OJtmngelual 2UUan Conference, 1873. HISTOET, ESSAYS, ORATIONS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS OF THE SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, Held in New York, October 2-12, 1873. EDITED BY KEV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., AND KEY. S. IREN^EUS PKIME, D.D. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FEANKLIN SQUARE. 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. THE Executive Committee of the Evangelical Alliance of the United States, in making arrangements for the Sixth General Conference, confided the prepa- ration of the Programme and the selection of writers and speakers to a special committee, consisting of the following named persons : REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., KEV. S. I. PRIME, D.D., REV. THOMAS D. ANDERSON, D.D., REV. G. W. SAMSON, D.D., REV. G. R. CROOKS, D.D., REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., REV. JOHN HALL, D.D., REV. NOAH HUNT SCHENCK, D.D., REV. -JAMES M'COSH, D.D., LL.D., REV. H. B. SMITH, D.D., REV. E. A. WASHBURN, D.D. The Committee on the Programme having, with protracted deliberation, matured the plan of the Conference and chosen the themes to be discussed, sought the men best fitted in their judgment to treat these subjects, for the defense and advancement of evangelical truth. About one hundred men, from various parts of the world, eminent for learn- ing, ability, and worth, holding high rank in theology, philosophy, science, and literature, were thus brought together, with the richest fruits of their la- bors, and animated by a common impulse to contribute each his part to the power and usefulness of the great Conference. The result was far beyond the expectations of the Committee. These essays and orations, discussing almost every important theological, religious, and moral question of the age, were ea- gerly listened to from morning till night, for ten consecutive days, by thou- sands of sympathizing hearers in this city, during a season of financial dis- tress, and then were multiplied, through secular and religious periodicals, among millions of readers. It is safe to say that the utterances of a religious assembly were never re- ceived with more profound respect by so great a number of attentive minds. It was, therefore, an immediate duty to gather into a permanent volume the productions of the Conference. To this end the Committee on the Programme confided the preparation of this volume to the General Secretary of the Con- ference, Rev. S. Irenasus Prime, D.D., and to the Honorary and Acting Cor- responding Secretary of the United States Alliance, Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D. To the former was committed " the charge of the general arrangement and typographical character of the volume, the preface, historical sketch, and gen- eral index ;" and to the latter " the charge of the papers delivered before the Conference, their classification, and all the details pertaining to their introduc- tion into the volume." This devolved on Dr. Schaff the labor of translating papers from foreign languages, revising them all, and the greatest care in see- iv PREFACE. ing them accurately through the press. In some cases it was necessary to send the proofs across the ocean, and then to reset the essays, to embody the numerous alterations made by the authors. The editorial labor performed in making these repeated revisions has been immense. No one can comprehend the skill and patient toil involved except those who are acquainted with the work, and the Programme Committee desire to put on record here their ap- preciation of this great and gratuitous service. The papers contained in this volume give, however, but a faint idea of the character and spirit of the Conference. Its principal charm was the personal intercourse of Christian brethren from all parts of the world, and the secret of its power and success, we believe, was the presence of the Holy Spirit from the opening social reception in New York to the sublime close in Washington, when delegates from every clime made the Rotunda of the National Capitol resound with the praise of Christ, and joined with one voice and heart in pro- fessing the Apostles' Creed, repeating the Lord's Prayer, and singing the dox- ology. The Spirit of God alone could subdue all human passions and dis- cords national, sectional, sectarian, and personal and make them tributary to the universal harmony. He alone could impart such devotional fervor and intense enthusiasm as thrilled the crowded assemblies from day to day. Under His blessed influence, the Conference was truly a communion of saints, a foretaste and pledge of a higher and better union, which the same Spirit will bring about in his own good time. The blessing of this Conference is seen in the general encouragement of faith, hope, and zeal in the Master's service. The delegates from abroad have carried it home and disseminated it in their respective fields of labor. The echo of its quickening power comes back to us, in reports of public meetings in the capitals of Europe, in published discourses, and private letters all over- flowing with gratitude to God for what the delegates had seen and heard in those memorable days of October. Christians of the Old and the New World, separated by the ocean, feel now as never before the concentrated power of evangelical Protestantism, and the inestimable value of mutual sympathy and willingness to learn from each other, and to work and pray for each other. May God hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy of the one flock and one Shepherd ! The Committee wish to express their acknowledgments to the Recording Secretaries, Rev. Messrs. H. B. Chapin and S. W. Crittenden, for their assist- ance in the preparation of this volume. Great credit is due to the Publishers for the patience, enterprise, and liberality which they have shown in bringing out the volume at their own risk, without expense to the Alliance. And with earnest desires for its wide nnd permanent usefulness, it is sent forth to the members and friends of the Evangelical Alliance throughout the world. HISTOEICAL SKETCH. HISTOKIC AL SKETCH OF THE SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OP THE Held, New York, October 2-12, 1873. IN the month of August, 1867, the Fifth General Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance was held in the city of Amsterdam, Holland. At that meet- ing a request was presented by the Evangelical Alliance of the United States of America that the next General Conference might be held in the city of New York. At an informal meeting of Delegates to that Conference it was suggested that the United States Alliance should enter into correspondence with the various branches throughout the world, with a view to, the acceptance of the invitation, should it be found practicable and desirable. The General Conferences had been held at intervals of four or five years;, and as it was not expected that a very large number of members would cross the ocean to attend a meeting in America, it was the decided opinion of European members that the New York Conference should be held within two or three years after the one at Amsterdam, 'and that anoth- er should be convened in Europe at the usual time. As the result of corre- spondence, it was determined to hold the Conference in New York, in Sep- tember, 1869, and an invitation was issued accordingly. At request of the British Organization, the time was changed to September, 1870. The Alliance in the United States began to make preparations for this Conference in the year 1868, and in the summer of the year following the Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., was deputed to visit the several Alliances in Europe, and to extend a personal invitation to men of learning and ability 4 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. who were in sympathy with the Alliance to attend the Conference. On November 4, 1869, the United States Alliance met with a large assembly of clergymen of the city of New York and neighboring towns, and a great number of laymen, in the Collegiate Keformed Dutch Church, corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, to hear the report of Dr. Schaff, who had recently returned from his journey in Europe. Eis report was in the highest degree encouraging, and the resolution was adopted to go forward with the preparations. More than $10,000 were subscribed on the spot toward the expenses of the Conference. A committee, to whom was confided the Programme for the Conference, having arranged the subjects which it was considered important to discuss, selected from various countries the men who were believed to be best quali- fied in their respective departments of thought and labor to make valuable contributions to the Conference. These gentlemen were consulted, and the programme was completed. Arrangements were also made for the entertainment of the members by Christian families in the city. In the beginning of the month of August it was confidently expected that in a few weeks the Conference would be as- sembled. And when the war between France and Germany began to threat- en the successful consummation of the desired plans, the Executive Com- mittee decided not to postpone the Conference in any event. But telegrams and letters from France, Germany, Switzerland, and England came, stating that a full representation of their members would be impossible, and from some no representatives could be expected. August 5, 1870, the Committee, with great reluctance, resolved to post- pone the Conference, "at least for the present year, and until such time as the providence of God shall open the way for its successful convoca- tion." A few delegates from foreign lands had arrived in this country before the postponement, and others arrived soon after, to the number of twenty-six, representing Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, South America, and Tasmania. A public greeting was given to these breth- ren by the United States Alliance in the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion Building, on Friday evening, September 23, 1870. Among those present from abroad were the Rev. James Davis, Secretary of the British Alliance ; the Rev. Joseph Angus, D.D., and the Rev. Thomas Aveling, of London ; the Rev. R. Koenig, of Pesth, Hungary ; the Rev. Dr. Revel, of Florence, Italy ; the Rev. J. G. Bliss, of Constantinople ; and the Rev. J. Ketley, of Demerara, South America. The presence of these and other SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 5 brethren, from such widely separated portions of the world, furnished an indication of the interest that had been awakened in the expected Con- ference throughout Christendom, and served to deepen the regret at its postponement. And on the following Sunday evening, when a public meeting in the interest of the Alliance was held in the Association Build- ing, addressed by the Eev. James Davis, of London, and others, the crowd- ed audience that filled the spacious hall to overflowing, and the numbers who were obliged to leave for want of room, showed how deeply the com- munity were interested in the Conference that had been deferred. RESUMPTION OF PREPARATIONS. In the spring of 1872, it was decided, after correspondence with the other branches of the Alliance, to hold the Conference from the 2d to the 12th of October, 1873. During the summer of 1872, Dr. Schaff again visited Eu- rope, to confer with distinguished gentlemen whose presence was especially desired, and earnest preparations were resumed at home. The disappoint- ment incident to the postponement in 1870 rendered it difficult to arouse in the public mind the enthusiasm that had existed at that time. But the com- mittee labored with all the more ardor. Sub-committees were formed, on the Programme, on Finance, on Preliminary Meetings, on arrangements for Entertaining Delegates, Music, etc., etc. Public meetings were held in a number of churches of different denominations, with the view to increase the interest of the community in the Conference. Pastors cheerfully pledged themselves to raise contributions from their congregations. While the work of preparation was thus going on, favors were shown to the committee, which greatly assisted them in their arduous endeavors. The Young Men's Christian Association renewed the generous offer that they had made in 1870, of the gratuitous and exclusive use of their spacious building for the Conference during its ten days' session. The Trustees of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, corner of Fourth Avenue and Twen- ty-second Street, of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, directly oppo- site, and of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-fourth treet, kindly placed these edifices at the dis- posal of the Conference. Steinway Hall and the large Hall of the. Cooper Union were also tendered to the Conference.for such occasional use as might be desired, free of charge. Offers of hospitality flowed in, sufficient to meet the demand, many families returning from their summer sojourn in the country earlier than usual to entertain their guests, and others furnishing the means for entertainment at hotels, while most of our leading hotels of- fered to receive delegates at greatly reduced rates. Nor should the valua- C EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. ble aid rendered by the press be overlooked. Not only the religious week- lies, but the principal secular daily papers in New York, as well as many newspapers throughout the land, contained editorial notices of the Confer- ence that served greatly to enhance the public interest. SOCIAL REUNION. On Thursday evening, October 2d, the " Social Reunion of Members and Invited Guests" took place in the Association Building, which was suitably arranged for the occasion. The walls of the reception-room and parlors were hung with paintings of the artists whose studios are in the building, and the lecture-room and library were used as refreshment-rooms. Admission to the building was only by tickets, which had been distrib- uted, in addition to members of the Conference, to pastors of contributing churches, to families entertaining delegates, and to other friends of the Alliance, so far as the capacity of the building admitted. Nearly every Christian nation was represented ; heathen nations had their representatives in the persons of missionaries of the Cross ; and distant India sent one of her own natives, no longer an idolater, but a worshiper of the true God, and a member of the household of faith. All branches of the one Evangelical Church were represented by clergymen and laymen, distinguished by vari- ous peculiarities, yet rejoicing to feel that they were one in Christ Jesus. After an hour of delightful social intercourse, the audience-room was thrown open. The great throng moved toward the doors in solid array. Soon every seat was filled, and every inch of available standing-room was occupied. Half of the ground-floor was reserved for the use of the dele- gates, and on the platform were seated the President and many of the other officers of the United States Alliance, and such of the delegates as were to take part in the services of the evening. It is not often that one is permitted to gaze upon such a sight as was then presented. The hall itself was tastefully decorated. The platform was car- peted, and adorned with evergreens, flowers, and plants. In the centre of the wall behind the platform were the initials and motto of the Alliance, with the date of its organization and the date of the present Conference: Unum Corpus Sumus in Christo. 1846. 4873. SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 7 Just below this was the motto, also descriptive of the principles of the Alliance, U !N NECESSARIIS UNITAS; IN DUBIIS LIBERTAS; IN OMNIBUS CARITAS." Around these mottoes the names of the eminent Eeformers and Theologians, Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe, Edwards, Knox, Bunyan, and Wes- ley, were arranged. On the balcony was the Greek name of the fish, 'IXGYS, the mystic emblem of the faith of the early Christians in the days of their persecution, containing, as it does, the initial letters of the words in which they confessed Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as their Saviour, 'Ijjdou? Xjoioroe Ofou f Y*oe SWTJ/JO. From the ceiling above the platform the flag of the Union was gracefully festooned, to which was appended the shield containing our National Motto, "E Pluribus TJnum" a motto equally appropriate to the united Christian body under whose auspices the festivities of the evening were celebrated. On either side of the American flag, completing the drapery, were the flags of Great Britain, France, and Germany. At the other end of the hall, on the front of the gallery, were the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, applied by Christ to himself in the last chapter of Kevelation, AQ. Around the entire gallery were hung the flags of the various nations alternating with that of the United States. The Hon. William E. Dodge, President of the United States Alliance, took the chair, and the exercises were commenced with singing the hymn, ' ' From all who dwell below the skies, Let the Creator's praise arise ; Let the Redeemer's name be sung Through every land, by every tongue." The hymn was sung to the familiar tune of " Old Hundred," the grand or- gan accompanying, and the entire audience rising and joining in this act of praise. The Eev. C. Dallas Marston, M.A., of London, then led the audience in the Lord's Prayer. The Eev. William Adams, D.D., LL.D., of New York, delivered an address of welcome to the members of the Conference, which is to be found on page 65 of this volume. Eesponses followed from a number of distinguished foreign delegates. Lord Alfred Churchill, of London, after reading a letter of greeting, ad- dressed by the Council of the British Alliance to the United States Alliance (see page 719 of Appendix L, to this volume), expressed his great pleasure in accepting the hospitality of American Christians, and his belief that the influence of this Conference, in which Christians in his own country were so much interested, would be felt all over the civilized world. He closed with 8 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. assuring the meeting of the good-will of all classes of Christians in Great Britain toward America, its churches and its people. The Rev. John Stoughton, D.D., of London, said that as he was entering the hall a gentleman whispered in his ear, " This, sir, is the grandest meet- ing that has been held for ages. It beats the Ecumenical Council at Rome !" lie believed the gentleman was correct, as Americans generally are when they express their opinions. The Council at Rome was nothing but a gath- ering of the members of a single Church, and that the most sectarian Church in the world; whereas this Conference has representatives from various branches of the Christian Church, all of them distinguished more or less by the true spirit of catholicity. . He had come to this country with all the feelings of an Englishman, but he had been so overwhelmed with kindness that, though here only a month, he felt one-half American already. He saw in the hall the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack peacefully folded together, and as he looked upon the audience he felt that henceforth a war between England and America would be an impossibility. As a Christian he was prepared to join hands with all in waving the banner that bears upon its folds the simple cross. He hoped great things from the Conference, and prayed that peace and union might attend it from the beginning to the end. Rev. George Fisch, D.D., of Paris, felt that he was enjoying a foretaste of heaven. It was a blessing to be where there were no boundaries, no na- tionalities, but an alliance that embraced us all. He hoped that the Confer- ence would be of great benefit to evangelical Christians in France, and that the American Republic, which was dear to the French people, would teach them that a republic, if it is to stand firm, must be built upon the ground of personal conscience and personal faith in God. Rev. Franck Coulin, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland, sincerely wished that there was but one language on earth as well as in heaven. He had long wished to visit America, the classic land of religious liberty, but he could never have anticipated the warm welcome that awaited him here. Some people said the Evangelical Alliance was not practical, but he felt that the present meeting was enough to disprove such a charge. Whitefield once preached on Christian unity, from the text, "God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is ac- cepted with Him." So he would know all Christians, not as sectarians, but as disciples of Christ. He was sure that all who were gathered at this meet- ing, though representing different branches of the Christian family, were unanimous in desiring the success of the Conference. Professor I. A. Dorner, D.D., of the University of Berlin, said that evan- SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 9 gelical America had invited evangelical Europe to this Conference, and that this invitation was appreciated by his own countrymen, as well as by all others to whom it had been extended. Some of the most distinguished friends of the Alliance in Germany were not here. The Eev. Dr. Hoffmann, of Berlin, a man of great influence in Germany, expected to attend, but had recently been called to his heavenly rest. The learned Professor Tischen- dorff, of Leipsic, would have made one of our number, but he had been sud- denly seized with a severe illness that rendered it impossible for him to come. The interests of the Alliance were dear to all, and he felt that the true idea of a Christian Church would be vivified by such a meeting as this, and the bonds of Christian brotherhood strengthened. Professor Theodore Christlieb, D.D., of the University of Bonn, Prussia, in addressing the audience in the English language, felt like young David when he tried to march in the armor of Saul ! At the Council of Ephesus, held 1400 years ago, the following greeting was given: "Brethren, I greet you in the name of Mary, the Mother of God, because through her you have been brought safely over the ocean." Coming from the land of the Refor- mation, he would greet the Conference, not in the name of Mary, but in the name of the blessed Saviour, who had brought them safely together. In behalf of his brethren, he thanked the United States Alliance for the recep- tion given them. Germans were not much accustomed to flatter, but he must say that the welcome here had exceeded those at former meetings of the Alliance, and would make it very difficult for any European nation to invite the Alliance for some time to come. The German delegates would learn much from their visit to the United States. They had already seen something of its institutions, its usages, and its customs, and would carry home impressions that would be of great benefit to them. Germany had for ages been a country of spiritual troubles, but he felt confident that Protest- antism, resting on the basis of truth and liberty, would ever be invincible against all forms of human error. There were times and this was one of them when Germans could, in a sense, forget that they were Germans, and shake hands with their French brethren (offering his hand to the Rev. Dr. Fisch, of Paris). The fathers of our faith were already one before the Throne, and their children should be one. He hoped that German Chris- tians, as well as all others, would be strengthened by this Conference, and that Protestantism would go forth as a thoroughly united and truly Ecu- menical power, until the world was brought to the feet of Jesus. Rev. M. Cohen Stuart, D.D., of Rotterdam, regretted that he was the only delegate present from Holland. But though alone, he was followed by the prayers of the friends who had sent him, and who would gladly have come 10 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. themselves, bad it been possible for them to do so. Though he had been in this country but three weeks, he already felt quite at home. He was glad to see the American and the Dutch flags twined around the hall, to see in these flags the same identical colors, red, white, and Hue, and to meet with so many good Dutch names and warm Dutch hearts here. He hoped it would be our constant prayer that the Evangelical Alliance might be led and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, so as to promote, according to its high calling, the kingdom of truth and of love. The Kev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India, a converted high-caste Brahmin, and a missionary of the Free Church of Scotland, said that his appearance at the Conference gave the lie to the assertion, sometimes made, that the missionary enterprise had been a failure. India had indeed been dead, but a resurrection was taking place in that country, and he hoped that it would soon be felt through the whole length and breadth of the land. He had come to the Conference with the greatest expectations, not merely because he believed in the power of sympathy, but because he be- lieved in the eternal verities of the Bible. His countrymen were unfortu- nately divided by caste originally four, there were now some four hundred castes but he hoped to see them eventually united ; and this would be ef- fected by carrying out the objects that the Evangelical Alliance had in view. He had been told 1 , before leaving home, that he would find castes in Chris- tian lands, but, on his return, he should tell his countrymen that the differ- ences among Christians were slight, and their unity was substantial ; that they were one in the grand, essential, eternal truths of salvation. If we could all go forth from these meetings determined to present Christ to the world, the effect would be so great that neither skeptics nor heathen could resist it. Charles Reed, Esq., M.P., of London, was the last speaker. He was grati- fied that the key-note had been so well struck in Dr. Adams's address of welcome. He had noticed that every other speaker had expressed the same brotherly kindness. He had attended many meetings in his own country, but had never found a better feeling in an audience than he saw exhibited in the gathering of to-night. As a layman he was glad to be upon the same platform with so many distinguished clergymen. There had been times when councils such as this had been called together, and none but the clergy allowed to take part in them. It was a blessed thing that the Evangelical Alliance opened the avenue through which the clergy and their flocks might pass together. All the addresses, of which the above brief abstract gives but an imper- fect idea, breathed a spirit of kindness and brotherhood that banished every SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 11 prejudice of nationality or creed, and welded the hearts of the immense au- dience together as the heart of one man ; and when Professor Christlieb, in the course of his address, turned to the Eev. Dr. Fisch, of Paris, and these two brethren, from countries that have so recently been engaged in deadly conflict, clasped each other's hands, the enthusiasm of the audience knew no bounds, and, rising to their feet, they caused cheer after cheer to echo and re-echo through the hall. And when the Hindoo, Sheshadri, clad in Oriental costume, with snow- white turban and flowing robe, in classic English and with earnest utter- ance, spoke of himself as an example of the success of missions, and express- ed his sympathy with the Alliance, and his hopes for the future of his coun- try, the hearts of the audience were again filled with the deepest emotion. After two hours of rich enjoyment, the exercises of the evening closed with the benediction by the Rev. Noah Hunt Schenck, D.D., of Brooklyn. ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFERENCE. At ten o'clock on Friday morning, October 8, the Conference met in Stein way Hall for formal organization and the transaction of business. The hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, even the aisles being filled with interested spectators. The large platform and the seats in front of it were occupied by delegates and invited guests. The Hon. William B. Dodge presided, and, before proceeding to business, a half-hour was spent in devotional services. The audience united in sing- ing the doxology, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below ; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." The venerable Professor Charles Hodge, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton, New Jersey, offered prayer in these words : " Come, Holy Spirit, come ! Descend in all Thy plenitude of grace. Come as the Spirit of reverence and love. Aid us, O God, in the discharge of the duties on which we are about to enter. We have assembled here from al- most all parts of the world. We have come to confess Thee before men ; to avow our faith that God is, and that He is the Creator, Preserver, and Gov- ernor of the World. We are here to acknowledge that the God of Abra- ham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob is our God. We are here to confess Christ as God manifest in the flesh, and as our only and all-sufficient Saviour, who for us sinners died upon the cross, to reconcile us unto God, and to make expiation for the sins of men ; and who, having died for our offenses, has risen again for our justification. We acknowledge Him as now seated at 12 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. the right hand of the Majesty on high, all power in heaven and on earth having been committed to His hands. Thanks be to God, thanks be to God, that lie has put on us, unworthy as we are, the honor to make this confession, and to bear this testimony to God and to His Son. O God, look down from heaven upon us. Shed abroad in our hearts the Holy Spirit, that we may be truly one in Christ Jesus. " Thou blessed Spirit of the living God, without whom the universe were dead, Thou art the source of all life, of all holiness, of all power. Thou perfect Spirit, Thou precious gift of God, come, we pray, and dwell in every heart, and touch every lip. We invoke the blessing of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost on this Evangelical Alliance. We spread abroad our banner, in the sight of all men, with the confession which Thou hast put into our lips the confession of all Christendom. We confess God the Father to be our Father; Jesus Christ, His Son, to be our Saviour; the Holy Ghost to be our Sanctifier ; and His Word to be the infallible rule of faith and practice. Grant, Lord, that wherever human words are uttered, this confession may be the language of every heart. And to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be glory, now and evermore. Amen." 1 The Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D., of Westminster, London, read the seven- teenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, after which the Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, repeated the Apostles' Creed, the audience rising and uniting in the recital : I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell ; the third day He arose again from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost ; the Holy Catholic Church ; the communion of saints ; the forgiveness of sins ; the resurrection of the body ; and the life everlasting. Amen. Prayer was then offered by the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa, Italy, and the whole Assembly joined in singing the hymn, " All hail the power of Jesus' name." At the close of these services, the Hon. William E. Dodge, of New York, spoke as follows : "FELLOW -CHRISTIANS, MEMBERS, AND DELEGATES, It becomes my pleasant duty, as President of the United States Evangelical Alliance, to call the Conference to order, that the necessary steps may be taken for perma- nent organization. SIXTH GENEKAL CONFERENCE. 13 " In response to our invitation, you have come from different parts of the world, to attend this General Conference in a land to many of you new and strange. In the name of the United States Alliance, I extend to you again this morning a cordial welcome to our shores, our homes, and our hearts. We trust that the separation from beloved friends and from pressing duties, with all the discomforts of travel, may find some compensation in the joys of a Christian fellowship that only such an occasion can afford, and in the new and riper views of Christian obligation and privilege that such discus- sions as are now before us promise to unfold. " To those who have crossed the ocean for the first time, there will also be an opportunity to become more intimately acquainted with the life and fea- tures of the New World. You will find here vast numbers from your own lands, who have come to adopt this as a home for themselves and their chil- dren. You will learn something of the form of civil government that distin- guishes this from other countries. You will notice the various religious or- ganizations, seeking no support from the State, but only demanding protec- tion in the full enjoyment of religious liberty. You will perhaps be aston- ished at the growth and prosperity that have been attained in so short a time. The population of this city in which we are convened has, within the life of men present with us here to-day, grown from 70,000 to about 1,000,000, while the population of the United States has in the same time increased from 6,000,000 to 40,000,000. "Americans who travel abroad gaze with interest upon the growth of cen- turies ancient cathedrals, castles, and cities of historic fame ; here we can only point you to what has been accomplished chiefly during a single cen- tury. We hope that many of you may visit our Western States, cross our inland seas, and witness for yourselves the marvelous changes in progress there. "We meet as Christian brethren, and, laying aside for the time the dis- tinctions that separate us into sects and parties, we rejoice to greet one an- other as children of a common Father, assembled to deliberate on the mighty concerns of his kingdom, and to consider how we can best promote the great principles that bind us and all true believers together. The topics to be discussed are most timely and important, and we trust that the conclusions reached will fully vindicate the wisdom of convening such a body of men. " Permit me to remind you that the calling of this Conference, composed of representatives of almost every land, and well-nigh every department of Christian thought and activity, has awakened wide interest in our own country, and, I doubt not, in other lands. The eyes of God and of men are watching us. Let us enter upon our duties with a deep sense of our entire 14 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. dependence on that -wisdom which is from above, and with earnest prayer that the Divine Spirit may guide all our deliberations. Animated with such feelings, and blessed with such aid, it can not be that we shall separate with- out carrying away thoughts and purposes that shall redound to the glory of God and the welfare of our fellow-men. " Years hence it may be one of the happiest memories we shall cherish that we were permitted to take even an humble part in the proceedings of this Sixth General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance. May it do much toward preparing the way for the relief of those still persecuted for right- eousness' sake in various portions of the globe ; may it give an impulse to the growth of religious liberty everywhere ; may it bind together Chris- tians of every name more closely, and also help forward the growing senti- ment in favor of arbitration in the settlement of international difficulties, and lift up among all people a victorious standard in the face of modern skepticism, rationalism, the claims of the Papacy, and every other false system. "Let me add that such arrangements as were in our power have been made for the comfort and convenience of the delegates during their stay among us. Again giving you a hearty welcome in the name of the United States Alliance, I request the Conference now to proceed to a more formal organization." After the delivery of this address, the list of delegates to the Conference was presented, showing a membership of 516, including regularly accredited delegates from the various Branches of the Alliance throughout the world, and gentlemen admitted to the floor of the Conference by invitation of the United States Alliance. Of the delegates, there were 75 from Great Britain, 9 from France, 12 from Germany, 6 from Switzerland, 2 from Belgium, 1 from Holland, 2 from Spain, 1 from Italy, 1 from Greece, 2 from Turkey, 1 from Prussia, and 4 from India, making a total of 116 from the Eastern Hemisphere. From the different Branches of the Alliance in the British Provinces of North America, including the Bermuda Islands, the West In- dies, and Prince Edward Island, there were 56, and from the United States Alliance and its Branches there were 294 delegates. Among the members by invitation were missionaries from Burmah, Siam, China, Ceylon, India, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and South Africa, so that nearly every portion of the inhabited world was represented. The reading of the roll, owing to its great length, was dispensed with, and on motion of the Eev. G. R. Crooks, D.D., of New York, the Conference pro- ceeded to the election of officers. Ex-President Theodore D. Woolsey, D.D., SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 15 LL.D., of New Haven, Connecticut, was unanimously chosen President of the Conference, supported by Vice-presidents; and Secretaries, General, Honorary, and Eecording, were elected. The complete roll of the officers and members of the Conference may be found on page 755 of this volume. The Eev. Dr. Woolsey, on taking the chair, addressed the Conference as follows : " CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, We are met here to-day because we believe in the Communion of Saints. We believe that man in his nature has aspira- tions, has a sense of want, has a need of redemption, and is one in all his races. We believe, also, that God is one, and that in all the various unfold- ings of Christian life there is one Christian character : the spirit of love to God and love to man, resting on Jesus Christ our Lord, in the hope of re- demption through Him. We can say, ' Unto Him that loved us, and wash- ed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father ; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.' And as in all ages of the past, from the age of the apostles down to our time, in every land, and under every form of worship which had access through Christ to the Father, there has been communion of the saints ; we believe in one great universal Church, that has lasted through all time until now, and that is to last until the end of all things. "And thus, to quote from Bishop Coxe, ' Oh ! where are kings and empires now Of old that went and came ? But, Lord, thy Church is praying yet, A thousand years the same.' "Notwithstanding the inefficacy of prayer has been demonstrated by sci- ence (!), the Church goes on praying still, all the same; and as long as there are Christians in the world they will pray instinctively, in spite of all logical conclusions. " Thus, too, we believe in the diffusiveness of the Gospel. I heard last night of a friend now here (Rev. Narayan Sheshadri) being converted from natural pantheism to an intelligent and cordial belief in Christ, and so I was reminded that ' Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.' This Gospel has spread on every side, with equal power of self-diffusion through all lands. Think what a change it has made in our continent ! A German antiquary says that in Caesar's time a squirrel could jump, from tree to tree, from the Ehine to the Elbe. So, two hundred and fifty years ago, an al- most unbroken forest stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, roamed over 16 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. by a few Pagans. Now in these United States more than 60,000 Protest- ant churches attest to the diffusive energy of the Gospel. "And this Gospel makes everywhere the same appeals to the conscience that it has done in times past. Not many months ago a young Japanese called upon me and said, 'I am a Christian, and I have received an appoint- ment from my Government. Now I want to know, inasmuch as my Gov- ernment may order me to do something inconsistent with the profession of a Christian life, what am I to do?' I told him, of course, that he was to obey God before men, but that, if he maintained his Christian life, every thing would be clear to him at the time. The same problem is coming up before the enlightened Japanese conscience as before ours. It is the same everywhere. " But in the present age, while the social and the missionary triumphs of the Church have been great, the assaults and attacks upon Christianity have been almost equally great and formidable. And, now, what is to be the effect? Is it not to bind us together as Christians, and make us forget our differences ? And while we value the discipline and the recollections hand- ed down to us from our fathers more than those of others, will not these as- saults of the adversaries of our faith make all the regiments of the army of God move together as one united band ? "Gentlemen, I need not repeat the welcome already given to you. Yet, as your President, I may once more say to you that we welcome you all. We welcome the Lutheran ; we welcome the children of free, heroic Switzer- land, and the representatives of France, the much suffering and glorious Church of France ; we welcome those from all other parts of Europe, and those who have come like first-fruits from the Eastern lands ; and, with al- most English hearts beating within us, we welcome our friends from En- gland, Scotland, and Ireland, of every name who are here." At the conclusion of President "Woolsey's address, the Rev. T. D. Ander- son, D.D., of New York, moved the following rules of order, which were adopted : First. The proceedings of the Conference shall be conducted according to the rules and regulations governing parliamentary bodies. Second. A committee on the daily Programme shall be appointed, to whom shall be referred, without debate, the papers, and overtures, and other mat- ters submitted for the consideration of the Conference. Third. As the object of the Conference is a comparison of views and free discussion, and not legislation, no resolutions committing the Conference to special measures will be entertained. SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 17 Fourth. No member shall be allowed to speak more than once on the same subject without the unanimous consent of the Conference. On motion of the Rev. Noah Hunt Schenck, D.D., of Brooklyn, Rev. James Davis of London, Eev. M. Cohen Stuart, D.D., of Rotterdam, Holland, and Rev. S. Irenseus Prime, D.D., of New York, were appointed a committee on credentials of delegates not yet presented, with power to complete the roll. The Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, then read a letter addressed to him, before leaving home, by the Archbishop of Canter- bury, with the request that he would read it before the General Conference. This interesting letter, in which the Archbishop expresses his sympathy with the Alliance, and his prayer for God's blessing on the Conference, is published on page 720 of Appendix I. to this volume. The Conference being now fully organized for business, the first topic specified in the printed programme was taken up, viz. : "REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION IN VARIOUS CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES." The Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa, delivered an address on the " State of Religion in Italy," and the Rev. Leopold Witte, of Cothen, Prussia, read, in part, a paper on " Evangelical Theology in Germany," prepared by Pro- fessor A. Tholuck, D.D., of the University of Halle. THE DAILY LUNCH. From Steinway Hall, the members of the Conference, at one o'clock, re- paired to the Young Men's Christian Association Building, where a collation had been prepared. And on each succeeding day of the Conference, be- tween the morning and afternoon sessions, refreshments were served in the lecture-room and library of the building, free of expense to the delegates; and entertainment was in this way furnished to about 800 persons daily, including members of the Conference, distinguished visitors, and others. CONTINUATION OF THE FIRST DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the Conference resumed its sessions, in Association Hall. The hall was densely crowded, the members of the Con- ference occupying the whole front half of the main floor, which was perma- nently reserved for their use. President Woolsey took the chair. Address- es on the "State of Religion" in their respective countries were delivered by the following gentlemen : Rev. M. Cohen Stuart, D.D., Holland ; Rev. H. 18 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. Krummacher, Germany; Rev. Eugene Reichel, Switzerland; Eev. Fritz Fliedner, Spain; Rev. M. D. Kalopothakes, M.D., Greece; Rev. Leonard Anet, Belgium ; and Rev. Leopold Witte concluded the reading of Dr. Tho- luck's paper, which had been interrupted in the morning by the adjourn- ment. Dr. Schaff gave a brief account of his interview the past summer with his Majesty the Emperor of Germany, who requested and authorized him to present to the Conference his cordial greeting, and the assurance of his warm sympathy with the Alliance. [See Appendix I., p. 721.] Before the adjournment, the Hon. George H. Stuart, in the name of the Philadelphia Branch of the United States Alliance, of which he is President, extended to the Conference an invitation to visit Philadelphia in a body on Monday, October 13 ; at the same time announcing that the Pennsylvania Railroad had generously offered to place a special train gratuitously at the disposal of the Conference for this visit. President M'Cosh invited the del- egates to stop a couple of hours at Princeton, on their way to Philadelphia. These invitations were cordially accepted. In view of the interest taken in the proceedings of the Conference, and the impossibility of accommodating in a single audience-room the numbers who desired to attend, notice was given that there would be two meetings in the evening, one at Association Hall, and the other at St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street. The benediction was then pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton. At half-past seven o'clock in the evening the Conference re-assembled in. Association Hall, where an address was delivered by the Rev. Auguste De- coppet, B.D., of Paris, on " The Position of the Protestant Religion in France," followed by a few remarks on the same topic by the Rev. George Fisch, D.D., of Paris. The Rev. John Stoughton, D.D., of London, read a paper on " The Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Relations of America to En- gland," and the exercises of the evening were concluded with a brief ad- dress by the Rev. J. C. Brown, LL.D., of Berwick, England, on the " State of Evangelical Religion in Russia," in which country a portion of his life has been spent. The benediction was then pronounced by the Rev. Wil- liam Patton, D.D., of New Haven, Conn. The meeting held on the same evening in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church was attended by a large and interested audience, many of the mem- bers of the Conference being also present. Lord Alfred S. Churchill, of London,' one of the Vice-presidents of the Conference, occupied the chair. A hymn was sung, and prayer was offered by the Rev.G. W. Weldon,M.A., of London. The chairman, after a few appropriate remarks, announced as SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 19 the topic of the evening, " The Evangelical Alliance : its Objects, and its In- fluence in promoting Christian Union and Religious Liberty," and intro- duced, as the first speaker, the Rev. James Davis, of London, Secretary of the British Evangelical Alliance. Mr. Davis, instead of reading the paper prepared by him on this topic, which appears in this volume, delivered a popular address on the objects and aims of the Alliance, and was followed by the Rev. J. S. Russell, of London, on the same subject. Addresses were also delivered by the Dean of Canterbury and the Rev. Mr. Weldon. Professor Charles A. Aiken, D.D., of Princeton, New Jersey, then read a letter written by the late Rev. Merle d'Aubignd, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland, and addressed to the " President and Members of the Ecumenical Council of Evangelical Christians at New York." This letter was intended for the proposed Conference of 1870, and, after the death of its distinguished author, was sent by his widow, to be read at the Conference of 1873. It may be found on page 717 of Ap- pendix I. At the close of these exercises, the doxology was sung, and the benedic- tion was pronounced by the Rev. Richard Smyth, D.D., of Londonderry, Ireland. THE DAILY PRAYER-MEETING. The business sessions of Saturday, October 4, were preceded by a devo- tional meeting at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, commencing at nine o'clock A.M., and continued for three-quarters of an hour. The church was well filled, and the services, consisting for the most part of prayer and praise, were characterized by great solemnity. The Rev. Dr. Adams, pas- tor of the church, conducted the meeting, and the congregation were led in prayer by the Rev. J. C. Harrison, of London, the Dean of Canterbury, the Rev. C. Dallas Marston, of London, and the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India, This devotional service was held at the same place and hour on each suc- ceeding day of the Conference ; and as brethren of different names, and from various quarters of the world, bowed together before the common mercy-seat, the feeling of every heart was, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." It was a service that drew heart to heart, and all hearts to Christ, and was a fitting preparation for the duties of each day. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND DAY. At ten o'clock A.M. the Conference assembled in Association Hall, Presi- dent Woolsey in the chair. As on the previous day, the hall was thronged 20 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. to its utmost capacity, and hundreds were unable to gain admittance. The exercises were commenced with prayer in the French language by the Rev. Franck Coulin, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland, and the President was about to introduce the first speaker, when a note was handed to him stating that the multitude who were unable to enter the already over-crowded hall desired that another meeting should be organized in one of the neighboring church- es. Arrangements were made upon the spot for the opening of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, in which meetings were held both morning and afternoon. The general topic of the day was "CHRISTIAN UNION," and the first speaker at Association Hall was Professor Charles Hodge, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton, New Jersey, who delivered an address on " The Unity of the Church based on Personal Union with Christ." It had been expected that Bishop Matthew Simpson, D.D., of Philadelphia, would address the Con- ference on the same topic, but illness compelled him, at the last hour, to de- cline the service, much to the regret of all. His place, however, was ably filled by the Rev. G. R. Crooks, D.D., of New York. The Rev. Eliphalet Nott Potter, D.D., President of Union College, Schenectady, New York, and the Rev. C. Dallas Marston, M.A., of London,. presented papers on "The Communion of Saints: Modes of its Promotion and Manifestation." The Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, spoke on " Christian Union consistent with Denominational Distinctions." At the afternoon session the Right Rev. Gregory T. Bedell, D.D., of Gam- bier, Ohio, treated the same topic, prefacing his address with a fitting allu- sion to the catholic spirit of the late Bishop M'llvaine, of Ohio, who during his lifetime had cherished and manifested the deepest interest in the Evan- gelical Alliance. The Rev. W. Noel, of Berlin, then delivered an address, in the German language, on the " Influence of the Evangelical Alliance in pro- moting the Spirit of Christian Union ;" and was followed by the Rev. Emile F. Cook, B. A., of Paris, on "The Evangelical Alliance in France," and the Rev. F. W. Conrad, D.D., of Philadelphia, on " Interchange of Pulpits." The exercises were then concluded with the benediction, in French and English, by the Rev. Dr. Coulin, of Geneva, Switzerland. At the meeting in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., of Providence, Rhode Island, presided in the morn- ing, and the Hon. Felix .R. Brunot, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in the after- noon. At the morning session prayer was offered by the Rev. David Ma- clise, D.D., of New York, after which the Rev. Mr. Marston and the Rev. SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 21 Dr. Conrad read the papers subsequently read by them in Association Hall ; the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri gave an affecting account of his conversion to Christianity and of his mission work in India ; and the Rev. Fritz Fliedner, of Madrid, spoke on the subject of " Evangelization in Spain." The bene- diction by Rev. Mr. Sheshadri concluded the exercises. At the afternoon session, after prayer by the Rev. William Ormiston, D.D., of New York, Bishop Bedell and the Rev. Mr. Cook read the papers presented by them in Association Hall ; the Rev. H. Wilkes, D.D., LL.D., of Montreal, delivered an impromptu address on the "State of Religion in Canada;" and the Rev. H. Krummacher spoke of "Inner Missions in Ger- many," and afterward pronounced the benediction, in the German language. SUNDAY SERVICES. On Sunday, October 5, the pulpits of very many of the evangelical church- es of New York and vicinity were occupied by members of the Conference, who were heard by large and attentive audiences. In the evening two public meetings were held, commencing at half-past seven o'clock : the one in the Academy of Music, and the other in Steinway Hall. Long before the doors of these edifices were opened, throngs of peo- ple blocked the sidewalks, and extended even to the middle of the streets in front ; and at the opening of the doors the pressure was so great that many in despair gave up all effort to enter. Both buildings were soon packed to their utmost capacity, and at least 8000 persons, probably, were present at the two meetings, while hundreds were unable to gain admittance. At the Academy of Music, the Hon. Felix R. Brunot, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, presided. The exercises of the evening were commenced with the singing of the hymn, " Come, thou Almighty King," after which the Dean of Canterbury read the 143d Psalm, and led the assembly in prayer. The chairman, Mr. Brunot, after a few appropriate remarks, intro- duced, in succession, the following speakers: Rev. Robert Knox, D.D., of Belfast, Ireland ; Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India ; Rev. Franck Coulin, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland, who spoke in French ; Rev. Moses D. Hoge, D.D., of Richmond, Virginia; Rev. W. H. Fremantle, of London ; Rev. W. F. Stevenson, of Dublin, Ireland ; Rev. T. Lorriaux, B.D., of Paris ; Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D., of London ; General Clinton B. Fisk, of St. Louis, Missouri ; and Charles Reed, Esq., M.P., of London. During the progress of the meeting two hymns were sung, and the exercises were closed with the doxology, and the benediction by the venerable Samuel H. Cox, D.D., of New York. At Steinway Hall, the Hon. Nathan Bishop, LL.D., of New York, pre- 22 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. sided; and after the singing of tbe hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus' name," prayer was offered, and the following speakers were successively in- troduced : Rev. Kichard Smyth, D.D., of Londonderry, Ireland ; Rev. Pro- fessor Stanley Leathes, of King's College, London ; Rev. L. C. Berkeley, of Lurgan, Ireland ; the Dean of Canterbury ; Hugh Miller, M.D., of Bloom- field, Scotland; Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of India; and Hon. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia. Several hymns were sung between the addresses; and at the close of the meeting the Rev. Professor J. F. Astie', of Lausanne, Switzerland, offered prayer, and the benediction was pronounced by the Rev. H. Krummacher, of Brandenburg, Germany. PROCEEDINGS OF THE FOURTH DAY. On Monday, October 6, the Conference held two sectional meetings, the attendance at both of which showed not only that there was no abatement in the interest with which the public regarded the proceedings of the Con- ference, but that this interest was increasing in intensity. The general topic of the day was "CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS." The First Section, which met in Association Hall, morning and afternoon, discussing it in its Theological bearings ; and the Second Section, which met in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, morning and afternoon, discussing it from a Philosophical point of view. At Association Hall, President Woolsey took the chair at ten o'clock, and called upon Bishop Campbell, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, to lead in prayer. Before the business of the day was commenced, the General Secretary of the Conference read a communication from the American Bible Society, offering to each foreign delegate to the Conference, as a souvenir of. his visit to this country, a copy of one of the editions of the Bible published by the society; also, an invitation from the Managers of the American Institute to the delegates to visit their Exhibition gratuitously. The Rev. O. H. Tiffany, D.D., of Washington, D.C., invited the delegates to visit the Capital of the United States, as the guests of the Metropolitan Branch of the United States Alliance, after their visit to Philadelphia. The Gen- eral Secretary announced that through the kindness of Mr. Alexander Stuart, of the house of R. L. & A. Stuart, carriages would be at the door of Association Building on Wednesday, at two o'clock P.M., for such of the European delegates as desired to visit Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park, in Brooklyn. After the applause that greeted these invitations had SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 23 subsided, the delivery of the papers announced in the programme of the day was begun. The Rev. Professor Stanley Leathes, of King's College, London, and Pro- fessor Theodore Christlieb, D.D., of the University of Bonn, Prussia, read papers on the "Best Methods of counteracting Modern Infidelity;" and President W. F. Warren, D.D., of the University of Boston, Massachusetts, on " American Infidelity ; its Factors and Phases." At the afternoon session, the Rev. E. A. Washburn, D.D., of New York, and Professor Paul Zimmermann, D.D., of Leipsic, Germany, read papers on "Reason and Faith;" Professor Felix Bovet, of Neuchatel, Switzerland, read a paper, in the French language, on " Christianity and the Gospel ;" and the Rev. M. Cohen Stuart, D.D., of Rotterdam, read a paper prepared for the Conference by Professor J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D., of the University of Utrecht, Holland, on " The Gospel History and Modern Criticism." A paper prepared by the Rev. John Cairns, D.D., of Berwick, England, on " The Causes of, and Best Methods of counteracting Modern Infidelity," was presented: owing to want of time, it was not read, but is printed in this volume. The meeting was closed with the benediction by President Potter, of Union College, New York. At St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., of Providence, Rhode Island, occupied the chair. The proceedings were opened with prayer by President S. G. Brown, D.D., of Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Papers were read by President James M'Cosh, D.D., LL.D., of the College of New Jersey, on " The Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Development;" by Principal Dawson, LL.D., of M'Gill College, Montreal, on " Primitive Man and Revelation ;" and by Professor C. P. Krauth, D.D., of Philadelphia, on "The Strength and Weakness of Ideal- .ism." Dr. M'Cosh's paper was followed by an interesting and animated discussion, in which Rev. G. W. Weldon, M.A, of London, Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Prince- ton, and Rev. Dr. J. C. Brown, of Berwick, England, took part ; and Professor Guyot, of Princeton, followed Dr. Dawson's paper with some remarks. In the afternoon, papers were read by Professor Arnold Henry Guyot, LL.D., of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, on " Cosmogony and the Bi- ble;" by President J. W. Nevin, D.D., of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on " Chris- tianity and Humanity ;" and by Professor Edmund Spiess, Ph.D., of the University of Jena, Germany, on "The Comparative Study of Religions." As in the morning, interesting discussions followed the reading of the papers, in which President M'Cosh, of Princeton, Principal Dawson, of Montreal, Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, Rev. Alexander Burnett, of Aber- 24 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. deen, Eev. Joseph Edkins, of China, and President Anderson, of Kochester, New York, took part. The session was closed with prayer and the bene- diction by the Rev. J. F. Stearns, D.D., of Newark, New Jersey. At half-past seven o'clock in the evening, a French meeting was held in Association Hall. The weather through the day had been unpleasant it was the only inclement day during the entire sessions of the Conference and the rain at night threatened to interfere seriously with the gathering of our French brethren. But the hall was well filled. Professor Felix Bovet, of Neuchatel, Switzerland, was called to preside, and, after addresses of welcome by the Eev. Philip Schaff, D.D., of New York, in the English language, and Professor Elie Charlier, of New York, in the French lan- guage, interesting addresses were made in French by Professor Bovet, by the Rev. A. Decoppet, and the Rev. Dr. Fisch, of Paris ; by the Rev. M. Le- litivre, of Nimes ; by the Rev. C. Boegner, of Strasbourg ; by the Rev. L. Anet and the Rev. E. Rochedieu, of Brussels ; and by Professor Pronier and the Rev. Dr. Coulin, of Geneva. The key-note of the meeting was struck by the Rev. Dr. Schaff, in his opening address of welcome, which was as follows: " MR. CHAIRMAN, DEAR FRIENDS, AND BRETHREN, In compliance with the request of your Committee of Arrangements, I have the honor and pleasure to open your proceedings, and to extend to you all, in behalf of the Evangelical Alliance of the United States, a cordial welcome to our churches, our homes, and our hearts. "We deeply regret the unavoidable absence of Guillaume Monod, Pressense, Bersier, Rosseeuw St. Hilaire, Babut, and Godet, who are, however, present with us in spirit and prayer, and who charged me with their best wishes for the Conference. We appreciate your presence all the more since it has been very difficult for you to leave your post of duty. No delegation is better entitled to our affectionate regard and sympathy than the delegation from " la belle France," and my own native Switzerland. "As Americans, we can never forget the debt of gratitude we owe to France for her efficient aid in achieving our national independence ; and your Lafayette is one of our household words, in inseparable union with the name of him who is " first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun- trymen." Nor are we less indebted to Switzerland for giving us such statesmen as Gallatin, and such scholars as Agassiz and Guyot, and the model of a republic that rests on popular self-government, and combines the advantages of national sovereignty and State independence, or of a cen- tralized and confederate government. SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 25 "As Protestants we shall always remember that France, in the person of John Calvin, gave to the world the foremost theologian, legislator, and dis- ciplinarian of the Reformation, and in the Huguenots a race of Christian heroes, who, like the Puritan Fathers of New England, sacrificed every thing to their sacred convictions, and became the benefactors of every Prot- estant country. We boast of the Huguenot blood that flows in the veins of many of the first families in America. Coming to our own times, the writings of your Guizot, Monod, Merle d'Aubigne, Pressense, Godet, Vinet, are as much appreciated among us as in their native land, and may be found in the libraries of scholars and working men from New York to San Francisco. The Protestant Church of France has been like a burning bush in the wilderness, and stands to this day a living monument of God's pro- tecting care and the unconquerable power of truth ; it is miraculously pre- served, after centuries of persecution, for a better future. " It has been my good fortune in early life to be brought in personal con- tact with your Vinet the Protestant Pascal ; with Merle d'Aubigne the historian of the Reformation, whose widow intrusted to me his testamentary words to this Conference ; with the saintly Adolph Monod, in whose socie- ty I spent several of the most delightful days of my life ; with Godet, the commentator on St. John and St. Luke, who was my most intimate friend when we studied in the University ; with Guyot, who is now our own, like his friend and fellow-townsman Agassiz; and with yourself, Mr. Chairman, who gave us such a charming book on your pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In this intercourse I formed the early conviction that the natural charms of the French character, when sanctified by divine grace, constitute one of the noblest types of a Christian gentleman. " In the providence of God, France has recently passed through a furnace of affliction. But this is only a passing cloud : "Behind a frowning Providence, God hides a smiling face." In the life of nations as well as individuals the deepest humiliation is sometimes the richest blessing in disguise. Already has France astonished the world with a proof of her recuperative energy and inexhaustible mate- rial resources. Let us hope that she will soon astonish the Church by a moral and spiritual regeneration, and outshine the glory of bloody victories by the nobler and more enduring glory of general education, self-governing liberty, and the pure religion of the Gospel of peace." In the addresses grateful allusion was made to the warm sympathy ex- isting between the United States and the French-speakina; countries of Eu- 26 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. rope, and the earnest hope was expressed by more than one speaker that France might follow in the footsteps of this Western Eepublic, in the enjoy- ment of civil and religious liberty and spiritual light A well-attended meeting of our "Welsh population was also held on this evening, at the Welsh Presbyterian Church, in Thirteenth Street, at which the Rev. II. Powell, pastor of the church, presided ; and addresses were de- livered by the Rev. John Evans, of Liverpool, and by several resident cler- gymen of Welsh parentage. PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIFTH DAY. On Tuesday, October 7, so many meetings of the Conference were held simultaneously as to greatly embarrass those who wished to hear certain speakers, but who found it impossible to be in several places at the same time. Sectional meetings were held in Association Hall, morning, after- noon, and evening; in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, morning and evening; in the Madison Square Presbyterian. Church, in the afternoon; and in the Broadway Tabernacle in the evening; and a children's meeting was held in the Church of the Disciples, corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, in the afternoon. The general topic of the day was "CHRISTIAN LIFE." At the morning session of the First Section in Association Hall, President Woolsey in the chair, the blessing of God was invoked by the Rev. J. C. Harrison, of London. An invitation was presented from the Erie Railway, offering a free ex- cursion to all of the delegates to Niagara Falls and back. A communica- tion was read from his Honor the Mayor of New York, inviting the mem- bers of the Conference, in the name of the authorities of the city, to visit the Public Institutions of New York. This invitation was unanimously extended by the Common Council, in response to the following message from the Mayor : Mayor's Office, New York, October 6, 1873. To the Honorable the Common Council. GENTLEMEN, The Evangelical Alliance, composed of delegates from various Christian bodies throughout the world, is now holding a Conference in this city. The assembly includes gentlemen from Canada, Europe, and other foreign countries, who occupy positions of honor and responsibility, and are eminent at home and abroad for learning, piety, and active benev- olence. Among the subjects in which they will naturally feel a deep interest, and SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 27 which will occupy their attention, is our method of dealing with the large class of the unfortunate and the criminal among us ; and, as many of these gentlemen visit our city for the first, and perhaps for the last time, it seems proper that the people of this city, through their representatives, should ex- tend to them an invitation to visit our justly celebrated institutions, and ac- quaint themselves, as far as possible, with their practical operations. As many of these delegates come from nationalities in which a large pro- portion of our own citizens were reared, it is much to be desired that they should not return to their firesides with any existing prejudices against our form of government, but with pleasant memories, and increased respect and esteem for the land which is now the home of their fellow-countrymen, and with which the portion of the world they represent is so closely identified by social and commercial ties. (Signed) W. R HAVEMEYER. On motion of the Eev. C. Dallas Marston, M.A., of London, a vote of thanks to the Mayor and Common Council of New York, and to the Erie Eailway Company, was unanimously passed. The Conference then proceeded with its business, and papers were read by the Eev. William Arnot, of Edinburgh, on "The Eelation between Doc- trine and Life;" and by the Eev. Eichard Fuller, D.D., of Baltimore, Mary- land, and the Eev. William Nast, D.D., of Cincinnati, Ohio, on "Personal Eeligion: its Aids and Hinderauces." It was not the intention to hold a meeting in Association Hall in the afternoon ; but, as the overflow of people from the Madison Square Presby- terian Church, where a sectional meeting was to be held, drifted into the hall and completely filled it, a meeting was improvised 1 , at which the Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., of London, and the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, delivered, substantially, the addresses afterward delivered by them in the Madison Square Church, on " The Pulpit of the Age ;" and the Eev. John Hall, D.D., of New York, being suddenly called on, spoke on the same subject. At the evening session, after prayer by the Eev. William Patton, D.D., of New Haven, papers were read by the Eev. J. C. Harrison, of Lon- don, and Eev. Professor W. S. Plumer, D.D., of the Theological Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina, on "Family Eeligion;" by the Eev. W. W. Pat- ton, D.D., of Chicago, Illinois, on "Eevivals of Eeligion: how to make them Productive of Permanent Good ;" and by President M. B. Anderson, LL.D., of the University of Eochester, New York, on "The Eight Use of Wealth." At the meeting of the Second Section, in St. Paul's Methodist Episopal 28 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. Church, at ten o'clock A.M., the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., of Providence, Rhode Island, presided, and the exercises were commenced with prayer by the Rev. E. E. Jenkins, D.D., of London. Papers were read by the Rev. James H. Rigg, D.D., of the Wesleyan Training School, Westminster, Lon- don, on " Secular and Religious Education ;" and by President Noah Por- ter, D.D., LL.D., of Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut, on " Modern Lit- erature in its Relation to Christianity." The paper of Dr. Rigg called forth a spirited discussion, in which President Potter, of Union College, President M'Cosh, of Princeton College, and James Girdlestone, Esq., and J. Carwell "Williams, Esq., of London, took part. . At the meeting of this section in the evening, Hon. William E: Dodge, of New York, presided; and prayer was offered by the Rev. J. C. Brown, LL.D., of Berwick, England. A paper was read by the Rev. A. L. Simpson, D.D., of Derby, England, on " Modern Literature and Christianity ;" after which remarks were made on the same topic by the Rev. William Ormis- ton, D.D., of New York, the Rev. Dr. Rigg, of London, and the Rev. Robert Crook, LL.D., of Belfast. The first topic of the morning session, " Secu- lar and Religious Education," was then resumed, and the discussion of it was continued by the Rev. E. 0. Haven, D.D., the Rev. William Ormiston, D.D., and the Hon. William E. Dodge, of New York ; the Rev. F. W. Con- rad, D.D., of Philadelphia ; the Rev. Dr. Rigg, of London ; President S. G. Brown, D.D., of Hamilton College, New York ; and the Rev. L. E. Berkeley, of Lurgan, Ireland. The exercises were closed with the benediction by the Rev. Mr. Berkeley. The Third Section met in Madison Square Presbyterian Church, at two o'clock in the afternoon. The galleries were occupied by students of the- ological seminaries in New York and vicinity, and the whole church was filled to its utmost capacity. President Woolsey introduced Charles Reed, Esq., M.P., of London, as chairman, who, after a brief address, announced as the topic of the afternoon " The Pulpit of the Age." Addresses were de- livered by the Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., of London ; Professor D. P. Kidder, D.D., of Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey ; and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn. After the singing of the doxology, the audience was dismissed with the benediction by the Rev. Mr. Beecher. At the meeting for children, held at three o'clock in the afternoon, in the Church of the Disciples, corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, the Rev. George H. Hepworth, pastor of the church, conducted the devo- tional exercises; and an address was delivered by the Rev. Narayan She- shadri, of India. The large church was well filled with an audience com- posed partly of children and partly of adults, all equally interested in the SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 29 remarkable man whom God has raised from idolatry to be a teacher of Christians in a Christian land. The Fourth Section met in the Broadway Tabernacle, at half-past seven o'clock in the evening, Charles Eeed, 'Esq., M.P., of London, in the chair. After an anthem, beautifully rendered by the choir of the church, the Eev. A. T. Pierson, of Detroit, Michigan, led in prayer. The topic of the evening was " Sunday-schools," and addresses were delivered by the Kev. Richard Newton, D.D., of Philadelphia, the Rev. Nathaniel Weiss, of Paris, the. Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., of New York, and Charles Reed, Esq., M.P., of London. This meeting was especially attractive to those who are actively engaged in Sunday-school work, and they were present in large numbers. Not only was every seat in the church occupied, but the aisles and passages were crowded with those whose interest in the addresses led them to stand dur- ing the whole of the long service. Thus the eight meetings of the day closed, sending to their homes thou- sands of hearers with hearts stimulated to seek for higher attainments in that " Christian Life " which had been the theme of the day. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTH DAY. On Wednesday, October 8, three sectional meetings were held : the first at Association Hall; the second at St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church ; and the third at the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church. These meet- ings were confined to the morning, the afternoon being left free for the ride to Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park, and the evening for a reception and public meeting at the Academy of Music, in Brooklyn. The general topic of the day was "ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM." At Association Hall the exercises were commenced with prayer by Pro- fessor W. S. Plumer, D.D., of Columbia, South Carolina. The Rev. Dr. Prime, General Secretary, presented messages of greeting to the Conference, sent by the Ministerial Association of Columbus, Ohio, and by the Young Men's Christian Association of Maine, then in convention at Auburn, Maine. Papers were then read by Professor I. A. Dorner, D.D., of the University of Berlin, and Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., LL.D., of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Infallibilism of the Vatican Council, and Nominal Protestantism;" by the Rev. George Fisch, D.D., of Paris, on " The Present State of Popery in France ;" and by the Rev. Leopold Witte, of Cothen, Prussia, on " Ultramontanism and the Four Prussian Church Laws.'' The benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Fisch, of Paris. 30 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. At the meeting of the Second Section, in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, Lord Alfred S. Churchill, of London, presided ; and prayer was offered by the Rev. W. II. Fremantle, of London. Papers were read by Professor W. KrafFt, D.D., of the University of Bonn, Prussia, on " The Vatican Council and the Old Catholic Movement;" by the Rev. Professor C. Pronier, of the Free Church Theological Seminary, Geneva, on " Roman Catholicism in Switzerland since the Proclamation of the Syllabus;" and by the Rev. R S. Storrs, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York, on "The Appeal of Romanism to Educated Protestants." Rev. Dr. Schaff, after some introductory remarks, read a paper from the Old Catholic Congress, recently held at Constance, signed by Bishop Rein- kens and others, and addressed to the General Conference, and a letter from Pore Hyacinthe, of Geneva, to the members of the Evangelical Alliance. These letters are in this volume. The session was closed with the benedic- tion by the Rev. W. Ives Budington, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York. At the meeting of the Third Section, in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, Hon. William A. Buckingham, ex-Governor of Connecticut, occu- pied the chair. Prayer was offered, in the French language, by the Rev. Dr. Coulin, of Geneva, after which the programme was as follows : " Roman and Reformed Doctrines of Justification contrasted," by Right Rev. George D. Cummins, D.D., of Kentucky; " Protestantism, Romanism, and Modern Civ- ilization," by Professor George P. Fisher, D.D., of Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut ; " The Evangelization of France," by the Rev. T. Lorriaux, B.D., of Paris ; " How shall Protestant Ministers best meet the Demands of the Present Age?" by the Rev. Franck Coulin, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland; "Christian Liberty," by President Alvah Hovey, D.D., of the Newton The- ological Institution, Massachusetts. The benediction was pronounced by President Hovey. In the afternoon the foreign delegates visited Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park, in Brooklyn. At two o'clock, carriages kindly provided by Mr. Alexander Stuart, of New York, were at the door, and the excursion was highly enjoyed by all who took part in it. After this pleasant ride, the delegates were taken to the Academy of Mu- sic in Brooklyn, and were entertained at dinner with a large number of ladies and gentlemen of Brooklyn. As multitudes who were in attendance upon the sessions of the Confer- ence could not make the excursion, devotional meetings were held in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, commencing at two o'clock. At the former place, the Rev. Mr. Sheshadri preached, and at the latter Rev. "Wm. Arnot, both churches being SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 31 filled to overflowing, and both audiences greatly edified by the discourses that were delivered. BROOKLYN MEETING. At half-past seven o'clock in the evening, the popular meeting that had been arranged for Brooklyn took place in the Academy of Music. The multitudes that attended, and the enthusiasm that was manifested, showed that the citizens of our sister city were not a whit behind those of New York in their appreciation of the Conference. The stage was tastefully draped on the sides and rear with the flags of the various nations repre- sented, and was occupied by the delegates and invited guests. The Eev. B. S. Storrs, D.D., presided, and opened the meeting with a brief but elo- quent address. The hymn, "Come, thou Almighty King," was sung, and the assembly was led in prayer by the Dean of Canterbury. Spirited ad- dresses were made by the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Italy ; Lord Alfred S. Churchill, of London ; the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn ; the Eev. John Stoughton, D.D., of London ; the Eev. George M. Grant, of Nova Scotia; the Eev. John Hall,D.D.,of New York; the Eev.Narayan Sheshadri, of India ; and the Eev. C. Stovel, of London. The addresses were all of a popular nature, abounding in humor, but more in serious thoughts that moved the hearts of all who heard ; and at a late hour the audience retired, feeling that the evening had been one of rare enjoyment. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH DAY. On Thursday, October 9, three sectional meetings were held : the first in Association Hall, morning and afternoon ; the second in St. Paul's Meth- odist Episcopal Church, morning and afternoon ; and the third at the Church of the Disciples, corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, in the evening. The general topic of the day was "CHEISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVEENMENT." At Association Hall, the morning session was opened at ten o'clock, as usu- al, the President in the chair. The exercises were commenced with prayer by the Eev. Dr. Caswell, of Providence, Ehode Island ; after which a letter was read conveying to the Conference the greetings of the Congregational Association of Illinois. Papers were then read as follows : " The Church and the; Nation," by the Eev. W. H. Fremantle, M.A., of London ; " The Ee- lations of Constitution and Government in the United States to Eeligion," by the Eev. T. D. Woolsey, D.D., LL.D., of New Haven, Connecticut; "The 32 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. Sabbath made for Man, and bis Consequent Eight to Legislation for serv- ing its Ends," by the Rev. Mark Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., of Williamstown, Massachusetts. Opportunity being given for discussion, J. Carwell Will- iams, Esq., of London, replied to the views of Rev. Mr. Fremantle in favor of an established religion in the State ; and W. J. Menzies, Esq., of Edin- burgh, supported them. At the afternoon session, President Hovey, of the Newton Theological Institution, Massachusetts, repeated the paper on " Christian Liberty," pre- viously read by him before another section of the Conference ; and James Girdlestone, Esq., of London, delivered an address on "Legislation on Moral Questions." The papers assigned to this section being now finished, volun- teer remarks on the general topic of the day were called for, in response to which Hon. Felix R Brunot, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and the Rev. T. P. Stevenson, D.D., of Philadelphia, spoke in favor of the express recogni- tion of God in the written constitutions of Christian governments; and the Rev. G. M. Grant, of Nova Scotia, the Dean of Canterbury, Bishop Simpson, of Philadelphia, and the Rev. David Inglis, D.D., of Brooklyn, spoke on the subject of " Church and State." At the close of this discussion, the Rev. H. C. McCook, of Philadelphia, gave notice of the arrangements made for the visit of the delegates to Phil- adelphia, whereupon the Dean of Canterbury moved a vote of thanks, as follows : MR. PRESIDENT, AND LADIES- AND GENTLEMEN, After the announce- ment just heard, I think the delegates, both American and foreign I don't consider myself of the foreign party ought to pass a vote of thanks to the Pennsylvania Railway Company, and to the Committee of Arrange- ments of the Philadelphia Branch, for the very kind way in which they have made preparations for our pleasure' and comfort. I therefore sug- gest that such a motion be put to vote. This motion was seconded, and unanimously carried. The meeting closed with the benediction by the Rev. Dr. Forsyth, Chaplain of the West Point Military Academy, New York. At the meeting of the Second Section, in St. Paul's Methodist Episco- pal Church, the Rev. G. R. Crooks, D.D., of New York, presided, and, after the usual devotional exercises, the following papers were read : " The In- fluence of Christianity on Civil and Religious Liberty," by President W. H. Campbell, D.D., of Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey ; " Evils of a Union of Church and State," by the -Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL.D., of Rich- mond, Virginia; "The Effects of Civil and Religious Liberty on Chris- SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 33 tianity," by Professor D. R. Goodwin, D.D., of the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. The exercises were closed with the benediction by Professor Henry B. Smith, D.D., LL.D., of the Union Theological Semi- nary, New York. At the afternoon session, the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., of Providence, presided ; and prayer was offered by the Rev. S. H. Tyng, Jr., D.D., of New York. Ex-President Hopkins, of Williams College, Massachusetts, repeat- ed the paper on " Sabbath Legislation," read by him in the morning at As- sociation Hall, and a brief discussion followed, after which the meeting was closed with the benediction. The sectional meeting held in the Church of the Disciples, Madison Av- enue and Forty-fifth Street, convened at half-past seven o'clock in the even- ing, the Hon. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, acting as chairman. The large church was completely filled, and hundreds were unable to gain ad- mission. After prayer by the Rev. J. Stanford Holme, D.D., of New York, Rev. Professor J. F. Astie, of the Theological Seminary of the Free Church, Lausanne, Switzerland, read a paper on "The Free Churches on the Conti- nent of Europe." Addresses on the subject of " The Support of the Chris- tian Ministry " were then delivered by the Rev. John Hall, D.D., of New York, the Rev. T. Y. Killen, of Belfast, Ireland, the Rev.L. E. Berkeley, of Lurgan, Ireland, Professor M. W. Jacobus, D.D., of the Western Theologic- al Seminary, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and Bishop Cummins, of Kentucky. The meeting was closed with the benediction by the Rev. George H. Hep- worth, of New York. Professor Christlieb, in reading his paper on "The best Methods of Coun- teracting Modern Infidelity," before the Conference, on Monday, the 6th inst., had omitted portions of it for want of time. He was requested to re- peat it in full, and notice was given that he would comply with this request on Thursday evening, the 9th inst., in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. Rev. Dr. Adams introduced the speaker, and for two hours and three quarters he held the attention of a vast assembly, and many remained standing during the whole time. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS VISITED. In addition to the meetings of Thursday, the day was rendered interest- ing and instructive to a portion of the delegates by a visit to the public in- stitutions of the city, tendered by the municipal authorities. Owing to the pressure of its business, the Conference was unable to adjourn for this ex- cursion; but about one hundred and fifty of the delegates, among them those especially interested in public charities and in prison reform, met the Mayor, 34 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. the Commissioners of Charities and Correction, and several members of the Boards of Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen, at the foot of Twenty- sixth Street, East River, at ten o'clock in the morning, and were conveyed by steamboat to Blackwell's, Randall's, Hart's, and "Ward's islands. On Blackwell's Island the Penitentiary, Work-house, Insane Asylum, and Hos- pitals were visited. On Randall's Island the children of the Orphan Asy- lum were drawn up in line to receive their visitors, and the boys very cred- itably went through some military exercises with their wooden muskets. Speeches were made to the delegates by three of the inmates of the Asy- lum Henry Savage, Thomas Graham, and Emma Gardner. Commissioner Stern also made a brief address, and responses were made by the Rev. G. W. Weldon and the Rev. Thomas W. Aveling of London, and Professor Henry A. Nelson, D.D., of Cincinnati, Ohio. On the school-ship Mercury, at Hart's Island, a variety of nautical evolutions were most admirably exe- cuted by the boys; and addresses were made by the Mayor, Alderman Vance, and the Rev. Dr. George Fisch, of Paris. On Ward's Island the vis- itors were conducted through the building originally erected for an inebri- ate asylum, but now used as an asylum for disabled soldiers. In the large hall of this building dinner was served to the delegates, after which Mayor Havemeyer, the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa, Professor Felix Bovet, of Neuchatel, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker, of London, made appropriate remarks. The company reached New York, on their return, at about six o'clock in the afternoon, where they found carriages awaiting them on the dock, to convey them to their several places of abode. The courtesy of the municipal authorities, the magnitude of the charities inspected, the admira- ble condition of the institutions visited, the beauty of the scenery, the scenes and events of the day, made a profound impression upon the delegates. PROCEEDINGS OF THE EIGHTH DAY. On Friday, October 10th, four sectional meetings were held : the first, in Association Hall, morning and afternoon; the second, in St. Paul's Meth- odist Episcopal Church, morning and afternoon ; the third, in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, in the morning; and the fourth, in the Madi- son Square Presbyterian Church, in the afternoon, all of them attended by large and interested audiences. The general topic of the day was "CHRISTIAN MISSIONS FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC." At the morning session in Association Hall, President Woolsey in the chair, prayer was offered by President Asa D. Smith, D.D., of Dartmouth SIXTH GENEKAL CONFERENCE. 35 College, Hanover, New Hampshire ; and a paper was read by the Kev. Jo- seph Angus, D.D., of Regent's Park College, London, on " The Duty of the Churches in Relation to Missions." The Rev. Rufus Anderson, D.D., LL.D., of Boston, Massachusetts, presented a paper on "Territorial Divisions of Missionary Fields of Labor, and Missionary Courtesy ;" and by Dr. Ander- son's request it was read by the Rev. Dr. Clark, one of the secretaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. A paper pre- pared by the Rev. Dr. Grundemann, of Pottsdam, Germany, on "Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant Missions compared," which was to have been read by Professor Christlieb, was deferred, owing to the late hour at which the translation of it had come to hand. It is published in this volume, among the papers of Friday, October 10. The Rev. Thomas M. Eddy, D.D., of New York, read a paper on " The Obligations of Science, Litera- ture, and Commerce to Christian Missions." An opportunity being given for impromptu remarks, brief speeches on mission work were made by the Rev. Thomas Penrose, of Reading, England ; Professor Charles A. Blanchard, of Chicago, Illinois ; the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India ; and the Rev. J. W. M. Williams, D.D., of Baltimore, Maryland. The afternoon session was commenced with prayer by the Rev. John Chambers, D.D., of Philadelphia. The Rev. Dr. Schaff presented a paper from Count Andreas von Bernstorff, of Berlin, on "Lay Preaching," which was ordered to be printed in the volume of proceedings. George A. Stu- art, Esq., of Philadelphia, delivered an address on "Lay Preaching;" after which II. Thane Miller, Esq., of Cincinnati, Ohio, sang, with touching effect, the hymn, " Tell me the old, old story," the audience joining in the chorus. The Rev. Robert Knox,D.D.,of Belfast, Ireland, read a paper on " City Mis- sions in Ireland;" after which brief impromptu addresses on the subject of missions were delivered by Professor Christlieb, of Germany, and the Hon. Frederick T.Frelinghuysen, United States Senator, of Newark, New Jersey. George H. Stuart, Esq., read a letter from the Rev. Alexander Duff, D.D., of Scotland, sending a hearty " God-speed " to the Conference, and expressing his regret at not being able to attend its sessions. The benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., of New York. At the meeting of the second section, at ten o'clock A.M., in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, ex-Governor William A.Buckingham, of Con- necticut, and United States Senator, presided, and the exercises were com- menced with prayer by the Rev. Dr. Forsyth, of West Point. Addresses were delivered by the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India, Hugh Miller, M.D., of Broomfield, Scotland, and the Rev. J. S. Woodside, of Northern India, on " Christianity among the Hindoos," " Obstacles to Mis- 36 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. sion Work," and " Women's Work in India ;" by Bishop E. De Schwei- nitz, S.T.D., of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on " Missions among the lowest of the Heathen;" and by the Rev. E. E. Jenkins, D.D., of Southport, En- gland, formerly a missionary to India, upon the general subject of missions in India. At the afternoon session papers were read and addresses delivered by the Rev. William Murray, of Falmouth, Jamaica, on " Christianity in the West Indies ;" by Hon. Felix R. Brunot, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and Hon. Nathan Bishop, LL.D., of New York, both connected with the United States Indian Commission, on "Indians in the United States;" and by the Rev. Moses. D. Hoge, D.D., of Richmond, Virginia, on "The Mission Field of the South." The meeting was closed with the benediction by the Rev. Dr. Hoge. At the meeting of the Third Section, in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, at ten o'clock A.M., the Rev. E. P. Rogers, D.D., of New York, presided ; and after prayer by the Rev. Robert Knox, D.D., of Belfast, Ire- land, a paper was presented by the Rev. Antonio Carrasco, of Madrid, on " The State of Religion in Spain," which was delivered in Spanish by the author, and translated by the Rev. Fritz Fliedner, also of Madrid. A paper prepared by the Rev. H. H. Jessup, D.D., of Beirut, Syria, on " Mis- sions to the Oriental Churches," was read by the Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, of New York, lately a missionary to Syria. A paper was read by the Rev. L. E. Berkeley, of Lurgan, Ireland, on " Evangelization in Ireland." The Rev. M. Lelievre, of Nimes, France, presented a paper on " The Evan- gelical Home Mission of France," which, at his request, was read by the Rev. Emile Cook, of Paris. The meeting was concluded with the bene- diction. The Fourth Section met at two o'clock in the afternoon, in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. It was addressed wholly by foreign mission- aries who were in attendance upon the Conference, each speaker being lim- ited to ten minutes. Addresses were delivered by the Rev. Edwin E. Bliss, of Constantinople; the Rev. B. Labarree, of Persia; the Rev. M. D. Kalo- pothakes, M.D., of Greece ; the Rev. Mr. Thomas, of India; Mr. W. Yorke, of the Dindigal Training-school, Madras, India; the Rev. A. Grout, of South Africa; the Rev. C. H. Carpenter, of British Burmah; and the Rev. Justus Doolittle, of China. In the evening a German popular meeting was held in Association Hall. The Rev. Dr. Schaff presided ; and the meeting was opened with the sing- ing of Luther's grand old hymn, " Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." Prayer was offered by the Rev. Edward Dreier, of Neuen Kirchen, Hanover; and SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 37 the chairman, after some felicitous remarks, introduced to the audience the following speakers : Professor Corner, of Berlin ; Professor Christlieb, of Bonn ; Eev. Paul Zimmermann, of Leipsic ; Rev. A. H. M. Held, of New York ; and the Rev. George Zahner, D.D., of Ohio. This meeting, which was very fully attended by our German fellow-citizens, was one of great interest, the topics presented by the speakers being the vital questions of German theology and church life, with special reference to the reciprocal relations of Germany and the United States. Before adjourning, it was re- solved to hold a similar meeting on Sunday evening at the Cooper Insti- tute, at which opportunity should be given of hearing other speakers. In the evening an elegant reception was given to the Conference by the Hon. "William E. Dodge, President of the United States Alliance. In ad- dition to the members of the Conference, most of the clergy of the city and many invited guests filled the spacious mansion of Mr. Dodge, on Murray Hill, in Madison Avenue. Conversation, music, and refreshments enliven- ed the evening ; and brief speeches were made by the venerable Dr. Cox, the Rev. Mr. Sheshadri, and the Rev. J. C. Harrison, of London. After two or three hours of delightful intercourse, the Rev. Mr. Harrison, by re- quest of Mr. Dodge, offered prayer, and the guests soon after took their departure. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINTH DAY. On Saturday, October llth, the last day of the business sessions of the Conference, three sectional meetings were held : the first, in Association Hall, morning and evening; the second in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, in the morning; and the third in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, in the morning. In addition to these, a united session of all the sections was held in Association Hall, at two o'clock in the afternoon. The general topic of the day was "CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS." At the morning session in Association Hall, the President in the chair, the exercises were opened with prayer by Bishop Alfred Lee, D.D., of Del- aware. Rev. Dr. Cattell, President of Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsyl- vania, extended to the delegates an invitation to attend, on the 21st of Octo- ber, the dedication exercises of Pardee Hall, a new building intended for the scientific department of the college, stating also that free railway tick- ets would be furnished to all who could make it convenient to attend. The Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D., of New York, invited the foreign dele- gates to visit Central Park after the adjournment of the Conference in the 38 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. afternoon, stating that carriages would be at the door of the hall at that time for their use. President Eliphalet Nott Potter, D.D., invited the delegates to visit Union College at their convenience. After a vote of thanks for these courtesies, papers were read by Rev. Pro- fessor J. Harris Jones, Ph.D., of Trevecca College, Wales, on " Christianity as a Reforming Power;" by the Rev. W. Fleming Stevenson, of Dublin, Ireland, on " The Working Power of the Church how best to Utilize it ;" and by President W. H. Allen, LL.D., of Girard College, Philadelphia, on " The Labor Question." The reading of Dr. Allen's paper was followed with remarks on the same topic by Professor L. H. Atwater, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton College, New Jersey, and President Woolsey, of New Haven. At the sectional meeting in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, the Rev. Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., of New York, presided ; and after prayer, papers were read by the Rev. Thomas W. Aveling, of London, on " Christian Phi- lanthropy ;" and by the Rev. William A. Muhlenberg, D.D., of St. Luke's Hos- pital, New York, on " The Lord's Supper in Relation to Christian Union." A paper on " The Care of the Sick," prepared by the late Count Agdnor de Gasparin, of Geneva, for the Conference of 1870, was read in part by the Rev. Hervey D. Ganse, of New York, and may be found in full in this volume. A few remarks were made on the subject of "Deaconesses," by the Rev. Fritz Fliedner, of Madrid, son of Pastor Fliedner, the founder of the House of Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth, on the Rhine. At the sectional meeting held in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., Chancellor of the University of New York, presided, and prayer was offered by the Rev. E. C. Wines, D.D., of New York. Papers were read by Professor Henry A. Nelson, D.D., of Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, on " Intemperance and its Suppres- sion," by the Rev. E. C. Wines, D.D., LL.D., of New York, Secretary of the National Prison Association, on " Christianity in its Relation to Crime and Criminals ;" by the Rev. Elie Robin, B.D., of Paris, on " Industrial Schools as an Agency in the Prevention of Crime ;" and by Henry Bergh, Esq., of New York, on " Cruelty to Animals." /It was originally intended to have the important subject of "Young Men's Christian Associations" treated on Tuesday, October 7th, on which day the general topic was " Christian Life." But as it was desirable that op- portunity should be given to the members of the Young Men's Christian Association of New York, and to young men in general, to be present when this subject was discussed, it was, by request, postponed to Saturday even- ing, October llth, as an occasion when a larger number of young men SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 39 could conveniently attend. This meeting was, therefore, held subsequently to the formal exercises with which the business of the Conference was closed. Morris K. Jesup, Esq., President of the Young Men's Christian Association of New York, and one of the Vice-presidents of the Conference, occupied the chair, and the exercises were commenced with prayer by the Hon. Charles Young, President of the Young Men's Christian Association of Prince Edward Island. A paper on "Young Men's Christian Associa- tions " was read by Cephas Brainerd, Esq., of New York ; and addresses were made by the Rev. Thomas W. Aveling, the Rev. John Stoughton, D.D., and George Vigeon, Esq., of London; the Rev. Henry Miller, of Hammersmith, England ; the Rev. M. Lelievre, of Nimes, France ; and the Rev. Dr. Coulin, of Geneva, in the French language, translated by Mr. N. Cyr, of New York ; the Rev. Leonard Anet, of Brussels, Belgium ; the Hon. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia; and H. Thane Miller, Esq., of Cincinnati, Ohio, who also sang the hymn, "I love to tell the Story," with organ accompaniment and chorus. The meeting was closed with the bene- diction by the Rev. Henry Tarrant, of Leeds, England. At two o'clock in the afternoon the whole Conference met in Associa- tion Hall, President Woolsey in the chair, for the formal closing of the bus- iness sessions. Two verses were sung of the hymn "Blest be the tie that binds;" and prayer was offered by the Rev. William Arnot, of Edin- burgh, Scotland. The Rev. William Adams, D.D., LL.D., of New York, Chairman of the Programme Committee, stated in its behalf that the Com- mittee had spent much time and labor in the arrangement of the papers, and that if there had been any disappointment on the part of those who had presented communications to the Committee, it was the result of causes which the Committee could not control. The Rev. John Hall, D.D., presented a report from the Programme Com- mittee recommending that various memorials which were placed in the hands of the Committee be printed in the volume of proceedings to be pub- lished. These papers so ordered may be found on pages 730-746 of Ap- pendix II. Lord Alfred S. Churchill read an address from the delegates of Great Brit- ain and Ireland, acknowledging the hospitalities received, and expressing a most grateful appreciation of them. He accompanied this address with a few very happy remarks, and concluded with the prayer that the blessings of God might ever rest upon the American nation. The Rev. George Fisch, D.D., of Paris, presented a similar address on behalf of the delegates from France, Switzerland, and Belgium, and rejoiced to add that they would return to their homes refreshed and inspirited. 40 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. [At this point notice was received that tbe Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church was filled with an audience who desired to have speakers sent to them, and accordingly Bishop Cummins, Rev. Dr. Fisch, and others, by re- quest, proceeded to the Church to address this second meeting.] The Eev. Dr. Dorner presented an address of thanks from the German delegates, which was read by the Rev. Leopold Witte, of Cothen, Prussia, who added that they would give a practical shape to their thanks if the Conference would come to Germany. The Rev. Anson Green, D.D., of Toronto, in behalf of the Canadian dele- gates, said that, though Canada was a colony of the British Empire, they claimed the privilege of speaking for themselves, and of saying that the welcome given them had made an impression upon them that would never be forgotten. The Rev. George M. Grant, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, added that, in anticipating their coming, the Canadian delegates did not know but that they might fall between two stools, being recognized as neither " for- eign" nor "home" delegates; but the result had proved their fear to be groundless, as the kindness shown them could not have been exceeded. As these sentiments were uttered the members of the various delegations manifested their hearty approval of them by standing as their several rep- resentatives were speaking. The Rev. William Ormiston, D.D., of New York, moved the following resolution, which he accompanied with appropriate remarks, and which was seconded and carried : Resolved, That in view of the great and manifold blessings of the Divine Providence vouchsafed to this meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, its mem- bers gratefully desire to record a humble expression of devout thankful- ness to Almighty God for his goodness, and to commend each other to his care. The Rev. William Arnot, of Edinburgh, moved the following resolu- tion, which he supported in a brief speech, and which was seconded and adopted : Resolved, That the General Conference recognizes with great satisfaction the interest which the pastors and churches of the city of New York, Brook- lyn, and vicinity have taken in the Evangelical Alliance, which interest ap- pears to pervade the whole country. The Rev. John Hall, D.D., of New York, replied to this resolution in behalf of the pastors of New York, Brooklyn, and vicinity, thanking the delegates for the acceptable and valuable services rendered by them in min- istering to their congregations. SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 41 The Kev. J. C. Harrison, of London, moved the thanks of the Conference to the families who had so hospitably entertained the delegates. It was the prayer of all of them that the blessing of God might ever rest upon these homes. The Eev. T. Lorriaux, of Paris, most heartily seconded this mo- tion, and spoke, not only of private hospitalit}', but also of the gratification received by the delegates in visiting the public institutions of New York, as the guests of the city. To this resolution, which was unanimously adopted, the Rev. T. D. An- derson, D.D., of New York, responded in behalf of the families who had entertained delegates, and who felt that they had received more than they had bestowed. Had there not been this interchange of social feeling, the Conference would have lacked a most important element of influence, and the delegates would have returned to their homes without the ties of friend- ship that now unite them to those who have been their hosts. On motion of Rev. Professor J. Harris Jones, Ph.D., of Wales, the thanks of the delegates were presented to the Young Men's Christian Association of New York, for their hospitalities to the Conference. Morris K. Jesup, Esq., President of the Association, responded to this resolution. He said that the New York Young Men's Christian Association claimed to be an Evangelical Alliance on a small scale. It numbered 4000 young men, band- ed together for Christian work, irrespective of sect or denomination. It was, therefore, fitting that the Association should entertain such a body as the Evan- gelical Alliance ; and if their building had been as large as their hearts, there would have been ample room for all who desired to attend the Conference. The Rev. W. Ives Budington, D.D., of Brooklyn, submitted the follow- ing resolution, which was adopted: Resolved, That the thanks of the Alliance are due and arc hereby ten- dered to the Press in this city and elsewhere, which has given to the public, at great expense, reports remarkably full and accurate, of the papers read and of the speeches uttered in this Assembly, and our acknowledgments are also made for the intelligent appreciation so generally shown of the ob- jects and spirit of this Alliance. On motion of the Rev. Dr. Schaff, of New York, it was Resolved, That the thanks of the Conference be presented to the proprie- tors and agents of the several Transatlantic steamship lines who so gener- ously furnished facilities of transportation for the foreign delegates, and to those American railroad companies who so kindly proffered free excursions to both foreign and American delegates, thereby greatly contributing to the success of the Conference and to the gratification of all its members ; also to the various institutions that have extended courtesies to the members of the Conference. 42 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. The companies, corporations, and institutions included in the above reso- lution are as follows: The Cunard, White Star, Anchor, Transatlantic, the Bremen Lloyd, and the Hamburg and New York Ocean Steamship Companies. The Erie Railway Company ; the Pennsylvania Railroad Company ; the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad Company ; the Balti- more and Potomac Railroad Company ; and the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad Company. The Mayor and Common Council of New York ; the Board of Education of New York ; the College of the City of New York ; the Managers of the House of Refuge, New York ; the Mercantile Library Association of New York ; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ; the Seaman's Friends' Society, New York ; the New York Historical Society ; the American In- stitute, New York ; and the Newark, New Jersey, Industrial Institute. On motion of James Girdlestone, Esq., of London, a resolution of thanks was passed to the Committees of the United States Alliance, for the pains taken by them to make the Conference a success ; and to the President and other officers of the Conference for the fidelity with which they had dis- charged their responsible duties. This resolution was responded to by the Rev. S. Irensens Prime, D.D., General Secretary of the Conference, and by the Rev. Dr. Woolsey, the President The remarks of Dr. Prime were as follows : The labor which has been devolved on the officers of the United States Alliance in making the preparations for, and in conducting the Conference, is known to no one better than to myself. We have anticipated the as- sembling of this Conference with intense interest and anxiety, and have spent weeks and months and years in perfecting those arrangements which have now their final and, we hope, satisfactory accomplishment. Twice the time fixed for the Conference was unavoidably postponed, and these disappointments greatly dampened our spirits and discouraged our efforts. But we did the best we could. We sent out our invitation into all the earth, and its remotest parts responded. Those who had the most to do with the preparations are the most sensible of our shortcomings. We know the want of perfect accommodation for each one of the thousands who have pressed at the doors of every house we have opened for our meet- ings. Gladly would we have taken them all to our assemblies. We have heard complaints from some that they could not have seats secured. And those who had secured seats have complained that they could not always get them. But the throngs have been so great, and so far'beyond the ex- SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 43 pectation of any one, that some inconvenience must be suffered. How small has that inconvenience been, compared with the honor and privilege and blessing of being permitted to stand, even for an hour, in the midst of the greatest and noblest convention of the ministers of Christ that was ever as- sembled upon this Continent! Its memory will be a joy to us long after we have forgotten the discomforts and toils that have attended it. There are some laborers in this service to whom thanks are eminently due; they are the several committees, the active working men in them, who have had charge of the buildings, of the hospitality and entertainment of guests, the programme, music, railroad, and finance committees, and oth- ers, all of whom have wrought hard and long ; and I am here to say that if the arrangements have been such as to warrant your approval, to those in- defatigable men your thanks are due. These ushers, whose duties have been arduous and exhausting, are chiefly students in theology, who have gratuitously given their services, that they might contribute to your com- fort, while they themselves should now and then get 'a word of wisdom and knowledge from your lips. We have all tried to do our duty. Wherein we have failed in temper and courtesy, in the midst of the inevitable difficulties of handling such im- mense assemblies in so many places at one and the same time, we humbly beg your forgiveness. When our turn comes to have the Conference again, we will avail ourselves of present experience, and do it far better than now. It is an honor to have been a servant in this glorious Conference. If it had cost the life of any of us, the sacrifice would have been small. But we have all lived, and are stronger, wiser, and we hope better, for the work. From this mount of service and privilege, we shall go down to the Master's work refreshed and quickened, to do and to die where and when we are called. Rev. Dr. Hall moved a vote of thanks, especially to the venerable Presi- dent, Dr. Woolsey, for the gentle firmness and graceful dignity with which he had presided. This was enthusiastically adopted, and President Wool- sey said : GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE CONFERENCE, The hour has come to close this meeting, and with it the business sessions of the Conference. In the few moments in which I am to address you, I have to thank the Secre- taries for their continual assistance, without which I could have done noth- ing. I have the pleasure, my fellow-members of the Conference from the United States, in your name, to thank the foreign delegates for the rich in- 44 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. struction they have given us, and for having come so far, at no small ex-" pense of time, for our good. And I have to thank you all for your great interest in the meetings, and for your readiness to comply with the rules for the observance of order. And now, gentlemen, what have we gained from our attendance at these meetings? Estimating the papers presented as highly as we may, has not the great gain been a deeper impression of the unity of Christians than we have had before, of the communion of saints throughout the world, an im- pression that may last through our lives, and may develop within us a higher spirit of true catholicity than we have had hitherto? The remarkable com- munication from the "Old Catholics" that was presented to us shows that there are those beyond the bounds of "Protestantism" who, although widely differing from us, recognize the same common Saviour, and have a sym- pathy with us. Suppose, now, a member of the Church of Rome who pre- served his connection with the Pope should come to us and say, " I am in- deed a Catholic; I can not in conscience break away from the Church of my fathers, but I believe in Christ, and I believe that you love Christ and love the kingdom of Christ in the world ; my heart is with you, and I wish to express my sympathy for you," would you not receive him? Would you not, when he said, " I believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as you," call him your brother? [Decided expressions of assent from the members of the Conference.] Recall to your minds, gentlemen, that time in the ancient Church when a party announced the principle that except the Gentiles were circumcised, and obeyed the law of Moses, they could not be saved. Among those narrow-minded Christians there were very many good men who would have died for Jesus. There were multitudes who agreed with the apostle Peter contrary to their own principle, really when he said, " We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they." For such Christians, who differ so widely from us, and yet in their Christian life are one with us, we will open the door of our hearts ; we will not drive them from our assemblies. And may I not ask, gentlemen, if this meeting is not fitted to recall to our minds that vast assemblage, that " great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," who "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." Who were these mul- titudes, arraj-ed in white robes? They were those who came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 45 the Lamb. Shall we not give all diligence to wash our robes, and make them white in the blood of the Lamb, that we may form a part of this great and ever-increasing throng? I wish you all farewell ! The doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," was then sung ; the benediction was pronounced by the Kev. Anson Green, D.D., of Toronto, Canada; and the Conference, which had been increasing in inter- est each day of its sessions, and which had awakened a growing enthusiasm in the multitudes who daily attended it, brought its regular business to a close. After the adjournment the foreign delegates rode to Central Park, in ac- cordance with the invitation of Dr. Field. While they were absent, the delegates from the United States Alliance and its Branches held a meeting in Association Hall, at which steps were taken to promote the usefulness of the Alliance in this country. SERVICES OF THE LAST DAY. On Sunday, October 12th, the last day of the Conference, the delegates filled very many of the pulpits of New York and vicinity, preaching every- where to crowded congregations with great acceptance. FAREWELL SERVICES. The interest that had been rising during the ten days of the Conference reached its height on this last Sunday evening, when FIVE places of meet- ing were opened, attended by at least 15,000 persons, and yet not furnishing sufficient room for all who desired to be present. Meetings were held from seven to nine o'clock, in Steinway Hall, at which the Rev. T. D. Anderson, D.D., of New York, presided ; in Tammany Hall, at which the Hon. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, presided; and in the Church of the Disciples, corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, at which the Rev. George H. Hepworth, of New York, presided. At all of these meetings interesting farewell addresses were delivered by members of the Conference, and devo- tional exercises were intermingled. At Cooper Institute a crowded German meeting was held. Dr. Schaff presided; and the large audience listened with the deepest interest to valedictory addresses, in their own language, from Professor Krafft, of Bonn ; the Rev. Mr. Noel, of Berlin ; the Rev. Mr. Fliedner, of Madrid ; and the Rev. Mr. Witte, of Cothen, Prussia. The farewell meeting was held in the Academy of Music, commencing at half-past seven o'clock. Tickets of admission were required as on the pre- ceding Sunday evening, and nearly an hour before the commencement of 46 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. the exercises the building was densely crowded in every part, and thou- sands went away unable to gain admission. The Hon. William F. Havemeyer, Mayor of the City of New York, pre- sided, and introduced the services with a few appropriate remarks. Prayer was offered by Kev. Thomas Armitage, D.D., of New York, and the assem- bly united in singing the hymn, "Come, thoti Almighty King." Prayer was offered by the Kev. George Fisch, D.D., of Paris, who, in closing, re- peated the Lord's Prayer, the entire audience, by previous request, joining with him audibly, each one in his own language. The Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., of New York, then introduced in order the following speakers, representing the various delegations from abroad : the Rev. Dr. Cook, of Quebec, Canada ; the Rev. Professor J. F. Astie", of Lausanne, Switzerland; the Rev. Emile Cook, B.A., of Paris; the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa, Italy; the Rev. William Arnot, of Edinburgh, Scotland ; the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of Bombay, India ; Professor Theo- dor Christlieb, D.D., of Bonn, Prussia ; the Rev. L. E. Berkeley, of Lur- gan, Ireland; and the Very Rev. R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean of Canter- bury. In all of the addresses there was a spirit of grateful satisfaction with what God had wrought during the Conference ; of overflowing affection for the brethren with whom such sweet counsel had been taken ; of hearty good- will to the country whose extent, and resources, and institutions, had been looked upon with wonder and admiration ; of sincere sorrow at the part- ings that must now take place, the more painful because the intercourse had been so pleasing; of earnest desire that the Conference might result in permanent good to the cause of Christ ; and of tender interest in the multi- tudes who are as sheep having no shepherd, knowing not by sweet experi- ence the Lord Jesus Christ and his salvation. At about ten o'clock the delegates who had been engaged in addressing the other meetings of the evening had reached the Academy, and joined their fellow-members of the Conference on the platform, preparatory to hearing the closing words of farewell. The following hymn was sung, com- posed for the occasion by the Rev. Hervey D. Ganse, of New York : By a thousand ways we come, A thousand ways we go ; These in India have their home, And these near Alpine snow. Islanders of distant seas, Dwellers on the Western main, Men of Britain and of Greece, Of China and of Spain SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 47 We are many, we are one ; For, by one Spirit led, All our paths together run, Though o'er the earth they spread. Straight to Christ they lead for light ; Straight to Christ for sin forgiven ; Straight behind him through the fight, Then, with Him, straight to heaven. Merge we then our separate speech, To form a common tongue. Cease, ye discords, while we reach A universal song. "Jesus " be the name we sing! Help us, Spirit of the Lord, And the utmost lands shall ring, With the glorious word. Hark, with shouts the saints on high The King of glory crown ! Roll apart, oh solid sky, And pour the anthem down ! "Hallelujah !" Say, ye men, Is it heaven or earth that sings ? Shout the chorus back again : " Our Christ is King of kings." The Rev. Noah Hunt Schenck, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York, then de- livered the farewell address, which may be found on page 707 of this vol- ume. After the singing of two verses of the hymn, "I love thy kingdom, Lord," the Rev. William Adams, D.D., LL.D, of New York, offered the final prayer, imploring the blessing of God on all that had been done by the Conference, and commending the delegates to the divine protection and care. The doxology was sung, "To God the Father, God the Son, And God the Spirit, three in one, Be honor, praise, and glory given By all on earth, and all in heaven." The benediction was pronounced by Bishop E. S. Janes, D.D., of New York, and the members of the Conference separated. 48 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. EXCURSION TO PRINCETON AND PHILADELPHIA. On Monday morning, October 13th, the foreign delegates to the Confer- ence, with a number of invited guests, about 250 in all, visited Princeton and Philadelphia, in accordance with the invitations to which reference has already been made. A special train, composed mostly of palace cars, was placed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at their disposal, leaving Jer- sey City at half-past nine o'clock in the morning. The weather, just cool enough for comfort, was bright and clear, the country was beautifully varie- gated with the changing tints of autumn, giving the delegates from abroad a sight of American scenery in October. The train reached Princeton at nbout eleven o'clock, and as the procession of visitors, after being received by the Faculties of the College and the Theological Seminary, passed up the avenue that leads from the railroad station, the walk was lined on both sides by the College students who welcomed the members, and astonished some of them, with their "Rocket Cheer." After passing the Theological Semi- nary, where the students, in double row, stood uncovered in their honor, the delegates proceeded to the Second Presbyterian Church, where a meet- ing was held for an hour. The floor of the church was filled with the cit- izens of Princeton, and the galleries with the students of the two institu- tions. The venerable Dr. Hodge, of the Theological Seminary, presided, and offered the opening prayer, after which brief but pertinent addresses were made by the Dean of Canterbury, the Rev. W. Arnot, of Edinburgh, the Rev. Dr. Rigg, of London, the Rev. Dr. Coulin, of Geneva, in the French lan- guage, the Rev. M. Decoppet, of Paris, and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn. The delegates then spent half an hour in inspecting the Col- lege buildings, after which they partook of a bountiful collation in the old College library, and returning to the railroad, journeyed to Philadelphia. On arriving in Philadelphia, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the dele- gates w r ere conveyed to Independence Hall, the room in which the Declara- tion of Independence was made by Congress in 1776. Here Judge Pierce, in behalf of the Mayor and Common Council of Philadelphia, welcomed them to the city. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher followed with a brief address of welcome, in the name of the country ; and replies were made by the Rev. C. Dallas Marston, of England, the Rev. L. E. Berkeley, of Ireland, the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Italy, the Rev. George Fisch, of France, and the Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, of India. The Dean of Canterbury closed the exercises with prayer. As the delegates passed from the hall, they all looked with interest at the old bell that rang out the tidings, nearly a century ago, that the country was free. SIXTH GENERAL CONFEEENCE. 49 From Independence Hall the delegates were conducted to the Continent- al Hotel, where, after the Divine blessing by the Eev. Henry A. Boardman, D.D., the oldest pastor in Philadelphia, they partook of a sumptuous dinner, furnished by the Philadelphia Branch of the Alliance. After this repast was over, the delegates proceeded in a body to Horticul- tural Hall, in Broad Street, in which a public meeting was to be held in honor of their visit. The hall was appropriately decorated, the walls being hung with floral designs, with the names of Luther, Calvin, Huss, Wycliffe, Zwingle, Knox, and Wesley, in letters of flowers. Across the stage there was a triple arch, formed of evergreens, bearing in floral letters the mot- toes, "All one in Christ," and " Let brotherly love continue." The audience present filled the hall to its utmost capacity, and the platform was scarcely adequate to the task imposed upon it of holding all of the delegates who were in attendance. George H. Stuart, Esq., President of the Philadelphia Branch of the Alli- ance, presided, and after the singing of the doxology, prayer was offered by the Eev. J. C. Harrison, of London. Mr. Stuart made a few introductory re- marks, and was followed by ex-Governor Pollock, who welcomed the mem- bers of the Conference in the name of the citizens of Philadelphia, and by Bishop Simpson, who welcomed them in behalf of the churches of Phila- delphia. Addresses were then made by the Dean of Canterbury, the Eev. Narayan Sheshadri, the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, the Eev. M. Cohen Stuart, of Holland, the Eev. Dr. Fisch and the Eev. Emile Cook, of Paris, the Eev. Emile Eochedieu, of Brussels, the Eev. W. Arnot, of Edinburgh, the Eev. Dr. Ormiston, of New York, and the Eev. T. Y. Killen, of Belfast. These addresses were interspersed with hymns, in the singing of which the audience heartily joined. Although it was after eleven o'clock when the exercises were concluded, the interest continued unabated to the end, and the enthusiasm displayed by the vast audience was fully equal to that which had characterized the series of meetings held in New York. In addition to the meeting in Horticultural Hall, three others were held, one in the Baptist Church on the opposite corner, another in the First Ee- formed Presbyterian Church, and the third in the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, in the immediate neighborhood of the hall, at all of which there were full audiences and interesting addresses. After the adjournment of these meetings the delegates returned to the Continental Hotel, where arrangements had been made by the Philadelphia Branch of the Alliance for their entertainment over night. 50 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. EXCURSION TO WASHINGTON. On Tuesday morning, October 14th, at nine o'clock, a special train was placed at the disposal of the delegates by the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, arid the Baltimore and Potomac railways, and a reluctant farewell was said to Philadelphia, whose generous hospitality had been so highly enjoyed. At Baltimore the delegates were met by a deputation from Washington, consisting of the Rev. Drs. Sunderland, Gray, Watkins, Williams, and Cleveland, who took them in charge as the guests of the Me- tropolitan Branch of the United States Alliance. On reaching Washington they were greeted with a peal from the bells of the Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church, and were conducted to Willard's Hotel, where arrange- ments had been made by the Metropolitan Alliance for their entertainment while in Washington. Here a cordial welcome to the Capital of the United States was formally extended to them by the Rev. O. H. Tiffany, D.D., act- ing chairman of the reception committee, and Governor Shepherd tendered them the hospitalities and freedom of the District of Columbia. PRESENTATION OF THE DELEGATES TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. It had been arranged that the delegates should call upon the President immediately on their arrival in Washington, as a pressing engagement called him from home, and he had delayed his departure a few hours for the sake of this visit. Accordingly they proceeded in a body to the Executive man- sion, headed by Governor Shepherd, and Richard Harrington, Esq., Secreta- ry of the District of Columbia. On arriving, they were received by the President and his Cabinet Ministers. Mrs. Grant, and several other ladies, were also present. The Rev. Dr. Tiffany addressed the President, as follows: MR. PRESIDENT, The Evangelical Alliance, which has been in session at New York, was a gathering of Christian men representing the Protestant faith. They came from many lands and uttered the mature thoughts of their Churches ; they deliberated on topics of common interest to all Chris- tians, and it is confidently believed that thus great stimulus has been given to Christian scholarship, enthusiasm awakened in Christian work, and the ties of Christian fellowship greatly strengthened. The churches and citi- zens have extended through the local Metropolitan Branch of the Alliance an invitation to the foreign delegation to visit the National Capital. They have come in response to that invitation, accompanied by many American SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE. 51 friends, and I now have the honor of presenting to the President of the United States and his Cabinet the officers and members of the Evangelical Alliance, but will first invite you to join in an invocation, led by the Dean of Canterbury, to our Heavenly Father. The Dean of Canterbury offered prayer, invoking the blessing of Heav- en on this country, where the Alliance had been so hospitably received, and on its Chief Magistrate, and praying that this visit might lead to peace and good-will among all nations and all men. President Grant replied to the Eev. Dr. Tiffany's address of introduction with his usual brevity, but his words were to the point. Addressing the delegates, he said, " It affords me very great pleasure to welcome the Evan- gelical Alliance to the capital of this great nation, which I feel is the freest of nations to work out the problem of your mission." The delegates were severally introduced to the President and members of the Cabinet by George H. Stuart, Esq., of Philadelphia; and after the ceremony of introduction was over, several brief addresses were made. The delegates then withdrew, pleased with the simplicity of the ceremonies attendant on a Kepublican court, and gratified at the distinguished atten- tion that had been shown them. In the evening public meetings were held in the Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church, the First Presbyterian Church, Trinity Episcopal Church, and the Congregational Church, which were all densely crowded, and at which addresses were delivered by a number of the delegates. VISIT TO THE CAPITOL AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS. At nine o'clock on Wednesday morning the delegates visited the Capitol and the public buildings in Washington. While at the Capitol the rotun- da was turned into a temple of praise, the whole body of visitors joining in the singing of the hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus' name;" then pro- ceeding to the East portico, the Eev. E. P. Eogers, D.D., of New York, re- peated the Lord's Prayer, and the Eev. C. Dallas Marston, M.A., of London, the Apostles' Creed, in both of which the whole assembly reverently joined with audible voice, after which the doxology was sung, " Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." . After visiting the various public buildings, so far as time permitted, the delegates returned to Willard's Hotel, and, at one o'clock, sat down to a banquet given by Governor Shepherd, of the District of Columbia. The Governor, in addressing his guests, spoke as follows : " I am honored, gentlemen, by your presence as my guests to-day. Al- 52 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. though from want of time the entertainment offered you may not be com- mensurate with the occasion, our welcome is none the less hearty and sin- cere. Your visit to the seat of government will long be remembered by our people, and if you will take with you as agreeable recollections of Wash- ington as you leave among us of yourselves we will be gratified indeed. We have welcomed you as leaders in the great movement for the regenera- tion of our race. We will part with you with wishes of God-speed in the noble work which claims the best energies of your great minds and noble hearts. Our regret is that your stay with us is so brief. Our joy is that, though brief your sojourn, you have inspired our people with new zeal in the interests of the Christian Church. Allow me to conclude with this sen- timent : ' The Evangelical Alliance ; may its results be equal to the grand- eur of its conception and the nobleness of its ends.' " To this address, appropriate responses were made by several of the dele- gates, and after an hour of happy interchange of thought and feeling, the entertainment was brought to a close. The delegates left Washington in the afternoon, returning to New York, through Philadelphia, or journeying southward or westward as they pre- ferred. Many of them went to Niagara Falls, accepting the kind invitation of the Erie Railroad Company to go and return free of expense. A large number had visited the Falls before this invitation was given, the Evangelical Alli- ance of the United States having offered to defray the cost of the journey by rail to all the delegates from abroad who wished to make the tour. Having spent as much time in this country as their several duties at home would permit, the delegates from foreign lands returned to their homes, by various lines of ocean steamers, leaving behind them precious memories of their presence and labors. Friendships hallowed by the grace and service of God were formed, to be cherished with tenderness through life, and to be revived and perpetuated in eternity. Impulses were given by their words of power to the cause of truth and righteousness which will never be effaced from the thought of this people. The families which en- joyed their society count it a blessing and an honor to have entertained these angels of the Churches. And the Conference, the largest and perhaps the most important that has been held in modern times, will mark an era in the history of Evangelical Christianity. ESSAYS, OKATIONS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE TABLE OF CONTENTS. PACK HISTORICAL SKETCH a ADDRESS OF WELCOME, By the Rev. WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., LL.D., New York. Delivered at the Social Reception, on Thursday Evening, October 2, 1873, in the Young Men's Christian Association Hall...., , 65 DIVISION I. REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION IN VARIOUS CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES. Friday, October 3, 18T3. 1. ON THE POSITION OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION IN FRANCE, AND PARTICULARLY OF THE NATIONAL FRENCH REFORMED CHURCH. By the Rev. AUGUSTE DECOPPET, B.D., Pastor of the National Reformed Church in Paris 71 2. THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE. By the Rev. GEORGE FISCH, D.D., Pastor of the Free Church in Paris 76 3. CHRISTIAN LIFE IN GERMANY. By the Rev. HERMANN KRUMMACHER, Brandenburg, Prussia 78 4. EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN GERMANY: SURVEY OF MY LIFE AS A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY. By Professor AUGUST THOLUCK, D.D., University of Halle. Translated and read, with an Addition, by the Rev. LEOPOLD WITTE, Cothen, Prussia 8f> 5. THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF HOLLAND. By the Rev. M. COHEN STUART, D.D., from Rotterdam 90 6. THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF BELGIUM. By the Rev. LEONARD ANET, of Brussels, Pastor and General Secretary of the Chris- tian Missionary Church in Belgium 9f> 7. STATE OF RELIGION IN SWITZERLAND. By the Rev. EUGENE REICHEL, Montmirail, Switzerland 99 8. STATE OF RELIGION IN SCANDINAVIA. By the Rev. C. H. A. KALKAR, D.D., Copenhagen 101 9. THE STATE OF RELIGION IN ITALY. By the Rev. MATTEO PROCHET, Pastor of a Waldensian Church at Genoa, Italy 106 10. REPORT ON THE STATE OF RELIGION IN SPAIN. By the Rev. ANTONIO CARRASCO, Madrid 112 11. THE EVANGELIZATION OF SPAIN. By the Rev. FRITZ FLIEDNER, of Madrid 123 12. RELIGION IN GREECE. By the Rev. MICHAEL D. KALOPOTHAKES, M.D., Athens If 7 13. THE BRITISH PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA. By the Rev. ROBERT MURRAY, Halifax, Nova Scotia 129 14. CHRISTIANITY IN THE WEST INDIES. By the Rev. WILLIAM MURRAY, Falmouth, Jamaica 133 [Reports on the state of religion in Great Britain and the United States the two most im- portant Protestant countries in the world were intentionally omitted from the Programme, both on account of the vastness of the subject and the prevailing Anglo-American character of the whole Conference.] DIVISION II. CHRISTIAN UNION. Saturday, October 4, 1873. 1. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH BASED ON PERSONAL UNION WITH CHRIST. By the Rev. CHARLES HODGE, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey 130 ">8 CONTENTS. 2. CHRISTIAN UNION CONSISTENT WITH DENOMINATIONAL DISTINCTIONS. PACK By the Very Rev. R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., Dean of Canterbury 145 3. SPIRITUAL UNITY NOT ORGANIC UNION. By the Rt. Rev. GREGORY T. BEDELL, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ohio 150 4. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS MODES OF ITS PROMOTION AND MANIFESTATION. By the Rev. ELIPHALET NOTT POTTER, D.D., President of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y. Together with a Communication from Professor TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D 154 5. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS MODES OF ITS PROMOTION AND MANIFESTATION. By the Rev. C. DALLAS MARSTON, M.A., Vicar of St. Paul's, Onslow Square, London... ICO 6. CHRISTIAN LOVE THE BOND OF CHRISTIAN UNION. By the Rev. GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D., New York 167 7. CHRISTIAN UNION ; OR, THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE IN FRANCE. By the Rev. EMI LE F. COOK, B.A., Paris 161) 8. INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. By the Rev. F. W. CONRAD, D.D., of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 174 9. THE LORD'S SUPPER IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNION. By the Rev. WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MUHLENBERG, D.D., Pastor and Superintendent of St. Luke's Hospital, New York, and of St. Johnland, Long Island 180 10. THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS OF AMERICA TO ENGLAND. By the Rev. JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D., Kensington, London 184 11. THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE: ITS ORIGIN, OBJECTS, AND OPERATIONS. By the Rev. JAMES DAVIS, Secretary of the British Organization, London 189 12. THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE : ITS OBJECTS AND INFLUENCE IN PROMOTING THE UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS TO THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. By the Rev. W. NOEL, Counselor of the "Ober-Kirchen rath, "First Pastor of the Louisa Parish Church at Berlin, and Secretary of the "German Evangelical Church Diet"... 197 DIVISION III. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. Monday, October 6, 18T3. THEOLOGICAL SECTION. 1. THE BEST METHODS OF COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. By the Rev. THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D.D., Professor of Theology, and Chaplain in the University of Bonn, Prussia 208 2. BEST METHODS OF COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. By the Rev. STANLEY LEATHES, Professor of Hebrew, King's College, London 224 3. THE CAUSES OF, AND BEST METHODS OF COUNTERACTING, MODERN INFIDELITY. By the Rev. JOHN CAIRNS, D.D., Berwick, England 228 4. THE GOSPEL HISTORY AND MODERN CRITICISM. By the Rev. J. J. VAN OOSTERZEE, D.D., Professor of Theology at the University of Utrecht, Holland 238 r>. AMERICAN INFIDELITY: ITS FACTORS AND PHASES. By the Rev. WILLIAM F. WARREN, D.D., President of Boston University 249 6. REASON AND FAITH. I By the Rev. E. A. WASHBURN, D.D., of New York 25f> 7? CHRISTIANITY AND THE GOSPEL. By FELIX BOVET, Ph.D., Professor of Theology in the College at Neuch&tel, Switzerland. 261 PHILOSOPHICAL SECTION. 1. RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT. By the Rev. JAMES McCosn, D.D., LL.D., Princeton, N. J., President of the College of New Jersey 264 2. PRIMITIVE MAN AND REVELATION. By J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., Principal of McGill College, Montreal 272 3. COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE ; OR, THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE. By Professor ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT, LL.D., Princeton, New Jersey 276 4. THE GOSPEL AND PHILOSOPHY. By Professor ERNEST NAVILLE, of Geneva, Switzerland, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France 288 f>. THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF IDEALISM. By the Rev. CHARLES P. KRAUTH, D.D., Vice-Provost of the University of Pennsylva- nia, Philadelphia 293 CONTENTS. 59 G. CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. PAGE By the Rev. JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN, D.D., LL.D., President of Franklin and Mar- shall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania * 302 7. COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS, IN ITS BEARING UPON CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS. By EDMUND SPIESS, Ph.D., Privatdocent of Theology in the University of Jena, Ger- many 309 APPENDIX TO DIVISION III. 8. DISCUSSION ON DARWINISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT 317 DIVISION IV. CHRISTIAN LIFE. Tuesday, October 7, 1873. FIRST SECTION. PERSONAL AND FAMILY RELIGION. 1. THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE. By the Rev. WILLIAM ARNOT, Edinburgh 327 2. PERSONAL RELIGION : ITS AIDS AND HINDERANCES. , By the Rev. RICHARD FULLER, D.D., Baltimore, Maryland 333 3. PERSONAL RELIGION : ITS AIDS AND HINDERANCES. By the Rev. WILLIAM NAST, D.D., Cincinnati, Ohio 338 4. FAMILY RELIGION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ENGLAND. By the Rev. JOSHUA C. HARRISON, London 341 5. FAMILY RELIGION. By the Rev. WILLIAM S. PLUMER, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Co- lumbia, South Carolina 348 6. REVIVALS OF RELIGION HOW TO MAKE THEM PRODUCTIVE OF PERMANENT GOOD. By the Rev. W. W. PATTON, D.D., Chicago, Illinois 351 7. THE RIGHT USE OF WEALTH. By M. B. ANDERSON, LL.D., President of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 357 SECOND SECTION. EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. 1. MODERN LITERATURE AND CHRISTIANITY. By the Rev. A. L. SIMPSON, D.D., of Derby, England 363 2. MODERN LITERATURE IN ITS RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY. By the Rev. NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College, New Haven, Con- necticut 369 3. RELATIONS OF THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS ELEMENTS IN POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. By the Rev. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D., Principal of the Wesleyan Training College for Male Teachers, Westminster, London 377 THIRD SECTION. THE PULPIT OF THE AGE. 1. MODERN PREACHING AND ITS REQUIREMENTS. By the Rev. JOSEPH PARKER, D.D., London 383 2. THE BEST METHODS OF PREACHING. By the Rev. DANIEL P. KIDDER, D.D., Professor in the Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey...'. 387 3. THE MISSION OF THE PULPIT. By the Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER, of Brooklyn, New York 392 4. WHAT TO PREACH. By the Rev. JOHN HALL, D.D., of New York 397 FOURTH SECTION. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 1. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK ITS GREATNESS THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. By CHARLES REED, Esq., M.P., London 390 2. IMPORTANCE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AGENCY. By the Rev. RICHARD NEWTON^ D.D., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 405 60 CONTENTS. 3. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS IN FRANCE. PAGE By the Rev. NATHANAEL WEISS, of Paris 410 4. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS THE BIBLE SERVICE. By the Rev. J. H. VINCENT, D.D., New York 415 FIFTH SECTION. CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. By CEPHAS BRAINERD, Esq., of New York 419 DIVISION V. ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. Wednesday, October 8, 1873. FIRST SECTION. MODERN ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 1. THE INFALLIBILISM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND NOMINAL PROTESTANTISM. By the Rev. I. A. DORNER, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin... 427 2. ROMANISM IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY. By the Rev. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the Union Theolog- ical Seminary, New York 436 3. THE PRESENT STATE OF POPERY IN FRANCE. By the Rev. GEORGE FISCH, D.D., of Paris 438 4. ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE FOUR PRUSSIAN CHURCH LAWS. By the Rev. LEOPOLD WITTE, ofCoethen, Prussia 443 5. THE REACTION OF THE GERMAN NATIONAL SPIRIT AGAINST ULTRAMONTANISM. By the Rev. AUGUST DORNER, Ph.D., Repetent in the University of Gottingen 446 6. THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. By the Rev. R. S. STORRS, D.D., Brooklyn, New York 449 7. PROTESTANTISM, ROMANISM, AND MODERN CIVILIZATION. By the Rev. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., Professor in Yale College, New Haven, Con- necticut 461 8. ROMAN AND REFORMED DOCTRINES OF JUSTIFICATION CONTRASTED. By the Rt. Rev. GEORGE DAVID CUMMINS, D.D., of Kentucky 467 9. How SHALL PROTESTANT MINISTERS BEST MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE PRESENT AGE? By the Rev. FRANCK COULIN, D.D., of Geneva, Switzerland 475 10. CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. By the Rev. ALVAH HOVEY, D.D., President of Newton Theological Institution, Massa- chusetts 481 SECOND SECTION. THE OLD CATHOLICS. 1. LETTER FROM THE OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS, assembled at Constance, September 12-14, 1873. With Introduction by the Rev. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York 485 2. LETTER FROM the Rev. HYACINTHE LOYSON, Pastor of the Old Catholic Church, Ge- neva, Switzerland 490 3. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. By the Rev. W. KRAFFT, D.D., Professor of Church History in the University of Bonn. 491 4. ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND SINCE THE PROCLAMATION OF THE SYLLABUS. By the Rev. C. PRONIER, Professor of Systematic Theology in the Theological Seminary of the Free Church, Geneva, Switzerland .' 498 THIRD SECTION. EVANGELIZATION OF ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 1. EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. By the Rev. LOWRY EDMONDS BERKELEY, Lurgan, Ireland 508 2. THE EVANGELIZATION OF FRANCE. By the Rev. THEOPHILUS LORRIAUX, B.D., Paris, Secretary of the Central Protestant Evangelical Society of France 517 CONTENTS. 61 DIVISION VI. CHBISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. Thursday, October 9, 1873. FIRST SECTION. CHURCH AND STATE. PAGE 1. THE RELATIONS OF CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES TO RELIGION. By the Rev. THEODORE D. WOOLSET, D.D., LL.D., lately President of Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut , 523 2. THE CHURCH AND THE NATION. By the Rev. W. H. FREMANTLE, M.A., London 529 3. LEGISLATION ON MORAL QUESTIONS. By JAMES GIRDLESTONE, Esq., of London 535 4. SUNDAY LEGISLATION. THE SABBATH MADE FOR MAN HIS CONSEQUENT RIGHT TO LEGISLATION FOR SERVING ITS ENDS. By the Rev. MARK HOPKINS, D.D., Williamstown, Massachusetts, lately President of Williams College 540 5. EVILS OF A UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE. By the Hon. J. L. M. CURRY, LL.D., Richmond, Virginia 544 6. THE FREE CHURCHES OF THE CONTINENT ; OR, AMERICAN IDEAS IN EUROPE. By the Rev. J. F. ASTIE, Professor in the Theological Seminary of the Free Church, Lausanne, Switzerland 549 SECOND SECTION. CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY. 1. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. By the REV. W. H. CAMPBELL, D.D., President of Rutger's College, New Brunswick, New Jersey 558 2. THE EFFECTS OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY ON CHRISTIANITY. By the Rev. DANIEL R. GOODWIN, D.D., Professor in the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia 562 THIRD SECTION. MINISTERIAL SUPPORT. 1. NEED OF LIBERAL SUPPORT FOR THE GOSPEL MINISTRY. By the Rev. JOHN HALL, D.D., of New York 567 2. MINISTERIAL SUPPORT IN THE IRISH EPISCOPAL AND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES. By the Rev. T. Y. KILLEN, of Belfast, Ireland 571 3. SUPPORT OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. By the Rev. M. W. JACOBUS, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Al- legheny, Pennsylvania 574 DIVISION VII. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. Friday, October 10, 18T3. FIRST SECTION. PRINCIPLES OF MISSION WORK. 1. DUTY OF THE CHURCHES IN RELATION TO MISSIONS. By the Rev. JOSEPH ANGUS, D.D., Principal of Regent's Park College, London 583 2. DIVISIONS OF MISSIONARY FIELDS OF LABOR MISSIONARY COURTESY. By the Rev. RUFUS ANDERSON, D.D., LL.D., Boston, Massachusetts, lately Foreign Sec- retary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 588 3. PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC, AND GREEK MISSIONS, COMPARED AS TO PRINCIPLE, METH- OD, AND RESULTS. By the Rev. R. GRUNDEMANN, Ph.D., of Moerz, Prussia 591 4. THE OBLIGATIONS OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND COMMEHCE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. By the Rev. THOMAS M. EDDY, D.D., New York, Corresponding Secretary of (he Mis- sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 594 5. LAY PREACHING. By the Hon. GEORGE H. STUART, of Philadelphia 598 6. LAY PREACHING. By COUNT ANDREAS BERNSTORFF, of Berlin, Prussia 601 62 CONTENTS. SECOND SECTION. PARTICULAR MISSIONARY FIELDS. 1. CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. PAGK By the Rev. NARAYAN SHESHADRI, of Bombay, India. 605 2. WOMAN'S WORK IN INDIA. By the Rev. J. S. WOODSIDE, of Dehra Doon, India 612 8. MISSIONS AMONG THE LOWEST OF THE HEATH KN. By the Rt. Rev. E. DE SCHWEINITZ, S.T. D., Bishop of the Moravian Church, and President of the Theological Seminary at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 619 4. THE MISSION FIELD OF THE SOUTH. By the Rev. MOSES D. HOGE, D.D., Richmond, Virginia 623 5. THE INDIANS IN THE UNITED STATES. By the Hon. FELIX R. BRUNOT, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Chairman of the United States Board of Indian Commissioners 630 6. MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. By the Rev. HENRY HARRIS JESSUP, D.D., Beirut, Syria 634 7. THE EVANGELICAL HOME MISSION OF FRANCE. By the Rev. MATTHIEU LELIEVRE, of Nimes, France 643 8. CITY MISSIONS. By the Rev. ROBERT KNOX, D.D., Belfast, Ireland 647 9. MISSIONS OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF PRUSSIA AMONG GERMAN PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS ABROAD. By the Rev. W. NOEL, Counselor of the "Ober-Kirchenrath," and First Preacher of the Louisa Parish Church at Berlin .. 650 DIVISION VIII. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. Saturday, October 11, 1873. 1. CHRISTIANITY AS A REFORMING POWER. By JOHN HARRIS JONES, Ph.D., Professor in Trevecca College, Wales 661 2. THE WORKING POWER OF THE CHURCH HOW BEST TO UTILIZE IT. By the Rev. W. FLEMING STEVENSON, Dublin 666 3. THE LABOR QUESTION. By the Hon. WILLIAM H. ALLEN, LL.D., President of Girard College, Philadelphia.... 670 4. CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY. By the Rev. T. W. AVELING, London 675 5. THE CARE OF THE SICK. By the late Count AGENOR DE GASPARIN, Geneva, Switzerland 681 6. INTEMPERANCE AND ITS SUPPRESSION. Bv the Rev. HENRY A. NELSON, D.D., Professor in Lane Theological Seminary, Cincin- "nati, Ohio 689 7. CHRISTIANITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO CRIME AND CRIMINALS. By the Rev. E. C. WINES, D.D., LL.D., Secretary of the National Prison Association of the United States , 695 8. INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS AS AN AGENCY IN THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. By the Rev. E. ROBIN, Paris 701 FAREWELL ADDRESS, By the Rev. NOAH HUNT SCHENCK, D.D., Brooklyn, New York. Delivered at the close of the Valedictory Services in the Academy of Music, New York, Sunday night, October 12, 1873 707 APPENDIX I. LETTERS OF GREETING. TESTAMENTARY ADDRESS OF THE LATE DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND... 717 GREETING FROM THE COUNCIL OF THE BRITISH ORGANIZATION OF THE EVANGELICAL AL- LIANCE 711) FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 720 FROM THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH DIET 720 CONTENTS. 63 FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR INNER MISSIONS OF THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL ' CHURCH 721 FROM THE EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY 721 FROM THE EVANGELICAL OBER-KIRCHENRATH IN BERLIN 721 FROM PROFESSOR ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, VERSAILLES, Member of the Institute of France. 722 FROM THE REV. ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D., OF EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND 723 FROM PROFESSOR J. I. DOEDES, D.D., OF UTRECHT, HOLLAND 724 FROM THE HONORABLE ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., OF BOSTON 724 APPENDIX II. ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS. CLOSING REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE PROGRAMME 729 PEACEFUL ARBITRATION : A Communication from the Committee of the LONDON PEACE SOCIETY 730 ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA, IN RELATION TO THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST. By the Rev. J. LONG, Church Missionary in Calcutta 731 CONCERTED ACTION ON SUNDAY LEGISLATION. A Communication from Mr. ALEXANDER LOMBARD, of Geneva, President of the Swiss Society for the Sanctification of the Lord's Day 733 FROM THE WORKING-MEN'S LORD'S DAY REST ASSOCIATION, OF LONDON 734 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. Proposed by the Rev. Dr. VAN OOSTERZEE, Professor of Theology at Utrecht, Holland... 734 ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. From BENJAMIN MILLARD, Secretary of the Antislavery Society, London 735 PROTESTANTISM IN BRAZIL. From the Corresponding Secretaries of the Evangelical Alliance, Brazil 73C RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TURKEY, AND THE CONDITION OF ITS PROTESTANT POPULATION. From the Committee of the Turkey Branch of the Evangelical Alliance 73(! MEMORIAL ON THE OPIUM TRADE. From the Chairman and Secretary of the Turkey Branch 73!> CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. By HENRY BERGH, Esq., of New York 740 AMERICAN SEAMEN'S FRIEND SOCIETY. By the President and Secretary of the Society 741 FRATERNAL APPEAL TO THE FRIENDS OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE AND OF CHRISTIAN UNION GENERALLY ; WITH A PROVISIONAL SKETCH OF A PLAN FOR A GENERAL PROT- ESTANT UNION. Signed by the Rev. Dr. S. S. SCHMUCKER, Emeritus Professor of the Theological Semi- nary at Gettysburg, and many others 742 ADDRESSES OF THANKS FROM FOREIGN DELEGATIONS 74(! RESOLUTIONS OF THANKS ADOPTED BY THE CONFERENCE..., 748 APPENDIX III. A STATISTICAL EXHIBIT OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN THE UNITKD STATES 751 ROLL OF THE SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 755 THE DOCTRINAL BASIS OF THE UNITED STATES EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 760 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 761 To THE MEMORY OF PRONIER AND CARRASCO, WITH THEIR PORTRAITS 7(52 To THE MEMORY OF COOK, WITH A PORTRAIT 767 ALPHABETICAL INDEX 76! ADDRESS OF WELCOME, BY THE REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., LL.D., NEW YORK. [Delivered at the Social Reception, on Thursday Evening, October 2, 1873, in the Young Mens Christian Association Hall.~\ I DEEM it a special pleasure and honor that I have been requested, in the name of the Christian people of this country, to ad- dress a few words of welcome to those who have gathered at this Conference, and espe- cially to those from the other side of the sea. Some of you have long been known to many of us as personal friends and correspondents ; others have been gratefully known by their works of scholarship and philanthropy. The author of a good book is a true cosmopolite. He is at home in every part of the world. The author of a Christian hymn sung in all the churches of Christendom, the originator of a new and successful scheme of Christian philanthropy, is welcome as a friend wher- ever there are Christians to worship and to work. Pleasant, indeed, is it to grasp by the hand and look upon the faces of men with whom we have long had unspoken sympa- thy through the books which lie upon our tables. Coming to us on such an occasion as this, and on such an errand, none of you can be "strangers and foreigners;" all are " fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." As such we greet you with cordial affection. We bless you in the name of the Lord, and welcome you most heartily to our country, our churches, our pulpits, and our homes. This welcoming on the. part of Christians in the New World to visitors coming from the Old World marks an advanced epoch in the great drama of human history. The two hemispheres are separated in space by the long and lumbering billows of the Western Ocean, but, as time advances, we see more and more how they are unified in the great plan and purpose of the Almighty. Neither is complete in itself. The Old abides not 5 alone. It prolongs and perpetuates itself in the New. The New is not a sudden and in- dependent creation, like fabled Delos made to stand still as the theatre of an extempo- raneous civilization. It is the growth, ex- pansion, and continuance of the Old. You can not travel on this Western Continent without noticing that European history has notched itself into our very soil, and chroni- cled its several stages of development in the names of our States, and cities, and towns, and universities. Those who come to us from France will recall and read the history of their native laud in names scattered all over this country, from the St. Lawrence 011 the north, with that Mount of Vision known to us in our English pronunciation as Mont- real, away through lake and river to St. Louis and New Orleans and Carolina, where the Huguenots left the name of their weak and bigoted king, Charles IX. Those who come to us from Holland, if they miss dike and fog, surely can not feel themselves far from home in this city of New Amsterdam, and on the banks of that river discovered by Dutch enterprise. Germany, if she did not begin her migration so soon as others, is making up for delay in the volume of her population, like that which centuries ago overran the south of Europe, spreading her language and her industry over this vast domain ; and we welcome to-day her repre- sentatives to this city of New York as the fourth largest German city in the world. As for Great Britain, these household names of States, counties, cities, and colleges New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, Berkshire, Boston, Cambridge, Plymouth, Dorchester, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, William and Mary afford ADAMS: ADDRESS OF WELCOME. easy proof that this Western World, with its free governments, its institutions of learning and religion, is but the outgrowth and result of the successive throes, struggles, and rev- olutions of the old ancestral isle. As the names of parents are given to their children and their children's children, so the names of the martyrs, the patriots, the scholars, the statesmen, the good and the great men of former ages,'wortby to be held in everlast- ing remembrance, are reproduced and per- petuated through the length and the breadth of this New World. There was a time (we trust it has passed forever) when certain writers, in a spirit .of jealousy, distrust, and hate, were accustom- ed to refer to us as a " raw and recent pop- ulation," without history or ancestry, as if we were " disgraceful foundlings, blushing at the bend of illegitimacy in our coat ar- morial." Can children lose their lineage by migration ? Do we part with blood, birth- right, or pedigree when we cross the sea ? If there be virtue in any patronymic claim Lave not we as indefeasible a right in the fame of every patriot, scholar, and philan- thropist of the Old World as any who still tread the ancestral acres ? It was the conceit of classic mythology that the Muse of History was the daughter of Jove. The thought thus suggested we put into a better Christian phrase, believ- ing in the unity of God's purpose in Provi- dence. That which we receive from our Bi- bles has been wrought out iu philosophic form by Schlegel and Miiller. Look at de- tached parts of the drama at the Hugue- nots of France, exiled, massacred, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; at the Hol- landers, harried by Philip of Spain ; at the Non-conformists of England during the Five- Mile Act of the Stuarts and you would be bewildered and depressed, as if there were no equitable Power to protect and reward virtue. But these are only " parts of God's ways." To judge them as if they were in- dependent, insulated, and complete events is as if one gazing on some eddy or back- water in the Mississippi should infer that the mighty river were running upward and backward. Sweep a wider vision, make a more copious induction, wait and look again, cross the ocean whither the brave exiles be- took themselves, and observe the institutions of civil and religious liberty, the churches, the schools, the happy homes, which have sprung up iu this New World, and behold the vindication of Divine equity, progress and development in the magnificent plan of Divine Providence. Calvin and Coligny did not join in person the several expeditions to the American coast which they so zeal- ously patronized ; but Calvin, Coligny and Knox, Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper and Latimer, as well as the great German Reformers, Lu- ther, Melauchthon and Zwingli, are living and working upon our soil to-day. John Hampden, whose society Richard Baxter said would give a charm to the Everlasting Rest of the Saints, ceased not to live when he fell in battle, for the patriot statesman walks abroad in our own land. The " good old cause" for which Algernon Sidney prayed with his latest breath on Tower Hill in Lon- don did not perish when that noble martyr was beheaded. We ask you, coming from the Old World, to see and judge for your- selves the result and fruitage of great events, which carry us all back to the cell of Argyll, the scaffold of Russell, the grave of Wickliffe, and the ashes of Huss. It has ver- ily seemed to us that it was not so much we as they that were welcoming you to these shores ; that the very air was full of the mar- tyr spirits of the mighty dead, our common ancestry, bidding us, iu our blessed brother- hood, to enjoy together the rich results of their faith, prayers, and agonies, in a free re- ligion, a free Bible, a free Church, free schools, a free press, and free souls a glorious lega- cy of the past to the present the seed-corn and the roots beyond the sea in the Old, tho harvest and the compensation in the New. The object of our Conference is neither political nor ecclesiastical. We come not to discuss forms of church organization or gov- ernment, or any thing which is extrinsic and casual. Wo meet to manifest and express our Christian unity. Divers are the names which wo bear, both as to countries and churches German, French, Swiss, Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish, Lutheran, Reformed, ADAMS : ADDEESS OF WELCOME. 67 Anglican, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Meth- odist, Baptist, Independent but we desire and intend to show that, amidst all this va- riety of form and circumstances, there is a real unity of faith and life ; believing, ac- cording to the familiar expression of our common Christian creed, in the " Holy Cath- olic Church and the Communion of Saints." We are living in times when, all over the world, there is a manifest longing for more of fraternal unity. France and Germany have both given us new words expressive of this desire for cosmopolitan unity. Conven- tions and expositions are held in which rep- resentatives from all countries meet to com- pare and interchange ideas and commodities. These are signs which, like the tufts of grass and sprigs of red berries which caught the eye of Columbus from the mast-head of the Pinta, betoken the vicinity of land. We may be mistaken in our reckoning 5 fog- banks may be taken for laud ; but we know in what direction the land lies, and we must sail onward till we reach it. We pretend not to create unity certainly not by artifi- cial ligatures but to testify to that which exists already. God is one. The Kedemp- tion by Jesus Christ is one. The body of Christ is one. The kingdom of God on earth, for the coming of which all hearts and voices are taught to pray, is presented as an object in the singular number one, and not many. What is of essential benefit to one church and one nation, in course of time becomes the property of all. You can not fence off the great ocean into private pastures ; you can not partition off the firmament into household lots ; you can not divide snu, moon, and stars into bits of personal prop- erty ; you can not play Eobiuson Crusoeism iu the Church of God. No man can appro- priate to himself, in an insular spirit, any exclusive right in those great matters to the discussion of which we now welcome you Christian Faith, Christian Life, Christian Work, Christian Hope, and Christian Des- tiny. Bigots may misunderstand this, and lend themselves to what is private, local, and exclusive ; but there is no such thing as private property in good thoughts, good deeds, and good men. Paul is ours, and Ce- phas is ours, and Apollos is ours. All the great historic names associated with schol- arship, philanthropy, and religion, no mat- ter in what laud they were born or in what country they were baptized, are the com- mon property of all Christian believers. All truths, all discoveries, all inventions, all things good and worthy, in due time are as sure to diffuse themselves abroad in every direction, as water to find its level^ or the free air of heaven, to flow into every open space. By no method can we prevent this if we would. Believing in this great ordi- nance of God, we welcome you most hearti- ly to the expression and enjoyment of this high Christian, unity. It has been said, whether by poetry or science it matters not, that there is a certain point iu the upper air in which all the discordant sounds of the earth the rattle of wheels, the chime of bells, the roll of the drum, the laugh of the child, and the moan of the beggar meet and blend in perfect harmony. Surely it is something more than a poetic conceit, even the sure word of inspiration, that, when once we are lifted up to a fellowship in Christ Jesus, we meet in a high and heavenly place where " all things are gathered together in one, both which are iu heaven and which are on earth, even in him " an elevation so high that there is a complete oblivion to all those manifold distinctions of country, race, and name which belong entirely to a lower and heavier atmosphere. The pleasure of our Conference is subject to abatement. Some whose presence would have graced this occasion are not, for God has taken them. If, as we believe, departed spirits are conscious of what occurs on earth, those beloved friends and brethren are not indifferent to a scene like this Merle d'Au- bign6, Count Gasparin, Dr. Hoffman, Norman M'Leod, Dean Alford, Dr. Guthrie, and our own M'llvaino and Schmncker. If it be good and pleasant for brethren to dwell to- gether in unity upon the earth, how much better, more fragrant than precious oint- ment, and sweeter than the dew of Hermon will it be when all who are united to one au- other through Christ shall be welcomed to his presence by the Lord of Glory ! Ancient ADAMS : ADDRESS OF WELCOME. philosophy dreamed of a symposium which all the wise and good should enjoy in a fa- bled Elysium ; but inspiration has specified this as ono, of the elements of Christian bless- edness, that we are come to " the spirits of the just made perfect" "to the General Assembly of the Church of the First-born written in Heaven." Welcoming one another to these Christian assemblies upon the earth ; greeting every occasion like this for the ex- pression of Christian confidence and love ; beseeching you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together in your prayers to God ; that, coming together with joy by the will of God, we may with you be refreshed, our thoughts run forward with gladness to the time when all true servants of Christ, coming from the East and the West, the North and the South, with their bosoms full of sheaves, shall meet together at the harvest-homo in the cud of the world. In the very words of Dean Alford, whoso per- sonal presence we miss among us words which were chauted at his funeral sen-ice in Canterbury Cathedral " Ten thousand times ten thousand, In sparkling raiment bright, The armies of the ransomed saint?, Throng up the steeps of light. 'Tis finished all is finished, Their fight with Death and Sin ; Fling open wide the golden gates, And let the victors iu. "Oh then what raptured greetings On Canaan's happy shore, What knitting severed friendships up Where partings are no more '." So it is that our hopes of heaven enter into the welcome we once more give you, in the name of the Lord Jesus and of Christian brotherhood. I. REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION 1ST YARIOUS CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES. Delivered on Friday, October 3d, 1873. DIVISION I, CONTENTS, PAGE 1 . DECOPPET : Religion in the Reformed Church of France 71 2. FISCH : Other Protestant Churches in France 76 3. KRUMMACHER : Christian Life in Germany 78 4. TIIOLUCK : Evangelical Theology in Germany 85 5. STUART : Religious Condition of Holland. 90 6. ANET: Religious and Moral Condition of Belgium 95 7. REICHEL : State of Religion in Switzerland 99 8. KALKAR : State of Religion in Scandinavia 101 9. PROCHET : State of Religion in Italy 106 10. CARRASCO : Religion in Spain 112 11. FLIEDNER : Evangelization of Spain 123 12. KALOPOTHAKES : Religion in Greece 127 13. MURRAY, ROBERT : The ^British Provinces of North America 129 14. MURRAY, WILLIAM : Christianity in the West Indies 133 ON THE POSITION OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION IN FRANCE, AND PARTICULARLY OF THE NA- TIONAL FRENCH REFORMED CHURCH. BY THE REV. AUGUSTE DECOPPET, B.D., Pastor of the National Reformed Church in Paris. DEAR BRETHREN, In the absence of Mr. Bersier, who was to have addressed you upon the state of religion in France, allow me to treat a portion of his subject, inviting your attention to French Protestantism, and par- ticularly to that Reformed Church which I have the honor of representing here. I have always found that there is some difficulty in speaking of one's own church in the presence of representatives of other churches ; for one can not say all the good or all the ill of it that comes to one's mind. One hardly dares to say all the good, lest one should seem to boast ; while, on the oth- er hand, the Church is a mother whose in- firmities and weaknesses her children would fain leave veiled. I am embarrassed by the conviction that there is much to commend in French Protestantism and the Reformed Church, and that, unfortunately, there is much to lament. I propose to ask you to hear both sides, with the hope that the good will at least counterbalance the evil. Among the virtues that we readily recog- nize in our American and English brethren and their number is by no means small is the love of facts and figures. We are quite clear that you are thorough positivists in the best sense of the term. Let me then begin with figures. The Protestant population of France is still but a feeble minority, which holds its own, but does not sensibly increase. Before the late war we numbered about e of no value were it not followed l>y a moral and a religious one." These very significant words healthy symptoms of the moral re- covery of Italy do not stand alone, thanks to God. Another distinguished writer, the Roman Count, Ferengio Mamiani, discours- ing upon what he calls the Religiosity in Italy and France, states the fact that the former begins to feel uneasy under her mantle of religious indifference, and almost instinct- ively is looking for something that would save her from the tyranny of Rome on one side, and the comfortless doctrines of infi- delity on the other. Other voices have been and are heard from different parts of the Peuiusula trying to draw the attention of the people to such an important subject. It is true, nothing determined is offered to the people by their advisers ; perhaps they do not know it them- selves, but an immense step would be made the day in which the Italian people would rise and say, " We will have a religion in which we can believe with our hearts and souls." Here I ought to speak of the New Catho- lics of the liberal Catholics and it would be very interesting to follow them in their attempt to conciliate the exigencies of their more enlightened consciences with the re- quirements of a religion which has always baffled them; to see some of them by a slow process separating gradually from the Church of Rome; others keeping in their inner heart the belief in one living God, and suffering the, for them, meaningless ceremo- nies as necessary for the ignorant mob ; oth- ers severing the evangelical moral from all doctrine, keeping the former and making very light of the latter. 108 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. But time will not permit, as we have still to look at a party which is making awful progress in Italy, I mean the unbelievers. The number of those who have come to the rejection of all religion by a more or less philosophical and logical inference from as- sumed principles is comparatively small ; but their influence is every day more grow- ing and pervading the masses. Whether their name be free-thinkers, pos- itiviste, or materialists, they all find them- selves on the same platform. No personal God, either creator or judge ; man's conscience his only rule ; the religion of humanity the common bond that will one day bind togeth- er all nations in one family. Confounding Romanism with Christiani- ty, it is an easy work for them to show the former in complete opposition to every free- dom, and to find adherents among a people which is the more eager for liberty that it has been longer deprived of it. Add to this the natural tendency of man to say in his heart, " There is no God," and you will easi- ly realize the importance of the impending danger, more dreadful than superstition it- self. II. Let me now come to the smallest part of the population, which, however, is the part I represent here. I am sorry to say I have no commission from the Pope ; the only com- munication wo have together being a fresh excommunication I get every year from him. Let me come to the Protestants of Italy. And first of all, our guests. I call our guests the foreign Protestants, who come to Italy for the sake of art, of business, of health, and settle themselves among us for a period of time. They have about thirty- five congregations, especially in the large cities, as Rome, Florence, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa, etc. ; but the language of their wor- ship being either French, English, or Ger- man, it will bo easily understood that their influence might not amount to much upon a people that does not understand those lan- guages. Yet many of their ministers and some of their laymen have paid, and pay, the hospitality they enjoy in a very honora- ble and Christian way, by trying to bene- fit the people among which they live. Time does not permit me to do more than barely name some of them : Rev. Dr. Miller, who started " The Genoa Harbor Mission," which has yielded good fruits already, and prom- ises to surrender more for the future ; the venerable Dr. Stewart, of Leghorn, who has done more for the evangelization of Italy than any other foreigner now living ; Rev. Messieurs Buscarlet and Pater, of Naples ; Mr. Wallace, of Venice ; Dr. Van Nest, the chief supporter of an orphan asylum in Flor- ence ; Rev. M'Dongall, Waite, etc. I must also, and do it with great pleasure, tender my sincere thanks to Mrs. E. B. Gould, Avhose I talo- American schools in Rome are well- known here, and much appreciated iu Italy, and Mrs. Boyce, who founded in Vallecrosia (Liguria) an orphanage, where fifty girls and boys receive food, garments, instruction, and education. Of the native churches, allow me to speak first of the Waldensian Church ; not because I belong to her, but because she comes first chronologically. Long before were born the great reformers to whose praises, recited last night, I said " Amen" with all my heart ; the Waldensiau Church, iu the Alpine val- leys of Northern Italy, was bearing her tes- timony to Gospel truth, and sealing it with the blood of her children. She is there still, a remnant of thirty-three bloody persecu- tions, a token of God's wonderful dealings ; with her six or seven thousand communi- cants, four thousand one hundred pupils in the primary schools, eighty in her classical college, sixty in her high school for girls, and thirty in the normal school. But, thanks to God, she is no more there only. The bound- ary line drawn by superstition has been can- celed by liberty, and the Waldensian Church' has resumed her w r ork of evangelization. Here I take the liberty of calling your at- tention to a fact which I deem worthy of it. Though perfectly convinced that her form of church government and her confession of faith are thoroughly evangelical, the Walden- sian Church declared, through her eynodical assembly of 1855, that she would not Walden- siauize, but take her share in the work of christianizing Italy. The only instructions given to the evangelists were these: "Go preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, be faith- ful to the Master, and may God bless you !" The result was that the congregations gath- ered in thirty-seven different cities were as free as the birds that fly above your heads, and whose only law is God's law. The rep- resentatives of these congregations (scatter- ed from the Alps to Sicily) met, in number sixty or seventy, in the spring of 1873, in Florence ; and while rejoicing in their num- bering nearly two thousand communicants, one thousand six hundred children in their schools, and one thousand two hundred in their Sabbath-schools, they unanimously de- clared they would bind themselves in one body, and present a more compact front to the enemy. It does not behoove me to say a single word in favor of that Church ; but I think I may be allowed, without any impropriety, to summon before you three different par- ties, and to let them speak : 1. The presbytery of Italy, in connection with the well-known and rightly honored Free Church of Scot- land, composed of men who have lived many years in Italy, voluntarily and unanimous- ly published a pamphlet, in which they de- clared their deep sympathy for and full confidence in the Waldensian Church as a means of evangelizing Italy. 2. Numbers of PROCHET: RELIGION IN ITALY. 109 citizens of different towns apply to the pres- ident of the Waldensian Board of Missions for evangelists. 3. But the third of the three parties is the most remarkable one. It is the Jesuit Perrone, the great controversialist. In a book of two hundred pages he has, not long ago, heaped against the Waldeusians all the calumnies he could find in the books of his predecessors and in his own brain, warn- ing Italians against their heresies. I value that testimony exceedingly. One word more, to illustrate the unsecta- rianism of the Waldensian Church. Her the- ological seminary in Florence is open to stu- dents of all denominations free of charge, where they can study without ever being asked to abandon their own denomination. Very soon after the Waldensiau Church had begun her work in 1850, Christians of Switzerland, France, England, America, felt it their duty to take a part iu the work of carrying the Gospel to Italy. To that effect they took some of the first converts, and em- ployed them as evangelists under their own responsibility. Though many of these evan- gelists were without any theological train- ing, they succeeded, by the power that the Gospel has iu itself, to gather a good num- ber of congregations, varying very much in size. Up to the year 1870 no bond of union existed among them I mean, organic union. In that year some of them met in Milan, and laid the foundations of the " Union of the Free Christian Churches of Italy," better known in this country as the Free Italian Church. A Committee of Evangelization was appointed by them, having as president Rev. Dr. Van Nest, American minister in Florence, and as treasurer Rev. J.R.M'Dougall, Scotch minister in the same city. The celebrated ex-monk, Father Gavazzi, belongs also to that committee. In 1872 twenty-eight evangel- ists of that denomination met again iu as- sembly in Rome, and, among other resolu- tions, voted a confession of faith in twelve articles. No ruling elder was convened to this assembly; so that it seems that the congregationalist form of church govern- ment is the form likely to prevail among them. They number about a thousand communicants. Some of the congregations have schools connected with them. The American Board has recently undertaken to support the third of their evangelists. About the half of the Free Church, howev- er, did not join the Union, and continued, as in former years, to be entirely independent from each other ; meeting, however, once a year to confer between themselves specially upon matters relating to edification. As no report has ever been printed by them that I am aware of, it is impossible for me to give their number. At their last meeting of La Spinetta there were thirty ministers and eld- ers present, representing thirty-three congre- gations. Among their prominent men let me name the Count Guicciardiui, of Flor- ence, and Signer Bonaventura Mazzarella, deputy to the House of Parliament. They call themselves "Free Christian Churches of Italy." The Methodists have made good progress in Italy, owing to the energy and activity displayed by Rev. Henry Piggott and Rev. Jones directing the two sections, northern and southern. The Northern Synod numbers twelve con- gregations and six hundred communicants ; the Southern Synod, seven congregations and three hundred communicants. Good schools are in connection with some of the Methodist congregations ; and quite worthy of notice is the international school of Padua, started by the Rev. Mr. Piggott. The Baptists have concentrated their ef- forts more specially in Rome, where three foreigners are working among natives, name- ly, Messieurs Wall, Cote, and Van Meter. Mr. Clark had also started a small congregation in La Spezia. The American Methodist Episcopal Church of America have begun this year a mis- sion in Bologna, where they have sent two clergymen, Rev. Dr. Leroy Vernon and Mr. Spencer. I wish I had more time to speak at length of some other private efforts besides those already mentioned previously of Mesdames Boyce and Gould. I will not, however, let go unnoticed the work of Miss Burton among the soldiers work accompanied by many encouragements, and which seems now more than ever to yield fruit to the glory of God. I fear that every one of my hearers has been sadly impressed by the contrast be- tween the union of the Roman Catholic party and the divisions of the Evangelical one. Alas ! Italy has not been spared that weakness of Protestantism. It is my duty to tell things as they are. May God so act by his Holy Ghost that these different de- nominations will work together harmoni- ously ! An attempt has been made by the Wal- deusiau Church to bring all the denomina- tions into closer contact and more brotherly terms, but the attempt has hitherto proved hardly a half success. A few words about the evangelical lit- erature of Italy The Book of life. The Bible is now freely circulated throughout the length and the breadth of the country. Thousands of copies are sold every year by colporteurs employed by the British and Scotch Bible Societies, and carry into every home the Gospel light. Unfortunately the priests are on their guard, and burn as many copies as they can get. An Italian Bible Society has been formed in Rome, numbering now about four thou- sand associates scattered through the wholo of Italy. REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. 110 A Tract Society in Florence, assisted by the London Tract Society, has issued a good number of books and tracts, which, with God'a blessing, may awaken some souls and lead them to the true fountain of life. La Rwista Crutiana (The Christian Re- view), a monthly paper, edited in Florence by the professors of the Waldensian Semi- nary, has met with great approval by all de- nominations, and even by Roman Catholics themselves. It treats of all questions in a religious point of view and in a thoroughly catholic spirit. The Eco delta Verita, the veteran of the evangelical papers of Italy, is issued weekly, to the number of three thousand copies. The Amico del Fandulli (Children's Friend), illustrated weekly paper, numbers about ten thousand subscribers. L'Amico di Casa, a good almanac, is so well received by Roman Catholics them- selves that last year sixty thousand copies were sold in a few months. La Strenna del Fandulli and La Siblioteca del Fandulli have lately made their appear- ance, and seem to be well received. Fede e Stienza (weekly), II Corriere Evan- gclico, and La Vedetta (both monthly) are pub- lished hi connection with the Union of Free Churches, the Methodists, and the Free Chris- tian Churches. La Eoma Evangelica comes out weekly in Rome, and is in connection with no denom- ination so far as I am aware of. Compared to what we had but a few years ago, this array of books and periodicals is quite encouraging, but compared to the wants of a population of twenty-six million souls it appears very small. We had, not long ago, seventeen millions of people who could not read. We shall reduce that by one half, the next generation. But when these people shall be able to read, what shall they read? Will stories of saints or ro- mances be their only food ? 3. And now, reducing to three words what has already been too much condensed, at least according to my taste, Italy is worked upon by three parties Papists, infidels, evangel- icals. The former have to aid them habit and ignorance, the second the natural tend- ency of human hearts, the last the Gospel which of the three shall have it ? I shall not play the prophet : let me only say that there are thousands in Italy now hoping, praying, working for the installment in ev- ery house and heart of the Gospel of light, of peace, of salvation. There is a fact not sufficiently thought of, to which I wish to draw your attention. It is this: An American may bo a good Roman Cath- olic and a good citizen ; an Italian can not. He must choose between his religion and his country. Let him be devoted to the Pope, and he must, with his holy father, pray and work for the overthrow of Italian unity and freedom, for the re-installment of the pope- king and of all other petty kings or dukes. Let him be a good citizen, and he is obliged to see in the Pope the greatest enemy of his mother country ; the man who curses it ev- ery year, and is urging the Roman Catholics of the world to come to Italy to flood it with blood, in order to grasp again the earth- ly sceptre which liberty snatched out of his hands. I do not require to say more to make you sympathize with my countrymen you who have shown to the world in what high de- gree you loved your religion and your coun- try. Shall Italians have no other choice but to be good Roman Catholics and bad citi- zens, or good citizens and infidels ? Will not God make manifest to them that His religion has never been, and shall never be, in oppo- sition to one of the noblest feelings that still adorns the human heart the love of the mother country f Here comes an objection I desire to meet. The aesthetical feeling is so much developed in Italy that it has killed the moral and re- ligious one, some people say, and they add : " The Gospel and the plain evangelical wor- ship will never be received and appreciated by them." I grant the fact, I deny the inference. Yes, it is true, the aesthetic feeling is developed at the expense of the religious one. But is the blame to be thrown on the people alone ? From the moment, a child still, he is con- firmed by the bishop in gorgeous attire, amidst smoking incense, burning candles, and splendid music, to the day when, a dying man, he receives the wafer from a priest still surrounded with candles, religion is repre- sented to an Italian clouded in misty cere- monies. Italians do not know what close communion with God is ! But how can they see God at the extremity of a long lino of intermediary beings, beginning with the Vir- gin Mary and terminating at the priest sit- ting behind the grate of the confessional ? How can they feel His love, and give theirs in return ? Ah ! let the mighty breath of God blow away all that superstitious rubbish ; let those hearts now kept by hirelings in the outskirts of God's palace come into the inner cham- ber; let them feel loving arms around them ; let them hear a fatherly voice, saying, My son, My daughter ; let them feel the throb- bing of God's own heart beating against them, and I venture to say that, no matter what they may be naturally, Italian hearts will respond, will bo lifted up into a higher sphere, and give love for love. I have still to learn that there is a single heart in the whole world incapable of receiving the grace of God applied by the Holy Ghost. Will the Italian nation become Protestant like England or North America ? / do not PROCHET: RELIGION IN ITALY. Ill know ; the Lord knows, and that is enough for me. When I was a soldier during the Italian war of independence, I never trou- bled myself about the plans of the general-in- chief. I have changed army, and the Gener- al I have the high privilege of now serving under has my full confidence, ten thousand times more than Lamarmora or Garibaldi himself. In other words, God deals with na- tions; we men have to deal with individuals ; and it is because the Church in the third century forgot that rule that we have had the sad spectacle of Christian nations whose Christianity consisted simply in a mere var- nish covering the rottenness of superstition and corruption. Do you ask, What is, then, the object of our work in Italy ? Simply this : to bring down into all the Italian cities, towns, vil- lages, hamlets, the Gospel light which God so providentially preserved for centuries on the Italian mountains. When there will not be a corner of my dear fatherland without a pure, shining light, we will wait patiently, working and watching for the "own good time " of that gracious and merciful God who wills not the death of the sinner, but his conversion and his life. KEPORT ON THE STATE OF RELIGION IN SPAIN. BY THE REV. ANTONIO CARRASCO, MADRID. [Born at Malaga, Spain, January IQth, 1843.] BELOVED BRETHREN ix THE LORD JESUS, When, six years ago, I had the honor to attend the Conferences of the Evangelical Alliance, I closed my report with these words: "Spiritually speaking, Spain is at the present moment in a transition state ; belongs to no one in reality. The Govern- ment and the clergy strive to keep her in bonds, bnt they can not realize their pur- pose ; no matter how elevated the barriers they raise, they will never be so high that the truth can not rise above them, for truth is eternal, and sooner or later will effect the conquest of the world. We believe that Spain's salvation is at hand. God grant that this assembly may be able to accelerate the rising of the Sun of Justice, which shall flood the country with its divine light !" The event which was expected by all who were acquainted with what was passing in Spain took place in September, 1868. The people and the army, Democrats and Prog- ressists, the laborers of the fields and of the cities, all joined hands to overthrow a dy- nasty which was far from realizing the as- pirations of Spain of the nineteenth century. Since then, great have been the convulsions, and still greater the changes, that we have witnessed in our country. The disunion of the parties which united in accomplishing the revolution, the assembly of two Constitu- ting Cortes, the Regency of General Serrano, the cowardly assassination of General Prim, the reign of Don Amadeo of Savoya, the proc- lamation of the Republic, the Carlist risings, the Republican insurrections, bloodshed in almost all the cities of the Peninsula, the ill- concealed ambition of many, want of patri- otism in almost all, the best institutions ill managed, the most eminent statesmen worn out this is the history of these last five years in Spain, to the great sorrow of all who had formed the hope that the advent of liberty would bring peace and progress with it. Still, in the midst of so many dis- asters, we have preserved intact the religious liberty inscribed in the programmes by the Juntas of all the cities in the early days of the revolution ; and had we acquired nothing besides this sole liberty, we should still have the deepest reason of gratitude to the Lord, who with his strong arm ftas throivn down the brazen gates, and crumbled the bolts of iron. It is not a small thing, my dear hearers, for me, a Spaniard, born in the land of Philip the Second, and of Isabella the Second, to be able to appear on this platform, and from it tell the whole world of the Protestant church- es of Spain, of the Protestant Bibles printed in Madrid, and distributed throughout Spain, read by so many families, ivlien it is their for- tune to know liow to read for me to be able to communicate to you my fears, my hopes, and my plans, and then to return tranquilly to my Madera Baja Church, in the confidence that I shall not be assailed by the myrmi- dons of the law, that six years ago would have seized me on crossing the frontier, and thrown me into prison for the crime of cher- ishing a faith different from that of the Church of Rome. In order to appreciate this privilege at its full value one must have known what was the state of affairs in her days of intolerance, have seen one's self condemned to nine years of imprisonment for the sole crime of read- ing the Holy Scriptures without the notes of the church. That which costs us most is what we most appreciate, and for this rea- son we, who have suffered for religious lib- erty, can never consider the revolution fruit- less which has given it to us. So far my introduction, and after cordial- ly greeting you, dear hearers, in the name of the Spanish Protestant Church, I shall enter immediately into the subject assigned to me, termed " Spain and the Gospel." And since I do not believe that your intention was that I should speak to you only about the church- es in Spain, but also that you desire to learn what work is done, how it is done, the faults we commit, the dangers we should avoid, my impressions of the past, and my hopes for the future, I will commence by a brief review of the state of the Spanish people, of their char- acter and aspirations, which will enable yon to judge whether they have been well or ill evangelized, and whether the manner of evangelization adopted up to the present day is the one most fit to meet the wants of the future. It is an axiom, my hearers, that the truth is one and the same everywhere ; but it is none the less true that each nation has a dis- tinct character of its own, and requires a particular form of evangelization. Let us consider the different features of the charac- ter of the Spanish people. CAERASCO: RELIGION IN SPAIN. 1. Tbe Spaniards are a peculiar people. Those who have studied their history and customs may say that their customs are more or less rough, their history more or less il- lustrious; but surely none have ever said that the nation of Padilla and Lauuza, of Murillo and Cervantes, does not bear the seal of a powerful originality. A strong and energetic race, endowed with an indestruc- tible instinct of preservation, the ardent blood that fills the veins of its sons is ever ready to flow for whatever cause is dear to them. The iudepeudence of their country is dearer to the Spaniards than a religion ; it is fanatism, never once belied during the course of its history. Next to their country, their religion has always been pre-eminent in the hearts of the Spaniards their religion, which, has so deeply influenced their customs, their laws, their literature, and their arts. The clergy were acknowledged from a very remote period (since the conversion of Ricaredo to the Catholic religion) as one of the public authorities, and perhaps that which most predominated. Their educa- tion, the moderation with which, they used their influence, and their austere life soon gave them a notable ascendency, observable in the numerous and benevolent laws with which the people were endowed by the Coun- cils of Toledo. The king reigned in Spain, btit the councils governed. The traces of this early religion are still to be found in all Spanish customs, impregnated with the Cath- olic spirit, and the same traces are found in the laws, in the character of the Spaniard, in their aspirations, and in their enterprises. Great dangers, knightly feats of arms, pos- sessed powerful attractions for the Spaniard. To die fighting the Moslem in defense of their country and their religion was the highest ideal of death conceivable to them. To return from the war, and, still covered with the dust of the combat, present the tro- phies to the lady of their love, was their only poetry ; and their old romancers have preserved the memory of the poetical wor- ship rendered to woman in the Middle Ages. In lieu of instruction, the Spaniards pos- sessed an eminent degree of integrity, amia- ble simplicity, love for their families, and the highest respect for their word of honor. This, my hearers, was the Spain of the olden time. But the day arrived fatal in the annals of its history, when an absolute monarchy was established, and, together with absolutism, the sinister Inquisition. Liberty of con- science, as well as that of thought, vanished from our soil, and intolerance soon began to bear its bitter death fruits. It is true that at previous periods some of the clergy, eager to possess the wealth of the Jews, iiad insti- gated the people against them ; but it is none the less true that certain kings protected the Jews from the fury of their accusers. 8 Yet, when at last the Inquisition was estab- lished in Spain without the consent of tho Cortes, and notwithstanding the protests oi' the most enlightened men of that period, Heruando del Pulgar, and, in the next reign, Hernando de Talavera, then perished the Cas- tilian liberties on the field of Villalar and Mallorca and Valencia lost theirs too, with Juan Odon Colon and there remained no more hope of the existence of any of those liberties that exalt a nation. Catholic writers are not wanting who exalt the power and wealth of Spain in the days of Philip II., the great champion-in-arms of intolerance ; but they forget that the pros- tration of nations is a slow work, that in their history punishment does not succeed crime immediately, and, when the great mor- al laws are trampled and crushed under the dazzling veil of high prosperity, the skeleton of death underneath is hidden from sight. There is no greater proof of this truth than the grandeur of Spain in the sixteenth cen- tury, under the reign of Philip II. This monarch possessed, besides Spain, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the Duchy of Mi- lan, Rosellin, the Low Countries, and the Franco Condado. On the Western coasts of Africa, he owned the Canary Islands, Fer- nando Po, Annobon, and St. Helena. In America, he reigned in Peru, in Mexico, in Tierra Firme, New Granada, Cuba, St. Do- mingo, Martinique, Guadalupe, and Jamai- ca. In the Indian Seas, the Philippine Isl- and also belonged to Spain, and afterward the conquest of Portugal largely augmented his already vast dominions. Spain saw her kingdom strong and united, while all else declined around her : her sol- diers were the first in the world, and her navy then was unequaled. At the same time that Spain predominated in the outer world by her strength, she flour- ished within her boundaries through her ag- riculture, industries, and commerce. But, alas, all this prosperity was but as when a fair and beautiful plant in all the glory of broad leaves and rich fruit has a canker-worm gnawing at its roots, which will blast it in its prime ere its fruit has ripened. All this grandeur was being slow- ly but only too surely undermined by an in- fluence as devastating as the simoom of the desert, as deadly as those miasmas that poi- son the air to the breather the terrible and deleterious religious intolerance, the opposi- tion full of hatred to tho Gospel and to lib- erty of conscience. Philip II. accepted and re-enforced the politics inherited by him from the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isa- bella, and from his father Charles V., to the detriment of all the moral and material in- terests of his people. Tho same system was adopted by his son Philip III., which is to say that the Church and Crown united to consummate the ruin of Spain. 114 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. The Jews, who had lent large sums of money to Ferdinand and Isabella for the taking of Granada, received as recompense the edict for their expulsion and the loss of all their wealth. The Inquisition condemned criticism and philosophy hi the works of Antonio Lebrija, which were devoured by the flames. It con- demned liberty of conscience, and a great number of Protestants all learned and pi- ous men died at the stake in Valladolid and in Seville. Philip II. provoked the rebellion of the Moors only to conquer them and seize their properties; and Philip III. banished more than a million of them, having the same object in view. The riches of the nation lowed into the convents, falling into dead hands to use the energetic language of the Middle Ages ; the number of artisans dimin- ished, and the friars increased ; agriculture received its death-blow, and the friars mul- tiplied ; commerce was paralyzed, and the friars enlarged their convents to admit new inmates ; those who accepted the Gospel, and who would have been the salt of the <>arth, were all burned or banished, and still the friars grew in number and prospered. The Spanish were obliged, in order to live in peace, either to go into the convents, or, becoming mere adventurers, go to America in search of the accursed gold which has not a little contributed to the prostration of my country. The only faculty left free in Spain was the imagination, and that only so long as it was employed in chanting or delineating the glories of the Church or the bounties of the reigning monarch. The re- sult of so much oppression was that, when Charles II. came to reign, Spain had neither army, navy, nor generals ; no men of science, no industries, no manufactures, no commerce, nor money; an immense corpse stretched out in its immense sepulchre; it, from time to time, seemed to return to life long enough to hold an auto-da-fe to prove to the world that it still existed under the yoke of abso- lutism and theocracy. And is it strange, then, that Spain should at this present period find herself in the state of an invalid, still suffering the effects of a long and terrible disease? For my part, I only wonder, not at its wretched con- dition, but at its existence after having en- dnred for three centuries the system inher- ited by the successors of Philip II., seconded by the religious ideas of a Torquemada. The state of my country, as I am about to present it to you, is sad indeed ; but I believe that those who love their country point out itsevils and then propose the remedy. And, if this manuscript should be read by any Span- iards who think that I have done wrong in saying aught but praises of every thing con- nected with Spain, I will answer them in these few words : " Cara Patria, carior Veritas." The religious state of Spain is indeed dis- couraging, and it can not but be so, consider- ing the intolerance which has reigned there for so many ages np to September, 1868. For a long time back the inhabitants of the Peninsula have only been Catholics in name ; and Rome, although aware of this, has made no effort to recover her dominion over the souls she has lost. She knew that she reigned in an official sense and in public life, and that the laws permitted no compe- tition with her priests. Sad satisfaction to have acquired so much with the loss of so many souls! For it is not possible to sup- pose that Rome deludes herself into the be- lief that those manifestations, proceeding from routine, are manifestations of piety. One of the consequences of the revolution has been to reveal this vacuum in the hearts of the Spanish. Few Liberals, and hardly any Republicans, in certain provinces, will hearken to a word of religion. The reason is obvious: Religion, for those who have had no opportunity for knowing a better one, means oppression of thought and con- science; privileges granted to a certain class; processions where they see captain- generals and skeptic ministers carrying wax -lights; it means nuns and bishops, who make and unmake cabinets; it means superstition and materialism. I myself con- fess that, if I knew no other religion but that practiced among Spaniards in the lat- ter ages, I would prefer regulating my life by the maxims of a high moral code rather than admit so much deceit and such odious privileges. I am told, in answer to this af- firmation, that the numerous hosts of the Carlists belie me, and that they maintain well aloft the standard of their faith. It is true that their banner bears their device, but I can not say that they bear in their souls the device of their banners. It may be that the peasants, for their religion's sake, obey the orders of their curates to take arms ; but can Ave say the same of the leaders of the factions who often boast of their increduli- ty of those who shoot their prisoners with- out mercy, or assassinate the Liberals, beat- ing out children's brains against the walls because their fathers are not Carlists, as oc- curred in Berga? Can we say that there was any religion in the hearts of those who, in Segorbe, killed a priest merely because ho was not an absolutist, and who rob, sack, and set lire to villages after praying over their rosary ? Can wo ascribe to religious influence the exploits of the famous priest, Santa Cruz, who has distanced the greatest miscreants with his crimes, and those of his innumerable colleagues in the ministry who, with the same hand with which they bless and grasp the crucifix, murder with the gun ; or the conduct of the bishops, ever ready to hurl anathemas against all who would cur- tail their privileges, and who under the pres- CAERASCO: RELIGION IN SPAIN. 115 ent circumstances Lave uttered no word of censure against their subordinates who so ignore their sacred duties ? No ; these meu follow a political standard, aud use the name of religion as they would any other name convenient for their plans. It is n6t necessary for me to stop and prove that the moral state of the country is the di- rect consequence of its religious condition. There is no profound conviction of sin, no anguish of a soul seeking to free itself from its burden. The moral grade has gone so low, public opinion is so indulgent, that it forms no curb for any one. The greatest wickedness, the vilest actions, are committed without scandalizing any one. Infractions of the law are so common here that nowhere is it more truly said that " laws were made to be evaded." There is no confidence in any one, and this want of faith in men ex- tends, unfortunately, to principles ; hence the disturbances, the riots, the rapid change of cabinets and of government officials, as well as of laws this constant seeking for that which they never will find, as long as they do not feel their moral degradation, and fall humbled at the feet of Him who pardons and raises those who humble them- selves, and who gives, together with sorrow for sin, the complete moral rehabilitation. There does exist in Spain, howeA r er, a group of enlightened men, of irreproachable lives and pure morals, who unite great simplicity with exquisite affability, and a real interest for the ignorant classes. I refer to such as Fernando de Castro, Garcia Blanco, Fernan- do Gonzalez, Ruiz de Quevedo, Gabriel Rod- rigues, aud many others whose names I have not space to mention. They are a chosen band with their officers aud chiefs ; but I do not know the soldiers that follow them, and this is Avhy I doubt whether they will ever obtain any very brilliant victories over the all-pervading evil. They, united, form the aristocracy of intelligence here ; but I doubt whether their principles form that leaven that raises a whole people. These men, so worthy of respect on many accounts, are wanting in the profession of historical Chris- tiauism, in the concrete affirmation of the dogma, without which moral has no base, in one of the two elements which form the individual and the people, in the one great necessity of our life the Christian doctrine. Without this fault, they would be a powerful agent, and would accomplish what they nev- er will so long as they consider instruction the universal panacea. Their principles are those professed by Socrates, and with those alone Greece certainly would never have been regenerated. The corning of Christ to shed his blood for the remission of sins was necessary to regenerate both Greeks and bar- barians. The literature of the country is on a par with its moral state. I would here make one observation. In speaking of literature it is not my intention to treat of all the contemporary literary productions, some of which are pronounced master -works both at home and abroad. I would speak of the people's literature, that most in vogue among them, of the two potentates of the age the novel and the newspaper. How great an influence for. good works of fiction exercise, and how great, too, for evil ! How immense the responsibility of the novelist ! History, politics, morals, religion, and philosophy are all taught to the people by the novelist ; and what a man of the lower classes learns in fiction is what he best remembers. But why enhance the influence of the novel here in the native country of the authoress of " Un- cle Tom's Cabin ?" You, still better than I, know how much such a novel can do toward accomplishing the triumph of a great cause. The productions in this line most popular in Spain and sought for with avidity are those which are distributed in sheets of four or eight pages at a time, and whose subjects are generally the worst human passions, pre- sented not as odious, but iu their most at- tractive form. The newspaper in Spain has generally for its object completely to ignore principles, and attack only persons. There is no char- acter so pure but it will be dragged through the mire if taking part in political matters. Libelous insinuations, direct accusations, downright falsehoods, which, even if next day contradicted, have already produced their effect these are the arms used by the different political parties against each other. In addition, there is always a re- luctance to tell the people the real truth ; they are flattered and deceived, but never told their defects. This is journalism in Spain, where, on different footing corre- sponding to its high mission, it could lend such signal service to the cause of justice aud truth. This, my hearers, is the picture I have had to show you. My heart aches at seeing how deep its shadows are. I am a Spaniard, and can not but feel deep sorrow at the mor- al sufferings of my people. Still it consoles me to think that there is good in them yet. I can not but attribute their skepticism to the ignorance in which they have lived till now of the pure Gospel of Christ. The ob- livion of their state of sin is due to those who have taught them to consider sin as only a series of acts as easily effaced as com- mitted. But their defects are counterbal- anced by many excellent qualities. The Spanish are naturally kind, intelligent, and endowed with great intuitiveness. Their bravery is as notorious as is their sobriety. The Spaniard, ready to shed blood in a mo- ment of wrath, has no equal in generosity after a victory. Who does not remember the days following the fall of the throne 116 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. of the Bourbons, during which tho people, without government or authorities, were left completely to their own instincts, and, with so many injuries and wrongs to avenge, they demonstrated a gentleness and a gen- erosity unparalleled in the annals of histo- ry t All their enemies were either in prison or disarmed ; they had at their mercy those who so shortly before had condemned not only journalists to death, but even those who were engaged on the material work of certain newspapers ; and all these per- sons were quietly allowed to go where they chose. The Spanish are easily moved to acts of generosity. Ah! how great a na- tion Spain could yet become, how high might her aspirations be, if she could only be brought to the feet of Him who alone can give prosperity to a people ! How soon would many of their defects disappear if the Spanish would turn their backs 011 er- ror and resolutely enter the path of truth ! There are still elements iu the Spanish peo- ple capable of making them a great nation ; but it must be repeated and reiterated. This miracle will never be realized through re- forms in its laws, nor with the establish- ment of new institutions; it will only be effected by the acceptance of Christ, who reforms the hearts of men through the Holy Spirit. 2. We will now treat of what Christians have done here toward obtaining this most enviable result. What class of work has been accomplished in Spain, and what means have been employed to make the Gospel known in Spain T This is the ques- tion which I will now take into considera- tion, and, as it is a momentous one in itself, I have prayed God to inspire me with the truth alone, free from the biasings of sym- pathy or of prejudice of any kind. Long before religious liberty was a fact and a legal right in Spain, some work had already been done toward giving Spaniards a knowledge of the true doctrine of Christ. Travelers, for the most part English, when they were coming to Spain, provided them- selves with Testaments and tracts, and then improved every opportunity for distributing them among their acquaintances and among their traveling companions, or they left them in the wardrobes of their rooms in the ho- tels, hoping that those who found them would read them, and perchance profit thereby, finding the conviction of the truth in their pages. Other Christians came purposely to evan- gelize, but these reduced their operations to familiar conversations, sustained in a lan- guage their imperfect knowledge of which made it impossible to understand them, or they would leave packages of tracts in the chairs of the public walks for those who came to occupy the seats after them. I con- sider this desultory mode of evangelizing unfruitful. I am not unaware that the ac- tion of the Holy Spirit is subject to no par- ticular form, and that the Lord in his infinite wisdom makes use of ways and means un- known to man for his mysterious teachings. I have heard of wonderful conversions which produced many others, all duo to the read- ing of a tract, or to a word uttered by a child. I have read of such instances in re- ligious papers, and I believe them, for I be- lieve iu the power of God ; still, I know that these are not tho means usually employed by God to bring sinners into the way of life. Our Maker has been pleased to use the min- istry of men to announce the glad tidings. He has willed that the Word read shall bo accompanied by the Word spoken, so that the text may be verified by the living com- mentary of the preacher. Tho work, as carried out by Mr. William Green, many years before tho revolution of 1888, has appeared to me the most success- ful of all those undertaken by foreign breth- ren. Many of our ideas differ on certain theological points; his views and mine on ecclesiastical organization are entirely op- posed to each other ; we are divided also on the question of baptism ; and, withal, the love of truth obliges me to render public testimony to the value of Mr. Green's serv- ices. He had lived many years in Spain, and his profession as engineer had placed him in contact with thousands of laborers. Thus he was able to follow step by step tho effects produced on the souls of those who listened to his words or read the books ho distributed. He has left deep traces of his teachings at every place where he remained for any length of time. Among the Spaniards, Don Luis Usoz y Rio has been the most efficient in the good cause. The clandestine reprinting of the works of the old Spanish reformers, more than four years ago, and his own original works, will testify to my assertion in his favor. Next in turn came a Christian Committee of Edinburgh. The gentlemen who com- posed it understood that a different means of evangelization from those hitherto em- ployed must be used. So, instead of send- ing foreigners to preach the Gospel here, they selected Spaniards for their purpose. One of these was Don Jos6 Vasquez, who now, very aged and retired from active life, resides at Seville ; another was Don Joso" Gonzalez, at present engaged in evangeliz- ing in Madrid ; another, Don Pablo Sanchez, who preached in Gibraltar ; and, I think, also Don Francisco de Paula Ruet, pastor of a Spanish congregation in Gibraltar. About this time, the Committee in Paris employed Don Manuel Matamoros, and tho work then assumed a greater consistency. Congrega- tions were organized ; private and secret worship was observed at the houses of Prot- estants ; those who separated from the Church CARRASCO : RELIGION IN SPAIN. 117 of Rome began to be known ; the tracts "Andres Dnun" and "Preservative against Rome," the Avritiugs of Luis Desauctis, sev- eral numbers of the paper El Alba, the gos- pels with Dr. Rule's commentaries, and oth- er religious works, were distributed with due discrimination, and prepared the way for a new era. I am aware that those con- gregations were wanting in religious in- struction ; I will confess, too, that the mem- bers who composed them were not as spir- itual as could have been desired ; but, with- al, I recall with deep emotion those days of a new love, of great illusions, and of vast projects those days of the secret gatherings to hear the preaching of the Word of God, always expecting the arrival of the agents of the law to conduct us to the dungeons of a common prison. The persecution which we had foreseen came in 1861, and Matamoros, Alhama,Trigo, Gonzalez, Marin, and he who has the honor of addressing you at this moment, were con- demned to prison. This imprisonment was productive of great good to us, and of great good to all Spain, for the matter was taken up by the press, and people became accus- tomed to hearing of the Protestants, and learned thereby that Protestants were men like their other fellow-beings, and they dis- covered, too, that there were six Spaniards who preferred imprisonment to liberty ob- tained through abjurement of their faith. After the imprisonment came our exile, and it must be confessed that with the exile al- most all that had existed disappeared. But the seed had been planted, and would some day germinate. The tyrannical system under which Spain continued up to the year 1868 produced a state of tension impossible of continuance for any length of time. This was under- stood by all who watched the course of events, and who saw what ground ideas of tolerance were gaining ; and Matamoros, with the peculiar intuition with which he was endowed, felt this movement, and thencefor- ward allowed himself no rest in the prepara- tion at Lausanne of several Spanish youths for pastors. There was a school opened there at the same time for girls to train them for teachers in Spain, and a lady from the United States, named Mrs. Mac Euen, founded also a preparatory theological school in the vicinity of Pan. At last, the long-desired day of religious liberty in Spain arrived, and all who were prepared to take a part in the work hastened to come from abroad and established them- selves where each thought fit. The French pastor, M. Curie, who had preached for sev- eral years at the Prussian Embassy, conceived and realized the idea of forming a commit- tee in Madrid which should give unity to the work. A centre was also formed in Seville by Messrs. Cabrera, Albania, and Sanchez. Mr. Green returned from the Balearic Islands. Mr. Armstrong came from England, and has been from that time the representative of the London Tract Society. Lawrence, Gould, and Faithful! came. Mr. Knapp, an Ameri- can, also arrived from Paris, Senor Ruet from Algiers, Seiior Trigo from Oran, your speaker from Geneva, and Mr. Gladstone, who had already lived for some years in Spain ; all without distinction of sect, oblivious of their different religious opinions, commenced dis- tributing books, holding worship, and an- nouncing the joyful news, by all the means within our reach. The chapels were always rilled with multitudes anxious to hear the new doctrines. Bibles were sold by thou- sands ; the tracts printed were all too few to satisfy the universal curiosity. It is much to be lamented that in those days there were not laborers and funds enough to have open- ed a chapel in every city and town of impor- tance throughout Spain, for, had this been done then, there would this day exist as many congregations as there were chapels opened to the public. The Christians had not faith enough to labor for the future; they undoubtedly believed that Spain was con- demned to live always under an iron rule. They only afterw r ard discovered that success might yet crown their efforts, and they then employed more laborers, some of them, un- fortunately, ill qualified for their high mis- sion. Then happened what could not but ensue, and at the same time what never should have taken place. The first was that, after the first moments of unity and concord among the laborers in this great and holy work, the different religious tend- encies of each of the directors became appar- ent. Some declared their adoption of the Presbyterian form, others manifested their Baptist proclivities, while others declared their adherence to the Plymouthites. And that which never should have taken place was that there arose a discordance among the foreign brethren, to whom we so natu- rally looked up as our models. This Avant of harmony among the laborers excited not a little comment amidst the new converts, much to the discredit of all. This evil might have been avoided had a little more abnegation been exercised, and a closer study made of things and persons. If the foreign brethren had been content to preach Christ alone to the Spanish, leaviug them afterward to decide among themselves as to the minor points of form, and consti- tute themselves according to their own lik- iug; if those friends had only laid aside their particular opinions as to baptism, ecclesias- tical organization, and other doctrinal points ; if they had not been so anxious to appear in the first rank, only careful to assist those who are but children in the faith with their counsels and suggestions, events would not have been precipitated, aud many churches 118 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. which gave promise of rich fruits for eternal life would not have been closed. The entire responsibility of what has oc- curred must not rest solely on the laborers iu Spain ; it also devolves on the committees, churches, and private individuals who are interested iu the Spanish work of evangeli- zation. When there is not perfect union among these committees or churches, even when they belong to the same country, how can it exist between their representatives in Spain T It would seem as though each one of these were only intent on communicating his particular ideas, forgetting that Spain must of necessity stamp her religious ref- ormation with her own particular national- ity. And while this obvious truth is ignored, it must not be believed that aught will be accomplished beyond factitious results that will disappear of themselves iu the natural course of things. I ask myself repeatedly, Why is it, what is the cause that produces the fact that al- most all the churches or groups of individuals who have taken part in the evangelization of Spain send representatives here from their own country? Have they no confidence in Spaniards for the direction of the Christian labors? Do they consider their agents so much more capable of directing a congrega- tion than we are ? Can they not see that the salary of one of these agents would suffice to defray the expenses of a new work in another town ? Are they not aware that their agents are in danger of exaggerating the tendencies or ideas of those who send them to justify their participation in the management of the churches, as well as of mistaking their wishes for realities, leading them into errors in their reports of their works, resulting in the creation of hopes which are completely defrauded by exit? And if, when facts come to demonstrate the truth, they would only frankly confess their mistake, the evil would not be so great ; but no, the want of success is attributed by them to a lack of inclination on the part of the Spanish to receive the Gospel; and it is ob- vious to all how much the work of evangel- ization sufters from these errors. The fact tinat each foreign pastor is pro- vided with an attendant Spanish pastor is in itself a proof that the former can not alone attend to the management of a work, nor sustain it alone among Spaniards. Why, then, such a plethora of directors? I may be told that the work acquires greater so- lidity under their direction, arrives at a higher state of spiritual prosperity; but facts prove the contrary. The most flour- ishing churches are those which are under exclusive Spanish direction. The reason of this, to some, singular phenomenon is clear. The history of the Spanish, their topograph- ical situation, and many other causes lead them to view every thing foreign with dis- trust. They mistrust that the predominating idea in the foreign propaganda is mere spec- ulation ; that there is a material interest in leading them to change their religion ; and many other absurdities enter their minds which it is far easier to censure than to de- stroy. Then, it must be remembered that the Spanish are a highly artistic people, pas- sionately fond of and accustomed to the finest oratory ; and it is an arduous task, next to impossible, for a foreigner to acquire such command of our harmonious and sono- rous Castilianas to be able to move the mul- titudes by his word. If I should commence preaching here in your city, in your lan- guage, I might, the first day, please my au- dience by my naive attempts to make my- self understood in your language ; but after a while my faults and incorrectness would become tiresome and insupportable, and my audience would leave me and go elsewhere to hear one of their own nation. This is what happens in Spain, the more so from their great appreciation of eloquence. I well know that in treating of the salvation of the soul the truth is of far more impor- tance than eloquence, but I can not be per- suaded that the Word imperfectly expressed can exercise more influence over souls than when well and intelligibly uttered. There is yet another error to be corrected. The characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon na- tion, their rigidity of manner, their habits, and their nature, so far less expansive than ours, are all so many obstacles to prevent the establishment of that sympathy between pastor and congregation eo necessary when treating of the saving of souls. This, my hearers, constitutes a serious impediment to the onward march of the Christian work. If the foreign churches and committees had began by a judicious selection of Spanish pastors and preachers to direct their con- gregations, and then, instead of sending a foreign pastor as director for each Spanish pastor, they had by common consent agreed to appoint one agent, eminently Christian, whose age, experience, and knowledge, to some extent, of the Spanish people would enable him to assist us with sound and salu- tary advice, who would give account to those committees of all occurring here, and inter- pret to us their sentiments and wishes with regard to our work, then evangelical chris- tianizing would indeed have made rapid progress iu the Peninsula. When there arc- many persons in one place, each represent- ing a different sect or persuasion, a miracle alone could prevent the divergencies and want of harmony which I condemn. After what I have just made manifest, I would make a declaration to dissipate any suspicion that may have been formed. I have no private cause of resentment against any of the foreign pastors engaged in the work in Spain, and, if I have ever had any CARRASCO : RELIGION IN SPAIN. 119 such cause, I have loug ago forgotten it. have lived in the most perfect peace with all of them, and have never committed any act that could in any way injure the work un- der their charge; on the contrary, I have assisted as far as possible in building them up, and whenever requested have always lent them my assistance in preaching, how- ever little my words may value ; I have al- ways endeavored to scatter the clouds which have at times gathered over them; but I have become convinced that, when treating of the advancement of the kingdom of God, we must completely lay aside our natural affections and affinities, and tell the whole truth without hesitation or deviation ; and I consider what I have communicated on this point as the truth. I should regret having offended any by my frankness. I hardly think that any offense will be taken, for I have heard these very ideas from the lips of foreigners themselves in Spain, w r ho, if they continue in the work, do so in obedience to the commands of their church. Nor would I by any means discourage those who with so much affection and constancy assist us with their prayers and with their money, both so necessary to us. I only request them to reflect on the means employed up to the present day in relation to the result, and would urge them to proceed with new vigor, but on a different plan, in this greatly need- ed and greatly beneficial work. The evangelical labors in Spain are car- ried on in three forms. One, the printing and distribution of Bibles, another that of religious tracts, and the remaining form is the preaching of the Word. The mission of the London Tract Society is well known to all. The agent of this so- ciety in Spain is Mr. Richard Cortield, a Christian who has passed part of his life in the exercise of this charge in South Ameri- ca. Solicitous in the performance of his duty, without taking any other part in our ecclesiastical labors, except by assisting us with his prayers, Mr. Cortield is closely de- voted to the supervision of the printing and distribution of the Holy Bible. His corps of colporteurs seems to me to be in perfect order, and the sale of the Scriptures satis- factory. I do not know whether the Carl- ist insurrection, which now devastates some of our finest provinces, has unfavorably af- fected the distribution of the Bible, but, generally speaking, I can say with certainty that the demand for it with the people at large has not diminished. This fact con- soles me, for I can not believe that the Word of God, so abundantly spread through the land, can fail to give some day blessed fruit. From time to time, large remittances of Bibles are sent from Madrid to Mexico and to other republics in Central South America. I have seen in the Madrid Deposit those great cases filled with the Word of God, and I have been moved at the sight to the depths of my soul, giving thanks to the Lord for having permitted me to witness the day when Spain should send not soldiers to con- quer America, nor fanatical monks to spread there the sinister Inquisition flames, nor gov- ernment officials to devour her riches, but the blessed Bible, the Book of books, that tells of the Author of all grace, goodness, and of every perfect gift ; the book of light and life, the pioneer of civilization, the only teacher of true progress to a people ! The religious tract work is under the care of a committee, whose agent and corre- spondent is my friend, Mr. Legh Armstrong. It is to be regretted that there has not been some arrangement made between tjie Amer- ican Tract Society and that of London, or that the former should not have taken meas- ures to distribute their tracts on a wider scale among us, for, in my judgment, those of its publications that I have seen are well adapted to the character and necessities of our people. The London Society sustains a religious weekly paper entitled El Cristiano, and assists in sustaining the semi-monthly La Luz. We are deeply indebted to and pro- foundly grateful for the services of the Lou- don Tract Society aud of the London Bible Society, not only for their generous sacri- fices in the service of our cause, but for the liberality Avith which they provide reading matter adapted to the tastes of all. There now only remains to be taken under consideration that form of the work carried out by preaching. During the period im- mediately following the revolution, every place of worship that was opened was in- vaded by an immense crowd of both sexes, all eager to witness what they never before had seen the Protestant worship. From among these inquisitive crowds were form- ed our churches. The first congregations that were constituted under a defined eccle- siastical form the Presbyterian form were those of Andalusia, sustained by a Commit- tee in Edinburgh. In Madrid, we thought it premature to give any fixed organization to our churches until we were sure that they were composed of true Christians. When we considered the proper moment arrived, we constituted the Church of La Madera Baja of Madrid, on the 27th of September, 1870, and our example was followed by the Church of La Plaza del Limon in Madrid, and by that of Saragossa and that of Ca- munas. These two groups, the most impor- tant of the Peninsula, united in the Assembly of Seville, in April, 1871, preserving each its own Confession of Faith, until a general one for all the churches should bo agreed upon. A confession of faith was discussed and ap- proved in the Assembly of Madrid in 1872, which has been highly eulogized by many of the European churches. The name adopt- ed for this confederation of churches is " The 120 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. Span Mi Christian Church." In the late June Assembly of this year the Presbyteries were appointed, these being for the present four in number: that of Madrid North is com- posed of the Church of Jesus, the Church of the Saviour, Las Penuelas de Madrid, the Church of Valladolid, and that of Sautan- dcr ; that of Madrid South is composed of the churches of La Madera Baja, Bellas Vistas, Camuftas, Alicante, and Carthagena; the Presbytery of Seville includes the churches of Seville, Cordova, Granada, Huelva, Jerez, Cadiz, and Malaga ; and lastly, that of Bar- celona, composed of the churches of Barce- lona, Saragossa, and Mahon. The Church is governed by its Assemblies, which unite an- nually, and from these are formed the per- manent committees, which direct the spirit- ual matters of each church during the year. There exist, besides the churches I have named, an Episcopal church in Seville; two Baptist churches, one in Madrid, and anoth- er in Alicante, sustained by Americans ; and another in Barcelona, which I do not know how to classify, either because it belongs to no class, or because its English directors do not wish to organize themselves. There is another mission of this same kind in a sub- urb of Madrid called Chamberi, also under the direction of an English brother. These churches have not all attained the same degree of religious spirit and Christian life. There are those where these elements are easily recognized, and there are others where they are very little developed. But, in general, we have great reason to praise God with all our souls for what has been ac- complished, for the bounties which in his mercy he has granted us ; and there is also reason why the laborers should humble them- selves for their want of zeal, for their lack of judgment, and for all kinds of weakness- es. There has not been enough harmony and fraternity among ns. We have often forgotten that our work is one of prayer and faith. No, the Spanish evangelical work has not given the fruit which at its beginning we had reason to expect from it ; but it may give it later, if the proper means are employed, which are the following : 3. There exist in the life of nations two moments especially favorable for the lead- ing of souls to consider the nnsceu things which are eternal. The one is that in which a doctrine opposed and persecuted through long years is for the first time announced. The curiosity natural to all men, the sym- pathy ever aroused by causes or principles that have been proscribed, and the anxious avidity with which the needy grasp at what- ever is new in the hope to lind some relief lor the woes of life, are advantages which those interested in the spread of the Gospel ought to turn to account. For Spain this moment has already passed, and it is need- less to repeat that its advent found us un- | prepared, and that as a consequence we have not profited by it as we might. The second moment to which I refer is that which succeeds all great social commo- tions, that which follows those periods of strife and tears and blood with which God from time to time is wont to chastise the nations. When men have suffered much and variously from the instability of human affairs; when war, terrible and devastating war, has desolated fields and cities, leaving behind its mournful train of orphans and widows; when the earthly ideal wo have long cherished has passed into the realm of facts, and in place of the expected flowers yields thorns and thistles that only lacerate, then it is that the soul, disappointed in its fond hopes, comes to expect less from men and things, and instinctively turns its con- templation toward a better world, where there is neither grief nor tears ; then it is that the soul turns its thoughts Godward. It has needed, in order to do this, to pass through the stern school of misfortune ; but so it is, sorroAV (as all admit) is one of the great means by which God draws us toward himself. Let it be observed, also, that the reaction is always proportionate to the action itself; the more intense the disappointments expe- rienced on the earth, the more completely does the soul abstract itself from all that is earthly, and seek consolation turning in npon itself. What is mysticism but the heart's protest against the rude realities of life f What is mysticism but the exaggera- tion of a true and legitimate sentiment an exaggeration which carries the soul, in its anxiety to rise above human miseries, to those heights whence all that interests hu- manity is lost to view ? In support of what has been stated, let history bear its testimony, and it will be seen that the great religious movements have been commonly preceded by great na- tional catastrophes. When was the relig- ions revival of our own century brought about, if not after the French Revolution and the great wars of the First Empire had deluged Europe with blood, and carried mourning and woe to millions of hearts ? When did mysticism appear in Spain, the great religious movement of Santa Theresa, of Louis de Granada, of Louis dc Leon, and others no less illustrious, unless after the mad attempts at universal dominion of Charles V. and Philip II. had carried off the flower of Spain's youth to perish on the battle-field ? When did the recent great re- ligious revival burst forth in America, if not after that gigantic struggle of four years which laid in the grave so many thousands of Americans f When have the French in our own time listened with most readiness to the Gospel, except after the, for them, disastrous war with Prussia ? Yes, it is un- CAERASCO: RELIGION IN SPAIN. 121 questionable, the periods of trial and mis- fortune are times favorable for the exten- sion of the kingdom of God. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the means to announce the Gospel should not be sought in these moments of extremity. It is needful to have all prepared, otherwise the risk is run of the nation returning to its old ways, to that which had been abandoned as unable to satisfyits longing aspirations. And now, having said this, is it necessary to prove that Spain is at the present time in such a period anticipative and preparatory of religious fervor ? Is not proof enough to be seen in those Basque Provinces, in Na- varre, and Catalonia, desolated by the sav- age hosts of absolutism and theocracy ? Is not the proof seen as we look around upon those cantonal or internationalist insurrec- tions, upon the city of Valencia bombarded, Alcoy burned, Carthageua entirely ruined, Granada and Malaga the prey of anarchy, Seville and Cadiz dyed with Spanish blood ? Is it not proved as we witness the ills on every side, the paralyzation of commerce, men whom all looked up to with confidence swept away by the wave of revolution, the army disorganized, new institutions and new liberties clamored for before those already gained have been put into exercise ? I know not how you may regard these facts ; to me they seem to say that soon, very soon, we shall see the men whom earth can not satis- fy seeking the things of heaven to fill the conscious void within their hearts. The separation of Church and State al- ready on more than one occasion announced, and which there is every reason to hope will be carried into effect should also contrib- ute to hasten the advent of the day for which we sigh. When Spaniards have to pay directly, and not through the medium of the state, to support a religion which they do not believe, and the ministers of Avhich are seen fighting in the ranks of ab- solutism, carrying destruction wheresoever they are able, dragging off the deluded peo- ple, and seizing even the objects consecra- ted to the service in their churches in order to secure the triumph of a political cause, they will assuredly reflect deeply upon the .subject, and many will abandon such a re- ligion, to seek that which alone is able to regenerate the human soul and impart to it the true peace of which it stands in need. Let us glance now at the means which can be adopted, with a view to bo ready for the contest and secure a victory, whenso- ever the things above indicated arc realized. I will notice them summarily, the propor- tions of this report not permitting me to claim from you a more lengthy attention. It would be advisable to reform the ex- isting religions work in Spain in the man- ner I have before noticed in this paper. If the different committees or churches in anv given country agreed among themselves to send, in place of numerous representatives, one alone, of living faith, of great Christian experience, of ideas the reverse of narrow, who should love this Spanish people whom it is sought to evangelize, and who, instead of imposing his own views and directing according to his own caprice, should hear the opinion of the Spaniards, should consult them with regard to the laborers to be em- ployed, and leave to them the work of preaching a man who would seek to be our sympathizing guide, and not our despot the work would gain in spirituality ; and with the economy that would result from the suspension of various agents new works of evangelization might be commenced in important towns where as yet the Gospel has not been announced, as, for example, in Cornnna, Ferrol, Salamanca, Oviedo, Alcala, Guadalajara, etc. The preachers should be natives of the country, Christian, and, as far as possible, educated men. It is necessary to know how to discern among the many that aspire to take part in our labors. It has been un- fortunate that in many instances the prefer- ence has been obtained by those who have been astute enough to divine the favorite ideas of persons directing, and these, seeing their ideas understood, have thought they had in their presence converted men, when in reality they were nothing but charlatans who abused the credulity of persons more Christian than prudent. The preaching ought to bo always the same in substance, and ever varied in the form of presentation. It is necessary to an- nounce Christ, the only name under heaven given among men whereby they can be saved; but the Christ of the Gospels, all spirit, all life, and all love. It is necessary that the preaching be such as shall teach the Spanish people that the Christian religion is not indifferent or hostile to any one of the legitimate manifestations of human life ; that science, industry, and art have their end in God's plan ; in a word, that the Oos- pel condemns nothing except sin. The instruction and education of the young, the laborers of a future day, is a matter which should engage earnest atten- tion. To develop the understanding and the conscience, at the same time that Christ is formed in the heart, how beautiful a work for a Christian ! But it is needful that the schools be established with intelligent fore- thought, that .1 plan be followed giving the best results ; that one should not be satisfied with teaching the first elements and making the pupils learn by rote a catechism they do not understand; that masters feel the im- portance of their mission, and the grave re- sponsibility Avhich they assume before God. To have such masters it is necessary to make them, and such masters will be made by REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. the creation of a good Christian normal school. The adults, also, ought to take their seat in the festival of instruction and religion. Interest should be taken in the Spanish ar- tisan, and he ought to be made to see that Protestantism has done for him more than the Catholic religion; for, if the latter has givi-n him soup at the convent door, it has always sought to keep him in ignorance and degradation ; while the former has raised him morally and intellectually, permitting htm thus to earn with dignity his daily bread. The children of this world, it must bo confessed, have been wiser than the chil- dren of light. They have founded classes of instruction for -workmen, and societies like the "Fornento de las Artes," where the laboring man can find books, papers, and magazines, can hear lectures, or attend class- es of every description. Why should we not do the like f Why allow others to gain over these working classes, which, well instruct- ed, would be one of the firmest supports of our work T I have already stated my opinion as to the literary productions, that are now being published in Spain. Let us create an evan- gelical literature. What we have at the present is confined to the pamphlets issued by the Religious Tract Society of London. But something more than this is needed. We need books of history, of moral philoso- phy, of Christian apologetics, of controversy,' all animated by a religious spirit. We need, also, the religious novel, by which I do not mean the novel filled with texts of the Bi- ble, which few would read, but that which sheds the radiance of Christianity upon its pages, which brings great characters and great virtues into deserved relief, which ex- alts and makes lovely all that is good, and holds up to reprobation whatsoever God con- demns. I believe that the novel, well ma- tured and well written, would be a powerful auxiliary in our work. Besides this, a journal is needed. There already exist two or three periodicals, the Criatiano, the Luz, the Evangelista ; but these are not of a kind to realize the end I propose. I refer to a daily paper, which should occu- py itself with political questions without be- longing to any specific party, which should defend all liberal solutions without regard to the source from which they emanate, which should preach respect to the law and the necessity of obedience, which should anathematize the employment of arms for the attainment of the ends of men and of party, which should defend the abolition of slavery and penal reform*, and, finally, which should proclaim the evangelical religion as the only one that can save Spain. The Ro- manists have well understood the power of such an instrumentality, and have many or- gans of their ideas in the Spanish press. Such, my dear brethren, are the means which appear to me best adapted for the evangelization of my country. I know that all will be useless and vain, unless God pro- nounce his sovereign fiat lux, that shall awake souls from the sleep of death ; but, peradveuture, God is waiting to pronounce it until we labor as if all depended on our efforts. My brethren from all nations that listen to me, I address you all, while I entreat by the mercies of God that you do not forget us in our work. Think how noble it is to extend the hand to the fallen, to raise them up. Spain is fallen ; but she may yet arise; and occupy the position which belongs to her by right among Christian nations. Brethren of America, who are engaged in proclaiming Christ in the republics which once were Spanish colonies, reflect that, working in Spain, you work for them, because, great as is the abyss which our political mistakes have opened between them and us, they can not deny, without denying themselves, that they are blood of our blood, and bone of our bone. Let each one place his stone with faith in the great edifice we are engaged in raisiug, that the Lord may have compassion on my unhappy country, and many souls therein cast themselves at the feet of our Saviour, confessing that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, who alone hath the words of eternal life.* * [Mr. Carraaco having arrived too late to present his paper on the day set apart for the "Reports on the State of Religion," delivered the substance of it iu Spanish on Friday, the 10th of October. w.] THE EVANGELIZATION OF SPAIN. BY THE KEV. FRITZ FLIEDNER, OF MADRID.* THE greatest boast of the Spanish nation, the advantage which it is believed to pos- sess before all Roman Catholic countries, the object for which it spent all its intellectual and material strength during centuries, is its religious unity. Neither Jew nor Moor might dwell in this Catholic country ; and when more than 800,000 Jews and afterward innumerable Moors liad to emigrate from beautiful Andalusia, leaving all their goods behind, and going God only knew whither, it was so far from being looked upon by Spaniards as a cruelty that their most fa- mous author, Cervantes, not only excused but praised this proscription. The tribunal of the Inquisition was established to guard the unity and purity of the Catholic faith, and members of the first families of Spain counted it their greatest honor to be the helpers and the officers of the Inquisition. And when they had cleared their own land by crusades against the Moors, had forced their Jewish neighbor, to perjure himself by a public profession of Christianity which found no echo in his heart, they turned to the task of gaining the victory for the unity of the Romish Church in foreign countries, to subdue by the power of their weapons and the weight of politics, the heretical Re- formers. And for a time it actually seemed as though the struggle might turn in favor of the Papal host. It is chiefly to be attrib- uted to the efforts of Spain that the evan- gelical movement in France was hampered, and almost destroyed in the southern prov- inces of the Netherlands, in Bavaria, Italy, Austria, and Poland. But, for these services rendered to the Romish Church, Spain was called upon, afterward, to do frightful pen- ance. When the Westphalian peace put an end to the fiercest raging of the religious war, not only was the object of the war unattained, but Spain's foreign power was stricken to death, its inward strength van- quished, the country impoverished, and towns ruined. On the other hand, the monaster- ies and chapels were counted by thousands, and the priests and monks by hundreds of thousands; and yet withal, to this day, the * [As the Rev. A. Carrasco did not arrive till sever- al days after the opening of the Conference, the Rev. Fritz Fliedner, a eon of the founder of the Deaconess's Institute at Kaiserswerth, delivered the following ad- dress on Spain, where he has been laboring for sever- al years as an evangelist, pent by the German society for the evangelization of that country. Kd.] pride of the Spaniard remains unshaken in the unity of his faith. Even in the last rev- olution (1868) the Romish Church Avas for this reason retained as the State Church. It was not religious freedom, it was merely re- ligious toleration which was granted, and that because " a Spaniard might possibly wish to confess another faith." This was looked upon, however, only more as a possibility than a probability. Future events will reveal the mistakes of Romish Spain in the first half of the nine- teenth century. It will be manifest hereaf- ter, if the light is not dawning already, that many Protestant hearts are beating in Spain to-day, and that the Christian martyrs whose blood was shed in preceding centuries are still represented by their successors. It will also become manifest, and that very soon, that the testimony to the truth which was given by Spanish Protestants at the stake or in the prison, and which Rome supposed crushed to earth, has risen again, and that its fruits have not been lost. The knowledge of the efforts made by the evangelical Spaniards, and their cruel per- secution and suppression, was the occasion of freeing other countries from the Romish yoke ; and, thank God, this testimony of the martyrs was not in vain for Spain either. After three hundred years, the fetters of re- ligious tyranny are at last broken, and wo see at once the seed of the Gospel falling on good ground, germinating, taking root, and growing. The complaints of the priests against the present evangelical movement are directed chiefly against this point, that it is sought to tarnish the ancient fame of Spain. Their prudence requires that the new life should be ignored or looked upon as artificially called forth from without. Their efforts are directed to prove that Spain still has the right to bear the name of a Romish country, and retain its allegi- ance to the Romish Church, whose head is the Pope. But, if it is not now manifest, it will soon be that, even years before the last catastro- phe which gave back freedom to Spain, ev- ery thing was prepared for a new propaga- tion of the Gospel. Neither English money, distribution of the Bible, nor political lib- eralism colled forth the present interest in Protestantism ; these merely took away the last bars, which sooner or later must have yielded to the spiritual development, as cer- 124 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. tiiinly na the husk to the growing corn. When Isabella was driven away, the Prot- estant Spaniards, who had been banished for their faith, retnmcd. As soon as Spain was open, the workers stood ready to sow and gather in the harvest in their beloved country, which they had been compelled to leave for the sake of the Word of God. Spain, then a field, in part at least, al- ready white with the harvest is a country inviting to all laborers in Christ's cause, and we who have been called to it ask our Protestant brethren to rejoice with us in the prospects before us. Wo do not share the extravagant hopes of those who expect to see the whole of Spain Protestant in a few years. A nation that has been held for three centuries under such an intellect- ual and such an idolatrous servitude to Rome, can not all at ouce be freed from this sad state and its consequences. But that, along with all this superstition and infidel- ity, a new spirit of faith is moving that even on this seemingly stony ground the seed of the Word has not lost its power is a proof that this new era of religious free- dom is not offered to the Spaniards in vain. Many congregations are already formed throughout the whole country, and the evangelical movement is a living reality, and worthy the support of Christian breth- ren. The work of evangelization of Spain has been hitherto very little known with regard to its inward nature and its extent. V7ith a few outlines, we will endeavor to sketch the field of work, the Christian work- e*rs, the hinderances, and the hopes for the future, and we trust it will become more and more evident not only how welcome, but how necessary the help of Protestant Christendom is in Spain. Entering the Peninsula from France, we pass through the Basque Provinces, the residence of the Carlists, where, up to this day, very little has been done on account of the civil war, which has there its centre. The Basque Provinces are recorded as the most bigoted ; the majority of their inhab- itants are partisans of Don Carlos. How- ever, as often as one of our colporteurs has succeeded in penetrating this region, he has had a successful sale of Bibles ; and, though called upon to suffer greatly from enmity, has, nevertheless, come back with much en- couragement. It should never be forgotten that, while the Carlist cause is political, it has also a religions bearing, as with the re- establishment of the Carlists may come the expulsion of Protestantism. The neighbor- ing province of Aragon is famous through the Virgin of the Pillar, whose worship re- minds us of the Ephesian Diana. But as it was said there in the time of Paul that the Word of the Lord grew mightily and pre- vailed, so also in Zarragoza the Word has fonnd soil and made growth. Not only has a small Protestant congregation been form- ed, but the place of worship belonging to it, situated in the principal street of the town, and in the neighborhood of a Romish church, is always crowded at the hour of service. Of course the priests have tried every thin/; to hinder the work. They have appointed special prayers and processions against the Protestants, but, as always happens, they have only become instruments of directing general attention and interest to the Protest- ants. A school is connected with the church. Then in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, we find already six different places of wor- ship, with eight schools, with hundreds of children in attendance. In the neighboring island of Minorca there is a congregation and a school. Some mission stations are in the surroundings of Barcelona, and the work among the Catalans would have been un- bounded but for the want of workers and the Carlist war. That is the condition of Protestant affairs in the East of the Penin- sula. In the North little has yet been done, al- though this part deserves special atten- tion. The inhabitants of Old Castile are the proud descendants of Spanish chivalry, among whom fidelity, honor, frankness, and constancy have maintained themselves bet- ter than in the South. In Valladolid we are reminded of the history of the Spanish Reformation; immediately on entering the town, one sees at the side the field where the first public auto-da-fe of the Protestants took place, in 1559. There Antonio Here- zuelo and Francis de Vibero Cazalla joyfully sealed their faith in the Redeemer by death in the flames. As the Romanists feared the eloquence of the former, he was gagged ; but his glance was enough to move his young wife, Leaner, who, from fear of mar- tyrdom, had denied her faith, to recall her word and to give her strength to follow him, later, with the same courage. In tho same Valladolid the Gospel is now preach- ed ; the people eagerly listen to the Word ; a small congregation has been gathered, and a school begun. Farther north, in Sautan- der, the American Board has lately opened a new station, and we hope that its work will continue to spread in this direction. In Madrid itself are four chapels two of them with audiences of from three hundred to five hundred each, one an English mission station, and one a Baptist chapel. Then farther south are the stations in Camunas, Alicante, Cartagena, Granada, Cordoba, Se- ville, Icrez, Ca"diz, Huelva. The centre of the South is Sevilla, the capital of Andalu- sia, once the head-quarters of the Inquisi- tion, and witness of the death of many martyrs. Nearly three years ago, the first meeting of the General Synod of the evan- gelical congregations of Spain was held in what was formerly a Jesuit church, now FLIEDNER : THE EVANGELIZATION OF SPAIN. 125 bought by the Scotch brethren to be an evangelical church. What a contrast be- tween then and now! There is also an Episcopal mission in this town, and schools are, as in most of these places, connected with the work of preaching. Surely, the field is large, and few are those who work. The first Spaniard who preach- ed the Word of God in this century was Francisco Ruet, born in Barcelona. On a journey through Italy, as early as 1854, he was converted by the work of Luigi di Sanc- tis ; he came back to his country, preached the Gospel there, was imprisoned, and con- demned to be banished for life. He went to Gibraltar, where he gathered a small con- gregation, and, through his instrumentali- ty a few years afterward, Matamoros was brought to the knowledge of the Gospel. Be- sides Ruet, there is at work in Madrid a young- er Spaniard (whom, though he has been de- layed en, route hither, we still hope to see in this Conference before its adjournment) Siguor Carrasco who received a good theo- logical education at Geneva, and was about to finish his studies in Germany, when the opening of his country called him back for immediate labor. Cabrera, formerly a Span- ish priest, learned the first word of Protest- ant doctrine through a Spanish catechism for children, printed in New York. He was for a time minister of the Spanish Church in Gibraltar, while Ruet was gathering a con- gregation in Algiers, and is now working with great zeal and talent in Seville. Fi- nally, I must mention our Spanish mission- ary in Granada, Jose" Alhama, formerly a hat- inaker, but one of the sincerest and most trustworthy Spanish laborers. He was in prison with Matamoros ; then lived in Gib- raltar, on the work of his hands, till the way opened to his country. His well-edu- cated daughter conducts a girls' school, in connection with herfather's chapel, andnight schools. Every year some new Spanish workers enter the field, part of them pre- pared in the schools at Lausanne, and in the school of an American lady in France. But we want far more native teachers and preach- ers. From foreign countries we have at work in Spain two missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, two of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, one Amer- ican Baptist, three missionaries from the American Board, one from Switzerland, one English Methodist, several Plymouthists, the English agents for the Bible and Tract So- cieties, and one German missionary. This variety of workers presents in itself a great difficulty in the work ; still, I am glad to say that not only the union among them is becoming more and more a reality, but that also the different mission boards or societies working in Spain take much notice of each other, and acknowledge the strength which Christian union gives to the work of evangelization. We have the enemy before us; our colporteurs and our schools meet occasionally with strong opposition from the Romish clergy, who excite the people against the Gospel messengers. But stronger than this enemy is another one fighting against the truth, that is, the religious indifferent- ism, always and everywhere the consequence of a long unrivaled Romish Church dominion. The higher classes are, to a great extent, in- fidels ; they look on true religion as on an old-fashioned curiosity. Therefore, almost all members of our congregations are gath- ered from the poor. This presents another difficulty in sustaining the churches and preachers. The aid of our foreign brethren has done a great deal ; still, it ought to be recognized more fully as a principle that the Spaniards themselves, however poor they might be, must contribute according to their strength toward their own church expenses. A great deal of money has been, so to speak, wasted, for it has broken down the princi- ple of independence, rather than nourished it ; and great caution should be taken by Christian friends who administer any gifts. But we are glad to say, also, that the young Spanish Church is now gradually, though slowly, moving toward the principle of self- support. Some churches have begun to make it a condition of membership ; even some paying schools have been commenced, and it is to be hoped that this system will be accepted more generally. The greatest difficulty lies, perhaps, with the youth of our Spanish Church, and the weakness of its spiritual life. The difference between those who have embraced the truth for a life-long period and those who are young children in the faith makes itself very often felt. But every day of Christian experience helps to diminish this defect ; and we all know that the Lord, through weak instru- ments, builds up his mighty kingdom. We trust that these young Christian soldiers will learn to fight for their king, and to con- quer for him yet many souls in their native country. For the field is certainly a large one, and I add, in the honest conviction of my heart, a promising one. I have found among the common people in Spain a great deal more of religious sen- timent and a greater desire for religion, a greater hunger and thirst for righteousness, than I have found in Austria or Italy. Af- rica, it has been said, begins with the Pyr- enees ; it may not be true but in a very lim- ited sense. But perhaps this standing afar from the current of European civilization has preserved to the Spanish nations the natural warmth of their religious sentiment. If we had only the men to send forth through- out the whole country proclaiming the Gos- pel, in each town, in every village, ten, twen- ty, hundreds would listen to them with ea- gerness and rejoicing. 126 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. It is tnio the political changes have af- fected the work, but hitherto only to a very limited extent. The Carlist war has closed the Northern provinces before the political revolutions have drawn the general atten- tion from religious to political matters. The general uncertainty hinders a good many friends from helping, as they would do un- der other circumstances ; but these nearly five years of religious liberty have not been fruitless. To a large extent Protestantism has made itself known in Spain. The Span- iards have learned to look on Protestants not as "terrible monsters, but as good, earnest, zealous meu" "who, perhaps," it is some- times heard, "are better Christians than we ourselves" and who care for the educa- tion of the children, it might be added, more than they themselves ever cared for it. Sal- meron, the last president, protested against Spain being still called a Catholic country ; and it is true that not only a great part of the country is indifferent to religion, but that there exists also among the lower classes a bitter hatred against the Church of Rome. In the last revolution in the South they put the Archbishop of Granada in prison, destroy- ed some churches and nunneries, and the fa- mous processions of the Holy Week they did not dare to bring forward. Only in Val- ladolid the people said, "Our Holy Virgin is republican too." They adorned her with the red cap, and carried her about. We do not require to enlarge on the harm which such exercises must do to religion in gener- al and to the evangelical movement in par- ticular. But we would do wrong to judge of the state of the country merely by these manifestations. The unsettled state is not simply the fault of the Republic ; it received that, along with the financial troubles and the Carlist rebellion, as a sad inheritance from its predecessors. It was to be expect- ed that the pride of the Carlists wonld swell on the departure of the king, and also that their means would be increased. But, if they had any real strength, they would long ere this have been at the gates of Madrid. We will not forecast the future, and less still of that strange country where, as the great English statesman, Pitt, said, two times two is not always four that is, where the most accurate calculations prove to be false. But we must confess that all the disturbances hitherto have not hindered the work of evangelization nor affected it in a serious manner; and therefore we are justified in not waiting for the political or social condi- tion of the country to become settled before we go on with our evangelization work. Whatever government be established, it does not seem probable that religious liberty, al- ready won, can ever be withdrawn again. The whole tendency of Spanish politics has been toward a separation between Church and State i. e., a disestablishment of the Church of Rome. Wheu the Govern- ment made the religious tolerance in regard to the church-yards a reality, it extended the same to the hospitals, infirmaries, and benevolent institutions. So now not only are these sometimes well-endowed hospitals thrown open to our needy brethren in the faith, but they may enter without fear of being tormented on their death-beds by the religions fanaticism of those who compass land and sea to make one proselyte, as was formerly so often the case. Measures are also taken to prevent extreme unction be- ing administered to any one against his own will when in an unconscious state. The clergyman has free admittance to the mem- bers of his congregation, and when necessa- ry can, with their consent, remove them, and place them under other care. That is cer- tainly all we can wish, and more than we ever hoped to attain. It is true we have in Spain as yet very few churches or chapels, and only two in Seville and one in Terez are our property. Our field of labor in Spain is newer than that of our brethren in Italy, the Wal- denses, who haA'e found helping hands to build them churches, and who possess a the- ological seminary. But, as we are younger, I trust we will grow faster, for our field of labor is a most hopeful one. We are, therefore, very thankful that from America has come an offer of help in the foun- dation of a seminary for Protestant preachers in Spain. What Spain most needs is earnest, well-educated evangelical preachers. Asemi- nary is an urgent necessity, and the sooner it can be established the better. Perhaps none of those who attend this meeting feel so much the want of Christian union among the evangelical brethren as we in isolated Spain the extreme of Europe. We return gladdened to our lonely missionary posts, strengthened by the sight and the enjoy- ment God has given us here ; but we ear- nestly hope that all of you will accompany us with ardent prayers, remembering us at the mercy-seat, as we, in our young church- es, remember you, and petition for your con- tinued prosperity. RELIGION IN GREECE. BY THE REV. MICHAEL D. KALOPOTHAKES, M.D., ATHEXS. Ix attempting to speak of Greece after the delegates of great nations, I feel quite ein- barrassetl by the thought of how small a country Greece is, in comparison with the extensive countries of France, England, Ger- many, and Italy, and the small importance placed upon her on this account. Yet importance and influence do not al- ways depend on the great and the rich of this world. Greece has demonstrated it in old times, and I hope that in time to come, also, she will not be unimportant iii the world. If we believe in Providence, we can not but see that Greece is destined to play some important part in the destinies of nations. The fact that she alone is permitted as a nation to survive the mighty revolutions, vi- cissitudes, and trials of more than two thou- sand years revolutions which swept away the mighty empires of Assyria, Persia, Egypt, and Koine from the face of the earth and the other fact, which has no parallel in the world's history, viz., that her language from the time of Homer to the present day a period of more than three thousand years never ceased to be a living, spoken language, in hues adapted to times and circumstances, can not fail to impress every thoughtful mind with the idea that even Greece, abused and misrepresented as she has been by all as the nest of brigands and the source of vice, has yet a mission to perform on the earth. With the Greeks you can not dispense as long as you continue to study the writings of their immortal ancestors, and they con- tinue to exist as a nation. They are like the blood npon the key : you may scrub it, you may wash it, yet you can not obliterate it it is there. The only thing you can do is to help those who are laboring for their spiritual regeneration, to bring them back to the simplicity of the Gospel, from which they have departed, to the faith which you profess. In reference to the state of religion in Greece, I say what my brother from Italy has said, viz., that it is very low, even among the best of its adherents; and that the Evan- gelicals have to contend not only against er- ror, ignorance, and infidelity, as is the case in other nominally Christian lands, but also against a greater obstacle the strong feel- ing of union of church and nationality, or, rather, race. This feeling is so strong that both those who believe in all the doctrines and prac- tices of the Church, and those who care nothing about either, unite hand in hand in upholding the Church. Consequently, he who departs from this form of faith is regarded as an outcast, worse than Judas himself. If he is an of- ficer under the Government, he has to lose his situation ; if he is a teacher, he can not hold his place. If it happens to be an un- married female, she runs the risk of re- maining so all her life. And so in all other spheres of life. Yon have no idea of the influence this false notion exerts among the Greeks. Yet, great as are these obstacles against which the Evangelical Greeks have to con- tend, light is spreading among the people from various quarters and through various channels ; and I wish here to thank Dr. An- derson for sending missionaries to my coun- try, and to assure him that the money and labor which have been expended in that mis- sion field for years, with apparently small or no results at all, have not been without some fruit. Few and despised as the Evangelical Greek citizens are, they have not shrunk from this noble combat, but entered upon it deter- mined not to allow any thing to interfere Avith their object determined to fight the good fight of the Gospel till they see its glo- rious light shine in its full splendor over the whole land. God has thus far enabled thorn to estab- lish only one church a church which, in spite of its emallness and insignificance, has caused the Mother Church a great deal of anxiety, and made her cry out and demand its extermination. Thanks to God for the liberal, enlighten- ed, and high-minded men who have govern- ed the country for the last ten years men who are able to discern the signs of the times in which wo live, and the true interests of our nation. To them, as well as to the healthy tone of some of the press and of the enlightened portion of the people, the Evangelicals are indebted for the enjoyment of their religious rights in spite of the de- mands of a persecuting Church. To them we are indebted, under God, for all the good that we have been enabled to do through our various publications and the distribution 128 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. of the Bible throughout the land. Through our newspapers we are enabled to visit more than four thousand homes, and our Bible colporteurs place the Bible in the hands of many thousands more. When I think over the past, and remem- ber that iu 1858 few or no copies of the Word of God were sold, and see now that more than three thousand are disposed of in various forms among the Greeks, I take courage in the midst of my trials, and hope that the time is not far off when the Greeks too will return to their old allegiance even to their primitive Christianity. We have many merchant princes all over the world many educated and scholarly men many thrifty and enterprising youth ; but we want pious merchants, pious schol- ars, pious young men, and then you will see what the Greeks can do. THE BRITISH PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA. BY THE KEV. ROBERT MURRAY, HAIJFAX, NOVA SCOTIA. WHAT are we doing for Christ in the Brit- ish North American Provinces ? The coun- tries comprehended under this designation extend from the cold and stormy banks of Newfoundland to the sunny slopes and pic- turesque fiords of British Columbia, and in- clude a region grand enough to be the seat of a great empire. But though we have ter- ritory vast as that of the "Great Republic" itself, we can as yet boast of only one-tenth of your population. But what thiuk our four millions of Christ, or what are they doing for Christ ? What is their attitude toward him and his Gospel ? 1. There are at least fifty thousand In- dians, who are nominally as well as really heathen, who do not pretend to be Chris- tian. 2. There are one million seven hundred thousand, or over one-third of our popula- tion, who are Roman Catholics. 3. Unitarians and Universalists, who, among us, are practically identical, number eight thousand. 4. Persons professing to be Deists, Infi- dels, Atheists, or without creed, number six thousand. 5. Evangelical Christians number two milliou fifty-six thousand, and are subdi- vided as follows : Methodists 590,000 Presbyterians 584,000 Church of England 565,000 Baptists 245,000 Lutherans 40,000 Congregatioualists 24,000 Nearly two-thirds, then, of our population are at least nominally on the side of Christ as opposed to Antichrist and to heathenism and infidelity. Our clergy of all denominations number four thousand seven hundred. Would that all were true soldiers of the Cross true successors of the Apostles ! Alas ! one-third look to the Pope as their Head and Lord, ' while others, of whom better things might be expected, reject the name " Protestant," and turn their faces in the direction of the great apostasy. In one province, that of Quebec, the Ro- man Catholic Church is overwhelmingly dominant, and intrenched in the hearts and traditions of the people. In three other provinces Newfoundland, Prince Edward's Island, and Manitoba she is so strong as to occasion anxiety to the friends of liberty 9 and education. In Quebec, Romanism is practically if not legally " the Established Church." The French mind seems to be al- most wholly in the hands of the priest, to be directed, molded, or frozen up as he wills. The land is taxed to build and keep up par- ish churches all over the country huge structures, at nine miles distance from each other ; the clergy are paid by a compulsory tax ; and Romanism is also taught at the public expense in the public schools. It is estimated that nearly one-third of the land- ed property in the great Province of Quebec is in the hands of the clergy of Rome, and their accumulations are going on with in- creasing rapidity. Hence, the political and social power of Rome in Lower Canada is enormous. Politicians have found out that it is profitable to do the bidding of an or- ganization thus great and strong, and that at least promises to give the kingdoms of this world to those that fall down and wor- ship it. Happily, there are signs of day -break in this long-benighted province. The old world -wide struggle between Gallicanism and Ultramontanism has raged with ex- treme bitterness in the bosom of the Church for many years. Bishop against bishop and priest against priest is a spectacle not often witnessed on this continent. How the bat- tle is to end we can not yet say ; but it is noteworthy that the latest victories have been achieved by the Gallicaus. Neverthe- less, as the development of Romanism all over the world is in the direction of Ultra- montanism, it seems most probable that, sooner or later, the Jesuits of Montreal will overcome the Archbishop of the Seminarists of Quebec. It must be recorded that Gallic- an and Ultramontane alike make common cause in Canada against the Gospel, against all evangelistic efforts. Mission work among the French Roman Catholics has been attended with marked success. Home missionaries and colporteurs, evangelists and catechists, traverse the coun- try, scattering the Word of Life. Seldom a week passes without some result being noted. Sometimes they come in tens and twenties to join the Evangelical Church. Converts, however, very often seek to escape from the petty but malignant and trying persecutions of their old friends and neighbors, by fleeing for refuge under the ample folds of the " Stars and Stripes." This accounts, to an apprecia- REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. 130 ble extent, for the very large emigration of French Canadians to the United States. In Ontario, as in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the Romish Church is less strong and formidable. Her adherents are largely Irish or of Irish descent, and they clingto theirfaith with characteristic tenacity. The priesthood have secured separate schools for their adher- ents in Ontario, Manitoba, and Newfound- land ; and they are pressing for similar priv- ileges in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island as they are in these United States. The world-wide battle of Rome against popular education is fought among us with unrelenting determination. But the efforts of the foe tend powerfully to unite Protestants of all shades in closer bonds of unity. In all the Provinces there are missionary operations carried on among the Roman Cath- olics, with some measure of success. Viewed as a whole, the Church of Rome is not making progress among us. Her influence is rather on the wane. She boasts of occasional con- verts from Protestantism ; but her losses are tenfold greater than her gains. Her political influence a sort of power in which she traf- fics, and for which she eagerly plots and plans is not increasing ; though it must be con- fessed that the united action which she can secure on the part of her voters sometimes renders her dangerous to the liberty of the country. The most numerous group of the great Protestant family are the Methodists. On- tario and Newfoundland have been the chief scenes of their evangelistic triumphs, while they have been active and successful in all the Provinces. True to its genius and his- tory, Methodism has gone forth among the poor and the outcast, and has gathered a noble harvest of souls. Once the Church of the poor, it is now rich, and strong, and influential, as any other denomination ; and its evangelistic efforts are carried on with unflagging zeal. It has well-endowed and well-equippedinstitutions for training young ministers. Its membership is increasing in numbers, and in the grace of liberality. The Presbyterians are almost equally nu- merous with the Methodists. They have five institutions for training the rising min- istry, and there are about eight hundred pas- toral charges, supplied by about six hundred ministers. For many years they have been engaged in foreign missions, aud at present they support missions in China, in the New Hebrides, and in Trinidad. The Protestant Episcopal Church among us is still called the " Church of England," and is in close sympathy with the parent Church. At one time it was the "Estab- lished Church" in nearly all the Provinces, and, though now free from state connection, its influence and power are not by any means lessened. Ritualism widely prevails within its pale, and is diligently fostered by some of the bishops. Still there are faithful evan- gelical bishops; aud many of the clergy, with a largo majority of the laity, abhor the mock- popery of the Ritualists. In spite of Ritual- ism, in spite of efforts to introduce " Confes- sion," and to draw closer to the Church of Rome, there can nowhere be found firmer Protestants, more zealous evangelists, or more consistent advocates and supporters of the principles of the Evangelical Alliance than in our branch of the Church of England. The worst omen is that the official propa- gaudism is mainly on the side of error. All or nearly all the recruits of whom Rome can boast pass downward through the "easy de- scent " of Ritualism. The Baptists are numenras in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Throughout the whole of their history they have been distinctly evangelical and evangelistic. They are energetically en- gaged in equipping their higher educational institutions and in adding to the number of their missionaries at home and abroad. With- in the past few days the Baptists of the mar- itime Provinces have sent forth nine mission- aries to establish a new mission in South- eastern Asia. The Lutherans and Congregationalists have their chief strength in Ontario. The former, for obvious reasons, do not increase very rapidly, German immigration not be- ing large in our direction. The Congrega- tionalists are always found ready for every good work in connection with their evangel- ical brethren of other denominations. Unitarianism and Uuiversalism are among us but feeble and stunted exotics, drawing life mainly from New England. We have eight hundred Swedenborgians, and a few Deists, Atheists, Mormons, and Mohammed- ans ; but they wield no influence, and are not increasing. The most formidable foe of living Chris- tianity among us is not Deism or Atheism, or any form of infidelity, but the nominally Christian Church of Rome. All the leading Protestant denominations, recognizing thLs fact, have established special missions for the benefit of Romanists. These missions are to be found in Nova Scotia, New Bruns- wick, and Ontario, but chiefly in Quebec, where the power of Rome is greatest where, in fact, we have a new France, without the Revolution of 1789. The French Canadian Missionary Society, supported by all evangelical denominations throughout Canada, is doing a remarkable work in Quebec, gathering together, in scores of different places, the nuclei of evangelical French churches, scattering precious seed over the length and breadth of the field, and reaping here and there a bounteous harvest. Educational institutions are also kept up for the special benefit of French Canadian youth, and these have been productive of valuable ROBERT MURRAY : THE BRITISH PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA. 131 results, chiefly in the way of breaking down the inveterate prejudices of the people, and thus preparing a way for the Gospel message. A French Canadian Church is being formed a not unworthy daughter of the Evangel- ical Church of France. All the churches have home mission enterprises, to which they devote much attention ; they follow their children to the lonely forests, to the fertile prairies, to the fishing-stations on the shores of the stormy sea. Your hardy fishermen, your adventurers, miners, and foresters, reap with us the benefit of these enterprises. Missions to the Indians are sustained by all the leading denominations. Only a few weeks ago one hundred and fifty converts were baptized in the far West. These In- dian missions have existed for many years in nearly all the Provinces, and with hope- ful results. We live on friendly terms with our Indians, and they are thus more favor- ably disposed toward Christianity. It is only fair to say that the Jesuit missionaries were pioneers in this work. There is, how- ever, in their case this drawback, that their teaching of the Indians has been of extreme- ly little value, the Jesuits leaving the wild roving children of the forest as they found them. Protestant missionaries uniformly carry with them the blessings of civilization, instruction in Bible knowledge, and in the arts of life. They endeavor to make their converts good citizens as well as good Chris- tians ; in truth, the one implies the other. Missions to the heathen in foreign lands have been established, as we have noted, by the Presbyterians and Baptists. The Wes- leyans, and Episcopalians, and Independents send aid to missionary societies in Great Britain. Sixteen missionaries sent forth to heathen lands are supported by the Presby- terians, and nine by the Baptists. Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Evangelical Episcopalians, and Presbyteri- ans are ever ready to unite in every good work, in city missions, home missions, col- portage, and tract distribution. In efforts to disseminate a pure religious literature we follow the example of Great Britain and the United States. The great and good men teach at our fire- sides who preach and teach in New York and in London. The printed page carries its message to our loneliest hamlets. And if we receive from the United States our Uni- versalism and Uuitarianism, our Swedenbor- gianism and our Spiritualism, our shreds of Mormouismand rags of Materialism, we also share far more abundantly in the mighty and beneficent flood of Christian literature issuing from your great tract societies and from many of your private publishing houses. We can not live without you ; there is no religious movement among you but tells upon us for good or for evil mainly, I be- lieve, for good. Our religious and ecclesiastical life, like our political and social life, is powerfully ! affected by currents of thought and influ- ence that come upon us every hour from the United States on the one hand, and from Great Britain on the other. We are a strongly conservative people, and to some extent we assimilate the food that comes from abroad. In all things we are not quite so American as the United States, nor are we quite so English and Scottish as our fa- therland. May we not yet be recognized or, let me say, may we not justify for our- selves a place as intermediary and eclectic, standing between the Old World and the New, endeavoring to choose and seize what is best on both sides of the sea ? Our dream runs in this direction. Within the last four years nearly the whole of Nova Scotia, and many other parts of the Dominion, were visited with revivals of very great power. In Cape Breton whole counties were swept over as by a blessed gale from heaven, and for a time every thing was forgotten but the one thing needful. Multitudes were added to the Church, and sufficient time has elapsed to prove that the conversions were genuine, and that much fruit has been gathered for God. Refresh- ing and copious showers have fallen, and are falling still, in Newfoundland and oth- er Provinces. Whenever a revival throbs the hearts of your churches, we feel the quickened pulsations ; we share the ben- efit. The mass of our population treat with re- spect the ordinances and ministers of relig- ion, and attend public worship of some kind. Few, if any, of our cities are large enough to present the deplorable scenes of home hea- thenism and wretchedness which are wit- nessed elsewhere. Nearly the whole of our population is nominally connected with some religious denomination. In some of the leading Protestant churches family wor- ship is almost universal. The sanctity of the Lord's day is guarded with care in all Protestant sections of the country. Nearly all Protestant denominations have kept pace, within the past ten years, with the increase of the population of the coun- try ; and in all there has been a remarkable increase in the spirit of responsibility and self-reliance. The average of contributions for religions objects has increased more than fifty per cent, in ten years. The several branches of the Methodist family and of the Presbyterian family are hopefully negotiating for union. The Church of England, also, is consolidating her forces in the different provinces under a central authority. Thus it will appear that our people are alive to the redintegrating tend- encies of the time. All the Evangelical Churches live side by side in peace and brotherly love. Rarely, indeed, do we hear 132 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. tho harsh notes of internecine strife. De- nominational jealousies and bitterness are giving -way to Christian courtesy and help- lulnfss. The power of the Church of Rome is so great, tho craft of her agents is so marked, her aims are so destructive of all that is good, her spirit is so coldly and inso- lently isolative, that tho followers of Christ feel constrained to draw more closely to- gether, and to save their strength to repel the assaults of a common foe. We have before ns problems which you have solved, or are successfully solving. We have a mighty citadel of superstition among us ; we have a vast country to reclaim and possess for our Master. In order to success we need all the inimitable good qualities of our friends in Christ on both sides of the sea ; we need the conservatism and sobriety of the Old, with the amazing energy, enter- prise, and adaptability of the New World. Every year a parable is acted under our eyes which may soon bo realized in our re- ligious history. In early spring- time our great rivers are bound in mighty fetters of ice cold, remorseless, invulnerable. How vain all human agency to undo those fet- ters! Tho warm south wind comes; the breath of heaven comes, and with it the day of liberation. The -waters waken, rise, swell, rush with ever-increasing force till they become irresistible. What no power on earth could accomplish, no power on earth can now withstand. The fetters forged in the chill darkness of a past winter are all burst asunder and swept out into the sea. This parable is, we hope about to be acted in our history. CHRISTIANITY IN THE WEST INDIES. BY THE REV. WILLIAM MURRAY, FALMOUTH, JAMAICA. THERE are special reasons why the state of religion in the West Indies should deep- ly interest the Christian people both of En- rope and America. The great bulk of the property, landed and personal, of those rich and beautiful islands, is owned by men rep- resenting almost every race and language of both continents Roman, Celtic, Teuton- ic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo- American. They are your brethren, attract- ed thither by the spirit of legitimate enter- prise, the love of gain, or the nobler desire to do good and be a blessing to their much- suffering fellow-men. The vast majority of the inhabitants of all those islands, however, are people imported from the realm of hea- thendom Africans and Asiatics, and their descendants men, women, and little chil- dren, whose unrequited toil for generations had gone to enrich the superior races that held them in bondage, but who are now, with, one important exception, iii the full en- joyment of civil freedom ; and, better still, the number is daily increasing of those who are made free with the liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free. Cuba and Jamaica may be taken as rep- resentatives of the West Indies as a whole, as regards the possession of civil and relig- ions liberty and the progress of evangelical religion the former representing the scan- tiest amount of liberty and the lowest type of religion ; the latter, the amplest liberty, both civil and religious, with the greatest progress in the knowledge and practice of the religion of Christ. Under the first class may be placed with Cuba, Hayti, Sail Do- mingo, and the smaller French and Spanish islands ; under the second with Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad, the remaining British islands, the Dutch islands, and St. Thomas. In all the islands, except Cuba, some evan- gelical missionaries are laboring among the population. Cuba, with an area of over 50,000 square miles, a population of nearly 2,000,000, the wealthiest, and in other respects the most important of all the West Indian islands, is without a single evangelical missionary. Romanism is the only religion tolerated. No one can hold property there without first acknowledging in writing that he is an " Apostolical Roman Catholic." Men of ten- der consciences often leave out the word Ro- man, and the omission is readily winked at if the person in question be wealthy and in favor with those in authority. There is not a Sabbath-school in the whole island, and the week-day schools are few and far between. While the number of free children between the age of 5 and 15 yearn is over 100,000, only about 9082 attend school, and of this small number only about 1000 are colored or black. Morality and re- ligion, like education, are at a very low ebb indeed. Unbelief, immorality of the grosn- est kind, with injustice, corruption, and cruelty, unchallenged and uurebuked, uni- versally abound and dominate the whole isl- and. The only sign of Christianity in this so-called Christian island is the cross on the churches, and the mass irreverently hurried over by priests who are impatient to get through their irksome task, that they may hasten to the more congenial cock-fight, or some other low and brutal pastime. During public worship all seem intent on showing, by their undisguised levity and disrespect, that they have neither faith nor reverence, no fear of God, or any respect for those who profess to be the successors of Christ's apos- tles. And no wonder ; the priests themselves, with hardly an exception, exhibit the most painful picture of all - prevailing demorali- zing unbelief. The country curates can only be matched by those of mediaeval times, and may, as a class, be set down as examples of all that is corrupt and disgusting in low and brutal vice. There arc one hundred and forty -nine churches on the island, with a church reve- nue of 130,000 sterling; but with all this outward show and expenditure there is no ex- pounding of the Word of God, no preaching or even reading of the Gospel, no attempts to check the course of vice or lead the per- ishing into the way of life, no attempts to administer the consolations of the religion of Christ to the sick and the dying, as is I done in Protestant, or even in other Roman Catholic countries. Wide-spread, indeed al- most universal, unbelief is the result. The educated Cubans are better acquainted with the "Life of Jesus Christ," by M.Renan,than with the inimitable record of the same glo- rious life by the inspired evangelists. The notion, however, that the Cubans aiv naturally Avorse, more skeptical or ignoblr than other races or peoples, is not to bo entertained for a moment. They are only what the malign monster of tyranny, civil, 134 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. religious, and social, has niado them. The political despotism of once powerful, always fanatical aud cruel, and now decrepit, old Spain ; the still more relentless tyranny of papal Rome, which herself unable to sup- ply the healing balm, the life-sustaining ali- ment, the living, refreshing, renovating spir- itual drink, for the lack of which genera- tion after generation of the poor Cubans inis- orably perished evermore has stood a jeal- ous, watchful sentinel, guarding every ave- nue by which others, more enlightened and more pitiful, might convey to the famishing sons aud daughters of the fair Quecu of the Antilles the light, the nourishment, and the healing they so sorely needed ; and the sys- tem of compulsory, uurecompensed servi- tude, which held aud still holds one-half of the entire population to be the property, the goods and chattels of the other half, which forbids the education, religious or secular, of the servile race, which discourages the divine institution of marriage, aud treats the sanctities of the family relationship with cold and cruel contempt, have had a mighty influence in destroying the highest and best aspirations of the whole people in degrad- ing, demoralizing, and imbruting alike both rulers and ruled, priest aud people, master and slave. This is the triple tyrant that has been lordiug it over Cuba for centuries, and which has caused a race, naturally no- ble and brave, contentedly to grope in spir- itual ignorance, wallow in moral tilth, and too often to delight themselves iii horrid cruelties and hideous crimes. But that better things arc in store for Cuba, and that the day of her redemption is drawing nigh, is indicated by unmistaka- ble providential signs. The bitter and pro- tracted conflict for independence and liberty maintained by the white and colored Creole population against the dominion bf Spain, their readiness to abolish slavery, their per- severance in the face of great * difficulties, privations, and disappointments, their en- thusiasm for civil freedom aud religious lib- erty, their readiness to receive the Word of God, to hear it preached in Jamaica, where thousands of them have taken refuge, where the wives and little ones of hundreds who are now in the tented field with President Cespedes, and the destitute widows and or- phans of many who have fallen in the day of conflict, are residing and cared for by Christian people in the land of their exile these are so many tokens for good, so many signs that the Lord himself, in judg- ment and in mercy, is coming forth for their deliverance. In the city of Kingston, Jamaica, we have established for those exiles what is called the CUBAN MISSION. It was begun early in the year 1871. The missionary is the Rev. RAMON MONSAL- VATGE. He is a born Spaniard, but an Amer- ican citizen. He was trained for a monk in a Spanish monastery, aud for a Romish priest in a French seminary. He was con- verted to the truth from studying the Vul- gate, and was trained for the Evangelical Christian ministry under the care of Dr. Merle d'Aubigu6, whose great work, "The History of the Reformation," he has trans- lated into Spanish. He was taken up by the late Dr. Baird of America, sent by a so- ciety of which the doctor was secretary to Oran, in Algeria, where ho labored for a number of years with much success; was transferred by the same society to Cartha- gena, South America, where he gathered a large congregation, but when the priest party got into power there he was deprived of his church and school, could preach only in his own hired house, and was subjected to much persecution. He knew of the trou- bles in Cuba, and also that many of the Cu- bans had taken refuge in Jamaica. He felt irresistibly drawn toward them. But how- can he get there? Who will support him in the work should he get thither ? For no society that he can get access to will take hold of this new Christian enterprise. A New York merchant, who knew something of his labors, his worth, his trials, and his need, solved the first difficulty by landing the missionary and his family, free of ex- pense, in the city of Kingston, Jamaica. When he proposed to begin evangelistic labors among the Cubans in Kingston, al- most every one either assured him with re- gret that the thing was hopeless or laughed the very suggestion to scorn. Why, the Cu- bans are dead, twice dead, to all religious in- fluences! They care for nothing that bears the name of religion. They never go near the Roman Catholic churches, and the priests of Rome never look after them. At length he came to one who listened with deep in- terest to his proposal, entered heartily into his plans, put his church and school-room at his disposal for certain hours of every Sun- day, raised what funds he could for him per- sonally, and at the earliest possible opportu- nity brought the case before the Synod of his Church. The BESULT is the formation, in Kingston, of a Cuban Evangelical congregation, two Sunday-schools,two week-day schools, and a Beneficence Society for the relief of the wid- ows and orphans who are cast on our shores, sometimes literally starving and naked. Up to the middle of July of this current year (1873) four hundred Cubans have declared themselves Protestants. Among these are gen- erals and other military officers, lawyers, not- aries, merchants, planters, engineers, and art- isans. As they leave, some to fight the bat- tle of freedom in their native land, and others to go to various foreign countries, they take with them a copy of the Word of Life, with, WILLIAM MURRAY : CHRISTIANITY IN THE WEST INDIES. 135 it is humbly trusted, a strong determination to be henceforth guided by the spiritual light it affords. The Jesuits of Kingston have or- ganized a vehement opposition to this good work. They perceive in this humble begin- ning an outwork which may eventually de- stroy their whole dominion in Cuba. We, too, see in it the beginning of the end, the promise, the prelude, and the earnest of what shall be the "handful of corn in the earth on the top of the mountain," the fruit whereof shall in due time shake like Lebanon. It is this assured belief that has caused some of the best men and women in Jamaica to &&- vote much of their time and means to the support of this mission. It is in this firm confidence, also, that I have ventured to bring its claims before this great Confer- ence. I commend it to your faith, to your prayers, to your liberality. Let us now look for a moment at JAMAICA. Jamaica, the " Isle of Springs," the "Land of Wood and Water," as the name signifies, was won from Spain to Great Britain by an expedition sent out by Oliver Cromwell, about the middle of the seventeenth centu- ry. From that time onward the island has been nominally Christian and Protestant. It was not, however, till the first quarter of the present century that evangelical relig- ion made any marked progress among the people. Evangelical religion, like educa- tion, was a forbidden thing to the vast ma- jority of the people for over a century and a half after the island had become a British possession. The Church of England, it is true, was established by law and supported by the state during the whole of that peri- od ; but it was only the Church of the dom- inant few, and had little or no sympathy with the wants and woes, the earnest grop- ings for light and aspirations for liberty of the vast majority of the population. Early in the present century devoted men from Moravian, Methodist, Baptist, and Pres- byterian Missionary Societies, in the face of much obloquy and severe persecution, be- gan, in good earnest, to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, and to teach the way of life to all whom they could reach of every class and color. The result was happy and glorious. New light broke forth, and new life sprang up, in every parish of the island, save one, where heretofore deadness and darkness had reigned supreme. In this exceptional parish the men of wealth and power formed themselves into an Anti-Gos- pel Club, dedicated to Satan ! At their so- cial meetings the health of the prince of darkness, under one or other of his titles, was regularly druuk. This club existed in the early years of the present century. One of its members still survives in great pover- ty and misery. It consisted of over thirty members, all men of wealth and influence, but every one of them became impoverished, and nearly all of them died in most painful circumstances. The very district where they lived seems to have been cursed for their sake. This parish, St. Thomas in the East, was the scene of the insurrection and the atrocities of the year 1865. From the time of the abolition of slavery, in spite of all hinderances, the progress of gospel life and gospel light has been like the morning light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The population of the island, at the last census (1873), was 506,154. Of these 13,101 are white, 100,346 are colored, and 392,707 are black. One out of every seven of the whole population can read and write, while the number who can read is over 152,000, or very nearly one out of every three of the entire population. About 45,000 children are in attendance on week- day schools, while a still larger number at- tend Sunday-schools. The number of Sun- day-school teachers is close on three thou- sand; the Protestant evangelical mission- aries, 205. There are also seven Roman Cath- olic priests, and one Jewish rabbi. The several evangelical denominations are represented as follows : Episcopalians 13 ministers. Baptists 40 Wesleyans 28 Presbyterians 23 Moravians 15 United Methodists 11 Congregationalists 6 American missionaries, Congregation-) (1 al and Presbyterian ) The Church membership of the several de- nominations is over 51,000 communicants, so that we have an average of 250 members to every missionary, exclusive of ordinary hearers and children who are not commu- nicants. One hundred and nine thousand eight hundred and forty of the existing popula- tion have entered into the married state. Those who know what Jamaica was seventy, or even forty years ago, in respect to this di- vine institution, will be able to form some approximate idea of the moral and spiritual progress made since that period. The missionary cause in Jamaica is still largely indebted for the means of its support for the sinews of war men and money, to the liberality of churches and societies in Great Britain and America. The Episcopal Church, though now disestablished, and prospect! vely disendowed, is still mainly supported from the public revenues. She is, however, putting forth vigorous efforts in preparing for the time when she must de- pend entirely on the free-will offerings of her people. The Baptists are the nearest to independence in this respect of all Christian bodies on the island. They have to get a 13G REPORTS ON THE STATE OF RELIGION. good many ministers from England still, but they are almost wholly supported by the givings of their congregations. The Mora- vians, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and Con- gregationalists are making very steady and healthful progress in the same direction. In one respect their policy differs from that of the Baptists. They assign smaller charges to their missionaries, and the result is, that although self-support does not come so soon, yet the work, when it is done, is more thor- ough and enduring. The Baptists are projecting a mission to Hayti. The Presbyterians have, for the last three years, supported the Rev. Ramon Mon- salvatge in his mission among the Cuban exiles. They are also taking steps to estab- lish a mission among the Coolies, of whom there are over ten thousand in Jamaica, and for whose evangelization no effort has yet been made. Thus the colored and black people of Ja- maica, having themselves become partakers of the blessings, political, social, and relig- ious, which the Gospel of Christ brings to all who receive it, are as ready to support it at home, and as eager to send it to those who are perishing for the lack of it, as any people on the face of the earth. Much has been done ; a great deal yet remains to be accomplished. Life and property are as safe in Jamaica as in England or America. Drunkenness does not largely prevail. The Lord's day is well observed. Industry and thrift among the natives are steadily in- creasing. They are also ambitious to learn to read and write; but it is difficult to in- duce them to buy books aud periodicals. Generations must come and pass away be- fore the evil habits of the days of slavery are rooted out. Chief among these is the vile custom of concubinage, which eats as a canker into the moral and physical life of the people. It is now disreputable socially, but it still prevails to a lamentable extent among certain classes of the population. It is exceedingly encouraging, however, to find that where the Gospel has been long- est preached with earnestness, simplicity, and power, and diligent attention given to the training of the young, this evil too is conquered, if not wholly rooted out. There are whole districts of black and colored people in Jamaica where the women are as chaste and the men as correct in this re- spect as iu any European Christian coun- try. But I must not further illustrate or en- large. The time and space allotted forbid. I have simply presented to you two speci- mens of the state of religion in the West Indies. You have before you substantially the best aud the worst, the highest aud the lowest ; from these judge all. II. CHRISTIAN UNION. Saturday, October 4th, 1873. DIVISION II. CONTENTS, PAGE 1. HODGE : The Unity of the Church t 139 2. SMITH (R. P.) : Christian Union and Denominational Distinctions 145 3. BEDELL : Spiritual Unity not Organic Union 150 4. POTTER and LEWIS : Communion of Saints 154 5. MAKSTON : Communion of Saints 160 6. CROOKS: Christian Love the Bond of Christian Union 167 7. COOK: Christian Union and the Alliance in France 169 8. COXRAD : Interchange of Pulpits 1 74 9. M UHLEXBERG : The Lord's Supper in .Relation to Christian Union. 180 10. STOUGHTON: Eccl. & Spiritual Relations of America to England. 184 11. DAVIS: Evangelical Alliance its Origin, Objects, and Operations. 189 12. NOEL: Evangelical Alliance its Objects and Influence 197 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH BASED ON PERSONAL UNION WITH CHRIST. BY THE REV. CHARLES HODGE, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theology iu the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey. THE Church of Christ is one. There is one fold and one Shepherd; one King and one kingdom; one Father and one family. In this sense the Church includes all the re- deemed those now in heaven, those now on earth, and those who are hereafter to be born. Our present concern, however, is with the Church as it now exists in the world. The unity of the Church on earth may be viewed under three aspects : first, in reference to in- dividual believers ; secondly, in reference to local congregations or churches ; and, third- ly, in reference to national and denomina- tional churches. Under all these aspects the Church is one, and its unity in all its forms depends on union with Christ, its Head. As to these two points there is, and can be, no difference of opinion. I. Tlie Unity of Individual Believers. The question, What constitutes union with Christ ? can not be categorically answered, because that union is manifold. In the first place, wo were in him before the foundation of the world. As we were in Adam before we were born, so we were in Christ before we came into this world. This is a union in idea and in purpose which antedates all that is real or actual. Secondly, those thus in Christ come into the world, as the Church universal believes, in a state of sin and con- demnation, and remain in that state until they are renewed by the Holy Ghost, and be- come the dwelling-place of the Spirit of God. God is everywhere, and everywhere equally present. He fills heaven and earth, but he is said to dvrcll wherever he permanently manifests his presence, as he does now iu heaven, as he did of old in the Temple, and as he does in all ages and places iu the hearts of his people. As God is immanent in the world, and is the source of all the manifes- tations of intelligence in the operations of nature, so he is immanent iu the sonls of the regenerated, and is the source of their spirit- ual life and of all its manifestations ; and as the Spirit is given without measure to Christ, and is from him communicated to his peo- ple, it follows that ho and they are one, aud that they are all members one of another. The illustration which our Lord gives of the nature of this union is drawn from the vine and its branches. As every fibre of the root, the stem, the branches, the foliage, and the fruit are one organic, living whole, so are Christ and his people. St. Paul says Christ is the head, we are his body. As the life of the head pervades the whole body in all its parts and makes them one, so the life of Christ pervades his people and makes them one. This is the mystical union. It is a vital, permanent, and everlasting bond of connection between Christ and his people, and of his people one with another. They are as truly one as the vine and its branches, and the head and members of the human body are one. There is no doctrine of the Bible more clearly, frequently, or variously taught than this. This is a union which, so to speak, lies be- low our consciousness. An infant may be in Christ not only in the foreknowledge and purpose of God, but by the iudwelling of the Spirit, aud be no more aware of it than that he is a child of Adam. There is, there- fore, a third bond of union between Christ and his people, and that is faith. As soon as a new-born soul opens its eyes, it sees the glory of God iu the face of Jesus Christ. He believes the record which God has given of his Son. He receives him as God manifest in the flesh, because he sees in him the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. This is faith. Faith, there- fore, is the willing, conscious bond of union between the soul and Christ. Hence it is said that Christ dwells in our heart by faith ; and that it is not wo that live, but Christ liveth in us, and that the life that we now live is by faith of the Son of God, who loveth us, aud gave himself for us. Hence, also, all that is said of those who are iu Christ is said of those who believe. There is no con- demnation to those who are in Christ Jesus ; but he that believeth is not condemned. By faith we are the sons of God ; but those who are in Christ are sous and heirs according to the promise. So far, therefore, as adults are concerned, believers, and believers only, are iu Christ. But faith is a fruit of the Spirit, and an evidence of his indwelling in the heart; and therefore it is that indwelling of the Spirit which is the real and efficacious 140 CHRISTIAN UNION. bond of mi ii .n between us and Christ. From this two things follow : First, that any man in whom the Spirit dwells is in Christ, and is a member of his mystical body, which is the Church ; and, second, that all the normal or legitimate manifestations of the unity of the Church are duo to the indwelling of the Spirit ; in other words, nothing, whether in- ward or outward, is essential to the unity of the Church which is not a fruit of the Spirit. It is here as with the human frame ; nothing is essential to the unity of the body which is not due to the common life which pervades the whole. The first manifestation of the unity of the Church, considered as consisting of scattered believers, is the unity of faith. The promise of Christ that he would send the Spirit to guide his people into the knowledge of the truth was not confined to the apostles or the officers of the Church. It was given to all believers ; for the Spirit dwells in all, aud is in all the Spirit of truth. Hence our Lord says of his people, " They shall all be taught of God ;" and St. John tells believers, " Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things The anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye have no need that any man teach you, but the same anointing teacheth you all things." St. Paul says, " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them but the spiritual man discerneth all things." The Spirit does not reveal new truths, but leads to the right ap- prehension and cordial belief, as the apostle expresses it, of" the things freely given us of God ;" i. e., " of the things clearly revealed to us in his word." As this inward teaching of the Spirit is common to all believers, it must be the same in all. So far, therefore, as they are taught by the Spirit they must agree in doctrine. The apostle, therefore, says that as there is one body and one Spirit, so there is one faith, as well as one Lord and one bap- tism. What is thus taught in Scripture is found to be historically true. All Christians believe in the Apostles' Creed ; they all ac- cept the doctrinal decisions of the first six Ecumenical Councils concerning the nature of God and the person of Christ. They, there- fore, all believe in the doctrine of the Trinity and of the perfect Godhead and perfect hu- manity of our Lord Jesus Christ. They adore him as God manifest in the flesh. They re- ceive him as the only Saviour of men. They believe that he saves us by his blood, by bear- ing our sins in his own body on the tree. They believe that all power in heaven and earth is committed to his hands, and that to him every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. They all believe in the Holy Ghost, and the absolute necessity of regen- eration and sanctification by the power of his grace. They believe in the Holy Cath- olic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. This is the confession that has been made in all ages, in all languages, and in all places where Chris- tians have existed. As, however, the promise of God to sanc- tify his people is not a promise to render them perfectly holy in this life, and as his promise to bless them is not a promise to render them at once perfectly happy, so nei- ther is the promise to lead them to the knowl- edge of the truth a promise that they shall be perfect in knowledge. Perfect knowl- edge, however, is the condition of perfect unity. So long as we know in part, we can only believe in part. Perfect unity is the goal toward which the Church tends. God has given, the ministry until we all come to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Diversity of doctrine, therefore, among believers is unavoidable in our im- perfect state. In despite, however, of this diversity, aud of the denunciations and sep- arations to which it gives rise, the true Church emerges from the dust and tumult of conflict as one body, having one Lord, and marshaled under one standard. The second effect of the indwelling of the Spirit by which all believers are united is the sameness of their spiritual life, or relig- ious experience. All are convinced of their guilt and of their need of expiation by the blood of Christ. All are convinced of their need of the renewing of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit convinces all of the sin of not be- lieving in Christ. It convinces all of the righteousness of his claim to be the Son of God, and that he has wrought out an ever- lasting righteousness for us sinners. Christ, therefore, is to all the object of adoration, love, confidence, and devotion. Their relig- ious life is consequently the same. As the physiology of the Caucasian is the physiol- ogy f * ue Mongolian and of the African, so does the Christian experience of one be- liever answer to that of all his fellow-be- lievers. Hence the people of God of all ages and nations find in the sacred Scrip- tures the true expressions of their love, rev- erence, gratitude, of their penitence, faith, and joy. Hence also the prayers and hymns of one age answer for all other ages. We all sing the hymns of the Greek fathers, of the Latin saints, of Luther aud Gerhard, of Watts, Toplady, and Wesley. The world over, therefore, the heart of one Christian beats in unison with that of every other Christian. Thirdly, all believers are united by their mutual love, which the apostle calls the bond of perfectness. This love is the test of discipleship. "Hereby shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." " If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can. HODGE : THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 141 he love God whom he hath not seen ?" It is just as unnatural, arid, according to the ajiostle, just as impossible, that one Chris- tian should hate another, as that the hands should hate the feet, or the feet the hands. This love is founded, first, on congeniality. All believers have the same views and feel- ings, the same objects of affection and pur- suit. Secondly, it is founded on relation- ship. They belong to the same Master, who has bought them with his own precious blood ; they are subjects of the same King, and children of the same Father ; and, more intimately still, they are related as members of the same body, pervaded by the same life, so that, if one member suffer, all the mem- bers must suffer with it, and if one member rejoice, all the members must rejoice with it. This brotherly love manifests itself, first, in mutual recognition. Christians know and acknowledge each other as brethren. Oue may be rich, the other poor ; one may be bond, the other free ; one a Greek, an- other a barbarian ; one a Jew, another a Gentile. It makes no difference. They are all one in Christ Jesus. They instinctively love, honor, and confide in each other as children of a common father. They recog- nize the dignity and equality of being the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. They know that the time is at hand when each and all shall experience such an exal- tation in knowledge, in power, in holiness and glory, that all earthly distinctions will be utterly obliterated. When one believer, therefore, meets another believer, it matters not of what rank or of what denomination, his heart goes out to him, and he can not help giving him the right hand of fellow- ship. He will pray with him, worship with him, and sit with him at the table of their common Lord. Secondly, Christian love manifests itself in a disposition to bear each other's burdens and to supply each other's wants. The Christian does not regard his possessions as exclusively his own, but as a trust commit- ted to him for the benefit of his fellow-be- lievers. Christianity, however, is not agra- rianism. It enjoins no community of goods. It teaches the two fundamental principles of social science: first, if a man will not work, neither shall he eat ; and, secondly, those who can not work should be comfort- ably supported by those who can. Even in Christian families there is often a great dis- parity in the wealth and social position of its members. Nevertheless, they all regard and treat each other as brethren. Thus it should be, and thus it will be among Chris- tians. So much for the unity of believers con- sidered as individuals scattered over the world. They are one body in Christ Jesus, in virtue of their union with him by the indwelling of his Spirit. This renders them one in faith, one in their inward spiritual life, and one in love. They therefore rec- ognize each other as brethren, and are ever ready to minister to each other's wants. II. The Unity of Individual Churches or Con- gregations. The Spirit as he dwells in the hearts of believers is an organizing principle. As men in virtue of their social nature form themselves into societies, so believers in vir- tue of their new nature as Christians form themselves into local churches or congrega- tions. Social organizations among men is necessary for the well-being of the individu- als of which they are composed and of the society as a whole. A hermit is only half a man. Half his nature lies dormant. So an isolated Christian is only half a Christian. Believers have graces to exercise, exigencies to meet, and duties to meet which demand organic nuiou with their fellow -believers. They have not only a mutual interest in each other's welfare, but a mutual responsi- bility for each other's conduct. They are jointly intrusted with their Master's honor, and therefore are bound to decide who are and who are not to be recognized as Chris- tians. Being essentially a communion, they have a right to determine who are to be admitted to their fellowship. All this sup- poses external organization. In all ages, therefore, believers living in the same neigh- borhood have united in forming these local churches. As believers in their individual capacity scattered over the world constitute the mys- tical body of Christ on earth, so these local churches constitute one body, which is the visible church in ejich successive a ge. These churches are one body, first, spiritually. They have one God and Saviour. They are united in one spiritual life. They have one faith and one baptism. They are all one family. As of old the patriarch, surrounded by his sons and their families, constituted one great household, so it is now with these local churches, they are all children of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom every family in heaven and earth is named. They are one body also externally and visibly. First, because they recognize each other as churches. This involves the ac- knowledgment that each has all the pre- rogatives and privileges which by the law of Christ belong to such organizations : the right to conduct public worship, to preach the Gospel, to administer the sacrament, and to exercise discipline. Secondly, they are one body, because membership in one of these local churches involves the right to membership in every other such church. The terms of church membership are pre- scribed by Christ, and can not be altered. We are bound to receive those whom he re- ceives. A Christian in one place is a Chris- 142 CHRISTIAN UNION. tian in all other places, and is entitled to bo so regarded and treated. His prerogatives arise out of his character and his relation to Christ, and, therefore, go with him wherever he goes. Hence, in the beginning, a mem- ber of the Church of Jerusalem was of right a member of the Church of Antioch or of Corinth, if he removed to either of those places. Of course, if one church should vio- late the law of Christ in admitting mem- bers whom it ought not to admit, or in ex- cluding those whom it ought not to exclude, other churches are not bound to imitate them in this act of disobedience. But we are now speaking of the principle, and not of its nec- essary limitations iu practice owing to our manifold infirmities. The fact remains that the member of one local Christian church is normally and of right a member of every other such church, makes them all one great communion, one visible body here on earth. Thirdly, these separate congregations are one church because they are subject to one tribunal. The various tribes and races con- stituting the Russian empire are one body because they are all subject to the same em- peror. In like manner, all the scattered in- dividual local churches or congregations on earth are one, not only spiritually because they are all subject to Christ, their invisible head in heaven, but they are externally one because they are subject to the same visible authority on earth. During the apostolic age that authority was the apostles. Their jurisdiction was not diocesan, but universal, because it arose out of their personal gifts of plenary knowledge and infallibility in teaching. All be-lievers and all local churches were bound to submit to those whose infal- libility was authenticated by Christ himself, by signs and wonders, and miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost. We therefore find Paul writing with full apostolical authority to the Church in Rome before he had ever vis- ited that city ; and Peter addressed his epis- tles to believers in Pontns, Galatia, Cappa- docia, Asia, and Bithyuia, the very centre of Paul's sphere of labor. All the churches of that age and of every age bow r ed to the de- cisions of the council of Jerusalem. Since the age of the apostles the common tribunal to which all local churches are sub- ject is the Word of God. They all acknowl- edge the Scriptures to be the infallible rule of faith and practice. To this they all pro- fess to bow. The ultimate appeal of each and all is the written Word. And, secondly, each local church is subject to other church- es to which it has access. As no individual believer is isolated and independent of all other believers, so no individual church is iso- lated and independent of all other churches. The law of Christ is that of mutual subjec- tion. The ground of that subjection is not any social compact, so that the obligation to obedience is limited to those who are parties | of such compact. The command is that we should be subject to our brethren in the Lord, because they are our brethren and tbf> temples and organs of the Holy Ghost. It, therefore, refers to all our brethren. All history proves that this is the law of the Spirit. Every plant and animal has its i- 8ii8 formatirus, an inward law, in virtue of which it strives to attain its normal condi- tion. Adverse circumstances may prevent that form being fully assumed. Neverthe- less, the effort always reveals itself. So it is with the Church. It has always striven after external unity. This gave rise to the ideas of heresy and schism. It was this ef- fort which led to the convocation of provin- cial and ecumenical councils, to whose decis- ions all individual churches were expected to bow. At the time of the Reformation the same impulse revealed itself. The church- es then formed ran together as naturally as drops of quicksilver. When this union was prevented, it was by unavoidable hinderances which counteracted an obvious and admitted tendency. It can, therefore, scarcely be doubt- ed that in the normal state of the Church a smaller part is subject to a larger, and ev- ery part to the whole. The fact that the visible Churcli has never fully reached its ideal form is no proof either that the ideal is false or that the actual- is not bound to strive to be conformed to the ideal. It need hardly be said that the Bible teaches no such doctrine as passive obedi- ence either to the Church or the State. The Magna Charta of civil and religious liberty given us from heaven is, that it is right to obey God rather than men. Even the command to children to obey their par- ents in all things is of necessity limited by their allegiance to God. The obligation of Christians to obey each other is subject to the same limitation. Nevertheless, one church is bound to be subject to other churches for the same reason and in the same measure that a believer is bound to be subject to his brethren. The idea of the Church, therefore, as pre- sented in the Bible, is that believers scatter- ed over the world are a band of brethren, children of the same Father, subjects of the same Lord, forming one body by the indwell- ing of the Holy Ghost, uniting all to Christ as their living head. This indwelling of the Spirit makes all believers one iu faith, one in their religious life, one in love. Hence they acknowledge each other as brethren, and are ready to bear each other's burden. This is the communion of saints. The Church, in this view, is the mystical body of Christ. But, by a law of the Spirit, believers living in the same neighborhood unite as church- es for public worship and for mutual watch and care. These local churches constitute one body, first, spiritually, because they are HODGE : THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 143 all subject to the same Lord, are animated by the same Holy Spirit, profess the same faith, and are bound together by the bond of Christian love. Secondly, they are ex- ternally one body, because they acknowl- edge each other as churches of Christ, and recognize each other's members, ordinances, ministers, and acts of discipline ; and also because they are all subject to the same tribunal. That tribunal, in the beginning, was the apostles; now it is the Bible and the mind of the Church, expressed some- times in one way and sometimes in another. That this normal state of the Church has never been fully realized is to be referred partly to unavoidable circumstances, and partly to the imperfections of believers. It is natural that Christians speaking the same language, and constituting one nationality, should be more intimately united than those geographically separated. It is no violation of the unity of the Church that there should be an Episcopal Church in England and an- other in America, partially independent of each other. But apart from such considera- tions, true Christians often conscientiously differ so much in matters of doctrine and or- der as to render their harmonious action in the same ecclesiastical organization impossi- ble. Under such circumstances it is better that they should separate. Two can not walk together unless they be agreed. Ex- ternal union is the product and expression of internal unity. The former should not be pressed beyond the latter. One of the greatest evils in the history of the Church has been the constantly recurring effort to keep men united externally who were iu- Avardly at variance. All forced unions are to be deprecated. They lead on the one hand to hypocrisy, and on the other to per- secution. We may lament over such differ- ences and endeavor to remove them, but as long as they exist they can not be wisely ignored. In the present state of the world denominational churches are therefore rela- tively a good. The practical question is, What is their relation to each other ? t What are their relative duties ? How may their real Tinity be manifested in the midst of these diversities ? III. Denominational Churches. 1. The first duty of denominational churches to each other is mutual recognition. As we are bound to recognize every Christian as a Christian, and to treat him accordingly ; so we are bound to recognize every church as a church, and to treat it accordingly. And as we are not at liberty to give any definition of a Christian which shall exclude any of the true followers of Christ; so we are not at lib- erty to give any definition of a church which shall exclude any body which Christ recog- nizes as a church by his presence. A Chris- tian is a man united to Christ by the in- dwelling of the Holy Spirit ; and a church is a body of men, really or by a credible pro- fession, thus united to Christ, organized for the purposes of Christian worship, the proc- lamation of the Gospel, and for mutual watch and care. If this be the Scriptural definition of a church, we are not at liberty to alter it. The Church consists of the called, and every- body of the called organized for church pur- poses is a church, whether local or denomi- national. Everywhere in the New Testa- ment the word tic/cXjjo-ia is used as a collec- tive term for the cXqroi. As a man's being a Christian does not depend upon any thing external; upon circumcision or uncircumcis- ion, upon stature, color, or nationality; so whether a body of Christians be a church can not depend upon any thing external. A nation is a nation, whether its government be monarchical, aristocratic, or republican. So a church is a church, whatever be the form of its external organization. Nothing can be essential to the being of a church that is not essential to the Christianity of its members. " Ubi Spiritus Dei, ibi Eccle- sia," has in all ages been a motto and an axiom. There is, indeed, a theory of the Church which makes the form every thing. Ro- mauists hold that Christ gave the apostles power to communicate the Holy Spirit by the imposition of hands. This power the apostles transmitted to their official succes- sors, and they again to theirs, in unbroken succession to the present day. It is in the line of this succession that the Spirit oper- ates. His saving influences are imparted to those only who receive the sacraments from men having the supernatural power to ren- der them efficacious. As, therefore, no man can be a Christian who is not subject to those thus empowered to communicate the Holy Spirit, of course no body of men can be a church unless subject to these exclusive dispensers of salvation. With this theory we have at present nothing to do. A man who confines Christianity to any one exter- nal organization must shut his eyes to the plainest facts of history and of daily obser- vation. Apart, therefore, from this Romish theory, it is hard to see how, on Scriptural principles, we can deny a body of believers, in their collective capacity, to be a church, whose members as individuals we are forced to regard as true Christians. 2. A second duty which denominational churches owe each other is that of inter- communion. The terms of Christian fellow- ship, as before stated, are prescribed by Christ, and are the same for all churches. No particular church has the right to re- quire any thing as a term of communion which Christ has not made a condition of salvation. How can "we refuse to receive those whom Christ has received? If men can not alter the conditions of salvation, 144 CHRISTIAN UNION. they can not alter tlio terms of Christian communion. 3. A third duty of denominational churches is the recognition of each other's sacraments and orders. If the validity of the sacraments depends on some virtue in him who administers them, then those only are valid which are administered by those having that virtue. But if their validity depends, first, on that being done which Christ has enjoined ; second, on its being done by a church or by its authority ; third, on its being done with the serious intention of obeying the command of Christ, then the sacraments of one church are just as valid as those of another. And by their validity is meant that they accomplish the ends for which they were appointed. So also of orders. If ordination be the communication of supernatural power, call- od the grace of orders, by those to whom the ability to confer that grace exclusively belongs, then those only are true ministers who have been ordained by that specially gifted class of men. Or, if ordination be the act of conferring authority, as when the executive of a nation grants a commission in the navy or army, then no man is a min- ister who has not been commissioned by the competent authority. But if, as all Protest- ants believe, the call to the ministry is by the Holy Ghost, then the office of the Church in the matter is simply to authenticate that call, and testify it to the churches. As it is the office of the Church to judge whether a man has the scriptural qualifications for admission to sealing ordinances, so it is its office to decide whether he has the qualifica- tions for the ministry and is called of God to preach the Gospel. In neither case does the Church confer any thing. It can no more make a man a minister than it can make him a Christian. If, then, we recognize a body of men as Christians, we must recog- nize them in their organized capacity as a church ; and if we recognize them as a church, we must recognize their ministers. It does not follow from this, however, that we are bound to receive them into our pul- pits. We may recognize a man as a profess- or of mathematics or of music, and yet not see fit to set him to teach our children. 4. A fourth duty of such churches is that of non-interference. The field is the world ; and it is wide enough for all. It is a breach of courtesy and of the principles of church unity for one church to intrude into the appropriated field of another church, and to spend its strength in endeavoring to prose- lyte men from one denomination of Chris- tians to another, instead of laboring to con- vert souls to Christ. 5. Finally, there is the duty of co-opera- tion. In union is strength. All Christians and all churches are engaged in the same work. They are servants of the same Mas- ter, soldiers of the same Great Captain of their salvation. If the several corps of an army should refuse to co-operate against the common foe, defeat would be the inevi- table result. What, then, is to be expected if the different denominations into which Christians are divided keep contending with each other instead of combining their efforts for the overthrow of the kingdom of dark- ness? If the principles above stated be correct, it is of the last importance that they should be practically recognized. If all Christians really believe that they constitute the mys- tical body of Christ on earth, they would sympathize with each other as readily as the hands sympathize with the feet or the feet with the hands. If all churches, wheth- er local or denominational, believed that they too are one body in Christ Jesus, then instead of conflict we should have concord ; instead of mutual criminations we should have mutual respect and confidence; in- stead of rivalry and opposition we should have cordial co-operation. The whole vis- ible Church Avould then present an undi- vided front against infidelity and every form of Antichristian error, and the sacramental host of God, though divided into different corps, would constitute one army glorious and invincible.* * No speaker on the floor of the Alliance was under- stood to speak for any one but himself. The Alliance was in no wise committed by any thing he said. Dr. Hodge was called upon to express his views on the Unity of the Church. This he did freely, although fully awauB that many Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists dissented more or less from some of the principles which he advanced. In thus acting, he did what was done by every other speaker, from the beginning to the end of the meet- ings of the Alliance. It is with surprise, therefore, as well as with regret, that he learns that some of his brethren were grieved by what he said, especially on the subject of Christian communion. CHRISTIAN UNION CONSISTENT WITH DENOMINA- TIONAL DISTINCTIONS. BY THE VERY EEV. R. PAYNE SMITH, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Ix venturing to address the members of this great Alliance upon the subject of Chris- tian Union, I can not do so without express- ing my grateful sense of the privilege grant- ed me in being allowed to speak upon a theme at once so important and so dear to my own heart ; while at the same time, the consciousness of personal uuworthiness and inability to treat such, a subject fittingly is painfully present to my mind. I caii only pray that He who gave us the new commandment, "to love one another," will strengthen my weakness, and enable me to speak to his honor. It was his own prayer for his believing people, " That they all may be one : as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." And this oneness of his disciples he describes as the proof which would convince the world of his divine mission, " that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me" (John xvii., 21). Now in what does this oneness consist? Does it consist in uniformity ? in the accept- ance of a formula of doctrine fixed for us by others ? or even in our speaking and believ- ing all of us exactly the same thing ? Let us look boldly at the facts, and putting aside for the present the consideration of what ought to be, let us examine what really is. We find, then, that the great Christian com- munity is broken up into many and opposing sects, just in proportion as it is in earnest about Christianity. Wherever belief is ear- nest, and men are alive to the value of the Gospel, there differences of opinion arise, and men hold varying views, and debate them. And this too often they do with bit- terness. The bitterness with which dis- putes have been carried on among Christians has passed into a very by-word. Even in the present day, there are those who consider differences of belief from their own standard of orthodoxy as worse, and more criminal, than the violation of the moral law. Our Lord forewarned us of all this ; he came, he said, to place a sword in men's hands ; and men have known only too well how to wield it. He came to make a man's foes those of his own household : and men, in exact accordance with this prophecy, have deemed that they were obeying a higher 10 law in violating the fifth commandment, and rejecting all that express teaching of our religion which has made gentleness, love, peace, mildness, the proper fruit of the Spirit, and the seal and earnest of the work of divine grace upon our hearts. And this bitterness has in no way less- ened the tendency of men to stand apart, but, on the contrary, has aggravated it. Every controversy has left its mark on the Church in the way of some new schism and division. Even if we turn back to primi- tive times, to those great Ecumenical Coun- cils which have so important an influence upon us, and whose office, as it seems to us, was to settle the main outlines of the Chris- tian faith, yet every one of them was mark- ed also by the founding of a great heresy. The minority in no single instance gave way. The numerous vote, the loud acclamation of the orthodox party, and the weight of im- perial authority, carried no conviction to the minds of the rest. So far from settling the dispute, it was constantly fought out after- ward in the cities with sword and spear; and Church History is full of records of the bloodshed and persecution, the fraud and duplicity, the knavery and violence with which the rival parties struggled, not mere- ly to uphold their own views, but to destroy the opposite view and its maintaiuers. I know of no greater authority in the Church than that of the early councils ; and yet at the time they carried with them no persua- siveness. Men fearlessly maintained their own views against their whole weight and influence, and would yield their opinions neither to numbers, nor authority, nor pow- er. It is a sign of better things in our own day, that the last so-called Ecumenical Coun- cil, though it has caused a schism, is at all events only met by fair argument and an appeal to history. In fact, the whole history of the Church is that of a struggle, not only against sin, and ignorance, and unbelief outside of her, but also for supremacy of doctrine within. The outward struggle is that which ennobles Christianity. Had it not battled for holi- ness, and purity, and light with the dark outer world, there would have been no bright side, no triumphs of the faith, nothing on 14G CHRISTIAN UNION. which the Christian conscience could have rested content. But now, while there is a deep feeling of disappointment often pres- ent in onr minds at the thought that Chris- tianity has not accomplished all that we could have hoped, yet there is also much to comfort us. It has not accomplished as much as we might have expected; it is not yet triumph- ant ; it still has to struggle against ration- alism and superstition; and yet a broad line of demarcation does separate the mod- ern from the ancient world, and that line was drawn by Christ. His words have been a light, not merely illuminating many an individual conscience, but also shedding its beams broadcast over the whole world, and making it feel something of the warm and purifying glow of holy love, of self-denial, of high hope, and heavenly devotion. If the teaching of Christ has not gained so com- plete an ascendency over the human mind as we might have hoped, yet its influence has been great, and we owe to it whatever is best, and most permanent and true in modern civilization. But when we turn to its internal history, to the manner in which rival parties have struggled within it for supremacy, to the unchristian arts they have used, the manner in which all things have been held lawful against those who put an unorthodox interpretation upon the words of Holy Scripture, the persecutions inflicted on men who were acting upon conscientious convictions, even if mistaken, it is with a deep sense of shame that one reflects upon the evil uses to which men have put God's best and greatest gift. It is the object of the Evangelical Alli- ance to soften and abate this internal strug- gle, that we may combine in a more united attack upon Christ's enemies outside the Church. We waste our strength too much now in debating matters, important it may be, and necessary for the full manifestation of the faith, yet not essential -to the salva- tion of the soul; and meanwhile, unbelief stalks abroad in growing strength, and the masses are left the prey of sin and ignorance. Poverty and misery herd together close by the abodes of luxury ; and error and hea- thenism still possess lands which are the heritage of the Son of God. It is to this battle that the Evangelical Alliance calls us, and bids us unite our strength, not re- quiring ns to abandon our beliefs, or be in- different about the truth, but pointing ns to a nobler struggle, which is our common duty, and in which we may all take our part, and praying us, for the sake of our common Lord, to hold our varying views in the bond of love. For, whether we ap- prove of it or not, evidently a diversity of opinions is a necessity of man's present con- dition I say of man's present condition, be- cause I regard this diversity of opinion as belonging only to our present fallen and im- perfect state. I can not imagine the exist- ence of dispntings and controversies, or even of differences of opinion, in a perfect state. In heaven there may be degrees of knowledge, and men may advance from one height of contemplation to another, but whatever they know they will know accu- rately. There can not be there that uncer- tainty and confusion of thought, and that iudefiniteuess of language, which so clouds all our ideas and speculations now. But we are not living in a perfect state, and in our present state diversity seems to be the law of nature. Underneath the outward diver- sity of nature there are, I grant, grand gen- eral lines, and a real and substantial uniform- ity ; yet the individual has always his own points of difference. Though working upon typical forms, yet nature bestows something of individuality npon every one of its units. And civilization tends to increase this di- vergency. In a wild state the animals are very similar to one another. No sooner do we domesticate them than differences of size and color develop themselves, and we find, also, that every one has its own peculiar character and disposition. Probably there is a similar difference in wild animals, only we have not the same opportunities of study- ing them. But at all events, God's works in nature are marked not by uniformity, but by variety. The charm of the landscape consists in its endless diversity of form and color. The changing conditions of the at- mosphere make no two days alike. Music is not the monotony pf one sound, but the harmonizing of many, and in it discords sometimes add to the exquisite charm of the whole. The pure light \vhich gilds the whole world around is not a colorless, nor even a one-colored ray, but is the blending of all the prismatic hues; and every sub- stance absorbs aud rejects these hues in varying degrees, and hence the manifold beauty which surrounds us on every side. Search where we will, every climate has its own varieties of flora and fauna, its own pe- culiarities of soil and vegetation, its own development of life. And the geologist has disclosed to us vast ages of by-gone time teeming with active existence animals as perfect as those of the present day, and as well fitted to perform their part in the world's great drama, aud yet filling us with aston- ishment as we notice how unlike they are to every thing which exists now. And the vast and gigantic vegetation among which they roamed is of forms which, if they now exist at all, do so only in dwarfed and stunt- ed growth. Wherever we look we feel that variety is the law of creation. In the words of the Psalmist, we exclaim, " O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all! the earth is full of thy riches" (Psa. civ., 24). R. P. SMITH: CHRISTIAN UNION AND DENOMINATIONAL DISTINCTIONS. 147 And when we rise up to man, this raani- folduess takes a higher form, iu proportion to his nobler gifts. His animal nature is as much influenced by differences of soil and food and climate and modes of living as that of any of the inferior creatures. Bnt civilization has upon him a tenfold greater effect than domestication has upon them, because it develops tastes and pleasures and motives and objects of pursuit of a men- tal kind, and rising, therefore, to a far high- er elevation than the gifts of mere physical existence. At the very entrance of life we start, each one, with varying bodily and mental powers, and all through life the very greatness of our endowments obliges us constantly to choose. For man is a moral agent. He is not sway- ed by instincts which leave the individual but scant room for free play. Reason and will are the two powers which regulate his conduct, the latter deciding for him what he will be and what ho will choose for himself as his objects of pursuit, while reason directs him iu his selection of the means whereby he can attain to the ends which he covets. But reason is full of diversity in its operations. Instinct has but one way of accomplishing its object, and that way always the same, al- ways successful, but never improving. Rea- son is tentative : it tries and fails ; and tries again, and improves its methods and suc- ceeds partially, and so advances indefinitely onward, and, it may be, at times falls back, but never becomes perfect. The lower gift of instinct is perfect in its lower field, and produces uniformity. Reason is ever diver- sified in its operations, never perfect, always incomplete, aiming at more than it can ac- complish, struggling perpetually forward, but always beset with imperfection. Add that reason and will are themselves modified by a thousand other things. Man has other great gifts; his imagination, his memory, his affections, his conscience, all in- fluence his development. You, in this New World, can not but be powerfully affected by that which so strikes a stranger coming among you the vastness of your country. You have a mighty continent to conquer, and [ within the memory of living men you have peopled regions compared with which our land is in size but as nothing. We in the Old World are influenced by its memories. One who, like myself, ministers where a church stood when the Romans were masters of Brit- ain ; where again, on Ethelbert's conversion, the Saxons again raised a temple to God's ' honor, and where the very building iu which | we meet daily for prayer was completed in all ; substantial points as it stands now, just sev- en hundred years ago, can not but look back sometimes and muse on by-gone times. You look forward ; the grand future before you fills you with anxiety to realize it ; yon are all in haste, and eager for its accomplishment; and the sense of a mighty destiny before you urges you forever on. We dwell more among thoughts of the past, and are less keen, there- fore a little moss-grown, perhaps, with more of what we call repose; you, it may be, give it a worse name. We, too, have some energy ; but both nations you on this side of the Atlantic, and we on the other are influ- enced very powerfully by the conditions un- der which we live. There is much besides which tells upon us. How mightily is our mind affected by the writings of the great authors whose works are our daily companions ! And, sharing in the same literature, this is an influence which brings the Old and New Worlds together and unites us. And then there is the current literature of the age, the newspapers and magazines ; and, still more, the general tone of conversation around us. Add, too, that the past still sways the present. We are what .we are because of what our fathers did and said ; and because of the choice made for good and for evil by the generations that preceded us. They have settled for us what were the conditions under which we were brought up, just as we are settling and mod- ifying those conditions for the generations to couie. It is a vast aggregate that togeth- er forms national and individual character, and every part of it is perpetually in mo- tion, acting and reacting upon every other part. And in this vast, slowly -changing mass, we individuals have our allotted place, powerfully influenced by it, ourselves influ- encing it more or less according to our strength of character, doing either good or harm, lowering or raising the general tone, making it more Christian or more worldly, yet no two of us exactly in the same place, no two of us exactly shaped alike, each molded by different influences, or by the same influences to a varying degree, each certain- ly acted upon by the spirit of our age, each powerfully, I trust, influenced by Christian- ity, and yet with our points of divergence, and forming a different estimate, if not of the main essentials of Christianity, yet of much that is very important and precious in its bearings and doctrines. But here comes the very important ques- tion, Is this diversity right ? Ought we to be content thus to differ ? I answer that it is not right absolutely and in itself, and that we ought not to be content with it. It is an imperfection of our present state, and we ought not to be content with an imperfec- tion. On matters of such eternal conse- quence as the truths of revelation, it is a necessity that we must have opinions, views, ideas. I do not shrink even from the unpop- ular word dogma. I do not see how Chris- tianity can exist without dogma ; for a dog- ma is but an intellectual conception of a truth, a form and mode of embodying and expressing it. And necessarily there must be 148 CHRISTIAN UNION. various degrees of correctness in these ideas and conceptions of what the Bible teaches us. Some must be more, some less true ; some more complete, others deficient, and falling short of the full meaning of the in- spired teaching. I know of no greater mis- fortune that could befall the Christian world than that we should become indifferent to truth, or suppose that there was no such thing as truth, or that we ought not to pur- sue it and make sacrifices for it, and if need be suffer for it. To love truth and follow it for its own sake is to add fresh nobleness to life ; and ill would it be for us if we were careless about it, or imagined that it was of small consequence whether we attained to truth or not. Such a cancer of indifference would eat far into the heart of every better and higher resolve. Truth is most precious, even if it were only because our beliefs af- fect our conduct, and that so far as we fall short of the truth, so far will our motives also be debased by the admixture of error in what we hold. But besides this, truth is precious for its own sake. If the stu- dent of science or philosophy or morals thinks his life well spent if he can add to man's heritage of knowledge, surely we who claim to have had truths revealed to us from heaven can justify our belief in such a reve- lation only by the genuine conviction that the knowledge of those truths was necessa- ry for us here upon earth. And is not the possession of truth part of our promised per- fection in the world to come ? Are we not told that there we are to know as also we are known ? Truth, therefore, we must love and follow after and cherish; and lest we should fall short of it, we must earnestly search into ourselves, that no selfish motive, no pride of reasoning, no unwillingness to be convinced, may shut us out from attaining to it. But what is to be our attitude toward those who differ from us? Now if there is any reason- ableness in what I hcive stated, divergence of opinion is a necessary condition of our present imperfection. We are here, first of all, in a state of progress. "We have not yet attained, neither are we already per- fect," and all, therefore, that we can do is " to follow after, if that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended of Christ Jesus " (Phil, iii., 12). But surely, if thus the knowledge of us all is imperfect ; if our state is not one of having attained, hut one of progress ; if at most we are but feelers and seekers after God, our feelings toward those who with us are also seekers after God should be one not of hostility, but of love. We fall far short ourselves of what we would gladly know ; and if they fall short too, or hold what we do not hold, and reject what we accept, yet they are en- gaged in the same quest as ourselves, and this very diversity is a necessary condition of our general advance. Look where you will, truth and the Bible are nowhere val- ued, except where there is discussion and free debate and iuquiry about them. Go where there is that mechanical unity which some men profess to value so much, where it is the Church's business to settle what is the faith, and you will find all practical in- terest in it gone. Wherever men value the Bible, they will search it for themselves, will form diverse opinions about it, will discuss it, and often, it may be, misunderstand and misuse it. So all things capable of being used are capable of being misused. It is the necessary result of the imperfection of our nature. But where there is no contro- versy and divergence of opinion, it is be- cause the truths of revelation are put aside, out of the way, apart from man's practical life. Unless we would wish the Holy Scrip- tures thus to be as though they existed not, we may well be content with the existence of rival denominations. They serve often to keep great truths from being practically lost and omitted from our view ; they in- fluence minds which otherwise might never be reached ; they are the luxuriant, even if irregular, outgrowth of vigorous life, and without them there would be the torpor of death. But there is a far graver consideration, and one that may make us look very seriously at this divergence of opinion, namely, that it is the result of our being responsible agents. We are accountable to God for what we be- lieve as well as for what we do. But respon- sibility implies freedom. We are not respon- sible for necessary acts, or acts done under compulsion. To reward or punish for deeds done without choice on our parts would be contrary to our first ideas of justice. So would it be to reward or punish for doctrines received at the dictation of others. There would be obedience and disobedience, noth- ing more. And if the belief imposed upon us were ruinous to our spiritual or mor- al nature, we should not be answerable for that result ; the responsibility Avould rest upon the Church. But if it matters what we hold, and we are accountable to God for our belief, we must be free ; and if we arc free, then too we are responsible. But sure- ly any one who felt his own responsibility would be slow and unwilling to judge other people. Right beliefs there are, and wrong beliefs ; and we must answer to God for the measure of truth we attain to, or fail in at- taining to, according to the opportunities vouchsafed us. And no one who felt this responsibility would willingly judge another. Ourselves standing at the bar, conscious of the many prejudices which have kept us away from the full light, sorrowing over the blindness of our passions and the narrowness of our intellects, and the one-sidedness of our reasons, and the many un worthinesses which R. P. SMITH : CHRISTIAN UNION AND DENOMINATIONAL DISTINCTIONS. 149 have made our beliefs so tangled a web of truth aud falseness, well might we shrink from judging others. They, it may be, have sought the light more prayerfully and ear- nestly than we have; or, if not, yet our searching has been too imperfect to justify us in pronouncing their sentence. It is the judge who pronounces sentence, not any of those who together are standing at the bar ; and I feel sure that every one Avho really felt how grave is the duty of searching out God's truth and living by it, would be so humbled by the sense of his own shortcomings that he would thankfully leave to that God on whose mercy he himself depended the task of inquiring how far others had made better or worse use than himself of God's gifts. I have in this but briefly sketched some considerations which may make us tolerant of the divided state of opinion existing at the present day. I have shown that it nec- essarily belongs to an imperfect state ; that it is essential to progress ; and that it must exist wherever the Bible is valued and stud- ied. Great activity in religious thought can not but lead to conflicting views and inter- pretations ; aud these, I have shown, are ab- solutely and in themselves an evil, though one of those infirmities with which we are now necessarily beset. I should have been glad, also, to have shown how much of essen- tial unity underlies our diversities, how much we hold in common, how many of the things that keep us apart are disputes on. matters of mere temporary and secondary interest, and how the work of the Holy Spirit on the believer's own heart can not but bind him closely to all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. But the full and proper treatment of these subjects belongs to oth- ers, while it was allotted to me rather to show that Christian unity does not involve the sacrifice, on our part, of what we suppose to bo truth, but the holding our views in a more Christian way. We too often push our points of difference into extreme prom- inence; we magnify those things whereon we disagree, and regard as nothing the vast com- mon ground whereon we are united. And then we suppose that all that we hold is ab- solutely certain. We are very hard upon the Pope, and yet there are but few men who have sense enough practically to doubt their own infallibility. And so, firmly be- lieving in ourselves, we condemn all those who differ from us. All this is natural, but wrong ; and we shall rise above it only by drawing nearer to Christ. He told his dis- ciples that they knew not of what spirit they were; and still we are of the spirit of the dis- ciples rather than of that of the Master. But by loving and meditating more upon the Master, we shall learn more of his gentle- ness, and so may his prayer be fulfilled that we all may be one in him ; and without giv- ing up our beliefs, without parting with one jot or tittle of what we regard as truth, may yet feel that too heavy a responsibility rests upon ourselves for us to condemn others; and that after all the true faith of Christ, however ready it may be to suffer for him, and to fol- low him withersoever he leadeth, will yet be a faith that worketh by love, that love which alone can heal our divisions, because it is the very " bond of peace," and the fulfillment of the whole law. SPIRITUAL UNITY NOT ORGANIC UNION. BY THE Rx. REV. GREGORY T. BEDELL, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Ohio. . AN allusion was made yesterday to the death of the venerable and beloved Bishop M'llvaine, which deeply touched me. The President will permit me, while thanking him for the brotherly words, to respond for a moment before entering on the duly ap- pointed subject. In the late Bishop of Ohio the Evangelical Alliance possessed a most devoted and conscientious friend, and the cause of evangelical truth a consistent, ear- nest, loving, eloquent advocate. Bishop M'llvaine had looked forward to this meet- ing with fervent hopefulness, believing that such a communion of souls kindred in the faith, and such a comparison of minds dedi- cated to the one cause of the Gospel, must by God's blessing result in clearer compre- hension of the great religious problems of the age, and the knitting closer of bonds of Christian fellowship. He realizes now what we are only praying for. In his absence I may speak of him, but will employ the fitting words of his intimate associate, like-minded, Bishop Lee, of Delaware, which, with many whom I am privileged to address to-day, will have a decided weight. " While thoroughly and affectionately at- tached to his own church, he delighted to recognize in others the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the manifestations of the mind which was in Christ Jesus. To acknowledge those who held the great foundation truths of the Gospel as brethren was to his mind no compromise of his principles. His supreme loyalty was given to Jesus, the Master of the House, and he embraced in his frater- nal sympathies all who bore the image of Christ Diverse and, in many instances, antagonistic tendencies were in him happily combined. His clear, comprehensive, and powerful intellect was softened by deep ten- derness. His constitutional warmth and vi- vacity were tempered and restrained by calm judgment and thorough self-control. His strong, earnest convictions were so regu- lated by charity as not to run into bitterness or bigotry. This native nobility was united with entire simplicity and unaffected affa- bility. He was a scholar without pedantry, and an orator without being declamatory. The intellectual and emotional, the medita- tive and the energetic, the intrepid and the considerate, were in beautiful combination. The fervor of his piety did not unfit him for the busy scenes of life, and lively interest in what transpired around him ; and efficient discharge of various duties did not damage the inner life of faith and communion with God." [Sermon of Bishop Lee, of Delaware, on the death of Bishop M'llvaine, of Ohio.] Those who knew Bishop M'llvaine rec- ognize the portrait ; and those who did not, remembering these characteristic delinea- tions, will be prepared to recognize him when they shall meet him in the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are writ- ten in heaven. With this brief tribute of respect to the memory of one of the greatest men of this generation, and of affectionate friendship, I pass to the subject assigned to me by the Committee: "CHRISTIAN UNION CONSISTENT WITH DENOMINATIONAL DISTINCTIONS." Protestantism has often been proclaimed a failure, merely because Protestants differ in methods of administration. Christian unity is often declared to be impossible, and any real expression of brotherhood among God's children by faith in Christ Jesns im- practicable, where denominational distinc- tions are conscientiously maintained. Ene- mies of Christianity are constantly ringing the changes on the divisions of Christendom. It is time that Evangelical Christians should affirm that unity does not depend on organic union. We have lost immeasurably by mag- nifying differences in form, minifying the unity of evangelical opinion, sentiment, and practice, and tacitly yielding to a current impression that Evangelical Christianity is in essence, in the very nature of the case, disintegrated. Let the truth be boldly af- firmed. Such is one purpose of this Confer- ence. Protestantism, indeed, is not a church. Evangelical Christianity is not a form of or- ganization. But neither of them is a mere negation, as enemies of the Gospel are fond of asserting. They are systems of positive truth, characterizing many churches. Nev- ertheless the unity of Christianity is inde- pendent of Protestantism, as well as of all other external expressions of the truth of Christ. It exists as a living, active reality of spiritual communion, consistent with, but in- dependent of, forms of organization.. Such is the principle that underlies this proposition. The proposition, however, opens a more dif- BEDELL : SPIRITUAL UNITY NOT ORGANIC UNION. 151 ficult discussion. The controversies of all Christian ages have turned largely on the great question, In what sense and in what de- gree the term Oneness of the Church is to be understood. If oneness of the Church is in- consistent with denominational distinctions, then, strictly speaking, there has been no oneness in the Church from the beginning. Denominational distinctions separate the great churches of the Latin and' the Greek faiths, and separate them from the Oriental churches. Distinctions are named between the Protestant Episcopal churches, distinc- tions in doctrine, in formularies, or in poli- cy ; as, for example, between the Church of England, and the Church of Sweden, and the Protestant Episcopal Church iu this country. Denominational distinctions sep- arate great Protestant churches in America from one another, and these from foreign churches. But oneness exists, nevertheless ; and in every age, as in this, "the Holy Cath- olic Church, the communion of saints," has been recognized of men and blessed of Christ ; forming sufficiently a whole, bound together by sympathies and unity of work which are sufficient to accomplish the pur- poses of the Holy Ghost. Upon this general question, however, it can hardly be expect- ed that we shall enter. A minor practical inquiry remains What measure, and what manner, of Christian un- ion are desirable, in order to express the one- ness of Christ's Church, and to further the Saviour's designs in establishing it ; it be- ing supposed that denominational differences will be maintained ? "Alliance" is a well -chosen term. It solves the question immediately by force of definition. It expresses all union expedient or possible among Christians who conscien- tiously differ in forms of administration ; while it admits full liberty of individual opinions, within a range agreed upon. Be- neath the broad shadow of this term we may express ourselves freely on the subject now under discussion. The term " union," employed in the proposition, is not felici- tous. It is not synonymous with unity. " Union " embraces the idea of organization, and implies a certain degree of human for- mations. "Organic Union" is the fuller and more definite expression. "Unity," on the contrary, conveys a purely spiritual idea. It has no relation to earthly or visi- ble forms. It exists independently of dis- tinctions which separate the children of God into national churches, or, in one nation, into various denominations. The terms " union " and "unity" not being synonymous, the proposition can hold good only as affirmed concerning spiritual unity, or communion. Organic Unity not impossible. The idea has been broached that even or- ganic union is not impossible among Chris- tian churches which hold the same evangel- ical doctrines, and this with only a partial re- linquishing of denominational distinctions. Certainly, it would be possible to unify the Church on an ancient historical basis, trench- ing only on those differences which are in- consistent with that form. But supposing this suggestion to be in advance of public sentiment, and impracticable at present, shall we silently submit to the opprobrium that the Church of Christ lacks unity because denominational differences exist ? This is a question of interpretation interpretation of providential facts and of the revealed will of Christ. Unity consistent icith Differences. 1. The significant fact remains, to which allusion has already been made, that denom- inational distinctions have existed within the Church from the beginning. They are not new things. They did not spring out of the Reformation, although made more prominent and easier of production since that era. They have existed for eighteen hundred years. One of the earliest facts in Church history is the separation of Chris- tians into sects and parties ; I will not say it is one of the saddest facts, for it is by no means certain that such a universal fact in our religious history, within a Church which has always been under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, is a subject of unmixed lamen- tation. There have been sadder facts than this. The crushing out of free thought and liberty of action by the despotism of Rome, which was a corollary of the attempt to force organic union on the followers of Christ, was a much sadder fact. Nor is it easy now to prove that the evil prevalence of ancient heresies which distracted the Church in ear- lier centuries was not quite as much the re- sult of the effort to suppress error by eccle- siastical force as of any principle of vigor in themselves. Certainly, since the era of the Reformation and of printing, since men have thought freely and uttered themselves with- out restraint, since instructed public senti- ment has been the only arbiter, no heresy has arisen in the Church comparable in its wide-spread disasters to that, for example, which called for the Council of Nice. If the results of organized and enforced union in suppressing denominational differences are to be measured, let the history of dog- mas and parties iu the Church of Rome be analyzed- Denominational distinctions have always existed in her body. Who does not know that contending sects are rending her frame to-day, under the mask of union, contending not less for religions and doctrinal principles than for policies ? Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans con- tend with the fiercest denominational ran- cor within an organization that is falsely proclaimed to be one and undivided. It is 152 CHRISTIAN UNION. a significant historical fact, anil I will for- bear to illustrate it further, that denomi- national differences have continued in the Church from the beginning. 2. They arise from natural causes, not so much from religious imperfections as from native differences. The first schism on rec- ord resulted from nothing worse than na- tional prejudices. However we may lament them and they are to be lamented, just as all disorders of the human frame or of the human mind are subjects of sorrow there is little prospect that denominational dis- tinctions will vanish from the present dis- pensation. They are the offspring of differ- ences in nervous temperaments, in mental constitutions, and in physical build. The Church of Christ can not think precisely alike in all its members, nor act with entire sympathy and harmony, until all minds run in the same groove, all nerves respond to the same impulse, and all bodies are framed on one model, and are equally free from dis- ease. 3. It follows that denominational distinc- tions are necessary results of liberty of thought and action. When Luther's success cut the shackles of religious opinion, de- nominationalism revealed itself without re- straint upon the Continent. A similar re- sult followed the slower-paced and more cautious reformation in England, happily with restraint. The Church of England lias never been free from parties from the wholesome influence of parties and the se- cret of its vigorous life has been liberty of difference, within the Scriptural bounds of its symbols. The Reformation was a resur- rection. A new life sprang out of the dead things among which the Church had become inanimate. And one of the most character- istic elements of that new life exhibits itself in denominationalism. However it may be applauded or deplored, it is a part of that grand revolution. Such revolutions never go back, and denominational distinctions can never be expected to disappear, unless mind can be again shackled, and liberty crushed. 4. Among the inexplicable, although ob- vious, methods of divine government is that which couples happiest moral ends with fiercest moral conflicts. As electrici- ty restores the equilibrium of atmospheric forces by awful convulsions as peace is the natural and necessary product of exhaust- ing wars as civilization, and arts, and com- merce, and tranquil industry, follow never except upon the footsteps of contending ar- mies, or after invasions by more advanced nations so, in the moral Avorld, truth is the resultant of controversies. Not always er- ror against error; not always half-truths against each other ; not always some whole truth against either, produces the desired result; but never does an ago reach truth pure and simple until that age has struggled for it, conflicting amidst falsehoods. My impression is that differences in the Church call them denominational, or by whatever name will bo more agreeable- differences in the Church exist according to a law, and are preservative of the pure truth of the Gospel. With this conclusion ecclesiastical history entirely coincides. This logic of facts has led such a writer as Dean Goulburn unwillingly to suggest that there may bo (what may be termed) a secondary law of Church structure ; and that when men's passions or prejudices re- fuse to be governed by the primitive law, the secondary becomes controlling. Dean Goulburn's words are, "When a primitive ideal is hopelessly frustrated, and the first best thing made impracticable by human sin and perverseness, God introduces a second best thing, and endows it with (at all events) a temporary sanction." (Dean Goulburn's Catechism on the Church.) We are cer- tainly living under a law which renders de- nominational distinction consistent with Chris- tian unity. This significant fact is to be clearly held and recognized. Considering the history of the Church, considering the principles on which the Holy Ghost has been guiding it, considering the constitution of the human mind, and human society, an experiment of unconditional union among all Christians would be perilous. Still, holding that a com- mon organic form having a historical basis, and allowing for denominational differences, is pos- sible, it is also certain that any organic union of Evangelical Christians formed to- day by the abandonment of conscientious religious distiuctions would, on the return of sober thought to-morrow, be split into a thousand fragments, disjoined forever. Unity Eealized. From this excursus among possibilities and improbabilities we return with grate- ful restfulness of heart to dwell upon that spiritual unity which has been realized. The unity of faith in the Son of God ; the unity of common regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost; the unity of love to Christ, and love in Christ to all who are Christ's ; the unity of loving work for Christ, which, amidst all distinctions of minor dog- mas, has a single eye for the glory of Christ and a single aim to develop his kingdom in every ransomed soul that is the unity of the Church. That is the unity which has been manifested in every age. That is the unity which Christ prayed for, and which was granted him, and which distinguishes and separates the Church of Christ from the world. In that solemn hour when the Head of the Church began his work of intercession, pray- ing not for the apostles alone, but for them also that should believe on him through their BEDELL : SPIRITUAL UNITY NOT ORGANIC UNION. 153 word, he did not speak concerning organic union. A true interpretation of our Saviour's language is also a just interpretation of the facts of ecclesiastical history. His mind was fixed on a spiritual unity only. " That they all may be one " so he prayed. Again and again his supplication went up, crowded with this thought of unity. " Holy Father, keep through thine own name those that thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." " One, as we are." " The world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also that shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may know that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." This is not a vision of organic un- ion. Could any thing visible realize that oneness between the Father and the Son? "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us ;" and " that they may be one " actually, positively, and as we are, so that the world may recognize the unity. This spiritual unity is to be the world's testimony. That ineffable union of the Father and the Son in adorable Godhead is not a union that can be seen a union that can be manipulated ; nor can any earthly un- ion that interprets it be of such a character that it may be increased or diminished by human will or by human consent, or'subject to any physical or external conditions. As the Unity in the Blessed Trinity is unde- fined, uumanifested, and spiritual, so is that oneness for which Christ prayed that it should ever characterize his Church. "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." That prayer has not remained unanswered through all these Christian centuries. That prayer has been fulfilled. Every age and generation has witnessed it. The Church is one, has been made perfect in one, has never failed of unity. In the darkest days of or- ganized Catholicism, the Catholic Church, the Church universal, the Church of living ones in Christ Jesus, the Church of his love and his acceptance, has always existed in his sight, recognized by his Spirit, accomplish- ing his purpose. In that unity all modes of holding truth coincide. With that unity denominational distinctions are entirely con- sistent. As we exhibit the loving principles of that Divine Unity, all the earthly that divides the spiritual brotherhood becomes secondary in thought, and the children of God realize their absolute and eterual one- ness. God be praised for whatever in Evangel- ical Alliance will nurture and fortify in our souls a sense of this spiritual unity in Christ Jesus our Lord ! THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS: MODES OF ITS PROMOTION AND MANIFESTATION. BY THE REV. ELIPHALET NOTT POTTER, D.D., President of Union Coll., Schenectady, N. Y. Together with a Communication from Professor TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D. REPRESENTING Union College, an institu- tion founded nearly a century ago upon the Christian basis of Evangelical Catholicity, I had hoped to ask you to receive 011 this occasion, in my stead, my honored coadjutor in. the Faculty, Dr. Tayler Lewis. Well known to you all, it were fitting that his nge, his experience, and his ripe scholarship should find voice on such an occasion, and in the discussion of such a theme. Prevent- ed from being here, he has sent me the ac- companying communication. I omit much that I had written, that I may, without ex- ceeding the assigned limits, embody his in- structive letter in this paper. The union of the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant, the union of each Christian soul with the blessed departed, is a reality, like that of the union of all the members of Christ now on the earth, in the one body of Christ. The hand may not see or know the foot, but the unity of the body is not the less a fact. All the members of Christ, whether conscious of the fact or no, are thus truly and vitally united in the one body of which Christ is the head. Living saints and dead but one communion make ; and if so, the fact that living saints are for the time as widely separated from each oth- er as they are from the blessed departed does not destroy the reality of their oneness in Christ. As the communion between the saints of the Elder Covenant and those of the latest ages, if it can not be more real, will yet be more clearly manifested in the future life, so in the future of this life we may hope that the means and methods for the visible inter- communion of saints will, through the ages all along, be more and more clearly revealed. Divided and doubting now, the members of the body of Christ are yet one family. If war sometimes rages, the Creed yet pro- claims the belief of Christendom in that ar- ticle, late to be introduced, but none the less fundamental to the faith, " I believe in the communion of saints." The signs of the times are not without tokens of encouragement. Is there not a tendency in the present mind of Christendom toward the establish- ment of a clearly recognized distinction be- tween the substance of the faith, that is to say, God, his Word, his Truth, and man's conception and expression of the faith, that is to say, the topics of scientific theology f While the substance of -the faith is unchange- able, yet theology as a science is seen in- viting discussion, admitting question, and requiring variety as well as accuracy in statement. Should not greater facilities be afforded for the uutrammeled study of the- ology? The instructor in the theological seminary has ofteuest to indoctrinate the pupil. There is danger, therefore, lest the facts of revelation, of history, and of meta- physical and physical science be made to bend to the supposed necessity of harmoni- zing with the theology taught, the unchan- ging truth of God. Facilities for the study of theology as a pure science are now, how- ever, increasing, and might readily be af- forded in connection with many institutions founded for the pursuit of higher education. It would then come to be more clearly un- derstood that iteration and reiteration is not demonstration; .and that while it is desir- able that definite belief should displace doubt, yet that mere verbal, parrot-like ut- terance is not Christian faith, faith being de- fined as (viroffTams) " the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In matters of faith the distinction needs to be understood between infallible author- ity and competent authority ; between that scheme of human infallibility which demands from the faithful an act of intellectual sui- cide, and that respect for adequate and com- petent authority which common sense ren- ders unhesitatingly in the ordinary affairs of life. Outward organic unity depends, doubt- less, upon unity in organic ideas. In the modes of its promotion, and the means for its manifestation already operative, have wo not encouragement to hope for the more per- fect manifestations hero on earth of the Com- munion of Saints ? 1. Christian Work. This point is consider- ed first in order because of our Saviour's declaration, "They that do my will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." POTTER: THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 155 The increase among all -who profess and call themselves Christians, of similar conceptions and methods of Christian work, tends to Christian unity. The establishment of free churches, the increase of Sunday-schools, the organization of woman's work, the encour- agement of lay co-operation, the realization that the body of a sin-sick world must be cleansed and healed, and the mind enlight- ened and elevated, if the soul is to be saved ; in these activities and ideas Christian work- ers are already almost at one. Egotistic ri- valry and wasteful excess of labor in some fields, contrasted with the abject and neg- lected needs of adjacent fields, must fill the earnest and thoughtful mind with an awful realization of the great danger the work of Christ is in through our unhappy divisions; and so tend to inspire the desire and prayer for organized co-operatiou, and for loving Christian intercommunion. 2. Christian Doctrine. We include under this general head both teaching and preach- ing, and also systems of ethics and apologet- ics,. Is it not evident that a truer concep- tion of the "proportion of the faith" is now becoming general? Great central truths are seen to be of supreme importance. Schools of theology, widely divergent in many re- spects, yet concur in the relative impor- tance which they attach to certain cardinal points of doctrine, when compared with ten- ets which they mutually regard as of less moment. The cross of Christ is declared by all to be the preacher's profoundest and most pregnant and essential theme. The prov- ince and nature of the teacher's work is rec- ognized in nearly the same terms by many different bodies of Christians. Ethical sys- tems are becoming more nearly identical throughout Christendom. In apologetics, representatives of every school now adopt the same general theory of evidence, and recog- nize as of moment the same general lines of defense. As men come to think alike, their convictions with reference to the oracles of God and the facts of history, whether civil or ecclesiastical, will become less discordant. It would thus seem to be practicable that, as with one heart, they desire the welfare of the Church of God, so with one mouth they should confess the faith once delivered to the saints. 3. Christian Felloicship. A point is gained when Christians deprecate their differences and come together in the spirit of love to discuss them. No fellowship can be real or effective while mutual misunderstanding and distrust exist. An interchange, therefore, of ideas is of importance. In this age it is forced upon the most retiring by the venti- lation, as it is called, of topics of general in- terest in the public prints. We gain in this way, if in no other, a healthful sense of what our fellow-men are thinking about, a knowl- edge of the opinions they are forming. But no correspondence, no study of the lives and writings of Christian men, can give us that knowledge of them which we gain by meet- ing them face to face in free and loving con- ference. Christianity has declared the de- struction of caste, and has proclaimed peace and good-will to man. Nations tend, under its influence, to consolidate in larger masses. The growth of intercommunication and of international law may yet substantially unite, in one higher and all-embracing na- tional relationship, the peoples of the world. The influences we are considering, together with the universal desire for Christian unity and the increasing opportunities for Chris- tian conference, are hastening, it would seem, the hour when, in place of earthly kingdoms, there shall be Christ's kingdom, and in place of the world, the Church of God. 4. The conception contained in the apos- tolic maxim, "Let every man be fully per- suaded in his own mind," is producing the increase of toleration and Christian charity. On the one hand there is a growing regard for the best results of modern science, and on the other an increased respect for those living churchly ties which bind redeemed humanity to the past. 5. If ecclesiastical history opens up agi- tating topics of discussion, there are other influences of culture which tend to peaceful agreement. Architecture and sestheflc feel- ing are doing their part in diffusing a com- mon sentiment and sympathy, not to say similarity, in the accessories of worship. 6. Without suppressing the voice of indi- vidual utterance, ancient liturgies are gain- ing a firm hold in the hearts of all Christian people, and are thus tending to facilitate in- tercommunion by their general use as the mother tongue of Christendom. 7. So, too, is it with the increasing observ- ance throughout Christendom of its great historic anniversaries in the system of the Christian year. The assimilative power of the nation which enables it to receive indi- viduals of every race, and to make of them in many states but one people, should enable it to receive elements of good from every part of Christendom, that in God's own time there may be realized the prophetic vision of the Church, which, in its embracing in- tercommunion, shall be one Church. 8. Music is the Evangel of the Commun- ion of Saints. Hymnals are effective pleas for unity. Congregational singing is de- structive of the isolation of individualism, and the Church militant, in its march heav- enward, unites its voices, advancing to the note of hymns familiar to every tongue and dear to every heart, as are those words, " Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee." 9. For the Communion of Saints, for true Christian unity, myriads are praying. God's 156 CHRISTIAN UNION. answer would seem to bo reflected in the spirit of those ancient words, "In essen- tials, unity; in non - essentials, liberty ; in all things, charity;" since, Christian liberty and love are the essentials of abiding unity. Meantime each individual will be tempted, at least in thought, to hold that Christen- dom, to bo one, must bo drawn within the circle of belief in which ho dwells, and which ho thinks to be the very citadel of the truth of God ! 10. It may, therefore, be with the divine science of theology as it has been with the science of the heavenly bodies. Individu- als have contributed, by persevering efforts, to the final triumph, who were in theory farthest from any adequate conception of the truth. The superstitious but observant astrologer could furnish data for the astron- omer. Tycho Brahe, who doubted the Co- pernican system of the universe, could yet accumulate facts from which Kepler should adduce his three great laws, while Newton, by a higher generalization, included in one law the work of his predecessors. Thus it may be with the science of theology. Much may be achieved by the reverent and ardu- ous study of divine truth; much will be achieved by the prayers of the faithful, till " we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Sou of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Finally, although the systematic order and organic relation of all the members in the one body of Christ, together with the modes of promoting and the means for man- ifesting Christian unity, be not yet clear to all, still on Scriptural grounds we must hold that, like the hidden potency of gravity in the material universe, the Communion of Saints is a vital and ever-present fact in the spiritual universe. The force of gravity was potent before its law was demonstrated. The universe is neither created nor imperil- ed by the clashing theories of materialists, nor docs it depend for its continuance upon the success of rival schools in their attempts to formulate its facts. As the orderly rela- tion of the heavenly bodies existed before the first ray elucidating the system dawned upon the human intellect, so with the Com- munion of Saints that system which em- braces the countless hosts of God's elect. " They that be wise shall shine as the bright- ness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." And though "now" we know but in part, though now we see but as in a glass that is dim the reflected image, " then " the brightness already dawning shall break in upon the soul, in the full revelation of the unity of the many in the One ; the com- munity of saints and angels, as of countless stars in that one vast system of which Christ is the central and the everlasting light! Voices like to the music of the spheres may bo heard by the ear of faith echoing and re- echoing through the ages that great high- priestly prayer of our Divine Lord (last ut- tered, in its fullness it may bo the last to bo answered): "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in theo, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." With the following valuable letter referred to in the opening sentence, I may most fitly close the further consideration of the sub- ject in this paper. Union College, Sept 30th, 1873. MY DEAR FRIEND, I have been thinking much on our late conversation, and its principal topic, the article of the Creed in relation to the " Communion of Saints." Other ideas have oc- curred to me ; and I know that you will not deem me obtrusive or impertinent if I give them a writ- ten form, though in an epistolary way that will not allow of close connection or logical regular- ity. Take them, then, in the off-hand style in which they have presented themselves to my mind. The Communion of Saints implies a commu- nity of Saints, as a recognized body in distinction from a mere social sympathy. It is not a feel- ing of nearness simply, or of affection toward in- dividuals whom we may esteem Christians, but the recognition of "a people," a "people of God," a choice community among the other com- munities of the earth a divine community, yet having a history and a visibility in this world, and, at the same time, a TroXirtv/ia iv ovpavolg, a "citizenship in the heavens" (Phil. Hi., 20), more real than any tie that binds together any earthly organization, social or political. In oth- er words, it is not a mere spiritual communion, if we mean by that term one of feeling merely, of taste, or thought. Christianity, or Christen- dom, if the term is preferred, is not a school, either of art or of philosophy. It is not a mere brotherhood, however precious may be the idea conveyed by that word. The Communion of Saints is truly organic. There is a real head- ship, a real membership a "membership one of another." But upon that topic I would not dwell. There is not time nor space for the dis- cussion of an idea that carries us so far, and which, in the present state of Christendom, is attended with so many difficulties. These diffi- culties will doubtless be surmounted. We should never let go, or loosen our tenacious hold upon the idea : The Church was one in the beginning visibly and organically one and it will be such in the end. Such, too, is it now, notwith- standing the appearances of rupture and disorgan- ization that may be charged upon it, or that do actually exist. Its real visibility is its antago- nism to a world lying in wickedness ; and while this shows itself, its true visible unity can not be lost, either in a broad subjectiveness, or in an imposing outward formality that retains the name without the substance. "Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world." The very language implies diffi- culty, instead of a smooth, labor-saving, thought- saving doctrine of objective or personal infalli- bility. It is not said, the Church, even as a POTTER: THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 157 whole, shall never err, it shall never be in dark- ness, it shall never have its outward organiza- tion impaired, it shall never have to struggle with corruptions, it shall -never be torn by dis- ruptions, such as corruption breeds and necessi- tates. "Lo, I am with you." The very style of the address is a forecasting of stormy times. It indicates deeper perils than those that come from fierce encounters with the world with- out, or the direct blows of infidel persecution. These are the least of the forces with which om- nipotent grace has to contend. "Lo, I am with you," implies still nearer dangers, more inward disorders, such as demand the physician as well as the conqueror, the healing as well as the hero Messiah. It is not the world merely, but diffi- culties, defections, spiritual diseases within, pro- duced by worldly contact, or the Church's long war with so poisonous and malarious an adver- sary. Instead of an objective or oracular infalli- bility, either in the universal body, or in some single individual as an earthly head, this testa- mentary language seems to intimate that the Church is not only fallible, but that it will be al- ways in danger of failing sometimes of failing grievously. There stands the promise of event- ual triumph ; but it is as something ever to be prayed for, notwithstanding as though shipwreck were ever imminent to a vessel sailing on so tem- pestuous a sea. An infallible Church, infallible in itself or in some individual earthly head, could have no spiritual probation. To this end it must encounter storms, seasons of peril, not apparent only, but tremendously real. There may have to be the cutting away of masts, the throwing over- board of cargo. The outward form may be sad- ly marred. Breaches may be demanded by the very work of healing. Deep wounding may be necessary for the better binding up of fractures made by worldliness and corruption. There may be great apparent disorganization, but the prom- ise, "Lo, I am with you, "is the warrant for be- lieving that there will never be a total loss of that visible organic unity, however simple, or com- plex, or, for the time, irregular its form, which was in the beginning, and will be in the end. Such periods as the lleformation are but the ful- fillment of the promise. Division is never to be treated as a good per se. I can never go with those who regard denomina- tional distinctions as things totally innocent or indifferent, much less as desirable. But how is there to be brought about a closer organic unity, an ecclesiastical polity, which shall be something more than an Evangelical Alliance, or a mere ex- hibition, however precious that maybe, of frater- nal Christian feeling ? I feel my utter inability to give any thing like a satisfying answer to such a question. "God only knows," as the devout Mohammedan says ; HE alone can solve the prob- lem. Our duty is to believe that he will solve it, and therefore to hold ourselves in readiness for such solution whenever the course of Providen- tial events shall indicate its coming. In the mean time, certain other duties are remarkably clear. There must be no more division. May that man be anathema who seeks to create a new sect. Let union, ecclesiastical union, take place without delay between those bodies that are di- vided by the least interval. Let the last parting be the first coming together. Let it be deeply impressed on every mind that the greatness of the sin of schism is in the inverse ratio of the smallness of the dividing interval. Let it be felt that the great organic union prayed for is more likely to be effected by the steady approach of bodies than by any spasmodic proselyting of in- dividuals. When a man suddenly jumps from one boat to another, the most probable effect is the driving the two vessels farther apart espe- cially if he turns round, and, as is too often the case, hurls his missiles at those whom he has left, or manifests a new zeal offensive, by its ex- cess, even to those whose company he has joined. In such a case as this, let no Christian be gov- erned by taste merely, or oesthetical preference, tempting him to leave a plainer organization, or a plainer worship, for one deemed more beauti- ful and imposing. The taste may be innocent, and even holy, and yet the denial of its gratifica- tion demanded by considerations of what may aid or hinder the great cause. In other words, ev- ery member of an Evangelical Church, in which "the pure Word of God is preached, and the sac- raments are administered according to Christ's ordinance," should stay where he is, and where birth, baptism, and God's providence have placed him, faithfully laboring in such body for the great cause of ecclesiastical unity, ever praying and ever watching for that more perfect consumma- tion which God alone can bring about. Above all should he avoid every word and every deed which may in the least impede or discourage such a result, allowing nothing, unless it be a supposed peril to his salvation, to. change a purpose thus formed. In the present state of the Church, there is a duty preparatory to outward schemes for a closer ecclesiastical organization. They will be in vain without the cultivation, in each separate body, of a Churchly feeling in distinction from the me- chanical Ecclesiasticism of Rome on the one hand, and the extreme broad Churchism, or loose subjectiveness of ultra-Protestantism, on the oth- er. It can not be denied that in the revulsions of the Reformation, and more evidently since, there has been a departure which must be re- gained. There has been not a loss, but an ob- scuring, or, rather, a suffering to lie obsolete of certain ideas which must be stamped with a new impression, if the modern Church would firmly link itself with the past. Surely it needs no proof that one characteristic of our most modem thinking is the tendency to an extreme individu- alism. Church and State both show it. The true idea of the latter is ritnning down to that of a mass meeting or lynch law mob, re-asserting the inherent sovereignty of each atom of which it is composed. The "compact " theory, deriv- ing government solely from the individual assent, can most easily be proved to be false ; but it is destroying the proper idea of the civic organism as ordained of God. So in theology and anthro- pology. There is no humanity, it is held, except as an abstraction or figure of speech ; only indi- vidual men. There is no God-created and Satan- tempted humanity, by partaking of which indi- viduals become men. Any one who studies this must see how it affects the doctrines of the hu- man fall and the human redemption, or that problem of the first and second Adam which finds its only solution in the true idea of the Church. In some of its aspects, our most mod- ern science carries still further this extreme disor- 158 CHRISTIAN UNION. ganizing nominalism. There is nothing generic, nothing specific, no fixed being, no universals of any kind, only individual atoms. All things else that may seem to be are but the overflowing changes and combinations of these, the only eter- nal and unchanging realities. Such are the ex- tremes of the tendency ; but in a more moderate degree it affects the mind of our Protestant churches, and must be counteracted if we would cultivate a true churchly feeling, or believe in the Church as any thing more than a mass aggregate of undefined irregularities. Closely allied to this is the false humanitarianism, or that which views man irrespective of those ideas of ruin and re- demption which can alone give birth to a true philanthropy those doctrines apparently so se- vere, but which alone contain the true milk of human kindness. What I would express in the most general terms is that there can not be any true organic action and it had better not be at- tempted by us until a firm basis can be found in the cultivation of organic ideas. Aside from this, it would be like the attempt at building a structure with separate pebbles, without variety and without cement to hold them together. Such would be all political or social compacts, all religious alliances, that have no other adhe- sion than what comes from this inorganic and unchurchly individualism. There are other churchly ideas which must be thus cultivated previous to a successful organic action. I can barely touch upon them. There is, first of all, the idea. of the mystic union be- tween Christ and believers, whether regarded as flowing from, or as constitutive of, union between Christ and his Church that "great mystery" which the apostle symbolizes by the marriage relation. As a fact ineffable, nothing is more clearly taught in the Scriptures. In its rationale it is something into which the archangels "might stoop down to look." I am too poor a Christian for the discussion of a theme so holy. I can not even touch upon it without a feeling of intrusion into a mystery too sacred for my poor measure of faith. As &fact believed, as something more than a moral influence, or intellectual agreement, or emotional sympathy, it certainly entered most deeply into the mind of the early Church. "Men i n Christ " Christophoroi, ' ' Christ-bearers " they called themselves. It was no mer.e figure, but the most sublime of realities. It was no mere term of discipleship, much less any mere nom- inalistic generalization, but the solid ground of their purest churchly feeling. There can only be expressed the deep conviction that in the re- vival and re-impression of this idea is to be found the most efficient aid to a true spiritual commun- ion. Then, too, when it becomes predominant in Christian hearts, there may disclose itself more clearly that way of visible outward realization to which we all are looking. In the mean time, there are two practical considerations, of highest importance, that present themselves as flowing from this idea, in itself so ineffable. Are be- lievers truly Christophoroi, " Christ-bearers ?" then should we regard no error, whether in rela- tion to doctrine or to Church organization, so perilous as the rejection of any one with whom we have reason to believe Christ dwells. In the second place, if we think of ourselves as in mem- bership with this sacred body, then the humblest Christian, the most ignorant, the most unculti- vated, the most lowly in the social scale, should be deemed nearer to us, more esteemed, more beloved, not merely aesthetically, condescending- ly, sentimentally, but truly, heartily, practically, than the most cultivated, the most learned, the highest in earthly rank, that belongs not to the family of Christ. I would turn to other and plainer views con- nected with this general theme. The Com- munion of Saints has its historical aspect, the thought of which is most important to be re- vived at the present day. Nothing is more un- churchly than that mode of thinking and feeling which separates us from the past as though it were a chapter closed, and our present Christian- ity a thing by itself, the same as though it were now anew established in the earth. I allude not now to councils, or to ordinal successions, or to Church history as a mere recorded series of events from which we are to learn or from which we are to take warning, but to that great vital continuance to which the name Church may be given as well as to any existing congregation. No man can carefully read ecclesiastical history without seeing that there has been all along a most real life, most distinctly separated from the worldly life. There is the line of unearthly char- acters, the product of an unearthly power a per- petual miracle, an unbroken series of such un- earthly manifestations, extending from the Apos- tolical through the Patristic, the Roman, the Me- diaeval, the Protestant, the Modern Church. It is the line in which appear Paul, Cyprian, Au- gustine, Anselm, Bernard, Luther, Calvin, Pas- cal, Hooker, Ken, Edwards, Chalmers, down to our own times. It is not a mere fancied catena, with links arbitrarily supplied. This stream of life .flows on amidst all the apparent confusion cf ecclesiastical history. Let infidels say, too, what they will about the endless diversity of creeds ; there has been all along this stream of vitality a marvelous unity of belief. "All these died in faith, holding fast ' the doctrines of grace. 1 " It is the best name that can be given to that system of truth distinguished from all other by the deep impression it has ever made, and the incalculable importance its recipients ever attached to it the tenacious truth, ever holding its own, ever recovering from attack, and from which all divergencies have ever wan- dered more and more until lost in the utter dark- ness of atheistic infidelity. It differs, too, from all other views by this decided mark that it ever makes religion a great and fearful thing. Re- jecters have ever been afraid of it. This was its essential orthodoxy, as it may be described with- out any theological technics : a great perdition from which to be rescued, a great and most real peril to man, a great salvation, a great and di- vine Saviour. Those who in their hearts hold these ideas as thus generally presented can not be said to differ much in any more specific state- ments of orthodoxy. Grace is the significant word grace as distinct from every idea that ever springs from any mere earthly thinking. Man ruined by himself, and saved by God ; lost in Adam, found in Christ. Here has been the Church, the visible Church visible in the light of this Word. With this Church we should love to be in communion, to agree with it in doctrine, to interpret by it, and with it, the Word of God. The opposite feeling, which ever delights in some- POTTER : THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 159 thing new, new views of doctrine, new interpre- tations of Scripture, every thing, in short, that separates us from the past, or which feeds the unnatural thought that the Lux Mundi has been darkness for 1800 years, or until our light has been thrown upon it this is heresy, the spirit of heresy, which is a bad feeling, a bad, unchurchly, separating, individualizing state of soul, rather than any peculiar opinions in themselves consid- ered. So, on the other hand, a love to agree, a strong desire to think with the godly mind of all ages, a sorrow at differing from it, a most careful examination and re-examination of private judg- ment when it leads that way this is orthodoxy. The definition may not be very logical for the head, but it is clear to the Christian heart. Let me mention, as closely allied to this, an- other of these churchly ideas that we should cul- tivate. It is that of the Church in Paradise : "One people of the living God, One Church above, below; Part of the host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now." Here, too, a just revulsion from the Romish abuse has driven the Protestant mind too far in the other direction. The thought of the Christian dead not merely of the near and known de- parted, but of the Christian dead of past ages has too little hold on our Protestant churches. It is not that we do not think of them at all, but that we do not think of them as in unbroken com- munion with the Church on earth. Rome might seem to have the advantage here, and it might be conceded, were it not for the abuse she has made of it in the doctrine of Purgatory, and of priestly deliverance. But surely there is a lack here, in Protestant Christendom, that may be confessed. There might be religious services in connection with this idea, memorial worship, without any sanction of Rome's awful error, and furnishing, in fact, the most direct mode of con- demning it. Such memorial worship there might be, unconnected with any idea of peril to those who sleep in Christ, while full of the richest spir- itual nourishment to the souls of the living. With another thought I will bring my discur- sive letter to a close " The people of God." I have already alluded to the preciousness of the expression. "The elect of God." As a Calvinist, I am very fond, too, of that term ; but the other is the one in which we can better harmonize. It is suggestive of another phrase, having also, when rightly viewed, a high churchly value "The Word of God," the Holy Scriptures, or the Word of God written, in its close analogy with the Word incarnate. The one phrase presents a significance inseparable from the other. The "Word of God" can not be disjoined in idea from the "People of God." Aside from this, it is simply "a book," as some of the Rationalists have contemptuously called it. Even as "a book " of written or printed characters, it has an inestimable value. It is the record, the conserv- ing vehicle ; but, strictly speaking, it is not the Word itself. The completeness of that idea de- mands an ear, a soul to which it is addressed. Nor is this a mere verbal or air-beating proposi- tion. The ' ' Word of God " demands a ' ' People of God," to whom it is the Word, and without which it is, in a religious sense, Vox, et prceter- ea nihil not in stone, or wood, or parchment printed, but in human hearts, in the collective heart of the new humanity. It is this which makes it the " living W'ord" Aoyof rov QEOV &v Kai ivepyrjq (Heb. iv., 12) having its power, its very being, in the souls of God's people, the uni- versal churchly mind. I barely touch upon it in this imperfect way to show the connection of ideas, and as a protest against that view which would lock it up in convents and libraries, to be doled out in a sort of priestly alms-giving, even if such doling were any thing more, in most cases, than the sheerest pretense. Protestants have been charged with Bible worship; but, as thus regarded, the love of the Holy Scriptures, leading to their devout and universal study, is one of the most churchly of affections. It is not only the voice of God in the Church, but the vernacular language of the "People of God," the expression of their life, more valuable as such than any mere exegetical accuracy. You who know my favor- ite pursuits will certainly not suspect me of un- dervaluing the latter ; but, after all, learned exe- gesis has its chief worth as a conservative influ- ence, exercising a proper check upon the devout imagination, but leaving the great heart of Scrip- ture as it has ever affected the pious mind in all ages of Christendom from Jerome to Matthew Henry. There is truth, then, in the idea of the Bible being the book of the Church, and of the Church being its true interpreter. But, this must not be caricatured. It does not mean that, when perplexed witli a difficult passage in Job, I am to send for light to the infallible one in Rome, or to the parish priest as his most accessible tem- porary delegate. Even that would be an exercise of my private judgment, though a very foolish one. Church interpretation is a very different thing from this. I am to realize the precious idea by seeking, as far as I can obtain it, the mind of that old, unearthly, churchly series of unearthly men. I must seek the spiritual food on which they lived. Those hearty, practical interpretations of Scripture which are thus sanc- tioned as belonging to this living catena, I should love. I ought to rejoice in agreement. I ought to feel pain if the most honest and faithful exege- sis compelled a difference. I should believe that, even in their outward errors, they were nearer the heart of the Giver of that Word than the dry ex- egete. whose whole mind is upon the letter that only killeth when that life is wanting and that voice is not heard. I have done injustice to this latter topic, but you will pardon it as an attempt to set forth one of the most precious of organic ideas that must be cultivated as preparatory to any successful or- ganic action. The Bible and the Church ; he is no friend of either who would regard one as in any aspect, or in any degree, excluding the other. Any organization that calls itself the Church, and yet locks up the Word which God has addressed to his people, thereby proves its great deficiency, if not the utter falseness of its claim. If any thing in what I have written has the ap- pearance of being too dogmatic, ascribe it to the difficulty of expressing briefly ideas that seemed of so much importance. With Christian affec- tion and esteem, yours truly, TATLER LEWIS. To the Rev. President POTTEB, D.D. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS MODES OF ITS PROMOTION AND MANIFESTATION. BY THE REV. C. DALLAS MARSTON, M.A., Vicar of St. Paul's, Onslow Square, London. THE article of the Christian Creed* -which expresses belief iu the communion of saints is one of comparatively late introduction ; bat the truth declared by the expression is a fundamental one, based upon the Word of God, full'of the richest comfort, and well cal- culated in its realization to promote to the highest extent the holiness and prosperity of the Church of Christ. In order to appre- ciate the force of the article '' I believe in the communion of saints" it will be neces- sary to define the word Communion, and to keep the definition constantly iu view. Communion is more than intercourse ; though the word is frequently used in a loose sense, as if it meant nothing more as when we speak of "a season of refreshing com- munion between Christians." Communion Koivwvia (comp. KOIVWVOG, Philem. 17 ; -01, Luke v., 10) is properly fellowship; a partic- ipation enjoyed by those who are mutually concerned, in things which they hold in com- mon. By the covenant of grace the believer is taken into certain relations with God, with each Person of the Holy Trinity ; and those relations insure fellowship, participa- tion, communion in the particular blessings which, according to revealed arrangements, each Person of the Trinity vouchsafes to con- fer. Again, the relations with God estab- lish a relation among believers themselves, as among those who are interested iu the same Father, the same Saviour, the same Sanctifier. The communion, then, or fellow- ship of the saints (>; KOIVWVIO. rStv ayiwv, com- municatio sanctorum), is the mutual partic- ipation of the saints in all those matters which pertain to them as the people brought into covenant with God ; and the phrase thus understood will prove to be a, most comprehensive one, involving, and indeed ex- pressing, a guarantee of the highest privi- leges to the possession of which men are in- troduced by the gracious purposes of Re- deeming Love.t L. The comprehensiveness of the phrase will best be seen by a reference to the pas- sages of the New Testament in which men- tion is made of the fellowship to which the Pearson, "Creed, in Art" "The communion of saints is a holy conjunction between all God's people," etc.-O.wen, Principles of the Doctrine of Christ, ch. xxv. believer is admitted. Observe the following as speaking of it generally : " Our fellowship (Koivtavia) is with the Fa- ther and Avith his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John i.,3). " God is faithful, by -whom ye were called unto the fellowship (icoivuviav) of his Son Je- sus Christ" (1 Cor. i., 9). "The communion (KOIVOIVIO) of the Holy Ghost be with you all" (2 Cor. xiii., 14). " If there be any fellowship (noivuvid) of the Spirit" (Phi}, ii.,1). "The things which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship (icoivuviav) with us (1 John i., 3). To these may be added the passage in the seventh verse of the first chapter of St. John's First Epistle : " If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellow- ship (Koivwviav) one with another;" which may refer either to the fellowship between believers, or which I believe to be prefer- able the fellowship between the believer who walks iu the light and God who is him- self the Light. What a view is here given of the exalted condition of the spiritual Christian ! With the Eternal Father, with Jesus in all his full- ness, with the Holy Ghost, with every fellow- disciple of the heavenly Lord, he is made a partaker. Special ties bind him to each of these ; special joys flow from the existing union ; special duties claim performance. ; special privileges bring their honor and de- light. "Oh ! child of God oh ! Glory's heir, How rich a lot is thine." I must ask you to glance briefly at the several branches of this fellowship or com- munion, as indicated by the Scriptures just now quoted when compared with parallel passages. We can not bestow more than a glance, as the time necessarily forbids any attempt at dwelling'upon the several points, although their attractiveness might well en- chain us with a never-failing power. We will keep close to the teaching of the New Testament, using, indeed, for the most part, its very words. i. Our felloicship or communion is with the Father. " Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear ; but ye have re- ceived the Spirit of adoption, whereby wo MARSTON : THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 161 cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. viii., 15). The Eternal God regards the believer as his child, and the fatherly relation secures (1) A share in his nature. " Behold -what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the chil- dren of God" (1 John iii., 1). As those "be- gotten again" unto a living hope, "born again of incorruptible seed" (1 Pet. i., 3, 23), there are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might be partakers of the divine nature (Geiac KOIVUVOI vfft(ae) (2 Pet. i., 4). ' (2) Because of this there is granted to us a share in the Father's light. " God is Light. ... If we say that we have fellowship (KOIV.) with him, and walk in darkness, we lie . . . but if we walk in the light, as he is iu the light, we have fellowship (Koivmviav) one with another" (1 John i., 5-7). Those who walk in light do so because the Light vouchsafes to dwell in them and shiue forth from them ; so that the light of their life is really the divine presence communicated to them, and exhibiting itself in their deeds and words. (3) Believers also have a fellowship in the Father's kingdom. They are his heirs (K\>J- povofioi [Rom. viii., 17]) ; interested now in the inheritance as those who are made kings unto God (Rev. i., 6), and with a prospect before them described in this glowing lan- guage : " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has begotten us again ... to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, reserved in heaven" (1 Pet. i., 3, 4). Such is the communion or fellowship of the saints with the' Father fellowship se- curing a share in his nature, his light, his kingdom fellowship most intimately af- fecting the believer's standing, his life, and his future portion. ii. Again : Our fellowship is with his Son Je- sus Chrtet. We are one with Christ and Christ with us. Union with Jesus by faith involves (1) Fellowship with him in life. Behold in Jesus "the Prince of Life" (rbv apwybv rrjc wije [Acts iii., 15]). And he speaks thus, " Abide in me and I in you" (John xv., 4). " Because I live ye shall live also " (John xiv., 19). "Christ, who is our life" (Col. iii., 4), has declared, "He that eateth me" he that partakes of me as the living bread of the soul "even he shall live by me" (John vi., 57). (2) Fellowship in righteousness also re- sults from union with Jesus. Behold in him "the Lord our righteousness" (Jer. xxiii., 6). Incorporated in him the believer has all that he can bestow. To use the words of Hooker, " The man being found in Christ through faith, him God accepteth iu Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous as if he had ful- filled all that is commanded him iu the law: 11 shall I say more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law ? I must take heed what I say ; but the apostle saith, ' God made him which knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the right- eousness of God in him ' " (Serm. ii., 6). (3) With this there is fellowship in grace. Behold in Jesus the one to whom the Fa- ther hath given the Spirit without measure (John iii., 34). And is it not written, " Of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace ?" (John i., 16). And again, " Bless- ed be God . . . who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph.i., 3). (4) There is also for us fellowship in his sufferings. Behold in Jesus the " man of sor- rows and acquainted with grief" (Isa.liii.,3). To him, the Head, must the members be con- formed ; though, indeed, we do not reckon upon this, and are too prone to forget or overlook it. But we are "joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him" (Rom. viii., 17). And the illusions to this in the New Testament are interesting from the use which the inspired writers make of the very word Koivuvid, or KOIVUVOQ, when speak- ing on the point, as may be seen by referring to 2 Cor. i., 7 ; Phil, iii., 10 ; 1 Pet. iv., 13. (5) We have, too, with Jesus, fellowship in glory. Behold him as the exalted Prince to whom all power is given (Acts v., 31 ; Matt, xxviii., 18). Now listen to his words : " The glory which Thou gavest me I have given them" (John xvii., 22). " He that overcom- eth, to him will I give power over the na- tions, and he shall rule them . . . even as I received of my Father" (Rev. ii., 26, 27). " To him will I grant to sit with me in my throne " (Rev. iii., 21 ). Therefore Peter wrote, " I am a partaker (KOIVWVOG) of the glory that shall be revealed ;" and John, " I am a com- panion (vvyKotvuvoe) in the kingdom of Je- sus Christ." Such is the fellowship or communion of the saints with the Son ; which, like that with the Father, concerns the believer's standing in life and righteousness, his present course in action and suffering, and his future man- ifestation in glory. iii. The saints enjoy also the fellowship of the Spirit. " He hath given us of his Spirit" (1 John iv., 13). "God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts" (Gal. iv.. 6). In touching upon this, I will but pass- ingly remind you that by this fellowship we are made partakers of all the sanctifying in- fluences of the Holy Ghost, as well as of all his consolations. Then more especially let me direct you to some words in our Lord'o parting discourse to his disciples, which give to one particular of the communion of the Holy Ghost a prominence which is, I fear, much overlooked. In the 15th chapter of St. John's Gospel, at the 26th and 27th verses, the words of Jesus are these: "When the 162 CHRISTIAN UNION. Comforter is conic. ... Ho shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness." Here, then, is fellowship with the Spirit in testi- mony to Christ. What a glorious privilege is this to be placed, so to speak, on the same level, to occupy the same platform, with the Spirit, to share his special work of witness- ing among men to the grace and love of Je- sus our Lord ! Thus, while contemplating from the reve- lations of Scripture the communion which the believer has with God, it is as though in a heavenly vision each Person of the Trinity draws nigh and speaks after this manner to the trusting and expectant soul: "I possess such or such benefits and privileges. I ad- mit thee to a share in them. As the Fa- ther, as the Son, as the Spirit, I make thee a partaker (KOIVUVOS) ; I bless thee with com- munion (KOIVUVIU). Thon shalt participate in all the riches of grace and glory which, in the economy of redemption, it is my prerog- ative to bestow." Oh ! with what joy, beloved in Christ, should such thoughts as these fill our souls ! What earnestness should they excite within us to make the due return on our part to the God of all grace, that the communion with Him may be as complete as possible. For this fellowship, remember, is mutual. God condescends to establish it with us; we are privileged to maintain it with him. Let us enter more fully into its joys : toward the Father, by the exercise of love, trust, wor- ship, and obedience; to ward the Son, in faith, imitation, and gratitude ; toward the Spirit, by walking . after his guidance, and by not grieving him or quenching his influences. iv. We have now to consider the communion which the saints have with one another. I here omit all reference to that communion which .may exist with the angels or with the Church triumphant,* as well as to the mere- ly external fellowship between the real and the merely nominal disciples of the Lord, and will but notice a few passages of the New Testament which afford instructive illustra- tion of this part of the subject. I will quote some lines from Pearson's "Exposition of the Creed" (p. 663, Chcval- lier's edition) : " The saints of God living in the Church of Christ have communion with all the saints living in the same Church. . . . We all have benefit of the same ordinances, all partake of the same promises; we are all endowed with the graces of the same Spirit, all united with the same mutual love and af- fection, keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace ; all ingrafted into the same stock, and so receiving life from the same root; all holding the same Head, from which all the body, by joints and bands hav- ing nourishment ministered and knit to- * On the communion between 1he Church triumph- ant and the Church militant, gee Owen, "On the Per- 8011 of Christ," chap. xx. gether, iucreaseth with the increase of God ; . . . and being (i.e., since) the Head of the body is Christ, and all the saints are mem- bers of that body, they all partake of the same nourishment, and so have all commu- nion among themselves." As I have just said, the nature of this fel- lowship will receive instructive illustration from some notices of it which may be found in the New Testament. When St. Luke describes the state of things which characterized the early disci- ples, he tells us that they continued stead- fastly in fellowship, ry KOIVWVIQ (Acts ii., 42). There was among them a realization and ex- hibition of their common blessings ; their unity, their mutual interest, and care. The words of St. Paul to the Romans, " The Gentiles have been made partakers (tKoivw- vtjffav) of their spiritual things" (xv., 27), teach us that the blessings of the Gospel an- imate the soul with the desire to receive and welcome others to the enjoyment of them. With snch a feeling it was that the apostle wrote, " I thank my God for your fellowship (KOIVWV'K}.) in the Gospel" (Phil, i., 3, 5). There are two very interesting passages, one in Gal. vi., 6, and the other in Phil, iv., 15, which show the result of Christian fel- lowship in the kindly feelings of the general brotherhood toward those who minister to them the Word of God. " Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto (KOI- voivtiTw, let him exercise fellowship with; him that teacheth in all good things." " Ye Philippians, when I departed from Macedo- nia, no church communicated (tKoivuvrjaw, practiced fellowship) with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only." To which it may be added that the pas- sage just now quoted (Rom. xv., 26, 27) shows that spiritual fellowship is intended to lead to such an exercise of liberality as shows a recognition of mutual interest in temporal goods. Two others may be grouped together: "Praying us ... that wo would . . . take upon us the fellowship (noivtaviav') of the ministering to the saints " (2 Cor. viii, 4) ; and " they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship (icoij/wvi'ac)" (Gal. ii., 9). From these we learn that there is a fellow- ship in ministry, either in performing part of the same work, or in occupying different spheres with the same end in view, even the spread of the truth of Jesus and the exten- sion of his kingdom. These quotations make sufficiently evi- dent the character of that communion which exists among the saints. Based as it is on the communion which they all enjoy with their one covenant God, their Father, their Saviour, their Sanctifier, consisting as it does of the mutual interest which they all pos- sess in the rich spiritual blessings of the new covenant, it involves, as among themselves, MAKSTON: THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 163 all the consideration that results from their unity in Christ, all the joint service that can promote the cause and glory of their God. And if we search for the root from which such practical communion takes its spring, we find it in the essential fellowship which the Father has established among his chil- dren by making them " fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ" (Eph. iii., 6), and thus introducing them to the advantages of " the common faith" (Tit. i., 4) and " the common salvation" ( Jude 3). I almost feel that an apology is necessary for the very cursory sketch which I have of- fered of this part of my subject. Yet, under the circumstances, I can only aim at afford- ing material for future thought and study. I give but an outline, Avhich you may at leis- ure make more complete for yourselves. While, however, I have done'little more than enumerate the various particulars which may illustrate the communion of the saints, I have been induced to notice them in detail, be- cause a proper Scriptural opinion as to this communion or fellowship can alone enable us to decide upon the other points mentioned in the great subject now under review. The modes of promoting and manifesting com- munion, and the assertion that Christian uuion is consistent with denominational dis- tinctions, must depend upon a correct idea of communion itself. We can not build with- out a sound basis ; we can not insure a right direction without some knowledge of the tendency of our impelling force ; nor is it possible for us to appreciate the great truth which it is proposed eventually to establish I mean that Christian union exists inde- pendently of our sectional differences un- less we understand what Christian fellow- ship is and what it involves, and so place ourselves in a position to discover whether there is, or is not, any thing in tlte essence of Christian fellowship with which denomi- national distinctions must necessarily inter- fere. II. I will only touch for a short time on the modes of promoting and manifesting the communion of saints. This portion of the subject is, I presume, intended more particularly to embrace the fellowship which believershave among them- selves, and to suggest an inquiry into the means by which its benefits may be most ef- fectually enjoyed for the general good. If I have done well in fixing as the starting- point of all advance in this department of the Christian life the plain teaching of the Word of God, it is clear that we can only progress in the direction pointed out by ob- serving the principles which the Word in- culcates, and cultivating the spirit which it enjoins. Attention to this will render it no difficult matter to ascertain how we may best promote and manifest our communion. i. Let there be, then, an earnest desire, in the first place, to maintain the enjoyment of that fellowship which exists between the believer and the several Persons of the all- gracious Trinity. The whole Christian life, in its relation to man, receives its efficacy and beauty from the health of the Christian life in its relation to God. True, there may be a perfunctory performance of many stated duties which as Christians we owe to one another, while communion with the Father, the Sou, and the Spirit is not carefully encour- aged on our part ; but only this communion with God longed after, realized, enjoyed will preserve for us the gracious and consid- erate mind which makes communion with each other delightful, and renders men ear- nest and real in the pursuit and preservation of it. If, therefore, so far as in us lies, we would promote communion, let us aim at the real- ization of our sbnship ; that we are children of God, that our fellow-believers are the same, that there is " one God and Father of all." Let us live among ourselves as those who are partakers of the divine nature, called as members of one family to walk in light and love, journeying with thousands of others to the one home. What is the prime unfailing spring of family affection, that affection which exhibits the ideal of the family in so many living realities among us ? Surely it is this a common origin, a common parentage. The more, then, that we prove the joy of communion with our God and Father in Christ, the more keenly alive shall we be to the force of the apostle's words: "Every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him" (1 John v., 1) ; and when the tempta- tion arises which may urge us to strife or misunderstanding, the more readily shall we be influenced by the question of Moses to the quarreling Israelites, "Sirs, ye are breth- ren; why do ye wrong one to another?" (Acts vii., 26). ii. For this end also let us cultivate a deep- ening sense of our fellowship, as believers, with Jesus. Is he not for us the living Cen- tre, the attractive One, that regulates all who surround him ? Oh ! let us but draw closer to him, and of necessity it follows that we shall approach continually nearer to each other. The body, to use St. Paul's phrase, will be " knit together" (Col. ii., 19). Keal- ized oneness with Christ is that which brings individuals .and churches into genuine com- munion. Christ Jesus is the centre of the circle ; his believing members, and the Chris- tian societies which they compose, are as points on the circumference. How will you make these points mutually approach ? By bringing some nearer to others? No: for then you will increase the distance between them and others again. But lessen your cir- cumference ; in other words, bring every 164 CHRISTIAN UNION. point nearer to the centre, and it can not be otherwise than that the points will all close up the nearer they are to one another, the nearer they are to Christ. iii. Let us also seek a more abiding expe- rience of the communion of the Holy Ghost. Is he the Comforter, and have we fellowship with him! Then must we aim at "com- forting them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com- forted of God" (2 Cor. i., 4). Is he the Sanc- tifier, and are we made partakers of his ho- liness t Then must it be our part to promote the growth in spirituality of our brethren, that " the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint sup- plieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, may make in- crease of the body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. iv., 16). Is the Spirit the great witness for Jesus, with whom the disciples are associated by the Lord himself ? How, let me ask, can we more effectually bear our testimony so as to affect the world than by the exhibition of that love and unity which our Lord has thus solemnly commended: " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent rue" (John xvii., 20, 21). iv. So much as regards the promotion and manifestation of communion by the cultiva- tion of our fellowship with God. And as to the practical display of it among ourselves, what better can we do than frame our life and conduct after the Scriptural rules so ev- idently urged, so exquisitely illustrated, in the pages of the New Testament ? Should we not, like the early disciples, continue stead- fast in fellowship as well as in doctrine ? Should we not aim at making others par- takers of our spiritual things ? Should we not encourage, as between ministers and peo- ple, as between fellow-workers in the same or in different spheres, the interchange of the ever warm grasp of the right hand of fellowship! Yes; unquestionably we should. And let us do so. This meeting oh ! God grant that it may give a higher tone to our Christian communion than has ever hither- to been attained. Beloved, as those who profess to be one with the Lord Jesus, let us remember with especial care that those who are one with him are one with each other in him. The holy fellowship which during the days of this Conference exhibits itself in so practical a shape before the eyes of Chris- tendom is it not a reality ? Yes ; assuredly it is au even greater reality in the purpose of our divine Master than it is in our inten- tion. It is an attempt imperfect, perhaps, but still an attempt at the realization of his prayer, " That they all may be one." It affords a foretaste of the joy of that desira- ble, that anticipated day, when " there shall be one Lord, and his name one" (Zech. xiv., ( J) ; when "there shall be one flock and one Shepherd" (John x., 16). To-day we do not ut- ter the wish, " Unum corpus SIMUS in Christo;" we make the solemn, the glad declaration, " Unum corpus SVMUS in Christo." Let us, then, keep this feast for we are, as Israel of old, gathered from all parts for a festival let us keep this feast, and let us return to our homes, when we have kept it, as those who confess that Christ is all and that Christ is in all. Let us watch and pray against " what- soever may hinder us from godly union and concord ; that as there is but one body and one spirit and one hope of our calling one Lord, one faith, one baptism one God and Father of us all so we may henceforth be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Brethren, " to do good and to communicate," or, as I may more correctly render it, encouraged by the subject and the occasion, " Of well-doing and of fellowship be not forgetful ; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Heb. xiii., 16). I now come to the concluding point for our consideration the assertion that Chris- tian union is consistent with denomination- al distinction. Alas ! that after the lapse of eighteen centuries from the establishment of the Christian Church among men, it should be necessary to advance arguments upon this topic. Surely we should receive it as an axiom ; not argue about it as a matter demanding proof. Yet error is so pertina- cious, and false views of union are so com- mon while the conditions of union pro- pounded by some are so extravagant that it is well for us, especially on an occasion like the present, to restate, as it were, the case, and proclaim without hesitation the convic- tion of our hearts, resting as that conviction does upon firm and sufficient grounds. The true idea of Christian union may evi- dently be drawn from the Scriptural teach- ing which has been delivered in reference to the fellowship of the saints. Now it is cer- tain that the New Testament nowhere shows this fellowship, resulting as it does from union, to be dependent on externals. One- ness with Christ is really the essential basis of oneness ire Christ. For a few moments recall to your minds what the communion of the saints has been shown to be, according to the voice of the New Testament. The saints have commu- nion with the Father in nature, light, and kingdom ; with the Son in life, righteous- ness, grace, sufferings, and glory ; with the Spirit in sanctifying influences, consolations, and testimony ; and with each other in all the spiritual blessings of the new covenant, MARSTON : THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 165 in the affections -which result from their uni- ty in Christ, and in the service which they can render to advance the glory of God. Now can it be said that differences of organiza- tion, of ecclesiastical regimen, of forms of worship, affect any one of these branches of communion ? Is it possible to assert, with any truth, that Christians whose religious bodies are organized on different models can not alike call God their Father t that those who put 'themselves under various kinds of Church government can not alike rejoice in Jesus as their Saviour? that individuals who adopt this or that or the other form of worship can not alike enjoy the precious presence of the Holy Ghost ? Is it possible to say that these various bands of Christians can not realize the joys of a common faith and a common salvation ? that they can not be linked in fraternal intercourse, and with mutual good wishes encourage one an- other in serving and glorifying their God ? Questions like these need only be asked to make it evident that you can not answer them in the affirmative, unless you put indif- ferent things in the place of that which is essential, and insist upon settling in your own way matters which God has seen fit to leave unsettled in his Word. For it is manifest that such matters as the constitution of churches, their internal organization, their forms of worship, are not clearly and strictly defined or prescribed in the New Testament. I say, it is manifest that these are not so prescribed ; for, if they be, it would be easy to show the Scriptural ideal in each respect. Then it would follow that if any one of the existing forms could be shown to be alone right, all the rest would be wrong. But, strong as our preferences may be for one or another mode of organiza- tion and worship, none of us will venture to assert that he and his alone possess the true secret of worship alone command the springs which fill the sweet wells of fellow- ship with God and man. To assert this, or any thing like it, would be to thrust all oth- ers on one side and call them "Esau," while they might cry in vain, " Hast thou but one blessing, O my father ?" But then it might be retaliated upon ourselves with too much truth, " Is he not rightly named Jacob, be- cause he hath supplanted me ?" Weighty and solemn are the words of one who wrote well and boldly on the unity of the Church : " If the body holds to the one Head, and is animated by the one faith, and is sanctified by the one baptism, it is a Church before God ; and woe to us if we deny that it is so ! Our denial will recoil upon our own heads; and we shall only cut ourselves off from the blessings of Christian communion with those by whose faith and knowledge and love we might otherwise be instructed and edified."* Archdeacon Hnre, " Sermon on the Unity of the Church;" Note, A, D. I need not, however, enlarge in this strain. We admit with readiness, with gladness, that the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Con- gregationalist all the Christian brethren, indeed who " hold the Head" have, several- ly and with each other, communion with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit ; that they ex- perience this communion ; that they can and do communicate with each other in the prac- tical manifestations of fellowship noticed and enforced in the Scriptural statements to which reference has been made in this ad- dress. The Evangelical Alliance is a stand- ing witness to the fact that hundreds of Christians make this admission, and rejoice in making it. The present Conference, the most imposing display of Christian fellow- ship that the world has ever seen, is a living illustration of the truth that union in Christ is consistent with denominational distinc- tions. Fellow-believers, brethren and sisters in Christ, we who are here assembled can ap- ply to ourselves, and to this our associa- tion, the grand passage in the fourth chap- ter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, to which I have already adverted. We profess and proclaim, by this important demonstra- tion, that we, humbly yet confidently speak- ing in dependence on divine grace, have fel- lowship with God and with each other ; that we realize, not the possibility, but the fact of our Christian union, while recognizing the existence I may almost say the necessary existence of our differences in constitution, arrangement, and form. We do not ask for uniformity ; we assert our unity. There is, indeed, a uniformity, according to Hooker's idea, which all several persons belonging to the visible body and Church of Christ have, by reason of that one Lord, " whose servants they all profess themselves, that one faith which they all acknowledge, that one baptism wherewith they are all initi- ated"* This uniformity we own ; but we have learned that uniformity, in the ordi- nary sense of the word, is by no means the shape in which unity necessarily manifests itself, and that the desire of imposing it is one of the commonest errors of our weak, self-relying, narrow -hearted, stiff-minded nature. Uniformity is of man, and we have already too much of what is of man to wish for more. Unity is of God, and we long for an increase of that which is of him and from him. Uniformity, let me repeat, is of man. Man can frame you a machine so ordered and regulated that a thousand of its prod- ucts shall come forth all alike, cast in the same mould,jrunning in the same groove, un- varying, indistinguishable. But it is not so with the works of God. Do you find uni- formity among the members of the human race ? Look at the hundreds of men and 166 CHRISTIAN UNION. women iu this room. Is there any uniform- ity in the figures, the faces, the features, the expressions of all these f There is a unity of design and end in the sexes, but what a diversity in the individuals! Do you find uniformity in the leaves of the wood, iu the waves of the sea, in the stars of heaven, where one star differeth from another star in glory T No. And "they who have seen the blessed vision of unity, with the prayer of the Saviour breathing through it as the Hpirit of its life, and the smile of the Father beaming upon it, how can they turn from this to dote upon any thing so shadowy, so harsh, so empty as mere uniformity ? or how can they care much about uniformity, except so far as it is indeed the expression of a liv- ing love for unity, submitting its own heart and mind to do as others do for the sake of a more entire union and communion ?"* Let us prize, if we will, our own peculiar modes I do not know why men should not have their preferences ; fet us be glad when oth- ers adopt our views, if we can win them without base proselytisin I do not know why men should not encourage an honorable esprit de corps; but above all this sectional feeling let us put the welfare of the com- mon, universal Church of Christ the pro- motion and development of our oneness in him who prayed that we may be one. Union this is the true condition of the body animated by the spirit. The spirit it is which keeps up the union in the natural body : let the spirit be absent, the body wastes, corrupts, decays, crumbles to its at- oms. The presence of the Spirit of God, with * Hare, " On the Unity of the Church." whom the saints have fellowship, preserves the union which God has constituted, and which really and essentially exists. What the apostle applies to individuals in a Chris- tian community has its force of application to the churches in the Church. They are members one of another by virtue of com- munion. None of us can bo the head for the head of the body is Christ ; but wo arc members one of another. And if, in a sur- vey of the churches and their efforts, their theologians, evangelists, and members, we find that one community is blessed with far- sightedness ; another with quickness to hear the cry of the world's need ; another with skill to mould Christian operations ; another with ready swiftness to run upon the Mas- ter's bidding then shall the eye say to the ear, or the hand to the foot, Thou art not of the body ? " For the body is not one mem- ber, but many. And God hath set the mem- bers every one in the body as it hath pleased him. And the eye can not say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. God hath tempered the body together that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. Now, ye are the body of Christ, and members iu particular" (see 1 Cor. xii., 14-27). If so, let it be our care, whatever place in the body we occupy, so to realize our fellow- ship, so to manifest our oneness, so to live in the communion of the saints, that we may show to the world that Christian union is a reality, and that each of us feels iu the heart what we have together repeated with the lips, I believe in the communion of the saints. CHRISTIAN LOVE THE BOND OF CHRISTIAN UNION. BY THE REV. GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D., NEW YOKK. As the human body, though composed of many members, is one, so also is Christ and his Church. This body is made one by the operation of the Spirit. " For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles ; whether we be bond or free." One very important point is, there- fore, established : the Church is already one. It can not be made two, or divided ; it is one by virtue of a common life. Its unity does not consist in subscription to a common formula ; that is unity of opinion. Its unity does not consist in the agreements or reso- lutions of Christians that they will be one ; that would be the unity of a league or com- pact. Nor does its unity consist in the con- sent to follow a certain method of practice ; that is the fruit of the unity rather than the unity itself. We can not, therefore, of ourselves, create the unity of the Church. It is already cre- ated. We might as well speak of ourselves creating the unity of the human family. The human family is already one by virtue of its descent from a common stock. God has "created of one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth." Whether the members of the human family recognize this fact or not, it remains unaltered. And this is the sin of human nature that we, be- iugofone kind, having one common nature, do not act toward each other in harmony with this relationship. We act as though the human race were not truly and organic- ally one ; as though it had not a common destiny ; as though all its members were not embraced in the same comprehensive plans of the Providence of God. The members of the human family are brought into more satisfactory relations with one another by the recognition in their conduct of the one- ness of the race. The vital unity becomes the ground of the moral and affectional unity. Now, as the vital unity of the human race remains, whether men recognize it or not, so does the unity of Christ's Church, whether it be or be not clear to the consciousness of Christians. For the Church recognizes as its head the second Adam, its life is his life pervading its members. By the Spirit these members are baptized into one body, the unity is created by a divine power, the power which makes the Church a living body at all. When Christians come to a consciousness that all who are Christ's really are one, be- cause they are his, then they begin to in- quire whether this unity is practically re- alized. Before this consciousness is devel- oped, they try to form other unities. These are such as the unity founded on acceptance of a creed, which is the most common form that the effort has taken in Protestantism ; in a unity of external organization, which is that of Romanism. These fail, as they deserve to fail ; the fact that they have led to bloody persecutions is prima facie evi- dence that they are not the true principles of unity. The Christian world has late- ly made the discovery that the oneness of Christ's Church is not a fact to be created, but one in harmony with which we are to live. He is a Christian who partakes of Christ's life ; he is the brother of every one else who partakes of that life. All Chris- tians are therefore of one family ; and the problem before them is by their conduct to express the oneness which has been divine- ly created. This exhibition of Christ's Church as al- ready one is a leading Pauline idea. With Paul the unity of Christ's body is present, not future, and his effort is to bring his fel- low-Christians not to create the oneness, but to apprehend it. Thus he writes to the Galatians: "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek," i. e., there are no distinctions of race recognized ; "there is neither bond nor free," i, c., there are no distinctions of condition; "there are neither male nor female," i. c., there are no distinc- tions of sex; "for they are all one in Christ Jesus." The three great causes of separa- tion among mankind are (1) differences of race, (2) differences of condition, (3) differ- ences of sex. The fact that believers have put on Christ is sufficient, according to Paul, to overcome all these causes of separation, and to create unity. Let it be observed that these causes of separation were more powerfully operative in the ancient world than any causes of separation at work in the Christian world now. Jews and Gentiles after accepting Christ were hedged about by habits and opinions which still kept them apart. We see from the whole tenor of the Gospel history that they were far from think- ing alike. Paul reconciled these differences by pointing to their higher unity. The be- lieving slave and the believing master were 168 CHRISTIAN UNION. in Christ one. According to the ancient system, there was an immense distance maintained between the sexes ; there were no pnre associations of men and women to- gether. But both sexes were alike redeem- ed by Christ, and the slavish subjection of the -weaker was at an end. Let us observe further. There are three ideas frequently confounded with each oth- er. The first of these is unity, which is of spirit and life; the second is unanimity, which is oneness of thinking ; the third is uniformity, which is oneness of method. The effort to establish the last of these has been given up in Protestantism, and yet it operates as a cause of alienation. It is the effort to establish the second which is now about being abandoned, and Protestant Christians are ready to fall back on the first. When they have so done, they will find that unity of life does produce a suffi- cient unanimity and a sufficient uniformity ; for a oneness of life does, in time, produce a sufficient agreement in thinking and in procedure. The history of the last century is a striking proof of the correctness of these positions. John Wesley began his labors in the hope of reforming the lives of the English people. The object of his attack was practical un- godliness. In 1760 he issued a circular to fifty ministers of various churches, propos- ing that they should acknowledge and treat each other as brethren, notwithstanding their differences. In this he says : " I do not ask a union in opinions. They might agree or disagree touching absolute decrees on the one hand or perfection on the other. These may still speak of imputed righteousness, and those of the merits of Christ. Not a union with regard to outward order. Some may still remain quite regular, some quite irregu- lar, and some partly regular : but these things being as they are, as each is persuaded in his own mind, is it not a desirable thing that we should love as brethren?" And again, in 1765, he writes to a minister of the Church of England : " I desire to have a league, of- fensive and defensive, with every soldier of Christ. We have not only one faith, one hope, one head, but are directly engaging in one warfare. Come, then, ye that love Him, to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." In the spirit of a true catholicity, he publishes a life of Madame Guyon, a Koman Catholic, and of a French Unitarian. The simple law by which he decides the question of Christian union was wherever he saw the image of Christ to recognize in its possessor a brother. What God had accepted he Avould not call com- mon or unclean. Yet for the want of a consciousness in the churches of that age of the value of the truth which was so clear to him, he who would have united with all was driven to separate action, and his followers to separate church organization. And there can not be much done now for the more perfect union of Christians till the consciousness of the es- sential unity of all who believe truly in Je- sus is more perfectly developed. Then the differences which now separate us will melt away in the perception of a higher unity. May I, without censure, refer further to this great reformer as a leader in the pro- motion of union of Christian men I I hold in my hand some paragraphs from his ser- mons on a " Catholic Spirit." Its date is 1771, just one hundred and two years ago. His definitions are those which we have ac- cepted that personal faith in Christ, and love which is its product, are the true bonds of Christian Union. In looking for the traits in his fellow-man which constitute a claim to fellowship, he asks : " Do you show your love by your works ? While you have time, as you have opportu- nity, do you, in fact, ' do good to all men,' neighbors or strangers, friends or enemies, good or bad ? Do you do them all the good you can ; endeavoring to supply all their wants, assisting them, both in body and soul, to the uttermost of your power ? If thou art thus minded, may every Christian say yea; if thou art but sincerely desirous of it, and following on till thou attain, then ' thy heart is right, as my heart is with thy heart.' ' If it be, give me thy hand.' I do not mean, ' Be of my opinion.' You need not. I do not expect or desire it. Neither do I mean, ' I will be of your opinion.' I can not. It does not depend on my choice. I can no more think than I can see or hear as I will. Keep yon your opinion ; I mine, and that as steadily as ever. You need not endeavor to come over to me, or bring me over t6 you. I do not desire to dispute those points, or to hear or speak one word concerning them. Let all opinions alone on one side and the other. Only ' give me thine hand.' " What he asks for himself from his fellow- Christians is conceived in the same spirit : " I mean, first, love me. And that not only as thou lovest all mankind ; not only as thou lovest thine enemies or the enemies of God, those that hate thee, that ' despitefully use thee, and persecute thee ;' not only as a stranger, as one of whom thou knowest nei- ther good nor evil. I am not satisfied with this. No ; 'if thine heart be right, as mine with thy heart,' then love me with a very tender affection, as a friend that is closer than a brother, as a brother in Christ, a fel- low-citizen of the New Jerusalem, a fellow- soldier engaged in the same warfare, under the Captain of our salvation. Love me as a companion in the kingdom and patience of Jesus, and a joint heir of his glory." Finally he sums up his whole theory of Christian union in the pithy statement, " Catholic love is a catholic spirit." CHRISTIAN UNION; OR, THE EVANGELICAL AL- LIANCE IN FRANCE. BY THE EEV. EMILE F. COOK, B.A., PAKIS. IT is a matter of deep regret to myself and to many others that our venerated brother, Pastor Guillaume Monod, is not here to speak on the subject of " Christian Union," as had been expected. He would have done it in that beautiful language of which he pos- sesses the secret, and with that elevation of thought and maturity of talent which are the fruits of his long and rich experience. As this important theme was to be han- dled and discussed in its essential principles and bearings by several distinguished ora- tors, it appeared to me that the best thing I could do was to give a short, historical sur- vey of what has been done during the last thirty or forty years in France to promote Christian union, and then to suggest very briefly some desiderata in view of a closer and more complete union. I shall not deal with abstractions, but with facts. In apology of the meagreuess and defect! veness of this ad- dress, and in justice to myself, I must say that the task of preparing a paper on this subject was intrusted to me two hours be- fore I set off from Paris to come to America ; that I have had no means of consulting any documents whatever, and have had to rely only on my recollections. I have also to beg for indulgence on account of my very im- perfect acquaintance with the English lan- guage, which is not my mother-tongue, and for using in many instances French phrase- ology. I hope to be understood, and that is what I aim at. I ought to say, at the outset, with heart- felt gratitude to God, that the union of evan- gelical Christians in France is not a vain word, but a blessed fact. As far as I am able to judge of the religious condition of other countries, I see nowhere so few points of disagreement among Christians of differ- ent denominations, and I nowhere ascertain so many points of contact, so many things drawing the Christians close to one another, as I see in France. This may be attributed to the fact that we are but a very feeble mi- nority, lost, as it were, among the mass, and on that account obliged to draw near to one another, and help one another ; as, also, to the outward circumstances in which Protest- antism is placed, and which have created for all of us a very similar situation ; but it may also be due to the absence within the circle of evangelical Protestantism of any parties pro- fessing extreme views. There is no Church among us holding the tenet of apostolical succession ; Protestant pastors are all on a footing of perfect equality with regard to their ordination ; and a fact worth mention- ing which would scarcely be found anywhere else is that in at least three of the great di- visions, among the Reformed, the Free United, and the Methodist churches, it is a very com- mon thing to invite to the ordination of a pastor in one of these churches the pastors of the two others, who join them in the lay- ing on of hands. Then, again, the question of adult baptism has scarcely been discussed as yet. The liturgy of the Reformed Church (national) is not an elaborate one, and leaves room for spontaneous and extempore prayer, so that with regard to sacred worship, and to ecclesiastical modes of proceeding, and, we might add, with regard to the doctrines generally preached, the Reformed and the Methodists and the Independents are very much alike, and in many things almost iden- tical. [I have said nothing of the Luther- ans, as they are in the habit of standing a little more aloof; but, alas, there are but very few of them calling themselves French, or being considered as such some in the " pays de Montbeliard," and some in Paris, who have harmoniously worked together there with pastors of other churches.] But having said so much, we can not avoid acknowledging that Christians in France have been too long divided, and in too many respects hostile to one another; that they have had too many of those secret and underhand contests which entertain unjust prejudices, and produce painful clash- ings. The Evangelical Alliance has done us good by bringing us together; it has caused the members of different churches to know each other, and, as a natural sequence, to value and love one another. Before it was founded as a special organ- ization, the principles which it has for its mission to spread had been recognized, and had exercised a wholesome influence in France, as well as in England and in Amer- ica, by the establishment of religious socie- ties, the directing committees of which were composed of pastors and laymen belonging to several denominations. We had as far 170 CHRISTIAN UNION. back as 1830 our Bible, Tract, Missionary, Primary Education Societies ; later, tbe So- cifU du Sou Protestant, etc. ; and it deserves to be noted tbat there was no society of tbe kind specially connected with a particular church, as is the case in England, where one missionary society is connected with tbe Es- tablishment, another with the Methodists or the Baptists, and so on. The result was this, that any individual Christian who felt bis responsibility, and recognized the duty of working for the conversion of the world, has had to choose between doing nothing, or meeting on common ground with mem- bers of other churches imbued with the same spirit with himself. There is no doubt that those works undertaken by Christians of different churches unitedly had prepared the way, and that many there were who longed for a closer and more formal alliance. If I mistake not, it was the Evangelical Church of Lyons, admirably placed for this by its intermediate position between the Established and Dissenting Churches, which was the first to address an appeal in view of so desirable a union, and Pastor Fisch (whom we have the pleasure to have with us) took the " initiative " of calling together in 1845 a meeting of all those who profess- ed to love the Lord Jesus Christ, the year before the organization of the Evangelical Alliance; then a committee was formed in Lyons, connected with the movement inau- gurated on the other side of the Channel, and soon after another in Paris, and one at Nismes, while similar meetings were being or- ganized in the surrounding countries where French is spoken, at Brussels, Geneva, Lau- sanne, Neuchatel, which together Constituted the French branch of the Evangelical Alliance. In every place these committees called to- gether public meetings for prayer and edifi- cation, in which, notwithstanding what may have been said, it did a real good to have to conjugate the tenses of the verb to love, and to place in their true light the principles of the unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace. At first, there were some good men who did not think it their duty to associate with this movement. A few believed that their fidel- ity to their convictions required of them that they should stand aloof, claiming the rights of truth, and refusing to take any part in what appeared to them to be bane- ful and injurious compromises; but, in pres- ence of the blessings vouchsafed by God to meetings of the Alliance, they thought bet- ter of it, and were one by one irresistibly brought to co-operate with it, and not a few who had remained strangers to .the Evan- gelical Alliance when it commenced have become afterward its warmest friends and supporters. Apart from the committees we have men- tioned, but in the same spirit, although un- der a different form, were founded the so- 1 called Conferences of the two Charentcs in the West, of which our regretted brother, Lu- cien des Meisards, was the chief promoter ; and in the South the brotherly Conferences of the Cevennes, which embraced a large re- gion, and met in turn at St. Hippolyte, Aii- duze, Ganges, and Le Vigan. I had the priv- ilege of being a member of the latter,and was present at the extraordinary meeting of Le Vigan in 1853, where the Pentecostal influ- ence was most visibly seen and felt. Minis- ters in Department of the Drome convoked also in turn, in their several churches, gener- al meetings of Christians, and a beautiful re- vival was the fruit of those meetings. One meeting in particular will not be forgotten ; for a long time to come, that at Montmey- ran, where the regretted Charles Cook and Bertholet Bridel appeared as mighty men, and were received as apostles sent by God. The Evangelical Alliance had thus already brought forth precious fruit ; in many places a quickening breath was felt to pass over many souls, and to vivify both the ministers and their flocks. It is about this time that we shall place the foundation in France of the Young Men's Christian Associations, and that of the Sunday-school Union, both institutions being specially placed on the basis of the Evangelical Alliance. During the first ten years the Young Men's Christian Associa- tions were rapidly multiplied. There may have been some slackening in their prog- ress, but we believe that they have a great future in prospect ; and \ve attribute in a great measure to the fact that in some of our important cities Christian young men have had much intercourse, free from all sec- tarian spirit, the liberal dispositions which actuate precisely those pastors or influential laymen who belonged to the associations twenty years ago. The Sunday-school Union has steadily ad- hered to its original principles, and has al- ways had on its committee representatives of five or six churches. The second General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance was held in Paris in 1855, eighteen years ago. It was very large- ly attended, and drew a great many stran- gers, chiefly from Great Britain and Amer- ica. It can be asserted unhesitatingly that this Conference gave a great impulsion to the Alliance in France. Many there were who took this opportunity of giving in their adhesion to its principles. It would have been a difficult matter to refuse to take the hand of men who were the glory and orna- ment of the Church, such as Dr. Duff, Bap- tist Noel, Krummacher. And we may say it here, the General Conferences of the Evan- gelical Alliance have been the solemn and ecumenical assizes of the Christian world. And if there did remain in the mind of some true Christian enough of bigotry to prevent COOK : EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE IN FKANCE. 171 his uniting with his near neighbors with whom there might be a painful contact, how could he refuse the hand stretched out to him by men considered as the lights of the Church ? But this first step once made, others followed in course. The same year a most touching scene was repeated which certainly helped in destroy- ingbarriers, and bringing into close union the Christians of Paris. This scene took place, now and again, at the bedside of Adolphe Monod. He had it at heart to give a sol- emn affirmation of the unity of Christ's body, and to do this he called near him in succession, Sabbath after Sabbath, pastors of different denominations, and received from them in turn the comforting words of Divine truth and the sacred emblems of the Saviour's atoning sacrifice. Time after time the Communion of Saints, in what it has of most noble and most precious influ- ence, was realized in that room of a dying man. And it would have been very diffi- cult, not to say impossible, to any of those who had been present on such occasions to resume afterward their former discussions, or to quarrel with regard to a doctrinal point or an ecclesiastical arrangement. Soon after came from Loodiana a pressing invitation, addressed to Christians through the whole world, to devote to united prayer the first week in January. In many places, and especially where a Committee of the Evangelical Alliance had been formed, a joyful response was given, and during the last fifteen years this universal concert of prayers has had, in our country, its warm partisans, who, North and West, in towns and in the provinces, have taken care that the renewal of the year should always bring about a renewal of Christian Union, and who have, by dint of sheer perseverance, triumph- ed over the inertia or the prejudices of nar- row-minded brethren. This week of prayer has been blessed in the conversion of souls, and has often communicated a salutary im- pulsion to churches either asleep or languish- ing and drooping. Thus during fifteen years .and more there have been held in Franco at regular epochs series of meetings, which most surely have not passed uuperceived, all of them condu- cive to the promotion of Christian Union ; namely, (1.) At the beginning of the year the week of prayer, during which, in most places, Christians of all denominations have met in turn in the church or chapel of each denomination. (2.) In April or May are held the anniversary meetings of the re- ligions societies, bringing back with them the pastoral conferences, both special and general, of which we have as yet said noth- ing, which have exercised so great an at- traction on the ministers and elders of our churches. (3.) At the commencement of No- vember, just at the beginning of the winter season, the annual assemblies of Lyons, al- ways well prepared, well attended, and abun- dantly blessed. And we have not spoken of many other extraordinary meetings which have taken place here and there ; one at Bordeaux, not many years ago, convened by a new committee, that named of the South- west, others in the East at Troyes, Bar-le- duc, etc. And we might also have mention- ed, in order to make a complete review, the General Conference held in 1859 at Geneva, at our door, and nearly on French soil, which was attended by great numbers of our fel- low-countrymen. At the General Exhibi- tion of 1867, in Paris, there were also remark- able manifestations of the spirit of the Evan- gelical Alliance, in the manner in which the Protestant Missionary Museum was" arranged, in which the services at the evangelical hall were conducted, and the daily distributions of tracts and gospels was made. And on the eve of the opening of the Ecumenical Coun- cil of Rome, there was held in the Church of the Oratoire of Paris a most numerous and interesting meeting, in which evangelical Protestantism manifested its unity. Ad- dresses were given and prayers offered up to God by ministers of various churches, and assuredly they all appeared as one. By this time the Evangelical Alliance had fully entered in our religious habits and cus- toms, and had brought into close relation- ship the various denominations of Chris- tians in our dear country. The painful events through which it would have to pass would doubtless cement this union, and cause it to bring forth its most excellent fruit. It has been so. Without any effort, in the most natural manner, the Evangelic- al Alliance has practically demonstrated its power during those sad days of affliction and mourning. Let us just go back to the end of July and beginning of August, 1870. The Paris Committee had met to consider what ought to be done in view of tlie ap- proaching New York Conference. It was unanimously decided that no French dele- gate could, under the circumstances, leave France for America, and a telegram was sent to the New York Committee, suggesting that the conference be adjourned to a more fa- vorable time. And at once our Church laid the basis of a special distinct organization, to be designated the "Evangelical Auxiliary Committee of Help to Soldiers wounded or sick," which would act in harmony with the Geneva Red Cross Society. The influence of this Committee, and the importance of the work which it has done, can scarcely be exaggerated. If it were the proper time, most interesting things might be said about the army chaplains sent out by the Committee, the ambulances organized both in the provinces and in Paris, especially the great ambulance of the Chaptal College, with its three hundred beds, and the large 172 CHRISTIAN UNION. sums collected ; but we must confine our re- marks to those facts which have given to Christian Union a new aliment and added something to its power. In the first place, with regard to the chaplains sent out, there was nothing said about the Established Church or Free Churches. The question was not asked of a minister wishing to be employed in that capacity, to what church he belonged, but what were his aptitudes, and so it happened that of the ten chaplains first appointed four belonged to the National Reformed Church, one to the Lutheran, two to the Free Churches, and three to the Meth- odist; then the ambulances were only known under the beautiful name of evangelical am- bulances, and in the weekly meetings of the Committee*, which were very numerous, as many as fifty or sixty persons being some- times present, no distinction of a sectarian character was ever made, and a stranger who might have been present at one or sev- eral of the animated and most cordial ses- sions of the Committee could not have im- agined that there were there representatives of five distinct denominations, working in concert and perfect harmony. And on the battle-field, in the various sorties, there were between thirty and forty pastors, serving as brancardiers, helping the surgeons, carrying the wounded, and living the same life, be- cause all were enduring the same sufferings, and all partaking of the same hopes. They were truly great and solemn, those five gen- eral prayer-meetings held during that dreary winter in the Oratoire, the Taitbout Chapel, the Church of the Redemption, the Chapelle Malesherbes, and the Church du St. Esprit. Never before were the Christians in Paris so completely identified in a most profound hu- miliation and a common sorrow. Then fol- lowed the disastrous days of the Commune. The brethren felt more than ever the need of seeing each other frequently, and taking counsel together as to what was to be done in certain emergencies. It was a source of great comfort to be able to meet and pray together, and cast our burden upon the Lord, in those days of shame and peril. And most certainly, those who have thus held one an- other's hand in the hour of danger will never forget that they have fought together. The succession of this Evangelical Com- mittee for help to the sick and wounded, which had been so actively employed during the war, was taken, when peace had been made, by the Protestant Committee for help to the victims of the war, and from this sprang the Commission for religious aid to the condemned prisoners sent to New Cale- donia, both of them also based upon the same principles of united co-operation by the representatives of the different denom- inations principles which will henceforth obtain, wo firmly believe, in every great work of charity. It remains that we should refer to the Home Mission established in November, 1871, with Nismes as its centre of opera- tions. The idea of this mission originated in the National Conferences of the South, which met at Cette, where, notwithstanding their name, pastors of the Free and Method- ist Churches were allowed, if not to vote, to take part in the discussions. It is again in the spirit of the Evangelical Alliance that this most opportune mission has been found- ed, and it is the very embodiment of Chris- tian Union. I shall not enter into any de- tails on the subject, the French Home Mis- sion being specially represented in this Con- ference by Pastor Matthieu Lelievre, who will report on its principles and operations. We have shown by this hurried sketch that the religions movement in France is going on undoubtedly in the direction of Christian Union, and that united co-opera- tion is the order of the day. It is no longer asked, How shall we proceed with respect to this or that work of a general interest T As a matter of course, every one recognizes the advantage of grouping the various elements which the different denominations of Chris- tians offer. And even the special assemblies and synods of particular churches afford op- portunities which are eagerly sought of riv- eting the bonds of brotherly affection. Thus, last year, the General Synod of the Reformed Church (the first held since 1659) received deputations from the French, Independent, and Methodist Churches ; and very recently, the Synod of the Free Churches at St. Jean du Gard was the occasion of many interest- ing manifestations, which at the same were the unequivocal affirmation of the unity of the Church, and served in strengthening the union which is its natural consequence, and ought always to flow from it. We are conscious, as we are about to con- clude, that we have omitted several impor- tant facts. We have said nothing of the Paris City Mission, which was established fifteen or eighteen years ago, and was car- ried, during its short-lived existence, on the same unsectarian principles of which we have been speaking all along ; nor of the Committee of Evangelization for Paris, of which, in 1869, the Rev. Henry Grattan Guin- ness was the promoter, and which, during several months, had, on the Scime plan of mis- sionary services which aimed at reaching the masses, the names of fifteen to twenty minis- ters and about ten or twelve churches and chapels belonging to the different denomina- tions. We have not mentioned the interesting work which sprang from this Committee, and is still carried on at the Rue Royale, in which Methodists and Baptists, Reformed National and Independents, co-operate with Pastor Ar- niand Delille ; nor the very successful mission to the workmen of Belleville andMontmartre, and three other districts, under the direction COOK : EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE IN FRANCE. 173 of the Rev. aud Mrs. M'All, a quite novel effort characterized by the broadness of the plat- form on which it stands, and by the prompt and hearty co-operation of the Christians of our metropolis ; nor the interesting conver- saziones held during the two last winters every Monday night in the drawing-room of Pastor Durancl Dassier, where professors, the- ologians, aud laymen have met to discuss in a friendly spirit religious subjects. In conclusion, we shall state very briefly j what appears to us specially desirable in j order to maintain, consolidate, and render : more efficient Christian Union in our be- 1 loved France, and these remarks may per- haps apply to other countries besides. One of the first things needed is the prompt and vigorous reorganization of Evangelical Alliance committees wherever they have al- ready existed, and the formation of new com- mittees wherever it can be done. And these committees ought to meet at stated times, and call together public meetings for edification andprayeras often as convenient every Sun- day night if possible, as it is done at Nismes, where there is but one service in the even- ing, held in turns in two chapels, aud it is an Evangelical Alliance meeting, or once a mouth at least. Secondly, it would be necessary that, apart from these committees and meetings, which may retain their actual form, groups should be gathered, in the various districts of our great cities, or in towns and villages, con- nected with the Home Mission (Mission in- terieure), with the express aim of giving to every individual Christian the opportunity of and required facilities for working in co- operation with those around, in view of sav- ing souls and doing good to all men. The evangelization of the masses, general- ly of Roman Catholics, of children, to whom we ought to give a great attention, will nev- er be carried forward on a great scale but by the united forces of the Church. Popular lectures have to be given in stores or halls hired for the purpose, in order that crowds may be brought to hear the Gospel ; tracts must be given away by thousands, and good books be lent to multitudes ; hundreds of Sunday-schools must be founded in view of the poor; and for all this, the co-operation and simultaneous action of all the earnest aud pious members of the churches are abso- lutely necessary, aud nothing could contrib- ute more in uniting the hearts of God's chil- dren than this work done in common. Thirdly, we should like to see established between the different churches frequent in- tercourse under the form of an exchange of pulpits. Every body would be the gainer if now and then pastors of neighboring churches, not of the same denomination, should reciprocally preach for one another ; and we fail to see what possible harm could arise from such intercourse. Or such pastors might with a third make arrangements iu view of giving a series of lectures, instituting revival services, here or there. They would, together, and holding each other's hands, at- tack vigorously the strongholds of the adver- sary, Satan ; and if the results might not be iu every instance directly profitable to this or that particular church, they would as- suredly turn to the advantage of the Church in its greatest and best sense, and turn to the honor and glory of Jesus Christ the Redeem- er. But we feel assured that such a course of action could not fail to benefit all the churches adopting such a mode of action. Is it necessary that I should add that, in order that all this may take place, in order that the unity of the Spirit may be kept iu the bond of peace, it is absolutely needed that a closer relationship be established be- tween the members of the body and their liv- ing Head ; that men should cease to say, " I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas," that Christ may become all in all ; that the aim of every individual man or woman, and his or her constant preoccupation, be only, " What shall I do to please my Master and Lord ? What wouldst thou have me to do f " and that all be willing to say with sincerity, speaking not with respect to themselves only, but with respect to the particular church to which they belong, " He" (Christ) "must in- crease, but I must decrease," i. e., every thing which is merely earthly, formal, transitory 1 Then the separate churches will no longer be rivals, but sisters; then the interest of the few will yield to the interest of all; then God's chil- dren will continually do good to each other, and never any harm ; then every thing which might throw discredit upon other churches or other Christians will be avoided most sed- ulously ; then all offensive weapons would be reserved for the battle against error aud sin ; then the word of the Lord Jesus will be re- alized, "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one ; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. BY TIIK REV. F. W. CONRAD, D.D., OF PHILADELPHIA, PA. Mn. PUESIDENT, Dr. Adams, in his admi- rable opeiiiug address, made touching allu- sion to the name of Dr. S. S. Schmucker, of Gettysburg, Pa., among those who expected to be present at this meeting of the Alliance, but who have recently been transferred by God to "the General Assembly and Church of the First-born, written in Heaven." Call- ed by the Committee to occupy his place on the programme, I deem it an appropriate and agreeable duty, before proceeding to the dis- cussion of the subject assigned me, to pay a brief tribute to his memory, as an able ad- vocate of Christian union, and as one of the originators and supporters of the Evangel- ical Alliance. Dr. Schmucker commenced the study of the subject of Christian union more than half a century ago. The matured results of these studies were given to the world in his "Fraternal Appeal" to the American churches, which was first published in 1838, and subsequently passed through several editions in a revised and enlarged form. It was extensively circulated in England and America, awakened a deep interest in the subject, received favorable notice from the religious press, and numerous testimonials from many of the most distinguished divines of the different Protestant denominations. It is an admitted fact that the "Appeal" of Dr. Schmucker bore a prominent part in pre- paring the way for the organization of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846. He was present at its first meeting, and was even then des- ignated as " the father of the Alliance " by Dr. King, of Ireland, in a public address de- livered in London at that time. It was he also who moved already, at that first meet- ing of the Alliance, that its second meeting should be held in New York ; and although his motion Avas not adopted at that time, nev- ertheless it was carried out practically twen- ty-seven years later, as the present sixth Con- ference of the Alliance here happily attests. Dr. Schmucker took special interest in the subject of Christian union, and labored for its promotion, through the Evangelical Alli- ance, during the greater portion of his minis- terial and professional life. As he approach- ed the portals of eternity during his declin- ing years, his mind and heart were more and more absorbed by it, and ho prepared a Plan for the Confederation of all Protestant denominations in an Evangelical Alliance of the entire Christian world. This plan was published, and favorably noticed by a number of religious journals of different de- nominations in this country during the past year, and a copy of it has been laid before the Committee of the Alliance for their con- sideration. He looked forward to this meet- ing with ardent solicitude, and expected to be present to submit his Plan of Confeder- ation before the Alliance in person.* The last letter I received from him had ref- erence to the subject of Christian union, and contained a request that the speaker should in his absence take charge of his plan for the confederation of the churches of Protestant Christendom, and present it for considera- tion at the meeting of the General Synod of the Lutheran Church. But God, in his all- wise providence, so ordered that his strong desire to take part in this Conference could not be gratified. On the 26th of July last, after entertaining friends at his house in the evening, he was suddenly seized with heart disease, and before midnight died, in the con- scious hope of a blissful immortality. His last words were, " I have lived and am dying in the faith of Jesus." With this tribute to the memory of the departed, I proceed to the discussion of the theme assigned me by your Committee : IN- TERCHANGE OF PULPITS. Interchange of pulpits is a legitimate out- growth of the original appointment of the ministry, and the organization of the Chris- tian Church. Jesus Christ himself instituted the office of the Christian ministry. He originally ap- pointed twelve apostles, and invested them with ordinary and extraordinary powers and functions. The extraordinary powers con- ferred upon them constituted them apostles in the specific sense ; the ordinary functions constituted them ministers of the Gospel in the general sense. As apostles, they receiv- ed their appointments directly from Christ, were endowed with inspiration, made the medium of divine revelation, clothed with * [It is proper here to state that, while the late ven- erable Dr. Schmncker, in his "Plan," aimed at an of- ficial confederation of the various denominations, the Evangelical Alliance confines itself to the promotion of union among individual Christians, without inter- fering with their preference for, or loyalty to, their particular denomination, and without any attempt at an organic or confederate union of churches as such, which, however desirable it may be in itself, is cer- tainly not practicable or obtainable at the present time. Ed.} CONRAD : INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. 175 miraculous power, commissioned to hear wit- ness of his personal ministry, and especially of his resurrection, and were empowered to organize churches among all nations. As ministers, they were commissioned to preach the Gospel to every creature in all the world, to administer the sacraments ac- cording to the Scriptures, to exercise gov- erning and disciplinary powers, to confer the same prerogatives upon their successors through ordination, and thus to transmit the ministerial office to the end of time. As apostles, their field of labor was the world into which they went, bearing witness for Christ, organizing churches, ordaining min- isters, and exercising special supervision over both pastors and congregations. In this manner congregations were organ- ized, which, in their individuality, constitu- ted the Church Local or Particular ; and as parts of a general spiritual organism, consti- tuted the Church Universal. In like man- ner, ministers were called, ordained, and set- tled as pastors over these local churches. Thus believers became members, and their overseers or bishops became pastors of the Church Particular, and thereby also of the Church Universal, just as, by our national constitution, persons who become citizens of any one State thereby also become citizens of the United States. And while order requires that certain pre- rogatives belonging to members and pastors should be limited in their exercise to the Church Particular, yet the profounder and more comprehensive conception of the Church of Christ, as an all-embracing spiritual or- ganism, demands that some other privileges pertaining to the Church Universal may also be exercised by both members and pastors, in exceptional cases, by mutual consent. To this class of privileges, sacramental fellow- ship among members, and interchange of pulpits among pastors, rightfully belong. These formative principles here briefly stated are contained in the Scriptures, and were practically developed in the organiza- tion of the primitive Church, whose mem- bers confessed that they believed in one holy Catholic Church, to which they belonged, and in which they were invested, both as members and ministers, with the privilege of sacramental and pulpit fellowship. But in the ongoing of Providence, the primitive Church was inoculated with error, and trans- formed into the Romish hierarchy. This made a reformation indispensable. The occasion was thus furnished for the rise of Protestant- ism, whose development eventually culmi- nated in the organization of the different orthodox Protestant denominations, among which an interchange of pulpits ought to be practiced, in accordance with the principles and example of the Apostolic Church. Interchange of pulpits can not, however, be inaugurated and regulated by canon laws. As Protestants are not united in one external J organization, there is no general ecclesiastic- al body which is authorized to legislate on the subject. Interchange of pulpits must, therefore, be remanded to the sphere of ec- clesiastical liberty, and be regulated by the pastors of the Protestant denominations ac- cording to local circumstances, congregation- al relations, pastoral preferences, and ecclesi- astical affinities. While, therefore, the Evan- gelical Alliance can not legitimately author- ize the pastors of the different denominations represented in it to interchange pulpits, or prescribe when and where and how often exchanges shall take place, yet in our judg- ment it may approve or recommend such interchanges wherever ecclesiastical canons and laws of State will allow. And we hope that through the influence of this Alliance all such obstructions will eventually be re- moved. Interchange of pulpits ought to be re- stricted to Protestants. The Church of Rome, as the "Mother of Abominations," invented traditions, corrupted the Word of God, perverted the sacraments, usurped the authority of the Church, and led the people astray; and when rebuked, refused to re- nounce its errors and correct its abuses, and hence the Protestants heeded the call of God addressed to them : " Come out from among them, and be ye separate." They according- ly organized their respective denominations. The errors and abuses protested against were subsequently authoritatively adopted by the Council of Trent, and are held and promul- gated to this day. As, therefore, the Canons of Trent remain in full force, the Protest of Speyer must remain in full force also. Fidelity to the truth of God required the entire separation of Protestants from the Church of Rome, and consistency demands that there be no interchange of pulpits with the priests and prelates of that cor- rupt Church. Interchange of pulpits should also be re- stricted to the ministers of orthodox denom- inations. Under the deterioration of the human reason consequent upon the fall, there arose in Apostolic times false proph- ets, who erred concerning the faith, preached another gospel, denied the Lord that bought them, and brought in damnable heresies. Christ called these "wolves in sheep's cloth- ing," and warned his disciples against them ; and, as the apostles forbade the churches from receiving them and their pastors from bidding them God -speed, the moral force of these warnings and injunctions requires that the pastors of orthodox denominations should refuse an interchange of pulpits with modern errorists who deny the fundamental doctrines of the system of evangelical truth. Interchange of pulpits in the Christian Church was foreshadowed by the custom prevalent in the service of the synagogues 176 CHRISTIAN UNION. of the Jewish Church. The prerogative of reading and expounding the Scriptures and preaching to the people was not restricted, but was extended by the rulers of the syna- gogue to any member of it or to any stran- ger who might be present, as well as to the "angel" who was appointed to attend to this part of the religious service. When Christ entered the synagogue at Nazareth, of which he was a member, the book of the prophet Esaias was handed to him, and he read and expounded the lesson for the day. But when Jesus was present in a synagogue of which he was not a member, he preach- ed to the people instead of the "angel" or preacher, after the reading and exposition of the Scriptures. When Paul and his com- panions were at Autioch, in Pisidia, they went to the synagogue and sat down. Af- ter the reading of the Law and the Prophets, the rulers sent a messenger to them, saying, " Men and brethren, if ye have any word of exhortation for the people, say on." And in accordance with this invitation, Paul preach- ed the Gospel to those who were present, or officiated in the place of the angel or preach- er of the synagogue. If, now, the privilege of exhorting or preaching in the place of the angel was conferred upon any member or stranger present, much more would this priv- ilege be extended by one angel of the syna- gogue to another. And as the ministers of the Seven Churches of Asia were called an- gels, in all probability because of the analo- gy which exists between the duties and pre- rogatives of these offices, the propriety and duty of interchange of pulpits among the angels of the New Testament churches was at least foreshadowed by the custom prevail- ing in the Jewish synagogue service. The propriety of interchange of pulpits is enforced by apostolic authority and exam- ple. The apostles organized churches in different localities, ordained elders or bish- ops, and recommended them as pastors to their members. They also chose ministers or evangelists whom they employed as their assistants, sending them forth to promulgate the Gospel in destitute regions, to visit and edify the churches and encourage their pas- tors. The presbyters or bishops were pas- tors of the different churches in the same city, and doubtless recognized each other as such, and officiated for each other as occa- sion called for it. The evaugelists, like the apostles, were ministers of the Church in general, and wherever they came they were acknowledged as the accredited messengers of the apostles by the pastors of the local churches, in whose stead they preached the Gospel during their sojourn among them. The interchange of pulpits on the part of the pastors of orthodox Protestant congre- gations in the same localities, or when they visit other congregations in other countries as temporary evangelists, has doubtless the sanction of Apostolic authority and exam- ple. The propriety of the interchange of pul- pits is sustained by the practice of the prim- itive Church. In the primitive ages the unity of the Church was exemplified by al- tar fellowship among its members and pul- pit fellowship among its pastors. Any min- ister in one part of the Church was recog- nized as such in every other, and, if present at public worship, was ordinarily invited to take part in conducting the services. This privilege having been abused, regulations were made by the church councils to guard against the reception of impostors. Accord- ingly, one of the Apostolic Canons requires that no strange minister should be received without letters of recommendation ; and the Council of Carthage adopted in the year A.D. 368 a similar regulation. Interchange of pulpits is demanded by a consistent development of the principles of Protestantism. Protestantism was not a new creation. It did not originate new ec- clesiastical forces, but it discovered the form- ative principles of Christianity, and embod- ied them in the organization of the Evangel- ical Church. At first Luther aimed at the reform of the Romish Church and opposed separation from her. For while he saw "that every thing was in a wretched state there," he did not regard that as a sufficient " reason for separation," nor separation as the best means of making it better. " There is no sin, no evil," said he, " that should de- stroy charity or break the bond of union. We must not desert God on account of the devil." But the Papal bull of excommuni- cation eventually taught him the hopeless- ness of reforming the Church of Rome, and the necessity of an ecclesiastical reorganiza- tion. In the accomplishment of this work he did not originate a new sect, having no connection with the Church of the past, but he reorganized and revived the primitive Catholic Church, with its Apostolic prin- ciples, in contradistinction from the Papal hierarchy. Adopting the ecumenical creeds, the Re- formers confessed their faith in the perpe- tuity of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, which consists of the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity, and the sacraments are administered in accordance therewith by the ministers ordained according to the divine appointment. They maintained the universality of the priesthood of believers as the Scriptural basis for the particular priesthood of the ministry, not as an indeli- ble order of ecclesiastics as held by Rome, but as an office of service in the Church, transmitted by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, according to Apostolic ex- ample. Congregations of believers were thus organized and pastors settled over them CONRAD: INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. 177 in various localities and different lauds. Ex- ternally separated, they appear as the Church Particular ; but internally bound by the uni- ty of the faith, they constitute the Church Catholic. And this unity did not consist in absolute uniformity iu doctrine, worship, government, and usage, but in agreement in the reception of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. These ecclesiastical principles the Swiss as well as the Saxon Reformers promulga- ted at first independently, and their repre- sentatives, Zwiugli and CEcolampadius, Lu- ther and Melanchthon, formally adopted them at the Marburg Conference, October 4, 1529, the 363d anniversary of the signing of whose articles, by an extraordinary coin- cidence, occurs this very day. They were re-affirmed in their colloquies and conferen- ces, confessed in their creeds and concordats, and authoritatively declared in formal trea- ties. And while it must be confessed that the Reformers, under the pressure of pecul- iar circumstances and temptations, some- times acted inconsistently with the catho- lic principles adopted by them, nevertheless were they not thereby repealed, but remain- ed in full force. It must also be admitted that some Protestants have infringed upon them by unduly magnifying their denomi- national peculiarities ; but while such an ac- knowledgment reveals the fallibility of man and the tendency to sectarian exclusiveness, it does not destroy the force of the historic tes- timony to Protestant unity and catholicity. Dr. Dorner, in his " History of the Develop- ment of Protestant Theology," testifies that he wrote it to show that, " under the guid- ance of the spirit of Evangelical Catholicity, in spite of the variety of nationalities, as well as the manifold conformations of Evangelic- al Protestant Christianity among those peo- ples which have appropriated the blessings of the Reformation of the sixteenth century in spite of the divisions in language, usages, and habits, as well as iu its destiny, Evan- gelical Protestant Christendom forms a uni- ty." In corroboratioii of this testimony, another distinguished witness, Merle d'Au- bigne", says : " The catholicity of the Refor- mation is a noble feature in its character. The Germans pass into Switzerland; the French into Germany; in later times men from England and Scotland pass over to the Continent, and doctors from the Continent into Great Britain. The Reformers in the different countries spring up almost inde- pendently of each other, but no sooner are they born than they hold out the hand of fellowship. There is among them one sole faith, one spirit, one Lord. It has been an error, in our opinion, to write the history of the Reformation for a single country. The work is one, and from their very origin the Protestant churches form ' a whole body fitly joined together.'" 12 In other words, the unity and catholicity of the Protestant Church, together with the parity and validity of the ordination of her ministry, were acknowledged as the cardi- nal ecclesiastical principles, in accordance with which interchange of pulpits was prac- ticed as occasion presented itself and cir- cumstances rendered it proper and benefi- cial ; and the consistent development of the same principles demands a free interchange of pulpits now. Such interchange has been fostered by the organization of the Evangelical Alliance. It originated in the longing awakened by the Holy Spirit for the realization of " the com- munion of saints," and is the expression of Protestant unity and catholicity. Consist- ency requires that the denominations repre- sented in it recognize the Christian charac- ter of their members, the doctrinal sound- ness of their ministers, and the validity of the ordinances administered by them. The articles of confederation constitute a bond of union which seeks expression in sacra- mental fellowship at the table of the Lord, and culminates in ministerial fellowship by an interchange of pulpits. What influence the meetings and publications of the Evan- gelical Alliance in England and on the Con- tinent have had in fostering interchange of pulpits, we leave to our European brethren to tell us ; but we can assure them that its influence has rendered such exchanges com- mon in the United States. Ministerial ex- changes are customary iu all parts of our country, and between the great majority of the Protestant denominations, and the result proves their propriety and usefulness. Interchange of pulpits has had a tendency to root and ground believers in the truth, to confirm their faith, to increase their broth- erly love, and to prepare them to acknowl- edge each other at the sacramental board as " fellow-citizens of the saints and of the household of God." It recognizes the offi- cial standing of Protestant ministers, re- veals their talents, acquirements, and spir- itual graces, produces mutual affection, and promotes their cordial co-operation in the common work of the Lord. It places essen- tial and non-essential truths in their true relative position, and is calculated to correct misapprehensions and remove prejudices in regard to other denominations, as well as to diminish the occasions for, and to soften the asperities of, religious controversy. It ac- cords with the Scriptural constitution of the Church and the office, relations, and pre- rogatives of the ministry ; it is enforced by the analogy of faith, and it practically illus- trates the unity and catholicity of Protest- antism over against the unfounded and pre- tentious claims of unity and catholicity set up by the Church of Rome. Objections are, of course, to be expected against the practice. It is alleged : 178 CHRISTIAN UNION. 1. That interchange of pulpits is incon- 1 sistent with fidelity to " the truth as it is in | Jesus" and " the faith 6nce delivered to the saints." All truth has its source in Christ, and is important. But some truths are more important than others, because of their in- trinsic excellence and their relative position anil-i niliifiicf in the system of Christian doc- trine. To this class belong the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, all of which are held by the orthodox Protestant denominations. To the discussion of topics involving these essential truths, Protestant ministers, by a kind of common ecclesiastical law, confine themselves in exchanging pulpits with each other. They furnish a very wide field from which to select pulpit themes, and the strong- est incentive against the introduction of dis- puted points on such occasions. And as faith cometh by hearing and embracing the cardi- nal doctrines of Christianity, and as these are set forth by Protestant ministers when offi- ciating for each other, interchange of pul- pits is consistent with bearing witness " to the truth as it is in Jesus," as well as with "earnestly contending for the faith once de- livered to the saints." 2. It is alleged that interchange of pul- pits renders the ministers of one denomina- tion jespousible for the doctrinal statements of the creed of another. Confessional obli- gations can only be assumed by the volun- tary subscription of a creed, and they can not be rightfully imposed by mere implica- tion. In this manner the ministers of Prot- estant denominations become responsible for the doctrines set forth in their respective confessions, according to the import of the formula of subscription assented to at their ordination. By an interchange of pulpits they merely acknowledge the soundness of their several creeds as regards fundament- als, while by withholding a formal subscrip- tion to them they indicate that, in their judg- ment, their respective confessions are, nev- ertheless, deficient, imperfect, or erroneous in some of their doctrinal statements. But they do not by such exchanges in anywise in- dorse what they regard as error, nor bid God- speed to errorists. 3. It is alleged that interchange of pul- pits depreciates, if not ignores, denomina- tional differences. In consequence of the multiform character of revelation, the per- verseness of the human reason, the imper- fection of man's spiritual development, and the diversified influences to which he is ex- posed in his religions training, the attain- ment of absolute agreement in the interpre- tation of the Scriptures has been found im- possible, and doctrinal differences have ac- cordingly arisen among Protestants. These differences have been regarded as sufficient- ly important to justify them in organizing their respective denominations. Now, in- terchange of pulpits recognizes the exist- ence of these differences as the distinguish- ing characteristics of the Protestant denom- inations. Ecclesiastical instinct, Christian courtesy, as well as Scripture injunction, prevent their discussion while occupying each other's pulpits. They are neither ig- nored nor thrust forward ; they are neither depreciated nor exalted; they are simply let alone. Protestant ministers may, conse- quently, justify the origination of their re- spective denominations in their organiza- tions, and regard their peculiarities as suffi- ciently important to perpetuate them. By interchange of pulpits they transfer their differences to the sphere of non-fundament- als, and confess that their non-reception does not destroy the Christian character of the members, the official standing of the minis- try, nor the validity of the ordinances of their respective organizations. 4. It is alleged that interchange of pulpits is calculated to confuse the minds of Chris- tians, and unsettle their ecclesiastical opin- ions. This objection is based upon the sup- position that, whenever one Protestant min- ister occupies the pulpit of another, he would seize the opportunity to assail the doctrines and usages of the denomination to whose members he was preaching, and to set forth and defend those of his own Church. But as the Scriptures enjoin upon all ministers to avoid "doubtful disputations" and the discussion of" questions which gender strife," so glaring an impropriety will seldom if ever occur ; and, as a matter of fact, we have nev- er heard that any Protestant minister thus abused the privilege accorded him, nor that any members have thereby been proselyted from one denomination to another. 5. It is alleged that the various Protest- ant confessions set forth different doctrinal systems, that the discourses of their minis- ters are characterized by their peculiarities, and through interchange of pulpits the mem- bers of one denomination are necessarily in- oculated with what are regarded as the er- rors of the other. This objection sounds spe- cious, but it nevertheless has little weight. It has been conjured up by theologians Avhose lives are spent in splitting doctrinal hairs, and, w r hen practically examined, proves a mere man of straw. The Protestant confessions in reality set forth the essential features of but one doc- trinal system, and their differences belong to the category of theological accidents. This was recognized and manifested at Ber- lin, in 1851, when two thousand six hundred pastors, professors, and theologians, repre- senting the four grand divisions of Protest- antism Lutheran, Reformed, Calvinistic, and Movarian reconfessedthe doctrinal ar- ticles of the Augsburg Confession as contain- ing the evangelical system of Christianity. Their doctrinal differences are seldom dis- cussed by Protestant pastors in their own pul- CONRAD : INTERCHANGE OF PULPITS. 179 pits ; and nearly all the sermons they preach present evangelical truth in such a form as to be just as well adapted to edify the mem- bers of one Protestant denomination as those of another. It is only on rare and special occasions, and by special effort, that sermons are preached by Protestant pastors so charged with the peculiar phases of their respective denominations as to be clearly apprehended even by their own members ; and should any one of them so far forget himself as to preach such a discourse to the members of another denomination, when occupying one of their pulpits, the result, in all probability, would be nothing more than an opportunity of obeying the apostolic injunction, "Prove all things : hold fast that which is good." And it is hardly conceivable how the sermons preached by Protestant pastors, when ex- changing pulpits with each other, could in- fect their hearers with heresy and lead them astray. Those who refuse to practice exchange of pulpits, and isolate themselves from all other Christians in their exclusiveness, un- duly magnify their denominational peculiar- ities, and give them an unscriptural position and influence in the system of evangelical truth. They arrogate to themselves the characteristics of the Church Catholic ; they practically deny the Christian character of the members, the official legitimacy of the ministry, and the doctrinal orthodoxy of all other denominations, and thus transform a true denominationalism into an unjustifia- ble sectarianism. They refuse to acknowl- edge the manifest favor with which God has crowned the labors of the ministers of other denominations, and virtually reproach Christ for accrediting by his benediction the ministry of such unchurch! y sects, without the pale of the covenanted mercies of God vouchsafed to them alone, as the true Church of Christ. Let the ministers of the Evangelical Prot- estant denominations realize that the Church is set forth in the Scriptures as a sun, and that ministers are all its light-bearers; as a school, in which they are all teachers ; as a house- hold, in which they are all servants ; as a fold, in which they are all pastors ; as a vineyard, in which they are all laborers ; as a kingdom, in which they are all officers ; and as a great world field, in which they are all sowers of the seed of the Word. Let them remember that the true conception of the Church Mil- itant is not that of a manikin whose parts, mechanically connected, form a body with- out organic union or life, but of a body all of whose members are compactly joined to- gether and constitute a living spiritual or- ganism ; nor is it that of an army divided into separate divisions, led by hostile officers against each other, but of one grand army marching against Antichrist, all of whose divisions with their leaders are led by Je- sus Christ, the great Captain of our salva- tion. Neither is the true ideal of the Church triumphant that of a templo divided into separate courts, between whose worshipers and miuistrauts there is no fellowship ; but it is that of one vast temple, not made with hands, illumined by the Shekinah of glory, occupied by the general assembly and Church of the First-born as worshipers, whose min- isters are all recognized as alike the priests of the Most High God. Let the Protestant ministry heed the decla- ration of Christ, " One is your Master, and ye are all brethren." Let them give due signif- icance to the sacerdotal prayer of Jesus, that they might all be one, as he and the Father are one, that the world may believe that the Father sent the Son to redeem it. Let them ponder the prophecies, that the time shall come when Ziou shall constitute but one fold, under one Chief Shepherd, all whose " watchmen shall see eye to eye." Let them, by their prayers for each other, their inter- change of pulpits with each other, and their cordial co-operation in every good work, aid in ushering in the time when the Scriptural characteristics of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church shall be actualized on earth, and " the kingdoms of this world " bo declared by the Apocalyptic angel to have become " the Kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ," and all her accredited ministers " kings and priests unto God." THE LORD'S SUPPER IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNION. BY THE REV. WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MUHLENBERG, D.D., Pastor and Superintendent of St. Luke's Hospital, New York, and of St. Johnland, Long Island.* PERHAPS I ought to apologize for not keeping, iu what I am about to say, to one of the themes allotted me in the programme ; yet my only apology is that I ain strongly moved to speak on another one, however, not wholly irrelevant to the general topic of the day, nor inappropriate as one of the concluding papers of the Conference. Proceeding with my subject, which I can treat only in the plain words of a worker rather than a speaker, and not after the sci- entific method of the able and scholarly men who have preceded me, I observe, we should think it strange, were we not accustomed to it, that among Protestant Evangelical Chris- tians there is so little socialness, if it may be so designated, in the observance of the high- est social act of their religion. Their unity in the faith and in the cardinal doctrines of the Gospel is certainly not obvious in their relations to the great Sacrament of unity the Lord's Supper, their observance of which being so isolated Avithin their own ecclesi- astical bounds. They meet each at their own, but rarely at a common communion table. Now this, as an ordinary rule, could not be otherwise. The communicants in a neighborhood of any size could not form a single congregation. Nor, if they could, would it be desirable. They have their church homes, so to call them, where, under their own pastors, and amidst their families and friends, they feel it a good and pleasant thing so to participate in the sacred feast. They have an indisposition to go for it be- * [The above address was delivered by the vener- able author, October 11, 1873, but belongs properly to the section on Christian Union. The note at the close of Dr. Hodge's article applies also here. The Evan- gelical Alliance, which is no church, but simply a voluntary association of Christians from different churches, did not hold a communion service at the General Conference iu New York ; but an opportuni- ty was given to its members to join freely in the reg- ular communion services which were held in several churches during the two intervening Sundays. One such service, which took place in Dr. Adams's Pres- byterian Church, October 5th, and in which the Dean of Canterbury, of the Chnrch of England, Bishop Von Schweinitz, of the Moravians, Dr. Angus, of the Bap- tists, Rev. N.Sheshadri, a converted Brahmin, of Bom- bay, and others, took part, was especially impressive, and elicited a great deal of interest and subsequent discussion in the newspapers, which it is hoped may have a good effect in the end. Ed.] yond these companies of immediate breth- ren. Nor is this unsocial if it be only a nat- ural preference for their own associations, for the sacramental modes and customs to which they, like their fathers before them, have been accustomed. But when they do it on religions grounds, when they make it a matter of conscience, when they would forego the communion altogether rather than partake of it outside of their own con- nections, then it is that unsocialuess, to call it by its mildest name, which it is hard to reconcile with aught of hearty realization of membership in the one body of Christ. Here I pray not to be understood as advert- ing to any particular body of Christians who feel constrained to close communion, from consistency with their special creeds. There are true brethren in that category, at whom I would not be aiming words, and at a time like this. I refer to what is com- mon among all Protestant Christians their avoidance of one another's communions ; an avoidance the more remarkable since they practice it on scarcely any other religious occasions. They do not refuse to worship in one another's sanctuaries, they listen to one another's preachers, they go hand in hand in w r orks of piety and benevolence, in the name of their one Lord ; but when it comes to communicating together, there they halt they are ready for any act of brotherliness but that ; and so the extraor- dinary and not less unworthy thing comes to pass, that the last place at which they should be willing to separate is the last place at which they are willing to meet. Were I now to add what has been fearful- ly worse than such alienation, the wrathful controversies, the bitter theological strifes, the mutual excommunications, of which this blessed ordinance has been the occasion the centre of peace the very centre of war we should say, how true the paradox of our Lord, " I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword." Such fierce zeal for opinion, magnified into essential faith, has, however, been for the most part confined to religion- istic combatants, who, of all combatants, least know wha^t manner of spirit they an of. Happily, too, it is rather a thing of the past ; but not without leaving a remainder in that which is the same in kind, though MUHLENBERG: THE LORD'S SUPPER. 181 less in degree sacramental exclusiveness, the veriest opposite of what \vould seem to be a matter of course, sacramental compre- hensiveness. That also, thank God, is pass- ing away. A happy change has of late years been going on. The fencing in of God's board by man's devices is one of the old ways Avhich we are discovering must not necessarily be good only because they are old. We are coming into a clearer and freer atmosphere. The night is far spent ; the day is at hand. The icy barriers and frost-work of ecclesiasticism, congealed in the dark, are melting under the beams of advancing light. We have had union com- munions. Christians have acknowledged a becoming and solemn significance in forget- ting awhile their diversities, and in enjoy- ing their agreement in the supreme and precious truths embodied in the sacrament. Loyal to the Churches in which Providence has set them, giving them due preference and support, they own a yet higher allegiance to the law laid upon them in common : " This do in remembrance of me." It is one of the encouraging signs of the times, an ascendant harmony of Gospel concord amidst the jar of churchy discord, and as such not un- worthy the observation of a Gospel alliance. So, at least, it seems to your speaker, who begs to offer some thoughts upon it as his contribution to the Conference. With regard to these union communions, I submit that the time has come when they should be systematized and regulated, and that mainly in order to their having a rep- resentative character. Accordingly, they should not be extemporary gatherings of all and any good people moved to attend them, but companies of persons chosen by their brother communicants of their respective congregations not, of course, to the exclu- sion of all others; but these elected dele- gates or proxies should form the main body of the communicating assembly, which would thus witness not only for itself, but for all its constituents, to unity and union in Christ. To that extent it would be a representa- tive holy communion ; but let it be extended farther let it embrace more than only cer- tain local congregations, however numerous. The great object in view is the union of the different branches of the Protestant Church even intercommunion. And mark how ea- sily that could be effected by what a simple process. Those different branches, in their highest councils, their synods, their conven- tions, and so forth, would only have to adopt resolutions approving of such communions, recommending their members to join in them, giving counsel concerning them, with the prayerful hope that they might become a new and blessed pledge of brotherly peace and good-will in the widest aud best of bonds. Let us suppose their action went beyond this, and that they appointed dele- gates immediately from their own bodies, to meet in a stated, say annual, holy commun- ion, coinciding in time with one or anoth- er of the local celebrations. Here would be a general Church union. Here would be a concordat, not of theological dogmas or of ec- clesiastical policy, yet of fundamental Chris- tian doctrine, withal of Christian amity. Here would be a compact without diploma- cy, without settlings of precedence, without mutual concessions a compact signed with Christ's own seal. Here would be an Ecu- menical Council that might claim, as conn dently as any ever held, the presence of the Holy Ghost. Here would be a universal confraternity, having that mark of divine creation, variety in unity Lutheran and Calvinist, Zwinglian and Moravian, Episco- palian and Presbyterian, Methodist aud Bap- tist, all within the limits of a sound Faith ; of all ranks and conditions, too the ortho- dox Emperor who sent us so cordial a greet- ing, and the pietist school-master, the Pri- mate of all England (so be it) who spake friendly words to us through his dean, and the dissenting Bible-reader, side by side in the equality of the one Faith, the one Lord, the one Baptism, the one God and Father of all, partaking of the one bread and the one cup given to them, as brethren, by their God-brother at his own table of all-embra- cing love. Let that come to pass, and who will say that our evangelic Christendom is destitute of all unity, a chaotic aggregation of confused and inter-repellent parts ? yet withal, the objection may be made, destitute of any organic union. Nay, nay, who was the great organizer of the Church? And when by any positive external act of his own did he ever organize it, if not when he instituted this one bond of fellowship for all his disciples through their fellowship with him? if not, too, when by the hallowed wine-cup he signified the only organism of which he ever spake, " I am the vine, ye are the branches." Such an evangelic, catholic, and represent- ative holy communion, all will admit, is a goodly ideal. But we may doubt its prac- tical realization ay, we may more than doubt unless we can assume for it a wide- spread and longing desire unless from all earnest hearts and voices there goes forth the response, "Amen, in the name of the God of peace, Amen." Trusting for that, I see no great difficulties in the way of the tribes of our Israel thus gathering for a high Chris- tian Passover. I say great, for there might be minor ones, arising out of the divers modes of celebration prevalent among the different bodies of Christians, each naturally adher- ing to its own ; but respecting these there could be only universal agreement that they are mere accidents, not of the essence of the ordinance. They are extrinsic forms, vari- able, while the substance is untouched. In 182 CHRISTIAN UNION. the solemnity proposed we must look at the Holy Supper as it is iti itself and exclusive- ly as we liud it in the pages of the New Tes- tament. There, it is simply a company of disciples partaking together of the elements of the meal ordained by their Lord and Mas- ter in sacred and grateful commemoration of the sacrifice of his death for their redemp- tion the communion of his body and blood. This is the amount of Scripture fact and teaching concerning the Eucharist. It is one of the agenda, not credenda, of our relig- ion. The doctrines concerning its nature, efficacy, and the like are inferential, the Bi- ble argument for which we may weigh for ourselves, having due regard for ancient and traditional consent in the premises. They do not affect the minimum of agreement, be- yond all question Scriptural, which must ex- ist among ourselves in order, with our mani- fold views and sentiments, to our intercom- munion. That minimum, considering the amount of Gospel truth it involves, is enough. So of the various sacramental rites and cere- monies ; they are more or less agreeable to Scripture, they have more or less value in their way ; but none of them are invaluable. They do not approach to an essential. Thus looking at the institution solely in the New Testament exhibitions of it, wo are struck with the absence in it of one feature which is very extensively thought to be in- dispensable to its integrity or, as some would say, to its validity : I mean admin- istration by an authorized administrator. Herein might lie the greatest obstacle to in- tercommunion, but of this we discover not a trace in the inspired records. In the first instance, our Lord was the iustitutor rather than the administrator, and, so far as he was the latter, certainly he appointed no suc- cessor in the office. Had he done so, we could not have been left in the dark con- cerning it. Inequality, except that of " Pri- mus inter pares " for order's sake, is at vari- ance with the chief idea of the communion. It was to his first communicants our Lord laid down the law ignoring all precedence among them : " One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." Turning to the Pentecostal Christians, we find them keeping the feast in their private houses, where certainly the apostles, who as yet were the only ministers of the new dispensation, could not always have been present to give their authoritative benediction. When St. Paul preached to the disciples at Troas, where they had met on the first day of the week for their " breaking bread," the oppor- tunity was his for a farewell discourse to them, not their opportunity for a commun- ion, which would have taken place whether he had been with them or not. When the same apostle rebukes the Corinthians for their shameful behavior at their sacraments, if the clergy were among them as celebrants or consecrators, they certainly would have come in for a share of his lecture for allow- ing such scandalous disorder. " The figment of any thing like sacerdotal consecration of the Eucharist by transmitted power," says Dean Alford, " is as alien from the apostolic writings as it is from the spirit of the Gos- pel." To this quotation let me add another from a High-churchman, Bishop Cotterill, of the Episcopal Church in Scotland. " This Christian rite," he says, " the highest expres- sion of communion with Christ and with one another, was celebrated at first with little of that formal observance which afterward attended it, not in the temple where the dis- ciples still met for formal public worship "- not in the temple,that place devoted to priest- ly service " but at home, probably in such of their houses as were used for their gath- erings ;" where, I may add, as I have already implied, the apostles must have been ubiqui- tous, to be at every sacrament, absorbed as they were with their work as ambassadors for Christ, especially as the service at first seems to have been a daily one. Again, re- marks the bishop : " It is a significant fact that the one representative ordinance of the old economy for which the office of the Le- vitical priesthood was not needed (the Pass- over being a household institution) was se- lected by Jesus Christ as the rite out of which the great representative ordinance of the new should grow."* If an officiating ministry was not required for the type un- der the old dispensjvtion, surely none can be demanded for the antitype under the un- priestly dispensation of the new, save on the ground of custom not to be needlessly set aside. Accordingly, to speak as we are wont of one's administering the communion, of giving and taking the sacrament, is not Scrip- tural, though the language is unobjectiona- ble as conformable to the long-existing modes of celebrating the Supper. So the various ritual observances which have been added to it are of course to be reverenced accord- ing to their age and significance, so long as they do not touch the elementary nature of the institution, or prevent or interfere with its main design. We all have a strong at- tachment to our own Eucharistic modes. Nothing here said would in the least disturb it. It is a pious attachment which it would be well-nigh impious to violate. Communi- cating within our own ecclesiastical house- holds, we should bo disorderly if we did not conform to their established order. Never in the main could I part with that of the liturgy enshrined in my heart, as it enshrines all catholic and evangelic truth. But when we come out and hold a communion on com- mon ground, we forego all that marks our * In justice to the bishop, I should mention that in another place he requires an authorized celebrant, bnt pretendingno Scriptural precedent. See his "Gen- esis of the Church." MUHLENBEKG: THE LORD'S SUPPER. 183 dissimilarity, and we confiue ourselves to that wherein we are alike. We merge our various species in the genus Christian. We can afford to lay aside badges, though worn by our ancestors, content to appear only with the one sign of the cross. As the Eu- charist was ordained before ecclesiastical order, so in partaking of it in its primitive form we must be pre-ecclesiastical. We put ourselves on a level, clergy and laity, one of necessity presiding, and he, for obvious seem- liness, a brother in the ministry. We fall back upon our status of simple discipleship in Christ, and keep the feast, as far as may be, after the manner of its first occurrence in the upper room at Jerusalem. And could it be otherwise than refreshing aud enlar- ging and strengthening to the soul thus to return from time to time to a primordial Christianity ? I will not detain you by enlarging upon the probable happy consequences of a divine- ly constituted Evangelical Alliance, but will conclude with one or two additional re- marks. For all practical movements toward great- er union among Christians there must be some central ground. Overtures from par- ticular quarters might not be met in the spirit with which they would be made. You can not start from any of your old harbors ; you must take a new departure. And from whence rather than from the broad mid- land of a catholic, holy communion ? If you can not begin there, you can begin no- where. Again, such "love-feasts" would be an exhibition of the Church in her normal char- acter as the Divine Brotherhood the char- acter which she needs to make good, and to manifest more and more, if she is to make headway in the world. In that she will not fail to be appreciated. Men understand brotherhood. They desire it, and will have it in forms which they invent for themselves, as in their fellowships, their lodges, their fraternities. Let them see fellowship in the Church ay, socialism, communism, too. Let the Church recognize in these that which, in their true forms, she should supply, by tak- ing a lead, with her concerted strength, in all beneficently social movements, all phil- anthropic enterprise ; by her concern for the downtrodden and oppressed, lifting them up in their redeemed humanity ; by her ad- vocacy of the righteous rights of man ; by her not winking at the complacent notions of wealth and power, that the Dives and Lazarus of the parable are the normal con- dition of social Christendom, that in the conventionalities of life there must needs be an impassable gulf between the rich and the poor ; by her not leaving plans for the mel- ioration of the humbler classes wholly to the State, as if no business of hers ; by proving that the interests of humanity are therefore hers ; by her doing justice dare I say it ? to her Christ, by giving men to behold him the supreme Philanthropist the Christ not of her theolognes and scribes; the Christ of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; the Christ that now is, the Liberator the Emancipator from slavery, tyranny, from the grinding of mammon, burying the children of poverty in the pits and mire of earth as well as the Al- mighty Redeemer from the bondage of sin to the glorious liberty of the Sous of God. So let the Church demonstrate Christian social- ism, Christian communism. So let her, too, declare for liberty, equality, fraternity. To such ends let this Congress charge her for who has a better right to ? bid her make full proof of her profession as the benefactor, of the world, and not unfit herself for the high vocation by dissensions within herself. Remind her, with line upon line aud precept upon precept, that union is strength. Of every barrier that keeps her people from joint co-operation in her common work, that withholds them from intercommunion at the blessed feast, for the uplifting and invigor- ating of their souls of all such ramparts of separation, say to her, as the prophet of old did to Zion, "Take away the battlements that are not the Lord's." So adjure the world-wide Zion you here represent to the sacred obligation of peace within her own borders, as she would be worthy of herself, aud do earnest battle with her foes all thick and united around. So let her hope for suc- cessful conquest with the world, as she then may when she fulfills her prophetic type, "Jerusalem built as a city, at unity with herself." But one word more, referring to union. Let the American churches unite, as some of them already do, in the practice of nearly all the churches abroad, of observing the great historic days of Christianity, which commem- orate the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and on these days, making all sanct- uaries to resound with the universal creed, the Te Deum, the Glorias, the common her- itage of us all so demonstrating both pres- ent union aud the oneness of the Church of the past with the Church of to-day. But all, nothing, nothing communions, alliances, hospitalities all nothing without larger outpourings of the Holy Ghost, in the love of Christ constraining us, in unselfish- ness, iu the spirit of conciliation and forbear- ance, in self-sacrifice, in the affection of hearty brotherhood iu Christ. Who will not pray for that iu the invocation of the Church for more than a thousand years Veni Creator? THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS OF AMERICA TO ENGLAND. BY THE REV. JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D., KENSINGTON, LONDON. As the earlier part of my address must be historical, I feel myself placed at a disadvan- tage before tbis assembly, as historical state- ments, \vheu condensed, are sure to be, even at the best, very dry. However fresh and fragrant the parts may appear in the his- torian's mind, and however much of inter- est they may inspire in the minds of those to whom they are presented in expanded pictorial form, they must become a mere hor- tua 81CCU8 when subjected to a process of ex- treme condensation. Were I to take up the subject of the "ecclesiastical and religious relations between America and Europe at large, it would much more than double the difficulties I have to contend with ; and, therefore, I can but briefly point to that very wide field of observation, and then re- strict my remarks mainly to the relations of America and England. Moreover, I must confine my attention to the relations be- tween Protestants in the New and the Old World, as any discussion respecting the re- lation of Protestants and Roman Catholics to each other or to the effect of European Romanism on America in general would be far too wide for the limits of this paper, and would involve controversies which might draw us away from our proper theme. I would begin with the general remark that different countries have contributed great- ly to the formation of your religious life. When America was covered with forests, which no woodman's axe had ever touched when, where now thriving cities may be seen, naught existed but prairies, in which buffaloes wandered at their own wild will when your majestic rivers were furrowed by no barks larger than the Indian's canoe di- vine Providence, by dispensations of wis- dom, righteousness, and love, was preparing influences which have served to mould your religious destinies. The Mediaeval Church the Waldensian and Bohemian Brotherhoods the Protestant Reformation the labors of Luther and Calvin and Zwingle the suffer- ings of Latimer and Ridley the struggles of Huguenots the institutions and activities of the Dutch Reformed the confessorship and exile of Puritans the writings of for- eign and English divines and the language, literature, and aspirations of Germany, have all contributed to create the religious Amer- ica of the present day. These influences may be said to have risen into the heavens, to become there fertilizing shower-clouds; and these, in due time sailing, settling, and breaking upon old American wildernesses have made seeds of truth, sown on cleared lands of thought and sentiment, grow into a harvest of faith and love and blessing. The addresses you have heard from our foreign brethren supply some information il- lustrative of points of contact between Eu- ropean and American Christendom; and a promised paper by another clergyman may contain statements throwing light upon the formation of opinion here through influences from other lauds. But the links of connec- tion between European Protestant Church- es and American Protestant Churches ; be- tween the Church of Holland and the Dutch Reformed Church of this country ; between Lutherans of the Fatherland and Luther- ans in this land of their adoption ; between the old Huguenots and the Protestant Frenchmen of the States ; between the Mo- ravians who sprung from Herruhut, and the Moravians who have their settlements and episcopacy among you all these interesting links of connection deserve to be examined with historical care by some one thoroughly competent to the task.* I. In confining myself, as I am compell- ed, within the limits of those historical re- lationships which have obtained between America and England, I observe, in the first place, that there has been between us an ago of ecclesiastical union, now past and gone forever. It has been partly organic and partly inorganic. Of organic union two types present themselves the Episcopa- lian and the Methodist. A word respecting each. Episcopalianism in America, from its in- troduction at the founding of Virginia, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, to the consecration of bishops for American sees, where Episcopaliauism obtained at the close of the eighteenth century, was undoubted- ly a branch of the English Church. The Book of Common Prayer used to be read on * [The subject of the Ecclesiastical and Religious Relations of America to the Continent of Europe was originally on the programme, and assigned to the Ed- itor, but was stricken out at his own request. U] STOUGHTON: ECCLESIASTICAL AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS, ETC. 185 the shores of Chesapeake Bay as on the banks of the River Thames ; for the terms of the Charter in 1606 gran ted to Virginia a colony consisting of Episcopalians prescribed that in the new settlement " the true Word and service of God should be preached, planted, and used, according to the rites and doc- trines of the Church of England." The set- tlement, like other colonies under the En- glish crown, came within the capacious boun- daries of the metropolitan see of London : and ecclesiastical authority on the side of the mother country, submission on the side of such of the daughter states, continued amid many difficulties for about a century and three quarters. At the end of that pe- riod, in 1784, Dr. Seabury, as Bishop of Con- necticut, was consecrated in Scotland, and Dr. White and Dr. Provost, as 'Bishops of Pennsylvania and New York, at Lambeth.* Another branch of Christ's Catholic Church sprung up in this vast continent in the mid- dle of the last century, and for a little while retained organic union with it. The year 1766 saw a German Irishman (who four- teen years before had become acquainted with John Wesley, and had by that means recovered the "blessedness of humble faith, after losing it a while) opening his house for Methodist worship in this city, and the infant cause of Methodism found here not a cradle for sleep, but a school for the devel- opment of its mighty energies. Three years afterward an appeal from the country for preachers reached the English Conference, then sitting at Leeds. " Who is willing to go ?" asked Wesley. Two earnest itiner- ants, named Boardman and Pilmoor, an- swered each of them, "Here am I ; send me." "What can we do further, in token of broth- erly love ?" asked the Conference. To this a thoroughly Methodistical reply was given. " Let us make a collection." Thus the Meth- odism of America became ingrafted on the English stock, and the Methodist love of col- lection - making perhaps contributed some- thing to the characteristic generosity of the American religions public ever since. But very naturally the American Methodist So- cieties soon aspired to independence. In 1773, the first Conference was held in the New World ; and, in 1784, Dr. Coke received his famous commission to your shores from the hands of the founder of universal Wes- leyandom. From that time dates the exist- ence of Methodism in America as a distinct organization. Before, but for a short space, Methodist Societies in the Western World were subject to the English Conference ; aft- erwards they were separate and self-con- * It appears that two clergymen who came over to America in the first quarter of the last ceutnry were consecrated bishops before they came by nonjnring bishops in England, and furtively discharged Episco- pal functions. Wilberforce, Uiatory of the American [Episcopal] Church, p. 155. taiued. The organic union of the two dur- ing a short period was the natural and nec- essary result of the constitution of Method- ism, which is based on a principle of ec- clesiastical harmony and wholeness, and is averse to the breaking of organic bonds until compelled by circumstances of imperi- ous necessity. The love of Episcopal order which beat strongly in the breasts of both Wesley and Coke, and lingered long in the midst of the early Methodists, notwithstand- ing their irregularities led to the introduc- tion of an Episcopal element, under a some- what new and characteristic form, into the developments of American Wcsleyanism. But Anglican Episcopalianism and Wes- leyan Methodism stand by themselves in the history of organic ecclesiasticism on the two sides of the Atlantic. They exhibit aspects different from those of other religious bodies. Other bodies have never been interlaced by organic ties they have only felt the gen- tler entwinements of sympathetic affection. English Independents and Presbyterians founded states in the New World, in the ex- ercise of a freedom denied to them at home, being neither patronized nor persecuted by the government they had left behind since that government possessed no adequate means of controlling their proceedings in the land of their adoption. Under the Common- wealth, indeed, Acts of Parliament against the Book of Common Prayer were, on this side of the sea, formally published by com- missioners sent out for the purpose as I find from the state papers of the period but they do not appear to have been prac- tically enforced. Presbyterianism in Amer- ica has never been organically united with Presbyteriauism in Great Britain. Nor does Congregationalism either in New England or in Massachusetts appear to have received support from any English Government, or to have been subject to the control of any English Churches. Cromwell's rule pro- moted the missionary designs of Eliot, and the Presbyterian Synod at Sion College, Lon- don, showed a disposition to co-operate in his noble enterprise; but, beyond expres- sions of regard, and, it may be, some measure of voluntary assistance, I am not aware of any thing having been done at that time in England for the strengthening and exten- sion of American Presbyteriauism or Ameri- can Congregationalism. The whole action of both ecclesiastical systems within your shores may be said to have been that of thorough self-control. They operated according to the laws of the state in which they established themselves ; and in the formation of which they had been chief actors, neither helped nor hindered by the mother country; struggling only with those difficulties which spring from the ri- valry and antagonism of sects when brought into contiguity. The same remark may be 186 CHRISTIAN UNION. made of Baptist Churches in Rhode Island, which arose out of the teaching of the apos- tle of ecclesiastical freedom, Roger Williams, If I may mention another respected section of our Anglo-American Christendom, the So- ciety of Friends (between whom and other denominations there existed no little strife), I would add that the yearly meeting of Friends in England, at the close of the sev- enteenth century, formed, I helieve, a sort of Court of Appeal for American Friends any such link of dependence, however, was slen- der ; and this simple manifestation of Chris- tian life among you has, like others (indeed, all others except the two I first mentioned), mainly, if not entirely, throughout stood on a basis of its own. Such, in a few words, is the history of old ecclesiastical relations between England and America. It would be interesting, had we time, to investigate the causes and characteristics of each of these relations. Those causes would appear to have been economical, embracing the spirit of enterprise and emigration Englishmen bringing over to America, with their commercial and in- dustrial habits, religious predilections form- ed at home. Political causes would also be recognizable, including, on the one side, the action of government, on the other side, love and loyalty to the mother-land influences which undoubtedly have had much to do with the current of Episcopalian sympathies flowing over the New World long before they were gathered into diocesan channels. Distinctly religious influences are especial- ly noticeable in connection with this sub- ject, comprehending impulses of conscien- tious conviction, appearing in some cases as a reverential and conservative regard for ancient institutions, in others as an out- burst of zeal in favor of quickening move- ments, such as periodically are wont to oc- cur in the Church of Christ, breaking up dead formalities. And then, finally, person- al causes and characteristics would come to light, and we should have to point to the names of Smith and Hunt almost forgot- ten in England, but I suppose emblazoned, as they ought to be, in rich colors on your Virginian records and to the world-known names of William Penn, John Wesley, and George Whitefield. Interesting also it would be, had we space, to work out the history of the termination of this by-gone age. It would lead us up to moral and social causes of disruption to the alienated feeling between Americans and Englishmen a century ago to a decline in fondness for organic systematizing, and especially to the great political influences which became condensed in operation amid your grand struggle for independence a hun- dred years ago. That has played a conspic- uous and important part in the ecclesiastic- al revolution of the past, and was sufficient of itself to snap any such organic relations as existed between the imperial and colonial States. And here let me be excused for re- marking that as, on account of the close and loving friendship sustained by Scotchmen to us Englishmen, and by us Englishmen to Scotchmen, we can sincerely rejoice in the defeat of our fathers at Bannockburn (but for which heart-burnings might, no- body knows how long, perhaps to this day, have kept apart the two nations divided by the Tweed) so on account of different but equally affectionate friendships subsisting now between you as an independent people and ourselves as the once maternal empire (friendships which could not have existed in their present form but for some decisive event assigning to the two countries a true and proper position toward each other) on account of such friendship, I say, we can unfeignedly exult in the victory which your fathers nobly won at Bunker Hill. Once a mortification, it is turned into a joy. II. Now we turn from the past to the pres- ent and the future ; and more interesting than any of the points which challenge the secular historian are those, spiritual rela- tions, independent of all organic structures and schemes, which unite the Christians of the Old and the New World relations which strike their roots below formal con- federations, and survive the dissolution of artificial bonds, and are now existing in more vigorous vitality than ever, full of hopes, richer than any of our treasured memories. Those relations I would rapidly notice, 1. And first, if I may be excused another backward glance, let mo remark that early English colonization in America bore a de- cidedly religious impress. It presents a unique page in the world's history. No- where else do you find blended with colonial enterprise such reverence for God and Christ and divine worship. Of the story of the Pil- grim Fathers neither you nor we can ever tire. It will be a dark day for the world when that episode fails to awaken enthu- siasm on either side the world of dividing waters. It may well inspire every one who w r rites the story of your Northern States. No other people can boast of an origin such as belongs to New England. No other peo- ple can find in their annals a tale at once so true and beautiful, so tender and brave, so authentic, and yet so rich in a sublime pathos a pathos such as belongs to the ideal world of legend, myth, or drama. It asks still for the pens of American Vir- gils to trace adventures more heart-stirring than those of the Trojan yEucas. The New England epic shows how neither martial ambition, commercial greed, nor mere love of enterprise nerved the refugees at Delft- haveu but the fear of God and the spirit STOUGHTON : ECCLESIASTICAL AND SPIRITUAL RELATIONS, ETC. 187 of liberty ; and how, from first to last, the voyage of the Speedwell and the Mayflower re- ceived its impetus from a form of Christian piety which identifies itself with the faith and spirit of our Evangelical Alliance this very day. 2. Still more important and more to our immediate purpose is it to recognize the common spiritual life of Christians on both sides the waters. We are all one in Christ Jesus German, French, Dutch, Italian, En- glish. He is the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, and whatever our confession of faith and form of polity whatever the fold in which we be gathered whatever the past- ure where we feed we are of the flock of which he will never resign the pastoral oversight. Despite our differences, we have one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We need not try to lay a new corner-stone of unity. The chief corner-etone "elect, precious" is laid, and that forever. We may go so far as to say that we need not build up the walls of a spiritual unity ; they are built by the Holy Spirit in his sanctifying work. To us it belongs simply to manifest what exists humanly to demonstrate what is divinely created. Atlantic cables, ocean postage, in- ternational treaties, the interchange of em- bassies, express not brotherhood so intimate and clear as that which really obtains be- tween the disciples of Christ here and in Europe. It is that which in the present Conference binds us all together in the love of one Saviour and the hope of one heaven. 3. In considering the relations of the two empires, one is struck with the fact that originating power in reference to Church de- velopment once rested on the side of Europe, especially England. Europe gave her daugh- ter systems of ecclesiastical polity, which have grown with her growth and strength- ened with her strength ; but as to the spirit- ual relations between the United States and European peoples, there lies now productive power in vigorous exercise on both sides on yours no less than ours. Europe does not in these days, perhaps, originate relig- ious in fluences in America beyond what Amer- ica does in Europe. Influence of this kind is reciprocal. Possibly beyond what is mere- ly reciprocal went that wave of spiritual power called Revivalism, which rolled over from your broad continent some years ago to our island shores. That movement was of mighty spiritual force. It carried with it an original and originating energy. We thank you for it most devoutly, and most de- voutly do we desire a renewal of it. When- ever it really comes, we shall return it in a tide of blessing and praise, depend on that. Action and reaction between us will be in- cessant, augmenting, wonderful. 4. Further, an interchange of spiritual sen- timent is yearly going on through the peru- sal of your literature in Europe, and the perusal of European literature by you. We leave you to tell of edification and refresh- ment derived from Continental and English divines ; but we would take the liberty of testifying to the effect produced on the the- ological intellect of Europe by authors who have lived and are living on your side the water. We hope we can appreciate the close and almost mathematical reasoning of your imperial logician, Jonathan Edwards, albeit that some of us who confess his gen- ius, dispute some of his conclusions, and much of his method. And truly we have all had our devotion enkindled afresh by the seraphic ardor of Edward Payson, while young and old have been charmed by the felicitous illustrations of Jacob Abbott.* In the department of Church History, and in that of Biblical exegesis, we English are debtors to American names, both among the living and the dead ; and just now we feel our obligations on the increase as we receive critical German commentaries enlarged and improved in an American dress, through the hands of Dr. Schaff, and welcome the first in- stallment of the "Philosophical and Theo- logical Library" issued under the auspices of Dr. Smith and Dr. Schaff. 5. Pulpit intercommunion must not be overlooked, and here the lives of Whitefield and Wesley bear witness to the wonderful impression made in America a century ago by their preaching. We have not been fa- vored to a like extent with the living elo- quence of your pulpit orators; but we do not forget the visits of Mason, Mcllvaine, Spring, Sprague, Patton, Cox,Tyng, and oth- ers who might be mentioned with honor. Henry Ward Beecher just allowed our coun- trymen, at a period of great excitement, to hear his voice, and to stimulate earnest long- ings for a revisit ; and Dr. Cuyler warmed our hearts by his few utterances in London last year. But pnlpit interchange between the two countries has as yet done little, compared with what it might accomplish. Owing to national and individual idiosyncrasies, Amer- ican and English preachers adopt different methods of instruction and appeal ; each might learn something of the other by more frequent and general intercourse. Preachers of the one hemisphere can not be exactly like preachers of the other. Pity they should ; but one might spiritually improve the oth- er, in following out her own natural and gra- cious bent. Perhaps, on this side of the At- lantic, more of English preaching might be advantageous ; certainly, on the other, Amer- ican preaching would be of immense service to English Churches of all denominations. The matter I would earnestly commend to * These names are mentioned simply because they are among the oldest recollections of the author. A long list of American writers worthy of all honors might easily be added. 1S3 CHRISTIAN UNION. your attention, ns one of practical, and, I would add, pressing importance. 6. This subject is intimately connected with another the interchange of visits be- tween American and English Christians. Par- lor fellowship is, perhaps, more intensely ef- fective than pulpit interchange. An Amer- ican in an English home an Englishman in an American one is not only the partaker of a privilege, but the originator of an influ- ence. He may send a charming ripple of ex- citement over the calm lake of domestic ex- perience. He may leave behind a memory which will be ever beautiful, ever fragrant. We Europeans cherish fond recollections of visitors whose presence and conversation have shed new light and warmth over our firesides. May none of us Englishmen do aught to mar the Christian intercourse of this auspicious gathering; and may the friend- ships and acquaintances now formed or re- newed be bonds of everlasting love between families of the two countries. With mere politicians, domestic influence may count for little ; but iu the estimation of Christians they will tell for much ; and our hopes for lasting peace between England and America rest not a little on the foundation of mutual affection, which intercourse such as we now enjoy will do more than any thing else to deepen, widen, and perpetuate. 7. 1 must be allowed to refer to the co-op- eration of America with England in the work of Bible revision, now so harmoniously and successfully carried on at Westminster. That work is no doubt of the highest value to all English-speakiug people throughout the world. It has brought together members of English, Scotch, and Irish churches iu an un- exampled way, and promoted the interests of Christian union to an unexampled extent. We rejoice to know that, through the inde- fatigable exertions of Dr. Schaff, American scholars have been formed into companies to aid iu this much-needed and noble enter- prise ; and the result, it is trusted, will be the production of such an improved version in the mother tongue as will worthily secure the confidence of both the Old World and the New. 8. Besides these definite bonds of intercom- munion, there is another of a more general kind, consisting in the influence which flows from example. No doubt the religious ex- ample of England in times past has affected America in a manner more effective than any organized relation whatever. Perhaps it has told beyond every thing else. But also for a long time, and now more than ever, your example has been and is stimulating us. Re- vivals here, as I have indicated, sent thrills of sympathy all over England ; the vigor of your religious activity has promoted ours; your boldness in spiritual, as in other enter- prises, has inspired our admiration ; and your pre-eminent liberality will, we trust, com- mand our imitation. But I must conclude. Much has been said of late in England, by a certain order of ecclesiastics, about a union between East and West, i. e., between the Greek communion, on the one hand, and the Latin and Anglo- Episcopal communions on the other. To most of us, I suppose, such a union appears a for- lorn hope. The age for organic reunions, after long separation and independent activity, is gone by. From the union of Latin, Anglo- American, and Greek Churches, based on the corner-stone of Episcopacy as an indispensa- ble necessity, of course all non-Episcopalian communities are shut out. But the union of East and West in the case of Protestant Eu- rope and Protestant America the union of Bible Christians in the two hemispheres in works of faith and labors of love (union iden- tical with mutual sympathy and co-opera- tion common prayer love to the same Saviour the desire to do his will, and to help one another in doing it) that union is no impossibility. It exists it is manifested to-day its growth, its increase, calls forth the exclamation Esto perpetua. THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE: ITS ORIGIN, OBJECTS, AND OPERATIONS. BY THE KEY. JAMES DAVIS, SECRETARY OF THE BRITISH ORGANIZATION, LONDON. IF the Evangelical Alliance were a new institution, it would be none the less excel- lent, but in name only has it the stamp of novelty. The Church of God has never been otherwise than one. " One faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all," is applicable to all ages. It is equally true to say that this unity has always co-existed with diversities of administration. Israel, under the former dispensation, was one hav- ing a Divine revelation the rule of life, the inspirer of consolation and peace, of joy and hope, to every member of that Church. But Israel was composed of twelve tribes, equal- ly included in the same covenant, interested in the same promises, inheritors of the same heavenly rest, typified by an earthly one. They occupied different positions, and were called by different names, yet they were one Israel. At stated seasons separation and es- trangement were forgotten at the clear call of God to assemble for sacred festival in Je- rusalem. "Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Is- rael, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sake, I will now say, Peace be within thee." So far as the true Israel were concerned, there was then an Evangelical Alliance. The Church has not lost, and never can lose its essential unity. Forms of worship may vary, for on these things Holy Scripture is silent ; modes of government may differ, for these are matters of doubtful interpretation, and Protestants own no infallible authority short of the Word of God. There is one lody. All true believers admit that they are one in Christ. He is the Head of the Church. The Lord Jesus Christ came " to gather in one all things in himself, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in him." Delightful fact, applicable to the great mul- titude which no man could number, of all nations, kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, whether standing before the throne of grace hero or the throne of glory hereafter, re- deemed and righteous through the efficacy of the atoning blood of the Lamb ! And here again we meet the true type and model of the Evangelical Alliance. On the 19th of August, 1846, some eight hundred professing Christians, including many of the holiest, the most learned and distinguished, of various nations, assembled in Freemasons' Hall, London, to consolidate and complete efforts which had been made in previous years to associate Christians of all countries in a cordial, visible, and effect- ive union. Recent circumstances, more es- pecially connected with attacks made in dif- ferent quarters against Evangelical Protest- autism, had seriously impressed thoughtful minds with the necessity for more combina- tion among those who held the same essen- tial doctrines and were working for the same object. The warm aspiration after brotherly intercourse with those who, like the early Church, when most pure and tri- umphant, were of one accord, and of whom we read, " the multitude of them that be- lieved were of one heart and of one soul," impelled others to see if there could not be found a way of bridging over the narrow gulfs that separated one section of the Chris- tian Church from another, and unite follow- ers of the same Lord in holy fellowship and active and world-wide service. Noble pi- oneers in this great cause, from the Old and New Worlds,had written and striven for this object, sometimes crossing oceans and conti- nents, animated with strongfaith and exalted hope, and pleading powerfully for the increase of brotherly love, by which all men should know the true disciples of Christ. For twen- ty years the preparations were being quiet- ly but surely made. In Liverpool ministers of different denominations had been annual- ly called together for united prayer, and au address on these occasions published, exhort- ing Christians to follow up and widely ex- tend that fraternal intercourse. In other places, at home and abroad, holy and catho- lic-minded men were moving in the same direction, which culminated in a proposal for a union of Evangelical Protestants, for fraternal recognition, mutual aid, and the spread of the Gospel in all lauds. At a con- ference of ministers of various Evangelical Churches, at the Wesleyan Centenary Hall, London, in February, 1845, sentiments were expressed in favor of the proposal, and at a great public meeting held in consequence in Exeter Hall, in June of the same year, such was the enthusiastic ardor of the as- sembly that the friends of Christian union 190 CHRISTIAN UNION. found that, instead of fighting a battle they had to celebrate a victory, and make full proof of the Psalmist's words, " How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity !" A meeting held in Edinburgh iu the fol- lowing July contributed an important step to the formation of the Evangelical Alliance. It was the bi-centenary of the Westminster Assembly, and gave occasion to the expres- sion of sentiments truly catholic, and the advocacy, in powerful terms, of evangelical union. The arguments and earnest language of one of the speakers forcibly impressed a gentleman present (the late John Henderson, Esq., of Park, Glasgow), to whom the idea at once presented itself of a treatise on the sub- ject. A volume of essays, to which some of the most eloquent and distinguished men of the day contributed, gave point and force to a proposal emanating in the first instance, we believe, from the Rev. Dr. Patton, of Amer- ica, in a letter to the late Rev. Angel James that a great conference of delegates from Evangelical Churches in various parts of the world should be held on the subject, in the metropolis of Great Britain. From East and West, from North and South, the encouraging answer came " Let it be carried into effect." Fathers and brethren, the wise and good of various localities in Great Britain, combined, with this object, in provisional committees formed in the provinces; and in due time their labors were crowned with success. The 19th of August, 1846, had been fixed for the as- sembly, and on that day Episcopalians, Meth- odists, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Moravians, Lutherans, and others, met from different and distant countries to consider the great question about to be submitted to them the formation of an Evangelical Alli- ance. It was a season of fervent prayer and praise, of hallowed intercourse, of anxious and animated discussion ; and at the fourth session the following resolution was unani- mously passed : " The members of this Con- ference are deeply convinced of the desira- bleness of forming a confederation on the basis of the great evangelical principles held in common by them, which may afford op- portunity to members of the Church of Christ of cultivating brotherly love, enjoying Chris- tian intercourse, and promoting such other objects as they may hereafter agree to pros- ecute together. And they hereby proceed to form such a confederation under the name of the Evangelical Alliance." The proposal became a fact. The Alliance was formed ; and brethren who had assembled on this oc- casion dispersed to their respective provinces and countries, to reflect on the good work in which they had been engaged, and to organ- ize associations for extending its influence and benefits as widely as possible. But British and foreign ministers of the Gospel did not separate without giving some suita- ble expression of their fraternal sympathy as fellow-ambassadors for Christ. On the Lord's Day, August 23, by mutual arrange- ment, an interchange of services in London took place, and more than eighty pulpits were occupied by members of the Conference, and the same glorious doctrines constituting our common Evangelical faith were preached in the English, French, German, and other lan- guages, foreshadowing the time, not very far distant, it is hoped, when all national, as well as international, hinderances will be removed out of the way, and wise and godly men, apt to teach, and giving full proof of their ministry, will be welcomed in all pulpits to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. The Alliance thus auspiciously formed rapidly spread its fruit -bearing branches, which now exist not only in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but also in the United States of America, and in the principal capitals throughout the world. These organizations, designed for Christians " to realize in themselves and to exhibit to others that a living and everlasting union binds all true believers together in the fel- lowship of the Clmrch of Christ," express not only a great truth of vast importance in these days of strife and division, but a pow- er which it is incumbent upon Christians so united to use prayerfully, zealously, and practically whenever occasion calls it forth. That these occasions have not been wanting, and that the Alliance has not failed to turn them to most useful account, its subsequent history very clearly shows. In presenting this necessarily brief histor- ical sketch of the Alliance, and recording its transactions, with the results which, by the blessing of God, have followed, it would have been pleasant to speak of the correspondence which it has created, and the communications held with Evangelical Christians, of various communities, in different parts of the world, thus enabling them to express and manifest true sympathy in seasons both of joy and sorrow. It would have been pleasant to trace the operations of the Alliance in mod- erating controversy, in fostering cordial af- fection among true disciples of Christ, and supplying numerous occasions for their as- sembling together to hear tidings of the progress of the Gospel in different lands, and in rendering effectual aid in cases call- ing for special help. It would have been pleasant to refer to the various societies it has originated for combining Christian ef- fort in new departments of Evangelical la- bor the Turkish Missions Aid Society, the Continental Committee for Religious Liber- ty, the Christian Vernacular Education So- ciety for India, the German Aid Society, the Christian Evidence Society all still pros- ecuting their important home and foreign work, with unquestionable evidences of the Divine blessing. But we proceed to speak DAVIS: THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 191 of the larger efforts made by this ecumen- ical society in prosecution of its design for the largest and most world-wide usefulness. The co-operation of Christians being the log- ical, sound, and suitable object springing out of their union, it is essential that they should periodically meet in various lands for mu- tual information, for wise counsel, and for strengthening the various brotherhoods of the universal household of God. London. The first General Council of the Evangelical Alliance subsequent to its for- mation was held in the British metropolis in the autumn of 1851. It was the year of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Indus- try of all Nations. The products of all coun- tries and the triumphs of art among all peo- ples were made tributary to Christian coun- sel ; and the invitation to come in the inter- ests of national peace was supplemented by one in the interests of Christian and catho- lic love. The list of ministers, professors, etc., who attended that Conference presents sixty from France, forty from Switzerland, eleven from Belgium, twenty -two from Hol- land, forty-seven from Germany, six from Sweden, and twenty-two -from the United States ; besides individual names from Pied- mont, Italy, Kussia, Malta, Rhodes, the Cape of Good Hope, the West and East Indies, Tu- nis, China, etc. At these meetings original papers, prepared with great ability and re- search, were read ; a great variety of authen- tic religious intelligence, both home and for- eign, was supplied, and seasons for Christian intercourse and mutual edification were af- forded, which left the happiest and most en- during impressions on the minds of those whose privilege it was to be present. What nobler purpose, it might be asked, could the Evangelical Alliance serve than that of pe- riodically bringing together Christians of all nations, not simply to avow their union and exchange affectionate greetings, or by their united service of praise and prayer antedate the joys of heaven, but to survey the state and progress of the whole Church, and strengthen one another for greater zeal, de- votion, and activity for the advancement of the great Christian commonwealth ? Paris. The next General Conference was held in the capital of France, in the year 1855 ; our French brethren, like the British organization, turning to a happy use the Exposition of Arts and Industry held in their metropolis that year. For an assem- bly of Christians of all nations to be held in Paris was regarded as an event of no or- dinary significance. If the capital of the British kingdom merits the distinctioiv of being the focus and centre of Protestant influences, the capital of France is, of all Continental cities, that which possesses the greatest influence in the councils of Rome and over the mind of Europe. The effect likely to be produced by such an assembly upon Christendom at large was, therefore, expected to be greater in that city than in London. The results attained through the Divine blessing afforded satisfaction to all who took an interest in the cause of Chris- tian union and the spread of the Gospel. Some one thousand two hundred persons from fifteen different nations were present at the Conference ; and while the deepest interest was awakened in the various sub- jects brought under the consideration of the assembly, the discussions which follow- ed only elicited the brotherly feeling and perfect harmony reigning in the hearts of all. On two occasions the brethren cemented their fellowship with Christ and with each other by. meeting at his table, when the serv- ice was conducted in various languages ; the elements were distributed by pastors of the different Churches represented in the Conference ; and the words of the Lord Je- sus, in giving the bread and in giving the wine, were pronounced in six languages French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish. But the varieties of human lan- guage produced no discordance, and led to no confusion ; they were the harmonious utterances of the one faith, and the expres- sions of the same love which woke up in every heart the fervor of holy joy and grate- ful thanksgiving and praise. It is worthy of notice that the subject of religious liber- ty and the intolerance which at that time prevailed on the Continent, in Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic countries, as well as the persecutions endured by many Chris- tian brethren, were forcibly brought under the attention of the Paris Conference, with a view to some practical steps being taken in reference to them. This led to the ap- pointment of a united committee, composed of brethren from France, Belgium, Switz- erland, Holland, Prussia, Sweden, Turkey, Great Britain, Ireland, and America, to whom the subject was confided for their joint coun- sel as to the practical measures which might be adopted in relation to those countries where intolerance principally prevailed. The Committee met and drew up their re- port, in which resolutions were framed, and which, on being presented to the Conference, obtained their unanimous concurrence. The resolutions were to the effect : 1. That it is the right of every man, in so far as his fellow-man is concerned, to wor- ship God, as well publicly as in private, ac- cording to his conscience, and to propagate the faith he holds by every means not con- trary to morals or good order, or to that obedience to government which is enjoined in the Word of God. 2. That the Conference, having had its at- tention drawn to the persecutions endured by many Christian brethren for conscience' sake, takes occasion to express its sympa- thy with them under their sufferings, and 192 CHRISTIAN UNION. to commend them to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. 3. That the Conference recommends that strenuous efforts be taken with a view to obtain in all countries where now intoler- ance prevails, the fullest religious liberty, not only for themselves as Protestants, but for others, irrespective of distinctions of be- lief; and that, in furtherance of this object, memorials bo prepared and presented to the rulers of those nations among whom cases of persecution were occurring. Thus were laid the foundations of that great work in the cause of religious free- dom whicli the Alliance has prosecuted with vigor in European' and Eastern coun- tries, and on which the Divine blessing has so signally and so largely rested. Berlin. The third in the series of Con- ferences of Evangelical Christians of vari- ous nations and churches, convened by the Evangelical Alliance, was held in the city of Berlin, in September, 1857. The desire to bring about a closer union among Protest- ants had long been cherished by the King of Prussia, and when his attention was drawn to the principles and proceedings of this so- ciety, his majesty immediately avowed him- self its friend, and subsequently, on repeated occasions, rendered to it valuable service. The king, through the medium of private correspondence and a royal message sent to one of the annual meetings of the British organization, made known his wish that the next General Conference should take place in the capital of his kingdom. The royal com- munication was as encouraging as it was novel and unlooked-for, and naturally sup- plied a stimulus before which difficulties disappeared and exertions multiplied. Com- mittees in Berlin and London actively co- operated in making the required prepara- tions, and at an early period a preliminary meeting of brethren from various parts of Europe was held at Frankfort. Twice a deputation was sent to communicate with his majesty, and was honored with private audiences; the first deputation beiqg com- posed of French and English members, the second of English and German. An exten- sive correspondence was opened w ith mem- bers of the Alliance in every quarter of the globe, and a wide-spread sympathy and many prayers were thus engaged on behalf of the Conference. The different branches of the Alliance in Sweden, Holland, Bel- gium, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Syria, the East Indies, and in the United States of America, expressed in various ways, and especially by published addresses to which numerous signatures were attached, their earnest concurrence. Where no branch of the Alliance had been formed, similar ad- dresses spontaneously emanated from Chris- tian brethren, as at the Cape of Good Hope, and also from various ecclesiastical and mis- sionary bodies, as from the Synod of the Mo- ravian Church, from the Church Missionary Conference of Calcutta, and the German Mis- sionaries in Bombay. Another fact worthy of note is that British Christians of all de- nominations issued an address to their Con- tinental brethren, signed by more than thrtjn thousand persons, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, with several bishops of tin; United Church of England and Ireland, and some of the colonial bishops, gave public ut- terance, from the press, to their hearty sym- pathy and earnest prayers that the blessiug of God might rest upon and prosper the as- sembly. Among the public meetings held to help forward the design, special mention should be made of one in London, at which the Earl of Shaftesbury took the chair, and one at Lambeth Palace, presided over by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the latter numerous bishops and clergymen, non-conformist ministers, pastors from for- eign countries, besides noblemen and other laymen, were present, and expressed their cordial approval of the object. The Conference opened with a devotional meeting held on the evening of September 9, 1857, in the Royal Garrison Church, used also for the subsequent sessions, by special permission of the King of Prussia ; and for nine successive days there was gathered to- gether in Berlin an assembly of Christian men such as considering their nationalities and ecclesiastical diversities, the official and ministerial character which the greater part of them sustained, and, above all, the sim- ple yet sublime object which had brought them together no city perhaps in Christen- dom had ever before witnessed. It would be extending too largely this brief histor- ical sketch to enter into details of the pro- ceedings of this Conference, but one inci- dent must not be passed over. The King of Prussia, who had shown throughout his deep interest in the gathering of Christians from so many nations in the metropolis of his kingdom, expressed his wish to receive the members of the Conference at his palace at Potsdam. On Friday, September 12th, three special trains conveyed about 1200 visitors to Pots- dam, who, after partaking of an elegant re- past, were received on the terrace, to whicli the front of the palace opens, by the king and the queen, who had arrived about six o'clock. It was intended that his majesty should have been received in respectful si- lence, but it was impossible to repress the enthusiasm of the assembly as his majesty, alighting from his carriage, passed among his guests, manifesting, by his look and speech, the cordiality with which he wel- comed them. The Conference, in its entire- ness, having been presented to his majesty, the Chairman of the German Branch of the Alliance (the Rev. E. Kuutzc) spoke as fol- DAVIS : THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 193 lows : " Sire, Your majesty has seen many armies, but never before such a one as now meets your view an army not arrayed in martial attire, but girt with spiritual weap- ons, and wielding only the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." The king replied, with evident emotion, " I have always felt the most earnest desire to pro- mote such a union among Christians, and hitherto it has appeared to me impossible ; but now I rejoice to see it. The first step is taken. The first days of the Conference are passed, with the joy and blessing of the Lord. I trust it will be the same with the rest. My wish and most fervent prayer is, that there may descend upon all the mem- bers of the Conference an effusion of the Spirit of God like that which fell on the first disciples at Pentecost." Afterward, as his majesty advanced through the different groups, formed according to their national- ities, some of the principal persons of each were successively presented, to all of whom short and appropriate observations were made. While the king was thus engaged, the queen had been supplied with the names of the ladies who had been most kindly in- cluded in the royal invitation, and was pay- ing similarly gracious attentions to them. The presentations being finished, as their majesties were about to retire amidst the renewed cheers of the assembly, a voice struck the first notes of Luther's time-hon- ored hymn, so hallowed in the minds of Ger- man Protestants "Bin feste Burg ist nuser Gott;" and, at its close, a venerable clergyman stepped forward, and offered up a short but emphatic prayer, and pronounced the Ben- ediction. The king and queen, evidently taken by surprise at this spontaneous and devout utterance of Christian loyalty, stop- ped the moment they heard the psalm begin, and reverently remained till the close of the prayer. At eight o'clock the special trains conveyed the visitors back to Berlin. Geneva. The fourth of the series of Gen- eral Conferences was held in 1861, in the city of Geneva, a city with historic associa- tions of the deepest interest to Evangelical Christians, and a land of unrivaled beauty throughout Europe. It recalled the memo- ry of some of the noblest and greatest men that the Church has known since the days of the apostles. These combined to give a charm and an interest to the Conference being held there which attracted multitudes to the assembly gathered to consider the re- ligious state of the world, and to consult for the good of the Church. The subjects on which admirable papers were presented fur- nished themes for the interchange of wise aud solemn thought, as well as profitable discussion. The Observance of the Lord's Day ; the Condition of the Working Classes ; 13 Modern Skepticism; Foreign Missions; Jew- ish Missions ; Italy and the Gospel ; Calvin and the Reformation ; the Religious State of Eastern Europe and Western Asia ; the Union of Doctrine aud Life ; Recent Reviv- als of Religion ; Sunday-schools ; Religious Liberty these were among the subjects carefully considered, and in which the fol- lowing, among other honored brethren, took a prominent part : Drs. Dorner, Krummach- er, and Tholwall, from Germany ; Professors Mazzarella, Revel, and Geymonat, from It- aly ; Professors Merle d'Aubigne", Godet, Na- ville, Malan, Gaussen, Bungener, Pastors Barde, Coulin, Brunier, Colonel Tronchin, from Switzerland; Professors Rosseeuw St. Hilaire and Cuvier, Pastors Monod, De Pres- sense", Fisch, Grandpierre, Vallette, Casalis, Frossard, from France ; Monsieurs Groen van Prinsterer, Dr. Cappadose, Pastor Chantepie de la Saussaye, from Holland ; Dr. Kalkar, from Denmark ; Pastors Rudiu and Descou- layes, from Sweden; Barons Von Schwebs and Von Haaren, from Russia; Rev. Drs. Baird and Sawtell, from America; Rev. Pre- bendary Burgess, Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, Revs. T. R. Birks, Dallas, W. Arthur, Bun- ting, Birrell, Herschell, the Earls of Roden and Cavan, the Hous. Arthur Kinnaird and Spencer Cowper, Sir Culling E. Eardley, Bart., from England ; Rev. Drs. Guthrie, Thomson, and Cairns, from Scotland; Pro- fessor Gibson and Dr. Urwick, from Ireland. On the morning of September 2d, the Con- ference was opened in the Cathedral of St. Peter, in the midst of a large concourse of clergy and laymen and of a numerous audi- ence. After singing the hymn Grand Dieu, nous te ^nissons, the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John was read, and a fervent prayer was offered by Pastor Coulin, of the National Church. M. Adrien Naville, President of the French-speaking Branch of the Alliance, then gave the in- augural discourse, and thus opened the busi- ness of the Conference, which throughout was distinguished by the harmonious and loving spirit pervading the assemblies. The celebration of the Lord's Supper appropriate- ly closed the series of meetings, and, from its international as well as eucharistic char- acter, was perhaps the most remarkable oc- casion in the history of the Alliance. During the time of holding the Conference a num- ber of special meetings, some of them of con- siderable importance, were held, and numer- ous breakfasts and other gatherings, of a more or less private nature, took place ; thus opportunities were afforded, in addition to the fraternal and friendly intercourse en- joyed among esteemed Christian brethren of various countries, for private conversation on religious questions of great international importance. Nor should we omit to men- tion a novel feature in the Conference, and, indeed, in Switzerland and European coun- 194 CHRISTIAN UNION. tries viz. : the numerons open-air meetings held for the promotion of a religious awak- ening among the people, who were address- ed, in their own language by British and other foreign visitors, and to whom the ear- nest setting forth of the love of Christ was largely blessed. Amsterdam. The fifth General Conference -was held in 1867, in Amsterdam, in a laud which, among Protestant nations, naturally holds a foremost place. While comparative- ly of small geographical extent, and contend- ing against great natural difficulties, Holland possesses a history of almost unrivaled im- portance and traditions which cover her peo- ple with everlasting renown. From the first they have been brave and generous lovers of freedom, of national independence, and of the Gospel. At the earnest invitation of our Christian brethren of the Netherlands, ar- rangements were made for holding the next General Conference in their city of Amster- dam, and on the evening of Lord's Day, Au- gust 10th, the Conference was opened by an inaugural service in the New Church, Am- sterdam. This large cathedral church, built, notwithstanding its name, A.D. 1408, was fill- ed to the extent, it was estimated, of 4000 persons, occupying and crowding all that part of the sacred edifice which is devoted to divine worship. The Kev. Dr. Van Ooster- zee, Professor of the University of Utrecht, preached on the occasion a sermon of great power and beauty, admirably adapting an incident in the history of St. Paul to the cir- cumstances of the assembly, and to the senti- ments and objects which had brought Chris- tians together from so many different coun- tries. The hymns sung at this service and at all the subsequent meetings were print- ed in parallel columns in four languages Dutch, German, French, and English ; and thus all were enabled to unite in this act of worship. On each successive day papers were read of great learning, historical re- search, and practical value, supplying an amount of information tending to re-assure faith in the divine origin and power of Christianity, and enlarge the sympathy of all who heard them with the true Church of Christ, in its conflicts and varied trials, its social philanthropies and missionary en- terprise, and its all-pervading spirit of life and love, t This Dutch Conference was distinguished even more than any of the preceding ones by an immediate and local usefulness, giving it additional value. The Committee had, from the first, been desirous to render the visit of so many foreign Christians in Amsterdam fruitful of spiritual good to the citizens at large. Various methods were employed for this purpose, some of which must be men- tioned. On two occasions the regular pro- ceedings were suspended, \vhen the great hall was filled by a large concourse of peo- ' pie from the city, to whom addresses were delivered on the nature aud design of the Evangelical Alliance, and on the solemn ob- ligations to receive the Gospel of Christ and imitate the faith and fidelity of their re- nowned forefathers. But not only in the Park Hall was the Gospel earnestly pre- sented. The use of other spacious build- ings was obtained, when crowds of the poor and even moral outcasts of society list- ened, evening after evening, to the message brought to them by sympathizing strangers, whose earnest words were interpreted by our Dutch brethren. Soldiers in the barracks were also cared for, and, by the kind permis- sion of the commandant, the troops were as- sembled, and Mrs. Daniel, known for her ex- traordinary work among the soldiers at Al- dershot, accompanied by a British general officer, addressed them on " the common sal- vation." The Conference closed with the celebra- tion, on the Sunday, of the Lord's Supper in the Remonstrant Reformed Church, a sim- ple but spacious edifice, now filled with com- municants gathered together, in communion with their one Lord and with each other, to celebrate his redeeming love. Surely it was an appropriate conclusion to the meetings of the previous days, which had produced a sense of profound gratitude for the manifold and rich pleasures afforded by " the comfort of brotherly love" and the "fellowship of the Spirit," deepening the conviction of the power of the Gospel, aud the duty of be- lievers everywhere to strive for the increase of love and for unity, which is the bond of perfectness. As an appropriate and delight- ful termination to the Conference, the visit- ors were invited to participate, on the fol- lowing day, in the engagements and pleas- ures of the annual gathering of the Dutch Missionary Societies, which, by special ar- rangement, had been appointed immediately to follow the meetings of the Evangelical Al- liance. The village of Vogelenzang is about half an hour's distance by rail from Amster- dam, and there, in a beautifully wooded park, the property of Mr. Baruaart, some 20,000 per- sons assembled and spent the day in listen- ing to missionaries and missionary addresses, intermingled with prayer aud praise, and with social intercourse of an eminently grat- ifying and Christian character. In addition to the supply of refreshments to the entire company, Mr. Barnaart opened his mansion to the foreign guests and their families, who were entertained with the utmost kiuduess and hospitality. It only remains to record that, at one of the sessions of this Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance, the Rev. Dr. Prime, of New York, after reading a luminous report on the state of religion in the United States, pre- pared by the Rev. H. B. Smith, D.D., of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, made DAVIS : THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 195 the following communication : " Brethren of the Alliance, I am charged, in the name of the American Branch of the Alliance, to in- vite you to hold your next General Confer- ence of Christians of all Nations in the city of New York, assuring you a hospitable wel- come in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." The announcement, as might be expected, was very enthusiastically received and ac- knowledged, and then referred for consider- ation to the different European Branches of the Alliance, with a view to its being ac- cepted. That acceptance having been uni- versally accorded, the present Conference is held, for which much prayer has been offer- ed, that special blessings may rest upon it, for the increase of unity, peace, and concord among all the followers of our divine Lord, and the spread of his kingdom throughout the world. UNITED PRAYER. The manifestation of Christian union would be imperfect indeed if it had not, for one of its most frequent and brightest evi- dences, united prayer. Drawn to the Cross as their common centre for the baptism of love, Christians will be also drawn to the throne of grace in sympathy with each oth- er's need, and with the wants of the Church and the world around them. To promote union in prayer at stated seasons and on special occasions has been the constant aim of the Alliance. Principal among these must be mentioned the Week of Prayer at the open- ing of the year, which has become an insti- tution of the Christian Church throughout the world. One of the practical resolutions adopted at a Conference of the Alliance held in Manchester, in the first year of its forma- tion, was to this effect : " That it be recom- mended that the week beginning with the first Lord's Day of January in each year be observed by the members and friends of the Alliance throughout the world as a season for concert in prayer on behalf of the objects contemplated by the Alliance." In accord- ance with this resolution, an address of in- vitation, with suggested topics for prayer, has been prepared and translated, and wide- ly circulated over all countries in the au- tumn of every year, embracing, as far as cir- cumstances will permit, entire Christendom. This annual Week of Prayer has been in- creasingly and more extensively observed year by year, and in some places in England and abroad the largest halls and churches have sometimes been insufficient to contain the multitudes attracted by these devotional and united services at the opening of the year. In reviewing the events of the last quarter of a century, Christians who have assembled on these hallowed occasions can hardly fail to recognize and devoutly ac- knowledge God's goodness in answering the prayers of his people agreed touching the things they have asked of him. The open- ing of so many wide and effectual doors in Europe and other continents for the proc- lamation of the Gospel and the spread of the Holy Scriptures; the religious revivals which have visited and blessed many lands ; the breaking asunder of the chains of slav- ery and serfdom ; the increased life and ac- tivity among Christian Churches, are all events in the gracious providence of God indicating the hand of one to whom the cry of faith and earnestness never ascends in THE ACTION OF THE ALLIANCE IN THE CAUSE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. From the commencement it was seen that religious liberty would be in perfect har- mony with the professed aim and ultimate object of the Evangelical Alliance, and that, without it, the union of Christians in a bond of fellowship would be an impossibility. The members of the Alliance have therefore directed their earnest efforts to deliver their afflicted brethren from all religious persecu- tion, and to remove from nations existing obstructions to the circulation of the Word of God and the free proclamation of the Gos- pel of Christ. The instances in which the Evangelical Alliance has successfully exert- ed its influence for these objects are so nu- merous that they can only be glanced at in this brief sketch. A paper was to have been contributed by the Foreign Secretary of the Alliance, on the foreign operations of the Society, but owing to his lamented illness, and consequent absence from the Conference, it has been omitted. It is sufficient to men- tion that the Madiai in Florence ; Matamoros and his fellow-Protestants, and Julian Var- gas, in Spain ; the missionaries and Turkish converts in Constantinople and other parts of the East ; the Baptists in Germany, Rus- sia, Sweden, and Switzerland ; the Nestorians in Persia ; the French missionaries in Basuto Land, South Africa, as well as English mis- sionaries in New Caledonia ; the Lutherans in the Baltic Provinces of Russia, with oth- ers, have proved the value of Christian sym- pathy and the efficient aid which the Al- liance, through its various British and For- eign organizations, can render to our fel- low-Christians throughout the world. The efforts of some of our Continental Branches with reference to the observance of the Lord's Day in their own lands have also been sig- nally blessed. In Prussia, labor on Govern- ment works on Sunday and the assembly of the militia on that day have been stopped. In Switzerland a large number of manufac- tories has been closed, and the postal au- thorities are giving the whole or part of their employes rest on that day. These are some of the results with which it has pleased God to bless the co-operation of Christians in the Evangelical Alliance. But even if 19G CHRISTIAN UNION. no such secondary objects had been accom- plished, its great value would still remain in supplying a bond of union for Christians in all countries, and manifesting that union before the world as a duty and privilege binding on all the disciples of Christ. Spir- itual union is heavenly, and as all true be- lievers in our Lord Jesus Christ, whatever their national differences and diversities in non-essential points of faith and practice, are one, and will be harmoniously joined together iii the fellowship of the heavenly glory, it is expected of them now to walk iu the fellowship of the Spirit, to cherish love one toward another, and with united activi- ty occupy the vast fields of Christian useful- ness that on all sides stretch out before them. Amidst the many and minor differences of the followers of our Lord, all of whom are burdened with weighty cares and solemn re- sponsibilities, the words may be appropriate- ly applied which the poet represents Adam as addressing to Eve, after mutual reproach- es and accusations : "Arise, let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere ; but strive, In offices of love, how we may lighten Each other's burdens in our share of love." It only remains that the cause so auspicious- ly begun, and already so far advanced, be still vigorously prosecuted, and for this end the members of the Alliance invite the sym- pathy, the prayers, and the co-operation of all in every land who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. " He that will love life, and see good days, let him seek peace, and ensue it." " Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be called the children of God." THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE: ITS OBJECTS AND INFLUENCE IN PROMOTING THE UNIVER- SAL PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS TO THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. BY THE REV. W. NOEL, Counselor of the "Ober-Kirchenrath," First Pastor of the Lonisa Parish Church at Berlin, and Secretary of the "German Evangelical Church Diet." DEAR BRETHREN, When God the Lord brought Israel out of the laud of Egypt, he spoke a word, which may be said to compre- hend all that God had said, done, and or- dained in behalf of his people. It is the word : " You shall be a priestly kingdom, and a holy people " (Exod. xix., 6). In saying so, he made it his people's duty to be, or rather to become, a people of priests. He does not say You are, but You shall be a priestly peo- ple. He himself will render them a priest- ly people, and he testifies that his covenant made with Israel has no other object. But the way to carry it should and could not be made a short and easy pleasure excursion. It was to be rather a long and weary pil- grimage beneath the yoke of the law, and within the narrow range of the statutes reg- ulating the service of the Temple and the offerings. The time must be fulfilled before the real High-priest could make his appear- ance, and offer up the only sufficient sacrifice on Golgotha for the sins of the whole world. Then only the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, and the approach to God was free to all who came to Jesus at his word : " Come unto me, all." That is the origin of the uni- versal priesthood of all the faithful, which St. Peter testifies to the Jews : " Ye also, as lively stones, are built Tip a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sac- rifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ ;" which St. Paul preaches among the heathens : "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone ; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." The first Christian communities esteemed the gift of universal priesthood the most precious jewel of their crown. During the apostolic age it was not only the sanctified lips of the elders and bishops (between whom the New Testament makes no difference) that poured forth a strain of spiritual life, but also the laity were priestly persons, anointed with the Holy Spirit, who in tongues of prophecy re- vealed to them the mysteries of the kingdom of God. But then followed a period after that of the apostles, when the Church that, strange to say, had chosen for her patrons St. Peter and St. Paul, the prophets of the uni- versal priesthood of all the faithful, on com- ing to power, re-established the ancient Jew- ish priesthood, with its statutes and offer- ings, as if there had never been a redemp- tion. Now the enthusiasm for the Lord and his kingdom began to die away, and with it the persuasion that all the faithful were called upon to be priests, and that there was no difference between the clergy and the laity. It was reserved to the Reformation to draw forth from the dust, under which Rome had buried them, besides other jewels of the Gospel, also the doctrine of the uni- versal priesthood of the faithful. But de- cidedly as Luther urged this point, it was forgotten during the dogmatic struggles of the sixteenth century, till Spener and Francke, at least theoretically and as pium desidet^ium, set it up as the privilege of all true Christians, and the Methodists and oth- er Dissenters in England put it into practice. Ever since the doctrine of the universal priesthood of the faithful has become an article of faith of the German Protestant Church, she has striven to make her adher- ents members of that invisible Church whicli is the" Communion of the Saints, as testified in the Apostolic Symbolum. The doctrine of the universal priesthood of the faithful praises the glorious liberty of the children of God, and assigns to the Christian the place which he occupies with reference to his God and Father in virtue of the redemp- tion by Jesus Christ. But as the first and great commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and with all thy mind," has another like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," so the second question for the Christian, who is reconciled to his God and Father, is that of 198 CHRISTIAN UNION. his relations with his neighbor. This ques- *ion is answered hy the article of the Creed, " I helieve in the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints." Behold what high and glorious task is set before our eyes! But it is to be attained only gradually, as the Saviour says in the parable of the seed growing secretly : " For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself: first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." The communion of all who are redeemed and sanctified by Jesus Christ can not be realized but by the members of each indi- vidual church first joining in faithful and holy love among themselves. When that is done, let them stretch out their hands be- yond the more or less narrow pale of their own denomination, and open their hearts to their brethren in Christ, and invite them to take a joint stand on the ground of the Com- munion of the Saints as the children of God, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the Lord in the bond of peace (Eph.iv., 3-6). If in the Apostolic Age it was possible for the Saint Apostles to keep up the unity of the Spirit, even in spite of the antagonism between the Christians out of the Jews and those out of the Gentiles an antagonism which was a good deal fiercer than that which separates the Protestant from the Catholic Church how is it that we should not be able to do the same, provided we strive honestly and seriously, and trust that God will assist us in our endeavors ? It fills us with joy, therefore, that Evangelical Ger- many at least, since the days of Spener and Francke,had never been totally in want of faithful and pious souls that, though belong- ing to different confessions, united on the ground of their common love to the one Head of all Christendom. Particularly has this been the case when, after the wars of liberation (1813-1815), a new life of faith awoke. Then it occurred that members even of the Catholic Church shook hands with earnest Protestants in brotherly love over the separating barrier of their respective confessions, rejoicing in the consciousness of being both children of God by Jesus Christ. Let me only point you out, for an instance, Sailer and Wessen- berg, and those they drew round them. Unluckily that spirit of conciliation did not prevail but for a short time. The Jesuits once more came to power, and Ultramonta- nism began again its fatal work of corrup- tion, completing it by the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus, and the Infallibility of the Pope. A great many earnest Catholics, particularly in Ger- many, refusing obedience to the decrees of the Vatican Council, separated from the Church of Rome, without pretending to sep- arate from the Catholic Church.* Nor was ' "Die Altkatholikou.' that all. Ultramontanism attempted also to encroach upon the sovereignty of the State. Laws had therefore to be framed and passed, to secure its independence from the pretensions, altogether unlawful and revolutionary, of the Roman clergy. Under the prevailing circumstances, and in face of the eagerness of confessional antagonism, in Germany at least, there seemed to be no chance of taking np and promoting the work of the union between the two Churches, Catholic and Protestant, so successfully be- gun after the wars of 1813-1815. The more thankfully was welcomed the Evangelical Alliance when, about twenty-five years since, it endeavored to establish within the Evan- gelical Church a union of the faithful of the different Reformed confessions, for the pur- pose of giving each other cordial support, of affording means for an exchange of ideas, and of encouraging common enterprises of helping and saving love. The Evangelical Alliance will not be a union of the Evangelical Churches, still less will it establish a new church, or melt and mix together those which, in different lan- guages, countries, and forms, serve God their Saviour in their own manner. The Evangelical Alliance will inspire them all with the consciousness that their members one and all belong, as children of God, to one blessed Lord and Saviour, and are in duty bound to join in true love for the pur- pose of doing his work. The fact that all Christians, in virtue of the universal priest- hood of the faithful, have immediate access to God through Jesus Christ, has found its proper expression in the Evangelical Alli- ance. If that is the case, we may say that our Saviour's prayer for his apostles (St. John xvii.) has to some extent been heard : " Neither pray I for these alone " (the apos- tles), " but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us ;" till once the word will be fulfilled, and the com- munion of saints realized, " One fold and one Shepherd." That is, in my opinion, the task of theEvan- gelical Alliance. Has it fulfilled this task, or is" it about to fulfill it? Let me answer these questions from my German Evangel- ical point of view. When, in 1857, the Evan- gelical Alliance, for the third time after its foundation, in 1846, met at Berlin, Dr.Krum- macher, now a member of the triumphant Church, believed himself bound to examine in his address three reproaches which had been thrown upon the Evangelical Alliance from different sides, and which, in Germany at least, are still raised against it: First, that its endeavors and debates wanted inner truth ; then, that they were not suited to the spirit of the age, and did not answer the ! exigencies of the Evangelical, especially the NOEL : THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. 199 German Evangelical people ; finally, that its purposes and ends, far from being distinct- ly and clearly denned, did not warrant any practical results. Concerning the first reproach that it is a union of brethren in appearance only, not in reality, each member reserving to himself his denominatism we may say that the very existence of the Evangelical Alliance up to this day has sufficiently invalidated this re- proach. Were the Evangelical Alliance de- void of inner truths, it could not have lived and derived new strength from each of the five general assemblies which have taken place since its foundation. It has proved that Evangelical Christians, though belong- ing to different denominations, can love each other in Christ without sacrificing the truth, and that the voluntary communion of love, on the ground of the general priest- hood of all the faithful, has infinitely more real truth in itself than the mechanical conformity of the Eoman Catholic Church, which is nothing but an artificial produce of overbearing priestcraft. The same is to be said as to the second re- proach that what the Evangelical Alliance aims at is neither in the spirit of the age, nor does it answer the exigencies of the Evangel- ical, especially the German Evangelical peo- ple. Two years after the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London (August 19, 1846), and quite independent of it it was scarcely known then was founded in Wit- tenberg, at the burying-place of Luther, the German Evangelical Church Diet (Deutsclier Evangelischer Kirchentag), which within the pale of the Evangelical Churches of Ger- many pursues the same objects as the Evan- gelical Alliance does at large, that is, to es- tablish a brotherly union of all German Evan- gelical Christians, standing on the ground of the Protestant professions of faith, holding Jesus Christ to be the only-begotten Son of the living God, who was crucified, and rose again from the dead. The German Evan- gelical Church Diet has held sixteen meet- ings, attended not only by German Evan- gelical Christians, but also by foreigners. The Church Diet goes farther in its views than the Evangelical Alliance. Its object is to form a confederacy of different Evan- gelical Churches, while the Evangelical Al- liance only purposes to further the union of faithful individuals. Yet both are twin brothers, born out of the same pirit, and founded for the same object. For this rea- son the Church Diet has always gladly sym- pathized with the endeavors of the Evan- gelical Alliance. When, in 1869, at the Diet which had been convened at Stuttgart, Pro- fessor Dr. Schaff delivered the invitation of the American Branch of the Evangelical Al- liance to the sixth great meeting, which is now being held in this city, he was request- ed by the chairman to express to those who sent him the cordial sympathy of the Diet, with their endeavors to effect a closer union between the members of the different de- nominations of the Evangelical Church. To this the whole assembly gave its hearty as- sent by rising with one accord. These facts refute sufficiently the re- proach that the endeavors of the Evangel- ical Alliance are out of time. Finally, a few words respecting the third reproach which has been thrown upon us that our purposes and ends, far from being clearly and distinctly defined, do not warrant any practical results. We must own that objections of this nature, if raised against us, are not entirely unfounded. Yet, if to inspire each other with the love of God and Christ, to teach and admonish each oth- er, to minister to one another spiritual gifts, is something, our meetings have not been without fruit. And that fruit will be abun- dantly rich should we attain to that which an eloquent tongue expressed as his wish and hope : " That the French impart to us their ardent zeal in the service of the Lord ; the brethren of Italy, their cheerfulness in martyrdom and death ; the English, their apostolic energy ; the Scotch, their firmness in the faith and their moral and religious earnestness ; the Dutch, their soberness in the days when thousands are spiritually in- toxicated; the Americans, their reverence for the letter of the Word of God and their Christian courage in conquering the world ; that the Methodists bestow upon us part of their zeal to gain each single soul ; the In- dependents, their readiness to make sacrifi- ces for the interests of the community ; the Baptists, their discipline ; the Anglicans, their reverence and love for their Mother Church ; the United Brethren, their mission- ary zeal." Nor must we undervalue what the Evangelical Alliance has done in inter- fering for religious liberty in Italy, in Spain, in Roumania, in Russia, and lately, also, in Japan. Since this brotherly exchange of spiritual gifts will first of all strengthen only the inner man, and his intervention in be- half of religious liberty can take place only occasionally, it bears the character of a testi- mony, however important, rather than the seal of a deed of sacred fraternity. The Ger- man Evangelical Church Diet, which I have termed, with Dr. Schaff, the twin brother of the Evangelical Alliance, in order to escape the danger of falling into mere doctrinarian- ism and vain idealism, has, from its begin- ning, entered into a league with the con- gress for "Interior Mission" (Innere Mis- sion), and thus found a means not only to take practical affairs in hand, but also to perpetrate deeds of helping and saving love. Besides, there is another institution in Germany, the Gustavus Adolphus Union, whose best friends are likewise the well- wishers of the German Evangelical Church 200 CHRISTIAN UNION. Diet. This Union, with more than a thou- sand branch societies, spread all over Ger- many, may be called the elder brother of the Evangelical Alliance. It embraces mem- bers of all the German Reformed Churches, and its object is to support such Evangelical communities among a larger Catholic pop- ulation, who want support for the erection and sustenance of churches and schools. Lutherans and Calvinista indiscriminately enjoy the benefit, according to the word of the Holy Scriptures : " Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith." Its agency extends over all the countries of the earth where German Protestants live together in greater numbers. The report read last year at the yearly meeting of the society in Speier mentions sixty-five churches consecrated in the course of the year, to whoso erection the society has contributed, one of which at Ferraz, in Southern Brazil, another at Lutzin, in Rus- sia. Fifty-eight schools have been opened, most of them in Austria, where the Evan- gelical communities have had to suffer more than anywhere else under Jesuitical oppres- sion and insolence. More than 200,000 tha- lers have been expended on more than a thousand communities. During the thirty years since its founda- tion, the society has disposed of more than 3,500,000 thalers, and " every gift," says the report, " which goes out with our work and prayer has been almost everywhere a balm spread on wounds inflicted by Jesuits. It has been a messenger of peace and life, drawing our brethren abroad out of their state of isolation and distress, and proving to them that they are no longer to be for- saken and forgotten." Should it not be possible for the Evangel- ical Alliance to make exertions of a similar kind in a practical way? Should the Al- liance not be able, somehow or other, to do the same for the Evangelical of all tongues that the German "Gustavus Adolphus Ve- reiu " does for those of German extraction ? Should it not, instead of hearing only works of helping and saving love reported and praised, set up such a work for itself? I would only refer to the couvention of Gene- va. That is it, dear brethren, which I wish your enlightened considerations to refer to, without presuming to make farther propos- als. Only one thing let me observe, before I conclude, that the Evangelical people would form a more accurate idea of the en- deavors of the Evangelical Alliance, and would give them a more hearty sympathy, if we could point out deeds perpetrated on the ground of the love which unites us in Christ. III. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. Monday, October 6th, 1873. DIVISION lit CONTENTS, THEOLOGICAL SECTION. PAGE 1. CHKISTLIEB : Counteracting Modern Infidelity 203 2. LEATIIES : " " " 224 3. CAIRNS : Causes of Modern Infidelity 228 4. VAX OOSTERZEE: The Gospel History and Modern Criticism 238 5. WARREX : American Infidelity its Factors and Phases 249 6. WASHBURX : Reason and Faith 255 7. BOVET : Christianity and the Gospel 261 PHILOSOPHICAL SECTION. 1. McCosn: Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Development 264 2. DAWSOX : Primitive Man and Revelation 272 3. GUYOT : Cosmogony and the Bible 276 4. NAVILLE : The Gospel and Philosophy 288 5. KRAUTH : The Strength and Weakness of Idealism 293 6. NEVIX : Christianity and Humanity 302 7. SPIESS : Comparative Study of Religions 309 8. APPEXDIX. Discussion on Darwinism and Development 317 THEOLOGICAL SECTION. THE BEST METHODS OF COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY* BY THE REV. THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D.D., Professor of Theology, and Chaplain in the University of Bonn, Prussia. THE question as to the best methods of counteracting modern infidelity is so wide a one whether we consider it in a scien- tific, a historical, or a practical and moral light that it is imperatively necessary for us to confine ourselves in its treatment to two points of view. First, then, we would in- dicate the chief scientific positions in which attack and defense can be most successfully maintained especially drawing attention to those points in the great struggle which have hitherto been overlooked ; and second, we shall endeavor to sketch out the practi- cal tasks imposed upon us as members or teachers of a Christian community, as well as on the Church of Christ at large, in the great battle against the unbelief of our day. All questions of detail we will leave to free discussion. We Germans are notorious for making long introductions, but to-day notwith- standing all that might with advantage be said I prefer to omit preliminaries alto- gether. I will not, therefore, stop to give an exact limitation or definition of the term "modern infidelity," although this notion has not everywhere quite the same extent ; as e. g., in England, some opinions are called rationalistic, which in Germany would hard- ly be so designated. I hope, however, to ex- press the view common to us all, when I say that wo comprise under the name of " infi- del " all those tendencies and systems which militate against the Biblical and Christian view of God and of the universe, which do * [This essay fur exceeds the length of other papers in the volume ; but the editor was unwilling to use the liberty of abridging it for the sake of gaining space. It is an able and elaborate defense of Chris- tianity, and made a deep and lasting impression. It was delivered twice (first in part in Association Hall, and then, by request, in full in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church), with unusual fresh- ness, energy, and modest self-assurance, to crowded and intelligent audiences, which listened to it with delight, and with a growing conviction that Christian- Sty had nothing whatever to fear from its assailants. It was all the more effective since it came from a Ger- man scholarone almost unknown before in Amer- ica. Ed.] not consider Holy Scripture as an authentic record of Divine Revelation, and which in theory or in practice refuse to acknowledge the central doctrine of our faith, viz., the salvation that has appeared in Christ. The term modern infidelity, then, would desig- nate the same tendencies and schools of thought as they appear at the present day, i. e., armed with weapons furnished them by the philosophy, the historical criticism, and the natural science of our times. Finally, we pass by the various schools of unbelief with their specific principles, such as Pantheism, Rationalism, etc., since the more important of them will be separately treated of to-day ; and we merely glance at the different forma practically assumed by modern unbelief. Among these forms we see every possible gradation of departure from Christian truth, ranging from the in- differentism which still admits of a nominal connection with the Church, to a fanatical and aggressive hatred of all that belongs to it ; from a Pilate's tone of haughty despite, to blasphemous mockery ; or from the learn- ed investigator and critic, who with im- mense diligence and acuteness endeavors to reduce all the Divine elements in Scripture to mere natural phenomena produced by hu- man historical agencies, down to the shal- low journalist, who is fain to widen his cir- cle of readers by piquant mockery of all " orthodoxy " and " methodism." Essential- ly the same tendency of thought is repre- sented by that critic who, as the result of the long conflict, would have us substitute the new faith (by Messrs. Lessing and Dar- win) for the old faith, but who, forsooth, ar- dently desires to see the old order of society preserved at least until his eyes are closed, as well as by those fanatical enemies of the present social order, who already anticipate the logical results of the " new belief," i. e., a chaos formed by the destruction of socie- ty's present frame-work, of all the ideal ele- ments of life, even of the worship of art-he- roes still left to us by Strauss, and the proc- lamation of a gospel of the flesh which shall 204 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. teach niau to cultivate naught but the pal- pable and sensuous. If, in view of these increasingly radical and threatening attacks, we inquire after the best methods of repulse, we thereby in- dicate that there are various methods of dif- fering value. The defense must, of course, vary in its method, on the one hand, accord- ing to the nature and extent of the unbelief, the causes of its origin, and the manner in which it conducts its assaults against our faith ; on the other hand, according to the position which we desire to defend. But we may safely say that there are, and al- ways have been, certain recognized and well- defined lines and maxims of defense, though differing much from one another in value. A thoroughly wrong method one which is diametrically opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, and has not, sad to say, always been used by the Roman Church only is the sup- pression of opposition against certain dog- mas by physical force, or by merely appeal- ing to the outward authority of the Church. In the same way we reject and I think you will agree with me in this as unevangel- ical, unfruitful, and productive of confusion, the cognate tendency shown by the extreme ecclesiastical party in the Protestant Church, who would oppose the unbridled independ- ence and subjective arbitrariness of the crit- icism of our day by an overstrained assertion of the rights of the priestly office, and would endeavor to raise a barrier against the prev- alence of free investigation and spontaneous appropriation of truth by laying an exag- gerated stress upon the sacramental actions of the Church, which the most advanced of them are already beginning to make into sacrificial rites. These theories and tenden- cies we reject; for a knowledge or appro- priation of saving grace communicated oth- erwise than by moral (not magical) means is opposed no less to Scripture than to the spirit of our age ! The trust that sustains us in this tremen- dous struggle, \vaged not "with men alone, but with all the powers of darkness, must not be founded on ourselves, nor on other weak men ; not on any outward assistance from the state, nor on forms and ceremonies (for " cursed is the man that maketh flesh his arm," Jer. xvii., 5) ; but on the Lord himself, who sits exalted at his Father's right hand, as Ruler over all, even the raging of his enemies. His presence is not bound to out- ward forms or traditions. Ho is the Spirit (2 Cor. in., 17), and from him proceeds the Spirit of truth. To this his Spirit we must in the last resort leave the work of convin- cing men's hearts and minds of the truth of Christian Revelation, without sparing them the trouble of free investigation or of a con- scientious decision and self-resolve. In ac- cordance with these principles, our human task in the battle against unbelief can be no other than to overcome the opponent by moral and spiritual means. First of all, that is, by an earnest, spiritually vigorous testi- mony for Christ ; next, by a truly scientific delineation of Christian belief, as a view of the world and of God, which is strictly co- herent and corroborated by history and con- science, while at the same time openly ac- knowledging all its difficulties and obscuri- ties ; and last, by a practical demonstration of its truth in Christian living and suffering. Keeping this fundamental rule in view, we, on the other hand, see unbelief present itself to us socially in different shapes, ei- ther isolated in individuals, or systematical- ly formulated in scientific schools, or prac- tically carried out by the press, clubs, un- ions, etc., and forming a threatening power in our social life. Thus our subject natu- rally divides into three heads : How may we best counteract Infidelity I. In individu- als? II. In scientific systems? III. As a social power, practically extending its influ- ence throughout wide circles? I. INFIDELITY IN ISOLATED INDIVIDUALS. Under this head we \vill only give a few suggestions, in order to have more room for the other parts. The following treatment seems to me the wisest : First, \ve must endeavor to obtain for ourselves (and mostly for the individuals in question, too) a clear idea of the special causes from which their unbelief has origi- nated. These may be of very varied charac- ter. They may consist in received tradition, in discoveries of modern science, in political or social phenomena. Often unbelief results almost as a natural necessity from the whole spiritual and moral atmosphere of a- man's surroundings. Let us put ourselves in the place of such individuals, and not forget (as is, alas ! too often done) the share of blame w r hich frequently attaches to the Church herself, by reason of her neglect to care for souls, her inward nakedness, her fruitless bickerings about trifles, her narrow-minded party-spirit, all of which constantly do an infinity of mischief by alienating from her the hearts of .thousands. Such thoughts will produce in us true humility and hearty sympathy with the inward misery of those who are far from God feelings without which wo shall never be able to gain their confidence, nor to lead them to see the in- nermost causes of their unbelief in certain moral failings. It is not for nothing that our Lord classes unbelief with hardness of heart ("He up- braided them with their unbelief and hard- ness of heart," Mark xvi.,14; cf. Luke xxiv., 25). In the first and last resort, all Ttnbe- lief springs, not from the hardness and in- comprehensibility which the faith possesses for the understanding, but from the hard- ness and perverseness of the natural heart CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 205 of man, which will not bow to the mighty aud solemn truth of Divine Revelation. This perverseuess is a strange mixture on the one hand, of cowardice, when a man has not the courage to let his inward failings be uncovered in all their nakedness, nor dares to enlarge his own narrow views according to the great ways and deeds of God, but would fain make these fit to the measure of his own small ideas ;* and thus, on the other hand, of overweening self-confidence, when the same man thinks far too highly of human knowledge and accomplishments, and far too little of God's mighty and holy government when he would attain to ev- ery thing by means of his own knowledge and power in a word, when man would far rather help himself than let himself be helped by God, and thankfully accept the redemption brought by Jesus Christ. In truth, this is the material principle whicli divides all unbelief and false belief toto ccelo from true belief: on the one hand, there is self-help; on the other, God's help. The pride of the philosophical critic, just as much as that of the natural scientist, is always striving to substitute human activity and spontaneity for human receptiveness before God. Instead of Soli Deo, its motto is Soli Jwmini gloria! Last, but not least, among these general iuward causes of unbelief come the positive- ly earthy inclinations of the human heart, its proueness to satisfaction in this world, a tendency which is seductively encouraged by the present materialistic denial of anoth- er life; or, to put it plainly in a word, the power of the dollar. This is a far greater hinderance to true belief than all the writ- ings of philosophers and critics put together: this worship of Mammon it is that causes a deep and wide-spread disaffection against all ethical and spiritual truth, and a per- version of the moral judgment, against which all mere logical reasoning is of no avail. The causes of unbelief really lie in the heart and Avill. However strong outward influ- ences may be, in divine things no one errs entirely without his own fault. If such be the case, then the most effect- ual method of opposing unbelief in individ- uals is that which we may term the ethico- psychological or isagogic method; that is, the method which leads inward to the heart and conscience of those addressed. Let mo explain myself. First of all, we should endeavor to lead our brother to a clear and sober recognition of the inward causes and the effects of his unbelief on his own moral development ; this, however, not as inquisitors, but with hearty and humble sympathy. " Reflect," * "Animus ad amplitudinem mystei-iorum pro mo- dulo suo dilatetur, non mysteria ad augustias nnimi constringantur." FRANCIS BACON, De Augment. Sci- let us say to him, "on the first beginning of your doubts. From what region did they come ? Is not, perhaps, your present creed merely the theology of the natural heart? And can you say that this unbelief has been a real blessing for your inner life ? Does its increase denote a true moral progress, mod- eration in happiness, comfort aud support in misfortune ? Oh, give a true and upright account of all this, not to me, but to your- self and God !" Later on we should show in how false a manner the doubter usually examines the Divine origin and the truth of the Christian faith. As a rule, he makes the convenient demand first to be convinced by scientific- ally exact arguments of the truth of Chris- tian revelation before he will accept it. He will first know, and then believe. But this way can not bring him to his goal. We must show the fundamental error of this de- mand, which consists in a confusion between the region of morals and religion and that of mathematical science. Spiritual truths should not aud can not be mathematically demonstrated. First they must be appre- hended by the heart and conscience, and they will then prove themselves to the un- derstanding as divinely true and necessary. Were faith a mere matter of demonstration, it would cease to be faith, i. e., a moral act consisting in a trustful yielding up of self to that which as yet we see not (Heb. xi., 1). Further, we should go on to show that faith and knowledge, far from being op- posed, naturally supplement each other, aud that true faith is the source of the deepest and highest knowledge. All learning is nec- essarily preceded by a submission to the au- thority of the teacher ; and this prelimina- ry submission of the intellectual and critic- al faculties to the truth of Revelation brings light into the soul, and lays the foundation for healthy, sober, aud clear views as to God, our own being and condition, sin and its cure, and our final destiny. Thus faith, i. e., the intrusting ourselves to the light of Diviue Revelation, leads to the knowledge of the most exalted truth ; indeed, it is the beginning of it. If this way to knowledge seem hard to you, ask yourself whether the Christian faith does not correspond to and supply the deep- est needs of the human heart. And this is another important point in the treatment of unbelievers. The question turns upon the recognition of evil in ourselves. For the whole struggle between belief and unbelief, as has truly been said,* is but the conflict between those who treat sin as a light mat- ter and those who are heavily oppressed by it until they come to Him who takes their burden away and lays His light yoke upon * Cf. A. Peip, "Das Credo der Kirchc nnd die Intel- ligenz des Zeitgeistes," 1ST2. 20G them. Do you glory in your upright moral life T Have you, thou, ever turned the whole energy of your moral consciousness inward in a strict self-examination T Even a great thinker like Kant once thoughtfully paused before the universal and unquestionable fact of a " radical evil " within us. And no up- right man can help doing the same. But the depth of this conviction depeuds upon the standard which a man applies to him- self, upon the idea which he has formed of his aim and destiny. Are you not, per- chance, in the habit of comparing yourselves with other men, who are at best but imper- fect f In so doing, yon degrade your own dignity as one created in the image of God ! Your destiny is the highest imaginable higher than ever philosopher or' poet placed it. " Be ye holy, for I also am holy." " Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Does not a presentiment of this immeasurable destiny live in your soul too ? and have you not the irrepressible feeling, that to be truly free, happy, acceptable to God, aud like him, you must be free from all sin T Now we have seen that the strictest mor- alists, such as Kant, confess that no natural power can suffice for this ; that even with the greatest moral energy in wrestling with evil your morality remains full of defects, and therefore your own exertions can not satisfy the wants of your heart. And, on the other hand, in the person of Christ you see a moral grandeur, in Avhich healthy eyes, at least, have been able to discover no blem- ish ; an ideal of perfection respecting which even rationalistic critics have confessed that all human standards vanish before it. What, in view of this, is more reasonable than to conclude that you, poor, fettered, but strug- gling spirit unable to free yourself, yet destined to the highest Good must, to at- tain your destiny, enter into a personal aud living communion with the only perfect One who has appeared in the history of our race with Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Man, the Sin-destroyer and Redeemer of the world ? And this is the sum and substance of our Christian faith and Christian life! We believe that the free grace aud mercy of God has come to the help of poor man, vain- ly struggling to free himself from sin and evil ; and this great and all-sufficient Divine Help is Christ Jesus. If you still wish to be your own saviour, beware lest you fall into a delusion as to the fatal power of the evil which is in you and its conquest. Such delusions may flat- ter our human pride, but are belied by the actual experience of all straightforward men. But the hand of the Divine Redeemer has long been knocking at the door of your heart, in answer to all its anxious questionings and complaints, and if you now grasp this hand aud intrust yourself to the guidance of the CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. highest and purest Light that ever shone in this world, to the God of holiness and his saving grace in Christ, then this act of faith will bo your greatest moral achievement : it will be in you a root of all the goodness and greatness attainable by man ; you will re- ceive with this act the Christian assurance of the Divine truth aud immutability of your faith, because it substantially approves itself to your conscience in the "demonstra- tion of the Spirit and of power." These, in short, are the chief features of the "isagogic" method of treating unbelief in individuals. I consider it to be the best and most effective, because the most trench- ant and impressive. Of course, however, it must be varied according to the measure of education which the individual has enjoyed, and especially according to his moral condi- tion. The surest way to awaken a response in the other's breast is the personal testimo- ny of grace received, which can throw itself and its spiritual experience into the scale, and stand surety for the truth of Christ's salvation. Another very important point, especially with scientifically directed minds, is to show them that, with their transpo- sition of the relation between faith and knowledge, they will never escape riddles, and must, nolens wlens, accept many things which are utterly without proof, or even absolutely inexplicable. Ay, we may go so far as to say that, without the facts of Bib- lical revelation, the enigmas of our exist- ence, the world, the Church, and history, are increased tenfold. This indicates to us the weak point of II. THE SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMS OF UNBELIEF. These, nowadays, conduct themselves more than ever as if they represented science par excellence. They will hear of none but sci- entific arguments, and so against them none but a strictly scientific procedure cau avail. From the very beginning the Church did not shrink from this struggle, and by means of it she constantly attained a clearer con- sciousness of the substantial elements of her own belief. Apology was the mother of dogmatical science. However great the harm may be which is done to whole gen- erations by the systems of unbelief, yet it should be borne in mind that every earnest and honorable contest with scientific oppo- nents has, in the end, always enriched the Church's store of truth, brought to light new weapons from her inexhaustible arse- nal, and demonstrated anew the steadfast- ness of the foundations of our faith. "For- ward!" then, must be our motto, as against modern unbelieving science too. The hot- ter the battle, the more gainful its issue ! In answer to the question as to the best scientific methods of defense, I pass by all matters of detail (which will be separately treated of in our conferences), and will now CHRISTLIEB: COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 207 endeavor to delineate the fundamental po- sitions which we must take up, in order successfully to defend our faith, and at the same time to expose clearly the scientific and practical weakness of the opposing systems. The first question is : How far does the ground extend which must under all cir- cumstances be defended? Which are the absolutely indispensable articles of our Prot- estant Christian faith ? This brings us to a point that is most important for our subject, and which it should be the chief business of our dogmatic theology to settle : I mean, the clear definition and limitation of the essen- tial and fundamental articles of our faith, in contradistinction to those which are less im- portant and may be left to the free judg- ment of each individual Christian. In order to carry out its task, our science of defense must learn to treat minor points as such. He who defends too much, and represents doubtful things as absolutely necessary to be believed, will no more succeed than he who defends too little, i. e., mere rational truths, instead of the heart of Christian be- lief. What is, then, the chief object of our defense as distinguished from others ? Let me explain myself by means of an illustra- tion. In every considerable fortress there is a central bulwark or citadel, w r ith various bastions, trenches, etc., the close connection of which forms the strength of this centre. Further out there is the enceinte, inclosing town and fortress with its moat; but the largest circle of all is formed by the outside forts, which hinder the enemy from approach- ing too near the walls. Our Christian faith is a fortress, strong as a rock, with just such defenses. The central position, or citadel, is as all believing theologians have long agreed the redemption and atonement ac- complished by Jesus Christ. Union of man with God through this Mediator is the end and aim of all Revelation. This central dogma of the atonement requires certain presuppositions and certain consequences in respect both of God and man which are absolutely indispensable if it is to stand firm. The presuppositions are these : our natu- rally lost condition by reason of sin, not- withstanding the image of God originally implanted in man ; and the saving will of God, caused by his merciful love, which car- ried out the atonement by means of the God- man, Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen, and thus crowned his revelation to the world by manifesting himself as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The consequences are : the ap- propriation of this work by the individual, objectively, through the divinely appointed means furnished by the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, L e., the Word and the visible signs and seals of grace ; subjective- ly, through repentance and justifying faith ; and, finally, the perfection of our salvation in the resurrection, last judgment, and eter- nal life, when the new creation of grace, or the ravages of sin in the heart, shall be made outwardly manifest. These are, as it were, the bastions of the centre in back and front, the properly so- called fundamental truths, a strong chain, in which no link can be dispensed with, and hence the chief object to be defended. The enceinte with its moat is the doctrine of Holy Scripture, as the record of Divine Revela- tion, inexplicable if assumed to be the prod- uct of merely human authors, and hence both human and Divine, surrounding with the benignant influence of its living waters the citadel and town of our faith i. e., our Protestant Church and making it a united fortress. The remaiuiug points, such as the various confessional details e. g., as to the relation between the two natures in Christ, the ac- tion of the sacraments, the relation of Divine grace to human freedom, and a hundred other things may be left for decision to a truly Christian exegesis, historical investigation, and philosophical speculation, as long as the central truth of the God-man and his work, or the soli Deo gloria, is left untouch- ed. These form, as it were, the outer forts, which should not, indeed, 'be given up pre- '-^ maturely, but from which a wise combatant * will, in case of need, withdraw to the cen- tre, in order not to exhaust his strength, but to defend this more securely. The for- tress is not conquered though one of the outposts should fall into the enemy's hands; nor, indeed, should even one of his missiles injure a stone of the enceinte. Do not misunderstand me. I do not say that it may not be in a man's power, nor his duty, to defend many outworks. I do so myself; and merely insist on this, that a successful defense must remain conscious of the difference between what belongs to the circumference and to the centre, and may not make a non-essential article of faith a condition of salvation. The true method is that which will not allow a grain of saving truth to escape its grasp, Avhich gives to faith what belongs to it, but also does not withhold from freedom its due. We now proceed to consider the chief groups of "our innumerable adversaries, and to ask after the best and most effectual line of scientific defense as against each one of them. We immediately see that our citadel, the Christian idea of God and of the redemp- tion, is undermined and attacked chiefly by philosophy, the enceinte by historical criti- cism, and the outworks but, in fact, the whole as well by our modern natural sci- ence. The chief maxim for our scientific defense to be drawn from the above is without in the least timidly avoiding matters of detail at once to reduce all isolated controversies 208 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. to a difference in first principles, and to com- pare the views of the opponents, in all their consequences, with those of a Biblical Chris- tianity. This will invariably result in an idea of God, and a conception of evil differ- ing from that of the Bible. A distorted con- ception of God lies at the root, not only of the pantheistic and naturalistic systems, but also of the attacks on the truth of the Gos- pel history, the Godhead of Christ, and the Divine origin of Christianity. And an un- biblical conception of sin and its conse- quences it is which forms the fundamental assumption of the attacks on the Christian doctrine of redemption and atonement, as well as on the Biblical anthropology. These turning-points must decide the fate of the battle, aud here we should take our stand. And first we should use the broad shield of the united and entire Christian view of the world ; then with the sword at- tack the opponent's position, and fearlessly expose his weak aud vulnerable points. Thus we take our stand against 1. Unchristian philosophy, by demonstra- ting the inner logical consequence and uni- ty, the harmony and symmetrical beauty of the Christian doctrinal system; the wisely planned and holy progress of the Divine Revelation, from "the first creation to the restoration of all things. How sublime and yet how simply comprehensible, how suited to the deepest needs of our hearts, are the teachings of the Bible as to the Divine na- ture, as compared with the abstract, arti- ficially twisted, incomprehensible, modern philosophical conceptions of God, which leave the heart entirely cold ! At the same time, it should be shown and this I would urgently recommend to the notice of apol- ogists how the isolated elements of truth contained in the non- Biblical conceptions of God converge in the Biblical doctrine, as in a focus, and how in the latter alone God appears as the All-perfect, in whom the idea of the Absolute is realized, while in the for- mer there is always an important element wanting, either spirituality (as in Material- ism), or self-consciousness (as in Pantheism), or the living, omnipresent activity (as in Deism) : all of them elements indispensable to the complete conception of the Absolute.* In all this our position will be a safer one, if we lean more upon the fundamental ideas contained in Scripture than upon terms from the dogmatic schools. This is especially true with reference to the point which phi- losophers delight to attack the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Let us at once con- fess that the expression three persons (which is not Biblical) may cause misunderstand- ings, since it is so easily confounded with * Ct the details of this argument in the author's work, "Moderne Zweifcl am Christ lichen Glauben" (2d edition, Bonu, 1870), pp. 227-248 (soon to be pub- lished in English by Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh) three individuals ; as St. Augustine himself has remarked, " tres personaj, si ita dicendte sunt ;" and, moreover, that the expression Trinity is but an attempt at a, short des- ignation of a mystery, for the clear concep- tion and designation of which in this life neither intellect nor language will ever be adequate. On the other hand, however, let us show how in the triune personality of God is contained both his true infinity and the possibility of his self- impartment in Revelation : the true bridge between God and the world. For in this doctrine the unbending conception of abstract Monothe- ism has obtained vitality through the idea of a Divine Will of love. Hence this doc- trine furnishes a preventive against the dei- fication of nature, and is the only perfect bulwark of vital Theism in the idea of God as the highest plenitude of life and love, aud it is only philosophical short-sighted- ness which can refuse this key to the great world -enigma, a key often -well used by many a great philosopher. Only when this gulf between the Creator and the created is bridged over will the breach between man and man be closed. Here only have we a firm ground for the realization of the idea of humanity, the brotherly unity and equal- ity of all men as regards origin and destiny. This shows the immeasurable importance of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for the world's culture,* a doctrine which is also remarkably attested by the history of hea- then religions. No less firmly and deeply founded should our position in these days be with regard to the defense of miracles. The negation of the miraculous proceeds partly from a false idea of God, partly from an incorrect, mechanical conception of the world ; and, we may add, for the most part from the ar- bitrary assumption that, because no miracles happen nowadays, none have ever happened. If God be, as we Christians believe, a free, personal, extra-mundane Will, whose influ- ence, nevertheless, is omnipresent through- out the whole creation, then the approach to every point of this creation must be al- ways open to him, and this necessitates the possibility of miracles. Doubtless the cre- ated world is relatively independent; but can the laws of nature which only act by God's good pleasure form a barrier for him, when, in pursuance of the highest moral and religious ends, it is his will to use ex- traordinary means ? You talk of a " breach of the laws of nature." But first of all tell me, what limit is there to the intensification of natural forces by the power of the Divine Will? And does not the product of the miracle immediately subject itself to the ordinary course of nature f You object that * Cf. Hundeshagen, "Die Natnr und sescliichtliche Entwickelnng der Hutnauitatsidee." CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 200 miracles would rend the "world's economy asunder. Ay, but the first great rent in the original order and harmony was made not by God, but by the sin of man. The abnor- mal development of our freedom can not only bear, but imperatively demands the sal- utary interference of God as a work of pity and love. Miracles, therefore, do not unnat- urally destroy true nature, but supernatu- rally heal distorted nature. Instead of, as formerly was customary, using isolated mir- acles as apologetic arguments, we should as- sign to each miracle, according to its evi- dent dispensational aim, a place in the great organic plan of salvation, the living heart of which is Christ. You object, finally, that no miracles oc- cur at the present day. But can not and must not the periods of the Church's birth find of its growth be governed by somewhat different laws ? Cast a glance into the his- tory of modern missions, and you will see how, at this very day, in the course of found- ing new churches, things happen which re- mind us of the Apostolic times. Having thus shielded the Christian belief in God and his personal relation to the world from infidel assaults, let us grasp the sword and attack the weak points of our opponents, by demonstrating the scientific untenable- ness of their principles. What is Atheism but an arbitrary denial of the universal and immediate certainty of the existence of God, a certainty necessarily following from the conditioned character of our self-conscious- iiess, which we feel to be dependent on an absolutely Higher Being ? This view is without any deep insight into the nature of the factors which constitute our own con- sciousness, and it is condemned by the fact of the universality of religion. What is Ma- terialism but an audacious hypothesis, an unsuccessful attempt to explain the whole complex of our thought, the origin of our self-consciousness, nay, even our moral ideas, as a product of sensuous perception and the action of matter ? Does it not in doing away with the freedom of the will and in- dividual responsibility practically destroy all the moral elements of our life, and render the idea of a spiritual and moral progress illusory ? And Pantheism, too to say noth- ing of all its other foibles does it not mani- festly move in a logical circle so soon as it endeavors to bring the principle which it presupposes (whether it be the "substance" of Spinoza, or the "absolute Idea" of He- gel) into relation with the world-matter as its causa effidens f God is supposed over to be evolving the world from himself, and yet He is only realized in its development. Where, in this case, is the ratio sufficicns of the reality of the Avorld, and especially of our self-consciousness? and where is there an absolute final purpose in this eternal, aim- less circuit of the universe? U And with what unnatural limitations of the conceptions of God do we meet in the case of Deism and Rationalism ! How do they deprive God of his true vitality and divinity, just as much as they do the world of its dependence as a creature ! And do not these systems by their denial of a spe- cial Divine Providence take the innermost nerve out of all moral and religious action, and remove the true key to the understand- ing of the world's or of individual history ? While acknowledging the isolated ele- ments of truth contained in these systems, we draw the general conclusion, that by their endeavors naturally to explain the world's enigmas they only multiply them ; and that they expect us to believe things much more repugnant to reason and con- science than the Scriptures with all their miracles ; e. g., a self-creative world-matter ; the origin by self-development of the first organisms; the self - emancipation of man from the condition of an ape, etc. He who doubts and denies where he ought to be- lieve will often have to believe implicitly where critical doubts would be most fitting; as, e.g., Strauss, in his last and most radical work, "The Old and the New Belief," has found himself compelled to bow to the most uncertain hypotheses of modern scientists. Finally, we may embarrass these oppo- nents by inquiring as to the positive and solid results of their speculations. We are very far from wishing to deny the general merits of philosophy. But, we ask, where are the tangible results arrived at by the philosophy which is hostile to Christianity, and which alone we are considering here ? Has it solved, finally, any fundamental ques- tion ? How have the different systems dur- ing their various changes struggled with and overthrown one another, while the sim- ple Gospel remains, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever !" Or is it possible that mere philosophical speculation could be its own aim, apart from any useful results ? No ; every science which is not scientia ad praxin i. c., which does not bear fruit for our life is inwardly unhealthy, and no longer nourishes, but only puffs up the spirit. And what is the present condition of phi- losophy? Since the systems of "absolute Idealism " have utterly broken down, and the reaction against them has led men into the slough of materialism, philosophy is at a loss. The one party loudly cries that we must return to the old teacher, Kant ; oth- ers wearily labor to arouse some interest by means of historical representations of past systems, by excursions into the history of literature, or into the natural scientific re- search of the day. Others, however and these it is who most attract the world's at- tention draw from all that has gone before an awful conclusion, and before the aston- 210 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. ished world hoist the flag or rather let me nay the distress-signal of the most extreme Pessimism. Schopenhauer sees in all exist- ence nothing but misery and suffering, and can find true happiness only in self-dissolu- tion into an absolutely empty Nothing, the Nirvana of tho Buddhists. And Edward von Hartmanu, who, in his rapidly sold book on the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " (a book of which I shall certaiuly not deny that it has some real merits), exhibits to us the workings of this great " Unconscious " in the corporeal and spiritual world, de- clares it to be a mistake that a world should ever have sprung into existence at all, and even an inexcusable crime if it had been created by a self-conscious God. All hope of happiness in this or in another stage of tho Avorld's history is, according to Hart- manu, a pure illusion : before us stands the senile age of mankind, in which, after all hope has died away, our race " finally aban- dons all claim to positive happiness, and only yearns for absolute painlcssness ; for the Nothing, Nirvana." Thus far have our most recent philoso- phers advanced. On the tree of knowledge they now show us, with strange aptitude, ! gel), and the philosophers who inarch be- hind may be able to mark and admire tho rhythmic movement of the "Idea" through Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis ? Vainly do we dream of man's personal and living value, and nourish a living hope ! And inexorable is the dilemma which we see before us : either to receive Him who says, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," or, rejecting Him, to choose our portion with those other spirits, the most honest of whom Truth, and Death!" For the scientific defense of our faith against 2. Destructive historical criticism, I would recommend the following measures to insure a firm, position: Above all, do not let us place unnecessary difficulties in our own way, and furnish our adversaries with dangerous weapons, by an exaggerated theory of inspiration, which in its equal application to all the books of our present Canon can be justified neither by Scripture nor by historical evidence. The very limits of our Canon are riot an ordi- nance of Divine right, inasmuch as no proph- et ever declared the list of inspired Old Test- the seductively beautiful and variegated ament writings closed in the name of God ; tints of autumn, tokens of despair and utter j and no apostle superintended the collection hopelessness, which with silent eloquence once more proclaim, " Vanity of vanities : all is vanity." Are not such views, I boldly ask, the most striking proof that it is only that which Divine Revelation gives and promises to man which makes his life worth living ? Here, again, we clearly see that the faith of tho Christian is, in the last re- sort, the only star- banner of hope amidst the gloom of our existence ; ay, the only protection of our moral dignity. Boldly, my Christian friends, let ns attack our op- ponents on this weak point, which is fitted more than any other to discredit unchris- tian philosophy in the eyes of all who feel of the New Testament books. But must not the Spirit, who leadeth into all truth, have guided those who had to decide as to the limits of the Canon, in order to insure the genuine tradition of saving truth to the later world ? As a proof with what correct judgment they acted, we should adduce the fact of the startling difference in spirituali- ty which exists between canonical and apoc- ryphal, or, indeed, all non-canonical writ- ings, even those of the centuries next after the Apostolic Age. Herein the Canon shows itself to be a unique and compact whole. And from this inner spirit of these writ- ings let us draw the chief argument for tho their deeper needs. Let us show the world j inspiration and normative authority of the that it is not Christianity, but the Anti- j Scriptures. Tho Protestant Church con- christian philosophy which finally degrades siders the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the dignity of man ; that this dignity in its be the chief criterion of canonicity. First fullness flourishes only on the soil of Divine of all, then, we defenders should , regard Revelation, that it is only possible as a de- the Scriptures as a whole, and proceed to duction from the Christian conception of God, and only to be realized by the Chris- tian plan of salvation ; and hence that any show how they form a compact organism, although the different authors wrote at such long intervals ; how they record the prog- unbelieving subtraction from the fundament- ress of Revelation, unfolding step by step, al Biblical views of God and the Divine des- j in history, doctrine, and prophecy, the Di- tiny of man must lead to an idea of man and the mundane process which most deep- ly degrades us in our capacity of spiritual and moral beings. For in all naturalistic and pantheistic systems what is the world's history but " the Golgotha of the Absolute Spirit ; the fearfully tragic slaughter-house in which all individual life and happiness is sacrificed only that tho development of the vine plan of salvation from the world's be- ginning to its end, and withal, in a simply sententious style, pregnant with meaning; how they everywhere breathe, in a greater or less measure, the spirit of sacred earnest- ness, and all tend to one great purpose the honor of God and the welfare of mankind. What a fullness of light and life is contain- ed in them, like a spring flowing throughout universe may go forward undisturbed " (He- ' all ages. What wondrous all-sufficiency for CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 211 every need, every age, and every stage of knowledge; how infinitely above all mere human products ! At the same time, atten- tion should be drawn to the regenerating influences of the Bible in the case of indi- viduals, as of entire nations, to the self- manifestation of its Divine truths in the heart and conscience of the reader or hear- er. How can all this be explained without the fact of inspiration ? This criterion of the inward testimony of the Spirit must be kept free from all sub- jective arbitrariness by its objective cor- roboration, according to the "analogy of faith," with respect to the several books; and by a historical criticism (in addition to this inner one) as to their actual origin. The testimony of the Holy Ghost and the Church, the attributes of freedom from er- ror, sufficiency, and perfection, pertain pri- marily to the Canon as a whole. This objective criterion of the analogy of our faith was clearly enunciated by Luther, who says : " The right touch-stone whereby a Christian man may try all books (of Scrip- ture) is, that he inquire whether they treat of Christ or not, forasmuch as all Scripture telleth of him." We must look at and de- fend Scripture from its central point, Christ, by applying the above-mentioned central truths, in which all Scripture coincides, as a criterion in judging of the value and au- thority of the various books and portions. To this kernel of the Scriptures, and this only, does the Holy Spirit bear witness in the hearts of believers, and grants in respect of it an immediate and immovable certainty. In matters of detail we should not forget that the Divine Revelation in Scripture is vouchsafed to us in a form not purely di- vine, bnt at the same time human ; and that even St. Paul distinguishes what he has re- ceived from the Lord from that which is merely his own opinion as well-meant coun- sel coming from one who has the Spirit of the Lord (1 Cor. xi.,23 ; vii.,25, 40), and that there is certainly an important difference between a portion of Scripture, the author of which distinctly describes his utterances to a direct Divine Revelation or command, and one which is entirely silent on this point. Do not let us forget that no theo- ry of inspiration however convenient this might seem to many can dispense us from the duty of a reverent criticism of Scripture, a criticism which must extend not only to texts and translations, bnt also to a search- ing comparison of the different types of doc- trine (e. jr., Pauline, Johanuean, etc.), and of the various ethnographical, historical, and other data, with one another and with pro- fane history. And if this criticism should here and there discover later additions, in- terpolations, chronological discrepancies, and the like, to such we may well apply the words of Luther : " If there be found a strife in Scripture, and the same can not be settled, let it alone, it is of little moment, so as it runneth not counter to the articles of our faith." We must not be too timid in such matters. If we indeed believe Christianity to be the revelation of the absolute truth, then an isolated truth may occur when and how it pleases ; it can not be dangerous, but, in the end, only helpful to the Christian faith. What can not be denied need not be feared ! But if criticism seeks to east suspicion on the whole for the sake of a few isolated discrepancies, or if it arbitrarily attempts to measure the substance of Revelation by mere human standards, then it becomes de- structive, and then we must draw a hard and sharp line against its false pretensions. Above all things, we demand that sancta sancte tractentur, with the becoming rever- ence, with an upright and humble desire for truth. He who will not let himself be ap- prehended by the spirit of Scripture, will never comprehend its contents. Spiritual things must be spiritually judged. Scrip- ture, therefore, must be meted with its own measure. To apply the standards of merely natural and human events to the self-reveal- ing actions of God is to begin by doing vio- lence to Scripture. This is the fundamental error of all false rationalistic criticism. Our first step in opposing this practice is, to expose the false principle on which it rests. Since the days of the TUbingen School, this criticism has arrogated to itself the title of historical, though it is often only philosoph- ical. It claims to examine with historical impartiality, and is often from the first bi- ased by arbitrary philosophical assumptions. These men approach the records of Chris- tianity, imbued with a pantheistic or ration- alistic aversion to the miraculous, with the intention of rendering the supernatural facts recorded therein as merely human as possi- ble, by means of connecting them with and deriving their origin from contemporary his- torical phenomena and of acknowledging as historically certain only what is perfect- ly transparent and intelligible to them, be- cause it does not exceed man's capacity ; just as if God the Lord could not make history with his deeds, Avhich far transcend our comprehension he who is Cause and Aim of all history ! This, in good sooth, is not impartial historical investigation, but rather the result of looking through highly distort- ed philosophical spectacles ! This criticism can not, however, compass its ends without innumerable coups de force and unbounded arbitrariness. And this is the second quarter to which our scientific defense has to direct its attacks. To say nothing of the way in which the rationalists and Baur have distorted the specific nature of Christianity, we would merely point out how the efforts of the latter and his disci- Jlv! CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. pies have been directed toward transferring the origin of Christianity as the universal religion from Christ and the first Apostles to the authorship of St. Paul, just as if he himself had not openly declared that he did not preach himself, but Christ Jesus (2 Cor. iv., 5), and that no man can lay another foundation than that which is laid (1 Cor. Hi., 11), as if one who declares even an an- gel to be accursed if he preach another Gos- pel than that of Christ (Gal. i., 8) would not indignantly have declined the fame of in- venting a new Christianity ! In order to deprive the Founder of Chris- tianity of his specific dignity as the Son of God, this false criticism has, as we all know, endeavored to turn his miracles into natural events or myths, and to give his testimonies and teachings respecting himself the im- press of fabrications and opinions of a later age ; and especially to cast a slur upon his absolute sinlessness. As if it were not im- possible witness even the confession of a Rousseau to invent such a picture of Christ as that which the gospels give us ! As if even supposing all four gospels to be spuri- ous the four uuimpeached epistles of St. Paul were not enough to prove clearly the God-manhood and the perfectly holy media- tory character of the Crucified and Risen One! And as if even the most arbitrary criticism of the gospels had not left as gen- uine some self-testimonies of Christ, in which he lays claim to attributes which positive- ly exceed any mere human standard, e.g., in the passages which relate to his second com- ing as the Judge of the world ! Here we see criticism reach the crowning point of arbi- trariness, and talk of" fanaticism" and " un- justifiable self-glorification " (Strauss). Be it so ; but let these critics bear the crushing burden of bringing evidence which may give us the faintest glimmering of an understand- ing how such serious moral and intellectual defects could co-exist in the same individu- al with the otherwise perfect sobriety, clear- ness, and quietness of His words and actions, and with the lofty moral dignity of His whole nature. Is it not wholly absurd, we ask, to suppose that the religion of humility and love could have taken its origin from a fanatic so eaten up by pride ? $ut if Christ uttered these testimonies of himself, like all his other words, with deliberation and truth, then he must be the One for whom the Church has ever taken him the only-begotten Son of the living God. Time would fail us to detail all the futile blows which this criticism has dealt against the New Testament history, the most fla- grant of which were the efforts (finally giv- en up by Baur himself) to explain natural- ly the conversion of St. Paul, even at the cost of making him an utterly inexplicable psychological monstrosity, or even an epi- leptic ! I would only remind you what a firm barrier we have against all such attacks in passages like 2 Cor. xii., 12, where St. Paul, in an epistle confessedly genuine, appeals to his signs and wonders and mighty deeds be- fore those under whose eyes they had taken place. And, I ask, would not a writer who asserts such things of himself be utterly de- mented if he were not perfectly certain that they were true ? All these attacks based on an aversion to the miraculous, and especially the denial of the Resurrection, may be consigned to a well- merited grave by the one unanswerable ar- gument : You can never explain the enigma of primitive Christian belief, its world-con- quering power, and its world-regenerating effects, nor the existence of the Christian Church itself, if Christ was not and did not do what the gospels tell of him. By trying to explain primitive Christian history as a chain of merely natural occurrences, you turn it upside down, and make it an insolu- ble enigma. By your denial of the super- human element in Christ, and especially of his resurrection, you are compelled to seek the mainspring of so immense a movement as that of Christianity in persons, circum- stances, and relations which can not bear the weight of such a superstructure ; and in the end you ask us to believe that the king- dom of Truth took its origin from misunder- standing, error, self-deception, and dishon- esty ! The logical law of the sufficing cause makes all your efforts vain. At this point we may call attention to the inwardly inevitable process, in which this criticism often overleaps itself, and not sel- dom becomes utterly absurd. Thus, no sooner had Strauss endeavored to derive the chief motive of the myths ascribed by him to the primitive disciples and churches, from the idea then current among the Jews as to the Messiah, than Bruno Bauer treads on his heels, declaring that the idea of the Messiah, as far as regards its existence before the rise of Christianity, is also a myth ! Again, af- ter many critics have for years doubted the truth of the reports of the Resurrection, there comes Noack, and informs us that Christ was crucified, not iu Jerusalem, but on Mount Gerizim ! Hence negative criticism has been con- siderably beaten back upon several points. Just compare the present state of results iu the criticism of the gospels with that of a few decades since. The Synoptics, which had then been pushed onward into the sec- ond century, have already step by step been brought back into the first. Even in the question as to the time when the Gospel of St. John was written, the Critical School has receded from the year 160 (Baur) to the be- ginning of the second century (Keim 100- 117), i. e., a time when St. John may still have been alive. And if Keim in a recent work declares that the prevailing theology of the CHEISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 213 day can not, without sacrificing the truth, ascribe to this gospel a direct historical value, he thereby shows that he himself does not object to sacrifice the truth, which is that at the present day more than ever the ascription of its authorship to St. John is being defended not only by such critics as Ewald, Diisterdieck, Meyer, Riggeubach, Van Oosterzee, Godet, but even by Weiziick- er, Ritschl, and others.* That favorite instance of our opponents, the inner relation of the Synoptics to the fourth Gospel, has far less weight, since the fact has been generally recognized that a superhuman view of Christ's person can not possibly be ignored as contained in the first three Gospels. To say nothing of the ac- count of our Lord's childhood (the authen- ticity of which has lately been convincingly proved by Steinmeyert), we have passages such as Matt, xi., 27 ("All things are deliv- ered unto me of my Father : no man know- cth the Son but the Father," etc.) ; cf. Luke x., 22, respecting which even a critic like Reuss confesses that "the whole of St. John's Gospel is, as it were, but a circumscription of these utterances." And the works of our clay on New Testameut doctrinal teaching show that all the germs of the Pauline and Johannean doctrines are contained in the words of our Lord.t Another help against the arbitrariness of criticism, and the scientific light-mindedness with which it often seizes on mere isolated notices from profane history as proof posi- tive against the Scriptural accounts, is often afforded by the most recent archaeological research. I would remind you, e. g., of the proofs for the truth of many facts recorded respecting Egyptian history in Genesis and Exodus, which have lately been furnished by Ebers, in the interests not of Christian faith, but of science, and the deciphering of old Chaldaic inscriptions respecting the flood by Mr. G. Smith, of London. But especially I would refer you to E. Schrader's late work,|| in which a number of the notices scattered throughoiit the Old Testament, respecting the history of the Assyro-Babylonian empire and the Assyrian monuments (from the tower in the plain of Shinar down to the fall of Babylon), are remarkably confirmed, even in their details ; so much so that Egyptologists have been corrected by Assyrologists in re- spect of their chronology where it differs from that of Scripture. Have we, then, not a right to say with Gellius : " Obscuritatcs * And most lately of all against Keim and Scholtcn, by Lenschner, in his work, " Das Evangelium St. Jo- hannis, mid seine neuesten Widersacher." 1S73. t " Die Geschichte der Geburt des Herrn, uiid seiner ersten Schritte im Leben." 1S73. t Cf. Bernhard Weiss, "Lehrbnch der biblischen Theologie des nenen Testaments." 2d edition. 5 " JSgypten und die Bucher Mosis." I. Bd., 1SCS. 1 "Die Keiliuschrifteu und das alte Testament." 1872. non assignemus culpce scribentium, sed inscitiw non assequentium f" In such questions the scientific defense of our faith must not shirk the trouble of going into details, for it is in these that negative criticism seeks its strength. But the rep- resentatives of the latter should be shown how often they make small differences into great contradictious ; how they endeavor, by means of uncertain hypotheses, to decide questions which it is impossible to settle authoritatively ; how often they give them- selves the air of being able precisely to char- acterize the inner development of an author or of his age, so as to be justified, in the case of certain differences between earlier and later writings, to deny the possibility of their originating from the same man. What they announce as a " certain result of theological science," not seldom, in truth, owes its ori- gin to subjective taste and arbitrary choice. They are far too little conscious of the limits to real scientific demonstration ; and often, when they suppose that they have produced the non plus ultra of scientific acuteness, it is but a flight in the airy regions of imagi- nation. Truly, often " much learning hath made them mad." In view of all this, we must protest aloud against the arrogance of this modern theo- logical school, especially against the manner in which they present to the public in pop- ular exegetical works cf., e. g., " Die Pro- testantenbibel ueuen Testaments," a work now appearing under the auspices of the Protestantenverein as Gospel truth, "the ascertained results of historical and Bibli- cal investigation ;" while these are accepted only by a minority of theologians, and many of them men of waning credit. And if they go so far as to give themselves credit for being the promoters of greater life in the Church, they should be clearly shown how miserably unpractical and insufficient their stand-point is to attain this end ; how, by their denial of inspiration, they utterly de- stroy the living interest of the mass of men in the Bible, by changing it into a merely historical and literary interest. Not a few students of theology are, by means of this method of treating, or rather maltreating Scripture, becoming thoroughly disgusted with the study of exegesis. Finally, we should seek to deprive this school of criticism of the charm of novelty. What more is it with its resolution of ac- tual facts into mere insipid religious ideas than a new edition of the old Gnosticism ? And will it not die away just as this did, if it offers for the religious need of the Chris- tian people evaporating ideas or crumbling stones, instead of the living Bread from Heaven ? This school, indeed, seeks to re- tain Christ as an ideal. But can a mere idea redeem the world? Sin, unhappily, is a mighty reality, and only Divine realities 214 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. can overcome it. This is the true reason why, ns long as there are sinners in need of salvation, the world can not give up the Word of Life. Our defense against the attacks of 3. Modern anti- miraculous natural science will have to be conducted in a somewhat similar manner, since its principle of the denial of the miraculous is identical with that of the destructive critical school. Dar- win and his followers are working out the same fundamental idea as Baur and his dis- ciples, viz., to bridge over by natural means all the chasms in history and nature, so as to get rid of all supernatural agencies. And both schools, though originally quite inde- pendent of one another, have at length hap- pily met in the person of Strauss, as we see iu his last work, " The Old and New Belief." In order to maintain a firm position against the attacks of natural science, we must first consider the purpose for which the Scrip- tures, as a whole, were given, and thus draw a sharp line between this aim and that of scientific investigation. The aim of Scripture is to show us the way of salvation, and this it does by communi- cating religious and moral truths, which the apprehension of man, darkened as it is by sin, could never have discovered by itself. But in no respect is Scripture intended to play the part of a hand-book of natural his- tory or philosophy, or to give us physical information which is of no essential impor- tance for our faith. The Bible should not, therefore, be called upon as arbiter in ques- tions of pure natural science, which do not in the least affect morals or faith. Not even the highest inspiration could have been in- tended to lift the Biblical writers above the view of nature current in their day, or to give them the clear insight into natural science which was reserved as a reward for the patient toil of later generations. Its purpose was to enable them to enunciate the truths of Divine Revelation, as far as they were connected with physical rela- tions, in a form which should not militate against the objective truth of these relations, and should leave room for all future discov- eries in that region. For this reason the Bi- ble speaks of natural phenomena simply in the language of every-day life, which gives impressions as they are received. Certainly, however, Scripture, iu its enun- ciation of religious truths, can not altogeth- er avoid touching on physical ground, es- pecially in the history of creation. But where it does enter upon the region of na- ture, it only does so as far as is absolutely necessary to ground and establish our faith to instruct man as to his true destiny, and to make way for correct notions of the relation of God to the world, while exclud- ing all false ones. Tims Materialism and Naturalism, as well as Pantheism and Ema- natiouism, are equally excluded. Then the physical processes are f ragmen tarily sketch- ed in a few bold strokes, as far as they are necessary to form the basis of the history of Revelation, to which the record forthwith proceeds. Evidently, then, this record is by no means complete from a physical point of view. On the contrary, innumerable ques- tions are left open, to be answered by our investigation. But in no case are physical relations brought in for their own sake.* Entire silence is kept on all points which do not form part of the foundation of religious truth. How few physical details do the first and second chapters of Genesis contain in comparison with heathen cosmogonies! It is important to remark the distinction that, while the statement of religious truth is always precise and clear, that of physical facts is so broad and general that room is left for all later discoveries of details. In- deed, they are given in such a shape as to unfold their hidden truths with the ad- vances of sciencet and this, I think, is no small proof of their inspiration. Take, e. g., the creation of light on the first, and the sun riot until the fourth day for which statement the Bible cosmogony has been ridiculed by innumerable infidels, from Cel- sus down to Strauss. How brilliantly has this been justified by modern natural sci- ence, which has shown that the earth pos- sesses light in itself, and did so, probably, iu a far greater degree at the time when the trees now found in the coal-beds were grow- ing ; for these have no annual rings, a fact which points to the conclusion that the earth did not then derive her light from the sun, and consequently had no change of seasons. The sun itself is now generally believed to be an opaque body, the light of which is produced by the combustion of its atmosphere; and light itself is attributed to the undulations of ether, which would account for its not being created, but mere- ly called forth from the chaos to exist in a separate form. Physical discoveries will often prove to be keys to the understand- ing of Scriptural data, and show how these could not possibly have been furnished by their authors without Divine enlightenment. But we must not be too quick in the inter- pretation of such passages, and, above all, "not make Scripture say things which it does not distinctly enunciate. How often " as Whewell truly sayst " has one thought himself to bo defending a Scriptural truth, when he was merely fighting for an inter- pretation of his own, which was presently shown to be false !" If wo have drawn a limit, beyond which Of. Rensch, " Bibel und Natur," 3te Aufl., p. 34. t Cf. 8. Garratt, "Veins of Silver," chap. i. : "In- spired Words and Unfolding Truths." t " History of the Inductive Sciences," i., p. 403. CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 215 the appeal to Scriptural authority should riot go, we must also indicate the bouuds of natural science as against religious teach- ing. We must, from the very first, take ex- ception to the claims of natural scientists, when they ignore all religious and moral truths, and apply to incommensurable mag- nitudes the standard of mathematics ; when they commit the absurdity of making our belief in the supersensuous and spiritual world depeudeut on the results of micro- scopic or telescopic researches ; Avheu they go beyond the investigation of present phe- nomena, aud pretend to give an authentic account of the processes by which the world originated processes which are entirely out of the reach of exact investigation, and only permit of speculative theories ; aud when they will not acknowledge the fundamental fallacy of all naturalistic theories as to the world's origin, viz., that they make the pres- ent order of things the criterion of the proc- ess of creation, and will not acknowledge the influence of other forces than those which are still at work. lu all this natu- ral science oversteps its limits, aud argues from analogies which we can not allow. If, however, botlx sides keep within the limits of their respective tasks, then they must necessarily be united at last. If the Bible and Nature both contain a Revelation from God, they can not really contradict one another. Where this \vould seem to be the case, it is because either God's words or his works have been misinterpreted. In such a case we must not immediately cast away the Word, in order not to give offense to the cultivated, but quietly wait for a reconcilia- tion ; again examine the exegesis of the pas- sage in question ; but at the same time see whether natural scientists are not giving us doubtful conjectures, in which they have often been mistaken, iustead of really cer- tain results. This is all the easier for us, from the fact that there have always been distinguished natural scientists who did not believe in the possibility of a contradiction between the Bible and Nature, from pious patriarchs of science, like Copernicus, Newton, and Kep- ler, down to men of our own day, like A. von Haller, Euler, Littrow, Von Schubert, Wag- ner, Roper, in Germany ; or Buckland, Hugh Miller, Sir John Herschel, Brewster, Whew- cll, in England; or Cuvier, Lavoisier, Mar- cel de Serres, La Faye, etc., in France. Indeed, we can answer the contempt with which the science of the day looks down upon Holy Scripture, by pointing to a num- ber of important matters in which a union has been effected, or at least made way for. As far as we know the chief stages of the earth's development, they agree in point of order with the six days' work of Genesis i. The fact that a fluid state of the earth's crust preceded the formation of the mount- ains answers to the description of the sec- ond day. The first numerous appearance of the terrene flora in the comparatively early coal-period, and the later appearance en masse of the terrene fauna in the tertiary period, corresponds in its chief features to the secoud, third, fifth, aud sixth days. As- tronomy, again, has proved in a startling manner, by means of the spectral analysis, the unity of the Cosmos, and the near rela- tionship which the elements of the othej ce- lestial bodies bear to those of the solar sys- tem. We begin to see proof positive for Cu- vier's far-seeing utterance: "Moseo has left us a cosmogony, the exactitude of which i. confirmed day by day in an admirable man- ner." With regard, moreover, to the Bibli- cal computation of the age of the human race, geologists aud palaeontologists are de- claring that, according to the newest data, the period of about six thousand years is in all probability correct. And, finally, mod- ern astronomy and physics decidedly sup- port the probability of the cessation in due time of the motion of our solar system, and the destruction of the earth through the ex- haustion of the forces hitherto at work. No wonder that, as things stand, a con- siderable number of theologians declare the harmony between Scripture and science to be complete, or at least capable of becoming so. And we may at least gather, as the re- sult of their efforts, the declaration that an ideal harmony in respect of the chief fea- tures may be established without doing vi- olence to either side. Meanwhile, truth demands that we should confess that this harmony at present does not extend to all details ; e. g., theologians are not agreed as to whether the days of Genesis i. maybe stretched out so as to meet the requirements of the immeasurably long period postulated by geology. The first specimens (not the masses) of the different stages of creation do not, as far as scientific research has extended, follow strictly in the order of the six days, for the lowest plants and the lowest animals appear simultane- ously in the geological strata ; aud to bring all the data in the Scriptural account of the deluge into accordance with the present re- sults of science would be rather difficult. But may we not hope for a future solu- tion of these difficulties, seeing that neither exegesis nor, still less, natural science, are by any means complete? God does not grant to one generation to solve all enig- mas : coming ones will have to work at them, too. But the measure of corrobora- tiou hitherto afforded by science to Scrip- ture gives us a right to treat with well- merited contempt the ridicule cast upon Scripture by so many scientists. And as against such attacks we may pro- ceed to point out the foibles of natural sci- ence, which she has of late often exhibited 216 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. with the rashness of youth, especially in her younger departments. How categorically, e. g., was the volcanic theory in geology pronounced to be the only trno one, in opposition to the Neptunian, and how signally has it been deposed from the position of sole ruler by the chemical investigations of Fuchs, Schafhiiutl, Bischof, and others!* What uncertainty is shown in the calculations of geologists c. g., as to the time required for the cooling of the earth's crust, their estimates differing, not by thousands, but by millions of years! How much jugglery, in fact, has been car- ried on by natural scientists in respect of enormous numbers! How often have they endeavored to give their calculations as to the formation of the different strata a learn- ed gloss by amounting to millions of years ! And now sober investigators are, on the ground of careful observations, beating a re- treat ; and, instead of the favorite millions of years usually held up to the astonished public, are computing much more moderate periods. The age of the mammoth, the great bear, and the reindeer, which scien- tists (especially Frenchmen) have been try- ing to separate by thousands of years, are now by thorough investigators, like that of Fraas, placed quite close together. And the lake dwellings, too; how has their origin been relegated to immemorable antiquity, in order to throw discredit on the Biblical account of man! And now scientists are beginning to turn up their noses at the idea of the stone, bronze, and iron ages being successive epochs; so that we may confi- dently assert that none of these remains ex- tend back more than a few centuries beyond Csesar, and hence are not even older than historical times. And so, after all, the six thousand years of the Bible are not so utter- ly insufficient to accommodate all the re- mains of ancient civilization. But in what hot haste were scientists at the time to spread these now exploded notions in all kinds of popular publications ! Without heeding the outcry of the scien- tific rabble against our " vulgar belief,"t let us quietly expose before the eyes of our flocks this mode of proceeding, and let us show them how large a portion of scientific "knowledge" is based only upon grounds of likelihood, which may very well some day give way. And how has our task been lightened in the chief controversy of our day that as to the origin of man by the extravagancies which naturalists would have had us be- lieve. Our firm defense of the Biblical doc- trine is this : That the derivation of man's .\iM.-iu-r us a ivlimous aiid moral being Proving, e. g., that the formation of quartz could only have originated from the action of water. t " Koblerglaubc," an opprobrious epithet applied by German iufldels to the Christian faith. from the creative act of God, who formed him in his own likeness, and destined him to attain to it, agrees so clearly with our whole moral and religious self-conscious- ness, with the historical development of the human race, and with the personal experi- ence of all true Christians, that it is the only reasonable doctrine, and alone worthy of man's dignity. We need but place it side by side with the scientific fancies of for- mer times on this subject, now often ridi- culed by sober naturalists themselves, and the choice will not be a hard one. But the controversy has assumed a more serious aspect since Darwin and his school have endeavored to connect the genealogy of man with the highest mammals, viz., the anthropoid apes. The counterproof is not our affair, but that of savants by profession. Fortunately, the most recent discussion of the question seems unfavorable to the re- lationship.* But, even supposing the out- ward differences were proved to be ever so small, would not the present intellectual and moral (to say nothing of the religious) condition of man, notwithstanding the small superiority in his organism, be all the more a riddle? No representation of the psy- chical processes in inferior animals, their instincts, notions, memory, etc., however it may sublimate them, will be able to dis- prove that in this respect the lower animals have made no progress for the last several thousand years; that they have never dis- covered the inner laws of these phenomena, nor have been able to distinguish their in- dividual Ego from their momentary condi- tion. For such facts and this is our firm posi- tion of defense there is no other explana- tion than this, that in the soul-life of the beast there is no comprehension of the in- dividual Ego ; there is no self-consciousness of the spirit distinguishing itself from its isolated affections, functions, conditions, as well as from all objects without it. And this is the specific distinction, the impassa- ble gulf between man and beast. The same is no less absolute from a moral point of view : on the one hand we see free, person- al, self-determining life ; on the other the iron rule of nature's law, by means of sensu- al affections and instincts. Even millions of years, and the innumerably minute stages of progress which naturalists postulate, can never bridge over the chasm which divides the natural from the moral law. And if these men (and Strauss also) flatter them- selves that it is the greatest possible honor for man to have raised himself from the depths of animal life to the present height of moral consciousness, wo reply : If man is, * Witness the defeat of Carl Vogt at the Stuttgart Conference of Natural Scientists (autumn, 1872) by Virchow, Luschka, and others at the head of a large majority. CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 217 as you say, a mere creature of nature, then all that he does takes place by virtue of ab- solutely binding natural laws, and it is no merit iu him thus to have raised himself, since he could not help it. Unless our mor- al consciousness proceeds from an absolute- ly good and holy will of God, all our moral ideas are merely conventional and change- able, and there is no such thing as good and ovil.per se. Thus all morality is radically destroyed, and he who believes in a generic difference between the morally good and evil must also believe in the specific pre- eminence and Divine origin of man. Similar moral arguments obtain against those who deny the homogeneous descent of the human race from a single pair. He who tears asunder the human race in. its or- igin makes the different branches of it ene- mies instead of brothers, and destroys with their consanguinity the last bond of mutual love and esteem. The physiologists, however, who maintain this* may fight our battle against the Dar- winists ; for, if the latter are trying to anni- hilate every boundary between the species, the former make demarkations where, ac- cording to Scripture, none exist. We may quietly allow our opponents to direct their attacks against each other, till the truth which lies in the middle alone remains. Darwinism may perhaps result in the re- duction of the present multitude of species to considerably fewer principal types (which can only be favorable to the Biblical account of the Flood), but the weighty arguments of polygenists will prevent these types from be- ing annihilated. The latter class of natural- ists should, however, remember that the ques- tion as to the origin of the human race is, in the last resort, a matter of history ; and this science, as applied to languages and religions, is pointing with increasing probability to one original tribe, the cradle of whichlayiu West- ern Asia, so that the possibility of the Bibli- cal theory is becoming more and more estab- lished. Here, too, we may say, What God hath joined, let not man put asunder. As things stand, we shall not join in the apprehension expressed by Schleiermacher, that natural science, when fully developed to a complete system of cosmology, might result in an intellectual starvation of theol- ogy. Nay if I am not deceived the rela- tions between natural science and theology appear of late to have taken a turn for the better. This, because the stand-point on ei- ther side is beginning to become clearly marked. Many prudent and far-seeing nat- ural philosophers have begun to acknowledge that their science has, in many cases, over- stepped its boundaries, and therefore warn their younger ormore hot-blooded colleagues to abstain from undue interference in other departments. May we, then, not nourish the hope that in due time both these bright stars shall revolve around a common centre, in mutual harmony and friendly rivalry dis- covering the great deeds of God ? But, besides these comparatively detailed methods of offense against the different sci- entific attacks, there remains to be consid- ered the defense of our whole line against infidel theory and practice combined. For these tendencies are now showing themselves in practice and form as III. A GROWING SOCIAL POWER IN THE LIFE OF OUR DAY BOTH IN CHURCH AND STATE. This form of unbelief is, without question, far more dangerous than infidelity in individ- uals or in philosophical systems. I would rec- ommend, in this respect, a double method of defense. First, a more negative one, which has hitherto been carried on only sporadically, but which, in order to take due effect, should be treated as a whole : viz., an exposure of the miserable consequences of infidelity as shown in history, in contradistinction to the whole- some effects of healthy Christian faith. This may be called the historical method of defense ; it is, however, at the same time a cutting attack. Our Lord himself pointed it out when he said, " By their fruits ye shall know them " (Matt, vii., 16) ; and the proof of the actual corruptness of these fruits will make impression upon many who are deaf to all other arguments. How should we furnish this proof? Not by setting up ourselves as judges over the persons of our opponents, nor so as to do them injustice, by forgetting how many of them are upright and leanied men ; but by showing the influence of their tendency of thought as actually exhibited in the collect- ive life of Church and State since the last century, and comparing its effects in the dif- ferent spheres of society. On an attentive consideration of the spir- it which animates our opponents as a body, the first thing which strikes us is the ex- traordinary overweening pride with which most of them treat all positive believers.* They lay claim to bo the only representa- tives of science, and have repeated this so often to the people, that in Holland, Germa- ny, and Switzerland the greater part of the press echoes this opinion as a matter of course, and lays all " orthodoxy," i. e., belief iu the Bible, under the reproach of ignorance and narrow-mindedness. And with this haughty spirit the theologians among them plentifully imbue their congregations. They flatter the spirit of the times, and puff up the " educated " consciousness of an age already intoxicated with culture, till its pride reaches As Edwards, Forbes, Agassiz, Burmeister, and >ther?. Cf. Hofstede de Groot, "Die moderne Theologie iu den Niederlanden," 1870, p. 29, et seq. 218 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. an unbearable pitch, by means of their high- flying critical treatment of the Gospel his- tory ; indeed, many of them often go so far as to rouse all the passions of intolerance against the "parsons," t.e., the representa- tives of the old faith. When they are iu a minority, they cry for tolerance, and preach the doctrine of equal rights for every per- suasion. But when they are the ruling par- ty, sovereign Reason shows herself to bo most intolerant, and denounces those who cling to the old faith as the enemies of prog- ress, and of all truly humane culture. If we go on to consider their method of attack (and except the merely scientific rep- resentatives), we can not help seeing what a despotism of phrases and commonplaces they have founded, so that thousands blind- ly applaud the half or not at all understood mottoes of the day ; and what a confusion of ideas must be laid to their charge ! The clear meaning of sharply definite Scriptural ideas accepted by the Church is gradually put aside, and another meaning substituted for it, so that, while the shell remains, the true kernel is gone. During one thousand eight hundred years, e. g., the word " resur- rection " has been understood in the whole of Christendom to apply to the body of Christ ; now, however, they change the meaning of the word into that of a contin- ued existence of any kind, and declare as irrelevant the question whether our Lord's body was raised to a new life or not. In the Church the old forms are for the most part preserved ; and in this case they con- tinue to pray to Christ as ordered, though otherwise they consider him to be only the son of Joseph, and prayer itself a subjective outpouring of the heart's emotions, without objective effect on the course of affairs. Is this perfectly iipright and truthful ? Some are soon tired of this incongruence between the rites and liturgy of the Church and their own inward convictions, and enter other more congenial callings; but the growing generation is by these means (though not exclusively by them) disgusted \vith the study of theology. In many, however (es- pecially during the first half of this centu- ry), this incongruence has been overcome by the earnest demands of life and holy office, which, though they left the university as Rationalists, convinced them of their error, and led them to preach salvation through Christ alone. Does all this bear witness to the healthy character of unbelieving prin- ciples ? But let us look more closely at their fruits in the inner congregational life of the Church. Infidelity has of old emptied the churches and given an impetus to schismat- ics, because it can not satisfy the deeper spiritual needs. What a display has infi- delity made of its weakness in the pulpit by reason of its denial of the miraculous ele- ment iu the great facts of salvation ! Let him who wishes to see instances take but a look at the utilitarian preachers of the times of " illumination." It is well known that these men did not disdain, even on high fes- tivals, to stoop so low as to instruct the peo- ple iu their sermons about farming, hygiene, vaccination, or cattle -feeding. And now? There is no scarcity of high-flown words. But does the one thing needful faith in Christ, conversion, and regeneration still form the central object in the modern pul- pit? Alas! not even for an earnest peni- tential sermon can one of these men collect his energies. Is not this a serious state of affairs ? And Avhat of the liturgical fruits of un- belief? Just glance into the liturgies cur- rent during the zenith of Rationalism in the last century ; read those finely rounded phrases and paraphrases about God, virtue, and immortality, self-ennoblement, and Je- sus Christ, the Eastern sage of olden times, and confess that you would hardly have be- lieved so utter a want of taste to be pos- sible. Or glance over the hymn-books of that time, with their miserably watered old hymns, and their practically as well as the- ologically shallow and pitiable humanita- rian odes. And how is it in our day? Why, if formerly there was at least the shadow of a worship, now the attempts made in Haar- lem, Grouingen, Neuchatel, to establish a truly " modern " Divine service, have, by their miserable failure, gone far to prove the utter futility of all such endeavors. In due time, then, worship would have to cease al- together. In the matter of Church constitution and government (in which believing theology, it is true, has made many mistakes also), the chief historical achievement of unbelief (in Germany) is the "Territorial System" a theory which considers the Church and its government to be only a part of the State and its constitution as such, and must lead to the former being entirely emerged in the latter. And at this day unbelief seeks to betray the inalienable rights of the Church to the State, and to prove the omnipotence of the latter, as against any act of Church discipline meant to defend the positive doc- trine, hoping that the State may soon pro- nounce for the equal rights of all parties within the Church. Modern unbelief seeks to efface the specific distinction between Church and State, and thereby robs the for- mer of its vital power.* Again, look at the influence of unbelief in the active congregational life of the Church, in the institutions for the extension of God's kingdom, and see the paralysis which fol- lows its ascendency. The German-Danish * This paragraph applies more especially to Ger- many. CHRISTLIEB : COUNTERACTING MODERN INFIDELITY. 219 mission ill Tranquebar flourished vigorously during the former part of last century, till the triumph of Rationalism at home dried np its supports and caused it to wither away. And how do these liberal unbelievers seek to hinder and malign the work of missions at the present day by distorted criticisms ! But as to doing better themselves, which would ' be the best criticism, they have not lifted up a finger. The institutions of onr inner missions, too, have almost all of them been founded and supported solely by the love and liberality of believers, while unbelievers have done little else than embitter their ex- istence by repeated attacks.* . But perchance unbelief has proved itself to be a firm support of the State, and a source of moral strength in public and political life ? The best tests of a principle are fur- nished by times of public distress and dan- ger. As soon, e. g., as a war is imminent, the power of unbelief in a nation immedi- ately sinks in a marked manner, and even unchristian journals at once begin to speak more of God and divine help. An involun- tary instinct fills the churches ; the need of a higher assistance is plainly felt, and the fine phrases of unbelief can not give this. These facts are questionable enough for the support under trouble which unbelief can af- ford. And when the thousands upon thou- sands of wounded need spiritual consolation, how little can unbelief afford this ? In the last war I say it deliberately, for I have witnessed it myself in the Avar this task devolved almost entirely on believing minis- ters, often at the request of their free-think- ing colleagues. Here the pastoral bankrupt- cy of the rationalistic clergy was clearly evi- dent in their total inability to satisfy the spiritual cravings of the suffering and dy- ing. It would be laughable, were it not rather to be wept over, that unbelief should ever attempt to minister to the spiritual needs of man. But, putting aside such seasons of dis- tress, what are the political and social fruits of unbelief in a general way ? History very plainly tells us that apostasy from the faith very soon deprives a nation of its power and authority. As in the family, when its life is not based upon the fear of God, all domestic bonds are soon destroyed by the unfettered power of selfishness, so that dangerous laxi- ty or arbitrariness is substituted for earnest discipline in the education of children so, too, in civil and national life. The people that will not bow to divine authority will eventually break through the bounds of all human order in endless revolutions. The self-love, which would fain be wiser than di- vine revelation, at last snaps all the bonds of society. The new faith (of Strauss), prac- * Witness the venomous attacks on the " Ranhe Hans" at Hamburg (Dr. Wicheru's institution). tically carried out, is the Commune, which during its ascendency was always talking of philosophy. Unbelief will ruin every na- tion which does not in time resist its all- poisoning influences. The result of historical investigation shows that all these results of unbelief have the same inner ground, viz., that it is without the Spir- it of God, which alone creates and preserves all true life. But if the fruit be evil, then the tree and its roots are evil also ; and fool- ish, indeed, is he who would gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. In our attack on unbelief we must expose these its fruits : It boasts itself of helping progress, and hinders it ; it inscribes " cul- ture" on its banner, and threatens us with a new and a worse barbarism ; it promises to bring in the age of true humanity, and yet it injures the dignity of man, so as to deprive him of any specific moral value, be- cause it overlooks the fact that humanity can only be saved and prosper by means of Divinity. We must protest, then, against unbelief in the name not only of Scripture, of faith, and of God's honor, which it tramples in the dust ; not only of our spiritual experience, which it does not understand but also of reason, which it leads astray. We must protest against it in the name of a healthy Church life, of frnit-beai'ing preaching and care of souls ; of the truth and purity ay, even of the good taste and aesthetics of our worship ; in the name of a healthy disci- pline and constitution of our congregation- al life ; of the independence of the Church, which by it is betrayed to the State ; of the Church's energy and power of increase ; of self-sacrificing and self-denying love ; of Home and Foreign Missions, which it tries to paralyze ; in the name of all practical tasks of the Christian life, for which it has neither a deeper understanding nor yet en- ergy to carry them out ; in the name of mor- als and all true humanity, which it under- mines and destroys, since it separates them from religion, and saps its divine founda- tions. We must protest against it, not only as Christians, but as citizens and patriots who truly love their country, because the prosperous future of a nation, its freedom and power, its flourishing and healthy de- velopment, essentially depend upon its hon- estly holding fast to the Gospel as the Truth and the Life from God. But this historical defense will not meet all objections, by reason of its negative na- ture ; and I would therefore point out to you a more excellent, positive way, which I may call the practical religious method I mean the actual proof of the Christian truth by means of a Christian life. When we look at the growing power of unbelief, and the infinite variety of agencies employed in its propagation, from the jour- 220 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. nals and associations of mere Human itarian- ism, down to those of the most radical Com- m nn ism, with its secret societies, and trav- eling agents and lecturers, it is evident that such a social power can not be met merely by scientific and historical arguments. These may suffice to convince individuals; but against the close columns of unbelief the Church must use her last and most effective weapon, i. e., the practical and moral supe- riority of her representatives in an all-em- bracing love and holy life. This practical religious method is the most convincing of all, and truly irresistible, and must in the end gain over all those who are of the truth. This it was that worked so mightily in the first ages of the Christian Church, and will continue to do so to the end. Without it, infidelity will nowhere be defeated ; and the growth of the latter is owing, in a great meas- ure, to the fact that the Church has too much neglected this branch of testimony. Truth is plentifully witnessed for in words and books, but not enough in life. But speaking as I am before those who, I trust, have long since been striving to give practical effect to this testimony, I may con- fine myself to a few hints as to the way iii which it may be rendered most effectual. And, first of all, let us remove from theo- logical and Church life the stumbling-blocks which have hindered so many from believ- ing the everlasting quarrels about things upon which salvation does not depend ; the jealousy of one another ; the narrow-mind- edness at home and (alas, too) abroad, which can not lovingly enjoy the brother's success, because he does not wear quite the same ec- clesiastical uniform ; and, instead of all this, let the flame of believing and wide-hearted evangelical love among the various denom- inations burn more brightly than hitherto. A great, positively believing Ecumenical Evangelical Alliance notwithstanding all variety in matters ecclesiastical, and esteem for the forms of faith delivered to us is in itself a practical apology, which makes impressions upon thousands, a justification of the indestructibility of our fundamental faith, a Christian Evangelical International, which may oppose the atheistic Internation- al with superior spiritual weapons. Let us, in order to establish more firmly the unity of our one fundamental position, ever draw more clearly the line between the Essential and the Non-essential; and let us protest against the destructive error which main- tains that no such line is to be drawn, but that all tendencies have equal rights in the Church. Our German liberalism has not, in this respect, attained to so correct a judg- ment as the same party in England and America, These would say to those in our Evangelical Church, who, e. e accepted on his testimony, and on that of the Apostles, because otherwise their belief in the resurrection is perfectly incomprehensible. Never has it been so evi- dent as in our days that the theory of the so-called vision-hypothesis, defended in all kinds of ways, is not to be maintained, and it may be considered at the least very remark- able that the most recent biographer of Christ* has seen himself obliged to put a hypothesis of objective Christophanie at the place of mere subjective, defended by Strauss and others. He admitted such revelations and operations of the spirit of the deceased Saviour on his first followers, that he him- self made tho impression on them that lie had really risen and was glorified. Ac- cording to this sentiment, which Weisse and Scheukel had already adopted in former times, the deceased Nazarene himself appear- ed from time to time to the eye of his dis- ciples in the form of a ghost; in other words, the supernatural, which had been shown tho front door, enters again by a back door. Will it now last long matters standing thus before we shall be obliged to put our signa- ture to the thesis of the Tubingen professor Baur, when, spite himself, and in an un- guarded moment, he wrote: "Nur das Wun- der der Auferstehuug konnte die Zweifel zerstreuen welche den Glauben selbst in die ewige Nacht des Todes verstossen zu mttsseu schieneu?"t This, at all events, becomes clearer and clearer that the greatest difficul- ties present themselves OH the side not of those who recognize this miracle but on the side of those who deny it; and that from the stand-point of negation one must accept a psychological miracle, which positively is not less great than the metaphysical mira- cle which one resolutely opposes; in other words, the opposing party gives that which is incomprehensible only another place, but does not take it away, and much less satisfac- torily explains it. Thus the struggle concen- trates itself more and more round the tomb of Christ ; the enigma can only be solved in one way, the only way which modern natural- ism obstinately refuses to accept, inasmuch as from its point of view it can not accept this miracle, though it should be substan- tiated not by 500, but even 5000 or 50,000 witnesses. As long as the opposite party will obstinately maintain this point of view, the maxim, "Contra principia negautem non valet disputatio," may be applied to them. It is thus evident to every one open to reasonable conviction, that as soon as the miracle of the resurrection must be cou- ceded, that the doctrine and the triumph of Christian supernatnralism is secured, in principle at least. For as then the super- natural no longer appears to us as merely a philosophical hypothesis, but as an undeni- able fact, on which the light clearly shines, Professor Keim. t F. C. Bnur, Das Chrintenth. und die Chrintl.-Kirche der drei crstcn Jahrhunderte, 2 Aufl. (1SGO), 5 39. VAN OOSTERZEE : THE GOSPEL HISTORY AND MODERN CRITICISM. 245 it has become an historical fact, and thus it will become possible, after Laviug obtain- ed that strong position, to conquer step by step, as it were, the fiercely attacked terri- tory. Now it is evident that, as regards a vast number of details, many difficulties, seen at a distance, seem giants, but on their be- ing closely inspected they dwindle down to mere dwarfs ; while others, though they can not just now be perfectly and satisfactorily explained, the science of faith is nowise real- ly impaired thereby. We can already men- tion with pleasure the names of Apologists who have most brilliantly maintained the honor and veracity of sacred history against the contempt with which it is most arbitra- rily treated, among the less recent ones, for instance, Tholuck and Lange and Ebrard; among the more recent ones, Luthardt, Christlieb, Auberlen, Riggenbach and Pres- sense", also Godet. Names of most excellent repute, belonging to the New World, can be added to these ornaments of the Old World, and it is just this contemptuous hatred with which some of the modern critics regard it beneath their dignity " to fight such a mob," because their empty-sounding arguments are not worth refuting it is exactly their bitterness which proves that we do not fight as those that beat the air (1 Cor. ix., 26) ; it is only when the enemy feels he has received a mortal wound that he feels infuriated. If in former times it was a rule that he who denies must also prove ("neganti iucumbit probatio"), uow r this very rule seems to be reversed, for he who believes and confesses is also expected to give an account of the right he has to do so, but be it said to the honor of Christian faith till now it has by no means shown itself incompetent to fulfill this arduous and vitally important task; and though daily called to struggle and to fight, the conflict is not without victory attending it. Do you desire us to show what we mean by the well-secured advantages it has gained in the most recent times ? We voluntarily venture to do so, at all times ready to de- feud our most holy conviction, although we by no means lay claim to that praise which the complete accomplishment of such a task might well deserve. It has been most clear- ly shown, as regards the criticism of the New Testament, that the historiography of the New Testament bears far more evidences of antiquity and authenticity than is generally supposed, so that the friends of classic liter- ature might well speak of good fortune if the authenticity and integrity of many of their treasures could bo so clearly proved as that of the four Gospels. It has appear- ed that the opponents of the Gospel of St. John play the unenviable part that the ham- mer does to the anvil, and that its assertion that the origin of this Gospel dates from the middle or even beginning of the second cent- ury is not only undemonstrable, but quite inexplicable. It has been seen that the few things which negative criticism has left us of the first three Gospels I mean the am- putated declarations of the Lord in the Gos- pel of St. Matthew, and the supposed origin- al writings of St. Mark are more than suf- ficient to combat unbelief with the desired effect, and to render a merely human history of the Prophet of Nazareth an impossibility, so that the enemy will at last see himself obliged uublushingly to deny the small re- maining minimum of the Gospel if every ob- stacle in the high-road of negation is deter- minately to be got rid of. And in respect, again, to the historical narratives them- selves, transmitted to us through the same sources, we attach high value to the result of the most recent researches researches that now have almost the force of an axio- ma. More than ever it has become evident that it is perfectly impossible, on purely historical grounds, to make in the history of the Lord a separation between its natural and supernatural elements without being most unjust or dictatorial, inasmuch as both are not only closely interwoven, and proved by the same evidence, but are so intrinsically and inseparably one, that in this case the denying of the supernatural renders the other, the natural, perfectly incomprehensible. Show us, we reiterate to the heroes of Modernism show us, after you have foresworn religion, what remains of your natural Christ if yon deny the God-man ? but till thus far no sat- isfactory answer has been returned. Ra- tionalism, Mysticism, Naturalism, have each, in their turn, during the course of this cent- ury, ventured the trial, but it has so unmis- takably failed, that none of the spectators nay, not even one of the artists themselves have felt satisfied with the newly sculptured figure of Christ. Neither the wise rabbi of Rationalism, nor the vague, shadowy, and nebulous figure of Mysticism, (a ghost with- out flesh or bone), nor the Galilean woman and national friend of Naturalism, seem to be permanently able to replace the Apostolic Christ, much less to satisfy the want felt in him, and which he only is able to satisfy. And when they proclaim to us a Christ, who is the most perfect man in the ethical, but not the Sou of God in the metaphysical and historical sense of the word, then it- very soon appears that all these unfounded asser- tions lead to the most pitiful contradictions, and that one has placed one's self on an in- cline, on which it is perfectly impossible to remain standing, but that, on the contrary, inexorable logic necessitates a person to take a step backward or forward. If miracles are positively rejected and how is it pos- sible to believe in miracles from a purely naturalistic stand-point? it follows that the doctrine of the man Jesus Christ being without sin must be contradicted, for, as it is 246 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. maintained, it is contrary to all analogy and experience that there is a single instance, from lirst to last, that through medium of a pmvly natural development one perfectly pair should come forth from among and from the impure. If, on the contrary, Christ be acknowledged the perfect man, the ideal of humanity, then sooner or later we shall feel ourselves constrained to a change of the Ecce Homo in an Ecce Dcus Homo, as such an individual can only be regarded as the new shoot on the diseased trunk of humanity ; thus a moral miracle, the key to all that is natural, a peculiar gift, and at the same time the highest degree of self-revelation of a God who performs miracles and wonders. To this latter conclusion every one must nec- essarily come -who, without prejudice, gives himself up to the purely ethical impression which the harmonious figure of Christ, as displayed in the Gospel, produces on the heart and the conscience, whereas those, like Renau, among others, who have but an eye for the aesthetic side of sacred history, prove on well-nigh every page of their -writings their internal incompetence to form any thing like a right judgment in this matter. And if in this conflict of principles this only true stand-point is thus gained, if one has once more learned to confide in the personal testimony of the historical Christ concerning himself, even there where the understanding can not fully fathom its complete contents, because our hearts and our consciences must unconditionally assent to it, and deem it in- conceivable that this Son of man should de- ceive himself and us, if we once more begin to .contemplate the other words, deeds, and dec- larations of the Lord by the light of Christ's own testimony, then and who does not feel it really to be so ? then the magic of the grandiloquent assertions of modern criticism have lost their power, at least in principle. A just, a proper view is obtained of the whole in all its indivisibility and precious- ness. That whole casts its light on each of the remaining parts, be they near or remote ; that which regarded, singly and alone, might justly excite surprise, becomes clear to us in its characteristic connection with the whole, not only clear, but worthy of God. Behind every seeming contradiction to which the finger of criticism points us, we soon dis- cover a higher harmony, and on this har- mony again rays of heavenly beauty, truth, and holiness fall ; then at every turn we feel repeatedly convinced that not only of the whole, but also of each of its indispensable parts, that it stands as firm as ever. And now -we feel ourselves at perfect lib- erty to add, in the second and last place, it demands more than ever. Or will a lengthy demonstration be necessary to show that it is only possible to wrench the holy land of sacred history which the enemy has most illegally taken possession of out of his hands, if every one of us is faithful to his most holy calling f The words of Lord Nel- son before the battle of Trafalgar "En- gland expects every man to do hie duty" are, in a higher sense, the order of the day of the King of kings in this great conflict of the present day. Never has the Church never has theology known a more crit- ical period in reference to this struggle than at present ; and it would, indeed, be a source of intense regret if these grand times should produce little men only. Nor has the his- tory of the Gospel, so inexpressibly dear to every Christian, ever demanded of each of us so much as at present ; and if any body wishes to know what it is that it demands, and of whom in particular it is demanded, I will answer the question in a few words, and beg you, like Shakespeare of old, to re- gard my couple of soldiers as a whole army. If I now had the honor of exclusively ad- dressing in this place, and by preference, only priests and Levites in the Temple of Theological Science, I would as energetically as possible, both for my own and their sakes, exclaim: Behold a field without compare a field in which we are at liberty to exer- cise our noblest mental energies ! Men and brethren ! let us avoid even the appearance of leaving, for the sake of our ease, the dis- cussion of these litigious questions to those who are inclined to follow a road that leads to destruction. Christianity was introduced into this world without any show of learu- edness, but not without the powerful sup- port of science can its good cause be possi- bly maintained in our days. " Knowledge is power." This is more than evident in those who at present, with mighty hand, shake the pillars of the divine building ; but knowledge sanctified by faith affords supe- rior power, in which we should not by any means allow any body to surpass us on ac- count of our own neglect. We must oppose false science with true science, and we can do so at present the more easily as the time of false mediation and transaction seems to have passed for good. In this sense, the last work of Strauss, " Der Alte uud Neuo Glaube," seems to have vast significance ; and the science of faith has good cause to be thankful to the aged Apostle of Unbelief that he has at last, and with perfect hon- esty, called things by their right names. As clearly as every eye can at present see the chasm between Modernism and Christianity, as evident it is that it is positively neces- sary that apologetical labors should bo con- tinued with renewed energy. More than ever the present times require that the line of the Pascals and Vinets, on the one hand, and of the Grotiuses, Lardners, and Paleys, on the other, should be continued with en- ergy, and in that direction in that charac- teristic direction which the wants of the time require. The conflict that has been VAN OOSTERZEE: THE GOSPEL HISTORY AND MODERN CRITICISM. 247 raging so long, aud that is now being re- newed with fresh vigor, must be waged, it is true, with our former arms, but not with- out their first being examined and whetted anew : as far as it is possible, they should also be increased with new ones. The ques- tion as to what is the best method of Apol- ogy should be repeatedly inquired into ; all private differences should be -waived and forgotten for a time in the momentous strug- gle of principles. Awake, ye Christians ! especially ye Protestant theologians rise to the battle! Many an honorable wound may indeed be inflicted by the enemy, but an incorruptible crown is the prize held out to you ! But, in thought, I am mixing matters be- longing to science with those of the Church both, indeed, most intimately connected with each other. It is true, I am here speak- ing to men of the Church. I do not speak of any particular community or denomina- tion ; for in this great struggle in which we all have a common interest, every kind of party badge should disappear. In my heart is deeply engraven the words of your emi- nent theologian, Dr. Neviu, " The sectarian spirit is always fanatical, or affects strength aud has none." I have now iu view the men of the Holy and Catholic Christian Church, built on the foundation of the apos- tles and prophets, who have their servants on this side, as well as on the other side of the ocean ; and I do not hesitate to exclaim in the name of their holy and everlasting King : Assist the Church iu keeping the treasure that is committed unto her; and assist her iu giving a good account of the faith iu the historic Christ. There is no truth iu the assertion often, but so thought- lessly, and by hearsay, repeated that faith is perfectly independent of the course of his- torical, critical examination. On the contra- ry, Christianity is either seriously disturbed or established thereby ; practical Christian- ity stands or falls with the recognition of the miraculous character of the historic rev- elation of salvation. But if this now be the case, then the Church, that is watching this struggle with profound emotion, aud often feels her very foundation rocking, ought to be suitably armed. Iu the present time the Church has wants that can not be met or satisfied with preaching, catechizing, or pastoral addresses only however excel- lent these may be in themselves, and how- ever faithfully those duties may be perform- ed. She requires a more decided prophylac- tic against the venom of infidelity that is presented to her on all sides, or there is ev- ery cause to fear and to believe that the present crisis will lead to a more fatal phthisis. In what form must this preserva- tive be administered to the Church ? Per- haps in that of popular scientific lectures ; of apologetic societies ; of polemic litera- ture. I do not venture to give any positive answer to the question, seeing that in this case so much depends on special talents and circumstances. I merely put forth the gen- eral principle that extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary measures, and that we who are thoroughly acquainted with the subject should zealously endeavor to enlight- en those who are relatively placed below us, as well as the more enlightened among the community. Through our medium the con- viction must also be established in the Church that, behind the unbelieving science, there is also a believing science, which, if not able to obtain the assent of its adver- saries, still does obtain its respect and re- gard ; and that we ourselves, at all events, do not doubt or despair that victory will be ours a victory that will the sooner be obtained if we but exert ourselves to the utmost. The modern critical direction de- mands great things of intellectual and mor- al life, which demands it is, however, unable itself to satisfy. These requirements we must, however, not meet with other de- mands, but endeavor to fulfill them in a bet- ter way than it is possible for the opposing party to do. Like a violent and turbulent stream of a Mississippi, the flood of infidel- ity is rising ; but it must be curbed, purified, aud eventually compelled to pour its wa- ters into the ocean of the faith of the Church that, by this fresh supply, must at last in- crease in depth aud volume. But wherefore should I continue to ad- dress individuals concerning a matter that is of most vital importance to every Chris- tian ? No, indeed ; here is no difference be- tween Church and theology, between the pastor and the members of the Church . The evangelical history demands of every Miccer, without any distinction, increasing interest, and the positive conviction that it is the sure foundation of Christiauity, resting not on abstract ideas, but on facts that are iu- confutable. Christianity demands renewed examination of its contents, of the grounds whereon it rests, of its connection with the grand whole of the revelation of God's plan of salvation, so that none may despise it. Alas, matters are come to such a pass iu the present time that the most exalted truth- queen by birth has to go about as a beg- gar already condemned, saying to judge aud witnesses : " Do not condemn me, at least before you have heard me once more." And what does truth demand? First and fore- most a confession which every Christian is capable of giving the testimony of a lift- which is at the same time the most su- preme revelation, the highest revelation of the truth. Would infidelity venture on such bold negations if it did not, on behold- ing so many of its so-called Christians, con- stantly receive the sad impression that the fact of facts stands so completely above 248 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. and beyoud them that it may bo denied or contested without any real harm to any one, as it seems merely a matter of contention, and uot golden fruit of the Tree of Life! Christians brethren, sisters in Him whom unbelief would willingly rob of his crown, iu order to place it on the sullied head of whole Humanity never was there a more glorious opportunity than the present one, but never was your calling so holy, too, as just now, to show the world that your faith in the complete, historic Christ is not a hol- low sound, but a living power, which can impossibly be explained by nature and mat- ter only. I say to the Christians of the Old World: The more friends and enemies see that all that is old is passing away from you, the less will they have the courage to repeat that the Gospel with all its miracu- lous narratives did very well for former times, but that it is worth nothing for the present. I speak to the Christians of the New World, and add : You would be break- ing with your own glorious history if ye were to abandon your belief in the Gospel history that divine and miraculous history which was the life-giving stream and the dying consolation to the Pilgrim Fathers, of the friends of liberty, of Washington, of Lin- coln of imperishable memory. America, thou art a Eepublic, but thou hast a King in the Heavens, who alone giveth and preserv- eth true liberty ; watch well that thou dost not forsake him, and become one common- wealth of Christ. I speak to the friends and members of the Alliance of the Old and New World assembled here in the bonds of brotherhood, and I comprise all in these words, which I also address to myself, " Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown" (Rev. iii., 11); give each other the hand of fellowship across every bar- rier even across the barrier of the waves in the united struggle against falsehood, un- righteousness, and sin. The times are be- coming very serious a crisis is certainly approaching; exercise criticism; above all, search and examine yourselves; become truly modern that is, in a higher sense of the word be regenerated in the inner and out- er man, and form one great nation that rises as one man to take up arms, perfectly pre- pared when the last the last all-deciding struggle of the future must be fought. There is one thought more that arises within me; allow me to express it. The sixth general meeting of the Evangelical Alliance beholds the conflict between Be- lief and Unbelief, which to employ the words of a well-known writer "is a theme of most profound depth : in reality, the all- absorbing theme of the history of the world, taking dimensions as. never were known be- fore." How, I now ask, will matters stand when the time for the seventh meeting comes round ? Shall we enjoy, after six days of labor, a seventh day of comforting and refreshing rest? And when will that great universal Sabbath break forth for the struggling Church, for the whole creation that now groaneth? a Sabbath on which the eye of Faith and Hope cau not avoid gazing with ever -increasing longing. Wo can not say ; but before parting, before that peace is concluded, let us give each other the hand of fellowship, and then let every one of us renew the combat at the post as- signed him. But let it suffice. When above us the clouds of Infidelity become darker and darker, and still more threatening, may both America and Europe remember the words of John Eliot, the apostle of the In- dians : " Those are some of the clouds that must lc seen before the Son of man appears" And indeed the night seems descending upon the wrestling Church ; and sometimes it would seem as if the word of the poet was becoming verified as regards the kingdom of God : " Westward the star of empire takes its way" words generally applied to Amer- ica. But this fear, the offspring of little faith, shall not be fulfilled; this star is not destined to sink in the West, but, after hav- ing in appearance set, it will rise again in the East. Or, rather, like the Polar Star in the North, it glows in ever-refulgent glory ; it is the star which evermore will lead every mariner who intently fixes his gaze upon it into a haven of refuge and safety ; and when at last this star shall illuminate the whole world with the splendor of tlie sun, then in its transplendent rays the united shout of friend and foe will be heard: " Christe,-n- tisti .'" AMERICAN INFIDELITY: ITS FACTORS AND PHASES. BY THE EEV. WILLIAM F. WARREN, D.D., President of Boston University. WHAT are the forces and forms of Amer- ican unbelief? Whence have they proceed- ed? What is their relation to American Christianity ? These are some of the questions which naturally thrust themselves upon the atten- tion of the first Ecumenical Conference of the Evangelical Alliance convened on Amer- ican soil. To answer them intelligibly, especially to our foreign visitors, it will be necessary to glance at the genesis and development of the social and religious life of the nation. Historic forces and effects can only be un- derstood historically. Going back, then, to the colonial period of our country's history, we are struck at the outset by the remarkable fact that the first effective preparation of the original British American colonists for social and political unity was due to a great religious awakening, the revival which commenced in 1740. Down to that time, the spirit of intercolonial jealousy, isolation, and repel- lency had prevailed over every centripetal and nationalizing influence. Till that time there had been neither ethnological, politic- al, social, nor religious unity. On the con- trary, the numberless international, civil, so- cial, and religious antagonisms of all Europe seemed concentrated upon a narrow strip of this Atlantic coast. Shut in between the territories of France upon the north and west, and Spanish Florida on the south, bisected near the middle by large Dutch and Swedish populations in New York and Delaware, overdotted with settlements of every European nationality, the little Brit- ish colonies of two hundred years ago pre- sented in most respects the least hopeful aspect of all the European dependencies in the New World. No two existed under a common charter, scarce two had a like re- ligion. Here a Romanist colony was nearest neighbor to settlements of fugitive Hugue- nots, there the plain and quietistic Quaker was separated only by a boundary line from the formal and rite-loving Anglican. Noble- men and peasants, Papists and Protestants, Roundheads and Cavaliers, Royalists and haters of royalty, believers and unbelievers, all found themselves standing on a common platform all faithful to their Old World affinities. Out of elements so utterly het- erogeneous, whence could unity and order come? It could come only from that Au- thor of peace and Giver of concord who de- lights to reconcile all antagonisms and unify all that sin has dissevered. Toward the middle of the last century came the fullness of God's time for genera- ting a new Christian nationality. First a soul was needed to organize the rich though motley elements into one living national body. That soul was communicated, as by a divine afflatus, in the great Whitefieldian Revival. In its mighty heat the old in- tellectual and spiritual partition walls, by which the colonies had been so long isola- ted, fused and let one tide of gracious influ- ence roll through the whole domain. For the first time in their history, the British colo- nies were agitated by one thought, swayed by one mind, moved by one impulse. Again and again through all these colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, this most fa- mous evangelist of history moved in tri- umph. Puritan New Englanders forgot that he was a gowned priest of the very Church from whose oppressions they had fled to the wilds of a new Avorld. Dutch New York and German Pennsylvania almost unlearn- ed their degenerating vernaculars as they listened to his celestial eloquence. The Quaker was delighted with his gospel sim- plicity, the Covenanter and Huguenot with his " doctrines of grace." The Episcopalians were his by rightful church fellowship, and thus it came to pass that when, after cross- ing the ocean eighteen times in his flying ministry, he lay down in death at Newbury- port, he was unconsciously, but in readity, the spiritual father of a great Christian na- tion. The fact has never been duly acknowl- edged by the historian, but a fact it is. The outward providential discipline by which the new national spirit was nurtured and strengthened, and gradually made to take on the form and functions of an organ- ic body politic, was admirably fitted to its end. From 1744 to 1762 the French and Indian wars drilled the young nation in the use of arms, preparatory to the great strug- gle of the war of liberation. The soon-en- suing agonies of the revolutionary period substantially completed the work of nation- al unification. Thenceforth there was an American peo- 250 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. pie a self-conscious nationality. Colonies had given place to emancipated States, tbese to a unified, consolidated Republic. How now stood the Evangelical and anti- Evangelical forces in this nation at the com- mencement of its political independence? Ecclesiastically considered, by no means un- favorably. Almost the entire population belonged to Evangelical churches, and what was still more favorable, to Evangelical churches with which they were identified by all the ties of education and long-stand- ing tradition. In New England, Puritan in- dependency, or Congregationalism, was not only the religion established by law, but the real faith of almost the entire community. In the Middle and Southern States, with the exception of Pennsylvania, the Church of England had been the established Church, though in many sections the Reformed Church, including its three great branches, the Scotch, Dutch, and German, equaled or surpassed in numbers and influence the communion established and favored by law. Though the disruption of the new nation from the mother country left all communi- cants of the Church of England disorganized and churchless, they remained so for a very brief period only. In 1784 and 1789 they organized themselves into two new Episco- pal Churches, the Methodist Episcopal and the ProtestautEpiscopal,eachretaining, with slight modifications, the Articles of Religion, the Liturgy, and many of the traditions of the Anglican mother. Liitheranism at this time was not strong. Even including the ten or twelve Moravian societies, the whole strength of the American Lutheran Church did not exceed some seventy-five parishes. Still it was not greatly disproportioued to the German population. To sum up, with a population of about three millions, there was very nearly an Evangelical minister to every two thousand souls. There were healthful traditions of the godly character and Chris- tian heroism of the original settlers ; there were living recollections of the mighty re- vivals of the last generation. Such were the hopeful elements in the new national life, religiously considered. Notwithstanding this favorable religious aspect and prospect, however, the cause of Evangelical religion has probably never seen darker days in America than precisely at this period. The French infidelity of the era of Vol- taire was a formidable antagonist. The soil of the American mind was peculiarly fitted for the reception of this form of false doc- trine. Almost half a century had passed since the great awaken ing of 1740-44. Near- ly all of this period the country had been the theatre of exciting warfare. The de- moralizing influences of camp life had been experienced to the full. The Revolution through which the people had passed had broken the prestige of ancient institutions. The intoxication of success had drowned serious thoughts of eternal things. The French allies had brought along with their friendship and aid the frivolity and unbe- lief which characterized the French mind at that period. The religious life of the peo- ple was at so low an ebb that they were ready to contract any and every contagion of error. French deism, witty, sentimental, brilliant, revolutionary, chanced to be the ruling epidemic of the Christian world, and America did not escape. Three men stand out in history as the hierophants of this new gospel in America. Two of them were of English birth and ed- ucation, one only of American. Singularly enough they all had the same Christian name, and that the name of the skeptical apostle. The three men were Thomas Jefferson, Thom- as Cooper, and Thomas Paine. These three doubting Thomases were born democrats and social revolutionists. Their opposition to the Church was largely a result of their iconoclastic natures. The first was the po- litical, the second the scientific, the third the social representative of the contemporary Antichristian movement. The first was in- fluential by virtue of his political statical as President of the Republic, the second by rea- son of his office as educator, the third in con- sequence of his early and ardent advocacy of the cause of American Independence. On one occasion, Jefferson sent a government vessel to France to convey Mr. Paine to this country as the nation's guest. Favored with such an historical preparation, so related to the national sentiments, so adapted to the national aspirations, so sanctioned and ad- vocated by popular favorites, it is little won- der that the gospel of the" Age of Reason" became a great popular power among the American people during the last two decades of the closing century. Its powerful sway was first but effectually broken by the wide- spread and sweeping revivals of 1801 to 1803. The next notable movement in the relig- ious history of the country was that moment- ous one which gave to the latent Unitarian- ism and Universalism of the New England Churches ecclesiastical organization and con- scious aggressive power. This was in the years 1800 to 1815. A graver movement has never marked our history. In Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, it carried away the oldest, wealthiest, and strongest churches. It bore away from evangelical control the oldest, richest, and most influen- tial college of the whole land. It gave to the new denominations, particularly to the Unitarians, all the prestige of Boston wealth and culture. Though originating in a jus- tifiable reaction against the dead scholastic orthodoxy of the period, with no thought of overturning the normative authority of the WARREN : AMERICAN INFIDELITY. 251 Bible or of denying the Divine mission of Jesus Christ, it soon became apparent that neither the repristinated Ariauism of Chan- niug nor the novel theology of Ballou could long constitute a tenable standing place for bodies of men and women so intelligent and thoughtful as those of whom we speak. Just here, however, before these new, reactional churches could undisturbedly ripen the seeds of error in them, a new historic force was in- troduced into the spiritual life of the nation, which, both on account of its relation to our theme, and also because of its potent effect upon the development of New England thought, must here be mentioned. I allude to infidel Socialism and its American propa- gandists. In 1824, the great English Socialist, Rob- ert Owen, landed upon our shores to pro- claim his " New Moral Order," and to prac- tically initiate the reconstruction of human society. In October of the following year he was at the head of a "Family" of nine hundred souls, on a fruitful domain of thirty thousand acres on the banks of the Wabash. On the ensuing Fourth of July, being the semi-centennial of the declaration of Na- tional Independence, he issued a pompous manifesto, entitled " Declaration of Mental Independence." This was the commence- ment of a Socialistic fever, amounting at times and in places to a genuine mania, which for twenty years, in one form or an- other, inflamed the public mind. Its first phase was its most outspokenly antirelig- ious, its last its most obnoxiously immoral. Beginning with, the Owenist excitement (1824-30), blossoming out in the infidel association at Northampton, in Unitarian "Brook Farm," and Univcrsalist "Hope- dale," all founded in 1842, running to seed at last in the extravagances of Fourierism (1843), the Free Love of Oneida (1847), and the necromantic diabolism of late-bom Broc- ton, it was, all in all, the most formidable demonstration which the spirit of Antichrist had ever made among ns. The latest histori- an of the movement enumerates no less than eleven experiments at social reconstruction during what he calls the Owen period, and thirty-four during the Fourier one. Nor is this an exhaustive list. As nearly as can be ascertained, not less than eight to ten thou- sand people actually broke with convention- al Christian society and entered these com- munities. Many periodical organs were es- tablished, and tons of Socialistic literature circulated through the land. Their domains in the different States where they existed amounted to over 130,000 acres. Nowhere in Europe were the wild dreams of Owen and the French Socialists so magnificently tested as in this country. Their quick-suc- ceeding failures were all the more conspicu- ous. For this, among other reasons, Amer- icans have far less than European peoples to fear from the belated Communists and " Internationals " of to-day. Contemporaneously with this Socialistic agitation, often hand in hand with it, yet often entirely distinct, went another which, though it could point to no such striking out- ward achievements as Socialism, has doubt- less more lastingly affected certain strata of our population. This was a grand incur- sion of foreign Naturalism and Materialism, organized and officered for the most part by German and British apostles of what is called Phrenology. First proclaimed in the United States, from 1821 to 1832, by a Dr. Caldwell, an American pupil of Gall, then re-enforced by the presence and lectures of Spurzheim, further expounded and advoca- ted from 1838 to 1843, by the noted George Combe, this new evangel of natural law and man's self-perfectibility won many adher- ents among crude and curious and half-edu- cated men. These, aspiring to the honors and emoluments of public teachers, speedily spread themselves all over the country as itinerant lecturers, offering to expound the new science, to demonstrate it by describing with blindfolded eyes, from a mere manipu- lation of their " bumps," the noted characters of the locality, and finally to examine and advise all candidates for eminence or hap- piness at twenty-five cents a head. These precious enlighteners of the people grad- ually gave place first to traveling mesmer- izers, and then to the mediums and apostles of spirit-rapping and spirit -trances. As often before, the reaction from Materialism and its unbelief carried unballasted minds clean over to necromantic superstition. This remarkable transition in the nnchris- tiauized elements of our population com- menced as early as 1830, if we may believe the author of the "Autobiography of a Shaker,"* who was in that year converted by the agency of spirits, as he alleges, from an Oweuito Materialist and Socialist to u spiritualist of the Shaker order. The same writer affirms that for seven years before the new spiritualistic demonstrations ap- peared in the outside world, namely, from 1837 to 1844, they abounded in all the Shak- er communities, that mediums were to be counted by the dozen, and that the spirits foretold the grand and universal manifesta- tions which were about to burst upon the world. In 1844 commenced the seership of Andrew Jackson Davis, and in 1848 the "rappings" at Rochester attracted the at- tention of the civilized world. Robert Owen himself in his last days became a believer, and his son and successor, Robert Dale Owen, is to-day an influential representa- tive of that faith. By one road or another, nearly all the original communists, phre- nologists, and mesmerists found their- way A'lantic Monthly, April and May, 1809. 252 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. into the Spiritualistic camp. Hero they still plot and pronounce against Christianity, favored, as they believe, with invisible al- lies. A little before and after the year 1840 we \vituess the first considerable effects of Ger- man philosophy and criticism on American religious thought. This oceanic current reached us by two channels, one direct, the other by way of Great Britain. The least vital and coherent religious body of the country naturally experienced the first dis- turbance. In the bosom of Unitariauism there arose new parties. Ralph Waldo Em- erson and Theodore Parker strode past So- ciuns and Channing, the one to the cold heights of a poetic Pantheism, the other to the citadel of an eclectic Antichristiau The- ism. Emerson's first complete breach with his brother ministers was in his famous ad- dress before the Divinity College, at Cam- bridge, July 15, 1838 ; Parker's, in his instal- lation sermon, entitled " The Transient and Permanent in Christianity," preached in the spring of 1841. The teachings and personal influence of a German, Dr. Karl Follen, who was for ten years connected with Harvard College and Divinity School, and for five years more was a Unitarian pastor, were not without effect in bringing about the new departures. For a time the denomination was sorely torn by controversy ; but, historic- ally committed to the most uncompromising hostility to all " tests," not only of belief but even of authorized teaching, it soon became evident that all who chose to affiliate with the body must be tolerated, however unpop- ular their beliefs or heterodox their doc- trine. The result has been summed up somewhat over-harshly perhaps by a recent and sympathetic writer, the editor of The Modern Thinker, as follows: "Theodore Par- ker was a pure destructive. He left no school, no church only a memory Emerson has preached the gospel of indi- vidualism, and so doing has helped to exag- gerate some of the worst tendencies of the American mind The Unitarian move- ment has spent its novel force, and the sect which bears its name is only notable for agreeing to disagree. Its latest and logical development is in the person of the Rev. O. B. Frothingham, who is seriously at work to make disorganization organic; in other words, he is endeavoring to get people to act together, whose only bond of union is the irreconcilable divergences of their fun- damental beliefs : this is the logical out- come of the whole Unitarian or 'Liberal Christian' school." Unable to obtain a satisfactory control of the entire Unitarian organization, the most destructive and Antichristian ministers and members of the body, without withdrawing from it, have, with others of like sentiments and spirit, united in establishing what is called "The Free Religions Association," which by means of the press and pulpit, the platform and club, labors to uudermine all distinctively Christian ideas and institutions. This is now in its sixth year. It does not pretend to any unanimity touching the prop- er substitute for the cherished faith of the Christian world, but it seems to believe that the utter demolition of all existing religions is the indispensable prerequisite to the estab- lishment of the true. Delenda est Christianitas is therefore rightly represented as the first, last, and almost only article of its creed. This, at the present time, is the only posi- tively Autichristiau organization among us of any perceptible influence. Even this has no official organ, and only an annual public demonstration. It differs from the "Freie Geineinden" of Germany in that it essays to be national, while those are local ; it dif- fers from the German " Protestauteuverein," in that it does not organize auxiliary asso- ciations, or assume to operate in the interest of the Protestant Church. Glancing back for a moment over these successive waves of opposition to the king- dom of Christ in America, one is struck first of all by the itu-t that none of them were of American origin. The successive types of unbelief and misbelief which have arisen and prevailed in Europe have in every case de- termined the successive types of unbelief and misbelief in America. In most cases the first effectual introduction of a new type has been due to Europeans coming to our shores. Thus, our first popular infidelity was directly due to European soldiery, and to such immi- grants as Thomas Paine. The great New En- gland defection was, to a certain extent, pio- neered by British Sociniaus, and decidedly aided by the coming of Joseph Priestley and John Murray. The communistic crusade was preached by Owen in person, and seconded by scores of such foreign-born adjutants as G.H. andF. W. Evans, Fanny Wright and A. J. Mac- donald. The phrenological revival of natu- ralism was introduced by a pupil of Gall, and disseminated by the labors of Prussian Spurz- heim and Scotch Combe. Mother Ann Lee, whom England gave us, was the early fore- runner of American " Spiritualism," while the ghost of Scandinavian Swedeuborg ap- pearing to Andrew Jackson Davis in a grave- yard near Poughkeepsie, in 1844, so affected the deliria of that " seer" and the whole sys- tem of his followers that the historian of American Socialisms declares " Spiritualism is Swedenborgianism Americanized."* Fi- nally, the transition of the " Free Religion- ists," from a professedly Scriptural Uuitari- * " Spiritualism is Swedenborgianism Americanized. Andrew Jackson Davis began us a medium of Swedeu- borg, receiving from him his commission and inspira- tion, and became an independent seer and revelator only becanse, as a son, he outgrew his father." J. H. NOYEO, History of American Socialism*, p. WO. WARREN : AMERICAN INFIDELITY. 253 anism to au open repudiation of all positive revelation, was an effect of German specula- tion and criticism, meditated partly by such men as Follen, more effectively by American students and tourists abroad, most potently of all by the writings of Germans and of ad- mirers of German literature. Thus all these threatening surges of Antichristian thought and effort have come to us from European seas : not one arose in our hemisphere. Like other peoples, we have erred in the sphere of religion ; but our admitted errors, as in the case of the wild excrescences of Mormouism, Millerism, and Shakerism, are all in the di- rection of superstition rather than in that of unbelief. America has given the Old World valuable theological speculations, admirable defenses of the faith, precious revival influ- ences, memorable exhibitions of internation- al charity, but she has never cursed human- ity with a new form of infidelity. Confining our view to the present, it is a striking and a cheering fact that no form of infidelity among us can boast of a single champion of cosmoplitan, or even of nation- al reputation. We have no Strauss, no Re- nan, not even a Carl Vogt. We never have had. The nearest .approach to it we ever had was the forceful Unitarian preacher who ministered to the "Twenty -eighth Congre- gational Society" in Boston, from 1845 to 1859. Even he had not the requisite learn- ing or genius to enable him to propound a solitary new difficulty to the Christian scholarship of his age. We have infidel littti- rateurs of respectable attainments and all- too-wide influence, but in all the ranks of American unbelievers the Christian apologist of learning and ability can nowhere find a foemau worthy of his steel. The oldest American periodical devoted to the abolition of all religion is The Investi- gator, an organ of pure atheism, of very lim- ited circulation, though now in its forty- third year. It was for some time conduct- ed by the noted Abner Kueeland. The only professedly religious weekly of open Anti- Christian character is The Index, established by a Mr. Abbot in Toledo, Ohio, but recent- ly removed to an Eastern city. It repre- sents in the main the spirit and views of the " Free Religious Association." A monthly of somewhat pretentious character was com- menced in Boston under the title of The Badical, but it soon died a natural death. Though resuscitated after a few months, its second lease of life was shorter even than the first, and it is now twice dead. The two weeklies above mentioned are, there- fore, at present the only proper organs of American infidelity. The Golden Age, The Woodhull and Claflin Weekly, and The Oneida Circular are mouth- pieces not so much of Antichristian faith as of Antichristiau mor- als. Comparing our current American infideli- ty with that of other Christian countries, we find little to distinguish it. It is less learned and systematic than the German, less political and communistic than the French, less chafed and fretful than the British. Still, in all Christian lauds the ideas, and aims, and agencies of the party are essentially alike ; in all they labor to rob the individual soul, the family, the school, and the state of all distinctively Christian characteristics, to secularize hu- manity in every sphere. In one important respect there is a difference. Our larger so- cial, political, and religious liberty gives to American infidels important advantages over their European brethren, but this same lib- erty of thought and profession and agita- tion deprives them of half of their power to destroy. The cask of powder which, if ex- ploded within this building, would shatter it to a heap of rubbish, may be exploded without harm to any thing on the distant hill-top in the open air. So half, at least, of the destructive power of European infidelity in past generations has been due to the pres- ence of the party within, instead of without, the Church. This extra-ecclesiastical position of infi- delity in America has greatly assisted Ameri- can Christians in rightly estimating its na- ture and remedy. With us more than with any other modern Christian people has un- belief been recognized as the natural, and in a sense normal characteristic of unawakened and unregenerate souls. Its many forms, so far as they are genuine products of a man's own thought, and not mere slavish parrot- ings, only correspond to different stages of spiritual insight. There is a state of spiritual purblindness and insensibility and bondage to sense to which Atheism and Pantheism are perfect counterparts. The atheistic or pantheistic theory of the universe fully and satisfactorily accounts for all the facts com- ing within the narrow range of such a mind, and clearly apprehended by it. It has a right, therefore, for the time being, to rest satisfied in that system. The fault is not in the system, but in the condition of the mind. If the subject, by his own active or passive agency, induced the condition, or if, born in it, he has persistently resisted the good in- fluences designed by his Creator to deliver him from it, he is blameworthy, but in any case the system must not be dissevered from the subjective state from Avhich it origi- nates. Wherever the subjective state is found, there the system is legitimate; so long as the former is uuremedied, so long the latter has a right to exist. The same is true of speculative or naturalistic Theism. It represents a type of intellectual and spir- itual experience. If the system is defective, it is because the experience is defective. So long as men stop with such experience, so long will they stop with speculative Theism. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. Such being their view, American Chris- tians arc not especially disturbed by the fact that there are different forms of unbe- lief and misbelief in the land. The fact is a sad one, but it is only a small fraction of tbe infinitely sadder fact of man's universal blindness and corruption. We expect that there will bo infidels and errorists in the world as long as there are unrenewed men in the world. We expect to abolish infidelity only by bringing all natural men into the experience of a spir- itual life, whose supernatural facts will ad- mit of no explanation short of that given us in the supernatural Word and in the holy Catholic Church. Believing that there nev- er was a time when so many shared this spiritual life, and the intellectual world- view which properly answers to it believ- ing also that there never was a time when the leavening progress of Christ's kingdom among men was so rapid and irreversible as at present, we preach Christ with all bold- ness, as the grand and only effectual anti- dote of unbelief. To every taunting query, "Can any good thing come out of Naza- reth f" wo answer, " Come and see." To ev- ery conceited sneer at Christ's authority, wo respond, " If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." To every candid seeker after truth and righteousness, however lost in error and in sin, we offer Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. The Holy Spirit at- tends the word. Blessed be God! Blas- phemers are silenced, scoffers are made doc- ile inquirers, atheists are converted to God, deuiers of Christ experience his power and shout his praise. Hallelujah ! The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Therefore unto the ever blessed Father, the reigning Son, the world-transforming Spirit, be ascribed all glory and blessing, world without end. Amen and amen. REASON AND FAITH. BY THE REV. E. A. WASHBURN, D.D., OF NEW YORK. IT may seem to some who hear me that ray subject is only a renewal of the worn- out theological battle of centuries. Yet, brethren and friends, it touches the deepest intellectual as well as religious want of the time. It is but yesterday since the Council of Latin Christendom met to decree that in- fallibility, the attribute of the all-wise God alone, is officially incarnate in the person of the Pontiff; and absurd as we may hold it, it is impossible to believe that a decision Avhich bore with it so many learned and de- vout minds, which swept at last into the tide able opponents like a Gratry, and is now lighting for life or death with the heroic chiefs of the Old Catholic party, can have come from the mere vanity of a Pope or the craft of the Jesuit. It was the conviction of that Church that here was the only posi- tion against the inroads of Protestant free- dom. And on the other side you see a mod- ern, growing school of science, which, with a dogmatism as strong as that of the Papal decrees, affirms that our faith in those old- fashioned phrases, God, soul, cause, substance, in any thing beyond phenomena, has no worth for reason at all. In a word, it is the same unsettled conflict between the two powers of superstition and unbelief. The form of it differs with the modes of thought in every time, but the strife was never more earnest than now. And if, then, it be asked, What can be the hope of adjusting the end- less quarrel of the past ? I reply that the whole growth of Christian thought in the study of the Scriptures, in the history of doc- trine, in the relations of revealed truth to science, leads mo to believe that we are abler than before to meet it. I speak as one of those who earnestly hope for such media- tion between the Church and the criticism of the time. I believe that the principle of a Protestant freedom is a sober and sacred one. And if I can so handle the question as to take it out from the older formulas in which it has been imbedded, and reach the living thought of men ; if I can help any, however humbly, to know that our faith in a Divine Christ and Christianity is as rea- sonable as it is heart-felt, I shall speak what thousands of minds are seeking in the twi- light of opinion. I shall begin, therefore, with showing the aim and province of revealed truth, as the way to understand the harmony of reason with faith. It is from a want of a clear view of this, as I believe, that the mistake arises which seems hopelessly to divide the cham- pions of religion and of science. It will, then, be the admission of all who hold the divine origin of Christianity, that its essential purpose is to reveal redemption from sin, and the life of holiness through an incarnate Redeemer. In such a view, its truth has a direct bearing on the manifold questions of human thought. It concerns our deepest knowledge of the being of God ; the laws of his action in nature and the soul ; the inward facts of our own conscious- ness; and still more, as a religion that comes down to us in its sacred books, it has a connection with our large inquiries of the origin of the world and the primitive state of man. We have here the groundwork of Christian science. Theology is its noblest fruit. We can never fall into that shallow scorn of it so common among the talkers of our modern time. It was the theology of the Church that led the intellectual as well as religious civilization of the world through its great ages of life, as it bloomed in Oil- gen in Athanasius ; and fed the whole Latin mind through Augustiu, before it became the barren logic of the schools. Yet we are always to distinguish, although we can not divide, the theology of the Church from the essential truth of the Gospel. The New Testament is not and was not meant to be a system of philosophy. As a revela- tion of life to men, it is only concerned with the questions of our theoretical study in so far as they affect the one central fact of God in Christ reconciling the world. It is not an absolute knowledge of the natm-e of God, but as he reveals his incarnate love in His Son ; not a psychology of man, but the truth of his divine origin, and his sin as it is broadly evidenced in the moral conscious- ness of the race ; not the science of the globe or the complete history of the race, but the record of redemption. I can not pause here to show how such a view affects in many points our treatment of Scripture, as, e. #., our theory of inspiration. Here it is enough to note its general bearing on the subject before us. We give its true sphere to the- ology. But we must not forget that it is in its very nature a changing and a partial growth ; not changing, indeed, in its sub- stantial truth, but in the mode in which that truth has been presented by devout thinkers, as the Church has passed through 256 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. its great orbit of knowledge, and surveyed one after another the phases of its divine light. The Greek mind was wholly ab- scirWd in the doctrine of the Incarnation; the Latin, in the nature of man, of sin and grace; the Protestant has unfolded the meaning of a spiritual faith in our Redeem- er. Athanasius, August! u, Anselm, Calvin, Schleiermacher, represent this varied expres- sion. All have their harmony, as they are studied in their relations to the history of doctrine; yet all are but fallible teachers of a system never complete so long as the devout mind of man shall study afresh the mind of Christ. But Christianity is not a gnosis; not a theory, but a living Gospel. It remains the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Creeds are its outer walls, but not ifs sanctuary. Schools of theology defend it against false speculation, but they neither give nor take away its deepest influence over the life of men. We prize the symbol of Nice as one of the truly Catholic landmarks of the historic Church ; and we claim it as the wisdom of the English Communion that it has placed it in its Liturgy far above all special articles or confessions ; yet we must never make a Nicene Council the doctrinal basis of all Christian theology, and still less rest upon it the central truth of the Incar- nation. That truth has a surer evidence. It speaks to the thought, the affections of all in the immortal page of the New Testa- ment, in the perfect holiness and love of the Son of God. In. such an understanding of the charac- ter of Christianity, we know the harmony of faith with reason. In whatever sphere Revelation has to do with the theoretical questions of our knowledge Biblical sci- ence, theology, history reason is organ and arbiter. But as a practical truth which touches other powers conscience, affection, will it has another and inward sphere. We may thus briefly consider the place of the reason. It must be plain that, in so far as Revelation contains any truth that asks mental assent, it must appeal to the mental faculty. None denies this, unless he masks clear sense under some vague sophism. The only question is not as to the use of reason, but as to its abuse. What are its capacities and what its limits ? We admit with read- iness that it is a finite power, aud that, as Butler claimed in his immortal work, there are mysteries as well in nature as in the realm of religious truth, in the vital force lurking in the blade of grass as in the prob- lem of the will or the nature of the Atone- ment. All truth has its penumbra ; and a divine wisdom, above all, must have its in- finity of shadow with the light. But to say that there are truths transcending the rea- son is not to deny its use in any sphere where we can exercise the intellectual pow- ers. There la not one mental faculty which we call reason, and another which we call faith. "Reason," in the clear language of Augustin, "should not submit, unless it de- cide for itself that there are occasions when it ought to submit. Its very submission is then reasonable." Nothing can be the source of worse confusion than the notion of our popular theology that Revelation is the gift of certain incomprehensible doctrines which are to be believed without any effort at un- derstanding. This is the exact opposite of the Scriptural idea. It is the mystery, hid- den from the ages, and now opened to our knowledge, of which the apostle speaks so often ; and so far as the Gospel is a revela- tion of any essential truth, there is in it " no darkness at all." Such an error confounds its simple character with all the glosses of a speculative theology, the perplexities of human theory, the purely critical questions of science ; aud leads at last to that skep- ticism which sweeps away the wheat with the chaff. Let us not mistake this point, my friends. In the beginning of the last cen- tury the learned Huet, bishop of Avranches, wrote his " Demonstratio Evangelica" to show that the ancient skeptics were the masters of philosophy, because they proved that we knew nothing. We have had too many who held that human folly was a Gos- pel demonstration. Pardon me if I speak specially here of a book which has been much praised in our own day I mean the " Limits of Religious Thought " as it best illustrates this sad fallacy. It was re- served for an English divine to set up the most thorough system of Pyrrhonism as a Christian apologetic. The position of the writer is this : that we can have nothing beyond relative knowledge, and therefore there can be no certitude in any of our ideas, intellectual or moral. It follows that our ideas of God, his nature, his character, are purely subjective ; aud thus, whatever may be the representations of him in Revelation, they can not be within the sphere of real and positive truth. We have, he affirms, a regulative wisdom, enough for our practi- cal minds, but no more. It was the hon- est aim of this thinker to defend the Scrip- ture against the objections so often urged by the unbeliever. But it is not seen by many who hailed the book as the triumph of Christian thought, that the weapon which wonnds the Rationalist kills the truth of Revelation. If we can not know that our intellectual or moral conceptions of God have a real basis, then every revelation of him in his Word may bo an imagination. I can not adore him as a Father in his blessed Son, for the paternal relation is a purely human idea ; I can not know that the love, the pity, the holiness, I only discern by my moral af- fection have any ground in his own nature. But further yet, this regulative wisdom is folly, for if my faith have no assurance in WASHBURN : KEASON AND FAITH. reason, then to follow it may be to follow a will-o'-the-wisp along the marshes of human ignorance. And this is the defense of faith ! I hold it an utter surrender to unbelief. It is the most pregnant of facts that the lead- er of English -positivism has cited this very reasoning in support of his own conclusion that science can not reach or admit any idea of Cause, or Person, or God. Hume said, with his inimitable sneer, " Our holy relig- ion does not rest on reason, but on faith." Our modern champion gravely repeats it. And is this a sound Christianity ? I answer not in the name of reason, but of the very truth of God and Christ No! If I must keep my belief by such skepticism, it is lost forever. And here we reach the right view of faith. What is it to believe ? I turn to the New Testament, and learn it from the lips of Christ. It is a personal trust in him, an act of the mind, heart, and will together. Such is the original force of the word always in the gospels. Faith is not opposed to the intellect, but to the sight, the sensuous ap- pearance. " Blessed are ye that see not, yet believe." And so, when we pass to St. Paul, the great preacher of faith, we find him op- posing the "philosophy falsely so called," the gnosis of Judaiziug teachers, but he ap- peals always to the spiritual mind, the faith rooted in love, ending not in dogma, but life. The thought of personal trust in Christ is the dominant in every chord. There is no such idea as faith in a proposition. We learn hence its Christian meaning. It is not to accept certain opinions about Christ, cer- tain systems of doctrine touching his nature and his offices, the psychology of the will, the theory of redemption, but it is to accept him. It is to come to the New Testament with the simple consciousness of our moral nature that we are children of God, that sin is the root of our spiritual disease, and holi- ness the want of the soul ; to find in him that revealed grace of our Father we need, and to follow him in the renewed and holy life which is life eternal. This is Christian- ity. It is its beginning and its end. And if, then, you have accepted this definition, you will agree with my whole idea of the office of faith. It is not a special revela- tion or illumination of the mind. It is not an assent to certain truths which contradict reason, but are given on arbitrary authority. There can bo no such assent, save with some intelligent idea of what it assents to. A Christian faith, then, I affirm, is one with reason, but a reason disciplined by and act- ing with other faculties and within another sphere than that of pure speculative thought. As the revelation of Christ is a practical truth for the life, so it asks the exercise of the conscience, of the affections, and the will. We may construct a perfect system of theology. But to know Christ and his Gos- 17 pel is a deeper process. No theory of de- pravity can teach me the meaning of sin, un- less I have first felt its reality as a moral fact in myself. No theory of the Atonement can teach the dependence of my soul on the Saviour, until I have felt the fitness of that divine grace to my personal need. It is in this true sense we use that phrase of the fathers, "Fides pr&cedit intellectum" Faith goes before understanding. All our reason- ing must rest at last on certain first truths, at once intellectual and moral, call them what you will, innate or connate, intuitions or cognitions. We see God by this inner eye ; we know him not as an inference of our logic, but as the necessary conviction of mind and heart. And thus we know God in Christ by this moral affection, as the perfect holiness, the incarnate grace, and with him all those related truths which are spiritually discerned. Such a knowledge of faith neither contradicts nor excludes nor makes useless the exercise of the highest mental power. The believer is just as de- pendent as other men on the process and re- sults of Christian learning, when he will pass outside the sphere of this living, practical truth into the domain of theology or criti- cism. Yet within that sphere he has a sat- isfying wisdom. There is what Pascal has finely called an "interior reason" in this Christian knowledge, an implicit, harmoni- ous action of the mental and moral pow- ers together, by which instead of a cold an- alysis the mind seizes the vital truth of the Scriptures; and as it was said of Newton that he could by intuition reach the sum of the most complex reckoning, yet it was not intuition, but only such rapid action of the mind as to lose sight of the steps, so is the synthetic power of faith. It is a knowledge that leads him always, amidst the difficulties of criticism, to rest on the sure foundation. It is a knowledge that keeps him from con- founding the Gospel with the theories of men, orthodox or heterodox. And, again, just as the simplest believer receives the truth by the same mental faculty as the scholar, though in a plainer way, so the scholar must gain his real knowledge by the same deep method. An Augustin, although he may range over all systems of philosophic thought, although his own vast genius may have mingled much of the ore of fancy with the gold of his rich theology, comes to Christ, with the deep self-knowledge of a hungering and thirsting heart. A Luther amidst the husks of a scholastic divinity turns to that "theologia pectoris" Avhich he has learned upon his knees. Thus faith and reason are one. The Mecanique Celeste is a grand ra- tionale of the heavens ; yet to the child-like mind, as to the man of science, the stars speak a divine law, a beauty greater than the book, and more reasonable to the former than to a Laplace, who found that "his equation 2C8 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. needed no unknown quantity, no God." Rea- son may end in the intellectual conclusion ; faith ends in Christ and holiness. Reason alone is barren opinion ; faith is reason knit with affection and conscience. And thus I shall pass from the abstract vic\v to what will doubtless have a more living interest, the battle of our time be- tween belief and unbelief. I shall strive to show the grand error of rationalism and the spirit of the Christianity which must meet it. If, my friends, wo have clearly seen the dif- ference between a purely speculative knowl- edge and that spiritual truth which a Chris- tian faith grasps, it is in the divorce of the one from the other that rationalism consists. It is not in a just use of our intellect in the- ology or criticism, nor is it in the claim that any doctrines of the Church must agree with the necessary truths of the reason and the conscience. That is the "reasonable serv- ice " which the Scripture itself enjoins. But the root of rationalism lies in the assumption that there is already all necessary truth given us in our own consciousness, and therefore we neither want nor can have any divine, special revelation. I do not say a supernat- ural revelation ; for I hold that all Avithin the realm of spiritual life is above nature, and that to limit the supernatural power of God to the age of miracle is a vicious error which opens the way to a gross materialism. Rationalism, in a word, makes the central truths of Christianity the Incarnation, the Atonement, the power of the Holy Spirit unreasonable mysteries. We see the steps of this growth in its history. The rational- istic spirit is not indeed confined to one time or land. It is often the ignorant reproach against Germany that its parentage is there, but if it have produced the school of keenest unbelief, it is because it is the home of the highest philosophic power, the noblest learn- ing; and if it have a Baur and a Strauss, it has also a Neander, a Rothe, a Dorner, a host of devout scholars. In its earlier shape rationalism was chiefly an effort to explain away the miraculous character of the Scrip- ture. But after it took a philosophic basis in the Kantian conception of " religion within the bounds of pure reason," it developed rap- idly with the changes of speculative thought, until the work of Strauss gave it its most sci- entific expression. The religion of Christ was only one of the nature-religions of the past. Its divine author was a myth, -wrought out of the fancy of the Jewish believers. Yet there was a brilliant charm to many minds in that stately fabric, which seemed to ideal- ize the deepest truths of Christianity into an absolute religion, while it dismissed its legend. But Avhen at last it resulted in making God only self-consciousness, and im- mortality a dream, it was seen that a ration- al philosophy which denied revelation must end in denying even the spiritual truths it boasts. The gorgeous cloud-laud set in the darkness of atheism. We reach hero the position of our latest rationalism. We need only turn to the views of Strauss in his coarser, later work, or to that romance which Renau has called the "Life of Jesus," to know its type. It has become a destructive criticism. It rests on what it styles the basis of positive science. There, is indeed, in one view a gain, because it has left the ground of myth, and confessed that the per- son and life of Christ are facts too stubborn to deny some historic basis. But the critic deals with these facts wholly by the laws of a natural science. He comes beforehand with the assumption that there is nothing but a fanciful legend in the gospels ; he writes the life of Christ as no more than the history of an Apollonius of Tyaua, or a saint like those of the Roman hagiology. The grander fact of such a being as he stands alone in history, the miracle above all else of his wondrous influence over the race, the ideal yet real perfection of wisdom and grace that shine forth in him, the moral convictions of man- kind that point to and centre in such a Re- deemer, the divinity of a religion that has created a new world of faith and thought and life, all these evidences, as rational as they are sacred, are nothing. Such is the shape of our modern unbelieving wisdom. It has reduced Christianity to that which Baur claims as the solution of the Resurrec- tion a faith, a church built on the delusion of a few fishermen of Galilee. And even this is but one among all delusions. There is no God in history. There is no personal future. There is no human destiny save this eternal change of races and opinions, of religious and social struggles, which came forth from the unknown, blind force of na- ture and return to their nothingness. We stand aghast at the open denial of all reali- ty beyond gases and nervous tissues. Yet I hold we are more indebted than we think to our latest form of unchristian science, for it will prove that a sound Christianity alone can save, as it has done before, not merely revealed truth, but the first principles of all spiritual truth whatever. And thus I reach the last, -weightiest top- ic, the way in which we must defend the faith of Christ against our modern rationalism. I speak it with an earnest conviction that the Christianity we need is that which shall meet it with that science it abuses, and show to a time which asks a clear, positive truth that we are able to give a reason for our faith. Pardon me if I utter with an honest plain- ness my whole mind here. I should do in- justice to the truth if I should fear to ex- pose the error of an irrational belief, as Avell as of unbelief. Although I reverence the heart of piety even in superstition, yet it is folly to forget that the one vice creates the other. I do not care to choose between WASHBURN : EEASON AND FAITH. 259 the fever or the chill when both are al- ternate phases of one intermittent disease There are those to-day, as there have al- ways been, who, in their dread of rational- ism, are ready to deny all jnst principles of criticism in regard of Scripture or of theolo- gy. It is in two forms that the tendency is seen : one the ecclesiastical, in the Roman Church and the self-styled Auglo-Catholic school ; the other the theological, which is more akin to the Protestant mind. Yet at bottom it is the same mistaken conception of faith which leads to both. It is the charge always repeated, that the very principle of Protestantism, the right of free inquiry, must make our faith a thousand-ton gued specu- lation; and that a teaching Church, which through its authorized ministers interprets the Word of God, is the only safeguard. I will not confound with the babble of de- claimers who tell us that Protestantism is a failure, or with our new-made army of monks, who wrap the dead Christ in the ritualistic grave-clothes of the middle age, those thoughtful and devout men who have been misled into this notion of the Church. I will only answer that the right of intelli- gent inquiry does not contradict just author- ity, so long as that authority means, as in all science, that of sound learning. But it is the condition of intellectual and moral life in the Church that its teaching shall be open to criticism. Let the Word of God be in the hands of its doctors only, whose decisions are above question, and call it what you will, the infallibility of a Pontiff, or the voice of the Church, and it becomes the word of man. The infallibility of Scripture is only secure when it is held so divine that it can conquer ciTor. It is in far less peril from varieties of interpretation than from an infallible church. We do not want a faith that comes from the stifling of the mind, for that is credulity ; but the faith that enters with the light. And if I have so met the ecclesiastical claim, I can answer as truly the same spirit when it comes in the shape of a dogmatism that fears the advance of modern critical thought. Nothing can be more fatal to the cause of truth. It is the very weapon the rationalist wants, if he can only show that his criticism, however false, is met by a mere appeal to the accepted tradition. Nay, I know no sadder unbelief in the divinity of our religion than is given by those who, from dread of attack, would fain clothe the truth of God in the Saul's armor of their unproved systems. It is because I believe it of God, I can trust in its intrinsic might ; because it is not a deposit of dogmas, but one living Catholic faith in the mind and heart of the Church ; because I know it is given to be studied through honest effort of the human intellect, and that all its gains have been through struggle, I can know it will con- quer the wildest errors of to-day as in the past. This, then, I affirm to be the aim of a true Christian learning, to bring out those central truths of revelation, in which it addresses the whole spiritual nature of men, and has there its witness. I rejoice in it as the no- blest proof of the advance of our theology, that it has so largely entered on this path of Christian evidence. The main assault of the rationalist is against the miraculous side of revelation, as a legend which science can not admit. We must meet him with that living view which shall show the Gos- pel of the Son of God to be no mere out- ward history of the past, but the same yes- terday, to-day, and forever, because it rests on the living Christ. Although I have all respect for the Paleys, and the Avhole class of apologists of a former day ; although I do not doubt that the external evidences, so-called, have their worth as buttresses of the outer wall, yet I maintain that, for sci- ence as well as faith, the enduring argument of Christianity must be in the inward har- mony of revelation with the design of its- Master-builder. The person and life of Jesus Christ is the one miracle which rationalism can not explain away. It still compels the unwilling homage of the Renaus, as it did the Rousseaus of a former da5". If we stand on that central truth, we have a miracle which gives a reason for all the wonders which attended His mission. That fact alone explains the history of mankind, as it shows in all natural religions the yearn- ings of the human conscience after a Re- deemer, and opens yet more the meaning of a Church, a Christian civilization, which has grown out of the life of the Sou of God. And such a principle, again, will guide us amidst the questions of Biblical interpreta- tion, because it will teach the true distinc- tion between the province of revealed truth and critical science. If we have grasped the one spiritual law of revelation, we shall be in no danger of clinging to some mechan- ical theory of Scripture for fear of losing its substance. The Book of God will be for us no record of astronomy or geology, no chronicle which a verbal criticism can over- throw. It will be the history of a divine redemption. Wo shall read in the record of that ancient people of Israel, its law, its prophecy, as a ripe English scholar now Avith us has done, a preparation for Christ. And last of all, to condense in a few words what I can not enlarge on, yet can not leave, it will be the aim of a Christian learning to bring our theology to the test of that Divine truth which is above and beyond all theolo- gy. I believe it is the grand boon to be gain- ed from all the battles which have been fought for our confessions, that at last we shall arrive at a clearer conviction of their essential harmony. In such a view I cau not look on the past of Latin or Protestant doctrine as a wrangle of needless systems ; 260 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. not even what an ingenious thinker styles it, the robust play of Christian iutellect ; the throwing to and fro the shuttlecock, where all the good lies in the exercise. No, it has been the earnest struggle of all, from Augus- tine to Calvin, in which each has advanced some lost or undeveloped side of truth. But we are to learn that theology and life must go together. It was after the first forma- tive period of the Church, when the mass of scholastic tradition the gold, silver, hay, wood, stubble had covered the foundation, when the metaphysics of the doctors became the creed, and subtle definitions of sin, grace, and sacrament were petrified into idolatry, that there came a divorce between the head and heart of Christendom. The Reforma- tion was an appeal from Aristotle to Christ. And yet we have too often seen repeated the same history. Whenever faith becomes the acceptance of the traditional glosses instead of living truth, it has been changed to an orthodoxy without its moral power. Nor let us forget that there is a most essential kinship between such dogmatism and ration- alism. Rationalism builds its fabric of the- oretical notions, dogmatism does the same : rationalism robs Christianity of all that can touch conscience or affection, dogmatism does the same. Let us learn thoroughly this law of theological ethics. When Neander was asked whence was German unbelief, he answered, the dead orthodoxy. We know it not only in the Lutheran Church, but in that of New England. If ever there was a chapter in doctrinal history to be deeply studied, it is that which reaches from the day of Edwards to that of Channing. As yet it has only been superficially written. American Unitarianism was the just reac- tion against a scholastic divinity, keen, sub- tle, rigid, as that of the middle age, and, like that, creating the intellectual move- ment that opposed it. It was Avhen the truth of the Incarnation had been made a subtle enigma of metaphysics that the Uni- tarian rejected it; when the blessed sacri- fice of the Cross had been explained into some mercantile bargain, that it lost its meaning ; when a subtle theory of the will had been called essential doctrine, that the moral feeling revolted against it. We are to ponder this fact to-day, as it is brought home to us by the peculiar strifes of our re- ligious thought. It is not a theological cul- ture we are to renounce, for this would only end in a creedless indifference, or in that vague mysticism which emasculates the mind. But our hope is in that larger cul- ture which shows us the harmony of all doctrine, and guards us from mistaking the empiric school of one age for an unchan- ging, absolute truth; it is in such studies as a Dorner has given in his " Person of Christ," where we can trace the central fact of Chris- tianity through its manifold expression. And, more, it is in the knowledge that all our human systems are but a dim reflection of that "mind of Christ," of Him whose truth is not a philosophy, but the life of men. This is our power against modern unbe- lief. This is the Christianity we need in a time when the hungering thousands are ask- ing, amidst the questions that touch the be- ing of any revelation nay, the being of God and the soul for a Gospel of positive and living meaning. And I thank God I can hail it as the most significant feature of this great council, although some may very dim- ly see the result, that we are Hearing the age when we shall reach this unity. I thank him for these signs of the time, for every gain o'f our study in his Word, for ev- ery light a Christian science has cast on the record of religion, yes, and even for the tor- rent of unchristian intellect which has left the soil more fertile for the harvests of a better truth, which will force us out of our little shelters of Westminster and Augsburg, of Anglican and Reformed, to meet at last in the city of God, in the confession of the Christ who is not divided. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GOSPEL. BY FELIX BOVET, PH.D., Professor of Theology in the College at Neuchatel, Switzerland; Author of "Voyage eu Terre Sainte," "Histoire du Psautier des eglises Ileformees," "Histoire du Comte Zinzendorf," etc. THE topic of the day is Christianity and its Antagonisms; and you have just been told of the antagonism between faith and reason. My friend and colleague, Professor Godet, who was expected to participate in this discussion, but who unfortunately has been unable to be present, would have spo- ken to you of Christianity and.Numanity, aim- ing to show that, properly viewed, there is no antagonism between them, but that Chris- tianity is the perfection of Humanity redeem- ed from sin and error. Having been invited, on brief notice, to take his place, and thus having had but a limited time for the preparation of what I have to say, I must beg your indulgence. I propose to treat of the precise relation be- tween Christianity and the Gospel, and to show that between these two words, appar- ently synonymous, there is in reality an im- portant distinction ; and that the words Chris- tianity and Christian are insufficient, and, to a certain degree, incorrect, as designating the object of our faith, and as expressing what we are and what we should be. This may appear a discussion of mere words, but different words express a differ- ence of thoughts ; and moreover, in a relig- ion founded upon the written Word of God, words are eminently significant. And first, it is worthy of note that the word Christian is not of Christian origin. Those called Christians were originally so designated by strangers, who gave a name to something they did not and could not un- derstand. The Jews called the disciples of Jesus Galileans or Nazarencs. And when, for the first time, a church was founded by this new sect in one of the large cities of the Gentiles, the Greeks of that city also invent- ed a name to designate those who belonged to it. These dwellers in Antioch (like the Athenians subsequently, Acts xvii.) saw in the Gospel nothing beyond a new doctrine (KO.IVI) didaxrj), and in the new religionists only a philosophical sect similar to those which for six hundred years previous had constantly sprung up in the fertile soil of Greece, and which at that time were becom- ing more and more numerous. They saw that the members of this sect followed a teacher called Christ, as others followed Plato, Py- thagoras, or Epicurus, and hence, quite natu- rally, applied the terms Christianity and Chris- tian, as they did Pythagorean and Epicurean. As to the disciples themselves, they did not at once take the name of Christians, as we see that it is found twice only in the New Testament, and never as a word given to themselves by the members of the Church. Once it is uttered by Agrippa when he says, " Almost thou persuadest me to be a Chris- tian" (Acts xxvi., 28); and again it occurs in the passage in which Peter, alluding to the insulting use that the heathen made of this word, says to his brethren, " If ye be re- proached for the name of Christ, happy are ye Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil doer, or as a busy- body in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a 'Christian, let him not be ashamed ; but let him glorify God for this very name"* (1 Pet. iv., 14-16). The recommendation of the apostle was regarded. This name given by the enemy became a source of glory to God ; but it is the more noticeable that, during the whole of the first century, and even beyond that period, the Church, while accepting it, did not adopt it ; and that it is not even used in those books of the New Testament which seem to have been last written. It could be said, a priori, that these names, Christian and Christianity, invented by hea- then, could not be absolutely correct, aud would throw a light more or less false on what they meant to designate. The appel- lations might, indeed, have been worse chos- en ; because these words contain an element of truth, and an essential element, since they bind the Church not to Barnabas or to Paul, as some were tempted to do at Antioch, and as some also .ire tempted to do in our day, but to Jesus Christ, its true founder, or, to say better, its true foundation. However, they were not without inconvenience; the name Christians seemed to designate, first of all, like the name Aristotelians or Epicu- * 'EV TU> ovonan roiniu, according to the most cor- rect text as found in the most ancient manuscripts (Sinait., Alexandr., Vatican), and in the most ancient translations (Peschito.Vulgata, in isto nomine). 'Ev -rip Hfpet roiirto of the Textus receptus is very interesting, as it proves that at the time of the introduction of this paraphrase it could no more be conceived that the name of xp"-ia<6t had been primitively an insult. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. reana, the men who embraced a certain opin- iou, or even a certain mode of living, rather than a new people, a race engendered of God, a royal priesthood. And the word Christian- ity (Christianismus) gave much less the idea of a gift of God than a certain collection of themes to adopt and precepts to follow. These names were not without influence upon the Church when at a later period it adopted them. The people of priests had a tendency to become a people of theologi- ans, and with us those two ideas have al- most melted into each other. The name Christianity indicating a group of doctrines, it could and must be asked of how many articles of faith it was composed. The Church of the centuries that followed count- ed eighteen symbolic articles ; later, the Ro- inish Church counted its dogmas by hun- dreds (as many as it had canons of coun- cils), and considers it one of its privileges, in every century, to draw new ones out of the treasury of the Holy Scriptures and of tradition. The Reformation stepped back, but did not change its course. The En- glish Church has only thirty-nine articles left. We ourselves, in our Evangelical Al- liance, have begun by adopting nine arti- cles of faith. All this has some reason to be, I admit, but, let us admit it also, that it does not satisfy us entirely, because we feel that these articles of faith are not the true expression of our faith itself, and only rep- resent, for better or worse, the intellectual and abstract side of it. I do not pretend to say, you understand, that these words Christianity and Christian which have come down to us through our fathers, and which have become dear to us, must be abandoned. They belong for many centuries to the language of the Church, and we must accept that language as it is. But have you never noticed that the comparison of a foreign word with a word belonging to our mother tongue helps us sometimes to complete, to rectify, and always to enrich the idea to which it corresponds ? So much the more will this be apparent in the subject that we study at this time, if, forgetting for a moment the name we bear, and which has been given to us by strangers, we will con- sider the name which has been given to our religion by the men from whom we have it, and the name they took for themselves. I have said religion, but this word also they never used.* A great manifestation of life had taken place (according to the ex- pression of John) ; and they told of that which they had seen with their eyes, which they had looked upon, and their hands had handled (1 John i., 1), and they called the The Greek SpnffKe.'a, found only four times in the New Testament, does not correspond to " religion " (as it is translated in Jas. i., 26, 2"), but to "worship- ing" (as it is rendered in Col. ii., 18): testimony which they gave of it the good news, the Gospel. It is not they, however, that had first given this name ; it was the name given by the angels at the time of the birth of the Saviour: The Gospel of great joy.* This is an angelic and heavenly con- ception, and verily true ! This is a name which does not suggest any kind of system, or theory, or dogmatism, not even a dogma- tism given from heaven, but that calls to mind something vastly better than that a gift of God, the good news of God's giving himself to the world, The Gospel of great joy ! As to the names by which the early Chris- tians designated themselves, they are no less characteristic. Besides the honorary titles that the apostles gave them sometimes in their epistles, and which called to their mind their hopes and their privileges ("roy- al priesthood," "purchased people," "chil- dren of God "), we find in the New Testa- ment three names which were used con- stantly in the habitual language to desig- nate those who had believed. These names are saints, disciples, and ln-ethren. The name saint, like the word gospel, re- minds, first of all, of the gift of God ; that is to say, something which is entirely objective. Saint, in the language of the Bible, means set apart.\ Applied to God, it expresses the transcendency of the God of Israel, and his absolute independence of the universe, which is only his creation, in opposition to the God of the Gentiles, who is immanent in nature, and is not distinguished from it. Applied to men, it expresses that they have been made themselves independent of nature, free from its yoke, to which the mass of hu- manity is subjected (Deut. iv., 19), and that they have been consecrated to God. So the saints, or the saints elect, as Paul calls them, are not, as the name Christian would imply, a people who have adopted a doctrine, and have chosen a religion in preference of an- other. No! They are men that God has set apart for himself. A man can make himself Christian as he makes himself He- gelian or Cartesian, Zwinglian or Lutheran, but God makes the saints. The men who are made saints, because they are called of God, must be holy in their life. All grace and all morality are contained in this name. Pelagiauisni, Moliuism, Autiuominianism, and many other aberrations are excluded by this single word. Sancti estis, sancti estote " Ye are saints, be ye holy." But the New Testament does not desig- * Eio^'j'eXifo/uai iiftiv xapiiv n<-fa\riv. I. like ii., 10. t The radix ^*lp was erroneously considered by some authors as analogous to X'UT, " to germinate, to grow green," and by some others as analogous U EJin, "to become new, fresh." The trne analogou of O'lp is Tip, used by the Talmudists in the sense of ccedo, scindo, 113, 2^p, "to cut, to separate, to put aside." BOVET: CHRISTIANITY AND THE GOSPEL. iiatc them only by this name that remem- bers especially that which God. is for them. No ; the uame disciple, so often used, reminds of what they are themselves, of the position they have accepted before the Lord. The name disciple, which means pupil or scholar, obviates many misunderstandings. What constitutes a disciple is not what one knows, not what he has already learned, but what he is to learn still. The most advanced and the least advanced, are the disciples, one like the other, provided they are at school. One is not a disciple when he thinks that he has nothing to learn, or when he imagines that he has learned all. When we think we have inclosed heaven in our measure, and the Gos- pel in our system, we can consider ourselves Christians, but not disciples. Alas ! we, dis- ciples of Jesus like sophomores, who some- times hesitate to treat as fellow-students the freshmen we hesitate to consider as be- longing to us, or more strictly as belonging to Christ, the men (as we find so many in the Church of Rome and in the churches of the East) who only begin to spell the name of Jesus, but who, without knowing yet fully what it means, stammer it already with love, and men (as there are many with us) who are outside of our denominations and churches, but who have already heard in their hearts the Master's voice, and have listened to it without having yet learned to call him by name. Most frequently the disciples or the saints are called in the New Testament brethren. Of these three names the latter is the one which is used moat to this day, but its mean- ing has been lost, perhaps, more than that of any other appellation. It is a remark- able fact that during several centuries the heathen, blinded by their prejudices and hatred, saw in the disciples of Christ only rebels to authority, sometimes atheists, and even disputed the purity of their morals. Only one of their virtues, brotherly love, was in these times never doubted. It shone like the sun above all others, and constrain- ed from their persecutors this cry of aston- ishment, " See how they love each other !" The Word of the Lord had thus its literal fulfillment ; it was in that, in that alone, that all knew his disciples by the love which they had one for the other. In our day and it is sad to see it the phenomenon is reversed, and it can bo said that of all Christian virtues brotherly love is the one that, at first sight, attracts the least attention from the world. I need not go far to seek proofs, and a single one will suffice. If I open one of our Christian pe- riodicals, I see (and the enemies of the Gos- pel would agree to it themselves) that it dis- tinguishes itself from other papers by propri- ety and honesty scrupulously observed, by more respect for authority and more eleva- tion of thought, often even but not always by more generous feelings; but, alas! (I speak of the European religious papers) I find in many of them no less bitterness in the discussion, no less of rash judgments and evil inferences, no less haste in believ- ing evil and in distrusting the good, no more charity and love toward one and the other of the disciples who ought to be as brethren. Protestants and Catholics, High and Low Church, Calviuists and Lutherans, Free- Church men and State-Church men, first appear to the world of our day under the form of actors in a great conflict or an im- mense civil war. What I am sorry to sec I desire that my thought be understood is certainly not this infinite diversity of expressions of Christian sentiment, because this very diversity is a richness. On the contrary, what I deplore is the kind of unity which some try to es- tablish, a factitious and violent unity, to be forced by newspaper anathemas and by bulls in pamphlet form, when the true unity, the sole one worthy of brethren, has been given to us by the Lord : " By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." But is it here, in the midst of this frater- nity that unites us from all the parts of the world in one place is it here, in these days of the feast of the Evangelical Alliance, that we must mourn over this lack of brother- hood? Oh yes, and more than anywhere else, because if the Evangelical Alliance has done many things, if we have cause to re- joice in God for its existence, its very ex- istence proves better than any other thing how far behind we are still of unity in the same manner as that beautiful institution of our times, the International Society for the Relief of the Wounded, proves too well that the "nations are yet in a state of war. The programme of the Evangelical Alliance, its motto, its ideal, is in this word expressing the last will of our Saviour : " That all may be one." How far short does the Evangel- ical Alliance come of uniting all, and how many persist in remaining ontside? And how much the word itself of Evangelical Alliance makes us painfully measure the dis- tance between it and unity! Must not one of onr principal duties in these solemn meetings be to humble our- selves before God for the very need of an Evangelical Alliance? Must wo not, in asking God to bless onr work and our efforts, ask him, above all, to send his Holy Spirit, so that all Christians may be transformed into saints, disciples, and brethren, and that in this way the day may be hastened when the word alliance will not be needed and no mention of it will be made, because unity will be written in the hearts, and that unity will be nothing else but LOVE ! PHILOSOPHICAL SECTION. RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEVEL- OPMENT. BY THE KEY. JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., PRINCETON, N. J., President of the College of New Jersey. I INVITE you into a temple in which are symbols and inscriptions fitted to instruct us as to the true character and history of our world. That temple is not made by hu- man hands, but by him who created the heavens and the earth. It is larger, grand- er, and yet simpler than the rock-cut tem- ples of India, than the columnar vistas of, Egypt, than the cathedrals raised by the piety of the Middle Ages. Some of the great passes in the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas bear some likeness to it in length and height, but they are bare and sterile, -whereas this is covered on both sides with figures full of meaning. At the grand entrance are two forms which arrest the attention. The one on the right consists of two tables of stone, representing law moral and natural. The one on the left is an altar, with flowers and fruit on it, and a bleeding lamb. Here the vista bursts on our view, and extends on till the sides are lost in the dim distance ; but at the farthest end is an object which no distance can lessen the Eock of Ages, with a throne set on it which can not be moved, and the Ancient of Days seated on it, and in the midst "a Lamb as it had been slain;" and midway between the entrance and the end is a cross lifted up and a meek sufferer stretched upon it, but with a halo round his head, and above him, spanning the arch, a rainbow formed by the refraction of the pure white light which streams from him who dwelleth in light that is inaccessible to mortal eyes and full of glory. On each side of this extended gallery are symbolic figures, and these grow out of each other, and carry on a continued history from the past into the future on- ward into eternity. The great limners of the world are busily employed in drawing the pictures in this palace of the great King. I am to engage you for a little while in look- ing at them and reading the inscriptions. I. Those on the Religious Side. They have been written " at sundry times and in divers parts" by holy men as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The first inscription that meets our eye is "In the beginning" the word used by the old Greek philoso- phers when they were inquiring after the origin and principle of all things. How far back into the remote this carries us we can not tell, but then " God created the heavens and the earth." Then we see a brooding darkness, but it is a cloud of seeds from which the worlds are formed. "The earth was without form and void," but the wind of the Spirit blows upon it, and a voice is heard, " Let there be light," and light appears, and henceforth there is systematic order: there is development in order or order in develop- ment, and at the close of each day or period God declares " all things to be very good." As yet there is no sun nor moon ; but there is rotating evening and morning, and the even- ing and the morning constitute the first day we know not of what length, for the clock of time is not yet set up, and the word day often means epoch in Scripture. In the sec- ond day there is the rising of the aerial and the. sinking of the fluid. In the third day the sea is divided from the land ; on the same day life appears, and has a developing power in it, " for the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, whose seed is in itself after his kind." On the fourth, two solid lights appear, and be- come the rulers and dividers of time. When the fifth day rises out of the night, we see the waters bringing forth the moving creat- ures, and we have fishes and fowls, with moving creatures and sea monsters, all with a power of evolution, for the waters bring forth after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind, and are enjoined to multiply and -fill the waters in the sea and the earth. A sixth day dawns, and we see reptiles and beasts, all after their kind ; and in this epoch appears a nobler creature made after the image of God, and with the command to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. This was the special work of Elo- him, the one God with a plural nature, who, on finishing the creation, leaves the living McCOSH : RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTEIXE OF DEVELOPMENT. 265 creatures to develop by the powers with which he has endowed them. Another vision joins on, and we have not Elohim, but the Lord Jehovah, the lawgiver, the covenant-maker ; and we have exhibited to us the relation in which man stands to him. Man is represented as formed out of the dust of the ground, but "with a divine breath breathed into him ; he is put under law, with a promise of life and a threatening of death. We now come to the most myste- rious of all the records. A tempter, indi- cating an earlier fall, suddenly intrudes, and he uses the beast of the field and the lower passions as his instruments ; and henceforth man exhibits devilish propensities of pride and rebellion, on the one hand, and animal propensities of appetite and lust on the oth- er ; and there is sin propagating itself, act- ual sin developing from original sin as a seed, and man driven into a world where are thorns and thistles ; and the multiplication of the race is with sorrow, and man has to earn his bread with the sweat of his face, aud his body has to return to the dust from which it was taken. There now appears a figure with an in- scription containing the whole history of mankind in epitome. You see a Being pos- sessed evidently of superhuman power, but with a truly human nature, having his heel bitten by a serpent, on whoso head he sets his foot and crushes it forever. The attached Avriting is, " I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed aud her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Henceforth there are two seeds, and each develops after its kind, aud they contend and must contend till the good gains the victory. A seed not seeds, as of many, but seed, as of one is developed from the woman, but by a heavenly power, the Holy Ghost, who brought form out of the formless at creation ; and this personage is represented as suffering, as having his heel bruised, and in his suffering destroying the power of evil. Henceforth our world is a scene of contest. Man is warring with the unwilling soil, with privation, disappoint- ment, loss, disease, and death ; one man con- tending Avith another because of conflicting interests and passions ; one race and nation fighting with another ; and a large portion of human history is a history of Avar. To restrain excessive wickedness the earth is visited with a flood as geologists tell us it had often been before but animal pairs are preserved to continue the races, and the rain- bow is made to give assurance to the terri- fied fathers that waters will no more cover the earth. The purpose of God is fulfilled in the scattering of men ; but the people, whereA'er they go, propagate the evil, and change the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, aud " to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." To preserve a seed who may know the truth, a special man and a special seed is set apart. Out of this seed comes the father both of history and poetry, who, in language of un- surpassed simplicity and grandeur, has de- scribed creation, and written the inflexible law in the granite of Sinai, and, himself a prophet, spoken of a greater Prophet to come. Their greatest poet, himself a great warrior, portrays the contest between the good and the evil going on in the world in -warlike imagery ; and, feeling that he himself is not the man to build the spiritual temple, be- cause his hands haA'e been imbrued in blood, points ever to a King who " in his majesty rides prosperously because of truth, meek- ness, and righteousness." There follows a succession of prophets, each with his vision and his parable ; and the grandest of them, whose sentences flow like a river descending from the heights of heaA r en to Avater the plains of earth, speaks of him as wounded, bruised, dying, and in the grave, but seeing the fruit of the travail of his soul, and ex- tending -his dominion till it covers the whole earth as the waters do the channel of the sea. Contemporaneous with these we have typical personages prophets, priests, and kings with their faces shining with light as they look forward to One suspended on the cross, and beyond to the throne of God. In the middle of the ages that great person appears, passing through suffering to conquest, fighting with sin and subduing it, connecting heaven and earth as by a ladder, and as a rainbow spanning the world. Beyond the central figure a new life ap- pears. God comes forth as creator the first time since he rested after creating the heaA-- ens aud the earth. Just as in the prehis- toric ages there had appeared a plant life, and an animal life, and an intellectual life, aud a moral life, so noAV we haA~e a spirit- ual life it is the dispensation of the Spirit. Those who haA r e sat for ages in darkness IIOAV see a great light. A neAv people come forth, not dAvelling in a separate locality, but scat- tered among all people, like salt to preserve, like seed to propagate the life all over the world. With that spiritual life come oth- er forms of good, such as art, and civiliza- tion, and Avideniug comforts, and the cul- tivation of the intellect, and the refining of the feelings. But the soil has still to be plowed and harrowed in order to yield seed and fruit ; the spiritual forces haA'e to meet and OA'ercome obstacles ; and CA r ery good cause before it succeeds has to produce a martyr, out of whose ashes a UCAV life pro- ceeds. Not only so, but there is a contest in eA*cry heart ; " the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other." The cause moves on, as the light comes from the sun in vibrations, as the tides come up upon the land advancing and receding ; but 266 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. on the whole advancing. In the last sym- bolic book we hear a succession of trumpets sounding to call men to the battle, and see vials poured out to destroy the seeds of evil and purify the atmosphere. Many pass to and fro, and knowledge is increased ; agen- cies for good are multiplied, and the king- dom extends till it spreads over the whole earth, which has rest for a thousand years we may suppose a day for a year. Beyond this the vision becomes dim from the dis- tance, but we see the old adversary loosed for a little while, and the earth burned with fire, and the dazzling bright throne of judg- ment set up, and the God-man upon it, and every one giving an account of the deeds done in the body, whether they have been good or whether they have been evil ; and then a separation these descending by their own weight into their own place of black- ness, and those carried up to heaven by their attraction to God, where they join in the song, " Salvation to our God that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb." II. The Scientific Side. Here, as on the other side, we have a body of men busily employed in drawing figures and carving inscriptions, all to throw light on the past and present of our world. They are left to their native powers, and have to work by observation ; they are not kept from error by any special guidance, and much, that they write is laid in colors which fade, or in false colors, which require to be blotted out by those who come after. Still much remains, and shall remain forever, chiseled in the rock and never to be effaced, and this is growing and accumulating. We have, first, lawgivers, who, finding that men are prone to evil, have proclaimed laws more or less perfect to secure obedience. Then there are moralists, from Socrates downward, inscribing on that wall what they have found written on their hearts, and which they regard, if only they read it aright, as a transcript of the holy nature and the supreme will of God. Alongside of them you may notice the broad-browed philoso- phers, from Plato and Aristotle on ward, spec- ulating on fate and chance, and the relation of the universe to God, and demonstrating that man's soul has a conscious unity and personality of which it can never be de- prived. The next group consists of histori- ans, who have given us lively narratives of the great deeds of our world, of the sacri- fices which men have made for kindred and for country, but who have also to record enormous crimes, political feuds, and wars which have deluged the earth with blood. Next and more influential are those who ex- press popular feeling, and have told what this world of men and women is, and have enshrined their thoughts in vrse, that they may be caught more easily and remembered longer. Let us notice the topics of which they treat. The oldest of them, never sur- passed for natural strength, has sung of the wrath of Achilles, and the evil thus wrought. Another, full. of grace, has sung of arms, and of a hero fleeing from a burning city, and crossing a stormy sea to found an empire. In a later age we see one, who, though blind, has seen further than other men, and has painted demoniacal pride, Paradise Lost and Paradise Hegained. Another hand has taken the lyre, and, with old Horace and modern songsters and satirists, has delinea- ted the loves and the hatreds, the hopes and disappointments, the joys and sorrows, the aspirations and foibles, which agitate men's bosoms. A third class, led by our high- browed dramatist, have exhibited on a stage what they believe to be the swaying motives of rich and poor, and have let us into the se- crets of the working of ambition, passion, jealousy, pride, vanity, envy, revenge, ca- price, fear, despair. The poet of the com- mon people, in describing their joys, often sensual and mad, comes to the conclusion that " man is made to mourn." Romancers in these late years are taking up the same work, and are spinning tales which exhibit the strength and weakness of our nature yearning affections, blighted hopes, cruel be- trayals illustrated by seduction and mur- der. All of these artists describe this earth as a strangely mixed scene, with hills and hollows, with lakes sleeping in visible re- pose or rent by storms, with peaceful valleys and terrible gullies, with streams flowing gently and then pouring over fearful cata- racts, with an ocean now inviting us to re- pose on its bosom, and anon tossing off men and vessels like seaweed. But let us specially look at the grand truths inscribed by the expounders of sci- ence, as you see them there with their in- struments for weighing and measuring, and their laborious calculations. On the relig- ious side every thing was ascribed to God, proceeding orderly : " Thou hast established the earth and it abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances ; for all are thy servants." A somewhat different but not inconsistent view is given of the same objects on the scientific side, where every thing is ascribed to what is called Law, which, however, when properly understood, implies a lawgiver. So these men, conscious- ly or unconsciously, are unfolding to our view the plan of the great Creator. On this side of the hall of science you see inscribed, first, mathematical figures, such as squares, triangles, circles, spirals, and other sections of the cone, and it turns out that these regulate the forms and movements of objects in the heavens and in the earth, and are made to do so by a God who, as Plato says, geometrizes. Then you see science investigating inani- mate nature, and showing that all the phys- ical forces are modifications of one and the McCOSH: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT. 2G7 same force. Now it is seeking to discover the order and progression of animated be- ings, of plants and animals. It has shown that there are geological epochs : first an azoic period; then plants, marine and ter- restrial ; then the lower creatures with ani- mal life ; then fishes, fowls, reptiles, quad- rupeds ; and, finally, man. In looking at these phenomena, men dis- cover every where development or evolution. It appears in inanimate nature in suns, planets, and moons being evolved out of an original matter, in a way which implies that the earth is older than the sun, and must have existed for ages, and had light shining upon it before the sun took his solid form. It is a characteristic of organized beings to produce others after their kind. Those who view development in the proper light see in it only a form or manifestation of law. Grav- itation is a law of contemporaneous nature extending over all bodies simultaneously over sun, moon, and stars the most remote. Development is a law of successive nature, and secures a connection between the past and the present, and I may add the future, securing a unity, and it may be a progres- sion, from age to age. It is merely an ex- hibition of order running through successive ages, as the other is of order running through coexisting objects. But at this point difficulties and disputes arise. Is development so restricted that the plant and animal produces an offspring only after its kind: the lichen producing only the lichen, and the lily only the lily, and the oak only the oak, and the worm only the worm, and the bee only the bee, and the horse only the horse. Or may not develop- ment be so extended as to imply, in new cir- cumstances and under new conditions, a modification of kinds, that is, new species, and an advance from age to age from lower to higher forms. Some maintain that there is no power in nature to change species, and that when a new species appears it must be by an immediate fiat of God acting inde- pendently of all natural agents. Others hold that there may be powers in nature relig- ious men say conferred by God which grad- ually raise species into higher forms by ag- gregation and selection. I am not sure that religion has any interest in holding abso- lutely by the one side or other of this ques- tion, which it is for scientific men to settle. I am not sure that religion is entitled to in- sist that every species of insect has been created by a special fiat of God, with no sec- ondary agent employed. But in prosecuting these investigations science comes to walls of adamant, which will not fall down at its command, and which, if it tries to break through, will only prostrate it, and cause it to exhibit its weak- ness before the world. (1) It can not de- velop without a matter to develop from, and it can not tell where this original matter came from. This matter must have proper- ties: what are these properties? and whence? The impression left by the statement of some is that, if we only had this original matter, every thing else could be account- ed for by evolution. But (2) we can not, apart from a designing mind, account for that combination, that organization of agen- cies mechanical, electrical, chemical, vi- tal which produces development. (3) It can not say how animal sensation or feeling came in. (4) It can not tell when or how instinct came in, how or when intelligence appeared, and affection and pity and love, and the discernment of good and evil. (5) In particular, it can not render any account of the production of man's higher endow- ments, his powers of abstracting, generaliz- ing, and reasoning, from the individual ob- jects presented to him, of discovering neces- sary truth, and the obligation of virtue. Science has not found these in the star-dust, nor were they in the ascidian, the fish, the monkey : how, then, did man get them, or, rather, whence came man as possessed of them. Science, at all these places, comes to chasms which it can not fill up. It has no facts whatever to support its theories, and is obliged to acknowledge that it has none; and as to the hypotheses which it calls in, they do not even seem to explain the essen- tial facts, the appearance of new powers or agencies not known to be at work before. But meanwhile, and as it is poring into these things, it is obliged to look at a set of phenomena unknown to or overlooked by the older physicists and naturalists; has, as it looks to animated beings, come in view of a conflict of which it can give no account, and of a manifest evil. It speaks of worlds coming out of star-dust, of worlds shattered into fragments, and their materials scattered into space ; and in regard to our earth, of upheavals, of sinkings of laud, and the sub- mergence of all living beings on it ; of floods, of denudations, of volcanoes, of icebergs, and long periods of shivering cold. All these might not be evils, but then it speaks of what is and must be an evil of the existence of pain. When living beings appear, it can not tell how, it is obliged to speak of a struggle for existence, the stronger devouring the weaker, and innumerable diseases preying on the animal frame, of individuals dying, and races perishing from want of sustenance or amid overwhelming convulsions. When man appears, it can not tell how, but on a scene evidently prepared for him, ho carries the seeds of disease in his very person, and he has to suffer pain of body and torture of mind. Around him are storms to destroy and disappointments crossing his path, and within are selfishness and craving lusts and repiniugs and passions, which war against each other, and war against the soul. 268 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. True, there arc in all these objects law ami order and beneficence, obvious and press- ing itself on the notice. Forces, blind in themselves, are made by their combination to produce the most perfect mathematical figures. Beauty appears every where iu sky and earth, in planet and plant. Every organ of the animal frame is good in itself, and liable to accomplish its evident pur- pose. There is order in star and sun and earth, but order coming out of disorder.' It is beauty iu flower, in young man and maid- en coming out of dust and returning to dust; wo see it in that foliage, so beautiful even when it is fading ; does not the father feel it when he commits the body of his son to the grave, "dust to dust, ashes to ashes." Man has high aspirations, but it is only to feel how far he falls beneath them. All these are facts quite as much so as the move- ments of the planets in elliptic orbits, as the laws of development in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The proudest think- ers, as they are brought face to face with these facts, are obliged to acknowledge that they can not discover a final cause in many of the most common agents of nature ; as, for instance, in the derangement to which every organ of the frame is liable, and in the parasites which dwell iu and feed on the bodies of all our noblest animals. The mi- croscope shows us how exquisitely they are formed, but all to inflict the more excrucia- ting pain. We may apologize for some of these things, but we can not explain them for instance, the existence of incurable sor- row and madness. Physiologists know that the organs of the body the eye, the stomach, the liver, the brain might have been so con- structed as not to be liable to disease and pain, to which they are exposed, not by ac- cident, but by their very nature and struct- ure. Combined science, as it looks into the future, is obliged to tell us that the world and all that is therein shall first have its heat exhausted, and then, in the disintegra- tion, shall be burned with fire ; and what the new order of things to issue out of this ele- mental fire it can not tell. Now this is, in fact, the sum of what sci- ence has been able to say abont our world : Our cosmos rises out of dust, is formed into beautiful shapes by warriug powers, be- comes order and progressive order, and ends iu dissolving heat. Our earth comes out of a cloud and ends in a conflagration. The highest being, as he enters it, makes known his presence by a cry, and ends his march through it in the grave. Surely iu all this, while there is much in the evident order and beneficence to elevate, there is not a little to awe and to humble us. The profoundest thinkers feel that they have come here to an -unknown power behind and beneath all, and are impelled under a choking feel- ing to cry ont, like the dying Goethe, for light, and for windows to be opened to let it in. Meanwhile that other and higher law, the moral law the law written on the heart has something very important to utter, and it pronounces it in the name of God, the law- giver. It affirms of itself that it is unbend- ing as stone, and yet finds that man has broken it. It points emphatically to a judg- ment to come it can not say w r here or when, but certain to come as certain as that there is a law, an eternal law, and a God to guard it. The scene closes with each one placed before that bar to give an ac- count of the deeds done in the body, whether they have been good, or whether they have been evil ; and there it leaves him, in the midst of the conflagration of worlds, with undying matter taking new shapes, and a soul certainly as undying as that matter ready to be consigned to its own place of light or of darkness. III. Having taken a cursory glance at each of the sides of this rock-cut gallery, let us now look back upon the two. We see in a general way that there is a correspondence between them. In both wo have moral law set forth in the one by the conscience, in the other by the commands and prohibitions in Eden, by the tables of stone on Mount Sinai, and by the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. But there is this im- portant difference : the one tells us that the law has been broken, and in proof points to the wickedness in the world, and the guilty remorse which agitates men's bosoms, but reveals no way by which the sin can be for- given ; whereas the other, while it declares that sin has been committed, clearly makes known a way by which the sinner may be reconciled to God. Both reveal order in the world : the one as appointed by God ; the other as discovered by man. In both we have pro- gression in the divine workmanship, and the order, as Dr. Gnyot has shown, is very much the same. The Bible says that after man was made God rested from creation, and Dr. Dana assures us that since man appeared ge- ology does not disclose a single new species of plant or animal. It is surely a curious cir- cumstance that this picture of the formation of our earth was drawn upward of three thousand years before geology started, and has continued unchanged amid the shiftings of science. The inspired record tells us, what anthropology confirms, that man has a two- fold nature a body formed out of the dust of the ground, and a spirit after the image of God breathed into him. Nor is there any contradiction as to chronology. For, first, geology has no clock to tell us the time what it reveals is not absolute, but relative. It tells us that a certain epoch must have been before another epoch ; but its deduc- tions are very uncertain as to how far back any one epoch say the glacial epoch car- McCOSH: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT. 269 ties us. These uncertainties have been in- creased by the discoveries lately made by Dr. Wyville Thomson and Dr. Carpenter, of creatures now living in the deep seas which geologists, if they had found them as fossils, would at once have ascribed to a much ear- lier epoch. And as to Scripture, it contains no inspired chronology of early ' history : what passes as such is drawn out of Bible genealogies by fallible men, and drawn out of imperfect data, for Jewish scholars tell us that these genealogies were never under- stood as being complete ; and the genealo- gies, when summed up, give us in the He- brew text, 1656 years between the Creation and the Flood, whereas the Septuagint gives us 2262 years, and the Samaritan text only 1307 years. At this stage the Scriptural record opens a new and strange phenomenon to appear in the universe of God : it furnishes a glimpse of an early rebellion ; for one comes on the scene to tempt the first human pair. At the corresponding period science gives intima- tions of a struggle in which we see warring elements, and a gradual evolution of planets and satellites, the sun consolidated into a centre, and capable of being seen from the earth ; and when living beings appear sci- ence can not tell how we fiud animals de- vouring one another: the strong, with their terrible fangs and jaws, prevailing ; the weak disappearing through, disease and death, ac- companied with brute passion and pain. History and biography come in to tell us how much of human activity has been spent in feuds among individual families and na- tions. Poetry and, at a later date, romance take up the theme, and they delineate the hopes and fears and pas'sions of our nature, and our bosoms beat responsive to their de- scriptions. We feel that the Scriptures speak profoundly and truly when they say : " For the earnest expectation of the creature (or creation) waiteth for the. manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of cor- ruption into the glorious liberty of the chil- dren of God, for we kuow that the whole creation (creature) groaneth in pain togeth- er until now" (Roin.viii., 19-22). The same apostle describes the internal struggle (Rom. vii., 14-20) : " To will is present with me ; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Our world is not what some describe it. It is not what the rationalist would have it a peaceful landscape, with nothing but or- der and beauty. It forces upon our observa- tion scenes which the expounders of natural theology and your Unitarians, who, dis- carding inspiration, would fall back on nat- ural religion are unwilling to look at ; and the opponents of religion, natural and re- vealed, are right when they say that it is difficult or impossible to discover final cause in every thing in the liability of every member of the body to disease, in pain often amounting to anguish, in sorrow which re- fuses to be comforted, in despair issuing in suicide. The last of the great series of Ger- man speculators, which began with Leibnitz and was continued by Kant and Hegel, ter- minated with Schopenhauer and Hartmann, who have dwelt on the natural evils of terri- ble power and prevalence found every where in the world ; and the speculative philosophy which began with optimism has ended with pessimism, audaciously avowed and gaining not a few followers. The great living spec- ulator of England, belonging to a very differ- ent school to that of observation main- tains that this world gives evidence of noth- ing beyond itself, except a great unknown out of which all things have come. Nor is our world what the sentimentalist dreams of, all sunshine and hope all gratification, and gayety. We live in a world where " day and night alternate ;" where the evening and the morning constitute the first day, and the second day, and so on ; where every man goes accompanied with his shadow, which he can not leave behind nor overleap ; and every one, sooner or later, will have to taste of bereavements, ingratitude, ill usage, and carries within him a fire of fear, lust, and envy, ready to burst into a conflagration and burn up the soul, as fire is to burn up our world. Look now at this picture and now at that, and say whether they do not answer as face auswereth to face in a glass, differ- ing from each other only as one twin broth- er differeth from another. All that science has demonstrated, all that theism has argued, of the order, of the final cause and benevolent purpose in the world is true, and can not be set aside. Every nat- ural law mechanical, chemical, and vital is good. Every organ of the body, when free from disease, is good. There is certainly the most exquisite adaptation in the eye, how- ever we may account for its formation, and for the numerous diseases which seize upon it. Agassiz has shown, by an induction of facts reaching over the whole history of the animal kingdom, that there is plan in the succession of organic life. " It has the cor- respondence of connected plan. It is just that kind of resemblance in the parts so much and no more as always characterizes intellectual work proceeding from the same source. It has that freedom of manifesta- tion, that independence, which characterizes the work of mind, as compared with the work of law. Sometimes in looking at the epos of organic life in its totality, carried on with such care and variety, and even playfulness of expression, one is reminded of the great conception of the poet or musician, 270 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. where the undertone of the fundamental harmony is heard beneath all the diversity of rhythm or song." All this is true, but all this is not all the truth. What the older scientific men did not see what Newton did not see, as ho looked to the perfect order of the heavens what Cuvier did not see, when he dwelt so fondly on the teleology seen in every part of the animal structure what Paley did not see, when he pointed out the design in every bone, in every joint and muscle what Chalmers did not see, when in his astronomical discourses he sought to reconcile the perfection of the heavens with the need of God's providing a Saviour for men has been forced on our notice, as nat- uralists have been searching into animal life, with its struggles and its sufferings. There is order in our world, but it is order subor- dinating conflicting powers. There is good- ness but goodness overcoming evil. There is progression but progression like that of the ship on the ocean, amid winds and waves. There is the certainty of peace but after a battle and a victory. There may be seen every where an overruling pow- er in bringing good out of evil ; so that Schopenhauer, in noticing the evil, has no- ticed only a part, and this only a subordi- nate part of the whole and this to be ulti- mately swallowed up. While they have seen the phenomenon, these men have not known what to make of it. It is useless to tell the younger natural- ists that there is no truth iu the doctrine of development, for they know that there is truth, which is not to be set aside by denun- ciation. Religious philosophers might be more profitably employed in showing them the religious aspects of the doctrine of de- velopment ; and some would be grateful to any who would help them to keep their old faith in God and the Bible with their new faith in science. But we must at the same time point out the necessary limits of the doctrine, and rebuke those unwise because conceited men who, when they have made a few observations iu one department of physical nature, being commonly profound- ly ignorant of every other particularly of mental and moral science imagine that they can explain every thing by the one law of evolution. Bnt there is a large and im- portant body of facts which these hypoth- eses can not cover. Development implies an original matter with high endowments. Whence the original matter ? It is acknowl- edged, by its most eminent expounder, that evolution can not account for the first ap- pearance of life. Greatly to the disappoint- ment of some of his followers, Darwin is obliged to postulate three or four germs of life created by God. To explain the contin- uance of life, he is obliged to call in a pan- genesis, or universal life, which is just a vague phrase for that inexplicable thing life, and life is just a mode of God's action. Plants, the first life that appeared, have no sensation. How did sensation come iu? Whence animal instinct T Whence affection the affection of a mother for her offspring, of a patriot for his country, of a Christian for his Saviour ? Whence intelligence ? Whence discernment of duty as imperative ? It is felt by all students of mental science that Darwin is weak when he seeks to ac- count for these high ideas and sentiments. Careful, as being so trained, iu noticing the minutest peculiarities of plants and animals, and acquainted as he has made himself with the appetites and habits of animals, he seems utterly incapable of understanding man's higher capacities and noble aspirations of seeing how much is involved in conscious- ness, in personal identity, in necessary truth, in unbending rectitude; he explains them only by overlooking their essential peculiar- ities. It is allowed that geology does not show an unbroken descent of the lower ani- mals from the higher ; on the contrary, it is ever coming to breaks, and, in the case of a number of tribes of the lower animals, the more highly organized forms appear first, and are followed by a degeneracy. It is ac- knowledged that in the historical ages we do not see such new endowments coming iu by natural law the plant becoming animal, or the monkey becoming man. That matter should of itself develop into thought is a position which neither observation nor rea- son sanctions. Science gives no countenance to it. Common-sense turns away from it. Philosophy declares that this would be an effect without a cause adequate to produce it. But these inquiries have brought us face to face with a remarkable body of facts. The known effects in the world the order, beauty, and beneficence point to the nature and character of their cause ; and this not an unknown God, as Herbert Spencer maintains, but a known God. " The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made, even his eternal power and God- head." But in the very midst of the good there is evil : the good is show r u iu removing the evil, in relieving suffering, in solacing sorrow, and conquering sin. Evil, properly speaking, can not appear till there are ani- mated beings, and as soon as sentient life ap- pears there is pain, which is an evil. It does look as if in the midst of arrangements con-' trived with infinite skill there is some de- rangement. It may turn out that, the Bible doctrine, so much ridiculed in the present day, of there being a Satan, an adversary, op- posed to God and good, has a deep foundation in the nature of things, even as it has a con- firmation in our experience without and within us, where we find that when we would do good, evil is present with us. The old Persians had a glimpse of the truth, prob- McCOSH: RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT. 271 ably derived from a perverted tradition, aud confirmed by felt experience, when they placed in the universe a power opposed to God; but they misunderstood the truth when they made that power coeval and coequal with God ; and the old Book, which some are regarding as antiquated, may be telling the exact truth when it tells us that sin is a re- bellion to be subdued, aud in the end ever- lastingly cast out. How curious, should it turn out that these scientific inquirers, so laboriously digging in the earth, have, all unknown to themselves, come upon the miss- ing link which is partially to reconcile nat- ural and revealed religion. Our English Ti- tan is right when he says that at the basis of all phenomena we come to something un- known aud unknowable. He would erect au altar to the uuknown God, and Professor Huxley would have the worship paid there to be chiefly of the silent sort. But a Jew, born at Tarsus, no mean city in Greek phi- losophy, and brought up at the feet of Ga- maliel but subdued, on the road to Damas- cus, by a greater teacher than any in Greece or Jewry told the men of Atheus, who had erected an altar to the unknown God, " Whom ye iguorautly worship, him I declare unto you." It does look as if later science had come in view of the darkness brooding on the face of the deep without knowing of the wind of the Spirit which is to dispel it, and divide the evil from the good, and issue in a spiritual creation, of which the first or nat- ural creation was but a type. We do not as yet see all things reconciled between these two sides the side of Script- ure and the side of science. But we see enough to satisfy us that the two correspond. It is the same world, seen under different as- pects. Wo see in both the most skillful ar- rangement ; we are told in both of some de- rangement. Both reveal a known God ; both bring us to an unknown source of evil. But with the sameness there is a difference. The relation is .not one of identity, but of corre- spondence ; like that of the earth to the con- cave sky by which it is canopied ; like that of the movement of the dial on earth to that of the sun in heaven. On this side is a wail from the deepest heart of the sufferer ; 011 that side there is consolation from the deep- est heart of a comforter. On the one side is a cry like that of the young bird when it feels that it has wandered from its dam ; on the other, a call like that of the mother bird, as you may hear her in the evening, to bring her wandering ones under her wings. You may notice on that side a bier, with a corpse laid out upon it of a youth, the only son of his mother, and she a widow ; on that other side the same picture, but with one touching the bier, and the dead arises and is in the embraces of his mother. On this side you see a sepulchre, and all men in the end con- signed to it, and none coming out of it ; on the other side you see the great stone rolled away, and hear a voice, " He is not here ; he is risen." The grand reconciliation is effect- ed by that central figure standing in the mid- dle of the ages, by him who has " made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him, I say, whether they be thiugs 011 earth or things in heaven." We have been able to take only a very cursory glance at the inscriptions on the wall of this temple. It. is the aim of all learning, sacred aud secular, to enable us to read aud comprehend them. The superscrip- tion over the central figure was in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, that the people of all countries may read it, and that we may proclaim it in every language. In the great contest going on without and within, every man must be on the one side or the other ; let us see that we be on the right side. It is the aim of the Evangelical Alliance to combine the powers for good, in order to overthrow the powers of evil. PRIMITIVE MAN AND REVELATION. BY J.W.DAWSON,LL.D., Principal of McQill College, Montreal. THE battle-ground of opposition in the name of science and philosophy to the Holy Scriptures is ever changing, but in modern times most of it, in so far as science is con- cerned, has centred on the early history of the earth and man as contained in Genesis. One portion of this controversy may be held to be disposed of. The geological record is so manifestly in accordance with the Mosaic history of creation, that to all those (unfor- tunately as yet too few) who have an ade- quate knowledge of both stories, the antici- pation of our modern knowledge of astron- omy, physics, and geology in the early chap- ters of Genesis is so marked as to constitute a positive proof of inspiration. Eecent dis- coveries and hypotheses have given another turn to the discussion, and have directed it to questions relating to primitive man, and the connection of the modern period with previous geological eras. Man, we are told, is a descendant of inferior animals. His primitive condition was one of half-brutal barbarism. His rise to the actual position of humanity was through countless ages of progressive development, extending over pe- riods vastly longer than those of sacred his- tory. These doctrines, supported by much plausible show of proof, are given forth by popular writers as ascertained results of sci- entific research, and we are asked to accept a new Genesis, shorn of all the higher spir- itual features of that with which we are fa- miliar, holding forth 110 idea of individual life and salvation, but only a dim prospect of some elevation of the race as the result of an indefinite struggle for existence in the future. Many good men are naturally anxious as to whereto this may grow, and whether we are not on the brink of a decided breach be- tween the Word of God and the study of the earliest human remains. My own belief is that the doctrines of the antiquity and de- scent of man, as held by the more extreme evolutionists, have attained to their maxi- mum degree of importance, and that hence- forth the more advanced speculators must retrace their steps toward the old beliefs, leaving, however, some most valuable facts in explanation of the early history of man. The subject is too extensive to allow of a full exposition of my reasons for this belief in the time to which this address must be limited, but I may refer to a few of the most recent facts in proof of my statement. The physical characters of the known specimens of primitive men are unfavorable to the doctrine of evolution. Theories of derivation would lead us to regard the most degraded races of men as those nearest akin to the primitive stock ; and the oldest remains of man should present decided approxima- tion to his simian ancestors. But the fact is quite otherwise. With the exception of the celebrated Neanderthal skull, which stands alone, and is of altogether unascertained date, the skulls of the most ancient Euro- pean men known to us are comparable with those of existing races ; and, further, the great stature and grand development of the limbs in those of the most ancient skeletons which are entire, or nearly so, testify to a race of men more finely constituted physic- ally than the majority of existing Europeans. The skull found by Schmerliug in the cave of Eugis, associated with the bones of the mammoth and other extinct animals, is of good form and large capacity, and presents characters which, though recalling those of some European races, also resemble those of the native races of America. The bones de- scribed by Christy and Lartet, from the cave of Cro-Magnon, in France, represent a race of great stature, strength, and agility, and with a development of brain above the Euro- pean average ; but the lines of the face show a tendency to the Mongolian and American visage, and the skeletons present peculiari- ties in the bones of the limbs found also in American races, and indicating, probably, ad- diction to hunting and a migratory and act- ive life. These Cro-Magnon people lived at an epoch when France was overgrown with dense forests, when the mammoth probably lingered in its higher districts, and when a large part of the food of its people was fur- nished by the reindeer. Still more remark- able, perhaps, is the fossil man as he has been called of Mentone, recently found in a cave in the south of France, buried under cavern accumulations which bespeak a great antiquity, and associated with bones of ex- tinct mammalia and with rudely fashioned implements of flint. It appears from the careful descriptions of Dr. Riviere that this man must have been six feet high, and of vast muscular power, more especially in his legs, which present the same American pe- culiarities already referred to in the Cro- Magnon skeletons. The skull is of great ca- DAWSON: PRIMITIVE MAN AND REVELATION. 273 pacity, the forehead full, and the face though broad and Mongolian, and large- boned is not prognathous, and has a high facial angle. The perfect condition of the teeth, along -with their being worn perfectly flat on the crowns, would imply a healthy and vigorous constitution, and great longev- ity, with ample supplies of food, probably vegetable ; while the fact that the left arm had been broken and the bone healed, shows active and possibly warlike habits. Such a man, if he were to rise up again among us, might perhaps be a savage, but a noble sav- age, with all our capacity for culture, and presenting no more affinity to apes than we do. If the question be asked, What precise re- lation do these primitive European men bear to any thing in sacred history ? we can only say that they all seem to indicate one race, and this allied to the old Turanian stock of Northern Asi#, which has its outlying branch- es to this day both in America and Europe. If they are antediluvians, they show that the old Nephelim and Gibbovim of the times before the flood were men of great physical as well as mental power, but not markedly distinct from modern races of men. If they are post-diluvians, then they reveal similar qualities to those of the old Rephaiin and Anakim of Palestine, who not improbably were of Turanian stock. In any case, they may well have points of historical contact with the Bible, if we were better informed as to their date and distribution. I have referred to European facts only, but it is remarkable that in America the old- est race known to us is that of the ancient Alleghans and Toltecans and their allies ; and that these, too, were men of large stat- ure and great cranial development, and were agricultural and semi-civilized, their actual position being not dissimilar from that attrib- uted to the earliest cultivators of the soil in the times of Adam or Noah. So far the facts bearing on the physical and mental condition of primitive man are not favorable to evolution, and are more in accordance with the theory of divine crea- tion, and with the statements of the sacred record. Recent facts with reference to primitive man show that his religious beliefs were sim- ilar to those referred to in Scripture. The whole of the long isolated tribes of America held to a primitive monotheism, or belief in a Great Spirit, who was not only the creator and ruler of the heaven and earth, but had the control of countless inferior spirits Manitous, or ministering angels. They also believed in an immortality, and a judgment of all men beyond the grave. Hence arose in various forms the doctrine of guardian manitous, represented by totems or teraphim, and watching over individuals, families, and places. Heuco arose also the practice of 18 burying with the dead the things he had valued in life, as likely, in the vague imag- inings of the untaught mind, to be useful in the other world. Their traditions also em- braced, in various and crude forms, the idea of a mediator or intercessor between God and man. No one who studies these beliefs of the American tribes can fail to recognize in them the remnants of the same primitive theology which we have in the patriarchal age of the Bible, and more or less in the re- ligions of all ancient peoples of whom we have historical record. I may say here in passing that the tenacity with which the red man of America has clung, in his barbarism and long isolation, to remnants of primitive truth, is an additional reason why we should strive to give him a purer gospel. With reference to the prehistoric men, known to us only by their bones and imple- ments, it may not be possible to discover their belief as to the unity of God ; but we have distinct evidence on the other points. On the oldest bone, implements some of them made of the ivory of the now extinct mammoth we find engraved the totems or manitou marks of their owners, and in some cases scratches or punctures indicating the offerings made or successes and deliver- ances experienced under their auspices. With regard to the belief in immortality, perhaps also in a resurrection, the Mentone man whose burial is perhaps the oldest known to us was interred with his fur robes, and his hair dressed as in life, with his ornaments of shell, wampum on his head and limbs, and with a little deposit of oxide of iron, where- with to paint and decorate himself with his appropriate emblems. Nor is he alone in this matter. Similar provision for the dead appears at Cro-Magnon and the cave of Bruniquel. Thus the earliest so-called palaeo- lithic men entertained beliefs in God and in immortality perhaps the dim remains of primitive theism, perhaps the result of their perception of the invisible things of God in the works that he had made. The antiquity of man as revealed by his prehistoric remains has probably been great- ly exaggerated. A careful study of the latest edition of " The Antiquity of Man," by Sir C. Lyell, in which that great geologist has summed up all the scattered evidence oti this point, must leave this impression. The par- ticular facts adduced are individually doubt- ful, and susceptible of different interpreta- tions, though collectively they present an imposing appearance ; and many of them have been weakened by recent observations and discoveries. American analogies teach xis as I propose to show in papers soon to be published that undue importance has been attached to the distinctions of neolithic and palaeolithic ages. The physical changes which have taken place since the advent of man have been measured by standards inap- 274 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. plicable to them, and the extinct quadru- peds of the later post -pliocene period may have lived nearer to our time than has been supposed. No human remains have been found in beds older than the close of the so- called glacial period, and the earlier indica- tions succeeding this period are not actual bones of men, but only rude implements, some of which are possibly naturally shaped stones, and others have had their antiquity exaggerated by misapprehension as to the mode of their occurrence. It is, however, probable that the investi- gations now in progress will establish the fact that in the earlier part of man's resi- dence on the Old Continent ho was contem- porary with many great quadrupeds now ex- tinct, and that some of them, as well as some races of men, may have perished in a great continental subsidence which occurred early in the modern or human period. Both of these conclusions will, I think, bring them- selves finally into harmony with the Biblical account of the antediluvian world, notwith- standing the strenuous opposition of the large party opposed to any correlation of natural and spiritual truth. Science may soon enable us to account for the divergence of mankind into permanent races in a way more satisfactory than here- tofore. It has hitherto been a stumbling- block with many in the doctrine of the unity of man, that we find evidence of distinctness of race as great as at present in early Egyp- tian monuments. Modern ideas of deriva- tion have swept away this objection, but they have not failed to demand an enormous lapse of time for the early development of these races. A new law is, however, coming into view, which may render this unneces- sary. It is that species, when first intro- duced, have an innate power of expansion, which enables them rapidly to extend them- selves to the limits of their geographical range, and also to reach the limits of their divergence into races. These limits once reached, the races run on in parallel lines un- til they one by one run out and disappear. According to this law, the most aberrant races of men might be developed in a few cent- uries, after which divergence would cease, and the several lines of variation would re- main permanent, at least so long as the con- ditions under which they originated remain- ed. This new law, which was hinted at long ago by Hall, the palaeontologist of New York, I have myself further illustrated, and it will probably altogether remove one of the imagined necessities for a 'great antiquity of man. It may prove also to be applicable to language as well as to physical charac- ters. I have given above only a few examples out of many which may be adduced that the results of natural science as applied to man, however they may at first seem to conflict with the truth of God, will ultimately come into harmony with it. One object in referring to these subjects here has been to invite the attention of Chris- tians to certain errors in the treatment of such subjects which I observe to be preva- lent, and which I think every Christian man of science must sincerely deprecate. The first is the hasty reception of broad popular statements of leading scientists, as if they were received and proved conclusions. Nearly every new scientific fact and princi- ple is at first only imperfectly understood and partially misapplied ; and statements much too unguarded are often made by en- thusiastic votaries of particular specialties. The second is the resting content Avith the shallow assertion that the Bible need not be in harmony with Nature. The Bible is not a text-book of science, nor are spiritual truths always directly reconcilable at first with natural truths. But theBible, as a Book of God, can not outrage Nature, and there are necessary harmonies between the natural and the spiritual. Weak admissions that the Bible accommodates itself to errors as to Nature may save the theologian the trouble of inquiry, and may be welcomed by men of science as setting them free from dogmatic trammels; but the earnest votary of science who is not a Christian despises those who make these admissions, and re- gards their doctrine as worthless. A third is the connection of ancient super- stitions or modern ecclesiastical expediencies with God's Word. Science is in its nature hostile to superstition, to ritualism, and to hypocritical expediency; while merely ex- ternal and sesthetical modes of dealing with mental and moral interests it must always reject as vulgar folly. It is a fearful crime against the souls of men so to connect such things with the truth of God that men of high culture are repelled from what might otherwise awe them by its moral elevation, or attract them by its spiritual beauty. I believe that much of the antagonism of men of science is really excited by accessories which are not of God, but the growth of hu- man device in darker ages of the world. I would not ask the Christian to accommodate his creed to any requirements of the science or literature of our day. That would be an equally fatal error. What I ask is that the Scriptural truth may be presented unmixed with extraneous matters, which are not of the Bible but of man. Lastly, the Christian must not despise as unworthy of attention the current scientific doctrines on such subjects. If the missionary think it necessary to study the beliefs of the rudest tribes that he may better teach them the truth, surely we must not ignore the latest results of the intellectual work of the most cultivated men, which in any case are sure to influence the mind of the time, DAWSON: PRIMITIVE MAN AND REVELATION. 275 and which, properly treated, must yield pos- itive results for the cause of God. The scientific infidel is not always a wrong- doer to be put down. He is often a very darkened soul, struggling for light, and sometimes driven back from it by the follies and inconsistencies of Christians. The la- mentable and growing separation between those who study God's works and those who believe in his Word is not all of it the fault of the scientist. The theologian will be held responsible for so much of it as may result from his adulterating the Water of Life with unwholesome earthly elements. COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE; OR, THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE. BY PROFESSOR ARNOLD HENRY GUYOT, LL.D., PRIXCETON, N. J. THE sacred volume containing the reve- lations that God, in bis -wisdom, chooses to give to -man, fitly opens with a short ac- count of the creation of the material world, animated nature, and of man himself. On this great question of Creation, which im- plies the relation of God to his creatures, of the finite to the infinite a question insoluble for human philosophy man had to be taught from on high. By its simplicity, its chaste, positive, historical character, the Bible nar- rative is in perfect contrast with the ftiuci- ful, allegorical cosmogonies of all heathen re- ligions, whether born in the highly civilized communities of the Orient, Greece, or Rome, or among the savage tribes which still oc- cupy a large portion of our planet. By its sublime grandeur, by its symmetrical plan, by the profoundly philosophical disposition of its parts, and, perhaps, quite as much by its wonderful caution in the statement of facts, it betrays the supreme guidance which led the pen of the writer and kept it through- out within the limits of truth. Side by side another manifestation of the same divine mind, the book of Nature, God's work itself, is open to our curious gaze. To man alone, among all created beings, has been granted the privilege of reading in it, by patient and intelligent research, the in- numerable proofs of the almighty power and infinite wisdom of its Author; for man's mind alone is akin to the mind which de- vised the wonderful plan unfolded in that great cosmos which we call Nature. Both these books, the Bible and Nature, are legitimate sources of knowledge ; but to read them aright we must remember the ob- ject and true character of their respective teachings, which are by no means the same. The sole object of the Bible, throughout the sacred volume, is to give us light upon the great spiritual truths needed for our spiritual life ; all the rest serves only as a means to that end, and is merely incidental. In the first chapter of Genesis, when de- scribing in simple outlines the great phases of existence through which the universe and the earth have passed, the Bible does not in- tend to teach us the processes which it is the province of astronomy and geology to discover ; but, by a few authoritative state- ments, to put in a strong light the relations of this finite, visible world to the supernat- ural, invisible world above to God himself. Its teachings are essentially of a spiritual, re- ligious character. Destined for men of all times and of all degrees of culture, its in- structions are clothed in a simple, popular language, which renders them accessible al iko to the unlearned, to the cultivated man, or to the devotee of science. Nature's teachings reach us only by our senses. A faithful study of God's visible works, sound deductions from the facts care- fully ascertained these are the foundations on which the science of nature rests. But from these finite premises no logical process can derive the great truths of the infinite, supernatural world which are given in the Biblical narrative. Nature's teachings, grand as they are, belong to the world finite ; they are of material and intellectual order, and can not transcend their sphere. Let us not, therefore, hope, much less ask from science the knowledge which it can nev- er give, nor seek from the Bible the science which it does not intend to teach. Let us re- ceive from the Bible, on trust, the fundament- al truths to which human science can not at- tain, and let the results of scientific inquiry be as a running commentary to help us right- ly to understand the comprehensive state- ments of the Biblical account which refer to God's work during the grand week of crea- tion. Thus we shall be convinced, if I do not greatly err, that the two books, coming from the same Author, do not oppose, but complete one another, forming together the whole revelation of God to man. To cling to an interpretation disproved by God's works, is to refuse the light which has been placed before us by God himself. To refuse, a priori, to believe in the possibility of this antique document agreeing in its teachings with modern science, because its author could not have had, it is supposed, such knowledge, instead of submitting this question to an impartial examination, as a question of fact, is unscientific. GUYOT : COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 277 If we do neither, we may hope to see dis- pelled forever the clouds which have ob- scured the majestic simplicity of that noble record. Taking this view of the Biblical account of creation, and of the method of its inter- pretation, let us consider : 1. The plan of the narrative. 2. What it teaches. 3. What help modern science, by its best results, can give us in understanding aright the statements of the Bible which relate to the method of the creation. This last investigation will tell us whether or no, or in what measure, the two records differ or agree. The necessity of being short may be the excuse of the writer for confining himself to a simple exposition of the views which he has expressed on this subject during the last twenty-five years or more, in many courses of public lectures, already partially published, without attempting critical refer- ences to the numerous explanations which have been offered by others. The document before us for examination begins with the first chapter of Genesis and ends with the third verse of the second chap- ter. It is complete in itself, forming an or- ganic whole which unfolds the history of the creation of the material universe and of liv- ing beings, including man as a part of nat- ure. By the symmetrical regularity of its arrangement, by the tone of its language, and the specific use of certain words, it is stamped with an individuality not to be mistaken. In this the name of God is Elohim, the Triune God of the universe, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, who all appear in the work of creation. In the second narra- tive, beginning with the fourth verse of the second chapter, which takes up, under an- other aspect, the creation of man as the head of humanity, God's name is Jehovah. 1. The plan is made clear by the following diagram : PLAN OF THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION. ERA OP MATTER. INTRODUCTION. Primordial Creation. Primitive State of Matter. In the beginning God created the And the Earth was without form, Heaven and the Earth (ver. 1). and void ; and darkness, etc. (ver. 2). ERA OP LIFE. First Work. First Activity of Matter Cosmic Light. Let there be light, and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. First Day. Fourth Work. Solar Light. Let there be lights to divide the day from the night, and let them be for seasons, and for days, and for years. And God saw that it was good. Fourth Day. Second Work. Organization of the Heavens. Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God called the expanse heaven. And it was so. Second Day. Fifth Work. Creation of Lower Animals, in Water and Air. Let the waters bring forth the moving creature that has life, and fowl that may fly iu the open expanse of heaven. And God saw that it was good. Fifth Day. Third Work. o. Formation of the Earth. Let the waters be gathered together, and let the dry land appear. God saw that it was good. b. The Plant. Let the Earth bring forth grass and trees. And God saw that it was good. Third Day. Sixth Work. a. Creation of Higher Animals, on Land. Let the Earth bring forth the living creature, cattle, beast of the earth, after his kind. And God saw that it was good. &. Creation of Man. Let ns make man iu our image. And God created man. And God saw every thing he had made, and it was VEBY GOOD. Sixth Day. CONCLUSION. No Work. The Sabbath. And God rested on the seventh day (ch. iL, ver. 1-5). Seventh Day. No Evening. These are the Generations of the Heavens and of the Earth (ch. ii., ver. 4). The history of creation is given here in the form of a great cosmogonic week, with six working days, preceded by an introduc- tion, and closing with a day of rest the 5J78 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. Sabbath of God ns Creator. Each day is marked by a special work, and begins with an evening followed by a morning. These six days are subdivided into two symmetri- cal scries of three days each. Both scries be- gin with Light the diffused cosmic light in the first, the concentrated solar light in the second. In both series the third day has two -works, while the others contain but one. The first series describes the arrangement of the material world it is the era of mat- ter; the second, the creation of organized be- ings, animals and man it is the era of life: two trilogies in this great drama of creation, corresponding to the two spheres of exist- ence, which precede the historical age of man. Such symmetry of plan can not bo ac- cidental ; it reveals a deeply philosophical idea, which it is for us to attempt to de- velop. 2. What does this record teach f The great spiritual truths emphatically taught by the narrative are obvious to all. A personal God, calling into existence by his free, al- mighty will, manifested by his word, execu- ted by his spirit, things which had no be- ing ; a Creator distinct from his creation; a universe, not eternal, but which had a be- ginning in time; a creation successive the six days; and progressive beginning with the lowest element, matter, continuing by the plant and animal life, terminating by man, made in God's image ; thus marking the great steps through which God, in the course of ages, has gradually realized the vast organic plan of the cosmos we now be- hold in its completeness, and which he de- clared to be very good : these are the funda- mental spiritual truths which have enlight- ened men of all ages on the true relations of God to his creation and to man. To under- stand them fiilly, to be comforted by them, requires no astronomy nor geology. To de- part from them is to relapse into the cold, unintelligent fatalism of the old pantheistic religions and modern philosophies, or to fall from the upper regions of light and love in- finite into the dark abysses of an unavoid- able skepticism. But thinking men, as well as men of sci- ence, crave still another view of this nar- rative : an intellectual view, we may call it. They wish fully to understand the meaning of the text when it describes the physical phenomena of creation. Are the statements relating to them a sort of parable to convey the spiritual truths just mentioned, or are they facts which correspond to the results of scientific inquiry f The answer to this question brings us to our third point. 3. What help can modern science give us in understanding aright the statements of the Bible, and hoiv do the two records compare t The difficulties at first sight are not few : the light before the sun ; days with an even- ing and morning before our great luminary could give a measure of time for them ; a firmament which divides the waters from the waters ; the earth, with its continents and seas, preceding the sun and moon; plants growing without the sunlight necessary to their existence these are problems which require a solution. Many have given up the narrative in despair ; some have disown- ed its historical character, by supposing a gap between the act of primordial creation and the work of the first day a vast gulf, into which they sink all the astronomy and geology of the past ages, thus making of the account a sham history. We have no right to treat such a document lightly. When the holy writer declares that, " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them" (Gen. ii., 1) ; and again, " These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth" (Gen. ii., 4), we must accept this sol- emn declaration, and believe that ho in- tends to give us a true history. Guided by this view, we shall consider the six cosmogouic days as the organic phases of creation, or the great periods of its his- tory, and look for the special work done in each in the order indicated by Moses : cre- ation of matter first, organization of the heavens next, of the earth and organic life last. Thus we shall avoid many a mistake which has caused a sad distortion of the narrative. The introduction to the work of the six days is comprised in the first and second verses, in which we have the primordial creation of the matter of the universe, and a descrip- tion of its original state. In the first verse we are taught that this universe had a be- ginning ; that it was created that is, called into existence and that God was its crea- tor. The central idea is creation. The He- brew word is bard, translated by create. It has been doubted whether the word meant a creation, in the sense that the world was not derived from any pre-existing material, nor from the substance of God himself; but the manner in which it is hero used dofis not seem to justify such an interpretation. For whatever be the use of the word bard in other parts of the Bible, it is employed in this chapter in a discriminating way, Avhich is very remarkable. It occurs only on three occasions, the first creation of matter in the first verse, the first introduction of life In the fifth day, and the creation of man in the sixth day. Elsewhere, when only transfor- mations are meant, as in the second and fourth days, or a continuation of the same kind of creation, as in the land animals of the fifth day, the word asdh (make) is used. Bard is thus reserved for marking the first introduc- tion of each of the three great spheres of ex- istence the world of matter, the world of life, and the world spiritual, represented by man in this visible economy all three of which, though profoundly distinct in essence, GUYOT: COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 279 are intimately associated, and together con- stitute all the universe known to us. What have science and philosophy to say about it ? Nothing. Creation is a fact be- yond their pale ; it is the miracle of mira- cles. Both science and philosophy must start from existing premises, and nothing is no premise. Their universal, logical con- clusion, therefore, ia that what is always teas, in some form ; and what is called here creation is but transformation, and, if so, that the universe is of God's substance. Whether we conceive, with the Brahmin, that the material universe is an emanation from the Deity ; or, with the old Egyptians, that it is itself a developing God ; or, with modern materialism, that it is the sole exist- ing substance, and the source of all the phe- nomena ever observed in nature and in man, pantheism and materialism are at the door, with all their internal impossibilities, and with all the contradictions they engender in the bosom of the free, moral, spiritual being, in the heart of humanity. We have therefore to accept on trust the truth of creation, as an ultimate fact, not to bo reached by any reasoning process, but which, being accepted, makes clear to mind and heart the relations of the universe, and of man to God. Thus Paul's declaration re- mains forever true : "Through faith we un- derstand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." The primitive state of matter when first cre- ated is described in the second verse : "And the earth was Without form, and void; and dark- ness icas upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the ivaters." Two words here the earth and the waters have to be rightly interpreted before we can proceed with safety. Does the earth (aarets) mean our terrestrial globe, with its conti- nents and seas, the organization of which is the special work of the third day ? and are the waters here mentioned the seas which are especially called by name as belonging to the work of that day ? We think not ; for the invariable rule of the narrative is never again to introduce a work already mention- ed. Nor is this the order of creation an- nounced by Moses, which is always the heav- ens first, the earth after. We take, there- fore, the word " earth" to be in this verse an equivalent to matter in general. The use of the concrete word "earth," instead of the generic or abstract word " matter," is com- mon to most languages, and was hero a ne- cessity, as such a word as " matter" docs not exist in the Hebrew language. We feel then justified in understanding aarets, in this ear- ly stage of the history of the universe, as meaning the primordial cosmic material out of which God was going to organize the heavens and the earth. The same reasoning applies to the waters of the second verse. The Hebrew word maim does not necessarily mean waters, but ap- ! plies as well to the fluid atmosphere; it is simply descriptive of the state of cosmic matter comprised in the word earth. These waters are the subtle fluid which, in the cosmogony of the ancient Egyptians, was supposed to extend beyond the boundaries of the visible universe, whose material had been drawn from that vast reservoir of all existence. The Bible itself gives us, in the Book of Job, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, ample proofs of the familiarity of their authors with that grand conception which, being accepted by them, teaches us the true interpretation of the Genesiac ac- count. One example may suffice : In the 148th Psalm David calls upon all creatures to praise the Lord, naming them in the order of their rank. " Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise ye him, sun and moon : praise ye him, all ye stars of light ;" and, going still higher, " praise him, ye heav- ens of heavens ;" and, last and highest, " ye waters that be above the heavens." These ev- idently are the waters of Genesis which pre- cede the light, the firmament of heaven, and the earth and the seas. Heading a few lines further, we have the proof that the Psalmist does not confound these waters above the heavens with the terrestrial waters, for, call- ing upon the things of earth to praise the Lord, he names the dragons, and all deeps the seas fire, hail, vapors, and winds. The sense of these two words being thus settled, every word of the second verse be- comes clear and natural. The matter just created was gaseous; it was without form, for the property of gas is to expand indefi- nitely. It was void, because homogeneous and invisible. It Avas dark, because as yet inactive, light being the result of physical or chemical action. It was a deep, for its ex- pansion in space, though indefinite, was not infinite, and it had dimensions. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face (outside, and not inside, as the pantheist would have it) of that A'ast gaseous mass, ready to act upon it, and to direct all its subsequent ac- tivity, according to a plan revealed by the great works which follow. The central idea of the second verse is the state of matter when created. The Spirit of God, moving upon it, announces and prepares the work of the six coming days. The de- scription applies, therefore, to the matter of the universe and the earth, and not to the earth alone as a globe already made, which would be no beginning. The distortions and forced interpretations which have obscured the Mosaic account, nearly all arise from the fundamental error which is here corrected. There is no gap between the first and second verses, no more than in any other part of the narrative. The Genesiac account is through- out a consistent history of constant, regular, and uninterrupted progress. It is not an CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. aimless rehash of the astronomical anil geo- logical phenomena during six times twenty- four hours before the creation of man, which would teach us nothing ; which is disproved by the well-established results of careful sci- entific investigation, and still more by the emphatic declaration of Moses himself that " these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth." Such are the statements of Moses. And science does not tell another story. Miner- als, plants, animals all bodies of nature are compound results of processes which speak of a previous condition. By decom- posing them, and undoing what has been done before, we finally arrive at the simple chemical elements which are the common substratum of all bodies. The same again can be said of the three forms of niatter-'-sol- id, liquid, and gaseous. The least denned the one in which the atoms are the most free is the gas. All bodies in nature can be reduced to this, the simplest of all forms of matter. Herschel, Arago, and Alexan- der, therefore, among astronomers ; Ampere, among physicists ; Becquerel and Th6uard, among chemists ; Cuvier and Humboldt, among geologists, all have arrived at the same conclusion that this iucomposed, ho- mogeneous, gaseous condition of matter must have been the beginning of the universe. The First Day. We now have a starting- point, but yet no activity, no progress. All beginnings are in darkness. The era of prog- ress opens with the first day's work, which was the production of light. " And God said, Let there be light, and there u-as light." At God's command movement begins. This is no cre- ation, but a simple manifestation of the ac- tivity of matter. Are matter and force one and the same I or is matter a substratum and an instrument for force, as the body is for the mind ? This vexed metaphysical question is not likely ever to be solved. If we incline to the last view, we may conceive that God then endowed inert matter with the forces which we find always associated with it gravity, the general quantitative force, and the specific, qualitative, chemical forces, and their correlatives. Under the action of gravity that immeasurable body of gaseous matter contracts ; atoms conglomerate into molecules ; nearer approach begets continual chemical combinations on a multitude of points ; in the more concentrated part light and heat are produced, and the result is the appearance in the dark space of heaven of a large luminous mass, the primitive grand nebula, the prototype of those thousands of luminous cloud* observed by the astronomer floating in the empty wastes beyond our starry heavens. Though most of the nebulae viewed through the powerful telescopes of this scientific age have been found to be clusters of distant or small stars, because far advanced in their development, the luminous gas forming the transparent body of many comets the Zo- diacal light, perhaps and other gaseous heavenly bodies, may serve to illustrate tho condition of that primitive nebula. Thus God divided the light from the darkness that is, the light of the nebula from the dark outside matter, as yet inactive, and from the empty space around. And God called the light day, and the darkness he call- ed night both specific names without ref- erence to any period of time. And the even- ing (tho dark chaotic time preceding) and tho morning (the glorious light of that vast luminous mass) were the first day the first great period of development, under God's guidance, of that world of matter just cre- ated ; a day measured, not by the sun which did not exist, nor by any definite length of time, but by the work assigned to it. The idea that these six days can possibly be days of twenty -four hours, seems only to prove the force of first impressions ; for its correctness is disproved in the most abso- lute manner by the text and the whole ten- or of the Biblical record, as well as by the study of nature. The reference, in the Dec- alogue, to the seventh cosmogonic day as a foundation for the Sabbath of man, which, at first sight, seems to suggest a complete similarity of these two Sabbaths, will be con- sidered hereafter. The Hebrew word yom (day) is used in this chapter in five different senses, just as we use the word day in common language : 1. The day, meaning light as above, without reference to time or succession. 2. The cos- mogouic day, the nature of which is to be determined. 3. The day of twenty-four hours in the fourth cosmogonic day, where it is said of the sun and moon, " Let them be for days and for seasons and for years." 4. The light part of the same day of twenty-four hours, as opposed to the night. 5. In Gene- sis ii., 4, in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth, embracing the week of creation, or an indefinite period of time. The days of twenty-four and twelve hours, which require the presence of the sun, are excluded from the first three cosmogonic days, since the sun made its appearance only on the fourth day. No reason is apparent in the text why the last two days should be of a different nature from the others, while the geological history of the creation of ani- mals and man demonstrates that they are periods of indefinite time. The word day, as light opposed to darkness, in the first day, and again as used in the fifth sense, have no application here. The cosmogonic day, therefore, only remains, and its special sense is to be determined by its nature. We have seen already that each of these days is marked by a work, and each work is one of the great steps in the realization of GlTfOT : COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 281 God's plan one of the great changes which constitute the organic phases of that histo- ry. Time is here Avithout importance. It is given, long or short, as needed ; and God's works, which are done by means and proc- esses which we can study, tell us that for ev- ery one of these great works of the six days, their Author before whom a thousand years are as one day han chosen to em- ploy ages to bring them to perfection. As in the growth of the plant we distin- guish the germinating, the leafing, the flow- ering, and the seeding processes, as so many organic phases, which might be called the days of the plant's history, without reference to the length of time allotted to each, so we have here the day of the cosriuc light, the day of the heavens, the day of the earth, the day of solar light, the day of th>, lower ani- mals, and the day of the mammal? and man ; which are really the great phasira of God's creation. The Second Day. The work of tliis day is the organization of the heavens. "And God said, Let there be an expanse (firmament) in the midst of the waters, and let it dividS the iva- ters from the waters; and God called the expanse heaven." It is to be regretted that the English version has translated tie He- brew word rakiah (expanse) by the word firmament. This is due to the influence of the Latin Vulgate, which has firmamentum as the equivalent of the inexact ffrtpiufia or the Septuagint. This last word refers to the current Egyptian conception of a solid vault of heaven separating the lower visible world from the tipper world of subtle, invisible mat- ter beyond. This view was held by the Greek translators, but is not warranted by the Hebrew text, and renders it unintelligi- ble. If it were correct, how could it be said that God called that solid vault " heaven ?" and further, verse 20, that God created the fowl to fly in the open " firmament" of heav- en ? In both cases expanse is evidently the fitting word. The central idea of this day's work is di- vision or separation. The vast primitive nebula of the first day breaks up into a multitude of gaseous masses, and these are concentrated into stars. Motion is every where. Gravitation and the chemical forces tend to concentrate matter around vari- ous centres, and thus to isolate them from each other; centrifugal force tends to dis- perse them. Under the laws of the forces of matter and motion established by God himself, and under his guidance these num- berless bodies, of all forms and sizes, which fill the space and adorn our heavens, com- bine into those worlds and groups of worlds whose wonderful organization it is the prov- ince of astronomy to discover. It is prema- ture to say that this noble science has as yet furnished us a satisfactory history of the generations of the starry heavens, and of their real structure. But much has been done toward it. In the genesis of our solar system as explained by the genius of La- place, and submitted by Alexander to ex- haustive calculations, the result of which amounts to a demonstration of its truth we see one of the processes by which has taken place the separation of individual planets from a vast central body, holding them in bondage, in their orbits, by the power of its mass. In the twin stars, revolving around a common centre of gravity, we perceive the effect produced when the masses are more nearly equal. In the nebulous stars of all grades we follow the gradual concentration from a gaseous state to a compact and well- defined body. In the great spiral nebula? discovered by Lord Rosse, we behold the act- ual breaking up of a world of stars of all sizes and brilliancy, and we witness the very process of their dispersion through space, by centrifugal force, along paths that they will never retrace. But the text speaks of waters above the heavens, and of waters under the heavens. The latter are determined by the work of the third day, by which it appears that they are the matter out of which our globe was made, the waters above being the matter which formed the heavenly bodies. We may ask ourselves, however, whether the matter of our globe is the whole, or only a part, of the waters under the heavens. If we accept the grand conception of the structure of the heavens proposed by Herschel, all our visible heavens are but an immense cluster of self-luminous stars, of which our sun, with its retinue of planets, is but one, situated not far from its centre. The form of this vast cluster is that of a disc, whose outer bound- ary is the Milky Way. In this the stars seem ready to break up, and assume the shape of the branches of a spiral nebula. Beyond extends, in immeasurable distance, the dark abyss of space. In this, again, are thou- sands of nebulous masses, each of which may be a starry heaven like ours. Here, we may fancy, we recognize in the clusters of visible stars, to which our sun, moon, and the earth itself belong the waters below the heavens, followed by the vast expanse beyond, containing the world of the nebula) the heaven of heavens, and the waters above the heavens, of which the Psalmist speaks. But, whether we receive the views of Herschel, of Maedler, or of Alexander con- cerning the structure and formation of the heavens, one fact recognized by all is the work of separation, of iudividualization, w.'aich must have preceded the present com- bination of the heavenly bodies, and is indi- cated as the special work of the second cos- mo. ?onic day. The Third Day. This day has two works, whioh must be considered separately. The first is the formation of the material globe CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. of the earth. "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, nnd let the dry land appear. And God called the dry land earth ; and the gathering to- gether of the waters called he seas." The main idea is condensation of matter into the solid globe, its liquid covering and gaseous envelope. Here, as usual, Moses gives us the final result of the work, and not the process by which it was produced. For that we must ask geology. The structure of the hard mantle of rock which covers the unknown interior of the globe, and the nature of its strata, togeth- er with their ever -increasing temperature downward, will bear witness to the eventful history of the past ages of our earth ; as- tronomy and chemistry will carry us still higher, up to the very birth of our planet. The materials of that part of the earth crust accessible to our investigation from the al- luvial surface sands and pebbles, through the sandstones, conglomerates, slates, and limestones, down to the crystalline bottom rocks show themselves to be the debris of pre-existing rocks, rearranged at the bottom of the ocean ; or due, as most of the lime- stones, to the secreting power of the polyps, or most minute animals of the sea. The tem- perature of the waters of this ocean was no higher than that of our tropical seas ; for these rocks contain innumerable relics of marine animals similar, though not identical, to those of the present day. Lower down, the crystalline rocks, mostly stratified the so-called metamorphic rocks still bear the mark of an aqueous origin, but also indi- cate a high degree of temperature in the wa- ters, which explains both their crystalline character and the almost entire absence of traces of life in these early seas. Coming from deeper sources still, but filling perpen- dicular fissures or chimneys, as in volcanoes, crystalline masses of porphyry, compact trap, Basalt, and volcanic substances cross the regular strata up to the surface, and by their igneous nature reveal the existence of an internal temperature sufficient to keep rocku in a melted condition. Guided by these general facts, and aided by the light derived from chemistry, physio, and astronomy, we may distinguish, in the gradual formation of the physical globe, b j- fore the introduction of life, four periods : 1. The nebulous. 2. The mineral incandescent. 3. The period of the hot oceans. 4. The pe- riod of the cold oceans. In the first the matter of the earth wa j a part of the hot atmosphere of the sun. 'In the slow process of contraction, consequent upon its cooling, the sun left it behind in the form of a gaseous ring. The ring breaks in several places, and is rolled up into a globu- lar mass, which, according to the laws o I mo- tion, rotates upon itself, and revolves around its parent body nearly in the plane of its eqtiator, and with the velocity imparted to it by the eun itself. The new globe, born from the old matter of the sun, now enters, as a gaseous mas:!, into the first period of its separate existence. Loss of heat by radiation causes further concentration. The molecules, brought near- er together and to the proper temperature for chemical action, now combine. A vast, long-continued, and ever-renewed conflagra- tion, with an enormous development of heat, takes place, and the result is an incandes- cent melted nlineral body, surrounded by a vast luminous atmosphere. The earth is a sun. This is the second period of its history. The cooling continues : a hard crust is formed on the surface of the melted body of the globe, and, when the temperature be- comes low enough to admit of the formation of water, the ocean which was before a part of the atmosphere in the shape of vapor is deposited on the solid surface of the globe. The temperature of this first ocean must have bein very high, owing to the immense weight of the atmosphere resting upon it. It has been calculated that when the depo- sition "began, the temperature of the first waters could not have been less than 600 Fahr; This geological phase, though it is one through which a cooling globe must have necessarily passed, has not, thus far, received the attention it deserves. Let us try to see what this state of things implies, for it is important for the explanation of the fourth day. The oceans were not only very warm, but must have been highly acidulated; for all the acids, which form a large part of the thousands upon thousands of feet of rocks deposited since, must have been then in the atmosphere. These hot and acid waters, rest- ing upon the old mineral crust, must have decomposed it, and a new series of chemical combinations have been formed, to which, perhaps, we may refer the deposition of the lowermost crystalline rocks which are at the base of the new terrestrial crust the only one we actually know. By these POAV- erful chemical actions the earth was trans- formed into a vast galvanic pile, emitting constant streams of electricity, which, reach- ing the ethereal space at the boundary of the thick atmosphere, became luminous. Ac- cording to Herschel, the photosphere of the sun may be due to a similar cause, and if we accept the most plausible explanation of the aurora borealis, it is but the last vestige of that electrical condition of our globe. Dur- ing this third period the earth was still sur- rounded by a photosphere of subdued brill- iancy: it was a nebulous star. The process goes on ; the physical and chemical forces, thus far so active, subside and enter into a state of quiescence ; the pho- tosphere disappears ; the globe becomes an extinct body ; the ocean cools down to the nuld temperature of our tropical seas, and GUYOT : COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 283 is ready for the introduction of living beings. The age of matter is over ; the age of life is at hand. The fourth period was that of the dark planet and the cool oceans. This fourth period, and perhaps the latter part of the third, are represented in the geo- logical strata by the so-called azoic rocks, which are found in all continents. Here also we have evidence of the appearance of the first land above the waters of the ocean. Considerable surfaces and low mountain chains, both in the Old and New World, be- long to this age. Geology explains very plau- sibly the sinking of the large surfaces now containing the oceans and the rising between them of the continents and mount- ains, by the gradual shrinkage of the cool- ing interior, forcing the hard external crust now too large to mould itself on the smaller sphere by folding into mighty wrin- kles. This process could not be better de- scribed than by the words of Moses : " Let the watei-s be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear" implying that the land was formed already under the surface of the ocean, and was subsequently raised above it. The first work of the third day closes the age of matter; for, if science is right in its view of the origin of our solar system, the sun, moon, and stars of the fourth day were then in existence, but invisible to the earth. The three great steps indicated by the works of the first three days are the same that we observe in the beginning and growth of or- ganized beings. All originate in darkness, jn a homogeneous fluid, which soon forms into an egg ; the next stage is a differentia- tion, and a gradual formation of individual organs ; the last is a combining together of all these parts into an organic body, exhibit- ing unity in variety. This is the universal law of development, both for individuals and collections of individuals. But in this third day there is a second work, entirely unlike the first, belonging to the age of organic life the creation of the plant a creation, indeed, of a new principle, though it is not designated in the text by bard, because it is but the peristyle of the temple of true life, the condition of its exist- ence. We say that it is a creation ; for in it matter is controlled by an immaterial prin- ciple, directing its forces so as to make it as- sume new forms unknown to the mineral. In the plant, as in every organized being, there is an inward principle of individuality not possessed by the crystal ; a variety of functions and organs working together to- ward a common aim for the benefit of the individual ; an inward growth, with a be- ginning and a definite end, and a reproduc- tion which perpetuates the species phenom- ena which are all absolutely foreign to in- organic matter. These characteristics are admirably summed up in the words, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." The words, "Let the earth bring forth," may seem to favor the idea of a combination of material elements without the introduc- tion of a new principle. But the same phrase is used in verse 20, \vhen a true creation (bard) that of the first animals was meant and took place. And again, in Gen. ii., 4, 5, we find that " in the day the Lord God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." This declaration distinguishes the plant, as a principle, from the matter which it moulds into the form necessary for its functions. This view must be held as the most ra- tional ; for all experiments even the very latest and apparently most successful made during the last hundred years to prove the so-called spontaneous generation of organ- ized beings from dead matter, have failed to convince the majority of thinking men of its reality. Matter, unaided, can never rise above its own level. The most important function of the plant in the economy of nature is, with the aid of the sun's light, to turn inorganic into organ- ic matter, and thus prepare food for the ani- mal. Nothing else in nature does this im- portant work. The animal can not do it, and starves in the midst of an abundance of the materials needed for the building up of its body. The plant stores up force which it is not called upon to use ; the animal takes it ready made as food, and expends it in activity. The plant, therefore, is the in- dispensable basis of all animal life ; for, though animals partially feed upon each oth- er, ultimately the organic matter they need must come from the plant. The manner in which Moses introduces the creation of the plant, as a work distinct in its nature from the first work of the third day, and the position he assigns to it at the end of this day, and before the creation of living beings, are highly philosophical. This order is required by the law of progress, according to which the inferior appears be- fore the superior, because the first is the condition of the phenomenal existence of the latter. Does geology confirm this position of the plant in the order of creation ? If we should understand the text as meaning that the whole plant kingdom, from the lowest infu- sorial form to the highest dicotyledon, was created at this early day, geology would as- suredly disprove it. But the author, as we have remarked .above, mentions every order of facts but once, and he does it at the time of its first introduction. Here, therefore, the whole system of plants is described in full outline, as it has been developed, from the lowest to the most perfect, in the succession 964 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. of ages ; for it will uover again bo spoken of in the remainder of the narrative. What plants actually existed at this period geolo- gy has to find out. The possibility of infu- sorial plants living in warm, nay, in hot water, is proved by their being found in the geysers of Iceland, and in hot, acidulated springs. The latest geological investigations tell us that abundant traces of carbonaceous matter and old silicious deposits among the so-called azoic rocks seem to indicate the presence of a large number of infusorial pro- tophytes filling those early seas. Whether they furnished food for the primitive proto- zoans of a similar grade is still a matter of doubt ; but the presence of limestone strata in the azoic age seems to speak in the affirm- ative. The striking fact that Moses, though fully recognizing the great difference between the two works of the third day, and the impor- tance of the vegetable kingdom, did not as- sign to it a special day, but left it in the age of matter, is not less full of meaning. The plant is not yet life, but the bridge between matter and life the link between the two ages. Placed within the material age of cre- ation, it is the harbinger and promise of a more noble and better time to come. It is the root of the living tree planted in the in- organic globe, and destined to flourish in the age of life. The fourth day opens the age of life, with the appearance of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens visible from the earth a work which apparently still belongs to the physical order, but whose object is to bene- fit life. " Let there le lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth ; and to divide the day from the night; and for sea- sons, and for days, and for years." The sun and moon are not created, they existed before, but now enter into new rela- tions with the earth. During the age of mat- ter the intensity of chemical action was a source of permanent light the earth was self- luminous the light of the sun, moon, and stars being merged in the stronger light of its photosphere, and therefore invisible to it. But after the disappearance of its luminous envelope, our glorious heavens, with sun, moon, and stars, become visible, and the earth depends upon this outside source for light and heat. Its spherical form causes the un- equal distribution of both which establishes the differences of climate from the pole to the equator. Its rotation gives, for the first time, a succession of day and night, which breaks the permanent light of the preceding age. Its revolution round the sun brings, in their turn, the seasons and the years. Thus are prepared the physical conditions neces- sary to the existence of living beings, the periods of activity and rest, of summer and winter, and that variety of temperature and moisture which fosters the almost infinite richness of the organic forms of plants and animals displayed in our world of life. In the third day the earth was ready for life ; in the fourth the heavens are ready to help in the work. The fourth day is, as it were, a reminiscence of the inorganic pe- riod, and forms another connection between the two principal stages of the globe. The fifth and sixth days oifer no diffi- culties, for they unfold the successive cre- ation of the various tribes of animals which people the water, the air, and the land, in the precise order indicated by geology. This history is introduced by the solemn word bard, which occurs here for the second time, and gives us to understand that, with the creation of the animal, another great and entirely new order of existence begins. Matter, indeed, is in it, but controlled and shaped into new forms, foreign to its own nature, to suit the wants of the immaterial being within. Vegetative life is in it, but subservient to higher functions, which the plant could never perform by itself. A con- scious perception of the outer world by sen- sation, however, and a will to react upon it, are powers which place the animal on a higher platform, and make it a being which, by its nature and its functions, is en- tirely distinct from the lower grades of exist- ence. Let us cast a glance at the geological his- tory of the life system, such as present sci- ence enables us to read it, and the admira- ble correctness t>f the Mosaic account will be evident. Geology informs us that the terrestrial crust, down to its lowest attainable depths, is composed of layers placed upon each other, different in mineralogical character and structure, and evidently deposited at the bottom of the ocean. The order of their superposition furnishes the great chrono- logical table of the events which took place during their formation ; the lowermost stra- tum the first deposited being the oldest ; the surface layers the last formed being the most recent. These strata preserve in their folds the archives of the creation of organized beings, plants, and animals, whose remains innumer- able fill these rocky shelves, and reveal to the geologist the mysteries of the by-gone ages. Five great ages of life may be distin- guished, each of them characterized by the predominance of a certain class of animals, and marking the great steps of gradual prog- ress in the vast system of the living forms of the past : 1. The age of invertebrated animals, con- tained in the Silurian series of rocks. 2. The age of fishes, in the Devonian series. 3. The age of the first land plants, in the Carboniferous rocks. 4. The age of the reptiles, in the Mesozoic rocks triassic, Jurassic, and cretaceous. GUYOT : COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 285 5. ThoAge of the mammals, in the Tertiary rocks. These are preceded, as a preface, by au age cf protophytes and protozoans in the so-called azoic or archaic rocks, and closed by the age of man, in the quaternary and present age. In the first, the primordial fauna makes its appearance iu the lowermost Silurian strata, and is represented by marine forms of the three great archetypes of iuverte- brated animals the radiates, mollusks, and the articulates. They appear all at once on the same level, and not successively. During untold ages, represented by successive de- posits of rocks amounting to over 15,000 feet in thickness, corals and plant-like radi- ates, mollusks of all grades some of gigantic size numberless crustaceans of embryonic form, swarm in the tepid waters of the ocean ; but not a fish is found, save a few at the very end of this long period of existence, as forerunners heralding the coming of higher forms. This is the reign of the lower ani- mal life the involuntary life typified by the invertebrates. In the second age, the Devonian strata contain iu abundance remains of the fish tribe, which is added to the riches of the sea, and takes the lead among the tenants of the ocean ; for, though the lowest grade in the archetype of vertebrates, it belongs to the higher level of animal life, in which sen- sation and will predominate. The strange forms of these first fishes their reptilian character, their powerful organization make them the scavengers and the kings of the seas. This is the reign of fishes. In the third the Carboniferous age the continents, which were slowly growing under the water, reach the surface. These newly emerged, still swampy lauds, cover them- selves with a mantle of verdure. In the warm and moist atmosphere of this day, charged with carbonic acid gas, humble cryptogams grow to stately forest trees, and a luxuriant growth of ferns and allied plants furnish the material for the vast beds of coal so precious to civilized man. This is the reign of the lower laud plants, purifying the atmosphere of its noxious gases, and preparing it for air- breathing animals. In the fourth age, monstrous reptiles, first amphibious, together with tall birds, then huge marine saurians and gigantic land rep- tiles, fill the oceans and inland seas, which teem with an extraordinary abundance of lower marine life. The reptiles are the kings of creation, they reign supreme. The fifth age was heralded, in the preced- ing age, by a few small, mostly marsupial mammals. But now the Tertiary opens with a mag- nificent array of large mammals, which peo- ple the new-formed continents and the seas, from the huge whale to the portly form of the elephant and the powerful organization of the lordly lion, the king of the brute crea- tion. The mammal the typical vertebrate,ihe perfect animal now reigns iu his turn, but will soon also have to yield its sceptre to man. The facts just mentioned speak a strong language. They tell us that creation is a reality. The archetypes of the Silurian are not derived from one another, for they ap- pear all simultaneously. Science fails to discover traces of a direct descent of the vertebrate from the invertebrate, whose plan of structure is entirely unlike ; of the large fishes of the Devonian from any preceding animal form ; of the huge reptiles of the mid- dle ages of life from the fishes of the Devo- nian. The gigantic pachyderms, which ap- pear suddenly at the tertiary epoch, are not the offspring of the reptiles of the age pre- ceding. The bond which unites them is of an immaterial nature ; the marvelous unity which we observe is in the plan of the Cre- ator. We should then acknowledge a plan admirable in conception, admirable in exe- cution. There is a wisdom which devises, a free ivill, and a power, which executes and creates in succession, at the appointed time, when it is fitting, and not a single great un- conscious whole which is developed by itself. In the order of time there is progress. The inferior being alwaj's precedes the superior ; the imperfect the perfect. Inorganic nature precedes organization. The watery element reigns before terrestrial ; the aquatic and in- ferior animals before the terrestrial and su- perior. In the series of the vertebrated ani- mals, we sec fishes, reptiles, birds, and mam- mifers appearing in the ages of the globe in the order of their perfection. The accordance of these results of geology with the Mosaic account is so evident that no further explanation is necessary. Fifth Day. The work of this day is the creation of the lower animals, up to the birds. "And God created great whales, and every creature which moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, and every winged fowl." The order of their appearance is that discovered by geology: the water animals first, togeth- er with the large amphibious, the great whales (marine monsters), and other rep- tiles, and then the birds. This corresponds with the first geological ages, the paleozoic and the mesozoic, up to the tertiary epoch. Sixth Day. The sixth day, which is the third of the era of life, contains two works, as did the third day of the era of matter : first, the creation of the higher animals es- pecially living on the dry laud, or the mam- malia it corresponds with the tertiary age ; and, second, the creation of man in the quar- ternary age. The First Work. "And God made the beast of the earth and cattle, after their kind, and every thing that creepeth w/>ow the earth." For this CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. creation the word made is used, not create, for it is not the first introduction, but the continuation of the life system. The creep- ing animals of the sixth day are not rep- tiles, but, according to Gesenius, the smaller mammalia rats, mice, etc. The greatest changes in the mineral and organic creation, according to geology, took place between the cretaceous and tertiary epochs. And there, also, Moses places the beginning of a new day. For not only are the laud animals a new set of beings, they are also the highest, and the family to which man belongs as a member of the life-system of nature. The second work of the sixth day is of a vastly different nature. The creation of man is a fact of such great importance that it could not be mentioned otherwise than sep- arately. Here, again, and for the third time, the word bard announces not a simple con- tinuation of the animal, but the creation of a new order of existence, the most exalted of all. Three times the sacramental word is repeated : " So God created man in his oivn image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." That be- ing, made by the Creator in his own im- age, upon the creation of whom Moses put so much stress, to enforce, as it were, the idea of his dignity, could not be confounded with the animals. But why does he place this creation, not in a separate day, but with the mammalia in the sixth day ? Man is the crowning act of the Creator. He is the sum- mary of all perfections scattered through the animal kingdom, of which he is the key- stone. He is the end and aim of the whole development of our planet, and as such belongs to this physical earth. But he is also a being of a new and superior order, and, therefore, must be kept distinct. The ap- pearance of the physical man is the prophecy and the promise of a future and more perfect age of development which begins with him the moral age, that of the historical world. This second work of the sixth day is thus the link between the age of the physical creation and that of the moral development of mankind, as the plant was the link be- tween the material and the world of life. It is the moral world planted in the material world, in order to make it subservient to a higher and better aim. Here end the working days of the Creator. All his other works God had declared to be flood; but on the sixth day "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was VERY GOOD." The work of the whole week is now finished, and perfect as God will have it for his purpose the education of man. Now begins the seventh day, the day of rest, or the Sabbath of the earth, when the globe and its inhabitants are completed. Since the beginning of this day no new creation has taken place. God rests as the Creator of the visible universe. The forces of nature are in that admirable equilib- rium which \ve now behold, and which is necessary to our existence. No more mount- ains or continents are formed, no new spe- cies of plants or animals are created. Nat- ure goes on steadily in its wonted path. All movement, all progress has passed into the realm of mankind, which is now accomplish- ing its task. The seventh day is, then, the present ago of our globe; the age in which we live, and which was prepared for the de- velopment of mankind. The narrative of Moses . seems to indicate this fact : for at the end of each of the six working days of creation we find an evening. But the morn- ing of the seventh is not followed by any evening. The day is still open. When the evening shall come the last hour of human- ity will strike. This view of the Sabbath of creation has been objected to on account of the form of the command in the Decalogue relating to the observance of the Sabbath. But those who object confound God's Sabbath with man's Sabbath, and forget the word of Christ that our Sabbath was made for man, who needs it, and not for God. God rests as a Creator of the material world only to be- come active, nay, Creator, in the spiritual world. His Sabbath work is one of love to man the redemption ; his creation, is that of the new man, born anew of the Spirit, in the heart of the natural man. So man is commanded to imitate God in leaving once in seven days the work of this material world, to turn all his attention and devote his powers to the things of heaven. There are, therefore, three Sabbaths: first, God's Sabbath after the material creation ; second, the Sabbath of humanity, the prom- ised millennium, after the toil and struggle of the six working days of history ; third, the Sabbath of the individual, short-lived man, the day of rest of twenty-four hours, made for him according to his measure. The length of the days in each is of no account. The plan, in all, is the same, and contains the same idea six days of work and struggle in the material world, followed by a day of peace, of rest from the daily toil, and of ac- tivity in the higher world of the spirit. For the Sabbath is not only a day of rest, it is the day of the Lord. Such is the grand cosmogonic week de- scribed by Moses. To a sincere and unprej- udiced mind it must be evident that these grand outlines are the same as those which modern science enables us to trace, however imperfect and unsettled the details furnished by scientific inquiries may appear on many points. Whatever modifications in our pres- ent view of the development of the universe and of the globe may bo expected from new discoveries, the prominent features of this vast picture will remain. And these only are delineated in this admirable account of GUYOT: COSMOGONY AND THE BIBLE. 287 Genesis. These outlines were sufficient for the moral purposes of the book ; the scien- tific details are for us patiently to investi- gate. They were, no doubt, unknown to Moses ; as the details of the life and of the work of the Saviour were unknown to the great prophets who announced his coming, and traced out with master-hand his charac- ter and objects centuries before his appear- ance on earth. But the same divine hand which lifted up before the eyes of Daniel and of Isaiah the veil which covered the ta- bleau of the time to come, unveiled before the eyes of the author of Genesis the earliest ages of the creation And Moses was the prophet of the past, as Daniel and Isaiah future. The following diagram, which s.ums up the results of the preceding discussion, may be found of service in making clear the correspondence of the two records : ERA OF MATTER. THE BIBLE. In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. SCIEKOE. Hatter is not self -existent. Primitive state of matter. Gas indefinitely diffused. First Day. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness. First Activity of Matter. Gravity. Chemical action. Concentration of dif- fused matter into one or more nebulso, appearing as luminous spots in the dark space of heaven. Second Day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Division. The primitive nebula is divided into smaller nebu- lous masses. One of them forms the solar sys- tem, which separates into sun and planets. Third Day. a And God said, Let the waters under the heav- ens be gathered together, and let the dry laud appear. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass. Concentration, The nebulous masses concentrate into stars. For- mation of the mineral mass of the earth by chem- ical combination of the solid crust, the ocean and atmosphere. The earth self-luminous. First appearance of laud. Azoic rocks. First infusorial plants and protophytes. ERA OF LIFE. Fourth Day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firma- ment of the heavens, and let them be for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years. Chemical actions subside. The earth loses its pho- tosphere; sun and moon become visible. First succession of day and night, of seasons and years. Differences of climate begin. Archaic rocks. Protozoans. Fifth Day. And God created great whales, and every liv- ing creature which moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, and every winged fowl. Plants and animals appear successively in the order of their rank marine animals, fishes, reptiles, and birds. First great display of land plants. Coal beds. Paleozoic and mesozoic ages. Sixth Day. o And God made the beasts of the earth, and cattle after their kind. 6 And God created man in his own image. Predominance of mammals ; the highest animals. Tertiary age. Creation of man. Quaternary age. Seventh Day. A,nd God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And God rested on the seventh day. No material creation. Introduction of the moral world. Age of man. THE GOSPEL AND PHILOSOPHY. BY PROF. ERNEST NAVILLE, OF GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. WHAT is Philosophy f What is the Gos- pel t What is the true relation between the Gospel and Philosophy ? These are the three questions which are briefly examined in this paper. I. Philosophy. Philosophy, in the etymo- logical sense of the word, is the love of wis- dom. This love manifests itself in the in- vestigation of a good rule of life, and in the effort of the will to form the life in accord- ance with that rule. In this sense, philoso- phy is essentially practical ; its object is to find the answer to this question, What ought I to do! In another sense, philosophy is the most general, the most abstract, aud, to all ap- pearance, the least practical of all studies. It aspires to explain the universe that is to say, to give a reasonable account of the nat- ure, the origin, aud the destination of all things. What is the first cause of the uni- verse ? What is the destination of the uni- verse ? What is the actual condition of the universe, in its relation to its first cause and to its destination ? Such are the questions to which philosophy seeks an answer. Between this question, What ought I to do ? which every one puts to himself una- voidably, aud this other question, How is the universe to be explained ? which many find an idle one, because they consider it incapa- ble of solution, the distance appears to be great. The practical aud theoretical senses of the Avord philosophy have, however, a close connection. Man is responsible for his conduct because he possesses an element of liberty, and because this liberty is found in presence of an obligation revealed by the conscience, and which constitutes duty. The determination of duty is the answer to the question, What ought I to do? The man who, without any scientific culture, follows in each particular case the dictates of his conscience, and honestly accepts all the means of knowledge which are offered to him, is assuredly in the right way. But if life develops according to its regular laws, if reason does its work, there comes a time when a man not only asks himself, What ought I to do under such and such circum- stances T but, What ought I to do in the gen- eral T What direction ought I to give to my life f What use am I to make of my will T This, for every man who has awaked to serious reflection, is the question of ques- tions. The use which each one is to make, of his activity evidently depends upon the general object toward which the world in the midst of which he is placed is tending. The duty Avhich each several being has to accomplish as its own share is settled by a general plan, and by a universal order of things. The personal question, What ought I to do ? supposes, therefore, this general question, What ought to be done f or, in other words, What is the destination of the universe ? the part, at least, of that desti- nation which is to be accomplished by free agents. The destination of creatures is the object with a view to which they have been pro- duced. To have a clear understanding of their legitimate end, we must go back to their principle. The question, What is the destination of the universe ? involves, there- fore, this further question, What is the first cause of the universe ? The conscience does not, in order to make its voice heard, await the solution of these high problems. The conscience speaks, in the absence of all doctrine ; it even contin- ues to speak, in a certain degree, in those who profess doctrines which deny its exist- ence. But, as reason develops, it rises to the conception of a general duty, and conse- quently of a plan which each free being is bound to realize in its own measure. This plan determines the destination of the uni- verse, and carries the mind on toward the Author of the universe, who has settled that destination. To know what I am to do in a general manner, I must know what is the plan for the realization of which I have to work. And so are united the practical sense and the theoretical sense of the word philos- ophy. Every one has, more or less distinctly, the consciousness of these truths. The question of the final cause of the universe, or, in other words, of the existence of God ; the question of the destination of rational beings, or, in other words, of an immortal future these questions lie at the foundation of all moral doctrine. Has man neither lawgiver nor judge superior to himself, and is he the mas- ter of his own life and actions ? or has he to pursue an end fixed by a higher will ? Does man terminate his existence at death ? or is NAVILLE : THE GOSPEL AND PHILOSOPHY. 289 death only the passage from one mode of life to another ? According to the answers given to these questions, the answer to the ques- tion, What ought I to do ? will vary. It is in vain that some seek to deny this. The advocates of independent morality contest the reality of the link which connects morals with doctrine. They affirm that doctrines are of no consequence, and that theories re- specting the origin and destiny of rational beings have nothing to do with man's con- duct. But they do not succeed in bringing their own feelings into agreement with their system. The greater number of these theo- rizers, who maintain the thesis that doc- trines are matters of indifference, are de- cided and often passionate adversaries of Christian doctrines. If doctrines were to them really indifferent, whence would come this passion ? The theory of the independ- ence of morals is betrayed by its own follow- ers. It will not succeed in changing the nat- ure of things, and the essential conditions of the moral life. Thoughtful persons, for the enlightening of their consciences and the directing of their conduct, will continue to ask, Whence come we ? Where are we ? Whither are we going ? The search after the solution of these prob- lems constitutes philosophy, in the high and full acceptation of the term. Philosophy takes birth spontaneously from the time that the human mind has acquired a certain de- gree of cultivation. From the time that a man is thoughtful enough to rise above gid- diness and frivolity, he finds himself face to face with the eternal mysteries of existence. Then he asks what is the final cause of the universe, what is its destination, what is the place and function of each several being in the universal order of things ? He asks this that he may understand what his duty is, and what hopes he may entertain. This inquiry, made by the reason, must be con- ducted according to the laws of science that is to say, a doctrine must not be accepted further than it explains the facts of expe- rience which constitute the problem to be solved. The object of all science is to ex- plain the facts ; the control of all science is found in the facts, the explanation of which is in question. To the question, What is philosophy? we answer : Philosophy is the research of the reason after an explanation of the universe. Let us observe that philosophy, in the gen- eral meaning of the term, is a research and not a doctrine. Philosophy, in the general, follows out the solution of a problem ; phi- losophies, in particular, are the several solu- tions proposed. II. The Gospel. The word "Gospel," like the Greek word which it renders, signifies good news. What is this good news ? It is one, and threefold in its unity. The princi- ple of the universe is goodness. God is love : 19 such is the good news in its unity. Love divine manifests itself in the creation of the world, produced by the power of the Father, who wills the happiness of his children. It manifests itself in the pardon granted to the human race, fallen by sin from its primitive condition. It manifests itself in the action of divine grace sanctifying pardoned souls, and preparing them for life eternal. Cre- ating love, redeeming love, sanctifying love : such is the threefold manifestation of the one and eternal love. This summing up of the Gospel is not an arbitrary conception the product of one individual mind : it is clearly indicated in the formula of baptism, and is become the basis of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity. We have here an answer to the three ques- tions of philosophy. What is the final cause of the universe ? An eternal Spirit, the Cre- ator of all that exists. What is the destina- tion of the universe ? The happiness of creatures called into being by goodness. What is the actual condition of the universe ? Humanity, that part of the universe which is directly known to us, is separated from God by sin the work of created liberty gone astray, but which liberty eternal Love de- sires to restore from its wanderings. Such is the doctrine of the Gospel, the develop- ment of that fundamental theory: God is love. The morality of the Gospel, its practical side, is summed up in the law of charity that is to say, in the consecration of each in- dividual will to the general happiness. The link which unites practice to theory is man- ifest. All duty is gathered up into obe- dience to God, who is the supreme source of obligation. To obey God is to do his will. His will is the happiness of all his children. Charity, the research and the practical real- ization of the happiness of all, is therefore the immediate and direct application of tbe doctrine of the love of God. And how has the good news been commu- nicated to the world ? Not as the result of a scientific inquiry, but as a testimony ren- dered by Jesus Christ, who affirmed that lie possessed the truth by virtue of his intimate union with the Father. This testimony was proposed to faith. And what is faith ? In the general sense of the word, faith is a fact of every day, of every moment. Faith is trust ; it is the state of a person who con- fides in another person of a soul which gives itself up to another soul. In the do- main of the understanding, faith shows itself by the reception of other people's testimony. Now faith, so understood, is met with at the very foundation of our intellectual life. Sup- pose that one individual, refusing to receive the testimony of others, will admit as truth nothing but what he has certified by his own experience, or demonstrated by the per- sonal exercise of his reason, in what situa- CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. tion will bo fiml himself? Ho will only know, in geography, tlio places which he has seen with his own eyes ; in history, the events of which he has been himself the wit- ness ; in physics, the laws which ho has dis- covered and proved. . . . The intercourse between different understandings will be broken off, and the human mind, smitten with barrenness by isolation, will stand still in motionless ignorance. Science,like the just man of the Scripture, lives only by faith. It is only faith which allows one individual to pass on his acquisitions to another, and one generation to leave to another the inherit- ance of its discoveries. Some, indeed, think and say that the progress of the human mind consists in substituting for faith the purely personal exercise of thought, and that the common proverb of Lafoutaine, " Depend on thyself alone," is the watchword of true sci- ence. It is a gross error. The development of thought ought to have for effect, above all, to substitute an enlightened confidence for a deceitful credulity, and to teach men to weigh the value of witnesses and of testi- mony ; but the life of the understanding is as impossible without faith as the life of the body without respiration. The solitude which would be ttie death of the heart would be also the destruction of the intelligence. We all live mutually by the experience, the reflections, the discoveries, the ideas of oth- ers. Therefore it is that falsehood, so vile in itself, has such disastrous consequences. Falsehood loosens the grounds of faith, and runs the risk of destroying it ; and, by the very fact, tends to uptear the main root of our spiritual existence. The instinct of dig- nity, which repels and withers it, is the safe- guard of intellectual life in society. Let us observe, in passing, that faith is the freest act which can be conceived ; for if there is a thing in the world which can not be commanded, it is confidence ; and that the result of this essentially free act is to constitute for us the authority of the testi- mony of others. Here ceases the antagonism so noisily proclaimed between liberty and authority. Faith is the conciliation of these two terms. The principal use of liberty is to acknowledge legitimate authority and to submit to it. This is true in the domain of the intellect as in that of morals. Faith, then, in the general sense of the term, is confidence. Christian faith has an- other object than the natural faith which we accord to the testimony of our fellows ; but it is not of another nature. Christian faith is confidence in Jesus Christ. A man whose competence and veracity are beyond doubt reports what he has seen in a foreign land : we receive his testimony. Jesus Christ announces himself as the witness of things divine. He knows the celestial land ; ho comes from it; he is returning to it, and he knows the way. Those who believe in him receive his testimony. This testimony has a special character, because the truth an- nounced by Jesus Christ is inseparable from his work. He proclaims the supreme love in his words ; but his words are only the ex- pression of his actions. He not only says the truth ; he does it. His life, his death, his resurrection, are the manifestations of that love which he declares by realizing it. Confidence in his testimony therefore is in- separable from confidence in his wotk and in his person, since his testimony bears above all upon an act of the divine mercy, of which he is himself the accomplishment. To the question, What is the Gospel? wo can now reply : Tlie Gospel is the good news of the lore of God proposed to faith. III. Eelation between the Gospel and Philoso- phy. What is the true relation between tho Gospel and philosophy? A widely preva- lent opinion takes for granted that this re- lation is an opposition. Is it really so ? Let us first of all clear our road of a prejudice. In the last century, some men who had done great things, but who had all the violence and all the narrowness of party spirit, at- tributed to themselves in an exclusive man- ner the name of philosophers . Their adver- saries have often been so wrong as to con- cede to them the monopoly of- this noble ti- tle. Philosophy consisted at that time mere- ly in breaking with religious traditions. Any effeminate ignoramus or hare-brained mar- quis was proclaimed a philosopher, provided he declared himself an enemy of the Church and of the Gospel. This point of view is not quite abandoned. Do not all those who break with Christianity assume nowadays the title of free-thinkers ? And how many there are of these free-thinkers to whom nothing is more foreign than true liberty of thought, who are enfranchised by order, and believe, on the word of other people, that the time is come for no longer believing in any thing! In the sense of the eighteenth century, there was then hostility between philosophy and the Gospel. But this is noth- ing but the alteration of the true sense of the words. Philosophy is the study of the universal problem, and the research of its solution. Philosophy in general could not therefore be either favorable or hostile be- forehand to any doctrine. The inquiry would not be free, and consequently would not be serious, if it were assumed before examina- tion that it was to end in the adoption of the Christian system of doctrine. Would ifc be free, if it were assumed, before examina- tion, that its result was to be the negation of the Christian system ? No more in this case than in the other. We will trouble our- selves no further, therefore, with this Jiotion of the eighteenth century, but refer it to the class of mere prejudices. There is .1 conception of a more serious character, which sets up between philosophy NAVILLE : THE GOSPEL AND PHILOSOPHY. 291 and the Christian faith a wall of separation. This is the idea that philosophy must only accept theories directly produced and dem- onstrated by the individual reason. Those who maintain this view consider that the philosopher must shut himself up in the sol- itude of his own intelligence, must forget all that he may have learned from tradition, and only take account of the doctrines which have issued, or which might have issued, from his personal reasonings, as Minerva came forth from the head of Jupiter. He may receive the facts which are certified by the testimony of others ; but as to the solu- tions of problems, he is to admit only those which he might have been able to discover for himself, in whatever place he was born, and at what epoch soever he had lived. If this individualist conception of science is ad- mitted, which has had illustrious supporters in Des Cartes and Jean Jacques Rousseau, it is clear that there is no relation whatever between the Gospel and philosophy, since the Gospel belongs to that domain of tradi- tion from which the philosopher is debarred. But the pretension of those minds which think to create personally their doctrines, by keeping quite clear of tradition, is a preten- sion which can not be justified. Those who put it forth are the dupes of an illusion. They attribute to the individual exercise of their reason ideas which have entered their minds through the medium of speech. Now speech is the great vehicle of the tradition of the human race. To shut ourselves up in real solitude of thought, it would be neces- sary to isolate onr thought from speech, which puts us into incessant communication with the thoughts of others. This no one does, and no one will ever be able to do. The condition of progress in science is that wo study the data of problems, and accept the solutions which give a reasonable ac- count of the facts. Solutions become scien- tific by being demonstrated ; but their ori- gin is of no importance whatever. To ex- clude from scientific investigation the solu- tions which are encountered in the anterior current of thought would be to arrest the march of science. If astronomers were un- willing to admit the theories which tradi- tion brings to them, where would be the progress of astronomy? The individualist conception of philosophy is very widely ex- tended ; it contributes in a great degree to the discredit into which the science of sci- ences is fallen ; and in a great degree also it contributes to estrange men of high intel- ligence from the serious study of the verities of faith. We must therefore apply to this solution the advice which the apostle ad- dressed to the Colossians : " Beware lest any man beguile you through philosophy." It is, in fact, a great seduction to bo led to re- ject the truth. Happily this notion, which isolates the philosopher from tradition, does not bear examination. Let us put it aside, as we have done the prejudice of 4he eight- eenth century, and let us see what may be, for an unprejudiced mind, the true relation between the inquiry after the final cause of the universe and the good news of the love of God proposed to faith. To the questions put by philosophy, What is the final cause of the universe? what is its destination ? what is its actual condi- tion? the Gospel, as we have seen, affords clear and definite replies. The principle of the universe is the will of an eternal Mind. The destination of the universe is the hap- piness of creatures. The actual state of the universe is an order of things disturbed by sin. Faith does not meet these doctrines as intellectual affirmations which it examines according to the laws of science. Faith, cleaving to Jesus Christ, receives his testi- mony because it receives his person as the manifestation of eternal Love. Faith does not result from the isolated action of the understanding, but from the encounter of the entire spiritual being mind, conscience, heart, and will with the promises, the hopes, and the certainties which attach them- selves to Jesus Christ. Faith receives the truth, and its proper work is to realize that truth in the life. But the solutions of the universal problem included in the faith of Christians may be separated from it. Wo may examine and discuss them according to the rules of science. Do they render ac- count of the facts ? do they explain them ? If the Christian solutions seem incapable of accounting for the facts under inquiry, the philosopher passes on, and proceeds to look for another theory which may satisfy him better. This is what those thinkers of an- tiquity did who rejected the preaching of the apostles. If the Christian doctrines seem to account for the facts in question better than any other doctrine, the philosopher ought to admit them as tb* most rational solutions of the problems propounded by the human mind. This is what the philosophers of antiquity did, as, for example, Justin Mar- tyr and those who followed him, who, hav- ing accepted the new faith, affirmed, and sought to prove, that the doctrines involved in their faith satisfied the understanding bet- ' ter than did the traditions of paganism and the reasonings of the sages of Greece and Home. The relation of the Gospel to phi- losophy can not be established in a general and abstract manner. The philosophy which judges the evangelical solutions to be false or defective remains hostile or foreign to the Gospel. The philosophy which, after having studied the consequences of these solutions, and compared them with the facts, judges them to be good, becomes Christian. To determine the relation of philosophy to the Gospel is therefore to ascertain whether 292 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. the Christian doctrines relative to the final cause mill t In- destination of created bciugs explain the facts better than the other doc- trines contained in the annals of human thought. The question can not be settled at the commencement of the inquiry, but at its close : it supposes the whole work of sci- ence accomplished. Here I can not but declare my conviction, and it is this : If the elements of the uni- versal problem are carefully taken account of, if their respective places are assigned to sensible phenomena to the laws of thought, to the requirements of the heart, to the dic- tates of the conscience and if it is resolved to sacrifice none of these data, then I think that the declarations of the Gospel render an account to the reason better than do any other doctrines whatsoever of the origin of the universe, of its destination, and of its actual condition. I think that the existence of a spiritual Creator explains nature, such as science presents it to our knowledge. I think that the idea of divine love accounts for the constitution of the human heart, and for its thirst after happiness. I think that the doctrine of the fall can alone explain the actual state of humanity, and the strange contradictions of our souls. I think, in short, that the doctrines which proclaim the divorce between the Christian faith and sci- ence misconceive of the facts or misconceive of the Gospel. I believe, therefore, that the Christian philosophy is the best of philoso- phies. I believe, too, that, notwithstanding the labor of ages, this philosophy exists as yet only in the state of rough sketch of commencement. I believe that, just as our civilization is infinitely far removed from having realized the spirit of the Gospel, in the same way our philosophy is infinitely far distant from having understood in all its depths, and followed out in all its conse- quences, the truth of the Gospel. People often et out with the notion that the fathers of the Church and the schoolmen definitively organized Christian science, and that to proclaim the alliance of the Gospel and philosophy is to wish to throw back the human mind, and bring it again into the Middle Ages. Nothing, in my opinion, is further from the truth. Heaven preserve me from disparaging the importance and the value of such men as St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and others! But these great men are far from having exhausted the inex- haustible fountain of evangelical instruc- tion. They are accused of having been too thoroughly Christians to be philosophers; it would be more according to truth to com- plain that they were too thoroughly Greeks to be Christians. In the formation of the science of the Church, there were introduced elements of ancient thought incompatible ith the straightforward and true sense of the Gospel. Dazzled by the genius of Plato and Aristotle, the fathers and the school- men accepted from these illustrious Greeks, not only the portion of their works which is eternally true, but also certain principles, the consequences of which contradict the doctrine of the living and true God. The philosophy which has been accepted as such by Christians, and rendered illustrious, in modern times, by the labors of such men as Leibnitz, Fe"uelon, and Malebranche, con- tains within it foreign currents, which pro- ceed from Greece and from India, and which tend to make shipwreck of thought upon the desolate shores of pantheism. The idea of God, the almighty Creator, does not yet reign completely over the broken remains of the metaphysical idols raised by the er- rors of the sages. A noble task is reserved for OUT epoch. A great harvest of truth is asking for laborers to gather it : but in col- lecting, with pious care, all which the intel- lectual heritage of by-gone ages contains of true and pure, we must break, more than has been done hitherto, with the false or insufficient doctrines of Greek tradition ; and must succeed, by a eerious effort of thought, in placing the understanding itself, in its proper and primitive nature, in pres- ence of the Gospel. Then will it be seen and acknowledged (such is my conviction) that the Gospel is the true principle of science, as it is the true principle of civiliza- tion, and that Christian philosophy is the meeting of the reason as God has made it with the truth as God has given it. If this is so, philosophy will not replace faith, since faith, resulting from the meeting of the whole spiritual being heart, con- science, will with Jesus Christ, has other sources than the understanding; but phi- losophy will offer a considerable argument in favor of faith. The man who has received from Jesus of Nazareth the light of his men- tal vision, and who recognizes in his sayings the true solution of the great problems of the human mind a solution hidden from the view of antiquity, and brought to light by the foolishness of preaching that man will be disposed to say with Nicodemns, ' Thou art a Teacher come from God," and to learn from that divine Teacher the conditions of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. If the Christian solutions are ascertained to be the best solutions of the universal problem, by the free and unfettered study of a science seriously pursued, then philosophy becomes one of the proofs of the Gospel for those who seek, and a confirmation of the Gospel for those who believe. To the ques- tion, What is the relation of the Gospel to philosophy ? I answer, The relation of the Gospel to philosophy is a relation of har- mony. The Gospel offers the true solution of the problems propounded to the reason ; and the truth of those solutions becomes a proof of the Gospel. THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OP IDEALISM. BY THE REV. CHARLES P. KRAUTH, D.D., PHILADELPHIA, Vice-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. IT is impossible to understand the weak- ness of a system without understanding its strength. The strength and weakness of idealism connect themselves with the same facts and principles, so that they can readily be grouped in pairs and reduced to paral- lels. 1. It rests on generally recognized princi- ples in regard to consciousness. Its definition of consciousness is the one most widely re- ceived : the mind's recognition of its own conditions. It maintains that the cognitions of consciousness are absolute and infallible, and that nothing but these is, in their de- gree, knowledge. In all these postulates, the great mass of thinkers agree with idealism. The foundation of idealism is the com- mon foundation of nearly all the developed philosophical thinking of all schools. Ideal- ism declares that while consciousness is in- fallible, our interpretations of it, on which we base inferences, may be incorrect ; and nearly all thinkers of all schools agree with ideal- ism here. No inference, or class of infer- ences, in which a mistake ever occurs is a basis of positive knowledge. Hence, says Idealism, only that which is directly in con- sciousness is positively known, and nothing is directly in consciousness but the mind's own states. Therefore we know nothing more. So completely has this general con- viction taken possession of the philosophical mind, that even antagonists of idealism, who would cut it up by the roots if they could cut this up, have, not pretended that it could be done. Dependent on and involved in its postulate regarding consciousness, is the idealistic postulate, "An idea can be like nothing but an idea" that is, the mental image can not be like some supposed material thing, of which it is asserted to be au im- age. To a certain point, at least, nearly all the thinking of philosophers is consonant with this postulate. The subjective can not be like the objective; the idea of a house can not be like a house. The proposition, taken in one way, is a truism. The idea of a house can not be like a house : the idea is intellectual, the house is material ; the idea is in my mind, the house is external to my mind ; the house is a complex of modifica- tions of materials ; the idea is a modification of the immaterial ; my idea in no respect is a cause of the house ; the house is in a cer- tain respect one of the causes of my idea ; the idea depends on acts on the mind, acts in the mind, acts of the mind ; the house de- pends on none of these. Bricks and mortar are not like mental modes. " The beings of the mind are not of clay." But while idealism has here a speculative strength, which it is not wise to ignore, it is not without its weakness, even at this very point, for its history shows that it is rarely willing to stand unreservedly by the results of its own principles as regards conscious- ness. If it accept only the direct and infal- lible knowledge supplied in consciousness, it has no common ground left but this that there is the one train of ideas which passes in the consciousness of a particular individ- ual. A consistent idealist can claim to know no more than this that there exist ideas in his consciousness. He can not know that he has a substantial personal existence, or that there is any other being, finite or infi- nite, beside himself. And as many idealists are not satisfied with maintaining that we do not know that there is an external world, but go further, and- declare that we know that there is not an external world, they must for consistency's sake hold that an idealist knows that there is nothing, thing or person, besides himself. Solipsism, or ab- solute egoism, with the exclusion of proper personality, is the logic of idealism, if the inferential be excluded. But if inference in any degree whatever be allowed, not only would the natural logic and natural infer- ence of most men sweep away idealism, but its own principle of knowledge is subverted by the terms of the supposition. Idealism stands or falls by the principle that no infer- ence is knowledge. We may reach inferences by knowledge, but we can never reach knowl- edge by inference. "An idea can be like nothing but an idea." We have said that in one sense this is a truism. There is another sense in which it is a sophism. As a truism, it is like the proposition that the most perfect portrait can not be like the face that a picture can only be like a picture. The face is flesh and blood, the picture is oil and color ; the face changes its hues and expression, the picture can not change ; the face is rounded and di- versified to the touch, the painting is on one surface. And yet the portrait is like the 294 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. face, aud the idea is like the object. The portrait is like the face in this, that, through the light \vhich it modifies as its medium, it produces certain effects ou the consciousness like those which the face itself produces through the same medium. Under the same laws, the idea is like the object, in that it is a faithful mental picture, drawn under di- vine laws, by the touches of the senses, con- formably to the innate conditions of the mind itself. It is the picture of the object, painted by the object itself, through its me- dia, on the canvas, which is conscious of the picture it bears ; or, rather, it is a photo- graph which becomes a picture by the mod- ification produced through the media, and by the internal changes of the sensitive sub- stratum, which coacts responsively to the media. The object is as it seems to the mind, and the idea is like the object, so far that there is a real correspondence, correlation, analogy, conformity, between the object me- diating through its means of force aud the idea co-mediated by these means, aud by the powers, connate or educated, of the mind it- self. That which produces the phenomena is in the real accord of natural cause and ef- fect with the phenomena. Different phe- nomena imply different objects, or different conditions of the same object. In idealism there is no object beyond the mind and cor- respondent with the phenomena, but the phe- uomenou itself exhausts the whole concep- tion of object. It is not the phenomenon of an object, but is itself object. Hence ideal- ism proper holds that in the phenomena we f no sense grasp any thing beyond it, while idealistic realism holds that in an impor- tant sense, though mediately, we do grasp the thing beyond in other words, that the medium establishes a real relation between the object itself and the mind. 2. Idealism seems to be strong iu the fact that it rests upon generally accepted princi- ples in regard to the personality of mau. The common view, with which idealism concurs, is that it is not the whole man which is the Ego, but that only man's mind is the Ego; that man is not a person, but merely has a person in brief, that man is not mau. It assumes the simplicity of man proper. The Cartesian construction of man and of person is the received one, and this is the construc- tion on which idealism builds. When we are conscious of our self, we are not conscious of the material nature associated with our- self. The assertion of idealism which strikes most persons as the extremest of its absurd- ities, to wit, that we have not substantial bodies, or do not directly know we have them, is a mere logical necessity from the commonly received principle a principle very probably held by the very people who ignorantly stand aghast at its inevitable in- ference. The dualistic realists, on their own principles, no more know that they have bod- ies than the idealists do; and hence some of the strongest dualistic realists, like the Scotch school in general, lay the foundations of an extreme idealism iu the very effort to overthrow the older and weaker one. In denying Berkeley they unconsciously assert. Fichte.* This school has consequently shown a tendency, in some of its latest and noblest representatives, to run out into a sad inde- terminism, or to go over to the idealism against which it has fought for a century.t But the seeming strength of idealism hero is really a weakness ; for, in common with the received dualism, it accepts a false con- struction of the personality of man. The at- testation of consciousness is as real to th substantial existence of our bodies as an in- tegral part of our person, as it is to the sub- stantial existence of our minds. There is no sort of proof proper that man is spirit, apart from proof that he also is body. 3. Closely connected with the false dual- ism of the popular system in regard to the person of man is its construction of the rela- tion of matte)' to mind. This also has always been a tower of strength to idealism ; and it is one of its unquestionable benefits that it has shown the untenableuess of the old position. If the choice must lie between oc- casionalism, pre-established harmony, and materialistic physical influence, on the one side, or idealism on the other, every sound thinker will accept idealism, at least provi- sionally, as not so great an evil as the oth- ers. The ignorant physicist sometimes says, " We know that there is matter. Why need we go further to an unknown something called mind ?" But his very assertion is self-destructive. It implies the priority of the something knowing to the something known. He has not been able to assert mat- ter without postulating mind. You not only can not prove matter, you can not de- fine it, without implying the existence of mind. In its assertion that mind is first, idealism is beyond all successful assault. Berkeley here did a great work in pulling down the false, in showing the defects of the existing systems. Des Cartes and Male- branche accepted matter, and were at a loss what to do with it. It was simply in their way. Locke's was the magnificent chaos of all systems. It only needed selection to de- termine whether his views should be devel- oped into skepticism, materialism, idealism, or realism. Were Berkeley but a blind giant, it was, at this point at least, not in the tem- ple of a true God that he reached forth his hands to feel the pillars. It was Philistia's temple of false theories that fell. If Berke- ley was not a Solomon, he was at least a Samson. His argument against matter is, as directed against some of the dominant theories he assailed, simply invincible. If * See " Prolegomena," v., 10, 15, 20. t Ibid., iv., 6," 13; vL, 14. KRAUTH: THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF IDEALISM. 295 matter were no more than what they as- sumed it to be, could do no more than they supposed it to do, it was a mere obstruction, which it was a relief to sweep out of the way. If the battle was not won, the deck was at least cleared for action. Yet at this point it is a weakness of ideal- ism that, in regard to the relation of mind and matter, it attempts to set aside fa Ise the- ories by repudiating ivell-grounded facts. The evidence that facts are facts is not weakened by the false theories that are broached to account for them, nor by our inability to of- fer any theory which explains them. Ideal- .ism may overthrow occasionalism, or pre- existeut harmony, or physical influence, or any and every theory as to the mode in which the non-Ego operates on the Ego ; but the fact that the non-Ego does operate on the Ego remains untouched. In denying the fact, idealism is forced out of itself into skepticism, its own theory becomes chaotic and preposterous, and it reacts into realism, or even materialism, or runs out into nihil- ism. We know too little of the ultimate nature and relations of matter and mind to venture beyond the ground of facts iu re- gard to them. In matter are hidden divine forces; it too is worthy of God; it too is an out-thought of God ; and we can not meas- ure it, because we can not measure him. We can. not think too highly of spirit, but we can think too little of matter. Matter, too, is in the sphere of faith. We can not walk all through its domains by sight merely. There are three spheres of wonder in thought. The lowest is simple matter, with its myste- ries and beauty and grandeur. The high- est is pure Spirit, the self-existent cause of the universe, and his angels. Midway be- tween is the being in whom spirit takes to itself matter, not that they may mechanical- ly cohere with their wonders separated, but that a new world of wonder may arise mysterious forces, and forces which neither simple matter nor pure spirit in their isola- tion possesses. Matter and mind conjoined do not merely add their powers each to each, but evolve new powers, incapable of exist- ence outside of their union. 4. Idealism in its best forms addresses a powerful appeal to confidence in making so ranch of the universe as a thing of thought. Its Platonic harmony with the idea as the primal thing, the presupposed model of the existent in nature, is part of its strength. Agaiust the theories of blind fate, of aimless chance, of evolution, without mind to guide it, of unconscious nature fretting itself into form or consciousness, in the happy accidents of millions of ages of failure, against the theories that in any sense make mind the product or function of matter, or put it after matter, or co-ordinate it with matter the best idealism, in asserting spirit as the glo- rious original, asserts plan as before all evo- lution, asserts that the entire phenomenal, whether physical or spiritual, finds its last root and cause in personal reason. But, while it is a strength of idealism that it confesses the thought in the universe, it is its weakness that it denies the word. The word is the tody of the thought, the medium through which thought awakens thought, and by which mind is operative on mind. After all its efforts, idealism totally fails to give an intelligible account of the excitation of thought. Berkeley is totally unsatisfac- tory in the explanation of the importation of the divine ideas to us, and simply helpless when he confesses, but leaves unexplained, the fact that the mind of one man commu- nicates excitation to the mind of another, Fichte confesses that the positing of the non-Ego, as the non-Ego inevitably appears in every man's experience, is incapable of explication ("unbegreifliche"), and Schel- 'ling, in his Fichtian period, acknowledges that while the limitation of the Ego, in a general way, can be explained, " the definite limitation of it is the incomprehensible and in- explicable demand iu philosophy."* Berkeley appeals to the omnipotence of God as capable of making direct impressions on the mind ; but the first sentence of the "Principles" shows that God is not the ob- ject of human Jcnoicledge we have no more than our knowledge of our idea of him. We know the idea, not the Being. Berkeley can find no solution of the facts he admits, ex- cept by a tacit desertion of his own princi- ples of knowledge. Matter, in many of its aspects, may be considered as the medium of thought, the interpreting word of God's mind the necessary condition of man's con- scious relation to man ; but of all these, in its Gnostic undervaluation of matter, ideal- ism has persistently taken no notice. 5. Closely allied with the position it as- signs to thought, is the strength which ideal- ism derives from the conception of the phe- nomena of the universe, as language in which mind speaks to mind, or speaks to itself. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge ; there is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." Yet, while Idealism speaks much of lan- guage, it is a language without words, with- out lip, and without ear. It has no words, for words are not ideas, but the representa- tives of ideas, and the media of expressing them ; and idealism has no medium between minds it has mind speaking without words, articulating without organs, and heard with- out an ear. Its words are self-uttered, that is, unuttered self-heard, and therefore un- heard. But while objective nature is like lan- guage in that it reveals mind to mind, it is even as a revealer greatly unlike language * "System des transcendental Idealifmus," |>- US. CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. in many respects. Objective nature is not only a means to an intellectual end, but is also in some respects an end to itself. And even when it is a means, it is, in its first and most direct intent, a means to a natural, not to an intellectual end. The bird has facul- ties for itself alone ; and those which it has for me it shares with me. It does not only sing for me, it sings for itself also. The flowers that blush unseen are not lost, and the sweetness shed on the desert air is not wasted. The intermediate purposes of nat- ure do not find their analogy in language, and hence the conception of language fails to cover the whole problem. It does not answer to build a system on the straining of a metaphor. But the secret force of the analogy, even as far as we grant it, is not what it ought to be for the ends of idealism. Objective nature has not the arbitrary char- acter of language. Talking man has innu- merable languages man as the excitant of' the perceptions of his fellow has but one language, and to percipient man Nature ad- dresses but one. The man of spoken lan- guage is " homo" and " anthropos" and the nation of "homo" does not understand "an- thropos ;" but Nature's man is man himself, asserting himself to the normal perception of the whole race in the one perception, in its kind identical and unmistakable. If Nat- ure finds in language some of her parallels, she finds in it, in other respects, her contrasts. She is so vast and so manifold that she soon exhausts the figure and leaves it behind her. The spoons of our systems never throw back the tide-line of her ocean. 6. Idealism has been strengthened by the obscurity, confusion, and vacillation of think- ers in regard to the notion of substance, or of the thing in itself." Yet idealism itself involves all the most serious demands of the notion of substance, falls into its greatest difficulties, and com- plicates instead of relieving them. The dif- ficulties touching substance are in the sphere of the ideal. But although it raises the dif- ficulties, it never settles them. It has all the empirical difficulties in accounting for what seems, and then the complicating dif- ficulty, which haunts it all through, that this only seems. It is encumbered with the perplexity of treating physical substance as if it were a fact, while it yet conceives of it as a fiction. In a word, it is encumber- ed with all the embarrassments brought in by the idea of physical substance, yet can avail itself of none of the relief the idea brings. 7. Closely allied with the notion of sub- stance is that of came and causality, whose obscurities have given a place of shelter to idealistic speculation. But idealism is no less weak than other systems in its interpretation of causality. The causal relation of intellectual forces and effects, of mental precedences and succes- sions, is not only as obscure in its own nat- ure as is physical causation, but is, in fact, the source of difficulty as regards the phys- ical. It is the adjustment in the mental construction which creates the perplexity. Here, as in regard to substance, idealism is compelled to accept experience as a source of difficulties, yet dare not use it as a means of relief from them. 8. It is an, element of strength in idealism, in common with all monistic systems, that it appeals to the love of unity natural to the mind. All great tendencies in human nat- ure point in some way to great truths to some truth possessed or some truth needed. When they swing and tremble, it is still un- der a prevailing drawing toward the true ; and when they at last lie still and point steadily, they point to the pole. One of the most marked desires of human thought is toward unity, to make as nearly as may be the One the All. The great struggle of thinking has been toward a monistic con- struction of the facts, and this has given us pantheism, materialism, idealism, and the doctrine of identity. It is a weakness of idealism, in common with materialism and pantheism, that it finds unity not in the harmony of the things that differ, but in the absorption of the one into the other. Two sets of things are be- fore us in the natural construction of expe- rience, as all schools alike admit things spiritual, things material. Before they be- gin to philosophize, the materialist and the idealist wholly agree on the phenomenal facts. There seems to be a world external to me, and I seem to be conscious that there is. But when they begin to philosophize, the materialist insists that as such a thing as mind is supposed to be can neither act on matter nor be acted on by matter, there can be no mind. The idealist, holding to the fuud.imental mode of the materialist con- struction, simply inverting the terms, says : As such a thing as matter is supposed to be can neither act on mind nor be acted on by mind, there is no such thing as matter. Each is a dogmatist, arbitrarily assuming the ele- ment by which he will stand as separate from the other, and each, by the thing he re- jects, making void the thing by which he holds. For there is no genuine proof that there is matter which is not a proof that there is mind, no genuine proof that there is mind which is not a proof that there is mat- ter. All proof of the existence of matter links itself with the consciousness which the mind has of certain facts which involve the existence of matter ; all proofs of the exist- ence of mind are linked with the evidences that matter operates on it and is operated on^ by it. Matter isolated from mind is un- known, and mind isolated from matter is un- knowing. tAs subject and object are corre- KRAUTH : THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF IDEALISM. 297 late terms, and the real existence of the thing in one term of the relation implies the real existence of the other, so mind and mat- ter are not opposites, but correlates. As philosophy algne knows them, there can be no mind conceived -without matter, no matter conceived without mind. Materialism and idealism are alike forms of direct self-con- tradiction. 9. It is a source of strength to idealism that, \vith its principles, various speculative errors, especially materialism, seem to be most effectually overthrown. The hope of accomplishing this was one of Berkeley's practical incentives. That he has not ac- complished this in the manner and to the degree he proposed is certain, but his labors were nevertheless not a failure. Berkeley has helped to lay an immovable foundation for a true estimate of the value of the soul and of the majesty of mind. Quite outside of his peculiar speculation, in which many may decline to follow him and, indeed, the more potently if we drop it he has helped to fix forever, to thoughtful men, evidence of the personality, the independent exist- ence, the amazing faculties of man's spirit. If he has not demonstrated that there is no substantial body, he has demonstrated that, whatever body may be, it is for the soul; that matter is for mind ; that the psychical rules the physical ; that the spirit is the ed- ucator of the organs ; that the universe is expressed thought and embodied plan ; it is conceived by mind for mind, is the language in which the Infinite Spirit speaks to the created spirits ; that law is but the revela- tion of will, nature an eternal logic and festhetic ; that man is an indivisible person, and that his essential personality is inherent in his soul; that soul is not the result of organism, but that organism is the result of soul ; that the universe we know can not ex- ist without mind. The esse of the knoicn is percipi, man is the measure of his own uni- verse, and there is no man's vniverse outside of man. On the other hand, idealism promotes ma- terialism by reaction, as all extremes, in the same way, produce their counterparts. To make a real thing nothing, is the best prepa- ration for making it every thing. The soil of the most matured idealism is, equally with that of a one-sided realism, the soil of the most extravagant materialism. The land of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel is the land of Feuerbach, Vogt, and Moleschott, as the land of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke is the laud of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer. Many in the world of thinkers, nearly all in the every-day world of what is called "common- sense," if fairly pinned down to the choice between "no substantial mind," "no sub- stantial matter," would say, " If this be so, there is no substantial mind." To the pop- ulace throughout, and to nearly all the cul- tivated, the thing seen, felt, heard, tasted, is the substance ; not the thing which sees, feels, hears, tastes. That is to most men the shadow. If you can make them doubt of what they have seen, how can they con- tinue to believe in that which they have not seen? 10. Closely associated by misconstruction and one-sided extravagance with material- ism is the doctrine of realism, against whose abuses the best idealism is arrayed. The common-sense of the Occidental races is pre- vailingly realistic, but realistic beyond all the metes and bounds which any system of intelligent thinking can endure. All phi- losophers are agreed that in a certain aspect the popular interpretation of consciousness is demoustrably false. It is so false that half an hour's talk will satisfy any man of ordinary intellect that he has misconstrued the testimony of his own eyes, ears, and touch. When the refined sense of the race becomes realistic, it tends to materialism. Those who are terrified at idealism would do well to contrast its workings not merely with their own sober realism, but with the workings of materialism; to put side by side materialistic France and idealistic Germany, or in Germany to contrast even the extrava- gances of idealism, with the reactionary ex- travagances . of materialism, remembering that the abuse of realism is the direct strong- hold of materialism. But if the extravagances and mistakes of realism are favorable to idealism, there is a strength, naturalness, and consistency in a sober realism which makes it a very formid- able antagonist in the sphere of speculation, and an invincible one to the practical mind. Not only so it is inA T incible to the idealistic mind in its practical moods. Fichte himself says, " Idealism can never be a way of think- ing, but is speculation only. When it comes to action, realism presses upon every man, even upon the most decided idealist. Ideal- ism is the true reverse of life."* Fichte else- where says, " If I do not acknowledge prac- tically what I must acknowledge theoreti- cally, I put myself in an attitude of clear self-contradiction."! And in saying this he passes judgment on his own system. 11. It is a great source of strength to idealism that, appealing to the reason as its ground, those who are its antagonists have so often failed in meeting it successfully have so often insisted that the whole question is to be carried out of philosophy and put to the popular vote or, accepting the chal- lenge to meet idealism in the sphere of spec- ulation, have, in that sphere, failed to over- throw it. But it is no less true that if the antago- nists of idealism have strengthened it by Philosoph. Journal, v.. 322, 323, note, t "Brief an Reinhold," p. 5. See Krng, "Idealis- rnus." CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. their differences, the friends of idealism have weakened it by their vital differences. Its friends have failed to agree. 12. It is one of the great attractions of idealism to thinkers that it meets the prob- lems of thought in a philosophical spirit. If it does not solve them, it tries to solve them. If it does not answer the question, it does not give it up. If its heroes are vanquished, they fall in battle with their harness on. There is often a great misconception of the whole purpose of philosophical effort. It is not to find a ground of practical convic- tion sufficient for the routine of every-day life. That ground is common to all the sys- tems. The most absolute idealist and the most positive realist are uudistinguishable here. The whole circle of the phenomenal is the same to both. It is not the on, but the cion which divides them. It is, indeed, one of the marvels of the case, that idealists have so often been distinguished in the largeness and pureness of their practical thinking and of. their active lives. One grand object of philosophy is to vindicate the sensations or instincts to the reason, or to correct both by the reason, or reason by both, or to show that they lie out of the range of reason, and must be accepted with- out hope of harmonizing them. It is the object of philosophy to ascend as high as it is given to man to ascend, to adjust our be- liefs and our cognitions, and to escape the error of simply believing what we ought to know, or of assuming to know what we can only believe. When divine revelation is ac- cepted, we must believe in order to under- stand. Is this the canon of philosophy too ? Under which flag Credo ut, or Intelligo ut ? A great school, the school of Belief, replies, Credo ut ; another school would totally deny the Credo ut. "However harmless," says Kant, "psychological idealism may appear as regards the essential aims of metaphysics (though in fact it is not harmless), yet it would remain a perpetual scandal to phi- losophy and the common reason of our race, to be compelled to assume, simply on belief, the existence of things external to us the very things from which we derive the entire materials for the cognitions of our internal sense and when any one doubts their exist- ence to be at a loss for a sufficient proof of it."* Brave words; but Kant never reached the point at which he could pretend to say, on speculative grounds, Intelligo. His heart went over from the philosophers to the vul- gar, and tried to stanch the wounds of the "pure" with the bandages of the "practi- cal ;" but the bandages of the " practical " could only be found in the repository of the " pure," and from thence Kant had removed them. His "reason "affirmed idealism. His instinct clung to realism. Kant perpetually 1 "Krit, d. rein. Vernunn," Vorrede. Ed. Kirch- mnnn. Dritt. Anfl. (Berlin, 1372), p. 41. unraveled in one what he wove in the other. The shroud of Penelope was never com- pleted. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopen- hauer, and hundreds of others, have worked upon it, but it is unfinished. Jf the work is ever stayed, it will not be by its completion, but by the coming of some Ulysses of meta- physics who shall bring it to an end by re- moving its motive. Meanwhile it can not be denied that the idealists have been marked by bold, persistent labor, and by great fidel- ity to speculative processes. They have re- fused all compromise with "common-sense," have pushed away persistently the friendly but coarse hand of empiricism. There is an air of the heroic characteristic of the school, in its unceasing warfare with all, however strong or popular, which does dishonor to man as a being of speculative thought. They cau not be driven or bribed into com- promising the dignity of science, the maj- esty of mind. But though.idcalism has nobly represent- ed in its best names the philosophical spirit, it has by no means a monopoly of such names or of this spirit. Other systems have worthy names, and some very bright ones are found arrayed against idealism. Many of the most illustrious thinkers of England, Scot- land, France, and Germany have resisted its premises, and yet more frequently its infer- euces. Some of its masters sit uneasy on their thrones, put there against their protest by their disciples. All recent idealism is the exaggeration or isolation of principles of Kant ; but if idealism is Kantianism, Kant did not understand his own system. If his creed was idealistic, his faith was realistic. Recent idealism is the disavowed, if not the illegitimate, child of the great thinker it claims as its father. 13. Idealism has nurtured many of the noblest spirits of the race, and claims the power of*begetting exaltation of mind and character. Berkeley is a sublime embodi- ment of the true philosophical spirit ; of the loftiness of its aims, the singleness of its pur- pose, the invincible persistence of its fideli- ty to conviction. Without disloyalty to the practical turn of the English mind, he has been true to purely intellectual interests. He at least has not degraded philosophy to the kitchen. His intellectual life is consist- ent with his own utterances : " The first spark of philosophy was derived from heav- en. . . . Theology and philosophy gently un- bind the ligaments that chain the soul down to earth, and assist her flight toward the Sovereign Good."* Idealism in its best forms is characteristically the system of noble, in- tellectual, and pure men. If it does not lift men to the heaven of their aspiration, it at least keeps them out of the slough and the mire. Yet idealism has also in some cases nurt- "Siri?,"5301,302. KRAUTII : THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF IDEALISM. 299 ured, even in its greatest representatives, an overweening Titanic arrogance. Not even the noble nature of Fickte could hide this tendency or, rather, the frankness of a true manliness brought it into consistent relief. It stands forth like a spectral giant of the Brocken on every mountain peak of his spec- ulation. One passage will be sufficient to illustrate it: "And wow with this view that there is no objective being correspond- ent with our conceptions be free, O mor- tal ! be redeemed forever from the fear which has been thy humiliation and tor- ment ! Thou shalt tremble no more before a necessity which exists but in thy thoughts. Thou shalt no longer fear that thou shalt be crushed by things which are but the prod- ucts of thine own mind. Thou shalt no longer class thyself, the thinker, with the thoughts which go forth from thee. As long as thou wert able to believe that such a sys- tem of things as thou didst describe to thy- self actually existed, external to thee, in- dependent on thee, and that thou mightest be a mere link in the chain of this system, so long thy fears were well grounded. Now thou art redeemed, and I resign thee to thy- self !"* 14. Idealism has been, and is, in some shape, received by an immense portion of the race predominantly in the philosophical races of Asia, and to no little extent in Eu- rope. " In Asia," says Schopenhauer, "ideal- ism is both in Brahmauisin and Buddhism a doctrine of the religion of the people even. In Hindostan, in the doctrine of the Maja, it is universal; and in Thibet, the main seat of the Buddhist Church, it is taught in the most popular form."t It is equally true that the Western mind is not inclined to accept idealism. The Ori- ental mind receives it through the channel of pantheism. To that mind it is theology rather than philosophy. " Idealism in Eu- rope," says Schopenhauer, " is bare paradox it is known as a paradox scarcely to be se- riously thought of, confined to certain ab- normal philosophers." 15. Idealism is a system of great versatili- ty, and has the power of associating its fun- damental position with structures of the most diverse kind. But it is also true that if it can bo built in with the strong and noble, it can also bo built in with the weak and unworthy. If it has won to itself the self-sacrificing Chris- tian heart of Berkeley, and has drawn into it his profound theistic convictions, it has also woven in with itself the dreamy pan- theism of the Orient, and the more vigorous pantheism of the West.. It has adjusted it- self to Fichte's moral order of the world as "Bestimmung des Menschen," p. 159-162. t "Ueber . . . Grnnde,"3d Anfl., p. 32. " Parerga," 2d Anfl., ii., 40. "Willeu in der Natur," 3d Aufl., p. 18B. Fnuienstr.dt, S.-Lex. : Art. " Idealismus." an ideal God ; to Schelling's God of his first era, as " the absolute indiflerence of antithe- ses ;" of his second era, as the God " who attains to perfected being by theogonic proc- ess ;" and of his third era, with the various modifications of his mystic theosophic tend- ency. It has been bound up with Hegel's religion, as "man's consciousness of God, and of God's consciousness of himself in man ;" and with Schopenhauer's unpaling atheism, pessimism, and animalism. Beginning in the spirit with Berkeley, it has ended in the flesh with materialism, and has taken in all between. It surely has established no claim to be a religious or ethical regulator. In its native soil it is the philosophy of Brahman- ism and Buddhism, which are systems of atheism and pessimism. The Maja, which is the popular form of the idealism of the Hindoos, is " the veil of illusion which shrouds the eyes of mortals, and causes them to see a world of which it can not be said that it is, nor even that it is not ; for it is like a dream, or like the sun- light on the sands, which the distant traveler mistakes for water, or like the thong which he takes for a serpent in his way. Suicide is the masterpiece of Maja."* 16. As idealism is one of the earliest, so does it claim to be the latest, and therefore the ripest, result of speculative thought. As a philosophical system, not as an ad- junct to a pantheistic theology or mythol- ogy, or to the atheistic systems of the East, idealism is not earliest in its rise, and its ripeness is of no value unless the fruit be good. But idealism is not the last result of philosophical ripening. Already the marks of transition are manifest. The philosophy of the future is one which will be neither ab- solute idealism nor absolute realism, but will accept the facts of both, and fuse them in a system which, like man himself, shall blend the two realities as distinct yet inseparable the duality of natures harmonized, yet not vanishing, in the Monism of person. Its uni- verse shall be one of accordant, not of dis- cordant matter and mind a universe held to- gether and ever developing under the plan and control of the one Supreme, who is nei- ther absolutely immanent nor absolutely supra- mundane, but relatively both immanent in the sense in which deism denies his pres- ence, supramundane in the sense in which pantheism ignores bis relation. Its God shall be not the mere Maker of the universe, as deism asserts, nor its matter, as pantheism represents him, but its Preserver, Benefactor, Ruler, and Father, who, whether in matter or mind, reveals the perfect reason, the per- fect love, the perfect will, the consummate power, in absolute and eternal personality. 17. The facts we have presented upon the one side justify the language in which a^distinguished thinker of Germany does * Schopenhauer, Frauenstiidt : Art. "Maja." CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. homage to the strength of idealism in the very preparation to expose its weakness : * "Idealism is in substance and tendency closely allied with spiritualism ; but it is profounder, more imposing, more towering. Among all philosophical systems, the boldest and loftiest is idealism ; the idea of the self- dependence of the mind is in it carried to its supremest height; the omnipotence of the Ego is its fundamental dogma ; the Ego the thinking mind is the centre of the uni- verse, it is the solitary fixed point in the be- ing of things, the primal spring of all exist- ence the Ego is God. It is in the fullest and highest sense of the word the system of freedom and self-dependence. Every thing in it is freedom, free activity, the spontane- ity of the Ego knowing no limits but those of its own imposition ; for outside of the Ego is nothing which can set bounds to it the whole external world, the non-Ego, is but empty seeming or product of the self-active Ego itself. In this lies the gigantic power with which idealism so often lays its grasp on the mind of men of great force and inde- pendence of character. This explains the enchantment with which it often lures espe- cially the young man, who feels most vivid- ly the self-dependence of his spirit. Ideal- ism is the system of fiery, active, free youth ; realism the system of sober, cold, calm old age. " Hence, also, it is that the moral element in man finds its most potent stimulus in idealism ; for idealism, by pre-eminence, re- poses on the self-dependence and freedom of the mind. " As in pantheism it is the religious view of the world which predominates, in ideal- ism it is the ethical view. A potent, exalt- ed, and strict style of moral thinking arises from the idealistic principle. This princi- ple involves egoism, indeed, but it is an ego- ism of the noblest, purest kind, standing in harmony with the most genuine morality; for it throws into the first line, not the em- pirical, sense-bound Ego, but the pure ra- tional Ego. Thus, at least, it appears in its highest shape, in one whose strong, lofty, masculine soul lived wholly in idealism. We mean Fichte, as he presents it in its rugged completeness in his ' Doctrine of Science.' " The same illustrious writer, whoso elo- quent tribute to the strength of idealism will heighten the value of his exposure of its weakness, has said :t " Let us look now at the shadow-side of idealism for in truth it lacks not in very dark and mournful shad- ows. It has been remarked, in speaking of pantheism, how intolerable to the common understanding of man is the view that the world of the senses is but deception and * Helnrich, Th. Schmid (1799-1836), Professor of Phi- losophy in Heidelberg: " Vorlesungen iiber das We- pen der Philosophic" (Stuttg. 1830). t Schmid, " Vorlesnngen," p. 2C8. seeming. This contradiction to the ordi- nary view of the world is greatly strength- ened in idealism, as according to it not mere- ly the finite world of the senses, but the entire universe Nature, Man, and God the nat- ural and the supernatural, the corporeal and the spiritual in brief, all that is actual, ex- ternal to the Ego is annihilated. Nothing but the Ego with its activity has true sub- stantiality ; the entire external world is but show and illusion ; is no more than an emp- ty, insubstantial play of images which the Ego calls into being and then allows to van- ish ; is no more, as Fichte expresses it, than ' the mirage of our divine Ego.' Thus the Ego finds itself alone in the boundless waste of emptiness and nothingness which circles it all round. Can any man, endowed with emotion, feel satisfied with such a view t Must it not make any man shiver, vividly to actualize to himself the desolate loneli- ness involved in this idealistic view of the world ?" 18. Jean Paul has painted, with his char- acteristic matchless eccentricity and vigor, the desolate condition to which an actual- ized idealism brings the mind : " The worst of all is the pitched, aimless, perked-up, in- sular life that a god must live. He has no society. If I am not (as the idealistic Ego) to sit still all the time and to all eternity, if I am to let myself down as well as I can, and make myself finite, just to have.sowie- tliing about me, I shall be like the poor little princes I shall have nothing about me but my own servile creatures to echo my words. Any being whatever the Supreme Being himself, if you choose wishes something to love, something to honor. But Fichte's doc- trine of every man his own body -maker leaves me nothing at all, not even the beg- gar's dog or the prisoner's spider. For, grant- ed that those two animals existed, the dog, the spider, and I would only have the nine pictures which we would paint of ourselves and of each other, but we would not have each other. Something better than myself that better something to Avhich the flame of love leaps up is not, if idealism be true, to be had. The mantle of love, which for ages has been narrowed to the canonical four fin- gers' breadth of the bishop's pallium, now goes up in a blaze, and the only thing a'mau has left to love is his own love. Veipily, I wish there were such things as men, and I wish I were one of them. If it has fallen to my lot, unhappy dog that I am, that nobody really exists but myself, nobody is as badly off as I am. No sort of enthusiasm is left me but logical enthusiasm. All my meta- physics, chemistry, technology, nosology, botany, entomology, runs down into the old principle, Know thyself. I am not merely, as Bellarmiu says, my own Saviour, but I am also my own devil, my own messenger of death, and master of the knout in ordinary KKAUTH : THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF IDEALISM. 301 to my own majesty. Around me stretches humanity, turned to stone. In the dark, desolate stillness glows no love, no admira- tion, no prayer, no hope, no aim. I am so utterly alone ! no pulsation, no life, any where. Nothing about me, and, without me, nothiug but nothing. Thus come I out of eternity, thus go I into eternity. And who hears my plaints and knows me now ? Ego. Who shall hear me and Avho shall know me to all eternity ? Ego." 19. The picture drawn by Jean Paul is gloomy enough, yet it has a solitary point of light and relief. The Ego itself is left : one only, it is true, but each man will con- sider that his own. And it is the fact that idealism is supposed to leave this great something secure that has given it a fascina- tion to men, who feared that other systems would leave them nothing, not even them- selves. A self-conscious, a possibly immor- tal something this, at least, is gain. When every thing else sinks in the ocean of idealistic nothingness, does not the per- sonal Ego stand unshaken, a rock towering in solitary grandeur above the sweep of all the billows of speculative doubt ? On that long line of coast, chafed by waves which ever pile it with fresh wrecks, will not that rock of personal consciousness furnish a base for one light-house of the mind ? Alas ! no ; for the logic of idealism robs us of conscious- ness of self. If, as Berkeley and all idealists assert, ideas without correlate realities are the only objects of knowledge, the personal mind itself is either mere idea or it is un- knoicn. Idealism can only affirm, "Thei'e is con- sciousness," but it does not Jcnoiv what is con- scious. If the Ego be assumed to be the ob- ject of 'knowledge, it is in that very fact transmuted into idea ; it is the mirage of a mirage. Two things which God hath joined together can not be put asunder without loss to both. The murder of matter is the suicide of mind. 20. Tested, then, by its own logic, where does idealism end ? We shall not answer the question for it, but accept the answer of its pure and great representative, Fichte. "There is," says he,* "nothing permanent, either within me or external to me. All is ceaseless change. I know of no being, not even of my own. There is no being. I know nothing and am nothing. There are images : they are the only things which exist, and they know of themselves after the manner of images images which hover by, without there being any thing which they hover by- which hang together by images of images images which have nothing to image, un- meaning and aimless. I myself am one of these images. Nay, I am not so much as that : I am only a confused image of images. All reality is changed to a marvelous dream, without a life which is dreamed of; without a mind, which dreams ; a dream which hangs together in a, dream of itself. Intuition is the dream ; thought the soiirce of all the being and of all the reality which I frame to myself, source of my being, source of my power, source of my aims is the dream of that dream." * "Bestimmnng des Meuschen," p. 142. CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. BY THE REV. JOHN WILLIAMSON NEVIN, D.D., LL.D., President of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, As the subject is altogether too broad for any tiling like full particular discussion, all that I can aim at in the present paper must be an outline simply of its general signifi- cance, in the form of a series of brief and comprehensive topics or heads of thought, following one another in close logical order, and yet thrown each one more or less upon itself for its own separate evidence and con- firmation. 1. The world of nature, made up as it is of innumerable parts, is nevertheless one universal whole, bound and held together through all its parts. by the presence of a single divine idea, which reaches its end in man. Its constitution, in this view, is not mechanical, but organic that is, it is not a scheme of things put together by simply ex- ternal juxtaposition, but a system of things cohering together inwardly through -the pow- er of a common life. It may be regarded as a pyramid, rising through a scale of degrees to its apex; or as an orb, determined from all sides to its centre. In either case the end is the same. Man is the apex and cen- tre, and for this reason also in himself sep- arately considered an epitome, a synopsis or recapitulation, we may say, of the entire nat- ural creation. He is the last sense of it, and the only true key to its meaning in all its lower forms of existence. So much we are plainly taught by the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Our own consciousness confirms the lesson ; and it has come to be so irradiated now by the light of science, that a man must forfeit all claim to ration- ality to make it a matter of any serious question or doubt. 2. It is no less plain, however, that man is the consummation of nature in this way, only because ho is in himself a great deal more than nature. Nature in its totality looks beyond itself is a continual nisus, in- deed, in its own constitution toward a high- er order of existence, without which it has no power ever to become complete ; and the very fact that it ends in man implies there- fore of itself that he is for it, at the same time, the beginning of that higher existence, and the medium accordingly through which room is made for the work of creation to run its course in new and far more glorious form. Such superiority belongs to him, as \ve know, in virtue of what he is as mind or spirit, in which are joined together as one the two faculties of the will and the under- standing, making him to bo in the image and likeness of God, and capable thus of re- ceiving into himself the light of God's truth and the power of God's love as the perfec- tion of his own life. Man in this way ex- ists really in two worlds. In his physical organism he belongs at all points to the world of nature, the system of things seen and temporal, with which he stands in con- tinual communication through his bodily senses. In his spiritual organism he is just as intimately comprehended in the world of spirit, the system of things unseen and eter- nal, which lies wholly beyond the range of his senses, although it is all the time touch- ing him, in fact, and making itself felt upon his life in a different way. The difference between these two orders of existence with man, however, is not just that between body and spirit generally considered ; for the dis- tinguishing life of man that by which he differs from the mere animal is primarily and essentially all in his mind, and only by derivation from thence in his body. But his mind itself is so constituted as to have in it, so to speak, two different regions one looking directly into the natural world through the body, and the other opening principally into the spiritual world. Hence, properly speaking, the difference between the external man and the internal man, some sense of which is found entering into the deeper thought of the world through all ages. It is not simply with the regenerate and righteous that such dualism has place ; it belongs to our life here universally.* Man * "Das Gesammtverhalten wie das Gesamnitgefiibl des Menscheu beknndet auf uuwiderstehliche Art, dass er als 'Fremdling' sich wisee in dieser Siunenwelt nnd dass das Hiuansstreben iiber dieselbe der eigent- liche Siuu alter eigenthiimlich menschlichen Thii- tigkeit sei. Daher die rastlose Unrnhe nnd der tiefe Zwiespalt, der sein gauzes Wesen durchzieht, indem er jedes Erreichte sofort wicder vor sich verneineu muss; die nngestillte Sehnsucht gerade mitten iin kriiftigsten Lebensgefiihle, die jeder hochsteu Freude sogleich sich beimischende eruste Wehmntti,was eben- so die Quelle hochster Erhebung zn Poesie und Reli- gion dein Menscheu wird, als umgekehrt den irdisch Gesinnten in die Verodung eines leeren, ewig unbe- friedigteu Strebeus hiuauswirft : alles dies is nur dass Zetfgniss einer nuabliissigeu Verneinung seiucs gegen- wiirtigen Znstandes ; das heisst aber zugleich : seines substantiellen Hinawuteins iiber denselben. Es ist zugleich die thatkriiftige Wirkung uud nnwillkiihr- liche Beglanbigang seines wahrhaftigen, jenseitigen Wesens. Indem der Mensch alles Zeitliche zu einem Ungeniigeudem herabsetzt, in keinem irdisch erreich- tenZiele sich gefangen giebt, verrath er dadnrch, eir.e NEVIN : CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. 303 is by bis creation at once both spiritual and natural tbe denizen of two worlds. That is his distinction from the beast, which is natural only and not spiritual. 3. The dualism here brought into view, it is hardly necessary to say, is not abstract the conjunction of these two modes of ex- istence in any simply outward relation. It is a distinction which seeks and demands unity the organization of its two sides into the power of a single concrete life. Neither is there any room for doubt in regard to the law which should govern the coalescence of the two orders of existence into one. The natural, all know at once, is in order to the spiritual. Here only it is that mind comes to its native home and true destination by entering into the light of God. The two or- ders of life are thus of themselves correlated as outward and inward, lower and higher ; and this implies, of course, that the outward and lower should be ruled in full by the in- ward and higher. That is the true idea of human culture. That is the only intelligi- ble end of man's redemption. It is possible for this order to be reversed. Tbe spiritual may be hopelessly turned away from the light of heaven, and merged in the darkness of mere nature. But that in the end is the damnation of hell. 4. It is not then by any violent sunder- ing of the higher life in man from the lower that he is redeemed and saved. This would be a sublimation of his existence that must destroy at last all its reality. What the case calls for is the full and complete reduc- tion of his lower life to the obedience and service of the higher, the raising of the nat- ural through the spiritual into the harmoni- ous union of the whole man with God. Eoom is made for this in the twofold constitution of the mind itself, by which it is possible for it to flow down, as it were, from its own su- perior region into that which is lower, so as to join them together as with the intimacy of soul and body in the power of one and the same truly spiritual life. It is not sim- ply from itself, however, that any such heav- enward determination of the human spirit can come. There must be for this purpose a flowing into it of spirit and life from a yet higher sphere. Only in and by the powers of the heavenly world itself only through real conjunction with these powers, proceed- ing forth as they do from the Lord of life and glory is it possible to conceive ration- ally of the glorification of the natural in man by means of his spiritual in the way here spoken of. The case requires and in- volves thus in the end an actual coming to- gether of nature and the supernatural, the human and the divine, to make the idea of humanity and the world complete. On this fiberzeltliche Macht nnd elne iiberzeitliche Bestim mung in sich zn trngen." From Ira. H. Fichte's Psy- chologie. hinges, in truth, the whole problem of man's salvation. 5. The twofold constitution of man, as we bave now had it under consideration, may be taken as a key for the right appreciation in general of the two economies the two different orders of existence which are joined into one immediately by means of it in his person. We need no other argument to prove that the two economies are in fact one economy in a deeper and broader view, and that the unity of creation, regarded as a whole, does not stop by any means with the natural world, but embraces along with this, at the same time, the entire sense and significance also of the spiritual world. How indeed can we have any faith in creation at all as the work of Infinite Intelligence and Love under any other view ? The two worlds natural and spiritual form togeth- er one universe ; and the union of nature and mind in man serves to show, with a sort of palpable demonstration, how they stand related each to the other in this cosmical whole. Their connection is not one of space or time. It transcends altogether these lim- itations. The spiritual world is not on the outside of the natural locally, nor does it come after this temporally. It is not a mere sublimation or etherealization in any way of the natural. The relation between the two orders of existence is of one sort rather with that between soul and body in man two modes of being, which are totally dis- tinct, while yet they work into each other every where as coexistent spheres in the gen- eral identity of his life. It is the relation of interior and exterior, higher and lower, prior and posterior, cause and effect ; and here, as in the case of soul and body, it is the spiritual world, of course, which goes be- fore the natural in this order of precedence. Things seen and temporal stand every where thus in the active presence and power of things unseen and eternal. The spiritual world, it has been well said, works from with- in, and actuates all and each of the things that exist and are formed in the world of nature, as the human mind works into the senses and motions of the body ; so that all the particular things of nature are, as it were, sheaths and coverings, which encom- pass spiritual things, and proximately pro- duce effects corresponding to the end of God the Creator. 6. The spiritual world here introduced to our view, we can see at once, is heaven-wide apart from that abstract and visionary con- ception of it, by which it is too commonly regarded as being the mere negation or com- ing to an end of the world of outward sense and matter. We do not characterize it prop- erly, when we speak of it simply as immate- rial and supersensible, or resolve it into the notion of an intellectual and ideal system. Jt is beyond tbe reqch indeed of our present 304 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. sense, aud for this reason it transcends also the range of all our natural thinking. But this does not make it in any sense shadowy or unreal. In its own superior order of exist- ence it has a character of positive reality aud substance which goes immeasurably be- vond the visible and tangible show of things in the world of nature. The spiritual world is not the pale shadow of the natural. On the contrary, it is the cause of the natural that on which it depends; the interior soul of the natural that from which it draws its continual life ; the universal issue and end of the natural that in which only all its powers and possibilities become complete. It is a world or universe, full of concrete existence and sensible experience; full of living relations, activities, and powers ; full of endlessly diversified phenomenal scenery and surroundings, with which, for grandeur, beauty, and glory, the universe of nature can bear no comparison whatever. 7. The living entities, powers, and activ- ities of the spiritual world, thus glorious- ly constituted, refer themselves throughout to God as their origin and source, and in do- ing so form necessarily an organized system, endlessly manifold and yet uniyersally one, flowing forth with perpetual derivation every where from the fullness of him who in such way filleth all in all. 8. Collectively considered, this outflow- ing of the divine Life, in the presence and power of which the spiritual world is thus created and upheld, is the Word of God; the self-utterance of the Infinite and Eternal Fa- ther, by which he is to be regarded as com- ing forth from the otherwise incomprehensi- ble depths of his own absolute being, and making himself known in the universe of his works. " By the Word of the Lord," we are told, "were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth." So again : " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." What can be more plain or full than this ? The whole creation has its principle and beginning here, start- ing in the spiritual world, and reaching down through that to the natural world, which, as we have seen, is dependent on the spiritual throughout as a lower and relative- ly more outward mode of existence. The Word of God is the alpha and omega of the universe, embracing angels and men. the heavens and all the powers therein, together with the whole boundless compass of nat- ure ; all things from first to last, from in- most to outmost, come together in this com- mon ground, and have in them no real cause or power of existence iu any other view. 9. If any thing wore needed more than has been already said to establish the idea of an organized harmonious unity, reaching through the universal creation aud binding all its parts together as a single whole, we have it -with overwhelming force iu the great truth here brought into view. The divine Word is the all in all of creation, the one principle from which the whole of it flows. How then must this not be, through all its orders of existence, through all its economies and constitutions, whether of nat- ure or of grace, one always and every where with itself, even as the Word is One ? 10. The law of original existence for the world in this view, is, of course, no less neces- sarily the law also of its continued subsist- ence. Heaven and earth stand perpetually in the presence and power of the divine Word ; and this not in the character of an almighty jiat simply, taking effect upon them in an outwardly mechanical or mag- ical manner, but in the way of life flowing into them continually through the Word from God himself; in whom, as we know, all angels and men, as well as all living creat- ures lower than man, live, move, and have their being. "Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in heaven ; thou hast established the earth and it abideth." The principle of stability iu both cases is that from which both heaven and earth took their origin in the beginning. So all changes also, through what are called the laws of nature, come no otherwise in truth than by the operation of this divine agency flowing down into the natural world through the spiritual. Noth- ing less than this is involved in that mag- nificent language of the Psalmist : "He send- eth forth his commandment upon earth ; his word runneth very swiftly. He giveth snow like wool; he scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels ; who can stand before his cold ? He sendeth out his word, and melteth them ; he causcth his wind to blow, and the waters flow." 11. The divine Word, by which the heav- ens and the earth continually exist in the way now shown, is the same that constitutes the living soul of all divine revelation from the beginning; making the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, in which this rev- elation is contained, to be the very embodi- ment in natural form of a supernatural spirit- ual power and glory surpassing immeasura- bly the reach of all merely natural intelli- gence or thought. This is what we are to understand by the inspiration of the Bible. It is the Word of God, in its ever-living su- pernal majesty, occupying and possessing the sacred text, not simply as the cause aud origin of it at the first, but as its truly in- forming and actuating spirit through all time. Of the Bible it must be said always in this view, God is there. It is the very she- kinah of his presence, as represented by the ark containing the two tables of the Law in the Jewish sanctuary ; the testimony, the cov- enant, so called, in and by which God came NEVIN: CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. 305 near to man arid drew man into union with himself. Every where the Bible is this un- ion aud meeting together of the invisible and eternal, the "powers of the world to come," with the interior deepest needs and aspirations of the human spirit in its present bodily state. Hence its authority for all or- ders and degrees of intelligence, from lisp- ing infancy on to old age ; an authority not dependent at all on criticism or hermeueu- tics, but powerful enough, if need be, to set this at defiance, to turn it into derision, as in itself a higher right, holding consciously or if not' that, then nevertheless sensibly from the felt power of the Divine itself, hid- den in the outward text, and yet shining forth from it so as to give understanding to the simple ; even as one may take in the light of intelligence from the eye of another, and catch the inspiration of love from his beaming face, whose presence otherwise may be only most imperfectly understood. The full sense of the Holy Scriptures is un- fathomable even for the angels themselves. How much less may it be sounded by the plummet of any simply human science ? It is a voice every where from behind the veil of sense and time, having in it eternal mean- ing. What Christ says of his own speech on one occasion is true of sacred Scripture uni- versally; its words are SPIRIT and LIFE. They are " quick and powerful." Gcd is in them of a truth. 12. The economy of revelation ends in what St. Paul calls the " mystery of godli- ness," by which God, as the Word, "for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." We can not go too far in owning aud proclaiming the infinite majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ, as being in this way the actual manifestation of God in the flesh. The whole truth and power and glory of the Gospel are comprehended in St. Peter's con- fession, Thou art the Son of God. On this rock only Christianity and the Church stand firm against the powers of hell. The Son of the living God, Christ is himself the living God ; the fullness of the Godhead bodily; the brightness of the Father's glory, and the ex- press image of his person ; the Lord of heav- en aud earth, by whom all things were cre- ated that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible aud invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers ; who is before all things, and by whom all things consist. He is the image of the oth- erwise invisible, unknowable, unapproacha- ble God, whom no man hath seen nor can see. The Father is in him, as he also is in the Father. He and the Father are one. He is, in a word, the Jehovah, the I am, of the Old Testament ; the Alpha and Omega, as he proclaimed himself in the vision of Patmos, the beginning and the ending, the 20 first and the last, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. 13. Christ, the Sou of God, is the Sav- iour of the world, through the divine life which is in him as God, and which he is able to communicate derivatively to all who look to him aud come to him for that purpose. Whatever other things enter into the idea of salvation, they are to be regarded as con- ditional only, and incidental to this, which is most plainly set forth in the Gospel as central and fundamental for all else. "In him was life," it is said, " aud the life was the light of men." He is "the way, the truth, the life." He is "the resurrectiqn and the life." To follow him, is to " have the light of life." He "hath life in himself," and in virtue of this "quickeneth Avhom he will." To his disciples he says, "Because I live, ye shall live also ;" makiag life for them to be the efflux of his own life. " God hath given to us eternal life" so the divine record itself runs : "and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life ; and he that hath not the Sou of God; hath not life ;" to which St. John adds with grand conclusion : " We know that the Son of God is come ; aud we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and ETERNAL LIFE." 14. The life which is thus in Christ the principle and fountain of salvation for men, must pass over to them in a living way, so as to become in them also a true rational and spiritual life conjoining them with the life of the Lord; and the organ or faculty by which this is found to be possible on the side of man is faith; which is an activity both of the understanding and the will in their highest form, joining them together as one in the apprehension of the divine Truth and the divine Good- these by their everlasting marriage constituting in fact the inmost es- sence and substance of the divine Life. Faith is no mechanical or magical appointment in this view, through which men are justified and saved in an outward Avay by having im- puted to them what is in truth no part of their own proper personal existence or expe- rience. It is the meeting of the human spirit inwardly with the enlivening rays that issue actually from the Sun of Righteousness. It is the turning of the soul within itself toward the Lord, and the opening of its inmost re- ceptivity to the life that is forever flowing from his presence. 15. There is, in such view, only one true faith for man. All the innumerable realities of the spiritual world are so many truths, in- deed, which make room for its exercise; but this universe of truths is at the same time one universal complex, in which all refer themselves with inward interdependence, correlation, and common derivation to the same general origin and source ; aud so, in full conformity with this, all the possible ex- 306 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. ercises of genuine faith refer themselves in like manner to a single generality, head themselves together, as it were, explicitly or implicitly, in one ground faith, which is the root and principle of faith in all other forms. What that primordial faith is the faith of all faiths is determined at once by what we are hound to acknowledge as the primordial truth the truth of all truths as this comes before us in the being of God, made known to us through his Word, and with full reve- lation at last only in and by his Son Jesus Christ. The true Christian faith in this view is not made up certainly of a system of sep- arate and independent doctrines or facts, loosely thrown together each on its own sup- posed evidence and worth ; neither can it be made to start from any such particular doc- trine or fact at our pleasure. There is but one order here that is practically or theolog- ically sound and right ; and that is the order which is governed by the objective constitu- tion of the Gospel itself, the order which be- gins with the Lord God our Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ, and which sees and owns all other truth only as flowing from his presence. 16. It is strange indeed that any one looking earnestly into the New Testament should ever miss seeing that the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the view now stated, the power of owning him to be the Son of God (with all which that means) not notion- ally and from the memory only, but from the interior depths of the soul is in very truth the beginning of all faith, and that without which all else calling itself faith is turned into a pale abstraction resembling death far more than life. Can Peter's con- fession, the rock on which the Church is built, ever cease to be what it was in the be- ginning? Is it less true now than it was eighteen centuries ago that the one universal work of God, the fountain of all other obedi- ence and righteousness, is to believe on him whom God hath sent ? How often are we not told that to believe in Christ as the Son of God is of itself to have eternal life, and that the want of such faith in him is itself the doom of death, because it is a rejection, in fact, of the life that dwells in his person and is to be found nowhere else ? " He that heareth my word," he says, " and believeth on 1dm that sent me" (in other words, seeth the Father in the Son), "hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life." But why go on here with testimonies ? On this subject they are alto- gether too full for particular quotation. 17. Life, eternal life, thus attributed to laith, is not to be viewed as a reward at- tached to it extrinsically by God, but is the necessary result of what faith is in its own nature and office; as being the medium of communication on the part of man with the Lord of life and glory, who is the fount- ain of all spiritual being, from which de~ pends, as we have already seen, the right order and perfection also of all natural be- ing. Faith saves us through its object, which is the divine truth, being in reality so related to this that neither can be in any man without the other. The divine truth (joined always with the divine love) is made through faith to be actually in the soul as a part of its own existence, like light in the eye. " In thy light," says the Psalmist, " we shall see light." But light again is at once but another term for life ; and in the spirit- ual world, accordingly, the divine truth is synonymous with the divine life; they cau not be sundered one from the other. In the heavens, truth is substantial essence just as really as life is, both flowing together from the Lord. " I am the Truth," he eays ; " I am the Light of the world ;" " I am the Life ;" all in the same intensely realistic sense. Faith, then, as the receptacle of divine truth, the shining of divine light in the soul, is necessa- rily communication at the same time with the divine life proceeding from Christ. Its power to save is just this, that it opens the spirit of man, made in the image of God, to- ward the answerable fullness of God in Christ, and so makes room for a veritable conjunc- tion with him, in the sense that the very idea of religion has been felt to demand through all ages. This, indeed, is eternal life. 18. Christianity, having for its origin and ground our Lord Jesus Christ seen and owned by faith to be the Son of God, in the way now presented, is a vast and mighty system, as already intimated, of other truths and facts innumerable (taking in at last, in- deed, the universal sense of the world), in which, however, all other truths are true, and capable of being truly believed, only in virtue of their inward coherence with what is here the beginning of all Christian life tind doctrine. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for example, is for our faith and theology, only after Christ, in and through Christ, and not before him ; and can never be construed rightly, except as controlled by the radical confession first of all: Thou art the Son of God; the I AM, which was, is, and is to come; the Almighty. So with the hypostatical un- ion. So with the inspiration of the Script- ures, the atonement, the article of justifica- tion, the Church, the resurrection from the dead. They are all true, in their proper Christian sense, only in and through Christ. They are true Christologically only, and not in any other sense. 19. But while the ultimate principle of Christian faith is in this way no other than our Lord Jesus Christ himself, the rule of faith, the medium and measure of its proper exercise, the only sure directory in the end for Christian life and doctrine, is the divine revelation contained in the Holy Scriptures. They are "the law and the testimony," by NEVIN : CHRISTIANITY AND HUMANITY. 307 which all truth is to be tried. They are this, however, only through their interior spirit- ual constitution only as they are, in the way we have seen, the very presence and power of the same divine Life by which Christ is de- clared to be the Light of the world. This it is that constitutes their true internal sense, undiscernible to the natural mind, and makes them to be in truth the "Word of God which liveth and abideth forever." They authenticate and illustrate Christ, only because Christ shines in them every where as the Truth of all truth to which they owe their origin. The " spirit of prophecy," we are told, "is the testimony of Jesus;" it flows from him, and looks toward him, in every part of the Bible. This reciprocal il- lumination and witness is no vicious logical circle. It is like the relation between speech and thought, or between body and soul, in general ; where each term is intelligible only through the other. The mutual illumi- nation in the case before us holds in what we have just seen to be the peculiar nature of faith. This is the inmost and highest in man brought into conjunction with the inflowing life of the Lord ; a state thus of direct illu- mination from him as the Sun of the spiritual universe, which of itself serves then to show the Scriptures in corresponding illumination also, and so to bring into view their true in- ward power and glory, whereby "they are able to make men wise unto salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ." This is that testimonium spiritus sancti of which so much account was made in the age of the Reformation, and the true idea of which has been so ranch obscured since. Not man's spirit as such bearing witness to God's truth (a purely rationalistic conception), but the Spirit of Christ made to be in man actually through his faith. Here lay the sin and con- demnation of the Pharisees. They made much of the Scriptures, thinking to have in them eternal life ; and yet they had no pow- er to see how the Scriptures testified every where to the presence of Christ. Why not ? Because they lacked the illumination that comes from inward union with the divine soul of the Scriptures. " Ye have not God's Avord abiding in you," Christ says to them ; " for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not." The entrance of God's words giveth light, where they are irradiated with this faith; not otherwise. Entering into man in any other way, the sense of the Bible is adulter- ated and profaned, and the light of heaven is turned into thick darkness. 20. The view now taken of the relation between faith and the revelation of God cen- tring in Christ carries us beyond the dilem- ma of false authority and false freedom, from the horns of which it has been found often so difficult to escape in the construction of Christianity. One is the Roman scheme, making the outward Church the beginning and ground and measure of all actual Chris- tian faith and life. The other is the Ration- alistic scheme, making the Bible to be all this in the like outward way, as a text-book of divine instruction on the plane of the nat- ural understanding, the moral and religious sense of which each man is left to work out as he best can in the exercise of his own free will and private judgment. The two schemes come in the end to substantially the same re- sult. They cast down the Word from its true supernatural throne. They rob the liv- ing Christ of his indefeasible majesty, pow- er, and glory. They tarn the communion of the spiritual world with the natural into mechanism, magical hocus-pocus, or dim gnostic imagination. They quench the heaven-aspiring light of faith, and will not suffer it to rise into the direct light of the Lord ; making reason in this way blind also, and turning it over to perpetual melancholy bondage in the prison-house of the Philis- tines. 21. Christianity, completing as it does the true idea of humanity by bringing it into true union with God, is the completion necessarily at the same time of the entire natural creation which finds in man its high- est and last sense ; in which view then, as the end of all things going before, it must be regarded as dominating and determining, from first to last, the order both of actual existence and of right intellectual concep- tion for the world at large. It is not the lower any where in the scale of creation that gives origin and support to the higher. On the contrary, the higher as principal and chief ultimates itself every where in the low- er. So up to the very fountain of all things in Him who came forth from the Father to be in this way the beginning of the works of God. With this must correspond then any true theory or science of the world. The boasted modern Weltanschauung, which builds its scheme of the universe on the premises of nature (as though these were for man here ihftonly data to start with the only elements to work with on to the end in trying to un- derstand the problem of his own life), is just as irrational as it is irreligious. The only true Weltanschauung is that of the Bible, which derives the harmonious whole of cre- ation, in descending order, from that Uncre- ated Living Wisdom (the source of all other life and light), which " the Lord possessed in the beginning of his way, before his works of old ; which was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was." The power of seeing and owning this is faith ; and just for this reason faith in Christ is the eye of intelligence for man, and the light of all science deserving the name. "Through faith," says St. Paul, " we understand" (intelli- gize or see with the mind) "that the worlds were framed by the word of God ;" so that the visible depends every where in truth on 308 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. tho invisible, nature on spirit, and not the reverse. Without the felt practical force of this insight into the actual constitution of tho world (which only faith can give), sci- ence is blind and philosophy insane. 22. Where science owns no allegiance to faith in this way, it is Naturalism ; and where it pretends to take in the spiritual meaning of the world in tho way of religion, it becomes what we are to understand prop- erly by Humanitarianism, the great heresy of the present time. This is the idea of a full completion of the world, morally and phys- ically, in man (who is in fact the immediate completion of nature), without the necessary complement of a higher spiritual life de- scending into him from the Lord. The the- ory may set itself, as infidelity, in open op- position to the Gospel; or it may affect to take the Gospel to its bosom, and to be just th.it form of Christianity which is now need- ed to save Christianity itself from general wreck amid the rising billows of modern un- belief. It is not to be disguised that such humanitarian Christianity has taken posses- sion widely of the religions thinking of the world at this time ; and that the evil is not confined to the doctrinal heterodoxies that have come down to us from other days, but is eating as a cancer also far and wide into what still claims to be the orthodoxy and the true evangelical life of the Church. Without going into details, it may be said that wher- ever the central mystery of Christ is either theoretically or practically cast down from its throne ; where he is not seen and owned to be the Son of tho Living God, the fount- ain of all life and light for men in the most real view ; and where faith is not made to be the answer of the soul, first of all, to this primordial truth this truth, of all other truths, serving to join man with the inflow- ing life of the Lord, and becoming thus in man himself a " well of water springing up iiitoeverlastiuglife" there, we must believe, the right confession of the Gospel is want- ing, and the fine gold of the Christian sanc- tuary has become dim. It is Humanitarian- ism " sitting in the temple of God, and show- ing itself to be God." There may be an outward cleaving still in the case to old doc- trines, regarded as technicals of the faith once delivered to the saints; but the doc- trines are dead, having no root in the Living Christ (mere tuSwXa, simulacra, pallid corpse- like abstractions [1 John v., 21J), and so are ready always to go np like the crackling of thorns before the fire of skeptical criticism. Or it may be the whole idea of doctrine and mystery has been given up, under the plau- sible notion that all true religion has to do at last only with a good life, and what we may call the spiritual culture of man from the plane of his simply human life as such. Under either view that of dead doctrine 3r that of no doctrine the mystery of error here described comes to tho same thing. Antichrist it is in both forms, work- ing and warring against the only true idea of Christ. 23. That this true idea of Christ is in- deed the question of all questions for tho age, and the question toward the right solu- tion of which all the inmost powers and deepest needs of the age are, with growing urgency, now pressing from all sides, is com- ing to be more and more plain to the obser- vation of the thoughtful every day. Science, politics, and morals, believingly or unbeliev- ingly, are forced to do homage to it. No theology has living interest, no confession- alism is more than a grinning skeleton of dry bones, apart from it. All the issues of faith and infidelity, spiritual life and spirit- ual death, are heading themselves together here, in the grand heaven-and-earth moving interrogation of our Lord himself: "What think ye of Christ ? Whose Son is he ?" Who is ho as related to God ? Who is he, and what is he, as related to humanity and the world ? 24. The right knowledge and acknowledg- ment of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the view we have now taken of what he is as the full and only visible manifestation of the other- wise invisible God, the fullness of the God- head bodily, and that which necessarily goes along with this, the right idea, namely, of what true saving faith is on the side of man, as first of all a direct looking to and com- ing to the Lord beheld in such divine majes- ty, whereby room is offered for the inflow- ing of truth, righteousness, and life in tho most real way from his presence these two in union, are they not, beyond all else, what the critical questionings and confusions of this last time of the Church are plainly forc- ing into view more and more from all sides, as the only true answer to the great world- problem with which they are concerned? Here, and here only it would seem, have we any solid ground on which to stand in the conflict between faith and science, revela- tion and reason the real existence of a per- sonal God, on the one hand, and Naturalism, or Nature made to stand for God, on the oth- er hand. Here, and here only, is the way opened for a real coming together of Chris- tianity and humanity, religion and morality, in the historical life of the world. Here, in its only true beginning, must theology find also its true end. Here only, if ever, can the war of sects and confessions so much as begin even to look toward the unity and catholicity of a genuine Church life. One Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, to begin with ; and so one faith, one worship, one life. To talk of negotiating or bringing to pass Christian orthodoxy or catholicity in any other way than this is but hypocrisy and sham. As he is onr Life, so he alone is our Light also and our Peace. COMPAEATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS, IN ITS BEAR ING UPON CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS. BY EDMUND SPIESS, PH.D., Privatdocent of Theology in the University of Jena, Germany. CHRISTIANITY, from its incipiency, has nec- essarily been subject to assault and persecu- tion, and been compelled, in the " combat for existence," to defend its very life. On the right hand and on the left enemies have arisen against its truths and its adherents, whom it could meet with no other weapons but faith and patience and a willingness to suffer for the Saviour's sake. The era of bloody persecutions passed away, and although the life and property of Christians were no longer jeopardized, yet it became apparent to them that it was their sacred duty to defend their " most holy faith" (Jnde 20) and Christian life. The primitive form of apologetics (dn-oXoylo/iai, to acquit, to justify) was, to a certain de- gree, of a forensic character, consisting in the refutation of unjust accusations before the tribunals of heathen magistrates; its ob- ject being essentially self-defense. Who has not heard of the calumnies and insinua- tions against Christians and their doctrines and practices characterized alike by ig- norance and malice that were brought for- ward by Lucian of Samosata, Porphyrius, Celsus, Hierocles, and Julian the Apostate ? The refutation of these malicious calumnies and aspersions was followed by apologetic writings, properly so called, which set forth the evidence of the divinity and majesty of the Gospel, and proved it to be the " fulfill- ment," once for all. From this it naturally followed that the glory and all-sufficiency of Christianity was illustrated by the polemic demonstration of the futility of heathen- ism and the insufficiency of Judaism, which furnished the dark background to the lucid picture of the kingdom founded by the Sav- iour from sin and death. While the Christians were yet an op- pressed minority, they were compelled to bo cautious in their polemics and reserved in their apologetics; but when Julian the Apos- tate, perceiving the historic anomaly of hea- thenism, and being convinced of the impos- sibility of its restoration, was forced to ex- claim toward the end of his life, " Tandem vicisti Galilaee," the parts were changed, and the oppressed frequently became the oppress- ors. Nevertheless, after Christianity had become, to its own injury, the favored State religion, it could not but notice that the Gospel must always remain " a sign which shall be spoken against" (Luke ii., 34), and that the preaching of the cross is " unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness" (1 Cor. i., 23); that there al- ways will be those that turn aAvay from Christ, declaring, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" (John vi., 60) ; that "mauy are called, but few are chosen" (Matt, xxii., 14) ; that only few find the narrow way that leadeth unto life, while the majority walk in the broad way that leadeth to destruc- tion (Matt, vii., 13, 14). The enmity of the natural man and his hatred of the truth, united to the pride of a wisdom arrogantly trusting in itself, not only always resist Chris- tianity, but also secretly and openly assail it with acrimony and pertinacity. But the mode of attack, as well as the im- plements of war, are changed with time and circumstances. Tactics and strategetics con- tinually vary, and experience teaches that every warlike operation reveals the imper- fection of weapons formerly deemed suffi- cient, and prompts to the invention of new and more perfect ones. Thus also the truth of Christianity and the validity of the Gos- pel for all men and all ages are continual- ly threatened and assailed by ever-varying means. Entirely new doubts and objections spring up beside the old ones, which, An- tasus-like, appear to gain new vigor by their contact with the earthy elements of human- ity. Assaults are made from new positions, and with missiles of a wider range and more destructive power. Levers are applied to all possible points in the attempt to lift the whole fabric of Christian thinking and be- lieving, with all its premises and conclusions, from its very foundation, and thus to secure its downfall. I only need refer to Darwin- ism, which has been demonstrated and made plausible with so much acumen and force of conviction by my colleague, Haeckel, in Jena, whose numerous disciples learn and practice jurare in rerba magistri, and are under the influence of the well-known law laid down by Cicero, Obest plcmmqne ns qni discere ro- lunt auctoritas coram, qui docent. Also David Friedrich Strauss, in his book, "Alter nnd ueuer Glaube" (3d ed. Leipzig, 1872), has 310 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. declared, with praiseworthy frankness and consistency, that a reconciliation between modern civilization and Christianity can no longer be thought of, and that all attempts to harmonize reason and revelation, worldly culture and Christian piety, must necessarily be ineffectual. Formerly, at least the elements of relig- ious truth were considered safe and invio- lable ; for even Rationalism, while it surren- dered, as untenable outposts, the divinity of Christ, his vicarious atonement, his resur- rection and ascension, the Holy Ghost, and the Trinity, nevertheless considered fully secured and unassailable the belief in the ex- istence of God, in liberty and immortality, in the moral government of the universe, and in the responsibility of man, created in the image of God. But to-day no point is safe any longer before the arguments and weapons of a science which challenges not only Christianity, but all religions, as far as they presume to be any thing else but phys- iological problems ; which asserts that they are all mere phenomena and functions of the animal organism, and, as such, must dissolve themselves inta the nothingness of errors and superstitions. This science declares that religion is either fear or attachment, which may be sufficiently explained by instinct or habit. Christianity, above all religions, can not shrink from the duty of justifying its claims in the face of every opponent, and of defending itself not only against ancient doubt, but also against these modern objec- tions. The truth that there is no salvation ex- cept in Christ, and that " the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church" (Matt, xvi., 18), must not only be professed and be- lieved, but also proved and confirmed. This is the object of Christian apologetics ; it is the scientific vindication of the absolute and divine authority of Christianity, as it was maintained and taught by Christ and his apostles, and as it was accepted and became effective in the establishment and propaga- tion of the Church. In defining the limits of this science and its purpose, we must show, in the first place, what Christianity has in common with all other religions ; and, in the second place, by what peculiar (distinctly Christian) concep- tions, doctrines, and institutions it has out- stripped them all. There exists, indeed, a consensus between Christianity and other re- ligious communities of every grade and kind, and also a dissensus, that constitutes, as it were, the personal property of our belief. Now it must be shown that the consensus comprises all the essential elements of relig- ion, and then the positive, the peculiar, the characteristic properties which make up the dissensus must be maintained against its ad- versaries ; or, in other words, the evidence must be procured to establish the fact that in Christianity there are combined in one the universal and natural, and the special and supernatural revelations. We herewith avow, openly and explicitly, a dualism of a universal and a special revelation, which, of course, is energetically denied by monists of every shade, as is also the dualism of God and the world, body and spirit, time and eternity. Now it is apparent that neither the con- sensus of Christianity with other religions, nor its dissensus from them, nor the absolute and relative superiority which we claim for it, can be made evident without a thorough and methodical comparison of all religions. A science that makes such a comparison its object is an indispensable means in the serv- ice of Christian apologetics. We are not compelled, like the defenders of Christianity in the first centuries, to clear ourselves from unjust accusations before a legal tribunal ; or, like the early fathers and the schoolmen, to combat the adversary by dialectics, and to adduce speculative arguments for substan- tiating the doctrines of the Church. Since Christianity is attacked in its character and history by means of critical and historical objections, it has to submit to a correspond- ing treatment, and defend and vindicate it- self by adequate weapons. The religious es- sence of Christianity can, of course, only be comprehended in the empirico-psychological manner of introspection, but its incompara- ble superiority above all other religions, its all-sufficiency, must be proved and made ev- ident in the way of critico-historical exam- ination. Even those that are without the skeptics and the aggressors have a right to demand this ; and we can not be justi- fied in asking for Christianity an exemp- tion by privilege, or in forbidding the appli- cation of the same mode of proceeding in its examination to which all other religions, with all that belongs to them, have to submit. But this critico-historical proceeding must necessarily be carried on in connection with the comparison of Christianity with other religions, some of which, as is well known, claim for themselves the superiority of n greater rationality and perfection a mode of treatment, however, which has either been entirely neglected or only incidentally em- ployed. Such a comparison can be abused, and thus a most effective weapon maybe turned against us for our defeat. It has, in fact, al- ready been employed in the effort to bring down Christianity to the level of a transient stage of knowledge, to a mere phase in the re- ligious development of mankind. In view of such dangerous, if not culpable attempts, it becomes the duty of Christian apologetics to take from the arsenal of this scientific comparison new instruments of defense for the protection of Gospel truth, to point out the insufficiency and degeneracy, or the mere- ly preparatory significance, of other relig- SPIESS : COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS. 311 ions, arid to furnish -the evidence of the ful- fillment which has had its advent in Chris- tianity. The comparison, the search for regularly recurring phenomena, and their common and essential attributes and incidents, has long since been methodically and comprehensive- ly undertaken in other departments of sci- ence; and in the hands of chosen investiga- tors it has proved a key to disclose and make known astounding analogies, uuthought of affinities, and occult laws. We must not un- derrate, while we do not overrate, the results which have been brought to light by " com- parative anatomy, comparative phil.logy, comparative statistics, comparative ethnog- raphy, and ethnic psychology." A new spirit of inquiry has entered into an entire series of scientific departments by the application of the comparative process ; and as science lias caused the resurrection of creations that lay buried in the primitive world of geology to build its daring conclusions upon (I only need refer to the researches and combina- tions of Alexander von Humboldt, who was as well versed and is as celebrated in this part of the world as in old Europe), so also does comparative investigation bring life and action into the fossils of historic science, and into the tertiary strata of the ancient depos- its of language and thought. It should, therefore, be systematically employed in the examination of religious, and for the estab- lishment of the absolute superiority of Chris- tianity. The advantage of such a juxtapo- sition for comparative purposes has already been indicated by Basil the Great, when he says, in reference to Christianity and hea- thenism : " If the two opinions have any relationship to each other, then the knowl- edge of it must be useful to us ; but if this is not the case, then the perception of the difference, which has resulted from the com- parison, is of no small value for the mainte- nance of that which is superior" (De Legend. Graec. libris, cap. 5). The essential meaning of the words of the apostles, wavra yicara/3a(ne), must carefully trace the vestiges of divine revelation, must acknowledge the "divine image " in " the least of the brethren," be- fore we can introduce the preaching of the cross, and intrinsically Christian truth. And how much of this points to a solidarity and original union of all natural revelation ! The eminent Nagelsbach, in his post-Hom- eric theology, states that there are three questions which man puts to every religion, viz : " Is there a God, and what is he ? How does man get rid of his sin ? What will be- come of him after death ?" In regard to the first and last questions, heathenism has received copious airkpfiara \6yov (seeds of the word), and it is indeed a pleasure and a profit to notice the rays ot light that have pierced the heathen world, where we find anticipations and intuitions that lead nearly to the gate of truth. Christ brought certain- ty, and raised human perception to the high- est grade by revealing God as eternal and all-comprehensive love, and by placing the centre of human destiny in the future iu a more perfect phase of personal existence. There is also a consensus gentium, a divine revelation communicated to all mankind in regard to the moral law (the vopoi aypa^ot), which is "written iu our hearts" (Rom. ii., 15). For this reason the law which tho Lord and his disciples proclaimed was not essentially new, but only more complete, more free, and more spiritual (1 John ii., 7). Also, the requirements of self-denial, of love to the neighbor yea, even to the enemy, of regeneration, and similar commandments, often claimed for Christianity exclusively, were by no means previously unknown or unheard of. Many loci communes may be ad- duced from heathen writings to prove this assertion, as I have done iu my book, "Logos Spermaticos" (Leipzig, 1871). Christ brought the fulfillment of the law (7r\r;pw//a, Rom. xiii., 10; Gal. v., 14; Col. i., 19; ii., 9; Eph. i., 23 ; iii., 19 ; John i., 16), gave us the tnic motives and our ideal aim. Other moral principles than the original, divine, and there- fore ever valid human ones, he could not and would not propound. He only aimed to renew men in the image of God, to bring them into conformity to his will, and to re- store them to the divine sonship. It is in this sense that he spoke of a new obedience and of new commands. But further than that the consensus does not go. The solution of the second vital question " How can I get rid of my sins ?" heathenism never found in any form. For this one, this distinctively Christian one i. e., the glad tidings of the redemption of sinful humanity there is no parallel in hea- thenism. No natural light is sufficient to fathom this mystery, this special dispensa- tion of God. "He, who is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctifica- tion and redemption" (1 Cor. i., 30), he, the only begotten of the Father, has given him- self for our sins ; " the chastisement of our peace -was upon him ; and with his stripes are we healed." For him the nations wait- ed till the " fullness of time " was come. He was the consolation of the Jews, who had been trained for him ; and the unknown help- er, for whom the heathen ardently hoped. But how the miracle should be accomplished was a hidden counsel. This is the eternal dissensus of Christianity, as high as heaven, by which it is distinguished from all other religions, by which it has become the abso- lute religion. Because no other religion gives au answer to the above question, nor is ablo to satisfy this want, therefore Christianity is the religion, singular in its kind, and reach- ing beyond all others. The anxious sigh, " Oh ! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me ?" is responded to by the comfort- ing and joyful exclamation, " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. vii., 25). The divine dignity and perpetual value of Christianity, as also its quality as "a sign which shall be spoken against" (Luke ii., 34), lie in the fact that it offers reconcilia- tion by the death of the Son of God, and that the Lord is pre-eminently the physician for SPIESS : COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS. 315 the sick, and the Saviour of sinners. For this reason the whole, who imagine that they need no physician (Luke v., 31), the self- righteons, the wise men after the flesh, the mighty and the noble (1 Cor. i., 26), turn away from it, and only few seek the narrow way that leadeth to life. For this reason, also, many that were bidden despise the feast prepared (Luke xiv., 21-24). It can not be otherwise, since it has pleased God to save, by the foolishness of preaching, those that believe. It is true this dissensus this peculiarly Christian element invites every where and at all times contradiction, and provokes the world to fight against it ; but at the same time it also finds its verification in the con- sciousness of sin, and the longing for salva- tion of the whole world, even of all who are born of woman. Inquire of all nations, knock at the door of all religions, every where you will find the consciousness of guilt and the painful sense of impotence ; every where yon will discover sin as a " thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor. xii., 7), and as "the sting of death" (1 Cor. xv., 56). Compare them all, without exception from the ex- tolled and happy Greeks down to the beast- like idolaters, from the most ancient nations, that worshiped and sacrificed on the high places, to the modern atheists and ascer- tain whether the same disease is not felt ev- ery where ; and inquire whether any one knows of the remedy ? Christianity has not brought this disease into the world sin, and the sense thereof, and the fear of death as it has been charged; but it has given the correct diagnosis, and made the cure possi- ble. Thus the impotency of all natural re- ligions, when brought in contact with the general depravity, becomes evident by a com- parison with Christianity, and acts as a de- fender of the Gospel, which is willing that all men should be saved, and reveals at the same time how this salvation has been pro- cured for all. I have only attempted, by general out- lines, to set forth the comparative examina- tion of religions, as the right and duty of Christian science, the manner in which ex- amination should proceed, and the advan- tages it offers for the defense of Christianity, especially against the " educated of its de- spisers." In this sense, and for the purpose of finding new weapons for the protection of evangelical truth, the comparison of re- ligions has not yet been carried on. Even the celebrated Max Miiller, although he has furnished in his "Essays" very estimable contributions to a scientific comparison of religions (vol. ii., " Comparative Mythology and Ethnology"), did not intend such com- parison to be a theological, but a historico- philosophical branch of science, in the sense of Lessing's comparison of the rings, which ultimately aims at the abolition of Chris- tianity, and not at its victory over other im- perfect religions. Previous to the delivery of his brilliant address at the Philological Congress at Kiel (1869), on the reception of the scientific comparison of religious into the catalogue of academical lectures, I had endeavored to demonstrate the possibility and necessity for Christian theology to oc- cupy this field, and cultivate it for its own use and profit. The same had been done by Maurice, in "Lectures on the Religions of the World ;" by Hard wick, in "Christ and other Masters ;" and by Werner, in " The Relig- ions and Cults of Ante-Christian Nations," without, however, attempting comparison or synthesis, or without having an apologetic intent. The later writers on apologetics, from Tschirner to Baumstark, as well as those who, like Kieulen, Lechler, and Hirzel, have treated of the object, method, and po- sition of this science in connection with the- ology, do not, of course, pass by other relig- ions, nor can they ignore them, but they do not yet make this systematic comparison of religions an independent and important part of apologetics. The encyclopedists, whose business it is to point out the limits of a science, and to divide it in its several depart- ments, have not as yet assigned a place to the comparison of religions, nor defined its object. Danz, Pelt, Staudenmeier, and Ha- genbach know it, at best, as an auxiliary sci- ence, which now and then may furnish some subsidies. Tradesmen-like, old-school the- ologians turn up their noses, and look witli an air of superiority upon the intruder, just as pedantic philologists look down in pity upon Germauistic and comparative philolo- gy. More considerate scholars confine them- selves to pointing out the impracticability, the insurmountable difficulty of considering other religions in a scientific manner. But, for the future, it will be entirely impossible to take position on the " insulator," and to remain confined to the criticism, exegesis, and application of the Bible. The world has become wider; it is now recognized that there are dwellers beyond the mountains and over the seas ; and, by the aid of a more extended philology, new means and ways are opened to become acquainted with the sphere of conceptions and ideas of other eras and nations ; therefore we must enlarge our view, extend our researches, and place our aims higher. It is true that the science of comparative theology lies still in the cradle. Its field looks now like the territorial squares on the old maps of America, but, like these, it will bo rapidly occupied. Shall we wait, then, till philosophers, philologists, and ar- chaeologists have taken possession of it in or- der to make it serviceable against Chris- tianity ? Voltaire truly says: "Every new truth fares like the embassadors of civilized states among barbarians; only after repeated in- 316 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. suite and vexations they obtain recognition awl influence." The comparative study of religious may for a while lie denied its claim as a science ; theological faculties may as yet not he willing to take up this new branch of learning; but it will not be long before this question will be made the order of the day, and we can not aflbrd to look quietly on, while others make use of this subject for their own ends, without our advice and co- operation. In comparison with the great- ness and importance of this undertaking, many of the favorite labors of modern the- ologians, in raking out of the dust all man- lier of apocryphical and pseudepigraphical writings, and sheddiug their light upon them, appear positively ridiculous, puny, and iusiguificaut, no matter how much eru- dition and study has been thrown away upon them, and to what degree the value of such historico-critical scholasticism may be exaggerated. It will be reserved to coming centuries to gather the fruits of the compar- ative investigation of religions; but shall we not plant trees, because our descendants only can reap from them ? That would be equally egotistic and faint-hearted. In former times numerous endowments were made and societies established, of either a scientific or popular character, for the maintenance of the divine authority of the sacred Scriptures or the defense of disputed Christian truth. Such was the endowment of Lord Boyle (H691); the Legatum Stolpia- num at the University of Leyden ; the So- ciety of the Hague for the Defense of the Christian Religion, called into existence A.D. 1785, to paralyze the influence of Priestley's "History of the Corruptions of Christian- ity ;" the Societas Sueciana pro fide et Chris- tianismo, in Stockholm (since 1771) ; the Ger- man Society for the Promotion of Pure Doc- trine and True Piety, founded by John Au- gust Urlsperger ( A.D. 1775), in Augsburg, and afterward removed to Basle; the Teyler Leg- acy, in Harlem (A.D. 1786), and others. It would be very timely to make new efforts and sacrifices for the defense and protection of assailed Christian doctrine. And in this contest it is eminently advisable that, by the comparative study of religions, proofs and weapons be secured for the defense of Gos- pel truth, lest they be employed in combat against it. It would also be in the spirit of this Conference, which is united by the con- sensus of faith, and at the same time respects the disscnsus, acting according to the two mottoes Suum cwque,aud. Firibusunitis if it would declare its sympathy with the aim, and its appreciation of the importance of the comparative study of religious, in its bear- ing upon Christian apologetics, and if, by its testimony and influence, it would give en- couragement to such scientific labors in the service of Christianity. " And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold ; them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." With this expres- sion of true toleration and high hope from the lips of our Saviour, I conclude, desiring to share with you the conviction that the comparison of religions can and must lead to a union in religion. So help us God! APPENDIX TO DIVISION III. DISCUSSION ON DARWINISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF DEVELOPMENT. [Daring the holding of the Philosophical Section in St Paul's M. E. Church, on Monday, October 6th, an extempore debate occurred, principally bearing upon the Development theory, as enunciated by Darwin and others. After the first Paper of the day had been read by Dr. McCosh [see p. 264], the discussion was opened by three speakers M. Weldon, Dr. Brown, nnd Dr. Hodge and was continued at intervals during both the morning and afternoon sessions, as other Papers on kindred topics were presented, President Anderson, of Rochester University, being the last speaker. On the conclusion of his address, a resolution was offered by a member of the Conference, and unanimously adopted, that Dr. Anderson be requested to write out his remarks, and that they be printed with the official documents of the Conference. In complying with this resolution, it has seemed advisable, on the part of the editor, to insert also a brief abstract of the whole de- bate. Ed.] REMARKS OF THE REV. GEORGE W. WEL- DON, OF LONDON. Mr. Chairman : The ques- tion which is before us thismoruingistbedoc- trine of development in its religious aspect, or, as our programme has it, "The Religious Aspects of the Doctrine of Development." Now, I think all of us who have heard the able and eloquent paper of Dr. McCosh must come to this conclusion : that unsolved prob- lems of creation ought to make men modest; for, as Bishop Butler says, we do not know the whole of the case, and any man who de- sires to exercise common-sense must acknowl- edge that we are ignorant of many of these points. We have to decide in the present day whether we are to accept the theory of the amiable, but I think mistaken, Professor Darwin, of Englaud. In other words, whether we ought to believe that man, as he is, came from clots of animated jelly, or whether he is the work of the Almighty Being, who said, when he brought him forth, that he was very good. If man is sprung from primeval mat- ter, he can not be the man spoken of in Gen- esis. But, sir, it is sometimes thought that the Bible is responsible for every doctrine of modem science. I beg permission to take exception to any such idea. The Bible was not intended to instruct us in science or the details of history. The Bible was made to teach us the one thing needful. The mighty monarchs and important empires that have come in contact with the history of man's creation have, of course, been spoken of in the Bible, but then, as soon as their special relation to the creation had been treated of, they were allowed to sink into the back- ground. The Bible was written to teach man the way of access to God through Jesus Christ, wholly ignoring any thing regarding the technicalities of scientific discoveries. Onr modern infidel tells us that in the Bible we have here only the production of one man, like many of our modern books, con- taining poetry, prose, and history ; and am I, he asks, to suppose that this is the produc- tion of a mighty man ? Sir, I can show the infidel that that patchwork is the very proof of its production by a divine mind. I see by those plans before me [pointing to maps suspended on the wall] that the earth is made up of numerous strata, all differing in substance, but their products and magnifi- cent service over the globe is the source from which man and beast derive sustenance and strength. My attention is riveted upon the same commanding and ennobling object, the one foundation of our peace and hope, the almighty and adorable Saviour, the strength and righteousness of the people of God in every form and in every age. Whatever book I open I find Jesus Christ the same he the first, the last, the midst, and without end. I say that the Christian development of the Gospel of Jesus is the whole aim of the Word of God; and I will say to you, in conclusion, that the difference between the religious views of an ancient patriarch and one of ourselves is only a difference of de- gree, not of kind. I was struck, yesterday, by something I noticed in your city. While I was crossing Fulton Ferry I saw the mag- nificently strong buttresses of some beauti- ful bridge that is to span your grand river. We see the buttresses rising, and from them we can imagine something of what the bridge will bo when it is completed. When at length it is finished, you will get it in all its com- pleteness and symmetry; but it is only the bridge which you saw some time before in 318 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. embryo the buttresses slowly rising from a network of scaffolding. So it is iu the re- ligion of oldeu times and of to-day: it is a difference, not of kind, but of degree. REMARKS OF THE REV. J. C. BROWN, LL.D., OF BERWICK-ON-TWEED, ENGLAND. I admit the propriety of the remarks being impromptu. At the same time, desiring to be explicit in the statement, I retired to jot down in pencil the few remarks I have to make. Though we are not met for contro- versy, we are met for conference, and I desire, as a botanist of twenty years' standing, to submit the following testimony as a contri- bution toward the expression of views iu regard to the aspects of the doctrine of de- velopment : First. All that I know in regard to the veg- etable kingdom is iu accordance with the hypothesis of development, as that term is generally understood. I know of nothing in- compatible with that hypothesis, and I know of much which seems to support it. Second. I find that hypothesis, as a work- ing hypothesis, much more useful in the prosecution of research, and in the exposi- tion of results obtained by research, than the hypothesis of a separate and independent creation of the several recognized species of vegetable production. Third. Facts which I have learned in re- gard to the animal kingdom are in accord- ance with the supposition that the work of creation in this kingdom has been, analogous to what it has been in the other. Fourth. The circumstance of all that I know on these subjects being in accordance with the hypothesis of development has in no way affected my views on any one of the follow- ing points of dogmatic theology, which are intimately connected with religious life, on which points I hold the views advanced in the Shorter Catechism issued by the West- minster Assembly of Divines : I. Man's chief end. II. The only rule which God has given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. III. The attributes of God and the mode of divine existence. IV. Sin. V. Effectual calling. VI. Repentance unto life. VII. Justification. VIII. Adoption. IX. Sanctification. X. The blessings which in this life ac- company or flow from these. XI. The blessings to which believers are admitted at death and at the res- urrection. XII. Providence. XIII. Prayer. Fifth. I don't believe, with those divines of Westminster, that God created all things out of nothing iu the space of six days ; but it was not the doctrine of development which led me to abandon that dogma, and there- fore it is not responsible for my abandon- ment of that view of creation. Sixth. The hypothesis relates solely to the mode of creation, not the fact, and from the effect of it on nay own mind, I anticipate that the confirmation or the general adoption of the hypothesis of development will ulti- mately exercise a beneficial influence on re- ligion. REV. DR. HODGE, OF PRINCETON. I don't stand here to make any speech at all. I rise simply to ask Dr. Brown one question. I want him to tell us what development is. That has not been done. The great ques- tion which divides theists from atheists Christians from unbelievers is this : Is de- velopment an intellectual process guided by God, or is it a blind process of unintelligi- ble, unconscious force, which knows no end and adopts no means ? In other words, is God the author of all we see, the creator of all the beauty and grandeur of this world, or is unintelligible force, gravity, electricity, and such like ? This is a vital question, sir. We can not stand here and hear men talk about development, without telling us what development is. DR. BROWN. My reply shall be simply in answer to the question, not an argument or discussion. What I understand by the de- velopment hypothesis many call it a the- ory ; I call it, and maintain that it is as yet generally, and certainly with me, a hypoth- esis is, confining myself to the vegetable kingdom, that the whole of the species of roses with which we are acquainted are not so many separate, special creations, but are all modified developments of one kind of rose ; and all the information I possess in re- gard to the vegetable kingdom indicates that not only what we call species, but what many call genera and orders calling them genera and orders in our ignorance are also modified developments of the same forma- tion. With regard to who is the author of creation, have I not answered it ? I refer to the doctrine in the Shorter Catechism. Is a minister and a missionary of forty years' standing to be required to tell whether he believes that this world is made by God ? But the question has been put, and it de- serves an answer. My belief is that every thing in heaven and earth tiud hell was cre- ated by the Lord and Father of our Saviour Jesus Christ. We are taught in that Cate- chism to which I referred to make a holy, reverent use of all God's attributes, ordi- nances, words, and works, and all whereby- soever he makes himself known. I hold that as an expositor of God's work, I am as truly a prophet of the Lord as I am when I stand in the pulpit as an expositor of God's Word. DARWINISM AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 319 The inquiry is not as to the fact, but as to the how ? How has God produced this won- drous world a world full of beauty ? Nev- er, through endless ages of existence, shall I cease to thiuk with gratitude of this, that the infancy of my being was spent in this glorious world, and as God gives me oppor- tunities I shall continue to study the won- drous works of his hand. My graudsire was a man not unknown in Scotland and America John Brown, of Haddingtou. One of his dying sayings was this : " I have hunted after all the lawful knowledge of the sous of men, but all would I give to know more of the love of God which is in Christ Jesus." These sentiments have been my sentiments, according to my weak- er powers, throughout a ministry of forty years, and I hope to prosecute to the end of my life the researches for which an opportu- nity is afforded us below, and hope in the better world to join those who proclaim " the whole earth is full of Thy glory." After the reading of Professor Guyot's pa- per [given ou p. 276], REV. ALEXANDER BURNETT, of Aberdeen, Scotland, remarked that he did not under- stand whether the reader of the paper held the view that the days of creation were pe- riods of time or regular days. He had al- ways stumbled over the passage that "the evening and the morning were the first day," and also the words of the verse, " For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and rested the seventh day." He could not un- derstand from the Professor's paper whether he meant that these were actual days. In reply, PROFESSOR GUYOT restated his views on that point. He said the days of creation are marked by works, and not by any definite time. In the true history of any thing from the great beginning, there are epochs of de- velopment ; in the plant it is the root, stem, leaf, flower, seed these are the days of the plant time is given according to the need. Such are the days of creation, which were simply indicated by the successive steps of its organization. In order to retain the idea of days of twenty-four hours, we must leave Moses, and be very unjust to him; for he tells us that the day of twenty-four hours be- gan at the fourth day of creation and not at the first, when the day and night are simply synonyms of light and darkness, without suc- cession. As to the Sabbath day of the Crea- tor, without an evening, it can not be of an- other kind from the cosmogonic days ; but man's week of toil and man's Sabbath day are measured according to the shortness of his earthly existence. PRINCIPALDAWSON,D.D., of Montreal, Can- ada, expressed his belief in the theories his friend, Professor Guyot, had put forth, and argued that the seventh day spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis could not be lim- ited to twenty-four hours, since it was not said to have had an evening or morning, and since the work of creation was not resumed. According to Moses, we now live in the sev- enth day ; but, according to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap, iv.), the fall prevented us from entering into this rest of God, and the weekly Sabbath is a memo- rial of this loss, as well as of God's rest. Further, according to the same writer, Christ has entered into his Sabbatism, and our Lord's day is a short reminder of a like per- petual Sabbatism which remains to us. We can not, therefore, properly explain or de- feud the Sabbath or the Lord's day unless we hold with Moses that the seventh day is an indefinite period. This being so, there is surely no ground to object to any length of the other days that geology may require. After the reading of Professor Spiess's pa- per [which see, on p. 309], the Chairman an- nounced that a limited time would be allow- ed for a general discussion of the subjects that had been considered in the papers read during the day. Calls for Dr. Dawson to take the platform were heard from different parts of the audience. Dr. Dawson said that if there were questions any one would like to ask him, he would be glad to answer them to the best of his ability. A clergyman in the centre of the church at once arose, and asked whether there is any necessary antag- onism between the Darwinian system and the Christian religion ? In response, DR. DAWSON said : The question asked me is whether there is any necessary antag- onism between the Darwinian system and the Christian religion ? That is a question that would require a treatise to answer, and I scarcely know where to begin in attempt- ing a reply. Darwinism is not the whole of what is understood by the doctrine of evolu- tion. The doctrine of evolution holds ap- parently that all things have evolved them- selves produced themselves, so to speak. In holding such a doctrine, Mr. Herbert Spencer assumes matter and force. That is, he assumes almost a practical omnipotence matter, with all the properties known to the chemist, and all the forces known to the physicist, being taken for granted. Then, having matter and force, our Spencerian philosophers maintain that from them they can produce life, although no one has yet proved that the humblest organisms can originate spontaneously without previous life. They further assume the possibility of the conversion of the plant into the animal, though this also is unproved. Thus, when you speak of Darwinism, you presuppose theories that make vaster demands on our faith than on our science. Darwin takes up only one branch of these speculations, that 320 CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. relating to the transmutation of species, and says if you will give me two or three species of plants or animals, I will show you how all species of plants or animals are evolved out of them. He does this by reasoning as to possibilities, not by facts. In the details of Darwinian reasoning wo are constantly met with difficulty as to the true nature and lim- itation of species as we have them, and in this naturalists are not agreed, so that much has to be done before we can state the real bearing of these hypotheses on the doctrine that animals and plants were created "after their kinds." On the other hand, we find in the first chapter of Genesis the word ''cre- ate" used for the introduction of the first animals and of man, and the formulae " let us make," let the " earth bring forth," etc., in other cases. Can AVO explain this differ- ence ? If I say that Moses maintains that the kinds of plants and animals were cre- ated separately, I might say more than he authorizes me to say. Science, on its part, does not at present tell us how the species came into existence. We only know that they came into being at different periods of geological time. Science is based on facts, but we have not the facts on this point. Do not be afraid, however, to discuss these sub- jects. Study them. Enter fully into them. After you have studied them a lifetime, you will still find as much more to learn. DR. HODGE : My idea of Darwinism is that it teaches that all the forms of vegeta- ble and animal life, including man and all the organs of the human body, are the result of unintelligent, undesignatiug forces ; and that the human eye was formed by mere un- conscious action. Now, according to my idea, that is a denial of what the Bible teaches, of what reason teaches, and of what the conscience of any human being teaches ; for it is impossible for any such organ as the eye to be formed by blind forces. It ex- cludes God ; it excludes intelligence from ev- ery thing. Am I right ? DR. DAWSOX : I think Darwin would not admit so much as has been said, and yet I believe his doctrine logically leads to that conclusion. The Darwinian theory takes hold of the production of varieties, and it is true that these varieties are produced by the action of external nature upon the species. I know that many persons are confused by the distinction between varieties and spe- cies. As regards the varieties, Darwin is well enough, but as regards the species his theory has not been proved, and it certainly does, more especially with respect to man, come into conflict with the Bible. The Dar- winian theory, I believe, is this: That spe- cies have come into existence by what he calls natural selection, which natural selec- tion arises in the struggle of species for ex- istence in the world, and the survival of the fittest in that struggle. So stated, the doc- trine is not a result of scientific induction, bnt a mere hypothesis, to account for facts not otherwise explicable except by the doctrine of creation. REV. JOSEPH EDKiN8,of Pekin, China, then spoke as follows: Dear Brethren of the Alliance : When Professor Spiess referred to the subject of comparative philology and the comparison of religions, I felt desirous to say a word in regard to these matters, be- lieving in their high importance in modern Christian apologetics. During a missionary life of twenty-five years in China, I chose these two fields of research, and made in them such investigations as I could. The history of language and that of religion are, I believe, very closely connected. In many cases they grow up together previous to the formation of national literatures. The study of religions may be carried on in China with great advantage. Yet little has been done toward the elucidation of the religions of Eastern Asia, just as it is also true that the eye of philological inquiry has scarcely yet been at all steadily directed to the languages spoken in that part of the world. Much may be hoped for from the examination of the ancient Chinese religion, embracing as it did primeval monotheism and the practice of burnt sacrifices, reminding us so strongly of the early religion of the Scriptures. The ancient religion of the Mongols has also to be examined, as it was before their conver- sion to Buddhism. The religions customs and beliefs of the Siberian tribes and the Shamanism of the Manchus should be in- quired into, and the results of these research- es compared with the religious usages and traditions of the North American tribes. The old traditions of the Babylonians are now, by the decipherment of cuneiform inscrip- tions, rapidly coming to light. They form a link in the chain which connects the re- ligion of the sous of Shem and of the proph- ets such as Enoch and Noah of the primi- tive revelation with its remarkable east- ern developments. The Karen traditions, to which, by the great success of the Baptist missions, public attention has been specially called, are another link. The remarkable religious usages of the Fijians, and especial- ly of the Island of Tonga, are so strongly marked with the impress of the old religion of Western Asia, that every one who has read of them has wished to find by what clew the connection between the Polynesi- ans and the Semites could be discovered. The Polynesians, scattered over a thousand isolated points in the South Seas, have plain- ly sunk from a state much more civilized than that in which they now are. To trace the chain of religious resemblances still fur- ther eastward, who that has read in Hard- wick's interesting work "Christ and other Masters" the account there given of the old Mexican religion, has not longed to know DARWINISM AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 321 why there exists so striking a likeness in several points between that religion and the usages and beliefs of the Southern Asiatic races ? I believe, for my own part, that a dis- tinct Semitic influence in religion and lan- guage may be traced through the countries of Southern Asia into the Polynesian Seas, and from thence to the western shore of America. As Turanian principles of lan- guage and religious belief entered America by Behring's Straits, so Semitic impressions nud traditions reached the same continent by a route across the ocean. By inquiries such as these, carried on in the region of religion and language, much may be done to strengthen the scientific proof of the Scripture doctrine of the com- mon origin of mankind. They may be very properly pressed on the attention of those American scholars who are interested in philology and archaeology, not only as il- lustrating the ancient history of this con- tinent, but as presenting the materials for a new and valuable chapter to be add- ed to the apology for our religion against the assaults of the scientific infidelity of the day. I will add only one word. Remember the advice of our German brother to study com- parative philology, and to carry out the prin- ciples of comparative research into the hea- then religious of the world. The debate was concluded by PRESIDENT AXDERSON, of Rochester Uni- versity, who spoke as follows : In reference to the subject under discussion, I beg leave to suggest the propriety of being careful in regard to the use of ambiguous terms. For illustration : The word evolution is suscepti- ble of two meanings, one of which is a name for the process of the Almighty in develop- ing the plan of creation it being used sim- ply as a name for the process of the creative energy under the control of Infinite Intelli- gence. In this sense the word evolution is used iu entire harmony with belief in a con- scious, personal God. . It is the evolution of a plan previously involved in the divine in- telligence and will; the outgoing process of creative power, the mode and end of whose activity were foreseen and foreordained. A second use of the word evolution is to name the process of growth in the universe, dis- counting from the word all reference to voli- tion, or pre-existing, consciously formed plan or idea. Used in this sense, the word is sim- ply and solely the name for a process, leav- ing out all reference to the will and thought which determined and controlled it. Using the word in this sense, when we say that the universe is due to evolution, it is equiva- lent to saying that the fact and order of the universe are due to an abstract term, which simply names the process. Thus evolution, in itself a mere verbal concept, is made to 21 take the place of volition and intelligence. There are plan and order, which are due, not to a planning or ordering force or mind, but to a force without a will, whose exist- ence is postulated, and whose activity is mod- ified by no intelligence or benevolent pur- pose. Using the word in this sense, it is made to do the work of a concrete force, guided by mind. To adopt such an explana- tion of the order of the universe is as irra- tional as to account for it by the eternal ideas of Plato or the realists of the Middle Ages. This use of abstract terms, as if they named concrete realities, is the special vice of metaphysics and metaphysical methods, and has no place in a system which purports to rest on positive facts and verified laws. In all our discussions of a question of this sort, we should be very careful of deceiving ourselves by the use of abstract terms when the conditions of the problem absolutely re- quire the presence of personality, will, and intelligence. If evolution is understood to mean the process of creation, whether longer or shorter, through one set of proximate an- tecedents and consequences or another, all due to a continuous activity of a creator, the word represents an intelligible idea pos- sible to thought. But when evolution is set forth as determining in itself its own proc- esses, and itself working out the order, beau- ty, and adaptation of the entire cosmos, and is proposed as a theory to account for the universe and its manifold and wonderfully complicated plan, the language becomes sim- ply unintelligible. Let the word "evolu- tion" be replaced by tbft word "growth," and we find ourselves accounting for the uni- verse and its manifold forms by the child- ish mode of saying that they exist because "they grew." A similar ambiguity affects the word "development," and the phrases " natural selection" and " survival of the fit- test." Selection, however orderly or natural it may be, involves intelligence somewhere. In the degree that it is natural, and accord- ing with a uniformly recurrent law, or plan, or system, the more distinctly is intelligence shown. Development, or unrolling, is un- intelligible without the implied conception of something of a plan or thought previous- ly enveloped in the orderly acting force which produces the result. The " survival of the fittest " involves the fact that there are present in the universe types and forms of life able to survive in the "struggle for existence," because of the perfection of their form, and the delicacy and completeness of their adjustment to the external conditions in which they are placed. The very pres- ence of these conditions of life and the ad- justment between them and the types of or- ganized life involve foresight, choice, plan, intelligence. If we deny that this wonderful adjust ment of means to ends, of Ccipacities to the CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ANTAGONISMS. conditions of their exercise, is an indication of the presence of mind, we are bound by parity of reasoning to deny that orderly ac- tion, systematically directed to intelligent aims, or the intelligent processes of thought and language, are any indication of inind in man. Man is the microcosm, or little world, and as such is an incarnate intelligence and will. The great world the universe man- ifests and impersonates an intelligence as clearly and as really as does man. As mem- bers of the human race, we are conscious of the working of this intelligence in ourselves ; and while wo can not enter into the con- sciousness of another man, we know that he is intelligent and conscious from his lan- guage and actions. We can not identify ourselves with the divine consciousness, any more than we can with that of our fellow- men ; but we are bound, by the same reason- ing, to recognize a divine consciousness and mind in the cosmos, as really as we are bound to recognize intelligence as controlling the expectations and actions of our fellow-men. It is 'somewhat singular to find the cham- pions of positive science, in their attempts to account for the process of creation, tak- ing refuge in abstract terms, and in their discussions continually confounding them with concrete forces of intelligence and will. Positive science claims to be conversant only with ascertained facts and verified laws. Few books on metaphysics or theology make freer use of these objectified concepts than do those of Herbert Spencer. This class of philosophers postulate the existence of mat- ter and force of matter without an origin, and force without a will. It seems to me impossible for the human mind to conceive of either as originating without a cause ; and especially is this true of our notion of force. Sir John Herschel, in his remarkable tract on the Origin of Force, first published in the "Fortnightly Keview," speaking as a physi- cist and a mathematician, emphatically states his conviction that force is an unmeaning term, and unintelligible conception, apart from the idea of will somewhere, either hu- man or divine. In all discussions of this sort, we should be careful to hold the apostles of positive science in strict allegiance to their own declared methods of thought. They may not make use of hypothesis, except as a scaf- folding wherewith to erect a solid structure of truth. Hypotheses, or guesses, are all but indispensable for the direction of research in scientific inquiry; but such hypotheses are not science. Now what is popularly called Darwinism may be a useful working hypoth- esis for the scientific inquirer, but it has no claim to take rank among verified laws, or place in any body of statements claiming to be positive science. There are now, and have been in the past, two classes of natu- ralists, one of which assumes the doctrine of the fixity of type and species among vege- table and animal forms. This class of natu- ral ists turn their attention to those points which distinguish classes, genera, and spe- cies from each other. They seek for distin- guishing marks through which they can re- duce the manifold forms of nature into or- der and system ; giving them common names, to the end that they may be brought within the grasp of a finite memory. Working in this direction seeking evidence of fixed- ness in form they may have undervalued the wonderful flexibility and plastic capac- ity which many species possess of adjusting themselves to new and varying conditions of life. Employed in the great work of class- ification their attention fixed upon the common points of species they may have, and probably did, neglect too much the study of the tendencies in species to assume varia- tions of form especially under the superin- tending agency of man. Impressed with this thought, other naturalists assume the exist- ence of unlimited plasticity and capacity for variation as a working hypothesis, by which they shall direct their inquiries and help to classify their resiilts. Here we have two schools of naturalists. Cuvier may repre- sent one. Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Darwin, by way of eminence, may represent the oth- er. " Species are fixed and invariable," says Cuvier. " There is but one animal," says St. Hilaire. Now we may not accept either of these hypotheses as absolute scientific truth. Both are respectable in the history of scien- tific inquiry. In the hands of able men, they have led to impressive and important re- sults. That grand system of classification which makes the acquisition of natural his- tory possible to a memory of ordinary strength, which has brought out the sys- tem of typical forms and special adjustments in creation, has been the outgrowth of the doctrine of fixedness in animal and vege- table forms. The curious and interesting inquiries and experiments regarding the ca- pacity of animal and vegetable forms to take on variation have powerfully impressed the younger scientific men and the reading pub- lic at large. This is the working hypothe- sis just now fashionable among investiga- tors in natural history. Used as a working hypothesis, provisionally held, it is unobjec- tionable ; but it has not yet approached the dignity of a verified law. We respectfully ask that, in default of verification, it may not be imposed upon us as a part of our sci- entific creed, on pain of being excommuni- cated as heretics from the universal scientif- ic church. The distinction between verified laws and certified facts, on the one hand, and working hypotheses on the other, should always bo kept in mind in discussions of this sort. It is the failure to make this dis- tinction that we complain of among the young and the imaginative followers of Dar- win, who are imperfectly trained in the rig- DARWINISM AND THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 323 id canons of scientific method. We object to receiving hypotheses as science, because of the strictness of our allegiance to the methods of positive science, of which they claim to be the special patrons. Every sci- entific treatise contains in it, of necessity, a large number of these unverified hypotheses. They have all degrees of probability, from a near approach to verification, to those which are founded on remote and unessential anal- ogies. No better service could be rendered to the public than for experts in special de- partments of science to discriminate care- fully what, in their special fields of inquiry, are universally considered as certified fact and verified law, from that which is hypo- thetical merely. The defenders of our faith have often erred in too hastily conceding that some favorite and fashionable hypothe- sis has been already clothed with the dig- nity and authority of science. We should bear in mind, too, that there are many of these hypotheses which, from their very nat- ure and the limitations of the human mind, are not likely ever to be verified ; which stand outside of the possibilities of verifica- tion. Such a one is the question of the uni- ty or non-unity of man. As a matter of pure science, apart from revelation, it may not be possible for us ever to settle beyond ques- tion whether man is one or manifold in ori- gin. I believe that the hypothesis of the unity of man combines more facts in its fa- vor, and excludes more difficulties, than the hypothesis of the non-unity of man ; but as no man can, for the purposes of evidence, be supposed to be present at his own birth, no more can he be supposed to be able to tes- tify, as a matter of fact, to the circumstances of his own creation. Sciences the most ad- vanced abound with discussions of these working hypotheses, which have more or less of evidence in their favor. Darwinism is one of these. The doctrine of evolution, in the Speucerian sense, is another. By Spen- cer, matter and force are assumed either self- existent, or created and set in motion by God. Out of these, plants and animals grow. Wo say to him, if you ask us to accept this doctrine, you must prove it. Even under the agency of man, there has been no soli- tary instance given of the conversion of in- organic matter into an animal. We ask for a crucial test. Till this is supplied we wait and question. Even if these hypotheses should be verified as matters of science, which seems to me very unlikely, the doctrine of a personal God would be just as necessary to explain the origin of the universe and the process of its development as it is now. There is an unworthy timidity among many Christian men at the apparition of these hy- potheses, with which the scientific imagina- tion is constantly teeming. I have said thus much by way of caution in the use of terms, and concerning the im- portance, in all controversy which arises out of the relations of revealed truth to the advancing sciences, of marking carefully and sharply the distinction between positive sci- ence, made up of ascertained facts and veri- fied laws, and those unverified hypotheses which abound in proportion to the activity of scientific inquiry and the freedom of dis- cussion. The evidence for the existence of a personal Creator can not be affected by any considerations drawn from the mode, relative rapidity, or the nature of the proximate an- tecedents and consequences in the creative process. The sooner this is understood and recognized, the sooner will quiet be given to the niiud of the plain Christian man, and the more readily shall we avoid false issues and nugatory discussions in our defenses of the doctrine of God against the shifting phases of aggressive naturalism. IV. C H 1U S T I A Is 1 I IV E . Tuesday, October 7th, 1873. DIVISION IV-CONTENTS, FIRST SECTION PERSONAL AND FAMILY RELIGION. PACE 1. ARNOT : The Relation between Doctrine and Life 327 2. FULLER: Personal Religion; its Aids and Hinderances 333 3. NAST : " " " " " " 338 4. HARBISON : Family Religion 341 5. PLUMER: " " 348 6. PATTON : Revivals of Religion 351 7. ANDERSON : The Right Use of Wealth 357 SECOND SECTION EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. 1. SIMPSON : Modem Literature and Christianity 363 2. PORTER : " " " " 369 :?. RIGG: Secular and Religious Education in England. 377 THIRD SECTION THE PULPIT OF THE AGE. 1. PARKER : Modern Preaching and its Requirements 383 2. KIDDER : The Best Methods of Preaching 387 3. BEECIIER : Mission of the Pulpit 392 4. HALL : What to Preach 397 FOURTH SECTION SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 1. REED : The Sunday-school Work 399 2. NEWTON : Importance of the Sunday-school Agency 405 3. WEISS : Sunday-schools in France 410 4. VINCENT : Sunday -schools The Bible Service 415 FIFTH SECTION CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS, l. BRAINERD : Young Men's Christian Associations 419 FIRST SECTION -PERSONAL AND FAMILY RELIGION. THE KELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE. BY THE REV. WILLIAM ARNOT, EDINBURGH. THE theme of conference yesterday was Christian doctrine, and the theme to-day is the Christian life. It may not be amiss, at the commencement of this day's proceed- ings, to feel for the link that unites these two. If I can not make a contribution cither to the apologetics of yesterday or the energetics of to-day, I may, at least, be- come the pivot on which the conference shall swing round from the one sphere to the other. The link which unites doctrine and duty in the Christian system is neither an imaginary line nor an iron rod; it is like the Word of God, " both quick (liv- ing) and powerful." It is like the great ar- tery that joins the heart to the members in a living body both the channel of life and the bond of union. If that link is severed in the animal, the life departs ; there remains neither heart nor members. So in the Chris- tian system, if doctrine and duty are not united, both are dead: there remains nei- ther the sound creed nor the holy life. Here, then, we shall find a logical argument and a practical lesson. Inquirers should know the truth on this point, and believers should practice it. A common street cry of the day is, Give us plenty of charity, but none of your dogmas ; in other words, Give us plenty of sweet fruit, but don't bother us with your hidden mys- teries about roots and ingrafting. For our part, we join heartily in the cry for more fruit ; but we are not content to tie oranges with tape on dead branches lighted with small tapers, and dance round them on a winter evening. This may serve to amuse children ; but we are grown men, and life is earnest. We, too, desire plenty of good fruit, and therefore we busy ourselves in making the tree good, and then cherish its roots with all our means and all our might. In the transition from the eleventh to the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the knot is tied that binds together doctrine and duty in a human life. Speaking gener- ally, with the eleventh chapter the apostle concludes his exposition of doctrines : and with the twelfth he begins his inculcation of duties. At the beginning of his great treatise he plunged into the deep things of God, and at xi., 33, he emerges from his explo- ration with a passionate cry of adoring won- der at what he has seen and heard " Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God !" After relieving his over- charged spirit with that grand anthem which constitutes the close of the doctrinal section, he addresses himself (xii., 1) to the business of directing and stimulating an obedient and holy life in believers, and this theme he prose- cutes to the close. At the point of contact between the doctrinal and practical divisions of his treatise he defines and exhibits the re- lations established in the laws of the Eter- nal between the gifts which flow from God to men, and the service rendered by men to God. Hitherto he has been opening the treasures of the kingdom, and permitting the divine goodness to flow freely into the lap of the needy ; but here is the turning point : henceforth he will urge that tribute should stream upward, like a column of incense, from man to God. Who hath first given to God, and it shall be given to him again? None. No man first gives to God, and then gets back equiv- alent. But though no man gives first to God, all renewed men give to him second that is, the disciples of Christ, having gotten all from God first and free, then and there- by are constrained to render back to him themselves and all that they possess. This apostle knows human nature too well to ex- pect that men will render fit service to God first and spontaneously. Ho puts the mat- ter on another footing. He expects that the mercy of God, first freely poured out, will press until it press out, and press up, what- ever the little vessel of a redeemed man contains, in thank -offerings to the giving God. Here is a leaden pipe concealed under the plaster stretching perpendicularly from the bottom to the top of the house. What is the use of it ? It is placed there as a channel through which water for the supply of the family may flow up to a cistern on the roof. "Water flow up? Don't mock us. That would bo contrary to its nature. Water flows down, not up. How should it change its nature when it gets into your pipe?" CHRISTIAN LIFE. Place your ear near the wall, and listen; what do you hear ? " I hear water rushing." Iu what direction T "Upward." Precisely; water left to itself outside of the pipe flows down ; hut water left to itself iuside flows up. "Why?" Because there it is pressed by the water that flows from the fountain on the mountain's side. It is the weight of wa- ter flowing down that forces this water to flow up. It is thus that living sacrifices, holy and acceptable, ascend from a human life to God, when that life is in Christ. When a human soul is within the well-ordered covenant, it is constrained, by the pressure of divine mercy flowing through Christ, to rise in re- sponsive love. " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye yield yourselves," etc. The word " therefore" is the link of connec- tion between doctrine and life. Here it unites the product to the power. The whole epistle consists 6f two parts, united together by this word. The first portion is occupied with truth revealed, and the second with obedience rendered ; and the truth is in point of fact the force w T hich generates the obedi- ence. Much mischief is done in the world by a wanton or ignorant divorce of this divinely united pair. There are two errors, equal and opposite. Those who teach high doctrine, and wink at slippery practice in themselves and others, fall into a pit on the right hand ; those who preach up all the charities, and ignore or denounce the truth and the faith that grasps it, fall into a pit on the left. Let not one man say, I have roots, and another, I have fruits. If you have roots, let us see what fruit they bear; if you would have fruits, cherish the roots whereon they grow. Beginning his course of practical lessons with the twelfth chapter, this rigidly logical author binds the motive firmly to the act, and the act to the motive. He tells us what we ought to do, and what will induce us to do it. For power to propel his heavy train, he depends on " the mercies of God," as these have been set forth in the preceding portion of the treatise ; and the train which by this power he expects to propel is, " Present your bodies a living sacrifice," etc. The mercies of God constitute the motive force. A consecrated life is the expected result. Consider carefully now the power em- ployed in constant view of the effect which it is expected to produce: "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God." Up to this point the epistle is occupied with the enun- ciation, elucidation, and defense of doctrine. The writer started with the set purpose of directing and stimulating human life in the way of holiness and love ; yet he expends the greater part of his time and strength in the exposition of abstract dogma. Paul has made no mistake here. Although his aim was to get human hearts and lives filled with love to God and man, ho devotes his atten- tion first to truth revealed. This is a scientific operator; he knows what he is about. He is especially skillful in adapting means to ends. To provide the water-power may be a much more length- ened and laborious process than to set the mill agoing; but without the reservoir and its impounded supply the mill would never go round at all. Paul goes forward with a firm step and a straight course toward his aim iu a sanctified and useful human life ; but he takes every step on the assumption that a devoted and charitable life cau not be ob- tained unless the person and work of Christ be made clear to the understanding and ac- cepted "with the heart. Hence the time ho has occupied and the pains he has bestowed in exhibiting and commending at the out- set a complete theology. A class of men is springing and pressing to the front iu our day who laud charity at the expense of truth. The truth, exterior to the human mind, which God has presented in his Word, they ignore as unnecessary rath- er than denounce as false. Doctrine, as truth fixed and independent, they seem to think a hinderance rather than a help toward their expected millennium of charity. In their view, a man may indeed become a model of goodness although he believe sincerely all the doctrines of the Gospel ; but he may reach that blessed state as quickly and as well al- though he believe none of them. Their creed is that a man may attain the one grand ob- ject of life practical goodness equally well with or without belief iu the Christian system. That there may be no mistake in the transmission of their opinion, they take care to illustrate it by notable examples. John Buuyan, who received all the doctrines of the Gospel, and Spiuoza, who rejected them all, attain equally to the odor of sanc- tity in this modern church of charity. This representation is publicly made by men who profess the faith, and hold the preferments, and draw the emoluments of the Established Church in England. In order to elevate love, they depress faith. For our convenience, they have compressed the essence of their system into a phrase that is compact and portable : " A grain of charity is worth a ton of dogma." The max- im is well constructed, and its meaning is by no means obscure. If it "were true, I should have no fault to find with it. But, as I have seen a mechanic, after the rule ap- plied to his work gave unequivocal decision in its favor, turning the rule round, and try- ing it the other way, lest some mistake should occur; so in the important matter before us, it may be of use to express the same maxim in another form, lest any fal- ARNOT : THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE. lacy should be left lurking unobserved iu its folds ; thus : "A small stream flowing ou the ground is worth acres of clouds careering in the sky." In this form the maxim is arrant nonsense ; but the two forms express an iden- tical meaning, like the opposite terms of an algebraic equation. Wanting clouds above us, there could be 110 streams, great or small, flowing at our feet ; so, wanting dogma, that is, doctrine revealed by God and received by man, there could be no charity. They scorn dogma, and laud charity ; that is, they vili- fy the clouds, and sing paeans to running streams. There is an aspect of childishness iu the methods at present in fashion for undermin- ing evangelical faith. When I was a little child, I thought the clouds were accumula- tions of smoke from the chimneys. I also thought that, while the barren atmosphere above our heads was filled Avith stacks of dry thick smoke, the earth beneath our feet was rich and beneficent, seeing that from its bow- els spring lip all the waters that feed the rivers and fill the sea. Foolish child ! The clouds are the store-houses iu which the wa- ter is laid up, ready to be poured on the earth. From these treasures the wells ob- tain, all their supply. We have streams on the ground, because we have clouds iu the sky. As the clouds create the rivers, the love of Christ exhibited in the Gospel causes streams of charity to circulate in human life. The Bible teaches this, and history proves it. " God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This is a dogma ; and be- fore that dogma came, how much charity was in the -world f Our latest reformers, I suppose, come eas- ily by their discoveries. I am not aware that they have passed through any preparatory agonies, like those which Luther endured at Erfurth. Your philosophic regenerator of the world dispenses Avith a long search and a hard battle. When he brings for- ward for my acceptance his savory dish, like poor old blind Isaac, when his slippery sou presented the forged venison, I am dis- posed to ask, " How hast thou found it so quickly, my son ?" Ah, it is easy for those who have never been deeply exercised about sin to denounce dogma and cry up charity in its stead ; but whence shall I obtain charity if I abjure truth ? " Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." The apostle John got his charity from the bosom of the Master whereon he lay. Where do the modern apostles obtain theirs ? How can you move the world if you have nothing but the world to lean your lever on ? The Scriptures present the case of a man who was as free of dogma as the most ad- vanced Secularist could desire, and who was, notwithstanding, woefully lacking in chan- ty. "What is truth?" said Pilate; and he did not wait for an answer, for he had made up his mind that no answer could be given. Pilate was not burdened with a ton, with even an ounce, of dogma, yet he crucified Christ crucified Christ, believing and con- fessing him innocent that he might save his own skin, endangered by the accusa- tions of the Jewish priests at the court of Rome. ' Those who, in this age, lead the crusade against dogma are forward to profess ut- most reverence for the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. But he did not despise dog- ma. " Thou art the Christ, the Sou of the living God." Nothing more completely and abstractly dogmatical can be found in all the creeds of the Church than that short and fervid exclamation of Peter in answer to the Master's articulate demand for a con- fession of his faith upon the point. And how did the Master receive it? He not only acquiesced iu the doctrine and the ex- pression of it by his servant, but, depart- ing in some measure from his usual habit of calm, uuimpassioned speech, he broke into an elevated and exultant commendation : " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is iu heaven." Let men keep congenial company, and let things be called by their right names. Either doc- trine truth revealed by God and accepted by man either doctrine is decisive and fun- damental for the salvation of sinners and the regeneration of the world, or Jesus Christ was a weakling. You must make your choice. The divinity of Christ, as confessed by Peter, is a dogma ; for that dogma Jesus witnessed ; for that dogma Jesus died. For it was be- cause he made himself the Son of God that the Jewish priesthood hunted him down. Did he give his life for a dogma that is di- vine and necessary to the salvation of sin- ners, or did lie fling his life away by a mis- take? Men must make their choice. Those who are not for Christ are against him. If you do not receive Jesus Christ as God your Redeemer, you can not have him as the beautiful example of a perfect humanity. He claimed to be divine, and died in support of the claim. Therefore, if he be not the true God, he must be a false man. Thus the Holy Spirit in the Scripture has presciently rendered it impossible for modern Secular- ists to reject the great dogma of the Gospel, and yet retain the life of Jesus as the high- est pattern of human character. Both or none : Christ can not be so divided. The word "therefore," destitute of any moral character in itself, and deriving all its importance from the things which it unites, is like the steel point set on a strong founda- tion, which constitutes the fulcrum of the balance. To one extremity of the beam is fixed, by a long plummet-line, a consecrated 330 CHRISTIAN LIFE. benevolent human life ; but that life itself lies unseen in the dark at the bottom of a deep well, a possibility only as yet, ami not nu actual entity. No human arm has power to bring it up and set it in motion pow- er to bring it into being. Here is a skill- ful engineer, who has undertaken the task. What is he doing? We expected that he would stand at the -well's mouth, and draw with all his might by the depending line, in the hope of drawing up that precious Chari- ty from the deep. But no ; he ia busy at the opposite extremity of the beam. He is mak- ing fast to it some immense weight. Who is he, and what is the burden that he is zeal- ously tying to the beam; and what does he expect to get by his pains 1 The operator, diminutive in bodily presence but mighty in spirit, is the apostle of the Gentiles ; the weight that he is making fast to the beam is nothing less than the mercies of God as they are exhibited in Christ all the love of God ; nay, God himself, who is love. He has fas- tened it now, and he stands back does not put a hand to the work in its second stage. What follows ? They come ! they come ! the deeds of Charity they ascend like clouds to the sky, at once an incense rising up to heaven, and a mighty stream of beneficence rolling along its channel on the surface of the earth, and converting the desert into a garden. Ask those great lovers who have done and suffered most for men who have taken up their abode in dungeons in order to soothe the spirits and relieve the wants of the wretched inmates who have braved pesti- lential climates to christianize and civilize the long-degraded negro ; ask the whole band of flesh-aud-blood angels who, by sacrificing themselves, have sought to heal the sores of humanity, what motive urged them on and held them up, they will answer with a voice like the sound of many waters, The love of Christ constraincth us. Those who have done most of the charity that has told on the ills of life do not think, and do not say, that this fruit grows as well on all doctrines, or no doc- trines, as on the truth of the Gospel. They tell us that the force which sent them into the field and kept them there was the mer- cy of God in Christ, pardoning their sin, and sealing them as children. They are bought with a price, and therefore they glorify God in their lives. In the scheme of doctrine set forth in the first half of the epistle, we behold the reser- voir where the power is stored ; and in the opening verses of the second section the en- gineer opens the sluice, so that the whole force of the treasured waters may flow out on human life, and impel it onward in active benevolence. Let the memory of God's good- ness, in the unspeakable gift, bear down upon our hearts, as the volume of a river bears down upon a mill-wheel, until its accumu- lating weight overcome the inertia of an earthly mind, and the interlacing entangle- ments of a pleasure-seeking society, so send- ing the life spinning round in an endless cir- cle of work to abate the sins and sorrows of the world. The mercies of God being the power that sends out the product, the product so sent consists of two distinct yet vitally connected parts, as soul and body iu the natural life. These are: Devotion in Spirit to God our Saviour, and substantial Kindness to Man our brother. The constituents of a true devotion are a "living sacrifice" and "a reasonable serv- ice." Whatever is rendered in sacrifice to God is rendered whole. The phraseology is in a high degree typical, but by reference to the Old Testament institutions it is easily understood. The distinguishing features of the New Testament sacrifice are, that it is the offerer's own body, not the body of a substitute ; and that it is presented not dead, but living. It is not a carcass laid on the altar to be burned; it is a life devoted to God. Love is the fire tha.t consumes the sacrifice, and in this case, too, the fire came down from heaven. The body is specially demanded as an offering; the body is for the Lord. It bears the mark of his hand. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Stand iu awe and sin not : give not that which is holy unto the dogs. Your body is another Bible : read it with reverence. Its precepts, like those of the Decalogue, are written by the finger of God. Show me, not a penny, but a man for this is the only coin which the great King will accept as tribute: whose image and superscription hath he? God's. Render therefore unto God the thing that is God's. As the sacrifice is living the service is rea- sonable rational. It is not the arbitrary though loving command addressed by a fa- ther to his infant son burn the fat upon the altar that he may be trained to habits of un- questioning obedience ; it is rather the work prescribed by the father to an adult son a work which the son understands, and a pur- pose in which he intelligently acquiesces. The burning of incense, practiced in the Ro- mish community for ages, and now resumed by those who should have known better, is not a reasonable service. It is a going back from the attainments of the Gospel to the beggarly elements of a past dispensation. The second constituent of Christian duty is reciprocal justice and kindness between man and man, like the harmony and helpful- ness which the Creator has established be- tween the several members of a living body. Mark how the hand comes to the defense of the eye in its weakness ; and how the eye with its sight, and from its elevated posi- tion, keeps watch for the welfare of the low- ly, blind, but laborious and useful foot. The AENOT : THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND LIFE. 331 mutual helpfulness of these members is ab- solutely perfect. Such should be the chari- ty between brother and brother of God's family on earth; such it shall be when all the sous and daughters are assembled in the many mansions of the heavenly home. In the remaining portion of the epistle, Paul labors with all his might to stimulate prac- tical charity, in one place reducing the whole law to one precept, to one word Love. Af- ter devoting so much attention to the roots, he will not neglect to gather the fruit. Af- ter so much care in obtaining the power, he looks sharply to the product, lest it should turn out that he had labored in vain. We must look well to our helm as we trav- erse this ocean of life, where we can feel no bottom and see no shore we must handle well our helm, lest we miss our harbor-home. Such seems to be the counsel given for the guidance of life to those who count that all religion and all duty lie in subjective care and diligence, while they ignore, as unat- tainable or useless, all objective revealed truth. But careful management of the helm, though necessary, is not enough on our voyage. By it alone we can not bring our ship safe to land. We must look to the lights in heaven. The seaman does not look to the stars instead of handling his helm. This would be as great folly as to handle his helm vigorously and never look to the stars. Not this one or that one, to the neg- lect of the other. Both ; and each in its own place : the stars, to show ns the path in which we ought to go ; and the helm, to keep us in the path which the stars have shown to be right. Not turn to the contemplation of dogma, instead of laboring in the works of charity ; but looking to the truth as the light which shows ns the way of life, and walking in that way with all diligence. It is interesting to notice how the spiritual instincts of the Lord's immediate followers led them in the right way, at a time when their intellectual comprehension of the Gos- pel was very defective. On one occasion the Master taught the twelve a lesson on this subject charity which seemed to them very hard. The point in hand was the for- giving of injuries, and how far it could or should be carried. " Master," they inquired, how often shall a man sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times?" That, they thought, was as great a stretch of loving forbearance with a neighbor as could rea- sonably be required of any man. But what is the word of the Lord in this case ? "I say not unto thce till seven times, but nntil seventy times seven." That is, he refused to set any limit to the charity of his disci- ples. Charity in his Church must be like the atmosphere wrapped round the world no mountain top can pierce through it to touch another element beyond. Charity shall surround life so high and so deep that all life shall float in it always, as the globe of earth in the circumfluent air. The poor men were taken aback by this great demand. It cut their breath. They had been educated in a narrow school, and could not at first take in the conception of a love that should know no other limit than the life and capaci- ty of the lover. But on recoveiing from their first surprise, and becoming aware of their own shortcoming, a true instinct di- rected them to the source of supply. Then the disciples said unto the Lord, " Increase our faith" Faith! Oh, ye simple Galileans, it is not in faith that ye come short ; it is in charity ! How foolish, at such a moment, to give chase to the ignis-fatuus of dogma, when it is life that you need more of love in your life! If our secular philosophers had been there, such would have been their patronizing reproof of those simple, unlet- tered fishermen. But the fishermen, taught of the Spirit, possessed a sounder philosophy as well as a truer religion than their modern reprovers. I could imagine that Peter, in such circumstances, would have stood up as spokesman for the whole college, and made short work with the logic of the Secularists. Although blind, like old Jacob, to objects outside, like him, Peter was endowed with an inner light. When Joseph brought his two sous to the patriarch for his blessing, he led them forward so that the elder should stand opposite the right hand of his grand- father, and the younger opposite the left. But Jacob crossed his hands in bestowing the blessing, so as to lay the right hand on the head of the younger child. When Jo- seph interfered to correct what h6 supposed to be a mistake, his father persisted in his own plan, saying, " I know it, my son ; I know it." He guided his hands wittingly. So would the simple but courageous fisher- man answer the philosophic Joseph of our day " I know it, my sou ; I know it." He guided his lips wittingly when, in lack of charity, he prayed for faith ; for faith is the only efficient of charity. He would fain yield himself a living sacrifice for behoof of his fellows ; but if he is ever impelled for- ward in this arduous course, he will be im- pelled, as Paul teaches, by the mercies of God. The instincts of the new creature in Peter taught him that, if he should ever do more in forgiving love for his neighbors, he must get more through faith from his Lord. A miller, while he watches the operations of his mill, observes that the machinery is moving slower and slower, and that at last it stands altogether still. On searching for the cause, he discovers that some small hard pebbles have insinuated themselves between the millstones, first impeding the celerity of their motion, and then stopping it altogeth- er. What will the miller do ? Put in his hand, and try to remove the obstruction? No; he is not such a fool. He goes quietly 332 CHRISTIAN LIFE. to a corner of the mill, and touches a sim- ple wooden lever that protrudes at that spot through the wall. Whut is the miller doing there? He is letting on more water: im- pelled by more weight of water, the mill- stones easily overcome the obstacle, and go forward on their course. The demand of unlimited forgiving was the obstacle that stuck on the heart of those poor Galileans, and brought its beating to a stand ; and they wisely applied for a greater gnsh of the im- pelling power more faith. When the cir- culation of the spiritual life was impeded by that hard ingredient, they gasped for a wid- ening of the channel through which the mer- cies of God flow from the covenant to the needy. More faith meant getting more of forgiving grace from God to their own souls ; and they knew that, when the vessel was full, it would flow over. The best of the argument, as well as of the sentiment, re- mains with the fishermen. It is now time, however, that we shonld turn to the other side, and gather there a very needful lesson for Christians ere we close. We have been showing that it is faith accepting the mercies of God that produces a devout and charitable life ; but what shall we say of those Avho have faith, or seem to have it, and yet lack charity ? Here a very interesting question springs. Want of faith, it is granted among evangel- ical Christians, is followed by want of good- ness ; as a blighting of the root destroys the stem and branches of the tree. But does the converse also hold good? W T ill a lan- guid life weaken faith, and an entire cessa- tion of Christian activity make shipwreck of the faith? As a metaphysical specula- tion, we do not touch this question; but on its practical side a useful warning may be given. Of all trees it may be said, destroy the root, and the stem will wither; but you can not predicate of all trees that the de- struction of the stem in turn destroys the root. Many trees, when cut down to the ground, retain life and grow great again. But some species pines, for example die outright Avhen the, main stem is severed. Here lies a sharp reproof for all who bear Christ's name. True it is that your faith in Christ is the root which sustains the tree of your active life, and insures its fruitful- , ness ; but true it is, also, that, like the pines, | if from any cause the life cease to act, the faith, or what seemed faith, will rot away under ground. It was in this manner that Hymenanis and Alexander fell away. They first lost the good conscience; then and therefore they made shipwreck of the faith. They gave way in the sphere of duty, and then dogma melted away from their hearts ( 1 Tim. i., 19). The stem of the tree was cut off or withered, and the root rotted in the ground. Thus, as the roots nourish the tree, and the growth of the tree in turn keeps the roots living, so is it with the trees of right- eousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified ! While faith, by draw- ing from the fullness of Christ, makes a fruitful life ; reciprocally, the exercise of all the charities mightily increases even the faith from which they sprang. While, on one side, the necessity of the day is to maintain the faith as the fountain and root of practical goodness in the life ; on the other side, especially for all within the Church, the necessity of the day is to lead and exhibit a life corresponding to the faith it grows upon. Here it is safe to join full cry with the Secularists more charity charity in its largest sense, a self-sacrifi- cing, brother-saving love, that counts noth- ing alien which belongs to man, and spares nothing to make the world purer and hap- pier. A pure, holy, loving, active, effective life this is the first, and the second, and the third requisite for the regeneration of the world. It is quite true that those who bear Christ's name fail to walk in his steps; and to this defect it is owing that so little of the desert has yet been converted into a garden. It is life it is love it is living sacrifices that are wanted ; this is the cure for the sores of humanity ; but how shall AVO get that life of mighty doing and suf- fering charity, which we confess is lacking, and Avhich, if we had it, would floAv like a stream OA'er the world and heal its barren- ness ? How and where shall we obtain this heaven-born charity ? Enter into thy closet, and shot the door, and seek it there. Seek, and ye shall find. Copy, literally, the simple request of the amazed disciples. Say unto the Lord, In- crease our faith. That means that your very soul should open to Christ, and accept him as all your salvation. It is not to have a faith printed in your creed-book about one Jesus ; it is to clasp him to your heart as your Redeemer, your Friend, your Portion. It is to taste and see that he is good, and to bear about with you the dying of the Lord Jesus. This will be a force sufficient to impel all your life forward, so as to please God and bene- fit your brother. " I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye pre- sent your bodies a living sacrifice." Ultimately we must look to the soA-ereign Lord God for a baptism of the Spirit, great- er than that of the Pentecost, to produce a revival that Avill usher in the glory of the latter day; but mediately and instrumental- ly that revival will come through the mer- cies of God, manifested to the world in the incarnation and sacrifice of the eternal Son, accepted, realized, and felt, in new and great- ly increased intensity, by the members of the Christian Church. PERSONAL RELIGION, ITS AIDS AND HINDERANCES. BY THE KEY. RICHARD FULLER, D.D., BALTIMORE, MD. HE who would drive a boat forward by rowing must use both oars ; if be employ only one, bis little bark will go round and round, will be a prey to every vagrant cur- rent, until it is dasbed on the rocks or car- ried out to sea. And it is just so with re- gard to human and divine agency in the matter of salvation. "For my part," says the hyper-Calvinist, " I do not believe that man's will or efforts have any thing to do with his salvation. From first to last it is God's fixed decree." But what does God say? "Work out your own salvation with fear ami trembling." "Exactly so," ex- claims the Arminiau, "that is my doctrine. All depends upon our faithfulness, vigilance, self-denying exertions." But what does the Bible declare ? " It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his own good pleasure." If, then, there be a will to live for heaven, it has been wrought in us by God's sovereign grace. And if this volition perish not, if it acquires " the name of ac- tion," it is wholly through the efficacy of preveuient, sovereign grace and mercy. If we reject the doctrine of human agency, we sink into all the indolence and impiety of the Antinomian. If wo discard the great truth of God's free, sovereign, indispensable grace, we will gradually find all our pray- ing and toiling only so much hopeless drudg- ery, and will be tempted to give up in de- spair. I do not design, however, to enter into this question, nor to show that the life of faith requires of us the compound attitude of one who works as if all depended on him- self; and who prays, lives hourly, as if every thing will, power, victory, salvation must be the donation of God's free mercy, the oper- ation of that adorable Spirit without whose immediate influences the holiest man would certainly be lost. My wish is to submit some serious reflections upon the most im- portant subject that can engage our minds, some thoughts which deeply concern our peace, holiness, preparation for death and eternity. Religion (from re, 7/'y an invasion of error, the " Great Awakening" was spiritually the salvation of the country. Again, after the Revolu- tionary War had left religion in a low con- dition, and French infidelity had infected large numbers, God used the powerful re- vivals at the beginning of this century to give new life to religion in the nation. Sim- ilarly, the second Avar with Great Britain, the mercantile prosperity and subsequent reverses, twenty years later, aud .also the financial crash of 1857, were followed by ex- tensive and powerful revivals. Aud now, in accordance with the inspired declaration, that " when the enemy shall come in like :i flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up u standard against him," the praying and be- lieving ones are expecting that the present spread of skepticism will furnish the occa- sion for mighty outpourings of the Holy Spirit, which shall demonstrate the divine character of the Gospel, and shall convert the very leaders of unbelief into apostles of the faith. They may, therefore, properly bo objects of desire, of prayer, aud of effort, on the part of ministers and of churches, while not allowed to interfere with the steady prose- cution of ordinary Christian work, and the expectation of a continual success in the CHRISTIAN LIFE. conversion of sinners and in the upbuilding of personal character. Indeed, as the spe- cial activities of a merchant in his spring and fall trade subside into the regular rou- tine of industry during the remainder of the year, so when the excitement and labor of a revival pass, it should be to allow steady play to the regular duties of family, social, and church life; it being understood that piety equally inspires both modes of action, and that the converts of a revival need sub- sequently to bo trained to obey the unex- citing demands of the details of a daily life that shall be inspired by faith in Christ, and love to God and their neighbor. In this light, that pastor is most wisely a friend of revivals who follows them most faithfully with the use of the ordinary means of grace, and with a recommendation of piety in its cvery-day aspect. That church also gives the best evidence of having received per- manent good from a revival which accom- panies its zeal for conversions with an equal care for the growth and education of " the babes in Christ," and for the exhibition by the older members of a proportionate char- acter, and a readiness for all forms of useful- ness, whether these be technically religious or secular. The converts will thus be made to understand that the revival is religion in only one of its phases, and in one of its forms of power ; and that a church does not nec- essarily decline in piety when those special scenes pass, but often goes on to greater trials and triumphs of Christian principle, which require daily communion with God and an abiding faith in the perpetual aid of the indwelling Spirit, in order to " over- come the world." And now may that same Spirit of all grace which moved Christian minds to con- vene this body, so largely representative of the Church of Christ, renew Pentecostal scenes throughout the world wherever the Gospel is preached, till the nations shall be converted, and the Redeemer " shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satis- fied." THE RIGHT USE OF WEALTH. BY M. B. ANDEKSON, LL.D., President of the University of Kochester, Bochester, N. Y. WE take it for granted that it is the duty, iu the sight of God, of every Christian to en- gage diligently in the production of moral or economical values. When the production of economical values, or wealth, is the imme- diate object, there should bo an indirect ref- erence to moral ends and purposes. But the obligation to labor is imposed upon us by the capacity for it, and exists independent- ly of the uses to which we may apply the proceeds. The New Testament rule, that if a man will not work neither shall he eat, is universal in its application. The man who lives on the labor of the public without adding any thing himself to the wealth or moral well-being of the com- munity is a pauper. If he is capable of work and refuses, he becomes at once a criminal, .and the State compels him to work by law. Ho seeks to share the wealth of the body politic without bearing his part of the pub- lic burdens. He adds to the character of the pauper that of the thief. In a slightly modified sense we may apply this law to him who lives upon the labor of parents or ances- tors without adding by his own labor to the wealth or well-being of the community in which he lives. The possession of inherited Avealth does not release him from the obliga- tion to work. His wealth can make his ex- ertion enormously productive. His failure to work is, therefore, more criminal even than if he were poor ; for his capacity in the production of values, both moral and eco- nomical, may equal that of a thousand men. Here we see the unsoundness of the ad- vice so often given to men who have secured wealth, to retire from business and cease from labor. It is every man's duty to work so long as he has the capacity. The mer- chant may justifiably withdraw from the most dangerous risks of business, but he may not escape the obligation to work, and there- by to add to the means of the public welfare. The obligation to labor is obviously im- perative upon those engaged in those pur- suits whose products are moral or intellect- ual. No amount of learning or discipline will relieve the scholar or the moral teach- er from the duties which these possessions themselves impose. The greater his capac- ity the more imperative is the duty to use it. He is or ought to bo a producer of mor- al values, and as his labor is an indispensable condition of the best success of those en- gaged directly in the production of materi- al wealth, he for this reason falls under u similar obligation to labor. As the moral tone of a community becomes degraded, its productive power diminishes in the same proportion. Honesty, industry, and self-de- nial, which lie at the very foundation of material production, are Christian virtues. Of all those elements which make man an instrument of production, none are so valu- able as intelligence and character. Never have they borne so high a market value as they do now. Just in the proportion that business relations become complicated and far-reaching do honesty and intelligence, clear-headed and trustworthy agencies, be- come indispensable. The production of moral and the produc- tion of economical values are reciprocally necessary, and each value is convertible into the other. Credit, the life-blood of modern commerce, is faith in the honesty and effi- ciency of those to whom it is given. It has been the outgrowth of Christianity. Credit, in the modern sense, was unknown to the ancients. With them the merchant was a supercargo or a peddler. Commerce, in the; magnificent dimensions of modern times, can not exist without the controlling presence of moral obligation in the minds of those who carry it on. No system of checks and safe- guards, no spy or police system, however skillfully arranged, can give security. When faith in character is lost, commerce is strick- en with paralysis. Up to a comparatively recent time, colo- nies and subject states upon whom unfair prices could be imposed with impunity wen- supposed to be the conditions of growth in national wealth. Legislation and diplomacy were supposed best to accomplish their eco- nomical ends when they gave the opportuni- ty for unequal and unfair exchanges. But now scientific political economists are pro- foundly convinced that all legislation or di- plomacy which has for its purpose to secure wealth to nations or classes of individuals by unequal laws or unjust treaties, is sure to fail in the end. If political economy has settled any thing, it is that no bargain is a good one which is not beneficial to both parties in the transac- tion. As this science becomes settled in its CHRISTIAN LIFE. principles anil clear in its definitions, it is seen more and more clearly that they are in entire harmony with morality, and that the whole range of economic science is bnt an application of the Ten Commandments. We see, then, that the pursuit of wealth liy legitimate processes is in entire harmony with morality, and depends upon it ; that the highest aims of the scholar and the Chris- tian have no antagonism with sound meth- ods of accumulation. Methods of accumula- tion which the moralist condemns as wrong the economist proves to be inexpedient. It is clear that he who by example and precept makes a community more moral and more intelligent in any marked degree will, in the end, add more to its capacity to accumulate wealth than he who is individually the most successful producer. But this influence of Christian morality upon material production is only incident- al. In the eye of the Christian, the uses of wealth constitute the all-important object of interest. The increase of the breadth, richness, and power of the Divine life iii men is an end in itself transcending in im- portance all results, however magnificent, which are realized in the present life and expire with it. With the Christian, wealth is mainly to be valued as the evidence of in- dustry and self-denial on the part of its pos- sessor, and as a means of elevating, purify- ing, and saving men. It is this w T hich dig- nifies and consecrates the labor and thought of the Christian merchant or manufacturer. The accumulation of wealth is simply the accumulation of power, which is valuable in the sight of God only so far as it is turned to noble uses. It is subject to the same law with accumulations of learning, discipline, culture, or skill in the arts. These, like wealth, are forms in which power is gener- ated and stored up. The use and applica- tion of all these forms of power should be controlled by one common Christian law. If any one of these forms is used for selfish gratification, the possessor becomes an of- fender, in proportion to the value and quan- tity of the power which he misuses. Whoever accumulates learning, or disci- pline, or culture for selfish gratification alone, regardless of what he ow.es to Christ and humanity, has in him all the essential elements of a raiser. We talk of misers as if they were found among the commercial Classes only. But the term is applicable to all who hoard up God's gifts in selfish care- lessness of the duties which those posses- sions impose. It is the use of power for blessing which alone can bring happiness to him who has it. Especially is this il- lustrated by wealth. All experience shows that, when wealth is hoarded to an amount beyond the reasonable requirements of the holder or his dependents, it loses its power to confer well-being. It imposes a constant- ly increasing amount of labor, thought, and anxiety, for which the owner can by no possibility receive a personal return. In a country where entails are not permitted, where wealth has a natural tendency to- ward redistribution, it is notorious that the most anxious, hard-worked, and care-worn members of society are the holders of enor- mous wealth. It is found that the labor and capacity required to keep it are as great, oft- en greater than was required to amass it. A man labors and denies himself in early life that he may have ease and quiet from his money. He too often finds that cares and responsibilities accumulate more rapid- ly than wealth. It is God's law that true enjoyment can never be attained unless we forget ourselves in the use of our power for the benefit of others. This law can not by any possibility be evaded or transcended, and its -penalties become stringent and em- phatic just in the proportion that property selfishly hoarded increases in amount. This law finds a modified application also in its bearing upon children. Wealthy men who shut their hearts against the appeals of benevolence often persuade themselves that they are hoarding for the benefit of their children. This is often but a disguised form of avarice a fruitless attempt to evade the penalties which God has attached to this form of vice. A noble manhood or wom- anhood is inconceivable except as the out- growth of labor, burden-bearing, and self- denial. Character, whether intellectual or moral, is a kind of manufacture of which the self-control, the moral, mental, and phys- ical efforts of the individual himself furnish the raw material. The result, the most val- uable thing on earth, genius ,cau not give, money can not buy. Whatever weakens or destroys the mo- tives to personal exertion, so far diminishes a young person's chances of attaining the fullest and richest development of manhood. The knowledge on the part of a child that he will be heir to an estate which will re- lieve him from the ordinary necessity of working for his living, in all but exception- ally constituted natures, strikes with paral- ysis the most effective impulses to exertion. Even those for whom some sort of activity is a necessity we often find busied about trifles, and in the end sinking into a feeble dilettanteism, developing a superficial var- nish of culture rather than the broad mind, strong will, and administrative capacity which make up real manhood. This law, thus applicable to the rich man and his children, is but one of the varied illustra- tions of the divine principle, that he who would save his life for selfish ends and pur- poses shall really lose it. It should, however, be distinctly under- stood that Christianity guarantees, in the strongest wny, the right of property and the ANDERSON : THE RIGHT USE OF WEALTH. 359 right of inheritance. But it balances this moral sanction to the possession of property by the duties attached, to such possession which it places over against the right. It secures to the scholar or artist the right of ownership in the product of his thought, but it imposes upon him the paramount obliga- tion to use the property which he has in his intellectual endowment or production for the benefit of his fellow-man. O% T er against ev- ery right, personal or political, Christianity places its corresponding duty. The severi- ty and extent of the obligation to benevolent action are in exact proportion to the brill- iancy of a person's intellectual gifts or the amount of his wealth. These rights and du- ties may be separated in thought, but may not be in fact ; they are parts of a common system ; each is a complement of the other. This relation is so fundamental that it is recognized in the lowest forms of utilitarian- ism as well as in the loftiest Christian mor- ality. The haw of self-sacrifice must be admitted as the universal condition of all individual moral development, and all so- cial growth and well-being. The doctrine of "altruism," set forth by Comte and his followers as a scientific discovery, is but a new name for the old Christian law which received its highest sanction and exemplifi- cation on the cross of redemption. In this non-recognition of rights and duties in re- spect to property as correlative, we find the origin of the great and dangerous collisions between labor and capital. The relative value of labor and capital in the market can only be determined by the law of sup- ply and demand. Exchangeable values must always depend on common opinion. The teachings of a sound political economy and .a sound morality are at one in forbidding in- terference with the natural currents of ex- change, distribution, and accumulation. In- deed the main function of the State is to prevent all abnormal interferences with free exchanges of nil forms of capital ami labor. Taxation by the State finds its justification in the fact that such protection against in- terference is given. When the State under- takes to fix prices, it is almoSI sure to be- come an oppressor. Taxation for the support of schools, for the support of the poor, for the prosecution and reform of criminals, is made necessary, that the burdens of society and the expense necessary for the preservation of its exist- ence shall be equitably distributed. If the State may not prescribe the rates of ex- change between different kinds of economic quantities, how are the questions which arise between labor and capital to find their solu- tion ? Capital is accumulating in all Chris- tian countries with a rapidity to which the past furnishes no parallel. These accumu- lations tend by an inevitable law to pass into the control of the able and intelligent. How are we to prevent these enormous ac- cumulations of power from becoming dan- gerous and oppressive ? If we weaken by law the right of our merchant princes to the possession of their wealth, we weaken in the same degree the right of the poorest laborer to the products of his daily toil. In like manner we weaken the impulse to accumu- lation, natural to man, which is one of the prime factors in a healthy and progressive civilization. Nothing so taxes the ability of the legislator as the framing of laws which shall preserve the right of property, and at the same time prevent its power from being abused. Whatever the legisla- tion of the future may accomplish in this di- rection, we believe that the only complete and satisfactory solution of this problem must be a moral one. In the wide-spread uneasiness among the laboring classes we find a growing appre- hension on their part of the duties which at- tach to the possession of wealth. Of the rights of the holders of property they are often sadly unmindful. On the. other hand, the wealthy classes are keenly alive to their own rights, while they are often fearfully neglectful of the manifold and weighty du- ties which their wealth imposes upon them. Hence this antagonism between the rich and the poor. Neither party has adequate- ly learned the great lesson of Christian brotherhood, nor that the rights and duties of every moral being are inseparable rela- tives. When the keen sensitiveness to the duties and obligations of capital, which lies at the basis of strikes and trades-unions, is moder- ated and controlled by an equal sensitive- ness to the rights of capital ; when the great masters of associated wealth become as keenly alive to the duties which they owe to the poor as they are to the protection of their own wealth ; when Christian love shall become the common atmosphere of the rich and the poor; when every man shall deem himself, like Christ, the servant of all in exact proportion to the power which he possesses, these collisions between the oppo- site forms of power, represented by capital and labor, will pass away forever. It is the duty of all Christian men, and es- pecially of the wealthy among them, to study this problem with the greatest care, lest, di- rectly or indirectly, they become unwitting- ly agents of oppression. The aristocracy of caste and the aristocracy of feudalism are rapidly passingaway. Centuries of servile in- surrections, accompanied by untold suffering, have workcnl out this still incomplete eman- cipation. But a new feudalism is coming to the front, as powerful and as all-pervading as the old. This is found in associated cap- ital. The control of this is in the hands of corporations, the sole end of whose existence is to increase and defend the power which 360 CHRISTIAN LIFE. they already possess. The common maxim that " corporation liave no souls " expresses the average judgment of men, that financial corporations are in some way endowed by law with all the rights of property, while they are emancipated from its correspond- ing duties. Right here arises one of the great dangers which threaten modern society. The power which associated capital will possess, in com- mercial nations, by the end of another cen- tury, is appalling in anticipation. If the power thus given by the fundamental right of property shall continue to be exercised without regard to the moral obligations which limit and control it, the enginery for oppression thus existing will be almost in- conceivable. Even now worthless securities are forced upon the market by those illegiti- mate appliances so well known to the finan- cier. Great combinations are formed for the elevation or depression of prices, in defiance of the natural action of the law of supply and demand. The feverish anxiety for sudden wealth overstrains credit, tempts to frauds and defalcations, regardless alike of the prin- ciples of political economy, of moral obliga- tion, and of civil law. Sooner or later these combinations must miscarry. Financial bub- bles break, frauds are exposed, confidence is lost, and poverty, pain, and suffering are car- ried to every cottage throughout our land. Capital is power mighty for good, when controlled by intelligent benevolence ; ter- rible for evil, when made an instrument of oppression. Our safeguard against this form of evil, which threatens us now, and must be still more dangerous in future, can be found only in subjecting capital, as well as every other form of power, to the control of the Chris- tian law of sacrifice and service. When capitalists, in their individual and associa- ted capacity, shall consider themselves as stewards for the administration of the wealth with which God has endowed them, so that it shall conduce to the blessing of man and the glory of God, these dangers will no long- er exist. It is high time that the elementary limitations of Christian morality should be recognized in the accumulation and admin- istration of wealth. No Christian man may do that as a director of a corporation which he would shrink from as an individual. He may not share the gain acquired by the oppression of the poor, or by combinations skillfully contrived for the robbery of the rich. There are moral laws which govern the accumulation and management of prop- erty. They may not be violated with impu- nity. The great financial revulsions which, like pestilences, have smitten the world from the time of the Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea Bubble to the present hour, are so many several illustrations of the retributive justice of God. While the laws of Christian morality should control the processes and set limits to the rapidity of accumulation, and while the duty of appropriating wealth to benev- olent uses is apparent, it is also clear that great discrimination should be exercised in selecting the objects to which the appropri- ation shall be made. Indiscriminate alms- giving may be productive of unlimited evil. The mere giving of money to the poor is not necessarily charity. It often exaggerates the very evil that it is designed to remedy. It may be so distributed as to destroy self-respect in the recipients, and train up a class willing to live upon the public bounty, and too in- dolent to labor for their own support or to bear their share of public burdens. The truest charity is that which educates and trains the poor into the capacity to sup- ply their own wants by their own labor and skill. He who supplies the physical wants of the poor in such a way as to take away their motives for labor, and induce in them a willingness to live upon the labor of the public, so far trains them to crime. The Mendicant Orders in the Catholic Church made beggary respectable, and have given currency to the idea that the giving of alms is a virtue in itself, without refer- ence to the purposes to which it is applied. Nothing more rapidly demoralized Romo than the custom on the part of the State of providing food for the large body of the poorer citizens. It is just as clearly the duty of men of wealth to bestow their bene- factions wisely as it is to bestow them. The great object should be so to bestow wealth that it shall be continuously productive of elevating and purifying forces. Large sums are often given indiscriminately in such a way that they are really a. premium upon beggary and crime. Those benefactions are most productive of blessing which are devoted to some form of technical, moral, religious, or intellectual education. If the poor are vicious, they, and in geuer.il their children, need to be reformed. With reformation, the cause of their poverty will be removed. If they are poor through want of skill or capacity, they and their children need .education and in- dustrial training. This will enable them to care for themselves. In the order of Providence, a large seg- ment of most communities, and a majority of many, is composed of persons, old and young, who are either too weak, too vicious, or too ignorant to keep themselves above want. All men alike, learned or ignorant, rich or poor, need the inspiring, elevating, and sanctifying influence of the Gospel of Christ. Here, then, we have laid out before us two grand spheres for the exercise of enlightened benevolence. Our Saviour was the great teacher. Every minister of religion, every Christian man and woman, is bound, directly or indirectly, ANDERSON : THE RIGHT USE OF WEALTH. 361 to follow his example in this respect. The world can be made better, healthier, and happier only as it is made acquainted with the laws of God, and persuaded to obey them. The preaching of the Gospel is but a process for the moral and religious instruction and training of men. The most productive field, then, for Chris- tian benevolence is education, when taken in its broadest sense. It is true that the sick and the aged must be cared for, often without hope of improving their condition in the present life ; but they may be trained for the life to come. Criminals must be re- strained and punished; but their restraint and punishment may be made a process of training for a better life. The children of the vicious poor must be clothed and fed; but it is of tenfold greater importance that they be trained in economy, industry, and the fear of God. How this mass of imbe- cility, ignorance, and crime shall be taught, elevated, and christianized is the great prob- lem of society, and the great task of the Chris- tian Church. To furnish the spiritual force for its accomplishment was our Saviour's mission to earth. To become the conductors of this spiritual force to the minds and hearts of men is the function of all who would be classed as his followers. It so happens that our own country pre- sents a greater demand upon consecrated wealth than perhaps any other nation. The teeming populations of the Old World, East and West, are rushing in to the vacant spaces of our vast domain. They are becoming participants and powers in our social and political life. We must fuse them into our own nationality. We must vitalize them with the power of Christian truth and emo- tion. Here a nation is born in a day. In- stitutions of learning must be founded and endowed in a generation, for which a thou- sand years have been required in the Old World. Houses of worship must be erected, and the school-teacher and the missionary must be equipped and furnished to follow, in a lock-step with the progress of our hardy pioneers as they march forward to subdue the wilderness into luxuriance and beauty. Unless our country shall be left to become a moral desert, this work must be done, and done in our own generation. To meet these moral wants, God has given ns in our coun- try a career and a capacity for rapid accu- mulation beyond that of any other people. God has graciously adjusted our financial strength to the moral burdens which he has called us to bear. Unless our benevolence in giving shall more than equal our capaci- ty for accumulation, the forces of ignorance, evil, and superstition will take possession of our fair laud ; and in spite of our boasted freedom of thought and action, we shall be- come a by-word, and a hissing, and a shak- ing of the head among the nations. This principle finds its application in the Old World as well. Hitherto the institu- tions of religion have been controlled and supported by the State. It needs no proph- et's ken to foretell that, sooner or later, the union of Church and State will be dissolved. All the spiritual and political forces of mod- ern life seem to tend in that direction. The time is not far distant when Christian men in Europe must take upon their shoulders the work of home evangelization, as well as that of foreign missions. This condition of things will, in no dis- tant future, call for a development of Chris- tian benevolence such as the Old World has never seen realized. The unevangelized and ignorant masses, the bequest of feudalism to the present age, are pressing forward for a recognition of their political rights, un- taught though they may be in the first ele- ments of political duty. These masters of the future must be brought within the con- trol of an intelligent Christianity, or their emancipation will be fraught with equal woe to themselves and to social order. These are no fancied dangers. France and Spain, torn and bleeding, tell ns how valueless is mere liberty of action when uuguided by Christian love and unrestrained by moral law. The moral and intellectual training of these new depositaries of political power is an indispensable condition of the main- tenance of that social order through which the quiet possession of Avealth is rendered possible. Socialism, that spectre which so haunts the European mind, is due to the consciousness of the new possession of political power on the part of those to whose minds the intelligent self-restraint born of an educated conscience is a stranger. No police system, however omniscient, no standing armies, however powerful, can hold in check these demoral- ized millions when they choose to assert their rude power. To meet these social dangers of the fu- ture, an evangelical activity, more intelli- gent and loving than has blessed the world since the apostolic era, is immediately de- manded. It is the pride of the Swiss Con- federation that, when a hostile cannon-shot is heard on its border, every Swiss is in- stantaneously converted into a soldier. Such is the condition of the Old World and the New, that no man and no woman can claim to be a follower of Christ, who is not ready in some way to be incorporated into the great army of evangelical laborers. Whatever the Christian is, whatever the Christian has, whatever the Christian may become, whatever the Christian may acquire, be- longs to Christ and to humanity, whom Christ in his own person represents. These workers for Christ and humanity may be roughly divided into two great class- es. The one constitutes the great body of 362 CHRISTIAN LIFE. Christian preachers and Christian teachers of both sexes and every order; the other class consists of those whose immediate aim is accumulation of wealth for the support of the class first named while engaged in the direct processes of benevolent activity. The obligations resting upon these two classes of Christians are precisely similar. The Christian preacher, teacher, or mission- ary is under no obligation to consecrate his life to benevolent action to the neglect of all efforts for the amassing of property which does not bear upon the manufacturer or merchant. For both classes .alike Christ lived and died. Both classes alike are wor- thy to be called Christians only to the ex- tent that they live over again Christ's life, and, under the limitations of their capaci- ties, carry forward Christ's plans of mercy for man. The one class are called upon to devote learning, eloquence, intellectual pow- er, and time directly to these benevolent ends and purposes. The other class are alike call- ed upon to devote their surplus accumulations to the same great end. All these forms of power alike belong to the Saviour. To their use he has a common claim. The moral law which prescribes fidelity, industry, and con- secration to the Christian scholar applies equally to the merchant. The duty of the preacher to preach, of the scholar to teach, is no more imperative than the obligation which lies upon the wealthy to give to consecrate a similar proportion of the particular forms of power which they wield to benevolent ends. If we would as- certain, then, the right use of wealth and the extent of the obligation which binds men who control it, we should recur to the New Testa- ment, and there study the precepts and exam- ple of Christ and his immediate followers. Whatever of self-denial, whatever of self- sacrifice, whatever of consecration of pow- er to the salvation of men and the glory of God marked the career of these exemplars of our faith, is binding to-day upon the Christian teacher, the Christian preacher, and the Christian merchant. The doctrine of Atonement is the prime element of power in the example of Christ. The sooner this is recognized by the Chris- tian Church, the sooner will Christianity bo restored to its pristine efficiency. The ex- ample of our Saviour is not exhausted in the perfect exhibition of the negative forms of virtue. It is in the realization of the great positive idea of living for others, of conse- crating all the power of action or endurance which we may possess for the salvation of men, that we approach the example of Christ. It is this type of Christianity which shall reach and consecrate every form of power in the completest degree to Christian uses that is the world's great want. When the atonement on Calvary shall be recognized as the pith and substance of the example of Christ, as well as the objective condition of our salvation, a new era will have dawned upon the Church and upon humanity. The question will then not be "how little we may do for the cause of Christ," but rather, "how much of power we may accumulate, to the end that all of it, without reserve, shall be laid upon the altar of sacrifice." We have heard much, during the sessions of this Alliance, in defense of the Christian faith. All this is well; but may it not be that we attach an exaggerated importance both to the attacks of its enemies and the defenses of its friends f No weapon can pre- vail against a Divine and Christ-like charity. Is it not the best defense of Christianity to exhibit it before the world in its purity and glory ? What a conception of the Christian faith heaved the heart of the great apostle when he exclaimed, "I bear about in my body the dying of the Lord Jesus" when he could wish himself "accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh .!" Christianity does not so much need to be apologized for and defended as it needs to be shown. When holiness to the Lord shall be written upon the scholar's attainments and the titles to the merchant's wealth ; when every form of power which the Chris- tian Church controls shall be a continually smoking sacrifice upon the altar of conse- cration, our faith will need no other defense. Christianity will never be saved from its enemies by theological engineering. When every form of Christian activity and force shall be devoted to aggression upon the kingdom of darkness, there will bo no time nor need for apologetics. The victorious army with the light of battle in its eye cores little for the slow processes of the engineer. When all our resources are converted hon- estly and faithfully iuto engines of attack upon sin and wrong, apologies for Christ and his doctrines will be a grand imperti- nence. The simultaneous consecration of a tithe of the great fortunes in the possession of Christian men in the countries represented by this Alliance would have greater imme- diate weight with unbelievers than all the books on Christian evidence that have been published since the revival of learning. Sec- ond only in importance to the right use of Christian capacity in the work of preaching the Gospel of Christ is the Christian concep- tion of the right uses of wealth. SECOND SECTION-EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. MODERN LITERATURE AND CHRISTIANITY. BY THE REV. A. L. SIMPSON, D.D., OF DERBY, ENGLAND. THERE are some things which give this subject a special claim to be looked at. For example, there is its extraordinary profu- sion. Literature has attained. to such di- mensions that it may be said to be every- where. It surrounds us like an atmosphere. It is not as it was once in history, when wandering minstrels, story-tellers, and trou- badours were the only books in Europe. It is not as it was long after the invention of printing, when books were unpiirchasable by the mass of the people. It is not as it was even a few years ago, when the paper duty and other governmental restrictions greatly limited the production by limiting the sale. Now all such artificial restrictions are gone (in Great Britain, at least), and the result is something before which we stand almost appalled. When, apart from books properly so called, we think of the legions of monthly and weekly periodicals, and when to these we add the daily newspapers dis- tributed in houses and workshops, and at .ill railway stations, in myriads, we can not help feeling that there is a power in the midst of us perpetually at work which must go far, according to its nature and tendency, to make us or mar us, as individuals, as fam- ilies, and as nations a power which implies a tremendous responsibility somewhere, or rather everywhere. For, although it m'ay attach to some in a special degree, no man with any patriotism will be able to put it entirely away from himself. It is certain that a thing of the nature of literature, thus so incessantly supplied and so universally diffused, must be exerting a prodigious in- fluence of one kind or other. For although all literature is passive at first, not creating social tendencies, but only timidly reflecting those that exist, yet it speedily passes from this pupilage state, and becomes the princi- pal nutriment of social tendencies, intensi- fying what it reflects, till it gets down to the very springs of human thought and ac- tion, and attains something like a master- ship over all the channels of life. It was in view of this subtle power of literature that a statesman said, "Give me the making of a people's songs, and I will give yon the making of their Jaws;" the idea being this, that a people's songs, inas- much as they are the language of emotion, come up from a greater depth in our nature and with a more fervid glow, and must al- ways have a stronger hold upon it, than laws which are a matter of utilitarian calculation, shaped and formed for a defined end. The latter are a social necessity which we simply accept ; the former are an intellectual in- stinct which we can not resist the true "speaking out" of our nature in all those circumstances in which it must speak out, and when its language becomes at once the sign and the measure of the earnestness which is in us. Hence all people have songs (and that, too, before they have laws) just be- cause they have passions, emotions, affec- tions. But their " songs," technically speak- ing, are only one form of literary art ; and what is true of one of its forms is equally true of them all. In order, indeed, to get at the full meaning of the statesman's pro- found saying, we must consider the word " songs " as standing for all art, and then it becomes enunciative, although somewhat in- directly, of the truth that art, in one form or other, is the refuge of our nature in every emotional state that into which it instinct* ively passes in its endeavors to rise out of itself, so to say, into that fuller life which in such circumstances it feels itself capable of. The province of science and legislation is not meant to be disparaged, and the social and individual comforts which flow from them are not to be scorned. Man is of com- plicated faculty and of manifold need, and every thing in the world has its place and its power. But surely the distinction of hu- manity, psychologically speaking, lies in its idealism (to which religion gives sustain- meut and wise direction), and thus the in- fluence of such things is to the soul more than they seem, and the whole universe be- comes, under the guidance of God, as a spring-board to the spirit, in its bound to- Avard the infinite and the shadowless. Debasing Features of Modern Literature. It is evidently, therefore, of the greatest importance that this subtle influence, which is so constantly and so universally at work, should be in proper hands should be in unison with the spirit of Christianity, and 3G4 CHRISTIAN LIFE. moving in the same direction with it. And yet what do we find! Much, no doubt, blessed be God, very much which is true and good rooted in Christian motive, and fruited with Christian effects. To the great Bible and Tract Societies we are deeply in- debted, on both sides of the ocean, in this regard, and I pray God to bless these agen- cies more and more in their noble endeavors. They are much needed ; for, when we look forth on the wide field of modern literature, we find, in the first place, much that is sim- ply and entirely bad bad in its art element, if it can be said to have any, and bad in its essence. This is what Mr. Charles Knight called the " garbage field," or the stream of sewer literature of which he said that " all the garbage that belongs to the history of crime and misery is raked together to diffuse a moral iniasma through the laud in the shape of the most vulgar aud brutal fiction." And if this was the case in 1846, when these words were written, it is much more so now. The quantity of this sort of literature is ab- solutely overwhelming a literature of such a kind that to call it sensational is to say little or nothing. It is coarse and brutal indecent, too, up to the limits of the law, and often beyond them. Its tendency is, of course, all in the direction of the sort of life it depicts, the situations of which are made use of for the purpose of pleasing the mill- ion by stimulating their passions and pan- dering to their lusts. We need not wonder that appetites nurtured on such garbage should turn from the lessons of the mission- ary with disgust, and that churches should be empty while beer-shops and casinos are full. Under such a cuisine the heart is worse than starved it is poisoned and petrified ; conscience is killed out, and what of the in- tellect remains must be only as the purveyor of passion and lust, the demon in the herd of swine, impelling them down the steep of ignominious concession into the foul sea of indulgence. But now, in the second place, there is a considerable proportion of modern literature which is so far good in its artistic qualities, but decidedly, I may almost say avowedly, bad in its morality. This, like the preced- ing, chiefly consists of works of fiction, and to a certain extent of poetry. Of course, I do not object to any class of writings on ac- count of their form ; although, when the es- sence is bad, the fictional form is the most ensnaring. The literature of the drama is not to be denounced because it is dramatic, nor the literature of fiction simply because it is fictitious. These are particular meth- ods of expressing sentiment and thought, and they are perfectly legitimate methods. In the hands of a master they may be mighty for their purpose, and works under this or any other special designation are to be judged of by a reference to their spirit and subject-matter alone. The dramatic poets of the Restoration " who sauntered Europe round, and gathered every vice on Christian ground," we summarily condemn, not because they were dramatic, but because they were grossly immoral. So with many novels of the last century, and so also with not a few of the present day. There are many works, perhaps not of the very high- est art, but still works of accomplished and powerful writers which have been intro- duced by translation into English literature, which, both directly on those who read them, and indirectly through their influence on other writers, who are led to imitate them, have a widely corrupting effect, and that, too, extending pretty high up in the social scale. There are some writers, indeed, who hold as a theory that the free treatment of such subjects as involve the details of social and domestic immorality is not only admis- sible, but necessary to the completeness of literary art, and that literature in many cases suffers from oversqueamishness in this regard. This theory is avowed, I believe, by one of the most learned and brilliant, and, in a general way, one of the most interest- ing and influential of the French critics of the day. I refer to M. Taine, of Paris. -He raises the question whether literature is the better or the worse for being strictly moral, and he considers that it is the worse. And this view has found advocates in England, notably in Mr. Algernon Swinburne, who not only accepts the theory, but has in his own published poems given it unblushing prac- tical effect. And along with him, to use the words of a writer in The Daily News, " Some young writers of the rising generation seem inclined to get up a reaction against the excessive purism of the last eighty or nine- ty years. They consider their intellectual limbs fettered, and long to free themselves from customary restrictions, so that it be- comes a serious question whether or not such an immunity from the restraints of con- ventional morals is a desirable thing in these days." With regard to this question in the abstract, I should say that it is neither de- sirable nor allowable in any days, and for this simple reason that, just like all other men, writers are bound to be moral, what- ever else they may be. This is the first law of rational life, and nothing can change it, or for a moment suspend it ; and as regards its being necessary to the completeness of literary art, which is M. Taino's plea, I shall only say this that it can be shown, and that it has been shown by a reference to the fundamental principles, both of art and of the human mind, that such license is op- posed to true completeness and fatal to the highest reach of art, whether in the literary form or any other. It were strange, indeed, if it were other- wise strange if the highest beauty, which SIMPSON: MODERN LITERATURE AND CHRISTIANITY. 365 is as the earthly shadow of heaven's holiness, could be approached only by such miry ways ; and if that reserve with which civilized so- ciety has ever found it necessary to treat those numerous associations which gather round the tie of sex were incompatible with completeness of intellectual work, which is just a means of progressive elevation for the race if it were so, then we should be com- pelled to say, " Welcome the incomplete, and perish the completeness that can come to us only thus." If this be the only path to the empyrean of literary art, then let us fly low let us keep down among the insipid decen- cies and the vulgar moralities of life. We would not in this way know good and evil, even though Satan promises as of old that we shall " be as gods." To speak of the aspect to Christianity of a literature springing from such a root is quite superfluous. That which holds com- mon morality so cheap that it must go to the wall before the fancied demands of some wild theory of aesthetics is, of course, the de- nial of all religion, and is bound to treat it as a jest, which indeed it does, or seems to do, as when M. Taine says, in his description of a Sunday service in Edinburgh, that " the doctrine of the sermon, though rather ab- stract, might awaken reflections and individ- ual reasoning in some heads, more especially in winter or when rain falls." Perhaps I should not have said that this was a jest, though it sounds very much like one ; for, after all, it is at once the key-note and the sum of M. Taine's philosophy. With him materialistic conditions dominate man, and he undertakes to explain all that man has been or done, and all the differences in his being or doing in different ages and places, by a reference to these. Intuitional truths, individual, subjective will, independent choice, or determination of mind, go for lit- tle or nothing ; art, philosophy, religion, are just what soil, climate, and topographical features have made them, and therefore we need not wonder very much to find him making man's religious feelings come and go with the weather. All the same however, a literature born under such influences must be inherently bad. It can never run clear, for it is poisoned at the fountain. Our only hope concerning it is that it may not be able to run long. And now I touch upon another branch of literature, emphatically modern literature, which is both large and important. It is of a much higher type than the preceding, being avowedly promotive both of morality and religion, pure in its motive, tender in its feeling, more or less graceful and artistic in its execution, and, for all these reasons, ex- ceedingly fascinating, and actually, I believe, doing good in a general way ; but which, as I think, would do much more were it not for some characteristics which tend in another direction. I refer to those stories which ap- pear in our religious periodicals, and which are more extensively read perhaps than any others. And what I find in many of them is a hostility, not indeed to religion, but to every thing like defined beliefs. They as- sert or insinuate the idea that such beliefs have only a contracting and hardening ef- fect, and that they are quite incompatible with that free play of the human spirit in the wide atmosphere of human sympathy, and that consciousness of the divine love which is the true and only religion for man. It is a tree which is bound to have beautiful blossoms and all manner of fruit, but its root, if it have any, like that of the orchids, must be in the air. It must have none going down into the soil of positive doctrine, or the whole virtue is gone. As if it were true in point of fact that the acceptance of a creed meant the stoppage of all spiritual growth, or as if, on the contrary, it were not the case that the Pauls and the Johns, the Luthers and the Cal- vins, the Edwards and the Hodges, the Alex- anders, the Leightons, Henrys, and Chalmers, and all such great trees of righteousness as have adorned and enriched the world as if it were not the case that such were deeply planted in the soil of fixed and definite be- lief, and from that grew up ; or as if it could be true that the intellect, which is supposed to have mainly to do with dogma (though that is not so exclusively the case as many suppose), were such an irreconcilable enemy to the heart that it must first be seized and imprisoned before the heart can have free- dom to beat ; or as if it were conceivable that God should grant a revelation of his will, and yet leave us to take just as much or as little of it as we liked. Nevertheless, this sacrificing of truth on the altar of a vague sentimentalism meets us continually at present, and as often as anywhere else in the serial stories to which I refer. There is in many of them, too, a vague idea with regard to the inspiration of Scrip- ture, " taking away," as one has observed, " its value as supplying an objective stand- ard, both of truth and duty making the Bible not the word of God, but only a word of God, which is to be interpreted and acted upon only in the measure that it receives the seal of the individual consciousness which has brought itself into harmony with the absolute will of God." Now I am not here to stand up for any particular denomina- tional belief. I am not called upon to do so. But I certainly protest against a form of literature passing under the name of re- ligious, which asserts or insinuates and uses all the power of fictional art to enforce the idea that no such thing as a definite belief is required. I hold that sentiment to be op- posed to Christianity, both in its spirit and precepts. " Prove all things : hold fast that which is good." There must be a right and S.V. CHRISTIAN LIFE. ji -wrong, a true aud a false, in tlio matter of what wo believe, else \vhy was the Bible given us at all T And how otherwise could the Jews be said to have much advantage over other nations, every way, aud chiefly that to them had been committed the oracles of God f There surely is such a thing as truth in the world, and the missing of the truth in the sphere of religion must be attended by consequences more serious than those attaching to error or mistake in any other sphere. And I question very much the pro- priety of making works of fiction the obvi- ous vehicles of individual opinion. It seems to me to be taking an undue advantage of literary art. At all events, it is not good policy in the writer ; for no man can make use of his imaginary characters to enforce his own individual opinions without lessen- ing the dramatic effect of his works aud de- ducting from their value as works of art. In some of these stories, too, we find very loose and irreverential views of Divine Provi- dence and prayer. The literature I now re- fer to is exceedingly popular, but in these respects it is exceedingly unwholesome. It may have much that is good in its lessons of patience, hopefulness, self-abnegation, and reliance in some dim way on a higher pow- er, all wrought out with considerable ar- tistic feeling and dramatic skill, but still in the particulars at which I have glanced we have much to regret and to be watchful against. There is also a considerable root of liter- ature connected with the culturist school, which enforces a theory of life which has much that is plausible, and to some even fascinating, about it, but which, by making the individual his own centre, cherishes an unhealthy self-consciousness, and gives to religion, which must be supreme if it is any thing, only a secondary place, as one of the means which culture makes use of, along with many others, to attain its professed end, the perfection of our nature on every side. Goethe, the " high-priest of culture," as he has been called, was the earliest pro- moter of this view, followed in England by Thomas Carlyle, and more recently by Pro- fessor Huxley, looking at it from a material- istic point of view, and, in its more spiritual aspect, by Mr. Matthew Arnold. With this aud cognate questions, President M'Cosh has dealt with all his characteristic knowl- edge and ability in his "Christianity and Positivism," aud also Principal Shairp, of St. Andrews, Scotland, in his book, entitled " Culture and Religion," where both aspects of the theory are handled in a manner which leaves little or nothing to be desired. Literature Noble, nevertheless, and to le Well Used. I trust that no one will fancy for a mo- ment that any thing I have said is dictated by opposition to literature in the true sense of the word. On the contrary, I maintain that the study of it in all its purer and higher forms is not more pleasant than it is profitable. Apart from the stores of posi- tive knowledge which are thus obtained, it is stimulating, enlarging, and elevating from the very fact of bringing the mind into con- tact with the great leaders of thought in all places and all times. Thackeray used to say to his audiences : " Cultivate the society of your betters ;" and we do this emphatic- ally by the study of literature, for it intro- duces us into valuable society the moral and intellectual chiefs of the world. The sympathizing student makes acquaintance with such through means of their works, and comes ere long to regard them as friends. No stern conventionalities exclude him from their presence. They are the chosen and trusty companions in all the outgoings of his mind. He has been with them round the world. He has sounded the depths of human passion with Shakspeare; he has breathed the sweet gales of Paradise with Milton ; he has wandered through the far- off region of allegory with Spenser ; he has climbed the Hill Difficulty and stood on the Delectable Mountains with Bunyan ; he has wept over the mountain daisy and mused to the singing water-fall with Wordsworth ; he has trodden the bold region of chivalric ro- mance, in which the stern features of Histo- ry are seen through the uncertain twilight of fiction, with Scott ; and he has passed through dim alleys of stunted poverty, and peered into dark abodes of misery and vice, with Crabbe. He is the true cosmopolitan in the widest sense, and he finds society to his liking wherever he strays. His senses are evermore saluted by the voices of the gifted, and his dwelling is beneath the shad- ow of their renown. For him Homer sings the wars of Greece and the woes of Troy, and the thunderous echoes of Demosthenes yet linger in his ears ; and still, as he passes downward with the stream, Truth and Beau- ty are his companions. There are chasms, no doubt, from time to time in the birth of genius, for Nature is sparing of her prodi- gies of the loftier type, and Alp is separated from Alp by a lengthening plain ; but the beacon-fire flashes from hill to hill, and the subjacent level is ever rescued from total obscurity. And there is no little pleasure in the marking of those giant steps of gen- ius down the steep of time ; "Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard. To carry nature lengths unknown before And give a Milton birth, asked ages more : Thus genius rose and set at ordered time?, And phot a dayspring into distant climes, Ennobling every region where it chose ; In Greece it sunk, in Italy it rose- Till, tedious years of Gothic darkness past, Emerged all splendor in our isle at last. SIMPSON: MODERN LITERATURE AND CHRISTIANITY. 3G7 Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main, Then show far off their shining plumes again." Do we pity the man whose blindness ex- cludes him from the glories of this outer world of creation? Not less is he the ob- ject of pity to whom this great volume of literature is a sealed book ; this bright world, which is the dwelling of thought audof thick- coming fancies, where mind has its throne, its sceptre, and its spoils, its innumerable pictures of the beautiful and the true, its palaces of enchantment, called up by more than the art of the Eastern magician, and stored with more than the wealth of Eastern maguificence ; where Fancy sits weaving her innumerable spells, and History is teaching from the book of nations her solemn lessons, and Science from her watch-tower points her telescope to the skies, or sounds with her plummet the depths of an almost fath- omless antiquity ; and Philosophy, with her mirror to the heart, is looking soulward with introverted eye; and Biography is setting up her model heroes for the future ; and Po- etry is singing her melodious songs, "Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;" and Religion (for she, too, has her throne in this palace of the mind) casts over all the girdle of her love, while her radiant fore- head strikes the stars, and her eye " looks forward into eternity." But the greater a thing is in its healthy and normal condition, so much the more per- ilous is it when it is improperly used and falls iuto the service of evil. And we can not be blind to the fact that such is the case with our modern literature in many respects. It panders to sensationalism, it stimulates pas- sion, it feeds many evil roots of skepticism in relation both to Christian goodness and Christian truth. It weakens the intellect by its superficialism and rapid succession obviousness for the sake of haste, and the circumstances in which much of it is ex- pected and intended to be read, on railroad journeys, etc., being the constant demand nowadays; while that which is more solid iu its character as the exponent of philo- sophic speculation and scientific theories is to a great extent opposed to the very possi- bility of a spiritual sentiment and a religious life, eliminating as it does the supernatural element from the world, and enforcing a life which is purely sensuous in its nature, or at all events materialistic in its limit and range. " Science has done so much for us," says Prin- cipal Sbairp, " in the way of increasing our comforts and removing many of the surface ills of life, that vague and exaggerated hopes are entertained of what it may yet do for the healing of the deepest disorders." The vast increase of wealth, too, leading to a proud, ostentatious, and luxurious life, falls in with the current, while the great competition in business and the unwonted facilities for locomotion keep up an excite- ment by no means favorable to thoughts of the unseen. All this, of course, conies oufc in our literature, since whatever an age thinks and feels it must express iu its forms of art. It is first a symptom before it is a cause a symptom of something deeper than itself, which, however, it feeds and strength- ens by the very fact of expressing it. And hence it is not merely by attacking the lit- erature that we must seek to do good, but also by attacking the life of which it is the exponent, and bringing into- play more and more widely and prayerfully all holy Chris- tian influences, and, in so far as literature itself is concerned, encouraging and circu- lating what is unmistakably pure and good. There is no better way of keeping chaff out of a bushel than by just filling it with grain ; and let us be thankful there is grain at our command sufficient to displace the chaff, abundant though it be. In the Bible alone (not to speak of the literature which grows out of it) there is the seed-corn of a harvest which no tares of the enemy will be able to choke, and which, made vital by the power of the Holy Ghost, shall yet cover the earth with those fruits of righteousness which shall be gathered (to the praise and glory of God) unto life everlasting. We do not intend to part with the Bible yet, for all that science can either promise or threaten. There is too much sin and misery in the world for that, and chiefly because the world does not esteem that Bible as it ought to do. But were the Bible away, the sin would be greater and the misery deep- er, for in that case it would be sin without check and misery without hope. In so far as the world is any way better than it was, it is the Bible that has taught the world to think, and science need not be so anxious to put out the eyes of the giant on whose shoul- ders it stands. Wo can not forget even the indirect benefits we have derived from the Bible, from its influence on the general sen- timent of society an influence so great and so salutary as to justify the conclusion that, were that Bible, and what we owe to it, even remotely, abolished, the philosophic infidel who holds it so cheap would speedily find himself in the abysses of barbarism and n general chaos. And that is only its effect by the way the gold dust, as it were, which it throws off from its chariot wheels in its burning progress to victory. That victory is achieved in the depths of the individual soul, to which (if it be received) it brings light and grace, .and a spirit of holiness, and a Saviour mighty to save. These are things for the loss of which neither science nor philosophy provides any compensation. And this must be remembered in view of that dis- tinguishing feature of the infidelity which is now rising everywhere into prominence, CHRISTIAN LIFE. namely, that it is not infidelity for its own sake, as it were pure ami simple, but for the sake of a, certain style of scientific progress to which it is alleged to bo necessary, and in the way of which a spiritual sentiment and belief in the supernatural are supposed to stand. If that be the case (which, how- ever, I do not believe as true science can not be hindered, but only helped by faith in God and the Bible) yet, I say, if that be the case, it does nothing to reconcile us to the dismal alternative of surrendering our Bi- bles. And seeing how much, not for the present only, but for the awful and endless future, that surrender would involve, we de- mand to be made much more assured of our ground, and to be supplied with much more satisfactory evidence than we have yet been supplied with, before wo can even think of entertaining the idea at all. What we have got to do is to give all of our strength to the promotion of an enlight- ened Christian sentiment speaking, writ- ing, and living in the spirit of the Gospel, not acting iu any way as if we were afraid of the Ark of the Lord, but each one in his own sphere and according to his ability com- mending it to the world by his life, and com- mitting it to God in his prayers; in which case we shall have reason to expect that, when the enemy cometh in like a flood, tho Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him, and that, sooner or later, "Ho- liness to the Lord" shall be written upon literature as well as upon every other forna of human activity. MODERN LITERATURE IN ITS RELATION TO CHRIS- TIANITY. BY THE REV. NOAH POETER, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College, New Haven, Conn. THE term literature, strictly interpreted, would include every printed work which at- tracts the attention of the smallest number of readers. Used in a more limited sense, it would comprehend all those works which, by the importance of their matter or the perfection of their form, impress themselves upon one or more generations. Thus ap- plied, it would include every able treatise upon theology, science, and philosophy. It is obvious that the theme proposed for the present essay excludes such works, and cov- ers only those printed productions which pos- sess a more general character and awaken a more popular interest ; as history, biography, poetry, fiction, popular orations, and essays, as also criticism and journalism in all their branches. All these descriptions of literature have this in common, that they address the popu- lar ear, and suppose a circle of miscellaneous readers, as distinguished from such as are tech- nical or special. This circle may be narrow or wide, according to the nature of the. sub- ject, the tastes and culture of the readers, and the power and skill of the writer. lu respect to any or all of these varying ele- ments, no definite limits need be prescribed. And yet we may say that every writer who takes a significant place in the literature of even a single generation must have spe- cial gifts for conceiving and setting forth what he would say. Such a gift we call genius, in a general way. Genius attains its highest form when it divines the popular thought by keen sagacity, and moulds it by fitting words, teaching with authority, in- spiring by eloquence, or entrancing through poetry or fiction. The works of writers thus endorsed, con- stituting the literature of an age, must nec- essarily present a more or less faithful tran- script of the age itself, as to the problems and questionings, the conclusions and im- pulses, which make up its intellectual and moral life. But great writers do much more than reflect an age. They react upon it, and mould it by their individual influence and energy, as they instruct and elevate or delude and debase it. They make the truth to become evident and attractive, and thus become ministers of wisdom and bless- 24 ing, or they give to error and falsehood the authority and charm of truth, and thus cor- rupt the life of one or many generations. The words of great writers symbolize the faiths or the no faiths of all reading and thinking men. They are shouted in their battle-cries, they are quoted in their argu- ments, they are sung at their feasts, they give comfort in sorrow, and peace in death. Thus it is that great novelists and poets, great historians and critics, great essayists and journalists, become both the representa- tives and the leaders of their times. Literature asserts to itself an independent sphere and an undivided authority. All writers who obtain a hearing assume to know of what they affirm. They may defer to higher authorities than themselves as to matters of fact, of science, of speculation, and of religion, nay, even of literature it- self; but in such cases they assume to know and to decide who is entitled to the decisive word. They stand between such authorities and the public, they interpret their words and translate their arguments and conclu- sions into the language of letters. They claim to know and to indicate what has been established as true, to sift the true from the false, the solid from the plausible, and to diffuse into the public mind the re- sults of the higher and the more advanced thinking of the times. It by no means fol- lows that literature is infallible. It has oft- en been the vehicle of monstrous delusions and dangerous doctrines, in respect to every important interest of man. On the other hand, whatever is established as true be- comes the property of the race by becoming recognized and assented to in literature. If literature is independent, it must be free from all political and ecclesiastical author- ity. If the censor may restrain or erase or confiscate whatever displeases the ruling magistrate or dominant party or contradicts what is laid down by the doctor of science or the priest of the church, literature can be hardly said to exist. It certainly can not exercise its functions as the herald of new thoughts and the exponent of new principles. On the other hand, there are self-imposed re- straints of courtesy and decorum, of fairness and tolerance, which grow out of the fuuc- 370 CHRISTIAN LIFE. tion of literature itself as the professed ex- pounder of truth by the light of reason. Lit- erature also aims at culture, and culture pre- supposes refinement of manners as truly as of diction and imagery. The character and the influence of a lit- erature depend on two elements : the com- munity whose opinions and culture it re- flects, and the genius and tone of the writers who represent and mould it. A superficial and frivolous people will demand and ac- cept a superficial and frivolous literature; an unbelieving and sensual age will sustain, and be sustained by, a godless and corrupt literature ; a generation that thinks and feels strongly and nobly will produce a strong and elevated literature, provided that readers and writers have sufficient gen- ius and culture to require and to furnish the expression of what is thought and felt. It follows that, if a people or an age is ca- pable of literature, this literature must hold intimate relations to the religious faith and life of the people or the age. Religious faith and feeling confessedly have much to do with that life and culture which literature expresses and to which it appeals. A relig- ion which is founded in the nature of man, and is adapted to his wants, which com- mends itself to his conscience, and trans- forms and purifies the springs of action, can not but act for good on both the matter and form of literature. Such a religion will ele- vate and refine the manhood of an age, reaching its manners and speech. It will stimulate the intellect, and guide and in- spire the imagination. A religion which is against man's true nature must dwarf and corrupt the literature, or the literature must overthrow or reform it. It does not follow that a very religious people or religious era will necessarily produce a splendid litera- ture. Many conditions may be wanting of culture in the people, and in the writers who reflect and react on their life, in history, poem, or novel. An age in which religion is becoming effete or corrupt may produce great writers who are inspired by the faith and fervor of the apostles and martyrs for liberty and for God, of whom their readers are not worthy, although they admire the sentiments and truths which they do not translate into action. On the other hand, the literature of a peo- ple may exert a powerful influence for good or evil on its religions faith and life. Its great writers hold the ear of their readers. It is the prerogative of genius to give en- ergy and attractiveness to truth, and plau- sibility and power to falsehood. It can thus befriend or dishonor the most sacred convic- tions of man's nature concerning God and the eternal life. It can cleanse or pollute the most hallowed of his emotions. That literature exerts a powerful influ- ence at the present moment can not be de- nied. It is almost a truism to say that its influence was never so great as now. Nev- er was the authority of its tribunal so im- posing. Never did it assume to itself the function of summoning before itself the de- fenders of a greater variety of opinions, however firmly rooted or sacredly cherish- ed ; never did it criticise so boldly, and yet with such show of courtesy and reason, the faiths and traditions, the tastes and the cus- toms of the Household, of Society, of the Fo- rum, and the Church. It would seem that there was never a time when new theories were so hospitably entertained, or adopted on a briefer examination and more slender evidence; never a time when a brilliant im- agination, copious illustrations, and a cap- tivating diction could give such extensive currency to extemporized theories in respect to religion, morals, society, manners, tastes, and even in respect to literature itself. The reasons for the greater influence of literature in our times are obvious : the diffusion of intelligence ; the multiplication of readers ; the power of ideas to propagate themselves; the disposition to try, if not to distrust, ev- ery thing that is received, and a headlong hospitality toward every thing which is new in fact, or which seems new under the lights of new illustrations and diction. There are those who contend that the in- fluence of literature, with these attendants, can only be for good. The bold and critic- al spirit of modern literature, in their view, must necessarily sift truth from error, and wisdom from folly, and tame down to sobri- ety every species of extravagance and ex- cess. Its permeating fire must melt the dross from every alloy. Its subtle chemis- try everywhere disintegrates, that it may reunite, ;the elements of the best-compacted structures and those only which literature reunites are certain to endure. Whatever the all-powerful time-spirit shall utter through the oracles of literature should be received as true ; and whatever the cultured sensibility of public sentiment, as purified and enlight- ened by literature, shall accept or reject with subtle tact, should be regarded as wor- thy or unworthy of trust. These exalted estimates of the functions of literature might easily be shown to bo extravagant. It might readily bo seen that the time-spirit of literature may be very good or very bad, according as by action and reaction the age is corrupt, and manifests itself in a corrupt literature ; or again, that a literature may be better than its age, and may tend to re- deem it. The fact that such extravagant estimates of the infallibility of literature are entertained indicates that at present, litera- ture, as compared with the other forces of society, is rapidly increasing in its relative importance and energy. The books and journals which men read have more to do with what men believe aud care for than PORTER : MODERN LITERATURE. 371 ever before. lu philosophy, the word of lit- erature ofteu seems more potent than the argument or dictum of any single philoso- pher or school. In theology, the essayist disputes and silences the theologian. In matters of religious feeling and duty, the journalist is more potent than the preach- er. The fashionable poet, novelist, or crit- ic of the hour casts a spell over his readers \vhich no other enchanter can dissipate. The foregoing considerations will have prepared us to estimate rightly the rela- tions of modern literature to Christianity. We divide these into two classes, the hos- tile and the friendly. We concede that, to a limited extent, they may be indifferent. There are branches of literature, and single authors and works, which may seem to have no influence upon the existing Christianity, and, in turn, to be unaffected by it. Such are the lighter species of fiction, poetry, and es- says which reflect and affect only the more superficial experiences of man and his life, and leave his graver opinions and senti- ments untouched. Wit and humor are not necessarily Christian or unchristian in char- acter and tendency. The literature of soci- ety and the minor morals, of criticism and the essay, it might be urged, need not recog- nize religion or the Christian faith. How far this may be true is of little consequence. It is sufficient for us to know that litera- ture, in its graver and more serious forms, must be either hostile or friendly to Chris- tianity. It is also true that modern litera- ture is becoming more and more earnest, and, even in its lighter manifestations, finds it difficult to forget the higher activities and relations of man. We regret that our limits must restrict us to those relations of modern literature ichich are unfriendly to Christianity. We shall con- sider Christianity under four aspects : as to its assumptions, its facts, its truths, and its life. It presupposes certain assumptions, it attests certain facts, it reveals certain truths, and it enforces a peculiar life. How far is modern literature unfriendly to each ? The assumptions which Christianity sup- poses are the existence of a personal God, his providential interest in the beings who are made in his image, the survival of the spirit after the dissolution of the body, the respon- sibility of man to God, the fact of depravity and sin, involving the relations of guilt and evil, and the need of help and deliverance. It can not too often be repeated that Chris- tianity does not make these facts, but it finds them to be true. The man who does not believe or find them to be true can not accept Christianity. That not a little of modern literature rejects these assumptions needs no enforcement. In respect to them, it is largely Pantheistic, Atheistic, and Epi- curean either avowedly or practically. So long as Pantheism was a doctrine of meta- physics, it was an inert and impotent specu- lation, as repulsive as it was dry. It was not till it had been dissolved in the menstru- um of literature that it became so attractive to the imaginations of thousands of culti- vated men as to displace the living God of common sense and of common speech. Pan- theism, in the hands of Spinoza, was a log- ical inference from an imperfect definition. It was not till it was glorified by the imag- ination of Schelling, who was as much of a poet as philosopher, and was warmed by the eloquence of Jacobi, and, above all, was made plastic through the all-subduing genius and wonderful diction of Goethe, that it became so intelligible and fascinating, and passed into the literature of poetry and fiction, and became a practical theory of modern culture. The English Carlyle and the American Emer- son might both resent the charge of intro- ducing and glorifying Pantheism for their confiding and admiring readers, and with some show of reason ; but the most generous and kindly critics of either, after the most painstaking search, will find, in the varia- tions of their magnificent verbiage, almost every form of conceiving and describing the living God except such as ascribe to him personality and the capacity of communion with man. This studied evasion by the de- vices of a fertile invention, and amidst the resources of copious diction, produces the effect upon their readers of the displace- ment of a personal God by that impersonal Absolute which amply satisfies the capacity and the demand in man for natural worship, while it makes no demand upon man for per- sonal loyalty and love. That is no evasive or indefinite doctrine which Matthew Arnold proclaims when he sets forth the only God whom literary criticism recognizes to be " the stream of tendency whereby all things strive to fulfill the law of their being," and seeks to establish this as positively affirmed in the Scriptures when interpreted as litera- ture. Scores of attractive novels have ap- peared of late in Germany and England, in which this conception of God is set forth as the only trustworthy faith on which a cul- tivated and refined soul of large experience of culture and of life can possibly rest. Some of this school of writers may hold fast to moral law; many regard moral evil as a necessary stage in development ; very many fail to assert the continued existence of the spirit, but substitute for it some indefinite satisfaction in a union with the life of the glorified universe. The Pantheism of modern literature in all its forms is more a senti- ment than a speculation ; but it is not, there- fore, weak or impotent ; there is nothing so attractive or imposing to the cultured imagi- nation as a sentiment when it takes the form of thought. The Atheistic school of letters differs from the Pantheistic, at least in its speculative 372 CHRISTIAN LIFE. starting-point. While the Pantheist begins \vith organization and ends with the Abso- lute, which manifests itself in the finite in returning cycles perhaps with rational and moral ends the new Atheism starts with development from simple elements along an infinite series of blind forces, straggling into order and life through the chance results of naturalselection. The one satisfies the imag- ination with its Absolute, in which the wor- shiper may claim a continuous life ; the oth- er positively denies immortality, and sup- plies to the imagination the spectacle of a progressive humanity in future generations. The Atheistic school finds its philosophy in Comte and Mill, Lewes, Darwin, and Spencer. It is applied in literature by Buckle and Draper, John Morley, Taine, and St. Beuve, and a host of critics and sociologists. Poets this school has none, for in speculations like these poetry can not thrive. The dry spec- ulation of Atheism is repulsive from its bald- ness. The arguments on which it rests are uniformly barren and negative. But the literature of Atheism is made plausible and interesting to the imagination and the feel- ings because it leans on the last discoveries in physics, and is enlivened by an amplitude of manifold illustrations from science, and art, and government. There is something attractive and imposing in the assurance that all the problems of history, of litera- ture and art, nay, even of psychology and philosophy, can be solved by the single for- mula of evolution. There is an impression of solidity and of common sense in the teach- ings which propose to explain the mysteri- ous and the spiritual by forces that are fa- miliar, and laws that can be verified. The writers of this school are never impassioned, but they assert an almost religious confi- dence in the truth of their doctrines. They condescendingly profess a catholic sympa- thy with all creeds, and with that of the Christian Church as the best and noblest. It is only under the force of an imperative necessity that they have outgrown the Theist- ic and Christian prepossessions of their coun- trymen. But the claims of science are su- preme, and its devotee must follow its lead- ings whithersoever they conduct him. One can scarcely believe what he knows when he reflects on the rapid growth and the strong rooted hold of this Atheistic school of letters on English soil, and its temporary triumph in what has claimed to be the most Christian of its universities. That it exists, and pre- sents a most formidable front to the hered- itary faith of the English people, can not be denied. The cool propositions to the Chris- tian Church to subject its faith in prayer to the verifications of experiment, and to resort to suicide and scientific homicide as humane expedients to limit human suffering, illustrate the lengths of practical atheism to which literature may be insensibly led. It deserves to be noticed that, bold and positive as is the attitude of these modern deniers of God and immortality, they not in- frequently betray a secret consciousness of the weakness of their position. While the Pantheism of modern literature is devout and reverent in its language, its Atheism is sad and apologetic that it must yield to the necessity which forces it to say that there is no God. It concedes that the with- drawmeut of this faith from human society may involve temporary inconvenience to so- cial order and private morality. But it sym- pathetically re-assures the timid that an in- telligent faith in the beneficent laws and a comprehensive knowledge of the stream of tendency will, in due course of time, be more than an adequate substitute for the personal God whom modern thought has been forced to abandon ; that an educated* and refined sympathy with those who suffer from our mistakes will become more efficient to re- strain and to reform than the sharp sense of personal guilt which science resolves into uncomfortable associations, and the vision of that abstract humanity which in the per- sons of future generations is to exist in ad- vanced perfection shall minister greater com- fort than that hope of personal existence of which modern science can find no proof. John Morley thus protests against the inference that the creed of the Atheist furnishes no guidance and inspiration for the conduct. " There are new solutions for him if the old are fallen dumb The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in thought, every duty omitted from act less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen tribunal than as an ungrateful infec- tion, weakening and corrupting the future of his brothers; and he will be less effectual- ly raised from inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation so mean- ly comfortable to his own individuality than by hearing fall on the ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succor from her children ; and a man will be already in no mean paradise if, at the hour of sun- set, a good hope can fall upon him, like har- monies of music, that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling crea- ture still receive a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defend- ers, when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been blotted out of the brief recollection of men forever" (Voltaire, chap, v., 3). This passage is one of many illustrations that the new Atheism is far more sentimental than the old. Though it boasts of moral strength, it makes confes- sion of moral Aveakness. While it accepts science as against sentiment, it avails itself of the thinnest gauze of sentimentalism to cover and hide the ghastly skeleton of its negative and hopeless creed. Herbert Spen- PORTER : MODERN LITERATURE. 373 cer is never weary iu his Essays designed for the popular ear, of sneering at the " carpenter theory " of the universe, but he is as forward as any theologian to set forth his doctrine of the infinite unknowable force in advan- tageous contrast with the doctrines of Ham- ilton and Mausel. Stuart Mill is aroused to such a pitch of moral indignation at Man- sel's ethical conceptions of God that he un- wittingly falls back upon a theory of con- science, which he has spent all his life in refuting, in the most passionate and elo- quent sentence which he is known to have written. We notice, also, that the Atheistic school has little unity of positive opinion. Its bond of union is its opposition to received opinions, its interest iu political and social reforms, and what is called scientific cul- ture. But the Atheism of literature is as truly a sentiment as is Pautheism. While Pantheism seeks to stimulate and satisfy the imagination by its splendid cloudland, Atheism appeals to the more earthly satis- factions which proceed from conscious illu- mination and scientific pride. We consider, next, the unfriendly attitude of modern literature with respect to the facts of Christianity. These facts are the Incar- nation and the Miraculous, as possible and accredited events of human history. That modern literature extensively distrusts and denies these facts need not be argued. This denial and distrust did not begin with litera- ture. Philosophy first declared that the mi- raculous is impossible on speculative grounds. Historical criticism undertook to separate the supernatural from the actual in the Chris- tian records. Physics recognize in their the- ories nothing beyond fixed and inexorable law, which they discern in the great and the little alike. Literature follows with its dec- larations and insinuations that the advanced sentiment of the age has eliminated the su- pernatural out of its faith. With assured re- iteration, it pronounces this question to be decided. Matthew Arnold says ("Lit. and Dogma," v., 2), "It is what we call the time- spirit that is sapping the proof from miracles. Whether we attack them or defend them does not much matter; the human mind, as its experience widens, is turning away from them It sees that under certain circum- stances they always do arise, and that they have not more solidity in one case than au- other." What Matthew Arnold thus writes with sufficient flippancy, a thousand more flippant journalists and Bohemians have been for- ward to reiterate, till, as it would seem, all faith iu the supernatural and wonder-work- ing Christ has been banished from many cir- cles and schools of literature of every grade, from the highest to the lowest. In these circles it is received as an axiom that no cultured and enlightened critic in letters, unless in exceptional cases, can be a believ- er in the Incarnation or in Miracles. These cases are explained by traditional associa- tions, or some private theory which takes the man out of harmony with general en- lightenment. The New Testament, which is full of the supernatural Christ, is felt to be more and more estranged from the asso- ciations of modern culture, and is either thrust aside with a bewildered or impatient gesture, or quietly let alone. On the other hand, it is worthy to be no- ticed that the Christ of the New Testament can not and will not be dismissed from the minds of the thoughtful men of these times. The incomparable symmetry and purity of the character of this wonder of history, this sin- gular phenomenon of humanity, is more and more justly estimated, as critics grow more thoughtful and tolerant. His incomparable superiority to the men of any and all ages is more widely confessed as men become more exact and comprehensive in their knowledge of the wisest and the best, and more refined in their estimates of the char- acters whom fiction and poetry have invent- ed. Though critics and litterateurs may fail to confess Christ to be supernatural in his be- ing and his works, yet, when confronted with him, they are forced to confess, or at least are afraid to deny, that he is the wisest and noblest, the most exalted and God-like, of all who have either lived or been conceived to live on the earth. The accomplished biog- rapher of Voltaire is constrained to apolo- gize for the philosopher for his incapacity to appreciate and honor Christ, and to confess that his passionate hostility to Christ was a blot on himself and his age. The historical critic, who is forced, by the necessities of his position, to find some flaw or defect in his character or claims, often betrays the weak- ness of his cause by hastily dismissing the theme. The majority leave it untouched, or abandon it with a few words of superficial eulogy. The puzzled silence of others, and their manifest reserve, which almost takes the air of worship, indicate that the super- natural Christ is a problem which was nev- er so hard to solve as it is now. The Christ of the New Testament is more than ever the Sphinx that draws all thoughtful men to its presence, again and again to propound the riddle of its being, and to force from them an answer. The thoughtful student of hu- man history, the accomplished devotee of manifold culture, and the pensive thinker on man and society can not but raise the question more and more distinctly, What is the origin, and whence the charm, of this mysterious personage, who has wrought with such magic energy in other ages, and who continues to captivate so many tender and trusting hearts, and is even able to refine and lift up those who dishonor and degrade him by their defective conceptions of his glory f Literature is, indeed, not so thoughtful 374 CHRISTIAN LIFE. anil earnest as might bo desired. It always is exposed to this defect. Culture with- draws men from the immediate experiences and relations of humanity, and delights it- self in factitious refinements of art, diction, and the imagination. That it is specially tempted at present to be flippant and scorn- ful, with the increase of wealth, and ease, and artificial life, is manifest. Culture and literature themselves tend to become dainty and conventional, and so to depart from na- ture and from humanity; and when they leave nature and humanity, they must de- part from God. Many of those doubters of culture, who always seek and never find, in whom there dwells more faith than in half our creeds, the men like Blanco White, Thom- as Carlyle, John Sterling, Arthur Clough, William Smith, and James Anthony Froude, are to be regarded more as the abnormal pro- ducts of a one-sided culture than as pro- nouncedly Anti- or ETnchristian. There are, however, influences in the op- posite direction, all which tend to make lit- erature more simple, and honest, and ear- nest. So far as it yields to these influences, so fast must it bethink itself of who Christ is, and find in the daring paradoxes of its own denials and the contradictions of its own unbeliefs an argument for faith in the supernatural, as the adequate explanation of man's past history and his present culture. Nor will it fail to learn from the history of literature itself that the distrust of the su- pernatural is largely a matter of fashion, and may be carried so far as to reach the extreme of credulity. It may also learn that a belief in the supernatural is itself an essential con- dition of any literature which is to be fresh, and growing, and true to the wants and as- pirations of man ; that without a living God and a supernatural Christ, not only in the past but in the present, man must fail of the highest thoughts and inspirations of which he is capable, and can not reach the noblest achievements in poetry and art ; that with- out a living faith human culture must feed upon itself, and of necessity be impoverished, and die of atrophy and inanition. We pass, next, to the relations of modern literature, as unfriendly to the trutlia of Christianity. The supernatural facts of Christianity are significant and important, because they imply certain truths of the nature of man, and reveal and enforce cer- tain truths of the administration of God. If Christ is not an Example, a Redeemer, and an inward Power, his incarnation be- comes simply a spectacular theophany, which, whether it is true or false, may al- most equally well stimulate the imagina- tion and furnish materials for the poet. If Christ's death and resurrection have no re- lations to man's life with God and in the future world, it is of no special moment whether they are believed or denied. The relations of these facts to man and to God, when received as true, constitute what we call the Christian Faith ; when they are de- fined and defended in the forms of science, they constitute Christian Theology. To both of these modern literature is more or less unfriendly. So far as it is Pagan in its Spirit and tastes, it is hostile to the Chris- tian Faith. It is Pagan so far as it believes in the development of nature as opposed to redemption from sin ; in the free spontanei- ty of impulse as against subjection to duty; in the aesthetic perfection of culture as op- posed to the higher beauty of unselfish love. This Pagan spirit has always been more or less active ever since the revival of Greek literature in Italy, which blossomed into sud- den beauty, and faded into as sudden decay, not being rooted in a Christian faith or phi- losophy. It has re-appeared in modern times in grander proportions, and with many graces inspired by that Christian truth which it would ignore or dispense with. It was the life-work of Goethe to combine the Greek perfection of form and the Greek delicacy of taste with that imaginative spir- ituality which is peculiar to Christianity, and to do this without faith in Christian truth. The effort was vain. The two ele- ments struggled in his soul in a war em- brace, but the Pagan element prevailed. Ever since his time the worship of genius has very largely taken the place of the wor- ship of Christ, and modern literature has become more Pagan in its spirit and creed. While it would not dispense with the beau- ty and fragrance of Christian civilization, and has sedulously developed new refine- ments in culture, it has sought to cut itself off from the Christian faith from which it has drawn the best of its life, and now passionate- ly insists that literature has at last developed a permanent life of its own. The catholic tolerance of Goethe has long ago been dis- owned. A more definite and passionate hos- tility to the Christian faith has manifested itself among many leading writers of Ger- many, France, England, and America. The truths which were formerly received with decent homage, and perhaps were invested with elevating associations, are now often alluded to with undisguised contempt or assailed with hissing scorn. The leaders in this direction are imitated by many second and third rate camp followers. Such a mood can not long continue. The Pagan adoration of beauty and grace, to the exclusion of duty and of God, can not satis- fy more than one or two generations. Mat- thew Arnold, in the thoughtless negations into which he has plunged headlong, mani- fests a healthful reaction in his estimates of " the beauty of holiness" which should lead him to be a warm defender of the faith from which it springs. The Pagan substitutes for Christian truth will, sooner or later, be PORTER: MODERN LITERATURE. 375 recognized even by their own worshipers, not only as impotent to help and to comfort, but even as powerless to inspire to the best achievements in art and literature. The antagonism of modern literature to Scientific Theology is, in part, anecessary form of the antagonism which must always exist between the stiff and arid terminology of the men of the schools and the free and flex- ible language of men of letters, which is also warm with the associations of common life. That this antagonism is in part unreasonable is too obvious to be insisted on ; that it is in part excusable is equally clear. It will never be abated until theologians learn to distinguish between the metaphysical defi- nitions and systems of theology, and even of Church symbols, on the one hand, and the vi- tal truths of Christianity on the other ; and men of letters can discern that the language of science, to whatever subject it is applied, must be exact and rigid ; and that theology, so far as it is scientific, must be metaphys- ical. So long, also, as Christian preachers and writers are limited so much to the dia- lect of human creeds and systems, or to ste- reotyped phrases of any kind, and avail them- selves so little of the popular and imagina- tive diction of literature and of common life, so long must they repel many whom they might convince and win. It is encouraging to observe, meanwhile, that the themes of theology are to a large ex- tent becoming the themes of literary discus- sion, if often with little reverence, yet gener- ally without a theological dialect. Prayer, moral recovery, and spiritual progress, the development of man in this life and the fu- ture, are all stock themes iu modern litera- ture. If literature is largely Autichristian, it is, by the same rule, largely theological, and it follows that theologians must become men of literary breadth and culture. They must be willing, and even forward, to enter the arena of literary discussion, and on the only terms on which they can gain a hearing. They must forego all special privileges, and meet their antagonists simply as cultivated men, using the language which men of let- ters employ. They must forego the lan- guage of creeds and confessions, and define and defend the principles of Christian truth iu language warm with familiar associations, and elevated by refined sentiment. They must be willing to take blows as well as to give them. They must respect the rules of courteous debate, and abstain from offensive personalities. In short, they must bo ac- complished as men of culture, and bo will- ing to use culture in the exposition and defense of Christian philosophy. The true evangelist will not only go out into the highways and hedges, where vice and squal- or disgust and repel, but will enter also into the high places, in which spiritual wicked- ness luxuriates in art and letters, and de- lights itself with the enchantments of gen- ius. The relations of modern literature to the Christian life are the most important of all. This, and this only, gives the supreme inter- est to Christian truth and Christian history. If this peculiar life can not justify itself as supremely excellent, neither the facts nor the history can stand before the searching scrutiny of modern criticism and the refined sensibility of modern culture. The oppo- nents of Christianity understand this ; and hence they would fain persuade themselves that what is distinctively Christian in the advancing moral and spiritual life of the race is so defective and evil that it must speedily be outgrown and laid aside. What- ever they may concede to this life in the past, they contend that better ideals have now been attained, and these are realized in better achievements. For the exhibition and enforcement of their judgments, litera- ture is a convenient and effective instru- ment. The impersonations of the novelist and the poet, the analyses of the historian and the critic, and the satires and carica- tures of the essayist are all largely used. These estimates of the Christian life respect its inner spirit and its outicard manifestations. The inner manhood of the Christian is un- selfish and unworldly, humble and prayerful on the one hand, and prudent, frugal, self- respecting, and aggressive on the other. Both these aspects of the Christian spirit are misconceived and dishonored in litera- ture. The first is scorned, as abject and un- manly, and over against it is set the Stoic ideal, which knows neither pity nor love in their purest forms, which is too proud to confess its human weaknesses and faults, and too disdainful to seek help in prayer. The sterner aspects of the Christian spir- it offend the Epicurean scnsuousness that is naturally fostered by literary refinement and artistic culture. Each of these is so one-sided as to confute the other. Each is so unnatural as to provoke a reaction. Both are reconciled in the equilibrium of the Chris- tian ideal, before which neither the Stoic nor the Epicurean ideal can fiually prevail. The man of culture who lives by faith in Christ will shoAv himself superior to the man who lives by faith in Marcus Aurelius. The Syb- arite must, sooner or later, show his selfish- ness, however refined. The manifestations of the Christian spirit in the outward life are fertile themes for vivid if not exaggerated portraiture in lit- erature. The more consummate is the fin- ish of the mirror, the more distinct is the image which it reflects. The slightest de- viation in its form may transform what pro- fesses to bo a faithful transcript into a gross and ludicrous caricature. If the Christian ideal is confessed to be the highest conceiv- able, it is none the less easy to draw a con- 376 CHRISTIAN LIFE. trast between what is proposed in aim and as- piration, and what is achieved in fact. The outward Christian life may also bo imper- fectly understood even by the most enlight- ened disciple. It encounters, by its own concessions, powerful antagonists within the hearts of the most single-minded and ear- nest. To a large extent, also, it is followed hy those who are deficient in the knowledge and refinement which are essential to its most attractive and appropriate manifesta- tion in manners and speech. Its intrinsic spirituality and truth furnish uo absolute security against hypocrisy. From the days of Lucian to the present, the real or supposed defects of Christian living have furnished ample material for the criticism and satire of literature. They are especially open to these at the present time. The resources of literature were never more abundant. Its readers were never more numerous and enlightened. The insight of both readers and writers was never more sagacious, and the susceptibilities of both were never more wakeful. Never was Antichristiau litera- ture, apparently, so sincere and conscien- tious even when it is the most caustic and contemptuous in its judgments. It ought not to occasion surprise that it should set forth in high relief the supposed or actual defects of the Christian life ; that with its abundant material and resources it should produce powerful portraitures of the evils which it discerns, and exaggerated carica- tures of the defects which it chooses to misrepresent ; that writers of every variety should be active in this work, from the lowest Bohemian, whose ribaldry is scarce- ly redeemed from vulgar abuse, to the most accomplished essayest or novelist, who him- self scarcely knows whether his Antichris- tian portraitures are written in sadness or in scorn. The courteous decorum and the refined sympathies of St. Beuve did not save him from betraying his refined disdain of the misguided spirituality of those earnest phi- losophers and saints whose history he wrote. The intensely ethical Froude sets forth, in biting words, the bondage of modern Prot- estantism to greed, and its craven subjection to the bold and insidious temptations of the times. George Eliot does homage to the Christian spirit in every feature except its personal love to a personal Christ, but em- phasizes her hostility to actual Christianity, and her dishonor to the Master of our faith, in the portraits which she draws of Chris- tians of every type, even of the most saintly. How sad and depressing are her representa- tions, we all have felt. A kindly critic says of her most truly, " She is a melancholy teach- er melancholy, because skeptical ; and her melancholy skepticism is too apt to degen- erate into scorn" (The Spectator, June, 1872). The Christianity of to-day will be none the worse if she is mindful that she is watch- ed as never before by keen-sighted critics, Avho have the power of setting forth her de- fects with wit and grace, and with energy and sarcasm. Her foes can do her far more good than her flatterers. It would be well that she should listen to their sharpest sarcasm and their keenest gibes. It would not be amiss to inquire how these hostile critics view the littleness and meanness of the sectarian spir- it which is forced everywhere upon their at- tention ; what they think of the manifold ex- communications of our ecclesiastics, which are equally impotent, whether enacted . at St. Peter's or in the pulpit of a log chapel ; of the dogmatism of our theologians, wheth- er it be solemnly uttered in a professor's chair or fiercely shrieked at the fireside; of the fanaticism of our worship, whether it expends itself in the genuflections and pros- trations of a ritualistic chapel or shouts it- self into convulsions in a conventicle; of the equally offensive cant of the latitudi-' uarian and the evangelical, and of all those overdoings and half-doings which, being nei- ther thoroughly sincere nor thoroughly man- ly, can not be truly Christian. Do none of our so-called religious journals and newspa- pers give just occasion to these sharp ob- servers to misjudge and misrepresent Chris- tianity itself? Do the insinuations in which many abound, the injurious aspersions which they calumniously affix, the hollow platitudes to which they resort, and the commercial spir- it in which they are managed represent the Christianity of our times, or do they more or less grossly misrepresent and dishonor it ? It is one thing to be able to show that many of the hostile attacks and more effect- ive insinuations against the Christian living of our day are unjust and unwarranted, and altogether another to conclude that noth- ing is to be learned from them. It may be true that literature in all ages has derid- ed and belied the best of Christians. It may be true, also, that with the decorum and conscientiousness of some of the Antichrist- ian literature of the times, it is essentially unfriendly, and therefore unjust in its judg- ments. But it may not, therefore, bo ne- glected or despised. Its discernment was never so keen, its weapons were never so sharp, and their thrusts were never more ef- fective, whether made in sober earnest or the solemn and admonitory banter of a literary Mephistophiles. So far as it is earnest, so far does it demand of the believing Christian Church more simplicity of faith, more spir- ituality of aims, more upright Christian liv- ing in its homes, its neighborhoods, its com- mercial dealings, and its political activities. In the presence of such a Christian life as is conceivable under our human limitations, the most hostile literature would bow in si- lence, if it did not confess from the heart that Christ is in very deed present in a living and united Christendom. RELATIONS OF THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EL- EMENTS IN POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. BY THE REV. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D., Principal of the Wesleyan Training College for Male Teachers, Westminster, London. [Born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, January IQth, 1821.] THE subject on which I have consented to address the Conference is one of the utmost difficulty and delicacy, especially at the pres- ent moment ; and I feel as if I had to choose my steps over ground dangerously mined in all directions, and to hreathe an atmosphere full of questions and controversies. I shall endeavor, however, as far as possible, to es- cape controversies by giving little more than a clear statement of facts, with here and there an intimation of opinions or a suggestion, on grounds of pure induction, of practical con- clusions. I shall avoid what are called ab- stract principles. Nothing is so easy as to dogmatize by announcing what pass for abstract propositions, and what sound like plausible or even evident principles, and by deducing from these a tissue of conclusions, on almost any side of a pressing and prac- tical controversy. But very little is gain- ed by high general arguments on practical questions, unless they are continually and throughout tested and illustrated by facts. Indeed, what men take to bo an abstract prin- ciple is very seldom indeed a true abstrac- tion. It is often little more than a working prejudice founded upon limited and ill-iu- terpreted experience at best a shell or en- velope of words in which some principle is involved, which those who use the words have not learned truly to abstract and de- fine. My subject is announced as "Religious and Secular Education ;" but the half hour at my disposal will not allow me to illus- trate, even in my own practical fashion, more than a small part of the whole ground included under such a title. I shall, accord- ingly, deal almost exclusively with the " Re- lations of the Secular and Religions Ele- ments in Popular Education." To the sub- ject of University Education, in particular, I shall barely be able to advert. I shall, more- over, concern myself almost altogether with European aspects of the questions which come within view. Americans will draw their own conclusions, and will define and arrange for themselves their educational economy. There is no such thing as an organized and exclusive state system of secular edu- cation to be found in the world, except in Holland : there the secular system has been established not a great many years. It is possible, however, that, while the public schools of a nation may not be secular, but may combine secular and religious instruc- tion, the state, in its oversight and aid, may concern itself exclusively with the methods and results of secular instruction. In this case, although the schools themselves may not be secular, the government stands in re- lation only with the secular instruction ; and thus refuses all concern or share or responsi- bility in religious instruction. This is the principle on which government deals iu En- gland with all education given in day-schools founded and conducted, under given regu- lations, by religious denominations, by be- nevolent associations, or by voluntary effort. In these schools the government in England simply ignores the religious element. The only schools in England in which re- ligious instruction is systematically and on principle paid for out of public funds funds raised by levy on the householders are the new School Board schools, in which general Christian instruction is given out of the Scriptures by the teacher, or some person (it may be, and sometimes is, a clergyman) appointed by the School Board. These schools are wholly built by rate, and their final or residuary charge lies continually and necessarily on the rates, a small portion only of the expense being provided for by the school-fees, and about one-third (at pres- ent) by the national exchequer, more or less, according to the secular results. The in- struction given is called undenominational. The Roman Catholic, however, objects to it as to him sectarian, as anti-Catholic, as Prot- estant; while the rationalist, or skeptic, ob- jects to it as inevitably dogmatic, more or less, and as almost inevitably, at all events as commonly, as for the most part, more or less evangelical. The imperial taxation, however, is not ap- plied to the payment and maintenance of these schools, so far as respects the religious instruction given. The imperial, the nation- al, oversight, examination, and pecuniary aid, are limited altogether to the secular 378 CHRISTIAN LIFE. methods and results of instruction, as in the case of the voluntary or denominational public schools. The local rates, the rates Irvii-d :ind raised \\itliin the borough or the school district, are charged with the whole * responsibility of providing for the religious instruction in thqse schools. The School Board and its funds stand in relation to School Board schools precisely as the Chris- tian denomination or the voluntary benev- olent association stands in relation to the schools founded by Christian Churches or voluntary associations. The religious instruction given in the School Board schools usually includes a Bi- ble lesson, singing, and prayer. Scarcely any Boards very few indeed have estab- lished secular schools in their districts. Perhaps there is no one principle, or motto, or rallying cry at this moment so potent and popular in England as "The Bible in the Schools." A certain \ving of the advanced liberal party has unquestionably lost credit both for itself, and, I fear, also for the principles of advanced liberalism in general, by be- ing understood to oppose Bible lessons and Christian instruction in the public schools. This is one of the causes, there can be little doubt, of what is called the conservative re- action now proceeding in England. In England, accordingly, the imperial gov- ernment, the government from the national centre, proceeds virtually, in its organization and administration of popular education, on the secular principle. On the other hand, the local School Boards teach, for the most part, a free and broad Protestant Christian- ity in their schools, using the Bible as the authoritative text-book. It seems to me that these School Boards have for their re- spective towns or school-districts set up a kind of supplementary and children's week- day church establishment, where Protestant Christianity is in a sense preached that is, explained and applied, practically taught to children ; and where, to some extent, com- mon worship is maintained. But then there is no territorial rooting, no " priesthood," no ministerial order, no real property endow- ment. In the case of reformatories, of industrial schools, and wherever the public necessities in the way of reclaiming or absolutely pro- viding for children the children of vice or of destitution render boarding as well as schooling, and something like family life, necessary it seems agreed by tacit consent that anti- denominational scruples must be set aside. Both the imperial revenue and the local rates are applied in contribution to denominational institutions, such as I have indicated, especially Roman Catholic reform- atories and industrial schools. Yon have probably heard something of a controversy in England about the 25th and 17th clauses of Mr. Forster's Education Act. The clauses relate to the education of the children of indigent parents. The 17th clause gives School Boards the power to remit the fees in their own schools at their pleasure ; the 25th clause gives the power to pay the fees of indigent children at any public and in- spected elementary school to which they may be sent. School Board schools are not yet, and are not soon likely to be, available in all parts of England ; very many parishes, many small towns, and even some largo towns, are already well supplied with efficient and inspected public elementary schools. The rate-payer sturdily objects to any attempt to set aside or ignore these schools, and at his expense to set up and maintain new schools. The parent objects to be obliged, if he happens to be very poor, to take away his child from what he regards as his own school. In the case of the Roman Catholic parent this objection would be persistent and em- bittered. Under these circumstances, if in England universal, compulsion was to be ap- plied, or to be contemplated as possible and desirable, it was necessary to arrange for the payment of fees in other public-inspected schools as well as their remission in Board schools ; which latter schools, indeed, if there were no Roman Catholic public schools, no Church of England public schools if these and all voluntary denominational public schools were to be done away would very soon become purely secular schools. In many parts of your own States it be- comes increasingly evident that the common schools must become purely secular ; or else that special provision must be made for the Roman Catholics. In Canada, the price paid for the maintenance of common schools for the rest of the population is, that there be separate and special provision for the Roman Catholics. So in England, unless separate schools were allowed for the Roman Catho- lics, School Board schools would of necessity become secular. The Roman Catholic popu- lation could hardly be invited into a Protest- ant common school. And into a secular common school, though they might perhaps be invited without any manifest injustice, it is certain that in England they could not be forced. Educational compulsion could not be applied, unless denominational as well as board schools were allowed to exist, and un- less fees were paid in such schools for indi- gent children, as well as fees remitted in board schools. In Holland, where the common schools are secular, this difficulty has rendered it im- possible to apply a compulsory law. I may add here, on the authority of the Dutch Minister of Education, Baron Mackay, that the incidence of the secular system of schools on the Roman Catholic population in Hol- land, is eased by the fact that for the schools in Roman Catholic districts, of town or EIGG : SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 379 country, Roman Catholic teachers are ap- pointed. I have explained that the 25th and 17th clauses give to the School Boards the power to pay or remit fees. It is a question, how- ever, keenly debated in England, whether the School Board is a fit and proper body for investigating claims to poor-relief. Of course, the payment or remission of fees is only one form of poor-relief. All our polit- ical economists are of opinion that the Foor Law Guardians should have this work as- signed to them, and that fees should only be paid or remitted on their authority. The Education Amendment Act, however, passed last session, has greatly lessened the difficulty and responsibility connected with this subject, so far as School Boards are con- cerned. That Amendment Act remits all cases of the children of out-door paupers, paupers residing out of the work-house or poor-house, and receiving out-door relief, to the poor Law Guardians for payment. These children now must needs go to school be- tween the ages of five and thirteen, and the guardians must pay the fees, which, how- ever, are not to exceed a fixed and moderate sum. Voluntary Benevolence on the one side, and the Poor Fund on the other, will leave but little margin, as I hope, for either pay- ment or remission of fees on the part of the School Boards. The conscience clause in the English Edu- cation Act requires that religious instruction in all public elementary schools i. e., schools inspected by government and receiving gov- ernment aid whether such schools be of voluntary foundation or be School Board schools shall only be given at a fixed hour either preceding or following the appointed hours of secular instruction. Within these hours the proper hours of state-recognized and secular instruction, viz., from 9.30 or 10 A.M. to 4.30. P.M, excluding the dinner hour no sort of religious instruction can be given. The managers are also strictly pro- hibited from using any influence to bring the children to any church or connect them Avith any congregation, or in favor of or against any particular denomination ; any violation of these regulations would entail the forfeiture of the government grant. So much as to the relations between re- ligious and secular instruction in our En- glish public elementary schools. It is quite impossible at this transition stage to give, as to several important points, any but the most vague and general estimate of the statistics bearing upon the subject. It may be safely affirmed, indeed, that the number of public inspected school departments in England at this time can not fall much short of 11,000, i. e,, boys', or girls', or mixed, or infants' sep- arate departments ; that the number on the school-rolls is about 2,000,000, with an average attendance of 1,500,000 ; that three-fourths of the children are in schools established during the last sixty years, and worked by the Church of England ; that the inspected schools i. e., separate school departments belonging to the Church of England number nearly 8000 ; those of the Methodists about 1000 ; of the Roman Catholics about 500 ; those of the British and Foreign School So- ciety (Protestant Undenominational) and of different Protestant Non-conformist congre- gations, excluding the Methodists many of this class of schools having been transferred to School Board schools about 900 ; and of School Bbard schools, making a very rough guess, perhaps 400 at present, built or trans- ferred. The next three years, however, will probably see this last figure the number of School Board schools mount up to two or three thousand. I should myself like to see a British school (so called) or a School Board school brought within walking distance of every child of ten years old in the kingdom. But neither time nor place is suitable to-day for stating my reasons for such a wish ; and, much as I might wish it, I have no expec- tation of seeing it accomplished within any assignable period. But within a very few years I have no doubt that a good inspect- ed school, under strict and efficient national regulations, by whatever name it may be called, will be available for all the children of our country. It will be seen from what I have stated how strong the Church of En- gland has made itself by its schools, what an immense educational work it has done. These schools are now a most important part of its line of intrenchments. Having paid nearly or quite three-fourths of the cost of building these schools, and having raised from year to year, by voluntary contribu- tions, perhaps three-sevenths of the annual cost, and having thus furnished the country with three-fourths of its available supply of popular elementary education, it holds a wide and mighty purchase upon the country. When School Boards have done all that re- mains to be done, and the supply of schools is fully equal to the demands of the coun- try, it is probable that still two-thirds of the school-provision of the country will be work- ed by the Church of England. I simply state . facts. I do not comment on them. But they tell a full and various tale as to the past, the present, and the future, as to hopes, and fears, and heart-burnings, as to forces and contro- versies. Let me now turn to the much misunder- stood question of Irish popular education. In round numbers, there are in Ireland 7000 so-called national schools ; of these 5000 are non-vested, that is, schools owned and con- fessedly managed by the different denomi- nations, corresponding very nearly to the so- called denominational schools of England, except that the power of the denomination- al element is stronger and less guarded, while 38Q CHRISTIAN LIFE. the contribution of the public revenue, the state contribution toward the expense is much greater. In England, the govern- ment only pays, on an average, one -third of the cost of the denominational schools, and is prohibited in any case whatever from paying more than one-half; whereas iu Ire- land the government pays not less, I believe, than four-fifths of the cost of these denomi- national the non-vested schools. The other 2000 schools are vested schools, have been built out of public funds, and are vested as property in public trustees in the National Board. These schools, however, are really as denominational as the other. The description which I am about to give ap- plies equally to both classes of schools, vest- ed or non-vested, and will show in what re- spects the Irish national schools differ from or agree with the English public inspected schools. In all the Irish schools, vested or non-vested, the catechisms of the respective denominations, in each case of the dominant denomination in the place, or at least in the school, are taught by the school-teacher. The schools are managed, all alike, by sole denominational patrons, who in almost all cases are clergymen, Roman Catholic or Prot- estant, who are checked by no committee or local board of any sort, and who, till with- in the last three months, could dismiss a teacher at their own mere option, with or without reason assigned. In all the schools, the clergymen of the ruling denominations that is, for the most part, the patrons of the schools give specific religious instruction themselves ; all the school-rooms are used as Sunday-schools; in nearly all, the chil- dren are prepared for confirmation by their spiritual pastors ; most are used by the de- nominations to which the patrons belong for denominational purposes, not only on the Sunday but on the week-night. Finally, in all the Irish schools, whether vested or non- vested, unlike the English inspected denom- inational schools, religious instruction may be given either by the patron or by the teacher at any fixed hour, any fixed inter- mediate hour, during the ordinary hours of general instruction, provided the hour be duly specified and made publicly known. The only distinction of any importance between the vested and the non- vested schools is, that in the vested schools minis- ters of all the different denominations may demand a fixed time, before or after the gen- eral studies of the day begin, for giving in- struction to the children of their flock in the school-room. In a large proportion of the vested schools, however, this is only a right on paper. There are twenty -seven Model Schools. These are the best schools in Ireland ; but they are too few to influence the general estimate of the system. They have chief- ly been established during the last twen- ty years. Originally, and for many years, there was but one such school at Dublin. They may be said fairly to represent what the Irish National Board, at least iu its bet- ter days, would have desired all the schools of Ireland, as far as possible, to resemble. In their common teaching they are not sec- ular, but uusectarianly Christian ; in their special arrangements they are, as far as need be or can be, omni-sectarian and dogmatic. They provide for teachers of different relig- ious persuasions in the same school, each of whom is bound religiously to instruct the children of his own persuasion, and for the attendance at the school weekly of the clergy of the different churches, each to examine and supplement what the teach- ers have been doing, and to keep up the pastoral charge of the children of his own flock. The original principle of the Irish system, as officially defined in Mr. Stanley's the late Lord Derby's famous letter, forty-two years ago, was to furnish a "combined literary and moral and separate religious instruc- tion." From the very first, however, the Irish Board of Education found, or at least believed that they found, that the moralities of instruction could not be practically sep- arated from religious convictions and priii- cipjes. Accordingly, from the beginning, they officially interpreted "combined liter- ary and moral" to mean " literary, moral, and religious instruction." They provided lesson -books which were largely impreg- nated with religious teaching ; they pre- pared and published four volumes of Scrip- ture Extracts ; they even issued and recom- mended for use a little work (by Archbishop Whately) on the Evidences of Christianity. At the same time, they made express and abundant provision for the instruction of the children in the catechism and special doctrines of their different churches by their clergy, and, under the clergy-patrons, by the school-teachers. Besides the school-patron and the teacher, acting on behalf of the prevalent creed and sect, all clergymen were to have access to the children of their sev- eral flocks. At first there were to have been none but vested schools. On this principle, however, the system took very little hold of the coun- try. In 1840, the Presbyterians made terms with the Board for the admission of non- vested or denominational schools. These, as I have stated, now constitute five-sevenths of the whole. Twelve years earlier than the foundation of the Irish system, that is in 1819, a system agreeing strictly in principle with the orig- inal Irish system had been introduced into Germany. In practice, however, it was found unworkable. Within five-aud-twen- ty years it had slidden and grown into a liberal denominational system. Such has EIGG : SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 381 been the system iii Germany now for many years past. In France the liberal statesmanship of Gui- zot, instructed and sustained by the philo- sophic capacity aud culture of Victor Cousin, naturally and congenially inclined to attempt for the French the experiment of combined instruction, of which the failure in Germany was not yet declared, and of which the ex- periment was being made, in a spirit so large aud with objects so elevated and enlight- ened, in Ireland. Nevertheless, in France as in Germany and in Ireland in Germany ear- lier, and in Ireland about the same time the experiment proved a failure. The combined system in France also worked into a virtu- ally denominational system, although the denominationalism is not, I believe, so fully or impartially carried out among the free churches as some think it ought to be. Thus has the combined system everywhere proved a failure on the principle of united moral and secular instruction that is, of united uusectariau and generically Christian instruction, both secular and religious and separate specifically doctrinal instruction. All the countries of Europe, with the single exception already named of Holland, provide in some way for the denominational manage- ment of public elementary schools. This is so even in republican Switzerland with its free system of common schools. Nowhere is it more distinctly the case than in Germa- ny, where the clergy of the three established denominations are state officers. The pres- ent controversy in Germany as to education arises from the determination on the part of the government to keep the state regula- tions supreme in the school, and to reduce the Romish hierarchy and fraternities no less than the Lutheran or the Reformed clergy to the position of the loyal executive of all government regulations. It is parallel to the resolution of all parties in England not to submit to the Ultramontane demands as to education in Ireland. In Ireland, as we have seen, the teacher teaches his own patron's catechism in the school. In Scotland, Presbyterian Scotland, the common national teaching will, under the act recently passed, be definitely religious iu a sense unknown elsewhere in the British empire. There the School Board and rate- built schools will pervade the land, and there the education given by the teacher is to be not only Christian and religious, but very definitely dogmatic. The Bible will bo used as a common reading-book in the schools, and the Westminster Catechism, as well as the Bible, will be taught by the teacher to the children, of course under the protection, as in England and Ireland, of a Conscience- clause. In both Ireland and Scotland as much common religious instruction aud in- fluence is incorporated with the universal education as can be practically accomplished. The same also may be said to be the princi- ple generally adopted by the School Boards in England, but our lively controversies re- strict the common Christian instruction with- in narrow limits. The imperial administra- tion, in fact, except in the case of reforma- tories or industrial schools, proceeds strictly on the secular principle, the principle of pay- ing only in consideration of secular methods and results. Only the School Boards, I re- peat, pay expressly or properly for common religious instruction. In agreement with my promise at starting, I have not attempted to argue iu this paper, or to ventilate theories, but simply to pre- sent facts in clear relation to each other. Before closing, let me touch again upon the case of Holland, the country of secular edu- cation. Roman Catholicism forced secular- ism upon Holland about sixteen years ago, not without great division, and struggling, and controversy. But the condition and circumstances of Holland have enabled that country to work a secular system as no oth- er country could. Unlike the popular mass- es in England, but like the ancient and truly indigenous Scottish lowland population of all classes, and like the New England of earlier times, the lower classes in Holland are all church-going people, and seldom or never omit to have their children instructed by their pastor and confirmed at the proper age. This is no consequence of the modern and highly developed education of Holland. It is the basis of character and quality on which that education has been established. The lower classes in Holland at least the Protestants and the Roman Catholic popu- lation are always sure to be religiously in- doctrinated to a sufficient extent by their priests the lower classes in Holland gener- ally resemble, and seem to have for genera- tions resembled, in respectability, economy, prudence, respect for Christian profession, and, at least, external worship, our middle classes in England, aud your people of al- most all classes in the States, except certain foreign strains of immigrant blood. Cleanli- ness and thrift are universal. Christian civ- ilization pervades the community. If a sec- ular system can be made to work iu Holland, it does not follow that it would be practicable in England. The masses on behalf of which there is the most urgent need for us to care in England, unless they are Christiauly in- structed and civilized iu the schools, unless there they are morally, I will say, religious- ly trained and impressed, are certainly not likely elsewhere to receive any Christian iu- struction or training. Their homes are too commonly the abodes of profanity and irre- ligion, not seldom of all that is coarse, aud animal, and degrading. I will be frank enough to confess, in this my last paragraph, abstaining still from con- troversy or discussion, that ideally and in CHRISTIAN LIFE. fundamental principle I am, as to national education, a pure voluntary, or, if you like, a free-trader. I hold here to the principles of John Stuart Mill, that great economist. Government should require for every child a good education, should take proper man- ner to have the educational condition of children especially before they are allowed to go to work, whether whole time or half time of electors, of competitors for public employment, tested, but should not under- take to provide education for the nation. "An education established by the state," says Mr. Mill, " should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experi- ments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence." And the competition should, of course, be fair and equal in all conditions and respects. The interference of government in England dur- ing the last forty years is indeed to be jus- tified, as I think, but only as exceptional, transitional, temporary ; and on principles which Mr. Mill has himself distinctly laid down. " When," he says, " society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless the gov- ernment undertook the task ; then, indeed, government may, as the lesser of two evils, take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may that of joint-stock enterprises, when private enterprise in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry does not exist in the country." On this principle the interference in England of the Government during the last forty years may be fully justified. But I hope that another generation may see the vast system and net-work of government protec- tion and pecuniary aid, and direct interfer- ence and management in my own country, gently and gradually done away. With the disappearance of that system, all the varie- ! ties and complications of the religious diffi- culty will also disappear. I am aware that what I have now said will appear very heretical to many of my Amer- ican hearers. It is not my business to de- fend it. I will, however, say that Mr. Mill's principles are not, as I seem to see, incon- sistent with the principle of the common- school system of this continent according to its original conception and essential prin- ciple. Meantime I venture to think that a large State, including among its people many de- grees and varieties of belief, and doubt or disbelief, so far as it contributes by vote out of State Funds to schools or universities, would find it both convenient and just to ignore religions diversities and distinctions altogether, and to respect alone and abso- lutely secular objects, attainments, and re- sults. It seems to sound right when men say that the contribution of the State shall be only to unsectarian institutions. But a rigidly and necessarily unsectarian institu- tion is apt to become sectarianly secular, and even propagandistly skeptical and anti- religious. To maintain such institutions out of public revenue, while liberal and largely tolerant, broadly catholic institutions are left unaided, merely because they are the property and charge of a practically and closely cemented Christian organization, seems to be a policy which at least is open to question. I venture to doubt whether this is really pure secularism, or true unsec- tarianism, in principle.* * [The reading of this paper was followed by a dis- cussion in the morning and evening on the religions element in popular education, in which Dr. M'Cosh, Mr. James Girdlestone, Rev. J. Carwell Williams, Dr. Haven, Dr. Conrad, Dr. Onniston, and others took part. Papers on the same subject had been previous- ly engaged from Professor Pfleiderer of Germany, Mr. Van Loon of Holland, who, however, found it impos- sible to attend. Ed.) THIRD SECTION.-THE PULPIT OF THE AGE. MODERN PREACHING AND ITS EEQUIREMENTS. BY THE REV. JOSEPH PARKER, D.D., LONDON. Ix discussing, even cursorily, the question of modern preaching, my contention through- out will be that in proportion as we follow the apostolic method of stating and apply- ing truth will our preaching bo adapted to this day and all other days of human sin and want. In order to wield the original power, is it not needful to recur to the orig- inal method of preaching ? Take, for exam- ple, the preaching of the Apostle Paul, and inquire somewhat into its substance and manner. What did Paul, the Apostle of Je- sus Christ, preach ? Paul himself answers the question : " I preach Christ crucified ;" "I preach the unsearchable riches of Christ;" "Christ sent me to preach the Gospel." Here is definiteness of conviction. The man knows his business his one, simple, beneficent business and his mind is set upon it without doubtfulness or distraction. He does not preach about the Gospel : he does not show how skillfully he can abstain from touching it even where it seems impossible for him to escape it altogether : contrari- wise, he preaches the Gospel itself with full- ness of statement, and with a supreme desire to make it understood and felt. To Paul, Jesus Christ himself was the Gospel: the man was the doctrine; the doctrine was the man : hence, the preaching was quickened by those elements which set the personality of the Saviour at the head of all life, and make that personality the complement of all being. Thus much, then, for the sub- stance of Paul's preaching, viz., a living, dy- ing, triumphing, almighty, and unchangea- ble Saviour. Is it not such a Lord that is needed in this day, when men are mad in wickedness and have become the makers of their own gods ? We have inquired as to the substance 6f Paul's preaching; what was the manner of the preacher ? On this point, also, the apos- tle speaks with peculiar and instructive em- phasis. We ask him, How do you preach f and he answers, " Not with wisdom of words, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of none effect ;" " My preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom ;" " I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom." This law of speech would destroy niue- tenths of what is falsely called "eloquent preaching." What care is bestowed upon the manufacture of sentences ! how periods are smoothed and rounded! how anxious are many speakers lest by a slip in quanti- ty they should impair the rhythm of their utterances! Is not this the "wisdom of words" which the apostle religiously es- chewed, lest the Cross of Christ should be made of none effect ? Are not these the " en- ticing words of man's wisdom " which Paul avoided in his ministry? I put the case thus interrogatively rather than dogmatic- ally, lest I should even seem to bring un- just reproach, or inflict needless pain, on some honest man. Am I, then, discounte- nancing the highest uses of speech, or would I exclude eloquence from the sanctuary of the Lord? Far from it. Seeing that we can not preach without words, I would have all words fit and seasonable ; on the right hand of Truth I would set Beauty, and on her left hand I would set Music, but as they stood together in the smiling light I would say, Now abideth Truth, Beauty, and Music, but the greatest of these is Truth Truth is the infinite quantity; beauty aud music are measurable and determinate elements. There is a danger among us, aud it should be clearly pointed out a danger of setting up an idolatry of mere words, and so drawing attention to the casket to the disadvantage of the jewel. What do we often hear re- specting a preacher and his preaching? That he is a polished speaker ; that his lan- guage is exquisite in chasteness and bal- ance ; that his sermons are literary models, and that his composition is a study in art. This is thought to bo complimentary com- plimentary to an angel of the Lord, clothed with fire, and put in trust of mighty tlum- derings, a preacher of the Cross, and a re- vealer of judgment to come! God-speed to the eloquence of the heart ; but as for the mere sentence-maker, his pulpit is a store of carved wood, not Lebanon or Bashan, not the mountain of myrrh or the hill of frank- incense. The probability is that the Apostle Paul would bo impatient with a good deal of what passes among us as eloquent preaching. Would he not be ill at ease until the preach- er came to the Cross and showed its bearing 384 CHRISTIAN LIFE. upon human sin anil human need ? Would he be BO pleased with an epithet as to forget n doctrine T Is ft sermon to be an entertain- ment or a lesson T Is the preacher a cunning trickster in the use of words, or a teacher sent from God T Let us have a clear under- standing upon these points, that wo may know the scope and urgency of our work, and do it mightily with both hands. There is a third question which the Apos- tle Paul will answer in a remarkable man- ner, In what spirit did you conduct your minis- try f Hear his reply : "I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling." " With all humility of mind and many tears." " I warned every one night and day with tears." Mark this as one secret of the apostle's power he always felt his own weakness, and lie always saw the pathetic aspects of his work. He trembled; he feared; he wept; he travail- ed in birth ! Yet how few suspected the existence of such experiences ! So bold that he could stand alone ; so resolute that nei- ther bonds nor afflictions could move him ; yet was he heart-broken as a minister of the Cross of Christ. Paul did not attempt his work in an off-hand manner, as if he were superior to it, and could do it without strain or effort. It was evermore above him; it exhausted and mocked the mean sufficiencies of human resource ; it scorched and consumed him like an altar fire ! " Who," said he, " is sufficient for these things ?" Think of Paul weeping ! When he wept it was with " many tears." Who could argue like Paul, whose every word struck like a battering ram, yet who could cry with tears so many and so bitter ? A good deal of useful work may be done with logic, but without pathos we can never get that special and indescribable in- fluence which touches all hearts, speaks all languages, and sheds the light of hope upon all lives. Pathos is not, indeed, one-sided. There is a pathos of laughter as well as a pathos of tears ; there is a godly laughter, easily enough distinguishable from the mer- riment of fools. Argument applied with pathos means mastery the world over ; argu- ment without pathos may burn up ill weeds, but can never produce gardens of loveliness or Edens of delight. We must have the dew as well as the fire. Looking, then, at the substance, the man- ner, and the spirit of Paul's preaching, I con- tend, in answer to the question which is in- volved in my subject, that in proportion as we return to apostolic doctrine and method will our preaching be adapted to all the great necessities of our own and every succeeding age. I trust I am not violating the spirit of an honest charity in expressing the belief that the time is at hand when the preaching of Christ crucified, without the wisdom of mere words, and with much trembling and pathos, will be the only original preaching. In some quarters we have a Christ, but not a Christ crucified; a character in history, but not a sacrifice for sins, or a mediator between God and man. When Peter mentioned the name of Christ to the Sanhedrim, ho set an example to all preachers evermore " Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom ye crucified " that is the full style and title of the Saviour! Eu- inous mistakes may arise out of its abbre- viation. We have now to be very definite in the statement of his name, because many false Christs have gone out into the world creatures of the imagination, spectres seen in troubled dreams, painted things made to order and sold for a price. Let us in so foul a market-place remember that the name of the Infinite Saviour, God the Son, is Jesus Jesus Christ Jesus Christ of Nazareth Je- sus Christ of Nazareth whom every man has crucified by his own great sin! This call to reproduce the substance, the manner, and the spirit of apostolic preach- ing is not a call to a narrow or superficial ministry. An inexperienced man might, on hearing the range of Paul's preaching, sug- gest the easy possibility of speedily exhaust- ing it. " Preach Christ crucified !" he might exclaim. " Why, that may be done in a ser- mon or two!" Such are the mistakes of ignorance and vanity! The maturest and ablest men in the Christian ministry will testify, with tears of delight and thankful- ness, that the gracious mystery of redemp- tion by the Cross has evermore grown before the vision of their reverence and love until it has filled all things with its mournful, its holy and infinite glory. They will testify further that the Cross of Christ the Christ of Nazareth is the only key which can open the secrets of human history, and that human history apart from that Cross is con- fusion without hope a wild, fierce fight, end- ing in the hopelessness of a beast's grave. He who has no crucified and redeeming Christ to preach wastes his little strength within the narrowest limits, though he may appear to have wide liberty of action: he can but talk at men ; ho can never speak to them, to their agonies, their heart-hunger, their helplessness, their dumb and vehement aspirations. His mouth is filled with mock- ing, and his words are instruments of cruel- ty ; as for his prayers, they are as birds with broken wings, tormented by their 'own im- potence, testifying to the presence of an in- stinct, but never reaching the gates of tho sun. Seest thou not, O student of God, that tho great, dear, sad Cross is everywhere, and, if thy course as a teacher be determined by any other meridian, thou shalt be as a thief among men, and at last be damned as a slayer of souls ? History will show that the preachers who have taken deepest hold of human life have been most faithful to the Cross of Christ ; others have had their reward for divers gifts and excellences, yet PAEKER : MODERN PREACHING AND ITS REQUIREMENTS. 385 beyond a momentary applause they have had but little lieu upon the love and thank- fulness of human hearts. The preaching of Josus Christ crucified has always elicited the greatest answers from those who have heard it. These answers have confirmed the divinity of the doctrine, and set the seal of heaven upon the preacher's purpose and method. What have those answers been? Answers of penitence, of loyalty, of service; grief on account of sin, devotion to the Re- deemer's Cross ; service without weariness, a pursuit of the lost ; a healing of the dis- eased; a teaching of the ignorant, and uu- despairing prayer for those who are out of the way. What results have attended preaching of an opposite kind ? Pedantry, sciolism, self-worship, a theology without re- ligion, a temple without a God these wo have found, together with a gentility cold as death, and a self-absorption cruel as the grave ; but nowhere have we discovered the " living sacrifice " and the godly self-denial which are born of the atonement of God the Son. Faithfulness to the apostolic doctriue and method will save the preacher from all the narrowness of mere denominationalism in the exercise of his ministry, and from all other narrowness of thought and sympathy. Denominatioualism, properly understood and wisely administered, has most excellent uses, yet we can not have too little of it in the Christian pulpit. In the pulpit we should hear the universal language of God's love to mankind, and not the provincial dialect of zealotry and sectarianism. The wise pastor will have his classes for private instruction in many points of secondary and relative im- portance, but his pulpit will be sacred to the proclamation of the eternal truth which man needs in all places and at all times. This brings me to a point which should be treated with delicate discrimination. The preach- er's lips need not be sealed upon what are called the questions of the day ; yet, in my opinion, he will treat such questions more successfully by the exposition of great prin- ciples than by becoming a special pleader or sinking into a mere debater. On the oth- er hand, allowance must be made for men of exceptional gifts and peculiar influence. There are ministers of A r arious denomina- tions, in whom we glorify God, and for whom we can never cease to thank him, who are specially qualified to discuss secular ques- tions iu the course of a religious service. Such men must ever be a law unto them- selves. I have no reference, how remote so- ever, to them when I urgently advise those who are younger than myself to refrain while in the pulpit from the discussion of all pa- rochial, secular, political, and other tempo- rary questions. They will find enough to do without discussing such topics. In lead- ing public worship, tn expounding the Scrip- 25 tures, and in holding up the Cross over the whole field of human sin and want, the fin- est powers of the most brilliant preacher may well be exhausted. As to "preaching to the day," I have a dis- tinct opinion to express. In so exercising our ministry there is a danger that we speak very loudly and eloquently to men who nev- er hear us. The young preacher reads the last number of a skeptical review, and in- stantly sits down to the composition of a sermon which is to destroy the logical posi- tion of the reviewer ; yet, alas for the vigor of the preacher and the dignity of the whole situation, not a man in the assembly ever heard of the article, and the reviewer him- self is unaware of the very existence of the preacher. Possibly, too, the people may un- fortunately remember the objection when they have forgotten the answer, and thus the preacher may become the ally of the skeptic. That some people may be pleased with the kind of preaching which is ad- dressed to " the day " is far from improbable, seeing that it never stings the conscience; it never condescends to enter the region of moral discipline ; it is simply a sublime fight in the air, in the exciting progress of which the combatants fiercely strike at nothing, and hit it with magnificent precision. There is neither irony nor sarcasm in the state- ment that in listening to some preachers deservedly conspicuous and influential, it may be one receives the impression that there is an eager though invisible auditory before them whose one object is to give them the lie at the end of every sentence, and to convict them of lunacy in the construction of every argument. This is supposed to be " preaching to the day !" The fact is that in such cases the preacher is rather replying to the books which he has been reading dur- ing the week than devoting himself to the treatment of the actual experience repre- sented by his congregation. I am far enough from denying that notice should be paid to current criticism upon Christian doctrine, but quite as far from asserting that such no- tice should be paid from th pulpit. Writ- ten attacks are best mot by written defenses, and, even Avere it not so in a literary point of view, it is certainly more honorable to meet an enemy on his own ground thaiv to fire upon him from the security of a privi- leged position. More than this: the Chris- tian pulpit turned into a medium for the advertisement of unchristian books is a flagrant violation of public stewardship. Preachers have enough to do without de- grading the sanctuary into an arena of ex parte debate : " Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over- seers, to feed the Church of God, which ho hath purchased with his own blood." That the Gospel is a message to humanity CHRISTIAN LIFE. ratlior than to any special set of men will be unanimously agreed. The Christian sanc- tuary is not a high school for the technical education of a few pupils, but a free public school for the instruction of the whole world: the rich and the poor meet together ; the mas- ter and the servant ; the old man and the lit- tle child ; the strong and the weak, all are there, and upon them all the rain of a com- mon blessing should descend. Loss of sym- pathy is loss of power. If as preachers we become separated from the common mass by betaking ourselves to some specialty of our vocation as, for example, the refutation of skeptics who never listen to us, and the de- struction of theories of whose very existence nine-tenths of our hearers are totally una- ware we shall cut ourselves off from those currents of sympathy upon whose right use so much of ministerial usefulness depends. From the ministry of pedantic debaters, mothers (whose lives oscillate between pain and care) will retire without a word that can make their families glad, little children will escape as from a great weariness, and men of business will turn away with the pain of grievous disappointment ; and thus the man who should have come down upon human life as an angel charged with mes- sages from the secret place of th'e Most High will become a mere chatterer of unprofitable words, talking an unknown tongue to men who long for truth and love. As to the manner of the preacher, I may express the hope that the day will never come when individuality will cease to dis- tinguish the ministry. It is written upon all the works of God : why should it not be written upon the sanctuary, the chiefest and brightest of his creations ? Who am I that I should find fault censoriously with my brother's way? Have I had some secret revelation from heaven which has been de- nied to him ? Hath God made but one in- strument ? Is not the trumpet his, and the lute, the organ, and the instrument of ten strings ? Do I not hear in his house the clash of cymbals, the throb of drums, and the silver of sweet bells ? Every man must preach in the way in which he can use his power to advantage the advantage always being the spiritual progress of the hearer, and not the mere elevation and fame of the speaker. It would appear as if to win a world-wide renown, to make the ears of all nations tingle, it is necessary to pass through a period of offense and antagonism. Fault- less respectability never made itself known afar. Gentility seldom gets beyond its own parish. And even the highest quality of power intellect in its inspired moods, and excitement so terrible that it is mistaken for calmness is sometimes doomed to lim- itation, if not obscurity. The men who have become the chief figures in the Christian pul- pits of all lauds the men whose names are known in out-of-the-way places and by the most unlikely people the men who belong to the world, have all, in some degree, been a by- word and an offense for a time ; in some sense it has been said of each of them, " He hath a devil and is mad, why hear ye him f " But if the word of the Lord has been in him, and his soul has been the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost, he has thrown off all the crudeness and vulgarity of early practice, and become a master and a ruler in the kingdom of the Church. The fear is, how- ever, that, in making an admission like this, some young man may begin as an ape and end as a fool ; that is to say, he will repeat extravagances and eccentricities, without knowing any thing of the spiritual power and genius of his model. There is no help for it. I can not waste my time in any at- tempt to reclaim such a man. It would ap- pear as if there must be " a son of perdition " in every company. In such a man there is a great law at work, and he, by his mad- ness, is giving all diligence to make his call- ing and election sure. May his day be short, and his death easy ! To those Avho do not preach let me say : POM determine to a large extent the kind of preaching which is popular. I look to hear- ers as well as to preachers for a genuine re- form of the pulpit wherever reform is need- ed. You must insist upon hearing the Gos- pel! When you distinguish between gold and tinsel, when yon show your disgust for the mere prettinesses of pulpit dolls, when you protest against all trilling with the real- ities of life and destiny, when you set your face like a flint against all that is unsub- stantial in doctrine and all that is vicious in ritual, you will soon drive the hireling from the pulpit and banish the tallow-chandler from the altar of God. THE BEST METHODS OF PKEACHING. BY THE KEY. DANIEL P. KIDDER, D.D., Professor in the Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey. THE experiments of eighteen hundred years have proved that the world needs no new gospel, and equally that the wisest minds can not hope essentially to improve upon the original plan for diffusing Chris- tian truth throughout the earth. Whatever improvement is possible was comprehended in the scope of that original plan, and was designed to grow out of its appropriate work- ing. The desideratum of the present as of other times is a hotter comprehension of the great designs of the Author of the Gospel, and of the means and methods which he appointed for its promulgation. Whoever, therefore, would learn the best methods of preaching must take his first and highest lessons in the school of Christ. Let him study -with devout attention the precepts and the example of Him who " spake as never man spake." Then let him well con- sider those direct illustrations of the Mas- ter's word and will furnished in the practice and teaching of the Apostles. From the in- spired Word let him learn the power of di- vine truth in its application to his own heart and life. Then let his soul become deeply imbued with the love and zeal which char- acterized Him who came to seek and to save the lost. These essential preliminaries having been attained, it is proper to seek auxiliary in- struction from the experience of .successive ages, and also to make sure of those special adaptations to our own age and circum- stances which God in his providence sug- gests. "Great has been the company of the preachers " in the past, and we of the pres- ent may hope to profit by the successes and failures of those who have gone before us. As time rolls on, and as the human mind becomes educated to a better comprehension of Christian truth, the practical uses of that truth should be ever improving, while Chris- tian men and ministers become more capable of avoiding errors and mistakes. Much has already been learned of the deep things of God, but how far are we yet from having sounded the depths of the ocean of revealed truth! So, with all that has been accom- plished in preaching the Gospel, who can suppose that the maximum of preaching power has yet been attained ! While we may thankfully claim that the preaching of the past has done much for the salvation of men and the glory of God in- deed, directly or indirectly, all that has been done toward evangelizing the nations and diffusing Christianity in the world .yet how much more that it might have done has it left unaccomplished 1 What multitudes within the hearing of its voice have lived and died unmoved and unsaved! What long periods of time have been barren of evangelical results ! What vast regions of the earth have never yet been reached by the proclamation of the Gospel ! Even in the most favored lands, what myr- iads, what majorities, have remained indif- ferent to the great salvation ! When we consider what the Gospel was appointed to do, and what it was capable of having done ere this, we are compelled to lament that the preaching of the past and even of the present has fallen very far short of its possibilities for good. What is worse, preaching has been found capable of perver- sion, and successive ages have suffered from its power for evil. In the early centuries it was the propa- gcitor of prolific heresies. During the pe- riod of the ancient Church, it insinuated into well-intentioned minds the false princi- ples of asceticism, and thus exiled to deserts and monasteries many of the best men and women of the Church whoso presence was indescribably needed in society and in Chris- tian work. In mediaeval times, under the lead of such men as Peter the Hermit and Bernard of Clairvaux, it waved a fire-brand over the nations, and urged millions of men, and even thousands of children, to set out on warlike crusades, in which most of them fell victims to the false zeal which pervert- ed preaching and ecclesiastical authority had aroused. Even in this last generation of the nineteenth century, the debasing il- lusions of Spiritism and the loathsome doc- trines of Mormouism are propagated and maintained by a system of perverted preach- ing. But as such perversions, however per- petrated in the name of Christ, are obvious departures from the truth and method of the Gospel, so their one essential remedy is to bo found in the more diligent and faithful preaching of the truth as it is in Jesus. The practical question before us now is whether we can not by means of Scripture CHRISTIAN LIFE. and experience ami the aid of the Holy Spirit office lie not only exploded the en-ore which, go measure up to the original and authorita- +'"""-' - * * i *-:.. u~ ,1 tive standard of preaching, as that hence- forth it may answer ita full design of at- through man's apostasy and love of sin, had long brooded like thick darkness over the minds both of Jews and Gentiles, but ho tracting all cars, impressing all minds, and j introduced a system of pure and positive winning all hearts. Let us, therefore, with practical ends in view, proceexl to a brief analysis, seeking to determine what are the essential elements of that preaching which truth, adequate to the spiritual wants of mankind. He also set in a clear light many truths previously but dimly revealed, and some that had been partially obscured by was appointed by the great Head of the the shadows of error. In this manner ho Church for the evangelization of the world, illustrated his own declaration, "I am the We find that its fundamental idea is based way, the TRUTH, and the life." upon the social nature of man, and his inher- In the great commission he invested his ent desire of communications from his fellow- ministers with the teaching office, magnify- men. Hence human lips are employed to ad- ; ing their work as the instructors of men by dress human ears and human hearts. We ( a double stress, "Go teach all nations, TEACH- here strike the clue to a series of elements IXG them to observe all things whatsoever which have always been found in the suc- cessful preaching of the past, and which need to be combined in a greater degree and more thoroughly intensified in the preaching of the present and future. 1. The Power to arrest and command Atten- tion. Men are naturally averse to Christian truth. They prefer entertainment, excite- ment of the fancy, amusement, indifference, any tiling that will leave them to the in- clinations of their hearts or the wayward- I have commanded you." It is only in com- pliance with this feature of the Saviour's command that they can claim his added promise, " Lo, I am with yon alway, to the end of the world." "Apt to teach" was also the requirement of a representative apostle, who commanded his son in the Gos- pel to commit the teaching office, as it is still required of the Church to do, " to them who shall be able to teach others also." The perpetual renewal of human society ness of their lives. It is the preacher's busi- by successive generations of the young and ness to break the spell that binds them, to j inexperienced makes perpetual the necessity disturb their self-satisfaction, and to diseii- i of the task of Christian instruction. Bnty gage their anxieties from the worldliuess if it were not so, the fathomless depths and that absorbs them. This is not to be ac- 1 the infinite extension of Christian truth de- complished by petty surprises or by star- ! mand for it ever new applications to the- tling paradoxes. They may excite atten- changing circumstances of humanity, and tion for the moment, but usually they will invite its students onward to ever new and react both against the preacher and his message. True- and effective preaching demands a manner worthy of the truth it seeks to proclaim. That manner must be expanding regions of thought. Thus it is that, while secular oratory exhausts itself with special occasions, and even science be- comes a "tale that is told," the Word and dignified, though not austere. It must in- ; truth of God are like perennial fountains, dicate a consciousness of the supreme im- ever sending forth streams of freshness and portance of the message to be delivered, and beauty. It is the privilege of the preacher the extreme necessities of those who ought to draw from those fountains, and minister to receive it. Such a consciousness will the waters of life to them "that hunger and banish formality as an impertinence scarce- ly less tolerable than frivolity itself. It will appeal alike to the self-respect and the conscious wants of the hearer, and, having arrested his attention, will tend to fasten it upon the growing interest of the theme. No preacher can hold the attention of an audience who has not important thoughts to utter, and who can not utter them in a manner worthy of their import and design. Distinctness of articulation, skill in empha- sis, clearness of arrangement, and fervor in delivery, all have their uses for this object, thirst after righteousness." Whatever elso preaching may lack, it ought never, consid- ering the richness and productiveness of its themes, to be barren or unfruitful of profit- able instruction in reference to " the things of the kingdom of God." 3. Preaching should convince the Judgment. "Knowing the terrors of the law," said Paul, " we persuade men." It was the compulsion of persuasion which the Saviour enjoined upon his disciples as a means of inducing men to come in, that his Father's houso might be filled. Hence the control of at- and, well combined, ought to secure an ever- j tendon and the impartation of instruction, deepening interest to the truth uttered in however important of themselves, are nev- application to the heart, and life, and des- tiny of the hearer. . 2. Tlte Quality of imparting Instruction. ertheless to be regarded as means to tho higher end of convincing men of spiritual truth and religious duty. As God has im- One of the most important phases of Christ's planted reasoning faculties in every mind, character was that in which he appeared as it. is the preacher's duty to bring Christian the world's great Teacher. In his teaching truth within the action of those faculties, KIDDER: THE BEST METHODS OF PREACHING. 389 so that they may be enlisted iu its reception and study. To this end, he must be a lov- er of truth, and must illustrate its influence not only in his life, but in his modes of rea- soning. No mental reservations must be al- lowed to underlie his statements, no covert sophistries to impeach his candor, and no evasions to betray his lack of confidence in the truths he assumes to utter. His motto must be, " Having believed, therefore do I speak," and, in showing forth the reasons for the hope that is in him, he will not fail to persuade others also. 4. Preaching should arouse the Conscience. It was specially designed to reach and quick- en that silent and often silenced monitor of every breast, which, however averse its pos- sessor may be, seldom fails to respond to ear- nest reasoning on " temperance, righteous- Jiess, and a judgment to come." Powerless and valueless for true religious effect are those sermons which .awaken no echoes in the chambers of conscience ; whereas the faithful word which startles into action a dormant consciousness of guilt before God, and confronts a careless soul with its own short-comings and their consequences, is of priceless value in the moral history of that Boul. When the conscience is properly aroused, it becomes au auxiliary of untold power to aid the preacher in his further work. It sup- plies the listening ear, the tender heart, the consenting will. Thus it is that, through the office of preaching, God works within men " to will and to do of his own good pleas- ure," and yet in perfect harmony with their individual freedom of choice and action. 5. Preaching should melt the Sensibilities. As man embraces in his nature the most va- ried powers and susceptibilities, so preach- ing was designed to address and influence every faculty of his being. Intensely falla- cious, therefore, is the theory of some that preaching should only address the judgment. That, indeed, is to be done in a manly and .faithful manner ; but the more delicate task of warming the heart and kindling the emo- tions is not to be left undone. For this there is no power equal to a right exercise and an unaffected expression of the religious affections. How tamo is the classic precept of Horace, " Weep yourself if you would see others weep," compared with the heart ut- terances of the Hebrew prophets and psalm- ist! Listen to Jeremiah as he exclaims, " Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people !" Also to David when ho said, " They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." The preacher who cherishes or il- hjstrates a cold, unsympathetic nature, or whose ideas of propriety would repress ev- ery emotion that does not freeze in its ut- terance, is but a poor representative of Him who shed tears over Jerusalem and who wept at the grave of Lazarus ! If " love is the fulfilling of the law," and if Christian " faith works by love and pu- rifies the heart," then let no preacher of the Gospel fear or fail to cherish a consuming love for his fellow-men, and to imbue his messages with a warmth of sentiment which will soften frigid hearts and melt down the obduracy of impenitence. Well has it been said that he who loves most will preach best. 6. The great End, Aim, and Result of Preach- ing should be to lead Sinners to the Saviour, All other elements focalize in this. Hence, whether by instruction, persuasion, convic- tion, or entreaty, or by all combined, the preacher must by all means strive to save men. Hence, also, that method or combi- nation of methods which will save most is without question the best. At this point the controlling purpose of the preacher will greatly influence the character of his preach- ing. Moral and spiritual results rarely en- sue by accident. The laws of intellectual and spiritual influence are not less positive than those which govern matter. He that would preach the Gospel for the glory of God and the salvation of men must study those laws and avail himself of their power. Of all the good gifts which it is permitted men to covet, that of winning souls is the greatest. For the attainment of this it is the privilege of every minister of the Lord Jesus to toil with a holy ambition and to pray with an unwavering faith, relying upon the promised aid of the Holy Ghost. For this, he should account no labor irksome, no study hard, no experiment profitless. For this, even failures may become to him les- sons of help, and sacrifices the source of glorious rewards. A ministry that is not crowned with the result of soul-saving, however it may win human applause or snuft' the incense of ad- miration, is poor indeed! Whereas he that is blessed of God in using the appointed means of converting sinners from the error of their ways enjoys a privilege that angels might covet. 7. Preaching should educate and train immor- tal Souls for Heaven. The Christian life is a scene of probation and development. Con- version, by introducing souls into the fel- lowship of the Church, places them iu rela- tions in which they can be taught with much greater hope of profit than when in the world. In the school of Christ, ministers should not only be diligent students, but practical and faithful instructors, ministering to the in- creased knowledge and spiritual growth of all who hear them. In this task they will prove the truth of the Saviour's words, " Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 390 CHRISTIAN LIFE. word that proceedeth ont of the month of God;" also of Paul's declaration, "All Scrip- ture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- rection, for instruction in righteousness." How powerless are the precepts of merely human wisdom, and how vain the devices of men, in the great task of preparing inhabit- ants of earth for the companionship of an- gels and the society of God in heaven ! It is here that secularists and all who clamor for poetry, philosophy, and the arts and parade of oratory in the pulpit fall utterly below the essential idea of preaching. Paul re- jected similar solicitations to deviate from his one theme and object, and his words fur- nish a perfect and overwhelming answer to many of the modern would-be reformers of pulpit themes and methods. "Christ sent me to preach the Gospel : not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ sbould be made of none effect." "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." " And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstra- tion of the Spirit and of power." Let the preacher, then, rely supremely ou the revealed truth of God, through which alone true Christian successes are won ; but let him seek to use it with pertinence and power, that bis labor may not be in vain in the Lord. Regarding redeemed souls as God's building, let him strive to build them up into Christ, their living Head. The best methods of doing this will usually corre- spond closely to those by which his own soul is strengthened and developed in all good- ness and in the graces of the Christian life. In this respect, like the disciples, he should receive the bread of life at the hand of Jesus and distribute it among the multitudes. Although it is impossible to overestimate the essential elements of successful preach- ing, yet let it not be supposed that absolute rules or unvarying methods are to be pre- scribed to all ministers of the Word. Vari- ety of mental constitution and of spiritual experience prevails as extensively among preachers as among hearers. Not every one that is truly called of God can be a son of thunder, nor can all ministers of the truth bo equally the sons of consolation. The va- rieties of character and capacity exhibited in the original company of the disciples are strikingly illustrative of similar varieties ever to be expected in the increasing multi- tude of laborers called to work in the vine- yard of the Lord. Whatever special gifts or graces any preacher may have received, he should con- scientiously cultivate and diligently use for the instruction and salvation of his fellow- men, confident that, if employed with an eye single to God's glory, they will be found to the advantage of many, if not of all, who may hoar him. Moreover, while coveting the best gifts and seeking to practice the best methods, the preacher of the present day should not remain uninstructed by the bad methods and mistaken practices of those who have preceded him in the sacred office. It is the province of history to teach by examples, and unfortunately the history of preaching records many examples of poor success, and indeed of utter failure, which should serve as admonitions to the ministry of the future. Happily the most serious errors illustrated in the history of the past find their most hopeful means of correction in the cultiva- tion of a true and worthy MINISTERIAL CHAR- ACTER. If heathen rhetoricians taught the neces- sity of the orator being a good man, it cer- tainly is not surprising that Divine authori- ty should require "the man of God," the pub- lic preacher of righteousness, to " be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii., 17). This Scripture at its very lowest interpretation demands not only a genuine conversion and a divine call, but a high type of Christian experience. How can a man teach others "the things pertaining to the kingdom of God " who is not divinely taught himself? How can he persuade other men of the truth so well as when deep convictions rule his own thoughts and govern his actual life? How can he hope to arouse the conscience of sinners if his own conscience be palsied by self-seek- ing or hypocrisy ! How can he hope to lead unconverted men to a Saviour whom he fol- lows " afar off," or how can he train Chris- tians to a higher state of 1 grace than he him- self maintains? Such questions answer themselves, and in so doing clearly demon- strate that a prime and indispensable pre- requisite to all preaching worthy of the name is a deep, personal, and living experience of the power of Christian truth. Such an experience should be deemed incompatible with mental indolence. It should be to the preacher a continual prompting to improve every opportunity of self-cultivation, and to acquire all that knowledge, human and di- vine, which is requisite to make him " a work- man needing not to be ashamed, rightly di- viding the word of truth." The preacher who Avalks worthy of his high vocation, which is-of God in Christ Je- sus, will hold his time, his talents, and his energies consecrated to the one great busi- ness of proclaiming the Gospel to his fellow- men. Ho will make all other engagements subsidiary to this, and with continual prac- tice and experience in it he will acquire not only increasing skill, but a holy enthusiasm which will kindle the emotions and enlist the sympathies of those who hear him. When in addition to his natural and ac- quired abilities he receives in answer to KIDDER: THE BEST METHODS OF PREACHING. 391 promise and to prayer "wisdom from oil high " and the blessed " unction of the Holy One," by whom he may hope to be spiritu- ally anointed for his work, he may rest as- sured that, however great the difficulties be- fore him, his labors will not be fruitless, or fail in the final day to have the approval of the Judge of quick and dead. Such methods of preaching and of prepa- ration for that great function of the Chris- tian ministry are open to all who are in- vested with the sacred office, and for all the grand and glorious results that ought to fol- low from the faithful exercise of this divine- ly appointed agency, the preachers of the present and the future will be held responsi- ble. Let none be deluded with the idea that the preacher's office is obsolescent, or that the absolute or relative importance of preach- ing is diminishing with the spread of gener- al intelligence or the multiplying issues of the press. The truth is that Christian preach- ers speak to more ears and more hearts to- day than they ever reached before. More nations and more individuals invite their ap- proach and welcome their message than at any former period of the world's history. Hence, through the opening doors of God's providence and the accumulating power of Christian influence, it is to be hoped and ex- pected that preaching will win increasing triumphs, and that the trophies of its past success will hereafter be regarded as only the first-fruits of the grand conquest of the world for Christ. For such issues it becomes every minister of the Gospel to consecrate his best energies and efforts, in the determi- nation to do his full part toward the has- tening of that glorious consummation. Then let each one, however humble his talent or obscure his position, deem it the highest possible privilege as well as the most sacred duty to " preach the Word ; be instant in season, out of season ; reprove, rebuke, ex- hort with all long-suffering and doctrine," thus sowing the seed of the kingdom of heaven, and not doubting that in due time he will " reap if he faint not." THE MISSION OF THE PULPIT. BY THE REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER, OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. WHY is it that it is necessary at this time e sent to advantage among the semi-civil- ized and the newer parts of our country ; hut why should there be a need here in New York, where we have so many newspapers to instruct us? Where academies and colleges :uid societies for the diffusion of scientific knowledge are abundant, where books are overplenty, where men are stuft'ed with knowledge, why is it needful that an order of men should continue who, in the earlier periods of civilization, before that analysis and separation of functions took place which always goes with civilization, embodied ill themselves so much that now thsy mostly must lay aside ? Is there any distinct field for the Christian minister separable from that of any other profession? Is he any thing more than a teacher of general moral- ity ? I hold that in the divine economy the whole globe is in some sense a university with its different colleges. There is the col- lege of matter nature, physical nature which is au instructor, not alone in the uses of life, but, in a low and germinal way, in the rudiments of morality, springing from our relations to physical nature ; and man is in- structed by the rising and setting sun, and all that intervenes between. Then, again, another college in the great university is society itself, with the household, with busi- ness, with laws civil and criminal ; and all these go to the making np of a great man. If men were to live in this life alone, I scarcely see that there would be any need of other instructing agencies than those pro- vided through the uses of nature and the uses of human society; but. if man is des- tined to live again and forever, if the life aud immortality brought to light in the Lord Jesus Christ are a verity, and if this life is l>nt a bud and the blossom, then there is a transcendent need of those agencies which shall bring in this last and highest element, viz., the Spiritual Element. While we are taught by the scientists in truths that belong to the sensual nature, while we are taught by the economists of things that belong to the social nature, we need the Christian ministry to teach us of those things which are invisible. Around about this terraqueous globe is a spiritual 1 universe, and there are truths not only more radiant aud numerous, but transceudently more important than any that wo grope for and dig out of the crust of the globe, or out of the experience of human society. To teach the great population of the universe that above all is the Father of all, who in his own kingdom waits to receive us, to im- part the knowledge of man's spiritual na- ture, and the knowledge of the invisible lift-, and the knowledge of that manhood whic'.i is to fit us for that life this is the special function of the Christian ministry. To sup- plement, to throw the light of this higher j world upon all the phases of the present in ! order to give all the natural world and all I its functions a meaning which could not have been found out otherwise, to give to the human life both stimulus and support such as there would not be in this alone, bringing the light of the spiritual and the invisible world to bear upon it this makes it transcendently more important, and adds to its territory, and opens a magazine of mo- tives beyond comparison purer and more pungent and universal and more adapted to the wants of men than can be devised upon the surface of the earth. Here, then, is where the Christian minis- try comes in. It undertakes to inspire men with an idea of manhood, and undertakes to bring upon them those motive forces by which that manhood can be developed. Let me not speak without book. I accept the apostle's declaration in the most literal sense: "And he gave some, apostles; aud some, prophets ; aud some, evangelists ; aud some, pastors and teachers," all sorts ; " for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ;" and here is the full purpose, " till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man. unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Be- ginning where the animals begin, or if pos- sible lower, born into weakness, and through weakness long waiting, men come at last to a certain element of strength, wisdom, and power by the ordinary ministrations of wisdom, nature, and society. But this, which is in us, the divine, which is in sympa- thy with God, which brings us into relation- ship with him, this comes only through the interposition of higher agencies. No school teaches this. No scientist teaches this. No BEECHER : THE MISSION OF THE PULPIT. 393 economist teaches this. It is taught of God only by the power of God from on high. And again Paul speaks to this effect, when, in writing to the Corinthians, he de- clares the motives which brought him to them, " I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom ;" not simply to the fancy, to the ear, to the aesthetic persuasion, " but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power : that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." A character formed upon the model of the Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect man- hood, making men according to the new theory of psychology, introducing along the line of development a new economy, in which the most perfect exemplar and pattern is the Lord Jesus Christ, and attempting to develop in men that close ideal of the force and power which comes from the immediate contact of the Divine soul with the human soul ; not despising reason, not despising imagination, not despising all the faculties of the human soul, but giving to them the vivacity and power of the direct impact by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. By this power it is attempted, by the Christian min- istry, to bring mankind into the royalty of the new manhood which is in Christ Jesus. If, then, it be asked what is needed in our age of the pulpit, if you propose to me to discuss the pulpit in the present age, what is its object, in what respects does it need re-enforcing, where is its power, where is its weakness, I say that the first power needed in every pulpit is that so signally made known in the first pulpit the intense sense of the need of men, of their limitations, of their ignorance, of their want, of their weak- ness. Call it by what terms you please in your systematic theology ; call it depravity, total depravity, siufulness, disobedience, ig- norance; call it unskilled and undisciplined; whatever you choose to call it, if there is in the soul, in the pitying consciousness of ev- ery human being midwife at birth, nurse at the next step, and father all the way through, from top to bottom that sense of the want which .ill the wealth that comes from hearts in Christian society can not supply, and which can only bo medicated by the touch of Him who gave the soul to man that is the first thing that man needs ; man full of flashes or germs of that which is to be yet born ; so poor that there is not a bird that does not hatch out more perfect children than man docs; so poor that the lion licks a better cub, with better pros- pects of lionhood, than the child born to the noblest mother that laughs and weeps at the same moment. Of all the things upon the earth, the only thing that is so rich that it gets lost in it is man. There is so little to mistake in the lion that he always grows up to be a per- fect lion. They find their way themselves ; but man is the metropolis of all created things, and in him are consummated the hints found everywhere else. So much is there of animal force in various ways, so much of social affection, so much of moral element reaching out everywhere and losing itself iu selfish yearnings, so much of aspira- tion, that no man can take hold of himself and build himself up. And so there is no creature beginning so low, with such pros- pects, that gets so much help as man, but it is a help which no one present can give to man. The eye can see, the heart can feel, and the understanding can aspire, but the help from the source whence our souls come is necessary for our perfect birth, even when it is the beginning of that manhood of which Christ is the most perfect example in life. The next requisite iu the pulpit is the sense of " God with us." It is a good thing to believe that there is a God whom we shall one day see as he is. We have seen him as we thought he was, as we imagined he was, and we have seen him as we have been taught here and there by vain, adulterated philosophy ; but, after all, we now see through a glass darkly, and shall only then see face to face. We all know and all believe that there is this supreme, spiritual, benevolent Father ; but there is a revelation of God by the Holy Ghost in the hearts of men which, although it can not be stated in words, amounts to something more than philoso- phy. It amounts to force. It is precisely that which the apostle ex- pressed when he said that he should stand on the power of God rather than on the natural effects from human causation. And when he took occasion thus to speak he spoke as an orator. We know he was such by his letters. He could not help himself. Paul could not have spoken without being an orator. He used the wisdom of Athens when he belonged to Athens, and in Rome he did as the Romans did in things that were good. We know perfectly well that all the instruments by which human life is influenced or fomented he felt at liberty to employ ; but there was something behind all this. There was in his soul the con- sciousness that there Avas a power before which all other things or elements of power paled, and that was the power of God ; not him that dwells behind or within philoso- phy, but God with us, a God we might feel, a God that fires the soul, that lifts us with strange exultations above ourselves; that gives power and an unaccountable enthu- siasm of love to God, and a faith in God, by which when one man is possessed of the Holy Ghost he becomes a power altogether transcending the measure of ordinary causes. It is this sense of the belief of God, tin* belief that the Divine Spirit is poured out 394 CHRISTIAN LIFE. oil tho souls of men as directly as the sun- light is poured out on the soil when it makes flowers, and into flowers when it gives prisms and colors, and into both when it gives fruit behind the flower the il- limitable want of man and the illimitable supply of God, the endless hunger and the endless food, the mighty weakness and the mighty power, the nothingness of the be- ginning and the transcendent glory of the end, when we shall be presented perfect be- fore the throne of our Father. Here are the twogreatelemeuts of the Chris- tian ministry. And no man can have them and be ever so ignorant and yet be fruitless, aud a man may have every thing else besides these and he will have little fruit. It is sympathy with a human want, aud it is faith and feeling of God in the soul tho two combined which constitute a Christian minister, which open the door, the invisible gate, which lead men to say, "What of it?" which move back the horizon no mean thou- sands of miles like our horizon, lit by no morn- ing star such as astronomers tell is our morn- ing star, but by the Sun of Righteousness that rises in the eternal horizon that we believe in and' teach continually. These give the strength and the power to the Christian minister. When that power is in man, it may be augmented; it may be supplemented in a thousand ways ; it may be made more efficacious by adding those elements of knowledge by means of which easy access is obtained among men, by which we can control the forces in them. But the primary constituent of the true Christian minister is a refined sense of sympathy in the sinfulness of man, in man as a sinner because he is a sinner, and the essential cer- tainty that a great overreaching and reign- ing God is pouring out his soul upon the human family, and that by that power man may be lifted out of animalhood into more than rational intelligence, into divinity it- self, and become a son of God. Here, then, is the end aud aim of the Christian minister to create such a man- hood that it will last forever. It is to be more than a philosopher, more than a phi- lanthropist : it is to be a son of God. It is a manhood on which the light never fades, which hath no summer nor winter, and is as God, and will last as long as God. Who but feels this greatness of God, as made manifest in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the interpretation of God ? Poems are trans- lated from one language into another, but who shall translate God, who shall tell what his thoughts are, as they move in the eter- nal spaces ? You know what a mother's love is, aud what a father's love is. You know what tho love of noble hearts, one to an- other, is in this life. But these are saplings arising from the great central root. And what is that central fire of love that carries in it true justice, and in its vnstuess aud al- titude and its dignity and glory is willing to lay down and suffer and become a road that men may walk upon it, saying, " I aui the way and the life; walk with me," a con- servative God, a bleeding God, a sympathiz- ing God ? That is Jesus Christ's interpreta- tion of the eternal ruler of the universe, and that is the precise thing that Paul declared when he said that he never would hide him- self, nor by any ingenuity, by any dexteri- ty, prevent man from seeing him full in the face. Your great God must be a perfect God, aud to be a perfect God ho must be lifted above all else, perfect as a statue is, and as cold. The idea of those mediaeval times was of a God lifted above all care; grand was he as a sovereign, reigning by centripetal forces, who sat central and re- ceived all, a gulf into which all praise ran ; but the God that Paul quivered before with intense admiration whom he could not, sleeping or waking, living or dying, forget is the God interpreted by him who show- ed his great love by laying down his life. That is the God; that the cross the sac- rifice of the cross, the shame of dying, the willingness of God to die, defeated and over- thrown, and yet suffering for man, as the interpretation of the innermost nature of God, who dwells in tho fullest self-sacrifice. Think of the grandeur and beauty of this great fatherhood of God, who is justice, is the minister of love. Wherever he went, Christ was a suffering God, suffering for man. Is there any thing so sad as to look on human life with an inside eye at the jealousies, the raspings, the yearnings, without knowing what they yearn for ? Is there any thing so piteous as human life ? I do not wonder at the words that the noble men of antiquity have sent down through ages. Spread abroad the can- opy of God's love in Jesus Christ ! There is an inspiration, a reason for working that makes the Christian ministry tho most joy- ful vocation in the world, and a vocation Avhich may be more fruitful than any voca- tion in life. If you ask mo what does the modern minister want, I say he wants more realization of the human fact of sinfuluess, and much doctrinal realization of it. A man can take the doctrine of human sinful- ness, and make it into a theory and ride it, and it is like riding a hobby-horse it is a hard and useless task. But after realiza- tion, you pity men ; your heart yearns to them, you feel like a mother with a sick child that is fretful aud peevish, unreason- ably so, and yet every thing that the child does touches the mother's heart with pity. The Christian minister can have compassion on those who need it, doing more in pro- portion as men need more, giving that sort of sympathy with human wants because of human infirmity, because of infirmity whose BEECHER: THE MISSION OF THE PULPIT. 395 roots are sin. That is the want of the Chris- tian mini3ter. What other want is there ? The want of humanity, not in the sense of general kind- ness, for I believe ministers are the kindest people alive. They require the human ele- ment, the preaching that has in it that which is congenial to man. We preach sermons express our own thoughts. But do you think that there is any mother alive who would hire a nurse who was to talk to the baby out of a book? Dp you believe in strong souls kindled by each other's light and love, and that one should say, " Wait until I go home and ask my father to write me a discourse, so that I can talk to you ?" It is one thing to have a philosophy of those things ; it is another thing to have sense and spirit the sense of mankind, the feeling of man in you. We go off for knowledge and forget ourselves, and come back with knowl- edge. We go for philosophy, w r hich is a very good thing, and come back with phi- losophy. What we want is a man here. Therefore was the Gospel committed to men, because they are sinners, because they are weak ; they are weeping, they stumble ; men ought to have compassion on those do- ing the same things all round about them. Aud it is this yearning and longing for man that is to be the root of the true Christian ministry. We want that enthusiasm which comes from the certainty of all- concluding faith. We can't reform them, we can. not build them up, we can not make them men in Christ Jesus by reason of wit and wis- dom, by eloquence or appeals, but because God is in us. It tingles to the ends of our fingers. It fills the soul with the blood of the Lamb. The holy man is full of God. When men have this want, they are more powerful than their fellow-men they have that certainty, that enthusiasm that allows no denial, running over all things, knowing neither high nor low, strong nor weak. This is the element we want. Brethren, there are a great many men who are getting to be ashamed to be enthusiastic, to be ashamed of glowing zeal and of that nobility of a heart opened Avheu God has touched it. Let the mountains, when the snn comes in spring to thaw them out and set their rills to music and running down, bringing out flowers on every side of every bank, let them be ashamed of all that comes when they send their streams down and the human heart be ashamed of those en- thusiasms and feelings when God is to be considered. What, then, does the modern pulpit want ? Just what the old pulpit wanted. It wants still that homely sense of the sinfiilness of man and the remedial forces provided for it. It wants the men that believe in their work, and think it the best work human life could be devoted to. It wants men that believe in a heaven men that believe they are but a hand's-breadth from their own immortali- ty men that can take penalty, shame, and disgrace, knowing that in a very short time it may, it will, be all the same to them men who are willing to spend and be spent, though the more they love the less they are loved, looking just beyond to that which is more certain than what the senses interpret here. It is this view of God and immortal- ity, and this yearning toward man, that is the root and substance of the Christian min- istry. I am satisfied that as soou as this kind of ministry begins to operate there is that in the heart of man that responds to it and ratifies it. It is what men want. We hear a great deal said by those catechisers of the pulpit the daily papers. They are instructing us all the time as to the way to preach, warning us about sensational preach- ing ; and we are greatly indebted in our pro- fession to them. But I notice that wherever the stateliest eloquence and the richest wis- dom prevail, without human feeling here and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the con- gregations are apt to be thin, and the min- istrations of the sanctuary are ineffectual. Why do not people go to church more ? One thinks it is this, and another thinks it is that. You can open a church in a hovel, and let a voice go forth that has the power of touching men, and you will find it crowded and thronged. You do not want the cobs that used to have corn. That which man wants is sappy food, refreshing food. Men are willing to be dealt with, to have their sins flashed in their faces, willing to have their consciences aroused, but do not want to be handled. They want a preacher that takes hold of them in some way, one who can do more than that, one who can give to them that which every man consciously needs some men have aspiration, and some more indulge in superficial thought one who can give strength to bear their burdens to men that are sore in life, men who are in sorrow ; to women who don't know how to bring up their children, and who are contin- ually having more and more added to their flock ; to people who want to know where the next hod of coal is coming from, people who are afraid of the sheriff, men who are pricked with the ten thousand nettles of human life. Often they come to church and hear a long discussion on the fall of Adam. Well, that is not inopportune, but still they're so flat them- selves that they feel as if they would like to know something about their own fall. They want something that deadens the struggle that is going on within them ; they want some one who will take part with them, a minister who brings God down to the side of men, not as an everlasting condemuer, but one who brings God down as a present help in time of trouble ; a minister who brings the Prodigal Son home to his father, who, 39C CHRISTIAN LIFE. ticeiug him afur oft', runs to him, and before he cau speak throws his arms around his neck. The helper we need is He who will help a sinner, who will help a hard-hearted, proud man, who knows ho is selfish and wants to get over it, but he is too proud to do so. He wants a God to convert him, that is what he wants. When I quarry my stone and build my house, you will come and live with me. Oh ! it will bo very well, but I want some one to help me quarry my stone and build my house. The greatest soul is that which is lifted out of carnality. I don't blame Darwin for thinking that we came from a lower order of animals, for we even now have snakes in us, bears something of almost every thing in us ; and men have a hard time in the me- nagerie of their souls. Now there is help for such things ; help while we are lying flat upon, the ground. The bounty is not the bounty which comes in at the last moment. God is our leader and captain, who leads us on to salvation. He goes before us in our fight. That is what men need, and the preacher who preaches this help to human want will never have empty pulpits. Let me say a word for sensational preach- ing. I know it is not considered as the highest kind. The fact is, it is thought to be dangerous, and there are a great many men sitting on empty nests who thank God that there never will be any eggs hatched. There is a great deal of outcry against sen- Rational preaching. Very well ; there may be. There is a great deal of nonsense, but, after all, do you suppose the reason people throng to hear sensational preaching is cu- riosity alone, a tickling of the fancy ? There is something in the preaching which goes down to men that interests them and takes hold of them, and it is to hear that they go. And whose fault is it ? You ought to thank the sensational preachers that they bring men up somewhere that there is not a clear slide from the top down to the bottom. But there is a great deal of that which is called sensational preaching which is not the kind spoken of by Paul when he said men were Hometimes saved by the foolishness of preach- ing. There are a great many thoughts that are adapted to a genteel sinner that don't do much good. There are a great many dis- organized and unbalanced statements, but, after all, the heart of the preacher corrects him in what his head mistakes. Great is the power of the human soul when it is in- spired by communion with God. What we want is no new schemes. We want men. Wo want men with the faith of Jesus Christ ; we want men with hearts that weep over men, who have the sense that it is more no- ble to work for one single soul the mean- est and save it, than to wear the crown of an empire. This is what we want. Go out into the wildest portions of the West where the throngs of our Methodist brothers go from the plow and the store ; they are ill adapt- ed in knowledge to all the exigencies of a large ministration, and yet wherever they go the grain falls before their sickles. What does it ? The Spirit of God in their souls, the working and the power of God's Spirit, the most powerful instrumentality in the world. Men say that the pnlpit has run its career, and that it is but a little time before it will come to an end. . Not so long as men continue to be weak and sinful and tearful and expectant, without any help near ; not so long as the world lieth in wickedness ; not so long as there is an asylum over and above that one which we see by our phys- ical senses; not until men are transformed and the earth empty; not until then will the work of the Christian ministry cease. And there never was an epoch, from the time of the Apostles to our day, when the Christian ministry had such a field, and there was such need of them and such hope and cheer in the work, and when it was so certain that a real man in a spirit of God would reap abundantly as to-day ; and if I were to choose again, having before me the possibilities of profits and emoluments of merchant life, and the honors to be gained through law, the science and love that come from the medical profession, and the hon- ored ranks of teachers, I still again would choose the Christian ministry. It is the sweetest in its substance, the most enduring in its choice, the most content in its pover- ty and limits if your lot is cast in places of scarcity, more full of crowned hopes, more full of whispering messages from those gone before, nearer to the threshold, nearer to the throne, nearer to the brain, to the heart that was pierced, but that lives forever, and says, " Because I live ye shall live also." WHAT TO PREACH. BY THE REV. JOHN HALL, D.D., OF NEW YORK. [A crowd of eager friends of the Alliance, unable to obtain admission to Dr. Adams's Church, having filled Association Hall, two of the speakers from the former building were brought to give their addresses in the Hall. At the conclusion of Mr. Beecher's ad- dress, there was a general call from the audience for Dr. Hall, who happened to be on the platform. Upon this being repeated persistently, he rose and said:] I AM unwilling to occupy your time with any remarks which, as I did not expect to say any thing, must necessarily he desulto- ry and inconsecutive; for one thing may he said regarding all puhlic speaking, namely, that what has not heen prepared with care is usually of little value, and what costs the speaker little effort does little good to the hearer. With the remarks of the eloquent speaker to whom you have just listened I substantially agree, although I should prob- ahly employ, in some instances, a different phraseology. The sinners to whom we preach are to be pitied ; and we can not show too much com- passion for them : hut they are also to be blamed ; and Ave are bound to tell them that they are culpable for rejecting and despising the Gospel we are sent to proclaim. Their condition, until they believe, is dreadful in the extreme ; and we should labor to make them understand and feel that ; but it is the dreadful misery not of a misfortune that has come upon them, an evil chance that has hap- pened to them, but of a crime which they are still committing, and williugly persisting in. Very likely this will not always gratify them ; very likely, instead of soothing them, this will vex and irritate them, and make them secret- ly angry ; and then we must go on and preach so, and live so, that they shall, by the bless- ing of the Holy Ghost, see that they have no reason to be angry with us, who only carry God's message, but that, in point of fact, they are angry with the truth in other words, with the message which the Lord sends them concerning themselves. We can not, again, feel too keen a sympa- thy with the people who hear us some of them altogether in the dark, some of them opening their eyes a little, some of them see- ing men as trees walking, some of them lov- ing the light and craving for more, and some of them sorely beaten down and crushed by trials and difficulties in their life. We can not feel too keen a sympathy with them, es- pecially when we remember our own strug- gles, and the dim twilight through which many of us have groped, if now. in God's light, we see light clearly. But what shall we do f What sympathy is best for all these varied conditions of the human spirit ? Here it is that the evangelical system that is, the system which magnifies at every turn the objective truth regarding the person and work of Jesus Christ gives, it seems to me, its true and proper power to the pulpit. My sympathy is good as far as it goes ; but di- vine sympathy is infinitely better. And what do I know, what can I present, of di- vine sympathy, but in Jesus Christ ? What can I gather and disclose of this sympathy from general considerations regarding Dei- tyf The world God's world is a mystery to all of us. Even to Christians Providence is a perpetual puzzle, and they must wait to see how good and wise God is by seeing the end. But in the face of Jesus Christ, God's glory, ay, the light of the knowledge of it, shines. Him we can preach to the people : on his sympathy we can expatiate ; him wo can lift up and unfold, the personal Redeem- er, Son of God and Son of man divine hu- man, the might of omnipotence in his arm, even when it was nailed to the tree ; him, the prophet for the ignorance of man, tho priest for the guilt of man, and the daily recurring wants and sins of man, the king for the defense and government of man, tho true and tender brother to the believer, tho Captain of salvation to the Christian sol- dier, the good master to the disciple, tho Lord and Saviour to the meanest and poor- est believer, yes, to the weakest and least effective of his servants here, as truly as to the Apostle Paul ! When we preach this Jesus to men, ami they receive him, it is not only that they get more light, are elevated, helped, carried forward beyond the lengths to which other forms of teaching carry them ; it is not this only, nor, indeed, this at all. It is that they are now enlightened with this kind of light for the first time ; and they find out that whatever they knew before, in this kind of light they were blind, and in this kind of knowledge they were utterly ignorant. Now they are the subjects of a change, more or less conscious; call it conversion, or regeneration, or illumination, or any oth- er name you will, that is understood in its meaning by the people, and in the preach- er's sense of it, which ought surely to be tho Scriptural sense of it. Now they have par- :HH CHRISTIAN LIFE. don, they arc accepted, they arc in Christ, they are in a new condition, and are set out upon the attainment of a new character. It is uot that this revelation of God's mercy, through belief of which they are in Christ, has made them better, has improved their manhood, or elevated them a temperance society might do that a literary society might do that it is that they are changed, that the secret springs of the will are touch- ed. If any man be in Christ, he is a better man T No. A broader man f No. He is a new creature made a new man by an act of God, by his word as truly a divine act as -when God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And that we ministers, ourselves thus enlightened by Divine grace, can preach this glorious Gospel of the bless- ed God, and in lifting up Jesus Christ pro- duce, instrumentally, these results, this seems to me to be the real power, and, -when done, the dignity and glory of the pulpit any pulpit, ancient or modern. We who preach are poor creatures; but the word of the Lord is mighty. Of that word Jesus Christ is the sum and substance ; and the sum and substance of any ministry of permanent spiritual power must be the set- ting forth of him, the living Christ for dead souls, the bread of life for starving souls, the water of life for thirsty souls, the one Life- giver of divine appointment, in coming to whom the dead in sins are quickened, and in cleaving to whom the new life of believ- ers is fed and strengthened. Now as to this sensationalism in the pul- pit, there is but a word to be said. When a minister, by the selection of odd and queer topics, in form or reality away from the Gos- pel by unique or grotesque ways of put- ting himself, or putting his things before the people, by vulgarisms, or startling novel- ties of expression, aims at making a sensa- tion that shall terminate with the hour, or, at least, terminate upon the preacher, there is sensational preaching, -which is offensive to true taste, as it is away from the spirit of the Gospel, and the dignity and power of the pulpit. That is uot only contemptible as tri- fling it is base and criminal, as trifling with the most solemn themes and for selfish ends. I hope there is not much such sensationalism. But give us the ministers who go directly with Bible truth to the souls of men who preach to them of their guilt in denying the Holy One and the Just, who urge this home on judgment and conscience with an earn- estness begotten of the Spirit of God, and flowing out of souls set on fire from above, until the crowds, carried away, subdued, and terrified, cry out, " What shall we do to be saved ?" Let us have sensations like this pro- duced, anywhere, by any ministry, and I for one if no part of this honor is given me shall yet fall on my knees, and give thanks to God who hath given such power unto men. FOURTH SECTION.-SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK ITS GREATNESS THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. BY CHAKLES EEED, ESQ., M.P., LOXDOX. I AM deeply sensible of my obligation to the Sunday-school, personally and officially, and, when asked to represent the Old World institution in the New, I was rejoiced to ac- cept so honorable a position. The time al- lotted to mo is too brief to allow of my in- dulging myself in an historical review of the origin and growth of this educational or- ganization, and, while many paths are open before me, it will be my duty to select one, and that the practical, and up that path I propose to lead you by a direct course. Of the past I will only say, What has God wrought? It is ninety-two years since Eaikes gathered his first school in 59 Cath- erine Street, Gloucester, and through allthose years, though suspected, frowned upon, abused, and denounced, the course of the Sunday-school has been onward, its sup- porters have never relaxed their effort, its advances have been rapid, and its achieve- ments marvelously great. Adam Smith, the author of " The Wealth of Nations," has declared that no plan has effected a greater change of manners, with equal ease and sim- plicity, since the days of the apostles ; and Chief- justice Marshall, your own distin- guished jurist, says, "I can not be more iirmly convinced than I am that virtue and intelligence are the basis of our independ- ence and the conservative principles of na- tional and individual happiness; nor can any one believe more firmly that Sabbath- school institutions are devoted to the pro- tection of both." And that which may be said of the United States and of the British Empire may with truth be averred of the great European countries, represented by distinguished friends of religious education around me here. Having mentioned them, I shall not be misunderstood if my refer- ences are mainly to the schools of the two great Anglo-Saxon communities, with whose schools I am more familiar, by long expe- rience, and by recent extended observation. Of the English institution it may be said that it has been benevolently intended as a mis- sion to the poor and the neglected, not em- bracing to any great extent the children of the congregations. The aim has been high, the numbers in proportion to population large, and the devotion of the teachers be- yond all praise ; yet, encumbered by secu- lar processes, its success has not been com- mensurate with the effort put forth. The schools of America, on the other hand, have been mainly for the children of the Church, while in her noble mission schools the chil- dren of the poorest are found. The fusion of classes has been more marked, a higher class of agency has been secured, and the results, if not holier, have been greater. America has reaped the advantage of her system of common schools, in the habit of order and completeness of secular teaching among the children, and in the creation of a public opinion among Christian people in favor of the Sunday-school. Great Britain is now about to realize America's great ad- vantage ; henceforth the two countries will carry on the work of religious teaching un- der more equal conditions, and these two great nations, one in blood and in language, and bound by the closest ties of amity and Christian affection, with a vast agency, no- ble, gratuitous, earnest, and pious, having for their aim the conversion of souls, and their standard the Word of God, will present to the world a spectacle worthy its admiration and imitation. The question then is, not how to preserve peace and quiet in our streets on the Lord's day, not how shall neglected children be taught reading and writing, but how shall we secure to our children a sound religious education. When I say our children, I mean the youth of the nation. The work is to be done not by the State, but by religious peo- ple ; not in cities and towns, but in the West- ern territories and in scattered hamlets, and by the combined and systematic effort of Christian people. Truly, this is a noble mission. It is to plunge deeper for the rescue ; it is to strike higher for the prize ; it is to embrace two classes, the richest and the poorest, hitherto neglected. Deeper down, to rescue the off- spring of the stolid, the vicious, the brutal, the blasphemer, and the drunkard. Higher yet, to win the children of our artisans, un- friendly to religion and bitterly hostile to what they deem cant and priestly device. KK) CHRISTIAN LIFE. Higher still, to gain access to yontli, ex- cluded from the true influences of Christian life, shut out from the glad tidings of the Gospel message, members of families whose creed it is that it is not the thing to be seri- ous, and that it is a crime to be religious, " where the doors are barred against the en- try of any but the worshipers of this world." And is it possible that you are going to in- terfere with these, the upper classes of soci- ety T I say, yes, if it be possible ; and I be- lieve it is. By what right do you do this ? I reply, by every right. Is the poor man's neglected child more dangerous to society than the profligate son of the wealthy man ? If we are justified in lifting the latch of the poor man's cottage, why should we avoid the rich man's mansion ? This we know, that "it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one of these should perish." I divide the constituency now outside the school into three classes. The first are our own children. Our own peculiarly. I mean by these the children of godly parents, members of our churches and congrega- tions, and belonging to the middle class of society, that class which forms the back- bone of the strength, the virtue, and the honor of a community. Happily, America has laid hold of this class, and she has her reward. England has not. The children of her respectable people, her " superior peo- ple," the children of her deacons and of her ministers, are not, as a rule, in the Sabbath- school. Our poorest are wretchedly poor, our ragged are miserably clad, if clad at all, and their habits and language beget a whole- some fear that " evil communications cor- rupt good manners." Before prejudice can be overcome, we must adapt our arrange- ments to meet the proper expectations of the mother ; and by such suitable provision we shall conquer her objections. Parents must have satisfactory assurance of some advantage to be secured, some proof that good influences will be exercised. Fortu- nately, I have this assurance; hence I give my testimony in favor of it, and I press home upon ministers and deacons this ques- tion : Do they act wisely in withholding the influence of their example do they not do an injustice, by this conduct, to the Sun- day-school T Ottr duty is to create a pub- lic opinion, and when that opinion is begot- ten fathers and mothers will hasten to com- mit their children to our trust. The second class to be secured is the neglected, the hea- thenyes, the heathen of London and New York. The easiest way and the way is not difficult is to get them early. Parents are not reluctant ; it gives happiness to the lit- tle ones ; and remember, those who come earliest stick the closest, yes, as ivy, their young affections cling to the training-place of early childhood. And the rough, untu- tored parent, bad as he may be, does not wish his dimpled little one to grow up as hard and as rough as he is, and the mother yields her child to the teacher whose visits bring light and comfort to their dismal dwelling. You take tho infant to your school, and tho elder sister can come too ; and if the mother does not come to the house of prayer, we secure to her the oppor- tunity of doing so. And who shall say that the little one will not bring back notes of music which may prove "heavenly notes" caught in the infant class? And here let me repeat, the earlier children are secured, the longer they are retained. At fourteen, the turning point of life, when boys claim a kind of independence, and girls are in tho habit of asserting their own will, the special teacher, tho separate apartment, the table, the chair, and the Bible attract and hold those who, but for these special arrange- ments, leave us at the most critical period. The third section includes the youth of wealthy, w r orldly, and indifferent families children of the fashionable mother who sacri- fices all for pleasure ; whose children dwell in the nursery and are seldom seen, except at dessert, to be admired, coaxed, and spoiled ; whose great concern is brilliancy of com- plexion, purity of teeth, and gracefulness of carriage, but has no thought of the welfare of the soul. In such a family it may be tho mother or the father who is at fault not usually both for my experience teaches me that one is frequently prepared to admit the error and to accept help toward amendment of life. The mother will favor the visits of a Christian friend, or the father will say, when the invitation of some pious neighbor comes, " Let the boys go." Is it whispered. Who dare attempt this ? The best answer is to say, Some have dared and have suc- ceeded. A friend of my own, living in one of the fashionable parts of London, took r, handsome house next to his own, and fitted it up for such a purpose. He issued his in- vitations to a Sunday afternoon meeting for Bible study. The result was many calls of courtesy, inquiry, and grateful acceptance. On the next Sunday nineteen youths, from fourteen to eighteen, came, and that Chris- tian gentleman, a man high in the scientific world, is now at the head of an institution of influence and power, originated by his resolution to dare to do this godly work. Within the range of my own observation I have known many such resolute efforts, so that I am entitled, when any one chal- lenges my recommendation, and says, "Who dares?" to answer, It is dared and done. Who does not know that in a religious com- munion, where zeal knows no obstructions or hesitations, ladies of all ranks and men of all conditions relinquish every thing and become "all things" to accomplish their special object? This is a means scarcely used by us, and a potent one it is. REED: SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 401 But -who is to create this enlarged agen- cy ? The responsibility must rest upon the Church. Yes, henceforth the Church must understand that the Sunday-school is not to be left to chance ; it is no longer to have a doubtful position, or yield a hesitating alle- giance. The school of the future must be an institution of the Church, its work must be recognized as part of the church work, and it must be felt that the root of church life lies in it. Truly, the advancement of religion is the claim of the times, and this claim lies now before the Church and de- mands instant recognition. And should not the school be acknowledged ? Whence came the Church ? Tracing things to their sources, in multitudes of cases it will be found that a Sunday-school was the nucleus ; from it was formed the little congregation, and in their midst a little company of believers consti- tuted the Church. And whence, let me ask, come our pastors and teachers ? Have not our ministers usually been trained in the Sunday-school, and there first put forth their teaching power, and there given proof of their ministry ? Have not our missionaries been first found zealously engaged in rescu- ing and teaching our heathen at home, visit- ing the families of scholars, and " preaching the Gospel to every creature " in the regions round about, " beginning at Jerusalem ?" Now, as a matter of fact, no church mem- ber can be indifferent to the school, for as a rule the members of our churches have come from it. Dr. Campbell says, " An immense majority of church members have been first impressed not from the pulpit, but in the Sabbath - school." And when it is alleged by some teachers that their pastors are in- different, it is most improbable ; they may bo overcharged with duty, but they are not forgetful; they may be disinclined to dis- turb by interference, but they are not un- concerned. Still, no doubt, an impression exists that the school does not receive the consideration it deserves. If there is ground for this, let it be at once discovered, or let the suspicion be forever set at rest. The words of Dr. Humphreys may well be pon- dered by those to whom they are addressed : " Ministers of Christ, how much the prosper- ity of this glorious cause depends on your faithfulness upon your influence. To say that it can not go on unto perfection with- out you is almost to say that, if it fails and languishes, you must answer for it. On you it devolves to teach the teachers, to counsel and encourage them in all their arduous du- ties, to persuade all the people in your con- gregation, if possible, to send every child to the Sabbath-school. The teachers expect, nsk, nay, implore your zealous and powerful co-operation. Surely, my beloved brethren, you will not disappoint them ; you will not stand aloof from so glorious an enterprise." These are earnest words, and the plea is 20 cogent. If it is needed in these States, be- lieve me, it is not less necessary in Britain, in Germany, and in France ; and it were well if our ministry would assume their rightful place and take the direction of their schools. Dr. Arnold was wise when he said, "At last I have secured my long-coveted control of my Sunday-school. These institutions are as necessary to the minister as to the church ; they occupy a position midway between the fireside and the pulpit. The teachers arc his assistants in the work of God ; their aim is the same ; they are pastors in miniature ; they are feeding the future flock in embryo ; they are moulding the generation ; they are the clergyman's right arm." And Todd says, "The Sabbath - school takes the children, as it were, out of the pas- tor's hand, and becomes the pastor to the lit- tle flock, but it does not and it can not re- lease him from the responsibility of seeing that the word is rightly divided." The figure is a beautiful one it is Scriptural. The pas- tor or shepherd leads and feeds the sheep; the teacher or under-shepherd feeds aiid tends the lambs of the fold. The food of the one is " strong meat ;' ' of the other, " pure milk." Barnabas was such a teacher at Antioch, before he was separated to the work of the ministry, for even then, as now, " he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evan- gelists, some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." The children of the Church, that is, of be- lievers, are entitled to the first place in this school of the Church. From infancy they are devoted, if not by baptism, at least by dedication to the Lord ; they are the chil- dren of many prayers, and brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This question is often misunderstood. It is sup- posed that parents are asked to renounce the religions education of their children, as though religion were a concern for the Sab- bath, and was put on and off with the Sun- day. What is wanted is not delegation, but the acceptance of co-operation ; assist- ance by instruction, counsel, influence, and prayer. In sick children there are often hidden desires and aspirations undiscovered by the parental eye, yet revealed to the sym- pathetic friend. " We speak that we do know, and testify that wo have seen." The conscious life of such children, too, often opens with a sweet graciousness of spirit, and a sweet but not a saving faith. Par- ents regard this as "hopeful, "and are con- tent ; but contact with another mind would often lead to the discovery of inquiry, if not yearning, after " a sure and certain hope," "the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." Parents would do well to avail themselves of this ontsidc agency, and to trust their 402 CHRISTIAN LIFE. children to pious teachers, such as the pres- ence of their children would secure. Their influence differs from yours, and often it is even stronger and more constraining. For, after all, this is a vital question ; yea, it is the question of questions. If parents and teachers are not laboring for conversion, for what are they working f And yet the Church herself needs converting on this point. She has not believed in early decis- ion and early profession of faith in Christ. Now, henceforth, let it be known of the school that the aim is nothing lower, noth- ing short of this " to win souls." Now let us be faithful. Early piety has not been looked for ; decision has been discouraged ; church-membership is refused. In England, out of 384 churches with 40,000 members, 379 have no members under 14 years of age, and in 199 no members tinder the age of 18. It is whispered, How do we knoio bow long it will last ? But between 7 and 13 years of age ay, younger does not conscience dawn ? does not the spirit strive ? And when a dear child reads her Bible as one who loves it, and delights iu prayer, when evil is resisted, shunned, and hated, when there is a cleaving to that which is good, when there is a mani- fest turning to God, who shall hinder a hum- ble approach to the table of the Lord ? " Ye shall judge them by their fruits." Brethren, if we did believe in early piety, we should look for the fruit, and mourn with anguish and wailing the lack of it. Yes, we do pray that all may be saved, from the " least unto the greatest," but we should start Avith sur- prise if a dozen of our infant-class children, next Sabbath morning, declared their love to the Saviour. Verily it is unto us " accord- ing to our faith." It is recorded of an American lady that her child told her, on her thirteenth birth- day, that she had given her heart to Christ. "God bless thee, ray lamb," said the de- lighted mother, " it is in answer to prayer. I always hoped that at this age you would be a child of Christ." " But," said the girl, " I often felt like submitting to him when I was quite little." " Did you, my dear, but I did not expect it before. I was sowing the seed and cultivating your heart, looking to this time for your decision." How true ! " the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." Do not the lives of Joseph, Josiah, Samuel, and Timothy teach us ? do not the histories of Zwingle, Melanchthon, and Calvin ad- monish us ? and shall we not, as in times of old, find in our children faith as great, and simplicity as sweet, and are not the pray- ers of infancy mighty before the throne of Heaven ? " Oh, sir," said Melauchthon to the discouraged Luther" oh, sir, let us not be cast down, for I have heard our noble pro- tectors, the little children of our parishion- ers, whose earnest prayers I have just wit- nessed prayers which I am satisfied God will hear, for ' ont of the mouth of babea and sucklings he has ordained strength, that he might still the enemy and the avenger.' " It has well been said, "An apathetic Church can not long prosper. Forbear to cherish and guide, and the affections of youth, even pions youth, are wearied ; they forsake the sanctuaries of their fathers, and seek other communions and sunnier resting- places." Apathy on the part of a church in worse than opposition. It is well to have sympathetic talk ; it is better to have hearty and earnest co-operation ; and at the present moment there is such need of this, that the Church must lay it to her own account that the failure she sometimes complains of is due to her rather than to the pulpit. The Church must consider the needs of the school, must provide the agency required in the school, and must practically sanction and control the school. What is demanded is, not any one for a teacher, not boys and girls, elder scholars and monitors, but men and women, selected, qualified to teach and to rule ; experienced, influential, and " mighty in the Scriptures." For it is not now a wearisome plodding, with hoe and spade, among weeds and tares, but training, water- ing, and tending. Where is this agency ? It exists, but it is dormant, and it lies as a use- less power in our midst. Thence will arise, when our voice is heard, and when the claim is felt, our spiritually-minded teachers, apt to teach not the religion of a creed, but the religion of the heart. This true teaching is needed not more in the school than in public worship. I IKTVO long urged the adaptation of our Sabbath worship to the wants of little children ; and for their sake, and to secure an intelligent appreciation of adult worship in youth, I have pleaded, and with some success, ii: England for separate services for infants. There is natural reluctance on the part of mothers to spare them from the pew, and of ministers from the congregation, and thr argument applies with force in this coun- try ; while in England, where the families ot" our poorest classes are found in no place of worship, the attendance of such little ones is not only no loss, but a clear gain. The ear- liest children's service established iu London was commenced in 1840, and now no well-reg- ulated large school is without one. No ono will venture to deny that going to the house of God is good at any age, and that it begets a certain habit, and may conduce to produce respect, if not reverence ; and this was what a minister meant who said to me, " I would have them there, even if they did not com- prehend a word of what I said ;" but it must be remembered that worship is not really in- teresting to a child unless it is understood. REED: SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 40?, That want of understanding begets weari- ness, weariness leads to dislike, and dislike often ends in disgust. Let it, then, he con- sidered that this is a proposal to adopt a plan proved to he pleasant and profitable to very little children, many of them so utterly neglected that the alternative is to know no worship or teaching at all. Beyond this I do not go ; hut some ministers should know that on Sabbath mornings there are elder ones among the youth in those upper galleries whose hearts are heavy for sin, and who, Sun- day after Sunday, fail to lay hold of the hope set before them for want of greater simplic- ity in teaching Gospel truth. " Lift up thy hands unto Him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger at the top of every street." There is yet another reason why the Church should see well to her Sun- day-schools. In the present undetermined state of the common school, and the uncer- tainty as to the place religion is to hold there not religious teaching, but even mor- al training, based upon the foundations of Scriptural authority it is incumbent on the Church to fall back upon her religious schools. Hitherto day schools have been conducted by religious teachers, in a relig- ious spirit, and the Bible held an honored place as the source of all morals and the au- thority of all discipline. Now that distinct- ive religious teaching must be dispensed with, the inculcation of that practical re- ligion Avhich, being common to us all, is most appropriate to children must be cher- ished that truth that teaches to fear God and keep his law ; that makes man love men, and all men reverence God ; that truth which, to use the vvords of Washington, "is proclaimed by the voice of the Bible, which, as the only true basis for eternal, must be the only true basis for temporal education." It is evident that, to hold our view, to say nothing of enlarging the scope of our oper- ations, wo must make our Sunday-schools more attractive and our teaching more ef- fective ; and in the great educational race we must not rest content till wo bring up onr teaching power to the highest degree offeree and perfection. The Sunday-school has a strong claim on the State, and by this I mean not on State support, but on the sympathy of all good citizens. In the presence of magistrates and legislators. I feel free to say that in England it is held to have been among the chief forces for good in moulding and fash- ioning our social condition. The founders of these States showed great foresight in lay- ing down the principles upon which educa- tion should be secured, and the exact terms of the decree of the General Court of Massa- chusetts show what, in 1647, was their ruling desire: "It being one chief project of the old delnder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times, by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times, by persuad- ing them from the use of tongues, that learn- ing may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors: It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint teachers," etc. What has wrought the great social changes in nations from savage to civilized; from serfs to freemen ; from slaves to citizens ? What has transformed grossness and sensuality to purity of life. What can diminish crime, and give virtuous direction to talent and cleverness? What can bend the danger- ous and hurtful to subserve the best inter- ests of society? While the world is im- pelled with the forces of violence in oppo- site directions while a spirit of lawlessness and revolt is abroad, the only safety and se- curity is the inculcation, in the mass of the people, of knowledge and probity and the fear of the Lord. In the neglect of these, knowledge, however polite and refined, will be weak and impotent in times of peril and danger, and will perish like a garland in tlio grasp of popular fury. A great writer says, "Wholesome laws and severe punishments are but slow and late ways of reforming the world. The timely and wise way of doing this is by early, religious education." Hence the best means of promoting the ends of civil government is to prevent the commission of crime, and that will not be done unless the law is taught with such authority as that, the foundation being opened up, the very child shall see that it stands firmly on the Divine law; The fear of the Lord is the be- ginning of wisdom. May such wisdom and such fear be the stability of our times ! What saved England when the cry of the people for cheap bread was resisted ? when the cotton famine was sore in the land, and America spared not her hand in the day of our adversity ? what, when infidelity came in like a flood upon us ? and what is our con- fidence now in the midst of hard social prob- lemus waiting for solution ? What makes your people brave in disaster, calm in crises of national alarm? what voice among you rebukes corruption, condemns avarice, de- clares against intemperance, and denounces war? The voice of the people, the common people trained in our schools, where the heart is taught ; where conscience is dealt with ; where character is moulded ; where man is fashioned ; where generations arc trained, and where the nation is controlled. Yes, wherever the bulk of the population are in the Sunday -school, the honor, the virtue, and the truth of any people are safe ; and so, as education is the chief defense of nations, righteousness will exalt any people. If this consummation is desired, no other agency 404 CHRISTIAN LIFE. can effect it. The more I look at the com- mon or day school of cither country, the more convinced I am that little more, if any more, than high moral training can be expected there. In the Sunday-school we have 800,000 teachers of all classes, 80 per cent, of them being old scholars, and 84 per cent, at least being church-members, teach- ing gratuitously millions of children and adults, the bulk of whom have no systematic religious instruction elsewhere. And taking yet a lower view ; an honest child is less trouble, more useful and more valuable (I mean of more money value), and will do more to relieve the State from the burden of his parents' maintenance in later years than an untaught one. A vicious child, on the contrary, is a certain cost to the State, and a grievous curse to the commonwealth. Educate him in every way, and in this the best way ; and recollect that " the more re- fined the secular instruction, the more need of religion to prevent degeneracy as one generation succeeds another." It only remains now to glance at the fu- ture of this mighty agency. Those who best know its constitution know most accurately its weak points, and we are not afraid to ac- knowledge them ;* but, for all that, we are conscious that in the Sunday-school lies an unrevealed power. A little fire and a lit- tle water give forth the stupendous force of steam, and from these humble agents of faith and love shall issue a power for the world's regeneration altogether irresistible. The common school contemplates the phys- ical, intellectual, and moral being ; the Sun- day-school, the religious, the spiritual. The common school has its limits ; the Sunday- school knows none, for its teaching crowns and glorifies the completely educated man. The cry of all enlightened nations is " Ed- ucate ! educate !" Ignorance is a common foe destroy it, and a tyrant falls. A noble coun- tryman of yours founded his splendid gifts to both our nations upon this maxim : " Ed- ucation is a debt due by each generation to the next." He is a true patriot he the true friend to the commonwealth, who educates the people. * "Onr Weak Points:" an address delivered before the Sunday-school Union of London, by Charles Reed, M.P. IMPORTANCE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AGENCY. BY THE REV. RICHARD NEWTON, D.D., PHILADELPHIA, PA. THIS is a great theme to attempt to han- dle iu the brief space allowed on such an occasion. And yet no single topic brought before this interesting assembly this gath- ering together of the representatives of the Church of Christ from all lauds can be more worthy of their consideration, or more intimately connected with the glory of their common Master, or the welfare of his blood- bought Church. To discuss this subject in all its bearings would require a volume. Some one general aspect of the great theme is all that can be attempted here. The point to which I would confine my remarks is, THE IMPORTANCE OP THE SUXDAY-SCHOOL AGENCY. I would argue this importance on the ground of five pertinent, practical considera- tions. I. This agency is important, in the first place, in order to realize fully the will of God in ref- erence to the religious instruction of the young. We have a clear intimation of God's will on this subject in the instructions given to the members of the Jewish Church by Mo- ses. In Deut. vi., 6-10, God says, with sol- emn emphasis, "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart : and thou shalt teach them diligent- ly unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." There could not possibly be any clearer rev- elation of God's will on this subject, so far as the duty of the Church is concerned to the children of her own members. The obligation is clear, positive, and im- perative. This point is settled. There is no room for a moment's doubt respecting it. Here it is proved, with absolute certainty, that God desires to have the children of his people taught the knowledge of his truth, and that he has ordained the family relation as the agency for carrying into effect this manifestation of his will. But, after all, this only makes provision for the children of the Church. Suppose, now, that the members of the Church are all faithful to their duty in this respect, and that all the children of the Church are fully instructed in the knowledge of God's Word, as he designed they should bo. What then ? Why, the vast multitudes of children out- side of the Church are still unprovided for ; and how are the wants of this mighty con- course of young immortals to be met ? The family agency can not meet the difficulty. However efficient it may bo to secure in- struction for the children, of the Church, it can not provide for the instruction of the young beyond the actual limits of the Church. And it is mainly with these that the Sunday-school is occupied. Now what is the will of God respecting this large class of the young of our race ? And how may that will be most efficiently carried out ? It is the will of God that the young every- where should be taught his truth. We gather this both from the inferential and direct teach- ing of Scripture. We are taught this infer- entially. One of the features of the state of final glory promised to the Church on earth is that "all her children shall be taught of the Lord." And whatever God has determined shall be realized in perfection then, we may well infer must be pleasing to him to have realized in measure now. But we are not left to inference on this point. We have direct and absolute teachings as to God's will here. We are told most positive- ly that " God will have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of his truth." And that his will in this matter extends to the children is clear when we hear the prophet asking, " Whom shall ho teach knowledge? and whom shall he cause to understand doctrine ? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts " (Isa. xxviii., 9). It is, then, the will of God, without any question, that all the young should be taught his truth. But how shall this will be carried out ? To do this with any prospect of success, vre need the help of just such an instrumentality as the Sunday- school furnishes. It is an agency admirably adapted to carry on and complete this work. If any object to it on the ground that it is an agency not distinctly recognized or en- joined in Scripture, they may just as well, on the same ground, refuse to avail them- selves of the aid of the printing-press, or the steam-engiue, or the electric telegraph. These various instrumentalities have been discovered and brought to light, in the good providence of God, just as the necessities of the world and the Church demanded them. 40G CHRISTIAN LIFE. And it is precisely so with the Sunday-school agency. We see it brought into play at the very time when God is calling all the mem- bers of the Church to go forward iu the great work of teaching the young every- where the knowledge of his truth. There is no way in which this work can be done so efficiently and so practically as by mak- ing use of the Sunday-school agency. This is an important agency in order to realize the will of God iu reference to the religious instruction of the young. II. It is important, in the second place, as af- fording an opportunity for the practical expres- sion of love to Jesus. When we really love a person, nothing is pleasauter than to do what we know is grati- fying to that person. But Jesus has left us in no doubt as to the Avay in which he desires his people to show their love to him. He made known his will on this point very clearly, in that memorable scene which trans- pired on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Here Jesus reveals himself to his disciples. It is his first public appearance to Peter af- ter his resurrection. He has already seen him in private, and assured him of his for- giveness and continued favor. But now he meets him in the presence of the other dis- ciples; and while gently chiding him, by raising a question as to his love, he points out a way for the expression of that love that will be most grateful to himself. Three times Peter had denied his Master ; and three times that Master now questions his love, and then directs him how to prove it. " Simon, son of Jonas, lorest thou mef Feed my lartibs." This is very touching. But there is nothing in the words of Jesus here to restrict them to Peter. What applies here to him as one of the chief of the apos- tles applies equally well to every true fol- lower of Jesus, however humble his position. We are feeding the lambs of Jesus when we are teaching the young the truth respecting his character and work. And this is only what every true Christian should bo ready to do. If Jesus has pardoned our sins, and renewed our nature, and given us the hope of heaven, then certainly we ought to be willing to tell of what he has done for us. Here was just where the Psalmist stood when ho said, " Come, ye children, hearken unto me, and I will tell you what God hatli done for my soul" (Psa. Ixvi., 16). And this is clearly what God expects of his people when he says, "Let him that heareth say, Come." And so we may well regard our Saviour as addressing to every member of his Church the appeal that he made to Peter when he said, " Lovest thou me ? Feed my lambs." And love to Jesus, whenever it ex- ists, should respond to this appeal. Every renewed heart should warm toward this work. Every energy that grace has quick- ened and sanctified should he enlisted in it, in one form or other. And as this work stands before us, and wo see the linger of Jesus pointing to it, and hear the voice of Jesus calling attention to it, and feel the love of Jesus drawing our hearts to it, who will hold back from it ? Looked at from this point of view, how deeply interesting the Sunday-school work appears ! It is an agency specially occupied in feeding the lambs of Christ. And when we know that he has named feeding his lambs as the most acceptable way in which those who love him may show that love, how important a part of the Church's work the Sunday-school agency is seen to be! And how earnest the interest all his people should feel in it ! I often wonder how any- one who really loves Jesus can read about this scene on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the question put to Peter there, and then be willing to remain unconnected with an agency like this. When we remember that Jesus points this out as a way in which he especially desires that his people should show their love to him, the wonder is not that so many are found willing to engage in it, but that any who claim to be the friends of Jesus should be willing to stand aloof from it. III. The Sunday-school is important, in the third place, because of the opportunity it affords of giving employment to the working talent of the Church. The Church of Christ is a redeemed Church. Every energy in it is a ransomed energy. It all belongs to Jesus. It is all bought with a price, and brought under the strongest ob- ligation to be used for his glory. This is the Bible view of what the state of things in th Church should be. It is the normal condi- tion the Master's own idea of what the Church should be. That it is very imperfect- ly realized or carried out docs not affect at all the position liere assumed. The whole working talent of the Church every heart, and hand, and mind, and will is the purchase of Christ's precious blood, and should be employed for his glory. And there is no field of labor where every variety of talent can be utilized, and made to tell for the glory of our Master, as in the Sunday- school work. Here those who are endowed with the richest intellectual gifts, and who have cultivated them to the utmost, may find work that will fully task their noblest powers. At the same time, those whose mental endowments are the most slender, and who have had the scantiest opportuni- ties of improving the same, may still find something to do. The servant with ten tal- ents may employ them all ; the servant with one talent need not wrap it in a napkin. There is work for him to do, even with that one talent. Those who have the gift of teaching, and love to exercise that gift, have before them here the grandest field that can NEWTON: IMPORTANCE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 407 be presented in which to employ their pow- ers. There is no work in which knowledge, however vast and vsiried its attainments, may be turned to such good account as in that which occupies the teacher in the Sun- day-school. All the treasures of history, all the developments of science, all the opera- tions of nature, and all the facts and inci- dents of daily life will come into play in the effort to illustrate and enforce the greattruths that centre in redemption's wondrous plan. And then in the adjuncts and accessories of the Sunday-school, apart from its great central work of teaching, how much there is to be done that gives employment to energies and capacities of a different class! In ar- ranging and conducting the library, in pro- viding for and managing the musical exer- cises of the school, in looking up scholars with w T hich to recruit the school, in provid- ing for those who need it decent clothing in which to attend the exercises of the school, and in spreading around it an atmosphere of prayer for God's blessing on the work, there is a broad field presented, in which all whose hearts are warmed with love to Jesus may find something to do for him. IV. In the fourth place, the Sunday-school agency is important as a practical aid to the diligent and systematic study of the Scriptures. It is in the clear understanding of these Scriptures, and in the proper application of them to the heart, that we are to look for all growth and maturity in the Christian life. This is the fountain by drinking of whose waters we are to seek that constantly re- newed refreshment that we need. This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, and by the eating and digesting of which alone we can hope to secure those supplies of strength that will fit us for the daily du- ties of our spiritual calling. This is the ex- haustless mine in Avhich lie hid all the treas- ures of the knowledge of divine things ; and only by patient digging and delving here can our souls be enriched by the pure gold and silver of saving truth. This is God's armory ; and only from it can his people be furnished with the weapons that they need to enable them to contend successfully with the hosts of deadly errors that in these days come swarming around us everywhere like legions from the pit. This truth is so glori- ous in its elements, so grand in its propor- tions, and so vital in its relations to us, that the desire to know it should be inducement enough to the diligent study of it. This is true. But in the imperfection of our fallen state, how great the gulf that wo often find betAveen what ought to be and what is! And in securing an cud as important as this, we need to avail ourselves of all the auxiliary motives within our reach. And the Sunday- school agency supplies a powerful motive here. If I have to meet every Sunday a class of bright, intelligent, inquiring young minds, for the purpose of studying with them a portion of Scripture, then in the desire to meet their wants and do them good I have an inducement to diligence and thorough- ness, in studying that portion of the Bible, that will lead me much farther than I should be led if I were studying that same passage of Scripture with reference only to my per- sonal edification. If I had no other motive than this to influence me, my study of that passage would probably be much less care- ful and exhaustive. I should be apt to rest satisfied with a general apprehension of the scope and meaning of the passage. But I dare not venture to go before my class with such a preparation. If I hope to meet their requirements, and maintain my influence over them, I must be armed at every point. I must be fully post- ed on the history and the geography of the passage. I must know all about the habits and customs of Oriental people to which there may be an allusion in the Lesson. If controverted points of doctrine are referred to, I must be able to give some account of the different views that are held respecting them. I must bring to bear upon the sub- ject all the light which the most recent in- vest igatiois of Bible students can supply. And in occupying a position where I am re- quired to study the Scriptures in such a way as this, I feel that I am brought under the most powerful motive to be doing that which is most beneficial to myself individu- ally, and at the same time most conducive to the best interests of those about me. And the influence of this motive was nev- er so powerful as it is now. The present system of uniform or international lessons intensifies the power of this motive to a re- markable degree. It incrcasea vastly this stimulus to study. There never was a time in the history of the Church when so many earnest and intelligent men and women were preparing themselves so thoroughly for the work of teaching, as is now the case all through this land and in Europe also. And as this system of lessons becomes more gen- erally adopted, till the great body of Sun- day-school teachers throughout Christen- dom sit down on the same Sabbath to teach the same lesson, there will be growing pow- er in this motive. The carrying out of this plan of lessons places at the control of every intelligent teacher an amount of valuable aid in studying the Word of God such as never was brought within his reach before. At a trifling cost, a teacher can provide him- self with two, three, or half a dozen differ- ent expositions of the same lesson. He can thus avail himself of the calm and mature judgment of the best expositors in the dif- ferent branches of the Church. He can gath- er up the rays of light that shiue from so many different sources, and, bringing them to a focus, can throw its beaming blaze on 4H CHRISTIAN LIFE. the passage be is studying. Thus he can meet his class as " a workman that needeth not to be ashamed," feeling sure of giving them all the aid that human means can fur- nish iu the studying of God's Word. And an agency that operates in this way is im- portant iu carrying on the Church's work in the earth. And if it is helpful to such an extent in giving a full, clear knowledge of God's Word, then it is impossible to do any thing that bears more directly on the best interests of the Church than to have this instrumentality more widely diffused, and more vigorously supported. V. Lastly, the Sunday-school agency is im- portant as aiding to develop the highest type of Christian character in the membership of the Church. We are reaching the last days of the dis- pensation under which we live. At Wa- gram and at Waterloo, when the battle was fur advanced, Napoleon called out his " Old Guard," and left the issues of the day -with the last charge on which he sent them. And the great conflict which has been waged so long with the powers of sin is now drawing to a close. In deciding this conflict, there is a last charge for the Church to make. In making this charge, the Great Captain of our salvation will order out not the " Old Guard," but the Young Guard. It will be a race of his followers in whom the highest elements of Christian character have been developed. And these are elements which the Sunday-school agency is admirably adapted to call into play. I would refer to four elements of character, as indispensable in the men and women who are to carry on that work which the Church of Christ must do in its closing conflict with the powers of darkness. The first of these elements is intelligence. I use this word here in its reference to Scrip- ture knowledge. This is the highest kind of intelligence. It is the broadest, the deep- est, and the njost practical. Pope said, " The proper study of mankind is man." This is only true in a qualified sense. To say that " the proper study of mankind is God God in Christ," is much nearer the truth. In this study, the manhood and the Godhead blend, so that each throws light on the other. You enter a labyrinth without a clue in attempt- ing to study humanity apart from Christ. We must see ourselves in God's light, if we would not be left wholly in the dark here, and we need a race of Christians now thor- oughly furnished with this intelligence. They must have a practical knowledge of the truth of the Gospel; they must know the " exceeding sinfulness of sin," and the tremendous ruin it has wrought ; they must know the wondrous remedy devised to meet that ruin; they must know "the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge;" they must know the freencss and fullness of God's grace; they must take in the idea that the world belongs to Jesus, and that the first great duty of every Christian is to aid in se- curing it to him ; they must know something of" the powers of the world to come," of the grandeur of the Christian's portion in eter- nity, with its promised crown and kingdom. The glare of the world will pale before thin knowledge ; and those who possess it will be prepared to live, in some measure, as Paul lived after he had made his visit to the third heavens. It is the Spirit's work to give such views of truth as we have referred to. And it is iu connection with the Sunday-school agen- cy that we may expect to find the Spirit so working as to prepare a generation of intel- ligent Christians adapted to the Church's work in the present day. Liberality is another element that must mark the Christians now called for. Wo need a race of generous, large-hearted men and women, who have a practical, influential belief in the truth that the gold and the sil- ver belong to God, and who have a thorough conviction that there is something better to be done with money than to hoard it. We need a race of Christians trained to the hab- it of giving, who will write " ' Holiness to the Lord ' on the bells of their horses," and who " will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth" (Micah iv., 13). I know that money will not evangelize the world, but it will go far to supply the human agencies needed to carry on this work ; and until these are freely supplied, we have no right to expect that blessing of God which alone can give success. There is plenty of money iu the Church now for all the purposes hero contemplated, but the membersof the Church know not how to use it. They need to bo trained to give, they must be made to under- stand the Bible principle of giving, and bo taught to carry out that principle in the use of all their means. And the Sunday-school, with its missionary organization, affords an admirable training-school in which to se- cure this result. It familiarizes the minds of the young with the world's great want, and shows them how they may aid in sup- plying this want ; and so accustoms them to the habit of giving freely and gladly as God gives to us. A third element needed in the type of char- acter demanded by the exigencies of the pres- ent day is consecration. This implies a practi- cal carrying out of the principle that " we are not our own, but bought with a price." This is a principle the correctness of which we all admit, and yet the real power of which but few exemplify. Jesus sets himself before us as the pattern of consecration. "For their sakes," he says, in his great interces- sory prayer for all his people "for their sakes I sanctify" (or consecrate) "myself, NEWTON: IMPORTANCE OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 409 that they also may be sanctified " (or conse- crated). How thoroughly Jesus gave him- self to the work of our redemption! His thoughts, his sympathies, his time, his ener- gies, all the powers of his humanity, and all the resources of his divinity were laid upon the altar. And it is as he stands by this altar, on which every thing is laid, that we hear him saying, " For their sakes I conse- crate myself, that they also may be conse- crated." We need a race of Christians trained on this principle, and prepared to tread in the steps of that consecration which ran through the whole life of Jesus; and the Sunday-school is the most efficient agen- cy we can employ in securing this result. Taking Jesus as the model of the Christian life, it aims to imbue the young with his spirit, and to reproduce in them " the same mind which was also in Christ Jesus." The last element needed in the character of those who would properly do the Master's work in these days is catholicity. Intense denominationalism is one of the growing evils of the present day. It is threatening to narrow down our sympa- thies and contract our hearts, and make us think more of our little company ensigns or regimental flags than of the broad banner of truth under which the great Captain of our salvation is leading on his sacramental host to victory. This spirit must be watch- ed against and counteracted. We must have a generation of Christians who love the pre- cious kernel of saving truth better than the hard shell of sectional peculiarity in which they receive and hold that truth ; who feel, admit, and act upon the principle that the things which all true Christians hold in com- mon, and about which they agree, are un- speakably more important than the things about which they disagree, and out of which they build up the walls of denominational differences. Denominationalism is not in itself an evil ; or, if it be so, it is an evil un- avoidable in the present state of things. It is one of the marks of imperfection insepa- rable from a militant Church. But there are higher interests and nobler ends to be regarded than the building up of our division walls. There is work for Christ and for the world to be done, which no de- nominational agency can do. We have a grand illustration of this remark in the no- ble work that has been accomplished in this country by the American Sunday-school Un- ion. It has entered into our new and sparse- ly settled Territories, and achieved a glorious work for the country and for Christ. In the half-centnry of its existence just reached, it has established more than fifty thousand Sun- day-schools an average of over one thou- sand every year. In connection with these schools it has enlisted more than four hun- dred thousand teachers, and gathered under their influence upward of two and a half millions of scholars. Out of these schools more than three thousand churches have been founded. This is a work that no denomination could have undertaken. And there is simi- lar work to do elsewhere, Avhich can only be done by the cordial and united eftbrts of those who love the honor of Christ and the souls for whom he died better than their de- nominational interests. And to secure this result we must have a race of intelligent, large-hearted, consecrated, catholic-spirited Christians. Ephraim must be taught "no longer to envy Judah, nor Judah to vex Ephraim." As members of Christ's blood- bought host, we must forget the different tribes to which we belong, and march on to victory, as the Israel of God, whoso highest aim and effort is to help on the coming of that blessed time in which we shall see "All sects, and names, and parties fall, And Jesus Christ be all in all .'" And if we would see a race of Christians raised up in whose characters these ele- ments are largely developed intelligence, lib- erality, consecration, and catholicity there is 'no better way in which we can secure this end than by the general adoption, and faith- ful use of, the agency of Sunday-schools. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS IN FKANCE. BY THE REV. NATHANAEL WEISS, OF PARIS. LADIES, G ENTLEM EN, A ND HONORE D BRETH- REN IN JESUS CHRIST, The united and cor- dial salutations of numerous Churches have been presented to you in a spirit of fraternal greeting. Some of these Churches are im- portant, and almost triumphant, when com- pared with others of more modest propor- tions, but whose trials mark a period more militant. I am not here as the representa- tive of any ecclesiastical body. My mission is more humble : I come to salute you sim- ply, but very affectionately, ou the part of forty thousand children, of different Protest- ant Churches in France. These salutations, I feel sure, will touch your hearts, notwith- standing their modesty ; for, are they not in themselves a beautiful manifestation of the Evangelical Alliance, since the Sunday- school Society of France, which has sent me, represents the youth of all ecclesiastical de- nominations of French Protestantism ? Have I not the right, then, to say that, far from regretting this mission, I am proud of it ? for, although I am not the delegate of any particular Church, I represent the firmest hopes of all those who, in my country, fight for evangelical truth. I. History of Sunday-schools in France. Every one knows that Sunday-schools are of quite recent institution, as we do not find any mention of them in the time of the Ref- ormation, either in the writings of the Re- formers or in the organization of the new Evangelical Churches. In the early history of the Reformed Churches of France, there was no need for them. In the sixteenth cen- tury the truth was accepted everywhere over the country ; we find that the youth re- ceived their religions instruction and educa- tion in the family circle. Any one familiar with our history knows that the Huguenots were celebrated for the austerity of theirlives, and I believe that some part of their tra- ditions remain in some American families. Parents considered it not only their duty to provide for the earthly wants of their chil- dren, but also to lead them to Jesus, and to work for the salvation of their souls ; they therefore taught them the Scriptures, and inspired them with a faith as heroic as their own ; and with such an education we are not astonished to find such numerous exam- ples of individuals giving np all affection and wealth and often laying down their lives for Christ. As a result of this system, those of the lower classes, who had no other means of learning than this home education, were able to hold great and convincing ar- guments with priests and doctors of the old religion. But, owing to the priests and doctors, those prosperous times did not last long. Persecutions came, and I do not believe that in any country, or at any time, they were ever carried on with more animosity and persistency. They lasted for more than two hundred years ; the churches were destroyed little by little ; families were massacred, im- prisoned, or exiled. The few who succeed- ed in serving God did so in secret, hiding in desert places, and firmly maintaining for their children the religious education, which they illustrated in their daily walk and conversation. But toward the end of these dreadful tri- als many yielded, and pretended to be con- verted to the religion of their persecutors, while trying to remain faithful to the truth. Owing to this extorted hypocrisy, it was thought for a time that Protestantism was dead in France. But from time to time a torture or an execution recalled it to mind. Finally the day came when the Protestants were allowed to profess their faith, and live in their own country. This brings us to the eighteenth century; and our Church enters a period much less interesting than the pre- ceding one. But the few who formed these churches were Huguenots of the old type, who had remained faithful to the Reforma- tion, through all storms and trials ; and a greater number of the new converts, who had pretended to be Romanists, declared themselves Protestants as soon as danger was over. To these were added, later, exiles who had returned to their country, with for- eigners (Swiss, German, Dutch, English, and Alsatian) who had settled in France. The fact, that the largest proportion being those who had returned to the faith once denied against their will, shows ns that we must not depend on old traditions for the relig- ious education of our youth ; other circum- stances have contributed in a great measure to obliterate almost entirely these traditions. The rationalistic doctrines of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alembert, reigned at that time in France, and their influence ex- tended over a large portion of the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, and affect- WEISS : SUNDAY-SCHOOLS IN FRANCE. 411 cd the Protestaut Church. Faith lost its energy, and Christiau life its austerity ; it seemed as though, after so many conflicts, a certain apathy, or inviucible languor, had taken hold of Christians. Moreover, it was necessary to organize the Church, and much time was lost, under the First Empire, by the Churches, who sacrificed a large portion of the liberty they had so dearly bought. What resulted from all this is the question which interests" us. The instruction and religious education of the youth were al- most entirely neglected. Parents scarcely troubled themselves about it, and that care wtis left in the hands of the pastors, who, faithful to the ancient custom (excellent for children trained and educated at home), lim- ited themselves to teaching the catechism, instead of bringing the children, little by little, to the knowledge of the Word of God, and familiarizing them with the stories of the Bible, and thereby gaining their hearts ; they obliged them to learn abstract formu- las, which represented Christianity as a sys- tem ; and when they were able to recite these formulas, they declared their belief in this system, of which they very often had little if any understanding ; they then re- ceived their first communion, and were de- clared Christians. There were exceptions to this rule, but it must be said that this method was generally followed ; and we see iu it some of the causes of the religious in- difference, the weakening of evangelical be- lief, and the intestine divisions which to-day characterize portions of French Protestant- ism. How is it to be wondered at that, iu a country where the adherents of the Gospel are surrounded on all sides by their enemies of yesterday, with a religious education so very inefficient (for it only extends over the last two or three years of childhood, proper- ly speaking), so superficial, and so little ap- propriated to the mind and heart of the child, a great part of those who were sub- jected to it suddenly discovered that they had completely forgotten their faith, or that they believed in nothing, and had gradually lost all interest in the religious life of their Church? But as soon almost as we see the evil, the remedy appears. In 1810, scarcely thirty years after Robert Raikes introduced the Sunday-schools in England, we are told that in France a young minister, supported by English funds, commenced the first Sun- day-school in Bordeaux, In 1814 M. Le- vavasseur, snrnamed Durelle, a native of Jersey, who had studied at Gosport, estab- lished- one in Luneray. In 1820 he founded another in Quie"ry, to-day one of the strong- est churches iu the North of France. In 1819 wo find one also at Nomain ; then, iu 1822, Frederick Monod is said to have estab- lished the first one in Paris. In 1826 one was formed in Bertry (D^partement dn Nord). In 1828 we are assured that there were twen- ty-eight Sunday-schools in France, and in 1852 the idea of religious instruction for children under the care of the laity had al- ready spread to such . an extent that about two hundred Sunday-schools could be count- ed in France. It was at this time (1851) that the Society I represent iu your midst was formed. This Society proposed to spread this idea of Sunday-schools ; it accepted the English and American methods in the divis- ion of the schools into classes, taught by teachers, and in the preparation of the les- sons at a previous meeting, thus introducing a division of labor and universal priesthood; and the laity found in this new method of instructing the youth the means to supple- ment the too visible deficiency of education in the family and Church, the glory of which, I repeat, belongs to England and America. A Sunday-school magazine was published, from 1851 to 1863, by this Society for in- struction of teachers. But it must be grant- ed that, while the right of lay teaching in religion was asserted, and to some extent acknowledged, beyond the immediate fami- ly of the pastor it had little or no practi- cal effect. It was not until this period of 1852 to 1856, when a committee was formed, and France was visited by your very well- known A. Woodruff, that the universal prin- ciple of dividing into groups, and the em- ployment of all competent lay members to give religious instruction, was held to be an obligation. Immediately following this visit, and for two years, Mr. Paul Cook, sus- tained by American money, and who is well known by the services he rendered to our work, visited nearly every department in France; and at the close of his labor it is believed that about four hundred and fifty Sunday-schools existed in France. You see, gentlemen, how much we arc in- debted to England, America, and more es- pecially to the visit of our great American friend, Mr. A. Woodruff, who has done so much for Sunday-schools all over the world. When he came to Paris, iu 1856, he himself reorganized several schools ; and to commem- orate this period, a great meeting of all Sun- day-school children and teachers of Paris was held, where the singing of special Sun- day-school hymns gave enthusiasm to the work. These meetings have been kept up since this impulse was given, and almost every year the vast arena of the Hippodrome at Paris is filled with from two to four thou- sand children, and as large a number of grown persons. These vast assemblies have done much toward popularizing our work. The Paris teachers' general meetings take place every three months, and are often largely attended. In 1857 the Society, fol- lowing Mr. Woodruff's suggestion, consid- ering it necessary to publish interesting, use- 412 CHRISTIAN LIFE. ful, and religious books, founded a Sunday- school library, destined to become a popular Protestant bookstore. It has spent 200,000 francs for the printing of about 300,000 vol- umes, of about fifty different authors; and twenty-one of these works are out of print to-day. In 1864 the Rev. M. Paumier, of Paris, President of our Society, undertook the publication of a little weekly paper for children, entitled " Le Muste des Enfants" (Children's Museum). This paper became popular, and appeared until the end of 1868, when the publication was suspended.forwant of means. Finally a new paper for teachers and Bible classes, which was to take the place of the magazine, also ceased to appear in 1870 ; so that to-day we have no period- ical publication, and are obliged to be sat- isfied with publishing from time to time a new volume, when our resources permit us so to do. Notwithstanding this, and thanks to the labors of the missionary agents, supported at first partly by the societies of America and London, and now especially by the London Sunday-school Union, the Sunday- schools have multiplied in France to such an extent that we can count about 960, showing us that since 1851 about 760 have been founded (thirty-six per year). We are fast approaching the time when each Protestant Church in France will have its Sunday-school, and we hope, with the help of God, to make new and more rapid strides toward the attainment of that complete- ness of organization which characterizes this work in the United States and England. II. Characteristics of Sunday - schools in France. It is time now, gentlemen, that I should give you au idea of the conditions of this work iu France ; its character, as well as the hopes we have a right to cherish. 1. And, first, you must not cease to remem- ber what is so readily forgotten : that not- withstanding constitutional guaranties we have not the liberty of going everywhere, of visiting parents and inviting children to the Sunday-school. The agent who would do that, even supposing the Catholic fami- lies allowed it, would immediately be col- lared by a policeman, and. the Society would have to spend its money in lawsuits with the Government. We may only go to the places where some Protestants have the liberty of meeting to worship. It must be known that, after having fought so long for their independence, the Protestants of France are to-day only tolerated on condition that they shall keep quiet" and make no converts. And when Catholic villages or cities call us, we have many difficulties to overcome before we can obtain the right to answer these calls. I have organized Sunday-schools in two or three places where the Gospel has recently penetrated for the first time, and where small churches have been formed. I have been almost compelled to hide myself to hold meetings, and we could have no sing- ing, lest we attract attention, and I should be called to appear before the tribunals. Religious liberty does not exist in France, and the lack of it is a great drawback to the development of all Protestant work. 2. The French are very intelligent, and very impulsive. They seize quickly and discern promptly the right and true side of all new ideas and of all improvements that may be suggested to them ; and they do not withhold their applause or enthusiasm when they hear strange and true things ; but, on the other hand, they forget readily, and fire often superficial and very conservative, the very slaves of tradition and custom. This is so true that some one has said that " it is only necessary for a thing to be recog- nized as true in France, for them to prac- tice the contrary of that to which they were accustomed." This observation is true also of the French Protestants, and explains a fact which has often happened to me. In conversation I have often heard it said, " The Sunday-school is an excellent thing, and I believe it very necessary ;" and when I ask, "Have you a Sunday -school," or "Do you work in one ?" " No, sir," would be the reply. There are ministers and people in some of our French churches who are yet opposed to the principle of Sunday-schools. But they are decreasing daily in numbers, and as a general thing people approve of this new method of instruction ; but between this and practically assisting and personally helping there is a vast distance ; for instance : One day I met a minister who told me he saw no salvation for the Church but in the Sunday- school. I answered, "You have some in your parish ?" " Oh no, sir ; I had some, but had to give them up." " Suppose we endeavor to rebuild this work ?" " Oh, you can form no idea of the great difficulties we have to contend with ; it would be perfectly useless to try it, sir." They are accustomed to cer- tain traditions, and have a terrible idea of the obstacles to be overcome in exchanging these traditions for new methods. I should not be just, however, if I did not state that we are overcoming this spirit of conservatism. The number of Sunday-schools proves this. But once the first step taken for the founda- tion of the school, the same discussions be- gin again for each and every improvement teachers' meeting, necessity for a library, etc. To-day, wherever it is possible, our Sunday- schools are divided into classes ; and of those I have visited more than a fourth have pre- paratory teachers' meetings. In 1871 a Local Union was formed, by the energy of Mr.Paul Cook, in Nismes (De"partc- ment du Gard). Many schools of this de- partment are visited, and every six months teachers' and numerous other meetings are held, where questions concerning Sunday- WEISS: SUNDAY-SCHOOLS IN FRANCE. 413 schools are studied aud discussed. This Un- ion also supplies the schools with books for their libraries, and by its activity is a great help to us in the South of France. 3. A third observation will show the prin- cipal difference between our Sunday-schools and those of America. With us the Sunday- school, except in one or two cases, is depend- ent upon, and can not be organized outside of, the Church. In the United States, the Sunday-school is, in principle, independent of the Church, and we would often be tempted to say that the Church depends upon the Sabbath-school ; it is a free institution, founded and directed by spontaneous and voluntary efforts, while with us the Sunday-school becomes an eccle- siastical institution. The Church to which the children belong directs it, and has the responsibility of it ; aud it is in the church, or in the school-room adjoining it, that the Sunday-school is held. You see the effects of this system : if the Church is alive and active, the Sunday-school will be so also. If it is indifferent, or its teachings be more or less heterodox, the Sun- day-school will feel it. This is so true that, in some towns where both the principal tend- encies of French Protestantism (that is to say, the Liberal and Orthodox) are represented in the same Church, the children are divided between them. The Orthodox minister gath- ers in his Sunday-school the boys, and the Liberal minister the girls. It is always the Bible that is taught, but commented upon differently according to the views of the pastor. The pastor is generally the superintend- ent. He it is who gives the general lesson, chooses the teachers, directs them, and gives the school its character and stamp. Our Sunday-school Society is an associa- tion of men whose object is the development of the Sunday-school work; but the schools are independent of the society. They belong to their respective churches, who can, if so disposed, refuse us access to them. The only tie between the Society and the Sunday-school is the missionary agent, whose duty it is to visit those schools al- ready established, and to found new ones. When he arrives at any place, ho must first call upon the pastor, or whoever represents him ; obtain permission to assemble the chil- dren, aud call a special meeting of his peo- ple, from among whom the pastor makes selections of suitable teachers ; aud, finally, the school is organized. This is the result of the agent's visit, if successful ; but it is never accomplished without prolonged dis- cussions with the pastor. But here also we are in progress. Two great societies exist in France the SoctitJ Centrale Protestante and the Soeitie iZvangellque for evangelistic work, with each of which the Paris Sunday- school Society are in friendly correspond- ence, and have their promises to do their utmost to establish Sunday-schools wherever they open a regular preaching station. 4. Another fact which must not be forgot- ten is that in France the Protestant Churches are very much scattered. You may go over the entire extent of some departments, and only meet with a single group of Protestants. I have often traveled a whole day before reaching a small church with a modest Sim- day-school. In these distant localities, lost in the midst of Catholicism, and where a stranger is seldom seen, the agent is always received with joy. It is here you see the delight and attention manifested by the chil- dren. What pleasure they take in your care for them, aud in the little books you bring them! This dispersion of our Protestant population over the French soil is one of the great arguments in favor of the Sunday- schools; for were Sunday -schools formed wherever there are (if only a few) Protest- ant children, not only would it prevent these scattered groups from disappearing, but form the nucleus of more vigorous flocks. Owing to these various circumstances, our visits take too much time. It requires from four to six years to visit all the Protestant churches and missions of France. Thus you can readily understand how the influence of the agent is diminished by these infrequent visits, and consequently the many years nec- essary to introduce the new ideas and meth- ods represented by him. We must now say a few words, gentlemen, with regard to the future of this our Sun- day-school work in France. First, we hope, if our means increase, to be able to supple- ment the infrequency of the agent's visits, by a weekly illustrated paper for children. Second, we believe it will be possible soon to organize other Local Unions like that of Nismes. If we succeed, this French Protestant work will have made a great step toward your co-operative system, which I may almost say forms the basis of your social organization. As to the results we may expect, we may say that the future of the Sunday-schools in France is intimately bound up in the future of French Protestantism. I have endeavored to give you a summary of the principal difficulties of our particular work. I ought, perhaps, to have dwelt more upon the facilities, the bright sides, for there are some; and the reminiscences of the agent are not always darlr, some are very bright and cheering. In many localities I have met with such deep aud joyful religious life as to surprise me, especially in the North of France. But I did not come here to say that all was case and prosperity with our Sun- day-schools. No, for the difficulties are real , and the activity of Catholic Ultramontanisni increasing in truly frightful proportions. Protestantism gains ground in cities, more 414 CHRISTIAN LIFE. especially in manufacturing districts, where it makes proselytes among the working classes. In the rural districts, on the con- trary, it either remains stationary or de- creases. Yon are aware that in France the population does not increase, and the mixed marriages often carry over the few children there are to Catholicism ; so that it may be said, as far as numbers are concerned, Prot- estantism loses on one hand what it gains on the other. Its influence, however, is greater than could be expected from its nu- merical strength. We are not one thirty- eighth of the population, and in the Cham- ber of Deputies alone one-tenth of the mem- bers are Protestants ; and certainly Protest- antism has overcome many prejudices, and its work has not been in vain. But it would do more were it united, active, and animated with a more powerful spirit, although it is not uncommon to meet with some energet- ic and decided characters. For instance, I will here relate the case of a Sunday-school scholar. At Saint Audelain, a village in the Departement of La Nievre, where many con- verts have been made from Romanism, some two years ago a Sunday-school was insti- tuted, and now numbers ninety children. At the recent Government census the moth- er of one of the scholars, although secretly Protestant, described herself and children as Catholics, from fear of the priests. The child, upon hearing the same, was uneasy, saying she was no Catholic, and would not be so de- scribed, giving her mother no rest until the alteration was made. Yes, Popish bondage, the slavery of the soul and body of the na- tion to the Church of Rome, this is the great enemy we have to fight against, more auda- cious than ever; and we know that it does not hesitate to use the most extreme meas- ures. We must, therefore, endeavor to create, by means of the Protestant Sunday-schools, a new generation, more vigorous, more Chris- tian, and less fearful. When our Saviour wept over Jerusalem, he knew that all would forsake him, never- theless he hesitated not to accomplish his expiatory sacrifice. May we also in this great work never falter at any sacrifice; and the little tree, yet small and weak, will grow up to a larger and stronger one. SUNDAY-SCHOOLS- THE BIBLE SERVICE. BY THE REV, J. H. VINCENT, D.D., NEW YORK. I PROPOSE to speak of a comparatively modern institution, which, although still called " Sunday-school," is quite unlike the most excellent enterprise inaugurated by Mr. Robert Raikes, of England, a century ago. Of his work and its later modifica- tions too much in the way of praise can not be written. It has received from the churches a cordial indorsement, and under the Divine blessing has been of untold advan- tage to our race, saving its tens of thousands from ignorance and from spiritual death. " The Bible Service " of which I now pro* pose to speak, although of recent origin in some sense, indeed, an outgrowth of the mod- ern Sunday-school movement^is, in fact, one of the oldest and most fully authorized agen- cies of the Christian Church, meeting the demand which was in other ages met by ec- clesiastical provisions of which I shall here- after speak provisions justified by the ne- cessities of Christian character and experi- ence, by the example of Christ and his apos- tles, and by specific commands in both the Old and the New Testament. Believing that the work which this in- strumentality is designed to accomplish is hindered by indefinite and incorrect theories, and by the defective methods which embar- rass the Sunday-school, it is my purpose in this paper to show the distinction between the Robert Raikes " Sunday-school " and the modern " Bible Service," that the two may be no longer confounded, but that both may receive recognition, and each perform the distinctive work to which in the providence of God it is called. I respectfully invite your attention to a few well-considered statements, which will lead us to a correct understanding of the true theory and work of the great institu- tion to which our time and thought are now devoted. 1. The work of the Holy Spirit in the processes of awakening, regeneration, and edification is performed through the truth of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. This truth "maketh wise unto salvation," "converting the soul," and promoting in all believers Christian growth, strength, purity, and activity. 2. The Church is " the pillar and ground of the truth," upholding, announcing, per- petuating, and defending it, that men may bo warned, attracted, persuaded, sanctified, and instructed by it. 3. The most efficient agency of the Chris- tian Church is the CHRISTIAN FAMILY. Be- cause of its early access to the child, its right- ful authority, the susceptibility of its sub- jects, its opportunities for the repeated en- forcement and illustration of truth, it tran- scends all other means in importance and power. There is no place like home for re- ligious instruction. Our highest thought of God is as " Our Father 5" our highest ideal of the redeemed Church is that of "the whole family in heaven and in earth ;" and the fair- est type of heaven on earth is the family where parental authority is exercised that it may be a shadow of the Divine authority ; where the details of daily life are directed by the purpose to illustrate the grace and power of the religion of our Lord Jesua Christ. 4. The Church, in obedience to her Found- er's command, provides the PREACHED WORD. In connection with it are services of prayer, praise, and Scripture reading. This agency, never more effective than now, can never yield its pre-eminence. For a little child, though he understand not one word of the sermon, I know no more powerful teacher of religion than is furnished by the great con- gregation, the open Book, and the living preacher. The service of praise, of Bible reading and exposition, of prayer, and of preaching puts the seal of heaven upon the Sabbath-day, brings into public notice the divinely appointed and endowed ministry, and suggests by its great assemblies the uni- ty of the race, the universal need, and the universal provisions of grace. The Church, through the family and the pulpit, is to teach the truth which saves the soul. 5. At this point let me ask, What shall bo done for the tens of thousands, even in Chris- tian lands, who have no such home influence, and who are never brought within the sound of a Gospel sermon , who in ignorance, deprav- ity, and wretchedness are running to ruin, imperiling at the same time the nation of which they form a part f ROBERT RAIKES'S SUXDAY-SCHOOL is the answer. Its efficien- cy can not bo overstated. (1.) It welcomes, clothes, cares for, and instructs the young. (2.) It supplies voluntary, Christ - loving teachers, who sacrifice personal ease for the sake of souls, and who thus become to these pupils what mother and father and pastor would otherwise have been. (3.) It renders religious truth and religious service familiar 416 CHRISTIAN LIFE. and attractive by its charms of song and picture and of skillful teaching. It was in Raikes's day a substitute for secular teach- ing ; it is now as then a substitute for family religion, a substitute for pulpit instruction, a substitute for pastoral care. The Robert Raikes Sunday-school is a missionary insti- tution. 6. An additional word or two concerning this substitutionary agency the Robert Raikes Sunday-school an institution dif- fering widely from the "Bible Service" which I here discuss. (1.) The Robert Raikes Sunday-school loaves its best work undone so long as it neglects the HOMES from which its members come, and so long as it fails to bring both parents and children under the influence of the PREACHED WORD IN THE SANCTUARY. Mission schools are intended to establish true home life, and to bring their members under the full influence of the Church. (2.) The Robert Raikes School can not exist within the bosom of the Church as an accepted substitute for home and the pulpit without detriment to the institution that fosters it. The distinction which makes the Sunday-school the "Church for the Children," excusing them in view of its pro- visions from the public service of the sanc- tuary, is damaging in the extreme to children and parents, and to the Church itself. We want no substitutes for the family altar and the pulpit in our modern Church! 7. I now come to speak of another agency in operation among us, usually called " The Sunday-school," but which, as I have al- ready said, differs materially from the mis- sionary appliance just described. This agency I call " The Bible Service." Of it let me assert (1.) That it is not designed especially for the members of irreligious families. It would have a legitimate and important service to perform even if all families rep- resented in . it were consistent, studious, Christian households. The mission element will be represented in the " Bible Service," but its distinctive aim and character are not dependent upon that element. (2.) I assert that it is not designed to be a substitute for the pulpit; for where the Word is preached with greatest clearness and vigor the "Bible Service" is most in demand. (3.) I assert, again, that this new depart- ment is not designed exclusively for chil- dren. These will always be present, form- ing, indeed, an important section of it ; but the juvenile feature will not be emphasized. Its songs and mottoes and programmes will not be chosen with exclusive reference to the needs and tastes of children, but rather with an eye to the power and preciousness of the Word of God. The young man and the maiden will be there; the strong man in middle life and the mother of children will be there ; the venerable sire, who, having long tested and long trusted and long loved the Scriptures, will be a patient, teachable, and delighted member of the " Service." (4.) It will no longer be SUNDAY school, as though the larger opportunities of that blessed day were the only reason for main- taining it ; and the idea of Seii'ice, without entirely displacing that of School, will be pre- dominant, for the closest study in accordance with the most approved methods of the sec- ular schools will become a beautiful and spiritual " service " unto the Lord. (5.) I have already anticipated in part my definition of the "Bible Service," which, more fully stated, is that department of the Church of Christ in which the children, youth, and adults of the Church and com- munity are thoroughly trained in Christian knowledge, Christian experience, and Chris- tian work. It co-operates with the family and the pulpit. As much as they do, it de- pends upon the Holy Spirit. It has one text- book the Holy Bible. It has one specific aim spiritual edification. It is the train- ing department of the Church : not a recruit- ing office, but rather a military academy. It is not for children merely, but for Christians of all ages. As preaching and the accom- panying services of the sanctuary are for children as well as adults, the " Bible Serv- ice " is for adults as well as children. Here the instructions of the family, the secular school, and the pulpit are supplemented by class recitation, discussion, and conversation. Here take place the activity, the attrition of brain and heart, by which truth is made clearer to the understanding and gains a firmer hold upon the affections. 1. The design of this BIBLE SERVICE is in harmony with the teachings of the Word concerning the value and power of the Word as a means of grace. " The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." " Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee." "I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong ; the w r ord of God abideth in you." "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly ; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another." "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for re- proof, for correction, for instruction in right- eousness, that the man of God may be per- fect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2. The BIBLE SERVICE meets an acknowl- edged demand for the proper study of the Word of God. This is indispensable to spir- itual growth. After preaching must come teaching. Preaching of a certain kind is ' teaching ; but the best effect of a sermon or lecture requires a supplemental catechisa- tion, in which, when wisely conducted, lies the very essence of teaching. Now the VINCENT: SUNDAY-SCHOOLS THE BIBLE SERVICE. 417 profitable knowledge of God's Word can not be attained without "conversation," " discussion," " disputation," " interlocuto- ry discourse," or by whatsoever name you please to call it. Mind must come in con- tact with mind. We must have study as well as reading, searching as well as hear- ing, teaching as well as preaching. In the Church of Christ the cultivated must instruct the illiterate, while these, in turn, by their experience in the sweet and hidden mysteries of grace, may be able to throw light upon many a text obscure enough to those who have applied only hu- man learning to its exposition. So shall God's people edify each other, and no mem- ber shall say to another, " I have no need of Ihee." 3. The BIBLE SERVICE is, moreover, a per- petuation, or rather a revival, of a custom prevalent in the days of Christ and of his apostles, and to be found in the Church whenever she has most largely enjoyed the presence of the Master. Teaching, in the sense already described, is an important part of her work. Jesus was pre-eminent- ly " the Great Teacher." His methods were those of the modern school rather than those of the modern pulpit. By questions, con- versations, and illustrations he excited the minds of his hearers to self-activity. His longest addresses were usually in reply to some inquiry which his own teachings had awakened. And even after his public ad- dresses or sermons, in which he spake the Word to the people " as they were able to bear it," when they were alone he expounded all things to his disciples. Familiar with his methods, his followers went forth "to preach and to teach in his name." Conver- sation, discussion, catechisation, were ordina- ry methods of instruction in the New Testa- ment times. In those days the Church was a school, and all Christians were " disciples." " They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine," the " word of Christ dwelt in them richly," and " in all wisdom they taught and admonished one another." Paul was a con- stant teacher, " disputing and persuading, at Ephesns and elsewhere, the things concern- ing the kingdom of God" i.e., "holding conversations" with the people in order to persuade them of the truth of the doctrine of Christ. In the Apostolic Church " teachers" were appointed, and these certainly were not in all cases "ministers of the Gospel." The Jewish " assemblies " for the careful study of the Scriptures and of the Talmud were familiar to the early Jewish Christians. In the first century, Christian schools were in- stituted. In the fourth century, we find a rigid and thorough catechetical system in operation. The wise leaders of the Church in all ages have recognized the necessity of this training process, in which, by way of 27 preparation for the pulpit, or in order to supplement its instructions, the plan of indi- vidual and class catechisation was adopted. Read the fervent appeals of Baxter in thin behalf. Read Luther, Trapp, Bridges, Henry, Usher, and a score of other devoted men, who long ago felt the need of a service such as the Church now craves, and is about to find in fullness and efficiency, as the best fruit of the modern Sunday-school. 4. The BIBLE SERVICE, by embracing the adults, will save to the Church the youth who are now held in the Sunday-school with so much difficulty. It will no longer be re- garded as a " children's affair." By making it a service of the Church, in which the piety and culture, the age and dignity of the Church are represented, we shall correct the false and perilous theory which now deters, especially our young men, from a cordial identification with it. It will be deemed as " manly " a thing to attend the " Bible Service" as it uow is to be at "public worship." I am not an alarmist, and yet I confess to some solicitude when I see our children brought up to neglect preaching, and at the same time taught to regard the Sunday- school as a children's institution. In early manhood they are, by their theory, gradu- ated from the school, and, not having been habituated to attend preaching, find an easy excuse for neglecting all public worship. My hope is in the " Bible Service," which shall be regarded as a supplement to tho pulpit, and not a substitute ; a department of the Church, and not a human append- age ; a " service " for all, and not simply a " school" for the young. 5. The BIBLE SERVICE will promote that knowledge of the Bible which is tho only sure means of opposing tho skepticism of our day. Error must be met by truth. It is strong faith in the Word of God that over- comes the world in whatever form its an- tagonisms are encountered. Thus the Mas- ter conquered in the wilderness of Judea. The Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Many of the charges of modern infidelity are based upon an entire misapprehension of the Word of God, and an acquaintance with tho mind of the Spirit as revealed in the Scriptures will enable us promptly and triumphantly to refute them. It is true that the Christian's power in an- tagonizing skepticism is found in the strong undercurrent of internal testimony which tho Word of God contains, but into which those alone can come who patiently, thor- oughly, and devoutly study its contents and imbibe its spirit. Again, knowledge of the Word quickens zeal, develops spiritual life and activity, and imparts that moral power which, revealed in the life, is the most ef- fective because an unanswerable reply to all doubt. 418 CHRISTIAN LIFE. C. The BIBLE SERVICK trains n baud of de- voted and competent teachers, who rightly estimate the power of truth and the dignity of the teacher's calling, and the importance of a careful preparation for so high and holy an office in the Church of Christ. 7. The BIBLE SERVICE is the most valu- able auxiliary of the pulpit, because, it pre- pares the people to desire and to appreciate expository preaching. A knowledge of the Bible, and the custom of conversing upon it in the family, the classes for study, and the social circle, will whet the appetite of the people for Biblical and evangelical ser- mons. It is a significant and gratifying fact that, with the new awakening of the Church to the importance of Bible study, and while the hearts of Christians of all communions are turning toward each other in longing after closer fellowship in Christ Jesus, just at this juncture the great international les- son movement should have been inaugu- rated. The same Scripture lesson is studied each Lord's day by five millions of people Baptists, Congregatioualists, Lutherans, Methodist Episcopalians, Protestant Episco- palians, Presbyterians, Reformed. The Lon- don Sunday-school Union will adopt the same lesson in 1874. Already in Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, India, the les- sons for 1873, from the books of Genesis and Matthew, have been translated into the lan- guages of those countries. The prospect now is that iu all the tongues of evangelic- al Christendom, the Holy Word being opened at the same place, the same lesson will be recited by old and young. This interna- tional movement deserves a careful consider- ation by the members of this great Ecumen- ical Council, in view of its value in exalting the Bible above all creeds ; in increasing facilities for Bible study, commanding the ablest talent and the entire religious press in weekly Scriptural exposition. It pro- motes familiar conversation upon the Oracles of God among business men, and travelers who casually meet iu the intercourse of sec- ular life. Engaged upon the same subject, they find pleasure and profit in a compari- son of opinon. It facilitates the preparation of the lesson by teachers, renders teachers' meetings more practicable, enables persons iu this age of emigration and constant trav- ' el to continue the same course of Bible study wherever they may be. The interna- tional system publishes to the world the fact of the true unity of God's people, as it is an answer to the Master's prayer : " Sanctify them through thy truth . . . that they may be one." As a step toward popularizing the study of the Holy Scriptures by increasing the ef- ficiency of teachers, the great Sunday-school Unions of this country, the American, Bap- tist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Episcopal, have agreed upon substantially the same course of normal class training for Sunday- school teachers. It is expected that this enterprise will elevate the standard, com- mand the confidence and respect of the Church, and train our senior scholars to be- come competent Bible teachers. This will be a realization on a broader scale than he anticipated of Dr. Moses Stuart's suggestion, made in 1852, in an article on " Hebrew Criticism " contributed to the Bibliotheca Sa- cra, in which he so ably pleads for " a sem- inary on an adequate pecuniary basis, the sole object of which should bo to teach, to explain, and to defend the Bible." He says, "An appendage of this critical Bible School (into which last laymen, if they desire it, as well as theological students, should be ad- mitted) should be smother department, with at least two competent teachers, to fit youth, male and female, for the great business of Sab- bath - schools. A residence at this depart- ment should be at the election of the pupil as to length of time, beyond a half year's course; but none should be admitted for less than six months." I am happy to report that many churches in this country have organized these normal classes, and that in New England many have given to the "Bible Service" one-half of the Holy Sabbath, providing in their programme for each Lord's day, 1st, a sermon ; 2d, a Bible service of careful investigation and class teaching; and 3d, a public devotional nnd conference meeting, iu which the fruits of the sermon and the Bible Service are dili- gently, devoutly, and confidently sought. And now to the Eternal Word, who hath revealed unto ns the wisdom and glory and grace of our Heavenly Father, bo honor and praise forever. Amen. FIFTH SECTION -CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. BY CEPHAS BRAINERD, ESQ., OF NEW YORK.* No association of , young men for a com- mon purpose can be otherwise than inter- esting to a student of the times or a lover of his race. And as the purpose in which they make common cause increases in dig- nity, so must the interest with which these men are viewed intensify. When their avowed purpose is the grandest possible, when the number united to forward it is large and constantly increasing, when the tie which connects the individuals grows stronger with passing years and increasing numbers, it is fit that a place should be ac- corded to the movement in the discussions of a Council as august and important as this. Young Men's Christian Associations had their origin in a desire to reach and save unconverted young men through the agen- cy of converted men of the same age and class. This was the thought in the mind of George Williams when, in 1844, in the city of London, ho organized the first Asso- ciation. That thought was carried across the At- lantic in a letter of a young sophomore of Harvard College, now a director of the As- sociation in this city, containing a vivid de- scription of the Society in London. This letter was published in a Boston religious paper, and suggested the organization in that city, though independently the Asso- ciation in Montreal had been previously formed. Since then the societies have rap- idly multiplied, except during the late war, and have grown in power and usefulness. The large cities and towns are not ex- clusively their fields of service. In small towns and remote villages they do a noble work. In one county, not the largest or most populous in the Dominion of Canada, are some twenty-seven in active operation, and even there the call is for more. Let me present, briefly, a few figures touching the present condition of the Amer- * [On the programme, this paper was assigned to the day devoted to "Christian Life," where it now ap- pears ; but the delivery of it was postponed to the evening of October 11 for a special meeting in behalf of Y. M. C. Associations, at which a number of ex- tempore addresses were also delivered by foreign and American delegates. Ed.] ican Associations (i. e., those in the United States and the Dominion of Canada), for I gladly confine myself to these, not only be- cause of the necessary limits prescribed by you, but because, as I understand, several members of this Conference from abroad will address you concerning the societies in Europe, with which we are fully in accord. Thirty-seven buildings have been dedi- cated to the uses of our work since 1867, varying in value from $400 to $500,000, and aggregating $1,914,450, each in a good meas- ure corresponding in its proportions to the field which the Society occupies, and many of them of rare architectural beauty. For- ty-three have building funds, aggregating $447,967 ; while in the important cities of Baltimore, Montreal, and Halifax, Nova Sco- tia, buildings are now in process of erection which will be completed within the current year. There are now sixty -three general secretaries, or agents, steadily employed by these Societies in the prosecution of their work, some of whom are clergymen, but the greater proportion laymen, w r ho have dedi- cated themselves to the cause " of Christ among and for young men." Other Socie- ties are now perfecting plans for the employ- ment of such officers. Their duties are the general supervision of our work. In select- ing them we seek those who can and will engage young men in this service for their fellows, and who will give such ideas of its character, and so present its duties and sub- stantial joys, as to retain them as systematic and constant workers. We now report nine hundred and twenty- four existing organizations, some in full ac- tivity, with a constantly extending sphere of labor and influence ; others with but lit- tle more than a name to live. Of these one- half forwarded reports of their work, con- siderably in detail, to our recent General Convention, and three hundred and eighty- one reported a membership of 63,700. It is just to state our actual membership at 100,000. I do not doubt that it is more. The annual current expenses of the two hundred and seventy-two who report that item is $272,654. During the last year, there was a net increase of eighty societies. 420 CHRISTIAN LIFE. So everywhere there is progress. States and sections on which for some years the ( General Committee has expended much thought and labor are now showing evi- dence that the seed has been well sown, and those who witnessed the planting of twen- ty years ago, and have watched the early growth, are now glad of heart, and more willing than ever to give and to serve in that cause aptly described in some of our formal papers as " labor iu Christ's name by and for young men." These societies had their origin in an ob- vious necessity. The cities were full of young men whom the churches did not in- fluence, or even reach. These were appar- ently unaffected by any existing agency, and so the idea was evolved of organiza- tions which should employ converted young men to reach the unconverted of the corre- sponding class. The society has been char- acterized by two distinctive features : 1. It has been wholly undenominational, and based upon the belief that the average American young mau, outside of church in- fluence, was more open to the approaches of such an agency ; and, 2. Work has been performed almost wholly by Christian laymen, because these were best fitted to carry it on ; and, also, because the ministry could not, under the limitations of human strength, as well as denominational exigencies, perform it. It was not in the beginning supposed that there was a field for the society else- where than in the larger cities : but as the contention with the evil influences which debauch our young men continued, it be- came apparent that there was a place for our work in every town, where the existing denominational agencies failed to affect the young men as a class ; that the town which could support a saloon where liquor was sold to young men, and Avhere they could gather nightly, and find the gaming table, low papers, and vile companions, also de- manded a counteracting agency, and hence the Associations of the smaller towns, with their modest reading-rooms, their annual courses of lectures, their receptions, their sermons, their cottage prayer-meetings and Bible classes, and, in the appropriate sea- sou, their open-air services. Even in com- munities where this specific effort for young men has not been made, Christian young men, associated undenominationally, have found fields for work which they could cul- tivate to better advantage than the indi- vidual churches. We have definite purposes, definitely stated. In 1855 our Conference at Paris an- nounced, in concise formula, that Young Men's Christian Associations were " societies which have for their object the formation and development in young men of Christian character and Christian activity. They seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, ac- cording to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their doctrine and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the ex- tension of his kingdom among young men." And this declaration has been reiterated over and over again in our Conferences, on both sides of the Atlantic ; and from it there is no dissent. Such is our object, formally, officially declared. What is the Christian profession and char- acter demanded of those who participate actively in our work ? Let the Associations speak for themselves. . At our General Convention in 1869, one of the largest ever assembled, consisting of more than 650 accredited delegates, theso declarations were adopted without dissent : "Resolved, That, as these organizations bear the name of Christian, and profess to be engaged direct- ly in the Saviour's service, so it is clearly their duty to maintain the control and management of all their affairs in the hands of those who profess to love and publicly avow their faith in Jesns, the Redeemer, as Divine, and who testify their faith by becoming and remaining members of churches held to be evangelic- al. And we hold those churches to be evangelical, which, maintaining the Holy Scriptures to be the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (the Only Begotten of the Father, King of kings and Lord of lords, in whom dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and who was made sin for us, though knowing no sin, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree), as the only name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved from everlasting punishment. "Resolved, That the associations organized after this date shall be entitled to representation in future conferences of the associated Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, upon conditions that they be severally composed of young men in commun- ion with evangelical churches (provided that, in places where associations are formed by a single denomina- tion, members of other denominations are not ex- cluded therefrom), and active membership and the right to hold office be conferred only upon young men who are members in good standing in evangelical churches." This action gave universal satisfaction. I have no recollection of criticism from any quarter where sympathy with an evangelic- al work is expected, nor have we swerved from the principles thus laid down. Watchful, too, have we ever been lest somo should claim an assertion on our part of equality with the Church. On this point the declarations of our Con- ventions are explicit : "Resolved, That we consider it the bonndeu duty of the members of all Young Men's Christian Associa- tions, calling themselves Christians, to hold their du- ties and obligations to their respective churches, and to services of the same, as having a prior claim upon their sympathy and efforts. "Resolved, That, in the prosecution of the work for the Saviour among young men which they have as- sumed, they should heartily and zealously co-operate with the divinely appointed ministry, and with all evangelical bodies of Christians." Iu the progress of the American societies, BRAINERD : YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 421 the General Conventions (of which eighteen have been held whose international char- acter you will not fail to notice) have per- formed a most important and controlling part. At the outset there was no thought of intercourse or union. Their annual meet- ings were held, as this conference is held, simply for prayer, comparison of views, and free discussion. Then, a general committee was appointed for one year. Then, declara- tions of principles, definitions of the work to be performed, and of its methods and agen- cies, until now we have reached a complete representative organization, with accredited delegates proportioned upon the member- ship in such societies as have incorporated into their constitutions the principles of the resolutions which have just been read. Here, more than " the comparison of views and free discussion" are contemplated. We have re- ports of work performed. We recommend, and intend to commit the societies to, definite courses of action ; we insist upon our evan- gelical test, and seek to give it potential force and aggressive power in the work that is prosecuted by every one of the associa- tions, and in the individual life and service of every one of their members. While act- ually pronouncing upon practical topics, and discussing them with warmth and earnest- ness, as matters of business, these conven- tions have never lacked special evidences of God's presence and blessing. They have uni- formly been seasons of deep spiritual refresh- ment, both to the delegates and to the peo- ple of the community in the midst of which they have met ; for the sessions are invaria- bly attended as are the sessions of this Con- ference by all the people whom the place of meeting can contain ; and often this sweet influence has extended beyond those who profess a love for Jesus, to those who were indifferent and careless, and has tarried after the departure of delegates, a reviving and transforming power. To secure permanently these results, and to guarantee uniformity in effort, the con- vention is now represented by a committee, appointed for three years, which employs as many agents- as the funds placed at its dis- posal will allow. It has at present two who are constantly engaged in attending local conventions, in visiting the associations, in organizing new ones, and in extensive cor- respondence with the leading members of the societies in all parts of the continent; while acting in concert with the committee are a large number of business men who de- vote more or less time, as their employment permits, to the same work of visitation. As the societies multiplied, the General Convention failed to meet all the require- ments for conference and intercourse. All the societies could not be represented, and conventions of Associations in nearer neigh- borhood to one another became necessarv. Such State and Provincial conventions, to the number of one hundred, have been held the past seven years in twenty States and five Provinces. They resemble closely the General Convention, having for their chief object the promotion of a better knowledge of one another's work through oral and writ- ten reports, and also suggestion and instruc- tion in regard to the methods and agencies by which the work can be best carried on. One familiar with these conventions is impressed at once with the striking resem- blance between them and this imposing con- ference of world-wide influence, composed of men of world-wide fame. We meet upon the same platform of Evangelical Christian unity ; the same spirit of devotion breathes in both ; a kindred popular interest gathers about the sessions of each ; we seek alike a comparison of views and free discussion ; we aim to cultivate and extend the senti- ment of Christian unity. But there exists also a single striking difference. We aim to go further and practically utilize this sen- timent of Christian unity by associating Christians especially laymen of the va- rious denominations in the work of leading individual men to Christ as the Saviour from sin. Nor is our work considered fin- ished while the young man who has been led to Christ through the agency of the As- sociations is unconnected with a church of his own selection. His duty in this regard is always strongly urged upon him. Some particulars in which the General Conventions have been most useful may properly be enumerated. 1. In the beginning they insisted that the Societies should bo more than merely union prayer-meetings of Christian young men. 2. Then they restricted the action of the Associations to the field of service as al- ready defined. 3. Then they insisted upon vital piety in the members, and upon labor for the salva- tion of young men, as the primary object. 4. Then they emphasized the importance of lay preaching, " not " to use the words of our Convention "because the laymen are better preachers than the clergymen, but because the preaching of the Gospel to the whole world is too large a work for the ministry alone to do, and too important to be left undone." 5. Without the fostering care and encour- agement of the successive conventions, the work of building Association homes would have made but little progress. 6. The Evangelical Church test, now un i- versally adopted, to which reference has been made, we owe to the Conventions. 7. Year by year in these conventions has the importance, yea, the indispensable ne- cessity of Bible study been so urged upon the Associations, that the result is now ap- parent in the multiplication of Bible classes, 422 CHRISTIAN LIFE. and in an increased love for and study of God's Word by individual members. 8. All along the line of these eighteen con- ventions, recommendations have been made relating to all the details of work in the in- dividual societies, by \vhich their policy has been settled, and their work adjusted, thus insuring a shapely and harmonious growth. 9. Above all, we thank God for these con- ventions, because in them leading Christian young men from all parts of this mighty continent, and from all the churches, have been brought together for the consideration of a common and majestic -work ; and by the outpouring of God's Spirit, their hearts have been so fused into one that no tie of organization or form of union is needed to secure their united action in any great work for the Master's honor. They can not be separated ; but as individuals and societies, they stand together as sharers in a common work, in like trials, and the same glory. One word as to the individual Associa- tions. They have adopted substantially the same constitution, and the work has been performed in all of them under the super- vision of committees of Christian young men, each having a prescribed field ; our purpose being to employ as large a number of persons as possible. I. We have the secular agencies : 1. An open and pleasant social resort for young men ; for we hold that any place that is large enough to support saloons, where young men are ruined, is large enough to justify the opening, by its Christian young men, of some place of resort for innocent recreation. The reading-room has been the chief, too often the sole reliance of the Asso- ciation in this part of the work. But some- thing more than this has been found nec- essary. A cozy, pleasant parlor or sitting- room, somebody to welcome strangers, a musical instrument, a library, an occasional social meeting, with singing, readings, or other agreeable entertainment, lectures, the gymnasium some or all of these tend to create about the well-located rooms that so- cial stir and interest which adds greatly to their usefulness. 2. At the social meeting, simple refresh- ments have often promoted the object in view. 3. Much emphasis has been laid on the importance of music as a means of attract- ive entertainment. 4. Familiar lectures, or talks to young men on the laws of health, by the best Christian physicians in the place, have also been of service in the work of the Associa- tion. 5. The gymnasium, the library, education- al classes in the evening for young men, the Employment Bureau, securing situations for those in need of them, and a hall for its own and other public meetings. II. Prominent among the religious agen- cies at the rooms are 1. The Prayer-meetings. .The well-known daily union meeting has been a blessing in many of our cities and towns. 2. The Bible Class is most faithfully sus- tained by our societies in the British Prov- inces. One in every two of these Associa- tions maintains such a class, while only ouo in every five of the societies in the United States are active in this branch of the work. 3. The Service of Song is au interesting and popular feature of the religious work in some of our Associations. 4. The personal activity of the individual members is the mainspring of all religious work, and is always indispensable, and al- ways insisted on. 5. In order to carry on the work thus very briefly outlined, it has been found nec- essary, particularly in our larger towns and cities, to secure a competent officer to de- vote his whole time to the supervision and care of the Association. The General Sec- retary, when most efficient and useful, is ex officio a member of the Board of Directors, and also of every working committee of the Association. 6. A building or home of its own seems to be as necessary to the highest usefulness of an Association, as it certainly is to that of a church. 7. Christian Boarding-houses for young men have been successfully maintained in connection with a few Associations. Ear- nest efforts to direct young men to good boarding places has been, for many years, an acknowledged part of the work. But the experience of the past loudly calls for the maintenance, in our larger cities, of boarding-houses for young men like those above mentioned ; buildings constructed ex- pressly for the purpose, with small but cheer- ful and cleanly kept rooms, and where whole- some and well-cooked meals will be served in an orderly way, and at a price within the reach of those who are making an attempt of the first one or two years of business life in the city. III. The activity of Christian laymen, to which the society owes its working force, has often found, in various quarters, a field for useful effort, wherever Christian work can, for local reasons, be better performed undenominationally than in the name of any particular church. 1. The tenement-house in our cities con- tains such a community, and the tenement- house prayer-meeting has often been a fruit- ful branch of the work. 2. The immense boarding-houses, which, in some manufacturing cities, accommodate large numbers of the operatives, are always open to us. 3. Country neighborhoods, destitute of BRAINERD : YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS. 423 stated religious services, have been often found ripe for a similar good work. 4. The Cottage Meeting is more restricted in its influence, reaching only a few families. 5. The Open-air Service calls together an audience which seeins to be best appealed to by those who come to it in the name of an undenominational society. The associations and their work have been described. Let me call your attention to three striking and peculiar features espe- cially pertinent to the discussions of this Conference : 1. The training received in these societies has increased greatly the working force of the Church. They have helped, they are help- ing, to solve the great problem of lay labor, which President Hopkins has justly termed " THE problem now before the Church." 2. The young men engaged in them all over the continent are from all the churches. In this common service they leave behind them denominational peculiarities, they meet on a common platform, and learn to love its simple propositions, an:l to love each other. They love not the Church home less, but the Church universal more ; they see eye to eye, and their chief glory is that souls are saved, and the Master honored ; and, 3. The men thus bound together advance in years; and one by one they come to the front in all the relations and activities of life. Thev take in their turn the lead in the enterprises of Christian benevolence and philanthropy; they, too, become statesmen, legislators, and administrators. They are to stand with the foremost in church councils. Will they love each other less then ? Will they shake off the effects of their early training ? Shall they be less in harmony ? Shall " height or depth, or any other crea- ture, be able to separate them ?" Will they not practically exemplify and illustrate, in every walk and relation of life, in adminis- tration both of Church and State, the essen- tial unity and oneness of all the disciples of Christ not in word merely, but in work as well ? Yea, they will! The union in which they are now held shall grow stronger and closer with advancing years, and the lesson taught by this great Conference confirms the answer. Already something has been done. Of all things capital is most sensitive. Yet this Conference meets in one of the few build- ings in the wide world capable of accommo- dating it, which is dedicated to the work of the one Saviour, in a service in which the clerical representatives of every Evangelical denomination bore a conspicuous part. But this building is a gift of the capital of the Christian men of New York to a Young Men's Christian- Association, and their unquestion- able testimony to the value of its past serv- ices, and to their confidence in its promise for the future. But this is one only out of eight hundred in the brotherhood. V. ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. Wednesday, October 8th, 1873. DIVISION V, CONTENTS, FIEST SECTION MODERN EOMANISM AND PROT- ESTANTISM. PACK J . DORXER : The Infattibilism of the Vatican Council, and Nominal Protestantism 427 2. HITCHCOCK : Romanism in the light of History 436 3. FISCH : The Present State of Popery in France 438 4. WITTE: Ultramontanism and the Four Prussian. Church Laws.. 443 5. DOBNER (AUGUST) : Reaction in Germany against Ultramontanism 440 6. STOERS: The Appeal of Romanism to Educated Protestants 449 7. FISHER: Protestantism, Romanism, and Modern Civilization 461 8. CUMMINS: Roman and Reformed Doctrines of Justification 467 9. COULIX: Protestant Ministers and the Demands of the Age 475 10. HOYEY : Christian Liberty 481 SECOND SECTION THE OLD CATHOLICS. 1. OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS: Letter, with Introduction by Schaff.... 485 2. HYACIXTIIE LOYSOX : Letter 490 3. KRAFFT: Vatican Council and Old Catholic Movement 491 4. PROXIER : Roman Catholicism in Switzerland. 498 THIRD SECTION EVANGELIZATION OF ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 1. BERKELEY : Evangelization in Ireland 508 2. LORRIAUX : The Evangelization of France 517 FIRST SECTION -MODERN ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM, THE INFALLIBILISM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, AND NOMINAL PKOTESTANTISM. BY THE REV. I. A. DORNER, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin. IT is a righteous iudignation which is felt against the Council of the Vatican that it should sanction a dogma of such fearful and far-reachiug importance as the Infallihility of the Pope ; and it is the duty of pure and evangelical Christianity to contend against it in doctrine and life. But, in order to con- tend successfully, we must understand our adversaries, must discern the roots of the er- rors, which are powerful only in that they are connected with great truths. And, again, in order to contend as Christians, we must strive with sorrow and sympathy, with that love which would have our brethren likewise in possession of the truth, and which does not proudly exalt itself above other commu- nions, but is mindful of the infirmities of our own. Sin, manifold and contradictory as it appears, is yet fundamentally one ; and it is just so with error. In this spirit I would treat both parts of my theme, iu order that we may strengthen one another iu the common joy of the pure Gospel, whose light has been restored to us by the Reformation, fruitful iu blessings, as the mother of us all. I. The Fatican Dogma of the Infallibility of the Pope. I shall not deny but that pride and thirst for power suggested to many of the Popes the idea of the infallibility of the pretended successor of St. Peter. But it does not suffice to say that all the Vatican Coun- cil were moved by pride and lust for power, to do the will of the Pope, to sanction this dogma. For the bishops have rather exhib- ited servility than pride ; they have thereby sealed their own submission under the Pope ; they have solemnly and formally divested themselves of their official equality with him in apostolic origin and dignity. It is true, moreover, that the Romish Church has there- by been thrown back into a gross and deep error, from which it can hardly arise again without a great internal revolution ; for the whole structure of the hierarchy, the pillar of the truth, would thereby totter and become suspected. It is true also that now the ut- terances of the Pope are like the canon law, and must be esteemed as inspired ; yea, that the Pope, as the authentic interpreter of the sacred Scriptures, is above the canon of the apostles and prophets. But, nevertheless, we can not justly understand this power- ful error without seeing its connection with great Christian truths, whose caricature it is. We can not master it entirely until we clearly and purely apprehend the evangelical truth of which it is a counterfeit. The in- fallibility of the Pope would not have become a dogma without the consent of the bishops. Why did they yield, not only those who for a long time had acted as mere servants and menials of the Pope, not only those accus- tomed to regard religion as a mere mechan- ical, ceremonial service, who without aston- ishment added this dogma to other dogmas yea, merely wondered why others regarded the matter as so serious but other bishops likewise of more earnest spirit and deeper religious interest? Why did, particularly, the German bishops submit themselves, who at first had bravely resisted ? At the begin- ning of the struggle they, not less than the " Old Catholics," drew back with horror from this dogma as a mystery of error, or lies. But their opposition became weaker and more lukewarm, until at last they capitulated with resignation. I shall not acquit them of cowardice and fear of man ; but the human heart is a deep thing, and strong in self-deceptions and ar- tifices. The entire episcopal order would not have submitted themselves with so much unanimity, had they not supposed that only in this way they could preserve great Chris- tian possessions. The error of papal infalli- bility was designed to subserve tiro great pos- sessions, \iz.,t\\Q preservation of the Unity of ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 428 the Church ami of Christianity, ami the secur- ing of awuraace or certainty respecting gen- uine Christianity, the latter through the for- mer. The unity of the Church was for them, as it ever is for the Catholics, more important than assurance; for they believe that all as- surance would be lost forever by a dissolution of that unity, and that if we know where the Church of the Lord is, the pillar and ground of the truth, we know likewise where his truth is. For they say, How shall the head lose its body f How shall the Lord ever give over his entire Church to error? But if the Church be split asunder, wo no longer know where the true Church is. Therefore unity must be maintained at all hazards : for by the Church preserving its unity, even God may be compelled, as it were, to be with it ; and his Spirit may be unable to leave it without rendering the entire divine work of redemption null and void. This unity of the Church has been found for a long time in the hierarchy, which is con- stituted by the perpetual apostolic succession of bishops, the only legitimate descent from the apostles ; and the unity of this hierarchy, culminating iu the Pope of Rome, is and must be watched over by God and secured from error. But in the fifteenth century, and at the reforming councils, the hierarchy could no longer preserve the unity of the Church. The councils were against the Pope, and the Pope against the councils; each mutually shook the faith in the other, and thereby the Ref- ormation became necessary and possible. Aft- er the Reformation had been accomplished, and had torn away from Rome a great part of the most energetic and promising nations, a more anxious and vehement effort was man- ifested to bring the faithful remnant com- pactly together under a monarchical head. A prelude was prepared to that system of absolute monarchy which in our day has stepped forth openly on the stage of history, chiefly through that order which is no less the vindicator of the theory of the worst ab- solutism of the Pope and his perpetual dicta torship as of his infallibility, than it is the bitter enemy, yea, the deadly foe of Protes- tantism. But other influences also were at work for the same result. The States developed them- selves after the American and French revo- lutions more and more independently. They withdrew themselves from ecclesiastical guardianship, and, in consciousness of their divine right, established the boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical power, freedom of religion, worship, and conscience, and the equality of citizens of different confessions. The entire modern political life called all the faculties of the citizens into activity as never before, and, accustomed to their partic- ipation in public affairs, threatened from thence a reaction npon the Catholic Church. Moreover, the most eminent spirits ainon the Catholics, at least in Germany, were car- ried on with the advance of learning among the Protestants. Common training-schools, common public employments, mixed mar- riages, common literature more and more modified Catholicism, yea, often evangelized it. The internal unity and uniformity of the Catholic faith were furthermore threatened, if not dissolved. Then Romanism saw that the time had come either to go down to ruin, or, by a gi- gantic effort, a life and death struggle, to overthrow the new civilization, which is so repugnant and foreign to its very soul, and to undertake the great restoration of the Ro- man Catholic system against liberty, civil and religious. For this nothing seemed to avail but the establishment of the most ex- tended dictatorship, the endowment of the Pope, as the centre of unity, by consent of 1hc Church,Mviih a power that placed at his dis- position the entire energies of the Roman Catholic nations, individually and collect- ively. This was and is the bold, grand plan of the Ultramoutanes. They were successful in holding the Vatican Council almost un- disturbed, and in fulfilling their purpose. The council accomplished the abdication of the ancient power of the episcopacy in favor of Roman absolutism ; and even better spir- ited and reluctant bishops yielded in order to preserve and to secure for future time the unity on which for them all the possessions of the Church depend, even the greatest one of assurance of the truth. Since, now, the entire episcopal order has submitted itself to the absolute sovereignty of the Pope, the octogenarian shows him- self inspired with fresh energy, hopes, and claims. Iu a brief of this year, 6th of March, he literally teaches the Catholics: "It is a religious duty and the will of God that they should devote themselves necessarily and absolutely to the wishes and admonitions of the holy throne, and that all wisdom for be- lievers consists in absolute obedience, and ready, constant dependence upon the throne of St. Peter." Thus the Pope is now virtu- ally the Church, its soul, the pillar and ground of truth and tradition ; for he decides re- specting the true tradition of the past; or, in other words, the entire Catholic world is his body, which he rules as the ever-living Peter yes, the representative of God. All dualism and strife between Pope and bish- ops, Curialisin and Episcopalism, seem to be ended, and unity secured forever. The summit has been reached ; but what effect has it npon the possessions of unity and assurance ? I answer, this craftily de- vised work of man can not do what was ex- pected of it, neither for the unity of the Church nor for the assurance and certainty of Christian truth ; but will work what was not expected. Let us consider both points : CORNER : THE INFALLIBILISM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, ETC. 420 first, tb:it papal infallibility docs not further, lut deeply disturbs the unity of the Church. Once it was not necessary for salvation to believe this infallibility, as can not be denied by the most rigid infallibilist ; yes, still ear- lier it was forbidden by an ecumenical coun- cil of Constance. Now to believe it is con- sidered tbe sign of highest piety ; now it is necessary for salvation, and to deny it has become a damnable sin. The successors of Pope Honorius were obliged to curse him as a heretic; now we are to believe that the Pope, as such, is infallible, and that he who believes what the Pope believes is orthodox. In view of such facts, what is to be said of the unity of the liomish Church with itself f Papal infallibility separates present Catholi- cism from its own past; shows the changea- bleness of the apparently unchangeable uni- formity of the Catholic faith and Church, which is still the fascinating magic word that draws many millions in triumphant procession in its train. Again : the Council of Trent still recog- nized as a fence and restraint against arbi- trary innovations the principle that every dogma must rest upon historical tradition, and that the Church can be bound only by that which is supported by Christian antiquity, or is not in any way in contradiction to it. All this was already changed by the new dogma of the immaculate conception; still more is it the case now. Constitutive tradi- tion, with the right of inventing new dog- mas, has been established in place of histor- ical tradition, and by that an objective per- fectibility of Christianity is taught, formerly condemned in the Montanists or Tertulliau. The infallible Pope is granted the right of giving forth from the shrine of his heart, like Pandora from her box, new dogmas at his pleasure ; yes, likewise the right of deciding by his authority respecting tradition ; the power of declaring that that has not been done which has been done, and that that has been done which has not been done for in- stance, the harmony of the ancient Church with modern Romanism. The sovereign lord of the Church, the Pope, has now been eman- cipated from the previous bonds of historical tradition ; the Church has been given over unreservedly to the unlimited subjectivism of a single man. But what is this unity in itself of which the Romish Church is so proud, and by which even the opponents of the new dogma at last became misled ? They would rather be united in error than expose the Church to the danger of a schism by resisting the error which had become strong and obstinate, and thus by their agreement the error was made incurable so far as man can see. But is unity of absolute value in itself, without regard to its substance, without regard to truth f The unity of the Church can not be artificially made by man ; it is an interior invisible life, created by God. Unity is of absolute value when it is unity in truth and in the Holy Spirit. But when the Holy Spirit is grieved by the recognition and furtherance of the universal sovereignty of error, where is any value left ? If truth has disappeared from the Church, it has lost its characteristic mark, and is a corpse, however beautifully attired. Such .unity is an empty shell, and there is imminent danger that the Church may in this way become like the Temple in Jerusalem, wheu our Lord, departing from it, said, " Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." The new dogma creates a unity which is a disunion with that apostolical and primitive Christian truth whose possession is the life of the Church. The stronghold and power of the Church are no longer to be seen in the truth, but in the carrying out of the hier- archy to its highest point. Still further, the infallibility of the Pope deepens the contrast between the members of the Church, bet ween the clergy and the laity; dam- ages the equality of all Christians before God ; yea, places all Christians in blind servitude to one mortal and sinful man as their ruler and Lord. That again is destructive of true Christian unity. It likewise threatens more than ever the peace with the different Christian denominations. Christian unity and brother- hood, for which our Lord prayed in his high- priestly prayer, becomes a communion under servitude, a nonage under an infallible Pope. But the saddest feature of the new dogma is that, even in its highest reference, unity is destroyed iu the name of unity, through the insertion of this human mediator. For still more important than this disturbance of the internal unity of the Church is the disturbance of the union and immediate communion of the individual person with God which this now dogma sanctions as valid, since that now the Pope alone enjoys and concentrates in himself the influences, the direct communications of the Holy Spir- it. The now dogma will no longer have the Holy Spirit to dwell independently in the believers ; henceforth they are to bo mere- ly passive channels for the water which is to flow from the Tiber at Rome. But not even the Pope himself has this immediate communion with God for his entire person, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life. For the new dogma involves likewise a separation of the intellectual life from the moral and religious, since papal inspiration is inde- pendent of the degree of personal morality. Moral reprobates have disgraced and may disgrace the Roman throne ; notwithstand- ing, according to the new dogma, the Spirit of God is bound to those who have ascended this throne by human, changeable modes of election. But it is essential to the nature of Christianity that light and life, enlightening and sanctification, should be insepamble. 430 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. What has been said may bo enough to show with what result the unity of the Church lias been provided for by the new dogma. Let now sec what it has done for the assurance of the truth, or for certainty. This dogma, we must say, as it is destructive of true unity, likewise poorly provides for as- surance of the truth; not only because the unity of the Church, that is said to answer for assurance, is not established by this dog- ma, but weakened ; but also because it is not yet quite clear and certain what,"J0gui e ca- thedra," infallibility of the Pope, per sese, pre- cisely mean. Moreover, since the principle of subjectivism is let loose in the Pope, ac- cording to modern Roman Catholic doctrine, it is not certain what on the morrow may be sure and necessary for salvation. Again, since all depends, not upon the fixed sub- stance of the Biblical truth, but upon its agreement with the Pope's formal authority aud teaching, this system of formalism ren- ders the whole substance of Christianity en- tirely indifferent, provided that the formal authority of the Pope is recognized. This formalism not only implants indifference con- cerning the substance or content of truth, but likewise involves skepticism : for the in- fallibilist cau only accept each doctrine hy- pothetically, so long as the Pope, the master and ruler even of tradition, will allow it; and the new dogma implies the denial that truth in itself cau be known, and that it has the power and the tendency of making it- self known and proving itself, and that. the believer can get a firm persuasion or inter- nal conviction of Christian truth independ- ently of changeable external authority. Therefore we conclude that the modern Romish system does not create true unity iu the Church, or certainty or assurance iu the soul ; but it combines Antinomianism, or the absolute autonomy of the one individual, the Pope, with Legalism and the servility of the people in ignorance and uncertainty of truth itself; a kind of Caesarism claiming to be spiritual, with arbitrariness, indifference, and changeableness. This system can only ac- complish a kingdom of external obedience, a kind of State, which has merely incidentally to do with religion, that is to say, with God, and affords only a relation of man with men. Such a system must come into collision with every self-conscious State. The empire of the Pope would be a spir- itual empire above all States, endowed with almost all the attributes of the State, even the power of coercion. Pervading Christen- dom and all its States, as a second State in every State, it must sooner or later offend every State that is conscious of its office, and endeavors to realize its own idea, and does not submit itself. It is a great error, as we have seen in Ger- many, to suppose that the State can avoid this conflict by not troubling itself about this Church. If the State does not trouble itself about this Church, the Church will trouble itself about the State, and appropri- ate more and more the State's prerogatives. If the State applies itself to its duty of caring for national education and training, it will have to contend with this Church, which would alone conduct all training and in- struction. If the State would inspect the Catholic institutions for the training of the young and the education of the clergy, in order to see whether they are abused to cor- rupt the national spirit, fill the youth with sectarian hatred, conspire against the inde- pendent rights of the State, implant servile doctrines respecting the superiority of a for- eign sovereign, the Pope, over the State, and inculcate disobedience to the State when re- quired by the Church then there must be a conflict with this Church. If the State, as in duty bound, protects from violence the freedom of those of its citizens who have as- sumed vows of celibacy or the cloister, and have given to the Catholic Church the right of punishing them in body, estate, and honor should they break these TOWS; who, how- ever, have subsequently seen that these vows are sinful, and that it would be fresh sin to keep them then the Romish Church com- plains that its freedom has been violated, and there is conflict. Or if the Romish Church misuses its excommunication aud the threat of the ban, for the purpose of pre- venting Catholic judges and magistrates from the fulfillment of their duty, even when against the interests of the Romish Church, or for the purpose of gaining political tri- umphs at the polls the State has simply the alternative, either to repress such abuse of spiritual authority, or to be recreant to duty and honor. The modern spiritual State of the infalli- bilists, governed by the Jesuits, would mass the Catholics compactly together as a par- ticular nation in every State where Chris- tians of different confessions are mingled; and thus divide the State within itself into hostile camps, which could not but finally lead to a life aud death struggle. Therefore the principle applies with reference to the infallibilists : " Videant consults ne quid res- puWica detrimenti capiat." This hostile po- sition of the Catholicism of the iufallibilists toward the modern State is for t us a still further proof that the unity of the Church offered by the Vatican is a false unity, be- cause it is hostile to good and divine insti- tutions ; yes, it is a calamity. If the State does its duty with reference to this evil, it will thereby further the cause of the pure Gospel. The State may not and must not inter- fere with the internal affairs of the con- science and the Church ; it must not itself originate or rule any one Church or all of them. But its office is to protect the free- dom of the citizens, that the system of sup- DORNER : THE INFALLIBILISM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, ETC. 431 pressing the freedom of the person in relig- ious things, or the poisoning of the nar tional spirit by servile views, may not lie al- lowed ; that still more evjery one may have the opportunity of seeking the truth in re- ligious things, and of living in accordance with the measure of the knowledge he has attained. This protection will he of ad van- tage to the sounder elements that may still remain in the Catholic Church, and for the so-called Old Catholics. Nevertheless, true help .can not come to Catholic people from the State, but ouly from the Gospel, which makes free in God and binds to God ; which gives a firm and assured heart through the truth, and forms the right foundation of the true unity of the Church, notwithstanding the differences of denominations. II. Nominal Protestantism. We have thus been brought to the consideration of evan- gelical Christianity. And that we may not give ourselves over to ecclesiastical pride, we must now consider the evils of nominal Prot- estantism existing among us against which we have to contend. Evangelical Christianity is the free-born daughter of the Reformation. It has recon- ciled the principles of authority and freedom in the moral and religious sphere, For the Gospel proves itself to evangelical faith as a power of God. The believer is overcome in his intelligence, will, and feelings by the spiritual power of redeeming truth in Christ ; and thus has first of all an assurance of per- sonal salvation in Christ, a subjective knowl- edge of himself as redeemed, and then, at the same time, an objective knowledge of the Redeemer of his divine power and grace. This victory of truth, as light and life, is at the same time a victory over doubt, skepticism, disunion, and enmity with God. In one word, man, by faith, is restored to unity with himself and God to unity of Christian character, and that is the founda- tion of all true unity of men in the Church. For how could there bo a unity of the Church if its members have chaotic and internally discordant elements within their own persons ? And, on the other hand, how can those who are born of God refrain from loving their kindred of the divine seed? But this possession of evangelical assurance and unity in the truth is to be gained only by ever Avrestling for it anew, and this ou ac- count of natural indolence. Moreover, the generations change ; and every new member attaching himself to evangelical Christian- ity must begin anew, although supported by the faithfulness and earnest example of the more matured. We have the treasure of the Gospel, but only in constant reproduction. Now the process of this reproduction may bo disturbed and interrupted ; and where its nor- mal course is stayed, the unity gained in the faith of the Gospel again begins to dissolve. The different elements which had hitherto been united #gain separate, and there ap- pears once more, on the one hand, a mere ob- jective authority or law a legalism without union with freedom ; on the other hand, a freedom which is rather arbitrariness dog- matical or ethical Antinoinianism ; and the substance of the Gospel is soon altered by both, on the one side in new forms of super- stition, based, however, upon indolence of faith, or unbelief, which creates for itself, in- stead of the riches of spiritual experience, substitutes of a sensuous nature ; on the oth- er side in the form of an unbelief, based, how- ever, upon superstition, which trusts in the self-sufficiency and independent authority of the natural man. In the one case there is a 4eification of the object, in some form of the creature ; in the other case, a deification of the subject. Both of these contrasts, which existed be- fore the Reformation even before Christian- ity are again, as a matter of fact, disclosed iu our times in Protestant Christendom ; and this is, indeed, the chief conflict of the Church of our day. 1. Alarmed by the abuse of freedom on the one side, many flee from freedom altogether. Lest they should open the door to disorgan- izing arbitrariness, they iniprisou Christian- ity itself; lest they should give room for sub- jfctmsm, they lead the way to an objectivism, which is human bondage. Church authority is made the basis of faith ; the symbols of the Church and their formula are placed above the pible ; and Church tradition is most scrupulously guarded, not because it is the truth, but because it is tradition ; and thus there is a zeal for unevangelical doc- trines \vhich are based merely on tradition. Many who are especially anxious for the cred- it of orthodoxy subordinate the study of the Scriptures to the symbolical books and tho ancient dogmatical writers. They are amazed when the believer in the study of the Script- ures shows the necessity of harmonizing more completely Church doctrine with the Bible. They are sluggish in the fulfillment of the duty of the true scribe, in bringing out of the treasure of the heart things new and old (Matt, xiii., 52). There is a tendency, still more extended, to substitute for the an- cient, conscious, personal form of piety, an impersonal form, which lives in shadowy and aesthetic feelings of an indefinite kind. This they accomplish by means of gorgeous cere- monial and manifold symbolism ; by subor- dinating tho preaching of the word to the liturgy and the sacrament ; by the propaga- tion of Christianity rather by cramming the mind with Christian material than by lead- ing to Christian knowledge and the personal appropriation of the truths of salvation ; by sensuous forms and ceremonies, to which spir- itual indolence ascribes the power of per- vading the entire man, as a fluid, with mag- 432 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. ical influence. Ami connected with tins there is likewise an uncvangelical emphasis of the power of the keys, and a Romanizing distinc- tion between the clergy and laity, which is rooted in the nuevaugelical doctrine of sac- ramental ordination. This method, which is a reaction from evangelical Christianity, is unfruitful in religion, is unsuited to the needs of the present age, and to the ever youthful Gospel, and to its regenerative power. It is related to the present as a peevish old man who would carefully guard a rich inherit- ance, yet allows it to rust and spoil, because he does not increase it by use, and does not continually coin and distribute the noble inetal of the Gospel. The Church will never in this way prevail over the masses of the people who are estranged from it. Rather this leaven of Romanism which has again been brought in leads back behind the Reforma- tion, of which it speaks with unhappy retrac- tions and regrets, while it takes away or shakes the evangelical assurance of faith, de- stroys the present evangelical unity, and misleads, if not to apostasy to Rome, yet to weak efforts to establish on evangelical soil a kind of duodecimo popedora in every con- gregation. But we can not linger by this foul stream, which now flows through the evangelical Church of more than one land. It has already been condemned by what has been said with reference to the modern Rom- ish Church, of which it is but a dwarfish, in- consistent copy. 2. We must, however, dwell for a while upon that other contrasted form of nominal Protestantism, that would be called Liberal Protestantism. In appearance it is entirely different from Roman Catholicism, and that tendency of Protestantism just described ; and this is, indeed, its wish and opinion re- specting itself. Yet the inconsistency is that, unconsciously, it is essentially the same. Lu- ther once used this appropriate language : " Papismus est merus enthusiasmus" (we would now say : " IdealismUs" or " subjectivis- mus"). Tradition, apart from the Holy Script- ures, is, indeed, a product of human ratio, and supposes a justitia such as is pleasing to the natural reason. We may likewise ap- ply these words inversely. The nominal Protestantism of which we are speaking shows itself to be the twin, of Romanism when we look deeper into its principles. a. It is true that this nominal Protestantism would by all means have the freedom of the person and free investigation vindicated ; but it is simply because it ascribes to every individual the same subjective autonomy and independence of the truth that Romanism concentrates in one person, the Pope. b. It is true, moreover, that the liberals in- sist upon the individual's own subjective as- surance; they would not have assurance from the objective power of the truth, but from the subjective decision respecting it; they would know nothing of an objective authority. They therefore reject tradition, and oppose every kind of obligation to the symbols of the Church. And so in recent times they have, in the different countries of Europe, n* if with oue watch-word, concentrated their attacks especially against the Apostles'Creed. They regard the symbols of the Church a.s merely dead forms and heavy ballast op- pressive to the spirit. They are conscious of a freedom from all external authority, so that they claim the right of every individual to teach in his own Church whatever his free investigation has found ; yes, likewise, the sacred Scriptures are of authority to them only with such reservations as render them all illusory. If any thing displeases them, they say the sacred writers have not report- ed faithfully, or have mingled Jewish and Alexandrine theology with it. Yea, so far have some of them already gone that they suppose they can reject even words of Christ with which they do not agree ; for even the mind of Christ, they say, was tinged with er- roneous Jewish ideas. Some still recognize Jesus as the sinless Sou of man, or ideal man, whose origin, however, was not supernatural, for every man may be morally perfect and blameless by the use of his freedom. How- ever, Jesus was to them the first to experi- ence and reveal the great truth that God is not a God of wrath, but of love. Others of the same party go so far as to urge us to carefully distinguish the ideal from the his- torical Christ. All the lofty predicates that the Church, in accordance with the Script- ures, ascribes to the historical God-man in his unity, they heap upon the ideal Christ, who, again, is identified with the Spirit of God, or God himself; while the historical Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, is at the most a symbol of this ideal Christ, audit is indiffer- ent how far Jesus may correspond with him. Jesus is to them a mere man, howbeit his re- ligion is genial; God and man are persons external to one another even in Christ, so that after Jesus departed from the earth he has at the utmost the significance of an ex- ample, and the merit of having been the first to speak the great truth of the Fatherhood of God, although not always consistently. This truth, say they, can now perpetuate it- self without his assistance or co-operation ; and there is no more need of his mediation with the Father, for all men are children of God, and are to be brought to acceptance and blessedness, although by many ways, through virtue and morality. The natural conscience, with its power and clearness of perception, they assert, is sufficient to guide all men into all truth ; for man is empowered by his con- science to sit in judgment over all dogmas. Thus this form of Protestantism, in the name of science, loosens all the historical founda- tions of Christianity and evaporates its doc- trines. Like the Romish Church, it dissolve:* DOKNER: THE INFALLIBILISM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, ETC. 433 the unity of God an4 man, and thinks that it has reserved for Christ a resurrection in the spirit ; while it denies him or buries him, as the Reformers charged against Rome. o. The Church of the Infallibilists has pre- served a series of genuine Christian truths as a traditional possession ; but these are buried under the rubbish of modern errors, and the weight of the monstrous and diver- sified apparatus of Romish ecclesiasticisra, and have thus become deaf and dumb salt ; and hence are hardly to be taken into con- sideration as a ground of difference. The only difference between the two errors that can be found is this : modern Catholicism limits the unrestricted arbitrariness or subjectivism to one point, in order that all the rest may be placed in blind dependence on it ; while this modern, degenerated Protestantism demands autonomy and self-sufficiency for all. The re- sults, however, with reference to the assur- ance of salvation and of Christian truth, are es- sentially the same, and it is even so with the unity which they leave us. In order to give assurance and certainty of the truth of the Church, Infallibilisin sets up as the funda- mental dogma that the subjective mil of the person sitting upon the throne of Rome is to decide with divine authority respecting truth and error ; while that nominal Protestantism, in the interests of assurance of the truth, en- dows the subjective will of every person with the authority of deciding what is to be bind- ing upon him. Both alike regard the object- ive divine truth, given in the personal ap- pearance of Christ, as not endowed with the power of testifying to its own truthfulness, attesting itself, and making evident, and di- vinely assured. Arbitrary subjectivism as- cribes the power of deciding what is to be obligatory truth, to the creature, without God : on the one side to one person, the Pope ; on the other to the multitude of co-ordinate persons, in their natural condition. d. The same similarity of principles appears, moreover, especially with reference to tJie recon- ciliation of man with God. The Catholic doc- trine is here a combination of Pelagian and magical elements. On the one side, merito- rious works, propitiating man, are required ; on the other, indulgence is dispensed. It is very much the same with the so-called lib- eral theology, which bases the reconciliation and justification of man, on the one side, on moral intentions and works (religion being subordinated to morality) ; on the other side they believe that men are entitled to forgive themselves their own sins, or to regard their sins as forgiven by God, basing themselves upon that idea of God which regards Father- hood as knowing no wjath ; alas ! also, no justice. As they do not go back to the me- diatorship. of Christ, what is it but, on the one side, self-absolution, without cost to self; on the other, a delusion of possible self-atouc- H)HJ ; ? 28 e. Now this is simply to fall back into the errors of Romanism through a form of Prot- estant nominal subjectivism, errors which penetrate even to the idea of God. Instead of holy justice, arbitrariness appears in both conceptions, and is called goodness. In- stead of free grace for Christ's sake, without which no one can stand before God, there appears in both views the law, demanding, but not giving, moral purity and change of the inmost heart, which no one can accomplish of himself. /. Again, on the one side we have the super- stitious self-deification of the Church ; on the other, the no less superstitious self-deifi- cation of the personal subject. In both con- ceptions the man who makes the creature the centre, excludes himself from the divine centre, and on the very basis of the deifica- tion of the creature there is left a mere deist- ical view of the world separating it from God. g. Again, this resemblance of the principles of the so-called liberal theology with modern Catholicism may be shown from other points of view. The Church of the Infallibilists, as we have seen, establishes a formal unity and authority over the substance of the truth and its value, but thereby falls into an tndif- ferentism with reference to the truth itself. They study merely the preservation of unity and uniformity, indifferent as to what the substance of the bond of union and Chris- tianity may be. At the same time, we have seen that the background of this formal /- falUbilism is a skepticism which doubts wheth- er the truth itself can be universally known. The same indifferentisni yes, skepticism is manifest likewise in this nominal Protestant- ism, so soon as it forms associations, or seeks a communion, as it has recently endeavored to accomplish in various ways. It is true they talk of assurance and knowledge ; but, inas- much as they confer upon all men the prin- ciple of unlimited autouomy, it can not but be that the most contrasted elements come together in these associations, and that a uniou through the same principles and their authority becomes impossible. How can per- sons of such opposite views bind themselves together in unity T There is but one way, that no one should value his view as true and certain. Should any one earnestly claim his view to be the true one, the union would be at once loosened or dissolved. Hence the continuance of such a union is possible merely as a school which is seeking the truth, but is not in possession of it ; but not as a religious communion rejoicing and living in its faith. And yet this is the more favorable aspect. For if we are ever to be seeking and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth ; if we refuse the truth when present to us, and obliging us to accept and advocate it, we fall into a skepticism which despairs of the possibility of knowing the truth as 434 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. an objective and universal entity, or else it seems indifferent whether we arc in posses- sion of the truth or not. I know that these are severe words. There are, it is true, in such associations men who are in possession of the Christian truth, but who by their mem- bership hope to regain others who have been estranged from the Church, thinking of that comprehensive word of Christ, " He that is not against us is for us." But, if they would remain sound in faith and love, they should think likewise of that other word that re- minds us of the decision which every one must make : " He that is not with me, is against me ; and he that gathercth not with ino, scatteroth abroad." h. So long as the bond of unity for such an association is not found in definite, positive Christian truth, nothing remains but to seek unity, partly in opposition and polemics against others, partly in certain external forms and organizations. This is the reason of the great controversial character and war- like spirit as well of the Catholic Church as of this so-called liberal Protestantism. The organization sought from this stand -point involves the idea of finding a form of com- munion in which every one may continue in absolute autonomy and religious sovereign- ty, and at the same time not be deprived of the blessings and enjoyments of communion, and the permanent right to the same. But what are they to love and cherish in com- mon, if there is nothing positive that is held in common? That which excludes nothing includes nothing, but remains hollow and empty. So far, then, as acting in company is concerned, they lay great stress upon free election. The members ascribe to themselves the power to vote by the majority respect- ing all things, even respecting the doctrines that are to be allowed or held in common. Thus they fall into the same error which sound judgment blames in the councils, that they established a mechanical method of de- ciding respecting what is true and well pleas- ing to God, which method is inadequate to the truth and its laws. Nominal Protestant- ism and the Romish Church both alike are destitute of any clear, firm norm of decision. The former, because they would build upon the variously constituted reason of the auto- nomic subject, and by the various methods and results of their historical even dog- matical criticism of the sacred Scriptures render every proposed norm again illusory. The latter, because they establish, though unconsciously, through historical or consti- tutive tradition, changeable human ideas in place of the rock of evangelical truth ; which ideas, when in contradiction with the Holy Scriptures, are, as the Reformers justly said, merely products of the naturdlis ratio humana. Both, consciously or unconsciously, must ar- rive at the same end, and accept an ob- jective perfectibility of Christianity. Both finally labor for the unnatural separation of the intellectual side of man from the mor- al and religious. The Romish Church claims for the Pope an enlightenment through the Holy Spirit independent of his moral and re- ligious condition. But the work of the Holy Spirit is of one piece, light and life go togeth- er. The modern so-called liberal Protestant- ism, again, in spite of Schleiermacher, ia in- tellectualistic and rationalistic. They would base religion upon knowledge, less now of a philosophical than of a historico- critical character. But they show by the very fact of their undertaking that they do not under- stand religion, and its true independent char- acter which Schleiermacher so classically vin- dicated. They put their own opinions re- specting God in place of religion, while they can only ascribe to them some probability, and can not regard the views opposite to, their own as impossible. Upon this subject allow me to dwell for a moment. Historical investigation and criticism are certainly authorized. In this way the Ref- ormation began, going back to the sources ; and never will Germany, the hearthstone of the Reformation, allow herself to be deprived of the right of free investigation, which has made her theology so rich and strong. But not every investigation rewards the investi- gator. We see in Germany that the object of investigation dissolves under the hands of many. The anatomical knife of their crit- icism can not find the spirit, which veils it- self from them, so that while they retain the body, the mere external material, the soul has flown away. The only cure for these errors and defects, as well as for the errors of infallibilism and false objectivism, lies in the truth of the Reformation; for why is it that nominal Protestantism can no more than Romanism attain a firm position, a truo knowledge of the Gospel? / think there itt one common fault. They do not understand what religion is. They do not know that religion, by its very idea, can not be made by men, but by God, his preveuient grace ; since religion is not thinking, or acting, but mutual, harmonious communion between the giving God and the receiving man. Again, they do not truly know their need of redemp- tion. Pascal says, " Unless a man knows that he is no longer what he should be, he lacks the first condition of self-knowledge." The first assurance is, that we are sinners, laden with guilt. This is the fundamental cer- tainty or assurance which leads the sincere inquirer further on. This is likewise the beginning of true fellowship, of true spirit- ual union that weknow our race to be one in guilt and need of a Redeemer. Where there is this vital knowledge, and a longing for peace with God and with our- selves, history is examined, in order to see whether it any where shows the form or ap- DORNER : THE INFALLIBIL1SM OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL, ETC. 435 pearauce of the Redeemer. He who thus, with the glance of longing for a Redeemer, will remain standing before the form of Christ in Holy Scripture, is susceptible of all the divine features or radiating influ- ences of his appearance. They seem to the alien and the profane contradictory in their divine paradoxy ; the groveling intellect gropes externally round about the holy ob- ject, or picks it to pieces like a flower. But the susceptible soul is met by an unexpected divine harmony shining forth to greet him. Christ would be the Redeemer and Fulfiller of mankind, nothing less ; therefore where that sensorium for a Redeemer, the true re- ligious and theological organ, is lacking, the whole person and work of the God-man falls to pieces. But the sinner longing for re- demption has a burning-glass within him, which, gathering the beams in one point, concentrates them to inflame his heart, and to give light, and warmth, and life ; so that in the believing look upon Christ the old man is consumed, and the new man arises in the creative glow of the love of God revealed in Christ. He is thus assured of his cause, and stands firm as a rock amid the fluctuation of human opinions ; assured first of his sal- vation in Christ ; assured no less of his di- vine Saviour; free through him not only from doubt and uncertainty, but likewise from seductive and changeable human au- thority. Again, in close connection with true assur- ance is the true principle of unity, as love with faith. This is the doctrine of the Reforma- tion yea, still more, this is the pure Gospel. We have looked at the errors to the right and the left : superstition based upon unbe- lief, unbelief the fruit of a superstition which deifies itself. May we thereby learn to love and value afresh the evangelical truth which our forefathers won by their own blood. May this joy in the kernel of the Gospel, in Christ and his free grace, likewise unite all evangelical Protestants more and more close- ly together. Indeed, it becomes us to cultivate unity more than in the first three centuries of Protestantism. It becomes us for our own sake, since we are going into a conflict of in- creasing earnestness. It becomes us for the sake of our opponents to the right and the left, to whom we have not to darken, but to recommend, by concord and love, that which alone can make them free and happy ; " for by this shall the world know that we are 7ii* disciples, if we have love one to another." It becomes us for the honor of Christ, under whose banner we stand. Since the Refor- mation wo have scattered in a hundred ves- sels upon the great ocean of nations ; it is time, to use the language of Homer's Odyssey, that wo should think again of the voorot; (the return home) that is, the unity of the sons of the Reformation. As evangelical Christianity has almost become an image of the dispersion of the nations, as we have al- most lost and in many ways misunderstood one another, it is time that we should again show ourselves to be children of Pentecost, which united the dispersed nations and tongues by the power of the Spirit, who com- bined an infinite variety in unity. We have fled from Romish sa?nenes,that leads to mere mechanical principles and death. But dif- ferences likewise, when they alone prevail, bring poverty, bitterness, and destitution of the Holy Spirit. Let us labor, then, that the differences ex- isting among us, which are all before the eye of God, may straightway become, instead of means of estrangement, rather a bond of unity, in giving arid receiving as it is the will of the Holy Spirit. This is furthered in an especial manner by tho idea of our Conference, which unites the parts of the globe together in an unprece- dented manner ; those two especially in which Christianity has thus far become the prevailing power on earth. May this Confer- ence be productive of the increase, not ouly of the spirit of peace among us, but also of mutual appreciation and co-operation in the gifts which the nations represented here have received from God's hand for the great task of civilizing, Christianizing, and evan- gelizing the human race. ROMANISM IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY. Bv THE REV. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Union Theological Seminary, New York. WE have listened with great satisfaction to the admirable paper with has just been read. I have in mind only one living theo- logian who might think to better it; and that is Dr. Dorner himself. The fault must be our own if we are not now firmly rooted in the conviction that, in adding to its creed this new dogma of Papal Infallibility, the Roman Catholic Church has both erred and blundered. But why, on a Protestant platform, this elaborate criticism ? Why this concern of ours^ibont the doings of the Vatican Coun- cil f Why so much of our programme given up to the Roman Catholic question ? Part- ly, no doubt, because we feel that our evan- gelical Protestantism is newly and doubly menaced. Infidel bugles are sounding in front of ns, Papal bugles are sounding behind us. And evangelical Protestants are not stand- ing shoulder to shoulder. It would be idle to say that we are not alarmed. But this is not the whole of it. Not Protestantism only is menaced ; Christianity itself is men- aced. With the battle on both sides of us, before and behind, we must be careful how we handle our weapons. We assert the unity of Protestantism, in spite of its manifold diversities and divisions. We must not forget the unity of Christen- dom. More than eighteen centuries have passed since the miracle of Pentecost ; and infidels are saying that these Christian cen- turies have not, on the whole, been credita- ble to Christianity. Of the thirteen or fourteen hundred mill- ions of men now peopling the globe, three hundred and seventy millions, we are told, call themselves Christians, but can hardly be persuaded to call each other Christians. Protestantism, say the Romanists, is infi- delity. Romanism, say the Protestants, is the masterpiece of Satan. And the Seven Churches of the Orient are equally disowned of both. We need, all of us, a larger charity. Our Protestant fathers of three hundred years ago had to fight their way into history, and we can not wonder that the Magdeburg Cen- turiators wrote history as they did. But now the time has come to hang that trump- et in the hall. When we look into our own hearts, the best of us, the real wonder is that there should have been any Christians at all. Human depravity has awful depths and an awful power. Grace enters for conflict. Life is a battle, ending only with life. And we go in at last through the gates of pearl, not with our shields, but on them. As wo are not ashamed of our Bible, so are we not ashamed of our Christian histo- ry. Miracles of grace adorn it from first to last. The Churches of the Orient, so fearful- ly scourged through all these Moslem centu- ries, are Churches still. It was their con- demnation that they had ceased to grow, and then, like the Cologne Cathedral, it was their doom to decay, fragment and ruin both in one. The Roman Catholic Church of to-day is simply the Latin Church of the Middle Ages, which has kept on growing till now. Anselm, Bernard, Aquinas, Tau- ler, Luther, Melauchthon, Pascal, and Fe"ne- lon have all belonged to it. Protestantism is its child. If asked, as Luther was, " Where was your Church before the Protest?" we may answer, as Luther did, " Where was your face before you washed it in the morning?" Christianity is not to be confounded with Christendom. They are not at one ; and never have been, not even while St. John sat writing his gospel at Ephesus. But nei- ther are they to be torn asunder. Our Chris- tian history ancient, mediaeval, modern is both trinal and a unit : three in one, and one in three. And so is Christendom to- day, both three and one. The Ancient Age still keeps on in the Orient ; the Middle Age, in Central and Southern Europe; only in Northern Europe and America is there, as yet, any nineteenth century. But the stars still hold to their courses, and human histo- ry, with God in it, can afford to wait. What shall come next, and next after, none of us may presume to say ; but we risk nothing in speaking well of what has been permitted in the past. And so we thank God to-day for Pope Pius IX., and his Vatican Council, and his now dogma, which began to be quarried so long ago. The massive block is lifted at last to its place. The edifice is crowned. Will it be crushed as well ? Let us not feel too sure of that. Shorn of its temporal power, the papacy may at once put on new spiritual power. And nations which, like France, have swung off into infidelity, may be expected to swing back into superstition. HITCHCOCK: ROMANISM IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY. 437 But Christian history is not to end in that way. Christiani ty would have perished long ago had there been any sentence of death in it. God destroys his enemies ; but his friends and children he merely chastens. His an- cient people are scattered to the four winds, but are still a unit, and still number as many millions as in the golden age of David and Solomon. The Eastern Church lies with torn bosom, trodden beneath cruel feet. But the heart still beats, and the pale lips still cry, " How long, O Lord, how long ?" The Church of Rome has denied her Lord, not so much for want of courage as for want of wisdom. By-and-by she will repent, and her last days will be her best days. As for Protestants, three hundred years are no long time, and we are wiser than we were. We set forth Christian unity as the goal toward which not merely all Protestants, but all Christiaus, are tending. Let us un- derstand that real unity has never been wholly wanting. Our Lord's prayer that his followers might all be one can not have gone unanswered. But neither has that unity been perfect. And to-day it is pre- cisely the most vital part of Christendom which feels this imperfection most keenly. But what is the unity of which we dream ? Certainly not uniformity in external organ- ization, some one of the historic polities, the Congregational, the Presbyterian, or the Prelatical, finally supplanting its rivals. It is against the whole genius of Christianity that polity should be of much account. That which can be shown to have under- gone so great a change so early in the sec- ond century, and so many changes since, can not be a matter of any vital moment. Historic criticism is hardly yet out of its cradle. When fully matured, every jure divino theory of church government will be driven by it to the wall. Nor should we be looking for uniformity in ritual. Orient and Occident, racial and other diversities, di- versities in temperament, taste, culture, are likely to be factors in the problem to the end of time. Nor may we hope for agree- ment in all the minor particulars of Chris- tian doctrine. The three essential and dis- tinctive doctrines of Christianity are incar- nation, atonement, and regeneration. If these are clearly affirmed, we can well af- ford the allowance of the largest liberty in regard to all the rest. And now what shall we do ? Just noth- ing at all but keep on growing. Each sect has its own errand. The doctrines are not yet all settled. Theology, Christology, An- thropology, Soteriology, have all had their turn ; but Ecclesiology and Eschatclogy are yet to come. We have, strictly speaking, no ecumenical creed ; not even the Apostles' Creed, for each one of us interprets it for himself, making it mean more or less. But from the rising to the setting sun there is not a Christian man, or Christian woman, or Christian child, whose eyes would not moisten as he sang, " My faith looks up to Thee." Controversy must still go on. But we arc very foolish to have it so bitter. Commun- ion is one thing ; intercommunion is anoth- er : just as national law is one thing, and in- ternational law another. Into the family of nations the door is wide, admitting some nations that none of us would like to be- long to. But any thing that governs at all is better than anarchy. In Palestine, be- yond the Jordan, among wild Bedouin, even Turkish troops are welcome to the traveler. So in the Church. Coptic Christians in Egypt may be far enough beneath our ideal, but after all the Cross is over them, and not the Crescent. For myself, of course, I prefer my own communion, or I would leave it for another. But God forgive me if I ever look- ed or shall ever look into any Christian face without finding in it something of the old family likeness. THE PRESENT STATE OF POPERY IN FRANCE. BY THE REV. GEORGE FISCH, D.D., OF PARIS, FRANCE. WE live at a time of a great and general struggle. Popery starts for a new battle. It has conquered at last its unity by the dogma of the Pope's personal infallibility, and has now in the Syllabus, its new Bi- ble, something like the declaration of rights upon which the first French Revolution was based, only it is the declaration of rights of the Pope alone, and annihilates all the rights of man. Every nation feels that it will, sooner or later, have hard work with Popery. But hitherto all the powers in the two worlds have resisted its encroach- ments. There is only one country in which the Pope has succeeded in taking the reins of the government, and it is France. It is that nation which was called formerly the eld- est daughter of the Church ; that nation which sends missionaries to every corner of the globe to counteract our Protestant missions. It is that nation which sends you, by each transatlantic steamer, so many priests, monks, and nuns, all so winning and so charming that they soon take hold of your confidence. It is that nation which provides the United States with so many refined ladies of the Sacred Heart, who are all deemed to be countesses ; and many blinded Protestants send their daughters to them for education, not minding that they will soon be enticed by the snares of that elegant worldly atmosphere, and become Pa- pists. France was seized upon by Popery. The Jesuits seek to make it an impregnable fortress from which they may direct their attacks upon every country on the globe. She will be the battle-field where the great action is to be fought. How important it is, therefore, to inquire what is the present state of Popery in France ! At the first sight it appears that indeed my country has become the most Popish in the world. We Frenchmen do not know whether we dream or not. What ! the peo- ple of Voltaire, so skeptical and so jeering, are now governed as a convent ! The Pope, whose orders are a mere cipher in his own country, is the real sovereign in France a sovereign both earthly and celestial. We are overrun with superstitions which go far beyond those of the Middle Ages. The pre- fects are placed under the orders of the bish- ops. Full room is given to the tens of thou- sands of pilgrims who throng and obstruct the streets of our cities, while three of our Protestant pastors connected with the Evan- gelical Society have been lately condemned to a fine, and would have to suffer impris- onment for a relapse ; and their crime had been to preach without permission to a few inquirers after divine truth. The Romish clergy, from fifty thousand pulpits and by innumerable journals, pour every day the grossest outrage upon modern society and all our liberties, while the newspapers in the provinces which attempted to resist them are persecuted and suppressed. But let us look beneath the surface. 1. This movement has nothing spontane- ous. It does not proceed from the people themselves. Spontaneity is the black sheep for Popery. It fears, first of all, any kind of liberty, any individual move. It remoulds the human soul by a merely mechanical process. It takes the man at the cradle in order to undo and deform him. With its fifty thousand priests in France and its in- numerable monks and nuns, it works like the invisible animals which build up the coral cliffs. They are mere atoms, but they are able to create those huge mountains which emerge from the depths of the sea to a gigantic height. 2. This movement has nothing of that which we call a revival. What is a reviv- al for us Protestants ? It is an awakening of the consciences by the Holy Ghost. It brings the souls to Christ by the conviction of sin. Now conscience is very much oblit- erated in Popery. The truth which is the most impressive for it is done away by the Roman dogma. When a Protestant is op- pressed by the burden of his sins, he is con- scious of that awful fact that we are a fall- en race, estranged from God, and subjected to an everlasting condemnation. But Pop- ery so interprets the atonement as to get rid of that agonizing feeling which would lead the souls to Christ instead of the priest. According to its creed, the Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us from original sin, and infant baptism purges it away ; therefore we have not any more to deal with it ; we have only to cope with our actual sins, and to save ourselves by our obedience to the commands both of God and of the Church. Here, again, the notion of sin gets confused. Rome puts on the same level disobedience against God's laws and against ecclesiastic laws. Now, if eating a morsel of chicken on Friday is a sin of equal weight as speaking evil of our neighbor, how is it possible that a Roman FISCH : THE PRESENT STATE OF POPERY IN FRANCE. 439 Catholic may realize the unutterable gulf of misery and guilt expressed by the word sin f Moreover, while among Protestants, who know that they are saved by faith in divine truth, lying is peculiarly hated as being the root of evil, that very sin is one of those which Popery opposes the least, as its whole system is based upon forgery. Even among the upright Roman Catholics who are not conscious of that fact, there is a general cur- rent of falsehood and deceit, which permeates the whole of the Popish nations, and demor- alizes even the best of their members. Is not Jesuitism, which makes lying for the Church a virtue, the very flower of Popery ? No conscience has first to be re-educated in our country ; therefore there is nothing in the present movement which may resemble an awakening of conscience. 3. It is not more a religious movement, in the highest sense of that word. If relig- ion is a satisfaction afforded to the deepest wants of the human soul, it is entirely want- ing in this so-called revival. There Avas a time when Popery had retained a sufficient part of Christian truth to feed the souls who did not move in the still loftier sphere of free grace and inward freedom imparted by the Holy Spirit. But now, under Ul- tramontane impulses, Popery is more and more deprived of its spiritual marrow. The Jesuits have always worked hard in order to make it deviate from its Christian basis, and to lay its foundation upon the most worldly tendencies of human nature. They have at last succeeded to make it a complete idolatry, having a goddess in heaven the Immaculate Virgin ; and a god on earth the infallible Pope. This movement is, therefore, nothing but a great effort of the Jesuits in order to re- store the temporal power of the Pope. They try to make France an instrument to recon- quer all the ground which they have lost. They are endowed with an amazing firm- ness of purpose. If we only served our Heavenly Master as they serve him whom they consider as his incarnation on earth! As they believe firmly in the promise made to Peter, and which they apply to the Pope, they are never shaken nor discouraged. When they have failed, they resume their work at the very stage at which it was inter- rupted. They use the defeats as means for a further success. When they saw France crushed and lying in her blood, they rushed upon her from every quarter. And, indeed, at first they were admirably helped by the circumstances, which appeared to them as most providential tokens of the Divine bless- ing. 1. When Germany gave us only ten days to elect representatives who were to decide the question of peace or war, and Avhen each department had to vote at once a, whole list of members, nobody was ready for it. The Republican party wished to continue the war. It was not possible to have an elec- tioneering agitation, to discuss names, to have preparatory meetings. The German armies occupied one-third of our soiL Our railway communication was cut. But the bishops had been on the lookout. They had framed lists of men pledged both to make peace and to obey the orders from Rome. In order to make them acceptable, they had interspersed them with a few Liberals. They had sent these lists to every parish priest of their department, and, as there were none but these to present to the people, they were voted. And so it happened that the Jesu- its became the real government of France. Our nation now is like a charger allow me to add, a fine one on the back of which a cunning horseman jumped. The charger would be led onward to the battle of liber- ty, and the horseman is decided to force it backward to the Middle Age. The charger kicks and kicks again, but the horseman holds fast and uses curb and spurs. We feel these spurs now very painfully. Let us hope that a tremendous move of public opinion may at least succeed to kick off the horse- man and cast him to the ground. 2. The Jesuits had a powerful auxiliary in the Commune. The Commune was a com- bination of Socialist influences and of the hatred which the Parisian people feel against the priesthood. There were only sixty thou- sand Socialists in Paris. How is it that the majority of the inhabitants supported the Commune ? Only because they thought that the National Assembly would bring back a clerical royalty, and therefore they opposed the national troops, which they called by the name of Chouans, which was given to the legitimists of the Venddan war at the time of our first revolution. Those atheists of the Commune who excited so much hor- ror by their crimes had been all trained up in the schools of the friars, and felt an in- tense aversion to the form of religion in which they were educated. But, whatever may be our judgment of the Commune, the fact remains. The foundations of society were shaken. An abyss was opened under our feet. The nation shuddered before the consequences of irreligion. Capital and wealth were affrightened, and came to shel- ter themselves under the wings of the priest- hood. The higher and middle classes made ' Popery their great insurance company. 3. The old nobility has been, since the French Revolution of 1789, the most inti- mate ally of the Popish clergy. These two classes of men had lost their privileges in the same hurricane. The clergy had led the noblemen to emigration. After the Res- toration of 1815, they both tried to get back their former position in society. The sons of these dukes and marquises are educated by the Jesuits, who take great care to pre- 440 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. servo them from any influx of modern aspi- rations and modern liberties. Men of this class live still in the fourteenth century. For their schools and colleges a compound of history was prepared by Father Loriquet, which taught that there was no Emperor Na- poleon the First, but a Marquis de Bonaparte, who had been for fifteen years the command- er of the armies of King Louis XVIII. Of course, under the Second Empire they were obliged to make therein some slight altera- tion ; but the fact remains, that all the teach- ing imparted to these noblemen is falsified. They do not understand their times better than we should understand the Chinese lan- guage if we were transported suddenly into the Celestial Empire. The priests persuade them that, if they can only bring their pupil, Comte de Chambord, upon the throue, they would be restored to all their former rights. 4. But they have a still more powerful ally. Generally, in France, in the higher and middle classes, the women who were edu- cated in convents are bigoted ; the men who were educated in the public schools are free thinkers. The men remain, however, in the Church, which they disregard and despise, for they will not displease their mother and sisters, their bride or their wife. Now the heart of the Roman Catholic women in the upper classes has been fired by their confess- ors. They form an army moving and fight- ing as one man an army of which the weap- ons are seldom to be resisted too, for they are charm smiles, tears, and nervous fits. I pity, indeed, the Roman Catholic members of our legislature who wish to oppose the return of Henry V., and consider it as the doom of their country. They must have, indeed, a miserable life, without rest for a single hour. 5. lu the clergy itself the Jesuits succeeded in suppressing all resistance. The French priesthood was placed by Napoleon the First, more than the clergy of any nation, in the hands and at the mercy of the bishops. The great despot thought that it was more easy for him to control the dignitaries of the Church whom he had richly endowed and promoted to their high office, and that, if the simple parish priest was nothing but an obedient slave of the bishop, all would play smoothly in his hand. Therefore the French clergy is, more than any other in Europe, deprived of any will of its own. A priest who resists or even displeases his bishop is interdicted, without a higher court to appeal to. The bishop has no motive to express, no reason to allege. And the inter- dicted priest is an outcast in society. He was trained in such a way that he is fit only for saying the mass. He is utterly ignorant too ignorant to become a school-teacher and, moreover, nobody trusts him. As the causes of his interdiction are not made pub- lic, every one supposes the worst. The best he can do is to become a cab driver. I was told a few years ago that there were six hun- dred men of that sort in Paris alone. Now imagine such a full for him who was a me- diator between God and man, and even the creator of his own Creator to have to whip on a miserable jade through the streets of our capital. Very few priests have courage enough to face such u punishment. This accounts for the general acceptance of the dogma of the infallibility among the French clergy. 6. The Jesuits silenced that portion of the former Liberals who had attempted to carry on an impossible task the reconciliation of Popery and of liberty. They were head- ed by the Comte de Moutalembert, and af- ter his death by the Due de Broglie. These very men who had devoted their life to prove that Roman Catholicism was compatible with liberty were obliged to accept the Syl- labus, and, indeed, that document had been first of all directed against them. God speak- ing on earth cursed every thing that was dear to them. They bowed down in hu- mility. However, I think that, in the in- nermost part of their soul, they did like Gal- ileo, who, after he had been compelled to say, while kneeling, "The earth does not turn round," added, when he rose, " Nevertheless, it moves !" 7. But the Jesuits wanted to recruit an army ready for any enterprise. They want- ed, moreover, to show that France had gono backward enough to justify the return of a mediaeval king. Indeed, Comte de Cham- bord, their pupil, whom they infused entirely with their own spirit, would be nothing but a crowned monk. He is said to have built on his property at Frohsdorf a large house, where he feeds two hundred Jesuits. In or- der to smooth down the way before him the pilgrimages were invented. Two memora- ble apparitions of the Virgin had taken place- in these latter years at La Sallette, in the Dauphin6, and at Lourdes, in the Pyrenees. The first pilgrimages were directed to these places. The sites had been admirably chosen. La Sallette is surrounded with the grandest scenery of the gigantic Alps. Lourdes is at the foot of the most picturesque rocks of the Pyrenees. It was a great attraction. As we rejoice to go next week to Washington or Niagara Falls, and as we shall visit those places without any expense on account of the liberality of our American friends, French people think it very pleasant also to see ad- mirable sites without any charge, and even to do by it a meritorious act and to win reward for eternity. But the great success of these two pilgrimages encouraged the cler- gy to get up in almost every diocese appa- ritions of the Virgin, miraculous images, or miraculous wells. In that way they told pow- erfully upon the imagination of the crowds. When false miracles were performed by scores at each pilgrimage, the people were deeply FISCH : THE PRESENT STATE OF POPERY IN FRANCE. 441 impressed by God departing in their own sight from the natural laws. They would not believe, indeed, that these healings were a mere trick of their spiritual leaders. And, nevertheless, that present campaign which was to the Jesuits of so solemn an issue will prove a failure. The great battle into which they marched all their forces will be lost. The Jesuits, who succeeded in every thing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are nowadays like that Sisyphus of old who in the ancient hell was said to be rolling a heavy stone up hill, which continually fell back upon him, and never reached the sum- mit. What their cunning has half brought to success fails by their ignorance of the time in which they live. They strain ev- ery nerve to bring back an irretrievable past ; but they aim at an impossibility. They must now give room to the Gospel which is suited for all times. They suc- ceeded in bringing our French armies to Mexico, and with them an Austrian emper- or ; but they only prepared the way for the Gospel. The Bible was carried into that country by the Protestant chaplain of our forces. They succeeded in bringing France into a war with Germany they were there- by instrumental in the downfall of Napoleon III., who alone kept the Pope in the pos- session of his temporal power, and in open- ing the city of Rome to the Italians, to the Bible, and to Protestant churches. Now they try again to get a king of France, who, like a Messiah, will not only restore the Pope to his throne, but redeem the Pa- pal Israel from all bondage in the whole world. I met a few days ago at Niagara Falls a Roman Catholic Irishman, who told me that all his wishes were centred upon the restoration of Henry V. to France, for he hopes that the king will rescue Ireland from the jaws of England. But in order to reach their aim they took the wrong way. 1. They counteracted all the instincts and aspirations of our country. After our disas- ters the watch- word of the whole nation was, "Let us raise up France again, by liberty, by education, by light in every form." My countrymen rose, all with one mind craving for compulsory education, which had made Prussia so strong against us. But, as the ideal of the Jesuits was backward, they op- posed it. They made a crusade in favor of the holy ignorance. They had memorials signed by the children of their own schools. Of course, these children, who dislike very much the discipline of the friars, signed en- thusiastically these petitions. It was the first mistake of the clergy. 2. They missed the opportunity for getting hold of the hearts which seemed prepared for the first one who would come to them, bringing comfort for the afflicted, and balm for the national wounds. The souls had been prepared by unheard-of humiliations, by unwonted sufferings, by the bitter fruits which atheism brought forth in the days of the Commune. But the Jesuits liked bet- ter to offer to the nation the most degrad- ing superstitions. Instead of answering the higher wants of the nation, they made ap- peal only to ignorance and credulity. They carried it too far for their own purpose. They led multitudes to implore black wood- en statues of the Virgin which were sup- posed to act by themselves. And when the remark was made to them that they had en- tirely forgotten the Virgin's Son, they met. that complaint by the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What is that sacred heart ? Not the soul of Christ, both divine and hu- man, sympathizing with us and full of mer- cy to the sinner, but his bodily heart, which is said to have appeared to Mary Alacoque. Now I think that it is going yet further down than the worship of the Virgin, for Mary at least is a person, while the sacred heart is nothing but a muscle of flesh. And how unwise it was to have selected La Sallette as their foremost place of pil- grimage! When these good legitimist no- blemen went there so cheerfully to that high Alpine valley, they did not know that the Virgin who had appeared there to two little shepherds was an old maid from the city of Valence, Mademoiselle Lameiliere. They did not know that, as most of our French ladies are (I will not speak of other nations), she had been too talkative, had avowed to a priest at Grenoble that she was the Holy Virgin, that she had showed the dress in which she was to appear to the conductor of the coach which had brought her to La Sallette. They did not know that she had cursed the potatoes it was a part of the message which she had brought from heaven and the potato crop had not failed. They were ignorant of her having prophesied that the Prussians would conquer France in 1856, and that the silly little shepherd whom she had addressed was to become king of France. The secular newspapers tell now that whole history, which was unfurled at the time before the court of Grenoble. That whole campaign will have in the end no oth- er result but to subject Popery to a greater amount of ridicule and disgust. 3. The way in which they govern France increases the hatred which the great major- ity of the people feel for the Popish clergy. They trample upon every liberty ; they vio- late every protecting law. They made the whole nation burn with indignation when they threw aside our greatest citizen, the liberator of our territory, M. Thiers, and abuse him in the extreme in each number of their newspapers. They call themselves 7 however, the men of moral order, but people consider that name as the bitterest irony. 442 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. In the bauds of God this passing reign of the .It-suits will have loosened France more completely from the bondage of Popery. 4. While they cover France with pilgrim- ages, we cover her with Bibles. The Bible societies have sold four millions of copies of the Holy Scriptures among our people. Our schools in Paris are overfilled with children of Roman Catholic parents, and in one of them ninety thousand francs of school fees have been contributed in one year by very poor workmen. We preach the Gospel from place to place, and, as in the Roman Cath- olic villages there is no place for meeting except the dancing-hall, we preach there the good tidings of salvation before crowded au- diences, which come week after week to hear of God's love and of a free pardon. The Evan- gelical Society of France last winter had, in one department alone, nine thousand Roman Catholics in several places attending upon the Protestant worship. By a marvelous di- rection of God, our army, recruited from ev- ery part of the country, was for thirty years taught to read in the Gospel of John by one of the elders of my own Church, who, by the order of Marshal Soult, in 1840, had intro- duced that method in every regiment of French soldiers, and was the general super- intendent of these reading schools. By another direction of God, the eighty-four thousand men of Bourbaki's army, who had been thrown upon Switzerland, brought back from that country the sacred volume and an unbounded admiration for the Protestant fuith. 5. Religious liberty is just at this time very much imperiled, but we shall have it ere long. Dr. De Pressense", who occupies such an important position in our national legislature, made the proposal to do away with all the former laws obstructing relig- ious liberty, and to make the worship as free as it is in the United States. That proposal, before being submitted to the House, was to be examined by a select committee of the House. The majority had chosen its mem- bers with much care, and made it to be com- posed of thirteen clericals and only two Lib- erals. However, after a thorough examina- tion, that committee decided unanimously to bring that proposal before the Assembly. And if it is carried, oh then what an admira- ble field of labor France will afford ! After such a preparation, with that longing for a renovation, with that more thorough repu- diation of a religion which resisted all its wants, what may wo not expect from our na- tion ! And then you, dear American friends, will stand side by side with us. France is lying before you as the wounded man on the road, and you, like the good Samaritan, will have compassion upon us, and pour oil and wine into our wounds. And let no one say that our progress in France is too slow to repay the efforts made in that direction. He who would say so is certainly not an Anglo- Saxon, and he is, moreover, in my opinion, a poor Christian. For, indeed, what distin- guishes the Anglo-Saxon race? Is it not that persevering energy which never yields to difficulties, but goes ahead and overcomes them one after another? We have already succeeded in an amazing measure if we take into account the obstacles which were in our way. Thousands and thousands of precious souls have been brought from Popery to the true knowledge of the Saviour. But we are still a feeble baud of laborers. We strug- gle hard. We are just now the only Chris- tian community in any nation which has to endure persecution. We are not in the least discouraged. It took more than a century for the Jews who had come back from Baby- lon to rebuild their Temple, but they suc- ceeded at last, and the glory of that temple was greater than that of the first had been. Our work is now obstructed in many ways, but it is God's work. We know it, and wo also shall succeed in the end. ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE FOUR PRUSSIAN CHURCH LAWS. BY THE REV. LEOPOLD WITTE, OF COETHEX, PRUSSIA. THE four laws lately enacted by the Prus- sian Government, in its struggle with Rome, have an interest far beyond the limits of the German empire. They were provoked by infallible Rome, and infallible Rome is an enemy of every Protestant country of free America as well as of free Germany. The old Roman proverb may be justly quoted here : " Non tua res agitur, paries si proximi ardes" " Thy own house is in danger when thy neighbor's is in flame." So let me an- ticipate your interest in the subject of my treatise. I will, in the first place, briefly state the contents of the said laws. They are four in number. The first asserts the right of the State to exercise a supreme control over the education of the clergy ; the second es- tablishes the right of the State to superin- tend the discipline exercised by the Church over clergymen ; the third defines the lim- its of the ecclesiastical power to exercise church discipline against laymen ; the fourth gives some regulations for those who are going to leave the Church. Even this simple general statement must, I am aware, strike you, my American friends, very strangely. You live in a country where the churches are entirely independent of the State. You will therefore naturally think that the State has nothing whatever to do with affairs of the Church. But the stran- ger these laws appear to yon at the first glance, the more perhaps you may feel a de- sire to have them explained by a citizen of that country in which they were enacted, by a pastor of a church which is itself placed under them. But what will you expect me to do ? Do you think that I have come hero as a dele- gate of the Prussian Government or of Bis- marck, in order to persuade you to fall in love with these four children of the Prus- sian legislature, who are stigmatized by the hirelings of Rome as children of Satan ? I am not hero in such a capacity. Or do you think that I, rejecting with the pride of a Christian the infallible Pope, am, worship- ing an infallible State, and will, therefore, sanction every thing which is issued in the form of laws by the Government ? I am a Christian, and believe only in one infallible Head and King of churches and states, Je- sus Christ, and claim the right to criticise freely the words of men, even if they are high in authority. Besides this, my friends, let me tell you, if you boast justly of the freedom of your Church, of the independ- ence of its doings and institutions, this very freedom of the Church of Christ is dear to me also, and is dear to every evangelical minister and layman in Germany who loves the Kingdom of God. I do not in the least think that the State churches in Europe, as they have grown in history, represent that condition of the bride of Christ which is desirable for her, if she expects to unfold the full riches of her beauty. But we have to deal here not with a state of things which ought to be, but with a state of things as it is in Germany. In your own country the principle of re- ligious and ecclesiastical independence has been established only gradually in the course of the last and in the beginning of the pres- ent century. The Middle Ages did not know any thing of religious freedom, and even the principles of the Reformation were in the beginning not strong enough to prevent in- tolerance and narrow-mindedness. "Cnjus regio, illius religio " " Where I live I must accept the religion of the land." This was for a long time the ruling principle in Euro- pean Church history. It is well known that the family of the Hoheuzollern of Branden- burg were in this respect more enlightened than most of their contemporaneous princes. They granted a refuge within their realm to any denomination and sect that was perse- cuted abroad, although they did not yet en- dow all these different churches with the same rights and privileges as their own Evangelical Church enjoyed in their conn- try. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholics could not have any imaginable reason to complain of pressure and want of freedom in Prussia. The Brandenburg electors and Prussian kings have always been very care- ful not to give the least offense to the bish- ops of Rome 5 nay, have often treated the popish Church like a petted child in their household. The popes themselves have re- peatedly and most gratefully acknowledged this fact. It is to be presumed that, if the character of the Romish Church had not been altered, she would still have enjoyed these ancient privileges, and her peace could not have been disturbed. 444 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. But nil of you know, nud thousands of Old Catholics themselves proclaim it before the whole world, that the Catholic Church of to- day is not any more what it used to be ten years ago. While Rome was living in full peace with the State, and no clouds threat- ening, a storm could be seen on the horizon of Germany. All at once, like lightning out of the clear sky, the Syllabus was thrown by the Pope, ex cathedra, into the Christian world; and a few years after the Vatican Council declared all definitions of the Pope concerning faith and morals to be infallible. Yea, this council overthrew the constitution of the Catholic Church by proclaiming the Pope the universal and infallible bishop of the whole Catholic world, and of every Catholic community in it. Prince Hoheulohe, who was at that time prime minister of Bavaria, a Catholic him- self, justly understood that these astonish- ing assumptions were as full of dangers for the State governments as the Greek horse was for the inhabitants of Troy. He tried, therefore, to issue a common protest of all the States against these aggressions. But his efforts proved to be in vain. Ou the 18th of July, 1870, the fatal dogma was pro- claimed. What was then the duty of such governments as had granted to the Roman Catholic Church of old times a privileged position within their boundaries ? No oth- er, as it seems to me, than to tell the Pope and his satellites, " You have broken our ancient treaties, and forfeited therefore the privileges granted to you by them. You have established a new .Church, to which we have not as yet accommodated ourselves. Let us regulate, therefore, the relations of this new Church to the State, in order to live in peace with each other. But do not expect us to deal with you as we did before to support your ministers, to grant the old privileges to your ecclesiastical and pastoral buildings, and to bestow on you rights which other religious denominations do not have." The favorable moment to make such a dec- laration passed by. The war with France, which had broken ont, absorbed, as yon may imagine, all other interests, and threw aside all church matters, even in a time when a struggle, fraught with fatal consequences had been inaugurated by Rome. Prince Bismarck has himself avowed, in one of his celebrated speeches in the House of Lords, that the political platform of the new Church party had not sufficiently terrified him at that time; but, by neglecting the golden opportunity, the Government of Prussia it- self had almost obstructed the way of a suit- able adjustment of the Church affairs. Af- ter having silently acknowledged the new state of things for two years,.it was at least somewhat preposterous to declare all at once, " We have come to the conclusion that the ancient Catholic Church, with which we have made our treaties, is not any more in existence." But, at all events, an answer was to be given to the Romish aggressions. And this answer is contained in the four laws of which I am speaking. Whatever we may think of some of the reg- ulations of these laws, it can not be doubted that they are an act of self-defense on tne part of the State against the Romish at- tacks. The right of this self-defense can not be denied. It is founded in the duty of self-preservation. As an individual has the right and the duty to defend his own life when attacked by the blow of an assassin, so the State has both the right and the duty to protect its own life and the welfare of its citizens against the aggressions of a power which claims the supreme control over the hearts, and minds, and consciences of its members. And here it is an old trick of the Roman Catholics, by which they try to con- found the question, when they proclaim in this connection the word of Peter, "We must hearken unto God more than nnto man." For, in reality, the authorities in question are not God on one hand and man on the other, but rather the Pope, who claims to be infallible, and to rule the conscience of man- kind, and the State government of Prussia, whose sacred duty it is to guard the free- dom of its subjects. The question could even be raised, whether the Pope, attempting to destroy personal freedom of conscience, or the Emperor of Germany endeavoring to protect this very freedom, better under- stands and promotes the will of God. If now the Government has the duty of protecting the sacred freedom of the citi- zens, this duty, as it seems to me, involves the unquestionable right to keep an open eye on the movements of the Churches. Sup- pose the Pope would send word to the Cath- olics of this country to inaugurate another night of St. Bartholomew among the Prot- estants, would your Government, my Amer- ican brethren, granting as it does the great- est freedom of religion to all sects and de- nominations, for one moment suffer such an attempt to be made ? Well, I am free to think General Grant would rather bring on an army from Washington to stop the Pope on his way. Even in these United States, as far as I can see, the principle is asserted that the Government can not tolerate prac- tices or movements in any religious commu- nity by which the moral character of human society is undermined. You Americans are practically exercising this right iir the case of Mormonism. It may be questioned, how- ever, whether Mormonism or infallible Ro- manism threatens human society with the greater evils. Having thus established these general principles, let us now, by this rule, briefly examine the laws themselves. By one of WITTE: ULTRAMONTANISM AND THE FOUR PRUSSIAN CHURCH LAWS. 445 them the Prussian Government claims the right to protect its Catholic citizens against the abuse of the power of Romish priests. Now can you deny that this claim is a just one ? Has not the Government the sacred duty to slielter the life .and the property of its citizens ? Suppose Roman priests were endeavoring to destroy, by their church dis- cipline, the civil honor and good reputation of individuals, that is, to undermine the foundation of their lives, is not the Govern- ment compelled to interfere in their behalf? Nay, in case that the priests themselves are citizens of the State, and fully entitled to its protection, is not the Government, as it claims in another of these laws, called upon to defend them when their personal rights, their freedom, and civil honor are assailed by a foreign power, claiming control over their bodies and souls, their lives and prop- erty? Suppose they would be disciplined by order of the Pope, as has been done, by being thrown into the dungeon of a convent, by being whipped and tormented, Avould it not be the duty of the Government to pro- tect them from such disgrace ? More offense than by any other law has been given by that in which the Govern- ment asserts the right of superintending the schools and seminaries in which the Ro- man clergy are educated. At a first glance you may feel inclined to shrink from such a law. But, in fact, suppose that in these sem- inaries a bitter hatred against the earthly power be planted into the young hearts, suppose that the students be taught to re- gard Protestantism as an abomination and to consider the killing of a Protestant as a work acceptable in the sight of God, could the Government of the State silently and smilingly stand by and look upon such pro- ceedings ? It is a fact that the Jesuits have taught such a kind of doctrine. Do they not deserve, then, to be expelled, and kept from poisoning a nation ? Let us not forget, brethren, we write to-day, 1873. In 1773, Clemens XIV., Ganganelli, an infallible pope, declared this very order to be ruinous to the welfare of human society, and abolished the order for ever and ever ; and Catholic pow- ers had urged him to do it. Is, then, Prus- sia to be blamed when she acts on the same conviction of the poisonous influence of the Jesuits, and sends them out of her domin- ion? True, I can not agree with every thing contained in these laws. To define, for in- stance, the limits of clerical learning, the measure of knowledge in literature and phi- losophy which the priests have to acquire, all this ought to be left to the decision of the religious denominations themselves. But, on the whole, there was an urgent necessity for these or similar laws. One thing, however, the State should nev- er forget : spiritual powers can not be final- ly vanquished by external means and regu- lations. It wants religious truth to break down religious falsehood. May Prussia sup- port and strengthen the bearers of such truth, and she will come out of the struggle victorious. Let the German Government, as it has begun to do in the case of Bishop Reinkens, support and strengthen the Old Catholic movement ; let it support the ef- forts of the Evangelical Church to establish human society on the eternal principles of the Word of God ; let the State proclaim the freedom and independence of the Evangelical Church, and surrender to the same its prop- erty ; let the whole nation breathe the air of religious freedom, and the dangers by which the State is threatened at present will disappear, as the mist before the sun. The State alone can hardly hope finally and successfully to resist the overwhelming pow- er and influence of Romish priests. But ' there is one power mightier than Rome and all the states of the world ; and whosoever is in close alliance with it may be sure to be crowned with victory. " Fragst du, wer der 1st, Er heisst Jesus Christ, Dcr Herr Zebaoth ; Und 1st kein and'rer Gott, Das Feld muss er behalteu." Faithful to Him, and free from the pressure of the State, the Church of the Gospel will be victorious against the church of spiritual bondage. And the State enjoying the bless- ings of such a Church will flourish and pros- per to do God's will. THE REACTION OF THE GERMAN NATIONAL SPIRIT AGAINST ULTRAMONTANISM. BY THE REV. AUGUST DOKNER, Pn.D. Bepetent in the University of GGttingen. IT is not the object of these few lines to examine this important theme on all sides ; for the reaction of the State against Ultra- montauism has been considered by another member of the Alliance. Nor will I speak of the reaction -which is to be hoped from a deeper and more comprehensive education of the clergy, and the laity as -well. I will confine myself to the religious reaction against Ultramontanism. It is a religious power ; and although it exerts such a great influence in other departments, yet the most lasting reaction against it can only come from a counter religious power. The count- er movement within the Catholic Church is Old Catholicism, an account of which has likewise been given by another at this meet- ing. I will, therefore, only make a few ob- servations. Since the Reformation, the one-sided prin- ciple of authority in the Roman Church has been obliged, by its conflict with Protestant- ism, to develop more and more. The history of Jansenism in France shows how hard it has been to persevere in a milder direction within the Romish Church. The Jesuits won the victory over the Janseuists, not merely because the State was unfavorable to the latter, but because Jansenism could not rise above the infallibility of the visible Church, as claimed to be represented in the councils. In order to gain a permanent triumph over Ultramontanism, something more is needed than merely to resist the infallibility of the Pope. For so soon as it has been proclaimed by a council, the decision of the council must be accepted by those likewise who recognize the infallibility of the bishops assembled in council. For should the Episcopalists refuse to recognize a council merely on account of the contents of its decision, when the council has been called in the right form, and has trans- acted its business with freedom, they would thereby overthrow their own principle, that a council called together in the right form is infallible. Thus they can only attack the form of the call, the composition of the as- sembly, and the manner of their delibera- tions. But such an attack may easily be extended to all the councils at all events, to the Council of Trent ; and the discussion would be endless, because at no council are the Church criteria necessary to its validity fully present. Thus the Old Catholics, so long as they maintain the infallibility of the councils, must be in a precarious situa- tion. But we may hope that their opposi- tion, as it is a matter of the conscience, will not remain satisfied with this stand-point, since it can never be shown with reference to any early council that it has the qualifi- cations necessary to infallibility. We greet the Old Catholics with the more joy that they confess their more ecumenical direc- tion, by a friendly position toward Protest- antism which we can not say to the credit of Jansenism. It is likewise not to be de- nied that the Old Catholics, if they gain ground, will to the same extent be a sup- port of the German empire against Roman- ism ; as they recognize the right of the na- tional life of the State, which Rome de- nies. But in order to conquer Romanism in principles, it is necessary that there should be a revival of the spirit inspired by the Reformation ; that there should be a deep love of the truth, a striving for personal as- surance and persuasion in religious things. The counter power to Romanism is given in Protestantism, because it represents a high- er stage of religious life. The Reformation vindicated the right of a free personality, the right and the duty of every one to be personally convinced by the truth. The Reformers, above all Luther, not only em- phasized original sin, evil and its penalty, but they regarded the consciousness of sin and guilt, which is the most personal thing in sin, as the greatest hinderance to success- ful human development; and this is the more significant when we consider that the most of the Reformers, even Luther, taught the doctrine of human freedom in a deter- ministic form. They laid equal stress upon the assurance of salvation, which is nothing else than that every one should experience the divine love immediately in his own soul. But we can not be convinced in our own souls merely by submitting ourselves at once to an external authority, or, after a sort of conscientious examination, uniting ourselves to an authority before which all further investigation is renounced. The law holds good, not only for different generations, but for the different years of the same man's DORNER : THE REACTION OF THE GERMAN NATIONAL SPIRIT. 447 life, that -what is not constantly won anew, | and thereby strengthened, no longer remains as a spiritual possession. The difference be- j tween Protestantism and Romanism is not merely that the Romanists recognize the in- ! fallibility of the Pope, while the Protestants recognize the infallibility of the Scriptures. But still more in the fact, that the Scrip- tures are, according to the Protestant view, intended for the use of every person, in or- der that he may gain immediate communion with God in Christ, who can and will bear witness to himself in the heart. And this experience must be again and agaiu renew- ed, if it would not be lost, for religion is life. Catholicism remains standing upon a stage of development which may not be unsuited to a certain point in the history of nations, but since it claims absolute sovereignty, it becomes an error. Romanism is satisfied with the assurance that the Church gives, so that the Church is the absolute authori- ty for the individual person. Thus the Church as a whole takes the place of the individual member. In the period before Christ, the worth of the individual person was still unknown. Christianity first taught the worth of the individual person, because first in Christ is the value of the human per- son completely revealed ; first in his person does the destiny of man for union with God realize itself. But it was not enough that the individual should enjoy communion with God in Christ as an immediate religious ex- perience. This the individual has had in all ages of the Church. It was, still more, nec- essary that the thought tli&t the individual is destined to immediate communion with God should work itself out to clearness of view and universality of conviction. For this a long history was necessary. There is a condi- tion in the development of the individual and the nations as well, in which they are still in religious minority, needing external au- thority. Regard for individual personality was not a matter of general understanding, when the prejudices of the ancient nations which had received Christianity were not yet overcome; and the German tribes had still to be trained as babes in religiou. lu this condition external authority was need- ed. But the Romish Church would still maintain that stand-point, while that which is justified as a stage of transition is from that very fact to be rejected. Protestant- ism represents a higher stage, because it makes men of babes. But, furthermore, individuality and per- sonality are in the closest connection. The individual has a special value in himself only when he occupies a special position in the whole body of the human race, when he can give something that others can not ren- der. The value of the individual person has not been fully recognized till the indi- vidual possession can be regarded as some- thing permanent given him by God ; for the individual would otherwise become again a mere example of his class. Protestantism lias from the beginning developed in many forms of individuality, although at first in a one-sided intellectual and scholastic form. Roman Catholicism reproaches us for our divisions ; yet we should greatly err if we supposed that Romanism on the one side sub- jects the individual to the whole body, while Protestantism neglects the whole body for the individual person and the individual life and knowledge. Protestantism represents here likewise a higher stage of development. The knowledge of individuality which Schleiermacher opened up must be deep- ened. It is an important problem of Prot- estantism at the present time to show that it can reconcile the right of the individual with the right of the whole body to the in- dividual. In this direction are the efforts of " The Union " which would not have uni- formity, but rather tolerates, yes, desires dif- ferences, in order that there may be on this basis a rich and prosperous development of Protestantism in life and doctrine, provided only the fundamental principle of reconcilia- tion with God in Christ be maintained. In the same direction are the efforts to secure a church constitution in accordance with Protestantism, which aims to secure that the individual should be not merely a passive but an active member of his communion, and that every individual may enrich the congrega- tion with his gifts. It is the same with the controversies respecting the limits of free- dom in the pulpit, in which the question is how far the right of the individual is to be limited or extended over against the convic- tions of the whole body. We do not pretend to decide these questions in this short sketch. We would merely call attention to the fact that in all these questions the relation of the individual to the whole body comes into consideration, and that the problem of sci- ence is to devote more thorough investiga- tions to these questions. The lack of unity among Protestants is a great stumbling-block. The German nation will overcome the dangers of Romanism if it can deepen the Protestantism, Avhich has its home in Germany, as a living inherit- ance from our fathers ; if it can show more particularly that it can likewise accommo- date itself to the proper strivings for church unity ; yes, that it represents a higher state of unity than the Romish Church. He who has experienced the love of God in Christ can have no pleasure in strife, but strives himself for unity, and mutual recognition in mutual giving and receiving. The Protest- ant Church of Germany will represent a higher stage of unity if, on the basis of a common experience of the love of God in Christ, it can so bring the Protestant part of the nation together that the differences 448 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. of Church custom and doctrine may not pro- duce divisions, but rather union ; for only thus can the different members supplement one another, and a higher unity be formed a uuity richer than the uniform structure of the Romish Church, and freer than that uni- ty which is found iu external authority and external institutions, because every individ- ual is confirmed iu his own individuality, and unites himself in the freedom of love to the whole body. The German national spir- it is hindered when the individual emanci- pates himself from the whole body, as well ;is when the individual is again reduced to nonage under the Church. May the Ger- man Church be enabled to realize the idea of unity in her external body ! Finally, there is an important thought with reference to the reaction of the German na- tional spirit, so far as it proceeds from Prot- estants against Romanism, which has fre- quently been mentioned, yet is the more worthy of remark here that the Alliance be- gins to realize it. The Romish Church calls itself the Catholic, the Universal Church, spreading itself over the world. Christian- ity would conquer the human race, because it claims to be the absolute religion. The Romish Church attempts to carry out the idea without regard to the peculiarities of nations. Protestants may here likewise represent a higher stage of development. No one is a man in abstracto, no one is a Christian. in dbstracto. The universal char- acter of Christianity is not abstract cos- mopolitanism. The nations are not to be Christian after a uniform type, but each one has to fulfill its own tasks. The true Catholic disposition unites the right of the individual nations with the duty of uni- versal love of man, and the recognition of unity in one and the same Church among all nations. Every nation has its gifts, and every one its special methods of manifest- ing the Christian spirit in knowledge and life. They supplement one another, and ev- ery one is bound to assert itself over against the others, }n every mutual giving and re- ceiving, yes, for the very sake of this inter- change of gifts. The more now the Protest- ant German theology becomes internation- al, the more will it be enriched, in order to be truly national ; and the more our clergy learn to know the Protestant life of other nations, the more will they be able to serve their own Church. There is strength for the combat with Romanism in the joy of communion with other Protestants. But yet the combat with Rome is at the same time a national combat against a falsely understood unity of the nations. The re- action of the German national spirit against Romanism is a reaction of the national life against a false cosmopolitanism. The true cosmopolitanism can only succeed by pre- serving and enlarging the bonds of broth- erly communion, which are to embrace all nations without swallowing them up. For the surest sign that the individuality of the nation as well as the individual is the will of God is the fact that the more the indi- vidual appropriates and the more he accom- plishes, the more his peculiarities of nature, instead of being effaced, increase and prosper. We have confined ourselves to the coun- ter-movement to Ultramontanism in the sphere of religion. As a matter of course, Protestantism does not prevent the State in the protection of its rights against the assaults of the Romish Church. For as Protestantism is favorable to the national life, it recognizes that the State is independ- ent of the Church. For the Giate represents Justice, and justice is a divine idea. It is not based merely upon a voluntary compact of individuals, as the individual can not exist for himself alone, but is born into the whole body. No more would a revival of the Protestant spirit be prejudicial to the development of science or the efforts for the extension of culture. For Christianity is not hostile to human culture. It would rather make men as cultivated as possible. If Chris- tianity is hostile to that which is truly hu- man culture, if it can not endure the de- velopment of the human spirit, it must per- ish. But this is not the case. What would Christianity do but order the relation of man to God ; bring love into man's heart divine love, which the human heart needs ? And what- is the task of science but to con- sider divine thoughts ? But here we must stop, confining ourselves to the reaction of the religious life sigainst Romanism. THE APPEAL OF EOMANISM TO EDUCATED PROT- ESTANTS. BY THE REV. R. S. STORRS, D.D., BROOKLYN, N.Y. IT is always easy, though always unsafe, to underestimate the attractive force of a system of belief adverse to our own. Stand- ing on the outside of it, we see only its ex- ternal proportions. The inner chambers, filled with whatever precious and pleasant riches, are hidden from us; and one must be of a remarkably sympathetic and compre- hensive mind to be able to enter into them, and to see the whole structure as its iuhab- itants do. It is especially difficult for us as Prot- estants to understand the attractive power of Romanism. Jealousy of it, as of a stealthy and dangerous system, careless of virtue, eager for power, exquisitely adjusted to win mankind by condoning their vices and con- secrating their pride this is an inheritance to which sve are born. And such hereditary impressions ripen with most of us into per- sonal conviction. Not only does it seem to us hostile to liberty, and to rational progress, incompatible with a liberal and fruitful civ- ilization; it seems so distinctly to antago- nize the Gospel, so positively to contradict the fundamental ideas of the Diviue Gov- ernment dissociating religion from morali- ty, and destiny from character its descrip- tion and its doom seem so luridly and in- delibly written in history, that w r e can not, without a distinct and strenuous effort, un- derstand how any should accept it. We have, therefore, been wont to regard the Roman Church as the Church of the ignorant and the superstitious alone ; to ex- pect that those born and trained within it will come out from it, with intelligent pro- test or with passionate revolt, when they shall have reached a higher level of educa- tion and moral force; and it has seemed well-nigh incredible that any one educated under Protestant influences should be al- lured into its fold. When such a one has gone to its commun- ion, we have been apt to feel that he must have been moved either by a desire for po- litical preferment, and the aid of the priest- hood in his personal schemes; or by the wish for terms of salvation which would leave his lusts free, and yet quiet his fears ; or by regard for particular teachers, as New- man or Faber in England, Brownson, Heck- er, or Hewit, in this country ; or that he was attracted by the tone of authority, and the 29 splendid pomp of the outward spectacle ; or that he was moved by a general uncer- tain eccentricity of mind, which might have made him a Shaker or a Mormon, but which, by chance, did make him a Papist ; or, final- ly, that it has been with him a blind leap after belief, in a desperate reaction from the lonely gloom of infidelity. In one or other of these ways we almost always account for the transfer to Roman- ism of one who has been educated outside its influences; while at last we are often constrained to leave it, as a strange phe- nomenon, not wholly explained by any thing which the man himself has said, or any thing which our thoughts can suggest. For some have gone who have certainly not been thus impelled ; of whose change no one of the motives which I have mentioned gives any more account than it does of the origin of the Paradise Lost. They are seri- ous, devout, conscientious persons, intent on learning, and then on doing, the will of the Almighty ; of no peculiar turn of mind, with no marked predominance of imagination or emotional sensibility ; many of them edu- cated in the best and most liberal Protestant schools ; some of them among the noblest of their time, whom it is a serious loss to us to lose. And it is to bo distinctly observed that these men accept the system of Romanism with no languor or reserve, with no esoter- ic and half-Protestant interpretation of it, with no thought at all of modifying its dog- mas for their personal use by the exercise of a private judgment upon them. They take the system as it stands. They take it altogether. They look with pity, not un- mixed with contempt, on those who are ea- ger to adopt its phraseology and to mimic its ceremonies, while declining to submit their minds to its mandates ; and for them- selves they confess doctrines which seem to us incredible, and conform themselves to practices which look to us like idolatrous mummery, with gladness and pride. Now, what moves these men? What is the attraction which the system presents to such as these, in Germany, England, this country? an attraction which is strong enough to wholly detach them from their early associations, and to make them devo- tees of a spiritual power which from child- 450 ROMANISM A> 7 D PROTESTANTISM. hood they were taught to dread and to de- test f It is this question to which I am asked to give a partial and rapid answer. Of course it must bo an imperfect answer, since I am not a Romanist, in any sense or any meas- ure. Ou the other hand, I am a Congrega- tibnalist, in tiie broadest significance ; be- lieving for myself, without the -wish to im- pose the belief on any body else, that each society of believers, permanently associated for the worship of God, and for the cele- bration of Christian ordinances, is a proper and complete chnrch; competent to elect and ordain its officers, to administer the sacraments, and to fashion its rules and its ritual, under Christ, while bound to main- tain and teach his truth, to honor the law of Christian purity, and to live in unity of spir- it, and in fellowship of good works, with all similar societies. So far, therefore, as the Roman organization is concerned, I stand at almost the furthest remove from it ; with no- body beyond me, so far as I know, unless it be the Society of Friends. And concerning the whole immense sys- tem which that organization represents and subserves, I confess my sympathy with the most radical of the Reformers. I believe that the Fathers were thoroughly right in revolting against Rome; that we are under the highest obligations to maintain that re- volt ; and that Christian civilization would perish from the earth, if the Papal suprema- cy should become universal. So it can not be that I should understand the system, or feel its attractions, as those do who live in it ; and if they were here to speak for themselves, they might well de- cline to have me represent them. But I can see some of the fascinating features which Romanism offers to its disciples, and can understand, in a measure at least as it has been part of my business to understand the appeal which it makes to educated Protestants. And from among its attract- ive forces, selecting them for their promi- nence and as easy to be exhibited, I will specify eight. 1. The prime secret of its attractiveness for such minds is, I think, that it claims to offer them in the Roman Church a present, living, authoritative Teacher; which has the mind of God immanent in it ; which is the witness and the interpreter of Revela- tion, and is itself the living medium of such Revelation; which has thus authority to decide on all questions of religious doctrine and duty, and whose decisions, when an- nounced, are infallibly correct, and unspeak- ably important. This is its first claim ; im- perative in tone, stupendous in substance, unique in its kind, and very effective. According to it, as you are aware, the bishops in communion with the See of Pe- ter are the Ecclesia docens; the divinely con- stituted, perpetual, iuerrant coq>oration, in which Christ, by the Holy Ghost, is always present ; which is filled, in its totality, with his inspiration, and which thus utters, in its decrees, his voice to the world. It does not merely articulate the general Christian con- sciousness of truth or of duty ; it speaks Christ's mind, as the apostles did in their day, with a superior fitness to modern needs, and with an equivalent, ail identical author- ity. Debate is, therefore, always in order till the Church has spoken. But after that, doubt is a deadly sin. For it is not a mere perilous dissent from the majority. It is, in its essence, infidelity to Christ. And, on the other hand, the belief of the faithful in a dogma properly formulated and declared needs no argument, allows no hesitation, and asks for no support of reason. It is imme- diate and final; since it rests solidly on the utterance of the Church, which is to it the testimony of God. This may seem to us immensely absurd, looked at in the light of "history. It may seem prodigiously to transcend all the pre- rogatives promised by the Lord to the Church to which his truth was given. We may hold ourselves able to count the rings by which the successive increments of influence gathering to that Church hardened at last into the tough and oaken fibre of this un- yielding and gigantic claim. It may seem to us to put dishonor on the Bible. And we may feel that it reproduces, with strange ex- actness, with an almost fearful fidelity, the prediction of Paul concerning that Son of Perdition of whom he forewarned the Thes- salonian disciples, " that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." But the claim thus outlined has certainly a subtle and grand attraction for many minds. They do not feel limited, harassed, or forcibly overborne by this Di- vine authority in the Chnrch. On the con- trary, they feel invigorated and elevated by it, because holding themselves assured of the truth, by the very voice of God, speaking now as at the beginning, only speaking now, in tenderness to them, not through trumpet or tempest, in articulate thunders or earthquake throes, but through the consenting votes and voices of consecrated men. It seems to them the grand privilege of their minds to have such a Church ; the con- temporary of the apostles ; full now, as at Pentecost, of the Holy Ghost ; a majestic, abiding, undeceivable power, the very body of Christ, through Avhich the present benig- nant Lord, always in the world, declares with perfect clearness and certainty what is to be believed and what to be done. All their expectations of progress and success in the attainment of divine knowledge rest on this ; and their minds are profoundly animated by it. A present revelation, not one in the past STORKS: THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 451 a revelation through men, not through a book is that which, according to their con- ception, now brings to them the thoughts of the Eternal. Especially in times like ours, when relig- ious doubt is passionate and ubiquitous, .when a whirling and vehement skepticism darkens and hurtles in all the air, they greet with peculiar desire and welcome such a ba- sis of certainty, such a guaranty of the truth, such a centre of enlightening and unifying authority. Amidst the many divisions of Christendom they long for this the more. And the Bible, interpreted by each for him- self, seems in no degree to meet their want ; while neither of the most cultured Protest- ant churches offers it satisfaction. Most of all, if they have themselves been assailed by the skeptical spirit, and have wavered and wandered in restless inquiry on the great themes of the soul's well-being, they feel attracted to such a Church, claim- ing such a prerogative, and offering such relief and assurance; as Dollinger says of Christina of Sweden, that she " took refuge in the ship of ecclesiastical authority from the ocean of philosophical doubt." And every mind must admit, I think, that there is a certain inspiring grandeur, august yet winning, in such a conception of God's enduring and holy Church ; that however far the ambitious corporation whose heart is Jesuitism, and whose head is the Pope, may fail of realizing it, the ideal itself is lofty and seductive; and that our timid and limited human nature, surrounded by so many puzzles, and faced by such tremen- dous problems, may well at times admit the wish that such a conception had been per- mitted of God to be realized, and had not been left, as we assuredly hold it to have been, a delusive dream. This is the first of the attractions of Ro- manism, to an educated mind. Another is 2. That it claims to offer to such a mind a body of doctrine, mysterious, no doubt, in some of its parts, but on the whole solid, con- sistent, consecutive, complete ; containing what they accept as a sufficient and satisfy- ing answer to the questions of the soul, the antithesis to infidelity in all its forms, and the consummation of what is true in other systems. It boasts that in this not only the Scripture is fulfilled, but philosophy is illu- mined, man's history is interpreted, God's ways to man are clearly vindicated ; and the appeal which it makes, through this doctri- nal scheme, is of immense persuasive force. The scheme, of course, starts, as every or- ganized theology must, with the doctrine of Original Sin. Sociniauism affirms that man's nature and spirit are right at birth ; that they involve, at any rate, no innate and governing pro- pensities to sin, and only need education, with favorable circumstances, to develop all forms of goodness and virtue. So it holds Jesus a created teacher, the Holy Ghost an impersonal influence, and regeneration a monkish myth. The Evangelical doctrine affirms that man, as originally created, was like God in nature, and like him also in moral perfection ; hav- ing the true knowledge of him, and standing in intimate communion with him through the sympathy of supreme and holy love; that no one of his constitutional powers -was lost in the fall, though their activity was per- verted, and their development hindered; but that the change which then took place was in the essential temper of his heart selfish idolatry and sinful passion supplant- ing the Divine love which had preceded, and the inmost dispositions and tendencies of the soul being thereafter averted from God, and directed to selfish pleasure and gain. The change now needed, therefore, is in this dominant spirit of the heart ; to alter the dispositions, to fix the supreme affection upon God, and to restore the spiritual dis- cernment which was possessed, but has been lost. And this is effected by the Divine Spir- it, through the truth as his instrument, and especially through the revelation of God's love, as declared, with transcendent fullness and tenderness, in his Sou. When this is accomplished, no direct addition is implied to the inherent properties of the soul, but a change is realized in its temper, tastes, and spiritual activities, in its relations to God, and its personal destiny ; a change so rad- ical, vital, complete, and so enduring in con- sequences, as to constitute a true regenera- tion. Conversion, to the loving obedience of Christ, is its sign and fruit. The beauty of holiness flows from it into life. It is com- pleted in sanctificatiou. And, on the ground of Christ's atonement, he who has not yet reached that sanctity, but in whom its prin- ciple has been implanted, is reconciled to God, and is treated as if he had been right- eous ; is, in other words, justified. Preaching the Gospel is therefore here the means of regeneration. To lead men to af- fectionate faith in God, as made manifest in his Son, is the office of the ministry. He who has most of this faith in his heart, oth- er things being equal, is best adapted to ex- cite it in others. The Church and its sacra- ments are the instruments of God for propa- gating in the world the truth concerning him, as revealed in his Word, and for main- taining in renovated men the faith and love which by his Spirit have been inspired. His wisdom and grace are illustriously ex- hibited in this plan of redemption ; the an- gels take new conceptions of him from it ; and man is brought back to a holy love which commemorates Paradise, and which prophesies heaven ; which, being made com- plete and immortal, must make a heaven, though every gate of pearl should vanish. 452 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. This is the Evangelical doctrine. The Romanist system differs from it in essential particulars. It also holds that man is fall- en, and inwardly depraved, but in this dis- tinct sense: By the image of God, in which he was created, it understands his rational and voluntary nature alone, by no exercise of which could he attain true inward right- eousness, the knowledge of God, or the bea- tific vision. This nature being left to itself, the flesh must fight against the spirit, con- cupiscence gain the mastery, disorder and corruption follow. To prevent this result were therefore superadded in Adam, by the grace of God, the supernatural gifts of Di- vine knowledge and righteousness, through which the spirit, re-enforced from its Mak- er, was enabled to rule and restrain the flesh "as with a golden curb," and to rise to communion with the Almighty. It was these Divine supernatural gifts which Adam forfeited in the fall, sacri- ficing them for his posterity as well as for himself, so that all men now are born with- out them ; are born in the state in which Adam was before he possessed them. And through this loss comes again the victory of concupiscence, the flesh everywhere con- quering and debasing the undefended spirit. There is, therefore, nothing to be effectually done for the soul of man, for its holiness and its peace, until these gifts have been restored to it. Without them, whatever teaching it may have, and whatever high influence through that teaching, it is naturally in- capable of aspiring to share the wisdom, the holiness, and the blessedness of God, as the flower is of flight, or the bird of solving a question in morals; and, without them, its course is continually downward, toward darker depths of ignorance and of sin. It is to supply this need of men, then, that the incarnation of God in Jesus is divine- ly ordained and divinely accomplished ; to make up to the soul, which has suffered a loss so essential and extreme, for this tremen- dous transmitted deprivation. By that in- carnation the supernatural gift which Adam forfeited is introduced anew into the world ; and it thenceforth is distributed, by the Holy Ghost, through the priesthood of the Church, and on its sacraments. It is properly given at the beginning of life, before activity has commenced, at the outset of consciousness. It is communicated in Baptism ; in which is effected an instant, essential, complete re- generation the infusion of a supernatural life, the removal of all corruption of sin, the immediate and full introduction of the soul into the spiritual household of God. All the saving benefits of Christ's redemption are thus and there conveyed to the soul, as it enters upon life, and begins the career which can never close. The grace thus imparted is afterward con- fumed in Confirmation. It is nourished and renewed in the sacra- ment of the Eucharist. It is restored, if lost, in the sacrament of Penance. It is replenished and re-enforced in the sac- rament of Marriage, by which human love is exalted and transformed into holy affection. It is renewed, for those who receive this, in the sacrament of Orders. It is finally sealed, and divinely com- pleted, in the Extreme Unction ; after which the soul, pursued and attended with gifts of grace from birth to death, goes forth to meet the grand assize. Regeneration and Sanctification are, of course, synonymous with Justification, on this system. The sacraments are efficacious means of grace ; having power to convey grace, by the Divine appointment, as material food has to nourish the body, or cold to congeal, or fire to burn. Transubstantiation is a necessity to the system, the means of realizing continually on earth the gift which came with Incarna- tion. The succession of the priesthood is an in- evitable part of it ; as much so as is the suc- cession of generations to a continued human history. The lines of transmission must be uninterrupted ; but personal purity in the priest is nowise essential to the virtue of his sacraments. True spiritual life is a thing impossible outside the Church, and miracles are stijl to be expected within it. For it is the super- natural Saviour, constantly present in the supernatural Church, who gives authority to every priest, and gives its efficacy to ev- ery sacrament ; and, if he shall will it, the lame may now leap, the canvas become di- vinely luminous, the solid marble tremble into speech. The visible Church is the permanent Di- vine kingdom in the world, whose numeric- al limits are exactly defined ; and the state of each soul after death is absolutely deter- mined by the relation it has held to that Church and its sacraments. This is, in brief, the substance of the doc- trine. Of course it seems to us in sharp contrast with the Sermon on the Mount ; with the teachings and the letters of Paul and his associates ; with the very frame and aim of the Gospel ; with consciousness itself, and the self-revealing facts of Christian ex- perience. The vices which have risen, and rankly flourished, in the Roman communion its own historians being the witnesses are testimony against it. The spiritual at- tainments of persons aud of peoples under Protestant influences become inexplicable, if it be true ; they explicitly contradict it. The answer is immediate, and is to us overwhelming. But the system is logical, consistent, very commanding, and to many STORES : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 453 thoughtful and questioning minds very at- tractive. Whatever there is of mystery, height, in- spiring power, in our doctrine of the Incar- nation or of the Trinity, is here as well ; whatever of solemn motive and warning in the doctrine of the Fall, and of Human Depravity, and of the Judgment for which we wait. And the advocates of this system hold it complete, while ours is partial ; theirs finished, and ours fragmentary. They do not in. the least regard this sys- tem as tending to subvert a sound morality, sincere and spiritual piety, belief in Christ as the author of grace and justification, but as simply essential to all these. And while they recognize Evangelical Protestantism as containing still some elements of the truth, they look upon these as scattered timbers, not built into a house, aud not sufficient to. make one ; as plates of iron, worthless sep- arately, and not capable of being framed together, except upon the Roman plan, into the vast and symmetrical fabric which is to bear up, over whelming waves, the heart and hope and faith of the world. By its claim of authority, and by this ar- ticulated body of doctrine, Romanism has a continual attractiveness for many fine minds. 3. There is, too, a vast and subtile power in the representations which it presents of the invisible and spiritual world, and the intimate relations which it declares as al- ways subsisting between that world aud this. The human spirit, conscious of affections, and haunted by premonitions, that overpass death, is always reaching out, with eager desire or with forecasting fear, after knowl- edge of the world which lies beyond its sense or science; a knowledge more exact and complete than God in his wisdom has seen fit to bestow. So necromancy is never dead; and so Spiritism comes, in our own time, to tip its tables and rap its floors, in a juggling offer to disclose the Unseen. Its incitement is in the hunger of the soul for some apprehension of the realms whose bounds, of beauty or fire, it has not reached. And now Protestantism, which limits it- self to what has been clearly expressed in the Bible, and which deals timidly eveu with that, seems vague, undefined, and essential- ly unsatisfying, in its treatment of all that mystic domain which lies before us, in com- parison with the exact descriptions which Romanism presents. This affirms that those who die after bap- tism really regenerate, and having com- mitted no unforgiven and mortal sin, yet confessedly imperfect in action and in vir- tue are to undergo, in the future state, certain temporal pains, by which they are to be purified, and satisfaction to bo rendered to the Divine Justice ; that these pains may be abridged by the offering of prayers, pen- ances, and alms, and of the unbloody sacri- fice, on the part of those who tarry behind ; and that the limiting or remitting of the pains is within the prerogative of the au- thorities of the Church. So friends who linger, with aching hearts, on this side of the grave, have power still to bless their dead. Across the far untrodden spaces they can send reliefs, and tidings of joy, to those who have vanished from their sight. And, in return, they may receive real aids and blessings from the dead. Those now sainted and beatified can intercede with God for us, and will do this if we in- voke them. They are living, conscious, in the presence of God, in enjoyment of the be- atific vision, yet informed of what we need and desire perhaps by the mind of God himself and are fraternally sympathetic with us. We may pay them homage: not the Latreia, due to God only, or the Uper- douleia, due to the Virgin Mother, but the Douleia, proper to saints. And \ve may im- plore with joyful freedom their ready as- sistance as intercessors for us with the Al- mighty. Angels, too, in their power and splendor, and their relative sovereignty over nature and life, are still the guardian spirits of men of the least aud humblest, to whom has come God's gift through Christ. Especially the Virgin Mother of Christ may be asked to aid us, with her tender sympathy, and her unbounded power with her Son. The growth of reverence for her in the Roman Church shows how dear and alluring the thought of her is to tbe minds of mankind. The vision of her seems to flash a certain tender light over realms that were otherwise so high as to be dreadful. First, her perpetual virginity is declared. Then, she is formally styled aud proclaimed the Mother of God. Then temples are built, aud prayers are arranged to be offered to her, as Queen of Heaven. Then her immaculate conception, without stain of original sin, is declared to be a dogma of faith. Now, she is undoubtedly more frequently implored in the Roman Communion than God or Christ. Women and children are especially at- tracted but not they only, the strongest and most philosophic are attracted by the thought of a Woman, at once maiden and mother, the spotless and illustrious head of her sex, so near the eternal throne of the universe, while full of gentlest memories and love. And so the whole mysterious realm be- yond the grave from which no traveler returns to us, the gloom and glory of whoso shadows and lights have been reflected on thoughtful minds from the outset of histo- ry, but the vision of which only death re- veals seems brought nearer the earth, and made palpable by Romanism; its inhabit- ants to be declared; their relations to us 454 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. to bo revealed as mutual ami sympathet- ic ; our offices for them and theirs for us to he shown surviving the dread separation, aud still to be accomplished across the vast and dim abysses. And however we may dis- miss the whole, as unauthorized by the Lord aud unwarranted by Scripture, the simple creation of man's imagination, as -wholly ideal as a fancy concerning the civil con- stitution of republics in Sirius, we must not forget that there is prodigious attraction in it for many longing and sensitive souls. It seems to them too beautiful in itself, aud too congruous with their wishes, not to be true. 4. Then, further, Romanism claims to of- fer a greater security of salvation than oth- er systems afford; and to those accustom- ed critically and conscientiously to examine their inward processes of feeling, their suc- cessive vanishing states of mind, and who thus come to suspect the reality of their own virtue, this is immediately and immensely attractive. For feeling seems to fly, as we touch it with our analysis, almost as life flits and fleets beneath the destructive dissecting edge. Spiritual states inevitably disappear when we look away from that which in- spires them, and search, with an introverted scrutiny, after themselves. Many a person of a sincere piety questions, therefore, if he may not have been deceiving himself as to the realness of his faith and repentance ; if what seemed contrition may not have been an unloving fear of the consequences of sin ; if what had been taken for Christian faith may not have been an assent of the under- standing, with no affectionate devoutness of spirit to make it A T ital. He questions this all the more as his rev- erence for God becomes more supreme, and his personal humility becomes more com- plete. He questions it most of all when he fronts, face to face, the tremendous facts of Death, Judgment, and the long Hereafter. Becauee a mistake must have such conse- quences, he is tremulously ready to suspect its existence. The fact that he suspects it seems to furnish fresh evidence that he has made it; and the passage is no long one from such a doubt to remorseful despond- ency. Now, iu such a mood of apprehensive self- questioning, Romanism appeals to him with a prodigious force of invitation. For, what- ever the fact may prove to be when its of- fers are analyzed, it seems to propose certain definite and practicable conditions of salva- tion, which appear as unmistakable as the ladder against a burning house, or the life- boat at sea. Baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, con- fession, penance, obedience to the Church, absolution by the priest, in whom authority to pronounce it has been vested by God, and whose declaration is ratified in heaven, the final anointing, and then, if any thing still remain of unfulfilled obligation, a full and eternal satisfaction to God by temporary pains beyond this life this is the plan which it proposes, and on which it otters the assurance of heaven. It will certainly turn out that all this presupposes certain spiritual states iu him who adopts it, without which it becomes confessedly ineffectual, and that the same doubts which perplexed him before may, therefore, here as easily arise ; and it also will appear that an intention of the priest is needful to the efficacy of every sacra- ment, of which intention the man who re- ceives this can never have certain and in- fallible proof; while it seems to us as plain as the stars that the whole scheme is want- ing in Scriptural authority ; that it is not implied in the words of the Master, nor in any teaching of his apostles ; that it tends to give men a false security, aud to substi- tute an exact ecclesiastical obedience for the faith and love which alone can spirit- ually unite men to God. But, after all, it is very alluring, especially, as I said, to a mind introspective, self -distrustful, conscious of sin, and feeling the doom of immortality upon it. When such a one draws near the point of final passage to realms unchanging and eter- nal ; when he thinks of the Eye which search- es every thought and wish, and traces the secret windings of desire ; when he feels on his prophetic soul the heat and splendor of the great White Throne to hear God's voice, through human lips, giving him quittance and final absolution, as Jesus to the loving woman, it is a thing which any one might desire if he could persuade himself that God had committed an authority so awful, an of- fice so sovereign, to human hands ! 5. And still further, Romanism seems to many to offer them a higher sanctity of spir- it and life than Protestantism does; a sanc- tity, indeed, which is wholly peculiar to it, and for which Protestantism, under what- ever name or form, presents no equivalent. So it attracts some whom it is a grief to us to lose. They want a life set apart from earthly care and labor, from desire and pleasure, from all the fascinations and entanglements of the world; a life devoted to religious meditation, and to works of constant benef- icence and piety ; a life in sympathy with that of ancient martyrs and confessors, of Agnes and Perpetua, of Basil and Benedict, and Francis of Assisi, and of princes who left their crowns for Christ ; a life that is hid with Christ in God. They long for this. Because the spiritual nature in them is tender and deep, and has been moved by a mighty impulse, it yearns with inexpressible desire for fellowship with the Lord, and for the utmost possible attain- STORES: THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 455 ment in the Divine virtue. This is, as it ought to be, the supreme and inspiring pas- sion of their souls, for which they are ready to sacrifice all. All the more they desire it as life around them is hurried and hot, full of ambition, lust, and greed. Amidst the rush and glare of pleasure, amidst the incessant roar of trade, this desire, in finer minds, becomes only the more intense and imperative. It has the energy of a recoil from that which offends, as well as the strength of a personal aspiration. It operates at length like a law of their being ; no more to be resisted than that which quickens the mother's love, or makes self -accusation follow a conscious and deliberate sin. "My soul be with the saints," they say. The inmost, incessant thirst of their hearts is for a celestial life on earth. And Romanism seems to offer them sat- isfaction. The sacraments are declared to communicate, and continually afterward to renew in the heart, this inner sanctity. They invest the whole progress of life on earth, and meet and sanctify all its changes. Manuals of devotion, wonderfully rich, tender, and varied, are offered to the disci- ple, to assist him to gain, and then to main- tain, the white chastity and the radiant charity of this divine life. The confessional offers its ear, never shut, into which the story of every impulse of doubt or passion may be instantly breathed, and behind which is a mind declared to bo instructed of God to clear the doubt and quench the passion. Calvaries are constructed in Roman Cath- olic countries, with successive stations rep- resenting the stages of the way to the cross, at each of which men may bow and pray, as with tender love and shuddering awe they climb toward the crucifix. And convents and monasteries open to men and women alike their hospitable doors, outside which all cares and possessions may bo left, where homes for life are furnished to the devout, and within which the world's clamor and glitter are unheard and unseen. To the active and energetic, for whom rest would be weariness, the most arduous and dangerous missions are assigned ; to pierce the forest and the jungle, and spend their years among savage tribes ; to face the bit- ing arctic cold, and the blazing fierceness of tropic heat ; to front the pestilence, shadow- ing at once the city and the sea with its dark wings. Now I need not tell yon how fascinating is all this to women of line and sensitive natures, to whom the common life of society seems demoralized drudgery ; to men of the heroic mould, to whom a supremo self-sacri- fice is attractive, and who count a life-long service to God the only royal good on earth. Protestantism seems to them, in comparison with this, gross, secular, essentially earthly, in its spirit and aims. When it bids them consecrate their business to God, and doing it in his fear, to do it all to his glory, it seems to them illicitly trying to unite God and Mammon. When it insists on the household life as the purest and noblest for both men and women, it seems to them Epicurean in spirit, hazarding the attempt to find a flow- ery path to the paradise which can only be reached over thorny roughnesses, and entered through sorest wrestle and pain. Protestant missions are to them too luxu- rious ; our labors for the poor appear dainty and haughty. And when an order of Prot- estant devotees is anywhere established, they feel instinctively that that is play, while they are in earnest; that only an absolute self-abnegation, guarded by irreversible vows, can match the height of their desire. So they welcome the severer tasks, the strict- er limitations, the more austere and exact- ing discipline which Romanism offers, and seek in its services the life of God. They may be disappointed, with a blast- ing surprise that shall blacken and wreck their whole subsequent life. One of the most impressive pictures which the recent traveler sees in Europe is by the fertile French Dore", exhibited last year in London, representing a young monk, who has just learned how greedy and gross his associates are, and on whose sad and sensi- tive face, as his missal drops in his languid hands, is breaking forth the passionate sense of disappointment, detestation, of inner re- pugnance, and an utter despair. The power of the picture is in its reflection of an ex- perience not unfamiliar. Blanco White, who knew intimately the convents of Spain, and whose veracity has never been questioned, speaks of those con- vents in one of his letters as " those Europe- an jungles, where lurks every thing that is hideous and venomous." And the key to his final entire skepticism, who began public life as a devout priest, is found by those who know most of his career in that fierce sentence. But whatever the final experience may be, the offer which Romanism makes to these men is great and shining ; and it need ex- cite no wonder in us that they should find it grandly attractive. 6. Then, with all these forces of attrac- tion, the Roman Catholic Church is a vast, venerable, historic organization, of une- qualed age, of immense extent, whose his- tory has, in some of its aspects, been a grand one ; whose history appears to those whom it attracts the one sublimest thing on earth inexplicable, except upon the hypothesis of its Divine origin. It is to them the Church of the Apostles ; which saw the splendor of the Ascension, which heard Peter and John at Jerusalem, 456 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. Paul afterward at Corinth and at Rome, and which directly conveys to us the dcpoai- ttim of faith received from them. It is to them the Church of the Cata- combs; where the new Christian kingdom was working underground, in garments of sackcloth, along galleries of rock, to over- throw and replace the armed empire above. It is the Church of the Fathers, and the canonized Doctors, to whose learning and eloquence, and spiritual insight, the world is debtor ; of Clement and Polycarp, of Jus- tin Martyr and Hippolytus, of Ambrose, Athanasius, and him of the flaming Nuuiidi- an heart. It is the Church of the great Councils ; before which were lowered imperial stand- ards, to whose decisions faction bowed, and whose creeds and decrees have governed and assimilated the mind of Christendom. It is the Church of the Middle Ages ; of Anselm, Bernard, and Peter the Hermit ; the Church which civilized barbarians, liberated slaves, organized crusades, built cathedrals, established libraries, founded universities ; which preserved learning, laws, and arts, amidst the shock of terrific forces, iu. what an ancient Gallican sacramentary hardly exaggerated when it called it " the crash of a falling world ;" the Church which taught the emerging peoples subjection to authori- ty, while it set sharp bounds to the rapaci- ty of barons, and admonished and ruled the haughtiest kings ; the Church which has since sent forth its heroic and conquering teachers to the ends of the earth, "Ad majo- rem Dei gloriam." And, ancient as it is, this powerful Church appears to them to-day the only power which nothing in fact centrally disturbs ; the only one which can defy infidelity, rule the licen- tious wills of men, subdue aud inspire the daring and refractory human intellect, en- noble and rectify human society; the only one which science can not shake, nor revo- lution dethrone, nor the fiercest antagonism of secular interests override and destroy. The supremacy of the spiritual order in the world appears to them guaranteed by it, and by it alone. Secure itself, from all as- sault, it judges the world. To us, who look on the same long records from a wholly different point of view, it seems as certain as any thing in experience that much of this is unhistorical, is purely fanciful ; that it has been the Gospel, as a spiritual force, working apart from and oft- en directly against the Hierarchy, which has done the best part of this ; that whoso- ever now preaches that Gospel, with fervent faith, is the true successor of all the saints ; and that the history of the Roman corpora- tion, which only came to its full develop- ment under Leo and the Gregories, has been crowded with bigotry, pride, persecution ; with prelatical tyranny, priestly license, and ' popular degradation ; with carnivals of fol- ly, aud carnivals of crime ; has been black- ened with the names of inquisitors like Tor- quemada ; has been stained, so that hyssop can not purge it, by prelates and pontiffs like the Borgias and the Medicis. This is our conception of it. But to those minds whose different attitude toward it I am trying to present, the opposite aspect is the one which it offers ; aud ofteu they are profoundly impressed by it. They seem to themselves ennobled by partaking in a his- tory which looks so sacred and august. They feel themselves confederate with the men, God's champions in the world, whose ma- jestic achievements amaze and delight them. They are strengthened for swifter aud grand- er work by all the heroic wisdom and devo- tion to which the Church appears to them heir. A baptism of power falls on them from the past, which is animating and pre- cious beyond all words. And this is an ap- peal which we must not overlook, if we would master the secret of their zeal. 7. Still further, too, we must not forget that Romanism powerfully appeals to these men by its cordial relations with all the fine arts ; with music, painting, sculpture, architecture ; with whatever impresses and most delights the senses and the taste. Its cathedrals are the wonders of the world : mountains of rock-work set to mu- sic. Its elaborate, opulent, mighty masses make the common hymn-tunes of Protest- antism sound almost like the twitter of sparrows, amidst the alternate triumph and wail of commingling winds. ' Its ritual is splendid, scenic, impressive, to the ultimate degree ; and all is exquisite- ly pervaded and modulated by the doctrine which underlies it, every gesture, every pos- ture, of the officiating priest, aud every vest- ment which he wears, being full of signifi- cance. Its liturgical forms have not merely been arranged by studious men, with apt and practiced gifts for the office. They have some of them been born of those immense crises in personal or in public experience when intensity of feeling, surpassing all po- etic impulse, infused spiritual fire into the sentences. Not only reminiscences are in them, therefore, of perils passed and victo- ries achieved; their present utterance is that of the faith which soared upward from the flame, or looked from the damp darkness of dungeons and beheld above the heavens opened. Aud architecture can not be too majestic to echo such voices. The tone- speech of music, in its most tender or jubi- lant strains, becomes their meek and glad ! handmaid. Nothing, therefore, is too ornate or mag- nificent to be incorporated in the superb ceremonial of this immense organism. It STOERS : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 457 marches, as it fights, an army with baimers. It would copy, if it could, the very ceremo- nial of the Temple above. The king's daugh- ter is all glorious within, and her raiment must be of wrought gold. To one who wants his whole aesthetic na- ture gratified and educated in his worship, while it shall be also and always subordi- nated to spiritual attainment who accepts this nature as from God, and feels its thrill- ing and sweet impulsions demanding a law- ful and large domain there is here a con- stant and vast attraction. Other, more strict- ly intellectual services, appear to him barren and frigid in comparison. He seems to him- self to be honoring God with a worthier wor- ship, while gaining for himself a peculiar delight, by making the sanctuary a poem in stone, and then bringing into it the purple and the gold, the veils of silk, and fragrant incense, by hanging it with pictures, and paneling its walls with significant marbles. It is not the understanding alone, or the moral nature, which that worship is de- signed to enlist. The imagination is to be reached by it, and profoundly stimulated. The most secret sources of feeling are to be searched ; the most delicate and retiring sympathies. The whole soul is to be suf- fused with its subtile influence, as the atmos- phere of the church is struck through with golden or crimson lights, till holy memories arise within one ; till he is wrapped in sweet ecstasy of reveries ; till he is conscious of undefined and transporting expectations, and almost waits to hear around, upon the charm- ed and perfumed air, the rustle of angelic plumes. The apostles worshiped well and truly, not at all in this way. The Saviour made no suggestion of this to the woman of Sa- maria, when he taught her how to offer her devotions. Our fathers found delight in praise, and were heard in their prayer, though offering it in rudest forms, under bleakest skies, because incense stifled them, and the gorgeous vestments seemed to them dipped in the blood of the saints. We do not maintain the passion of their reaction ; but we, too, are afraid of that sensuous pleas- ure which may be easily confounded with worship, while wholly dissimilar ; which may leave the soul intoxicate with joy, while utterly wanting in the devout love which links to God, and in the faith which conquers death. But the convert to Romanism delights himself in this service, so rich and tender, so various and so ancient, with a passionate fondness ; while the occasional attempts of ambitious High-churchmen to emulate that which the blending genius of many centu- ries and lands has produced are to him sim- ply ludicrous; like building another equal St. Peter's of scantling and boards, or repro- ducing Warwick Castle in cake anil sugar. 8. And, finally, let us not forget that Ro- manism offers to these men what they ac- cept as the Church of the Future ; through which, continuing to the end of time, and only growing mightier with age, the per- fect society shall be realized on earth. We have not reached the hiding of its power till we recognize this. It presents itself as ancient, but as still in the fullness of unworn strength ; as hav- ing the compactness, the hardihood, the con- fidence, which come with a long and vast ex- perience, but as combining with this the ar- dor of its most fervent and hopeful youth. It seems conservative, beyond all other human societies; since its government is, and must always continue, in the hands of a trained and practiced class, shrewd, vig- ilant, closely combined, everywhere repre- sented. It seems communistic, beyond the dream of any Socialist; since all baptized persons are made equally its members, and if continuing subject to the Church are one, eternally, in Christ Jesus. It claims to be eminently the Church for the rich; whose utmost treasures can not rival its revenues, whose titles and pedi- grees it immensely surpasses, and whose palaces dwindle before its cathedrals. It claims, more emphatically, to be the Church for the poor; for whom its build- ings and many services are always open, on whose behalf it builds great hospitals, to whom it preaches in historic cathedrals, like Notre Dame in Paris or the Duomo at Milan, as well as in the humblest chapels, and be- fore whom it displays the most exquisite splendors of its magnificent ritual. Compare its churches with ours, open only on Sunday, and then occupied chiefly by the cultured and the prosperous, and ours look partial, exclusive, in the contrast ; careless of those for whom the Lord died, and in whom he now presents himself to us. It is limited to no nation, this ever-ex- pandiug, exploring Church ; but is equally at home 011 every coast, and under every form of government. It grasps the most barbarous, while it trains the most civil- ized. It has an office for every power, and has a lure for every desire. Its plans ex- tend to all the lands, and anticipate in their reach the coming generations. And that perennial energy of it which is shown on the one hand in its doctrinal progress from dogma to dogma, till now it has concentrated such transcendent authority in the person of the Popo, on the other hand is shown in the missionary work Avhich, radiating from Some, is ever proceeding, with uncounted expenditure of money and of life, with un- wearied patience, aud an unsurpassed skill, on every shore where life is found. If any institution seems likely to endure, then, by vejason of its inherent strength, and in the absence of Divine interventions, this 458 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. is the one. To those who see in it the king- dom of God, made visible in the world, and filled with his eternal force, nothing else which is future secins as certain as this. It saw the downfall of the empire of Rome. Unchanged itself, it has watched the change, and seen the end, of kingdoms and thrones from that day to this. They expect it to see the end of those which now look stately and strong on earth, and to have the per- petuity which can belong to nothing else upon this whirling, inconstant planet. It is to them still in the beginning of its years. They anticipate the time when it shall have reconquered Germany and En- gland, shall have conquered this country, shall have reconciled to itself the severed and feebler Eastern Churches, shall have set the cross above the crescent, shall have bap- tized Buddhist and Brahmin in its faith, shall have come to the full inheritance of the earth. And then they expect the per- fect society, through the wisdom, justice, and spiritual sanctity, which it will everywhere propagate and maintain. They glory in being permitted to reach forward, through this expanding, eliduring organization, to mould the distant future of the world; not limiting themselves to a fugitive influence, which shall have passed when they are buried, but projecting their influence directly and sensibly into the fu- ture, and with the mightiest instrument of time working for the good of the latest gen- erations. In the ultimate triumph of this Church of their devotion they expect the Millennium ; and in the peaceful glories of that they look, each one, to have some share. It is a great anticipation. We must not wonder if it grapples their hearts as with hooks of steel. So it is, then, Fathers and Brethren, as I conceive it, and so far as the time allows me to state it, that Romanism appeals to edu- cated Protestants ; as offering them an au- thoritative teacher, always present, in which it claims that the mind of God resides and is revealed ; as presenting what it affirms to be a solid, consistent, and satisfying theolo- gy; as claiming to bring the spiritual world more clearly aud closely to their minds, and to show their relations to it more intimate ; as professing to give them a security of sal- vation unattainable elsewhere; as offering them what it declares the only true sancti- ty of spirit and life ; as showing a long and venerable history ; as welcoming and cher- ishing all the fine arts, and making these its constant helpers; as promising to rebuild and purify society, and at last to possess and regenerate the earth. To those who are attracted by it, it seems to have all which other systems possess or claim, and to add vital elements which oth- ers lack, supplying their imperfections, sur- passing their power, and meeting wants which they can neither interpret nor an- swer. It influences men by its immense mass, without their conscious discrimination of its separate attractions. Its bulk is so gigantic, its energy so incessant, that it seems to them to verify its claims without other argument, and to make a private judgment against it the most rash and reckless of spiritual acts. So it draws them to it with a moral momen- tum Avhich increases as they approach; with a force almost like that of the physical suc- tion of a current or a whirlpool. Once start- ed on their course to it, opposing argument becomes nearly powerless. The pull of this immense and consummate system is so stren- uous aud enveloping that theological, philo- sophical, historical objections are evaded or overleaped by the yielding mind, as are rocks in a rapid by rushing timbers. Where it has once become firmly estab- lished it impregnates every thing with its mysterious and penetrant influence. It be- comes a pervading spiritual presence; which has its voices not only in the pulpit or in books of devotion, but in homes, and schools, and all places of concourse ; which touches life at every point where that is sensitive and responsive; which is associated with ancestral memories and renown, and more vitally associated with the hopes of the fu- ture. It gives stability to rank, yet makes the humblest at home amidst its more than royal pageants. It invites the scholar to a happy seclusion, yet smites the most labori- ous life with a gleam from the supernatural. It paints the story of Christ on windows, and carves it in lordly and delicate marbles, for the eager and wondering eyes of child- hood, and for the fading sight of age. It occupies itself with imperial cares, yet con- nects itself intimately with the deepest as- pirations which move the soul, and with its longing love for the dead. It is like dis- placing the atmosphere to remove it. Re- bellion against it seems to dislocate the frame of society itself. Only a tremendous moral reaction, inspired and sustained by forces which are in their nature incompress- ible, and which have been gathering through successive generations, can break its hold on a nation which once it has firmly grasped. It is still too recent and too limited with us to have such a general sweep of power. But it is working, with unwearied resolu- tion, to make itself supreme among us. Its very strangeness gives it prominence in our American or English society ; as a palm-tree attracts more attention than an oak. It brings forces that have been disciplined for a thousand years to act on our plastic mod- ern life; and converts to it may be expected from many quarters. Some have held its doctrine before, in the feebler, more fanciful, and more fragmentary STORES : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 459 form in which that is avowed by a section, for example, of the Augelican communion, in England and here. Their logical sense must carry them to its conclusions, if log- ical sense has been able to maintain itself through the enfeebling prettiness of their previous career. Some, holding the evangelical doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord, and the pres- ent operation of the Holy Ghost, find here what seems to them the necessary comple- ment, and the justifying reason, of these transcendent disclosures ; the only exact and final antithesis to Sociniauism, or even to atheism. Some are drawn to it by the fervor of feeling, the energy of pathetic and admonishing eloquence, which mark the ser- mons of the Paulists, and of others who, like them, appear from their retreats to stir men's hearts as messengers from God. Some sim- ply and gladly react into it from a rest- less, sad, and weary skepticism. But all are greatly in earnest when they go. They are true devotees, and they rarely return. They are usually Ultramontanists afterward. There is nothing languid, moderate, tepid, in their conviction or their feeling. They are resolute, enthusiastic, \vith a fire of zeal which works alike in brain and heart. And they have a tone of assurance in their words, and of certainty of victory. Bellarmine is their favorite theologian. De Maistre is widely popular with them. Hyacinthe and Dolliuger are " fallen angels." They had no trouble with the dogma of Papal Infallibility. It was desired and wel- comed by them, as articulating what had been latent for centuries in the unvoiced consciousness of the Church, and as bring- ing the whole system to its legitimate and prophesied climax. That Pope Honorius had been formally condemned by the Sixth Council, his dogmatic writings burned as heretical, and his name anathematized and stricken from the liturgy, was not even a hindrance to the eagerness of their faith. They make great sacrifices for their con- victions, and do it joyfully. Indeed, the sacrifice. becomes to them a fresh motive, an argument for the system which demands it. For, according to the cross shall bo the crown, and they who have come out of great tribulation shall find their robes of a more lustrous white. Before the intensity of their aspiration the ties of friendship, the strong- est bonds of earthly relationship, if tending to withhold them from the Church of their desire, yield and are severed as flaxen fibres in the flame. For they regard the system which they accept, not only as essential to the future of mankind, to the well-being of persons, to the safety and glory of peoples and states; they regard it as alone Divine in its nature, overwhelming in its authori- ty, whose touch should properly shatter and consume whatever opposes it. Even the temporary toleration of a different faith is to them an unwelcome necessity. A system of popular education not pervaded by Ro- man Catholic influences, is ensnaring and dangerous. They have the courage of their convictions ; and they use without stint the instruments of Protestantism to further their system and to make it universal. Even present failure does not dishearten them. That they expect; and they can wait, for the Church lives on. The ages are hers ; and to her supreme incorporeal life, which time does not waste nor change impair, the final victory always is sure ! If we are to resist the vast eifort of these men, and to make the liberties which our fathers bequeathed to us, and the Gospel in which they surely trusted, supreme in the laud, we must at least know more than we have known of the seductive and stimula- ting forces which operate against us, and which we are to encounter. To treat the cases of those who have gone from us to Rome as merely sporadic the effect of acci- dental causes, or of personal eccentricity one might as well treat thus the power which drives the Gulf Stream northward, or which hurls the monsoons of the In- dian Ocean back and forth across the equa- tor. The one tremendous fact against them is that they can not alter, and can not obliter- ate, the record of the past. Their system has been abundantly tried ; and, fascinating as it looks, its prodigal promises have been proved as unreal as the stately pleasure- dome of Kubla Khan seen by Coleridge in his dream. The scheme which looks so se- ductive and magnificent, when searched by the passionless logic of events, when tested in the slow and solemn ordeal of succeeding centuries, in Italy, Spain, Mexico, the West Indies, turns out as unreal in what it claims and in what it proposes, as the island of No- where in the famous romance of Sir Thomas More. Good men have lived under it, multitudes of them ; saintly women, as pure and devout as ever brightened the earth with their pres- ence ; and such live in it now. But their goodness is wholly and constantly parallel- ed outside their communion, because it has come, not from what is peculiar to that, but from the quickening light of God's Word, and the transforming energy of his Spirit, which we as freely and consciously partake. In that which is peculiar to it its hie- rarchy, its ritual, its efficacious sacraments, its indulgences to the sinner, its vast and complex organization, the concentration of all authority in its "Vice-God" at Rome wherever the system has had its way it ha.s wrought such mischiefs that the pen hesi- tates to recount them. It has been powerful to depress peoples, 460 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. ineffectual to uplift them. It has, with sure instinct, discouraged and diminished secular enterprise. It has linked itself most natu- rally with the harshest and most tyrannous civil institutions. It has made religion a matter of rites, and a matter of locality; till the same man became a devotee in the chap- el, and a bandit in the field. It has accepted a passionate zeal for the Church in place of the humility, the purity and charity, which Christ demanded ; till the fierce Dominic be- comes one of its saints ; till forged decretals were made for centuries to bulwark its pow- er; till its hottest anathemas have been launched at those who complained of its abuses; till all restraints of humanity or morality have been overleaped in many ex- cesses to which its adherents have been prompted from the altar. Its most devoted and wide-spread order, the Society of Jesus, in spite of its invincible heroism and its uu- equaled services to the popes, by the mon- strous maxims which Pascal exposed, and the practices which expressed them, so kin- dled against it the indignation of Christen- dom that Clement XIV. was compelled to suppress it in all Christian states. The rage of this system against whatever would hinder its march against its own sub- jects when they have conscientiously paused in their submission has had something transcendent in its pitiless malignity. The fierceness of its persecutions has been pre- cisely proportioned to its power. The hand which looks so full of blessing has opened the deep of oubliettes, has added tortures to the rack, has framed the frightful Iron Maid- en, has set the torch to martyr fires. The breath which should have filled the air with sweeter than Sabaean odors has blighted the bloom of many lives, and floated curses over the nations so frequent and so awful that life itself was \vithered before them, till their very extravagance made them harm- less. Instead of true wisdom, where this sys- tem has prevailed with an unquestioned supremacy, it has fostered and maintained wide popular ignorance. Instead of true sanctity, its fruit has been shown in peasant- ries debased, aristocracies corrupted, an ar- rogant and a profligate priesthood. It has honored the vilest who would servo it, and crushed the purest who would not. It sent gifts and applause, and sang its most exult- ing Te Deum, for Philip the Second ; while its poisoned bullet killed William of Orange. The medal which it .struck in joyful com- memoration of the bloody diabolism of St. Bartholomew's is one of its records. Its highest officials have sometimes lived lives which its own annalists have hated to touch. Alexander VI., cruel, crafty, avaricious, li- centious, Avhom it were flattery to call a Ti- berius in pontificals who bribed his way to the highest dignity, who burned Savona- rola, the traditional portrait of whose favor- ite mistress, profanely painted as the Moth- er of God, hangs yet in the Vatican, who probably died by the poisoned wine which he had had prepared for his cardinals, and whose evil renown is scarcely matched by that of Caesar Borgia his sou stands as one of its infallible popes, holding the keys of heaven for men. If any system is doomed by its history, this is the one. Protestantism has now so checked it, the advancing moral develop- ment of mankind has set such limits to its power, that these are largely facts of the past. The Vatican Court is now free from scandal. The Church at present seeks strength through beneficence, not through control of the secular arm ; by its helps to piety, not through appeals to physical fear. But its more spontaneous and self-revealing development has been in this more friendly Past. Therefore the nations whom once it has ruled, when they finally break from it, hate it with an intensity proportioned to the promises it has failed to fulfill, and the bit- ter degradations it has made them undergo. Atheism itself that moral suicide seems better to them than to be again subjected to Rome. This is the system as realized in history, and there forever adjudged and sentenced. Of course this gives immense advantage to those who now resist its progress. It can not fascinate the nations again till the long experience is forgotten. But such is not at all its appearance as presented to those whom it wins to its fold. And we must look at it, in a measure at least, as those who honor and love it look, if we would un- derstand its power, if Ave would know how it is that it hopes a second time to conquer the world. Travelers have often and glowingly de- scribed the silver and golden illuminations of St. Peter's, as seen from the Pincian Hill at Rome, on the great Easter festival. Won- derful, ethereal, almost celestial, appears the majestic Basilica, with its dome, when sud- denly over all its lines flashes that startling, unearthly radiance. It has never been noticed, so far as I have observed, that the illumination is wholly con- fined to that half of the dome which fronts the city. The other remains frowning and stern, while this is glowing through the darkness like a golden temple let down by God from heaven to earth. We must not look only, as often we do, on the sombre and sterile side of Romanism, if we would comprehend its attraction. We must know, and feel, that there are aspects of it in which, to those who look with admir- ing eyes on its immense illuminated front, it appears more beautiful and serene than any vision of poets, while as solid and command- ing as the very, and only, Temple of God. PROTESTANTISM, ROMANISM, AND MODERN CIVIL- IZATION. BY THE REV. GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., Professor in Yale College, New Haven, Conn. IN this discussion I shall take " Civilizn- tion " in the broad sense, and include under the term all that enters into the improve- ment of the individual and of society all the elements that unite to constitute an ad- vanced stage of human progress. When- ever we contemplate the growth of civiliza- tion, we should not confine our attention to the organized institutions, political or eccle- siastical, which minister to the welfare of mankind, but should take iuto view, also, whatever influences spring from the indi- vidual and contribute to his well-being. In other words, the term "civilization" includes culture. The inventions and discoveries that lighten the burden of labor and conduce to material comfort, the safeguards of law, re- fined sentiments, literature, art, and science, the amenities of social intercourse all that raises man above the rude and narrow life of the barbarian is embraced in this com- prehensive term. In defining civilization, however, it has been justly said that no na- tion can be considered highly civilized in Avhich a small class is possessed of the bene- fits of scholarship, the charm of polished manners, and the conveniences and luxuries derived from wealth, at the same time that the bulk of the population are sunk in pov- erty and ignorance, perhaps degraded to a condition of serfdom. Nor can that nation be deemed civilized, in the full idea of the word, where the fine arts flourish while ag- riculture and the mechanic arts are in a low state. Civilization should involve some- thing like an impartial or proportionate de- velopment of the capacities of man and a fair distribution of social advantages. It should likewise carry within it the germ of further and indefinite progress. We are absolved from inquiring, in this place, what sort of a civilization could ex- ist, and how long it were possible for civili- zation to continue, without any aid from re- ligion. Whoever believes in the teachings of Christ needs no argument to convince him that Christianity is essential to the en- during life of all that is excellent and noble in the products of human activity. "Ye are the salt of the earth." It is clear that Christianity, from the moment when it first gained a foothold in the Roman Empire down to the present time, has never ceased to exert a profound influence upon society. Of the several agencies which have chiefly conspired to determine the course and the character of modern history, Christianity and the Church are first in importance. At- tribute whatever weight we may to the leg- acy that was transmitted from the nations of antiquity, or to the peculiar genius of their barbarian conquerors, every discerning student must allow to Christianity the pre- dominant part in moulding the history of the European communities now on the stage of action. No enlightened Protestant, in our day, will be inclined to disparage the wholesome influence which the Roman Catholic Church may still exert in certain places and over certain classes of people. We are not dis- posed to undervalue the benefits which that Church, in the Middle Ages, when it was the only organized form of Christianity in West- ern Europe, conferred on society. We are even quite willing to concede that the Pa- pacy itself, the centralized system of rule, which has been the fountain of incalculable evils, was providentially made productive of important advantages during the period when ignorance and brute force prevailed, and when anarchy and violence constituted the main peril to Avhich civilization was ex- posed. Let us thankfully acknowledge the debt that is due to the mediaeval Church for preserving from utter destruction the re- mains of ancient literature and art, for train- ing the minds of undisciplined men, and im- parting to them what knowledge had out- lived the wreck of ancient power and cul- ture, and for curbing the passions and soft- ening the manners of rude peoples. Chris- tianity in the mediieval Church existed in a corrupt form, but its life was not extinct, and it operated as a leaven, according to the ! promise of its author. Our attention is to be directed to more recent times. Wo have to compare the influence of Romanism with i that of Protestantism, as that influence is seen in the course of the last three centu- ries, and as it is deducible from the nature of the respective systems. There is one point of contrast between the two systems which deserves to be placed in 462 the foreground of onr inquiry. The Roman Catholic system is the rule of society by a sacerdotal class. This is a fundamental characteristic of that system. The guid- ance of the conscience of individuals, and of the policy of nations, so far as their poli- cy may be thought to touch the province of morals and religion, is relegated to a body of priests, or, according to the recent Vatican Council, to their head. The authority to de- cide upon the questions of highest moment resides in this body of ecclesiastics. It is not, indeed, like those hereditary priesthoods which are separated by an impassable bar- rier from other orders" of men, and which are found, as an established aristocracy, in cer- tain Oriental religions. Nevertheless, it is a limited class, admitting to its ranks none whom it chooses to exclude, and assuming the exalted prerogative of pronouncing in- fallibly upon questions of truth and duty, and of conveying or withholding the bless- ings of salvation. Protestantism denied this prerogative. It broke down the wall of separation between priest and layman. It accorded to the laity the full right to determine for themselves those questions over which the clergy had claimed an ex- clusive jurisdiction. It declared that the heavenly good offered in the Gospel is acces- sible to the humblest soul, without the in- tervention of a mediatorial priesthood. The emancipation of the laity from clerical rule is one of the prime characteristics of the Reformation. 1. Protestantism, as compared with the op- posite system, sets free and stimulates the en- ergy, intellectual and moral, of the individ- ual, and thus augments the forces of which civilization is the product. The progress of civilization, in the long course of history, is marked by the growing respect paid to the rights of the individual, and the ampler room afforded for the unfolding of his pow- ers, and for the realizing of his aspirations. There was something imposing in those huge despotisms Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Per- sia in which a multitude of human beings were welded together under an absolute master. Such empires were an advance upon a primitive state of things, where ev- ery man's hand was against his neighbor. Yet they were a crude form of crystalli- zation ; and they were intrinsically weak. The little cities of Greece, with their freer political life, and the larger scope which they allowed for the activity and the culture of the individual communities of citizens proved more than a match for the colossal might of the East. Among the Greeks and Romans, however, although governments of law had supplanted naked force, the State was supreme, and to the State the individ- ual must yield an exclusive allegiance. It waa a great gain when the Christian Church arose, and when the individual became con- ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. scions of an allegiance of the soul to a higher kingdom an allegiance which did not su- persede his loyalty to the civil authority, but limited while it sanctioned this obliga- tion. But the Church itself at length erect- ed a supremacy over the individual incon- sistent with the free action of reason and conscience, and even stretched that suprem- acy so far as to dwarf and overshadow civil society. It reared a theocracy, and subject- ed every thing to its unlimited sway. The Reformation gave back to the individual his proper autonomy. The result is a self-re- spect, an intellectual activity, a develop- ment of inventive capacity, and of energy of character, which give rise to such achieve- ments in science, in the field of political ac- tion, and in every work where self-reliance and personal force are called for, as would be impossible under the opposite system. In the period immediately following the Reformation, signal proofs were afforded of this truth. The little States of Holland, for example, proved their ability to cope with the Spanish Empire, to gain their indepen- dence, and to acquire an opulence and a culture which recalled the best days of the Grecian republics. They beat back their invaders from their soil, and sent forth their victorious navies upon every sea, while at home they were educating the common peo- ple, fostering science and learning, and build- ing up universities famous throughout Eu- rope. England, in the age of Elizabeth, proved that the native vigor of her people was re-enforced in a remarkable degree by the stimulus derived from the peculiar gen- ius of the Protestant religion. It was the period when she was acquiring her naA'al ascendency ; the period, likewise, of Shaks- peare, Bacon, and Raleigh. Who can doubt that the United States of America are not indeed wholly, but in great part indebted to their position, as contrasted with that of Mexico and the political communities of South America, to this expansion of the pow- er of the individual, which is the uniform and legitimate fruit of Protestant princi- ples f 2. The spirit of Protestantism favors uni- versal education. The lay Christian, who is to read and interpret the Scriptures, and to take part in the administration of govern- ment in the Church, must not be an illiterate person. Knowledge, mental enlightenment, under the Protestant system, are indispen- sable. The weight of personal responsibility for the culture of his intellectual and spirit- ual nature, which rests on every individual, makes education a matter of universal con- cern. Far more has been done in Protestant than in Roman Catholic countries for the in- struction of the whole people. It is enough to refer to the common-school system of Hol- land, and of New England, and to Protestant Germany, to show how natural it is for tho FISHER : PROTESTANTISM, ROMANISM, AND MODERN CIVILIZATION. 463 disciples of the Reformation to provide for this great interest of society. The free circulation of tbe Bible in Prot- esttint lauds has disseminated an instrument of intellectual, as well as of religious, im- provement, the good effect of which is im- measurable. As a repository of history, bi- ography, poetry, ethics, as well as a monitor to the conscience and a guide to heaven, the Bible has exerted an influence on the com- mon mind, in all Protestant nations, which it would be difficult to exaggerate. The practice of interpreting the Bible and of exploring its pages for fresh truth affords a mental discipline of a very high order. How often have the Scriptures carried into the cottage of ths peasant a breadth and refine- ment of intellect which otherwise would never have existed, and which no agency employed by the Roman Catholic system, in relation to the same social class, has ever been able to engender ! 3. That Protestantism should bo more friendly to civil and religious liberty than the Roman Catholic system would seem to follow unavoidably from the nature of the two forms of faith. Protestantism involves, as a vital element, an assertion of personal rights with respect to religion, the highest concern of man. Moreover, Protestantism casts off the yoke of priestly rule, and puts ecclesiastical government, in due measure, into the hands of the laity. As we have al- ready said, it is a revolt of the laity against a usurped ecclesiastical authority. The Church of Rome teaches men that their first and most binding duty is to bow with unquestioning docility and obedience to their Heaven-appointed superiors. How is it possible that Protestantism should not foster a habit of mind which is incompatible with a patient endurance of tyranny at the hands of the civil power f How can Prot- estantism, inspiring a lively sense of person- al rights, fail to bring with it, eventually at least, a corresponding respect for the rights of others, and a disposition to secure their rights iu forms of government and in legis- lation ? How can men who are accustomed to judge for themselves and act independent- ly in Church affairs manifest a slavish spir- it in the political sphere ? On the contrary, the habit of mind which the Roman Catholic nurture tends to beget leads to servility iu the subject toward the ruler, as long as an alliance is kept up between sovereign and priest. It is true that the Church of Rome can accommodate itself to any of the vari- ous types of political society. Her doctors have at times preached an extreme theory of popular rights and of the sovereignty of the people. While the State is subordinate to the Church, any form of government may be tolerated ; and there may be an interest on the part of the priesthood in inculca- ting political theories which operate, in their judgment, to weaken the obligations of loy- alty toward the civil magistrate, and to ex- alt by contrast the divine authority of the Church. When the civil magistracy pre- sumes to exercise prerogatives, or to ordain measures, which are deemed hurtful to the ecclesiastical interest, a radical doctrine of revolution, even a doctrine of tyrannicide, has been heard from the pulpits of the most conservative of religious bodies. Generally speaking, however, the Church of Rome is the natural ally and supporter of arbitrary principles of government. The prevailing sentiment, the instinctive feeling, in that Church, is that the body of the peo- ple are incapable of self-guidance, and that to give them the reins in civil affairs would imperil the stability of ecclesiastical control. To this reasoning it is often replied by ad- vocates of the Roman Catholic system that Protestantism opens a door to boundless tyr- anny by leaving the temporal power with- out any check from the ecclesiastical. The State, it is said, proves omnipotent; the civil magistrate is delivered from the wholesome dread of ecclesiastical censure, and is left free to exercise all kinds of tyranny, without the powerful restraint to which he was sub- ject under the mediaeval system. He may even violate the rights of conscience with impunity. The State, it is sometimes said, when released from its subordinate relation to the Church, is a godless institution. It becomes, like the pagan States of antiquity, absolute in the province of religion as in secular affairs, and an irresistible engine of oppression. It must be admitted that Prot- estant rulers have been guilty of tyranny ; that, iu many instances, they can not be cleai'ed of the charge of unwarrantably in- terfering with the rights of conscience, and of attempting to govern the belief and regu- late the forms of worship of their subjects, in a manner destructive of true liberty. The question is, whether these instances of mis- government are the proper fruit of the Prot- estant spirit, or something at variance with it, and therefore an evil of a temporary and exceptional character. The imputation that the State as consti- tuted under Protestantism is heathen de- pends on the false assumption that the Church and the priesthood as established in the Roman Catholic system are identical, or so nearly identical that one can not sub- sist without the other. It is assumed that when the supervision and control which the Church of Rome aspires to exercise over the civil authority is shaken off, nothing is left but an unchristian or Autichristian institu- tion. The fact that a layman can be as good- a Christian as a priest is overlooked. The Christian laity who make up a com- monwealth, and the Christian magistrates who are set over them, are quite as able to discern, and quite as likely to respect person- 464 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. al rights, ami to act for the common weal, as if they were subject to an organized priesthood. Since tho Reformation, a layman has been the head of tho English Church and State, and civil magistrates in England have borne a part in ecclesiastical government With- out entering into tho question of the right- eousness or expediency of establishments, or broaching any of the controverted topics connected with this subject, we simply as- sert here that the civil government of En- gland is not to be branded as unchristian or Autichristian on account of this arrange- ment. As far as the administration of pub- lic affairs in that country has been charac- terized by justice and by a regard for the well-being of all orders of people, the Gov- ernment has been Christian as truly Chris- liau, to say the least, as if the supremacy had been virtually lodged with the Pope, or with an aristocracy of priests. History verifies the proposition that Prot- estantism is favorable to civil and religious freedom, and thus promotes the attainment of the multiplied advantages which freedom brings in its train. The long and success- ful struggle for independence in the Nether- lands, the conflict which established English liberty against the despotic influence of the House of Stuart, the growth and establish- ment of the Republic of the United States, are events so intimately connected with Protestantism and so dependent upon it, that we may point to them as monuments of the true spirit and tendency of the Re- formed religion. That religious persecution has darkened the annals of the Protestant faith, and that the earliest leaders in the Reformation failed to recognize distinctly the principle of liberty of conscience, must be admitted. But Protestantism, as is claim- ed, at the present day, both by its friends and foes, was illogical, inconsistent with its own genius and principles, whenever it at- tempted to coerce conscience by punishing religious dissent with the sword and the fagot. Protestants illustrate the real char- acter and tendency of their system by de- ploriug whatever acts of religious persecu- tion the predecessors who bore their name Avere guilty of, and by the open and sincere advocacy of religious liberty. Liberty of thought, and freedom of speech and of the press, however restricted they may have been by Protestants in times past, it is the tendency of Protestantism to uphold. It is more and more recognized that freedom in the investigation of truth, and in the publi- cation of opinions, is required by the true principles of the Reformation. On the other hand, the dogma of persecu- tion has never been authoritatively disa- vowed by the Church of R6me. Who has ever done penance for St. Bartholomew and the burning of Huss? Even at this day this hateful dogma is boldly professed by the organs of the Ultramontane party, which is now in the ascendant. It is difficult to sec how these doctrines can bo given up by a Church which attributes to every one of the long line of pontiffs infallibility on ques- tions of morals. In recent times the doc- trine of " liberty of conscience " and of wor- ship has been branded by Pius IX., in an ad- dress to all bishops branded, therefore, ex cathedra as an error to be abhorred and to be shunned as the contagion of a pestilence. Tho recent dogma of the Council of the Vati- can involves a formidable attack npon civil liberty. This new article of belief subjects all civil legislation to the moral criticism of the Pope of Rome, and binds every mem- ber of tho Roman Catholic Church, whether ruler or subject, to submit to his decision. No limit is set to the power of the priest to intermeddle with the governments that ac- knowledge his jurisdiction. 4. Protestantism has bestowed a great boon upon civilization in supplanting the ascetic type of religion. Christianity came not to destroy, but to fulfill. It was not to supersede any one of the normal activities, or to proscribe any of the legitimate prod- ucts of human exertion. It was to mingle in the earthly pursuits of mankind, a ren- ovating and purifying influence. Family life, letters, art, science, amusement, trade, and commerce were to suffer no blight, but were rather to experience a quickening and, at the same time, an elevating power from contact with the Gospel. Christ bade his fol- lowers not to retreat from the world, but to stay in it and transform it. The kingdom of God on earth was to draw within it all that is pure and admirable in the infinitely diversified works and achievements of the natural man. It was not to be a ghostly realm of devotees, but a society of men and women, not indifferent to the labors and pleasures that pertain to this life, but infus- ing into all things a spirit of religious con- secration. Tho ascetic typo of religion in- terposes a gulf between religion and the business of the world, between things nat- ural and supernatural. The creation of a separate priesthood, who are cut off from family life and from the ordinary relations of society, exemplifies tho ascetic tenden- cy, which appears more or less distinctly throughout the Roman Catholic system. The effect of tho compulsory rule of celiba- cy is to attach a stigma to tho institution of marriage and to tho domestic relations. These relations are held to involve an in- ferior condition of sanctity. Apart from all the other evils which are connected with tho law of celibacy, it strikes a blow at the sacreduess of an institution on which the interests of civilization essentially depend. But the ascetic spirit, tho unauthorized di- vorce of things sacred and secular, pene- trates much further. FISHER: PROTESTANTISM, ROMANISM, AND MODERN CIVILIZATION. 465 It is a remarkable fact in history that the rise of commerce helped to undermine the authority of the clergy, and was one of the potent instruments in educating the Euro- pean mind for the revolt of Protestantism. Commerce, it is true, produced a keenness and sagacity of intellect, and led to an ac- tivity of social movement and intercourse, which tended to break the yoke of supersti- tion. Municipalities of busy merchants soon began to chafe under the sway of ecclesias- tics. Independently, however, of these pe- culiar effects of trade, there was a secret but growing consciousness that great industrial enterprises and secular activity do not find any link of connection with the ascetic type of religion. They may get from it a bare toleration, but they must look elsewhere for a sanction and a baptism. 5. The Protestant religion keeps alive in the nations that adopt it the spirit of prog- ress. There may exist a high degree of civ- ilization in certain respects, but a civiliza- tion which has ceased to expand through forces inherent in itself. China is an exam- ple. There may be a richer and more com- plex development which yet culminates, and, thenceforward, either remains stationary, or, which is more likely to occur, becomes degen- erate and goes backward. The civilization of the ancient Roman empire is a signal case of such an arrest of progress and of such a decadence. The spirit of progress, the fresh and unexhausted energy and hopefulness, with the consequent rapid growth in mate- rial and intellectual achievements which distinguish the Protestant nations, are due, not to characteristics of race alone, nor to incidental advantages of any kind, but, in a great degree, to their religion. There is a disposition to look forward as well as back- ward, to expect a future greater than the past, and to believe in the practicableness of carrying improvement to heights hereto- fore uuattained. Franco is a prosperous and highly civilized nation ; but of all countries nominally Roman Catholic, Franco is the one in which the Church of Rome has had the feeblest sway, and the one most alive to the iulluences which Protestantism and the Protestant civilization of other European nations have sot in motion. The effect of the reactionary Catholicism that followed the Reformation upon the nations of South- ern Europe was deadening. In the decay of the Renaissance, music, painting, and po- etry revived, in the ferment of religioius en- thusiasm excited by the Catholic reaction ; but the intellectual vigor of Italy and Spain beneath the iron tread of the Inquisition was soon crushed. The history of these natu- rally gifted peoples, subjected to the sti- lling atmosphere of ecclesiastical tyranny, is a convincing illustration of the fatal effect of such a system. The present aspect of South America and Mexico, when compared 30 with the American communities which have been reared on Protestant foundations, im- pressively exhibits the same thing. Roman Catholic polemics maintain that Protestantism is responsible for the skepti- cism and unbelief that prevail so extensive- ly among Christian nations. They assert that there has arisen in the wake of Protest- antism a spirit of irreligion which threatens to subvert the social fabric. The causes of this evil, however, do not lie at the door of Protestantism. The free inquiry that had developed in Europe in connection with the revival of learning could not be smothered by mere authority. The earnest religious feeling which the Reformation at the out- set brought with it counteracted the tend- encies to unbelief, for a time, at least ; and it was only when Protestantism departed from its own principles, and acted upon the maxims of its adversary, at the same time losing the warmth of religious life so con- spicuous at the beginning, that infidelity had a free course. The ideas which Plu- tarch long ago embodied in his treatise on Superstition and Unbelief are well founded. They are two extremes, each of which be- gets the other. Not only may the artificial faith which leads to superstitious practices, and drives its devotees to fanaticism, at length spend its force, and move the same devotees to cast off the restraints of relig- ion ; but the spectacle of superstition, also, repels more sober and courageous minds from all faith and worship. Such has been the notorious effect of the superstitious cer- emonies and austerities of the Roman Cath- olic system, both in the age of the Renais- sance and in our own day. Religion comes to be identified, in the opinions of men, with tenets and observances which are repugnant to reason and common sense ; and hence truth and error are thrown overboard at once. Disgusted with the follies which pass un- der the name of religion, and attract tho reverence of the ignorant, men make ship- wreck of faith altogether. The same bale- ful influence ensues upon tho attempt to stretch the principle of authority beyond the due limit. It is like the effect of excess- ive restraint in the family. A revolt is tho consequence wherever there is a failure to repress mental activity and to enslave tho will. The subjugation of the intelligence which tho Roman Catholic system carries with it as an essential ingredient compels a mutiny which is very likely not to stop with tho rejection of usurped authority. There is a general source of unbelief whicli is in- dependent of tho influence of any particular form of religion. Rationalism has been cor- rectly described as tho fruit of the under- standing stepping beyond its sphere, and supplanting the normal action of the moral and religious nature. It is due to a one- 466 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. sided, exclusive, and narrow activity of a single function of tho intellect, at the ex- pense of conscience and tho intuitive power. Such, for example, was the character of that skepticism which the Sophists encour- aged, and which Socrates, appealing direct- ly to the immediate, ineradicable convic- tions of the soul, did so much to overthrow. When tho free and accountable nature of the soul, and the aspirations and presenti- ments, as profound as they are natural, of the spirit of man, are flippantly set aside to make room for something called " science," which is converted by its votaries into a fe- tich, infidelity is the inevitable consequence. There is nothing in Protestant principles, rightly understood, to warrant or to induce such a procedure. Looking at the matter historically, we find that, in the age prior to the Reformation, unbelief was most rife in Italy, the ancient centre of the Roman Cath- olic hierarchy. In recent times, skepticism is nowhere more prevalent than among the higher, cultivated classes in Roman Catho- lic countries, where the doctrines of that re- ligion have been perpetually taught, and where its ritual has been celebrated with most pomp. To the relation of Protestantism and Ro- manism to special evils that afflict our mod- ern civilization, it is hardly possible within the space given to this paper to allude. War is still a terrible scourge of nations. It is obvious that the power of the Church of Rome, as an organized body, to avert war, even between countries owning its au- thority, amounts to nothing. It. has been reserved for two English-speaking nations, professing the Protestant faith, to furnish, as they have lately done, an impressive proof of what may be accomplished by the peaceful method of arbitration. The Church of old favored the emancipation of slaves ; but slavery was abolished in the United States with little or no help from the eccle- siastics of tho Roman Church. In the disposition to minister to poverty and to the various forms of physical dis- tress, Roman Catholics, be it said to their honor, vie with Protestant Christians. But this may be claimed for Protestantism, that its disciples are more zealous to devise the means of prevention, to pry under these great evils, and then to apply radical and permanent remedies. Political economy and social science, although still immature, flour- ish chiefly under the auspices of Protestant Christianity. There are questions, of which the " labor question," as it is called, is one of the most prominent, with which neither Church can be said to have fully grappled. But Protestantism has a better promise of contributing to the solution of these grave and portentous problems than the opposite system ; for the laborer has no real quarrel with the Protestant religion. The hostili- ty of the laboring class to a priestly system may take the form of a hatred to religion itself; but better teaching and a true spirit of philanthropy may give them the needed light. The Roman Catholic Church is at present engaged in the hopeless struggle to uphold in the midst of modern society the religious ideas and customs of the Middle Ages. A dictatorial attitude toward the civil author- ity, the management of education by eccle- siastics, an appeal to the senses by a gor- geous ritual, an exorbitant demand upon the credulity of mankind by unverified mir- acles aud prodigies, an attempt to revive pilgrimages and other obsolete or obsoles- cent superstitions, an increased devotion to the Virgin Mary, which borders on idolatry such are some of the characteristics of this movement. It is the endeavor to re-in- state or maintain a type of civilization on which history has pronounced a final verdict. KOMAN AND EEFORMED DOCTRINES OF JUSTIFICA- TION CONTRASTED. BY THE RT. REV. GEORGE DAVID CUMMINS, D.D., OF KENTUCKY. IT is a question of no ordinary interest, Where did the Reformation of the sixteenth century take its rise ? Which of the coun- tries of Europe can rightly claim the honor of giving birth to this sublime movement ? For this high distinction different nations are still contending. "Surely," exclaims the German, "the Reformation began at Wittenberg, in the cell of an Augustinian monk, and the nailing of Luther's Theses to the church door of the little Saxon town was the sound that awoke all Christendom, and is reverberating with ever-increasing volume through the earth." "Nay," responds the Switzer, "it was the child of the Tockenburg Mountains, the sou of the shepherd of Wildhaus, who first cleared a path for the free flowing of the Water of Life, the River that makes glad the city of our God, even as the little fountain rising .among the same everlasting hills becomes the mighty Rhine, the bearer of plenty and prosperity to nations." " Not quite true," interposes the French- man ; " to France belongs the glory. The University of Paris was the cradle of the Reformation. At a time when Luther was making a journey to Rome on some business touching the interests of the monks when Zwinglo was traversing the Alps in a com- pany of troops to fight under the Pope's ban- ner, Paris and France heard the life-giving truths from Jacques Lefevre, the doctor of Etaples surely well deserving to be called the Father of the Reformation. Was it not he who, as early as 1512, said to his beloved pupil Farel, ' William ! God will renovate the world, and you will live to see it.' " England has yet to be heard. In the very year that Luther nailed his Theses to the Wittenberg church door, two young stu- dents at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Thomas Bilney and William Tyndale, divinely guided, found in the study of Erasmus's Greek Testament the great truth that scattered all the darkness of su- perstition "It is Jesus Christ alone who saves." How shall we settle these conflicting claims ? There is but one mode. The Ref- ormation had a simultaneous beginning throughout all Christendom. It was the simultaneous action of the Holy Spirit through the Word upon the hearts of men in different nations. The truth which was to make the human mind forever free made itself felt at one and the same time in prov- inces widely separated and dissimilar. Ger- many did not communicate the light to Switzerland, nor did the University of Paris to Oxford and Cambridge, Lefevre to Tyu- dale, nor Luther to Zwingle. " I began," said Zwingle, " to preach the Gospel in the year of grace 1516 that is, at a time when the name of Luther had never been heard among these mountains. It was not from Luther that I learned the doctrine of Christ; it was from God's Word. If Luther preaches Christ, he does as I do, that is all." The beginning of the Reformation was like the bursting forth of spring, when from sea-shore to mountain top the breath of re- turning life is everywhere felt bursting the icy bonds that fettered a thousand streams, covering the valleys and hill-sides with ver- dure, clothing the grand old forests with beauty, foretelling the coming of rich har- vests for the glorious summer-tide. This simultaneous beginning of the Ref- ormation in the great nations of Europe is a feature of profound interest. It stamps it as pre-eminently the work of God and not of man, and at the same time it discloses an- other great truth which underlies this fea- ture. The Reformation was not a sudden out- growth of that century alone. Do we con- ceive of the Reformers of the sixteenth cen- tury as sturdy laborers, who went forth into a field all fallow and unbroken, into which no precious seed had been cast, and as them- selves breaking up the fallow ground, and casting in the ever-living seed, and then com- ing back at even-tide with their bosoms filled with sheaves of golden grain, the fruit of their own planting alone T Far from this is the true conception. Such a supposition would be out of harmony with all the move- ments of God's Providence, by which he ac- complishes great results by slow processes, and by many and oftentimes unseen agen- cies. The Reformation was existing centuries before its actual advent. Long and slow were the processes which brought it to its final and full development. " Like the birth of the beautiful islands of the Pacific, the foundations of the new convictions which 4C8 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. so greatly to modify and pnrify the medieval faith were laid slowly, unseen and unsuspected by ten thousand souls who labored they knew not for what, save to ac- complish the necessity of their own spirit- ual belief. Mighty convulsions suddenly cast up the submarine foundations of Pacif- ic isles into mountain peak and lake and plain, but the foundations were laid long before, silently and slowly." Even so with the Reformation. For centuries there had been workers in this field reformers before the Reformation for the most part silent workers, men who lived quiet and holy lives, who had found the truth amidst all the corruptions surrounding them, and silently and unconsciously prepared the way for the dawn of a better day; others who were constrained to bear witness openly, and be- came a part of the noble army of martyrs, like Huss and Jerome in Bohemia, Savona- rola in Italy, and Wickliffe in England. " And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth." But the 'Reformation was not more mark- ed in the siniultaneousness of its origin than in the common likeness which it bore in all lands. Two great principles distinguish Protestantism : the supremacy of Scripture, as the only infallible authority, and salvation by ffrace through faith only. Without communicating with others, al- most unknown to each other, the Reformers gave utterance in every country where the light spread to the same testimony to these great truths. " It is God alone," taught Le- fevre in the Sorbonne at Paris "it is God alone who by his grace justifies unto eternal life. There is a righteousness of our works, and a righteousness which is of grace the one a thing of man's invention, the other coming from God ; the one earthly and pass- ing away, the other divine and everlasting ; the one discovering sin and bringing the fear of death, the other revealing grace for the attainment of life." " What !" replied Beda, the leader of the crusade against the first French Reformers, "Lefevre affirms that whosoever ascribes to himself the power to save himself will be lost ; while whosoever, laying aside all strength of his own, casts himself into the arms of Christ shall be saved ! Oh, what heresy ! what delusion of the devil ! Let us oppose it with all our power." Lefevre's voice in the Sorbonne found an echo all unknown to him on the banks of Lake ZUrich. From the pulpit of the quiet monastery of Einsedeln, Ulric Zwiugle pro- claimed to the throngs of pilgrims who flocked to that shrine: "What power can there be in unprofitable works, weary pil- grimages, offerings, prayers to the Virgin and the saints, to secure you the favor of God f Christ alone saves, and he saves every- where.'' Bilney, too, in the University of Cam- bridge, coming unexpectedly upon a copy of the New Testament in Greek, hastened to shut himself in his room to peruse it. At the first opening his eye caught the words of St. Paul, " This is a faithful saying, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." He laid down the book, and meditated on the as- tonishing declaration. "What! St. Paul the chief of sinners, and yet St. Paul is sure of being saved." He read the verse again and again. " O assertion of St. Paul, how sweet thou art to my soul !" he exclaimed. " I am also like Paul, and, more than Paul, the greatest of sinners. But Christ saves sinners. At last I have heard of Jesus." I need not surely bring the testimony of the great Saxon Reformer, the great work- man of the sixteenth century. It was this truth that flashed into his soul from God's Word -in the convent of Erfurt, "The just shall live by faith," the truth which at once made him free, and became to him, as ho says, the very gate of Paradise, the very heart of the Gospel, which he lifted up and magnified perpetually, rightly proclaiming it for that age and this, and for all coming time, "Articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesice." My work, Fathers and Brethren, in this great Conference composed of the children of the Reformers, is to exhibit the contrast between the doctrine of justification as held by the Roman and the Reformed Churches ; to place before you the diverse and antago- nistic answers which Protestantism and Ro- manism give to the mightiest of all ques- tions, " What must I do to be saved !" to prove, by God's help, that in the perversion of this great truth lies the great apostasy from God ; or, as Hooker puts it, " The mys- tery of the man of sin is in the Romish doc- trine of justification," or, as Calvin declared, " If this one point were yielded safe and en- tire, it would not pay the cost to make any great quarrel about other matters in contro- versy with Rome." It is the remark of the latest American historian of the Reformation, " The Roman Catholic theory of justification may be so stated as to approximate closely to that of the Protestants, but on a close examination the two doctrines are seen to be discordant with one another." But, small as the diver- gence may seem at first view, the two teach- ings will be found at last separated by a great gulf, even as wide as that which di- vides truth from error, light from darkness. On the summit of the Adirondack Mount- ains there are found two springs of water, so close together that the wild fox, while slaking his thirst at the one, sweeps with his tail the other, and yet from the quiet nook where they spring one hurries away to the north and east to form the majestic St. Lawrence, with its thousand isles and CUMMINS: ROMAN AND REFORMED DOCTRINES OF JUSTIFICATION. 469 grand expanse of gulf-like water ; the other turns southward, and becomes the beautiful Hudson, breaking through the Highlands to bear its full tribute to the sea. That Rome regards this as the essential point of diver- gence between her own system and that of Protestantism is evident from the impor- tance given to this subject in the discussion of the Tridentine Council, convened to op- pose and overthrow the work of the Refor- mation. The divines of that council were exhorted to " be assiduous and exact in their studies " on this subject, " because all the errors of Luther were resolved into that point." I. The Romish and the Reformed Church- es differ as to the nature of justification. Ac- cording to the teaching of the Reformed Church, the term Justification has but one meaning in the Word of God. "It is acquit- tal from guilt. It is a judicial act on the part of God, accounting us righteous, not making us so. It is an act done for us, and not in us. It implies a relative change in the state of an accused person in respect of the sentence of the Divine law."* The Church of Rome, on the other hand, holds that justification and sauctification are one and the same. Says the Council of Trent, " Justification is not only remis- sion of sins, but the sanctification and re- newing of the inner man by the voluntary reception of grace and gifts ;"t or, in the language of Mohler, its most accomplished modern defender, " It is a power truly eman- cipating, dissolving the bands of evil, and extirpating sin."t This, then, is the contrast : The Church of Rome holds the justifica- tion of a sinner to be the sanctificatiou of his nature, the extirpation of sin, the mak- ing him truly and personally holy. The Reformed Church holds the justifica- tion of a sinner to be the act of God ac- counting him righteous, his acquittal from guilt, the forgiveness of his sins, and his reconciliation to God. Here, then, issue is made, and we make our appeal confidently to the Word of God to decide between the two teachings. Deuteronomy xxv., 1 : "If there be a con- troversy between men, and they come xmto judgment, that the judges may judge them ; to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth T" Romans v., 18 : " Therefore, as by the of- fense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation ; even so by the righteous- ness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." In all these passages it is impossible to as- sign but one meaning to the terms "justi- fy" and "justification." The judicial sense is prominent in all. Justification is the op- posite of condemnation : it is acquittal from guilt. Here, indeed, the divergence of the two systems may seem to be very slight, and many may regard the difference as only a conflict of words and of subtle distinctions of theology. But, in fact, this divergence will be seen, as we examine more closely, to underlie all opposing teachings of the two systems. Let us mark this as the sec- ond great point of contrast. II. The Romish and Reformed Churches differ in their teachings concerning the ground or basis of a sinner's justification be- fore God. Great caution is needed here to bring forth clearly the error of the Church of Rome, ob- scured, as it is by the scholastic subtleties of the Tridentiue doctors. The doctrine of the Reformed Church is most clearly stated in the eleventh of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of En- gland : " We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works and deservings." The doctrine taught here so plainly is that the ground or meritorious cause of our justi- fication is the merit of Christ only. This the Church of Rome anathematizes. Says the Council of Trent : " Whosoever shall affirm that men are formally justified by the righteousness of Christ, let him be accursed."* Again, another decree says : " Whosoever shall affirm that men are justified by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, to the exclusion of grace and charity which inheres in them ; or that the grace by which we are justified is only the favor of God, let him be accursed."t What, then, does the Church of Rome then they shall justify the righteous, and hold to bo the ground or basis of a sinner's condemn the wicked." Proverbs xvii., 15 : reconciliation to God ? She makes ad istinc- "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that ' tion between the meritorious and the formal condemneth the just, even they both are j cause of justification. "The meritorious abomination to the Lord." Job ix., 20 : "If cause," she says, " is His most beloved, only- I justify myself, mine own mouth shall con- begotten Son, who, when we were enemies, demn me." Psalm cxliii., 2: "Enter not on account of his abounding love with which into judgment with thy servant : for in thy he loved us, by his own most holy passion on sight shall no man living be justified." Ro- the cross, merited justification for us, and mans viii., 33, 34 : " Who shall lay any thing satisfied us to God."t Thus far we agree. But proceeds the Council : " The only formal * Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta. t Sess. VI., cap. viii. t Mohler's "Symbolism," pnjre 190. * Sess. VI., cap. x. t Sesa. II., cap. viii. t Sess. II., cap. viii. 470 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. cause is the righteousness of God, not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he make* us just" Here, then, the Church of Rome teaches that our justification before God is a, right- eousness in us. Says Hooker : " When they of the Church of Rome are required to show what the righteousness is by which a Chris- tian man is justified, they answer that it is a Divine spiritual quality; which quality received into the soul doth first make it to be one with them who are born of God ; and, secondly, indue the soul with power to bring forth such works as they do that are born of God. This grace they will have to be ap- plied by infusion ; to the end that as the body is warmed by the heat which is in it, so the soul might be righteous by inherent grace."* The same far-seeing mind discerned the specious error here concealed. " This," says he, "is the mystery of the man of sin, that they make the essence of justification to con- sist in a divine quality inherent, a righteous- ness within us. If it be in us, then it is ours, even as our souls are ours, though we have them from God, and can hold them no long- er than he pleaseth ; but the righteousness wherein we must be found if we would bo justified is not our own ; therefore we can not be justified by any inherent quality. Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in him : in him God find- eth us, if by faith we are incorporated into Christ." Subtle and obscure as may be the utter- ances of Rome concerning the nature of jus- tification, it can not conceal the deadly error that the doctrine of infused personal right- eousness lays a foundation for the doctrine of human merit. By this infused righteous- ness, the Christian is made capable of merit- ing God's grace, and securing salvation by a righteousness of his own. " It is not the logic of this point we contend for," says Bishop Hall, " it is not the grammar, it is the Divinity; what that is whereby wo stand acquitted before God ; whether our inherent righteousness, or Christ's imputed righteousness apprehended by faith. The divines of Trent are for the former ; all an- tiquity is with us for the latter." III. The Romish and Reformed Churches differ vitally in their teachings as to the in- strument or instrumental cause of our justi- fication. " Faith," says Hooker, " is the only hand that putteth on Christ unto justification." And this is the unanimous testimony of all Protestant Christendom ; the witness of all the Reformers a witness founded upon personal experience. " They had sought in vain for this infinite goodj" says Professor 1 isher, " in the teachings, injunctions, cere- * "Discourse on Justification.' monies, and services of the Church. They found it in the doctrine of gratuitous par- don from the bare mercy of God, through the mediation of Christ; a pardon that waits for nothing but acceptance on the part of the soul the belief, the trust, the faith of the penitent."* What, then, according to the teaching of Rome, is the instrument of our justification f It is baptism, and not faith. Hear the Coun- cil of Trent : " The instrumental cause of our justification is the sacrament of baptism, without which no one ever attained to jus- tificatiou."t Then the dying thief was not justified when Christ opened to him the gates of Paradise. Then Mary Magdalene was not justified when Christ said to her, " Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." Then the publican was not pardoned when he went down to his house "justified rather than the other." We see now the relation of the teaching of an infused personal righteousness to the whole system. Justification or personal righteousness or sanctification is communi- cated by baptism in infancy ; and thus bap- tismal justification or sanctification becomes the irpotrov evoe out of which the whole system naturally is developed. If it be asked, "What is the relation of baptism to justification accordiug to the Reformed Church," perhaps the best reply is to be found in the Twenty-seventh Article of the Church of England : " Baptism is not only a sign of profession, whereby Christian men are discerned from those that be not christened ; but it is also a sign of regenera- tion, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church ; the promises of the forgiveness of sins and of our adoption to be the sons of God are visibly signed and sealed ; faith is confirmed and grace increased by virtue of prayer to God." To this all Protestantism agrees : Faith is the sole instrument of justifica- tion. Baptism is 1. A sign of a Christian man's profession. 2. A sign of regeneration or new birth. 3. An instrument, when rightly received, by which we are grafted into the Church. 4. The promises of our forgiveness and adoption are visibly signed and sealed; and, 5. Faith is confirmed and grace increased by virtue of prayer to God. IV. The Romish and the Reformed Churches differ most essentially in their teaching as to the relation of good works to justification. It is the doctrine of the Re- formed Church that all our works are utter- ly worthless to merit salvation of God, and any attempt to regard them as a ground of * " History of the Reformation," page 461. t Couc. Trident, Sess. VI., cap. viii. CUMMINS : KOMAN AND KEFORMED DOCTRINES OF JUSTIFICATION. 471 forgiveness is to disparage the work of the Redeemer, who made upon the cross " a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world" " one sacrifice for sins forever." " Good works," says the Twelfth Article of the Church of England, " which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, can not put away our sins, and endure the se- verity of God's judgment." Now hear the Council of Trent : " Whoso- ever shall affirm that the good works of a justified man are in such sense the works of God that they are not also his worthy mer- its ; or that he being justified by his good works, which are wrought by him through the grace of God, and the merits of Jesus Christ, of whom he is a living member, does not really deserve increase of grace, eternal life, the enjoyment of that eternal life if he dies in a state of grace, and even an increase of eternal glory, let him be accursed." Which is right? "To the law and the testimony." Hear, then, what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. " By the works of the law shall no flesh be j ustitied." " To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieththe ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." " By grace are ye saved, and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God." " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "That I may win Christ, and be found iu him, not hav- ing mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Does the Protestant theory disparage and depreciate good works holy living ? God forbid. It teaches that good works are 1. The necessary fruit of faith, springing from it as certainly as good fruit from a good tree ; 2. That they are the evidence of a liv- ing faith, as the tree is known by its fruits ; 3. That they are pleasing and acceptable to God, and are rewarded, but of grace and not of merit. But while holding strenuously that the motive to good works is higher under the Evangelical than under the legal system, Protestantism declares that to claim any desert of God for man's righteousness is to deny the sufficiency of Christ's righteousness, and presumptuously to attempt to strength- en and complete it by our own. V. One other point of contrast yet re- mains, practically of greater importance than all : it is concerning the pardon of sins com- mitted after justification, or, what is synon- ymous, in the view of Rome, after baptism. In the teaching of Rome, " for all sins committed after baptism the offender owes, and must render, satisfaction." Sins are di- vided by the Church of Rome into two class- es : venial and mortal sins. Venial sins do not destroy our justification before God. ' Mortal sins do, and these are removed only by the sacrament of penance. Hooker thus sets forth this teaching of Rome: "As grace may be increased by the merit of good works, so it may be diminish- ed by the demerit of sins venial, and may be lost entirely by mortal sin. To such as diminish it by venial sins, grace is applied by holy water, Ave Marias, crossings, papal benedictions, and such like. To such as have lost it by mortal sin, it is applied by the sacrament (as they term it) of penance, which sacrament hath power to confer grace- anew, yet in such sort that it only changeth the punishment eternal into a temporal, sat- isfactory punishment in this life, if time is given ; if not, hereafter to be endured, ex- cept it be lightened by masses, works of charity, pilgrimages, fasts, and such like." " This is the mystery of the man of sin !" he ex- claims ; " this maze the Church of Rome dotli cause her followers to tread when they ask her the way to justification. I can not stand now to unrip this building and sift it piece by piece ; only I will pass it by in few words, that that may befall Babylon in the presence of that which God hath builded, as happened unto Dagou before the Ark." In strong contrast to all this will-wor- ship, Protestantism teaches that for all sins there is during life full and free forgiveness, by the immediate approach of the penitent soul in faith to the fountain opened iu the house of David for sin and all uncleanuess. Rome denies this great truth, and in its stead has built up that gigantic system of error whose essence consists in placing the Church between the soul and God, as the sole dispenser of this grace, and without whose ministrations there is no salvation. From this spring all the kindred errors, the elevation of the ministry into a hierarchy, a sacrificing, mediating priesthood, through whose offices alone all heavenly blessings can come ; a priesthood in whose hands sac- raments convey grace ex opere opcrato, in- dependent of the faith of the recipient ; a priesthood empowered to forgive sins after securing the confession of the penitent ; a priesthood by whoso words the bread of the sacrament becomes God incarnate ; a priest- hood empowered to offer sacrifices for the quick and dead. From this error, too, spring the doctrines of works of supererogation, a treasury of which is laid up iu the Church, to be dispensed in indulgences of the in- vocation of saints and the mother of Christ, of pilgrimages and fasts, and the whole sys- tem of asceticism. All these fall before the doctrine of justi- fication by faith as Dagon fell before the Ark. "Whenever justification by faith is held iu its true Protestant sense, the doc- trine of a human priesthood becomes a use- less excrescence, and falls off of itself. For what need can he feel of a human medi- 472 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. ator who already enjoys fellowship with (Jod in aud through Christ f Hence is to be explained the peculiar vehemence with which the Romish writers have ever assailed this doctrine, and the misrepresentations to which, in their hands, it has been subject. The assailants may, in mauy cases, be too well acquainted with the writings of the Reformers, not to know that Soltidianism, so far as the word expresses a tendency to laxity in practice, is as earnestly repudiated by the latter as by themselves ; the ani- mosity exhibited proceeds from a different source, aud the Protestant doctrine of jus- tification is assailed, not so much because it is thought dangerous to morality, as because it robs the Church that is, the clerical or- der of its assumed priestly character. As the dogma of the corporate life makes the Church, and not Christ, the author of spirit- ual life, so the doctrine of a human priest- hood, under the Gospel, makes the clergy the arbiters of the Christian's destiny ; for such surely they are, to whom is committed the power of barring or opening as they please access to God. With an instinct that never errs, the advocates of the Tri- dentine system feel that justification by faith by which is simply meant that Christ in his priestly office is present instead of be- ing represented by a sacerdotal order is out of place in their doctrinal structure, aud must either remain to mar its symmetry or be expelled from it."* A recapitulation of the two theories will now be of value. According, then, to the teaching of the Reformed Church Justification is the office of God, and not the work of man. It is the act of God accounting us right- eons, not making us so. It is the forgiveness of the sinner, the ac- ceptance of the penitent believer, as right- eous, into Divine favor and the hope of eternal life. It can not be purchased by our good works, and is therefore dependent on no in- ternal righteousness, but is wholly depend- ent on the righteousness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The only means of our securing it is faith, and this not because faith is meritorious, but because faith remits us altogether to Christ, " faith being only the instrument to convey so great a benefit to the soul, as the hand of the beggar receives the proffered alms."t This faith is the principle of all good works, and the parent of holiness. Good works spring from it as fruit from a living tree, and the incentive to their performance is the love of Christ constraining the soul. Litton's "Church of Christ," London edition, pages 652, C53. t Archbishop Usher, "Body of Divinity," page 190. And for all sins committed after justifica- tion there is full and ample provision in the free grace of God, received by faith, upon genuine repentance. Such is the simple yet sublime doctrine of all Protestant Christendom. According to the teachings of Rome Justification is the sanctification of the soul. This sanctification is an inherent or internal righteousness, the formal cause of our acceptance before God. This internal righteousness is imputed to the soul through baptism, aud chiefly in infancy. This justification is increased by our good works, which merit of God eternal life and an increase of glory. For all mortal or deadly Bins committed after baptism a sac- rament of penance is provided which re- moves the eternal consequences of guilt, but not the temporal. These must be expiated by self-inflicted pnuishments in this world, or else by purgatorial fires in the world to come. Such is the dark and perplexing maze into which the followers of Rome are led when they ask, "What must I do to bo saved ?" It remains only to characterize these op- posing theories as to their' effect and results upon the individual and society. 1. The one is justification by immediate access of the soul to the Redeemer, through the Holy Spirit. The penitent believing heart approaches, not through media, but directly, the mercy- seat of God in Christ, lays hold of the blood- sprinkled sceptre of mercy, and receives from a reconciled Father's hand the grace of par- don aud peace. The other is a justification by the Church, by and through the sacraments in the hands of a mediating priesthood. It is first effect- ed by the sacrament of baptism. It is re- newed or recovered, if lost, by the sacrament of penance. It is nourished aud sustained by the sacrament of the mass. It is per- fected in the hour of death by the sacra- ment of extreme unction. " The substance of this sacrament," says the Council of Trent, " is the grace of the Holy Spirit, whoso anointing wipes away offenses, if any are yet to be expiated, and the remains of sin."* 2. The one is a humbling doctrine; the other, a self -exalting doctrine, inculcating the proud notion of human merit. The one humbles the sinner and exalts the Saviour. It cuts at the root of all self- righteousness. It renounces all dependence for salvation upon human worth. It points only to the Lamb of God. It lays the sin- ner low at the foot of the Cross. It teach- es him to say from the first moment of re- pentance to his latest hour, " I will make Cone. Trid., Sess. XIV., cnp. ii., De Extrema TTiic- tioue. CUMMINS : ROMAN AND REFORMED DOCTRINES OF JUSTIFICATION. 473 mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only." It puts into his mouth the jubilant song, "Thou only art worthy; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed and washed us in thy blood, and hast made us kings and priests unto God." The other exalts self. It encourages com- placency and confidence in human right- eousness. It mingles man's merits with Christ's merits. It aggrandizes the Church and abases the Saviour. It falls in with the innate self-righteousness of the human heart. " There is no man's case so dangerous," says Hooker, " as he whom Satan hath persuaded that his own righteousness shall present him pure and blameless in the sight of God." 3. The one is a comforting doctrine; the other, where it operates upon sincere and earnest minds, leading to gloom, to fear, to despair. The Reformed doctrine, according to the Eleventh Article of the Church of England, is " very full of comfort." " There is," says Asher, " no such comfort to a Christian soul like that which floweth from this well of salvation, this sweet doctrine of justifica- tion." "Let it be accounted," says Hooker, " folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever ; it is our comfort and wisdom ; we care for no knowledge in the world but this : that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered ; that God hath made himself the Son of man, and that men are made the righteousness of God." What heart but the heavy-laden and sin- burdened shall tell the preciousness of this truth? It is the word of freedom to the captive. It unveils the face of a reconciled Father. It discloses the beaming smile of a God of love. It is the spirit of adoption. Its first lisping is, "Abba, Father! my Lord and my God!" Its challenge to the Uni- verse is, "It is God that Justine th. Who is he that condemneth ?" Its firm and un- shaken Rock is this : " There is now no con- demnation to them who are in Christ Je- sus." And amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal life, its exulting song is, " Nei- ther life nor death, nor angels, nor princi- palities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall bo able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord." The opposiug doctrine is a doctrine lead- ing to uncertainty and dread. It is a spir- it of bondage again unto fear, and not a spir- it of adoption. It puts a yoke upon the tru- ly earnest soul more galling than the Jew- ish, " which," says the apostle, " neither we nor our fathers were able to bear." After leading the devout soul through its maze of will-worship, it leaves its eternal salvation in doubt and uncertainty. Hence the type of piety which this teach- ing has ever produced. What are the " Lives of the Saints " but records of appalling aus- terities, of macerations, of penances, of self- inflicted cruelties ? " Where Rome's doctrine of justification lays hold of earnest and devout minds," says an able American review, " what labyrinths does it lead them to mistake for the way of holiness ! Their attention, of course, will be mainly directed to that satisfaction which they must make for past sins, notwithstand- ing their release from its eternal penalties by the satisfaction of Christ. Their whole life thus becomes a scene of purgatorial en- durance, and their attainments in holiness which are held forth for admiration in the lives of their most esteemed saints are those self-inflicted mortifications and sufferings in which the Fakirs of India excel them. Such is the sanctity which, in the lives of eminent saints, published in our own day, is commend- ed to the pious aspirations of the faithful of Rome. The sanctity of hair shirts, and gall- ing iron chains, and cruel scourgings, and eat- ing of unwholesome and putrid food, and all the strangest devices of self-torture which can be conceived this was the sanctity, as set forth by Romanists themselves, of Al- phonsus Liguori, and Francis de Girolamo, and Joseph of the Cross, and Pacificns, of San Severius and Veronica, Ginbrani, and the saints whose lives are contained in the Breviary ; all of whom Rome loves to honor, and for such sanctity canonizes. And who shall say that such sanctity is not the na- tive result of the Romish teachings on justi- fication and satisfaction ? But such teach- ings are a strange exhibition of that liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, a most sad forgetfulness of his saving grace, and a most lamentable caricature of that holiness to which he hath called us. And yet such achievements as those above alluded to are the very masterpieces of the Romish sys- tem. What well-instructed Christian will say that they do not stamp with falsehood the doctrine of justification from which they spring?" 4. Once more, the Reformed doctrine is a " wholesome doctrine ;" the Roman teaching, pernicious in its tendencies and effects. The objection to the doctrine of justification by faith only, that it is unfavorable to morali- ty and holy living, is as old as the apostles' day. Even then St. Paul is found defend- ing it against the gaiusayers : " Do we make void the law through faith ? God forbid ; yea, we establish the law." The Scriptural doctrine of justification is eminently a " wholesome," a holy doctrine. It can not bo embraced earnestly and truly and fail to bring forth fruit unto holiness. It implants within the soul the mightiest mainspring of all exertion. " The love of Christ constraineth us," is its noble incen- tive. "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" the first cry of the pardoned soul. " How 474 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. much must I do for the Saviour T" is the Ro- manist's utterance ; " How much can I do for Him T" the Protestant's response. In evidence of the might of this faith to bring forth fruits of holiuess, Protestantism points triumphantly to the records of the past three hundred years, to the lives he- gotten and nourished under its influence, to patriots like a Coligny, a William the Silent, a Sydney, and a Washington; to scholars and scientists like Selden, and Grotius, and Hale, and Newton, and Boyle, and Locke, and Milton, and Addison, and Brewster, and Faraday ; to philanthropists like Howard and Wilberforce, Fliedner, and Francke, and Miiller ; to divines like Me- lanchthou and Farel, Hooker and Leighton, Herbert and Ken, Neander and Tholuck, Moiiod and Vinet, Baxter and Doddridge, Wesley and Payson, Chalmers and Hall; to missionaries like Martyn and Elliott, Braiuard and Schwartz, Gary, and Marsh- man, and Judson, Williams of Erromanga ; Heber, and Mackenzie, and Patterson, the martyr of Melanesia. With equal confidence she points to the nations where this great truth has been re- ceived in contrast with those which have rejected it, and says to all mankind, " By their fruits ye shall know them." Wher- ever this doctrine is "truly preached, truly believed, and truly followed," there will ever be found all the virtues that sanctify the home, all the charities that sweeten life, all the sterner moralities that adorn and dignify human nature; and, on the other hand, when the opposing doctrine is taught and held, its fruits will ever be seen, to a vast extent, in a decay of private and public virtue. Let the fruits of the two systems be seen on the one hand in England, and on the other in Italy ; in Scotland contrasted with Spain ; the United States, with Mexico and Brazil. Fellow-Protestants of every name and na- tionality ! children of the Reformation ! this is the very citadel of our faith, the very heart of the Gospel. This truth made the Reforma- tion. And, under God, this truth alone can preserve it ; revive it where it has become sickly and feeble, purify it where it has fallen from its first estate. In the recep- tion, maintenance, and personal experience of this " truth as it is in Jesus," we are to find the real unity of all Protestant Chris- tendom. United to Christ by a saving faith, I am one with every other believer. Two incidents in history strikingly con- trast the two systems. In the magnificent cathedral of Toledo, in Spain, among the portraits of its archbish- ops painted by Murillo and other eminent artists, and by the side of the portraits of Mendoza and Ximenes, may be seen that of Carranza, the confessor of Charles V. When that Emperor was dying in the convent of Yuste, Carranza exhorted him to faith in the Crucified as the only hope of salvation. For that offense he, an archbishop of Toledo and a confessor of Charles, was arrested on th charge of being " infected with Lutheran opinions," was imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo, and died at last a prisoner in the dungeon. In the month of March last the great and saintly Bishop M'llvaine lay dying in the city of Florence, in Italy. His whole life had been one long testimony to the great truth of Justification by Faith only. Ho gave his profoundest studies to the estab- lishment and defense of this doctrine. As he stepped down into the dark valley, this truth became most precious to his soul. With a child-like faith he grasped the Cross alone. " Read to me," he asked, " the hymn, ' Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee.' Then again, 'Jesus, Saviour of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly.' Once more, read to me, 'Just as I am, without one plea, But that thy blood was shed for me, And that thon bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come '.' That hymn," he said, " contains the whole of my theology. Let it be sung at my buri- al." And it was sung by a vast multitude, as we laid him away to his qniet rest on the banks of the beautiful Ohio. HOW SHALL PROTESTANT MINISTERS BEST MEET THE DEMANDS OF THE PRESENT AGE? By THE REV. FRANCK COULIN, D.D., OF GENEVA. SWITZERLAND. THIS is a very interesting and well-timed question, an answer to which would fill a volume. The tenor of such an answer must depend on the nature of the medium and of the church organization of any particular ministry. To turn to the best possible ac- count the limited time granted us, I will lay before you, under three principal heads, the succinct summary of my observations and serious reflections. I. ORGANIZATION OF THE EVANGELICAL MINISTRY. To enable Protestant ministers effectual- ly to meet the intellectual and practical de- mands of the present age, it would, above all, be desirable to make them share more largely, in a system which more than any other has quickened industry; I mean the division of labor, which is justified not only by the wants of the day, but by the teach- ing of the Bible and of the early Church. The Apostolic Church had not to contend with the varied and crowding wants of the present day ; still she instituted distinct functions and ministries answering to the varied God-sent gifts which her specially trained ministers imparted to the people with special ability (Acts vi., 1-4 ; Rom. xii., 3-8 ; 1 Cor. xii., 4-12 ; Eph. iv., 7, 11-16). The Roman Church has, in its own way, largely applied this principle, and found therein one of the elements of her strength. Wherever she meets a special gift, she appro- priates it to a corresponding special work. The Reformation had, on its appearance, every thing to provide. Its founders men raised up by God and gifted by him with rare endowments had to do, and did, ev- ery thing simultaneously. They were men of science, men of action, pastors, apostles, and evangelists. They instituted a minis- try in accordance with their views. Now what was for them a necessity is for us a mistake and a weakness. Our world is a different world to their world, and wo must adopt a system calculated to meet its re- quirements. Right it is, doubtless, that every man, ac- cording to his opportunities, should strive to become as complete a man as possible. Christendom is one, and has a oneness of purpose ; its several parts must, then, be har- moniously blended, not pedantically sepa- rated. Life is to be distributed, not to be divided. Yet surely you can not but all agree that the intellectual and practical wants of the age require the varied treat- ment of special men, according to the in- structions of St. Paul. 1. In this age of ours which strives at re- casting science, in this age when the Titan pride of man dares scale the heavens and attempt God's throne, the Church is more than ever in need of many valiant teachers ; of men deeply and widely read, especially in the different branches of theology, who will live for her, and firmly will face her scien- tific unchristian opponents, as well as the Christian rationalists who, under the garb of theology, sap Christian faith. In Switz- erland, in a late foray made by the so-called liberal Christians, we could appreciate the signal services done to the cause of the Gos- pel by a few men who were so fortunate as to be already fore -armed by hard study. How useful it would be for the churches, in view of such eventualities, to enable fitly en- dowed men to keep to the front of the sci- entific phalanx, by publishing books, hold- ing conferences, and communicating to the masses a luminous and solid instruction! Too long have reading men been kept in the shade ; now is the time to give them a lead in religious education. 2. In an age of easy and rapid locomo- tion, when for several reasons Christians arc scattered over the surface of the earth, as they were in the early ages of Christianity, men should be chosen for the apostolic duties of messengers and delegates. We have, in- deed, our missionaries among the heathen, and we esteem the valuable services by which they, so to speak, widen the kingdom of God and quicken its soil by varied cul- ture. A foreign mission has its sphere of activity, but can not replace a home mis- sion, the want of which is felt, and which ought to occupy seriously the attention of all churches. Now I say that life is motion ; it is maintained, is assimilated, is strength- ened only by circulation. Let us encour- age, therefore, the relations and the commu- nication of the diverse members of the Body of Christ. To stir up the zeal of pastors, to bring together the diverse Christian con- gregations, to collect and make known the fruits of experience, to make preaching more 476 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. telling, to draw the attention of the church- es to their reciprocal duties, etc., let us en- deavor to institute an apostolic ministry, by consecrating to it such men as the Lord may particularly point out for that purpose (see Acts xiii., 2, 3). They would be iu Chris- tianity the representatives of the ecumen- ical element of unity iu diversity. The general conferences of the Evangelical Alli- ance come within the sphere of this activi- ty. We are here as delegates, as apostles ; we have the feeling of carrying on by this temporary ministry a work of the highest usefulness. Perhaps it may belong to the Alliance to add to its institution of ecumen- ical conferences that of a permanent apostle- ship. It alone sufficiently represents evan- gelical catholicity to take up this initiative. 3. In the primitive Church, there were prophets men specially consecrated to the ministry of preaching. By public preach- ing especially the Gospel has made its way in the world. But in democratic mediums like ours, in which public speaking is the first of all influential means, preaching un- der different forms tends to assume a pre- ponderating importance. We think it our duty to recommend very earnestly to the at- tention of the Church what is called High Pulpit Eloquence that is, preaching stud- ied both in matter and manner, so as to ena- ble the student to compose literary and ora- torical sermons. Pulpit eloquence not only influences for good sympathetic crowds and numberless readers when reproduced by the press, but possesses an important conserva- tive value as a high testimony in honor of the Gospel, projecting far around the rays of the truth, and drawing from far around the attention of cultivated minds and dissi- pating their prejudices. Now Cicero says, "Nascuutur poetae, fiunt oratores." That men gifted with the eloquence of public as- semblies should be able to develop their precious talent, they must have time to de- vote to it, they must to a great extent be relieved from other pastoral cares, so that their conscience may not have to reproach them with the time given to study, to retire- ment and meditation, and that the prepara- tion of their solemn duties may become their first and chief business. Pulpit eloquence depends on such conditions. The Roman Church has xmderstood that, and may serve us therein as an example. 4. The primitive Church had its pastors, men whose gift and office was the cure of souls. The cure of souls is in one sense the aim and purpose of an evangelical ministry; never should I imagine a servant of Christ, be he who he may, saying, " That's not my business !" In our days of excited aud arti- ficial life, it is more than ever desirable that each member of the flock should meet with a man capable of enlightening, directing, ' and fructifying the results of his experience. But if there be men peculiarly gifted in this respect, possessing characters more sympa- thetic, better calculated to inspire coufi- deuce, why should not the Church try to \ enable them to make the cure *f souls their principal concern f The Roman Church has its directors and confessors ; what I wish is that, mutatis mutandis, we had our directors and our confessors. It would usually be the office of men ripe in years and experience, who have suffered much, and who have that indulgent seriousness which is the mark of Christian maturity. In the exercise of com- plex pastoral duties, the being obliged on ac- count of specified functions to reserve the cure of souls for spare moments tends to un- dervalue this useful labor iu the minds of the pastor. The more successful the Church is in finding the means of making of the cure of souls a special ministry, the higher she will raise it in the opinion of the congrega- tion to the greater good of all. 5. One of the necessities of the day is by proper means to carry the Gospel down into the midst of the lower classes. For this purpose evangelists are required. The prim- itive Church had her evangelists, whose ac- tion was no less important than that of the apostles. The religions awakening at the beginning of this century was greatly due to the initiative of Felix Neff, Py t, Bost, sim- ple evangelists. The Church is at present in want of such laborers. It is important that they should be well chosen, well pre- pared, well directed serious and delicate points but it is necessary that there should be besides the staff of pastors and preachers, an enterprising company of popular mission- aries. The masses fall off from the official worship ; they have a repugnance for what- ever smells of the priest. The Christian doctrines must be brought before the peo- ple by men of the people, living among tlio people, and sharing in their life struggle. Before entering the door of the workshop or the factory, he must, as in early times, wear the dress of the workman and speak the language of the humble. 6. One of the most desirable improvements is that which would tend to relieve as much as possible the pastors of such material cares as office duties, administration, and alms-giv- ing. The primitive Church had, at an early date, her deacons. The evangelical ministry will be the gainer iu re-adopting the insti- tution, and developing it by a clear and def- inite distinction between the material and the spiritual domains. Chalmers very judi- ciously observes that the deacon, if a zeal- ous believer, is always in a position, without inconvenience to join occasionally evangeli- zation with his own ministry. Thereby he dignifies it ; whereas the pastor who is charged with evangelizing and directing souls is in danger of lowering and compro- mising his ministry, in proportion as he is COULIN: PROTESTANT MINISTERS, AND THE DEMANDS OF THE AGE/477 called on to meddle with material cares, and particularly with the distribution of alms. It is needless to observe that relieving pas- tors of administration cares is removing their fetters, is bestowing on them freedom and wings, is devoting them to their special mission. Let us add, moreover, that a participation as broad as possible granted to laymen in the work of the ministry, is one of the most important conditions in the answer to the question that occupies us. The Church which, by establishing a dis- tinction in its offices, and attributing to each individual the functions best adapted to his natural endowments, will succeed in organizing its available strength in the most complete and intelligent manner just as an army, which has its soldiers, chiefs, special arms, and its elite, forming a whole well pro- portioned and knit together in all its parts such a Church will meet best the intellect- ual and practical wants of the present day. II. PREPARATION OF CANDIDATES FOR HOLY ORDERS. Given the evangelical ministry, such as it is in most of our churches, I deem that one of the least doubtful causes of its insufficien- cy is to be found in the fact that the idea of a holy calling is weakened. I mean the special call from above, which beforehand is addressed directly to the heart of the future pastor by the supreme Shepherd of souls. 1. This is of all things the most necessary. Sometimes a candidate enters the ministry without having heard, like St. Peter, the call sound three times in his ears : " Feed my lambs." He enters it as a human career more or less honorable, for which a little science, a few. administrative talents, an ordinary measure of piety, are sufficient. Hence so many ministries shining with a certain brightness in the sphere of theolog- ical controversy, of religious literature, of oratorical teaching, or philanthropic activi- ty, but standing aloof from that sacred love of souls, from that devouring zeal for the house of God, which urged St. Paul to ex- claim, "Woe is me, if I preach not the Gos- pel," and which alone can make of the pas- tor a living leaven destined to leaven the whole Church, and through it the whole world. The anticlerical tendency of our century makes this condition all the more important. The more the calling in its ex- ternal character loses its prestige, the more essential it becomes that a pastoral calling in its internal character should bo a living reality. Every Church desirous of obtain- ing true pastors must, without delay, think on it, and decide on the means of forming positions for men who are truly called. She ought to keep this in view among the youth in the schools; to direct the attention of fam- ilies to it; to direct to it the attention of who- ever has at heart the sacred interests of the kingdom of heaven, and particularly the at- tention of those who have the special charge of preparing the candidates for holy orders. 2. Too much stress can not be laid on the necessity of saturating theological stud- ies with a spirit of living, inward, personal piety. You ask for men on a level with the intellectual and social demands of the age ; make true Christians ! Not by their science, but by their faith, the apostles moved their century. We must not ignore that the the- ological studies, as now carried on in our schools of theology, tend to imperil that sim- ple, spontaneous, communicative faith which ought to be the soul of the ministry itself. The peril is greater than ever now that re- ligious controversies receive the widest pub- licity ; so that to the natural dryness of sci- ence is added the profane character that in- fects most subjects in the public press and worldly conversation. It is incumbent on those invested with the serious and sublime charge of preparing the future leaders of the Church, to combat by the tendency of their preaching, and especially by their example, the causes of this evil. They must remem- ber that, in the preparation for the holy ministry, studies properly so called are not the object, but a means in many respects fraught with danger. They must aim not at making theologians, but in forming pas- tors, that is, Christians in the highest sense of the term, Christians ex officio, leaders and models for the flock in short, apostles of deep conviction, who can say with St. Paul : " The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pull- ing down of strongholds ; casting down im- aginations, and every high thing that exalt- eth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ " (2 Cor. x., 4, 5). 3. If the object aimed at is deep piety warmed by zeal and enlightened by solid sci- ence ; on the other hand, as this piety must be armed with a general culture in keeping with the advanced knowledge of the age, and with the tastes of the time ; moreover, as the future soldiers of Christ are necessa- rily destined to be brought into contact with the most advanced doctrines and manners which they will have to regulate or combat my opinion is that, provided the proper pre- cautions be taken, and the studies be guar- anteed from disturbance, schools of theology ought to be situated in the midst of large capitals, which are the centres of the mental activity and social interests of nations. The rocks ahead in this position are the numer- ous forms of dissipation to be found in largo towns ; but, on the other hand, the concen- trated experience of mankind is to bo found only there. St. Paul deposited the propaga- ting seeds of truth in the chief towns of tho ancient world. Christian antiquity chose as 478 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. seats of its schools of theology towns such as Antioch, Athens, Alexandria, Rome. 4. After these general observations, allow me to mention some points of a more spe- cial character. (1.) It is of major impor- tance now to train up, from an early age, I'm urc ministers to speak extempore. I do not mean unprepared speaking. Madame de Stael said, "On n' improvise que des phrases." In work, meditation, and prayer, the Bread of Life must conscientiously be prepared for the souls of men. But in this present century, when the freedom of speech is eagerly employed for the acquisition of all other liberties, in our century of confer- ences, meetings, public discussions, it is sin- gularly important ; for the pastor, constant- ly called on to give account for himself and the Church of the hope that is in him, should be a man capable of expressing his thoughts, if not always eloquently, at least simply, clearly, vividly, in a language both easy and correct. (2.) I propose that the instruction given to future pastors should comprise two new branches which as yet have, I believe, sel- dom appeared in the official programmes: the history of religions, and the economical sciences. The history of religions is a new science, which is abusively turned to the ad- vantage of the rationalistic doctrines which consider Christianity a natural offshoot of the development of humanity. The eco- nomical sciences (les sciences sodales), in their connection with the consequences and social applications of Christianity, are a study in- dispensable in face of the great question of the day, which the Church that ought to inherit the compassion of its Master has no right to push aside the question of the moral and physical improvement of the low- er classes. III. DIRECTION OF THE EVANGELICAL MIN- ISTRY. Whatever reception be given to our ob- servations on the organization and prepara- tion of the evangelical ministry, let us now ask how a pastor, working in any particular corner cf the Lord's field, may be enabled to meet most effectually the intellectual and practical demands of the present age. Forms change, but in substance these de- mands are always the same; and the reme- dy we have to apply to the evils of our time will be always the same the Gospel, the old Gospel of the Cross, a scandal to some and a folly to others. To attempt to remove from it this character, to make it more ac- ceptable, would be both an act of guilty in- fidelity and a gross error. Let us repeat it over and over again : What the Master re- quires of us is not to stand up as his advo- cates, his interpreters, especially not his con- tinuators, but simply to serve as witness- es. That is our mandate, and there lies our strength. Let us not distrust this weapon polished by God himself, which alone will conquer the world in the future, as it alone has conquered the world in the past. Let us beware lest, in adjusting it to the fash- ions of the day, wo do not blunt its edge and destroy its temper. If we wish to give it its primitive force, only one way is allow- able we must handle it with more faith, and with the willingness of a man who has in himself experienced its power. It is an ever-recurring illusion at every new evolution of humanity, the finding out a new Gospel thought to be more appropri- ate to new wants. Which has grown old, which has been condemned, branded, and buried away by time I Is it the old Chris- tianity of old times, or the gnosticisms and rationalisms that advance the culpable pre- tension of refreshing Christianity by tam- pering with it? All modern attempts for this purpose will meet with the same fate. Far from seeking out new ways, it is in a sincere return to the simplicity of the faith, it is in meditating more deeply and serious- ly on pur message, it is in more humbly abiding in our modest position of witnesses (such is my firm conviction), we ought to seek, and we shall surely find our newest and most effectual resource. With these considerations, our care should be less about the prevailing influences of the day in order to shape our conduct than about the means of taking heed to ourselves. Among these influences, one is particularly to be distrusted. I allude to what Pascal terms diversion (le divertissement). We live in times the predominant character of which is the absorption which loses sight of spirit- ual things under the pressure of the wheel of present earthly interests. The stage of life has widened out and become more crowd- ed ; a man finds himself forcibly in contact with very many more things and very many more persons. Now, the mipgling with men tends to wear down our individual character and to assimilate it with that of the many ; we think with the thoughts of others, and cease to be ourselves. A nerveless mind and an artificial. life threaten to supplant our own mind and life. As a natural conse- quence, we lose all hold on a medium which has enthralled us and fashioned us after its own image. If we wish to be prepared to act on surrounding society, we must beware not to allow ourselves to bo swamped by the preoccupations that sway it. The rath- er we would endeavor to keep aloof, in order to be in the midst of it men of one thought and one purpose : the thought of Christ, the purpose of the salvation of souls. The apostles lived in a society which, like ours, was in a state of fermentation. They commanded its attention. Howl Was it by rushing into the whirl of its seething in- terests and preoccupations f By no means ? COULIN: PROTESTANT MINISTERS, AND THE DEMANDS OF THE AGE. 479 Bat by coming before a thoughtless century as men intent upon a purpose, and not to be turned aside from an all - absorbing inter- est. To the Corinthians, the cosmopolites of the time, proud of their .varied culture, curi- ous of all the new gains of human wisdom, St. Paul wrote : " I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." We may be convinced that what our proud and worn-out century proud of its progress, worn out by its de- sires is particularly in need of, is a society of men who, like St. Paul, are determined to know only one thing. Those in the fourth century of our era, an epoch of subtle science and refined civiliza- tion, so similar to our own, who raised so high the influence of the Gospel ministry the Chrysostoms, Gregories, Basils what were they ? Servants of Christ thoroughly prepared, who in their youth had largely benefited by the resources of the time, but who were especially men of solitude^ and thought, strengthening themselves for the struggle by prayer and meditation. Of this there is no doubt : we want men of solitude and thought more than ever nowadays; men learned and clever if possible, but seeking their strength in prayer and meditation, not in their 'own cleverness or in man's wisdom. I can not better sum up the numerous and important observations that I might lay be- fore you on this grave question of the direc- tion to be given to our ministry than in re- minding you of the example of our Divine Master. " Be my imitators, as I am of Jesus Christ," said St. Paul. Every pastor, at all times, ought to aspire to be able to use the same language. Let us leave to Jesus Christ his redeeming work. Let us hold fast to his Spirit which he has left us as an inher- itance, and let us ask ourselves (how often this question has haunted us in our per- plexity!), What would Jesus Christ do if he were now to come back and place him- self at the head of his messengers, to direct them by his example, as he formerly did the apostles ? Let us ask what special teaching this model has for us in the present time, whose excellence rises above all ages, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 1. He who devoted thirty years of inward preparation to master his vocation, who be- gan his outward work only when he clear- ly and vividly realized it ; he who left his home to speak and act only when he could conscientiously say, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his work" he, I say, shows the extreme impor- ance which attaches to a realizing of our vocation. That, indeed, is a tower for us to build, a war for us to wage. Let us, then, count up our forces and consider our resources, for fear of failure. And this re- mark refers not only to novices, but also bears on masters themselves. We whose vocation has been necessarily imperfect, and woefully so for some of us, we can not too often put our call to the test. If Christian life is what it has been said to be, viz., a continued conversion, the ministry must be an ever renewed consecration. As we prac- tice our ministry, the feeling of our call ei- ther grows or flags. Let us beware lest it vanish ; let us ever try to keep it alive ; let not the vocation become a trade ; let us ever deeply feel that we depend not on our- selves, on circumstances, or any one but the Master, who, after thrice inquiring, " Lovest thou me," thrice added, " Feed my sheep !" Who would deny that our century is especial- ly in need of self-sacrificing,consecrated men ? 2. Then, if Jesus should re-appear among us, we can not doubt but that his character would be just that which our gospels have faithfully handed over to us. Perfection is unalterable ! So he would be just as we know him in his meekness, in his strength, in his perfect submission to God's will, es- pecially in his self-sacrificing devotedness. And now, as then, mainly by the manifesta- tion of that character in words and deeds, would he enlighten the world and found the kingdom of heaven. Let us then put on the same character, and impress our friends with it. This gen- eration has done with miracles ; well, then, compel it to accept the miracle of Christian excellence. As of yore, the light will be welcomed by some and shunned by others. Christ in us will again goad the world to opposition. But if the world hate us, let us take care that it should hate us as it hated Christ, and that it should thereby be made inexcusable. And besides, as min- isters, in fact, wo personify the Gospel. Peo- ple look to us, not to heaven. Our Chris- tian soundness is the light of our flock, our inconsistencies are the excuses of those who refuse to come to Christ to get life. 3. Were Jesus Christ to re-appear among us, no doubt he would bring with him the same social spirit which is manifest in his life. He would take no part in politics; ho would say to those who would tempt him to do so, " My kingdom is not of this world!" With his broad sympathies, he would not bo overparticular about details. In the midst of the present literary, scien- tific, and economical excitement, ho would ever assert that " but one thing is needful." He would doubtless, as of yore, travel from place to place ; no more from Galilee to Je- rusalem, but from Europe to America, in a spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of doing good. Ho would be every thing to all men, would address monarchs, wealthy men, learn- ed men ; but the poor especially would have his most loving attention, because they arc sufferers, and because, in spite of appear- ances, they are nearer the kingdom of heav- en. He would not only teach in synagogues 480 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. and under the porticoes of temples, but in public squares aud on the shores of lakes, in railway trains and steam-packets ; always in a language simple, and adapted to the facul- ties of his hearers, blending in his expatia- tions the visible with the invisible. His life would thus be a busy life, fraught with occasional fatigue, but refreshed with con- stant meditation and prayer. Would that the meu of the present day prayed more con- stantly ! The battle of life being now hard- er on account of the many new paths opened tip to our energy, we have a more pressing need of climbing the mountain and silently communing with God. When we are asked what ministers ought to do to meet the needs of the present day, methinks it is giving no useless advice when I urge them to give one hour a day to what the very Gospel has call- ed the ministry of prayer (Acts vi., 4). Be this as it may, Jesus Christ, the living Jesus Christ of the Gospels, such is the ideal we must each of us try to aim at, in order to meet the intellectual and practical exigen- cies of the age. Let us become Christ-bear- ers, and we need not fear to be found want- ing. This is no new device, you will sayt Newer than one thinks. Would God we needed not the advice ! Let the Church and the Church is rep- resented by her ministers let the Church return to her fountain, to Christ, and be- come the living manifestation of Christ. She may not christianize the world that promise was never held out to her but she will judge the world ; she will show up the inmost thoughts and sift out God's people ; she will gather in her folds those who have been elected for salvation, and will leave the rest of maukiud without an excuse. Through her the Holy Ghost will "convict the world of sin, of justice, aud of judg- ment." > CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. BY THE REV. ALVAH HOVEY, D.D., President of Newton Theological Institution, Mass. IT is, perhaps, Avell that I am expected to address you, if at all, on Christian Liberty, since it is a subject of peculiar historic and present importance to the body of Christians with which I am specially connected. For members of that body have often been con- strained by the love of Christ to assert, at great sacrifice, the rights of conscience in respect to the service of God, and some of them, it is supposed, are doing this at the present hour in a distant land. I shall con- fidently assume that the honored brethren who assigned me this theme expected a frank other ; and a remark upon the former of these relations will cast a ray of light upon the latter. It is this : The authority of God is absolute and original, at once the source and the limit of all other authority. Hence the relations of a Christian to God are su- preme, controlling all other relations. Every man, as a creature, is rightfully subject to God, his Creator ; but the grace of redemp- tion adds strength to this primary obliga- tion, so that Christians may be said to owe the profouudest homage and the most un- qualified obedience to the Lord. This fact and earnest though temperate discussion of { can not be emphasized too strongly. Jeho- it from my own point of observation. For vah is King in all the earth, and disloyalty to him can never be justified by the plea of loyalty to another. Among the facts which no other could be worth y of a Christian man ; no other could satisfy the members of this Evangelical Alliance ; and no other, unless by the overruling interposition of God, could possibly serve the cause of truth. In what I say, therefore, it will be my duty to follow a plain path, neither eulogizing one nor criti- cising another, but, in the spirit of love and loyalty to Christ, aiming to set forth the principles which seem to me just and right. Without controversy, I shall best speak for one by speaking for all, and I shall best speak for all by laying, if possible, the foun- dations of my argument in facts that can not be moved. A word of explanation will prepare the way for this attempt. "Christian Liberty" will be understood to signify the freedom of action in religious matters which accords with the Christian view of man in his relations to God and the State ; and this view of man is furnished with sufficient clearness by the teaching of Christ and his apostles. The expression used might be understood to embrace also the freedom of religious action which com- ports with the Christian view of man in his relations to the Church of which in any case he is a member ; but this part of the subject I do not propose to discuss. By action in religions matters is meant, of course, out- ward action, not that which is purely men- tal or spiritual ; for by common consent the latter should be free from civil constraint. The inward life of man can not be regulated by the State. Now it is evident from the teaching of Christ and his apostles that every man liv- ing in society holds important relations to God on the one hand, and to the State on the 31 may help us to fix the limits of Christian liberty in religious concerns, the paramount authority of Christ must have the first place. It is plain, therefore, that such liberty never offers to man the alternative of disobedience instead of obedience to the Lord. But it is equally certain from the language of Holy Writ that the State is of God ; for one apostle exhorts his readers to "honor the king," and " submit themselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto gov- ernors, as unto them that are sent by him :" another declares that " the powers that be are ordained of God," so that " whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God ;" while Christ himself says, "Render unto Ctesar the things that are Caesar's." The authority of civil rulers is therefore le- gitimate, and submission to it is enforced by the voice of conscience as well as by the im- pulse of fear. Yet this conclusion must be restricted in some way, or there is danger of infinite perplexity and disorder. For civil magistrates must certainly be thought in many cases to command what Christ for- bids, and to forbid what he commands. There is, then, I am sure, some means of escape from this seeming conflict of author- ity ; and it may be found by adopting one of the following hypotheses: Either, first, that the State, represented by its rulers, has authority from the Lord to interpret and enforce his law in religious matters; or, sec- ondly, that the authority of the State is lim- ited to secular affairs. Let either of these theories be consistently applied, and a con- i-J ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. flict of authority in the domain of rcligiou is no longer possible ; but attempt to mingle the two, and confusion, with injustice, is sure to follow. Which of these theories, then, is correct, when tested by the words of Christ and his apostles .' Can the former be established T Is it con- sistent with the Word of God to suppose that civil rulers stand between the souls of men and that Word, with authority from the Head of the Church to declare and en- force what it means? that Nero and Cou- stantine, Frederick the Great and Charles the Second, the Parliament of Great Britain and the Congress of the United States, have been severally charged with the duty of regulating for a part of mankind the service of Godf I find no evidence or even hint of this in the New Testament. Neither di- rectly nor by implication is such a view taught. The disciples of Christ were, in- deed, to stand before magistrates and kings, not, however, to learn from them the mys- tery of Grace, but rather to bear witness to the truth, and in many instances to seal their testimony with their blood. If they had been, taught by the Lord to look to the State for instruction in the Gospel or for direc- tions in building up churches, some refer- ence to this important lesson would have been put into the record of their work. Yea, more than this, some provision would have been made to furnish the people of every Christian land with a succession of godly rulers, who should be able, with the burden of secular affairs upon their minds, to guide the action of men in religious concerns also, more wisely than the saints themselves, or the pastors of the flock. But I discover in the record no hint of this function of " the powers that be" in matters of religion, and no provision to qualify them for so high a service. However certain it may be that civil government, though founded by men, is sanctioned by God, and should be honored and obeyed by the Christian, it does not fol- low that the State has control of every thing human, and may prescribe to men their du- ties to God as well as to one another ; it does not follow that the rough and terrible forces which the State must employ are fit to be used in dealing with cases of conscience. Acting within his proper sphere, the magis- trate is God's minister, but there is no suffi- cient evidence that his sphere of action should embrace the duties of religion. The first hypothesis must therefore be rejected. Is the second worthy of acceptance ? May we justly conclude from the New Testament that the authority of the State should be confined to secular affairs ? If I go further in my reply to this question than some of you are prepared to go, I beg you to bear in mind the different circumstances and atmos- phere in which we have lived, and to give the considerations which it may present a charitable if not a favorable hearing. It may bo true that the power of sympathy for brothers in affliction has fixed my mind on the evils which flow from State action in matters of religion, to the neglect of certain advantages which are said to result from that action, and possibly the reverse of this may be the case with some of you ; but it will nevertheless bo in our power to ap- proach the sacred Word together, and look with an honest heart for the lessons which it teaches. In doing this a few significant facts will certainly deserve attention. And the first fact is this : Christ commit- ted to his disciples the work of preaching the Gospel to every creature ; but in giving them this commission he made no allusion to consent or aid from the State. The com- mand was explicit, and the work to be done required them to visit every land and at- tempt to change the religious life of every people ; but not a word was said of their asking the assistance or obtaining the per- mission of any civil ruler, nor a hint given that the State as such had a right to direct in the matter. If any one should infer from the form of expression recorded in Matthew, "Go ye, therefore, make disciples of all the nations," that the followers of Christ were to approach the people through their rulers, and establish an organic union between State and Church, it is enough to reply that na- tions in their corporate form can neither be taught nor baptized, that the same expres- sion is used in a previous chapter to denote the people composing the nations, and that the parallel passage in Mark requires us to understand the phrase "all the nations" as equivalent to "every creature," or every man in the world. So, then, the fact to be weighed is simply this that the Saviour committed the work of evangelizing mankind and teach- ing them to obey his will in all things to his disciples, with no hint of aid to be sought or expected from the State. The second fact is this : Christ provided for the proper organization, instruction, and discipline of his followers, thus preparing them for united action-. This is evident from the history written by Luke, and called "The' Acts of the Apostles." Believers in Christ were brought together in churches, were fur- nished with leaders, were taught to meet on the Lord's day for worship and instruction, and were encouraged, if able, to assist the poor. Whatever view may be held in re- spect to this primitive organization, whether it be declared popular or presbyteriau, epis- copal or elastic, it was at least from above and sufficient. Christians did not, therefore, need the patronage or constraint of the "pow- ers that be" to hold them together in relig- ious action. Disconnected and weak as they seemed to the world, they could be trusted, with faith in their hearts, to labqr in concert for the best cause. "The locusts have no HOVEY: CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 483 king, yet go they forth all of them by bands." And so it was with the early Christians, hav- ing no visible head and no aid from the State, they were able, through the love of Jesus, to maintain order and carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. As the motto at my right declares, they were "Abgesondert wie die Wage, aber tine ivie das Meer." The history of Chris- tian life, labor, and success from the day of Pentecost to the reign of Constautine, is wor- thy of profound study by those who would answer rightly the question in debate. My third fact is this : Christ affirmed Lis kingdom to be distinct in origin and agency from that of any earthly potentate. He de- scribed himself as King in the realm of truth. He repudiated for himself and for his followers, to the end of time, the use of force in defending or extending his authority over men. In saying this I but offer you a para- phrase of his reply to the Roman governor, when asked if he was the King of the Jews : " My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be deliv- ered to the Jews ; but now is my kingdom not from hence. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." If any person deny that I have set forth cor- rectly the substance of this reply, he must, I think, suppose that the language of Christ was more comprehensive than his thought, and therefore obscure, if not misleading ; for this language seems to explain his course iu a particular instance by appealing to the very nature of his kingdom, which was spir- itual in its means of action as well as iu its origin. Iu perfect agreement with the an- swer of Christ to Pilate, was his response to certain Jews who questioned him about the lawfulness of giving tribute to Caesar ; for this response, "Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," presupposes a distinc- tion between civil and religious affairs, be- tween the service which is due to an earth- ly sovereign and that which is due to the Supreme Ruler, between the interests con- served by the State and those conserved by the Church. The same distinction may also bo inferred from his reply to one of the multitude, who said to him, " Master, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me," a reply expressed in these words : " Man, who made me a judge and a divider over you?" for such a reply would hardly have fallen from the lips of Christ had the request per- tained to spiritual affairs to the matters of his own kingdom. My fourth fact is this: The apostles de- nied the right of any person iu authority to restrain them from preaching the Gospel. It is a significant circumstance that there is no evidence of their applying in a single instance to rulers of any kind for permission to teach the new faith, but it is still more significant that there is conclusive evidence of their declining to refrain from the work of teaching when commanded to do so by the highest court of their nation. Behold them standing before the Jewish Sanhedrim, and listen to the words of the high-priest, as, iu behalf of the great council, he com- mands Peter and John "Not to speak at all, nor teach iu the name of Jesus !" What now do you hear in response ? " Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye ; for we can not but speak the things that we have seen and heard." And, as if this wore not enough, the scene repeats itself the apos- tles stand once more before the august tribu- nal, and the indignant high-priest asks, "Did we not straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name?" while clear and firm, as before, the response comes, "We ought to obey God rather than men." Now, bearing iu mind the fact that a right to prdach the Gospel involved a right to or- ganize churches, and through them carry on a systematic effort to change the religious life of the whole people, it is safe to con- clude from these replies that neither civil nor ecclesiastical rulers are authorized to de- termine what forms of religion may be taught among the people. You will observe that ec- clesiastical rulers are included in this state- ment. Neither pope nor council, nor any other body of men, however exalted as lead- ers and guides, can lawfully decide for the people what truth they may hear and exam- ine in the fear of God. In obvious harmony with the apostles' language to the Jewish Sanhedrim was their conduct ever after. They acted on the assumption that religious truth should be laid before the mind of every man, in order that he might accept or reject it freely. So, too, when the apostle to the Gentiles refers to the weapons used by Chris- tians iu their warfare, he pronounces them "not carnal, but spiritual," and describes them in language which may be summed up in two words, Christian character and Chris- tian truth. Using such weapons only, it is not surprising that the apostles declined to rest from their holy warfare though com-- manded to do so. Looking, then, to the teaching of Christ and his apostles for light, I seem to find that the rightful authority of the State is limited to secular affairs, and that Christian liber- ty is identical with religious liberty. But if Christian liberty is identical with religious liberty, believers in Christ are simply on a level in this respect with all other men. What they claim for themselves they should cheerfully concede to others, be they Jews or Turks, Buddhists or infidels ; for, accord- ing to this view, so far as the State is con- cerned, the right of free inquiry and action 484 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. iu matters of religion is natural and univer- sal, belonging to men as spiritual beings, and not to the defenders of any particular creed. Hence all that any government should be expected to do in this direction is to protect the people in the exercise of their natural right to religious liberty. I am riot so vain as to imagine that the argument -which has been briefly stated is either new or striking, nor so sanguine as to hope that all of you will see in it the force which it has to me ; but this at least you -will admit, that a practical assent by all Christians to the view advocated would put an end without delay to the religious perse- cutions and oppressions which in milder or more terrible forms have been almost a stand- ing reproach to the Christian name. If man's right to religious liberty were guard- ed throughout Christendom as no less sacred than his right to life which can only be forfeited by crime it would be an easy task to bring all other nations into practical ac- cord with the same view ; and then the con- flict between light and darkness, truth and error, would be waged in a fair field with le- gitimate weapons, insuring victory to the stronger. What better thing can you ask for our holy religion from " the powers that be" than just this undisturbed conflict ? It would be certain to result in a triumph of the cross such as the world has never seen ; nay, more, it would itself be such a triumph; for it would be evidence of a most tender re- gard for the religious convictions of every human soul, of a most singular readiness to forego the use of powers now possessed for the sake of avoiding possible wrong to oth- ers, of a most admirable and holy resolve to obey in all things the golden rule, and of a most unwavering faith in the spiritual re- sources of the King of Zion. Brethren of the Evangelical Alliance, I have laid this view before you because I could not from the heart propose any other ; but it is proper for me now to leave it with- out fear in your hands. " I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say." Before closing, however, I beg leave to express to you my gratitude for AY hat you have already done in a practical way in behalf of Chris- tian liberty. If you deem my theory ill adapted to the present state of the world, I rejoice to believe that your hearts cry out with mine against the practice of afflicting quiet citizens with fines and imprisonment because they insist upon being honest in the worship of God. If it be true that " oppres- sion maketh a wise man mad," we need not claim that our brothers of the Baptist faith who are called to endure it are always free from error. Should we make this claim, the shades of Miiuster, per fas aut nefas, would be summoned to rise from their graves and testify against us ; but we may devoutly hope that the day will soon dawn when re- ligious liberty will be universal ; when Chris- tian states will set the example of Belf-de- nial in this matter ; when Christian rulers will see that they can best serve the cause of their Lord by using none but spiritual weapons in his service ; when all who know the name of Christ will assert for others the freedom of action in divine things which they claim for themselves, and, opening wide the doors of honest inquiry, call upon every man to examine for himself the religion of their Lord ; then, rnethiuks, will all the fears which fill the hearts of many be scattered to the winds, and angels, having the everlast- ing Gospel to preach, will fly swiftly to the ends of the earth, persuading the heathen to believe in the Lord Jesus. But while saying this with strong confi- dence, I do not overlook the bearing of such a view upon legislation in respect to the Lord's day, the marriage covenant, the use of the Bible in state schools, and the release of Church property from taxation. For the doctrine of religious liberty now explained does not forbid all legislation in these mat- ters. It allows the State to prohibit ordinary labor on the first day of the week, in so far as such Ifibor is found to be unfavorable to the health of the people, or to the quiet which is necessary for religions worship as practiced by large numbers of them. It al- lows the State to prohibit polygamy and easy divorce, in so far as they are inconsistent with the equal and natural rights of men, or with the interests of virtue among the peo- ple. It allows the State to place the Bible in its schools, inasmuch as this volume has a high literary and moral character, con- ducive to good order and virtue. And it allows the State to release from taxation the property of churches, in so far as this property is held in trust for a definite and humane object, with no power in the trustees to use it for their own pecuniary advan- tage. Such legislation would doubtless re- quire special caution and care, but to the ex- tent in which it can be pronounced essential to the welfare of the State, it would nev- er prove itself incompatible with religious liberty. SECOND SECTION.-THE OLD CATHOLICS. LETTER FROM THE OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS, ASSEMBLED AT CONSTANCE, SEPTEMBER 12-14, 1873. WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. PROF. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., OF NEW YORK. I HAVE the honor to lay before you a Ger- man letter of salutation just received from the President of the third Old Catholic Con- gress, which was held a few weeks ago in the city of Constance. It is signed by Bish- op Reinkens and the presiding officers of the Congress, and is addressed to the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance. It hails from the famous chamber where, in the early part of the fifteenth century, an OZcu- meuical Council was convened for the pro- fessed purpose of healing the papal schism, and effecting a " reformation of the Church in the head and the members" a Council which deposed two rival popes, and thus as- serted its superiority over the papacy, but which also condemned Huss to the death on the stake for teaching evangelical truth, and thus defeated the object of a reformation. The document is important, not only for the authentic information it contains, but still more as an indication of the spirit and tendency of Old Catholicism, which now so largely attracts the attention of the relig- ious world. The Old Catholic movement has, by the re- cent election of a bishop and the adoption of a sy nodical constitution, passed the stage of a mere experiment, and assumed the char- acter of a regular Church organization, which stands between Romanism and Protestant- ism, with the avowed desire to reform Ro- manism, and to bring about, if possible, a re- union of divided Christendom on the basis of the Scriptures and the unanimous tradi- tion of the primitive Church. The new organization, which sends us a fraternal greeting, takes its rise from the last (Ecumenical Council of Rome, which pre- sents a striking contrast to this General Con- ference of the Evangelical Alliance. The Vatican Council was intensely Romish ; the Conference is just as decidedly Protestant. The ono was commanded by the pope, the other is a voluntary assembly. The one held up the standard of tradition as embodied in the Pope ("la tradizione son /o"), the other raises the standard of the Bible, as the only rule of faith and practice. The one over- powered the senses by a prelatical and cere- monial splendor such as even Rome and St. Peter's Cathedral never saw before, or are like- ly ever to see again ; the other meets in un- ostentatious simplicity, and appeals simply to the intelligence, the heart, and the con- science. The one lasted ten long months, the other will be concluded in ten days. The one was an assembly of bishops, exclud- ing not only the laity, but even the lower clergy ; the other is a convention of Chris- tian brethren, and recognizes the principle of the general priesthood of all believers. The one used a dead language, the other speaks in the living languages of the people. The one sat with closed doors, and the citi- zens of Rome were indifferent to its dis- cussions ; the other has no secrets to con- ceal, and excites such an interest among all classes of the people that there is scarcely room for the crowds eager to hear solid in- struction, and to join in the praise of Christ. The Council discussed the one question of infallibility, and even this the ablest of its members considered inopportune ; the Con- ference passes in review all the leading re- ligious topics of the age. The one claimed legislative authority which can not be resist- ed without the risk of eternal damnation ; the other relies on the moral power of truth, which must and will prevail in the end over all force and error. The one enforced an outward unity at the sacrifice of personal conviction ; the other manifests a spiritual unity in essentials, with great freedom and di- versity in non-essentials. The one declared war on modern civilization and all independ- ent civil government ; the other means to extend and promote general knowledge, free- dom, and reform on a positive basis of faith. The one proclaimed the absolute spiritual sovereignty and official infallibility of a sin- ful mortal man, though he be personally a 486 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. morul monster, like Alexander VI., or a con- demned heretic, like Honoriii8,or a theologic- al ignoramus, like Pius IX., who is said to be unable even to read the Bible in the original ; the other upholds the infallibility of God's Word, and the exclusive headship and inedi- atorship of Jesus Christ, who needs no vicar, being himself ever present with his people, according to his unfailing promise. The one imposed a new and blasphemous dogma on the consciences of men as an article necessary to salvation ; the other stands up for the lib- erty, wherewith Christ has made us free. The one, threw a flame of discord into society, and provoked a new schism ; the other tends to greater unity among true Christians of every land and every name. The Council ended with the glorification of the Pope, who can now say, "I am the Church (I'eglisc c'est mm) ;" the Conference will end, as it be- gan, with the glorification of Christ and his Gospel, as the only hope of salvation, and the only basis of peace and union in the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. More than eighteen hundred years ago an- other council was held in an humble room at Jerusalem a council composed of " apos- tles, elders, and brethren;" a council \vhich al- lowed free discussion, although blessed with the presence of inspired apostles ; a council in which Peter, unlike his pretended follow- ers, spoke in favor of liberty, and warned the brethren " not to put a yoke on the neck of the f_ Gentile] disciples;" a council which proclaimed no other dogma but this, that both Jews and Gentiles are saved, not by good works, not by the sacraments, not by the Church, not by any human mediators, but only " by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 " as apprehended by a living faith ; a council which maintained and strengthened the uni- ty between the believers of the circumcision and the believers of the uncircumcision, and gave a new impulse to the spread of the Gospel. You will not be at a loss to decide whether the Vatican Council or the New York Confer- ence is more in harmony with the spirit and aim of the Apostolic Synod at Jerusalem. Old Catholicism is an indignant protest, iu the name of learning, reason, and con- science, against the Vatican decrees of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. It is head- ed by men who a few years ago were re- garded as the pillars and ornaments of the Roman Church. It is strongly supported by the traditions of ancient Catholicism, in- cluding fathers, councils, and popes ; by the spirit of modern civilization ; and even by the former convictions of eighty-eight bish- ops of the Vatican Council and they the most learned and intelligent who, on the memorable 13th of July, 1870, voted against the dogma of papal infallibility, but who at that momentous crisis suddenly left Rome, to make afterward a cowardly submission, in a mistaken zeal for a false peace and a liollow unity of outward organization. Their intolerant proceedings against their former teachers, friends, and pupils have forced these into the attitude of schism, and an ap- proach to Protestantism. As the Old Catholics meet Protestants half- way, and are sincerely aiming at a reforma- tion of the Romish Church by a return to primitive purity and simplicity, Protestants ought to consider it a duty and privilege to extend to them the helping arm of prayer and active sympathy. They have invited theologians and dignitaries of other church- es to their Congresses at Munich, Cologne, and Constance ; why should we not invite them to our Conference? A meeting of the Swiss branch of the Alliance, which met at Geneva in September of last year, opened the way by addressing to them a fraternal letter of encouragement, drawn up by Dr. Merle d'Aubigne" a few days before his peace- ful departure into eternity. I deemed it, therefore, right and proper, dur- ing a recent visit to Europe in behalf of the Alliance, to put myself iu personal commu- nication with Professor Von Schulte, Bishop Reiukeus, Dr. Dollinger, and other leaders of the Old Catholics, and to extend to them an invitation to the New York Conference as honorary guests (without committing them to our Protestantism, nor committing the Al- liance to their Old Catholicism), that they might give us authentic information on their condition, object, and aim, and at the same time get an idea of the concentrated power of evangelical Protestantism, such as they could not see on the Continent of Europe. The invitation was very cordially received, and, had not various hinderances intervened, we would now see among us two or three of the champions of this reform in the Church of Rome. Instead of their personal presence, we have from them an official letter, which, I venture to say, is one of the most inter- esting papers brought before this Confer- ence, and will take its place among the his- toric documents of the Old Catholic Church. As the latest item of news from Constance, I will add that, on the last day of the Con- gress, Bishop Reinkens delivered an eloquent and enthusiastic address before a large au- dience, in which he characterized the papal prohibition of popular Bible reading as a crime, and exhorted the hearers "to read again and again the Word of Life, not from idle curiosity nor for the sake of controversy, but in humility and gladness, sitting at the feet of Jesus, and listening to the voice of the heavenly Bridegroom (John iii.,29), that thus they may enter into closest communion with God." This principle of the sovereignty of the Bible as the book of God for all the people, and of direct communion of the believer LETTER FROM THE OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS. with Christ, is the very soul of sound evan- ! other churches, and promoting a better iin- gelical Christianity, aud augurs well for the derstanding among them. success of this new reformation. May God prosper it, and make it a means for reviving With this explanatory statement,! submit a translation of the communication received. THE LETTER OF THE OLD CATHOLICS.* MOST REVEREND AND HIGHLY ESTEEMED GENTLEMEN : The President of last year's Cologne Con- gress received, from the Rev. Dr. Schaff, un- der date of July 21 of this year, a request to propose to the Old Catholic Congress at Constauce that they would send three dele- gates to the sixth International General Con- ference of the Evangelical Alliance, to be held in the city of New York from the 2d to the 12th of October, commissioning them "to com- municate to the Christian public of America authentic information concerning the origin, progress, and aims of the Old Catholic move- ment." He, therefore, with the concurrence of the Synodical representation of the Old Catholics of the German Empire, submitted this proposition to the Congress at Con- stance. The President had first taken pains to fix upon a number; of gentlemen who, by their social position and standing in the movement, as also by their linguistic and other attainments, were fit to bo proposed to the Congress as delegates for the discharge of this mission. Unfortunately, various rea- sons, partly of a personal nature and partly relating to the circumstances of the time, es- pecially the ravages of .the cholera in several parts of Germany, compelled them to decline the mission. The President himself, for pure- ly personal reasons, could not assume the charge. In consequence, the Conference had to forego the idea of sending delegates, and content itself with passiug a unanimous res- olution to address, through the presiding of- ficers, a letter to the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, thanking them for the friendly invitation, aud for the kind and generous manner in Avhich the visit of the delegates would have been facilitated by the executive committee in New York. At the same time we were to express our sincere pleasure at the testimony this invitation renders to our unchangeable purpose and en- deavor, expressed by us from the very first, to reunite all Christian confessions into one great Church of Christ, in which any par- ticular Church, though united as far as es- sential doctrines are concerned, may still * [The letter was accompanied by a printed copy of the remarkable Pastoral Letter of Bishop Reiukens, and a copy of the Synodical and Parochial Constitu- tion, which is quite liberal, and provides for the reg- ular 'participation of the lay element in the govern- ment of the Church and the congregation. A member of the Congress at Constance proposed to send to the New York Conference the whole Old Catholic litera- ture, but this is so very voluminous that the proposal was found impracticable. AU] preserve all other peculiarities correspond- ing to its national character, its historical antecedents aud training, and its political and social condition. With regard to authentic information touching the origin, progress, aud aims of our movement, we need say but little after the publication of the Munich programme of Whitesuutide, 1871, and the resolutions aud declarations of both Old Catholic Con- gresses, at Munich in 1871, and at Cologne in 1872. We, therefore, propose to give you only a brief sketch of our movement. For a long time there had been a large number of think- ing Catholics, especially among, the repre- sentatives of theological science, ecclesiastic- al law, history, and philosophy, who clearly perceived that the Roman Curia had entered upon a course which inevitably tended to the annihilation of spiritual liberty in all branches of knowledge, to the overthrow of the independence of bishops, the absolute centralization of Church government by the destruction of all national and territorial pe- culiarities in individual churches ; in short, to the absolute sovereignty of the Pope in Church aud society. It was known that the ideas of Gregory VII. and Boniface VIII. were exclusively followed by the Curia, aud that every seeming concession to the exigen- cies of the times was duo only to the fact that Rome could not yet openly come for- ward with its real plans. Up to the last hour a return was thought possible, and it was attempted to effect it upon the domain of science, and then to prepare the ground for further labors. The so-called Munich Con- gress of Catholic scholars, held September 28 to October 1, 1863, openly expressed this endeavor. The conduct of the Curia, how- ever, prevented such meetings, aud the Syl- labus fully revealed the real situation. The struggle which had begun quietly in the realm of science assumed a general charac- ter soon after the announcement of an (Ecu- menical Council to be opened December 8, 18(59, in St. Peter's Church, when the designs of Rome, aud of the Jesuits who directed them, became known. The Vatican decrees of July 18, 1870, made this contest an open one for the whole Church. First of all we have those decrees which directly and frankly pronounce the infalli- bility of the Pope and his universal episco- pate; but which, by logical inference, in- clude the Pope's absolute control of the con- science, mode of life, and rights of iudivid^ 483 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. uals as well as of nations. This is the legal origin and justification for our movement, because, after the publication of those de- crees, it became impossible for auy one who desired to continue in Christ's Word and give evidence to the truth to remain silent without renouncing all hope of reform. It had become evident to us that these decrees had the sole object of sanctioning a system (practically called into life three hundred years ago) which identifies Jesuitism with Christianity, Romanism with Catholicism, and Ultramontanisin with Christian policy ; and of giving to this whole system an im- movable foundation under the mask of di- vine revelation. Should the decrees of July 18, 1870, be recalled in the same solemn and precise manner in which they have been promulgated, Curialism would be destroyed, and that reform of the Church would be be- gun which wo are now striving for. lu that case only could we re-enter iuto relations with Rome. We might acknowledge in principle the primacy of Rome as an histor- ical institution in the same sense in which the ancient undivided Christian Church ac- knowledged it. We hope and strive for the restoration of the unity of the Christian Church. We frankly acknowledge that no branch of it has exclusively the truth. We hold fast to the ultimate view that upon the foundation of the Gospel and the doctrines of the Church grounded upon it, and upon the foundation of the ancient, undivided Church, a union of all Christian confessions will be possible through a really (Ecumenical Council. This is our object and intention in the movement which has led us into close relations with the Evangelical, the Anglican, the Anglo- American, the Russian, and the Greek churches. We know that this goal can not easily bo reached, but we see the pri- mary evidences of success in the circum- stance that a truly Christian intercourse has already taken place between ourselves and other Christian churches. Therefore we seize with joy the hand of fellowship you have extended to us, and beg you to enter iuto a more intimate communion with us, in such a way as may be agreed upon by both parties. In order that the work of restoring and completing the unity of the one Church of Christ may be realized, every individual Christian Church must cast off every thing which proves to be a merely human addi- tion, and must restore that constitution and discipline which rest upon the foundation laid by Christ the Lord, and which meet the just requirements of the different nations and the present age. This it is our inten- tion and task to perform within the bosom of the Catholic Church. We wish to cleanse it from the stains of a corruption which has gradually increased for more than a thou- sand years. All that Roman ambition and domination have created for selfish ends must bo removed. Every institution and cus- tom hurtful to true Christian vitality must.. be cast out; active faith must be substitu- ted for righteousness by works ; a sincere- ly Christian life in faith and practice must be substituted for pious bigotry. The de- terioration of the constitution of the Church into an instrument of the hierarchy and of the Roman Bishop must be set aside by the introduction of corrected rules which guar- antee to the Christian laity their rights both in the local congregation and the general government of the Church. A system of discipline must be introduced in which trno Christian earnestness and Christian moral- ity united with Christian love constitute the end, instead of a blind subjection of tho individual, or of all, to the fiat of a class or of a single man. In brief, we wish to reform the Church in such a manner that it shall become again a fellowship in love, in faith, and in work, of all who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and as the Saviour who alone has been and still is and remains our Mediator. Great changes will be necessary to attain this end. It can only be reached by pru- dence and a wise choice of ways and means. Therefore we were not disconcerted at the derision of those who said, "You only reject the infallibility of the Pope; you wish to retain all the other absurdities." W T e have unitedly overcome the desire that existed among ourselves for sudden change, since we have all come to the belief that the preju- dices and ideas in which successive genera- tions have been educated can not be de- stroyed in a single night. It has become manifest to all of us that our reform will be far more efficient if we proceed with delib- eration and caution, because the experience of the good we introduce will then teach xis the better to know the shadow of evil that still remains. We may contend, without vanity and without being accused of exag- geration, that no religious movement which does not aim at the destruction but at the amelioration of the existing state of things, which has to rely upon its own efforts, which has hitherto enjoyed no assistance from tho State, but on tho contrary has had great ob- stacles laid in its way, which occiirs in an age when on the one hand indifference and materialism, and on the other fanaticism and political churchmanship predominate in all classes of society, has been so successful in so short a time, whether we consider its pro- portions or internal results, either in the do- main of the law or that of life. On September 22, 1871, it was determined in Munich to organize regular parishes. To- day the Old Catholic Church numbers in tho German Empire nearly 100 congregations (in Baden, 27; in Bavaria, 33; in Hesse, 2; in LETTER FROM THE OLD CATHOLIC CONGRESS. 489 Prussia, 22 congregations ; 1 congregation in Birkenfeld). In these congregations over 50,000 members are enrolled. If, despite the difficulties and inconveniences which many suffer from openly joining an Old Catholic congregation, and in spite of the want of churches, etc., such a result has been already reached, we may boldly hope for far greater successes as soon as our Church has been rec- ognized by the State. Over forty priests, of whom six have joined us in the course of this year, attend to parochial duties. They will also have accessions. Six young men next winter will study Old Catholic theology in the University of Bonn. In many places, the friendship of our Evangelical brethren has rendered regular worship possible in Prot- estant churches; in others, the civil local authorities or the Government have granted us churches. In Austria, in Switzerland, even in France, Italy, and Spain, our move- ment meets with a response. If we look at the internal results, they are equally encouraging. By the choice of the clergy and the congregations, on June 4, 1873, Joseph Hubert Reiukeus, Professor of The- ology at Breslan, was elected Old Catholic bishop. His inclosed pastoral letter fur- nishes an evidence that the episcopal office will be carried out iu the true apostolic spirit. He was consecrated 011 August 11 by the Bishop of De venter, in the presence of numerous priests of all the three dioceses of the Church of Utrecht. His consecration has strengthened our fellowship with that Church. Steps have been taken to commu- nicate with the Armenian Catholics* Thus we are in intimate communication with that portion of the whole Church, formerly united under Rome, which does not submit itself to papal absolutism, and stands fast by the rights and faith of the ancient Church. In- ternal reforms have already been, begun, such as perhaps are enjoyed by no branch of the Christian Church. We have quietly abandoned the abuses of the adoration of saints, especially the exaggerated devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the indulgences. We have done away with the abuse of scap- ularies, medals, and such like. The payment of money for the reading of masses and pub- lic prayers, etc., has been given up. The national language has practically been gen- erally adopted in the Church service, and in the administration of the sacraments as far as it was possible to do without changing the generally accepted liturgical rules of the Latin Church. The inclosed provisional rules, which were adopted in Cologne, June 3, 1873, have al- ready secured to laymen a certain share of authority in the government of the Church an authority which in all its conditions is thoroughly in keeping with the rules and customs of the ancient Church of the first centuries, and fully satisfies the reasona- ble desires in our own age. If the propo- sition for a set of rules for synods and con- gregations should be accepted, as it doubt- less will be by the Congress at Constance and by the first synod, we shall possess a con- stitution which will probably be for sometime a pium desiderium with most of our Evangel- ical brethren in Germany. A Catholic synod, composed of a bishop, priests, and laymen, indicates a reform in the Church which only a few years ago would have appeared impos- sible. Thus we have realized what appears to us essential in the Constitution of the Church, viz. : the Episcopal office as the lead- ing one ; the functions of bishops and priests for the administration of the means of grace and for the proclamation of the Word of God ; the full, harmonious co-operation of all believers in a legal and orderly man- ner. Thus we hope to have replaced the reign of arbitrary and centralized absolutism by laws coinciding with the spirit of love and unity, by which the communion of believers should be guided. We close with the expression of our wish that your Conference may succeed in bring- ing about an active, close union between members of the different branches of the Evangelical Church; and with another wish, both for you and for ourselves, that the bond of mutual love maybe drawn closer and closer, that we may found institutions fitted to pre- pare the way for the reconciliation ofallChris- tian creeds, and to lead to that end we all should labor for, when, under one Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, the members of his holy Church shall form a single flock. May God grant this, and may his blessing bo upon your work. THE CONGRESS OF THE OLD CATHOLICS OF GERMANY. CONSTANCE, September 12, 1873. In the name thereof: The Bishop : JOSEPH HUBEUT REINKENS. The President : Dr. VON SCHULTE, Privy Councilor and Professor at Bonn. The First Vice-President : Dr. C. A. CORNELIUS, from Munich. The Second Vice-President : Dr. AUGUSTIN KELLER, from Aarau. LETTER FROM PERE HYACINTHE LOYSON. [Translated from the French.] To THE MEMBERS OP THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE ASSEMBLED ix GENERAL CON- FERENCE AT NEW YORK : GENTLEMEN, When I accepted now more than a year ago the invitation -which your committee did me the honor to send me for the meeting of the Evangelical Alli- ance, I could not conjecture the obstacles which would check the execution of my promise. While suffering from the sacrifice which they impose upon me now, I do not regret these obstacles, for they concern a new development of a reform to which is attach- ed, in my opinion, the salvation of the Cath- olic Church. In confiding to me a task much beyond my individual powers, but which he will aid me, I trust, to perform, God has imposed upon me duties which take precedence of all others. Will you excuse me, then, gentle- men, if in heart alone I join you ? By its warm impulses my whole being goes out to you. For a long time already I have count- ed friends among your ranks indeed, I can call you all by that name, for, united by faith in the same Christ, the only Son of God, and the Redeemer of men, you are laboring to bring together on a common ground the different Christian confessions, which have been so sadly, and, until now, so irremediably separated. My ambition, I confess, is still higher : where you are satisfied Avith an alliance, I would desire an organic and vital unity (uniti organique ct rirante). I believe this unity to lie in the future destinies of the Christian Church, because I discover it in its primitive traditions, and, above all, be- cause it is in the will of its divine Found- er. If all Christianity were not like that weakened Church of the Apocalypse, more or less " fallen from its first love," it would not be so difficult for it to realize, or even, alas ! to conceive the joyous mystery of its unity. Time does not permit me, gentlemen, to give you the details of the particular work in which I am laboring at Geneva, and which you wish to honor with your sympathetic interest. Besides, this work is sufficiently known to you through the public press. I venture to count, at need, upon the Rev. Pastor Franck Coulin (who will deliver to you this letter) to speak to you of my plans. Pastor Couliu is not only a friend of my per- son, but also of my work, and among our brethren of the Protestant churches in Switz- erland, we count no one who has for our re- form more intelligent and more cordial sym- pathies. Will you accept, gentlemen, with the re- newed expression of my deeply felt regrets, that also of my most respectful and affection- ately devoted regards, in our common Mas- ter and Saviour. HYACINTHE LOYSON. GENEVA, September 9, 18T3. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. BY THE KEY. W. KEAFFT, D.D. Professor of Chnrch History in the University of Bonu. [Born Sept. 8, 1821, at Cologne, Prussia.] ' So much has been written in regard to the history of the Vatican Council, that a whole library might be filled with this lit- erature.* I call your special attention to Frommanu's excellent representation. t In treating of the Council and the Old Catholic movement, the former can be con- sidered only in so far as it gave rise to the latter movement, bestowing upon it not only justification in itself, but great importance also. On the eighteenth day of July, 1870, in presence and with the assent of the major- ity of the voters of the Vatican Council, at midday but the sky being dark, under thunder and lightning, and by candle-light Pope Pius the Ninth commanded, iu the bull " Pastor astern us," all Eomau Catholic Chris- tendom to believe implicitly in the follow- ing as a sacred law, warranted by Divine revelation : "Adhering faithfully to the Tradition de- livered unto us from the beginning of the Christian faith, We, with the assent of the Sacred Council, teach and declare, to the honor of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the salvation of all Christendom, that the Roman Pontiff, wheu speaking ex cathedra, i. e., when he, iu virtue of his highest apostolic authority, and in the exercise of his office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians, proclaims in ex- plicit terms .1 dogma, to be believed by the whole Church may it concern either faith or morals possesses, by right of the Divine assistance promised unto him through St. Peter, that infallibility with which the Di- vine Saviour wanted his Church to be en- dowed in all matters of faith and morals ; And that, therefore, such dogmas of the Ro- man Pontiff are iu themselves (ex sese), and not through consent of the Church, immuta- ble. Should, however, any one dare to dis- sent from this our dogma, what God forbid ! let him be anathema !" With this decisive sentence of the Pope the Jesuits have at last reached a long-de- sired aim. Papal infallibility had, years * A complete list of this literature is to be found in the "Qnellerisammlnng" of Friedberg. . t Frommaun, "History of the Vatican Council, Go- thn, 1872." ago, been designated and defended by them as the last consequence of the principles of their own order. The principle of the order of Jesuits was, from the very beginning, in direct opposi- tion to the Protestant principle of faith ; the founder, Ignatius Loyola, declaring that im- plicit obedience is the source, and the great- est of all Christian virtues. In his celebrated letter, De virtute obedi- cntiae (A.D. 1553), addressed to the Portu- guese members of the order, he says : " The members of the Society of Jesus may be surpassed by other religious orders iu fast- ing, vigils, and ascetic mode of living, but iu regard to implicit obedience, denial of self- will, and reason they exceed all others. This obedience of the members of the " compauia" to their superior was to be ex- orcised iu a military manner, as to a general. The latter was, therefore, invested with the highest authority possible : he was to act as the substitute of God and Christ. " Who- soever heareth him, heareth me," i. e., Christ. " Whosoever despiseth him, despiscth me." In consequence, the members are bound to consider the general's command as the voice of Christ, according to the word of St. Paul to the Colossiaus : ' Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men : knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance : for ye serve the Lord Christ." Ignatius distinguishes three degrees of obedience : The first degree comprises those persons who .fulfill their superior's command as the will of God, even if their own will and judg- ment bo opposed to it : this act does not de- serve the name of virtue. The second degree comprises those who, in enacting the order of the general, make his will their own : this sacrifice of the will is virtue. The third degree contains those who en- act the order of the superior, not only in ac- cordance with their own will, but their judg- ment also thus making the sacrifice of their intelligence. This degree of blind, implicit obedience is the highest, and all individual responsibility of action ceases with it. In. the same spirit, the virtue of obedience 492 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. is enjoined in tbe rules of the order ; the subaltern has to so direct all his efforts that his obedience may be perfect iu every regard, both according to will and intelligence. "Let everyone be convinced that those who live under obedience must needs be di- rected and governed by Divine Providence, through the interposition of their superiors, as if they were nothing but a mere cadaver which may bo carried in any direction and treated in any manner; or they may be likened to an old man's staff, assisting him who holds it, wheresoever and whensoever he may use it." In the same manner, as all the members of the order are bound to the will of their superior, thus should, according to the rules of Ignatius, the superior, in his turn, pay im- plicit obedience, and without any reasoning whatsoever, to him whom God placed above him, i. e., the Roman Pope, the Vicegerent of God and Christ on earth. He is, therefore, the absolute sovereign of the order, and his commands must be, at all times and in all parts of the world, implicitly and uncondi- tionally carried out by the members of the order. This nominal superiority of the Pope over the general of the order of the Jesuits was, however, a mere pretext for the real superiority of the order over the Pope. Al- ready the founder of the order named Rome as the permanent residence of the general, so that he might live in the Pope's immedi- ate vicinity. The most intelligent members of the order were brought hither from all parts of the world, and thus by seemingly serving the Roman chair, the order assumed in fact the supremacy over the same, and through it over the whole church. Better than at any other period, Roman Jesuitism succeeded in our times in gaining influence over the Pope, Pio Nouo, making him entire- ly subservient to their aims. This has been done to such an extent that at the present day the general of the Jesuits is called " Papa Nero," to distinguish him from "Papa Bian- co," Pio Nono. Making use of their unlimited influence, the Jesuits believed that at last the moment had arrived when they might extend the constitution of their order over the whole Roman Catholic Church. Now at last should blind, implicit obedience, the life-principle of their order, be binding upon the whole Roman Catholic Church, nay, it should thus govern the world. That is to say, the Ro- man Catholic Church should be changed into one grand order of Jesuits, embracing all na- tions and all countries. To this end the two following dogmas were especially defended in the party-press of the Jesuits : 1st. The dogma of the uni- versal papal episcopacy, i. e., his complete, absolute jurisdictional power; and 2d. The dogma of papal infallibility in questions of faith and morals. The declaration of the immaculate concep- tion (A.D. 1854), which as is almost need- less to say is in direct contradiction to the Christian fundamental doctrine of original sin, served as an introduction to the two dogmas just mentioned. This secret the Jesuits betrayed themselves. Schrader, in his book, " Pius IX. as Pope and King," has told us that, at that time, they simply wish- ed to test how far they could go. The votes of the bishops having been cast aside, it was declared that the Pope alone was inspired by the Holy Spirit : this virtually decided al- ready the infallibility of the Pope. The Jesuits, elated by this success, and certain of final victory, predicted in their papers the sure acceptance of the two above- mentioned doctrines regarding the Pope. But as the Jesuits were striving to secure the Pope the same position in the whole Roman Catholic Church which the general holds in their order, they were obliged to increase papal authority to the very utmost. The Pope, who had formerly been considered but the visible representative of the Roman Church, and at the highest was looked upon as demonstrating the unity of the Church in a juridical sense, was now declared to be the principle of the unity of faith and love, and was placed in such close communion with God as is impossible to any other mor- tal being. Under the eyes of the Pope, the Ch'iUcI, Cattolica, the official press at Rome, pub- lished this blasphemy : " Si medita il Papa 6 dio che pensa in lui," i. e., " when the Pope thinks, it is God thinking within him !" In the book of Faber, the Oratorian, " Of the Devotion to the Pope," the faithful are taught that this devotion is an essential sign of all Christian holiness, and a necessa- ry condition to salvation ; " for the Pope is the third visible presence of Christ among us." This view has been openly defended by the Infallibilists. During the Vatican Coun- cil, Mermillod, the pretender of the Genevan episcopacy, preached at Rome on the three- fold theophauy : " In the manger at Bethle- hem, on the altar iu fhe Eucharist, and iu the person of the Pope in the Vatican." In this sense, also, deus has been changed to pins in some hymns originally addressed to God, and the Pope himself rewarded the defenders of these outrages with a " Breve." By the side of Raphael's pictures in the Vatican, Pius IX. had a picture painted, wherein he announces the immaculate con- ception of the Virgin Mary; he is represent- ed as touching the ground lightly with his feet; a ray of light falling from heaven upon him, while his month and the bull testify to his inspiration by the Holy Spirit. The Pope even attempted to work mira- cles, but without success; and in order to make up for this failure he prophetically an- nounced some future miraculous doings. KRAFFT: THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 493 Count Montalembert, formerly a very pil- lar of the Catholic Church in France, was quite right when he, on his death-bed, thus, with his last words, warned the " Ultramou- tanes :" " You are erecting an idol in the Vati- can /" Yes, an idol indeed, for Romish anti- Christianity has never been as strong as in our days ! The Jesuits, however, did not permit them- selves to be warned, but went on. The mock council, prepared and arranged by them, was destined to execute their plans. It is a fearful arrogance of the Romish Church to presume the representation of an Ecumenical Council in our days. The Orien- tal and Evangelical Churches protested de- cidedly against such a proceeding. Even in the midst of the Catholic Church some of the bishops opposed it, and during the ses- sions of the Council frequently declared that they could not recognize it as ecumenical. For who was represented at Rome but the cardinals of the Romish curia, the bishops, and orders? But the hundreds of thou- sands of priests and the millions of so-called laymen were not represented ; and when they, nevertheless, urged their testimony, it was timidly refused by the bishops, as if thereby the work of the Divine Spirit was disturbed within them. The Council was furthermore not free. The transactions of the Council were tampered with from the very beginning, as the Pope in the most arbitrary manner had himself appointed all the officers, and even before the bishops were assembled administered the oath to every one, from the president down to the last teller-of-votes. The very business transactions of the Council were fix- ed in the most arbitrary mode, as the Pope enforced a double order of the day. Against this outside pressure, this business mechan- ism, a very impressive protest was raised by the most intelligent bishops, but without success. Freedom of debate and confer- ence was consequently impossible ; the Pope alone, through his president, brought his own resolutions before the house ; no bishop had a right to do so ; their resolutions had to be laid before a commission outside of the Council, and their introduction to the Council, nay, the mere knowledge of them, depended solely upon the Pope's decision. The speeches were mostly unintelligible, partly on account of the size of the hall, and partly on account of the different pronuncia- tion ; and an insight into the steuographical reports was strictly prohibited. Publica- tions of the Opposition had to be printed outside of Rome, while the Infallibilists made a grand display of their views by ad- vertisements on the walls. Sudden adjourn- ments would frequently shut the tongues of half a hundred prelates, so that their testi- mony was silenced. The order of the day, i. e., the important questions which were to come before the house, were not published beforehand, but intentionally kept secret. Very strangely indeed, the decrees of the Pope were brought in only during the sessions of the Council. And this was the worse, as they were in contradiction to Scripture and Tradition, and were shown to be Jesuitic innovations. The only Scriptural proof for papal infalli- bility, Luke xxii., 32, which appears also in the decree of July 18, 1870, proves the very opposite, although the Jesuits consider it convincing. Christ in this passage says to Peter, " But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." Shortly before the passion of Je- sus, Peter had made some rash and presump- tive remarks. The Lord now announces to him his fall, but comforts him also by re- ferring to his conversion. But when the apostle continued in his self-confidence, the Lord told him in plain words that he would deny him thrice this night. No commentator of former times has ever seen in these words any reference whatever to the purity of the faith or to the functions of St. Peter's successors at Rome, or any suc- cessor of the apostle ; they all justly refer it to Peter himself, who did deny his Lord. These convincing arguments drove the In- fallibilists to the bold assertion that the doubtful meaning of the passage referred to had now, by the papal decree of July 18, 1870, been settled for all times ; and thus the fundamental doctrine of the Council of Trent, that very pillar of the Catholic Church, " that it is the right of the Church (ecclesia) to judge of the true exposition of Holy Scripture," is destroyed, and the Pope alone has been instituted sole interpreter of the Bible. The principle of Tradition too, which might be called the corner-stone of Roman Catholi- cism, has been overturned and trampled un- der foot by the Vatican decree. While the Reformation asserted that only that which could be proved from Scripture could be accepted as a doctrine of Christ, the Romish Church clung to Tradition, trying to establish a criterion for it. If, namely, the apostolic validity of any church doctrine could not be proved directly from Scripture, and if such a doctrine was found to have been taught and believed after the apostol- ic age "semper, ubique, et ab omnibus" then it was taken for granted that such a doc- trine must have originated in the apostolic preaching. The Council of Trent went still further, and taught that Tradition had come down to us, from hand to hand, in uninter- rupted succession, through all generations. The Church alone, as the Romish Catechism teaches, can not err in the interpretation of faith and morals, because she is taught by the Holy Spirit. 494 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. The bishops of the Opposition, who formed by far the majority of the Roman Catholic Christians there represented, protested that the accepted criterion of Tradition did not refer to papal infallibility. Such teachings were mere innovations, and the doctrine which had hitherto been believed was the true one. " God forbid that we, on account of the necessities of the time, should forge the original meaning of the divine law." When Bishop Hefele, of Rottenburg, by his essay on " Pope Houorius " (printed at Na- ples), had so confounded the leading cardi- nals that they could not conceal their con- fusion before the Pope, Pius IX. decisively said, " I am the Tradition !" which means, in plain English : The agreement of the whole church with tradition does in no way con- cern papal decrees; for they are iu them- selves infallible. The Infallibilists now openly declare that, because the doctrines of the universal episco- pacy of the Pope and his infallibility are con- tained in the constitution of July 18, 1870, they must therefore be contained in Tradi- tion also. Their only criterion for Tradition is the Pope, who, as teacher and shepherd of all Christians, binds the Church Universal to his teachings of faith and morals. The historical and political papers were quite elated at the decrees of the Vatican Coun- cil, for now it is established who should at any moment, by day or night, have the final decision in matters of faith and morals. It is a pity that the old Christian Church did not know this, or she might have saved herself a gigantic task in the christologic- al and theological disputes. One decree ex cathedra of a Pope whom she might have had at any moment, and the redeeming word was spoken, the proper formula found! Why did not the Pope speak at Nicaea, in the year 325? I now come to that highly praised una- nimity of which the Vatican Council boast- iugly says that at the last meeting 533 of 535 fathers present consented to the de- cree (forty of them being members of or- ders and cardinals). But according to the papal call there ought to have been present 1037 voting members, which leaves 502 votes wanting. More than 100 voters left during the last days, the majority of whom authen- tically declared that they should reject the doctrine of infallibility if they could bo pres- ent. The really decisive vote was cast July 13, 1870, while the solemn meeting of July 18 was a mere formality. On the former date 88 bishops from the largest dioceses had voted nay, while 400 Italian bishops of the very smallest dioceses, and more than 100 missionary bishops in part, infid. with- out any diocese at all, formed the majority. This fact, which is a convincing proof that there was no agreement in the Romish Church on papal infallibility, is inscribed on the pages of history, and no power in the world can erase it therefrom. The Vatican Council, therefore, can not show one single quality necessary to an ecu- menical council ! When afterward obedience and subjection were urged by the bishops on the plea that the Council had spoken it was justly re- plied : " Where do we read this ? The Coun- cil has not published any resolutions !" It was the Pope who in this mock council made the bishops perform mock work. Iu these solemn meetings the Pope in his own name ordained decrees, assuring his audience of the assent of the Council. In the consti- tution of July 18, 1870, he alone declares his infallibility, for he concludes with the above-mentioned words : " But if any one should dare to dissent from this our dogma what God forbid! let him be anathema!" He does not say, if any one should dare to dissent from the resolution of the Council, but " from my own doctrine and decision !" In these solemn meetings Pius IX. was to the Jesuits not the successor of the apostle, but a Vice-God, the Representative of the King of Glory, the triple crown on his head, and his under-shepherds on their knees be- fore him. ! Former councils spoke by their own au- thority, but henceforth all councils are su- perfluous, as papal doctrines ex cathedra are in themselves immutable. The bishops, or uuder-shepherds, are henceforth nothing but the Pope's servants, and those phrases in the Vatican decree regarding the real power of the bishops are mere sham and deception. The words of Gregory the First, " I shall have my honor when every bishop has his honor," have been thus distorted by Pius IX. : "The other bishops are honored.through my honor."* The former constitution of the Roman Church has thus been shaken and changed from its very fundaments, and in the place of the Ecumenical Council the Pope has been put as the Universal Bishop. Those eighty - eight opposition bishops who, on July 13, 1870, had voted Non placet, were decidedly the most intelligent members of the Council, and represented almost one- half of the whole Roman Catholic Christen- dom. They understood the victory which the Jesuits had gained by this revolution. But instead of obeying the voice of their con- science, which before and during the Council had spoken so loudly to them, they, after the Council, submitted to the papal decree. Instead of fulfilling their holiest duty "to be witnesses of the truth," as they had solemn- ly promised to their charges, in accordance with the apostolic word that " whosoever wishes to please men can not be a servant of Christ," they yielded. And what did de- J. II. Reinken's speech nt Wurzbnrg, page 17. KRAFFT: THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 495 termine them to take this step ? Nothing .but a miserable consideration for. the Pope. They did not wish to grieve or provoke the Holy Father, as they had testified before their departure, July 17, 1870, to their own eternal shame! Preferring to please a poor sinful man, they ceased to be servants of Christ. Further quotations from the later writ- ings of these original opposition bishops to which most of the German bishops belonged will, I trust, be superfluous. It would be a grievous, an actually disgusting task. Giv- ing their full and unconditional assent to the decrees of the Council, they requested the faithful to receive the dogma by pain of ex- communication ; and instead of thoroughly enlightening their people on this innovation, they heaped lie upon lie ! And what drove them to such a cowardly, dishonorable flight of their colors? Solely the fear of a schism of the juridical unity with the Pope. To avoid this, they were prepared to bring the very highest sacrifice of obedience, that of their own reason (sacrificio dell' iutellet- to). This is most clearly shown in the action of Bishop Hefele, the learned and world-re- nowned author of the History of the Coun- cils of the Church, who was the last to yield to the decrees of the Council. Quite a while after the mock council had been dissolved, he wrote, " I can not betray my conscience ; I would rather lose my place." But soon af- ter, April 10, 1871, he turned apostate, giving this explanation : " The peace and unity of the Church are of such high value that the greatest and bitterest sacrifices must be made for it." What a mistaken sacrifice ! What hypoc- risy ! As if truth were not infinitely more val- uable than mere external unity with Rome! Listen to the following solemn declara- tions of the German episcopacy, given be- fore the Council ; see how they contradicted themselves by their slavish subjection to Romish tyranny! " We solemnly declare that, first, the Ecu- menical Council will never proclaim any doc- trine which is not contained in Holy Scrip- ture, or in the traditions of the Church ; and that, secondly, the Council will not proclaim any new or different doctrines from those which by faith and conscience are inscribed on the hearts of all people, and which, hav- ing been considered sacred by Christian na- tions throughout all ages, are, now and ever, the basis upon which the welfare of states and the freedom of nations rest." Yet these same German bishops pros- trated themselves under Popish tyranny, and this at a time when, after the battle of Sedan, the whole German nation felt exalted beyond measure, and when the unity of the German Empire, the aim of long and patient I efforts, was reached at last. This, above all others, was the moment when the German Catholic Church ought to have returned to the primacy of St. Boniface, its founder. And because this was not done, Germany now became the real and actual centre of the Old Catholic movement, just as iu the sixteenth century she had been the cradle of the Reformation. The leader of the oppo- sition was the Nestor of Roman Catholic the- ology, Professor Dr. Dollinger, . of Munich, formerly one of the most zealous champions of Rome against Protestantism, as may be sufficiently proved from his " History of the Reformation." At his side we see Dr. Fried- rich, Professor of Church History in Munich, who by his " Journal of the Vatican Coun- cil " gave evidence of his deep insight into the intrigues of the Jesuits, and of his ap- preciation of the position formerly taken by the opposing bishops. As the second ally, Professor Dr. Huber, of Munich, is to be men- tioned, whose work on the Jesuits is among the most profound and best writings ever published concerning this order. An impor- tant influence on the consolidation of their canons was even then exerted by the pro- fessor of laws, Dr. Von Schulte, of Prague, who was afterward called to Bonn by the Prussian Government. More than any oth- er man of the opposition, he was able to be the very soul of the movement, and subse- quently to become the leader of the same. The Munich scholars w r ere joined by a num- ber of theologians and philosophers of Bres- lau and Bonn Jos. Hub. Reiukeus, well known as a learned Church historian ; Dr. Rensch, the editor of the Theologische Lite- raturblatt, which appears now iu its eighth volume, and is one of the most solid scien- tific publications in Germany ; and Professor Laugen, the author of an excellent work on the Vatican decrees, in which he shows con- clusively the untenability of these decrees in the light of the tradition of the ancient Church. The battle of Old Catholicism began at Nuremberg, about the end of July, 1870, by some renowned Catholic scholars. It was the opposition of science, of historical crit- icism, of philosophy, and canonical law. The consequence was that the bishops, after vain- ly urging the subjection of their opponents, suspended and excommunicated them, there- by provoking a most decided resistance. To most of the leaders opposition became now a serious matter of conscience. A congress at Munich, about Whitsunday, 1871, was largely attended by people of all classes, and the following programme was decided upon, that they wished to continue in the Old Catholic faith as given in Scripture and in the traditions of the church, and were, therefore, obliged to reject the Vatican de- crees as innovations. No council had a right to proclaim dogmas which were not in ac- cordance \yith the faith and the conscience of the people. The right of scientific in- 496 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. vestigation was insisted upon ; their agree- ment with the principles of modern states, in opposition to the papal Syllabus, was pro- nounced, and it was resolved, that the efforts of the Jesuits, so hurtful to public welfare, ohould be stopped. The aim of their resolutions was the for- mation, of parishes of their own, a thorough reform of the church discipline, aud last, not least, the reunion with the separated Christian churches. The party made important progress at the meeting at Cologne, the former cis-alpiue Rome (Sept., 1872). More than sixty priests, among them the most eminent theologians and canonists, renowned historians aud phi- losophers, and almost all the Catholic pro- fessors of the German universities declared their adherence. They were joined in great numbers by the educated laymen, aud al- though the mass of the people remained passive from indifferentism or narrow-mind- edness, steadily-rising life was nevertheless shown wherever parishes had been formed. Four hundred delegates of different parishes and societies attended, wise moderation be- ing exercised by all, as was necessary for such a mixture of radical elements. Im- portant resolutions on the further develop- ment of Old Catholicism in reference to it- self and the state were passed. Its relation to other churches was also considered. 1. The present bishop of Rome can not be recognized any longer as the head of the Catholic Church, neither can those bishops who yielded to the Vatican dogma be con- sidered Catholic bishops any longer. Their excommunication is, therefore, without ef- fect. 2. The Old Catholics are justified in claim- ing all rights and privileges which hereto- fore by constitution, stipulation, aud law be- longed to the Catholic Church. 3. The present situation is not only dis- tressing to the Old Catholics individually, who, cut off from the church, are driven by necessity to the organization of new parishes, which are justified in demanding recognition of the government ; but it is disti-essiug also to the whole Catholic Church at large, as formerly a heretical pope could be deposed, which after the promulgation of the new dogma is impossible. The above resolution that the Roman pope and the bishops obey- ing him do lawfully exist no longer, is, there- fore, final. 4. As it is impossible for us to nominate the episcopacy in the normal manner, be it resolved, that we return to the ancient form of election by the clergy and the people. Many reforms were made at Cologne, and a number of Romish statutes were abolished, as indulgences, adoration of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, scapularics, payment of (sur- plice fees and) stipends for masses. The Ger- man language was to be used during service. ' Abolition of celibacy was recommended by the laity. The obligatory character of the 1 confessional was to cease, and several things were to be changed in the church ceremo- nials. Further reforms were postponed until an Old Catholic Church, with episcopacy and synods, could be organized. Security for further reforms is given in the expulsion of all Jesuitic excrescences, and in the very principle of Old Catholicism ; only such dog- mas' can be proclaimed, which can be proved from the Scriptures, or from the ancient ec- clesiastical traditions. With regard to the state and modern civ- ilization, the Old Catholics openly rejected the Syllabus of December, 1864, which is now infallible. They came to this decision, be- cause it condemns not only freedom of faith and conscience, but freedom of scientific in- vestigation, which, also, they especially need. They declared their adherence to the civil constitutions of their respective states, there- by rejecting the dogma of papal oversight, so dangerous to civil law, and resolved that, in the battle with Rome, they would side with the state. For these reasons the Ger- man and Swiss governments protected aud recognized them. The highest court in Prus- sia recognized, by a decision of May 24, the Old Catholics as true members of the Cath- olic Church, and as having a claim on the protection of the state. The legal position of the Old Catholics before the judge is defined in this unmistakable manner : " If there is in question the formation of a new religious society, in the sense of the ' Edict of Toleration of 1847,' it affects not the Old Catholics, but rather the New Catholics, who, in fact, established a new doctrine, while they wish to prove themselves as the only true members and representatives of the Ro- man Catholic Church on the ground that they are actually in possession of the church buildings and other property of the Catholic Church." [The Emperor of Germany has re- cently recognized Dr. Reiukens as a legiti- mate bishop of the Catholic Church. Ed.~] The " fatherland" of the German Old Cath- olics does not lie ultra monies, as that of the Infallibilists, but their hearts and their love are with united and strong Germany, flourishing in industries, and advancing in politics and civilization. The hopes for the existence and develop- ment of the Old Catholic movement have been raised higher yet during the present year, by the episcopal election at Cologne, June 4. Twenty-two priests and fifty-five laymen, who are representative delegates of 60,000 souls, partook in it. The number of eligible priests, who must be over thirty years, was thirty. Of the seventy-seven votes cast, Dr. Reinkens, late Professor of Theology at Breslau, who was elected, received sixty- nine. KRAFFT: THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT. 497 After his acceptance, free love and devo- tion, but not blind obedience, were promised to him. His ordination by the Bishop of Deveuter, Bishop of the Utrecht Church, took place at Rotterdam, Aug. 11. In his Pastor- al he proves the right of his bishopric, and describes his task as a service to the faith- ful. " It is not the bishop's task to preach him- self and the interests of his position, but Je- sus Christ. His ministrations to the believ- ers are not his property, but the inheritance of the children of God, of which he is but a steward. It belongs to the episcopacy to preach obedience to the civil authorities as a religious duty for conscience sake." About three weeks ago (Sept. 14), Bishop Reinkens solemnly declared that the papal command "not to read the Bible" was thence- forth not binding for the Old Catholics ; he, on the contrary, in-ges and recommends that all Old Catholics should read the dear holy Book again and again, and should, in all hu- mility and joy, sib at the feet of the Lord ; for he alone has the words of eternal life. A meeting of delegates from nearly 100 Old Catholic congregations at Constance accept- ed a new syuodicalaud parochial constitution of such excellence as many an evangelical church stands still in need of, as I am sorry to state. Who of us is not rejoiced at this Old Cath- olic movement, which originated iu the re- ligious conscience, and is now growing and progressing! It is an open protest against Romish, Jesuitic Ultramontanism, which ap- proaches more and more to Autichristianity. 32 All of you, I trust, will unite with me in the earnest prayer that the outward expan- sion of the movement may be strengthened and deepened by an inward growth on the true evangelical basis ; so that, in opposition to the Jesuitic principle of blind obedience, the light of evangelical faith, of free grace in God through Christ, may shine every- where, and that Old Catholicism may break loose for all time from the canons of the Council of Trent. The new church must re- nounce forever the Supremacy and Primacy of the Pope, who can claim no historical rights whatever, for Rome will never with- draw the Vatican decrees, or undertake such reforms as are desired by the Old Catholics. Then will the Old Catholics reach their aim of reunion with other Christian denomina- tions in the only possible and true manner, by joining the Evangelical Alliance! And unto this end we ask the blessing and help of God ! In the battle which is waging just now between the German Empire and Rome, the Old Catholics stand on our side. Bishop Reinkens will, within a few weeks, take the oath of obedience to the Emperor. [He has done so since. Ed.'] According to the principle of our great warrior, Moltke, Protestants and Old Catho- lics will, for a time at least, march in sepa- rated bodies, but will always be united in the battles against Rome. The victory can only be ours alone, for we fight for eternal truth under the stars and stripes of Jesus Christ, who has given us the promise, " I am with you always, to the cud of the world !" ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND SINCE THE PROCLAMATION OF THE SYLLABUS. BY THE REV. C. PRONIER, Professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Seminary of Geneva, Switzerland. MY DEAR BRETHREX, You know what an impression was produced by the publica- tion of the Syllabus, the convocation of the so-called Ecumenical Council, and the dog- matic decisions promulgated by it in 1870. The impression would have been all the more profound had not the war, which de- ranged so much our peaceful conferences, suddenly burst forth. The thunder of the cannon drowned the voice of the Council. Every thing for the moment disappeared in the smoke of battle-fields. But when once the atmosphere was cleared iip, notwith- standing the cries of the wounded, the ruins to be repaired, the debts to be paid, a mighty empire to be consolidated, an ill-assured con- quest to be strengthened, it was necessary to remember what had been done at Rome in that year, at once so glorious and fatal, which marks so great an epoch in the histo- ry of European nations. It was then that the new dogma, the result of Ultramontane intrigues, produced its first effects in the re- lations existing between Roman Catholicism and the governments of Europe. I shall not remind you, gentlemen, of the shame of those feigned submissions of which we have been the astonished spectators. It is much bet- ter to pass them over in silence. Let us remember only the energetic protestations which have been heard, and still are, from noble-minded men unable to trifle with the truth for the sake of a lying unity ; remem- ber the Dollingers, Friederichs, Reiukens, and Father Hyacinthes ; and let us for a moment glance at Switzerland, that old republic so long accustomed to struggle for liberty. I. The entire population of Switzerland, ac- cording to the census of 1870, was 2,669,147, of which 1,084,369 were Catholics. Their in- terests, or rather those of the Roman See, are managed by a chargt tfaffaires, whose ill-de- lined functions appear to be, above all things, to serve as a medium between the Pope and bishops. As to the bishoprics, they were five in num- ber : 1. That of Sion, which contains 112 par- ishes, and comprises the canton of Valais and the district of Aigle in the canton of Vaud ; 2. That of Lausanne, comprising, besides the canton of Freiburg, those of Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchatcl. It is divided into 158 par- ishes; 3. That of Solenre or Basle, which comprises the cantons of Soleure, Lucerne, Zug, Berne, Aargau, Thurgan, Basle, Schaft- hausen, and contains about 380 parishes; 4. That of Coire, which comprises the cantons of Uri, Schwytz, Uuterwald, Appenzell, (Rhodes inte"rieures), the Orisons, Ziirich, Glaris, and contains about 160 parishes ; 5. That of St. Gall, comprising the canton of that name and some parts of Appeuzell, con- tains about 104 parishes. Tessin, the canton in which the Catholic population is proportionally the greatest, lately formed part of the bishopric of Como and the archbishopric of Milan. By a decree of the Federal Government it has been sep- arated from these, but no agreement has as yet been entered into with the Roman See in order to determine its new ecclesiastical position. Each of these dioceses had in ad- dition its chapter, seminaries, and convents. A recent statistical table, prepared by order of the present President of the Confedera- tion, enumerates 88 of the latter, and esti- mates approximatively their entire proper- ty, personal and real, at 22,645,915 francs. What effect was produced in Switzerland by the proclamation of the Syllabus and by the Vatican Council 1 A very different ef- fect in different parts of the country. The primitive cantons, Uri, Schwytz, Uuterwald, and the canton of Valais are, more than any others, under the control of the clergy. Jeal- ous of certain ancient privileges, ever more and more infringed upon, the population of these are animated with a spirit of the most conservative kind. Every thing is in the hands of the bishop and clergy, to whom is rendered, with the sincerity of the olden times, an almost absolute submission. There men awaited, without impatience or appre- hension, whatever it seemed good to the Vat- ican to decree. It was understood before- hand that not the slightest desire to resist would be manifested. Rome, having suc- ceeded, since the period of the French res- toration (1815), and the dissolution of the diocese of Constance, in substituting among the lower clergy an ultramontane obedi- ence instead of the liberal spirit of the Sail- ers and Wessenbergs, expected her decrees to be accepted in silence. It was not the PHONIER: ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND. 499 same, however, elsewhere. The Protestant and mixed cantons, having been for a long time up in arms against the Catholic pre- tensions, were on their watch against the proceedings of Roman policy. Far from ! being disposed to yield a single point, this ' part of Switzerland regarded with horror both the Pope and the Jesuits. Evangel- ical and rationalistic Protestants, radicals and conservatives, free-thiukers and serious believers, were found banded together as one man when it was a question of resist- ance to Rome. Need I add that the public attention in this part of Switzerland was strongly aroused by the ultramontane proj- ects ? Not only was there in the text of the Syllabus and the accompanying Encyclical letter a declaration of war against the fun- damental institutions of our country and the principles the most respected in modern society, but men endeavored to foresee their consequences. When the Council of the Vat- ican assembled, its movements were watch- ed with keen attention ; the conduct of the Swiss bishops present at it was carefully observed, and conferences were held in dif- ferent places. In short, every preparation was made to withstand the menacing storm which was gathering on the southern side of our mountains. It was long however before it burst forth. Old Catholicism, continually increasing in Germany, endeavored to organize itself in Switzerland. In April, 1871, that is, after the commencement of the struggle between Canon Dollinger and the Archbishop of Mu- nich, a meeting convened at Soleure protest- ed loudly against the decretttm vaticanum. In j the month of September of the same year, a congress of about two hundred members met in the same town, formed a regular society of Liberal Catholics, and sent three of their principal members as delegates to the Con- gress of Munich. They set about forming active committees of Liberal Catholics, and in this they succeeded. Notwithstanding the demands of the Roman Catholic clergy to be permitted to proclaim the Pope's per- sonal Infallibility from their pulpits, not- withstanding the lively discussion of the press at this period, Rome seemed to be ab- sorbed in profound meditation. She was in no hurry to put in practice the principles of the Syllabus, but, watching attentively the auti - infallibilist movement, she was un- doubtedly waiting for a favorable opportu- nity to execute her projects. Why did she do so ? It is not easy to say. Two facts, however, the one general, and the other applicable only to Switzerland, might perhaps explain the slowness of her movements. The first is the issue of the terrible war of 1870; the second is the re- vision of our Federal Constitution, the sub- ject that then occupied tho attention of our representatives, and was to be sub- mitted to the popular vote in the spring of 1872. Right or wrong, it is generally believed in Switzerland that, if the Franco-German war broke out at the very moment the Council proclaimed the dogma of the personal infal- libility,, this coincidence was not the mere work of chance. It is thought that Roman- ism had formed plans for reconquering the Protestant countries. At the present mo- ment even, France, disorganized and con- quered as she is, is looked upon by Rome as her most powerful champion in Europe. And in so far Rome is right. The golden rose bestowed on Isabella has not saved Spain from revolution, civil war, and a frightful anarchy which has buried her in ruins and deluged her with blood. Austria has been rendered powerless. Prussia and Italy are hostile. To whom, then, should the owner of the Vatican look from his tow- ers if not to France, still strong, notwith- standing her reverses, and more Catholic than ever, despite all her aspirations after liberty ? It was the same, it is thought, in 1870. The Pope and the Jesuits were cer- tain that the sword of a victorious Caesar, assisted by the advice of a Spanish lady, would turn the scale of the destinies of Eu- rope in their favor. But the sword of the CiBsar proved more brittle than a reed. He fell, and with him, if they existed, fell the plans formed by the Court of Rome. Per- haps the short period of confessional peace that followed the war, in Switzerland and the rest of Europe, is due to the fall of the French empire in 1870. Be that as it may, it is certain that, so far as the first hostile steps, the fanatical exhortations of the priests, had caused men in the South of Germany, and even in France, to apprehend the renewal of the bloodiest catastrophes of the wars of religion, so far did the first re- verses of the French arms allay the fears of the Protestants. The Ultramontane agents, insolent at first, were silenced. Permit me to adduce a striking example of this fact. The day of the battle of Worth it was re- ported at Geneva that the Prussians had been routed. Thereupon the hosannas of the curd of Geneva rose to the gates of heav- en, and, in delighted anticipation, he saw himself installed in our cathedral church, and in Calvin's pulpit. But he was obliged to abate his pretensions, and reduce his boasting to underhand calumnies against the Protestant mission to French prisoners. At the same time our legislature was occu- pied with the revision of the Federal Con- stitution. Do not fear that I shall occupy your time with questions of a political na- ture. It is not my subject. I shall there- fore only say, that by one of those strange combinations with which the political world at times surprises us, tho new constitution presented to the Swiss people by our legisla- 500 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. turo was opposed botli by Radicals and Ul- new Constitution, revised by our legisla- - A - J :i ~~ : - ture, was taken throughout tbe whole of tramontanes. The former rejected it as in- fringing on the sovereignty of the cantons, the latter, because it maintained the consti- tutional laws of 1848 against the Jesuits, Switzerland. To the great joy of Radicals and Ultramontanes, it was rejected by the majority of the people and cantons ; and al- and modified in nothing the legal position ( most immediately after, the Ultramontanes, of Catholicism in Switzerland a deplorable j believing themselves masters in Switzerland, one, were we to believe them. From the [ commenced the struggle on another point, commencement of the protracted debates on j Within a few months two of the most im- the project of the Constitution, the aims of . portant dioceses of Switzerland were dis- Roman Catholicism were clearly apparent, solved. One bishop was deposed, an apos- In fact, availing themselves of so favorable tolic vicar was escorted to the frontier by an opportunity for making known their de- the 'federal police grave events, which, sires, the Swiss bishops addressed the Fed- with the expulsion of the Jesuits from Ger- eral Assembly in a full and well-drawn np ( many, and the laws voted by the Prussian memoir which it is very curious to read at j parliament at the commencement of the this day. It is dated April, 1871, and a sum- present year, sound as a stern reply to the mary of it may be given in these words : Syllabus. " Every thing went well in the past, is go- j II. Every thing has been said that could ing badly at present, and will go worse in be said of the encyclical " Quanta cura," ev- the future, if our just demands are not at- ery thing of the Syllabus, that compendium tended to." of errors condemned by the Pope. The doc- As a conclusion to their discourse, the trine set forth in these famous publications bishops drew up their demands in eight gen- ; is not new ; and notwithstanding this, it is eral and four particular propositions. The j impossible to read them without feeling a following are the most important of the for- , continual surprise. Every point concerning iner : That the right of all ecclesiastical au- the relations of Church and State which is thorities to do in things purely religious ab- considered to-day as a progress to be real- solutely what they will, be expressly affirmed I ized, an ideal to be attained, or an evangel- by the Federal Constitution ; that in matters ; ical truth, is formally anathematized as pes- relating to education, marriage, convents, j tilential error. The Church, you say, has and religious orders, those cantons contain- not the right to employ force condemned ! ing a mixed population be governed by a You maintain the separation of Church and double legislature, one Catholic, the other State condemned ! You think that, if the Protestant ; that the iudissolubility of mar- ' Church aud State are united, the latter riage be legally imposed on Catholics ; that should at least preserve some rights rela- the religious brotherhoods be under the pro- j tive to the hierarchy error, damnable and tection of the law like other societies ; last- condemned. Bishops have the right to pub- ly, that a federal law protect the Church, her lish their proclamations, ordinances, bulls, faith, worship, and dignitaries, against the etc., without the sanction of the government abuse of the press. Such were the demands that pays them ; the ecclesiastical courts for of the Swiss bishops. To you, gentlemen, the trial of the clergy, whether in matters who live in a country where Church and | civil or criminal, should not be abolished ; State are separated, several of their demands all the ancient immunities of the clergy, may appear well founded. But when viewed source of the most frightful abuses, should in the light of secular traditions, under the be most carefully respected ; everywhere regime of a union the advantages of which j canon law should take precedence of civil the Swiss bishops had not the slightest in- j law ; there is no appeal against abuses ; no tention of renouncing, and with the formal common school in which the Church may not agreements which are. at the base of our dio- intermeddle ; the Catholic religion should be cesan institutions, these propositions were considered as the only religion of the State, simply monstrous. To adopt them were to to the exclusion of all others ; and in Cath- give all power into the hands of Rome, and olic countries no other should be tolerated, divide in two the Swiss nation. This was etc., etc. What is it, then, the Pope aud his not even to be thought of. Nor could the clergy desire ? Nothing less than supreme bishops deceive themselves on the fate that ' authority in both domains : to dictate to the awaited their propositions. All their ulte- State what it shall do, to govern in every rior projects Avere adjourned, undoubtedly thing without having any account to render because they did not feel themselves strong to the civil authority even in criminal cases ; enough to pursue them. I such is the height of their modest ambition. To these two facts we owe, perhaps, the Gregory VII. and Innocent III. would have respite procured us in the struggle against ! been contented with less. Ultramontanism, armed with the Syllabus ; Happily, gentlemen, the theocratic sys- and the decree of Infallibility. But this tern, of which the Syllabus is in our century state of things could not last long. In fact, the most striking exponent, exists only in on the 12th of May, 1872, the vote on the theory. Rome is immovable, inflexible, hard- PHONIER: ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND. 501 er thau iron and keener than steel, concern- ing the theoretical proclamation of her prin- ciples whether in religion or politics. In practice it is quite another thing. The iron melts, the steel becomes softer than wax, and the theory, pliable as if by enchant- ment, assumes every shape and form with surprising flexibility. Thus, while she con- demns in theory the separation of Church and State, good care is taken in countries like yours, where this mutual independence of the two societies is an accomplished fact, not to attack the principle. In theory, the right of placet, and the intervention of the State in the choice of bishops, in civil legis- lation, or marriage, and in matters relating to real property, are rejected with horror, but they do not let the opportunity slip of signing concordats in which these pretended rights of the Church are entirely overlooked. In short, the Romish Church iu her relations with civil society accepts almost all trans- actions, resting satisfied with protesting in theory. Why does she act so ? Because, in order to govern to-morrow, it is necessary to exist and live to-day ; because this necessity is of a nature to justify, not the abandon- ment of principles, oh no ; but clever con- cessions and skillful transactions with those governments as yet little inclined to submit to the dictation of clerical authority. Rome yields then, yet, while doing so in appear- ance, she in reality yields nothing ; she post- pones her plans, submits to the present necessity, but it is with a view to the fu- ture. The theocratic principles are there unchangeable. She never renounces them, and the most seemingly solid state of things, the most solemnly promulgated concordats, are in her eyes but temporary and void when they do not correspond to her hopes in form- ing them. Does she believe herself strong enough to trample them underfoot without seriously compromising her interests ? She does so without scruple; and in breaking them she too often, alas, has pretended to sigh in sadness over the ruins she herself has produced, over the blood she has spilled. The events that have taken place in Switz- erland since the rejection of the revised Con- stitution is but an eloquent commentary on this policy of Rome. There, gentlemen, you are going to see in operation the principles proclaimed in the Syllabus, and sanctioned by the decree of the Council of the Vatican. In the confusion which involved every thing at the end of the last century, the or- der of things established by Roman Cathol- icism in Switzerland was destroyed, as else- where in Europe. After Napoleon I.'s final defeat at Waterloo, the ruins were restored. But to reconstruct thjB social edifice as it was before was impossible. Men had to be satisfied with collecting a few of the ruins scattered over the soil, and it was hoped to initiate a new order of things, more lasting than the preceding, by the treaties of Vien- na. It was at this period the Swiss Con- federation was formed, of twenty -two can- tons, and that Geneva in particular, rejoi- cing in having recovered at last her lost in- dependence, took her place in it. On the reconstitution of Switzerland, the question of the dioceses would naturally be brought forward. After long negotiations, the history of which remains very obscure, the Papacy, in the person of Pius VII. at Rome, and his nuncio, Vincent, consented, in so far as concerned the canton of Geneva, to separate its Catholic population from the diocese of Chambe'ry, of which it formed a part, and place them under the jurisdiction of the bishop resident at Freiburg. This latter then received, honoris causa, the title of Bishop of Lausanne, Freiburg, and Gene- va. A brief, dated November 1, 1819, legally confirmed the new state of things on the part of Rome. This document is drawn up in that Roman phraseology in which the shrewdest terms of a far-seeing policy are cleverly combined with the vague expres- sions of Catholic mysticism. The Pope de- clares that in granting it he yields to the prayers which have been addressed to him so fervently on different hands ; he repeats at different times, and almost at each par- ticular stipulation, the following formula : " Thus then, of our own free-will, of our cer- tain knowledge, and after ripe deliberation, we decree," etc. He hopes that the Catholic religion, maintained and protected, as in the past, in the Catholic communes of Geneva, will receive additional adherents from day to day. In fine, the document terminates with this significant declaration : " The pres- ent brief will remain forever binding, valid, and durable ; ever producing its full effect, it will be religiously observed by those bound thereby, in the present and for the future ; it declares null every thing that may cause prejudice to these presents, whether know- ingly or ignorautly, by whomsoever it may be, or by whatever authority." On the com- munication of this brief, the Couseil d'Etat of Geneva decreed the reception of the Con- vention thus framed, referring to thp proto- col of the Congress of Vienna, which deter- mined the religions position of the new Sav- oyard communes annexed to the canton of Geneva. Among other laws framed later, one was to this effect : that candidates for vacant parishes should be presented by the bishop and named by the Government. Thus the legal position of the Geuevese Catholics was definitely established. Nine years later, after still longer negotia- tions, the bishopric of Basle was constituted or reorganized. The bull for this purpose was given by Leo XII. on the 7th of May, 1828 ; the same authoritative tone, with the same style, and the same solemn declarations regarding the inviolability of the contract 508 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. then formed. It is in obedience to the holy articles of the canon law, which provide that ouch diocese have its own spiritual director, that the papal bull is granted. It gives the new See of Soleure, the chapter and diocese in perpetuity, to the present bishop, our most worthy brother, Francis Xavier de Neveu, and to his successors in the diocese of Basle, with all the rights, immunities, and privi- leges belonging thereto, etc. This diocese, oAvhich the different cantons signing the Concordat were to form parts, comprised So- leure, the Episcopal seat, Lucerne, Aargau, Thurgau, and Zug, the Catholic parishes of the canton of Berne, and those of Basle. The bishop should be named by a senate of ten canons, and be accepted by the contracting states. Each of these, entering of its own accord into the diocese, reserved to itself the power to separate therefrom should it ever be deemed either suitable or necessary. Nay, they went even further. While sanctioning, on the 12th of July, 1828, the contents of the Pontifical Bull, the states then forming the diocese reserved, in formal terms, the sover- eign rights of their respective governments. In their ratification of the Convention, they express themselves thus : " Without its being possible to deduce in any manner from this ratification any thing whatsoever prejudicial to the sovereign rights of the governments, nor any thing contrary to the laws of the country or the ordinances of the State, to the archiepiscopal or episcopal rights, and final- ly to the relations established in the Swiss confederation between the two confessions for religious toleration." Lastly, each newly elected bishop, when entering on his functions, was to take the following oath: "I swear and promise on the Holy Gospel obedience and fidelity to the cantonal governments which form part of the bishopric of Basle. I prom ise, besides, neither in Switzerland or elsewhere to form any compact, nor take part in any project, norentertain suspected relations which might endanger the public peace. And if ever I am informed of any project hurtful to the state, whether in my own diocese or elsewhere, I shall inform the Government of it. I shall faithfully and loyally keep and accomplish the tenor of this oath read in my presence. And this I swear in presence of Almighty God, relying on his grace and the support of all the saints." Thus was concluded the Concordat reor- ganizing the bishopric of Basle. An As- sembly representing the diocesan states was afterward summoned to deliberate on those ecclesiastical matters common to all, and serve as a medium between the bishop and each of the cantonal governments. How unstable human things are, gentle- men ! Certainly, if any transactions in the world could hope for duration, there might be those I have just described. Here we have not two secular enemies, who, maimed and wounded in a deadly struggle, at last agree to conclude a peace. It was a friend- ly arrangement, a convention long deliber- ated upon, ripely examined in all its articles; a contract passed between the loyalty of some Swiss cantons and that power which on earth pretends to be the only representa- tive of the gospel of truth, justice, and equi- ty. Nevertheless, these conventions are to- day a dead letter. It is even probable that Rome never regarded them as binding. As to the diocese of Basle, it has been greatly agitated since its reorganization. More than once the politico-religious events have endangered its existence. The Revo- lution of 1830, which struck so heavily tho legitimate reigning line in France, by rais- ing to power under a constitutional king tho liberal party of the day, was like a mountain- billow which, upheaved by the wind, rolled toward the shore. The movement was felt in Switzerland, and the stability of the po- litical arrangements established by the res- toration was threatened. Lucerne, that canton since so Ultramontane, took the in- itiative, as leading canton (Vorort) in con- voking an assembly, which, held at Baden in the commencement of 1834, has been long remembered in Switzerland, and has given rise to a declaration of principles that have ever since been famous among us, under the name of the Baden Articles. One of the articles proposed was the substitution for the office of nuncio of a Swiss archbishop, a national metropolitan, as in so many other countries. At first a great many cantons accepted these articles. They were about to proceed to their application ; but the Ro- man See, which prefers dealing with several weak bishops tied to its interests rather than a powerful metropolitan, refused all action in the matter, and by an almost insulting proclamation condemned the articles of Ba- den in their entirety. The whole affair ended in nothing. Under the influence of the nuncio and time, the principal Catholic cantons, and Lucerne the foremost, retracted one by one their adhesion to them. After- ward agitation was produced in Aargau by disputes with the Bishop of Basle in refer- ence to the dismissal of some cure's, and an oath which the state wished to force upon them. Still later, the suppression of the convents in Aargau, the introduction of tho Jesuits in Schwytz and Lucerne, the Avar of the Souderbund, to which the nuncio wished to give the character of a religious war, were not without producing emotions whose effects might have been more profoundly felt than it has been in the diocese of Basle. Fortunately the titular bishops at these pe- riods, Salzmann and Arnold, adopted a most prudent line of conduct. It was not so with their successor, M. Eugene Lachat, elected bishop in 1863. Mark the date, gentlemen, PRONIER: ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND. 503 and remember that it was in 1864 that the encyclical " Quanta cura" and Syllabus were promulgated. Tims M. Lachat, aided by a chancellor who is said to be a Jesuit, and who in any case belongs to the worst school of Ultramontanisin, found himself placed in the episcopal see of Basle at the hottest pe- riod of clerical effervescence. He has been governed in all his acts by the theocratical spirit. Regardless of his oath to the dioce- san states, of the cantonal laws and liberal traditions, which in the primitive cantons are almost as old as the propagation of Christianity, he has been ever ready to withdraw himself from the sovereignty of the cantons, and to deny it in every ques- tion where the Roman hierarchy has pre- tended rights. Since 1863 he tried to apply, either ab- ruptly or by those ddtours so well known to Romish politicians, the principles of the Syllabus in the government of his diocese. The diocesan states have the right of pla- cet, which he constantly endeavored to evade, principally in the collection of Peter-pence, the promulgation of the Syllabus, and the decrees of the Council of 1870. In matters of education and marriage he attempted to act in accordance with the domineering pre- tensions. of the hierarchy, and not with the laws of his country. After allowing the ethics of the Jesuit Gury to be taught in the Seminary at Soleure, he tried to elude the condemnation of that book by dissolv- ing this Seminary, and erecting, contrary to the rights of the cantons and the Concor- dat, one after his own model. An Infallibil- ist himself, he deposed of his own authori- ty and excommunicated Old Catholics and Anti-infallibilist priests. In short, he act- ed as if clothed with a supreme authority to which every thing should yield. And that he acted thus in virtue of the pretend- ed rights of the Church may be seen by the merest glance at those publications which this abuse of power has produced. It is easy to observe, in these numerous docu- ments, and in all those which have been published latterly by the Swiss bishops, that they take good care to look at mat- ters very seldom from the stand-point of concordats and written conventions. The divine power of the Church, the supreme authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, the can- on law, such is the basis of all their reason- ings and attacks against existing laws. It is thus M. Lachat has acted. In vain did the Diocesan Assembly remind him of his oath, of the violated articles of the Con- cordat, the reserves made by the canton, and all that constitutes positive law; he but seldom permits himself to regard the subject from this point of view. Evidently treaties are in his eyes documents of little value. Sometimes he loudly protests his in- nocence ; at other times he accuses the can- tons of intolerance and oppression ; now he invokes the happiness and well-being of the Catholics ; and again he challenges the com- petence of the authorities in the Protestant cantons of his diocese, but he especially in- sists on his authority as bishop. Listen to the commencement of one of these docu- ments. " The bishops," says he, " are the successors of the apostles, and, as such, es- tablished by the Holy Spirit to govern the Church of God. It is from on high they have received their dignity and authority over their charge, and it is from the Church, that is to say, the Apostolic See, they hold their special jurisdiction over such or such a parish. It is on this account each bishop calls him- self bishop by the Grace of God and the Apostolic See. It is not, then, in any man- ner from the state they have received what- ever authority, power, and jurisdiction they possess." It is the doctrine of the Syllabus. As the Government of Aargau told him, the bishop recognizes in the State no other right than that of paying him. But what has passed at Geneva is more significant still. Here the acts of the Court of Rome have not the slightest possible ex- cuse ; they appear to be those of a power which makes, unmakes, and remakes every thing that may further its interests, caprices, or the foolish ambition of its agents. The treaties of 1815 had placed Catholicism at Geneva in a situation exceptionally privi- leged. And what hopes have not been con- ceived from this circumstance ! To judge by the Catholic writings only, from that moment and perhaps even before, the Court of Rome aimed at nothing less than the re- establishment of the bishopric of Geneva, destroyed at the Reformation. One man. in particular, has personified these hopes in himself, and pursued, with the tenacity of a priest, the realization of this project. The curd Vuarin, of Savoyard origin, combined in his person superior intelligence with rare administrative capacities, and an audacity of execution seldom met with. No scruple, no feeling, no moral nicety troubled him. During the time he occupied the parish of Geneva the Government was forced to re- sist, on the ground of law or treaties, those intrigues in which, through the influence of the cur6 Vuarin, the most powerful person- ages of Europe were involved. The bishop- ric of Geneva was not re-established, the tit- ular bishop at that time, M. Yenny, having absolutely refused to abandon, in any re- spect, his jurisdiction. But Catholicism was sufficiently strong in its position to bo able, after the fall of the Conservative Government of 1846, to hope and expect every thing. I can not here relate in detail by what favorable cir- cumstances Roman Catholicism has been en- abled, since our radical revolutions, to take such a development as caused the hearts of 504 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. its priests to beat with joy, and the greatest enthusiasm to prevail iu the Catholic coun- tries that surround us. Permit me only to say that, thanks to measures of quite a polit- ical kind, the Catholic population has gone on increasing; that the different govern- ments which have succeeded each other in the canton have shown favor to the new cit- izens, and thereby forwarded the attempts of Catholicism ; that the new curd of Gene- va, a Geneveso himself, but an Ultramon- tane of the purest water, insinuating, affa- ble, ambitions, and good-looking, wrought underhand to get himself named bishop, and had not to deal with men cither able or firm enough resolutely to oppose his in- trigues ; let me add, in fine, that our Gov- ernment only resolved to act on the day | when the Ultramontane intrigues were ex- hibited almost without concealment. Meas- ures were then taken, but it was too late. What had passed at Rome ? Had the curd of Geneva, M. Mermillod, named successive- ly Bishop of Hebron in partibus infidelium, and then vicar-general to his ordinary the Bishop of Freiburg, succeeded in having Geneva erected into a bishopric, and in get- ting himself elected to the new see in de- spite of the brief of 1819, and without pre- vious negotiations either with the Federal Government or the cantonal authorities ? No answer can be obtained to this question. The Pope's nuncio knows nothing, the law- ful Bishop of Geneva residing at Freiburg knows nothing, and the curd of Geneva, Bishop of Hebron, only gives evasive an- swers. But in the mean while the ordinary refuses to fulfill the functions of his epis- copal charge, and even gave iu his resigna- tion, so far as concerns the Geuevcse Catho- lics. M. Mermillod acts as bishop. He is obeyed by his clergy, who treat him as bish- op. To every demand of explanation he re- sponds with the haughtiness of an authori- ty who has no account to give to the State. One day, however, matters were cleared up. The Federal Council appears on the scene. It had expressly declared to the Pope that the creation of Geneva into a separate bish- opric was absolutely impossible, and that negotiations relative to the establishment of an apostolic vicariate could only be open- ed on two conditions : 1st. That the Govern- ment of Geneva be first consulted ; 2d. That the vicariate should not be conferred on the Bishop of Hebron. But Rome was decided. Without previous warning, without nego- tiations, without the consent, ever demand- ed on similar occasions, of cither the confed- eration or the canton of Geneva, the Pope, on the 16th of January, 1873, issued a brief appointing the Bishop of Hebron vicar apos- tolic for the canton of Geneva. In the same document, with the stroke of a pen, he form- ally annuls all tho conventions so solemnly concluded in 1819. Is it possible to see, in this tyrannical manner of acting, other than a manifestation of that absolute supremacy which the Roman hierarchy claims to pos- sess over the nations t Rome was formerly intoxicated with tho blood of the saints, but at present it is with her own power. Every thing is permitted, every thing possible, ev- ery thing legitimate, when it is she who de- cides and executes. III. These events have taken place iu a little country; they are, nevertheless, of universal import. It is not only in our towns and nation that men are indignant at the new intrigues of the Roman See. The echo of these facts has resounded in En- gland, Germany, France, and Italy. It has been borne back to our ears with strains of triumph iu the clerical press, and with the accent of sympathy iu the journals friendly to liberty. We have rejoiced both in the sympathies expressed toward us, and in the insults "which the Ultramoutauism of the Veuillots has directed against us. In fact it is necessary to be on the watch. A solemn question is laid down. The Papacy has long waged war with the Episcopacy for the pur- pose of concentrating in itself the entire au- thority of Church and tradition. On the 18th of July, 1870, thanks to the serried ranks of the Jesuits, a decisive victory has despoiled tho bishops of the last remains of independence. Tho Pope has been able to say, " lo sono la chiesa, io sono la tradizione " I am the Church,! am the tradition. But another war, formerly undertaken, then more or less abandoned, is about to recommence. It is a war against nationalities ; a holy war, since the Roman hierarchy pretends to have all the rights of God on earth; a terrible war, threatening Europe with awful disas- ters, since the whole of modern civilization is up in arms against Rome. How shall these nations resist ? What can and what should they do to avoid such perils f Such is the question. I wish to draw your atten- tion to it for a moment. Had I only to answer the question iu the abstract and theoretically, I would say the best means of combating the Papal theoc- racy is to place the Romish Church every- where on a footing of perfect equality with all the other Christian communions of the same country. And should any one consid- er this a strange mode of warfare, I would endeavor to demonstrate its excellence in tho following manner. One day the chief of a tribe that shall bo nameless, composed of five or six families, was very much embar- rassed on the following occasion. Ho was seated under his peaceful tent, and scarcely feeling the weight of his government, when the head of one of the families approached him haughtily, and spoke in almost the fol- lowing terms: "Listen, illustrious chief of this tribe. I am come to warn you that I have received from on high supreme author- PRONIER : ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND. 505 ity and special revelations. Obey me, and in every thing rule according to the counsels I am about to announce to you ;" and there- upon he declares them, threatening him at the same time with, the anger of Heaven should he not adopt them. Plunged in pro- found astonishment at this discourse, the chief had not yet replied, when the head of the second family appeared. To his great surprise, he spoke in almost the same terms as the iirst, with this exception, however, that his principles were widely different. Scarcely had the second ceased, when the third, approaching unexpectedly, made, in his turn, a vehement speech resembling that of the two first, but also with a great differ- ence as to conclusions, the adoption of which he demanded immediately. The remaining three did the same. And the heart of the chief was troubled ! Having dismissed them without an answer, he did not sleep that night. " What shall I do ?" said he to him- self. " If I adopt the principles of Ibrahim or Abdallah, it is a declaration of war against the others. I shall be under the odious ob- ligation of employing constraint, and per- haps of drawing the sword, in order to en- force an obedience which will ever cover a spirit of revolt. I shall perhaps do what is unjust, or, at least, appear to do so. What am I, then, to do ? I will, in a few articles, frame a law without special reference to any one of them. It will respect their dearest principles. .It will leave each of the six free to practice at home what seems good to him, but it will prevent any of them in any way compelling the others to believe or practice what they can not conscientiously. Each one will be equal in the eye of the law, and free at the same time." The illustrious chief meditated on this subject the whole of the night, and it was not too long. Early in the morning the heads of the families re- turned, and after having informed them of the cares that burdened his heart lie made known to them the law, which was so ex- cellent in every respect that they could only at least so says the story, though I can scarcely believe it prostrate themselves at his feet and celebrate the praises of his pro- found intelligence. This apologue requires no interpretation. Certainly, if an order of things could be es- tablished, either in a republic or a monarchy, so that the different sects would be on the same legal footing, while preserving in an absolute manner the free exercise of their respective worship, the desired solution of the problem would bo effected. What could the Catholic Church say that would not be refuted by facts? Protected like all other communions, she would undoubtedly have no legal privilege over any of them ; but what could she legitimately complain of? This equality would force her to silence. She could neither dictate her will to the govern- ment, nor declare herself persecuted. It is just this she dreads above all things. At any cost, she will have an exceptional posi- tion. She even prefers oppression to equal- ity, because oppressiou is inequality nay, a distinguished exception flattering her to a certain extent, and attracting the public gaze on her pretensions. Besides, gentlemen, I must add that this equality in liberty can only, in my opinion, be established by a rigorous distinction be- tween things civil and religious, by the sep- aration of Church and State. Wherever there is a Church privileged by any title, or to any degree whatsoever, there will be in- equality, and consequently a just cause for complaint to other communions as well as to Roman Catholics. I agree, therefore, with Bunseu and Vinet against Stahl, with the ecclesiastical system of America in opposi- tion to that union of Church and State which secular tradition has caused to pre- vail everywhere in Europe. I believe the separation of Church and State to be one of the most powerful preservatives against the despotism of the Papal hierarchy. I believe that, if there is a country in a better posi- tion than another to free itself from this in- fluence, it is the United States of America. Hold firm, then, your system of religious lib- erty, which seems destined to procure one day for the Churches of Old Europe an era of prosperity, and for her states that con- fessional peace vainly sought for in legisla- tion on religious matters. Do not, however, think that I am labor- ing under delusions. To imagine that the principle of separation would solve all diffi- culties, no matter of what kind, between Church and State, would be to forget that such a thing as perfect peace does not exist in this world. To believe that this new so- cial order of things could be established im- mediately would be to forget both that this principle is repudiated by a powerful pub- lic opinion, and that the States and Church- es of Europe bow beneath the weight of bur- densome traditions. Though I regret, I am not, therefore, astonished that the attacks of Rome have nowhere produced either the ap- plication of this principle, or even the meas- ures fit for bringing it about. Time pressed. Nothing could be promptly done that was not more or less in accordance with the principles till then prevailing. To speak properly, these principles seemed to have received a new baptism in repulsing the at- tacks of Rome. In Switzerland, where the hierarchy placed itself boldly in presence of the State with the intention of dictating its will, the State felt itself insulted in its dig- nity, wounded in its sovereignty, and, arous- ing itself, has seen it to be its duty energet- ically to maintain its traditional rights. Representatives from the seven states forming the diocese of Basic met at Soleure 5C6 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. on the 29th of January, 1873, and adopted the following resolutions: 1st. The consent given the 30th of No- vember, 1863, to the bishop, Eugene Lachat, of Mervelier, for the taking possession of the episcopal see of Basle, is withdrawn, and the diocese is thus declared vacant. 2d. M. Lachat is prohibited to exercise the episcopal functions in the cantons of the dio- cese. These will be invited no longer to pay into his hands the episcopal revenues; and in the cantons where the diocesan funds are not united to those of the State, they will, for the present, be sequestrated. 3d. The Government of Soleure will be invited to serve M. Eugene Lachat with a notice to quit the official episcopal resi- dence in due time. It will also take care to claim the inventory of the bishopric of Basle. 4th. In conformity with Article III. of the Convention, agreed upon by the diocesan States the 28th of March, 1828, for the for- mation of the bishopric ; in conformity with the Papal brief dated 15th of September, 1828, and the decisions taken by the dioce- san Assembly the 24th of October, 1830, the Chapter will be invited to appoint, within fourteen days after the communication of this decision, an administrator ad interim ac- ceptable to the cantonal authorities. 5th. The five diocesan governments will immediately commence negotiations for the revision of the diocesan Convention. They * will invite the governments of Zurich, Basle- ville, Schaffhausen, Tessin, and Geneva to take part in them for their Catholic popu- lation. 6th. The decision of the diocesan States will be communicated to the Federal Coun- cil, in prospect of negotiations with the Holy See. 7th. The Assembly adjourns to the 14th of February in order to know the decisions of the Chapter and attend to the settlement of current afi'airs. Zug and Lucerne, thinking the deposition of the bishop beyond the jurisdiction of the diocesan States, did not sign this decree. They alone still submit to the authority of M. Lachat. Almost at the same time, M. Mermillod, who no longer held a legal position at Ge- neva, caused the brief of the 16th of Janu- ary, appointing him vicar apostolic, to be read by the curds from the pulpits, and that without any legal communication to the civil authority. The Pope's charge cCaf- faires simply communicated the nomination to the President of the Confederation. Sum- moned to desist from fulfilling the functions of vicar out of respect for the Federal Gov- ernment, that had not been consulted in the matter, M. Mermillod repelled haughtily this demand, and almost immediately after, in consequence of a decree of the Federal Council, a carriage accompanied by a police officer and his men presented themselves at his residence. The vicar was conducted across the frontier, there to remain till he should recognize the rights of the civil pow- er. Ho is still there. Thus, to the authoritative acts emanating from the Roman See, the cantons of the Swiss Confederation replied by others equally au- thoritative. In this violent shock of the two powers the dioceses of Basle and Lausanne fell at the same time to pieces. These events have caused much discus- sion. Pius IX., from the Vatican, has not failed to reprimand Switzerland in the most violent terms. The enthusiasm of French Ultramontanism for the martyrs of the Church has only been exceeded by their in- sults and contempt for our country. In Switzerland the charge d'affaires of the Holy See has protested. M. Lachat, having with- drawn to the territory of Lucerne, has pray- ed the Federal Council for redress against the States who have had the boldness to depose him. M. Mermillod, vicar apostolic, has protested against the police measures which exiled him, and, roaming around our Genevese frontier, performs his functions of vicar as best he may. The cantons, for their part, are endeavoring to restore to something like legal order the elements dispersed by the revolutionary clergy ; new ecclesiastical laws are being voted ; the organization of a Swiss archbishopric is being discussed ; the Feder- al Council is looked to, and much is expect- ed from the new Federal constitution, the project of which, already known, is going to be submitted to our legislature. But till now this display of authority has been nei- ther in favor of the Catholic Church nor of the States of the Confederation. As to the former, not only has it lost in this combat two of its official representatives, but it has seen, what is otherwise more serious, Old Catholicism taking a firm footing in Switz- erland, which it would never have done but for the provocations of the Holy See. In the diocese of Basle a considerable number of parishes have openly declared against the new dogma. The Association of Liberal Catholics is actively engaged in organizing them. In Geneva, a man as highly respect- ed for the nobility of his Christian charac- ter as for his oratorical powers, Father Hy- acinthe, has given a number of public ad- dresses which have been received with en- thusiasm, and the practical result of which has been the formation of a congregation of Old Catholics, which in a short time may become the only Catholic Church officially recognized. Thus, as in the eleventh cen- tury, as in the sixteenth, and as in Germa- ny at the present day, the exorbitant pre- tensions of Rome produce schism and con- vulse her dominion. As to the States whose patience has been PRONIER : ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN SWITZERLAND. 507 exhausted by these clerical manoeuvres, some ' are undertaking, as formerly, the manage- ; uient of ecclesiastical affairs. They are seen embarrassing themselves with ques- j tions which, if they are not dogmatic, are j closely allied to what is. Thus the preten- sion of the Church to dominate over the State forces the latter on a dangerous posi- tion, where it advances with so much the less assurance as it professes with conviction the most entire respect for the liberty of conscience and worship. The claims of the theocracy produce the antagonistic assertion of the supreme authority of the State. What will be the result of all that? Is it to be the separation of Church and State? Some think so. The exaggeration of clerical power, they say, has provoked a crisis ; but this exaggeration is such that the only pos- sible issue is the sudden and violent rupture of all the bonds which till now have uuited Church to State in Switzerland. I too, gen- tlemen, hope that the system of the separa- tion of Church and State will be adopted. Imperfect though it be, like all things here below, yet it seems to me no less one of the most peaceful of refuges iu comparison with that rock-bound coast on which the storm is driving us. But I do not believe that we are ready to cast anchor in that harbor of safety. It is not more than three or four years since one might still augur well for the future in this respect. How often have not projects of laws in the French-speaking cantons of Geneva, Neuchatel, and Vaud been brought before the constituted author- ities for the separation of Church and State! These have been rejected. Have they any more chance of being accepted to-day ? Less than ever. True, the principle is accepted now almost without discussion. It is an ar- ticle of faith with political liberalism ; but this party, though professing it openly, re- coils even before its partial application. In the German cantons it is much worse. There the principle is not even accepted by those directing the movement. The State is all in all for them ; they see salvation, so to say, only in severe legislation for the recognized communions ; the churches are in their eyes only a department of the State. Thus, with- out speaking of the considerable practical difficulties in each canton, and for the mo- ment insurmountable in the Confederation as a whole, I do not believe we should be jus- tified in expecting the separation of Church and State. Shall a great national Church, Catholic but not Roman, rise out of the confusion in which we are at present plunged? Shall we have a primate or Swiss metropolitan, as the Baden Articles proposed ? Is Old Ca- tholicism strong enough iu my native land to take its place as a church separated from Rome ? I am afraid not yet. Ultramonta- nism, its antagonist, is still powerful. It has in its favor all the prestige of a tradition which has not ceased to charm the senses of many, notwithstanding the Council of 1870 ; its organization is complete; priests, bishops, religious orders, seminaries, the majority of the population, and a majority of the govern- ments in the Catholic cantons every thing, in a word, is on its side. On the other hand, Liberal Catholicism has as yet nothing ex- cept the love of liberty and the hatred of clerical intolerance, some ancient liberties, the sympathy of Liberal and Protestant opinion, and a few clever leading men. It is much, you say. Yes, it is much ; but is it enough to found a lasting ecclesiastical in- stitution ? No durable foundation can bo laid in religious matters without an ardent faith, a disdain of polity, and an all-absorb- ing interest for the salvation of men's souls. Heaven grant I may be mistaken iu my opin- ion ; but till now there is, it seems to me, too much polity and too little religious zeal among the Old Catholics of Switzerland, to allow us to form great hopes for the future of their cause. The future is, then, obscure, gentlemen; as obscure as those cloudy and indistinct ho- rizons toward which, when crossing the At- lantic, I have sometimes seen the passengers on deck casting uneasy glances. The mighty ship was dashingthrough the trackless ocean ; her prow was cleaving the foaming waves ; her sails were swelling in the wind, and the heavy sound of her working engines struck on the ear ; thus, with the ever-increasing obscurity, did we sail into night and dark- ness. So is it often with nations. What is iu store for us I know not. Perhaps the fu- ture has in reserve for us strange surprises that will far exceed our hopes or fears. The horizon may perhaps clear when some kind- ly breeze springs up to drive away the thick- est of the fog. But be that as it may, bo certain, gentlemen, that Switzerland will never become the hot-bed of clerical fanat- icism. We are assured that God will never abandon that home of liberty, that theatre of religious events which, with the names of Zwingli and Calvin, have borne the bless- ings of the Reformation to the most distant coast of your distant land. Ho will remem- ber the work of our fathers. He will inspire the faithful preachers of his Word, the church- es and societies jealous of his glory, with an heroic and simple faith. He will destroy tho best-laid plans of the enemy. Therefore, gen- tlemen, let Switzerland hold a large place in your affections. Pray for her in this her day of crisis. Often does she direct her gaze to- ward you. Remember her also; and may a powerful current of sympathies traverse tho seas like that submarine wire which enables us to maintain uninterrupted communication with each other! THIRD SECTION.-EVANGELIZATION OF ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. BY THE REV. LOWKY EDMONDS BERKELEY, LURGAX, IRELAXD. I AM to speak of " Evangelization in Ire- laud," and I desire that what I say may throw light upon the subject of missions among Roman Catholics in other countries. Let us survey The Field. lerue, the "Western," or, as some say, the " Sacred " Isle, the " Hibernia " of the Romans, the "Scotia" of later cen- turies, the " Emerald Isle " of the poets. It is about three hundred miles long by one hundred and seventy broad, with an area of 32,000 square miles a piece of territory that would hardly be missed out of these United States, yet inhabited by races exer- cising at the present moment world-wide influence for good and evil. The population of Ireland in 1841 was 8,196,597. In 1871 it was only 5,402,759, a decrease of 2,793,838 in thirty years. Whith- er have these multitudes gone? Many of them to the grave, in the days of famine and pestilence ; very many to seek homes in this and other lauds. Owing to constant emi- gration, the missionary field in Ireland is be- coming daily more manageable ; but owing to the same cause the Protestant Churches of the country are in one respect, at least, becoming daily less equal to the task. They are constantly losing some of their best mem- bers, who take the deepest interest in evan- gelistic work in their native land, and are best qualified to take part in it. Religious Denominations. The adherents of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland amounted in 1871 to 4,141,933 persons ; Prot- estant Episcopalians numbered 683,295 ; Pres- byterians, 503,461; Methodists, 41,815; In- dependents, 4485 ; Baptists, 4643 ; the Socie- ty of Friends, 3834 ; and other Christian per- suasions, including Moravians, etc., 19,035. Agencies at Work. The Protestant Episco- pal Church, at the period of its disestablish- ment in 1869, had 1551 churches, and 2172 clergy. Its ministers are now about 1900. Not a few of them are able, earnest, faithful men, who labor assiduously to spread the Gospel and to bring sinners to Christ. In connection with this Church f the principal direct evangelistic agency is the "Society for Irish Church Missions to Roman Catho- lics," formed in 1849, with which is now in- corporated the " Irish Society of London for promoting the Education and Religious In- struction of the native Irish through the medium of their own language," formed in 1818. It is not generally known that there were in Ireland in 1861, the latest period of which we have yet received full informa- tion, 163,275 persons who could speak Irish only, and that 23,180 of these were resident in Ulster. There were besides in that year 942,261 persons who spoke Irish and English, and it is well known that as a rule these people prefer to speak in Irish, and love to hear the Gospel in that tongue. To give that Gospel to them in their native language is one of the aims of the leading Protestant Churches of the country. Means could easi- ly be had to send it to them if they dwelt in Hindostan or Thibet ; but, as they have their home in the British Islands, there is little of the romantic in the effort to reach them, and it is difficult to excite any enthu- siasm on the subject. The object of the "Society for Irish Church Missions," says one of its recent publications, "is to promote the glory of God in the salvation of the souls of our Roman Catholic countrymen in Ireland." "The means employed to this end are an open, plain, faithful, and affectionate exhi- bition of the Gospel from the pulpit ; from house to house ; in schools, day, night, Sun- day, and ragged ; by distribution of the Scriptures ; by Irish teaching and Scripture- text teaching; by friendly disputation ('In meekness instructing those that oppose them- selves'); by the publication of Scripture texts on placards; by the distribution of tracts and handbills, and by every loving and faithful influence Avhich can be brought to bear upon those who are in dangerous er- ror, and whose salvation is earnestly sought." " The Society has raised within the last 22 years 553,255, or over half a million pounds stei-ling. In addition to this sum, spent in maintaining missionaries and teachers, it has been the means of erecting, with funds specially raised for the purpose, 19 churches, 9 parsonages, 8 orphanages, and 23 school- houses." *' It maintains at this date," eays BERKELEY: EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. 509 a circular issued in April of the present year, " 46 Sunday-schools, attended by 2198 chil- dren and adnlts, and 76 week-day schools, with an attendance of 3062 scholars. The Missionary Agency numbers 394, which com- prises 31 ordained clergymen, 217 trained agents Scripture readers, school masters and mistresses and 146 agents employed in Irish teaching and teaching texts of Scripture. About 184 Sunday and 142 week- day services are held during each month, at- tended by aggregate congregations of over 20,000. During each mouth the Scripture readers make about 10,000 visits, visiting in the aggregate about 24,000 persons. Besides which, the press is largely employed for communicating truth and exposing error nearly a million tracts, handbills, and other plain spiritual and pointed publications be- ing circulated every year." By a " Scripture Readers' Society," in con- nection with the same Church, the word of the truth of the Gospel is heard in many homes of the poor, while the revival of the "Home Mission" in some districts gives promise that that Gospel will be earnestly and faithfully preached in churches and school-houses, with a view to reach especial- ly the outlying Protestant population. The Presbyterian Church, under the care of the General Assembly, has increased from 433 congregations and 460 ministers in 1841 to 553 congregations and 625 ministers in 1873, and now employs various and impor- tant agencies for the evangelization of the country. By a " church extension " scheme, she seeks primarily to bring her own nomi- nal adherents under the sound of the Gos- pel, and to organize them into congregations. By her " Irish Mission," she labors more di- rectly for tlie evangelization of the Roman Catholic population. About 1000 a year are spent in maintaining her Scripture read- ers and colporteurs. Her system of " Con- naught schools " originated in 1847, when famine opened a wide field for missionary labor in the destitute districts of Ireland. In these schools, 20,000 children have re- ceived instruction, very few of whom had such opportunities elsewhere. In connec- tion with them there is an Orphanage and Refuge Home for females and young persons fleeing from persecution, in which they re- main till fit for service at homo or for emi- grating. Artisans, servants, clerks, and min- isters of the Gospel, on both sides of the Atlantic, are the fruits of the Connaught schools, while many happy death -beds of pupils have illustrated the power of Divine grace and the blessed effects of Scripture teaching. In connection with the Assembly there has been carried on for the past twenty- four years a system of "open-air preach- ing," by which multitudes of the poor and spiritually destitute portions of the popula- tion, of all denominations, have been brought under the sound of the Gospel. The Assem- bly's " Committee of Evangelization " sends ministers, if possible two and two, to lead- ing towns, manufacturing districts, water- ing-places, and elsewhere, to hold special services, sometimes for four or five evenings in succession, with a view to the revival of religion and the exciting of a deeper interest in the things of God. The " Sabbath-school Society" iu connection with the Assembly furnishes books and all needful appliances for the instruction of the young, while the " Orphan Society," recently organized, al- ready sustains 1400 orphans iu the homes of relatives and friends. Besides the Presbyterian Church under the care of the General Assembly, there arc in Ireland four small Presbyterian denomi- nations, numbering about 50 ministers in all ; namely, the Reformed Presbyterian, East- ern Synod of the same, the United Presbyte- rian, and the Secession. Their ministers all adhere to the doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The members of their own churches are carefully looked after by them, but the churches are too weak to do much general evangelistic work. The Wesleyans and Primitive Wesleyans, with their wonted energy and zeal, have pushed into many destitute districts and some populous towns in Ireland, and through them many are made to possess the blessed- ness of the people that know the joyful sound. Although the number of persons returning themselves as Methodists iu the last Government census is comparatively small, yet have they in their various sec- tions about 280 ministers, including super- numeraries and missionaries, and conse- quently they can do, and they do, much in the way of aggression upon the territories of ignorance and carelessness. The Independents and Baptists in Ireland have each about 19 ministers, and by them in their several spheres a full Gospel is faith- fully preached, and they contribute a share to the evangelization of the country. Of late years God has graciously quicken- ed a goodly number of laymen in connection with the various churches, who have gone everywhere preaching the Word, and whoso labors have been blessed to the conversion of souls. Much was looked for from the efforts of these earnest men ; but unhappi- ly some of them, while publicly addressing loud calls to sinners to come to Christ, hav more privately addressed, if possible, still louder calls to the children of God to como out from existing Church connections, and have thus created divisions and disunion, have added to tho number of sects in onr island, and greatly marred what would oth- erwise be a most delightful and effective work. Xon-dcnominatiottal Agencies. Chief among 510 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. non-denominational institutions -working in our country I mention the " Hibernian Bi- ulo Society," which has for its object the circulation of the Scriptures in Ireland and throughout the world. There is also the " Sunday-school Society for Ireland," doing an important work among the young, and there is the "Bible and Colportage Socie- ty." Though I have named this society last, I would direct special attention to its character, objects, and operations. Man- aged mainly, though not exclusively, by Presbyterians, it is not denominational, but evangelical in its constitution. It works by means of central de"p6ts, book agents, and colporteurs. It circulates the Scriptures, and books, periodicals, and tracts founded on them. Formed in 1858 by a combina- tion of various existing societies, and com- mencing operations on the 1st of January, 1859 ("the year of grace"), it has sold to the people of Ireland since then upward of seven and a half millions of publications, besides tracts distributed gratuitously, and has re- ceived in cash for sales upward of 56,000 sterling. This Society is seeking to embrace the entire country. in its operations, and has already penetrated, especially by means of colportage, into some of its darkest nooks and most distant corners. General Results. I give this brief account of the condition of the Protestant Churches and societies iu Ireland to indicate in a gen- eral way their preparedness, so far as agen- cies and means are concerned, for going in to possess the land for Christ, fully persuaded as I am that there must be an enlightened, educated, revived, living, loving Protestant- ism in our country before we can succeed to any large extent in the evangelization of the Roman Catholic portion of the population. So long as ignorance, intemperance, party spirit, and immorality are characteristic of any considerable portion of Protestants, Avhat inducement is there for earnest Ro- man Catholics to look favorably on our principles or systems ? Were all Protest- ants, or the majority of them, " living epis- tles of Christ," they would be the most ef- fective agents for the evangelization of their neighbors and countrymen. I rejoice great- ly to think that of late Protestantism with us has been raised to a higher platform has become more self-reliant, and earnest, and active, and thus the way of the Lord is being prepared. And who knows how soon "the dayspring from on high may visit" all the people of our laud ? By the agencies and means above men- tioned, much of the Protestant population of Ireland, numbering in 1871 1,260,568, has become well instructed in the truth, and some of the churches are enjoying a good measure of spiritual prosperity. None of the societies named are as old as the pres- ent century, some of the most important are only a few years in existence ; yet, to say the least, they are helping Protestantism to hold its own in the country. This was by no means the case during the deadness and lukewarmness of previous centuries. I be- lieve they are also enabling it to make some aggression on the territory of the man of sin. ] True, there is no general stirring of the pop- ular mind. Rome never seemed stronger | outwardly than at present. Her cathedrals and churches are towering up on every side, her ministers are everywhere active | and zealous, and she seems in many places ' to have the country at her feet. Yet am I | fully persuaded that in not a few quarters | the truth is quietly winning its way. Light is breaking in here and there upon the dark- ness, and a preparatory work is going on which may tell one day, and perhaps soon- er than most people expect. There are nu- merous evidences that impatience of eccle- siastical control is on the increase among the people, a spirit of independence exhib- its itself in the priesthood, and her long and fierce struggle for denominational education at the expense of the State shows how much she feels herself pressed by the influences at work around her. Evangelization of Roman Catholics. When I speak of " Evangelization iu Ireland," I presume I shall be expected to refer main- ly to efforts to reach the Roman Catholic population with the Gospel of God's grace. Here, however, a preliminary question pre- sents itself. Is it a duty to try to reach them with the Gospel ? Have they not got a religion already, which, if not the very best, is yet sufficient for all spiritual and eternal ends ? I dread the growing latitu- dinariauism of these times, which would in- cline to deny that the system of the Church of Rome is Antichristian. Doubtless some of its nominal adherents may be and are safe in Christ ; but the system as such is one of soul-destroying error, and the Church of Christ should sound iu the ears of its ad- herents the call of God, " Come out of her, my people !" Those who hold otherwise will be found, J believe, tending to deny alto- gether the necessity of the new birth, of real conversion, in the case both of nomi- nal Protestants and Roman Catholics, and the power of the truth when applied by the Holy Spirit to effect the regeneration of the human soul. But I fear, on the other hand, that some professing Protestants, who acknowledge the doctrine of the necessity of a spiritual birth and resurrection, are yet inclined to give up ! Roman Catholics in hopeless despondency, ! and to say that " they are joined to their ' idols," and may be left to perish in their ' sins. Hindoos and Mohammedans may be converted, these people say, but can Roman Catholics be reached by the grace of God ? You may well doubt the Christianity of the BERKELEY: EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. 511 man who asks or remotely suggests such a question. If a man has been himself con- verted, he knows that the same grace which sought and found him can reach any other member of the human family. He despairs of no one, however abandoned or blindfold- ed. He knows that conversion is the work of God, and that "of his own will men are begotten with the word of truth/' For con- verts to a creed or a system outwardly we care not. If all the Roman Catholics in Ire- land were to-day to make a merely nominal profession of Protestantism, the influx of them would be deeply injurious to the Chris- tian Church. It could be hailed only as bringing them within the reach of the means of grace and under the sound of the Gospel. It is convert* to Christ we want, and the pow- er and love of the Holy Spirit can give them in answer to prayer, and as the result of wise and loving effort. It will not be by miracle, however, but by the truth as it is in Jesus applied to their hearts, that they will be led to renounce self and the world, to receive Christ and his righteousness, and to give themselves up to God to serve and obey him. But is it not difficult to reach them with the truth to get it brought in contact with their minds ? In my country it is difficult. Protestantism is the religion of those whom they have been taught to regard as oppress- ors. With them it is not only a heresy, but a tyranny. At the same time, it would be well for time-serving agitators to remember that hatred of England and of English in- stitutions was generated in the minds of Irishmen before the name of Protestantism was heard of. Ireland's troubles may be said to have begun with the day when Pope Adrian IV., having arrogantly claimed the sovereignty of the kingdom, by a bull issued in the year 1155, formally conferred it on Henry II., on condition of his reducing his newly acquired dominions to unqualified submission to the papal supremacy, and con- formity with the Romish Church. The En- glish court before the time of the Reforma- tion prohibited the use of the Irish language, through the vain idea of banishing it alto- gether from the kingdom, to make way for the adoption 'of the English tongue. The Reformation in Ireland, in the first instance, consisted merely in the proclamation of the royal instead of the papal supremacy. Ex- ternal conformity was enforced, but no prop- er effort was made to instruct the people by the circulation of the Scriptures in their own tongue and by the preaching of the Gospel. Fines were exacted from those who failed to attend the parish church, yet the service was not alloAved in Irish, the only language the people understood ; but, where the priest and people did not understand English, it was decreed that the Latin tongue must be used ! The Romish faith was formally con- demned by acts of Parliament, and profes- sion of the Reformed religion enforced un- der the heaviest penalties, before any at- tempts were made to convince the people of their former errors. This is the fundament- al mistake made in regard to our country which has yet to be Corrected. Protestant- ism has yet to be presented to our country- men as a religion of love and self-sacrifice. " Even as the prince of Cuba in India is re- ported to have said that ho would not go to heaven if the Spaniards Avent there, because he thought that could be no good place where such cruel tyrants were, so in days gone by in our country many would not be of our religion, because they thought that could be no true religion which had such unconscionable professors and ministers." The Bible has yet to be presented in love to the Irish people in their homes. In other days there were no self-denying men to go forth in our land, as the Vaudots went on the Continent in the capacity of peddlers that they might circulate the Word of life, and no occasion was given for the utterance of the complaint made by the Romanists in England at the time of the Reformation : " The gospelers of these days do so fill the world with their noisome little books that they be like the plague of locusts that came up over the land of Egypt." Ireland has now no just cause of complaint against the British Government ; the Irish Roman Catholic now labors under no civil disability whatever ; but he carries about with him the memory of bitter wrongs, some more recent and others of ancient date, and hence it is difficult for Protestants to do missionary work among Roman Catholics ; but I believe the difficulty has been griev- ously and grossly exaggerated. Those who talk much of the difficulty have probably never tried to any great ex- tent to deal with men individually about their souls, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic. It is not to be expected that the latter will come to our churches, in the first instance at least, to hear the preaching of the Gospel ; but can they be reached in no other way ? To be saved, multitudes of people of every creed must be sought out in the field and by the wayside, in their own homes and at their own firesides and ad- dressed in the spirit of love and conciliation. There is too little in the churches of" warn- ing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom," taking them distributively, and going to each of them with the message of mercy. The great Master not only preached in cities .and villages, dealing with men in the mass, but talked lovingly and earnestly with Nicodeiuus and with the woman of Sa- maria, and so sought to preach the Gospel to "every creature ;" and the great Apostle of the Gentiles tells the Ephesiaus that by the space of three years he ceased not to 512 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. warn "every one " in Ephesus night and day with tears. When will the churches feel that they have not done their duty till they have made an otter of Christ and eternal life through him, as far as may be, individually and personally, to every Roman Catholic in Ireland f Who should do tins? We ministers of the Gospel as well as the Christian people should make opportunities, more than we do, of talking with ignorant neighbors about their danger as sinners, and the way of recovery through Jesus. If any minister says he can not do this with Roman Catholics " that the door is shut " it is time for him to begiu to inquire as to his spirit and temper, his connections and relations, and especially if he has been taking the right way to com- mend the Gospel to the ignorant and oppos- ing. If we were all like the Master, "of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord," the story of the woman at the well would bo repeated in multitudes of instances ; and it is worth remembering that, if there were only two Christian people in the world at this moment, and if before the end of the year each of these by prayer and effort were to be the means of bringing one other to Christ, and next year each of the four another, and so on from year to year, every converted per- son being honored of God in every twelve months to bring one sinner to the Saviour, in thirty-three or thirty-four years all the people of the world would know and ac- knowledge Jesus. But with reference to Roman Catholics i:i particular, I am fully persuaded that, what- ever ministers of the Gospel may be honored of God to do, it is by the agency mainly of converted laymen, and of women " who la- bor with us in the Gospel," that they are to be evangelized. Far be it from me to de- preciate the Gospel ministry. It is God's own institution. It must be maintained in all its efficiency. The waste places must be occupied with Christian churches, and every pastor must be a missionary and a superintendent of missionary operations in his own district. Church-members as well as ministers need to go " everywhere preach- ing the Word ;" but, however faithful they may be, there are multitudes whom they can not reach. We want a class of men, humble, earnest, loving, godly "men of the Evangel" with the love of Christ and of souls in their hearts we call them " col- porteurs" who are not ashamed to carry a pack, and who, while pushing the Bible and good books into the hands of the people, can yet speak what they know, and testify what they have seen, of God's love and Christ's grace. They must be prudent, con- ciliatory, quick-witted men, who can give a ready answer regarding the hope that is in them ; men trained for the purpose, and fa- miliarized beforehand with the questions likely to be raised by those whom they vis- it, and the nature of the opposition they may expect. They go, in the first instance, not as missionaries, but as traders, as the Vaudois went prior to the Reformation, with the view to lodge the Bible in the homes of the people. There are at present fifty snch men in connection with the Bible and Colportage Society of Ireland, but there should be at least five hundred. They carry the Scrip- tures, and good books, and illustrated pa- pers, and periodicals, They get access to the hamlets of the poor, and sometimes to the more pretentious dwellings of the rich, and they can talk with not a few, as one says, " as much as they like," about Jesus and his love. They are asked for a "dream book," and they sell for a penny a complete copy of " The Pilgrim's Progress ;" for a song book, and they present a copy of the hymns of the sweet Psalmist of Israel. They have sold to priests of the Church of Rome " The Life of Calvin," "The Blood of Jesus," "The Last Day of our Lord's Passion." They dis- pose of large quantities of such works as Baxter's "Call" and "Saint's Rest," "The Rise and Progress of Religion," "The Prac- tical View of Christianity," "Blind Barti- mens," and " The Power of Prayer." And, if the circulation of the Bible and good books had so much to do in bringing about the Reformation in many countries of Eu- rope centuries ago, why may we not expect God to bless similar means now ? Colport- age in Ireland is no longer an experiment. It is a success. It has been tried in every county in Ireland, and nowhere has it fail- ed. The colporteurs traverse every part of the land without molestation, or, at least, without injury. They may be hooted at, or called by ugly names occasionally, but this only gives them an opportunity of showing "the meekness and gentleness of Christ." And In what Spirit do they go? Not in a spirit of controversy, or, in the first instance, to engage directly in controversy. Protest- antism has been long regarded by our coun- trymen as a mere negation denying, and too often denouncing, much they hold dear. We wish to show them that Protestantism is a positive thing, holding fast the grand old apostolic doctrines, especially that of a present, free, full, and everlasting salvation through Christ Jesus, and teaching its adhe- rents to live " soberly, righteously, and god- ly in this present world." Hence our agents are instructed to talk with the people about the things in which they agree rather than about those in which they differ, to speak of sin and salvation, of Jesus and his love, of the Holy Ghost and his work, and espe- cially to exhibit a spirit of love, and com- passion, and humility in their daily con- duct. Questions soon come to be asked BERKELEY: EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. 513 which compel them to turn attention to the errors of the Church of Rome. A spirit of inquiry is excited. Protestantism is seen in the life and language of its adherents to be any thing but the overbearing, persecu- ting system many imagined. If we began by denouncing Romanism, the door would be shut against us at once ; but we seek rather to begiu by teaching that, "except a man be born again, he can not see the king- dom of God;" that "without faith it is im- possible to please Him ;" and that " without holiness no man shall see the Lord ;" and by trying to show that religion has a positive influence on men's lives in making them humble, loving, holy, and devoted. We try to reach the conscience and the heart, and if controversy must, as we find it must, bo engaged in, our agents seek to carry it on in a very loving spirit, and as men who "contend earnestly for the faith once de- livered to the saints." The Ehemish or Douay Testament. The col- porteurs of the Bible and Colportage Society make effective use of the Rhemish or Douay Testament in their intercourse with the peo- ple. We have an edition of this Testament iu Ireland, without notes, published some fif- ty years ago by the authority of the Roman Catholic' bishops, and solemnly sanctioned by Pope Pius VII. This was done when these parties were seeking emancipation, and wished to convince the British public and Parliament that the Church of Rome is favorable to the circulation of the Scrip- tures without note or comment. I believe they would gladly recall this edition of the Testament, but the stereotyped plates arc in the hands of Protestants, and many thou- sands of the precious book are being print- ed and circulated every year. Our colport- eurs and others use it thus : They are talk- ing with Roman Catholics about the way of life, controversy ensues, and the colport- eur, producing the book, says, " See, here is your own Testament. I abide by what it says ;" and he opens and reads, perhaps, Acts xiii., 39, " In Him every one that believeth is justified;" or Rev. xxii., 14, iu that ver- sion standing thus, " Blessed are they that have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." And surprise is expressed, and the book is purchased, and days and nights are some- times spent in comparing the two versions ; and the priest is occasionally consulted as to the genuineness of the Rheniisb, a thing he can not deny, and most important results follow. I believe the Douay Testament, thus used, to be a most effective instrument for the regeneration of Ireland ; and why not of other countries as well ? Support of Colporteurs. A sum of about 60 sterling is required to support a col- 33 porteur for a year. If any individual or committee give the committee of our Socie- ty 30, they engage to salary and maintain a colporteur in any given district in Ireland for a year. Could any evangelistic agency be simpler, cheaper, or more effective f We do not expect any great movement among our countrymen arising directly from the outside. We look for it from within the Church, and hence we seek quietly and ev- erywhere to leave the leaven of the Gospel iu the homes and minds of the people, till by God's blessing the whole shall be leavened. Can the Men le gotfoi- the Work and the Pay f This is an important inquiry, and, thank God, we can answer it satisfactorily. Men can be had, humble, loving, earnest, who, after in every case preliminary training for three or four months under one of our mis- sionaries, make most effective agents. They are mostly the fruit of the " year of grace " the revival of 1859. Prior to that era some had been found and were employed by the Hibernian Bible Society, on from 1846, in the colportage of the Scriptures and noth- ing else. Others were employed by the churches as Scripture readers, and by the Presbyterian Church in particular in the colportage of good books besides the Scrip- tures; but almost all those recently em- ployed are free to testify that they were ei- t her converted or revived in 1859 ; and when I left Ireland they were being found in con- siderable numbers, who, on appeal made, re- sponded readily and joyfully, "Here are we. Send us!" JF/io should send them? The churches in Ireland, we reply. On them especially the responsibility rests. They are placed in thai- land to be lights in it. Thank God, we be- lieve many Christians there are taking as their motto more distinctly and heartily than ever, "Ireland for Christ." But the work is too great for us. Great Britain and America should help. We thank them most heartily for what they have already done ; but I believe they do not see clearly enough that the work is too great for us, or they would come still more earnestly to our aid. A gentleman in Scotland the other day gave half a million to assist in overtaking spirit- ual destitution in that land of Bibles, and churches, and Sabbaths, and ministers. How can it be expected that 1,260,000 Protestants in Ireland can at once overtake the spiritu- al destitution of 4,141,000 Roman Catholics without help from abroad f Selfishness might be appealed to on this subject. Are not the Roman Catholic Irish the difficulty of states- men in both these Protestant empires ? Are not the most recently appointed and ener- getic bishops iu both from Ireland ? Do they not boast that Ireland is, like Israel of old, made to possess a multitude of peo- ple, that they may bo missionaries to the world? Would it not be the wisest and 514 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. most economical thing for the Christians of these countries to help us in doing what Elisha of old did long ago while he was tar- rying at Jericho T "The men of the city said to him, Behold the situation of this city ia pleasant: but the water is naught, and the ground barren. And he said, Bring me a new cruse and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters ; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed unto this day, ac- cording to the saying of Elisha which he spake." So here. It is the duty of the Lord's prophets and people to cast the salt of the Gospel into the springs of our coim- try. We say advisedly it can be done by those who know the country and understand the people, having been brought up among them. The healing power in this as in every other case can come from God only. He has made us responsible for the use of the means ; but when in answer to prayer did he refuse to give the increase to \vise and loving efforts ? Have you in these States 3806 Roman Cath- olic churches and five and a half millions of a Roman Catholic population, the greater part of which is from Ireland or of Irish origin f Then for your own protection you ought to come over and help us. But, be- sides, the Protestant Churches of Ireland, and specially the Presbyterian Church, have for many years, not to say for centuries, been giving the best of their people to this coun- try. Our most earnest Sabbath-school teach- ers and Christian workers come hither in great numbers, and form a not unimportant element of your strength. Latterly you have been getting some of the best of our ministers. You have not been sending us, but there have been coming from this country to us in re- turn a very troublesome class of men, in the shape of political agitators. They left home simple-minded Irishmen, but they came back apostles of anarchy, whom, to say the Jeast, we would rather want. We wish for a bet- ter return in the shape of generous sympa- thies and earnest prayers, and shall I say it ? liberal contributions for the spread of the Gospel in our country. The Alliance Spirit in the Work. Colport- age, as at present canned on in Ireland, is in the spirit of the Evangelical Alliance. Members of all the Evangelical Churches of the country are being associated more and more in the work. A Protestant Episcopa- lian and his wife, in remitting recently the 30 required toward the support of a col- porteur for a year, said : " We care not of what denomination, he is, provided he be of the Church which Jesus 'hath purchased with his own blood.'" A Methodist writes in great admiration of one of our agents, and offers 10 a year toward the support of such an agent in his locality. A Baptist has for years superintended one of our col- porteurs, and raised the sum required toward his support. But, above all, the colporteurs themselves long for the union of the people of God in our land, in sentiment, feeling, and work. One writes recently : " I find that the divisions among Protestants form a great barrier to Roman Catholics in the way of receiving from us any instruction concern- ing the way of salvation. When will the Christian Churches take their names mere- ly from their localities, as in days of yore T" Hinderances. This reminds me that there are many serious hinderances to the success of the Gospel in our country, and many dif- ficulties in the way of its dissemination. Where Rome has the sway, the people arc left in ignorance. She cares for education and encourages it only where she knows that, if not given by her, it will be had by . her people somehow. In other cases she is true to her motto, " Ignorance is the mother of devotion," and the darkness is " such as may be felt." The history of the past is an impediment a history of errors, and blun- ders, and mistakes without number almost without end. The ungodliness of many Protestants is a great hinderance to the truth. The use of carnal weapons party spirit, and warfare, and exhibitions, and pro- cessions imbitter the people against the religion of those who indulge in them. On board the vessel by which I reached this country, the only person of whom I heard who objected to the distribution of tracts among the steerage passengers was an Irish Roman Catholic, who was leaving an in- tensely Protestant district in the North, but a district where these things sadly prevail, and his words to me in a pleasant conversa- tion were, " You may gain men by love, but never by force." As I have said already, want of union among Protestants is a " sore evil under the sun " everywhere, but espe- cially in Ireland. Where, in any case, one set of professedly Christian people live apart in haughty exclusiveness, saying, " Stand by, for we are holier than you," and another set meet those pretensions in the spirit of proud defiance, what hope can there be of spiritual progress and prosperity f If the 2894 Prot- estant ministers of all denominations in Ire- land were meeting from time to time in their different localities to pray together, to take common counsel, and to uuito in Christian work, how soon might the world round about believe that the Father had sent the Son, and the Roman Catholic world be brought to look to the Saviour Avhoin they honor and obey ! Encouragements. There are many things to encourage us in the present condition of our country. There are 1,030,000 pupils on the rolls of our national schools alone (not reckoning private and higher schools), or BERKELEY : EVANGELIZATION IN IRELAND. 515 almost one in five of OUT population. The people have learned to read, and the art of reading is a power. They have a thirst for knowledge. A spirit of inquiry is abroad. Recent events on the Continent have shaken the faith of some in the stability of the Ro- mish system. France, long the bulwark of the Papacy, lies prostrate in the dust. Aus- tria has annulled the concordat with the Pope. Italy prospers in the face of the curse and excommunication. Free Churches have been formed in France and Italy. The Old Catholic movement progresses in Germa- ny. Wise legislation at home takes away occasion from those who desire occasion. All things seem to be moving in the direc- tion of liberty and truth. Does not the time spoken of by Haggai seem to be near at hand, " I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with my glory, saith the Lord of Hosts?" Ireland was once full of the Gospel. When Great Britain was in midnight darkness, our schools and colleges were thronged with students from the Continent of Europe and elsewhere, who spent much of their time in studying David's Psalms and Paul's Epistles. We were in days long gone by evangelistic as well as evangelical, and missionaries from Irelaud, such as Columkille, held forth the light of truth in multitudes of places as well as in lona. Ireland was the last country in Europe that submitted to the yoke of the man of sin, and it may be the last to cast it off; but the day of its redemption draweth nigh. God is putting a spirit of desire and of expectation into the hearts of not a few in our country, that the isles shall soon wait for his law, and our island among the rest. We have been greatly encouraged by the calls to prayer issued by the Evangelical Alliance. The 31st of March last was a time of earnest wrestling, publicly and pri- vately, with many among us. We hope that a day of prayer for Ireland will now be ob- served by Christians throughout the world annually. Never did I hear more sweet or earnest singing than when on that day the children of my Sabbath-schools joined in the hymn composed for the occasion by Frances Ridley Havergal : " Father, we would plead thy promise, bending nt thy glorious throne, That the isles shall wait upon thee, trusting in thine arm alone. One bright isle we bring before thee, while iu faith thy children pray For a full and mighty blessing, with united voice to-day." The Alliance has been inviting us to spe- cial preaching, as well as special prayer, and the New Year is a season of union in the proclamation of the everlasting Gospel. My decided conviction is that that invitation to PREACH should be extended beyond the bounds of Protestantism. The Pope of Rome invited us to the Ecumenical Council at Rome, but he asked us first to renounce our Protestantism. I need not say we did not go on those terms. I would ask him, and all Roman Catholic bishops and priests ev- erywhere, not to renounce their Romanism, but on a Sabbath to be named to join us in preaching from the Word of God. I would take my text on that day from the Douay Testament, and I would invite- his holiness and all his satellites to do the same, and let it be a passage already named, Acts xiii., 39, in that version standing thus, " IN HIM every one thai believeth. is justified." " IN HIM " not in Mary, or Joseph, or the Pope, but in JESUS " EVERY one," however guilty not that worketh, or prayeth, or doeth penance, but " every one that believeth " " is JUSTIFIED," cleared, acquitted, has a title to everlasting life. I suggest the thing to the friends here. Such a friendly challenge sent forth from this great continent to all parts of the world would meet with a glorious response ; and as the walls of Jericho fell down flat while the priests blew the trumpets, so the Lord might begin in a more manifest way to con- sume that system " with the breath of his mouth" the word that goeth out of it as he has begun already "to destroy it with the brightness of his coming" iu awful providential dispensations. The evangelizing party in Irelaud espe- cially, or anywhere, may seem few and weak compared with the number and strength of their enemies. So did David appear very weak when he went forth against the gi- ant of Gath. "When the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him : for ho was but a youth Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield : but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he Avill give you into our hands And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slung it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth." It is the stone of divine truth, slung by the Church of Christ with the arm of faith and in the spirit of prayer, and God Almighty will direct its course, and Baby- lon will fall. That system, as such, the Lord will take up as a great millstone, and cast it into the sea; and thereafter and thereupon the voice of much people will be heard in heaven, saying, "Alleluia ; Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God : for true and righteous are his judgments." Meanwhile, be it ours, by the preaching of the Gospel and the circulation of the Scriptures and good books, to sound among 51G ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. the adherents of Rome everywhere the cry, mates many of our Christian workers in " Coine out of her, my people !" And as a Ireland, I give you the following poem, specimen of the spirit of earnest desire, and j lately composed by one of our colporteurs, strong faith, and ardent hope Avhich aui- j and entitled "THE CALL OF THE MASTER TO ERIN." "The Master is come, and calleth far thee." JOUN xi., 28. Birthplace of poetic dreams, Mother of romantic streams, With thy lakes and mountains hoary, Vales renowned in song and story, Waving woods and fertile plains, Scenes where virgin beauty reigns Erin ! cradled by the eea. Rise ! The Master calleth thee ! Beautiful without; within, Error, superstition, sin, Blinded zeal, misled devotion ; Restless as the waves of ocean, Fierce in hate, though strong in love, Varying as the clouds above This is not what thou shouldst be, Rise ! The Master calleth thee ! Heed not what false friends may say, Love and Duty point the way ; Lay aside thy weeds of mourning, Gladly hail thy Lord's returning ; Be again what thou hast been "Isle of Saints," a garden green. Fling thy chains aside, be free ! Rise 1 The Master calleth thee ! Ah ! but light and life are fled ! Can the Master raise the dead, Bring again the loved departed, Make the downcast buoyant-hearted ? Long the night, and dark the skies, Can his Word make Light arise ? Erin, yes ! though dark it be, Up ! E'en now he calleth thee ! Torn by fierce intestine strife, Wake to higher, holier life. See the nations round thee growing, Light advancing, Knowledge flowing; Dream not of thy days of youth, This thy morning ; seize the Truth ; God's own Truth can make you free. Rise ! In love he calleth thee ! Master, come ! Thy word of might Sounded once, and there was light I See, we doubt thy promise never Faithful hearts are pleading ever For the sunshine of thy smile To illumine this our Isle. Let us thy Salvation see. Master, come ! We wait for thee 1 Morning-star of Hope and Love, Shine on Erin from above ! Jesus, Source of true affection, Thou the Life, the Resurrection, Speak 1 Restore the dead to life, Calm the waves of party strife, That our Island, blessed and free, May be given entire to thee ! Then our lakes of silver sheen, Verdant plains and valleys green, Rivers broad and flashing fountains, Wooded hills and rocky mountains, Shall re-echo full and free Earth's glad song of Jubilee. Truth shall flourish as of yore, God shall bless the Shamrock shore ! THE EVANGELIZATION OF FRANCE. BY THE EEV. THEOPHILUS LOERIAUX, B.D., PARIS, Secretary of the Central Protestant Evangelical Society of France. A FEW years ago a man died at Chateau- roux, D6partemeut de 1'Iudre. Every body knew he belonged to the Roman Catholic Church ; and as he was wealthy, the priests arranged for him a first-class funeral. But what was the surprise of all and the dis- appointment of the clergy when, the man's Avill being opened, the following clause was found in it: "I have lived and I die a Ro- man Catholic ; but when I was a soldier I visited Protestant nations, and iny wish is that France may embrace that religion. I give all niy property for the erection of a Protestant chapel in this town of Chateau- roux, my native place." During the last Franco-German war, the French soldiers were visited in their camps and on the battle-fields by ministers and Christian friends, who distributed to them New Testaments, and spoke words of love in Jesus Christ : everywhere they received the most cordial reception. Eighty thousand men of our army were driven into Switzer- land: they brought back religious impres- sions never to be effaced. In a village of the North of France one of these internes came home, bringing with him a New Testament. Nobody in the place had ever seen one be- fore, but on the pressing exhortation of the returned soldier they almost all procured the holy Volume ; and now that locality is evangelized by the Soci4te Ccntrale Protes- tante ff Evangelisation en France. During the awful scenes of the Commune, whHe the most auticatholic feelings were manifested, wo saw in Paris men coming to our ministers for religious consolation. A communist one day was being buried with- out the assistance of a priest ; his mother entreated his friends to call for a Protest- ant minister. The Rev. G. Monod went, spoke to those rude men, and all of them, with tears in their eyes, thanked him for the good ho had done them. A few days afterward, when Paris was on fire, the Sena- tor Bonjean (one of our most distinguished statesmen, who was to be shot as a hostage) wrote to a Protestant friend of his, " Send me a Bible, that I may prepare to die." What do all these facts mean ? What mean the meetings held by the Rev. MacAll in different parts of Paris, and crowded by hundreds of workmen and people of all classes ? What mean the meetings of the Rev. Armaud Delille, assisted by clergymen of all denominations, and where so many conversions have taken place ? All these facts are most evident and joyful indications that France needs the good news of salvation, that she is suscep- tible of receiving it, and that in most in- stances when the inhabitants are brought in contact with it, especially since the war, they receive it gladly. We would not deny the difficulties which we may encounter in propagating the Gos- pel. The Jesuits are certainly having a great levee de boucliers, and they succeed in raising a persecution against us ; but, "with the help of God, this persecution will be as provisional as our actual Government it- self; the fact is, that never before has the door been so wide open for the Gospel. Here is a striking instance. Every body knows that one of the most bigoted popula- tions of the world is that of Corsica. Some time ago, a few Protestant families residing in Bastia applied to the Societe Centrale Pro- iestante ff Evangelisation to have a minister. The committee thought it was impossible even to consider that application. "What! in that laud of fanaticism and ignorance ! our agent would be murdered on arriving there." However, a missionary agent was sent to that island ; the clergy were in an unspeak- able rage ; but the work of evangelization began, and now there is an important con- gregation in Bastia, among whom are many proselytes. Since that time a similar application was received from Ajaccio, on the other side of the island, and the same result as at Bastia is being attained,' And now the question is asked, What are the agencies in France for carrying on the work of evangelization? Agencies. There are three Bible societies, which spend together yearly 150,000 francs ; four religious book and tract societies, whose expenditure is 260,000 francs; a society for promoting the interest of education among Protestants, expending 120,000 francs; a Sun- day-school society, which has sent a deputy to this Conference ; a Christian association for young men; a society called Du Sou Protestant, to encourage systematic benevo- lence ; a society for the Mission Interieurc, which has also sent a representative here, the Rev. M. Lelievre. There are, besides, 518 ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. more than fifty philanthropic institutions, among which I would mention the Rev. John Host's asylums, a foreign missionary society which expends 200,000 francs, and five socie- ties of evangelization, the two most impor- tant of which are the Socic'te' JSvangtliquc and the Soctftt Centrale Protestante d'fivange'lisa- llon. The whole expenditure of our Prot- estant evangelical and philanthropic institu- tions exceeds two millions of francs. This is very little compared to the hundreds of millions that you consecrate to the service of the Lord ; but the Protestants are a very small minority in France, and if you compare the present with the past you will rejoice to know that almost all our religious societies have to-day an expenditure twice as large as twelve years ago. Especially remarkable has been the prog- ress of the two great societies of evangel- ization which have just been mentioned. The Societi iSvange'lique employs sixty agents, and spends yearly 140,000 francs ; it is doing a most prosperous work among the Roman Catholic population, and in some departments, as well as in Paris, it witnesses and accomplishes, under the blessing of God, great revivals. The able and devoted di- rector of that society, Rev. Dr. Fisch, has just given you interesting particulars. I have more especially to speak to the conference of the Societe Centrale Protestantc (F Evangelisation, established two years ago, with a view of providing for the scattered Protestants of France means of worship and religious education. In almost every local- ity of our country there are Protestants; but some of them live more than one hun- dred and fifty miles from the nearest place of worship. Left to themselves, they would become identified with the Romau Catholic population. A Protestant lady told a min- ister, the other day, that she went every Sunday to the Catholic Church with a New Testament, to read it during the mass. " I can not spend the Sabbath," said she, "without taking part in some public wor- ship." The Socie'te' Centrale has resolved to hire a room, and have a service in that lo- cality. Would you judge of the importance of our work, go from Paris to the extreme limit of the west. You find a Protestant congrega- tion at Versailles, and one at Brest ; between those two towns there is a distance of five hundred miles. Some years ago, in that im- mense space there was not one Protestant congregation. The Societe Centrale estab- lished three home missionary stations, at about equal distance from each other one at Chartres, one at Le Mans, and the other at Rennes and now these stations have become flourishing congregations. Between Paris and Boulogne in the North, there are only three towns, including Bou- logne itself, in which are found ministers and places of worship ; those three stations have been organized by the Socie'te' Centrale. Notice that those localities are important towns, in which exist large schools, prisons, soldiers' barracks, where we find many co- religionists. We have stations in eighty such towns. It may be said that, without our society, whole provinces would not have yet heard of the Gospel. It is to be remarked that, in grouping the scattered Protestants, and in forming them into regular congregations, the socie- ty spreads at the same time the light of the Gospel amidst the Roman Catholic popula- tion. The arrival of a pastor is a great event in the country ; many come to hear him ; the Holy Spirit reaches well-disposed souls, and frequently important religious movements take place movements which are generally serious and lasting, because they start from the knowledge of the Gospel, and are con- nected with a Protestant Christian nucleus which forms the permanent and enlighten- ing element of the new congregation. Frequently the movement extends to pop- ulations entirely Catholic, as is the case with St. Andelin in the De"partement de la Nievre. Five years ago there was not in that depart- ment one single evangelical place of worship. A religious movement sprang up at St. Au- delin, a beautiful village on the Loire, not far from Saucerre, one of our oldest and most celebrated in the history of the Protestant Church of France. The people asked the pastor of Sancerre to come and preach to them. At first the meetings were held in an inn ; but a friend from Paris gave 10,000 francs for the erec- tion of a chapel in that locality. I had the privilege, after having preached three years ago in the inn, of preaching last year in a neat, tasteful church, built on a hill, and which can be seen at a distance of more than ten miles. The day before I arrived, a vio- lent storm had torn away the roof of the church, and carried it over the road, on the house of the Sisters of Mercy. At once the people set to work to replace the roof. Be- sides the church, there are now two schools, attended by more than one hundred children. Lately an English clergyman visited those schools, and he declared that the children answered on religious subjects as well as the children of a good Protestant Sunday-school. The movement is extending to neighbor- ing villages like fire in your Western prairies. Two schools have been opened by our socie- ty at Lamarche, a village ten miles from St. Andelin, and the converts declare that they are ready to suffer and to die for their new convictions. One of our proselytes goes on Sundays in the country distributing tracts and engaging in religious conversations. We reckon in those two villages about six hun- dred people who have embraced Protestant- ism. Many are not born again, but all pre- LORRIAUX : THE EVANGELIZATION OF FRANCE. 519 fer the teachings of the Gospel to those of the priests ; all wish to be enlightened, and rejoice to think that their children receive an evangelical education. The society is about to place an agent also at Nevers, the chef-lieu of La Nievre, where there is a great prospect for evangelization, la the department of La Marue, at Troissy, in Champaign, a similar movement is pro- gressing, which originated in this way : Many years ago a woman of that place, a Roman Catholic, became a servant in the family of a Christian minister in Paris. There she felt, little by little, the power of the Gospel. She was converted, and, after a few years' service, she returned to her na- tive village. She commenced a quiet but earnest work of evangelization, telling oth- ers she had found the Saviour ; sind this she did with such perseverance and such effect that a large portion of the population went to the nearest place where there is a Prot- estant church. Since that time they made up their minds to abandon Roman Catholi- cism. " Now," they say, like the Samaritans to the woman of Sychar " now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves." The war, and the need of spiritual truth and comfort, developed the movement, which had slowly grown in the hearts of the peo- ple. Some time ago I went there, accom- panied by the Rev. Mr. Cory, of Dublin. We found the people assembled in a building which one of their number had erected, at his own expense, for public worship and for a school. The service lasted about two hours ; the room and street were crowded, and the preaching listened to with the most earnest attention. We received, at the close of the service, an invitation to go to another vil- lage, at a distance of about four miles, where the Gospel had only been preached ouce be- fore. One of the inhabitants of the place had offered his house to hold the meeting. We went accordingly, accompanied by a few of the more prominent members of the con- gregation of Troissy ; and " I think," says the Rev. Mr. Cory, " the scene Avhich follow- ed was the most interesting I ever witness- ed." Through the influence of the priests, the movement had been denounced to the au- thorities, which led to the arrival in our midst of the mayor of the commune, clad in his scarf of office, and come to demand, in the name of the law, by what authority AVC did these things. We answered that we were preaching the Gospel, and not causing disturbance in the place. The mayor ad- mitted that all he had heard was excellent, and quite contrary to what he had been told ; and the meeting terminated very calmly, with singing and prayer, the mayor remain- ing quite grave to the end. These people want to have a permanent pastor appointed to take charge of them. But of all this the Archbishop of Reims was powerfully dis- pleased ; he induced the pr4fet to send men to take a census of the new Protestants of Troissy ; threats were used ; the people were told that this change of religion would bring upon them great difficulties. Not one of them drew back ; they signed the documents by which they declared they would perse- vere in their resolution. A man, in writing down his name, wept bitterly : being asked the reason of his grief, he answered, " I weep because last year, at the census, I put my name down as a pagan." Our society has opened a school at Trois- sy, and placed there an evangelist. The place of worship is now shut, but from time to time our faithful friends go to Reims, thirty miles away. On Easter -day more than fifty went there to be received in the Church by the pastor of Reims, and to stand, for the first time, around the holy table. Now notice that, while in the Marne onr worship is prohibited, in the department of Nievre we meet with no opposition whatever. It depends very much on the good pleasure of theprtfets; but notice, at the same time, the spiritual progress is deeper w r here the difficulties are greater. What a subject for thanksgiving and encouragement ! In the De"partement de 1'Ain, a few years ago, there was only one minister of the Gos- pel and one Protestant school; now there are in that department eight faithful minis- ters, four schools, and ten Protestant libra- ries. One of those agents goes from fair to fair, selling or giving out New Testaments and Bibles, and holding open-air meetings at the same time. The part of that department located on the frontier of Geneva was formerly almost entirely Protestant, but, under the influence of Francois de Salle, the Protestants were persecuted and banished from the country. Now the seed which has been dormant in the ground for three centuries seems to burst out, and bring abundant and beautiful fruit. The same remark may bo made about the movement in La Nievre. Who has not heard of the numberless Protestants drowned in the Loire by the soldiers of Louis XIV. T Well, those terrible noyades took place in the very localities where now people become anxious to hear the Gospel. Well may we say: " God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform !" Oh, if wo could see again those glorious times when France gave to the world Cal- vin, Thdodoro de Beze, Coligny, Cavalier, and so many other witnesses of the truth ! But why should we not see such times again f Has the arm of God become shorten- ed ? Our duty is to labor faithfully, leaving to the Lord to appoint the time for gathering ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. fruit. Besides, we are not to expect France ' to be brought to light all of a sudden. No ; but the light will penetrate darkness, lit- tle by little, from one place to another; old churches will resuscitate ; they will bring forth young churches; and as the sun ad- vances, and covers new space with its rays, so will the Gospel gain ground until all know it. A remarkable resurrection of one of our old churches is that of Villefagnau, in the Charente. It was, in the time of the Refor- mation, a large and influential church. Lou- is XIV. sent his dragoons, who dragged the minister down from his pulpit, and left not one stone on the other of the temple. From that time until now the worship has been in the woods or in a barn. (I preached in that barn.) In 1864 the Sotieti Centrale placed an agent at Villefagnau, and, little by little, lie gathered together the scattered members of that small flock. Just now we are building a chapel in the very centre of the locality, and the Catholics themselves contribute to the erection of that edifice, as if to make amends for the ill treatment of their ancestors. To resume : Our society, that twenty years ago had 6 agents, employs now 107 ; our annual expense was then 30,000 francs, it is now 200,000 francs ; we had 4 schools, we have now 43; the number of our sta- tions exceeds 200. In order to supervise more efficiently and more minutely such an immense field of labor, wo have divided it into twelve sections, which are indicated on the map our society has published by differ- ent colors. Each section is administered by a special committee, and has its own treas- ury ; all the sectional committees report to the general committee in Paris : in one word, it is organized as a confederation. Such an extension of our field requires a large number of agents. Indeed, that is a great subject of anxiety for our churches; there are too few laborers. However, our so- ciety has to thank God for the able and de- voted men he provides for the work of evan- gelization. Our proselytes furnish it with a certain number ; at Estissac, for instance, a young man, formerly a Roman Catholic, and belonging to the wealthiest family of the place, has entered our theological school to prepare for the ministry. That school, which is sustained by the SocMte Centrale, is located in a large and appropriate building erected by our society, 103 Rue Nollet, Paris. It is under the direction of an eminent and learned clergyman, the Rev. J.de Visme. Al- ready one hundred and thirty-three young men have been prepared in our establish- ment for their higher course of studies. All except three are faithful and evangelical in life and doctrine, which fact is of great im- portance in the struggle we sustain against the Liberal party in our figlisc Reformde. A member of our deputation, the Rev. Mr. De- coppct, one of our eminent pastors in Paris, was a student in our theological seminary. It is easily perceived, by what has been said, that our field of labor in France is large. To-morrow it would be twice as large, if we could answer favorably to the applications which are under the consideration of the Committee. Oh ! let us scatter the good seed without sparing it. One of our great sources of en- couragement is the sympathy our work meets with on the part of our Christian friends abroad. How encouraging for us were the words of the Rev. E. W. Hitchcock, the able and devoted pastor of the American chapel in Paris, at our last general assembly ! "We gladly recognize in your society an agen- cy, divinely commissioned, to minister to the moral and religious necessities of the people ; to reach down to the fallen and lift them up to a better and holier life ; to give to the ig- norant the means of useful knowledge ; to emancipate the masses, on the one hand, from the meshes of infidelity, and on the other from the fetters of superstition and a corrupt faith; to erect her.e and there substantial light-houses to illumine the paths and direct the steps of benighted wanderers over life's desert ; in a word, to lay hold of the hearts and lives of men, instruct their ignorance, strengthen their faith, elevate their hopes, purify their morals, stimulate their zeal, sub- stitute for their blind propensities convic- tions of truth and right, and the principles of a pure Christianity. For the wisdom and zeal and success of your society in its benefi- cent mission, so clearly exhibited in the re- ports that have been read to-night, we both congratulate you and join you in thanksgiv- ing." Dear friends of America, these wishes, which the Rev. Mr. Hitchcock expresses on our behalf, are for you a joyful and sacred re- ality. What a favored country you dwell in ! For two years I have had the privilege of living with your ministers and your people. I have breathed your atmosphere of free- dom and prosperity, which the Gospel alono can procure. We French, and especially we Protestant French, love this your country ; we love your flag ; the stars Avhich shine in its folds seem to say, "Each State which composes this Union lives under the light of the Morning-star." May God prosper your churches, your in- stitutions, your Sunday-schools, your great and free country ! As for us, more than ever attached to you by the tie of historical rec- ollections and natural sympathy, we say to you, before returning home, " Finally, breth- ren, pray for us, that the Word of God may have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you." VI CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. Thursday, October Oth, 1873. DIVISION VL-CONTENTS, FIRST SECTION CHURCH AND STATE. PAG* 1. WOOLSEY: Civil Government and Religion in the United States.. 523 2. FREJIANTLE: The Church and the Nation 529 3. GIRDLESTOXE : Legislation on Moral Questions 535 4. HOPKINS : Sunday Legislation 540 5. CURRY: Evils of a Union of Church and State 544 6. ASTIE : The Free Churches of Europe 549 SECOND SECTION CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY. 1. CAMPBELL: Influence of Christianity on Civil and Religious Liberty 558 2. GOODWIN: Effects of Civil and Religious Liberty on Christianity. 562 THIRD SECTION MINISTERIAL SUPPORT. 1. HALL: Need of Liberal Support for the Gospel Ministry 567 2. KILLEN: Ministerial Support in the Irish Churches 571 3. JACOBUS : Support of the Christian Ministry 574 FIRST SECTION.-CHURCH AND STATE. THE RELATIONS OF CONSTITUTION AND GOVERN MENT IN THE UNITED STATES TO RELIGION. BY THE EEV. THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, D.D., LL.D., Lately President of Yale College, New Haven, Conn. THE subject on which I have been request- ed to prepare a paper for this meeting of the Evangelical Alliance is "The attitude of Constitution and Government in the United States toward Christianity." If these words were meant to include only the relations of the general Government toward Christianity, the answer would he short and easy. The Constitution of the United States is a writ- ten instrument conveying limited powers, among which is not included, either express- ly or by fair interpretation, the power either to establish or to support any form of religion whatever. In fact, the first of the amend- ments to the Constitution, which was pro- posed in 1789, expressly provides " that Con- gress shall make no law respecting an estab- lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Hence, while it is on other accounts certain that no laws of the United States could es- tablish or support religion ire any of the states, it is equally certain from this amendment that no such legislation in a territory, not yet made a state, would be constitutional. Con- gress could make laws touching marriage and divorce for a territory, but it could not for a state ; the control of the family rela- tions falls entirely within the province of the immediate state power, as far as those are concerned who are under its jurisdiction. And in the same way, no public Act of Con- gress touching religion would have any va- lidity within the borders of any one of the United States. Such being the nature of the Constitution, the few points where Christianity and the general Government not the Constitution come into contact, are of small importance. They are such as these : 1. The appointment of chaplains in the army and navy, in mili- tary and naval schools, and for the Houses of Congress. 2. The recognition of Sunday as a holiday for the Legislature and all em- ploye's in the civil service a usage which in pressing cases might be violated. 3. The power of the courts to consider on appeal contracts for any religious or eleemosynary purpose with which, it is alleged, the states may have interfered a power, be it re- marked, which relates to contracts for such purposes because they are contracts, and not because they are religious. 4. The power un- der the general control exercised over terri- tories which has been mentioned, of limiting the privileges of ecclesiastical together with other corporations. Thus, by an Act of 1862, corporations and associations for charitable or religious purposes are not allowed to ac- quire and hold real estate in any territory of greater value than fifty thousand dollars, and all such property acquired and held by such bodies after the passage of this Act are escheated to the United States. This stat- ute is of the nature of statutes of mortmain, and implies not a jealousy of religion, but of overgrown religious corporations. Thus the Constitution of the United States has, properly, nothing whatever to do with religion. If the people were Mohammedans under the same constitution, similar depart- ures in minor points from the principle of absolutely ignoring a particular religious faith would be possible. We pass over, now, to the attitude of the particular states toward the Christian re- ligion. Here a wide field opens before us, to explore which thoroughly would require far more time than can be allowed to papers presented to this Conference ; and, in fact, a very great abridgment of this paper, as originally written, has been found necessary. The subject may be looked at under these several points of view. We may ask, What were the earlier religious institutions and the feelings of the colonies before the Revolution t How the institutions and feelings were al- tered ? What is the spirit shoirn in the consti- tutions and laics of the states within the pres- ent century, and u-hat is the sober conviction of all denominations of Christians in the more recent times in regard to the relations of Church and State? I. All the earliest colonies with the excep- 524 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. tion of Maryland, where the establishment of the Catholic Church would have been il- legal according to English law, and of Rhode Island, where, first, equality of all Christian churches and faiths was a theory as well as a practice followed the mother country in regarding it to be the duty of the State to set up some form of Christian worship, and to recognize, nearly or remotely, some arti- cles of Christian faith. Such was the case in most of the Puritan colonies in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Ha- ven ; and also in Virginia, South Carolina, and New York, where the English Church was established. In New r York, the attempt to create an Establishment was made in 1693, at too late a day to produce much ef- fect. According to Chief Justice William Smith, the Dutch colonists belonging to the Church of Holland, and members of other denominations, numbered together fifteen to one Episcopalian. So that nowhere among the colonies was religious legislation so im- politic and so unreasonable. The Puritan colonies and Virginia supply ns with the results of a nearly similar ex- perience. They passed from the establish- ment of one exclusive form of Church order, through toleration, to the recognition of en- tire religious equality. The leading Puri- tan colonies, however, after conceding re- ligious freedom to all existing denomina- tions, halted for a long time at the point of requiring all to contribute, according to general rules of taxation, to the support of their respective forms of Church order. Vir- ginia passed, as if per saltum, from toleration to the voluntary system. In all these colonies the territory was di- vided into parishes, where the doctrine and discipline either of the Church of England, as in Virginia, cr of Congregationalism, as in the other colonies, was protected. Glebes were set apart in every parish of Virginia, and manses built. Things were left in the Puritan colonies more to the separate church- es. In all, at first, other sects were not en- dured. In Virginia, before 1643, certain min- isters from New England, sent for by some of the inhabitants, were remanded. In Massa- chusetts two of the early colonists were sent back to England, because they favored the worship of the Church of England. All the colonies agreed with the mother country in protecting Sunday by law ; at- tendance at church was required in Vir- ginia, and, if I mistake not, in New En- gland. Sectaries, especially Quakers, were frowned upon by the laws of all the colo- nies, and their assemblages for worship for- bidden. In Virginia baptism was so far com- pulsory that every person refusing to have his child baptized by a regular minister was amerced in two thousand pounds of tobacco. In two of the New England colonies in Massachusetts, and New Haven, until its un- ion with Connecticut in 1665 church mem- bers alone could be citizens with full power. In the colonies of New England, while the ministers were held in great respect, mar- riage was exclusively a civil ordinance until 1692 in Massachusetts, and until 1694 in Connecticut. Virginia being within the diocese of the Bishop of London, the Legislature of the colony had no independent ecclesiastical legislation ; it was otherwise in the New England colonies. Synods were called by advice of the general courts or assemblies the Legislatures, as we now call them. The Synod called in this way to meet at Say- brook, in Connecticut, in 1708, prepared a confession of faith and scheme of discipline, which was accepted by the Legislature as the legally enacted Church order in the colony. The Toleration Act of 1 William and Mary was binding in all parts of the dominions of England. Under, and after this Act, all sec- taries included within its provisions could have free worship. But toleration grew every where in the colonies as in the moth- er country ; and, finally, the actual equality in the social system of the colonies, as well as the principles of freedom, of which the Revolution was an outgrowth, carried the colonies beyond the old and more fixed habits of Old England. Thus, for example, in Connecticut, in 1727, four years after the first Episcopal church was founded, the laws were altered so as to exempt them from contributing to the reg- ular parish worship as well as to their own, and the same privilege was extended to the Baptists two years afterward. In Virginia Quakers were allowed to tes- tify on affirmation in the eighteenth cent- ury, and even acquired the right of A-oting for burgesses. Still, marriages could be cele- brated only according to the forms in the Prayer-book. The century was marked, here as every where, by increasing tolera- tion and increasing lukewarmuess toward the established churches. The important Act of 1776 abolished all past Acts which made religious opinions criminal, or made absence from church penal; it declared that to be compelled to support a Church contrary to conscientious convictions is unjust, and ordained that all Dissenters should be free and exempt from all taxes and impositions of any kind for the support of the Estab- lished Church. Another clause suspended the Act for supporting the clergy by parish lev- ies ; and in 1779 this ancient Act was repeal- ed. This was followed, the next year, by an Act dissolving all vestries, .and appointing overseers of the poor to discharge one of their functions. Thus the last cord was cut which tied religion to the State. As already said, the legislation in the New England colonies did not go quite as far, but WOOLSEY: CIVIL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION IN THE U. S. 525 made all denominations nearly equal by al- lowing every tax-payer to have his tax, so far as it went to the support of religion, go to the minister of his choice. II. Such was the progress of legislation and of public feeling influencing legislation in the principal colonies where there had been laws for the maintenance of religion. We are led to ask, next, What are the powers and what the spirit of the states in regard to religion ? The answer in regard to the powers of the states is simple and brief. They lost no power in this respect by the formation of the Constitution of the United States. They could have had religious establishments and laws sanctioning religion before ; some of them carried such laws and establishments over and beyond the Revolution ; they could have the same now. Nothing is altered in this respect on account of the institution of a general Government. A Catholic state, like Mexico and with a privileged clergy could be admitted into the Union to-morrow. It is true that quite a number of constitu- tions of states lay down in their provisions the widest possible religious freedom, and the most entire separation between Church and State. But the power that made such constitutions could unmake them, and set up others of an opposite character. The only restraint, outside of the popular will, in any given state, would be retaliatory legis- lation on the part of other states, and per- haps, in extreme cases, the Constitution of the Union would be amended to meet the dif- ficulty. But such a state of things as a return to the old feelings and institutions of the sev- enteenth and first part of the eighteenth cent- uries is hardly conceivable. It would be as great a wonder almost as a change in the order of nature. It might come when ranks of society and another form of government were introduced, but certainly not before. The feeling of the country is now, and for the last generation or two has been, that the true idea of government among us involves the entire and absolute separation of Church and State ; the complete liberty and exact equality of all denominations of Christians nay, of all religionists whether their views accord or not with the Scriptures ; the free- dom of all who wish to propagate any doc- trine or system of religion whatever; and the inexpediency as well as injustice of re- straining any one from publishing his opin- ions on any religious, moral, or political sub- ject whatever, so long as private rights are not violated. A man may inveigh openly, if he please, against this policy, and seek to change the convictions on which it is found- ed. But it can not be denied that such is the conviction of a vast mass of the thinking persons of the country. There are many who doubt whether we are religious, moral, and steady enough to bear our prosperity and our freedom. But probably there is almost no one, at least among Protestants, who would dream that we are to be saved by surrender- ing these convictions, especially by abandon- ing those which have a relation to religious liberty and equality. III. Such are the settled convictions of the country. If, now, one were to ask the re- ligious men of all Protestant denominations whether they would accept of State sup- port to religion, given in the least objec- tionable form that of a general tax, to be devoted in the ratio of numbers to all denom- inations, or even to all Protestant ones they would, I think, with one voice say no. This fixed sentiment of American Christians may, I think, be expressed under the following heads with fairness and exactness: 1. That if it were admitted that in some forms and conditions of society the Church might, without evil to itself, have a connec- tion with the State and I for one can make this admission without unwillingness the various forms of faith and worship in this country calling themselves Christian could never agree or consent to any relation ex- cepting one in which all would be equal. Nay, if any one of the Protestant sects could attain to the rank of a State religion, the voice in every other one of them would be, I am con- vinced, most decidedly against superiority over the rest, both as an evil in itself and as unjust toward them. Still further, not one of them would consent to have Romanism frowned upon by State law. 2. That the absolutely voluntary system best answers to our political system, and best secures the spread of religion in a coun- try ever enlarging itself like this. 3. That the evils of this system, such as competition of sects, increased sectarian spirit, proselyting, and encroachment upon one another's provinces, the weakness of new churches in new settlements conse- quent upon the number of sects, and the stiffness and narrowness of religious preju- dices engendered by religious rivalry while they are felt to be evils, and great ones are not to be compared with the impotence and deadness of which exclusive State churches are in danger. 4. That our system lays a great and salu- tary responsibility on Christian people for spreading the Gospel, and that much of the religious life of the nation expresses itself in this way. The power to act, the duty to act, the feeling that instant action is neces- sary, in order to preserve and extend Chris- tianity in a land, into which emigrants of all sorts and from all parts press, are mo- tives of immense power. 5. That no other but an absolutely volun- tary system is possible, because those who have no religion, and those who have sus- picion or dislike of even the remotest tie between it and the State, would utter such CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. complaints as to make it to be believed tbat their rights were injured. I have intended, in what has been said, to express the convictions of the great mass of thoughtful, religious men. It ought to be said, however, that these feelings have not always existed with equal strength since the days when full religious equality began. In the earlier parts of the century it was the opinion of many, in one or two of the old states, that the commonwealth ought bylaw to provide for the support of ministers, in such sort that all pastors of all sects in the towns could have their proportionate share in the taxes laid for that purpose. Dr. Dwight, President of Yale College, a wise and large-minded man, died in 1817, while an agitation was going on in Connecticut which destroyed in 1818 the last faint trace of State religion in that commonwealth. I can remember, as a boy, that he thought the foundations of religion were giving way, and in this feeling of his there were no elements of sectarianism mingled. So felt Dr. Lyman Beecher also, one of his scholars a hopeful, courageous, self-relying man. Of the crisis he writes, being then a pastor of an impor- tant church in that state: "It was as dark a day as ever I saw. The injury to the cause of Christ, as we then supposed, was irreparable. For several days I suffered what no tongue can tell for the best thing that ever happened to the churches. It cut the churches loose from dependence on State support. It threw them wholly on their own resources and on God. They say ministers have lost their influence : the fact is, they have gained. By voluntary efforts societies, missions, and revivals they exert a deeper influence than ever they could by queues and shoebuckles, and cocked hats and gold-head- ed canes." While it provokes a smile to think that so small a change as that from the parish laws then existing to perfect free- dom in supporting public worship should have awakened great alarms, we admire those strong religious convictions and ener- gies which very soon converted the appre- hended curse into a blessing. For that it was a blessing to religion all unite in believ- ing, and all facts show. IV. While thus religion is entirely di- vorced from the State, it is not altogether outside of law. Worship and Church or- ganizations need houses of worship that is, common property ; the minister must be sup- ported out of a fund or by a contribution, which is generally stipulated beforehand ; subsidiary religious institutions, such as cem- eteries and parish schools, may need special funds. Thus the rights of property and of contract, to which we may add that of pro- tection against disturbance of worship and others, come under the control of public laws. Again, there is a jealousy of large religious corporations, and of ministers as representing them, and thus another class of laws may be called forth. And, still again, the State may judge that certain truths of natural or re- vealed religion in their separate form, inde- pendently of any Church or ecclesiastical power, are necessary for the well-being of the civil community, and may ingraft them in some shape into its constitution. I shall devote a few words to each of these points, beginning with the last, and referring those who wish to look at them more at large to Dr. Joseph Thompson's " Church and State in the United States of America," published in Berlin, in the German language, a few months since, and more recently in English in this country. 1. While most of the states say nothing of religion even of what is called natural re- ligion in their constitutions, several with- hold civil office from atheists, from disbe- lievers in future rewards and punishments, and even from disbelievers in the Christian religion (Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and perhaps others). One, a few years since, disqualified Jews from holding civil office. But, if I am not in an error, every new revision obliter- ates all these old recognitions of religious truth from the constitutions, as being a dead letter, or as inconsistent with the political equality of persons against whom no crimi- nal charge can be brought. 2. In many constitutions a jealousy is shown of organized religious power ; and precautions are taken against the disturb- ance of religious equality. Sixteen consti- tutions, at least, declare in different forms of words that no preference shall be given to any religious establishment or mode of wor- ship. In others the Legislature is restrained from passing any law requiring or author- izing any religious society, or the people of any district, to levy any tax for the repair of any house of public worship or the sup- port of any Church or ministry. Others, again, forbid the Legislature to compel any one to attend, erect, or support any place of religious worship, or to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for the support of any minister of the Gospel. In one or two states no mon- ey can be constitutionally appropriated to any religious society, or theological or relig- ious seminary (Michigan, Wisconsin, Minne- sota). The constitutions of two states pro- vide that no gift or devise to any ecclesias- tical pei-son, as such, shall be valid (Mary- land, Missouri). So also one state limits the amount of real property which a church, parsonage, or burial-ground can hold to five acres. Again, the amount of income from real and personal property which the trus- tees of any religious corporation can acquire and hold is limited by an Act of the State of New York of 1813 to three thousand dollars per annum. A few exceptions were made to the operations of this Act in the Act itself; WOOLSEY: CIVIL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION IN THE U. S. 527 arid in 1863 a general exception was made in favor of Roman Catholic churches or con- gregations, excluding church buildings, par- sonages, schools with land for the same, and burying-places, from the provisions of the Act, hut otherwise conforming to the earlier law. It is probable that such limitations of the power of holding property will become ex- tensive through the states ; owing partly to jealousy of Roman Catholics, partly to a still less defensible jealousy of all religious or- ganized power, and partly to that regard for the right of family inheritance which has introduced the principle of the Roman quere- la inofficiosi testamenti into the Jegislation of France and Prussia. An unjust discrimination is made or was made in the earlier constitutions of ten states, all of them Southern, against clergy- men or ministers of the Gospel. They were incapacitated for serving in the Legislature, on the ground that such service calls them away from their proper duties. This dis- qualification, of old standing, received a sarcastic rebuke from Dr. Witherspoou, President of Nassau Hall. He suggested an amendment to the constitution of Geor- gia, that if the clergyman should be de- prived of- his clerical character by those who invested him with it, ou account, for instance, of cursing and swearing, drunkenness or uucleanuess, he should thereupon be fully restored to all the privi- leges of a free citizen, and become eligible to the Senate or House of Representatives, and be treated with all the respect due to his brethren, the other members of the assem- bly. Works, vol. iv., p. 423. With a few such, for the most part, not unreasonable restrictions, the states by their laws and courts protect the outward forms of religion. Churches or religious societies cau hold property, make contracts with min- isters, exercise discipline according to the rules of the denomination; in short, do every thing necessary for the purposes for which outward and associated religion is necessary, and for which it actually exists. In all this the courts protect, interpret, restrain, and do all acts which the nature of such corpora- tions requires. They will enforce the pay- ment of salaries, prevent the members of a Church, it may be, from transferring the Church property to another denomination ; protect the right of inflicting Church cen- sures according to the usages of the sect; recognize even the authority of Bishops or of Presbyteries within their spheres, and the like. It is unnecessary to enlarge here, al- though many interesting cases have come np, since the general theory of the relations of law and equity to cases that may arise in the affairs of religious bodies seems to be tolera- bly clear. V. Having looked briefly at the main points of our subject, we close with the inquiry whether the United States can be called a Christian nation. Cau a state or constitution be called a Christian one, which separates religious interests as far as possible from civil interests, although there may be a few vestiges of public respect for religion, such as chaplains of Legislatures, fasts, and thanks- givings appointed by public authority, re- ligious instruction in the army, navy, public prisons, hospitals, and the like ! Or, in other words, when a community believing that religion, in an independent sphere, becomes purer and more pervasive ; that perfect equality between denominations is the only just and peaceful policy ; that Christ's king- dom will grow and stand in its true quali- ties and in its power if unfettered by State laws provides for such an independent rela- tion between State and Church or Churches in its ground law or constitution, does the instrument of government, or the state thus created, give origin to an unchristian state ? Wo deny this. It is no more unchristian than an academy of science is unchristian with- out a creed, or a mercantile firm Avithout dai- ly prayers in the'counting-house. In what sense can this country then be called a Christian country ? In this sense cer- tainly, that the vast majority of the people believe in Christ and the Gospel, that Chris- tian influences are universal, that our civili- zation and intellectual culture are built ou that foundation, and that the institutions are so adjusted as, in the opinion of almost- all Christians, to furnish the best hope for spreading and carrying down to posterity our faith and our morality. But can Christianity be said to be in any sense the law of the land ? So Daniel Web- ster argued in the great Girard case (1844). He says, "General, tolerant Christianity, Christianity independent of sects and par- ties that Christianity to which the sword and the fagot are unkuoAvn is the law of tho laud." And lie refers to a judgment of tho highest court of Pennsylvania the state where the case had its seat that general Christianity is, and always has been, tho common law of that government, whether in its colonial or its state condition. And tho constitution of that commonwealth, framed in 1838, declares that no person, acknowl- edging the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments, shall be disqualified from office, thereby imply- ing that they who do thus deny may be dis- qualified. But we fail to see the cogency of the great advocate's argument. At the most, theism is sanctioned by constitutional provisions such as that which is cited. As for general, tolerant Christianity, it is protected in its outward expression or worship; its morality except in the matter of divorce, whero most of the states are exceedingly loose is 528 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. honored ; some few customs have mingled themselves up with public life; but how cau it be called the law of the laud f What points of contact arc there between the law and that abstract conception of Christianity which the great advocate speaks of, unless it may bo in the matter of laws against blasphemy, where they exist. If the people should all turn Mohammedans or Mormons, what material change would be needed in the laws, except in those relating to the marriage union aud to the division of estates? The true state- ment, then, MTIIIS to be that Christianity, being the religion of the mass of the people, its usages aud ideas can not be separated from legislation by a mathematical line; Sunday, for instance, must differ from other days in the eye of the law but the law has as little to do with Christianity and Chris- tianity with the law as possible. THE CHUECH AND THE NATION. BY THE KEY. W. H. FREMANTLE, M.A., LONDON. WHATEVER our convictions may be as to tbe relations of the Church and the civil power at the present moment in particular countries, I presume that it may be taken for granted that the Christian ideal blends all the functions of the redeemed humani- ty into one harmonious whole. I take the words used by the apostles of our Lord as expressing their ultimate hopes and ours : " The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of liis Christ," and, " To the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess ;" and I in- terpret these expressions as setting before us an ideal state in which all men will be united in spiritual obedience to our Lord, and the redeemed nations will be at peace under his dominion. In such a state of things, each separate nation must be a branch of the universal Church ; and its whole life must be at one with itself. Its organization for worship, or instruction, or the practical good of its members, must ex- press but the varying attitudes of the same body, moving under the same impulse. We are very far from this ideal ; but, if it is the Christian ideal, Christians must have it constantly before their minds, and steadi- ly work toward it. The object, therefore, of my address will be to point out what signs we may trace of an approach toward this ideal, and what is the pathway along which we may march to its realization. There are three assumptions which I will make, which support the hope of a national Christianity. 1. The first of these assumptions will probably seem overbold. It is that Chris- tian principle, so far from being, as some assume, in a waning condition, is gaining an empire tfver men's minds such as it never had before, and is about to assume far more fully than in past ages the direction of hu- man affairs. It is true that in the present day wo witness in many quarters a revolt from the theology of the past, and in some a revolt from theology altogether. But it is equally true that we very rarely witness moral skepticism. Many of those who can not accept Christian doctrines yet rule their lives by the essential Christian principle of self-renouncing love ; and the unconscious testimony which is thus borne to the sover- eignty of Christ by philosophers, by writers of fiction, by popular movements, can not 34 fail to strike us. And how much of the re- volt from theology and worship among seri- ous men is due to the wrong representations of these by Christians, especially to the end- less controversies into which they have fall- en, can hardly be estimated too highly. My conviction is, then, that Christian principle is destined to gain a much firmer hold as time goes on upon the minds and the life of men. This we must take as our basis in looking on to the future. We can do noth- ing without hope. Let Christians be very hopeful. 2. I notice a second fact. It is that every- where Christians are becoming ashamed of the sectarianism which has so long divided them. Never was the cry for union so wide- ly raised ; and never had it such a hold on the conscience of Christian men. It is, in- deed, considered dangerous to wish to break down the barriers which divide the churches from each other ; and it is sometimes thought a mark of strong religion to make a con- science of every peculiarity of the Church to which a man belongs. But what really makes men afraid of a full abandonment of sectarianism is this : they do not know where they ought to stop. They wish to sympathize with others, but do not know how far they can trust themselves. They get puzzled, and conclude that it is safest to stay within the old lines. Yet those lines do not correspond to any thing in the Christian conscience sufficiently deep to warrant their* perpetuation. There was a time, no doubt, when Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and In- dependents each considered their own meth- od of Church government to have the au- thority of revelation, and the others to be uuscriptural. But I suppose every one here is convinced that the Scriptures leave us quite free to govern the Church in the way most accordant to our convictions and cir- cumstances. And, though we have our pref- erences, we are not prepared to say that the system to which we belong is the only true system. Everywhere we meet with testi- monies of one Church to the benefits con- ferred by the sister churches, and those who thus speak would evidently have no conscientious repugnance, if circumstances pointed the way, to joining one of those other communions. This feeling is express- ed very frequently by the ministers; but among the laity, except in the case of some 530 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. few who are identified in a marked way with a particular organization, the differ- ence between one communion and another is hardly ever felt to be one of principle. Laymen usually choose their Church with reference to quite other considerations, mostly the suitability to them of the indi- vidual minister. The question then arises : Can separation from one another any longer be justified where conviction has reached this point? If separation is an evil in itself, if it leads to contention, and to a false representation of Christianity to the world, then to maintain separation needlessly and without a positive obligation of the conscience is to contradict the will of God. We must expect, then, that the tendency to union will increase. I may quote an emphatic testimony from the New Englamler (July, 1866; No. XCVL, pp. 498, 499), "To the principle that Christ's disciples in any one place are in fact, and ought to be in form and manifestation, one Catholic Church, instead of being (as they too often are) many sectarian churches." It is, indeed, vain to attempt any such manifestation of union unless the convictions of Christians favor it. But many things tend to the belief that men are becoming convinced that the stress laid on the separa- ting points is contradictory to the cardinal truth that we are saved only by faith in Christ, that they are therefore as injurious to truth as to love. And if actual union is for the present impossible, yet friendly intercourse is possible ; and through inter- course union may be approached. 3. A third tendency which I would signal- ize is the increasing importance attached to Christian morality, feeling, and life, and the waning importance of mere dogma. If this be put boldly it may give rise to fear, and well-grounded fear. But put it thus, that the tendency is to look at Christianity not as a system of opinions but as a life, and I hardly see how the fact can be disputed, nor how it can be reckoned as other than a good thing. It is not that dogma is to be given lip, and that it does not matter what a man thinks about God and Christ, about sin and salvation ; but that all the dogmas which have arisen concerning these must be viewed in connection with the central principle of life and love. The chief assertion concern- ing God is not the mode of his existence, but his essential nature of love. The chief as- sertion concerning Christ as the Son of God is not the assertion of a metaphysical rela- tion, but that he is the true image, the act- ual representative of the Divine Love. Sin comes to be seen, then, not abstractedly as guilt, but as selfishness; and salvation from sin not mere escape from condemnation, but as a life of love. If these things be held fast (and theology and literature are gradu- ally coming to recognize them), then all the assertions of the rival churches can be har- monized. The dogmas are not abrogated, but, instead of clashing in the realm of logic, they harmonize in a many-sided Christian life. Observe, then, how this makes for the na- tional aspect of Christianity. While relig- ion is looked upon as concerned mainly with abstract opinion, the general life of the na- tion will be left almost out of sight in our churches. But when it is found to be a matter which chiefly concerns conduct, then the whole national life comes distinctly with- in its purview. Add to this, that the expau- siveness of Christian love must make men more and more take interest in the general life, not alone in the special and private life; and you can not doubt that the tendency on which I am dwelling will make it every day more impossible to exclude public acts from our religious services, or the thought of re- ligion from all public occasions. The pulpit will speak more frequently of national inter- ests, and acts, and even of laws ; the legisla- tor will feel much more the influence of relig- ion, and take into account the bearing of his acts on the spiritual life of the people. Now, let us suppose these tendencies to go on increasing. The condition of things will be this : 1st. That Christianity is rec- ognized as a moral power, the function of which is to guide the whole life of the na- tion ; 2d. That the churches are seeking for j union on grounds of conscience ; 3d. That j their special doctrines are explained as dif- ferent aspects of truth, which are harmo- nized in the common life which they all are leading as members of one community. Must this not lead more and more, not to a mere union, but a fusion of the Church and the nation ? I am surprised at finding that this ques- tion is always discussed as if this fusion were impossible ; as if there must be two communities living in relation to each other, but separate ; and as if the only issue must be whether one should dominate the other or they should remain in isolation. This was not the view of our best writers in En- gland. The well-known passage in Hooker runs as follows : " Let it stand fftr our final conclusion that, in a free Christian state or kingdom, where one and the self-same people are the Church and the Commonwealth, God through Christ directing that people to see it, for good and weighty considerations, ex- pedient that their sovereign l6rd and gov- ernor in causes civil have also in ecclesias- tical affairs a supreme power ; forasmuch as the light of reason doth lead them into it, and against it God's own revealed law hath nothing; surely they do not, in submitting themselves thereunto, any other than a wise and religious people ought to do." It is well known that Burke, the great FREMANTLE : THE CHURCH AND THE NATION. 531 philosophical statesman, held the same view. He says (Works, vol. vi., p. 102, " Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians"), "An alli- ance between Church and State in a Chris- tian commonwealth is, in my opiuion, an idle and a fanciful speculation. An alli- ance is between two things that are in their nature distinct and independent, such as be- tween two sovereign states. But in a Chris- tian commonwealth, the Church and the State are one and the same thing, being different integral parts of the same whole. [For the Church has been always divided into two parts, the clergy and the laity ; of which the laity is as much an essential in- tegral part, and has as much its duties and privileges, as the clerical members ; and iu the rule, order, and government of the Church has its share.] Religion is so far, in my opin- ion, from being out of the province or the duty of a Christian magistrate, that it is, and it ought to be, the principal thing in his are." I need not say that Dr. Arnold, the great- est writer on these subjects in the present century, regarded the Church and the na- tion as identical. Yet I find that the only alternative ordi- narily put before us to the complete separa- tion of the two powers is a condition of things iu which -the State as an extraneous power interferes with the convictions of the Chris- tian community. The idea seems hardly ever to present itself to men's minds of a really popular church government, iu which, the liberties of all being guarded as efficient- ly as they are in the most democratic com- munities, the Christian society should gov- ern itself in civil and ecclesiastical matters alike. It is true that there are many things which a government is not fit to handle, and which are best left to private enter- prise. This statesmen in all constitutional countries have long ago come to recognize. The recognition ought to be carried into the sphere of religion, and applies there quite as much as in matters, say, of commerce or of benefit societies. When AVO deal with subjects such as those just named, we see that the government should interfere but little, but should regulate and foster their energy, and should distinctly frame its pol- icy for their advautage. But, when men ar- gue about Church and State, they say that either the State must impose penalties upon non-conformity, and tax men for the promo- tion of a religion which is not theirs, and elevate one religious system over others, and force articles of faith upon reluctant officers ; or else that it must declare a com- plete separation between the secular and the ecclesiastical spheres. Even De Tocqueville falls into this error. The idea never seems to have presented itself to his mind of a na- tional Church with democratic local self-gov- ernment. There is, when we reflect upon it, no rea- son at all why law should interfere with liberty in spiritual matters more than in those of ordinary government. It is evi- dently impossible, if such an agreement as I have contemplated should ever come to pass, that the law should not take cogni- zance of matters relating to public worship ; but it would do so under the full under- standing that it must not go beyond the bounds which guard the spiritual realm. It must allow as free play as possible to the action of local communities. It must nev- er interfere with the liberty of each man to worship God as he thinks right. It must not compel men to contribute toward ob- jects which they conscientiously disapprove. Above all, it must guard the right of every member of the community to influence the national policy in all matters alike. If it be said that under such a system as this Christian liberty would still be inter- fered with to this extent, that those who were unable to join with their brethren in the public worship agreed upon by the com- munity to which they belonged would be placed in an inferior position to others in public esteem, it must be answered that there is no organization in which large bod- ies of men can live together which is not open to the same objection. But it must be answered, also, that unlimited sectarian- ism leads to a much more serious breach of Christian liberty. When each sect takes up some portion of the kingdom of Christ and occupies it Avith a partial, one-sided system, and when that sect says to any of its members who long for a wider and fuller Christian life, " We can give you nothing but our own narrow terms, and any thing more you must seek elsewhere,'' it forces men either to leave their dearest associa- tions (and then where can they go ?) or to stunt their religious life (and then where is their liberty?). But a national system of Church government affords free room for all. it is the nearest thing on earth to the Jerusalem which is free, which is the moth- er of us all. The assumption is, indeed, sometimes made that the Church, or the organization for pub- lic worship, is a divine institution, while the State is an invention of men. But the truth is that in Scripture the authority of the ruler is spoken of more distinctly as an or- dinance of God than that of the teacher. "He is a minister of God to thee for good." And further, the Church is never a mere in- stitution for worship. It has government as one of its functions, and there are elders who rule as well as elders who teach. In many of the churches which attempted on the soil of America to organize themselves upon the model which they found in the New Testament, the force of this fact was so clearly seen that "ruling elders" wen- 532 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. considered necessary officers of a scriptural congregation. "Why have they gradually ceased T Because in a Christian community the only efficient discipline is that exercised by the Christian magistrate. The true rul- ing elders in our day are our statesmen, and judges, and officers, who bear the supremo mandate of the whole Christian community. Let me put this in another light. The Church what is it ? It is none of our hu- man organizations, but the family of the re- deemed gathered together "with their Lord. Our present organizations are tentative in- stitutions, in which we strive to realize some part of the true ideal, which comprehends man's whole nature. Now I maintain that our organizations for public worship are not themselves the Church, but partial ef- forts to realize the idea of the Church ; and I maintain the same thing of the great soci- ety of the Christian nation. When men are gathered together to worship God, to hear Christian teaching, or to partake of the Lord's Supper, I see in their gathering some attempt to realize their true relation to God as members of the redeemed family. When Christian men are met in Christ's name in the council-chamber or the court of justice to carry into practical effect the principles of Christian equity for the good of the whole of God's children, with whom the Father of all has bound them in the national bond, am I to say that is not the Church? I say, on the contrary, that it is, as much as the organizations for Christian worship, the Church of God. That is a church which tries to realize the true Christian life of the redeemed humanity. The Christian con- gregation is a church. The Christian fam- ily is a church. But, more truly than all the rest, the Christian nation is a church. But I shall be met, perhaps, by the objec- tion that a national religion, as soon as it comes to express itself at all in act, is lati- tudiuarian, and that men must bo admitted to a share in its worship and government who would not have been admitted iflto the primitive churches. I submit, in general, that the conditions of the question are alto- gether different from what they were when the Church was a small community in the midst of a vast heathen empire. We can not be as they were ; and the total absence of what is called church discipline is better than its exercise in the petty manner which alone is possible now. But, more particu- larly, I would observe that we must look for discipline to other means than those of formularies or of formal exclusions in the present day. In the first place, the laws of a Christian State would exclude the worst offenders they would have excluded the only person whose actual excommunication aud its grounds are recorded in the New Tes- tament, the incestuous man at Corinth. But, in the second place, the sound feeling of the community acting upon the consciences of its members must, in a national system, be much stronger than the discipline of a small private society. In a sectarian system, each sect is apt to bid against the others for mem- bers, and there is a strong temptation to de- base the standard; also, a large part of n man's life remains out of the purview of his Church ; and, if a man feels his position un- comfortable, he can go to some other sect, or remain untouched by them all. But in a condition of things in which the whole Christian sense and feeling of the communi- ty was brought to bear upon its members in all pails of their lives, the power of Chris- tian influence over the consciences of indi- viduals, even if not upheld by formal ex- clusion, would be exceedingly great. Of the list of evil men with whom St. Paul says Christians should not even eat, it might not necessarily and formally touch some whom more definite exclusions might reach ; but it would bear upon others, such as the covetous, the extortioners, the railers, where those exclusions are powerless. It is clear that the most impressive and attractive of all things is love. And if once it should be found that in religion love Avas strong enough to surmount the barriers of sects, the Church which would result from this would be the most attractive of all. We should have dif- ferent opinions still ; but they would be nat- ural differences, forming schools within the Church; modifying one another, not pre- tending to draw to themselves the whole life of the Church. They would not be, as now, the fictitious products of past centu- ries, embittered by the recollection of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, and founding the whole Christian life on special points of difference. A still great- er benefit, I think, would result from the whole nation being conscious that it was in all its acts moving as a branch of Christ's Church, feeling that in all public matters it was engaged not in satisfying the inter- ests of conflicting parties, but in providing . that Christian justice and love should reign among all sections of the community. Such a tone must react upon the character of the men who were put forward in public life ; and it must react also upon the life of indi- viduals, as I have already pointed out. As regards the Church catholic, made up of many nations, the relations of a national Christianity would be similar to those of a national policy in common life. We learn in matters of trade or constitutional liberty to set or to take an example from other na- tions, while we are independent of them ; and we acknowledge the solidarity of the whole human race while we know that our national life can not be made subject to that of others. And in matters of worship and Christian instruction it might be the same. We could look upon the Christians of other FREMANTLE : THE CHURCH AND THE NATION. 533 nations as members of the great Catholic Church, and could learn from the Christian- ity of other lands some of our most useful lessons, and impart similar lessons to them, while yet we should feel unhampered (which we hardly do at present). by the conduct of other countries, in adapting Christian insti- tutions to the needs of our own. And as regards the heathen, surely our national intercourse would gain very great- ly from a national system of religion. We should feel that from the first landing of any of our countrymen upon the shores of a heathen state, it was a matter of national concern that their dealings should be just and humane, that we could not endure the reproach of our citizens misrepresenting our Christian name to the heathen ; and we should forestall and prevent those deeds which have led at times to our arms being employed to sustain unchristian injustice. Christian missions Avould, as now, be con- ducted by voluntary agencies; but they would gain a readier access wheu they preached justice and love in public and pri- vate relations rather than the special dog- mas of sects ; and they could without com- promise of principle be fostered and upheld in their work by the government of a Chris- tian country. I do not like to close this paper without guarding against the reproach of vagueness by showing how their principles should af- fect the actual and existing life of the pres- ent Christian nations. Yet such a discus- sion would be far too long ; and I must bo contented with only a few remarks. I wish to point out that the mode in which national Christianity should work itself out must be different in different cases, accord- ing to the circumstances, the education, the traditions of each country. The ordinary question of Church Establishments is to mo a matter not of principle, but of Christian expediency. I was in favor of Disestablish- ment in Ireland, for the Episcopal Church Avas not national there, but am against it in England, where the Church may at least be made national. In America, where there are many large religious organizations, we can not think of any public provision of Christian worship and instruction except as a remote contingency. You have indeed your legislature opened with prayer; and prayer and the reading of Scripture in many of your common schools; and national fasts or thanksgivings enjoined by public procla- mation ; and laws for the observance of the Sabbath. It appears also from the accounts of village communities in some parts that there is an agreement in religion sufficient to unite the whole of the inhabitants under one pastor. I see also that efforts are made in some quarters to obtain a fuller recogni- tion of Christianity by the legislature, and a newspaper called the Christian Statesman, representing an association for this purpose, is published at Philadelphia. These symp- toms must grow for the present without our being able precisely to anticipate their issue. It is not, let us remember, so important to have a formal recognition of religion as that our public acts should bear the im- press of Christian justice and love. To- ward this, in growing unity, let all your churches strive. In the European States matters are very different. There we have the traditions of a national Christianity, which, though it has in the past been often carried into ef- fect in a way that has done violence to men's consciences, yet has been an effort to reach a true ideal. If in some cases the ef- fort must be given up, it is only because cir- cumstances do not admit of its realization. The ideal must still be maintained. I would point out, also, that in countries like Italy and Germany the legislative pow- er is not to be regarded as an extraneous body imposing its will upon the Church, but rather as the representative of the whole community, through which alone the laity can act. The legislation of Prince Bismarck, which concerns all the churches alike, has been, on the whole, approved by the laity even of the Roman Catholic Church ; and its tendency is to correct by the national pow- er, expressing the full sense of the Christian community, the influence of the really ex- traneous power, the Curia of Rome. This also was, I believe, the object of Cavour in Italy. When he spoke of a free Church in a free State, his meaning was that the Church should be free in the same sense as the State, by means of popular government within it- self. His successors have taken his words, but have interpreted them as implying that the whole spiritual life of the nation should be given over, tied and bound, to the nation's worst enemy. I plead that, if what I have urged as to the tendencies of religious thought be true, the sympathies of this Conference should not be thrown into the scale of the aboli- tion of national churches, but into that of their right direction ; that we should desire that they should be reformed, not destroyed. Let me point out how this is especially the; case with the Church of England. There the law proceeds on the assumption that every citizen is a member of the Church, and has free influence in determining its policy. If this were as fully carried out in matters relating to Christian worship and instruction as in the general goA~ernment of the country, I believe that we should soon be a long way forward in the path of unity. Unhappily, Avhile the State constitution has given more and more scope for free action, the Church constitution has remained what it was in the time of the Tudors, and the free action in religious matters has been forced 534 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. to go on without, instead of within. The reforms which I, in common with other Church reformers in England, advocate are these. We desire that in every parish a Church council should be elected by the free vote of the inhabitants, without the consent of which no changes should be made, and which should have the power, subject to the bishop's consent, to make any changes allowed by the general law. This being done, we desire that the general law should be progressively relaxed so as to leave as much power as possible to the free action of the local bodies, -who would then adapt the Church system to the -wants of the parish- ioners. We desire further that all restric- tions which tend to division among Chris- tians should be removed, such as that which prevents all but persons in holy orders of the Episcopal Church from preaching in the national pulpits, or the requirement of the prayer-book service and the ministrations of the parish incumbent at all funerals in the national grave-yards. We desire, fur- ther, that the endowments and boundaries of parishes should be re-arranged, so as to meet the altered wants of the population ; and that Church patronage should be placed in the hands of those who will exercise it solely in the interest of the people. By these means we believe that the great ad- vantage of a national Church may be main- tained without injustice, and the intelli- gence of all Christian people in the nation may be brought to bear upon the conduct of the national Church. We trust that thus the Church will truly express the Godward aspirations of its members, and train its children in active holiness ; and that it will become a model to all countries of national Christianity. We desire that each nation should be truly a Church of God, a place where every citizen may find his spiritual home, and the stimulus to constant efforts toward mutual justice ami love. LEGISLATION ON MORAL QUESTIONS. BY JAMES GIRDLESTONE, ESQ., OF LONDON, I THINK it a very great honor to be allow- ed to address you, among whom for the first time I now come, and from whom I have received much individual kindness. I know that, being a member of the National Church of England, my views can not wholly ac- cord with those that are generally predomi- nant in this country on ecclesiastical ques- tions. I am here, however, to ask, not for an established church, but for a religious state a very different article, one that I love, and that I believe every intelligent American loves. Legislation is law-making. The legisla- tion I deal with here is not the legislation of God, for that is his work, and it is finish- ed. It is human law-making that we are to study to-day. Not what set of men shall make laws that is immaterial, so long as the laws themselves are good. I am here to consider laws in their essence, not their technical details, but their substance as af- fecting morals, and morals are the founda- tions of society. The question is what laws shall be made by men for the gov- ernment of one another; what laws any State shall make for the government of all who are born or come within its geograph- ical area. And the State must be very ten- der in such matters, for every man who is found within the geographical area of any State is necessarily subject to the laws of that State, and the State that makes unjust laws is certain to find itself obstructing the individual in the performance of his duties, and depriving the individual of his rights. State laws, therefore, being of such impor- tance to those who come within their sphere, my object is to show how these laws must bo framed when they bear upon moral ques- tions. Moral questions are those which every- where and always affect all men, considered as creatures responsible to a Creator. So far as relates to a man's purely internal trans- actions, human legislation has no concern with these questions ; but when they relate to man considered relatively to his fellow- creatures, such subjects are fit for, and are necessary objects of, human legislation. The object of Divine legislation is to fa- cilitate the restoration of man to the like- ness of his Maker. - From the day of the fall of Adam all the race is fallen, and remains fallen, from the image of God, and now we all come into the world, not as Adam and Eve came, full grown and perfect, but sin- gularly weak and in need of help, and are to the end of life largely ignorant, and always selfish. For the protection of such a race from mutual injury and neglect, the pres- ence of a Divine law without the sanction of human penalties is insufficient, and it is necessary that man-made laws should be called in that shall have the sanction of human support and human penalties. Man is a social being, and the first social law laid upon man by his Creator is to in- crease and multiply. That involves socie- ty, and the social fabric has to be maintained by means of laws framed upon a moral ba- sis. Human laws aft'ecting moral questions touch subjects which come home to us in all relations of life subjects, therefore, upon which men have the strongest possible feel- ings. The principles involved in such laws are worthy of this International Conference. The art of making such laws is worthy of study by those who are, as you all are, call- ed to be heirs of a kingdom, an eternal king- dom. In morals no law can be made by man that can ever deprive me of my right to obey God, and, if I am forced to disobey God, my will has not done it, and the State has made a law that is no law. This raises the problem of to-day : How shall fallen man make just laws on moral subjects ? Every State needs a fixed standard of morals, by which the conduct of all, whether rulers or ruled, is to be tried, to know wheth- er it is right or whether it is wrong. There is not a little child in one of your schools that does not know that there is a wide difference between what is right and what is wrong. But then comes the question, what is the fixed standard by which morality is to be tried T The conscience is the moral eye by which we discern between what is right and wrong ; but the conscience of a fallen man needs an infallible standard by which to correct its work. A man builds a wall. If he build high, he can not build straight without some instrument to test his work. He uses the plummet, and by this instru- ment, which follows an infallible law, he 536 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. corrects the fallible eye, and his -work is well done. My moral work as a legislator is just the same ; I must not only test it by the eye, which is fallible, but by some stand- ard which is infallible ; and theu, if I keep up to my standard, my work can not fail. To carry public opinion, the common stand- ard of morals must be authoritative and rea- sonable ; and it must be a precise standard, adapted to make clear that which would otherwise be obscure. Now I find such a standard ready-made to hand, and I scarce- ly ever met a man who would not submit to it. It is the Bible. That is my standard, not the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, to which I belong. The Bible is the standard of religion and of morals by which a State is made sound in its morals, and by which the State is kept pure in its religion. It is not for the creature to say how he will act toward the Creator: it is for the Creator to tell the creature how to act ; and in the Bible the Creator does re- veal his will to his creatures. Every Church that professes to be Christian attests the Divine authority of the Bible. Many of you will assert that the Church of Rome does not like the Bible. But that Church witnesses to the inspiration of the Bible ; it is their book, as well as ours ; it is a stand- ard of morals with them as well as with us. But, you will say, the Jews do not assent to all the Bible teaches. Now, if there is a nation in the world to whom, un- der the Divine law, special honor is due from all, it is the Jews ; and if there is a nation for whom I feel a special regard al- most exceeding that which I feel for my own countrymen, it is for that race through whom I received the Bible, and from whom, according to the flesh, He came who is the Saviour of my soul. I shall urge nothing here that is not reasonably acceptable to the Jews, for though, as yet, they, generally speaking, deny the inspiration of the New Testament, they attest the Divine inspira- tion of the Old Testament, and I shall urge nothing here as moral save what is recog- nized, not only in the New Testament, but also in the law and the prophets. The Bi- ble is, therefore, the common standard for every Church that adores the God of the Bible. Then comes the rationalist, the man who does not accept the Bible as of Tiuiversal authority ; but the rationalist will not deny that the morality of the Bible is pure, and I will propound no proposition to which pure reason shall not be compelled to give assent before any jury of men honored in their own country. My jury shall not be taken from the United States, where the Bi- ble is known, but shall be a dozen men from any heathen city, and I warrant they will come to the conclusion that Bible morality is pure. Therefore, I claim the Bible as a standard of morals, already admitted by every Church, and to be admitted by every reasonable per- son. You say, " Your law interferes with liber- ty;" I reply. " My law does not." I claim the Bible itself for my law. I find it to be what it expressly claims to be, a perfect law of liberty. The object of Divine law is love, and the object of State legislation should be to secure to every man perfect liberty to fol- low out his duty in this life, as loving God and as loving man. State laws affecting moral questions must be gravely considered, and they must be pre- cise, giving a clear yes or an unhesitating no, and they must be well known. If you have got a good thing, take care and don't change it. Some legislatures are rushing into laws so fast and in such a headlong way that no one can follow their move- ments. I have heard it is so even here in the State of New York. Let moral legis- lation be done slowly. There should be no change in any law involving a moral ques- tion without my best vote recorded on it, nor with my consent unless I had a thorough understanding of it. Legislate distinctly. Take one moral point, for instance ; there should be no doubt whether a man and his wife are married or not. There is not one man or woman in this room who is not inter- ested in this question. It is a question which rises up in every clime and at every time. I say that legislation on sucb. a matter should be distinct and easily intelligible. Moreover, when you do make a law you should see that it is substantially obeyed. If you don't want it, don't make it ; and, if you have got any law and don't want it, repeal it ; but let it be a simple yea or nay, and finally, in moral matters pre-eminently let obedience be secured. Having laid down the principles upon which human legislation has necessarily to be conducted when morals are concerned, I shall try to apply very shortly these princi- ples to practical matters, pursuing here the Divine order of those Ten Commandments upon which God rested his covenant with his own people. And first, it seems to follow, from ad- mitting the Divine inspiration and pure morality of the Bible, that the book shall be recognized as a fixed standard of com- mon law, and pre-eminently that this shall be the case in regard to the Ten Command- ments. This accords with English law, both ancient and modern. I have read that the law in the United States differs from ours in England in that our laws are expressly founded, on the Bible, and yours are not. I stand upon the English rule, and, under cover of that rule, I find that practically I have in England liberty, so long as I don't interfere with the rights of my neighbor, to GIRDLESTONE : LEGISLATION ON MORAL QUESTIONS. 537 tbiuk, and to say, and to do what I please, and that is true liberty. The Statutes of King Alfred hegin thus : " The Lord spake these words to Moses." (Here follow the Ten Commandments, and sundry other laws from Moses, of a moral character.) The 49th clause proceeds thus : " These are the dooms which the Almighty God himself spake unto Moses, and com- manded him to keep ; and after the only- begotten Son of the Lord our God, that is, our Saviour Christ, came on earth, he said that he came not to break nor to forbid these commandments, but with all good to increase them ; and mercy and humility he taught." And Alfred's laws close thus : "I then, Alfred, King, gathered those to- gether and commanded many of those to be written which our forefathers held, those which to me seemed good ; and rejected the others. I then, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, shewed these to all my witan, and they then said that it seemed good to them all to be holdeu." These laws of King Alfred have never been repealed ; on the contrary, the Sover- eign of England only obtains the crown of England upon a solemn oath to maintain the laws of God and the ancient laws of the realm; and what is the result? King Al- fred came to the throne of England more than a thousand years ago, and his throne has been preserved for his children and greatly enlarged; and counting from him in direct line, King Alfred's lineal descend- ant of the thirty-first generation now fills King Alfred's throne. This descendant is Victoria, the Queen. That the Bible is the common law of En- gland appears from the various decisions of our law courts, some of them bearing date anterior to the Reformation. The follow- ing are instances : In the reign of Henry VI., "Ancient Scrip- ture is the Common Law on which all man- ner of laws are founded."* In the reign of Henry VII., " Every law is, or of right ought to be, according to the Law of God."t In the reign of Henry VIII., " The Law of God and the law of the laud are all oue."t And, " Our law is founded on the Law of God." In 1824 it was adjudged in the Court of King's Bench that " The Law of England is founded upon the Law of Nature and the Revealed Law of God. If the right sought to be enforced is inconsistent with either of these, the English Municipal Courts can not recognize it." In 1867 it was adjudged in the Court of * Year-book, 34 Henry VI., fol. 40. t Year-book, 4 Heury VII., fol. 5. t Year-book, 12 Henry VIII., fol. 2. Keilway's Reports, 8 Henry VIII. , fol. 191. Exchequer that "Christianity is part arid parcel of the law of the land."* This doctrine is, in the law-books, carried to its logical conclusion thus : " If any general custom were opposed to the Divine Law, or if any statute were pass- ed directly contrary thereto, as if it were enacted generally that no one should give alms to any object, in ever so necessitous a condition, such a custom or such an act would be void."t If you want your people to obey the Bi- ble, you must teach the book to the little ones ; what they get young they can not forget, and are likely to use for life ; what is not attained in youth is rarely learned in af- ter-life. Therefore, let the Bible be taught in the common schools, and fairly taught, that is, with a view to getting the meaning of the Divine words, not to force their mean- ing to suit the words of human formularies. And for this reason, as matters stand, I would at present have the Bible taught in the na- tional schools by laymen alone. And I may here remark incidentally that the mainte- nance of teachers who read out the Bible (the book common to all) is a very different op- eration from the concurrent endowment of rival teachings that are generally suspected to be false. The first and second of the Ten Command- ments would rarely be broken if bur chil- dren learned the Bible, and opportunity for keeping up acquaintance with the book were furnished to all. " How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard I" But if the Bible is taught truly, all hear of Him. And the promise is found to have vitality, "As soon as they hear of Me, they shall obey Me." In such a State there is little occa- sion for human sanction to the first two commandments. However that may be, it is clear that the State has no right to set up in the public schools, or elsewhere, the wor- ship of the goddess of Reason, or of Venus, or of her whose name I will not mention she is blessed, although, unfortunately, some men worship her. Nor has the State any right to set up idols, whether crucifixes or others, before which men are taught to bow the knee. If human laws do at all touch the question of idols, the Bible law is plain and uniform. I give one sample from Numbers xxxiii., 52: "Destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places." There is a Divine law to follow ; and no State can prosper in the breaking of that moral law. The third commandment primarily forbids any resort to the name of the God of truth to bolster Tip a lie. In practice human laws * 2 Barn. & Cress., p. 471, and Law Reports, Excheq- uer, vol. ii. t Broom's " Legal Maxims," 1S4S, p. 16, citing Doct. & Stnd., 18th ed., 15, 16 ; Noy. Max., 9th ed., p. 2 ; 2 Dwarr. Stats., 642, et seq. ; Finch's " Law," 75, 76. 538 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. deal with this offense, under the ninth com- mandment, as perjury. But there is another offense against the third commandment. Openly to assail the ears of others by blas- pheming God, or openly using ribald impre- cations of the Divine name, is an offense against society, and necessarily an object of restraint under just human laws. The fourth commandment secures the Sab- bath. By keeping one day in seven holy to himself, God has from the beginning of this world preserved the Sabbath-day for the working man. The State is clearly bound to preserve for me that rest which is my moral right. The fifth commandment is necessarily to be sanctioned by human legislation, for, if parental authority were not maintained, man would not undergo the cares involved in obeying the original command to increase and multiply and replenish the earth. The fifth is the first commandment with a bless- ing, and the Chinese, who notably obey this law, are notable possessors of the territorial blessing here promised. The sixth commandment preserves man's first right his life, and .this law must be maintained by the highest sanctions of State law. These must reach not only to the punishment of willful murder as ordina- rily understood, but also to the prevention, and, if needful, to the punishment of man- slaying such, for instance, as that of the sea-faring men which Mr. Plimsoll has lately brought to light and to the establishment of sanitary laws in general. I give an in- stance of the sanitary laws delivered by Moses. The Jews used to walk and sleep upon their flat roofs, aud battlements to the roofs were compulsory. We do not use flat roofs, and therefore need no law as to bat- tlements ; but the principle is clear that hu- man penalties must be relied upon to meet the special dangers of local cases, so that life may everywhere be preserved and pro- longed.* The seventh commandment touches the * The Divine law annexes the punishment of death to the crime of willful murder a law revealed to us in connection with the covenant with Noah, but that ap- pears to have been made known to the first genera- tions of men. This sentence is confirmed in the law given by Moses (Numb, xxxv., 31), where it is express- ly provided that satisfaction is not to be taken " for the life of a murderer." Some would have us abandon this punishment, pressing the Gospel claims of mer- cy ; but this seems inadmissible in the absence of any express repeal of the express law of God. And on the ground of mercy alone, who is to be benefited f Not society; that must and will protect itself, if not by the tardy process of law, then by swifter remedies of which the least objectionable would be a restoration of the personal office of the avenger of blood : nor even the criminal ; for he may never again have such an arousing call to wait upon the Divine Saviour as that which in England he receives from the judge who passes just sentence of death. The reason of this centence is found annexed to it: "In the imnge of God made he man." whole social fabric exactly at its base. The law which gives one wife to every man, and preserves one husband to every wife, is as old as the human family, aud is Divine. The institution of marriage is to be protect- ed and preserved in every case, and the au- thority of the man over his wife maintained intact. You smile, so I will give you an illus- tration from the law of Moses as stated in Numbers xxx. If a wife made a vow, and her husband on hearing of it disavowed it, she stood free ; but if he knew it and omitted a prompt disavowal, she was to be bound, and he was to bear her iniquity ; and the law was the same in the case of an unmarried daughter who lived with her fa- ther. The authority of the man was in each case upheld over the woman, and the man was held responsible ; and this is in the eternal nature of things, for man was made in the image of God, and woman was made in the image of man, and is responsible to him ; and this statement is quite consistent with the honor that I owe and show to my wife at home. Believing that breaking the seventh commandment is immoral, I think myself that adulterers, both male and fe- male, should go to prison. I say this only because bound to speak the truth on a sub- ject where many remain tongue-tied. Is prison the proper place to which to send criminals ? and are adulterers criminals f If so, they should be sent to a proper place. There is here a question of great moment. Ought the adulterers to be allowed to marry each other ? The law of England, I am sor- ry to say, permits such marriages ; but, ac- cording to the law of Moses, adulterers were to be killed. I do not ask the penalty of death, but I do ask that the marriage of the parties who have proved themselves incom- petent to keep the marriage contract may not be recognized by the law, and, moreover, that a proper punishment be meted out to them as criminals, a mere money fine being quite inadequate. Following the eighth commandment; the laws of the State must protect our property, or no one will care to till the ground and sub- due it. We must not steal any of the prop- erty that belongs to God. To take property that was held upon trustto provide the teach- ing of the Bible and hand it, as I consider was recently done in England, to those who with- hold the Bible from the people, is a case in point. The ninth commandment protects all our rights, our property, character, and even our lives, from the injury that is done by false statements, whether under the sanction of an oath or otherwise. The laws relative to libel and perjury come in here, by which a man gets pecuniary redress for his personal loss, and, when needful, society avenges it- self upon the false witness punishing him as a criminal. GIRDLESTONE : LEGISLATION ON MORAL QUESTIONS. 539 The tenth commandment deals with mere motives, and so, at last, does the law of man, in this sense, that although an accusation under h-uman law can only reach to what is overt, yet willful malice is of the essence of any criminal charge. Such, in my view, are the principles upon which every State can safely stand, and which no State can safely withstand, when legislating upon moral questions. If any now remark, You have relied upon the law of Moses alone, and not upon the Gospel, my answer is that the principles of moral gov- ernment laid down in the law of Moses hind civil governors everywhere and al- ways. Christ "came not to destroy the law ;" and the canon of the Old Testament closes with the injunction, " Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I com- manded unto him in Horeh for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments" (Mai. iv., 4). Finally, let me commend to your most careful attention the words of one who was a musician and a poet, who filled many posts from shepherd-boy to king, and who sinned fearfully, but afterward sincerely re- pented. He four times claims to be inspired of God in this, his final utterance : " Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, Ho that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God ; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure : for this is all my salva- tion, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. But the sons of Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they can not bo taken with hands : but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear ; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place" (2 Samuel xxiii., 1-7). Here is the divine pattern of the legis- lator and magistrate, the exercise of whose authority occasions universal rejoicing. He is just and fears God, and he seeks to over- whelm the wicked and to uphold the good. SUNDAY LEGISLATION. THE SABBATH MADE FOR MAN HIS CONSEQUENT RIGHT TO LEGISLATION FOR SERVING ITS ENDS. BY THE REV. MARK HOPKINS, D.D., WILLIAMSTOWX, MASSACHUSETTS, , Lately President of Williams College. IF wo would know the ground on which we have a right to the protection of the civil law in the enjoyment of the Sabbath, we must know the ground on which we have a right to such protection at all. For the idea of rights, or of a right, we go back to our primitive constitution. Under all circumstances man has a right to what- ever may be necessary to the attainment of his end as that end is indicated by his whole nature, that is, by his necessities, his active principles, and his capacities. Accordingly, there are rights that corre- spond to each of these ; and they are higher or lower, more or less sacred as these ne- cessities, and active principles, and capaci- ties are higher or lower, more or less sa- cred. If man has a necessity for food, or air, or light, then, iiuder the conditions or- dained by God, he has a right to them. If man has constitutionally as active princi- ples the desires of property and of power, then, under the conditions ordained by God, lie has a right to property and power. Or, if man has the capacity of love or of en- joyment, whether of a higher or a lower kind, then, under the conditions ordained by God, he has a right to the objects of such love and the means of such enjoyment. In each of the above cases it will be found that the conditions ordained by God resolve them- selves into simply a non-interference with the rights of others, or with a higher good. That the account of rights now given is correct, any one who will observe the phe- nomena may satisfy himself. In virtue of our moral constitution on apprehending the relation between our necessities and the ineaus of supplying them, between our act- ive principles and their objects, between our capacities and the means of meeting them, if any one would thwart the evident intention of God in regard to these, we im- mediately and necessarily have the idea of a right, or of rights, and this idea becomes one of the deepest and most controlling forces in the mind. Rights having been thus originated and recognized, it is the great object of civil society to protect them. How far govern- ments may go in promoting directly and positively human welfare it may be difficult to say ; but the protection of rights is so far their object that it may be questioned wheth- er they would be needed or would exist but for that. With nothing to guard against but the mistakes of ignorance, with no wrongs to fear or to redress, and no crimes to punish, with each individual governing himself by the law of love or being govern- ed in accordance with it, all necessities would be so supplied, each active principle would so find its proper object and scope, and ev- ery capacity would be so met, that little would seem to remain that might not be best done by voluntary associations for the pro- motion of objects requiring combined effort. But be this as it may, it is conceded by all that the great object of civil government should be, and is, the protection of rights. With this view of the ground of rights and of the object of government, we proceed to inquire whether the Sabbath holds such a relation to the necessities, or the active principles, or the capacities of man to ei- ther or to all of them that he has a nat- ural right to the protection of civil society in its enjoyment. Our position is that it does hold such a relation, and that the Sab- bath may be fairly placed in this respect on the same basis with the family and with property. In saying this, it may be supposed by some that we disregard the proper basis of the Sabbath as resting on divine authority, and its proper nature as a positive institution. Originally the Sabbath did rest wholly on authority. It must have rested on that, since the division of time it establishes is not a natural division. It corresponds with no period of the heavenly bodies, and with no changes -of the seasons. If man had been developed from an ape, such a division of time would have been impossible. By no law of association could it have been sug- gested to him, and it could have been aped from no one else. In any case, indeed, this division of time must have rested not only on authority, but on dirine authority, since the reason assigned for it has no relation to any thing done by man ; since no human au- thority could be competent thus to separate HOPKINS : SUNDAY LEGISLATION. 541 a, portion of undistinguished time ; and since the keeping of a portion of time holy is not an object in which any human government ever took the least interest, or which it would be possible for it to enforce. A pe- riod of rest human governments might en- force; but the conception of an undistin- guished and often-recurring portion of time, to be set apart by authority and to be kept as holy, could have originated only with God. Originating thus wholly by authority, the Sabbath must have been received originally, both as to the division of time and the man- ner of its observance, wholly as a positive institution. So it was received generally under the Old Testament, and so it is re- ceived by many now. But under Christianity all this is changed. The single saying of our Saviour that " The Sabbath was made for man " puts both the institution itself as originally given and the mode of its observance on a new basis as they are related to our minds. It gives us the reason for the command, and so the prin- ciple for tbe regulation of its observance. The Sabbath ceases to stand before us as a positive institution merely, but bases its claims upon its bearing upon human wel- fare. It is implied in the words of Christ that, if the.day itself rightly observed would not promote the well-being of man, then it is to be abrogated, and that there is to be nothing in the mode of its observance that is not subservient to the same end. But while this is true, it is also true that Christ said no word tending to abrogate the law of the Sabbath. On the contrary, his words imply, or rather directly affirm, that the Sabbath is for the race for man as man and so of universal and perpetual obliga- tion. What he did was to give ns a prin- ciple for the interpretation and application of the law, limited in its flexibility only by the end of the law. Ho gave us a principle instead of a rule. In this view of it the law of the Sabbath is for man, just as the law of the family or of property is; and, if the fourth commandment is to hold its place with the others, it must do it as regulating, as each of the others do, one of the great elements and relations that are essential to human well- being. And this is precisely what we say it does. The fourth commandment is God's statute iu regard to the element of time, as the fifth is in regard to the family, the sixth in re- gard to life, the seventh in regard to purity, the eighth in regard to property, and the ninth in regard to truth. Let these ele- ments be rightly adjusted, and give us in connection with them the worship of God and freedom from a covetous disposition, which are provided for in the other four commandments, and we say that wo have every thing required for the best condition of the individual and of society. " The law of the Lord is perfect." Nothing can be omitted ; nothing need be added. Of the commandments just specified as bearing on relative duties, if we except the fourth, it is conceded by all that each re- spects an element of human well-being that is universal, and that involves rights that require legal enactment and protection. Does the commandment recognize and reg- ulate the family! So does the civil law. Dees the commandment say, " Thou shalt not kill ?" So does the law. Does the com- mandment say, " Thou shalt not commit adultery ?" So does the law. Does the com- mandment say, " Thou shalt not steal ?" So does the law. Does the commandment say, "Thou shalt not bear false witness I" So does the law. In connection with each of these commandments the individual has rights that need to be, and are, secured by the civil law, and what we affirm is that the fourth commandment takes its place with the rest, and stands, in this regard, on pre- cisely the same basis. That the law, " Thou shalt not steal," is for the race, no one doubts, because the rea- son for it is universal. Property and the mode of its distribution are elements related to human well-being everywhere ; and the laws on our statute-books against stealing are not there simply, or perhaps at all, be- cause stealing is forbidden in the Decalogue, but because we can see for ourselves that it violates a natural right aud must be injuri- ous to society. But time is an element more universal than property ; and how extensive- ly the mode of its division aud employment enters into all that pertains to human well- being few of us realize. Its relations to that are even more intimate and pervasive than those of property. Of both property and time God is the Lord paramount. The eighth commandment is the statute of God to regulate by its spirit for the good of man, and for that only, the distribution and man- agement of that property which belongs to him. In the same way the fourth command- ment is the statute of God to regulate for the good of man, and for that only, the divi- sion and employment of that time which be- longs to him. What the effect upon the race would be if the fourth commandment were obeyed in full, that is, in its law of labor for six days, as well as of rest for the seventh, can bo known only by trial. My own conviction is that this would give a division and em- ployment of time in exact accordance with the demands of the constitution of man in his present state, whether as needing alter- nate activity and rest, or a diversity of em- ployment for his various faculties ; aud that if all men would work six days, and spend the seventh iu holy rest, the ideal point in regard to the division and employment of time would be reached. 542 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. And if this be so, we see the folly of those ultra-evangelicals who think they find free- dom iu destroying the law of the Sabbath. No law not merely ceremonial and form- al, no good law whoso force is in the rea- son of it, cau be destroyed in the interest of freedom ; for, if it be a good law, the ben- efits of it can bo had only through obedi- ence, and the abrogation of a law conferring benefits is either a mistake or sheer license. The simple question is, Is there a reason in the nature of man as it is related to the di- vision and employment of time both for the setting apart of six days of labor with spe- cial reference to the interests of this life, and of one day in seven as a day of holy rest with special reference to the interests that lie beyond ? In reference to this, the propositions which wo lay down are, first, That the nature cf man, whether as 2)hysical, intellectual, or spir- itual, whether as individual or social, is so pre- conformed to that division and employment of time which the Sabbath contemplates, that the best results for the individual, or for society, can be reached only through that. And, second, That, iu connection with this division and employment of time, there are rights which may properly be, and ought to be, secured by legislation. First, then, there is what may be called the physical Sabbath. For man, physically, there must be a division and employment of time, as there is of food and exercise, that will work out the best results. The divis- ion required, we might suppose, would be the natural division into day and night. It is so in part; but we here find a beautiful and striking proof of the Sabbath as from God, iu that, as related to man physically, it is based on a natural law that man could not have originally known, and probably would never have discovered. All moral law that relates to physical good presup- poses natural law, and must be framed with reference to it, and that the law of the Sab- bath is so framed we can now see. It is now known that the ordinary rest of sleep does not suffice for the constitution. It is ascertained by adequate induction, through observations and experiments care- fully made and long continued, that both men and animals will have better health, and live longer ; will do more work, and do it bet- ter, if they rest one day in seven, than if they work continuously. If this be so, and it is now unquestioned, then all those who would otherwise be compelled to labor will have a right to the rest which their constitution requires on the same ground on which they have a right to sufficient sleep, and, if need be, they will have a right to the interpo- sition of law to give them that rest. This is a point iu which the laboring classes have a deep interest. They have a right to that amount of time for rest and recuperation which is required for the full health and vigor of their constitutions, and those who employ them, and on whom they may be dependent, have no right to make such arrangements for pleasure or for busi- ness as will deprive them of that time. The time belongs to God. By natural law, as well as by express statute, he gives it to them, and they can not be deprived of it without injury to themselves, and wrong on the part of others. The blessing physically of the weekly Sabbath to the toiling mill- ions of Christendom no man can estimate, and, if any one would seek to wrest it from them, there would be an imperative call for legislation to secure them their right. But on the right to legislate respecting the division and employment of time in fa- vor of those who labor we need not dwell, at least in this country. Those who call so loudly for a law limiting labor to ten, and even to eight, hours a day will not question the right to legislate when the limitation is called for by a natural law. The Sabbath exists now by the common as well as by statute law a great provision of God in fa- vor of the laboring classes ; but it is so much a matter of course that wo often fail to think of it as by law at all. In its relation to the intellect, the Sab- bath is a provision wholly unique. There is nothing like it, or approaching it, under any other system. Iu looking at it in this aspect we must judge of it, as we must of all the provisions made by God, not by its perversions actual or possible, but by its tend- ency and results when honestly used for the ends for which it was given. By those who would keep the people in ignorance and consequent subjection, the Sabbath has been perverted into a day of mummeries, and parades, and frivolities ; but, while it is needed as a day of rest for those who toil intellectually, one great end of it is the in- struction of the people, and the whole peo- ple, not in science or general education, but on all subjects pertaining to moral and re- ligious conduct. Let a people be well en- lightened in these, and enlightenment on other subjects will be sure to come. On these they must be enlightened, if they are to be free ; and whatever conditions for such enlightenment it may be necessary to provide by legislation it will be proper for it to provide. But the Sabbath is for man chiefly as it is related to his spiritual and social nature. It is in the relation of the Sabbath to these, in connection with the Bible as a book requir- ing study, that we find the highest proof of that supreme wisdom that everywhere sets one thing over against another. These are man's highest endowments; it is through them that he has his most sacred rights ; and, if the Sabbath fail to elevate him in respect to these, its great end is lost. The spiritual HOPKINS : SUNDAY LEGISLATION. 543 and social nature I mention together, be- cause, though they may be cultivated apart in some measure, yet they naturally go to- gether, and can reach, their highest forms only in combination. It is here, in the so- cial affections in combination with moral purity and with worship ; in the union of men to each other through their union with God, that we find the true goal of humanity. Without these as its underlying elements society can not reach its highest state here, and in these will consist its perfection here- after. But, if it was the purpose of God to educate and elevate the race spiritually and socially, it would be necessary that they should be brought together at frequent and stated intervals with reference to this, and we do not see how it would have been pos- sible for him to secure these ends except by some such arrangement as the Sabbath. Left to themselves, mankind would never have come together for religious worship statedly, or in such a way as to cultivate the higher devotional feelings and social af- fections. With no regular return of hal- lowed days, or opportunity to cultivate so- cially the devout affections, the true wor- ship of God would soon be lost, and the re- ligious nature would become a means of degradation through some form of idolatry or superstition. But what relation, it may be asked, has legislation to these ends? None directly. It is not the province of legislation to en- force the observance of the Sabbath in its aspect toward God, or to make men either moral or religious. Men can not be made religious by legislation. It is only the civil Sabbath that can be thus enforced ; and by the civil Sabbath we mean a day made non- legal, in which public business shall be sus- pended, and in which labor and recreation shall be so far restrained that the ends of a religious Sabbath may be secured by those who wish it. To this it is that we say that the community has a natural right, and if this can be secured only by legislation, then the community and every man in it has a natural right to that legislation. From this discussion it appears that the Sabbath is not, as some seem to suppose, an arbitrary institution, or one slightly con- nected with the other arrangements of God for the elevation and well-being of man. Like the air, and the light, and the water, in the simplicity and yet variety of its ap- plications and uses, it bears the evident im- press of the hand of God. Kept as God com- manded, it would improve the individual man physically, intellectually, morally. It would unite man to man, and all men to God. Surely, whatever he may intend, ho who fights agaiustthe Sabbath, fights against the best interests of society ; and as society, no less than the individual, has a natural right to whatever is necessary to secure its ends, it has a right to the civil Sabbath, and to any legislation that may be necessa- ry to secure those benefits connected with it on which its own well-being depends. I close by presenting, in a form convenient for discussion, the propositions which I have endeavored to establish. They are : 1. That man has a right to whatever is necessary for the attainment of his end, as that end is indicated by his necessities, his active principles, and his capacities. 2. That the chief end of legislation is tho protection of rights. 3. That under Christianity we are to test the Sabbath by its relation to human well- being, and to use it for that end. 4. That the fourth commandment is God's statute in regard to the great element of time, its division and employment; and that these have a relation to the well-being of society even more intimate than that of property. 5. That the human constitution and the constitution of society is so preconformed to that division and employment of time which the Sabbath contemplates, that neither tho end of the individual nor of society can bo fully reached except through that. 6. That hence man has rights in connec- tion with the fourth commandment, as in con- nection with the others that relate to rela- tive duties, and that these rights ought to be protected by law on the same ground. 7. That it is not the province of legisla- tion to enforce the fourth commandment in its Godward aspect, or to promote religion directly, but simply to protect men in their rights under a great provision made by God for their well-being. EVILS OF A UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE. BY THE Hox. J. L. M. CURRY, L.L.D., RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. THE subject assigned to me is tho expedi- ency or rightfulness of alliance between the civil and ecclesiastical power. Without aiming at strict verbal accuracy, the ques- tion may be variously stated. Is an " Es- tablishment" proper? Can civil govern- ment rightfully interfere with liberty of conscience ? Has uot every rational being au inalienable right to worship God, free from molestation ? Has government a right to discriminate among religions, as Mr. Glad- stone phrases it, " to choose the national re- ligion ?" Should religious congregations re- ceive the salaries of pastors from the State, and be consequently placed under its super- intendence ? It ought to be premised that liberty is not unrestrained license, nor social anarchy, nor to be used " for a veil of wickedness." Lib- erty implies restraints and limitations, and exists where each person is guaranteed the full exercise of his faculties and rights so long as and provided that he does not inter- fere with a like full exercise on the part of others. "Sic utere tuo ut non alienum laedas." In the assertion of the rights of conscience, the peace or the existence of society is not to be disturbed. The legitimate authority of the magistrate is not to be impinged. Lib- erty does not license crimes against proper- ty, or society, or government, or individuals. This freedom of conscience, this right and prerogative of man, is sacred. It is correla- tive with obligation on the part of others. To disregard or interfere with this right is to be false to duty, to violate a sacred thing. Christianity has been often allied with civil government. Since the third century of the Christian era, such a connection has been, outside of the United States, the in- variable rule in Europe and America. Such a policy was induced, in part, by the fact that under the old Covenant a theocracy existed, and the civil government was insti- tuted, in large degree, to maintain and fos- ter religion. Civil rulers, for self-aggran- dizement, subordinated Christianity, or rath- er ecclesiastical organizations, to their cor- rupt purposes. Good but deluded men thought it a duty to foster by political sup- port the Christian religion; When the pa- pal hierarchy became predominant, it subsi- dized the civil power and held it in vassal- age. The Reformation, which, in some re- spects, was a protest rather than a reform, by a fatal blunder, copied, with some modi- fications, this wrong of Popery. Protestant governments, to resist papacy and promote the reformed religion, took religion nnder their fostering care. Kings and emperors and dukes claimed to bo the head of the Church in their dominions, were recognized as such, and exercised some of the power that had been withdrawn from the Pope. In England, the Oath of Supremacy, required of persons taking office, distinctly and form- ally asserted the right of the sovereign to be the head of the Church. The government claims the right of legislating for the nation- al Church, and the Parliament is as supreme over the Church as over property and life. When Church and State are united, the State practically assumes infallibility, arro- gates the capability and the right to sit in judgment upon creeds, and to determine what is a Church, what is the Church, what is true, and what is false religion. An es- tablishment prefers one denomination to an- other, and throws the weight, authority, pow- er, and influence of the government in favor of a particular sect of religionists. From among several denominations, government selects one to receive its discriminating fa- vor. It takes this denomination into part- nership, establishes it, patronizes it, supports by special laws, public property, exclusive privileges, gives it power as such State Church in the State, and sometimes uses civ- il officers to enforce ecclesiastical discipline. The government thus places nearer the sov- ereign power the man or the woman who professes a particular creed. Such a one becomes a member of a privileged fraterni- ty, and by a sovereign digito monstrari is held up sis a more proper person than his less fa- vored fellow. Ex cathedra, his orthodoxy is certified, and he stands before the communi- ty with the imprimatur of the powers that be. Separation of Church and State is tho re- moval of all political restraints and political supports from a Christian denomination. It means religious equality of citizenship, not the placing above nor below, but on a plat- form of perfect equality. It is the procla- mation that a citizen shall not be favored or prejudiced in property, reputation, social or official position, or in any right or privi- lege whatsoever, in consequence of his relig- ion. Divorce of Church and State is an as- sertion of the wrong of civil interference in matters of worship and an unmistakable CURRY: EVILS OF A UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 545 declaration that it is better for the govern- ment and better for religion to " render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." The distinction between what is civil and what is religious may be made sufficiently clear for all practical purposes. What is civil belongs to the province of the civil government solely. What is religious is, from grounds of expediency, as well as nec- essarily from its character, outside of civil control. Religion rests between God and the conscience, and the kingdoms of this world have no right nor competency to pre- scribe or control it. The people of the United States in Feder- al and State governments deny the jurisdic- tion of the magistrate in matters of relig- ion, and enjoy "the distinction and the blessedness" of an entire separation, organ- ically, of Church and State. Religion is neither fettered nor endowed. The Federal Constitution, in Article VI., Section 3, de- clares that no ll religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." When the projet of the Convention of 1787 was sub- mitted to the States for their separate rati- fication, three of them proposed additional guarantees- of freedom of conscience. In def- erence to this jealousy of interference with the most sacred personal right, the first amendment of the Constitution provides that " Congress shall make no law respect- ing an establishment of religion, or prohibit- ing the free exercise thereof." These arti- cles exclude the Federal Government from any administration of religion, and from all power to act on the subject. All the State constitutions are alike emphatic in the as- sertion of absolute religious liberty. This American contribution to the science of poli- tics did not spring from indifference or op- position to the Christian religion. It pro- ceeded, to quote Judge Story, " from a sol- emn consciousness of the dangers from ec- clesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects." It was incorporated into our organic laws in the in- terest and as promotive of pure spiritual re- ligion. " To this consideration," said Gen- eral Washington, "we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulations respecting relig- ion from the Magna Charta of our country." Liberty of worship was not regarded by the framers of our Government as derivative from civil power, nor as a concession or boon of political generosity, but as " a right inher- ent in the personality of the individual con- science." Government is a political organ- ism, and it is of the essence of American lib- erty that the government should bo entirely separate from churches and religious denomi- nations. The separation is no longer an ex- periment. It has the approval of every evan- gelical denomination and of every political 35 party. The different denominations are gen- erally prosperous, enterprising, and widely influential. Ministers, in the aggregate, are as well supported as elsewhere. Churches are as numerous and as efficient. Christian activity is as intelligent. Sunday-schools are as numerous and as well conducted. Benefactions for Bible publication and dis- tribution, for missions, church buildings, education for all benevolence are as lib- eral. The people of the United States are as well supplied with the means of religion as any like population in the world. Church accommodations are as ample and as well distributed. Infidelity and heresy have as few perverts. This success of the voluntary system, amply substantiated by the census, has been accomplished in spite of disadvan- tages, and yet equals what has been done for the Christian religion in countries where millions are expended to uphold establish- ments that have existed for centuries. Voluntaryism finds corroboration in coun- tries where an establishment is alleviated by toleration. A comparison of Dissenters with the favored sect can be made without prejudice to the argument of the inexpedi- ency of the reliance upon State favor. The non-conforming churches are not generally inferior in purity of doctrine, unity of faith, harmony of purpose, strictness of discipline, or consistency of conduct, to the endowed church. Bible and Mission and Tract So- cieties are as well sustained by Dissenters proportionately as by Churchmen. The poor and destitute are often compelled to rely upon Dissenters for religions instruction and public worship. It would be uncandid not to concede that State patronage has insured superior cul- ture to a portion of the ministry, and has given to the world profound scholars and eminent preachers. In spite of this admis- sion, I must advance a step and place the opposition to union oil grounds more im- pregnable than mere inexpediency or unne- cessity. It is wrong in principle and inju- rious in practical operation. 1. It is an injury to the State. When governments undertake impossibilities, they frequently do intolerable grievances or bring themselves into contempt. Governments have no jurisdiction over the conscience. This is extra-territorial. Governments can not afford to lose the sympathy or encount- er the just prejudice of the governed, or to do palpable injustice. An establishment fos- ters notions of arbitrary government, culti- vates opposition to liberal principles. Its pulpit often reflects the caprice and will, and espouses the cause of the court. The advocates of the divine right of kings, of passive obedience, the opponents of revolu- tion, of civil reform, of popular liberty, have uniformly been the adherents of an estab- lishment. The Tightness of the union of 545 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. Church and State by an inevitable logic leads to the Tightness of absolutism, of des- potism, to the denial of individual liber- ty and of the right of private judgment, to the suppression of free opinion and of the largest liberty of political action. English history is full of proofs of these assertions. A reference to the troublous condition of political affairs in Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy shows that the union is perplexing governments, obstructing reform, fomenting strife and war. State religions generated the Cru- sades, the persecutions, and very many of the outrages of Popery. A State religion brings Great Britain into the anomalous position of defending the Anglican Church with three orders of ministry in England, Presbyterianism with one in Scotland, and the Maynooth grants in Ireland. Accord- ing to Hooker, a national church is founded on the fiction of making every subject a member of said church. Arnold of Rugby was not able to free himself from the same hypothesis. Two corporate powers, with distinct offices and ministries, thus enlist the same persons as subjects and communi- cants. Statesmen and Churchmen are thus united for mutual help and defense. The State offers a premium to insincerity and hypocrisy. To get honors and emoluments, men become members of the Established Church. Moral principle is eradicated when men affect conversion to be sheriffs, magis- trates, and judges, and when a petty consta- ble is forbidden to execute process until he shall have received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper from the hands of a regular- ly ordained clergyman as a part of the pre- scribed induction into office. 2. It is a wrong to other denominations. Putting out of view the hostile decision of the government as between denominations, composed of equally worthy and patriotic citizens, the effect of governmental endow- ment is to lower the rejected party in the eyes of all those who regard the govern- ment as possessed of superior wisdom. What is called " society " is transferred to the Es- tablishment, and few things are more intol- erant and despotic than that profanum vul- flus which "lives, moves, and has its being" iu the accidents of birth, wealth, or govern- mental favor. Government elects a portion of its citizens, sometimes the majority, and subjects them to inferiority, dishonors them and their religion, puts a penalty on their form of worship, degrades them at the bar, in the college, in the pulpit, iu Parliament, and in places of honor and trust. Dissent- er is a term of reproach, and such a per- son is under a stigma, and in a state of uni- form degradation. This vexatious, prolong- ed, corroding insult is not relieved by acts of toleration. Toleration, by government, of the God-given, indefeasible right of wor- ship is an implication of the right to with- hold liberty of conscience. It makes wor- ship an act of political grace, and is a pal- pable contradiction, a license to neglect duty and run in the teeth of the constituted civil authorities. 3. It is a wrong to citizens generally. It proscribes merit and makes another qualifi- cation than fitness for office. In England, under Henry VIII., a good subject " accept- ed the mass without the Pope : under Ed- ward VI. he eschewed both ; under Mary he took back the mass, and after si while the Pope to boot ; under Elizabeth he gave them both up again ;" during the interregnum, Presbyterianism was established and the prayer-book was interdicted in private houses as well as in churches; after the Restoration, Parliament reinstated the Epis- copal system ; and now, in Great Britain, the union of Church and State makes a citizen a turn-coat if, in crossing the border, he would keep pace with " the corporate rea- son." It deprives citizens of an equal par- ticipation in rights and privileges, because they can not conform to a religious standard set up by men Avho have no theological ap- titudes and who were not selected for their piety. It makes a diploma of a college, a commission in the army or navy, a foreign mission, a crown, dependent on being loyal to the sect which happens, for the nonce, to be the favorite of the government. It com- pels support of a denomination Avhich has not the approval of the tax-payers. It robs of property, for whenever a government takes from its citizens more than is necessary for a just and economical administration of its legitimate affairs, it commits robbery. Gov- ernment may thus lead its own people into a fatal delusion, cause them to neglect per- sonal regeneration, and lull them into a false security by their membership in a national church. 4. An establishment is a wrong to our holy religion. Much of what has been said, especially concerning the identity of citizen- ship and church-membership, has equal per- tinency to this point. Public profession of a State religion is sometimes conjoined with private incredulity. Infidelity has taken refuge under cover of an establishment, abounds where religion is enforced by law. Germany and France with their skepticism are not persuasive of an establishment. All the sovereigns of England, from Henry VIII. to James II., during a period of one hundred and forty years, the boy Edward VI. except- ed, employed their supremacy to extinguish vital religion (Noel's " Union of Church and State," page 59). Fronde states that at onu time ordinations were bestowed on men of lewd life and corrupt behavior. Moral de- fects were accepted in consideration of spir- itual complacency. The CornJiill Magazine, of a late date, says (I quote not to indorse CUKRY: EVILS OF A UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 547 but to show tendencies) : " The Church of England is broad as to Rationalism, high as to Romanism, and low as to Dissent ; feeds all alike -with the dew of her fatness, and decorates each indifferently with her eccle- siastical honors." Bishop Coleuso holds offi- cial connection with a national church. Un- ion of Church and State degrades the Chris- tian religion by making it dependent on civil power. It submits questions of eternal sig- nificance, involving the essence of Divine truth and man's personal relations to his Creator, to men of most varied characters. " They may be men of high principle or of no principle ; religious or profane ; young men of gayety and fashion, or old men of inveterate immorality; they may be wealthy or steeped in debt ; absolutists or democrats ; sportsmen ever foremost at the death of the fox, or keener civic hunters after gold ; lov- ers of pleasure, whoso employments are sel- dom more serious than the opera or the race- track, or lovers of party, whose highest am- bition may be to keep one minister in or turn another out." It dishonors the Holy Spirit by doubting His omnipotence. It calls in the sword to do the work of spiritual weapons ; it encourages distrust of God and promotes weakness of faith ; it is adverse to humility and spirituality, and seeks for other elements of strength than righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 5. It is injurious to the denomination in alliance. If the strength of a church or a denomination be in its spirituality, what has been said may be sufficient to demon- strate the injuriousness of the alliance. An establishment is injustice and oppression. No argument is needed to show to an as- sembly of Christians that injustice and op- pression injure the wrong-doer as much as the sufferer. Unjust discriminations engen- der discontent, irritation, resentment, hostil- ity, sometimes aversion and hatred. Patron- age is invariably a source of corruption ; and the history of State religions shows that re- ligious communities are not exempt from its evil consequences. An endowment secular- izes a denomination, and attracts the world- ly, the selfish, the ambitious. The system of presentation to benefices is an afflictive malady. Advowsous are regular articles of merchandise, advertised iu the newspapers and sold at public outcry or private sale. From this legal right of presentment, regardless of the consent of the inhabitants of the parish, have come non- residence, huge salaries, starving incomes, sporting and dissolute clergymen. Men of frivolous characters, of infidel principles, hold livings as property, and bestow them for other considerations than a desire to save souls or promote the Redeemer's king- dom. To prevent the presentment and in- duction of unworthy persons and secure a pious ministry, it lias been found necessary in England to buy up livings as they be- come vacant. State favor diverts attention from things spiritual to things secular, and by creating a sense of dependence enervates. To make citizenship and church-membership identic- al, begets formality and worldliness, and in- troduces unworthy elements into churches. " Simon Maguses are more easily fosterer! than Simon Peters." Union of Church and State is an obstacle to reform and progress. " In England, it mutilated the Reformation ; in France, in parts of Germany, in Spain and Italy, overcame and crushed it. It alone gave claws and teeth to the Inquisitions, and without its aid the powerful confra- ternity of Loyola would have been baffled. As the union had previously corrupted the churches, so at the Reformation it prevent- ed their restoration to purity of discipline and to spiritual life." The power of the civil magistrate, used for the maintenance and support of religion, has had an incalcu- lable influence in corrupting Christianity, and has been a prolific fountain of innumer- able evils. The members of a State Church have their hands tied and labor under many disabilities in doing good. The facilities of the pious in this direction are lessened, while many members are indifferent to spiritual prosperity. 6. My last argument is that the union of Church and State is unscriptural. In an as- sembly where such contrariant opinions arc held, I am embarrassed by my own individ- ual convictions. A scripturally constituted church of regenerated persons, chosen by Christ out of the world and not made up of bad and good, vicious and virtuous, infidel and believer a separate, local, visible, in- dependent congregation of believers, and not a particular denomination of Christians, a national organization, a collective corpora- tion overspreading a whole land, co-exten- sive territorially with political boundaries such an independent, local assembly of saints, in my opinion, can not be in alliance with the State, nor be fused into the politi- cal power without losing the essential marks of an apostolic church. I am forbidden here by common Christian courtesy to argue the question on this hypothesis. I therefore take the common Protestant view, and from that stand-point make bold to assert the iin- scripturalncss of the union. Religion, man's relation to his God, is personal and individual, and can not be vi- carious nor compulsory. In the economy of God's grace, a national religion, strictly speaking, is a solecism, an absurdity. The Holy Spirit regenerates by units. The Holy Spirit's work upon the individual heart is indispensable to salvation. To love God { with all the heart and soul is constrained only by the antecedent love of God. State policy may establish a creed and enforce its 548 CHRISTIANITY AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT. outward observance by penalties, but the mind, the heart, and the conscience can not be fettered. Christ's kingdom is not of this world, and lie is the supreme, absolute, single Head. No temporal prince can be. Before Pilate, Jesus asserted his kingship, and in such a manner as to show that his dominion was compatible with the rule of an earthly gov- ernor. His kingdom is independent of civ- il authority. Over his subjects no earthly potentate has spiritual jurisdiction. For a State, by executive or legislative power, to give law to Christian churches, to prescribe creed or ministry, to determine the guests and the manner of their gathering at the Lord's table, is to act inconsistently with the character of Christ's kingdom and in repugnance to the teachings of the Scrip- tures. Christ and his disciples proclaimed and practically asserted soul liberty, preferring imprisonment and death to submission to the claim to control their worship. Christ commissioned his disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature. The field is the world. Union has barred, until lately, one-half of Europe against zealous evangel- ists, and States even yet lay off their terri- tory into parishes and prohibit Christ's min- isters from preaching the Gospel therein. Church and State have different functions and different ministers. One looks to the overt act ; the other includes the inner life. The early churches were organized, grew, and prospered under the principle of absolute separation from civil authority. Prior to 313, governments never offered assistance. " In many countries, through many ages, the union has been the alliance of fraud and force to degrade the nations ; the compact of the priest and the potentate to crush the rights of conscience ; the combination of regal and prelatical tyranny to repress true religion." Inspiration enjoins giving us an act of worship. Beneficence in support of church- es and ministers is a duty and a privilege. The contributions are to bo cheerful and voluntary. Christ never gave to civil rul- ers the right to make assessments and col- lect money for his kingdom. To patronize all denominations is none the less a viola- tion of the New Testament than to patronize one. The improvement iu public opinion on this subject has been wonderful. A few days ago, in the Hungarian Parliament, stones for their follow- ers. Would Interior Africa bo to-day even par- tially known but for the missionary explora- tions of Kropf, Vanderkemp, Kramer, Shaw, Threlfal, Freeman, MofFat, and his renown- ed son-in-law, Livingstone, whose early fame was won in mission service, whose zeal as an explorer was kindled at the altar of evan- gelism ? These men went in search of lost souls, and told the world of the wilderness into which they had wandered, and so un- sealed a quarter of the globe. 2. In Language. They did not go as phi- lologists, but became such by an evangelical necessity. Having found the lost men, they must teach them. A man and a book are essential to missions. The book de- mands a written language. Out of the jar- gon of disconnected syllabic sounds the mis- sionary must organize it. An alphabet must be invented, and he becomes Cadmus. Out of the alphabet an orthography, and so a grammar, and a lexicon. This was done to give the lost people THE BOOK, but out of this work, done for Christ's sake, literature gathers weird traditions, ancient legends, quaint stories, wonderful mythologies, and rare fragments of rude poetry. It gathers, vaunts its wares, and too often makes no note of its obligations. 3. Ethnic Knmcledge. Their great study has been manhood. They have observed it in all phases. They were compelled to do so. They went to save the people ; they must measure the difficulties ; what cus- toms helped or hindered f what faiths were held sacred ? what errors must be exploded ? what superstitions dislodged? what tribal or congenital influences were barriers to success f For their own safety and success they could not afford to be deceived. Er- ror written and sent home would somehow return to plague them. They must observe accurately, and record correctly. So, care- fully noting, they have written, and so have added hundreds of volumes to literature volumes on the character, customs, social usages, religious perils and possibilities of the races. They have invoked the pencil to aid the pen. They have, within the past fifty years, placed in Christian cabinets richer and more varied illustrations of na- tional and race peculiarities than were pre- viously in all the museums of the world. 4. Human Unity. If demonstration had been wanting to the oneness of humanity, they have given it. They have studied it under all skies, beside all waters, in all lati- tudes. They have noted the influence of climate and surroundings, and have critic- ally observed the modifications of zone, an- cestry, color, habits. We take the synthesis of their observa- tions, and so our creed includes the brother- hood of man. We affirm anew the Pauline dogma, that " God hath made of one blood all nations for to dwell on the face of the earth." That all are related at once to the first and the Second Adam. Missions prove manhood everywhere un- der the same essential conditions. Nowhere "evolved," nowhere "developed,"e very where born. It is subject to the same laws of growth, maturity, and decay. It is corrupt- ed by the same agencies, cursed by the same vices, smitten by the same griefs, broken by the same or by similar sorrows, and tending to the same inevitable end. Missions have found, under all superim- posed errors and traditions, the primitive formation of revealed Truth cropping out with variable distinctness : matter created by conscious and intelligent power ; out of primal elements the world emerging ; a commenced humanity ; the lapse from good 596 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. and the temporary triumph of evil ; a com- ing or accomplished redemption, and at the last some mode of retribution. And, under all phases, they find this many-tongned manhood answering to the great facts of Christianity. At the first, the creation groaning and travailing together in pain sad unity of sin and sorrow. Then that creation through malign conquest made subject unto vanity, yet through grace capable of accepting the Saviour, and, through him, salvation. They trace the weary furlongs of sin and curse, but they prove that, by one way of faith, men of all nations and latitudes come to one redemp- tion through incarnation and atonement, and, rejoicing in one experience, gather around the Elder Brother, one holy, undi- vided, indivisible Catholic Church, the ecu- menical new creation ! Protestant missions are the world's frater- ni/ers. They are based on the ideas of the brotherhood of blood; the brotherhood of the fall ; the brotherhood of atonement, and the priesthood of believers. They hold that a man any man is more precious than fine gold ; yea, a man any man than the golden wedge of Ophir. COMMERCE. Its obligations to Christian missions are simply past computation. Missions demand the Transportation of a Multitude of Laborers to remote Countries, often across, sometimes around the World. In Prot- estant missions it is held that Christian fam- ilies are the good seed of the kingdom, and that some of them must be taken abroad for the redemption of the world. These and they have been a great number has com- merce carried to, and sometimes from, far- off povts, and with them some of the needed comforts of civilization. Has all this been nothing ? Has it not crowded many a keel and thronged many a deck? Has it meant nothing to dealers in exchange and credits ? Extinguish missions and you jar the cir- cumference of trade. The .Gospel creates new Wants. Preached among barbarians, they hear its voice, and are ashamed. It is the Evangel at once of salvation and decency. Conversion is fol- lowed by a demand for clothing clean at that. Clothing means wool, and flax, and cot-ton ; means spindles and looms, and needles and shears ; means leather and lasts, and they mean the iron and steel of England and Pennsylvania, of Russia and Ohio, the anthracite, the block, and bituminous coals of the Alleghanies and the prairies; mean the carrying barks of Christian nations. The smallest mission station among the Hima- layas, beside the Zambesi, or in "Far Cathay," means a new belt slipped on the great drum of Christian civilization. Conversion calls for a .Home. The Church of the congregation must grow out of the churches of the household.- A HOME: it means a house, doors, windows, floor, and ceiling. It means washing and cooking means a nursery and family altar. Com- pute the material agencies entering into its production. What saw - mills rasp their coarse music? What nails drop in fiery haste ; what burdens of sand carted into glass-works; what kilns set ablaze; what quarries opened? The humblest home in Europe or America levies contributions on cosmopolitan invention and industry, and is as marvelous an exposition of universal in- dustry as that one at Vienna under the pat- ronage of the imperial Francis Joseph. Missions demand Schools. Their founders may only intend to cry, " Behold the Lamb of God," but the logic of events reminds them that pastors and teachers are joined togeth- er by God, and can not be put asunder. Commerce must carry the machinery, the appliances of instruction, and each mission- planted school abroad means a freighted ar- gosy from home. "Missions cause Discontent." Certainly they do ; they are meant to. Their teach- ing excites revolt agaiust ignorance and squalor as well as against sin ; stirs men in the dark to cry out for light ; stirs discon- tent until soul, body, and spirit are wholly sanctified. It means to sound the tocsin of revolution until the day of universal disen- thrallment. And, if we read aright, our FATHER means that each man shall somehow aid in the up- lifting of every other man, and that travel, trade, industry, and commerce shall be fac- tors in the equation of our infinite content. Missions are avant- couriers of commerce. They have brought Hindoostan to us to-day ; and our mission bills of exchange are large- ly the medium of its foreign remittances. They have opened the hidden treasures of China and Japan. They are the inspiration of travel. They are the hostelries of tourists, the signal sta- tions of observers, the sanatariums of sick and outworn sojourners, and within their compounds are the cemeteries within which, with solemn rites and reverential words, the sacred dust of such as fall by the wayside is tenderly laid to rest. Are missions promotive of travel ? Why, the missions of one American denomination are, this very year, the travel-posts by which a bishop and seven traveling companions make the circuit of the world. From this city they journeyed westward, halting for a brief space among the Mongolians, whom mission industry is training on the Pacific coast ; thence to Japan, lingering for rest and labor with the missions in Yokohama and Jeddo; westward thence to China, vis- iting Foo Chow, Kukiang, and Peking, and giving cheer to the brethren; westward still EDDY: OBLIGATIONS OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND COMMERCE. 597 to India, thence to Turkey, thence home- ward, still facing the setting sun, journey- ing by the signal -fires of mission stations and to the minstrelsy of mission songs. They give tourists a sense of security. They have already manifolded travel in China, and are causing Japan to be consid- ered a pleasant neighborhood for the sum- mer vacation of such American clergymen as have no leisure for an extended trip. They have made islands, once repugnant and perilous from their cannibalism, to be delightful halting places. They have end- ed national isolation, and made solitude im- possible. They have multiplied arguments for peace. The great Protestant powers can nowhere go to war without putting in peril their own citizens. They have given em- phasis to human unity, and helped the race onward toward the glad jubilee of universal brotherhood. Then let literature return its graceful ac- knowledgments for their multifold materiel and grand inspirations. Let science the true science, not the arrogant or frivolous ; the science which is honest enough to be candid ; the science which sincerely waits on facts let this genuine science confess how much it owes them for opened fields, for antecedent ex- plorations, for recovered observations, for important confirmations, for stores unlock- ed, cabinets filled, for countless facts, classi- fied and unclassified. Let commerce gracefully dip her flaunting colors before her adventurous path-finders, her faithful station-keepers, her brave coast- guards and generous purveyors. And let these three, LITERATUTE, SCIENCE, and COMMERCE, reverently worship Him who said, " Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." LAY PREACHING. BY THE HON. GEORGE H. STUART, OF PHILADELPHIA, PA., Member of the United States Board of Indian Commissioners. THE subject which has been assigned to me this afternoon, namely, "Lay Preach- ing," is, in my humble opinion, second in practical importance to no other subject which has been before this distinguished body, and my only regret is that the condi- tion of my own health and other circum- stances prevent me from presenting that subject, or opening up its discussion in a Avay which its importance demands. In the first place, I would ask this Confer- ence to glance at ihe field. "The field is the world." It has in it 1,300,000,000 of immor- tal souls, destined to meet ns at the judg- ment bar of God. Of these 1,300,000,000, some 800,000,000 are bowing down to stocks and to stones, the workmanship of their own hands. Besides these 800,000,000 hea- then, there are 160,000,000 Mohammedans, 240,000,000 adherents to other false systems of religion, leaving only 100,000,000 of nom- inal Protestants. It is not for us to say how many of these 100,000,000 are true disciples of our risen and exalted Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We know from well-authen- ticated statistics that with every stroke of the pendulum one immortal soul passes from time into eternity; with every revolution of the sun 86,400 immortal souls go to appear before the judgment bar of Christ. I would have yon pause just here, and consider the value of a single soul, for whom Christ died upon the cross on Calvary. It was but a few weeks ago that I was visiting the Tower in London. We were shown through its va- rious rooms, and called to examine all those historic mementoes of by-gone ages that are there preserved, and as we were passing out the guide asked us if we would not like to visit the jewel-room. We told him yes, and Avere conducted thither. There we saw the crown with which Queen Victoria God bless her! was crowned. We saw all the royal plate, and, with Yankee inqnisitiveness, we asked the person in attendance its value. He said that the present value of those jew- els and that plate was 4,000,000 sterling, $20,000,000 gold. The next day, in compa- ny with two beloved ministers, I visited the Field Lane Ragged Sabbath -school, where were gathered 1000 children from the worst dens of vice in London ; and as I stood by the desk of the superintendent, there sat before me a little girl she may have been thirteen years of age barefooted, bare-headed, with uncombed hair and unwashed face, and 1 looked down in her bright eyes and thought of the jewels in Queen Victoria's crown, and said to myself, "That little girl is the pos- sessor of that which is of more value than all the crown jewels in the world ;" because she possessed an immortal soul, that will live either in bliss or in misery throughout the unceasing ages of eternity. Looking out over this vast field of human souls, in which Christ's Church is called to labor, I would ask you to pause and consid- er one of the most highly favored portions of the field, as an evidence of the need of Lay Preaching to aid in accomplishing the great work of the world's evangelization. The field to which I refer is the United States of America, in which, according to the last cen- sus taken in 1870, the population is 38,5f>5,753 ; and the number of evangelical churches 54,773, with sittings for 19,066,000. From a careful estimate which I have made, the average attendance on the Sabbath will not exceed thirteen and a half millions, and after making allowance of five and a half millions, for children under five years of age, for the sick, and those that are called upon to wait on them, there remain some nineteen mill- ions, in this land of Bibles, churches, and Sabbaths, unreached and unblessed by the saving influence of the Gospel of Christ. If further evidence is wanted to confirm this appalling statement, that so many of our sons and daughters absent themselves from the stated means of grace, I point you, then, to the carefully prepared statistics of a city having a population of about 250,000, and with sittings in evangelical churches for only 23,339 of its inhabitants. On a Sabbath morning in October, these same churches by actual count contained 12,052 worshipers, and on the afternoon of the same day this number was reduced to 8,376. Such, niy brethren, is the field and its des- titution. How, then, can the regular or- dained ministry ever possibly occupy it to the full ? Should they not, then, encourage and seek to develop all the lay talent at the church's disposal ? Having spoken of the field, let us, in the second place, glance briefly at the seed to be sown in this field. " The seed is the Word of God," " the incorruptible seed of the king- STUART: LAY PREACHING. 599 dora," which God has given ; this seed is free, abundant, living, freely received by us, and should be freely given, until the whole earth be full of the glory of God. The Divine promise is that that seed shall multiply, sometimes thirty, sometimes sixty, sometimes a hundred fold, spreading on from heart to heart through all the various generations that in faith receive and cherish it. It is the very nature of that seed thus to spread in whatever soil it be sown, whether in the hearts of Christ's faithful ministers or in those of his believing people. Let us, then, consider, in the third place, Who shall sow this seed f We believe and hold fast to the doctrine of a holy ministry, called by the Holy Ghost, aud set apart to this sa- cred office. We believe also that all who have been born of the Spirit should help in some way to sow the seed of the kiugdom. Bad men, in thousands of ways, sow bad seed, scattering firebrands, arrows, and death with free hand. Good men should sow good seed wherever they go, seed that shall produce grand results here, aud results yet more glo- rious in the world to come. No congregation of Christ's disciples should rest satisfied until they have devel- oped and brought into the Masters service all the lay talent which they possess : and es- pecially should they seek to find a band of earnest, intelligent, soul- loving men to act as lay preachers, not to dispense the ordi- nances, but to " go out into the highways aud hedges, aud to compel the people to come in," by telling in plain and loving words "the old, old story of Jesus and his love." Some there may be whose gifts may qualify them to devote their whole time to the service of the Master as lay evangelists, like Brownlow North, Varley, aud others in England ; Moody, Bnrnell, and others in America. You have only to read the lives of such lay preachers as Bunyan, the Hal- danes, Matheson, Annan, and men of like spirit, to learn what the spirit of God has accomplished through such workers. Let us now, in the fourth place, speak of some of those places where the seed of the kiugdom may be sown by laymen. All can and should speak of Christ in their own families and in the daily avoca- tions of life. How many that stand idle in the market-place might find an open door of usefulness in the Sabbath-school, either in teaching or, at least, in gathering in the neglected, untaught children of our crowd- ed cities and towns, or in distributing tracts to those who never enter the house of God ! The social prayer-meeting will also afford ample opportunity of employment for lay talent. I would speak, however, more par- ticularly of the great field of labor for lay- men which is to be found in the open-air preaching, Avhether in the public street, the crowded thoroughfare, the vacant lot, the public park, the road-side, or the \vay-side field in the quiet country. These places, no less than the consecrated sanctuary, have been all more or less witnesses of the faith- ful presentation of the message of Gospel truth, and often the birthplace of many pre- cious souls. I have myself been privileged to speak a word for the Master ou the streets of my owu and other cities, and have seen the tear of penitence as it has flowed down the faces of the hardy sons of toil as they listened to the words of Jesus. During the past summer, while traveling in Europe, I have had the same blessed op- portunity of speaking for Christ in the crowded thoroughfares of Belfast, Edin- burgh, and London, where large congrega- tions were quickly gathered, while a few verses of a familiar hymn were sung. These congregations, which I have seen convened on the public thoroughfares of both the Old and the New World, were largely made up of those whose general appearance indicated that they seldom or never darkened the doors of the regular places of public wor- ship. If ever these masses are to be brought under the influence of the- Gospel, every lay- man must unite with the miuistry, and " go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind." He who laid that injunction upon all his serv- ants was an opeu-air preacher: as were all the prophets whom He had sent to the house of Israel. It was by the way-side, on the sea-shore, from the mountain, and among the corn-fields that He spake as never man spake, and the common people heard Him gladly. Let us, in the fifth and last place, view the extent of the obligation ; and here, what more is required than, "Let him that hear- eth say, Come. Aud let him that is athirst, Come. Aud whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Every one who loves Jesus should be an earnest worker in the kingdom. Were ev- ery Christian privileged to bring only one sinner to Christ each year, then in three years all in this land would be brought into the Ark of Safety, and in six years the world would be evangelized. The sainted mission- ary, Kni 11, once said that, if there remained but one soul on the globe unconverted, and if that soul lived in the wilds of Siberia, and if, in order to its conversion, it were necessary for every Christian to make a pil- grimage there, it were labor well spent. A poor Hindoo was dying on the plains of India, and sent for a Brahmin, who told him, in answer to his dying inquiry, that when he died he would pass iuto another body. "Aud where next?" anxiously in- quired the dying man. " Into still another body," exclaimed the Brahmin. In imagi- 600 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. nation the poor dying Hindoo passed through scores and hundreds of animals, and in the agony of the dying moment exclaimed, " But, oh ! sir, can you tell me, where shall I go last of all t" He passed away with the ques- tion of all questions on his dying lips still unanswered by his priest. Multitudes with- in the sound of our sanctuaries are passing daily to the Judgment-seat, with the same question upon their lips, unanswered. Years ago, when a passenger on board of one of our largest ocean steamers then afloat, the cry came from the deck that startled the captain and passengers, who were seated at their dinner-table ; the two startling words, " Stop her ! Stop her !" were quickly repeated, and in a moment our gallant captain was on the quarter-deck to ascertain the cause of the alarming order of the first officers ; the wind was blowing a hurricane at the time, and. the sudden announcement, not " slow- er," or " half speed," but " stop her !" quick- ly repeated caused no little consternation. As the captain stepped upon the deck, the officer who had given the order pointed over the larboard quarter to six men overboard, and, without waiting to inquire how they got there, or to what country they belonged, he instantly gave the order, "Lower away the life-boat! lower away the life-boat!" which was quickly done ; and while it was being done, he called for volunteers to man the boat. Over thirty men promptly obeyed the sum- mons, each one anxious to be among the chosen ten who should be privileged to aid in saving those who were struggling with the surging waves of the ocean ; they went on their perilous voyage, and succeeded iu saving four, two having found a watery grave. Brethren of the Convention, multitudes in all lands are " overboard," exposed to the dangers of a more tempestuous sea ; and while their cry comes up to us for help, let the response of the Church be, " Lower away the life-boat " of saving knowledge, until ev- ery soul shall be brought into the ark of safety, and the shout go up from every land that " the kingdoms of this world had become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." LAY PREACHING. BY COUNT ANDREAS BERNSTORFF, OF BERLIN, PRUSSIA. ALL Christians at the present time agree that there is a vast field of labor before us, one for which the existing laborers have long ago been found insufficient. The command of the Master, " Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest," not only obliges us to pray for faithful ministers, for missionaries, who car- ry the glad tidings of the Gospel to the re- motest countries; it also urges us to con- sider how the masses of nominally Christian countries can be permeated with a Christian spirit. In some places an increase of min- isters would be useful ; but, aside from the fact that it is difficult at present to find suf- ficient men for the existing number of par- ishes, experience in Roman Catholic coun- tries shows us that too great an increase of the clergy does not of itself promote spirit- ual life. The desire is more and more felt to have other helpers besides those in the clerical office men in all classes of society and of all professions, who in their respect- ive circles may strive to win souls for Christ. We are convinced that it would be a great blessing for the Church if many of her mem- bers, while remaining in their secular call- ings, were to take an active share in her works. It is, there fore, just that we should carefully examine into our authority for such working. Let us first consult the Scriptures. The Bible gives us no distinct precepts for the constitution and organization of the Church. It only teaches us the great facts on which our faith rests, and the doctrines derived from them. When the foundation of the Church had to bo laid, the Lord sent out his twelve apostles, men endowed with par- ticular gifts and an especial calling, so that they might as chosen vessels preach to Jews and Gentiles the great facts of Redemption. But when the apostles abandoned the office of serving tables so as to give themselves continually to the ministry of the Word, seven men were appointed to attend to the daily ministration ; and these men also be- gan to preach Christ, and with how great success! The same thing happened with Apollos, who spake and taught diligently, and mightily convinced the Jews ; and with Aquila and Priscilla. The most important example for us is the foundation of the Church at Antioch, the first flourishing Church among the heathen, and the one in which the disciples were first called Christians. Not apostles, not evan- gelists, but simple Christians, whom the per- secution had scattered abroad, founded this Church. While Peter very reluctantly made up his mind to go .to the Gentiles, these men of Cyprus and Gyrene " spake unto the Gre- cians, preaching the Lord Jesus." When the tidings of these things came to the ears of the apostles, they sent Barnabas, who, " when he had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all with purpose of heart that they would cleave unto the Lord," for, as we read further, he was a good man. He knew, therefore, how to recognize the fruits of the Spirit, even where he had done none of the work himself. Very instructive for our subject is the oth- erwise-difficult 14th chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. I take for grant- ed that prophesying means preaching the Word of God, while speaking with tongues means speaking in unknown languages a gift which, like the apostles at Pentecost the first Christians often received, and to which, as a miraculous gift, they attached great value. We are told in the first verse that we may all desire this gift of prophe- sying, and in the fifth verse the apostle dis- tinctly says: "I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophe- sied." The rest of this chapter teaches us that this gift does not necessarily belong to every Christian, but that all may desire it, and that those who obtain it should make use of it. In the old form of Divine Service described to us in that wonderful chapter several persons could.speak during the serv- ice, and the revelation of God, the impulse from the Spirit to preach the Word of God, was not bound to any office. Only women were not allowed to preach in the Church ; and even from this precept it follows that all men without distinction had the permis- sion to do so. St. Paul expects a great bless- ing from it, because he says that, if an unbe- liever came in, he would be " convinced of all." Let mo here quote three very remarkable passages of Scripture, which, though they do not exclusively refer to our subject, yet teach us that every testimony for Christ ought to be welcome to us. There have al- ways been men who, with false zeal, would hinder and suppress the preaching of the Word of God, if it did not take place quite in the way approved by them. What says 602 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. to this the lawgiver of tbo Old Testament f When it was announced that Eldad and M i'il: nl had remained in the camp and proph- esied, Joshua addressed Moses, asking him, " My lord Moses, forbid them ;" hut Moses answered, " En viest thou for my sake f would God that all the Lord's people were proph- ets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them " (Numb, xi., 27-30). And what says the great apostle of the Gentiles ? St. Paul, iu his Epistle to the Philippians (i., 15-18), writes : " Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife ; and some also of good-will : the one preach Christ of conten- tion, not sincerely, supposing to add afflic- tion to my bonds : but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the Gospel. What theuf notwithstanding, every way, whether iu pretense, or iu truth, Christ is preached ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." And what, finally, says our Lord and Master to such proceed- ings ? His apostles told him that they had seen somebody casting out devils in his name, who followed them not, and that they had forbidden him for that reason. But Jesus said : " Forbid him not : for there is no man which shall do a miracle iu my name, that can lightly speak evil of me " (Mark ix., 38, 39). We now pass to the history of the ancient Church. Unfortunately the accounts of that period are very scarce. Yet we can take for granted that the primitive form of divine service maintained itself till about the mid- dle of the second century. Ouly at that time a sharper distinction began to be made between the office of a bishop and that of an elder, and between clergy and laity. This and the expansion of the churches by the addition of weak and impure elements gradually lessened the participation of the congregation. But this change only took place very gradually. Tertullian, who min- istered toward the end of the second and the beginning of the third century, still very de- cidedly maintained that all Christians are priests. Yea, even later, some of the most eminent fathers of the Church iusisted upon this. Chrysostom, who worked under di- vine blessing as Bishop of Coustantiuople since 397, says how blessed a thing it is to bring others to Christ : " I wish and pray," said he, " that ye might all be among the number of teachers, and not only listen to our sermons, but also teach others the things we present unto you, and convince the err- ing ; then God will increase the number of believers, and the more you care for your brethren the richer grace you will receive yourselves." At another place he says, "Let one take his Bible, and call his friends and neighbors." Clearer and more distinctly these princi- ples came forward in the Reformation. Un- fortunately our Evangelical Church has also had times of dead orthodoxy, when the mem- bers of the congregation gladly left to him " who had the office for it" what they had no desire to do themselves. Still the prin- ciple of the priesthood of all believers was 1 maintained in the Swiss as well as in the Ger- I man Reformation. As the Refonned (Cal- j vinist) churches generally leave more room for lay influence, I shall only quote hen; some very interesting passages from Luther's writings. " Faith must do every thing. Faith alone is the true priestly office. There- fore all Christians are parsons. There is no difference, except the faith be unequal." "This threefold office God has given to us all. All Christians have the power to preach, to pray for each other, to sacrifice themselves unto the Lord." " The first and highest duty of the Christian is to teach the Word of God. That this is common to all is taught by the verse : ' Ye are a royal priesthood, that ye should show forth the praises of him, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.' Peter not only gives them the right, but even the command- ment, that they shall show forth the praises of God, which, indeed, is nothing else than to preach the Gospel. Paul also confirms it when ho speaks to the whole congrega- tion, and to every menajjer individually : ' Every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doc- trine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation;' and then: 'for ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted.' What does he mean when he says every one ? What means the word all f With these verses it is most strongly and clearly asserted that the high- est ministry of the Word of God is common to all who are Christians, and not only as a right, but as a commandment." " We have Apollos, of whom we read that he went to Ephesus without any other calling, and preached there only out of burning love, and mightily convinced the Jews. So ev- ery Christian is bound to do when he sees that there is want of the Word of God, and when he is able to do so. We have another example in Stephen and Philip, who were only called to the office of serving tables." " If it be so, that every Christian has the Word of God, he is also bound to confess, teach, and propagate it ; as the prophet says, Psalm cxvi., 10, ' I believed, therefore have I spoken;' and in Psalm li., he says of all believers : ' I will teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.' When a Christian is at a place where there are no other Christians, he wants no other calling but that he is a Christian, call- ed and anointed by God, and he is bound to preach to the erring heathen and unbeliev- ers. In such a case, a Christian in brother- ly love contemplates the sad state of a lost soul, and does not wait till he has received orders or letters from princes or bishops." BERNSTORFF: LAY PREACHING. 603 " St. Paul makes the miiiistry common to all Christians when he says, ' teaching and ad- monishing one another.' The question is asked whether a layman may also preach, since St. Stephen was appointed for the dai- ly ministration and not for preaching; al- though, when he came to the market, he im- mediately created a sensation by signs and miracles. But St. Stephen stands firm, and by his example gives power to every one to preach, wherever he may be, in the house or in the market, and does not suffer God's Word to be limited to shaven heads and long coats." We see from these quotations that Luther is very explicit on the subject. I might add a number of similar expres- sions from divines in the time of the Refor- mation and later ; but that would lead us too far. Let it suffice to mention that men like Martin Chemnitz, John Arnd, John Gerhard, and with them a great number of witnesses, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century stood up for these views. Toward the end of the seventeenth century it was particu- larly Spener, who brought to light again the doctrine of the priesthood of believers after it had been forgotten for some time. An active participation of the laity in the work of the Church has always been on the one side the cause, on the other the conse- quence, of new religious life. As soon as Christianity began to be a real power in some men, they felt the desire to bring to others the precious truths they had received themselves. On the other side, when a great number of Christians attended to the spirit- ual welfare of their brethren, the number of Christians quickly increased. Spener tried to awake this desire through his sermons, and the small meetings for edification (" con- ventikel") inaugurated by him very much contributed to bring new life into the Church. The same thing happened everywhere. Who in England does not think of John Wesley, Whitefield, Rowland Hill, and oth- ers, who wanted to bring life into the cold forms of the Church I Only when the Church of England proved too narrow to suffer such workmen in her pale, they were driven into dissent. Their intention was only to assist the work of the Church by testimonies of burning love from living members of the congregations. And what then took place in England still takes place now. Lay evan- gelists without number pass through the country, men of high rank preach to men of their own class, .and flourishing churches and rich development of religious life are the results. And in the United States ? Is it not the same here! Does not a Christian here be- gin to work as Sunday-school teacher, ad- vancing afterward to the charge of a class of adults, and then to all manner of Christian work ? We can not leave nnmentioned in | this connection the work done by the Young Men's Christian Associations. We have similar testimony from some | countries of Continental Europe. When the old republic of Geneva had still the forms of Calvin's legislation, but possessed no long- er his spirit, it was through the agency of a few men, some of them laymen, that life was again restored. When the revival spread, numerous evangelists were sent out. The Free Church of Geneva even tried to return to the apostolic form of divine service by arranging after the sermon a second part of the service in which the congregation could take part. Rich blessing attended these services. And jn WUrtemberg ? It is that part of Germany which has given birth to the greatest number of missionaries. Why is Christian life most flourishing there, al- though just there the cold blast of rational- ism has blown so strongly that, at the begin- ning of this century, it was the intention to expel the " Pietists "entirely out of the coun- j try, had not a refuge been offered to them at I Kornthal ? Through small gatherings, chief- ly conducted by laymen, Christianity has deeply rooted, itself into the people. Tho conductors of these meetings, often peasants, are sometimes very venerable characters. j Until this day there is a service in the Church of Kornthal every Sunday evening, where the members of the congregation taka an active part. We can affirm with confidence that, by the blessing God has laid upon lay agency in this century, he has impressed upon it the seal of his sanction. Therefore we have also the right to assert that the general recogni- tion of this principle would contribute much to increase Christian life. We can easily see why it is so. In the first instance, the clergyman must often hear the reply : " Yon are obliged to speak so!" Of course, this objection does not destroy the power of the Word of God, yet many a person is more easily accessible when addressed by a layman. The volun- tary testimony of laymen is in itself a prac- tical proof of the change wrought in them, a proof that Christianity is a real power in them. So their very word bears the power of an example. Then, as the promise that God's Word shall not return void refers to the Word of God that is preached, and not to him who preaches it, the mere numerical increase of sincere preachers must be ben- eficial to the propagation of the truth. Be- sides, the Church also gains inward power by it. The blessing of the work, to a great extent, returns to him who does it, and so the spiritual life in the Church is increased. A Christian who sets himself to preach the great truths of redemption must enter more deeply into the Holy Scriptures,being obliged to study them carefully. It also obliges him to pray. His work increases the number of 604 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. petitions he has to bring before the throne of God, and he will be convinced by his work that he can not get on without the daily help of God. He is finally obliged to watch closer over his own life, because a contra- diction between his preaching and his life would injure the efficiency of the former. The dangers of lay preaching are gener- ally very much exaggerated. It is possible that this privilege may also be claimed for preaching infidelity. But does not the same thing happen in our pulpits ? And yet, be- cause some clergymen preach errors and un- belief, we do not abolish the clergy. Prac- tically, only those who really love the Lord will offer themselves for a w,ork which, like this, involves sacrifice. Neither infidelity nor a dead faith creates such a desire. Per- haps there is greater danger that the teach- ing will be unsound; but this danger can surely be diminished very much, if the pas- tors and the appointed office-bearers of the Church give their attention to the matter. It will hardly be necessary to say that we do not want to interfere with the work of the minister. Whether religious serv- ices, with participation of the congregation, may be arranged here and there, as in the time of the apostles, must be decided in each individual case. At all events, the pastor remains the spiritual leader. His special work is not abolished or lessened by the priesthood of all believers. But there is, besides, an immense work to do, which the clergy can not do alone. Sunday-schools are, perhaps, the best place to accustom and train young people to labor with the Word of God. Then we have the nu- merous works of home mission. The preach- ing, properly speaking, of laymen ought espe- cially to have two objects in view. 1. The evangelization of unbelievers. A Christian who, perhaps, does not yet feel himself able to exhort and strengthen by his word a con- gregation of living Christians, and to lead them deeper into the knowledge of the ways of God, can at least bear testimony to the un- converted of the faith that is in him. The Church must go out to seek those who do not come to her. For those who hesitate to enter into a church occasion must be giv- en to hear the Word of God at other places of all descriptions. This is particularly a work for laymen. 2. Meetings of believers, besides the public services. These are of particular blessing. They strengthen be- lievers, and bring them into closer com- munion with each other. Such meetings for prayer and exhortation are best put into the hands of laymen. For a salutary development of this work, it is of the utmost value to have the great- est possible harmony between the pastor of the congregation and its active members. The more this is the case, the smaller the dangers will be. The minister himself has a great work to do in this matter. Better than any body else he can encourage it and give practical assistance. He ought to speak of the blessing of such work in his sermons. He ought to invite the catechumens to take part in Sunday -school work, he ought to give his special attention to the Sunday- school teachers, and form lay preachers out of them. The more he does this, the more he will be able to lead the movement. The more he favors it, the less difficulties the lay preachers will put in his way. It is a noteworthy fact that, \vhonever a minister gladly concedes also to others the right of preaching the Word of God, the workers are always delighted to be led by him ; while a minister, who in priestly arrogance wishes to keep the people of his parish from snch work, involuntarily rouses opposition against him- self. A judicious minister will not lay un- necessary fetters on the lay evangelists, and not try to limit their freedom of movement. Even if one thing or the other does not quite agree with his own views, he will neverthe- less rejoice at the blessing that accompanies the work. On the other side, the lay preachers should consider it their duty to -work, as far as pos- sible, in accordance with the pastor of the church ; they should especially work with perfect openness and loyalty, and listen as far as possible to the advice of the minister. If in this way, self-abnegation is practiced on both sides, the Lord's kingdom will be built up ; and that is the desire of us all ! I condense what I have said into the fol- lowing THESES : 1. The preaching of the Word of God by laymen, who have the necessary ability, is in accordance with the doctrines of Holy Scripture. 2. It accords with the practice of the first Christian churches. 3. It is a consequence of the principle of the Reformation concerning the priesthood of believers. 4. It has received its divine sanction by the blessing which the Lord has laid upon it in the present century. 5. Its general introduction would strongly contribute to the increase of religious life. 6. It must not interfere with the public ministry, but seek its object chiefly in small gatherings of believers and in the evangel- ization of the unbelieving masses. .7. It is desirable that the ministers should favor and encourage it, and not uselessly fetter the evangelists in their work. On the other hand, lay preachers should work in harmony with the pastor and gladly list- en to his advice.* * [In the absence of Count Bernstorff, who could not leave the Foreign Office in Berlin, an abridgment of his essay was rea:l before the Conference by the editor.] SECOND SECTION-PARTICULAR MISSIONARY FIELDS. CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. BY THE REV. NARAYAN SHESHADRI, OF BOMBAY, INDIA. [The Rev. N. Sheshadri, a converted Brahmin, is the first native ordained minister from India that has ever visited our country. He was so much in demand during his brief sojourn in the United States, that he had no time to elaborate an essay, but could only furnish us with corrected newspaper reports of several addresses delivered by him. From these, and especially from the report of his speech on " Christianity in India," de- livered before the Conference on the 10th of October, the following paper has been prepared. The presence of this brother at the Conference, clothed in his native dress, and telling with unaffected sim- plicity, but in the purest English, and with great intelligence and eloquence, the good old story of our own spiritual experience in repentance, faith, love, and hope, was one of the most interesting facts connected with this remarkable assembly. He stood before us a living proof of the adaptation of Christianity to all races and conditions of men, and a practical refutation of the objections to foreign missions. His influence in promoting missionary zeal will long be felt. In him, too, we witnessed the beneficial effects of the higher education given in India by the Scotch Missionaries, and also to some extent by our own. America is placed under great obligation to Dr. Duff, for kindly consenting to allow Mr. Sheshadri to leave an important en- gagement in Scotland, in order to come to this side of the Atlantic ; to Dr. Hugh Miller, who so kindly and at considerable sacrifice accompanied him, and to our own Mr. George H. Stuart, through whose, indom- itable enterprise the whole matter was successfully arranged. We congratulate our Scotch brethren on the possession of such a Missionary, and trust he may long be spared to labor among his countrymen. He has now been a Christian for thirty years, and for over twenty years a preacher of that faith which in the days of his youth he had been taught as a Brahmin to despise. The perusal of his views on missions, as now presented, will show what may be expected from men of his class and country. Ed.] IF Manu, the old Lawgiver of the Hindoos, could be supposed as rising from his ashes and listening to the expression " Christian- ity among the Hindoos," he would be horri- fied, for the idea of his law was that from North to South and from East to West there should be nothing but Hindooism, Hindoo- ism, Hindooism, to the absolute exclusion of every other system. But here we have a new theology, a new code of morals, and a new civilization of which, Mauu never heard. The mention of Hindooism leads me to speak of the Brahmins, for they are the very soul of Hiudooism. They form the highest class in Hindoo society. They are the only authorized interpreters of the Shasters and other holy books. Each Brahmin is a much more infallible dignitary than the Pope of Rome. In his right hand he holds fire, with which he can burn up the entire universe. In his right ear is the river Gauges, one drop of whose waters is sufficient to wash away the sins of ten generations of transgressors. In his big toe he carries the entire ocean. He is the Lord of the lower world, and as such might appropriate to his own use what- ever he pleases. His law is infallible ; his in- terpretation of the sacred books must be im- plicitly believed; and he has taken special care to conserve his system by prohibiting its votaries from ever crossing the seas, the river Indus, or visiting foreign lands. I must now give a brief view of the sys- tem taught in the sacred books composed by these Brahmins. THE SACKED BOOKS. These are known as the Veda [or Ferfas], the Shastet-s, and the Purans. Of the first there are four, of the second six, and of the third eighteen books. The Veds are the most ancient. They were written about 1400 years before the Christian era. The religion incul- cated in these earlier books differs entirely from that taught in the later works. The deities mentioned in them are different. In- dra, Agni, and Surya, with numerous god- desses, are everywhere invoked. These are merely personifications of the elements, fire, the sun, the air, etc. The Hindoo Triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh, or Shiv is a revelation of the later Shasters, and the names of Durga, Ksili, Ram, Krishna, Ga- nesh, and other popular deities of the pres- ent day were then entirely unknown. The worship prevalent at the time the Teds were composed seems to have been that of the sun, moon, stars, fire, air, water, etc. These all had their representative de- ities, to whom offerings were made, whose praises were sung, and whose anger was deprecated. The blessings prayed for were, for the most part, of a temporal character wealth, food, life, posterity, cattle, horses, do- mestic felicity, protection against enemies, victory over them, particularly where these are of a religion differing from their own, pro- 60C CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. tection against evil spirits, and the attain- ment of happiness of a purely sensual char- acter while very little reference was made to moral and spiritual benefits. The offer- ings prescribed were chiefly libations and oblations clarifiedbutterpouredonfire,and the fermented juice of the Soma plant thrown into the fire, sprinkled on the floors of their dwellings, or on the ground outside, and largely drunk by the officiating priests ! Worship was confined chiefly to the houses of the worshipers. There is little reference to a future state, and even the immortality of the gods themselves is but faintly indicated. VEDAXTISM. The form of religion which succeeded this was of a more philosophical and speculative character, and seems to have been an out- growth of that contained in the Veda. Its underlying sentiment was, "God is every thing, and every thing is God." It em- bodied the substantial principles of modern Pantheism. The legitimate consequence of such doctrine was the complete destruction of all free-will, and the denial of even per- sonal identity. Moral responsibility under such a system was impossible,, and the mul- tiplication of the objects of worship paved the way for the introduction of the great idolatrous system which was subsequently fully developed in the Shasters and Parana. The original centre of Modern Hindooism was Bramh. This may be defined to have been the primary and pervading principle of all being, which from all eternity remain- ed in a state of absolute unconsciousness, or complete deprivation of all attributes. It had existence without any of the attributes of such a condition. To the Hindoo mind there is no difficulty in this conception. The Nirgun of the Hindoo mythology was something in which reposed the elements of all being, all life, all power, all extension, Jill truth, all holiness, all that we can possi- bly conceive of God, and yet devoid of any manifestations of these qualities. It was neither masculine nor feminine, but a pure- ly neutral thing. THE XIRGUN BECOMES 8ARGUX. In process of time this inanimate neutral- ity manifests signs of life and activity. From its state of profound repose it suddenly be- gins to put forth developments of character that show it to be possessed of every con- ceivable attribute necessary to the Supreme Creator, Preserver, and Governorof all things. The term "Sar-gun" means possessed of" all attributes," or, in other words, this Being now appears as the universal centre of all forces, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. It has become endowed with the power of creating, preserving, and destroying, and in each of these capacities it soon proceeds to manifest itself in a tangible form. This sud- den transition presents no difficulty to the mind of the orthodox Hindoo. To his mind this huge colossus presents an image having the sun and moon for its eyes, the trees and rocks for its nails, and the remaining por- tions of the universe for its body. This mighty power, once set free from the leth- argy that from eternity had bound its ener- gies, soon expands into the full-blown pan- theon of the Brahmiuical imagination, and peoples the universe with gods and demi- gods, fiends and demons, to the number of 330,000,000. Many of these are the sons and grandsons of the three principal divinities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiv. These deities are divided into classes ; they are of all colors, shapes, and figures, sometimes human, some- times semi -human, many -headed, many- eyed, many-handed, many-footed monsters. They ride on elephants, buffaloes, lions, ti- gers, deer, sheep, goats, peacocks, vultures, geese, swans, serpents, and rats ! They are engaged in all sorts of pursuits, perform ac- tions of all shades of morality, and are mix- ed up with all affairs whether in heaven, earth, or hell. They delight in good and evil alike ; they enjoy both war and peace ; they love to preserve life, while they delight in the blood of their enemies or of victims sacrificed in their honor; they lie, they steal, they commit adultery; they are covetous, blasphemous, and quarrelsome, while they represent every thing that is conceivable as good! The people who worship them have be- come like them. Having such examples be- fore them in the character of their gods, what can we expect the people themselves to bef LITERATURE OF THE SACRED BOOKS. These sacred books not only treat of the character of their gods, but also professed- ly contain vast stores of Hindoo literature. They treat of chronology, astronomy, geog- raphy, and science, and various other branch- es of knowledge. Their chronology reaches back 4,000,000 of years ; their astronomy di- vides the universe into fourteen great worlds or systems of worlds, seven below our own, and seven, including ours, above. Our own earth is declared to be flat. It consists of seven circular islands, each surrounded by a separate ocean. The central portion is called Jambu-Dwip, outside of which is the great salt water sea ; outside of that comes the second portion of land, and around this flows an ocean of sugar-cane juice; then the third, around which we have the sea of spirituous liquors ; then the fourth, and its sea of clarified butter; the fifth, with its sea of curds ; next, the sixth, and its ocean of milk ; and, lastly, the seventh, with its sea of fresh water. Beyond this last ocean we have a country of pure gold and of pro- digious magnitude, whose virgin soil has SHESHADRI : CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. 607 never jet been trodden by the foot of man. The diameter of this world is 500,000,000 of jojans in extent (the jojan being eight miles). In the very centre of Jambn-Dwip rises Mount Sumeru.to the height of 600,000 miles, in the form of an inverted pyramid. At its base it is 128,000 miles in circumference, at its top it is 356,000 miles, and around its base rise little hills, the trees on which reach the modest altitude of 8800 miles in height. Time will, not allow me to speak of the oth- er worlds, the distances of which from ours and from each other are all distinctly speci- fied. These are all destined to be the abodes of spirits, terrestrial and celestial. In the highest of these is the chief residence of Brahma, the glory of which we are told could not be described by the most eloquent tongue or scribe in 200 years ! Of the same extravagant character is most of the teach- ing of the Shasters, and when we come to examine the Purans in the light of Chris- tian morality they are found to be simply revolting. MY CONVERSION. There was a time when I believed in these things. I was born and brought up as a Brahmin* and as a Brahmin I was taught to believe that I myself was a god upon earth that God became incarnate in me when I was born and with this belief I grew up. I thought it my right to claim divine honors, and these were freely accorded to me. It was a life of the highest pretensions and the meanest realities. It may interest you to know how I came to abandon this system, and to embrace the religion of the Christian. At first I despised the Bible. I did not wish to know any thing about it, for I had an idea that its teachings were subversive of my belief and position as a Brahmin. But the Lord, who is most Avonderful in his ways of working, used this very system of religion iu which I was brought up to empty me of myself, free me from the trammels of idolatry, and bring me to himself. One day, standing on the beach at Bombay, and looking out upon the mighty waves of the ocean, lashed into fury by the storms of the monsoon, I began to think of a legend that is recorded iu the Hindoo Scriptures, regarding a man who is esteemed by them a mighty sage, and who, on account of his good deeds, the austeri- ties he had undergone, and his remarkable holiness, has obtained a seat in a constel- lation in one of those heavens I have re- ferred to. This wonderful man, known as Agastya Rishi, is said to have drunk up the entire ocean the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, aud the Northern and Southern Oceans all with only three sips. Credulous as I was at that time, this was too much for my credulity, aud I began to doubt the cor- rectness of the story thus recorded. This was the starting-point. It set me to think- ing about religion. Then a great many oth- er stories passed in review through my mind. One of these was the story related of Hanu- man, or the Monkey-god. He is represented as carrying iu one hand a monstrous club with which he can destroy all his foes, and in another hand a mountain which he can take up and hurl, as a man would a pebble, into the midst of his enemies. Not only can he carry a mountain on one hand, but it is said that he, on one occasion, carried a mountain on each hair of his body. Then it is said that this same Monkey-god had a very long tail, and he used this tail for the destruction of the island of Ceylon. He wrapped a cloth around the end of his tail, dipped it into oil, set this on fire, and with this torch ignited the entire island, which, we are told, still continues to blaze to the present time. When he found his tail be- coming too hot, he plunged into the Indian Ocean, and there extinguished the flame. This punishment was inflicted on Ceylon because its king, Ra"wan, had stolen the beautiful Sita, the wife of Ram Chandar, King of Oude, in Northern India, who would never have been able to recover her but for the assistance of this Monkey-god. I began to think that surely these things could not be revelations from God. Then I was told that there were two kinds of relig- ion, one for the wise and learned, and anoth- er for the ignorant and foolish ; that as yet I had only learned the latter, and that I must now become acquainted with the former. I was told that in the new faith there was enough to satisfy the wisest aud greatest philosophers. We have had, and still have, a great deal of this so-called philosophy in India, more, perhaps, than you have in this Western World, or exists among the people of Eugland, Scotland, and Ireland. I thought perhaps there might be something iu that philosophical system which had been recom- mended to me. I began to study it, and just about this time the scholarship of the West came to my assistance. The sacred boots of the Hindoos had begun to be translated into English, and I was enabled to read them iu that language, and hear the commentaries upon their contents by those learned men under whom I was pursuing my studies. I found innumerable prayers addressed to the god of the sea, the gods of the firmament, and the god of the winds; but there was nothing very remarkable that struck me iu those prayers, nothing to satisfy the longings of an earnest soul, nothing to take away my sense of sin and guilt ; for about that time I began to be very much afraid of death, aud I longed for something that could give me peace. Bombay was very badly drained in those days, and we had cholera almost ev- ery year, and I used to fear that I would be taken away in one of these visitations. I 608 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. found that the prayers of the Veds could not satisfy my soul at such a time. Such a pray- er, for instance, as the following : " Oh thou who ridest in a car drawn by two milk-white horses, come to our sacrificial feast, and drink of the moon-plant juice, and be drunk, and eat of the viands we have prepared for thee." There were whisky-drinking gods in those days. There was nothing in such prayers that could satisfy me. Then there was still a third system of faith, which professed to be even more philo- sophical, viz., Vedantism, which I have al- ready shown to be pure pantheism, a system which annihilates man's identity and de- stroys all idea of moral responsibility ; which teaches that man may commit the greatest sins imaginable, and escape from the conse- quences under the plea that it is not he that commits them, but God himself. Reflection showed me that such a system was blasphe- mous. None of the systems set forth among the Hindoos could satisfy me. In this state of mind my thoughts turned to Christianity, and I remembered the teach- ings of those eminent men under whom I was then prosecuting my- studies. Dr. Wil- son, who, by-the-way, was regarded as a great sorcerer by the ignorant Hindoos, on account of the number of people that, through his in- strumentality, had embraced the Gospel, had told me to read the Twenty-second Psalm and the fifty -third chapter of Isaiah, and then turn to the writings of the Evangelists, and compare the former with the latter, stat- ing that, if I did so, he was sure I could not remain a Hindoo. I had ceased to consider Dr. Wilson a sorcerer, as he had never prac- ticed any such arts upon me. I concluded to read the passages he had pointed out. I did so, and, as I considered them, the whole field of prophecy opened up before me'. I became convinced that the Bible was no cunningly devised fable, but that the holy men who wrote it did so as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Ever since that time the Bible became my constant companion. I took great delight in attending the classes of our blessed missionaries. There was one missionary* to whom I am under special ob- ligation, as it was he who made me thorough- ly acquainted with the doctrines of justifi- cation by faith in Christ, and sanctification through the Spirit. The doctrine of the Cross presented a sublimity to my mind that nothing else could equal, and I asked, Was it possible that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these illiterate fishermen of Galilee, could have of themselves invented these facts and doctrines, which to me seemed far / more sublime than any thing ever conceived of by Socrates and Plato ? I concluded that these writers must have been led by God himself; and now that thirty years have The Rev. Robert Nesbit. elapsed since first this thought took posses- sion of my heart, it is still as fresh as ever. The facts of the Gospel there presented re- main the same to-day as they were 1800 years ago, and must remain unchangeably the same to the latest age ; and I resolved to embrace the religion that teaches them. Having made up my mind to become a Christian, I was baptized on the 13th of September, 1843, and then commenced to study for the ministry. I was licensed to preach in 1851, and in 1854 was ordained to the work of an evangelist, or missionary to my own countrymen. MISSIONARY LABOR. I labored for a long time in Bombay, and afterward I went into the interior of the country, and for the last ten years have been laboring there. We have now a net-work of railroads throughout many parts of the country of some 5000 miles in extent, and more in proc- ess of construction. We can get on one of our railroads and perform the circuit of the country in a very few days ; and as ev- ery class of people is very anxious to take advantage of this mode of communication, I thought we missionaries ought not to be behind others, and that we ought to avail ourselves of this means of carrying the Gos- pel to remote regious. With this idea m view I founded several stations along the North-eastern line of the Great Indian Pen- insular railroad, and the South-western liuo of the same company. I have one station on this line that requires special notice. In 1864 I went there to pay a visit to two na- tive Christians who were baptized by my friend, Dr. Murray Mitchell, and whose work I found to be taking effect on a certain class of people. I stopped there a few weeks, and instructed them in the Word of God, and bap- tized thirteen or fourteen individuals. In that station, in the year 1864, there were only two Christians, but in 1873 there are upward of 500, young and old. In Jalna we have no fewer than 6 full catechists, 10 as- sistant catechists, 3 colporteurs, and 6 Bible women. In 1864 we had not a single reader of God's Word, but now we have 125 readers of God's Word in our Christian Church, and it is a delightful and gratifying fact to hear the voice of praise and thanksgiving proceeding from the lips which never be- fore uttered auy thing consistent with God's praise. Then we have from among the heathen 1400 children and youth under Christian instruction in our schools. These scholars are taught after the most approved systems of your own land. Our schools are carried on on Biblical principles, and the Bible rules all our studies, and the ef- fect is there, as it has been here, most gratifying. I may mention here that I recently re- SHESHADRI: CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. 609 ceived a grant of laud of 800 acres from ! the government of his highness the Nizam [ of Hyderabad, on which I am planting a Christian colony. The town is called Beth- el. It is to be constructed on good sanitary principles, with wide streets, trees planted on either side, good drains, and comfortable houses. I have appropriated 300 acres to the town, and hold the rest for the purpose of cultivation. I have already constructed a large well, and hope, when I return, to carry on this enterprise with vigor to a successful result. I deem it of the utmost importance to my work, and ask for it the sympathy and support of my Christian friends here and in the British Isles. One of our greatest obstacles is the sys- tem of caste, which is much more formida- ble than were the feudal castles of the Mid- dle Ages. There are four principal castes among the Hindoos the Brahmins, the Warriors, the Mercantile and the Servile castes. These have again been subdivided into an almost innumerable multitude of subordinate castes, the rules in regard to all which are most imperious. The slight- est deviation from these brings down upon the offender the combined vengeance of the entire tribe. To become a Christian is the most malignant of all offenses against caste. Hence the zeal with which all converts are so eagerly persecuted. Before the light of the Gospel, however, this caste is giving way. And this reminds mo that I must here turn again to the subject with which I set out. PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY IX INDIA. At first sight it would appear simply im- possible that this new religion should ever make any headway in such a country, and the missionaries, if they had not faith in the truths and verities of the Bible, might have given up the task and returned to Great Britain, or America, or Germany ; but these men came to our land possessed of a firm confidence in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the power of their risen and glorified Redeemer. His great commis- sion to his Church was, " Disciple all na- tions." The manner in which this was to be done was very much left to the discre- tion of the missionary, according to the light he possessed. Accordingly we have in India had various agencies at work, some teaching in schools, some preaching in bazars, at melas, and oth- er places of assemblage. Many people did not like this latter method. They would not condescend to stand in a crowd to hear the Word preached. They despised such preaching as this. They were satisfied with their own systems. Some of the missiona- ries, to reach this class, established schools, colleges, and other seminaries of learning. Dr. Duff, for instance, when he went to Calcutta in 1830, found that the people 39 there were not accessible to street preach- ers. He determined to set up a school in which all the knowledge of Western Europe should be imparted. He was prepared to teach science, literature, and religion in a manner equal to that of the best schools of modern times, and nobly has he succeeded. The institution he founded, and for many years ably conducted, became a mighty pow- er in India. It has not only itself exerted a powerful influence through its own teach- ings, but it has become the model after which all good missionary schools have since been formed. From the day he first opened this school to the present time the Bible has ruled all the other studies. He found a Large number of very intelligent men, many of whom had been educated in government schools and colleges, who had imbibed skep- tical notions that were neither good for Hin- dooism nor for Christianity. To counteract this he instituted lectures ; and week after week he and his brethren lectured iu Cal- cutta on Christianity, natural and reveal- ed religion, ethics, etc., etc. ; and the conse- quence was that a number of very intelli- gent young men, who attended these lec- tures, admitted the claims of Christianity, and finally declared their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There was one particular young man, Mr. K. M. Banuerjee, editor of a paper called The Inquirer, who Avrote a se- ries of articles in his paper that were very influential at that time. He himself em- braced Christianity, studied for the minis- try, was ordained to that work, and is now exercising a very great influence upon the people of Calcutta. Others followed his ex- ample, and that great institution, founded in 1830, has since that time been eminently blessed in preparing agents for missionary work in all parts of India. I speak its praises, not because I am one of the mission- aries of that church to which it belongs. I but re-echo the opinions of all classes of the people, from the viceroy down through all grades of government servants, civilians, military men, merchants, missionaries, and others who have no connection with mis- sions, who have visited it and examined its students, and have all acknowledged its worth as a powerful regenerating agency in that great city. At the present time there are no fewer than 1300 pupils receiving an education there. This will give you some faint idea of the progress made by education in Calcutta. The London Missionary Society has a simi- lar institution there, and the English Church Missionary Society has a very good college, with a staff of professors, though with no preparatory department. There are other Christian schools in addition to these. All these agencies have been the means of bringing about a great revolution among a large number of the people of Calcutta. 610 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. But what has been accomplished in Calcut- ta has also been done in Bombay, Madras, Allahabad, Lucknow, Nagpoor, Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, and in many other large stations where missions have been estab- lished. But besides those who have em- braced Christianity there is another influ- ential class, who, though still Hindoos and Mohammedans, have been drawn toward Christians by the collateral influences that have been brought to bear upon them. These men have received their education mostly in missionary schools and colleges, and when they go out into the world they still find the missionaries to be among their best friends, ever ready to lend them a help- ing hand, and to hold friendly social inter- course with them. There is no class in the English community in whose society our educated people find so much pleasure as in that of the missionaries. Their houses are always open, they are prepared to treat the people on terms of social equality. During this familiar intercourse their difficulties are laid open and views are freely exchanged on all the leading topics of the day. Then they readily attend missionary lectures, and in various other ways enjoy that familiar in- tercourse with the missionaries which can only be had Avith men of Christian hearts, and whose hearts yearn for the salvation of immortal souls. By all these influences they are drawn to Christianity, and now be- gin to look upon it as the greatest civilizing power in the whole world. Not only so, but many of this class would prefer that their children should grow up Christians, rather than that they should imbibe that species of infidelity which so frequently results from government education in schools from which the Bible is excluded. The old schools of Hindoo philosophy are fast losing their influence on the people. Caste prejudices are fast disappearing be- fore these schools in which Christian in- struction is imparted, and I am happy to be able to declare in this place, that caste, at the present day, has no more power over hundreds of thousands of my educated coun- trymen than it has over you. Caste is a purely ceremonial thing. It teaches that religion consists in eating and drinking cer- tain things in certain ways. But Christi- anity teaches that it is not that which en- tereth the mouth which defileth the man, but that which cometh out of the mouth. Christianity grounds its disciples thorough- ly in the doctrine of human depravity and human guilt ; and shows that this depravi- ty and this guilt can only be got rid of by the blood of Jesus Christ. " The blood of Jesus Christ clcanseth from all sin," and when they are brought to this belief, then these glorious truths that have been so beautifully illustrated and unfolded in this alliance the fellowship with the Father, the Sou, and the Holy Spirit and true Christian fellowship with one another be- come evident and are found to be reducible to practice in all simplicity, sincerity, and truth. And now for a word or two, before I con- clude, about this Alliance. When I was in ray own country, America was always asso- ciated in my mind with Theodore Parker, Emerson, and other writers of the same school of thought, and I had a kind of im- pression that Evangelical Christianity had but a very feeble hold of the minds and hearts' of your people. But since I came here, what have I seen ? Day after day, throughout the sessions of this Alliance, I have found not only this one building filled to overflowing, but three or four others generally called into requisition, and as yet there seems no diminution of the interest taken in these meetings by all classes of the community. The presence of these vast as- semblies in the great commercial capital of this country convinces me that as a people you are not tired of Christianity, and have no desire to banish it from your midst. It seems to me that though Emerson, Theodore Parker, and others may talk otherwise, there is not the slightest doubt that the great mass of the people here have the love of God in their hearts, and delight to make known the truth that God has revealed in his Word. Now, one of the effects of this great Alli- ance will be to convince my countrymen that there are hearts, thousands of hearts, millions of hearts, that yearn for the salva- tion of the 240,000,000 of my own country- men. Let every American who may here- after visit the shores of India and there are many who do visit them not as mission- aries, but as merchants, as sailors, as engi- neers, as travelers, and I know not in how many other capacities but let every one of them, yea, let all who come, whether Amer- icans, Germans, French, English, Scotch, or Irish, come there as living members of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they will then be preachers of sermons more eloquent, and calculated to produce far greater results, than even the sermons of your own Henry Ward Beecher. Judging from the progress that Chris- tianity has made in India during the last half- century, I am full of hope and encour- agement. It may be before this generation has passed away, we may have the happi- ness to receive hundreds of thousands of my countrymen into the Church of the living God. And, oh, what a consummation that would be! You are accustomed to look upon your own country as a grand one and, indeed, it is a grand land and your continent as a grand continent, and so it is; but I come from a country that is nearly as grand as your own country. You talk of SHESHADRI : CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HINDOOS. 611 your high mountains ! Why, we have the highest mountains in the world ! You talk of your rivers ! We, too, have gigantic riv- ers the Ganges, the Indus, the Nerbudda, and the Krishna. We are governed, too, by one of the most enlightened, most benefi- cent, and most progressive governments iu the whole world. Christian England is no- bly represented in that land by some of the ablest statesmen of modern times, and our rulers are performing wonders in opening up the country, and in developing its hith- erto unexplored resources. All these move- ments tend to spread intelligence, wealth, and civilization. Ah! there is indeed a great national awakening of the whole land ; and, although my forefathers tried to keep my people secluded from the rest of the world, we have at last broken the shackles of caste, and thrown away the bull of infal- libility, and we can now travel not only to Europe, but come even to your country, or go to China, or to any other part of the world. So that we can receive enlighten- ment and civilization from all lands. Nay, beyond all these benefits, the Sun of right- eousness has himself risen there with heal- ing in his wings, and at present many thou- sands rejoice in his light. One of the delegates said the other day there would be no successor to this meeting of the Alliance ; that Europe could not en- tertain you as we have been entertained here, iu such a style of princely magnifi- cence. But, if Europe can not or will not invite you, I trust India will soon be iu a position to do so ; and if you will come over there and hold a meeting, in Bombay, Alla- habad, or Lahore, I shall guarantee that you will not be disappointed. We have already had an Evangelical Al- liance in that country, on a small scale, but which gives a foretaste of what may one day be expected there. In December last, mis- sionaries from all parts of India met at Al- lahabad, the capital of the North-west Prov- inces, to read papers and discuss matters connected with the prosecution of mission- ary work in all parts of the country. The conference consisted of 136 members, con- nected with all the different missionary so- cieties now laboring in India. During that never-to-be-forgotten week the utmost har- mony and good feeling prevailed, though diversity of sentiment was expressed on all occasions with a freedom that has seldom been witnessed in any assembly of divines ; and at the close of these discussions, on the Lord's day, the entire assembly met and communed together at the table of their common Lord and Master. There we had Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Presby- terians, United Presbyterians (Scotch and American), Reformed Presbyterians, Luther- ans, and many other denominations, all en- gaged in sealing their common faith iu the common symbols of the broken body and shed blood of our adorable Redeemer. Such a scene as was there presented is one of the greatest triumphs of Christianity. That tri- umph has been repeated in this Alliance in America ; and can we not see in these glo- rious manifestations of the union of Chris- tians the dawn of that glory which shall ere long fill the whole earth ? I shall return to my own country feeling that the day of her deliverance has come, and that these noble-minded Christians who have extended to me so warm a welcome to their midst will never cease in their efforts for India till all her sous and daughters shall have been brought to Jesus. WOMAN'S WORK IN INDIA. BY THE REV. J. S. WOODSIDE, OF DEHRA Doox, INDIA. WOMAX, originally formed from man, "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh," incorporated into his very being and identi- fied with him iu God's holy covenant, en- dowed with the same intellectual faculties, and possessing the same high attributes of moral character ; intended to be the loving, confiding, loyal, life-long companion, friend, counselor, and support of man in short, a helpmeet for him in every condition of life, has, by the brutalizing effects of the fall, been degraded from her legitimate position, and subjected to a state of bondage, vary- ing in its character iu different countries, but calculated, in every case, to deprive her of her legitimate rights, and prevent the re- alization of God's purposes in her creation. The earliest legislation of ancient nations, outside of India, everywhere shows that the true position of woman was misunderstood. EGYPT, professing to derive its laws di- rectly from the gods, subjected woman to the caprice of the stronger sex, and while professing a species of veneration for her in the one character in which of all others she seems most lovely that of Mother in re- ality reduced her to a state of miserable and servile dependence. CHIXA, claiming for her legal code an equal antiquity, consigns her females, of the highest rank, to a seclusion from socie- ty amounting to the most rigorous impris- onment, prohibiting them from all inter- course, even with their own fathers, after their removal to the home of their hus- bands. This, with the physical torture in- flicted on their persons, in the hope of se- curing those conditions of body deemed by them essential to feminine beauty, shows too clearly the sad condition of woman in that country. JAPAX, considered as the connecting link between the civilization of Eastern Asia and that of Europe, deprives woman of all separate legal rights, declares her incapable of giving evidence in the courts of law, and forbids any thing like genuine confidence between husband and wife. The histories of GREECE and ROME show a higher appreciation of female character, but even in those nations, in the brightest times of their highest civilization, we no- where find woman occupying her true posi- tion as the " companion and friend of man." The same' principle of subjection to man's caprice, and isolation from his society, marks her condition in both. But it is not alone among the ancients and in the dark obscurity of heathen nations that we find woman's true position denied her. In the most enlightened portions of EU- ROPE and AMERICA, where science and reve- lation have so long striven to define, estab- lish, and perpetuate liberty, both civil and religious, do we not find many of her un- doubted rights unjustly withheld ? Notwithstanding thousands of examples in both ancient and modern history of a de- votion, constancy, fidelity, and truthfulness more heroic than that of Porcia, the spirit of many laws and regulations, both social and national, affecting her interests, still practic- ally declares that woman is morally inferior to man and can not be trusted by him. It is scarcely credible that the law of di- vorce enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland as late as the year 1857, and now administered throughout an em- pire upon which the sun never sets, and that, too, under the sovereignty of a lady whose virtues lend a glorious lustre to the crown she wears, and unparalleled dignity, splendor, and majesty to the throne she so nobly adorns, should still, with unblushing effrontery, proclaim to the world the moral disparity of the sexes. While it severs the conjugal tie for a single offense on the part of woman, it declares that a similar offense on man's part shall be condoned, unless to it be superadded other offenses, such as gross brutality, personal violence, or desertion. No wonder that Lord Brougham, contem- plating the condition of woman under such enactments, should have exclaimed, " There must be a total reconstruction of the law before Avoman can have justice." The late Lord Macaulay, after an exhaust- ive survey of this whole subject, wrote as follows : " If," says he, " there be a word of truth in history, women have been always, and still are, over the greater part of the globe, humble companions, playthings, cap- tives, menials, beasts of burden. Except in a few happy and civilized communities, they are strictly in a state of personal slavery. Even in those countries where they are best treated the laws are generally unfavorable to them, with respect to almost all the points in which they are most deeply interested." But I must not allow these remarks to di- WOODSIDE : WOMAN'S WORK IN INDIA. 613 verge into a general disquisition on " wom- an's rights." I merely wish to indicate how difficult it has been to secure for woman, even in the most highly favored nations, the position for which God. originally designed her, and to which Christianity will yet re- store her. WOMAN'S CONDITION IN INDIA. I turn now to that far-off land I have the honor to represent in this assembly, and would respectfully claim your attention to a brief statement regarding the condition of woman in India. Hindoo chronology claims an antiquity reaching away back through four distinct ages, aggregating a period of duration of nearly four millions of years, and Hindoo history tells us that dur- ing the first or golden age of this period, which lasted 1,728,000 years, men, and women too, were all virtuous. Truth, righteousness, and absolute perfection of character every- where prevailed, and their holy lives were prolonged to the average length of 100,000 years! What a glorious commencement to the career of a nation ; and if the modern theory of progressive development by an unerring principle of natural selection had been realized in subsequent ages down to the present time, what a spectacle might not the India of to - day have presented ! How sad. that, in contemplating the pres- ent condition of her benighted millions, we must leave the regions of astronomical num- bers as to time, and the flights of poetic fan- cy as to the facts of history, and come down to the sober realities of life as we now find it among her people ! It would indeed be difficult to find language adequate to depict the condition of woman as she was found in India at the commencement of the present century. Through the merciful interposi- tion of the British Government, many of the evils which then existed have been greatly ameliorated, and some entirely removed; but there still exist, among this class, a deep moral degradation and a confirmed spirit- ual bondage that no civil power, however philanthropic, can ever eradicate. Nothing but the almighty power of infinite love, ex- erted through the benign agency of Christian women, can ever work out her full and final redemption. Birth and Infanticide. From the moment of her birth the condition of woman in India is one of sorrow, misery, and servile degra- dation. The birth of a daughter in a Hin- doo family is considered a grave calamity. As soon as the event is known, disappoint- ment, sorrow, and not unfrequeutly deep- seated indignation, become apparent in the entire household. A Hindoo father has been known to cause the death of his wife by violence, because she has committed the crime of presenting him with a daughter! No congratulations must ever be present- ed to the relatives, nor will any friend or acquaintance ever presume to refer, in the most distant manner, to an event which is considered so disastrous to all. The infant life is still, alas ! too frequently sacrificed to such feelings, notwithstanding all the ef- forts of a beneficent government to put an end to this inhuman custom. The demands of caste in regard to marriage, especially among the Eajpoot tribes, are so inexorable that in cases where, through poverty, these can not be complied with, infanticide is con- sidered the only possible solution of the dif- ficulty. At the commencement of the pres- ent century the annual slaughter of these female innocents might have been reckoned by hundreds of thousands. In the year 1802 the Marquis of Wellesley, then Governor- general of India, published an order of Gov- ernment declaring Infanticide to be murder, punishable with death, and from that time down to the present each successive admin- istration has labored to eradicate this fear- ful evil ; yet so late as the year 1836 it was estimated by a Rajpoot chief that as many as 20,000 female infants were destroyed an- nually in the provinces of Malwa and Raj- pootana alone. What adds to the horror with which we contemplate this savage cus- tom is the thought that the perpetrator of the crime is usually the mother of the little victim herself. The present Government of India is most energetic in its efforts to crush out this fear- ful evil in every part of the land, and efforts have very recently been made to induce the people so to modify their marriage cere- monies as to diminish expense, and thus make it possible for a poor man to have his daughters married, and avoid the other fear- ful alternative of their destruction. An in- telligent Rajpoot once complained to me of the hardships of his position in these words : " I am a Rajpoot. I have a family of nine children, six of whom are daughters. I am poor, I can not get my daughters married, and the English Government won't allow me to kill them. For them to remain unmarried is to me everlasting disgrace and utter ruin. What am I to do ?" I advised him to trust in God, and the same kind hand that had sent him these daughters would no doubt, in due time, send husbands for them. Years afterward I met him, and learned, to my great joy, that he had found husbands for every one of his girls ; and, when I reminded him of his former state of mind, he express- ed his gratitude to the authors of those be- nign laws that had prevented him from im- bruing his hands in their blood. Marriage and Widowhood. If permitted to live, the next great matter to be attended to, in the life of the Hindoo girl, is her mar- riage. A Kulin Brahmin is compelled, by the requirements of his caste, to betroth his daughter as soon as she is born. Other 614 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. castes deem it most unfortunate and degrad- ing if a daughter should remain uubetroth- ed to the age of four or five years ; and for her to remain unmarried to the age of eleven years would be to bring utter social ruin upon the entire family. From these child marriages, again, arise the worst features of Hindoo widowhood ; for many a child in In- dia becomes a widow before she has reach- ed the age of seven years ! It matters not whether her age be two, four, six, ten, twen- ty, or thirty years, from the hour of her hus- band's decease her condition becomes one of intolerable misery, and thousands of these unfortunates are driven to the last resource of the wretched suicide to escape from the shame, sorrow, and bodily sufferings to which they have been subjected. Their hair, that grandest ornament of woman, is shorn close to the skin ; they are stripped of all their ornaments, jewels, and even decent apparel ; their persons are covered with ash- es ; they are clothed with coarse refuse gar- ments, obliged to eat the coarsest food, ex- cluded from all familiar intercourse with their relatives, and compelled to wait upon the more favored inmates of the house in the capacity of slaves. Their persons are no longer inviolate ; they are liable, at any time, to bo treated with the most outra- geous cruelty, and can expect no expression of sympathy even from their own mothers and sisters, but are compelled to endure, as best thsy can, the united maledictions of all. Numerous cases have come under my own notice where these poor victims of social, op- pression have sought refuge from their suf- ferings in death, produced by means of opi- um and arsenic, or by precipitating them- selves into wells. And yet these horrid cus- toms have the full sanction not only of uni- versal usage, but claim prescriptive recog- nition and approval in their divine laws. Thanks be to God, there is at last the d,awn of a better day for the Hindoo widow, for of late years the more enlightened members of that community have begun not only to advocate and defend, but to permit and. practice the remarriage of widows. But supposing the Hindoo wife to escape the misfortune of early widowhood, and to live to become the inmate of her husband's house, her position is still what, to our West- ern ideas, would be considered wretched in the extreme. Her husband is her lord and master. She can not even meet him face to face, unveiled, in the presence of a third par- ty, though that may be one of her own chil- dren. She can never sit down to eat till her husband has first finished his meal. She dare not presume to eat from the same dish with him, but is content to wait upon him in the character of an humble attendant. She is closely guarded, and jealously watch- ed by a vigilant and perhaps overbearing and despotic mother-in-law, and other fe- male relations, or even dependents. Should she be so unfortunate as to have no chil- dren, she will soon have to endure the pres- ence of a rival in the person of another wife, and may at last be content to lavish her pent-up affections on the children of this intruder. I have spoken here only of the Hindoo, because that class is by far the largest, and have only now to add that in many cases the sorrows of the Hindoo woman are borne with a fortitude that does honor to her spe- cies, and she exhibits traits of character that place her high in the list of the noblest wom- en of any nation. Testimony of the Sacred Books. But it may be asked, Are these things the result of so- cial degeneration alone, or does this condi- tion of things find any sanction in the laws of this ancient people ? These laws are to be found in the Vedas, the Institutes of Mauu, the Sbasters, and the Puraus. Truth compels the declaration that, so far as mod- ern research has yet reached in the investi- gation of these, there is nothing found which will prevent the conclusion that the evils of woman's condition, as above described, find their fullest sanction in them all. According to the Vedas, "Woman is so bad that she is declared to be simply an in- carnation of sin. She can not be trusted; her evidence in law can not be taken. She must not read the Vedas, and is to have no concern whatever with religious rites." In the Institutes of Mauu it is declared, "That woman can have no separate holy rites, nor perform for herself any acts of de- votion. All she has to do is to worship her husband, and thus she will become famous in heaven." He ordains "that woman must do whatever her husband commands her," even to the violation of any and every pre- cept of morality. The Shaster says, "To lie, to be impudent, to deceive, to speak bit- ter words, to be unclean and cruel, are all vices inherent in a woman's disposition." And the Purans say, "Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred ablutions wash the feet of her husband and drink the wa- ter ; for the husband is to his wife greater than Sbankar or Vishnu. The husband is her God, and Guru, and religion and its services; wherefore, abandoning everything else, she ought chiefly to worship her hus- band, looking upon him as Vishnu." Among the Mohammedans. But it is not only among the Hindoos that we find the condition of woman so degraded. If we turn to the Mohammedan population, num- bering some 35,000,000 in India, we find the state of her affairs perhaps even worse than among those already described. Here po- lygamy, with all its frightful evils, is to be found in all its intensity, and, as a natural consequence, the system of seclusion, as found in the harem and zenana. WOODSIDE : WOMAN'S WORK IN INDIA. 615 This system seems inseparable from the former, and is absolutely essential to its ex- istence. Sir William Muir,the present Lieu- tenant-governor of the North-west Prov- inces, and the ablest as well as the most philanthropic Christian statesman now in India, in his "Life of Mohammed," speaking of the seclusion of females, says : " The truth is that the extreme license of polygamy and divorce permitted to his followers by Mo- hammed rendered these safeguards necessa- ry. Such license could not, without gross and flagrant immorality, be compatible with the free and open intercourse of European society. It would not in any nation be tol- erable without restrictions which fetter and degrade the female sex. The licentiousness of the system without the present checks, cruel and unnatural as they are, would cer- tainly create in Mussulman countries an ut- ter dissolution of morality, already at a suf- ficiently low ebb. If any man might look upon any married woman (near relatives excepted) as within his reach by marriage, the present husband consenting ; if every married woman felt that she might become the lawful wife of any man whom she might captivate, and who could persuade her hus- band to pronounce a divorce, the foundations of society would be broken up !" These re- marks of this distinguished statesman and scholar are worthy of serious thought by those who think that Brigham Young has been a benefactor of mankind by introdu- cing this system into the Salt Lake Valley. This State of Things not Universal. But I can not here attempt to follow the woman of India through all the intricacies of her inner life, nor to speak of this life as it is presented in the several different communi- ties of the country. Nor is it to be inferred from what is stated above that all females in India are equally subjected to the vilo treatment prescribed in the sacred books of the Hindoos, and enforced by custom, more particularly in the regions to the north of the Vindhya range, where the political pow- er and social influence of Mohammedanism have been chiefly felt. In all parts of India the lowest classes of women are permitted to go abroad, and in the South and West there is less restriction on the liberty of the higher classes than else- where; but whatever the personal and social relations of woman in India may be, the great central fact in regard to her moral and spirit- ual condition still stands out in all its naked enormity before us. Nearly 120,000,000 of women in that great country are still held in a state of moral bondage, and appeal through us, this day, to the only real source whence deliverance can be hoped for. THE REMEDY. There is but one power in the world that can rescue them, and that is the Gospel, car- ried to them, too, in the tender hands, and spoken to them in the fond, loving, heart- felt, and affectionate tones of sisterhood by Christian women. The peculiar constitu- tion of Indian society presents an insuper- able barrier to the direct evangelization of the women of India by the agency of man; but the Divine Author of our holy religion has provided for not only this, but for every other form of antagonism to the truth, and apostolic example shows us how the all-powerful aid of woman may be brought to supplement our original mis- sionary agency in that country. The spirit of missions is not confined to one sex. It is poured out upon all flesh, and the daughters of the Church, as well as her sons, have a divine commission to " prophesy," or make known the glad tidings of eternal life in such circumstances, and under such condi- tions, as may appear to require their special qualifications. THE WORK ALREADY DO?fE. But I must now proceed to notice briefly the work that has already been done. From the very commencement of missionary effort in India, the wives of missionaries, and many other Christian ladies, have steadily endeav- ored to ameliorate the condition of their hea- then sisters, and introduce as mauy as could be brought within the reach of their influence to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Je- sus; but still the great work, of the evangel- ization of India's daughters is, as yet, in its very infancy. From what has already been said, it will appear clear to a demonstra- tion that this work must, for the present, be almost purely educational. 1. Accordingly, among our earliest mis- sionary institutions, female orphanages find a place. Into these schools little outcast and destitute girls, deprived of all parental or other friendly care, were received, fed, clothed, and educated, as Christian children, with all the tender solicitude of parents ; and these efforts have been greatly blessed ; for, from these institutions have gone forth most of the Christian wives of our earlier converts, who have thus become' the mothers of the future Indian Church. This agency is still continued, and is doing a great work for Christ, in connection with almost every missionary society now laboring in India. 2. Then we have day-soltools for the ed- ucation, chiefly, of the lower classes, as only such can at present bo induced to attend them. It is very difficult to convince the people of the utility of these schools, and it was necessary, in mauy instances, to allure the girls into attendance by the payment of a small pecuniary consideration. This, in man}' places, is no longer necessary. A wide door is being rapidly opened for the prose- cution of this department of Christian ef- fort, and this must go on extending, until 616 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. the entire population is brought under its influence. 3. Zenana Missions. About twenty years ago a new enterprise was first attempted, which has since risen into a position of no secondary magnitude, and which is, I be- lieve, destined to exert a mighty influence for good among the women of India. I re- fer to what is known as " Zenana Teach- ing." Among the educated classes we now find a considerable desire springing up to have their wives and daughters also edu- cated, if this can be done in accordance with the peculiar customs of the country. Lady missionaries are allowed unrestricted access to the women's apartments in the houses of this class, and thus a field for evangelistic effort, of unlimited extent, is opened up, and now invites the women of Christian lands to enter in and cultivate it. This work is carried on at almost every mission station in India in a more or less systematic way; but there are two or three prominent so- cieties organized with special reference to it which demand a brief notice in this place. " The American Zenana Mission," organ- ized under the able superintendence of Miss Brittan, a lady well known in this city, and supported by the " Woman's Union Foreign Missionary Society," is one of the most impor- tant of these. It employs nineteen agents, be- sides a considerable number of native Chris- tian assistants. These labor at three great centres, and were at the close of last year educating about 900 pupils in their schools. The education given is as yet necessarily of an elementary character. " They are taught, in the vernacular, Earth's 'Bible Stories,' ' Line upon Line,' ' Peep of Day/ the Gospels, the ' History of India,' the ' Pilgrim's Prog- ress,' ' Rudiments of Knowledge/ Geography, books of Natural History, etc., and, in En- glish, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Readers, Geography, Arithmetic, and ' Peter Parley's History.' " Next in importance is the English " In- dian Female Normal School Society." " At the end of 1872, four hundred and twenty- five zenanas were open to the agents of this society in nine different stations ; and in these zenanas upward of 700 ladies were un- der instruction. In addition to these, there were twenty-seven schools with 727 schol- ars." The whole number of foreign agents and assistant teachers connected with this society is seventeen. " The Society for Promoting Female Edu- cation in the East " is one of older standing than either of the above ; but its operations are carried on through the association of its agents with the missionaries of other soci- eties. Separate details of their work are not at present within my reach. This soci- ety has also certain stations of its own, and nobly co-operates with other societies in car- rying on the great and good work which its name embodies. " The Woman's Foreign Missionary Socie- ty " of the Presbyterian Church in America is also largely engaged in this work. At all the principal stations occupied by the Board throughout the North-west Provinces and the Punjab, their agents are at work in the zenanas as well as other departments of female education, both vernacular and En- glish. 4. Christian Girls' Boarding-schools. Last, but not least, I must notice those institu- tions that are the direct outgrowth of Chris- tian missions, and now press their claims on the Church in Christian lands, not merely as a means of conserving the products of toil already gathered, but as great and im- portant agencies for developing an indige- nous evangelistic spirit among the people of the land. Foremost among these rank our Christian Girls' Boarding-schools. These in- stitutions are intended exclusively for the education of the daughters of native con- verts and others intrusted to the mission- ary's care to be trained up as Christians. Special reference is had to the position the pupils are to occupy in after-life as the Pio- neers of the new Christian civilization. They are educated with a special view to their be- coming centres of Christian influence in their future homes, and every thing, whether do- mestic, scientific, or ethical, that is calcu- lated to make a Christian home in India the exact counterpart of such homes in Europe and America is carefully inculcated. One of the principal of these, and that Avith which I am best acquainted, is the school estab- lished at Dehra Doon, in the North-west Provinces, in the year 1859. This school was commenced under the superintendence of a noble-minded daughter of Massachu- setts the late Mrs. Herron, herself a pupil of the celebrated Mount Holyoke Seminary at South Hadley and has thus far been con- ducted, as nearly as possible, after the plan of that world-renowned establishment. Mrs. Herron gave her brief but brilliant life to its service, and her remains now repose near the scene of her self-denying labors. She was succeeded in that arduous work by another of America's high-minded, high- ly educated, and self-sacrificing daughters Miss Beatty, a lady whose brief Indian ca- reer sheds a lustre upon the Christianity of America not surpassed in the entire annals of missionary enterprise. She was a native of the adjoining State of New Jersey, to which place she returned in the year 1869, and died " in the midst of loving friends," after an absence of seven years. As a missionary teacher, she excelled in all those qualifica- tions most essential to such a position. Her knowledge, her experience, her patience, her quiet but resistless will, and her indomitable perseverance enabled her to accomplish more WOODSIDE : WOMAN'S WORK IN INDIA. 617 in the few years of her connection with the school than could have been accomplished in much longer time by one less gifted than herself. So highly were her labors appreci- ated by even the Government of India, that the late lamented Lord Mayo did not con- sider it beneath his position as the Viceroy of India, and representative of her majes- ty the Queen, to pay a visit of condolence to her sick-chamber, and to speak words of comfort and encouragement to one who had given her life to the work of Christian edu- cation. It was my privilege to labor, for four years, side by side with this noble wom- an, and to witness day after day the inextin- guishable zeal with which, amidst difficulties of no ordinary character, she continued to labor for the welfare of the children com- mitted to her care. How often has my heart burned and my soul kindled with admira- tion as I looked upon her pale face and ex- hausted frame, still toiling on to the very end with a holy enthusiasm that seemed su- pernatural, and compelling the recognition of a power in woman as a missionary, I had never before fully realized. Her character, and that of others I might here depict, dem- onstrate to the Church that there is no bar- rier of caste that may not be torn down, no chains of ignorance that may not be broken, no dungeon in the zenana that may not be opened, no depth of superstition that may not be fathomed, and no moral darkness that may not be illumined by the sanctified en- ergies of Christian women. The school founded and moulded by these devoted women now contains about 120 Christian girls, under the superintendence of a missionary and his wife. The children are instructed by a staff of five American la- dies, aided by an equal number of native as- sistants. Instruction is given both in the vernacular and English languages, and the aim of all is to make the teaching as thor- ough as it possibly can be made in every department. It is, to all intents and pur- poses, a model or normal school of the first rank. But it is not alone as a great educa- tional agency that the value of such an in- stitution is to be estimated. It is more than this it is a Christian home, where order, in- telligence, industry, and religion are used to form the basis of that domestic character so essential to the future mothers of the Church in India. The buildings in which it is con- ducted have just been completed at a cost of about $30,000. They consist of two prin- cipal wings, two stones in height, each 156 feet in length by 47 in depth, with interven- ing class and lecture rooms, 50 by 58 feet. In addition to these, there are a spacious cook-room, store-rooms, lavatory, latrine, and other buildings, and in the adjacent com- pound a separate building, at present rented as a hospital. These details are given just to show the requirements of a branch of labor which missionary success has already imposed on the Church, and which must be sustained if the future Christianity of India is to be like our own. This school is under the special care of the " Woman's Foreign Missionary Society," and it should have been mentioned that this same society has recently purchased the Woodstock School at Landour, with the view of maintaining there a school of a high or- der for the children of missionaries of all denominations, and those members of the Anglo-Indian community that may wish to avail themselves of its advantages. Other schools of this class have been com- menced, and are to be conducted on the same plan. Such, for instance, is that re- cently established by our Methodist Episco- pal brethren at Lucknow, and one in the Punjab under the English Church Mission. Other missions, in particular our Scotch brethren, are not behindhand in their schools for girls. Did time permit, I might refer in detail to many of them, all doing a noble work, but I must hasten to notice another important agency. Government Female Schools. I am delighted to be enabled to state in this place that fe- male education is not only prosecuted of late years with greatly increased vigor by mis- sionaries, but it has also arrested the atten- tion of Government, and noble efforts are now being put forth in this direction in all parts of the land. Not only the Government of India, but the local Governments, are ev- erywhere actively engaged in this work, and do all in their power not only to encourage it in the public schools, but endeavor, by all legitimate means, to stimulate private indi- viduals to imitate their example. Foremost among these stands the Lieutenant-govern- or of the North-west provinces. He is no- bly sustained in these efforts by his excel- lent Christian wife, Lady Muir, who spends much time in visiting these schools wherev- er she goes, and by her presence and gener- osity does much to encourage those more immediately engaged in the work. There are many other prominent English ladies, whose names might hero be mentioned, who not only aid these Government efforts, but who, like Lady Muir, also manifest a special interest in those schools in which Christian- ity is taught. In the last administration report of the North-western Provinces we find that the Government maintained in these provinces alone 427 female schools, containing 7917 pupils, and gave liberal aid to 108 private establishments, containing 3571 pupils. The Government of the Punjab reports 125 schools, with 2573 pupils, and 166 aided schools, giving instruction to 6646 pupils ; and so with regard to all the other local governments, exact statistics of which are 618 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. not here available. The good work is go- ing forward, and though wo have still to la- ment the fact that the Bible has not been introduced into the regular curriculum of education, it can not be denied that these schools are doing much for the overthrow of idolatry ; for it is absolutely impossible to give any kind of accurate instruction in modern science, history, or even geography, without undermining the fabric of heathen- ism. It is due to the Government of India here to add that, though the Bible is not taught in their schools, it is invariably placed in the school library, and any pupil who may wish to refer to it has every facility for do- ing so placed at his disposal. Tens of thou- sands of the daughters of India are to-day receiving, in these Government schools, and in private native institutions, much sound secular instruction, which must prove high- ly beneficial to society at large, and prepare the people for that higlier knowledge so es- sential to their spiritual regeneration. Let us here remember, too, that there are some 30,000 girls in the mission schools of India, representing the combined efforts of twenty -five different missionary societies and the entire Church of Christendom. But supposing all these to receive a Chris- tian education of the very highest order, what are they among the vast multitudes still unreaclied ? The results here disclosed but discover the extreme impotence of the agencies as yet in operation. Let no one be deceived. The evangelization of India is scarcely as yet fairly commenced. It is a work in which generations of missionaries, yet unborn, may toil and die; but still it is certain of success ; and we have now enlist- ed in this cause a power, the potency of which the world has never yet fully under- stood. Woman is to share, as God intended she should share, in every thing that tends to the glory of humanity in this holy struggle. India affords a wide and inviting field for the exercise of her peculiar gifts, and were all the churches represented in this Alliance engaged in this work, as I believe they one day shall be, great and glorious results would soon be manifest. The crying want of India is Christianity ; and in the words of a brother-missionary, " Well-ordered Christian homes are one of the greatest wants of the Indian Church. We rejoice that there are such homes, but they are very few compared with the num- ber of Christian families and the wants of the Church. Englishmen, Americans, and Germans need no arguments to convince them of the matchless worth and priceless blessings of their Christian homes. They are nurseries of piety, and virtue, and great- ness, and goodness. Like the air and the dew and the sunshine in the natural world, they are the silent but powerful agents that are everywhere at work, refreshing and sus- taining the spiritual life of the Church, fill- ing it with beauty and goodness, and sus- taining and directing its energies. It is only pious, intelligent, and cultivated wives and mothers that can make such homes. The homes of England and America the brightest and happiest and most beautiful places on this side heaven are the creations of Christian womanhood and the Christian woman herself the richest product and glory of the religion of Christ on earth." Chris- tian women of America, the daughters of India appeal to you by every tie that binds you to them as sisters, and by the bonds of that love Avhich reaches far beyond all hu- man relationships, and unites all in Christ, to come to their aid. They still continue to be born, live, suffer, and die in heathen darkness, with scarce a ray of light to il- lumine, in the smallest degree, the impen- etrable gloom of their dark habitations. Shall they call in vain ? Surely not ! WOMAN IN INDIA TO WOMEN IN CHRIST. India's daughters, long degraded. Long by heathen power enslaved, Call aloud to Christian women In these lands by Jesus saved. Infants slain by wicked mothers, Children sunk 'neath Saugor's wave, Speak to you from death's dark chamber^ Call to yon their race to save. Widows shorn, despoiled, maltreated, Widows though but children still, Cry aloud, ye Christian mothers, Yon can help us if you will ! Wives shut np in lone zenanas, Slaves and tools of man's caprice, Ask your aid, ye Christian sisters, Them from bondage to release. Matrons old, in sin grown hardened, Yet with souls of priceless worth, Hail yon as their saviours, saying : For our rescue, oh, come forth 1 Shall not women thus appealed to, Women loyal, kind, and true, Quickly, in love's sweetest accents, Answer yes ! we come to yon ? And we bring with us the Saviour, Jesus Christ the Son of God, Who to ransom wretched sinners, Freely shed his priceless blood. He has long with pity viewed yon ; Now his power he will display In your full and free salvation, He the Life, the Truth, the Way. Yes, daughters of India, lift up your heads ; the day of your redemption draweth nigh. Christian women in every Christian land have espoused your cause, and have re- solved that you shall be free ; and heralds of their love are gathering around you, and will never give yon up till you shall all be- come one with them in Christ. MISSIONS AMONG THE LOWEST OF THE HEATHEN. BY THE RT. REV. E. DE SCHWEINITZ, S.T.D., Bishop of the Moravian Church, and President of the Theological Seminary at Bethlehem, Pa. MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN, Before reading the paper which I have prepared, permit ine to communicate a fact which ought to be made known on this " Mission- ary Day " of our Conference. In the city from which the gentleman comes who has just taken his seat (Rev. E. E. Jeukius, of London), there exists a So- ciety called " The London Association in Aid of the Missions of the United Brethren." This association is composed exclusively of mem- bers of the Church of England, of Independ- ents, of Baptists, and of other Protestant Christians, who contribute, with the utmost liberality and in fraternal fellowship, about $25,000 a year toward the support of the Foreign Missions of the Church which I rep- resent. Such a Foreign Missionary Evan- gelical Alliance is, as far as I know, without a parallel in the history of Protestantism, and does the highest honor to the catholic spirit of the Christians of Great Britain, who are so worthily and ably represented at this Convention. The Association was organized in 1817, and has, therefore, been doing its no- ble work for fifty-six years. With these remarks I proceed to take up the topic which I am to discuss. From the four gentlemen who have preceded me, we have heard very interesting accounts of Christianity as it is influencing that an- cient, and, iu many respects, enlightened people, the Hindoos. I will direct your at- tention to pagans of an entirely different order. My subject is, MISSIONARY WORK AMONG THE MOST INSIGNIFICANT AND DE- GRADED TRIBES OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. It will be necessary, in the first place, to define what I mean by their insignificance and degradation. From a missionary point of view, the hea- then may be divided into three classes. The first consists of populous nations, whose homes are permanently established, and whose coun- tries embrace important resources for the ma- terial development of the world. Such na- tions are found in possession of nearly two- thirds of Asia, from the North Pacific to the river Indus, and spreading over more than one-half of Africa, from the Capo Colony to the Great Desert. Their conversion to Chris- tianity would make them a great and far- reaching power iu the Church of Christ. The second class comprises aborigines that either inhabit islands of the sea conjointly with growing colonies of the white race, or that occupy the interior of continents and are encircled by civilized and nominally Christian states. In the Malay Archipela- go, in. Polynesia, in Australasia, excepting the continent of Australia, and in the lu- ilian territories of North and South Amer- ica, we meet with the representatives of this class. Their future is still an open ques- tion. Whether they will be permanent agents in the coming time, we of to-day can not tell. They may, at least in part, disappear. In any case, they will consti- tute, both on account of their geographical position and inferior resources, a secondary power in subduing the earth to the sway of Christ. The third class is made up of small tribes, or broken remnants of nations, isolated, con- trolling no resources of any moment, exer- cising no influence, and, in some cases, fast dying out. Indeed, their total extinction would not effect the world; its material development would go on unhindered, and even its spiritual progress, in so far as any evangelizing force is concerned which they could put forth, would barely feel their loss. They mostly occupy, moreover, the lowest grade of humanity. Their religious sense is almost a blank, relieved only by vague superstitions, which they do not themselves understand. To this class belong the Es- quimaux of the far North ; petty and de- tached clans of Indians in the forests of Cen- tral and South America ; the Bush negroes of Surinam ; the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego ; and the aborigines of the continent of Australia. I do not pretend to give a complete list. That will not be possible until the Protestant Church will have fully searched out every pagan land. The tribes of this third class, therefore, I denominate the most insignifictint and de- graded of the heathen world ; and to the missionary work goiug on among them I now beg leave to direct your attention. It can not be denied that other missions are comparatively more important. The conversion of Japan, of China, or of India, concerning which country we have heard so much this morning, would bring millions of new members into the Church. The riches of the East would be poured out 620 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. at Christ's feet. His banner would be borne by armies of missionaries to all the ends of Asia. Or suppose the Koraunas, the Bechuauas, the Dahomaus, with their terrible history of slave-hunts and blood, and other cognate peoples of Africa, re- claimed from barbarism, and made partak- ers of that grace of God which brings sal- vation and which has appeared to all men. The result would be wonderful. Influences would be set at work that must eventually cause the wild multitude of negro tribes to flow together into one great and powerful Christian nation, making their continent a stronghold of the Gospel, and its southern extremity, iu a new and glorious sense, the Cape of Good Hope. An outlook such as this suggests the question : Would it not be advisable for the Church to withdraw from work among the inferior tribes, scattered over the hea- then world, and to concentrate all its ener- gies in the midst of populous nations that constitute a power and that have a fu- ture? This question assumes considerable importance when we glance at the history of missions. In Greenland the Lutheran Mission was begun in 1721, the Moravian in 1733. Both enterprises are still continued. Through- out a century and a half, therefore, they have been calling for money and men. At least two hundred laborers, in all, have been sent out, and about forty are iu the field at present. Shut up amidst arctic snows and separated from the rest of the world, they draw a steady support from the churches at home and expend their own strength for the sake of an insignificant people that will never exercise any direct influence upon the conversion of the human race. The same sup- port and strength applied elsewhere would accomplish far greater results, and help more immediately to evangelize the world. Still more to the point is the case of the mission among the Bush negroes of Suri- nam. Its history is a record of sickness and death, of disappointments and failures. The air of the forests through which the Bush negroes wander is poison to the white man, and the water -courses along which they build their huts reek with miasmata. And yet, ever since 1765, with occasional inter- ruptions, missionary work has been carried on in that pestilential and obscure corner of the earth. Indeed it has been the scene of Christian heroism such as is rarely sur- passed. And who are the Bush negroes ? A handful of savages, descended from the fugi- tive slaves of the Colony, living wholly to themselves, carrying on no trade, without the slightest importance iu the world. The same determined missionary labor, done in other countries and among other tribes, would have produced a far more plenteous harvest. Over against such facts, however, and iu reply to the question which has suggested them, three considerations may be urged. First, we have a Divine behest : " Go ye into all the world," said Christ to his disci- ples, " and preach the Gospel to every crea- ture." The tribes under discussion are in- cluded in this command. They belong to the heathen who shall be given to our Sav- iour for an inheritance, and their secluded domains to those uttermost parts of the earth which he shall have for a possession. The Church would be disobedient to its Head, if any pagans were neglected on ac- count of their insignificance. Indeed, as has been well said, it would cease to be Christ's Church if it abandoned missionary work before the last heathen had heard the Gospel. But, second, we joyfully recognize the power of Christian love. Love to God and man is the life of the Church. This love begets missionaries. Deeming no heathens too degenerate, and no heathen tribe too pal- try, to be saved, it has sought out the low- est first. If its activity in this direction were to come to an end, there would be something wanting in the Christianity of our day. A jewel would drop out of its crown. Finally, we acknowledge the importance of a prudent missionary policy. It would be unwise to abandon fields that are of lit- tle consequence and concentrate the entire strength of the Church among powerful na- tions. For its present work is merely a preparation for that which is to come, when Joel's prophecy will be fulfilled still more completely than on the day of Pentecost, when God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh, and when the heathen will fly as the clouds and as the doves to their windows. The world can not be converted without such a visitation from on high. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." Hence prudence directs that at least a watch-tower, with a chamber for prayer on its roof, should be built in the midst of every pagan tribe. And then, when the heathen world will have been surround- ed with the cordons of the Christian host, that host will advance and conquer, in the Lord's time and at the Spirit's signal. These reasons seem to me to show that missionary work among the most insignifi- cant and degraded tribes of paganism is nei- ther a waste of money nor a loss of men. It is a proper, a necessary, and a great work. But there is another point of view from which such enterprises may be contem- plated. They prove, without the possibili- ty of a doubt, what the Bible predicates concerning the world -wide sufficiency of the Gospel as a converting and civilizing power. I will illustrate and establish this position SCHWEINITZ : THE LOWEST OF THE HEATHEN. 621 by facts drawn from the history of the mis- sion among the natives of the Australian Continent. This is one of the newest and most remarkable of those undertakings that come within the scope of my topic, although it is but little known in our country. My authority is a faithful and distinguished mis- sionary, who labored in Australia for nine years, and who visited me last spring, on his way to Canada, where he has taken charge of an Indian Mission. It has been computed that but 30.000, or perhaps 40,000 Papuans remain within the vast territory which forms their home. They arc fearfully debased. No other heathens are more so. This might be forcibly shown by their manner of life, if the time to which I am restricted did not forbid. A few points, setting forth their moral and spiritual state, must therefore suffice. Among the natives of Australia marriage exists merely in name. Wives are exchanged at the pleasure of the men, and a newly mar- ried woman belongs, for a time, to the whole tribe. Many of the offspring of such unnat- ural unions fall a prey to infanticide in its most horrible form. Weak and puny chil- dren are strangled, and pieces of their flesh given to their brothers to eat, that these may grow stronger. In the aboriginal lan- guage no equivalent words are found for love, faith, forgiveness, truth, or honesty. The natives have no conception of such virtues. No religion whatever, not even the lowest species of idolatry, exists among them. It is true, they entertain a vague notion of a good and of an evil spirit. But they do absolutely nothing to propitiate the one, or to appease the other. They have no worship, no sacrifices, no sacred rites of any kind. The only power which they fear is that of witchcraft. The only dictates which they follow are those of superstition, jeal- ousy, revenge, and lust. Since the arrival of the white race, the natives have sunk still lower. Their licentiousness has in- creased, and new vices have been intro- duced. My informant pronounces a drunk- en spree, in a native camp, to be one of the most hideous things ever witnessed in this sinful world. In view of these facts, it is not astonishing that the Australian aborigines were common- ly deemed to be beyond the reach of civili- zation and Christianity. This opinion was but strengthened by thirty -six years of fruitless efforts, on the part of several mis- sionary societies, to reclaim them. Even en- lightened Christians began to fear that such work was hopeless. But the day of salva- tion came at last. In 1860, Nathaniel Pep^ per, a native of the Colony of Victoria, was converted and baptized. So great was the sensation which this event produced, that a public meeting, with the colonial governor for a chairman, was called at Melbourne, to express the joy of Christians of every name at this marvelous victory of the Gospel. It has not been a fleeting triumph. Mis- sions are now permanently established among the Papuans, and supported by a number of the Protestant churches of Australia in fel- lowship. These missions reveal surprising results. The converts have been won from the for- ests through which they roamed, and are settled in villages. At such villages the ex- tinction of the race has actually been arrest- ed. Among the wild tribes, the number of deaths far exceeds the number of births; at the mission the reverse is the case. The converts devote themselves to gardening and mechanical pursuits, or serve the white settlers as herdsmen. Many of them have learned to read, write, and cipher. Their children are taken through a regular course of education. Among twelve huudred colo- nial schools in Gippsland, the mission school for natives, at Ramahyuk, recently gained the highest prize offered by the Govern- ment. Young and old have adopted all the habits and usages of civilization. In a ma- jority of cases, the evidences of a genuine change of heart are clear and marked. Not a few instances of triumphant death have occurred. Old Norah, when she first came to the mission, was a mere wreck in body and mind. Her life had been steeped in in- iquity. She appeared to be almost idiotic. And yet no believer, reared amidst all the advantages of the Church and of a Chris- tian home, ever delivered a brighter testi- mony in the last hour than she did. The very faces of these converts show that they have passed from darkness into marvelous light. When I looked at the photograph of Philip Pepper, a brother of the first con- vert, and an assistant at the Ebeuezer Mis- sion, and heard his teacher's account of the impressive warmth with which he publicly proclaims the Gospel and prays to God, I could scarcely believe that this man had been a naked savage, squatting in the sand and roasting lizards for his food, joining his countrymen in the vilest abominations, and living for years in a state as near to that of the irrational creation as it is possible for human beings to reach. Now this transformation among the Pap- uans has been brought about through the Gospel. No other agency would have been sufficient. A letter from one of the mission- aries to a colonial newspaper says : " We testify that no real change for the better took place among the natives gathered at the Ebeuezer station until they received the Gospel. Then the change began." This is the same Gospel which has evangelized oth- er pagans 'of the lowest class, which has gained such glorious victories in the Islands of the Sea, and which is slowly making its way into the midst of the powerful nations 622 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. of heathemlom. Ouo history of the atone- ment, one array of promises, one body of fun- damental doctrines set forth in demonstra- tion of the Spirit and of power, work out one end in every case. The pagans are en- lightened, radically changed in all the tend- encies of their nature, christianized through faith in a common Saviour, and, finally, civ- ilized. And there is no tribe too low for the influence of the Gospel. There is no tongue too barbarous for a version of the New Testament. There is no individual heathen too debased, stolid, and brutish to be made a new creature in Christ Jesus, a useful member of the Church, a believer both able and ready to give a reason of the hope that is iu him with meekness and fear. There is no form of barbarism which can not eventually be civilized and even refined iu ways that are wonderful, to the glory of God. In the further proof of this last position, let me say, in passing, that at the dedication of a new mission chapel in the Bushland, a choir of Bush negroes, assisted by some con- verted slaves from the Colony, sang, with genuine appreciation and great effect, " The heavens are telling," etc., from Haydn's " Or- atorio of the Creation." The same grand chorus, which enraptures the cultured Chris- tian of Europe and America, formed the ex- pression of praise that burst from the hearts of these reclaimed savages. From all that has been said, we therefore infer that the Gospel is a sufficient, and the only sufficient, power for the conversion of the whole world. This inference should encourage the Church to push forward its foreign mission- ary work, in these present days, with all its strength. The success which has, at last, been won even among the natives of Aus- tralia should give new energy to every la- borer in the field, and new zeal to every so- ciety at home. Is the everlasting Gospel thus going forth conquering and to conquer, then let there be more of a union among Protestant Christians in supporting it, and more of a system in spreading it, so that our common Lord may hasten the day of its final victory. And here, my brethren, permit me to throw out a single suggestion. I know very well that this Conference ought not to legislate, and that formal resolutions are not to be en- tertained. But do you not believe that the time has arrived, or, at least, is very near, when all Protestant Churches engaged in the foreign missionary work ought to come to a full understanding with regard to a general and united movement forward into the very heart of heathendom, and especial- ly with regard to their denominational re- lations to each other in the field T A Mis- sionary Congress of the entire Protestant world, on a basis something like that occupied by the Missionary Convention, to which Mr. Sheshadri referred this morning, held iu In- dia last January, is possible. And would it not be within the province of the present meeting of the Evangelical Alliance to take the preliminary steps for the convocation of such a Congress f It seems to me, brethren, that the discussions of this " missionary day " should lead to some practical result. But to return to my argument. The in- ference which has been reached, with re- gard to the sufficiency of the Gospel only in converting and civilizing the heathen world, claims the notice of scientific philosophy alsc, in its modern Antichristian forms. Such philosophy is struggling to annihilate the Gospel. We therefore ask the former to ex- plain the wonders which the latter is bring- ing about among the very lowest representa- tives of heathenism. Take the case of the Papuans. If they do not owe their exist- ence to God, if their depraved state is not a consequence of sin as it came into the world through Adam, if there was no atonement made for them by Christ, but if their origin must be ascribed to natural forces, and their degradation to a want of action among these forces, why has the Gospel proved to be the only power that can rouse them from their death-like stupor, and elevate them from their brutishness ? In order to facilitate discussion, should time permit, I will sum up what has been said in the form of two theses. I. It is the duty of the Church to continue and finish the missionary work begun among the most insignificant and degraded tribes of the heathen world. II. Such work has a peculiar significance in our day, because it proves to the Church and to Antichristian philosophy the world- wide sufficiency of the Gospel as a convert- ing and civilizing power. And now, in conclusion, looking once more at those obscure and dark corners of the earth, concerning which I have been speak- ing, I say, from the bottom of my heart, with the apostle, " The glorious Gospel of the blessed God !" THE MISSION FIELD OF THE SOUTH. BY THE REV. MOSES D. HOGE, D.D., RICHMOND, VA. PHOTOGRAPHY has illustrated the possibil- ity of printing a volume as large as Homer's Iliad on a slip of paper no larger than the palm of a man's hand ; but science has dis- covered no method of enabling a speaker to condense into the limits of a few minutes the discussion of a theme requiring as many hours for its proper elucidation. In at- tempting to portray " The Mission Field of the South," I can only do as the painter who is compelled to make a hurried sketch of a wide landscape : he can only present it in outline, with a few touches which rather suggest its salient points than depict them. There is no time for filling in, or for minute delineation. If he can not produce a com- pleted picture, he must content himself with a cartoon. Speakers and writers vary in their enu- meration of the States which constitute what we familiarly call "The South." I shall adopt Commodore Maury's classification, which includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee, with the Indian Territory and New Mexico, which are classed with the South- ern States because they lie east of the Rocky Mountains, south of 36 30' N. Latitude, and are drained by the rivers which empty into the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the States j ust enumerated are the largest in the Union one of them, Texas, being equal in extent to all the New England States together, and all the Middle States besides, and per- haps a portion of one of the Western States in addition. Physical Advantages. The eleven South- ern States together occupy an area nearly equal to that of Austria, Prussia, France, and Italy, with their combined population of more than 120,000,000. Such is the ex- tent of the missionary field of which I am to speak. But there is no moral interest at- tached to mere territorial magnitude. The physical character of this great domain, however, has a most important connection with what does give it peculiar interest in the regards of the philanthropist and Chris- tian, for its natural advantages are such as must ultimately give it a population com- mensurate with its vast extent. One of the wonderful features of the Atlantic side of the North American Continent is that the great basin of the St. Lawrence is the only one which runs from west to east, while at right angles to it is the greater basin of the Mississippi, which flows from north to south as do, more or less directly, all the prin- cipal rivers of the Union widening and deepening as they run ; thus affording in- creased facilities for navigation as they ap- proach the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, through whose waters, laving our southern coast, in a few years more, so much of the commerce of the world will pass. But the commercial interests of the country demand artificial lines of canal and railway trans- verse to the natural lines of valleys and riv- ers. One of these great avenues of trade* from the interior to the coast was traced by the foresight of Washington more than a century ago, when, observing how the con- fluence of the Missouri and Ohio rivers with the Mississippi was midway between the northern lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, and that the capes of the Chesapeake Bay were midway between Florida and Maine, he pro- jected the grand scheme of connecting the James River with the Kauawha, thus estab- lishing communication by water between the Mississippi, with its vast tributaries in the West, and the Atlantic Ocean on the East. The construction of this great na- tional work is now one of the most interest- ing of all the enterprises which occupies public attention, and its completion will mark a new era in the commercial prosperi- ty of the whole country. Such a connection between the West and East by water communication will be fol- lowed, or perhaps preceded, by another and a greater by rail. For the natural laws of climate, distance, and production will com- pel the construction of an Atlantic and Pa- cific Railroad south of the 36th parallel of latitude one which will not require a snoAV-plow driven by locomotives to open a track through formidable drifts the short- est, the cheapest, and least obstructed by frost and storms, constituting another of those great continental highways of com- merce not only for North America, but for Europe and Asia such as Macaulay tells us is always like a belt of gold across any country over which it passes. The Southern States, stretching down from the Potomac and Ohio rivers, early chilled by autumnal frosts, to the Florida Islands, within one degree of the torrid zone, from 624 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. the days of their colonial history have been the producers of the great staples whose importance to the commerce of the world rendered them especially invaluable to this country, because the time came, and was not long ago, when they furnished three- fourths of its entire domestic exports. It is true the system of labor which produced these results has been changed ; but climate and soil can not be changed by revolution, .and therefore their capacity for production is undimiuished. But, in addition to the cotton, sugar, and other great staples, no States surpass the Southern in the certainty and abundance of their cereal products. Not only is this true of the vast grain fields of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but the little sandy State of South Carolina, as long ago as the year 1850, produced six million bushels of corn more than all the New England States together; while Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee produced 300,000 bushels of corn in excess of all that was grown in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to say nothing of Rhode Island. The development of the mineral resources of the South has just commenced; but so rich and inexhaustible are they, that they are now attracting the attention of capital- ists from every country represented in this Alliance. I do not speak vauntingly of these phys- ical characteristics of the Southern States, for there is no merit and nothing to be proud of in the possession of these natural advantages especially as we have not im- proved them as we ought and I only enu- merate some of them to show how vast a population may be supported by a section of country so favored by nature, and how important it is (now that the overthrow of slavery has removed the greatest obstacle to immigration) to make every possible prep- aration for the spiritual good of the millions who are so soon to crowd our South -land and render it the most populous part of the Union. Sparse Population and Ignorance. Coming now to a more important division of my sub- ject, I remark that there are some hindr- ances to progress of the Gospel among our people, some of which can not be immedi- ately removed. The sparseness of the pop- ulation compared with the territorial ex- J tent of most of the Southern States is a se- rious obstacle to the establishment either of schools or churches. Living upon large plantations, as so many of their inhabitants do, necessarily remote from each other, not yet recovered from the impoverishment of unsuccessful war, it is often impossible to unite in sufficient numbers for the mainte- nance of the ordinances of religion. There is a partial remedy for this hinder- ance in the efforts of the Mission Boards of different denominations to supply people so situated with evangelistic labor and with healthful religious reading. But another impediment to spiritual improvement from that source is found in the ignorance of a large class of the population, debarring them from the benefit of any teaching that is not oral. Education and the University of Virginia. Intending to present as faithfully as I can a true picture of my field, I do not suppress the fact, though it pains me to admit it, that the United States census reveals a larger percentage of illiteracy, even among the na- tive white population of the South, than is to be found in any other portion of the Un- ion. But this obstacle to spiritual improve- ment, like that occasioned by sparse popula- tion, time and effort will speedily remove. 1 Indeed, the educational interests of the j South have recently received a mighty im- pulse. Certain circumstances have aroused I the people in reference to the education of all classes, and they are addressing them- selves earnestly to the great undertaking. Thousands of our planters and farmers at the close of a desolating war, even before they began to retrieve their material losses, made provision for the education of their sons for the purpose of securing to them a capital which none of the vicissitudes of life could deprive them of, and by which they might always attain the means of honor- ! able maintenance. They did not agree with Montaigne's father that "your scholar costs too much," but they believed there was no investment of money which brought re- turns so splendid, not only to the individ- ual mind illumined and invigorated by no- ble learning, but to the State, whose shat- tered fortunes could be best reconstructed by filling it with young men qualified, by thorough classical and scientific training, to develop its material resources as well as advance its intellectual and moral power. They knew that, if the prestige so long attached to gentle blood and hereditary wealth could not be maintained, the aris- tocracy of talent and acquirement would never lose its influence. The young men, too, comprehended the situation, and the consequence was, all the colleges and higher schools of the South began to revive, even before trade and commerce revived, and were filled with eager, ambitious young men, de- termined to achieve whatever victories may be won on the peaceful fields of studious let- ters. In Virginia we have the advantage of an institution which is, in effect, a nor- mal school to all other educational institu- tions. The University of Virginia was the first in the land organized on a system which made it the true culmination of the primary school, the academy, and the col- HOGE : THE MISSION FIELD OF THE SOUTH. 625 lege ; above them all in its standards, yet drawing them all upward, by degrees, to an approximation with itself, by furnishing them with a proper ideal, and by supplying them with teachers and professors compe- tent to apply the true principles of instruc- tion. Lest I should seem to speak too warm- ly of our University, with its elective system and independent schools some of them of applied science and its professors, better known, perbaps, in Europe than nearer home, I may say that a distinguished scholar of Great Britain, who recently visited this coun- try to study its educational systems, in his published estimate of our University, gives it a rank higher than I have done, and says some of its methods of instruction long fa- miliar there are just beginning to be intro- duced into the best institutions abroad.* And now that Virginia, too long content with fostering her higher schools, has taken up in earnest the education of the masses, it is easy to see what an impulse will be giv- en to the cause by such teachers as the Uni- versity is sending out, and by the elevated standard which it presents to all institu- tions of inferior grade. But more important than the removal of ignorance is the removal of spiritual blind- ness ; and it is true in Christian as in hea- then countries, that, though the teacher and the preacher may go together, it is the Gos- pel, after all, which is the power of God to the salvation of men. Having spoken of obstacles, I may now enumerate some facilities to the progress of the Gospel in the Southern field. Characteristics of Southern People. One is that the people of the South are the most homogeneous on the continent. As yet, the foreign element is comparatively small, and the Continental forms of unbelief do not pre- vail among them. Speaking the same lan- guage, with common traditions and sympa- thies binding them together, of course the religious teacher obtains readier access to them than where different races, tongues, and creeds are elements of disintegration in society. Again, our native population is not rest- less. It clings to the old ancestral home ; it also cleaves to ancestral religious faith. It not only abides by the soil in which the dust of noble forefathers is mingled ; it is loyal to the creeds associated with the memories of pious parents. The novel and specious forms of error which elsewhere have oblit- erated the old landmarks find no welcome among them. The irreligion of the South is rather the irreligion of recklessness, of ignorance, of passion, than of infidelity or of crystallized forms of unbelief. There are many communities in this land where the truth can scarcely penetrate, so crusted * Dr. Porter, author of "Giant Cities of Bashan, "etc. 40 over are they, and incased by formulated systems of impiety. But no neighborhood in the South is inaccessible because of in- trenched infidelity. Skeptical isms, which spread like epidemics in some quarters, were never popular there. And least of all are our people infected by the scientific philosophy of the day, which asserts such an unvarying uniformity in the operation of physical law as to leave no place in the universe of God for the supernatural, and therefore denies miracles, discredits proph- ecy, and silences prayer. It follows, there- fore, that, when the Christian teacher comes among us, he does not have the double task of first storming some outwork of infidelity before he attacks the central citadel of natural aversion to evangelical truth ; and this great- ly facilitates his labors among our people. Christian Civilization of the South. I am tempted to enter into these details about Southern characteristics, because there is perhaps no part of the world so little un- derstood, no people about whom so many erroneous impressions prevail. We have few opportunities for correcting them. Our large cities are few and far apart. Our newspapers are for the most part provin- cial. Distinguished foreigners, visiting the United States, find more to interest them north of the Potomac, and seldom derive their information of the South from person- al observation. If we sought for vindica- tion, however, we would find it in an impar- tial and official source, bearing a testimony to our Christian civilization so emphatic as to be worth reproducing. One of the tables of the United States Census Report gives the statistics of pau- perism and crime in all the States of the Union. Freedom from both of these evils unquestionably indicates a healthful and elevated civilization. The Southern States stand highest in the list in these respects. I contrast the statements made in the Cen- sus Report with regard to pauperism and crime in the New England States and in the Southern States, not for the purpose of making an invidious comparison, which I have no desire to do, but because the New England States are generally spoken of as distinguished for thrifty industry and high moral character. I. 1. Pauperism prevails in the New En- gland States in the proportion of 44 to ev- ery 10,000 of the entire population. In the Southern States the proportion is 13 to ev- ery 10,000 of the entire population. 2. In the native New England population, the ratio is 47 to every 10,000. In the entire white population of the South, native and foreign, the ratio is only 14 to 10,000. 3. In the for- eign population of New England States, the ratio of pauperism is 35 to every 10,000. Among the colored people of the Southern States, the ratio is 13 in every 10,000. 626 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. II. 1. In the United States census tables of criminal statistics, we are told that in the entire New England population the propor- tion is 11 in 10,000. In the entire Southern population it is 8 in 10,000. 2. In the native New England population the proportion is 8 in every 10,000. In the entire white pop- ulation of the South, native and foreign, the proportion of criminals is a little over 4i in every 10,000. 3. In the foreign New En- gland population the proportion of criminals is 26 in every 10,000. In the colored popu- lation of the Southern States it is about 13 in 10,000. III. Another surprising revelation which these census tables makes is in reference to church accommodations. 1. In the New England States there are 5421 churches, with 2,203,607 sittings. [Total population, 3,487,924.] In the Southern States there are 18,000 churches, with sittings for 4,706,937 persons. [Total population 9,487,386.] 2. Or, to state it in another form, in New En- gland there is one church for 643 inhabit- ants. In the South there is one church for 518 inhabitants. Thus we see that if the ability of a peo- ple to provide for their own support with- out being dependent on charity, if rever- ence for law, if generous provision for the ordinances of the Gospel are constituent el- ements of a true Christian civilization, then, when there is a call for a judgment by these criteria, the Southern States step to the front. The Negroes. And yet there is a vast work to be done for the evangelization of the na- tive population of the South, and a still great- er for the spiritual welfare of two other very dissimilar but most interesting races, the one in the Providence of God intermingled with us, and the other dwelling upon our border. In the eleven Southern States there are about five millions and a half of whites, and a lit- tle less than four millions of negroes. In three of the Southern States they outnum- ber the whites. In South Carolina they have a majority of more than 125,000. It will be interesting to those whose sym- pathies have long been enlisted in behalf of the freedmen, and who have had little op- portunity of learning what Christian phi- lanthropy is attempting for their improve- ment, to hear something definite with re- gard to the efforts which are made, first, for their secular education, and, second, for their religious training. The Freedman's Bureau, out of thirteen millions of dollars, expended only three and a half millions for educational purposes.* But what is needed is some regular and per- manent provision, such as is contemplated in the Free School System of the Southern * Letter from Virginia, in Old and Xeie. Boston, Nov., 1872. States, which provides for the education of the children of both races. Oppressed as were the property holders by the burdens of taxation, they nevertheless addressed themselves to the work of establishing free schools for white and colored children with- out discrimination between them. Virginia has taken the lead in this great work, and there the Free School System in- augurated in 1870 has been most faithfully and efficiently managed, as it might have been all over the South but for the fact that in some of the States where aliens have monopolized office, and ignorance has expelled intelligence from the halls of legis- lation, the public school fund has been squan- dered and the interests of the colored people betrayed. The question of levying a local tax for providing school accommodations was car- ried in Virginia in every case where it was presented to the suffrages of the people, ex- cept in one district in which the colored peo- ple voted solidly against it. In another large district where the colored people were in the majority, they left the question of the school tax to be decided exclusively by the whites, who were the property holders. Not a vote was cast by a freedman, but the white people voted unanimously for the tax. The establishment of normal schools for the negroes, like the excellent and well-en- dowed Agricultural and Polytechnic Insti- tute at Hampton, near Fortress Monroe, will do more than any thing else to confirm their possibly wavering interest in educational schemes for their benefit. Enlightened and well- trained colored teachers, thoroughly understanding the idiosyncrasies of their own race, and sincerely desirous to promote their good, without partisan or selfish aims, will become the best agency for keeping alive their present zeal for self-improvement, and for instructing them how to guard the great political estate so recently and sud- denly conferred on them, against the raids of pillaging and unprincipled demagogues. Next, as to the efforts made for the direct religious instruction of the freedmen, I may say that every evangelical Church in the South has their spiritual welfare at heart, and gladly embraces every opportunity for doing them good. African independent Churches. The colored people among us prefer separate independent ecclesiastical organizations; and those of the white race, who have given the subject the most conscientious thought, are disposed to encourage them in forming churches of their own, with ministers and officers of their own choosing, all to be gathered, when they be- come sufficiently numerous, under the care of Presbyteries, Synods, Conferences, Asso- ciations, or Conventions, according to the denominations to which they belong ; their white brethren, in the mean time, giving HOGE : THE MISSION FIELD OF THE SOUTH. 627 them all the encouragement, pecuniary aid, and moral support in their power. This is the preference of the freedmen, and the poli- cy of the Methodist and Baptist Churches, to which denominations the colored people in the South for the most part belong. Few of them now remain in connection with the Methodist Church, South. But with its approval, and under its auspices, an Af- rican Methodist Church has been organized, distinct and independent, yet still looking to their old spiritual guardians for sympathy, counsel, and help. This they receive. All the houses of worship belonging to the Meth- odist Church, South, which were built for their colored members, are transferred to them when they organize churches of their own, and in every way they are encour- aged and assisted in carrying out their wish to maintain a distinctive ecclesiastical life, with congregations composed exclusively of their own people, under the control of pas- tors and officers of their own race. This instinctive and intense regard for race, which first segregates and then con- solidates them, is a stronger bond than that of nationality ; and it is, perhaps, a prophe- cy, and a preparation for the time when they will be colonized into some state or territo- ry of their own. This will probably be the happy and harmonious solution of the prob- lem of their destiny in this country, for all history shows how difficult it is for two races so dissimilar in character and capacity to live together in the peaceful exercise of co- ordinate authority in Church and State. It is now admitted to be one of the great discoveries of modern missions that Chris- tianity is most rapidly and permanently ad- vanced by the establishment of self-reliant churches composed wholly of native con- verts, each church complete in itself, with pastors of the same race with the people. The illustration of this principle is already beginning to be seen in the South. The colored Bishop of the Methodist Church, the Right Eev. W. H. Miles, a man of eminent prudence and piety, at a recent General Conference held at Augusta, Geor- gia, reported 14 annual conferences, with more than 600 traveling preachers, and nearly 600 local preachers, and a member- ship of about 70,000. He opposes mixed schools, mixed membership, and favors an organization confined to his own people not in ally spirit of antagonism or unkind- ness, for he exhorts them to cultivate the most amicable relations with the whites, and to identify themselves with the inter- ests of the communities in which they re- side. Nor are our Baptist Churches less active and efficient in their labors for the colored people. They have missionary societies whose business it is to set the blacks to do- ing something for themselves, and the whites to helping them. They find the Sunday- school to be an instrumentality admirably adapted for giving them just the training they most need, because of the opportunity it affords of imparting such instruction as informs the understanding and enlightens the conscience. These are springing up all over the South, and those which are main- tained during the winter as well as the sum- mer months are called by the significant name of evergreens. Wliat the Freedmen need. But, after all, the paramount necessity of the Southern Af- rican Churches is a thoroughly educated ministry of their own. Nothing can be sub- stituted for this, nor can the complete devel- opment of their ecclesiastical life ever be at- tained without it. The negroes are consti- tutionally imaginative and mercurial, with a strong inclination to superstition and fa- naticism. And what they most require to counteract these tendencies is systematic in- struction in divine truth not the technical systems of the schools, not metaphysical sub- tleties or sectarian polemics, but a ground- ing in fundamental principles such a grounding as comes from illustrating these principles so simply and reiterating them so patiently as to insure a true and clear com- prehension of them. If ignorant enthusiasts and fiery fanatics are their spiritual guides, their religion will be the intoxication of ex- cited animal sensibilities, full of the chime- ras of distempered fancy, instead of the calm sobriety of rational faith and the salutary convictions of conscience enlightened by the Spirit of Truth. The Church, therefore, which secures this kind of instruction for them is their greatest benefactor. The American Baptist Home Missionary Society is doing a noble work in this direction. It has established seven schools, one in Wash- ington City, and the others in the Southern States at well - selected points, viz., Rich- mond, Raleigh, Columbia, Augusta, New Or- leans, and Nashville, for the education of young men of color for the Gospel ministry. Type of Civilization and Christianity among the Negroes. Let us hope that these vari- ous instrumentalities will be blessed by the Great Head of the Church to the highest good of the African people in this country. Nothing but the conservative power of Christianity can secure them against the evil influences which threaten them. Noth- ing else can bring them a happy future. There is much to hinder their attainment of a high degree of civilization. They are men- tally and physically unfitted to cope with the superior energy of the white races. It is no disparagement to the African, and no reflection on the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, that these inequalities exist. The truest friend of the African is not the man who inspects him through the rose-col- ored lenses of a sentimental philanthropy, 628 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. but one who looks at him in the light of truth, recognizing his weaknesses that he may guard him against their influence, and appreciating his good qualities that he may encourage him in their development. Nor is this picture a cheerless and dis- couraging one. There is before him the hope of a moral and spiritual progression of greater worth than any that is merely men- tal ; and, though his type of civilization and of Christianity may be different from that of the Caucasian, it need not be necessarily an inferior one; though he may never be distinguished in the walks of philosophic or scientific research, or of broad statesman- ship, or of original discovery, yet he may at- tain to a spiritual development of the gen- tlest and most attractive character. The very traits so prominent in his nature his freedom from ambition and avarice, his hum- ble, docile, forgiving, contented, patient, lov- ing, submissive spirit may, under the cher- ishing and sanctifying influence of divine grace, prepare him for a type of Christian civilization, softer, kindlier, fuller of the vir- tues of the Sermon on the Mount, more self- sacrificing, and richer in the sweet charities of the Gospel than any yet exhibited by the more aggressive and dominant white races. The, Bed Man. A glance at another race thrown upon our Christian charity, in the providence of God, will complete my sketch of the "Mission Field of the South." On the 100th meridian, between Kansas and Texas, lies what is called the Indian Territory, a land of water-brooks, and fount- ains, and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills ; a land spread out in wide and un- dulating plains, many of them of inexhaust- ible fertility, through which flow broad and navigable rivers, bordered by forests ; a land of temperate and healthful climate, and larger in extent than either of the great States of New York, Pennsylvania, or Vir- ginia. This Territory is now the home of the Indian tribes once dwelling in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, but re- moved by the Government of the United States to the reservations now allotted to them and marked by treaty boundaries. The Indian tribes inhabiting this Territory are the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, with a few remnants of other tribes. These Indians form a part of the aborig- ines to whom this whole continent once be- longed, driven from year to year by aggress- ive white emigration into narrower limits, and now nearly all removed to the west of the Mississippi River. To those who are fond of observing the characteristic distinctions of race, the In- dian of our frontier will furnish an interest- ing study. Many of his characteristics are in marked contrast with those of the Afri- can, which we have just been considering. The North American Indian is haughty in demeanor, taciturn, stoical, watchful, often revengeful, implacable, and cruel ; yet hos- pitable, grateful for kindness, of a tempera- ment imaginative and poetic, dignified in manner, ceremonious, regardful of the ties of consanguinity, full of veneration for an- cestral traditions and usages, with powers of expression which often rise to impressive and effective oratory. Though the Indian has not attracted the attention or called forth the Christian ac- tivities of our people as the negro has done for philanthropy in this country has been for the most part monochromatic, and not much tinged by the red ray yet no ef- forts have been more richly rewarded than those which have been made for the spirit- ual good of the poor Indian. Recently, in- deed, a noble advance has been made in that direction. Within a year or two the Gov- ernment has accepted the aid of religious bodies in its effort to pacify and civilize the savages on our Western plains. In Wash- ington City, in January last, the Board of In- dian Commissioners held a conference with some of the Missionary Boards which have been co-operating with the official agents of the Government, and the reports made and the addresses delivered indicate a new era in popular interest in behalf of the civil and spiritual condition of the Indian. Those were impressive words of Bishop Whipple when' he said, "Very much of the hostility of the Indian is the hostility of de- spair ; it is the terrible blow which a man who has nothing to hope for strikes toward his enemies." And those were brave words addressed to the Board of Indian Commis- sioners, in 1872, by the President of the United States, in reference to the rumor of a change in the humane policy which had been pursued toward the ludian : " Such a thing has not been thought of. I do not believe our Creator has placed the different races of men on the earth with the view of having the stronger exert his energies in exterminating the weaker. If any change takes place in the Indian policy of the Gov- ernment while I hold my present office, it will be on the humanitarian side of the question." The improved condition of the Indians of the South-west Territory illustrates the happy results of Christian effort in their behalf. They are civilized communities. They wear the dress, and live in houses built and furnished as among the humbler classes in the States. They till their fields and have herds of domestic animals. They have printing-presseSjiiewspapers, andbooks in the English language and in their own tongues. They have more schools, more churches, in proportion to population, and larger attendance on religious services, and contribute more money for benevolent ob- jects, than the people of any Territory of the HOGE : THE MISSION FIELD OF THE SOUTH. 629 United States. Life and property are more safe among them, and there are fewer viola- tions of law among them, than in the terri- tories occupied by the whites.* The Southern Methodists and Baptists are doing faithful work among them. So, too, is the Northern Presbyterian Board, es- pecially among the Creeks and Seminoles. But the most extensive missionary op- erations in the Territory are conducted by * " Fourth Annual Report of Board of Indian Com- missioners." the Southern Presbyterian Church. It has seven missionaries, three female missionary assistants, and a number of native help- ers, together Avith an important institution, Spencer Academy, under the care of three able instructors, and with judicious man- agement destined to become a power for good in advancing the educational and re- ligious interests of the Indian people. - Such are some of the gleanings of informa- tion which I have the honor to lay before you from " The Missionary Field of the South." THE INDIANS IN THE UNITED STATES. BY THE HON. FELIX R. BEUNOT, PITTSBURG, PA., Chairman of the U. S. Board of Iiidian Commissioners. IF ^> e speak of the Turks, the Mexicans, or the Chinese, the mind at once localizes them, and recalls some definite conception of the habits and condition of the people mentioned, and that which we know to be characteristic of a part is generally correct if applied to the nation. We are apt to speak and think of the North American Indians in like manner. Those we have read of, or know of, or have seen, make up our conceit of the whole race. And yet, as they now exist in the States and Territories, there are as great diversities of condition and circumstances among the va- rious tribes of Indians, as there are between the nations I have mentioned. They are distributed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and occupy reservations or claim their hunting-grounds in eight States and eleven Territories of the United States. There are ninety reservations, one-third of the number being west of the Rocky Mount- ains, and about one hundred and thirty tribes, or remnants of tribes, speaking probably as many as fifty different languages. Many of the tribes have no more knowl- edge of, or intercourse with, each other than the Turks have with the Mexicans ; and oth- ers maintain only the intercourse of war with their hereditary enemies. The Comanches fight the Apaches and the Osages ; the Sioux fight the Crows and the Utes ; the Utes fight the Cheyennes. In 1869, when the Cheyennes and Arra- pahoes made a " strong peace," as they ex- pressed it,with the whites, the chiefs thought it necessary to explain that, "in all their talks with the Great Father's commission- ers, they never agreed to make peace with the Utes or the Sioux," and asked me for a "paper" which would allow them to go af- ter their enemies, and not be molested by the " Great Father's soldiers." Their raids against each other have been less frequent of late, and will soon cease. The "Plains Indians" here spoken of are savages, and are just beginning to improve under the peace policy. The Oneida Indians in Cattaraugus Coun- ty, in this State, hold Agricultural Fairs and Teachers' Institutes. The Santee Sioux in Dakotah maintain Episcopal and Presbyte- rian churches. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, and Creeks, in the Indian Terri- tory, have Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyte- rian churches, a legislature, and a system of public schools. At several reservations in Washington Territory the Indians are good Catholics, and at one the chief conducts dai- ly matins and vespers in the church. Many of the laborers in the great lumber-mills at Puget Sound, and nearly all in the Belling- ham Bay Coal Company's mines, are Indians, earning the same wages as white men. Upon another reservation quite remote from white settlement the Indians have erected two Methodist churches, which are supplied by native preachers and have five hundred members. The Pueblo tribes in New Mexico, from time immemorial, have lived in houses, raised corn, peaches, and melons, and weave on looms of their own invention water-proof ponchos, or blankets, which have not yet been successfully imi- tated by the whites. In view of these diversities of character and condition, and the facts stated, it is charitable to suppose that the man who declares that "the Indians are only fit to be exterminated" knows very little about them as a race of people. So also of him who declares that "the Indians are inca- pable of being civilized." If the one only means that such of the Indians as commit murders and savage atrocities in time of peace should be exterminated, I agree with him. Even white people of that class ought to be exterminated, but not the race. If the other means only that a barbarous peo- ple can not in a few years all be transform- ed into inventors, scientists, lawyers, litte- rateurs, and adepts in the mechanic arts, I agree with him also. But these are not the inseparable concomitants of civilization, any more than are marble palaces and French fur- niture. There are white communities in this country and in Europe, and in both great masses of humble people who could not be elevated to this degree of civilization in a century, yet they are civilized. When it is claimed that the Indians are susceptible of civilization, I mean that, un- der proper treatment and teaching, they can become an inoffensive, industrious, Christian people, with all the civilization necessary to their own happiness and the peace of their neighbors, and all the Christianity needful to their salvation. BRUNOT : INDIANS IN THE UNITED STATES. 631 Since the day of Roger Williams to the present time, the Proprietary, Colonial, Con- tinental, and United States Governments have generally legislated in recognition of the Indians' rights. The legislative wrongs have been the result of deception, or forced by the aggressive character of the people. The benevolent measures attempted for their benefit and improvement in times past were almost uniformly thwarted by the agencies employed to execute them. Said the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1869 : " The sol- diers sent for their protection carried demor- alization and disease into their midst. The agent appointed to be their friend and coun- selor, business manager, and the almoner of the Government bounties, frequently went among them only to enrich himself in the shortest possible time, at the cost of the In- dians, and spend the largest available sum of the government money with the least os- tensible beneficial results. The general in- terest of the trader was opposed to their en- lightenment as tending to lessen his prof- its. Any increase of intelligence would ren- der them less liable to his impositions ; and, if occupied in agricultural pursuits, their product of furs would be proportionally de- creased. The contractors' and transporters' interests were opposed to it, for the reason that the production of agricultural products on the spot would measurably cut off their profits in furnishing army supplies. The interpreter knew that if they were taught his occupation was gone. The more sub- missive and patient the tribe, the greater the number of outlaws infesting its vicini- ty ; and all these were the missionaries teach- ing them the most degrading vices of which humanity is capable. If, in spite of these ob- stacles, a tribe made some progress in agri- culture, or their lands became valuable from any cause, the process of civilization was summarily ended by driving them away from their homes with fire and sword to undergo similar experiences in some new locality." Under the pernicious political maxim that " to the victors belong the spoils," Indian agencies had been for many years among the perquisites of successful politicians. They were bestowed too often as the choicest re- wards upon their most active and most scru- pulous partisans. As a natural consequence, peculation and robbery, and a disregard for the rights of the Red Men, had become the rule among them, and honest administration the exception. The outrages perpetrated upon the In- dians by the lawless classes of the frontiers \ were frequently made the pretext of war against them. For a hundred years the minds of the American people have been filled with tales of Indian atrocities done upon " the hardy pioneers of the frontier," nearly always hor- rible enough to stop the heart beat, and chill the blood in the veins of the hearer, and al- ways seemingly unprovoked. The white man's story alone was told, the Indian's never. The celebrated Kit Car- son, before a Congressional committee, testi- fied but mildly when he said, "As a general thing, the difficulties arise from aggressions on the part of the whites." I would have used far stronger words justified by facts. The Indian wars of the forty years before the election of President Grant have cost five hundred millions of dollars. The ac- companying horrors of slain soldiers, mur- dered families, and devastated homes, who can count f The military " Peace Commission " of 1867, comprising among its members the com- mander-in-chief and leading generals of the army, relate some striking facts in their re- port. I quote you one of their conclusions : "But it is said our Indian wars have been almost constant. Have we been uniformly unjust? We answer unhesitatingly, Yes !" No one can traverse the field of their inves- tigations without coming to the same infer- ence. The remembrance that my topic belongs to "Missionary Day" in the programme warns me away from this prolific phase of the subject. That, under auspices so adverse, the In- dians have not made greater progress in civ- ilization can not excite surprise. That so much progress has been made by many of them is wonderful. President Grant in his initial message in- dicated his determination to do justice to the remnant of the aboriginals, and reform the abuses of the Indian service. The "Peace Policy " will stand to his honor as long as our country has a place in history. Taking out from politics the nomination of Indian agents, he placed it in the hands of Christian denominations willing to accept the trust with its responsibilities. They are expected to nominate honest men, and supplement the civilizing instrumentalities of the Govern- ment with Christian missions. Passing over the wise adoption of the pol- icy to assure peace and safety to the frontier settler, its economy in lives and money, and other details of its purpose and operations, I confine my remarks to the features which especially concern this Christian assembly. It affirms the duty of the nation to extend the blessings of civilization to the Indians, and recognizes the religion of Christ as the foundation principle of civilization. Do the Christians of the United States believe this ? Never before was there such an opportuni- ty to prove our faith by our works. Never was there an opportunity for Christian mis- sions under so favorable circumstances never a plainer duty presented. There are about 350,000 Indians in the CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. United States ami Territories. Every de- gree of progress from barbarism to civili- zation is illustrated in the tribes. About 250,000 are civilized or partly civilized, and the remainder are yet savages in every re- spect. Not less than 15,000 Indians are members of Christian churches, and those tribes are most advanced in civilization where the foundation was laid by Christian missions. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws have a history perhaps nev- er paralleled in their rapid advancement from barbarism to civilization. They now number about 50,000, have each a legisla- tive assembly their own written language and laws, judges and courts. The Cherokee alphabet was the invention of a Cherokee Indian. They have churches, schools, acad- emies, and newspapers ; and a confederated government and national assembly, the de- liberations of which compare favorably with similar assemblages elsewhere. To this I need hardly add that many of their citizens are highly intelligent and educated. I have two volumes of Cherokee and Choctaw laws, printed in English, on their own printing-presses, in the year 1852. In these days of temperance agitation, it is worth mentioning that one of the statutes is identically the "Maine liquor law," but antedates that law ten years. Before the war of the Rebellion, many of the Indians were rich in farm improvements, cattle, horses, and slaves. At the close of the war, in 1865, its ravages had left their country devastated, and themselves in pov- erty. Yet the statistics of 1871 showed that, in number of acres cultivated, products, val- uation, wealth, and school statistics, they compared favorably with the Territories of the United States. The Cherokees have a population of 14,682 ; live in houses built by themselves, in number about 4000. Five hundred of these are framed and boarded houses, the remainder built of logs. They have two boarding-schools, one col- lege, and sixty day-schools, with an average attendance of about 2133 pupils, sustained at a cost of $25,000 last year from their na- tional fund. Three of these schools are for the children of freedmen. They have also a national orphan asylum. The Creeks number about 15,000. They have one boarding-school and thirty day- schools, which cost them $14,258 in 1872. They have their missions, and 2050 church- members. The Choctaws and Chickasaws have a pop- ulation of about 20,000. They had last year two boarding-schools and forty-eight day- schools, and expended upon them $69,500 during the year. They have three missions besides churches, and a church-membership of 2500. To enter into similar details in regard to all the Indian tribes, however interesting to me, would be tedious to you. I will men- tion but one or two others. Fifteen years ago the Yakaina Indians, a wild tribe in Washington Territory, were subdued after a bloody war. They were put upon a reservation, and a costly mili- tary post established to keep them in order there. The efforts of a Methodist missiona- ry soon rendered the military useless. When I visited them in 1871, 1 found three hun- dred farm-houses upon as many little farms, and two neat wooden churches erected by themselves, and about four hundred church- members. The churches were partly under the control of native preachers. The church- membership has largely increased during the two years past. Twelve hundred miles east of the Yaka- mas, as the crow flies, and the same dis- tance north of the Cherokees, we find the successful Episcopal missions among the Dakotahs. Ten years ago these Indians were engaged in the horrible Minnesota massa- cres, in which hundreds of white settlers paid the forfeit of their lives for wrongs done upon the Indians by others. Now, under the encouragement of the new poli- cy, the Episcopalians have six missions and two sub-stations among the Dakotahs, with churches and schools, and more than 600 communicants. A large number of the In- dians live in houses, wear civilized clothing, and labor industriously to eke out a sub- sistance by farming. The Presbyterians have also an interesting mission among the same people. Passing by equally successful missions of the Presbyterian, Baptist, Cath- olic, and Moravian denominations with re- gret, I ask your attention to a few words in regard to the wild tribes of the plains and mountains. There are probably 75,000 Indians who are totally barbarous, and who still subsist in whole or in part by the chase. They are all now at peace with the Government, and most of them have become satisfied of the power and superiority of the whites. The leading chiefs of the Sioux, Crows, Coman- ches, Kiowas, Cheyennes, Blackfeet, and other tribes admit the necessity of "going the white man's road." None of the North American Indians are idolaters. They worship the " Great Spirit," who, they say, made .all things. I have found but one Indiau in all iny visits to the tribes who pretended to be an atheist. Even he, in their ceremonious pipe lighting, made the customary reverence of the tribe toward the " Great Spirit." On several occasions when I opened a coun- cil with prayer, the chief followed the exam- ple by offering prayer to the " Great Spirit. At my first council with the wild Sioux, Red Cloud, the head-chief, stepped out into the space surrounded by his warriors, and, BRUNOT : INDIANS IN THE UNITED STATES. 633 raising his right arm in majestic and rever- ent attitude, made a prayer which is worthy of preservation. MOK-PE-A-LU-TA'S PRAYER. " O Great Spirit, I pray you to look at us. We are your children, and you first put us on this land. We pray you to look down on us, so nothing but the truth will be spo- ken in this council. We don't ask for any thing but what is right and just. When you made your red children, O Great Spirit, you made them to have pity on them. Now we are before you to-day, praying you to look down on us, and take pity on your poor red children. "We pray you to have nothing but the truth spoken here. We hope these things will be settled up right. You are the Pro- tector of the people born with bows and arrows, as well as the people born with clothes, and I hope we do not pray to you in vain. We are poor and ignorant. Our fore- fathers told us we would not be in misery if we asked for your help. O Great Spirit, look down on your children and help them." Last summer I passed a week in council with the Crow tribe, on the Upper Yellow- stone River, in Montana, and on Sunday af- ternoon I told them of the white man's great Book of Knowledge, and the simple story of the Saviour. Next day the chief made an eloquent speech, in the course of which he said, " You told us about your religion. We have onr religion, which is much the sanje, only you call the Great Spirit Jesus, and we call him by another name. We call him in Crow language E-ao-we-icat-se. He will pun- ish us if we are bad. We give him a part of all we have. We pray to him." We had noticed a beacon light for two nights, far up above the timber line, upon the summit of the highest mountain near. Some of the young men were there engaged in their religious rites, during which they remain for days without eating or drinking. The Crows are a generous, kindly, friendly people to the whites, but they are heathen. Woe be to us if we preach not the Gospel to the heathen ! What matter if some of them are idle or dirty, degraded or treach- erous, even as their worst enemies charge ? Christ died not alone for the industrious, clean, and gentle-bred. And let us remem- ber that not many centuries ago our boast- ful Anglo-Saxon race was but little less de- graded than the North American Indians. A Sioux Indian, whose heart was touched by the story of the Saviour, asked, " How long has the white man known about this ?" and on being told, said, "Why did you not tell us before ? I think the Great Spirit will not punish us who did not know, but will punish the white man who did not tell us." It will be seen that I have but flitted over my subject, "The Indians in the United States," touching here and there by the way. The time allowed would admit of nothing MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. BY THE EEV. HENRY HARRIS JESSUP, D.D., BEIRUT, SYRIA. [This paper of Dr. Jessnp, who could not be personally present, was read to the Conference by his co- laborer in Syria, the Rev. DAVID STUABT DODGK. Ed.] IT is one of the marvels of Christian his- tory that, after the lapse of nearly two thou- sand years, the birthplace of Christianity is missionary ground. The lauds of the Bible ask for the Word of God. The birthplace of religion needs a religion. The Christian Churches of the East need to be taught the nature of Christianity. The moral and re- ligious conflicts of the past are to be repeat- ed by the armies of the truth in the very seat of their ancient victories. The encamp- ments of the Prince of Darkness, like the black tents of the Bedouins, cover the lands where prophets and apostles preached ; and where He appeared who is himself the Truth and the Life there still exists enough of error to make the last decisive struggle protracted and severe. Western Asia, the cradle of the race, the battle-field of opinions, is now preparing to play her part in that coming conflict in which the issues of human history are to be finally settled. The chief religious systems of Western Asia to-day are Mohammedan, semi-Pagan, and nominal Christian, with a trace of Judaism. 1. Mohammedanism, extending from the Republic of Liberia, through North Africa, Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Northern India, to Pekin in China, with its one hundred and twenty millions of followers, presents one of the widest and noblest missionary fields in the world. Some of the finest races, intel- lectually and physically, are believers in the Koran.* They believe in one God, and in the divine origin of the Old and New Testa- ments ; but regard the Scriptures as corrupt- ed, deny the divinity of Christ, ignore the spirituality of religion, and look upon Chris- tians as their hereditary enemies. Having seen only the Oriental type of Christianity, they despise its immorality, idolatry, and want of charity, and refuse to exchange a system of monotheistic worship for what they regard as polytheistic idolatry. 2. The semi-Pagan sects, as the Druze, Nu- sairy, and Yezidee, numbering in all little more than half a million souls, constitute a most difficult, yet none the less important part of the Western Asia missionary field. * Want of space forbids mention of the various sects of Islamism. 3. But that portion to which the attention of Christian Europe and America has been chiefly called consists of what are styled the Oriental Churches. The massacre of Scio in 1822, the Greek Revolution, the Crimean War, and the massacres of 1860 in Lebanon and Damascus, have awakened interest most ex- tended, and schemes most varied, for the pro- tection and elevation, or the reformation and evangelization of the Christians of the East. Few have any correct idea as to who these Christians are, what they are, how nu- merous, and how widely dispersed. It is not enough to say that the Oriental Christians hold to the divinity of Christ and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, and deserve all honor for holding steadfastly to even a degenerate Christianity in the midst of Pagan darkness and Mohammedan fanati- cism ; for it is also true that they have all gone astray from the simplicity of the Gos- pel, not only exalting tradition above Script- ure, and holding usages which are idola- trous and anti-Christian, but living in open disregard of the morality of the Gospel. Re- ligion and morality are divorced. The Greek brigand or pirate who keeps the fasts is es- teemed a religious man, while such mission- aries as an Eli Smith or a Jonas King, who do not keep the fasts, are branded as having no religion. The Oriental Churches may be divided into six great classes, comprising fourteen dif- ferent sects.* I. The Monophysite, Eutychian, or anti- Chalcedonian sects, who reject the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, held in 451. These are four : the Armenians, Jacobites (or Syrians), Copts, and Abyssinians. They all have their own distinct ritual and calendar ; are hostile to each other, and to all other Christian sects ; have a married parish cler- gy ; and reject the primacy of the Pope. II. The anti-Ephesian, who reject the Coun- cil of Ephesus in 431. These are the Nesto- rians, or Chaldeans. They have a married clergy, a high reverence for the Scriptures, and but little of picture worship. III. The Orthodox Greek, who accept the seven General Councils. The Greek Church is Rome decapitated a priestly system with- See " London Quarterly Review," July, 1SG9. JESSUP : MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. 635 out a poutifex ; an exclusive traditional Church, which yet allows the Bible to the people. Ill the Turkish Empire its patri- archs and the most of its bishops are foreign- ers, speaking only Greek, and ignorant of the customs and wants of the people. The parish clergy are married, and generally most illiterate. IV. The Maronite, a Papal sect, with an ig- norant people, and an educated priesthood, sworn to allegiance to Rome, and yet, like all the above, with a married parish clergy. The Maronite Patriarch is regarded by his people as hardly inferior to the Pope. He refused to attend the Vatican Council, fear- ing, it is supposed, Papal interference with his personal prerogatives. V. The six Oriental Papal sects, who are converts from six of the above sects to the Church of Rome. They are the Papal Greek, Papal Armenian, Papal Syrian, Papal Nestorian, Papal Coptic, and Papal Abyssinian, They maintain their own calendar and saint days, the marriage of the clergy, and vari- ous ancient prerogatives, which the Papal legates are now striving most assiduously to abolish. In the Papal Greek Church of Syria, and the Papal Armenian Church of Constan- tinople, this interference of the Pope has resulted in schism, and large numerical loss to the Romish communion. VI. The Latins, a small community, com- posed chiefly of attache's of the French and Italian monasteries, who have conformed in all respects to the Church of Rome. These sects all agree sufficiently, both in the common truth and the common error which they hold, to be classed as one one in their need of reformation, one in being an obstacle to the evangelization of the Mo- hammedan world. 1. They all hold the doctrine of transub- stantiation. The books of the Greek Church are explicit on this point.* " The bread and wine are not the symbols of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid), but the very deified body of the Lord." This expression is found in the reply of the Patriarch of Con- stantinople to the German Protestant di- vines, who opened a correspondence with him about thirty years after the death of Luther (Greek edition, p. 184). The other Eastern Churches hold this doc- trine with equal tenacity. 2. They all agree in the doctrine of baptis- mal regeneration. In this respect the Greek Church is pre-eminently exclusive. It de- clares trine immersion, in the name of the Fa- ther, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be absolutely essential to salvation, and denies lay bap- tism. The Pope unchurched all non-Papal Christendom, and the Greek Church casts out the Pope as an unbaptized heretic. Article on the Greek Church, hy Rev. S. H. Cal- honn, missionary to Syria. "New York Evangelist," March 1, 1SG6 3. They all agree in the doctrine of priestly absolution, and a priestly mediation between God and man. 4. They all worship the Virgin Mary and the Saints. 5. They all regard relics and pictures or im- ages with more or less of superstitious rev- erence. 6. They all use the confessional and prayers for the dead. 7. With the trifling exception of the Lat- ins, their parish clergy are all allowed to marry, although the bishops and patriarchs are celibate. In nothing is the inconsistency of Rome more evident than in allowing the priests in seven of the Oriental sects the liberty of mar- rying, while denying it to all its priests in Europe and America. A native Syrian, in a recent tract against the Jesuits, asks them this question : " If marriage be a sacrament of the Church, why deny it to the clergy I" 8. In none of these Churches is instruction given in the Scrijptures. Their liturgies are in dead languages, and preaching is almost unknown. The only preacher of note in the Greek Church in Syria is denounced by many of his people as a Protestant. The numbers of these various sects in Western Asia and North Africa are nearly as follows, not including the Greeks of Russia or Greece : Greeks 1,000,000 Nestorians 140,000 " in India 116,000 Maronites 230,000 Copts 200,000 Nestorian Catholics 20,000 Armenians , 3,000,000 Greek Catholics 50,000 Jacobite Syrians 30,000 Abyssinians 4,500,000 Other Papal sects 300,000 Total 9,586,000 This brings the grand total to about ten mill- ions, which will probably include all the nom- inal Christians in Western Asia and North Africa. If now we consider the geographical distri- bution of these various sects, a remarkable fact is presented. As in the Apostolic age, the Jews were dispersed among the Gen- tiles, possessing the Hebrew Scriptures, yet dead and superstitious, formal and inert, so now we find the Oriental Churches, retain- ing at least parts of the Scriptures, scattered through the semi-Pagan and Mohammedan world. In Turkey, the Armenians and Greeks arc mingled with the Ottoman Turks. In Per- sia, the Armenians and Nestorians, with the Persian Mohammedans, Kurds, and Tar- tars ; in Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, the Greeks, Jacobites, and Armenians, with Yezi- dees, Moslems, Nusairiyeh, and Arabs of the Desert. In Syria Proper, the Greeks, Marou- 636 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. ites, Jacobites, and Roman Catholics of va- rious names, among Moslems, Nusairtyeh, Druzes, Metarcileh, aud Arabs of the Desert, lu Egypt, the Greeks, Copts, aud Armenians, among Egyptian Moslems, and tribes of North Africa aud Arabia. In Abyssinia, the Abyssinians among the surrounding Pagan and Mohammedan tribes. And in Western India, at Travancore, the Nestorian or Thom- as Christians, on the borders of Hindoo Pa- ganism and Islamism. These nominal Christian sects thus occu- py the great centres of Moslem power : Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Constantinople, Mosul, and Teheran. Their very position is providential and full of suggestion, and will aid us in de- termining the object of missionary work among the Oriental Churches. The primary object of all missionary work is the salvation of men through the preach- ing of the Gospel. This must be the imme- diate object here. The Oriental Churches, in their present lapsed state, need the Gospel as much, in many respects, as their Moslem neighbors. Gross darknesa covers the peo- ple. The work to be done is one which will bring men to Christ a living Christ. The great commission is a commission to preach the Gospel. But in what ivay is the Gospel to be brought home to these Oriental Churches ? In what mode is the work to be done ? There has been an honest difference of opinion on this subject even among Evan- gelical Christians, aud a much greater differ- ence between them and the high ecclesias- tical party in the Protestant Church. I. One view has been to effect an outward ecclesiastical union between these sects and Protestant Christianity, on the basis of ad- mitting the truth they hold, without agitat- ing the question of their errors. One ob- jection to this is its absolute impracticability. Union of Protestants with the Greek Church, on the basis of intercommunion, can never be effected the Greek Church remaining as it is until all Protestants have submitted to trine immersion by a regularly ordained Greek priest. The concession must be all on one side. Let this be borne in mind, and the advocates of union with the Greek Church may be saved much needless mortification. Since the contemptuous treatment of the German Protestant divines, in the sixteenth century, by the Patriarch of Constantinople, there has been witnessed no more humilia- ting spectacle than that of Protestant min- isters courting the ecclesiastical favor of Greek priests, who, while not wanting in out- ward courtesy, regard them as heretics, pub- licly anathematize them at least once a year (on Ash- Wednesday) in their churches, and consign them, with all other heretics and unbaptized persons, to perdition.* * See the Jerusalem edition of the " Triodion " serv- ice for Ash- Wednesday. Any attempt to fraternize with the Greek Church can only increase the contempt of their clergy for ourselves, and their attach- ment to the traditions aud superstitions of their fathers. II. Another plan has been to reform the high- r ecclesiastics, aud through them the people. The twelve labors of Hercules were slight compared with such a task. The patriarchs and bishops of the East are, as a class, wealthy, avaricious, masters of political in- trigue, unscrupulous, aud trained to hierarch- ical tyranny over the consciences of men, aud will probably be the last class in the East to accept the Gospel in its simplicity. There are, indeed, noble exceptions men who would gladly hail a reformation, but find their hands tied and their labors hin- dered by the iron fetters of ecclesiastical despotism. III. A third scheme has been suggested, and faithfully tried. It proposes to preach the Gospel and give the Bible to the people, leaving them in their own ecclesiastical re- lations, thus reforming the Church from within. This plan has been patiently tried in Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor,without suc- cess. It is still on trial among the Nesto- riaus. It has been found in the countries first named that, no sooner do men read the Bible and know Christ experimentally no sooner do they compare the New Testament Church with the rites, ceremonies, and priest- ly systems of the Oriental Churches, than they make haste to " come out aud be sepa- rate." Enlightened men, with the Gospel in their hands, will not confess to a priest and worship a picture. Nor, if they wished it, would their priests allow them to remain in a Church whose laws they disobey. There are not wanting signs of the growth of a Reform party in the Greek and Arme- nian Churches leaning toward evangelical truth, but it remains to be seen whether it will be allowed to continue in the bosom of the "Mother Church." The missionaries in Syria tried the experi- ment of preaching to the people, and leaving them in their old Churches, until the con- verts demanded the organization of a distinct Evangelical Church. And this brings us to the fourth scheme, IV. Preaching the Gospel, and founding a neiv Oriental Evangelical Church, outside of the old Churches, unstained with idolatry, and composed of living spiritual members gathered from all the sects of the East. This is believed by many to be the only true basis of procedure to secure a genuine reformation in the East. Christianity in the East is a name, a dogma, a lifeless form. It is a skeleton in the panoply of Christianity. Its religious life is that of the Middle Ages. Every where you find mouasticism, feast days, worship of saints, pictures, and images. JESSUP: MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. 637 Mariolatry is supreme. The Eastern Church is a valley of dry bones. The Life, the Christ, is departed. His humanity,while the- oretically admitted, is practically ignored, and he is banished beyond the reach of hu- man prayer or human sympathy, while oth- er mediators crowd the scene, to supply the want of the soul, and bring man near to God. What is needed is a preached Gospel, an open Bible, a pure spiritual Church, a de- voted ministry, baptized with the Spirit, and an exalting of the God-man, Jesus of Naza- reth, as the only Saviour, the only Mediator, the only Head of the Church. The apostolic spirit must be restored, for apostolic work is to be done, and this can only be hoped for through the free spirit of the Bible, work- ing in the free system of Protestant order. If Mariolatry is false, you must give the peo- ple a Church without Mariolatry. If trau- substantiation is idolatrous, give them a Church without transubstantiation. If priest- ly absolution and human mediation are anti- Christian, they must have and will have a Church whose only Priest is Christ, and whose only Mediator is he who sitteth at the right hand of God. But the crowning reason for the founding of a living Church, in which is to be preached the Gospel of a living Christ, lies in the fut- ure mission of Christianity in the East. The present, immediate object of missionary labor in the East is the conversion of the Orien- tal Christians ; but the ultimate object of Christian work among these sects may be re- garded as the conversion, through these sects, of the non-Christian populations of West- ern Asia and Northern Africa. These ten millions of Eastern Christians are the key to hundreds of millions of Mohammedans, Pa- gans, and other non-Christian sects. Their wide geographical dispersion among these sects, and their similarity in language and customs, render them the fit base of opera- tions for working upon these unevangelical hosts. There are few places in the world where direct missionary labors can as yet be carried on for the Moslems, and this indirect method, it is believed, will have peculiar ad- vantages in the future. The work of plant- ing and training a new Oriental Evangelical Church thus rises in dignity and importance to the first rank among modern missionary enterprises. It is no longer the Maronites of Lebanon, the Copts of Egypt, the Nesto- rians of Kurdistan, or even the great Arme- nian nation, but we aim to reach hundreds of millions of Mohammedans and Pagans, ex- tending over 120 degrees of longitude, from Liberia to Pekin. If it be asked, Why are not these Oriental Churches, as at present constituted, already fitted for this work ? The answer is, " In their present state they are among the great- est obstacles to the conversion of their Pa- gan and Mussulman neighbors." Islamisin was, and still is, in one sense, a protest against the creature worship of both the Eastern and Western Churches. Images, pict- ures, and saints are the abomination of the Mohammedan world. Syria is strewn with the headless trunks of ancient statues, and the unrestored ruins of ancient churches, once filled with pictures and images, which have been destroyed by the iconoclastic zeal of Islam. The Moslem enters a so-called Chris- tian church, and shrinks back with revulsion from the sight of men made in the image of God bowing down to gods made in the im- age of men. Christianity thus stands self- condemned and silenced in the presence of its Moslem foes. A recent convert from Mo- hammedanism in Syria, after having visited the Greek, Maronite, and Papal Greek Church- es of Damascus in quest of a faith to satisfy the cravings of his soul, turned away sick at heart at the sight of so much abject wor- ship of the creature instead of the Creator ; and, having learned from books of the doc- trines of Protestant Christianity, set out for Beirut, a voluntary exile, offering as he went this prayer : " Lord, if I do not live to reach Beirut, and die before meeting a guide to lead me to a true knowledge of thee, let me die in the Protestant faith !" The Church of Rome, with all its zealous propagandism, the Oriental Churches, with all their boasted creeds and patristic lore, can never meet the wants of the Mohamme- dan world. The Pagans of the second cent- ury objected to Christianity that it had nei- ther altars nor images ; the Moslem of the nineteenth century objects to Christianity that it has only images and altars. Here, then, are two great objects to be kept steadily in view, viz., the immediate ben- efit of the Oriental Christians, and the ulti- mate benefit of the Pagans and Mohamme- dans. To secure these two points, there is requisite a peculiar preparation. This prepa- ration must include : 1. The preaching of the Gospel in the ver- nacular language. This is the first and most important agency. It is that ordaiued by the great Head of the Church, and without which all others will come to naught. To this end the foreign missionary should mas- ter the language of the people. But, inas- much as the preaching of foreigners is neces- sarily more or less associated in the minds of the people with foreign habits, tastes, and prejudices, native preachers must be intrust- ed with the work as soon as possible. 2. The Bible must be given to all these sects in their own vernacular. Christianity is the religion of the Bible. The fact that the ancient Christian Churches lapsed so soon into superstitious and idolatrous usages was, no doubt, owing largely to the fact that the neople had not the Bible in their own lan- guage. Copies of the Scriptures were few and costly, and the uninstructed people soon 638 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. became satisfied to receive "for doctrines the commandments of men." To secure the future Church of the East from such a col- lapse, the Bible must bo translated and print- ed in every Eastern tongue. 3. An Evangelical Oriental Church must be formed on a broad Scriptural basis, eccle- siastically independent of control from Eu- rope and America, with as little of the sec- tarian peculiarities of these countries as possible, and having its own synods, associa- tions, or convocations for ecclesiastical de- liberation composed of Orieutal members. No ecclesiastical body in any land can un- derstand the circumstances and decide the difficulties of churches ten thousand miles away, of different languages and customs, and under a different form of civil govern- ment. If such control be attempted, the re- sult will be only confusion and alienation, whatever be the form of Church polity. In the founding of the native Church in the first instance, as in the installation of the native pastor, the foreign Church, through its missionary, must have the control, as in apostolic days. But w r hen these churches have been established, and assume the sup- port of their own pastors, the ecclesiastical responsibility should rest with the native churches. Foreign ecclesiastical control is a virtue only when a necessity, and it is a ne- cessity only until a native pastorate is de- veloped. 4. And this implies, fourthly, that these churches have a native pastorate. The apos- tles were not pastors ; the foreign mission- ary should not be, any longer than is neces- sary for the training of a native pastorate. Where the growth of the work is slow, and the pastoral duties are long performed by the foreign missionary, the result is unfavor- able to the self-development of the native Church, if not disastrous to its indepen- dence. The training, then, of a native ministry is vital to the work of restoring Christianity to the East. In this age of the world, this native ministry must be thoroughly train- ed. Not only are men of undoubted piety, zeal, and consecration needed ; but, in the great centres, men of liberal education and good talents, prepared for the conflict with ritualism, rationalism, Romanism, Islam- ism, and infidelity. In the rural districts, while the native ministry should be thor- oughly furnished, the aim should be to pur- sue no system of education which will alien- ate them from the simplicity of their peo- ple. The instruction should be thorough, so as to leave no cause for dissatisfaction no occasion, on the part of the young men, for the perilous undertaking of seeking edu- cation in foreign lands. There may be in- stances where Oriental youth, going at their own expense, have been benefited by a course of training in foreign countries ; but, as a rule, it has been found to bo fatal to their disposition to enter the pastoral office. It may fit them for becoming professors, or arti- sans, or for professional life ; but it is too apt to alienate them from sympathy with their own countrymen, or to destroy their feeling of personal responsibility for the spir- itual growth of their own churches. The instruction given to these young men should be eminently Biblical, and there is no place where Biblical studies should be more enthusiastically and effectively pursued than in the lauds of the Bible. It should in- clude a good acquaintance with Church his- tory ; and where can this be better studied than in its ancient seats ? Until commen- taries and other evangelical helps are trans- lated into these languages, the students must be taught English or some other Eu- ropean language. The course of study should be connected with Christian work. The young men should be trained to evangelistic work, expecting to endure hardness for the sake of the Gospel, and to be satisfied with such support as the feeble churches of their native laud can provide. The support of this ministry should come from the people. A Gospel supported by foreigners is regard- ed as a foreign Gospel. Pecuniary aid to those who do not absolutely need it is an un- mixed evil. Until the people support their own ministry, the question of their evangel- ization may be regarded as still unsettled. Their whole spiritual life and energies will be dwarfed by long habits of dependence on the charities of others. ' The theological seminaries should be lo- cated in important centres, where the high- est educational advantages are combined with abundant opportunities for evangel- istic work. 5. These new evangelical churches should be trained from the first to an aggressive mis- sionary spirit; to feel that they are called to give the Gospel to their Mohammedan, Pa- gan, and semi-Pagan neighbors. Without this, the work will stop before it is fairly begun, and the result will bo one more weak, inert Oriental sect organized, orthodox, and dead. The ultimate object must be kept constantly in view, by missionaries, native pastors, and native churches. Each church should be a missionary society, every mem- ber giving systematically and liberally of his income to the Lord; children's missionary societies be formed every where, and young men and young women be sought out, train- ed, and encouraged to dedicate themselves to the service of the Lord. In the cities, city mission work should be done; and in the villages, the church members be encouraged to go around two and two to the adjacent villages, preaching the Word. The Native Evangelical Missionary So- ciety of Eastern Turkey has set an example, in founding and supporting a mission to the JESSUP: MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. 639 Kurds, which may well be studied and imi- tated by native churches in all lands. Yet nothing but the Spirit of God can bring those once members of the various Oriental Churches to feel themselves called to labor for the salvation of Mohammedans, Kurds, Druzes, and Bedouin Arabs. The ecclesiastical training of centuries has taught the people not only to anathematize other Christian sects, but to hate all Mos- lems, Kurds, and Druzes with the most san- guinary animosity. The people often manifest unfeigned sur- prise on hearing the prayers offered in evan- gelical churches on behalf of Pagans and Mohammedans. Oriental society has crystallized into spheres, hard and hollow as the geodes of Lebanon quartz. Each sect is exclusive, self-satisfied, and iudiffereut to the welfare of all others. The missionary spirit, which had its birth on these shores, returns after its long ab- sence of centuries, an unrecognized and un- welcome stranger. If the new Evangelical Oriental Church receive it not, and be not baptized with its power, its own candlestick must ere long be removed from its place. The work of evangelization among 1lie non- Christian sects must be done by the native churches, or not at alL 6. Another step in the general prepara- tion is the establishment of a system of com- mon schools, to teach the people to read. Protestant Christianity is a religion of light. It must train its children to read the Bible. A translated and printed Bible, without readers, is a sealed book. -With the excep- tion of the Mohammedan boys' schools at- tached to the mosques, the whole of Western Asia was, until after the advent of foreign missionaries, almost entirely destitute of schools. The Levant, in this respect, is ut- terly unlike the Chinese Empire, where the majority of the people read. In the first instance, it will often be neces- sary to support these schools entirely by for- eign aid ; but this branch of the work, too, should be thrown upon the people as soon as possible. The common school is to be regarded as an entering wedge, as a means to an end, but not the end itself. The Bible should be taught in these schools thoroughly taught so that the pupils may learn to see Christ in every book in both the Old and New Testa- ments. The teachers should therefore be trained in normal training schools, in which the Bible should have the first place. Edu- cation without the Bible, in any land, is dan- gerous and incomplete. In uuevangelized lands it will only forge and polish weapons against the truth. 7. A Christian literature must also be pre- pared in the languages of the people. From the necessity of the case, this work must be done chiefly by foreign missionaries, and, in the first instance, at the expense of foreign societies. 8. Again, in order to secure and retain the control of the popular mind for Chris- tianity, and prevent the spread of infidelity among cultivated minds, Christian colleges and female seminaries of a high order should be established in the various controlling centres, to give a sound Christian education to the best youth of the land. These higher institutions should be endowed and furnish- ed with permanent buildings and complete apparatus, and native instructors be raised up as soon as practicable. The matter of higher education can not be left to the Imperial universities of Egypt, Turkey, and Persia, whose controlling influ- ence will be either in the narrow spirit of Mohammedan exclnsivism, or, if Europeau- ized at all, in the lax morality of European infidelity. The course of study should be thorough and the discipline severe. No- where is a little learning more dangerous than among a semi-civilized people. The Bible must be the very foundation of these institutions. A course of instruction, not in a controversial spirit, in the chronol- ogy, history, ethnology, physical geography, poetry, prophecies, and Christology of the Bible, if properly conducted, will fix the at- tention and enkindle the enthusiasm of the youth of all sects and religions in every Ori- ental land. And Orientals will hold such a school in far higher esteem than they will a purely secular institution without religion of any character. Again, if such colleges and seminaries be not founded, the entire higher education of the East will fall into the hands of the Jesu- its and other narrow sectaries. The Lazarists, Jesuits, and Dominican monks, with numerous orders of nuns, are founding educational institutions through- out the whole of Western Asia.- Abundantly supplied with men and means, and under the ablest strategic leadership, they are carrying on a campaign whose object is the absorp- tion of all the Churches of the East. Special Preparation. We have now men- tioned eight points in the general prepara- tion, and it remains to consider briefly the special preparations with reference to the Mohammedan world. I. The first step is the translation and printing of the Bible in the Arabic language the sacred language of the Koran. The Koran can not be lawfully translated; and all Moslems must read it in Arabic. The Sultan of Turkey speaks the Turkish as his vernacular, but reads his Koran in Ara- bic. The Shah of Persia speaks Persian, but must read his Koran in Arabic. The Viceroy of Egypt speaks Arabic, and reads his Koran in the same sacred language. And 640 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. so the princes of Northern India, the tribes of Northern Africa, and tho millions of Mo- hammedans in Northwestern China, speak different languages, but must read the Koran in the one common sacred Arabic language. The Arabic language is thus the bond \vhich, through the Koran, binds together one hundred aud twenty millions of our race. Now, if these millions can read the Koran, they can also read the Arabic Bible ; and a classical translation of the Scriptures into the sacred language, printed, like the Koran, with the full vowel points, will be a potent means for commending the Word of God to the Mohammedan world. II. A religious literature must be created in the same language, with special refereuce to the Mohammedan mind. The Arabic lan- guage is full of erotic poetry, fragmentary history, and countless works on grammar, rhetoric, and logic ; but it lacks the life and soul of sound religious truth. Arabic litera- ture is as radically permeated with the re- ligion and philosophy of the Koran as is English literature with that of the English Bible. Up to the present time, controversial works against Islamism are prohibited by law ; but substantial books of this charac- ter should be prepared, in view of the time when the door shall be opened among the Moslems themselves. III. The native pastors should be encour- aged to familiarize themselves with Moham- medan literature and doctrine, so as to be ready to meet the Moslem ' Utema in both oral and written controversy. IV. Every thing in ritual, worship, and Church architecture associated in the Mo- hammedan mind with idolatry and creature worship should be studiously avoided. As already stated, the idolatrous practices of the Oriental Churches form one of the chief obstacles to the conversion of the Moslems, who, on the other hand, are attracted by the unadorned simplicity of Protestant places of worship, so similar to what they are ac- customed to in their own mosques. Such is the tlwory of missions to the Ori- ental Churches. Such are the immediate and. ultimate objects of labor among them, and such was the work to be done when mission- aries entered the Turkish Empire more than forty years ago. What has been the RESULT ? Does the theory stand the test of actual ex- perience ? A complete view of the results already at- tained would be impossible in the limits as- signed us. We must, therefore, content our- selves with a mere outline. I. The oral preaching of the Gospel has been carried on for many years, and is still being carried on by not less than eighty American and European missionaries, and three hundred and fifty native preachers and helpers, in Turkey, Persia, and Egypt. II. In the department of Bible translation, the work already done is as follows : 1. The Arabic version : Begun in 1849, by Dr. EH Smith ; continued, after his death in 1857, by Dr. C. V. A. Van Dyck, aud com- pleted in 1865 ; made and electrotyped by the American Bible Society, and duplicate plates presented to the British aud Foreign Bible Society. Six different editions of the whole Bible have been made, and eight edi- tions of the New Testament. A voweled Bible has been finished for Mohammedan readers, the electrotyping of the Old Testament por- tion being done by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the New Testament by the American Bible Society. 2. The Turkish, in Arabic character : Re- translated by Dr. Schauffler. The New Tes- tament and Psalms are printed, and the Old Testament is now being translated. Done at the joint expense of the American and British and Foreign Bible Societies. 3. The Turkish, in Armenian character : Translated by Dr. W. Goodell and Bishop Carabet. The New Testament was revised and printed by Dr. Pratt, who had com- pleted tho revision of the Old Testament to the end of 2 Samuel, with the Psalms and a part of Job, when he was called to a higher service. The British and American Bible Societies have recently appointed an Editorial Com- mittee on this version, consisting of the Rev. Drs. Schauffler and Riggs, and Rev. Messrs. Herrick and Weakeley, as working mem- bers, and Dr. Schneider and Dr. Keolle, and Rev. Mr. Green, as consulting members, as- sisted by three native Turkish scholars. Done at the joint expense of the two Bible Societies, the text belonging to the American Bible Society. 4. The Bulgarian version : Translated by Drs. Riggs and Long. The New Testament electrotyped. 5. The Armenian: The New Testament re- vised by Dr. Riggs, and the Old Testament translated by him. The whole electrotyped by the American Bible Society. 6. The Syriac: The whole Bible translated by Dr. Perkins, and the New Testament elec- trotyped. 7. The Modern Greek: Translated by Leeves and Bambas. Printed by the British and For- eign Bible Society, and the New Testament introduced into the schools of Greece. 8. The Persian : The New Testament was translated into Persian by Henry Martyn, and both the Old aud New Testaments translated by Rev. Mr. Glen, and printed in 1846 and 1847 by the British and Foreign Bible So- ciety. 9. The Kurdish: The New Testament has been translated into Kurdish by an American Protestant pastor (Stepan Shimavonion), and printed in Constantinople at the expense of the British and Foreign Bible Society. JESSUP: MISSIONS TO THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES. 10. The Hebrew Spanish: By Dr. Schauffler, at the expense of the American Bible So- ciety. 11. The Grceco-Turkish : By Leeves, at the expense of the British and Foreign Bible So- ciety. We have thus eleven different versions of the Scriptures ready for the peoples of the East. They have already been sent to nine different empires in Asia, Africa, and East- ern Europe. They have found their way into palaces and hovels, into barracks and khans, into monasteries and schools, among Moslems, Druzes, Nusairlyeh, Arabs, and nominal Christians. III. An Oriental Evangelical diurch has been formed. With the exception of the churches connected with the English missions in Pal- estine proper, the great part of all the churches iu Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia follow the polity of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of the United States and Great Britain, on the doctrinal basis of the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is the policy of the missionaries to in- sist upon the assumption by the native pas- tors of all ecclesiastical responsibility at as early a date as possible. The native pastors in the three sections of the empire occupied by the Eastern, Western, and Central Turkey Missions have formed Evangelical Unions or Synods, for the transaction of ecclesiastical and evangelistic business ; and the Synod of Central Turkey has demonstrated its ability to manage its own ecclesiastical affairs, by its recent independent action iu declining, after protracted examination, to ordain a theological candidate holding what it re- garded as unsound theological views. The Churches so organized are ninety-five iu number, of which twenty are self-supporting, and nearly fifty have native pastors. The number of Church members is about four thousand eight hnndred,while the number of enrolled Protestants is nearly twenty thousand; and to these should be added thousands of men still connected with the old sects, who are Protestant in sentiment. The commun- ion table of the Evangelical Church is the only place in the East where Moslem and Christian, Druzo and Jew forget their old feuds, and exhibit the unity of a common faith in Christ. IV. For the training of a native pastorate there are six theological seminaries; viz., at Osiout, in Egypt; at Beirut, iu Syria; at Mar- sovan, Marash, and Harpoot, in Turkey ; and at Urumlyah, in Persia. The number of theological students is about seventy-five. V. The contributions of these churches and congregations amount to thousands of dollars annually, and there is a growing spirit of lib- erality. Missionary societies have been organ- ized in many of the evangelical communities. VI. The number of common schools connect- ed with the missions is not far from four hun- 41 dred, with about fifteen thousand pupils ; and such an impujse has been given to common- school education that many of the various native sects are establishing schools at their own expense, using the text-books printed at the mission presses. In Beirut alone there are six thousand five hundred children in schools of all sects, of whom two thousand five hundred are girls. VII. In Syria there are six evangelical fe male seminaries of a high order, with three hundred and fifty pupils ; in Asia Minor and Eastern Turkey four, with one hundred and twenty pupils; and in Egypt one making eleven in all, with about five hundred pupils. The colleges are two iu number. The " Rob- ert College," in Constantinople, has about two hundred and thirty students, old and young, of nearly a dozen nationalities and languages, so that the English language is used as the medium of instruction. The " Syrian Protestant College," in Bei- rut, is a purely Arabic institution, teaching the English, French, Latin, and Turkish lan- guages as classics. Its course of study is similar to that in the colleges of New En- gland. The number of students in the aca- demic department is fifty-eight, and in the medical department twenty-eight, making eighty-six in all. There is also connected with it a dispensary and a hospital. These colleges, theological schools, and fe- male seminaries should be sustained by the contributions of the Churches at home. They are to prepare an educational and scientific literature, and will do much to control the intellectual future of the East. Their build- ings, apparatus, and corps of instructors should be complete. Their success hitherto has already led the Mohammedans, Druzes, Armenians, Greeks, and Romanists to found academies and seminaries, until the Sultan himself has directed the opening of a female seminary in Constantinople. VIII. In religious literature, hundreds of books have been translated, and not less than four hundred millions of pages printed, and many of the standard English religious classics are already household treasures in Eastern homes. And year by year the col- leges, theological seminaries, individual mis- sionaries, and educated natives are adding to the number. What, then, remains to be done ? I. The Evangelical Alliance, as the only common organ of the United Protestant Christianity of the world, should, in a firm and judicious manner, make its voice heard, and its influence felt, in securing complete liberty of conscience in all Pagan and Mo- hammedan empires. This work has been begun. The public utterances of the Sultan of Turkey on this point are liberal and widely known, as are the recent assurances of the 642 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. Shah of Persia; and this growing spirit of liberality should be recognized aud encour- aged, until even a Turkish Pasha may open- ly embrace Christianity without loss of life, property, or office. The right must also be secured to publish temperate replies to Mohammedan, Pagan, and infidel attacks upon Christianity. At present, Christian presses are not allowed oven to mention the Mohammedan religion in disapprobation, upon pain of suppression. II. The different Churches and Societies of Europe aud America would do well to aid and strengthen the agencies already in oper- ation on the ground, instead of establishing new ones. The existing missions c;in readily do the work in the entire field, if properly main- tained, though it should be remembered that it is not desirable nor possible that every interior town should be occupied by expensive foreign agencies. These missions will need reinforcing from year to year, in order to maintain the press, the theological and higher education, and a certain propor- tion of the preaching work. Never was the call so loud for Christian women to labor as teachers aud Bible women in schools, families, aud harems. The colleges and female seminaries will need endowments, buildings, and apparatus, for their work must be continued long after the pastoral work has passed entirely into native hands. The press will need pecun- iary aid to print the growing Christian liter- ature. Let the Churches, then, of all branches of the great Protestant family, operate through the existing societies and agencies. Let us not repeat, on the territory of the Oriental Churches, the needless sectarian diversities of the Churches at home, or embarrass the work dear to us all by the unintentional com- plications of seemingly rival societies. On the contrary, let the new Oriental Evan- gelical Church be left free to work out the problems of its own future, unembarrassed by the minor differences of Evangelical Chris- tendom. III. And with equal force we may ask that these Churches be allowed to control their own ecclesiastical affairs without foreign in- terference. The Churches at home should not be over-anxious to have this or that party name, however honorable or beloved, emblazoned on the standard of the Church of Christ in the East. Let us aid our native Christian brethren by wise counsel and affec- tionate co-operation, but hasten as soon as possible their own national ecclesiastical au- tonomy. IV. Let us, as Protestauts, learn to work together in the cause of our common Master aud Lord. Let us not imitate the unseem- ly strifes by which Jesuit and Lazarist, Do- minican aud Capuchin, Sisters of Charity and Sisters of Nazareth are characterized throughout the East. May this age of union and co-operation at home be also the age of a more liberal, broad, aud hearty co-operation in the work of evangelization throughout the world. V. And, lastly, let us offer earnest and united prayer. The foundations are already laid. The Bible is ready. Institutions of learning are established. Living, spiritual Churches are springing up like fountains in the desert. It is a time for prayer for strong faith. Let us cry unto God for a baptism of the Spirit that these Churches be living missionary Churches that these institu- tions be nurseries of piety and true wisdom and that Kurd aud Armenian, Druze and Maronite, Arab and Greek, Moslem aud Chris- tian accept of Jesus as their only Prophet, Priest, and King. These ninety - five Oriental Evangelical Churches, standing like sentinels on the dis- tant watch-towers of Ziou, are this day en- titled to the recognition and fellowship of all true believers. By their allegiance to Christ they have already become our breth- ren. Infolded \vithiu them is the germ of the future living Christianity of the East. Before them lie momentous conflicts and victories purchased, it may be, with their blood. By all that is sacred aud precious in the religious legacy bequeathed us by the East, let us this day pledge to our brethren of the Oriental Evangelical Church the worthiest laborers, the heartiest sympathies, and tho most fervent prayers of the Evangelical Christendom of the West. THE EVANGELICAL HOME MISSION OF FRANCE. BY THE REV. MATTHIEU LELIEVRE, FKOM NIMES, FRANCE, Editor of LSEvangeliste. FOR the first time the French Evangelical Home Mission, which I have the privilege of representing among you, has its place in one of the oecumenical meetings of the Evangel- ical Alliance. Issuing, as it "were, from our recent national calamities, our society takes the first opportunity of affirming its rela- tionship with the Alliance, whose principles it adheres to, and which it proposes to real- ize practically. Its extreme youth, its small beginnings, ought perhaps to keep us from bringing it forth ; but we have two good reasons for pleading its cause: the want it has of the sympathy, counsels, and prayers of God's people ; and our conviction that the principles which it represents may become the source of great spiritual riches to the Church in France and elsewhere. Although we wish, for many good reasons, to be very modest as concerns us personally, we have not the right to be timid when speaking of our principles. I shall address you successively on the origin of our society, the principles upon which it is grounded, and the way in which we have tried to realize these principles. I. The Protestant Church in France so great by the heroism of the past, but so small in number and in faith seems to have understood better than the remainder of the nation the solemn teachings of God in the calamities of the last years. The evangel- ical Protestants have been conscious that the first cause of the sudden shaking of mil- itary and political power in France was its intellectual inferiority, and, above all, its moral declension. Their preachers and the editors of their religions papers have all echoed the general feeling, and have cried out incessantly France must be born again! This was the conviction so eloquently ex- pressed by Pastor Recoliu in a report on the evangelization of France read at the Evan- gelical Conference held at Nlmes, in Octo- ber, 1871, at which one hundred and thirty ministers and laymen took part. After show- ing the manifest weakness of Romanism and philosophy, he laid it on the conscience of evangelical Protestants to bring the Gospel to our population. He wished existing so- cieties to be supported, but, acknowledging that to meet unlimited wants new means were necessary, he proposed the creation of a "new Home Mission, a vast association, whose aim should be the evangelization of France; whose members should be Chris- tians from every denomination, laymen and clergymen, adopting its statutes ; and whose means should be the various ways thought fit by that association to attain that end." This proposition was voted with enthu- siasm, and a committee, named on the spot, was intrusted with the beginning of the work. Verily that was a solemn time ; the Holy Spirit breathed upon us, and we all resolved to devote ourselves more entirely to the service of our God and Saviour, and to the raising up again of our beloved country. All were unanimous in voting the statutes of the association, in which the general feat- ures of its organization, and the principles upon which it was grounded, were concisely indicated. We shall now state briefly what those principles are. II. The primary purpose of this " Mission mte"rieure " is to bring into full play all the lively forces of the Church. We are an in- significant minority scattered in the midst of a great nation partly papist, partly infi- del and we have not taken hitherto a firm hold on our people, inasmuch as we have la- bored to evangelize the country by proxy only, i. e., through the instrumentality of pastors and evangelists. What are eight hundred or a thousand ministers, which our various churches employ, in a work of such magnitude, in presence of thirty-seven millions of souls ? Often have we exclaimed, " But what are they among so many ?" The only way of compensating for this numerical inferiority will be in a realization of the wish of Moses, " That all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." Besides the commit- tees which send laborers and provide for their maintenance, besides the ministers who preach the Gospel, there ought to be a general lev^e en masse of Christians to wage war against infidelity and superstition. The idea is itself as old as Christianity, but our Home Mission has succeeded in giving it a precise and practical form, and in bringing it out at the time that it was most wanted. The special aim of the undertaking, and which has been so far successful, has been to endeavor to organize what it is most diffi- cult to organize individual initiative. 644 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. The method which it has adopted to real- ize this most excellent principle is the same which has presented itself whenever there have been revivals, and which Spener and Wesley have so admirably worked out the gathering together in every place of the liv- ing members of the Church, and the forming of those collegia pietatis those ecclesiola; which have been the nursery of all the great religious movements in the world. Such a local meeting, or groupe local, is not a com- mittee in the usual acceptation of the word. It is not, indeed, a board deliberating or di- recting certain operations in the name of the Church, of which it would only be a representation ; but verily the Church itself, taking up earnestly, through its most active and living members, the interests of the kingdom of God. No one is allowed to join one of those groups, according to the statutes, who does not pledge himself " to work per- sonally for the advancement of the Redeem- er's kingdom." The work by the groups can be indicated in two words praying and acting. We feel that they can not become the centres of ac- tivity unless they be first schools of deep piety, and unless their outward manifesta- tion be always exactly derived from their inner life. As one of our friends has said, it is necessary that the Holy Ghost should first accomplish in us au inner mission, in order that we, in our turn, should be able to carry on around us the real inner mission. .There- fore, also, do we feel the need of giving the first place in the meetings of our groups to prayer in common. It is prayer alone that will always inspire and regulate any effect- ive Christian activity. With respect to this activity, our groups of the Home Mission aim at two essential re- sults union in the work, and division of the work. One of the weak points of evan- gelical Protestantism, in a Catholic country, is that its forces are too much scattered in various directions, and from thence arises its powerlessness. What can be more necessary than to unite these activities, often hesitat- ing and discouraged, and to raise again and excite that sentiment of brotherly solidarity with which the loins of the Church were girt about in the prosperous days of its his- tory ? On the other hand, we are persuaded that no one has, as yet, understood how to sufficiently utilize in the Church that pow- erful element of action which is called the division of labor. If there are some branches of Christian activity around which the good will and eagerness of every one gather, how many others are deplorably neglected! In our position as a minority lost in the midst of a large mass, either indifferent or hostile, it is indispensable that we should make the most of our forces, by economizing them with the greatest care, and by using them all. We- are a small army, and have to re- deem, by our discipline, our numerical in- feriority. One of the most important parts of the work of our groups is to choose, there- fore, for each individual member the work for which he has the greatest aptitude, while respecting the liberty of every one. In fact, in the army of Jesus Christ, liberty and dis- cipline are two terms which do not exclude each other. A special article among the statutes of the Home Mission formally invites "the Chris- tian women to organize themselves in the same manner and for the same end." It adds : " The committees composed of women will consult with those composed of men, in view of the interest of the common work." On this point, no doubt, as on many others, we do not seek to introduce innovations; for a long time, thanks to God, our sisters have proved by their acts that they have a natural place among all works which relate to charity and devotion. But it was neces- sary to acknowledge what already existed in reality, and to invite all Christian women who had been kept back by an exaggerated timidity to become open fellow-laborers. But perhaps the most novel trait of our association is the union of the different Chris- tian communions in a common activity. It is ,by this that we closely connect ourselves with the Evangelical Alliance, and that we are trying, in our feebleness, to apply its ad- mirable principle. The Alliance, in proclaim- ing the spiritual and living unity of the Lord's people, in opposition to the false un- ity of popery, has answered a desideratum of the contemporary religious revival. But is this manifestation the ne plus ultra of broth- erly love ? Is it not lawful to desire a better and more thorough method of bringing near- er to each other the several denominations of Christians than that which creates large oecumenical conferences such as this is, or even more frequent meetings, such as those which every year are devoted to united prayer in the first week of January? We have recognized that what unites us is in- finitely more important than what divides us ; we love each other, and we feel the need of declaring it to the world and to ourselves; we believe in the communion of saints, and we must strengthen it by uniting our pray- ers. Why should AVC not take another step? Why, after having prayed together, should we not work together ? We have no pre- tension of saying what can be done in rela- tion to this in other countries, but we have thought that the moment has come for the French Christians to try something in this way. We belong to a race which is eager after unity in all things; it may be its feeble- ness, in it resides also its power; false re- ligious unity has undone it, but true unity might save it. The Evtingelical Protestants of France ought not, according to my opin- ion, to seek after an administrative and ex- LELIEVRE : THE EVANGELICAL HOME MISSION OF FRANCE. 645 terior unification; since Christianity as it exists in the United States has demonstrated that we can do without this. But it is of the utmost necessity that they should show to Latin and Catholic France that Protestant- ism is a principle of cohesion, and not of dis- solution. By bringing together, on the ground of Christian activity, disciples of Jesus Christ, among whom exist a few differences on sec- ondary questions of doctrine and organiza- tion, the Home Mission prepares the way to a confederation of French Protestant church- es. By doing what is now possible in that respect, she prepares a better future. These are our principles. There remains to be said, in a few words, how Ave have tried to realize them. III. An initiatory committee was formed in November, 1871, at Nlmes, in order to or- ganize and propagate this Home Mission, such as the Evangelical Conference of the South has conceived it. This committee in its composition was, as it were, the proto- type of what should be the local groups which had to be created ; its seven members belonged to the three principal denomina- tions of French Protestantism the Reform- ed Church, the Free Church, the Methodist Church. We can say, to the glory of God, the members of this central committee, dur- ing the two years which they have worked together, have never troubled themselves with the ecclesiastical differences existing between them ; they have scarcely felt that there were any. An appeal was addressed by them to all evangelical Protestants in France, and from every quarter came the most cordial adhesions. Among the most important, I shall instance that given by the Nestor of French literature, who is also the patriarch of French Protestantism, our illus- trious and great Guizot: "Put down my name among the members of the Evangel- ical Home Mission," he wrote to one of our friends; "I will devote to his work what amount God still vouchsafes to me of vigor and life. I will feel it an honor to serve yet, in the midst of your Association, the evan- gelical cause which is the cause of all Chris- tians, whatever may be the differences of opinion which God has in all times suffered to arise and allowed among his most sincere and zealous servants." What gratified us still more than such ad- hesions, so full of sympathy, was the imme- diate creation, in several localities, of a num- ber of Home Mission groups. We issued at once a monthly Bulletin, as their organ and connecting bond, and of that periodical, which is edited by our excellent president, Pastor Babut, twelve hundred copies are printed. There are now about one hundred of these local groups; a small number, if the size of France be considered, but not if the difficulties always encountered by a new en- terprise be taken into account. These asso- ciations of Christians have become in many places very precious as a means of awaken- ing individual zeal. In the small localities, they have gathered together the pious peo- ple whom isolation had discouraged ; in the large towns, they have besides organized schemes of a general character. Lectures have been given with great success on the questions of the day considered from the Christian stand-point ; ministers and laymen have gone frequently two by two preaching and evangelizing from place to place ; visits to the sick have been multiplied, and made with more care and method ; lessons for adults have been established to answer the intellectual wants of our ignorant popula- tion, which are generally eager after instruc- tion ; tracts and portions of the Scriptures have been distributed even in fairs, markets, and barracks. In short, the Christians in France begin to awake, and they understand better their duty to work personally for Christ by all the means which are in their power. I must not forget the Mission 2W2)ulaire in Paris, twin sister of ours. Among the works it has undertaken, I will only mention the Ouvroirs, opened after the events of the Com- mune, to snatch from abject misery poor women whose husbands were dead or in prison. A lady, as gifted as she is noble- hearted, Mme. de Presseuse", has devoted herself to that work, which has taken a great- extension, and met with important success. It is not a small result to have brought together through love classes of so- ciety which our civil discords had separated ; but, what is better still, schools have been created, in which a great many children have been placed under an evangelical influence ; new places of worship have been opened in the working classes' districts, and true con- versions have proved the work to be of God. The Central Committee of the Home Mis- sion has seen its task increase with the work itself. The committee was at first a mere bond between the different groups, but un- der the direction of Providence it has been compelled to extend its field of labor. With the contributions which have been sent in from many quarters, including the United States, the committee has organized preach- ing tours and lectures in different places, which are, in the present state of France, an excellent means of action. It has commis- sioned district agents agents regionaux to propagate the work by regular visits to the churches and by an active correspondence. It has addressed an appeal to men of faith and talent, who know how to make them- selves heard by the people, and has, of course, promised to bear the expenses they might incur. We intend multiplying such agen- cies. We desire to create a body of lecturers and itinerant missionaries who will go from place to place, preaching the Gospel of Jesus 646 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. Christ in its simplicity and sublimity to those who have hitherto refused to receive it, for this reason only, that they knew it not. Dear and honored brethren, our Home Mission is, as yet, as you have seen, in the day of small things. But we believe in its future, because it is a work of faith and Christian charity. It appears, surely, quite insignificant by the side of the great works wrought by Christian genius in America and in England. But, in its feebleness, it gives another proof that there is in France a little flock which does not despair of the religious future of a nation from which have arisen such men as Coligny, Calvin, and Pascal. CITY MISSIONS. BY THE REV. ROBERT KNOX, D.D., BELFAST, IRELAND. I ASK the attention of the Conference to the moral and spiritual condition of our great cities. The masses of the people in the growing centres of population are being lost to the Church. The Earl of Shaftes- bury stated, at a public meeting, not long since, that not more than two per cent, of the working men of London attend any house of worship ! In the city of Glasgow, the iion-church-going amouut to 130,000 that is, one-fourth of the whole population. In Edinburgh the same class amount to 60,000 that is, one-third of the population ; while in London, the Capitol of Christendom, this class amounts to the enormous number of 1,500,000 that is, about half the popula- tion! It may be assumed that the condi- tion of New York and other great cities of the continent of America is not more sat- isfactory. Whatever explanation may be given of this state of things, we have the melancholy fact staring us in the face, that in the great cities of Europe and America the masses have fallen away from the Church, and have assumed, with more or less inten- sity, an attitude of hostility to the Gospel. In accounting for this condition of things, some trace it to the pressure of poverty. They tell us that many families who went every Sabbath from the rural home to the house of God, when they pitch their tent in the great city and get disheartened in the terrible struggle for existence, sink into in- difference, and are buried in the seething, godless mass. Some trace the evil to the liquor traffic, and those habits of intemper- ance it generates and fosters. They tell us how the drink beggars and degrades, blunts the edge of conscience, quenches the spirit of piety, and demoralizes the whole man. Others trace the evil to the wretched habi- tations of the people. They tell us that, in the sunken regions of great cities, many of the poor herd together like beasts and not as human beings ; that the young grow up in surroundings which poison the springs of life and render all delicacy of feeling im- possible. Many do not hesitate to trace the infidelity of the masses to the spirit and bearing of the Church to her want of life, and holiness, and love. Men fail to see in the Church that pure, compassionate, un- selfish thing, which they might expect to come from God. They charge the Church with worldliness and pride, and insensibili- ty to the condition of the poor and the per- ishing, and are thus led to give up all faith in the reality and power of religion. Whatever be the true explanation, we have the stern fact to deal with Christian- ity has lost hold of the masses in our great cities. In dealing with this fact, we must remember that cities are the centres of In- fluence and moral power. The world is ruled by its great cities. The thoughts, and feelings, and principles of action that im- pregnate these centres spread rapidly, and poison or purify life in the remotest hamlet. This invests the subject before us with im- mense interest. Leaving heathen nations out of view, we are forced to the conclusion that the cities of so-called Christian lands are strongholds of drunkenness, debauchery, infidelity, and ungodliness in its most hide- ous aspects. Such places as London, Paris, Hamburg, and New York are citadels of vice. From these issues the literature that carries death in its wings to the homes of the people. It is a singular fact that, in the revival of missionary zeal which marked the dawn of the present century, the condition of the city population was entirely overlooked. Men burned with holy fervor for the con- version of the heathen, and societies were formed to send the Gospel to almost every country under the sun, at the very time when home heathenism was spreading like a malaria among the sunken masses at their own doors. A time came when these masses began to show signs of ability and eager- ness to avenge upon society centuries of criminal neglect. The Church was at last roused to begin the work of saving the hea- then at home. It was almost too late, as the history of the Paris Commune tells with trumpet tongue. It is now felt by all Chris- tian men that to preserve the very frame- work of society, if from no higher motive, we must reclaim the lapsed masses in our great cities. This is, in some respects, the most difficult work ever undertaken by the Church. The heathen may be ignorant, be- sotted, and low in the intellectual scale, but the heathen are usually without prejudice and without hatred. The lower and the lowest strata of our city population are largely brutalized by drink and hostile to religion. Many of them speak as if they had an old quarrel to settle with Christianity. The great practical question we now raise is this, What can be done to save these mass- 648 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. es; \vhcro is the power mighty enough to lift them out of their misery and vice T In answer to this question I have three obser- vations to make. 1. In our judgment, the only power equal to the task is the " Gospel of the Grace of God." This is " the power of God unto sal- vation to every one that believeth." It is the greatest moral power in the universe the living, personal, divine Redeemer can lift up and purify the people. No other agency is equal to the task. No mere sur- roundings can save a moral being, degraded and lost. Better food, better houses, even higher culture, can not do it. He must come under an influence that reaches to the very fountain of his being ; he must be touched by one who can quicken into new- ness of life. Jesus says, " Bring him unto me." This is our work ; we must bring the lost ones to Him who can cast out the un- clean spirit and fill the soul with a new and spiritual life. It is little short of mockery to offer a salvation of outside appliances. These may be good and precious as hand- maids to the higher benediction, but they can not save. They may alleviate suffer- ing ; they can not ward off death. 2. My second observation is that this wo'rk can not be achieved by proxy. We may la- bor among the far-off heathen by proxy, as there is no other "way of reaching them. We select men and send them forth as our representatives, and by the lips of these men we speak. But in dealing with the home heathen we need more than depu- ties. I would not undervalue the labor of the city missionary, but why not bring to bear on this work the whole spiritual pow- er of the Church? Every living, earnest member of a city congregation should be- come a missionary, and deal directly, per- sonally, with sinners. A congregation should not dream of having fully discharged its ob- ligations by paying a missionary to pene- trate the lanes and alleys. The work ia too great and arduous to be achieved in this way. Every saved soul should become a mis- sionary. It is the chief business of the min- ister to lift up Christ in the pulpit; it is the chief business of the elders to rule ; it is the chief business of the deacons to man- age the finances of the Church ; but there is a great work common to all and binding on all. Surrounded by a vast population, virtually heathen, worse than heathen, more guilty than the heathen, it is laid on minis- ters, elders, and deacons to assail this dense, compact heathenism personally, with per- sistent effort, with intense, all -conquering love. Every minister, elder, and deacon in a city church should be an evangelist, go- ing into streets and lanes in search of the lost ; not by deputy, but personally, doing the work in the spirit of the Master self- forgetting, self-sacrificing, dealing with the lost, closely, earnestly in love, faith, and patience. And what of the great body of the saints in our city churches? Are they to stand all the day idle? Here is work for them also a people perishing at their door : the command of the Master to every one of them is, " Go work to-day in my vineyard." Never shall the world be converted till the Church gets out of the wretched old nit of assigning the work of preaching exclu- sively to the minister. The true theory of the Kingdom is to make every Christian man and woman a herald of the glad tidings : " The Spirit and the Bride say, Come!" the Bride, that is, the Church the saved people, men and women not the clergy merely. I would neither undervalue nor supersede the office of the ministry. While the Church is mili- tant, there should be a class of men who should "give themselves wholly to these things," lifting up Jesus, and " feeding the flock of God ;" but in our dispensation no order of men can claim an exclusive right to preach the Gospel. A man saved by grace feels in his own conscience both the obligation and the au- thority to tell of Jesus and his work : " I believed, therefore have I spoken ;" " We also believe, and therefore speak." Thus faith is made by prophets and apostles the ground of utterance. The man who believes in his heart has Divine authority for making confession with his lips. Such a man will speak for Jesus from the moral force of love and gratitude, independent of all human au- thority. Even the apostles, when arraigned before the Jewish parliament, did not fall back on their Divine commission, but plead- ed, in justification of their work, the irresist- ible plea of their own experience : " We can not but speak the things we have both seen and heard." They stood on their own knowl- edge, their consciousness, their own experi- ence of Christ. This experience was so con- straining, it laid on them a moral necessity they could not resist. They would die rath- er than be silent. They stood to their pur- pose resolutely ; not so much in the spirit of obedience to an official commission as out of love for Jesus, their knowledge of the riches of his grace, their own experience of his saving power. What preaching comes of such experience ! No men speak with such pow r er as men fresh from the divine baptism. What a preacher was that man of Gadara ! Jesus sent him back to his home and kin- dred to tell of the blessings he received. With what startling power and fervor would he tell his story ! How he would point to himself, and remind them of all they knew of him when among the tombs, and cutting himself with stones so changed now, so gen- tle, so happy, so full of love ! No apostle vis- iting the hills and city of Gadara would com- mand the same attention. What a preacher KNOX : CITY MISSIONS. 649 was thatwoman of Samaria! When the spark of holy fire was kindled in her heart, she had no more time for parley ; leaving her water- pot, she ran into the city ; the power of her glowing, vehement appeals may be gather- ed from their effects. Some believed on the spot, others poured out of the city, and, meet- ing Jesus at the well, yielded up their hearts to him there. The best preachers for the masses are brands from among themselves plucked out of the fire men and women known to them, exhibiting in their own persons the trans- forming power of grace, speaking of Jesus in the workshops, at the corners of the streets, and at the fireside ; the most hardened and hostile are thus made to feel the reality and power of religion. For the special object of reclaiming the masses there should bo in every church an organization of Christian workers, including minister, elders, deacons, and all living mem- bers men and women. To this earnest baud there should be assigned a portion of the city, BO that every soul among the lapsed in that district would come into personal contact with Christian love. Till this, or something like this, be done, the conversion of the world will advance slowly, and the masses, already fallen, sink deeper and deeper in misery and crime. Wealthy Christians must be taught that we need more than their money to evan- gelize the world we need their personal service, the living voice and the loving heart. We ask them to be like the Master, " Who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes be- came poor, that we through his poverty might be rich." They should do as he did stand in the midst of publicans and sin- ners. It may be hard and trying work, but he did it, and he did more than all this, he laid down his life for us. We must teach the poor who are rich in faith that, though they have little of the gold and silver to lay at the Saviour's feet, they can bring an offer- ing of priceless value grateful, loving hearts hearts valiant and ready to work for him. We must show them how grace lifts the poor out of the dunghill and sets him among princes, making him an ambassador of the King of kings. This plan of engaging the whole Chris- tian people in personal service for Christ has much to recommend it. It is God's plan. It would at once augment the work- ing power of the Church a hundred-fold. It would bring untold blessings to the Church herself by its reflex power, and, be- sides all this, it would furnish to the world what the cynical, unbelieving world so loud- ly demands proof of self-sacrificing love. The world asks with a sneer, " Where is this love which you tell us is the spirit and gen- ius of Christianity ? The poor are oppress- ed, and you don't pity them ; they are ready to perish, and you don't lay it to heart ; you are selfish, supercilious, living apart."- We must wipe out this reproach by the Chris- tian people going down among the wretched and the poor, at any sacrifice of time and feeling, under the promptings of a love that casts out fear, and counts it a real joy to suffer for Christ. Till this is done, you can not penetrate worldly men with the convic- tion that there is any value and power in the faith of the Crucified One. 3. My third observation is that, in arriv- ing at the evangelization of the world, we should follow the Divine order. We must not only take God's agency, but God's order lay hold first of the (jreat cities. Preach the Gos- pel to every creature, beginning at Jerusa- lem. The apostles filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, and then passed rapidly to all the great centres of influence throughout the Roman empire Corinth, Autioch, Eph- esus, Home. From these centres the Word passed swiftly as on the wings of the wind, so that, within the first generation, it could be said, " Their sound has gone into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." We have not followed this plan. We have neglected the masses in our great cities, till a gigantic evil has grown up in our midst ; and it remains to be seen wheth- er there is life enough in the Christianity of our day to grapple with the evil and redeem the waste places, so that the tre- mendous moral and social power lodged in the heart of the city population may be con- secrated to Christ. The first requisite is a living Church a Church filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost. A dead church can not achieve any thing. It is the most useless institution on the face of the earth, and, like salt without savor, is fit only to be cast out and " trod- den under feet of men." The working po\v- er of the Church is just the measure of life in the pulpit and in the pew. What we want before organization above and better than all organization is life to be filled with life. Without life, the Church is a mere skeleton ; full of life, she rises up, an exceeding great army, invincible, and all- conquering. MISSIONS OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF PRUSSIA AMONG GERMAN PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS ABROAD * BY THE KEY. W. NOEL, Counselor of the "Ober-Kircheiirath," nnd First Preacher of the Louisa Parish Church at Berlin. THE subject for which I want to claim your attention leads you into the narrow- ness of a quiet, silent work of love. You have taken, in these memorable days, a sur- vey of all the different departments of Chris- tian, Protestant faith and struggle, love and suffering, hope and victory. I have to speak to you of the work of love which the Evan- gelische Oler-Kircltenrath in Berlin, the first authority of the Established Church in Prus- sia, besides its great tasks at home, does for German Protestant congregations scat- tered in foreign lands. Its care is extend- ed over all those congregations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America that seek its con- nection. You know that every year thousands and thousands in Germany suppose themselves to be called with the words once spoken to Abraham, " Get thee out of thy coun- try, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." The tide of German emigration flows westward into the United States of Amer- ica, which I dare say, without boasting, may thank the German emigrants for a good part of their wonderful development. The emi- grants who come here do not want the ec- clesiastical care of their fatherland, or at least not so much as anywhere else, for the conn- try they have selected for their new home rejoices in the religious freedom of its citi- zens, and allows them to live according to their own faith, and to constitute their own churches. There is here no preference of any denomination, nor are the professors of any faith disregarded before the common law. Our German brethren find here nu- merous, more or less well-organized, German Churches, which they can join, and where they may continue in the faith of their fa- thers and the customs of their home. Syn- odal regulations and a standing ministerial state, whose members are partly gone forth from the academies of this country, partly from Germany, give them the security of * [This address was delivered by the author in Ger- man at the large meeting in Cooper Institute, Oct. 12, but it belongs properly to the addresses on Mission- ary Work. ef.] the regular preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the means of grace. Quite different is the situation of emigrants in countries where the population is not pre- dominantly Protestant. It may be that they go to South America, where the Romish Church does not suffer any religious liberty, or that they settle in the Danubian princi- palities, where the Greek Church, though not so intolerant as Popery, still is averse to the Gospel and its confessors. Or they set- tle under the Government of the Crescent in the East and in Egypt, or they seek a home in the great European cities, where language and manners are foreign to them. There our German brethren form small num- bers, frequently not over one hundred souls, who, even if they constitute themselves into congregations, will soon pine away, because they are scattered over largo districts, have no close connection with one another, and do not possess the means of paying ministers and teachers worthy of that name. There are in the more numerous congregations of South Brazil, almost everywhere, so-called ministers of the Gospel ; but what sort of people have many of these been, and what are they still, here and there ? Reduced ad- venturers, teachers driven away on account of immoral actions, artisans given to drink- ing, disbanded soldiers, who make the Prot- estant Church the laughing- stock of the Romish population. Our German brethren feel deeply this disgrace and mourn over it ; but they have only to choose between the Ro- man Church, ready to devour them, or such pastors as these. Even large congregations, which have the means and are ready also to make sacrifices, are depending on chance, owing to their separation and disconnection from a larger church organization, whether they will find a true minister, or will fall into the hands of unfit, immoral men. In consideration of these improprieties many congregations, first a few, afterward more and more, have asked the permission I of the Evangelische Ober-Kirchenrath in Berlin to join the Protestant Established Church of Prussia. Others who could not do this on account of their unsettled condi- tion have asked at least its advice, its co-op- NOEL: MISSIONS AMONG GERMAN PROTESTANTS ABROAD. 651 eration for getting proper ministers, so that now Prussian ministers, sent to those con- gregations, remain in connection with their church at home, and, after having worked for some years in the " Sia val times were distinguished for the exercise of charity to the sick and poor, so that, if the ignorant multitude Avere very imperfectly acquainted with the mysteries of the faith of their inmates, they, at any rate, wove able to comprehend, to some extent, the worth of a religion that brought forth in them such fruits, and certainly learned to esteem and share many of the material advantages it secured. Men were " a hungered, and they gave them meat ; thirsty, and they gave them drink ; strangers, and they took them in ; naked, and they clothed them ; sick, and they visited them ; in prison, and they came unto them." It was assuredly to the inspiration of the religion he had learned from the New Tes- tament that Howard owed the impulse that sent him forth on his embassies of mercy through all the countries of Europe, to dis- cover and expose the appalling secrets of their prison-houses, until the indignant cry of insulted humanity inaugurated a change ; and nothing inferior to such an influence could have led the gentle Elizabeth Fry to subject herself to the self-denial and person- al peril to Avhich her visits to Newgate ex- posed her in her attempted and happily suc- cessful efforts to overcome the demoniac fury and wickedness of its miserable inmates. In all public calamities the genius of Christian philanthropy has passed among men as an angel of light. ".When Alexan- dria was visited with the plague, during the reign of Gallienus, the pagans deserted their friends on the first symptoms of disease. They left them to die in the streets, without even taking the trouble to bury them when dead ; they only thought of escaping from the contagion themselves. The Christians, on the contrary, took the bodies of their brethren in their arms ; waited upon them without thinking of themselves ; ministered to their wants, and buried them with all possible care : even while the best people of the community, presbyters and deacons, lost their own lives by their self-denying gener- osity. And when Carthage was ravaged by a similar pestilence, in the reign of Gallus, the pagans deserted the sick and the dying, and the streets were filled with dead bodies, which greatly increased the infection. No one came near them except for purposes of plunder ; but Cyprian, calling his people to- gether in the church, said, ' If we do good only to our own, what do we more than publicans and heathens ?' Animated by his words, the members of the Church divided the work between them, the rich giving mon- ey, and the poor labor, so that in a short time the bodies that filled the streets were buried. Who, before Christianity taught men to do it, ever thought of redeeming captives taken in war ? Yet this was what churches did ; and even sold the consecrated vessels for that purpose, as was done by Am- brose at Milan." (Rev. J. Lord.) Is it not found, now, that no sooner does a calamity happen by which widows and orphans are made, no sooner is it known that there is a wide-spread distress arisiiig G78 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. from famine, war, or pestilence, oven in oth- er lands, than the Christian philanthropy of this country and of England is stirred to its depths? theirs more than that of all the world besides ; and I do not hesitate to say it is because of the religion which has made the two countries what they are, in all that is good and great, and given them an enviable pre-eminence over the other nations of the earth. In preparing this paper I tried but the task was too herculean for me to accomplish to ascertain what amount of money, dur- ing the last half century, had been poured into the treasury of our London philanthrop- ic institutions, for that city may perhaps be regarded as the centre of philanthropic ac- tion ; and I essayed to do the same with your own city of New York, taking this, as I pre- sume I may, as the counterpart of London in the old country; but I failed from the very magnitude of the inquiry. One fact, however, I elicited, for which I was hardly prepared, and which speaks volumes. In London I ascertained and, if I were as fa- miliar with New York as with the more an- cient city, I doubt not I should be able to assert something similar as existing here there are nine hundred different charities formed to benefit men, and the vast majority of these relate to the body, its ailments and wants, embracing every form of disease and misery ; including among them the aged, the helpless, the infirm, the incurable, the orphan, and the widow. With one department of Christian philan- thropy that of aid to the orphans of re- spectable parentage I am, perhaps, from the official position I have held for the last twenty-six years, as honorary secretary to the Asylum for Fatherless Children, at Reed- ham, near London, more familiar than many here. I select eight of the oldest or best known orphanages, five of which are in or near London, and offer the following statis- tics with reference to them : St. Ann's Society, which has sent forth dnr-) ing its existence 3000 children, and re- > 500,000 ceived from the public ) The Orphan Working School, 4000 children, and received from the public The London Orphan Asylum, 3708 children, and received from the public The Wanstead Infant Asylum, 3000 children, and received from the public The Asylum for Fatherless Children, Reed- ham, 800 children, and received from the public '. The Crossley Orphanage, Halifax, toward) which the three brothers Crossley gave > 127,500 ) Mason's Orphanage, near Birmingham, built) 400,000 C35,000 512,000 200,000 152,500 200,000 1 and endowed by the founder, at a cost of. , Miller's remarkable institution* at Bristol, j 4n which have been received 4140 orphans, > 115,000 educated at an expense of ) As an illustration of what Christian philan- thropy in the heart of one man, and he a * In thirty years Mr. Muller has obtained, "simply in answer to prayer," 580,000, for all his religious and benevolent operations. Christian minister, can accomplish, let me call your special attention to the five institu- tions founded by the late Dr. Andrew Reed, of London, whose visit to this country, as a deputation from the Congregational Union of England and Wales, thirty-six years ago, some here may remember, and who was the father of the honorable member for Hackney, who has presided at more than one of the sessions of this Conference. He founded the London Orphan, the Wanstead Infant, and the Reedham Fatherless Asylums ; the Royal Hospital for Incurables, and the Idiot Asy- lum at Earlswood, Surrey. The former has received from the public 263,216, and the latter 300,000. These five institutions, up to the time of Dr. Reed's death, ten years ago, according to a table given in the life written by his sons, amounted to upward of one million pounds sterling. In his will he wrote with his own hands these memorable words : " I bequeath these asylums to my be- loved country, with an earnest prayer that they may bo watched over with wisdom and benevolence; that they may be kept free from abuse and preserved in efficiency, and remain, age after age, memorials of that Di- vine charity which exalteth and glorifieth a people." The ten institutions I have enumerated every one of which is the offspring of Chris- tian philanthropy have received from a benevolent public 3,802,716, or nearly twen- ty million dollars. Since writing the above, I have received a publication, which has emanated from the Bible House, designated " Christian Work." From it I find that last year the " local so- cieties " of New York, the great majority of which embrace philanthropic objects, raised $2,500,000, while it mentions in a note that the incomes of the various religious and be- nevolent societies in Great Britain, for the last year, amounted to 1,450,000, or $7,250,000. This is far below the mark, for it does n6t take into account what is done by every well-organized church throughout the em- pire for'the good of its own locality. I be- lieve the sum may be doubled, and not fully represent the amount annually expended for the purposes of Christian philanthropy. But after all it is not so much the amount of money raised for philanthropic purposes that shows the strength of the philanthropic principle, as something else, which no fig- ures in arithmetic can represent. Think of the personal toil unremunerated and unre- munerative which is necessary to carry on all the institutions of Christian charity and benevolence, and which is cheerfully given by hundreds and thousands of gratuitous, and yet often sadly misunderstood and abused laborers. Think of the instructions to the poor, given by myriads of hearty and loving workers whom the world never sees at their toils ; of the thousands of men and AVELING : CHRISTIAN PHILANTROPY. 679 women who visit the bedsides of the sick and the homes of poverty, to minister to human wants, and often under circumstan- ces of the greatest peril to health and life ; and remember that as these were originated under the inspiration of Christianity, by men who had caught its spirit, so are they still maintained and perpetuated by such as are quickened by the same living power, who " do it as unto the Lord and not unto men." As of the early Christian women it was said, so is it true of them to this day : " Matrons especially devoted themselves to these works of charity, feeding the poor and ministering to the sick. They visited the meanest hovels and the most dismal pris- ons. 'But what heathen,' says Tertullian, ' will suffer his wife to go about from one street to another to the houses of strangers ? What heathen would allow her to steal away into the dungeon to kiss the chain of the martyr?' It was because this benevolence was so universal that the pagans were struck with wonder and admiration, and marveled at the potent agency that could effect such results." Two days ago, in company with a number of other delegates to this Conference, I avail- ed myself of the invitation of the Mayor and Common Council of this city to visit the in- stitutions which are maintained, under the direction of the Commissioners of Chari- ties, in the islands of the East River. In the care of the sick, the poor, the helpless, the incurable, the insane, even of those who belonged to the criminal class; in the arrangements for the comfort of the soldier worn out in his country's service; and es- pecially in the asylum for children on Ran- dall's Island, where so many of the little waifs and strays of society greeted us, and in whose tiny shouts I thought I heard min- gled the suppressed cry of heart-broken hu- manity that had begun to feel the warm touch of a generous benevolence in all these I saw the direct and indirect effects of Christiiiuity. It was a noble exhibition of that Divine charity Avhicb, as Dr. Reed said, exalts, honors, and purifies a people. To all infidels and impiiguers of the work of Christianity as a remedial agency, to those who inquiringly or scornfully ask what good it has ever done in the world, wo reply : " Look at the myriads it has bless- ed in relation to this life only for this is surely an argument yon can understand listen to them, who, with a voice like the sound of many waters, acknowledge the mill- ion benefits they have derived from it." With a mightier emphasis than Job used can Christianity say: "When the ear heard me then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me ; because I de- livered the poor that cried, and the father- less, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to per- I ish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteous- ness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor ; and the cause which I knew not I searched out." These things are not seen in merely isolated instances, but in multitudes of cases; not on a limit- ed, bnt on a gigantic scale, somewhat more commensurate with the exigencies of hu- manity than in former days, and a little more in accordance with the injunctions of our holy religion and its Divine Head. Now, is it too much to ask that the oppo- nents of Christianity would show us some of their trophies, won without any help from the system they repudiate ? They would find it a hard task to do this; for at every step in the exhibition we should lay our finger on this and that act, and claim the motive power as having been supplied by our de- spised Christianity. Men of the world have taken of the things created by it, and appro- priated to themselves the credit of the crea- tion. They have collected the medicaments which have been distilled in the laboratory of a divinely instituted religion, and labeled them with their own names. But it is very easy to discern the true parentage of all be- nevolent operations. If, in helping to dis- possess poor humanity of any of its ills, the children of the world claim the honor of originating the thought and the work, AVC say, "Thy speech bewrayeth thee. The voice is Jacob's voice, though the hands be the hands of Esau." Such persons run the risk of being scornfully repudiated, as were the sons of Sceva, who wanted to have the credit of casting out devils ; for as misery and evil take their flight from the homes and hearts of myriads, they cry to the mere imitators of Christian benevolence, "Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who arc ye ?" The day is not far off when those who now speak evil of Christianity, as if its sa- cred books were but a collection of old wives' fables, will have to make the acknowledg- ment that they contain within them senti- ments and principles which have proved the germinaut power of all that has stirred hu- man hearts to noble deeds ; that, instead of its domain being a mere paradise of dream- ers, it is a nursery of noble souls that have filled the world with their achievements, and that will continue to do so in spite of the world's ingratitude. The Church of Christ may be often smitten on the right cheek, but she will return a kiss for a blow ; she may be reviled, but she will not revile again ; the ribaldry of the profane may pur- sue her, but she wafts back her blessings in return. She remembers the injunction of the Divine Oracle : " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink ; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon 680 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. his head. Bo not overcome of evil, but over- come evil with good." I take my cynical brother, therefore, with me into the noble temple of charity and be- nevolence which lias been reared by Chris- tian hands, an ever-eulargiug temple that is composed of living stones, many of which, rough-hewn originally in the quarry of hu- manity, have been shaped into a goodly sym- metry, and " polished after the similitude of a palace ;" and as the architect of St. Paul's bids the visitor to the metropolitan cathe- dral gaze on the glorious structure that rises around him, to discover the most fitting trib- ute to the genius and skill which produced such a building, so, pointing to the grand re- sults of a constructive and ever-growing be- nevolence which are to be met with every- where, and which but for Christianity would never have been seen blessing the world, I say, "Si mouumentuni ejus requiris Cir- cumspice." THE CAKE OF THE SICK. BY THE LATE COUNT AGENOK DE GASPARIN, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. [This essay of the late distinguished Count AGEKOB DE GASPARIN, who took such a noble and hopeful stand in behalf of our nation and country at the time of our greatest trial, was prepared at my request for the General Conference three years ago, ten months before his lamented death, aud was intrusted to me by his widow at La Pierreire, near Geneva, to be used for the object he had in view. It was accordingly read in part before the Conference, and is here inserted in full, as the voice of one who, though dead, still speak- eth. JM.] GENTLEMEN, I desire, in the first place, to express a sentiment of personal regret. Not only should I have been happy to take part in this truly oecumenical meeting of the representatives of Gospel Christianity, but, allow me to tell you, a feeling peculiarly deep binds me to the noble country in -which you are now gathered. It would have been a great joy to mo to shake hands with friends whose countenances are unknown to me, and to see with my own eyes a people which has set us such a noble example, and which holds the foremost rank in liberal civ- ilization. Compelled as I am to decline the invitation with which I have been honored, I have felt bound to do as much as lies in my power, and I beg you to receive with in- dulgence a few short reflections on the sub- ject I have been called to treat. That subject is the care of the sick and of the poor, as it stands connected with the institution of deaconesses. Allow me, gentlemen, to call your special attention to the care of the sick. It is for them that the institution of deaconesses has been founded, and the observations which this side of the question gives rise to apply so manifestly to the care of the poor that it would be but a repetition of the same ar- guments were I to examine the subject with regard to them. We shall find it to be a case of a fortiori. Wishing to simplify and shorten as much as possible, I will spare you extracts and quotations, and have no recourse either to books or reports. The Gospel alone, expe- rience, and facts Avill guide me while I en- deavor to throw light upon the subject. I. Nothing is more striking than the place assigned by the Gospel to the individual. Faith is individual, conversion is individual ; the Good Shepherd " calleth his own sheep 1>y their name." Every man individually is responsible before God ; every man has indi- vidual duties to fulfill ; consequently, no or- ganization whatsoever no system for pro- moting obedience, sanctification,or salvation can supply the place of individual effort. Now this applies to the exercise of charity, as well as to every other manifestation of Christian life. The number of offices insti- tuted by the apostles was very limited just what is necessary for the maintenance of order, the preaching of sound doctrine, and the distribution of alms in the name of the Church. With this indispensable excep- tion, the apostles maintain the fundamental principle of the New Covenant individual activity. " Pure religion and undefiled be- fore God and the Father is this," writes St. James, "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself un- spotted from the Avorld." When the Saviour is describing the last judgment in terms in- expressibly solemn, these are the words he addresses to the elect : " I was naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me." He does not say, " You gave money to an asso- ciation which had undertaken to clothe and visit." II. I grant that no one says these very words. No one thinks of giving Christians a permit of exemption from the duties of personal charity. By creating this new kind of charity, the Romish Church by no means intended to do away with individual benev- olence. Nevertheless, the very existence of corporations for the carrying out of special objects naturally places those objects al- most exclusively in the hands of those whose special business it is to attend to them, who are most familiar with them, and who conse- quently appear better fitted for the accom- plishment of the duty than you or I. And observe this : just as the Gospel prin- ciple which applies to the individual is spe- cially manifested in the private exercise of charity, so the Romish Church, starting from a general principle which annihilates the individual, mutilates or destroys the indi- vidual manifestations of charity. The in- vention of charitable associations is only one of the practical consequences of that prin- ciple. Every one knows that the system which places the priest between God and the soul leaves no room for a personal faith, for conscientious self-government, and for a candid inquiry after truth. If the Romish Church undertake to rule over men's con- 682 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. sciences and to' promise them heaven, it is not surprising that she should likewise un- dertake to perform all the duties of obe- dience for them. The development of char- itable corporations in her midst is a neces- sary consequence of her system. She has some men specially appointed for prayer, others for the maintenance of pure doctrine, others for the guidance of consciences. She could not do without specisil men for alms- giving. Besides, these special agents are convenient, and we are glad to avail our- selves of them. Let mo be relieved of the fa- tigue of seeking, and the trouble of coming to a decision. Let me bo told what I ought to believe, and what I ought to do. Let my duties toward the sick and the poor be ful- filled by others iu such a way as shall set my conscience at rest. Are there not people whose business it is ? It is not mine. Re- ligious or charitable associations will act for me, just as they pray for me. I will give the alms prescribed to me, as I accomplish the duties commanded me, recite the formu- las drawn up for me, and submit to the pen- ances imposed ou me. Here are my dollars. Now leave me alone. It would be difficult to be a Christian at an easier cost. III. Such are, gentlemen, the two tenden- cies which have been in antagonism for eight- een hundred years individual effort on the one hand, a mechanical system ou the other. To confine myself to the question under consideration, I come to this conclusion. In proportion as the mechanism of good works is foreign to the spirit of the Apostolic Churches, so is it developed from century to century, iu proportion as the doctrines of salvation by grace, and of faith in Christ, are lost amid outward forms as the different ways of meriting heaven are multiplied as the worship of God in spirit and in truth be- comes materialized as the immediate in- tercourse of the soul with God is prevented and the way into the Holiest closed and as the priesthood, Avith its spiritual guidance, rises in power and importance. Charity be- comes mere almsgiving, and even this alms- giving is the business of the priests or of the corporations that is to say, that direct intercourse between man and man is at an end, quite as much as direct dealings with God. Now Scripture brings man into contact with man the poor with the rich, the sick with the healthy. If such contact be done away with, the only satisfactory solution of the social question is done away with at the same time. If I am suffering, and I see around me nothing but charitable associa- tions hospitals, aid given officially, special agents accomplishing the duties of their vo- cation my heart will not be touched. I shall doubtless sincerely admire and deeply respect the devotedness of these agents of collective charity ; but shall I not be more or less inclined to look on them as the wheels which set the charitable machine going, by means either of taxes or voluntary contri- butions as the -workers of a well -regu- lated engine, which coldly and systematical- ly distributes its alms, the monotonous drone of which I can easily distinguish, but which is destitute of a heart that beats and feels. If, on the contrary, direct intercourse with my fellow-creatures is restored to me by the Gospel, every thing changes at once. I feel the pressure of a friendly hand, my suffering awakens sympathy in the heart of another, I see the countenance of my helper, and love responds to love in my own bosom. Thus is mutual affection created, and thus by de- grees disappears the poison of those social questions which threaten our Old World, and which the New World will do well to take into consideration. The weighty subject of practical charity would carry me too far ; I therefore merely point out its importance. Two facts, how- ever, stand out prominently : first, the pre- dominance of individual activity ; secondly, the limits within which this activity should be comprised. Beyond a certain boundary it must not extend, if it would accomplish its mission. Our individual charity becomes not only inefficient, but hurtful, when we scatter our help right and left, instead of confining ourselves to the families we know, with whose wants and circumstances we are familiar, and with whom we can maintain an interchange of sympathies. Common- place charity, alms given at the door, dona- tions requested and forwarded by letter, are quite as injurious to the interests of real charity as is official help. NOTE. In several of our towns offices for re- lief and reference the universal adoption of which can not be too highly recommended have been established. That of Geneva, under the direction of Mr. Edward Fatio, is, to my mind, a model worthy of imitation. At these offices men devoted, enlightened, and charitable, in the true sense of the word, receive and care- fully examine a mass of letters dictated by pov- erty, and full of its urgent requests letters which, before they undertook the office, appall- ed the inhabitants of our towns, unable as they were to get at the truth. After having taken a general survey of the re- quests, the party to whom they may be address- ed dispatches them to the office, whither he like- wise sends the petitioner when the latter calls for an answer, or, rather, when he comes to re- ceive the help he has extracted from the donor's weariness, from his idleness nay, from his very selfishness, anxious as he is to be rid of impor- tunity from any thing rather than from his be- nevolence. The office, which is in possession of all the requests, and is perfectly well acquaint- ed with all the circumstances, sometimes gives a positive refusal, when professional beggars, idlers, or vagabonds arc concerned. At others it strongly seconds the petitioner, especially when a family in distress needs a helping hand for a shorter or longer period ; when a child is to be apprenticed or sent back to his native land GASPARIN : THE CARE OF THE SICK. 683 while, at the same time, the office places at the employer's disposal both its experience and its good-will to help him in finding a suitable situation, and in watching over the prote"ge. We may add that the chief endeavor of the office is to provide work for the indigent, and by that means to draw them up out of that miry slough which bears the name of mendicity. It would be long to tell the evil these offices have prevented, the base imposture they have unmasked, the moral putrefaction cleansed, the deep misery relieved, the efficient help given, the real bonds of union cemented between rich and poor through their means, the undisputed good they have done and are doing to this hour. But one thing is necessary : it is that on both sides the same perseverance and the same ener- gy should be displayed. If the office meet with idleness and hesitation, and its activity be dis- turbed by continual inconsistencies ; if the re- ceivers of letters, instead of sending them to the office, and watching the progress of the affair, give their alms without reflection, to repent of it at their leisure one day because an importu- nate beggar wearies them with his solicitations; the next, because they are seized with a fit of ill-judged, misapplied sensibility the office, in spite of all its exertions, will be impeded in its movements, and the results of its labors will be compromised. We feel persuaded that the founders of the office for relief accomplish an excellent work, and render untold service to the poor and to society at large. Having seen these good Gospel daily laborers, who so courageously bear the heat and burden of the day, sometimes give way, both under the fatigues of their task and under the inconsistencies, we may add, the blinded incomprehension, and the very blame of those who should encourage them by every means in their power we desire here to bear a solemn testimony to their devotedness, to their work itself, and to its utility. IV. I have mentioned hospitals, and you will have seen, gentlemen, that I am not very fond of them. Of course, some are nec- essary. A limited number of hospitals, of limited size, are certainly required. But let us set aside as much as possible the tradi- tions of the Latin Church, which has covered Europe with those immense shelters of pov- erty, the building of which was long consid- ered the most excellent of good works. In the Middle Ages, every thing was comprised in these two forms of charity corpora- tions and hospitals. People gave to corpo- rations and built hospitals ; then, through the medium of these hospitals and corpora- tions, they took care of their sick and re- lieved their poor. Succeeding centuries have followed in the same track. Such a course is so convenient so much in accordance with the systematizing spirit of Europe ; this systematic charity allows private individ- uals, and society at large, to be so easy and comfortable. Wo ourselves are more under the influence of Romish tradition than we are perhaps aware. Every day we see new hospitals ris- ing, which true charity would not require, but which are essential to selfishness. Ex- cept in special cases, which need special rem- edies, it is a lamentable thing to take away a sick person from domestic care, and thus to free his family from the duties God had giv- en them to fulfill. Our duties are our priv- ileges ; we must be careful not to deprive ourselves of them. A family w ill, perhaps, feel relieved when its sick member is carried to the hospital ; but dare we affirm that such a relief is a blessing ? On the contrary, do- mestic care is so valuable, so much more cal- culated to promote recovery than that be- stowed in the best-regulated hospitals, that at Paris, for instance, the public administra- tion has at length acknowledged its incon- testable superiority. Every year the above administration gives increasing proofs of the importance it attaches to home care. I shudder when I see asylums for the aged, though founded, of course, with the best in- tentions. What an accumulation of infirm- ity, of debility, of dejection ! If any need the family, it is the aged. They need to be surrounded with the cheerful voices of the young, and the merry laughter of children. They love children, and are loved by them. Now can there be any thing easier than to place old people who are friendless and poor in private families ? With one quarter of the money which is expended in building, furnishing, and maintaining an almshouse, aged persons could be supported in villages where they would enjoy the free country air. Such a proceeding would not make so much show, but it would do more good. The principle which substitutes individual char- ity and the influence of the family for me- chanical systems and hospitals is, when put into practice, of a much more extensive ap- plication than would at first be supposed. With regard to lunatics, and even confirmed madmen, whose state seems absolutely to re- quire the special care of an asylum, we be- lieve the privacy of the family would soothe and quiet them. In Belgium, for instance, there is a custom of long standing, and which is frequently put into practice. There are villages in which persons in every stage of madness are received and taken care of. They are made to feel at home, and engaged in manual labor. The effect is most bene- ficial, and often they are completely cured. V. Must it then be inferred that Gospel laborers, peculiarly fitted for the work, pos- sessed of the requisite knowledge, and hav- ing a decided taste and aptitude for it men, in a word, who are clearly called to it must it be inferred that such should not receive the necessary course of preparation for the care of the sick ? By no means. How- ever limited the number of hospitals may be, the persons who are over them must be capable of fulfilling their duties, and this re- quires a certain amount of training. All the good-will in the world will not be a substi- tute for science and skill. We may add that the more home care is practiced, the more necessary will it bo to have well-qualified nurses at hand, and llms to secure under our 684 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. own roofs that aid for which we ouce had to apply to public establishments. For both these reasons, persons should be trained to nurse rich or poor, as occasion should pre- sent. Experience has shown the mistake of those who imagine that onr nurses can not, without risk, penetrate into certain quarters of large towns unless invested with the name and dress of a Sister of Charity. The Bible women daily visit the dens of London. At Paris I have seen young Christian ladies go- ing up the dirtiest staircases, in the most miserable dwellings, and every where they were respected. Besides, gentlemen, does not the city in which you are assembled possess a valiant army of charitable ladies, who never shrink from their labors, even before the Five Points ? VI. This simplicity of action, considered good for the apostles' days, was, of course, insufficient when men endeavored to improve the Gospel, and Avhen the great Romish mechanism was organized. Then appeared the monastic orders. I do not intend to give you their history ; I only make the follow- ing statement : The Protestant Sisters of Charity, who are so numerous iu Europe, and whom it is wished to introduce among you, are modeled upon the Roman Catholic sisterhoods. I know what are the differences which exist between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant sisters. I know also that the similarities exceed the differences, and that the latter are more apparent than real. Do not imagine that I allow myself to be carried away by a spirit of malevolence. I sincerely respect the Protestant sisters, and their devotedness. Among the founders of these new institutions I have friends and rel- atives ; and I understand the impulse upon which they act so much the better because I began by giving way to it myself, and by encouraging the work. I have therefore, perhaps, the right to hope that my opinion, which is the result of a serious and consci- entious examination of the subject, will be of some weight in the eyes of impartial men. VII. In the first place, I notice that the title of deaconess is misapplied to the Sisters of Charity in question. Only one deaconess Phoebe is spoken of in the writings of the apostles; and assuredly nothing can au- thorize us to suppose that she belonged to a corporation, governed by principles entirely contrary to those which regulated the oth- er offices in the primitive Church. We may gather from analogy that the duties of the deaconess were similar to those of the dea- con. She fulfilled the same requirements, at once so simple and so large, and which so decidedly maintain the established order of existence. "Let the deacons be the hus- bands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well" (1 Timothy iii., 12). Nothing here indicates a state of service which would place those engaged in it out- side the pale of ordinary existence, and un- der an authority entirely free to dispose of their persons. It is worthy of remark that the true Church deaconesses still exist. The little Free Church to which I belong elects not only elders and deacons, but deaconesses also. The latter who may bo either sin- gle, married, or widows attend specially to the visiting of the sick and the poor. They act in concert with, and are upheld by the Church, and in difficult cases have recourse to its advice. The life they lead is like that of every one else. Lastly, their exertions do not prevent the manifestation of individual charity any more than do those of the dea- cons. They have a household to superintend, children to bring up, and they are not, like the sisters, so special a personification of charity that one feels authorized to leave the exclusive care of it to them. The follow- ing historical fact is also worthy of observa- tion : The Puritan refugees at Leyden drew up, under the direction of their Pastor, Rob- inson, a remarkable system of Church gov- ernment, which contains the germ of several of the great improvements since realized by America. By this constitution five offices were established in the Church, and the sub- jects of the fifth class, who came after the elders, doctors, evangelists, and deacons, were the deaconesses that is, our own Bible dea- conesses. On this point, as on many others, the Puritans walked in the footsteps of the apostles ; and imitated that simplicity so fruitful in its effects, and which alone pre- serves from error. VIII. We here meet with an objection. By my own confession, it will be urged, neither the Church deaconesses nor individual char- ity will suffice in certain emergencies. I have myself acknowledged the necessity of training persons specially qualified for the work. Will not this bring us back to the institutions recently founded, and to the sis- terhoods ? For a time such may have been the con- clusion. Many a true Christian was con- vinced that, except by copying Rome, it was as impossible to find devoted nurses as to organize well-regulated hospitals; and yet the want of such nurses was unceasingly felt. But now experience has given iu its verdict. Recent facts have plainly proved that we need not borrow from Rome's adul- terated Christianity, and that a pious nurse, under the guidance of the pure Gospel, ful- fills the duties of her vocation far better than if she were enslaved by conventional regulations. To mention only one exam- ple : For twelve years* an establishment for training nurses has been in existence at Lau- sanne, in Switzerland. Twice a year, after having given serious proofs of their piety * Fourteen at the present moment. GASPARIN : THE CAEE OF THE SICK. 685 and call to the work, eight pupils are admit- ted. For five months they receive lessons in the theory of nursing, and, above all, go through a practical training, paying visits to the hospital, sitting up -with the sick at night, and watching by their bedsides in the daytime. A serious examination before com- petent judges terminates their apprentice- ship ; and brevets, according to their differ- ent abilities and acquirements, are given to the pupils, who are then placed either in our Protestant hospitals, or as independent nurses in different cities and villages. Some are employed by the Church, others by some charitable institution all, in a word, are actively engaged. The work is one of liber- ty, and, therefore, with the apprenticeship ceases the superintendence. The most friend- ly intercourse is kept up between the head of the establishment and the pupils. He aids and protects them with pleasure ; but there his control is at an end ; their inde- pendence is respected, and each of them goes her own way upon her own responsibility. If continual superintendence, the "sine qua non" of the sisterhoods, is not indispensa- ble, that celibacy de facto, which not only characterizes them, but is their very essence and bond of union, is, of course, not indis- pensable either. The nurses in the school at Lausanne are single, married, or widows. There is scarcely a class in which these three descriptions of persons are not represented. Need I say they are distinguished by no particular dress. Often during their five months' residence at the establishment, per- sons of different classes in society are thrown together. It might seem necessary to adopt a special costume in order to prevent un- comfortable feeling, and to obliterate cer- tain differences. But this uncomfortable feel- ing has never existed, and the differences are looked upon as perfectly natural. The young lady and the peasant girl both neat- ly dressed, and in a way suitable to their respective positions have always worked together in Christian harmony, and no so- cial difficulties have arisen in their minds by contrasting the fine material and elegant cut of the lady's dress with the coarse stuff gown of the peasant. No one thinks of giving them any other name than that of their noble profession. They are nurses, not sisters ; or, rather, they are sisters in the truly Scriptural and en- larged sense of the word. It is the Romish system, with its classifications so contrary to the Gospel, its different grades of sanctity, its priests and monks accounted nearer to God than ordinary Christians, which has de- 'prived the latter of their family name of the title which belongs to all the members of Christ's body and has bestowed it on the religious orders as their exclusive privi- lege. The pupils of the Lausanne school, in re- pudiating a particular dress, feel that He who commands us not to let " our right hand know what our left hand doeth," does not call us to proclaim our good works by out- ward signs, and they are resolved not to at- tract attention or solicit respect by wearing a badge of their consecration. The same hu- mility is evidenced in their setting aside the prestige Avhich accompanies nursing when apparently gratuitous. When our nurses leave the school, they earn their own liveli- hood, and receive a modest remuneration for their services. We live so much under the influence of that false sanctity invented by the Church of Rome, and it seems so necessary to us that our self-denial should be seen and known, that wo look upon a salary, if not as a dis- honor, at least as despicable, vulgar, and in- compatible with fervent consecration to God's service. This refinement of self-de- nial was unknown to the apostles. They were too siugla-eyed and too upright to im- agine such a thing. " The workman," said they, "is worthy of his hire;" and they even commanded that certain elders "should be counted worthy of double honor." Do we not take it as a matter of course that magistrates, clergymen, missionaries should be paid ? Yet, when charitable cor- porations are concerned, Romish traditions reappear, with the tenacity which charac- terizes erroneous notions, and a modest, law- ful remuneration, sanctioned by the Gospel, appears to us a humiliation. Besides, gen- tlemen, that gratuitous nursing, so greatly honored, as practiced by some associations, does not really exist.* The board and lodg- ing of the sisters are the expense of those who employ them, and when their labors are ended, a pension which will secure them against want, and provide for them in case of sickness, fatigue from over-work, or in- firmity, is guaranteed them till death. The slight remuneration which our nurses re- ceive is far from being equivalent to this. We desire only to go back to true evan- gelical simplicity, and to have done with that pompous, noisy self-denial in which Rome is so skillful, and which she has organ- ized so artfully. All special appellations and special dresses are set aside, pretended gratuitous service disappears ; but what remains is a true, modest, unostentatious devotedness, and that suffices us. We may add that persons in comfortable circumstances have often been numbered among the pupils. Their time of probation over, they devote themselves to the care of * It is easy to have the poor gratuitously nursed by the formation of a special committee, which takes into its service one or more nurse?, and sends them to the necessitous at its own expense. Snch a committee ex- ists at Lausanne. At other places unassuming private associations engage a nurse, and employ her as need requires. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. the sick, of course without accepting a re- nmueratiou which they do not need. But you may be sure that while acting thus, they do not for a moment suppose that their gratuitous service is more acceptable than the requited labors of their poorer compan- ions, who are less favored, but quite as de- voted to the Lord.* IX. If I have dwelt at some length on the Lausanne institution assuredly a most un- assuming one it is because it furnishes the demonstration of many disputed truths. It proves that in their care of the sick Chris- tians need not borrow from the Church of Rome, and that the Gospel, in its simplicity, possesses a power upon which we do not suf- ficiently reckon. Less organization and more life ; an ap- peal to free, individual action ; the develop- ment of the fund of strength which faith puts at the disposal of charity such is our programme. Instead of speaking to you of a small Swiss establishment, I ought to have put be- fore yon the noble example set us by Amer- ica. During the civil war, who nursed the sick and wounded soldiers ? Who founded those admirable asylums those soldiers' homes scattered along the route from Wash- ington to Texas ? Who made those asylums so happy that the poor soldiers felt as if they were breathiug the air of home? Who found- ed that wonderful organization, the Sanitary Commission ? Who collected all the dona- tions not only money, linen, and lint, but garments, wine, cordials, books, paper, games, flowers and fruits, the perfume and flavor of which reminded the sufferers of their native village? You know as well as I do the American women (for in such cases women play the chief part) devoted themselves they set charity by proxy on one side. They wrote letters for the wounded soldiers, their tender hands administered to their wants, they surrounded them with comforts, nay, with luxuries and delicacies such as a wom- an's heart alone can devise. My friend, Mr. Laboulaye, in a work which is in every one's * The superintendents of the Lausanne training- school are parents Mr. and Mrs. Reymond ; the fam- ily circle ha?, therefore, only been widened. Mr. Rey- mond is an established Christian, highly gifted for the work. His lectures are greatly appreciated, his power of penetration is remarkable, and his character is most amiable. All this peculiarly fits him to develop the minds of his pupils. He brings to his work extreme delicacy of conscience, all the kindness of an upright tender heart, aud all the experience he has acquired by the bedsides of the sick and in the houses of the poor. Lastly, the establishment possesses, in the per- son of Dr. Jain, a professor whose learned lectures, adorned sometimes by flashes of wit the fruit of a mind at once original aud acute, and fed by the assid- nous study of the discoveries daily made in the med- ical world not only captivate the pupils instructed by them, but attracts a good number of externs, happy to acquire knowledge which finds immediate use in the service of charity. hands, has given our European world the history of the "Hospital Days:" the diary of a lady who during the war was at the head of the Fairfax Hospital, near Washing- ton.* He has told us also of Mrs. Barlow. On her wedding-day she started for the army with her husband. Mr. Barlow was elevated to the rank of General. Each new campaign saw Mrs. Barlow at her post in the hospitals, aud at length she died in her work under the walls of Petersburg. What' a union! How noble, though brief, was their married life ! Is not that an example of true devoted- ness, of supremo consecration, of the care of the sick practiced in simplicity and by the power of Christ f During the American struggle the Central Association of women for the succor of the wounded collected a vast amount of money. It enlisted quite an army of devoted la- dies. And the work accomplished by women should not cause ns to lose sight of that car- ried on by the men, particularly the great activity displayed by the Young Men's Chris- tian Associations. I call your attention to these particulars, gentlemen, although they are well-known to you, because they prove unquestionably that sisterhoods are not needed in your midst, and that their absence has been the cause of no drawbacks. Have our hospitals full of sisters been any where crowned with such success as your temporary barracks attended by the volunteers of charity as those spacious, well-aired buildings from which the typhus and scurvy were excluded, and where the bill of mortality was far lower than could ever have been expected ? There improve- ment succeeded improvement, thanks to wonders of intelligence and kindness, such as the best regulated systems will never pro- duce. Life is a great teacher, liberty is a great discoverer. Through its influence vast hospitals breathing infection and death were replaced by small asylums in sunny situa- tions. By its hand gardens were planted, vegetables cultivated, flowers made to blos- som ; its care constructed steamers and cars specially adapted for the conveyance of the wounded, and, what is still better, it sur- rounded the sufferers with solicitude and love, and with that feeling of home under the influence of which the heart warms and the body is healed. We have left far behind us wholesale charity that charity always more or less hackneyed and professional which charac- terizes the most sincere and devoted cor- porations. X. It appears to me, gentlemen, that the' conclusions of this rapid sketch are self-evi- dent. We have to choose between the two * I do not know whether it is allowable to name Miss Jane Stuart Woolsey, but I venture to do so iu this note. GASPARIN: THE CARE OF THE SICK. 687 tendencies which divide the history of Chris- tendom iuto two very unequal parts. On one side are those mechanical systems so skillfully organized by the Romish Church hospitals innumerable, almsgiving exclusive- ly in the hands of charitable associations, corporations signalized to public respect by their dress, their title, their gratuitous serv- ice, by the practice of celibacy, by devoted- ness in regimentals, subservient to the will of a central superintendence, and marching with that uniformity which is produced by the abdication of independence. On the other side we see individuals in full posses- sion of their liberty, the care of the sick and the poor confided to the spontaneous activ- ity of Christian love, each child of God placed before his duty, and unable to set it aside under pretext of giving it up to more skillful hands, the Gospel the sole teacher, the apostles' example the sole constitution. You will have seen, moreover, that this lib- erty is perfectly consistent with decorum. Nothing can be better than that there should be Church deaconesses as well as deacons, leading the life of ordinary Christians. Noth- ing can be better than that intelligent, able nurses, who will exercise their noble profes- sion with as much experience and skill as love, should be trained. Let people de- vise the best means and ways, distribute among themselves the care of poor families, agree to prevent abuses, and endeavor to establish between employer and employed that enlightened and direct intercourse which is alone productive of good to such proceedings there can be no objection. In times of great extremity let extra opportu- nities for service be given and multiplied, as was the case in the United States during the civil war for such activity there is an evi- dent necessity. But all this is organization in independence, order in liberty. Liberty ! Ah, let us not weaken that vital principle which the Gospel has given to us. Is it not our duty as evangelical Christians to work, to fight, to bo exempt from the fulfillment of no one duty f " See how these Christians love one an- other," was once said of the disciples of the Saviour. May the time soon come when we shall constrain the world to exclaim with regard to us, " See how they love one an- other." Such is the true solution of Christian phi- lanthropy; its special application will be- come clearer and clearer to us by practice. That charity which is true, lively, free, and individual will discover it; she will be ready for each day's necessities, however serious and diversified the circumstances which may arise. The important thing is the principle. It is so much the more necessary to main- tain it, because Rome, that personification of progressive departure from the Gospel, will ever tempt us to copy her charitable in- stitutions after modifying them for our own use. Her mechanical organizations, so clev- erly got up and possessed of all the prestige of popularity and success, must be avoided by us. Let us, gentlemen, have courage to up- hold our principles; let us have faith in the power of truth and love. And if Rome hold up before us her Sisters of Charity, we will hold up before her our Churches of Charity. XI. In fulfilling the delicate task imposed on me, I hope I have been faithful to the pa- cific, brotherly spirit of the Evangelical Al- liance. The endeavor has been easy, for my heart contains nothing but feelings of affec- tion and profound respect for the devoted brethren who have founded the Protestant sisterhoods. I am persuaded that, far from seeking to imitate Rome, it has been their earnest wish to serve the Protestant cause by clearing it of the reproach of callousness, by putting an end to a state of inferiority from which its honor was suffering. We had, indeed, a gap to fill up ; our sick were often without the Christian love and care they need so much. And let us acknowledge that many suffering beings have met with tender care, and many souls have found peace and salvation in the hospitals superintended by sisters. I even go further. "We, who are the adver- saries of a system which our consciences con- demn, are indebted to these institutions, for we have been roused to action by the very error we combat. If we train pious nurses, is it not for the honor of the truth and of the simplicity that is in Christ ? Is it not that all may clearly see the absolute suf- ficiency of a pure Gospel in the domain of Christian activity, as in matters of faith and doctrine? Let us not be unmindful of the service thus rendered us. The argument of necessity, which was the basis of the sister- hoods, has collapsed before the evidence of facts. Facts have shown that there may be a real call to service, and a holy consecration to the relief of suffering, without the help either of corporations, or of superintendence, or of distinction of dress, or of celibacy. In bringing a controverted question thus openly before you, the committee who pre- pared the meeting of the Alliance have given proofs of a faith truly American in its hardi- hood and firmness. Your committee was right, gentlemen ; our unity fears not to come to the light. There can be no real unity if discussion is avoided, and only in proportion as the mani- festation of diversity is allowed, can it be solid. Compare with that false unity, boasted of by Rome, the unity of our Evangelical Alli- ance, in which there is room for the free as- pirations of all hearts filled with the love of Christ, and for the unimpeded soaring of all CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. understandings penetrated by the same Holy Spirit. Rome decrees dogmas which she imposes on all at one time the Immaculate Con- ception, at another the Papal Infallibility. If these dogmas wound the conscience, it must bo silenced. If the Bible raise its voice, it must be closed. If common-sense, convictions, truth should object, common- sense must be set aside, convictions must be ignored, truth must be smothered, and Rome's disciples must walk on blindfolded in the dark night of Roman unity. We desire no such artificial uniformity no such bondage. We seek after liberty and truth, in an open Bible and with awakened consciences. Yes ! truth is our aim. Truth is the subject of our earnest supplications at the throne of grace, the object of our most intense desires. Diversities arise precisely because our un- ion is real, because it is strengthened by an ardent, persevering search after truth, and because each aspiration after truth draws the bond closer. They arise because we have a horror of those expedient falsehoods which do violence to the conscience, and for that very reason destroy union. They arise be- cause we all desire to possess that faith which is honest, upright, and always accom- panied by a good conscience. Our union which has nothing to conceal, which knows neither constraint nor reticence loses noth- ing by being thus brought into contact with liberty. As the children of one God, the redeemed of one Saviour, the disciples of one Holy Spirit, and as obedient to one Gospel, do we not see the hour drawing near when our Re- deemer's prayer shall be fulfilled: "That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me I" INTEMPEKANCE AND ITS SUPPKESSIOK BY THE REV. HENRY A. NELSON, D.D., Professor in Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio. THE earth was riot yet dry from the wa- ters of the deluge TV hen the mischief and the shame of drunkenness first appeared. In the evening of its nineteenth century, Chris- tianity finds intemperance still a giant evil oppressing the human race. No age, no land, no people have been free from its miseries from its fearful aggrava- tion of all miseries. It every where con- fronts the active philanthropy of this age, opposing its beneficent progress, obstructing every good endeavor to ameliorate the con- dition of mankind. The Christian Church finds it every where a hiuderance to the spread of the Gospel an obstruction to the entrance of sanctifying truth into the hearts of men a seducing and corrupting power, making humiliating and destructive en- croachments even within her own inclosure. Not unfitly has this representative coun- cil of Protestant Christendom appointed this as a theme for deliberation. INTEMPERANCE AND ITS SUPPRESSION. The form of the title by which the Com- mittee assigned this topic is significant of the spirit which characterizes the Christian- ity of our age. The Church of Christ, recov- ering her consciousness of unity in him, re- covers also her consciousness of his power residing in her, his body, and designed by him to go forth from her into and through human society. She strives to realize the unity for which, in sympathy with her Head, she longs and prays not alone by investi- gation and contemplation of truth, seeking to find acceptable and intelligible words for the statement of the truth but also, and eminently, by uniting her members in the common work of her Lord, realizing a union of beneficent and holy activity. Contemplating the actual evils which op- pose themselves to the salvation in which she believes, she proposes to herself, in her Lord's name and strength, nothing short of the suppression of them. She devoutly be- lieves that " for this purpose the Son of God Avas manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." She expects that her own right and successful manifestation of him will have this effect. If the evil works of the Evil One can prosper and prevail in her presence, she justly apprehends that she lacks his power and his indwelling. As she 44 becomes more devoutly and thankfully con- scious of his indwelling, she the more confi- dently trusts that his virtue will go out of her for the healing of the world's sicknesses. Scarcely does the evil of which we treat need definition. A term of general import and various application, implying excess of indulgence or lack of suitable self-regula- tion, INTEMPERANCE, has long ago come to the more specific signification which points to indulgence in the direction of inebriety. This philological fact is highly suggestive of the pre-eminence which this form of vi- cious indulgence has attained, of its wide prevalence, and of its fearful effects. These effects the morbid conditions of the body, the enfeebling and debasement of the intellect, the debauching of the moral nature, the hardening of the heart, the blight- ing of all pure affections, the aggravation of every impure and unholy impulse, the utter desolation of home, the multiplication of crimes, the loading of society with burdens of taxation, and the enfeebling of society by enervating vices, the hopeless ruin of souls by rendering them incapable of receiving the Gospel these are too well known every where to all thoughtful and observant men. Indulgence in intoxicating drinks in- dulgence of that appetite and of those con- vivial practices which tend to drunkenness this is unquestionably the form of self-in- dulgence to the consideration of which this hour is devoted, and which the Committee have indicated by the word intemperance, in accordance with the usage, now well estab- lished, of the language in which the discus- sion is to be conducted. I shall speak, first, of the efforts which have been made in past years for the sup- pression of this evil. The wise men of all ages have recognized drunkenness as a vice, and have warned their contemporaries against it. It has always been understood that the expressed juices of certain fruits, especially the grape, become capable, not only of gratifying the palate, but of producing exhilaration ; and that, if this exhilaration is prolonged, it will give place to sottish prostration of all the powers both of body and mind. It has also been understood that such intoxication operates as an incentive to crime, to lust to what- ever is debasing to the individual and de- 690 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. structive to the family and to society. At the same time, it was believed that moder- ate degrees of that exhilaration might pru- dently be enjoyed, while all hurtful excess of the indulgence should be avoided. With this view men were warned against excess; were exhorted to set rational limits to their indulgence ; to restrain convivial enjoyment within such bounds as experience might show to be safe. The drinking of wine was placed in the same category with the eating of fooxl ; moderate indulgence was allowed, excess was stigmatized as shameful, harm- ful, sinful. The art of distilling spirits greatly in- creased the evils of intemperance, by fur- nishing liquors iu which the intoxicating principle is much more concentrated, and which could be produced in much greater abundance and cheapness. These liquors be- came known under the general designation of ardent spirits a name fearfully significant of their h'ery energy, their withering and consuming power. The evils and miseries which resulted from the use of these liquors were engaging the attention of Christian and philanthropic men in the early years of this century more widely and more earnestly than ever before. Those evils were ascribed to the excessive and immoderate use of such liquors. Christian ministers and ecclesiastical bodies, teachers and physicians, counseled moderation in the use of spirituous liquors ; and temperance societies were formed for the purpose of sup- pressing " the too free use of ardent spirits." In a sermon preached " at the General Elec- tion, Hartford, Conn., May, 1807," the Rev. Amos Bartlett forcibly said : " Through the frantic influence of these spirits, rational be- ings are transformed into furies ; the peace of society is broken, and many crimes are wantonly committed. To procure this liquid poison, families of the poor are deprived of their necessary food and clothing ; and not a season passes in which many victims are not registered in the bills of mortality." Yet this vigorous and earnest preacher proposed nothing more radical than efforts to prevent the " excessive use of spirituous liquors." Not long after this, the idea began to pre- vail that total abstinence is necessary for those who have once been addicted to in- temperate drinking. Dr. Rush, of Philadel- phia, said : " My observation authorizes me to say that persons who have been addicted to the use of spirits should abstain from it suddenly and entirely. 'Taste not, touch not, handle not,' should be inscribed npon every vessel that contains spirits in the house of a man who desires to be cured of intemper- ance." In the course of the third decade of this century, many friends of temperance adopt- ed the opinion that total abstinence from ar- dent spirits not only is necessary for the re- covery of the intemperate, but is a prudent safeguard against the formation of intem- perate habits ; that it involves the sacrifice of no real good ; and that benevolent regard for the safety and welfare of others demand* it of those who are not sensible of any dan- ger to themselves. This conviction soon led to the formation of societies whose bond of union was the mutual pledge of their mem- bers to abstain entirely from the use of ar- dent spirits as a beverage Such societies, although meeting with much opposition, not only from the intemperate, but from con- servative friends of temperance, who regard- ed that movement as extravagant and fa- natical, nevertheless rapidly extended their influeuce, and enrolled large numbers in their membership. It can not reasonably be disputed that large numbers yet living, and many who have gone from this world, have been preserved from temptation to intem- perance by means of that pledge taken in their early youth. The popular movement was rapidly pro- gressive ; and when the public mind had been thoroughly roused to the rational considera- tion of the evils of intemperance, and of their causes and remedies, it was not long until many of the more earnest minds arrived at the conviction that all drinks which havo power to intoxicate should be abandoned as well those which derive their intoxica- ting power from natural fermentation, as those in which that power is intensified by the artificial process of distillation. The formation of societies on the rnoro advanced principle of abstinence from every thing that can intoxicate began about the year 1830 ; and it is worthy of remembrance that the emphatic epithet "teetotal" was first applied to such societies at Preston, England. The term is said to have been caught from the lips of " a simple, eccentric, but honest and consistent reclaimed drunk- ard of the name of Dickie Turner," who em- ployed that provincial reduplication to em- phasize the expression of his purpose "I'll be right down teetotal forever."* The extensive adoption of total abstinence principles wrought a happy change in social customs. Spirituous drinks very generally ceased to be regarded as necessary to im- part strength to the laborer, to hasten con- valescence, or to enhance social enjoyment. Fair experiment convinced thousands of in- telligent laborers that fatigue could be bet- ter sustained without alcoholic stimulus ; and testimony was multiplied in favor of the good effects of abstinence amid expos- ures to heat and cold, excessive exertion, and epidemic disease. It was no longer neces- sary that the jug of spirits should accompa- ny the farmer daily to his field, or be always near the bench of the mechanic ; that the shopkeeper should offer the glass to every * See "Temperance Cyclopaedia," by Rev. W. Keid. NELSON : INTEMPERANCE AND ITS SUPPRESSION. 691 customer ; that in the hospitable mansion the decanter should sparkle in the sight of every guest ; nor that, amid the solemnities and the raptures of the bridal hour, libations should be offered to the demon most hostile to domestic felicity. Temptations to intemperance were thus greatly diminished. It became possible for youth to grow up without continued incite- ments to dangerous appetite, alluringly as- sociated with all their most pleasant expe- riences. The hope of those who led the re- form was chiefly in this better training of the young in the rearing of a generation who should never be enslaved by appetite, nor snared by convivial customs. There was, thus far, little to encourage expectation of recovery for those who had once become in- ebriates. In the fortieth year of the century a new phase of the movement began, which filled all lovers of mankind with thankful won- der. Its visible commencement was in a grog- shop in Baltimore, Maryland. Six wretched men, accustomed to waste there their earnings and their strength, woke suddenly to a just sense of their folly, and to the good purpose of reformation. Associating themselves un- der a mutual pledge to. drink no " spirituous or malt liquors, wine, or cider," they imme- diately began the work of inducing other victims of intemperance to join them in the revolt against the degrading tyranny to which they had been subject. These efforts were attended with remarkable siiccess. In many cities and towns enthusiastic meet- ings were held, at which reformed men re- hearsed their thrilling experiences, and in- temperate men, coming forward to sign the pledge, received welcome and sympathy and help from those previously reclaimed, and equally from the more numerous friends of the cause who themselves had never felt the drunkard's woe and shame.. In this country the movement speedily attained national dimensions, and no true American grudged it the most venerated of American names. The women of America also associated themselves very extensively, for the purpose of blessing the movement with womanly care and charity, in organiza- tions which beautifully took the name of " Martha Washington." In other lands there was no reason for attaching these American names to the movement. This movement did, without doubt, restore hope and happiness to many hearts and homes, but it fell far short of fulfilling the bright expectations which its first successes awakened. It failed to be thoroughly pene- trated with the spirit and power of evangel- ical religion. Those drunkards were perma- nently saved from drunkenness who hum- bly sought salvation from sin through Jesus Christ. Comparatively few who sought mor- al reformation only, by moral and social forces, without invoking God's regenerating Spirit, secured permanent moral reformation. So great a movement of the public mind, in regard to a great public evil, must neces- sarily lead to inquiry concerning the duty of the civil government. From the earliest times the traffic in spirituous liquors had been regarded as involving such peculiar perils that it must needs be restrained and regulated by law. A system of licenses ex- isted, whereby no one was permitted to sell intoxicating drinks without deliberate and written permission from the magistracy. This system was in logical harmony with the belief that these liquors were useful, but dangerous needed in every community, but liable to be abused by the unwary, to their own hurt and damage, and to the hurt and damage of society. Like gunpowder and medicinal drugs, they should be sold only by men duly qualified to guard against the dan- gers of indiscriminate sale. When the opinion became general that all drinking of such liquors is harmful, and tends not only to the debasement of the drinker, but to the diffusing of fearful evils through the community, the logical propriety of licensing the traffic was called in question, and the logical propriety of suppressing it was affirmed. The conflict of opinion upon this question has been earnest and persist- ent. It is continued to the present time. This is a question which necessarily becomes complicated with politics, not only in that good and high sense in which it is well that moral questions should be carried to their proper issues in statesmanship, but also in that lower sense in which the practical work of govern went is so sadly damaged by selfish partisanship. For no bad uses are the al- lurements and excitements of rum more con- venient than for those of political dema- gogues. Let us not wonder that principles most clearly approved to unbiassed reason are exceedingly slow in winning their way to political success. Let us candidly ac- knowledge that honest Christian statesman- ship mnst find real difficulty in carrying the principles of this beneficent reform into leg- islative action which shall be unobjectiona- ble and at the same time efficient. There are honest differences of opinion upon the questions how far and by what methods in- dividuals may be restrained in respect to this traffic, without endangering the rights and liberties of all. No questions of polit- ical ethics better deserve earnest and per- sistent study. In the settlement of these questions, and in the practical application of the true principles involved in them, must not the temperance reform have the next stage of its progress f Does not the decade thus to be distinguished fitly follow that in which the question of human slavery was so decisively settled f I venture no affirmation. I can not alto- 692 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. gether repress the Lopeful anticipation. Let us consider how far such hope is justified by inquiring I. What has already been achieved in the temperance reformation of this century ? II. What problems remain for solution f I. WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED ? 1. A thorough and extensive awakening of the public mind, especially the Christian mind, to the evil of intemperance. That there is still much apathy, and much igno- rance and sinful inattention, is not to be de- nied. So doubtless it is in all departments of moral reform and Christian work. Still it should be thankfully acknowledged that in this century there has been a great awak- ening to serious inquiry, and a diligent and earnest prosecution of such inquiry, upon this subject. The physiological, the eco- nomical, the social, the moral and spiritual aspects of the question have been extensive- ly investigated and abundantly illustrated. The literature of the subject has become ex- tensive and valuable. This is not all of un- exceptionable quality. Upon -what subject do not the literary results of human thought contain admixtures of error ? Making due allowance, we still have reason to rejoice that, in periodical and permanent forms, use- ful information and valid argument are with- in the reach of all earnest and industrious investigators. Parents, teachers, pastors, leg- islators, have ample means of information to aid them in their work of instruction, admo- nition, protection. 2. The power of social organization has been largely enlisted in behalf of this cause. I have adverted to the association of great numbers under the mutual pledge of absti- nence. These associations have been of va- rious forms in the different periods of the movement and in different regions. At present we have " Sons of Temperance," " Good Templars," " Templars of Honor and Temperance," etc., which have adopted, more or less, the forms and usages of Freemason- ry. Their system of lodges, their badges, their secret signs, and their ceremonial ren- der them compact and manageable organiza- tions, are very attractive to many minds, and give them a certain efficiency. Many Christians disapprove, on general principles, of such secret associations, but I am not aware that their fidelity to temperance prin- ciples is any where questioned ; nor does there appear to be any reason to doubt that they are the means of rescuing some, and preserving many from intemperance. We also have " Bands of Hope" and "Ca- dets of Temperance," etc., in which the young are associated under competent supervision ; are practiced in the methods of conducting public meetings ; and are subjected to the wholesome influences of song, and orderly social intercourse, consecrated to temper- ance and virtue, and often hallowed by the reading of Holy Scripture and prayer. There are also "Temperance Leagues" and "Temperance Alliances," formed for the purpose of united action in one or another department of the general work. Some of these have special reference to movements for legal suppression of the traffic in intox- icating drinks. Some unhappy dissensions have arisen be- tween different organizations and between distinguished individuals, marring and dam- aging the work, just as Christianity herself has been wounded and dishonored by secta- rian and personal strifes. Is not the present a favorable time for seeking such compre- hensive views and such charitable adjust- ments as will harmonize all the forces which are honestly engaged for the suppression of intemperance ? II. PROBLEMS YET TO BE SOLVED. 1. The Law Problem. How can civil soci- ety, by legislation and faithful administra- tion of law, do most for the suppression of intemperance ? The public mind is now extensively and intensely engaged upon this problem in the United States, and the writer believes it to be true in some other countries whoso churches are here represented. There is still much diversity of opinion among states- men and among citizens. Some, insisting upon the immorality of the traffic in intoxi- cating drinks, and its utter contrariety to sound public policy, demand from the legis- lative power its absolute prohibition, and from the judiciary and executive the steady and earnest endeavor to suppress it entirely. Others, equally desirous for its suppression, but despairing of success in that direction, study methods of limiting and mitigating the evil. They would limit it to licensed dealers ; would burden it by heavy taxa- tion ; would make the venders responsible for injuries resulting from the traffic. There is also a question whether a uniform law shall be enacted for the whole state, or each local community be permitted to decide the question by the votes of its electors. States and communities are experimenting with these various methods with much thought- ful earnestness. Problems of law, and other practical problems, are not ordinarily solved, like problems of mathematics, with results demoustrably perfect, and unchangeably cor- rect for all times and all places. Tho friends of temperance need not regret to see these various methods pursued simultane- ously in different localities ; and all should hold themselves ready to profit by the ex- periments. It is not proposed to discuss the merits of any of these methods in this pa- per ; but it is believed to be proper to make some suggestions in regard to ethical princi- ples applicable to them all. NELSON : INTEMPERANCE AND ITS SUPPRESSION. 693 a. The rights of property are iiot the only rights which it is the business of civil gov- ernment to protect ; nor should it be as- sumed that they must have precedence of all others. Let it be granted that there is real difficulty in legislating effectually against the traffic in intoxicating drinks, without some ideal, perhaps some actual encroach- ment upon the rights of property. But let it be considered whether such legislation cau be omitted without the failure of society to protect other rights, no less sacred, from more certain and more harmful encroach- ment. The right of property in a manufac- tory which emits unwholesome effluvia is not held to be more sacred than the right of neighboring citizens to breathe salubrious air. Shall the rum-seller's rights of proper- ty be held more sacred, be treated more ten- derly, be guarded more carefully than the right of the young wife to the unimpaired strength, the untainted breath, the uncor- rupted love of her husband ; the right of the mother to rear her boy uuexposed to the en- ticements of the grog-shop ; the right of so- ciety to protect itself against pauperism and crime, and to rear for itself a succession of citizens capable of defending and adorning and perpetuating the State 1 Doubtless in a perfect State, under a perfect government, all rights Avould bo fully protected ; for, doubtless, in their true idea, all rights are in perfect harmony. But iu practical states- manship, in .communities of depraved beings, we are to seek bravely and take contented- ly the nearest practicable approximation to such an ideal. It is proper to consider the comparative value and sacredness of the rights of which civil government is the defender. We must not let that which clamors most loudly, and most readily enlists material forces iu its be- half, crowd out of sight those which shrink away from the street and the market-place, and seek the privacy of home. It is the hoarse voice of materialism that shouts for the rights of property, and demands for them precedence before all other rights. It is the calm voice of Christianity which affirms the higher sacreduess of the right to rear chil- dren in virtue and piety, and to dwell iu peaceful homes, and to have those homes protected against the erection among them of establishments \vhich regularly and sys- tematically emit influences more baleful than the deadliest pestilence. 6. The drinker, as well as the vender, must be restrained by the civil power. It surely is time to inquire whether both the re- straining and the prohibitory legislation have not too much proceeded upon the as- sumption that drunkenness is only a misfor- tune. Has not the moral sentiment of the people been wronged and damaged by direct- ing legislative restriction and penalties too exclusively to one party in the immoral trans- action ? The Word of God plainly treats in- temperate indulgence of appetites as a sin the appetite for intoxicating drink as surely and as sternly as any other. The drunkard is not only a sinner against God, but a crim- inal also toward civil society, withholding from its interests his duo contribution of productive industry; casting upon its sys- tematized charities the burden of supporting his family; multiplying the probabilities that he will be an inmate of almshouse or prison ; and surely diffusing a corrupting in- fluence by his example. If the tempter to drunkenness is to be treated as a criminal, surely the drunkard should share the guilt and the penalty. And should not those who are not yet drunkards, but who patrouize the grog-shops, be treated as accessories to that offense against society, which the liquor traf- fic is held to be, whatever may be the degree of criminality which the legislature attaches to it? If legislation is to deal at all with social vices, let it exemplify that impartial- ity which belongs to the very idea of justice, never charging the whole blame of any ac- tion in which two or more parties arc asso- ciated upon one of those parties. 2. The Church Problem. What has the Church of Christ to do, at the present time, to promote this reformation ? a. It belongs to the Church to educate the State in the Christian ethics of government. The Christianity of the world must elevate the public seutiment of the world above the groveling maxims and tendencies of materi- alism. The questions of legislation and civil administration can never be rightly settled in communities which are not pervaded by spiritual, Christian influences. A people who have only earthly and carnal aims, who know no interests that can not be estimated in money, will never have rulers who cau wise- ly direct the forces of government on such questions as this. The State must have the Christian temper, tone, spirit, or it can nev- er give its people a truly Christian regula- tion. Will any one here interpose the objection that Christ's kingdom is not of this world, and that the Christian preacher must "not know any thing save Jesus Christ and him crucified f" Wo reply that the great apostle whose iuspired pen gave us that exalted maxim, gave us also luminous interpreta- tion of it in his own life. We should not be right iu taking it in a sense contrary to that iu which he practiced upon it. Wo must interpret his statement of what he deter- mined to do, by what the sacred record shows that he constantly did. And what Christian writer, inspired or uninspired, has more resolutely carried out the great central truth of the Gospel to its manifold deduc- tions, or applied it to all ordinary affairs and all various duties in human life, more freely than the apostle Paul? Doubtless he preach- 694 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. ed Christ and Lira crucified to Felix; but Luke expressly tells us that he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, till that lewd despot trembled be- fore his chained prisoner. Nor did he neg- lect to rebuke licentiousness and disorder and self-indulgence among his Corinthian Christians, and to inculcate self-denial for each other's welfare, and to give careful and considerate instruction to men and women how to keep themselves pure, and how to make their lives sweet and sacred and be- neficent, in the very epistle in which he de- clares that determination to know nothing else but Christ crucified among them. The right knowledge of that central truth in- volves all else that belongs to practical as well as theoretical Christianity. In our age, as in that and every other, it must be the men and women to whom Christ and his cross are all in all, even as they were to that fervent apostle it must ever be such men and women from whose thinking and prayers and earnest activity those influences will emanate which penetrate civil society, and vivify it unto a life that can expel moral disease from its veins, and heal its ulcers and its sicknesses. From no mere ethical basis can depraved humanity reason itself up to moral integrity and purity. The movement must be from the evangelical basis. The up- lifting power must be " the truth, as it is in Jesus." Neither forgetting nor despising the press and the secular platform and current literature, we believe that pre-eminently from the Christian pulpit must be sounded forth those mighty truths which work in the bosom of society, and move at length the whole body along pathways of beneficent re- form. Nor should it offend those of our fel- low-laborers in this reform who agree. with us in our views of Christian ethics, but dis- sent from our views of evangelical doctrine, if we solemnly avow our belief that in this, which they reject, is the very life and soul of that which, with us, they accept. Here is the hiding of its power " the power of God unto salvation." b. In order thus to save society, the Church must sanctify herself. How shall Christian truth, in its relations to this subject, fulfill itself iu the Church of Christ f For no specific and complete answer to this question is the Church yet ready. Her watchmen do not yet see eye to eye. This is no place for vehement assertion of individ- ual opinion upon specific questions of Bibli- cal exegesis or of Christian casuistry, upon which godly and venerable men would hon- estly and strenuously oppose each other. But, brethren and fathers, while we hold all such disputes away from this scene of broth- erly communing, is there not something of truth on this practical theme which we can agree in uttering? something which, by our united utterance, may gain some added power of beneficent influence? On one hand, can not we agree in advising that reliance be not chiefly placed in Church authority? Doubtless we could not now agree iu defining the limits within which Church authority might scripturally be ap- plied. But has not experience taught us that at least it is not expedient to press such questions of authority against the con- sciences of dissenting minorities? Let us not hasten to uproot the tares, while it is certain that we should thereby uproot or trample down good wheat. On the other hand, can not we agree in now recommending iu clear and earnest words, to all who " profess and call them- selves Christians," the voluntary self-denial (if to any it is self-denial) which is involved in total abstinence from intoxicating bever- ages? Can not we all agree in henceforth exemplifying this self-denial ? If we are not able to agree in the opinion that the Holy Scriptures any where command this, are we not all agreed in the belief that the Holy Scriptures nowhere forbid it? Can we, as honest and considerate men, doubt the salu- tary effect of such an example ? Without this, whatever we may say, and whatever else we may do, can we convince our fellow-men that we are heartily in ear- nest in seeking for the suppression of intem- perance ? CHRISTIANITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO CRIME AND CRIMINALS. BY THE KEY. E. C. WINES, D.D., LL.D., Secretary of the National Prison Association of the United States. THE question assigned to me for discussion before this Conference is, " The Relations of Christianity to Crime and Criminals." These two relations are essentially different. The first is one of uncompromising hostility ; the last, of paternal tenderness and love. Sin, transgression, crime, is that "abominable thing " which the Lord " hates ;" yet in the death of " the wicked " he declares that he has " no pleasure at all." The spirit of Christiauity is profoundly benevolent ; and in nothing is this quality more conspicuous than in its compassion for prisoners. Even in the Old Testament such expressions as these abound : '' Let the sighing of the pris- oner come before thee ;" " The Lord despiseth not his prisoners;" "From heaven did the Lord behold the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner." But it is in the New Tes- tament that the compassionate character of Christianity shines most lustrous. In his account of the last judgment, our Lord even identifies himself with the wretched outcast in his cell, in these amazing words : " I was in prison, and ye came unto me." The scorn- ful taunt of the Pharisees, " This man re- ceiveth sinners," formed the glory of Him who " came, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Publicans, outcasts, criminals those covered with a deeper than any bodily leprosy laid bare their wounds to the great Physician ; and as conscious gnilt and timid penitence crept abashed and imploring to His feet, they found ever a gra- cious welcome and a free forgiveness. As was the Master, such are the disciples, in their measure and degree. We have a beautiful illustration of this in the liberation of Jeremiah from the dungeon of Malchiah, through the humane interposition of Ebed- melech, the Ethiopian eunuch. That the kindness of this Gentile convert was due to his religion is expressly stated in the his- tory. His humanity was the effect of his piety. His mercy to others was the fruit of God's mercy to him. And so it is ever. To the love and grace of God in his Sou, to the vitalizing power of Christianity, to the fact that we live under a dispensation of mercy, may be traced every development and every manifestation of humanity seen amidst the ruins of the fall. To the revelation of a loving and redeeming Saviour we are in- debted for our best civilization. The posses- sion of this revelation, or the traces of it in tradition, are the source from which have sprung all the refinement that adorns and sweetens life, and all the exertions that men have made to lessen the volume of human misery, and to increase the sum of human happiness. Christianity has a twofold function to per- form iu the relations under which we are now considering it a function of preven- tion and a function of cure. The first of these topics will be treated by the Rev. M. Robin, of Paris, a gentleman abundantly com- petent to the task. Consequently, my part in the discussion will be limited to an in- quiry into the power of Christianity with respect to men who have already fallen, and are undergoing criminal treatment in prison. Two questions meet us in this inquiry : 1st. Can these men be reformed? 2d. If yes, what are the principles and processes of the treatment most likely to accomplish that end? I do not propose to argue the first of these questions on a priori grounds, but to treat it rather as a question of fact and experience. Here and there experiments iu reformatory prison discipline have been made, and al- ways with results as cheering as they have been remarkable. Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, Australia, and Russia, each sends to us an experience showing the immense bene- fits which, so far as fruits of reformation are concerned, result from substituting for the old coercive systems of penal treatment sys- tems impregnated with Christian love and kindness ; an experience showing, at the same time, that the most successful prison discipline is a discipline of diminished re- straint and of increased self-command, self- dependence, and self-action on the part of the prisoners. Forty years ago or more, Councilor Von Obermaier was appointed director of the State Prison of Bavaria, at Munich. Into this prison were received the worst class of convicts, the shortest sentence being for eight years, and from that to life. On his 696 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. accession, he found from six hundred to sev- ' en hundred prisoners in the \vorst state of insubordination and chronic revolt. The prisoners were chained together in gangs, and attached to each was an iron weight, which the strongest found difficulty in drag- ging. The guard consisted of one hundred soldiers, who did duty in every part of the premises, even in the workshops and dormi- tories. Twenty to thirty huge blood-hounds were let loose at night in the passages and courts to keep watch and ward. Ober- maier immediately lightened the chains and weights, and would, if allowed, have thrown them aside. The dogs and nearly all the guards were dispensed with. Mr. Baillie- Cochrane, an English gentleman of great eminence, who visited the place in 1852, found the gates wide open, and without any sentinel on guard. None of the doors were provided with bolts and bars. The only se- curity was an ordinary lock. The prisoners were treated so justly and with such genuine Christian regard that their confidence was won, their will gained, and their co-opera- tion secured in the work of their own im- provement. Prisoners of the best character were substituted as overseers in the work- shops for officers from outside. If a prison- er transgressed a regulation, his comrades would say to him, " It is forbidden," and it rarely happened that he did not yield to this admonition. Numerous workshops were es- tablished, and many trades taught, and, be- yond their support, all their earnings be- longed to the prisoners themselves. In their leisure hours they associated without fur- ther check on their intercourse than that which arose from an efficient system of ob- servation, and Obennaier declared that the moral effect of such association was found beneficial rather than the reverse. The num- ber of reformations effected under this sys- tem was something extraordinary. Few, comparatively, relapsed. The reality of these results is attested, from personal ob- servation, by Sir John Milbanke, British En- voy to the Court of Bavaria, and by Mr. George Combe, of Scotland, who speak of this prison, under Herr Von Obermaier's ad- ministration, as an illustration of the power of the moral sentiments (i. e., of applied Christianity) to govern and reform crimi- nals, without the lash or any severe punish- ment. Take now the case of Mettray, near Tours, in France, established thirty-four years ago by M. Demetz, who is easily prince among all those who have undertaken the work of reforming juvenile delinquents. There are few who have not heard of the wonderful success of Mettray as a reformatory of young criminals, for the boys committed to that es- tablishment are not mere vagrants, beggars, or viciously inclined children. They have all been convicted of crimes, and prior to the establishment of Mettray nearly 80 per cent, of this class receiving their punish- ment in the central prisons became hard- ened offenders, and, on their discharge, fol- lowed a career of crime. Mettray is what is called in France a colonie agncole pcnitcnti- aire. It is without wall or inclosure of any sort ; and, except temporary confinement in a cell, there is no bodily restraint. The life is industrial. The chief industry is agricul- ture. " To improve the earth by man, and man by the earth," is the motto of the col- ony. A vast domain, consisting of several farms, is cultivated by these young crimi- nals. Various trades have also been intro- duced, but chiefly such as are required for the production of implements for farm work, or for articles needed in the establishment. All, however, without exception, work on the farm in summer. A portion of the earn- ings belongs to the boys themselves. Of this a moderate part is placed at their disposal for immediate use ; the rest is deposited to their credit in the savings-bank at Tours. A certain amount of clothing is allowed to each inmate. If a boy requires to have any part of his dress renewed before the stated time for such renewal, he has to pay for it with his own money ; but if, at such time, his clothes are found in good condition, he receives the benefit of it by having the money which would have been laid out on clothes placed to his credit in bank. Every thing is done that can make duty attract- ive, and induce a constant habit of perform- ing it. The boys are not pushed forward with rudeness. Great care is taken not to bruise their young hearts, already frozen by neglect or withered by vice, before they knew any thing of life. They are carefully tended, and led on to goodness by gentleness and trust. The result is that less than five per cent, return to crime ; all the rest become honest, industrious, useful members of society. From 1835 to 1850, a period of fifteen years, an experiment in prison discipline of extraordinary boldness and success was con- ducted by Colonel Montesinos, an officer of the Spanish army, at Valentia, Spain. The average number of prisoners under his care was one thousand. Prior to his incumbency the system had been one of stern coercion, and the mean proportion of relapses had been from 35 to 40 per cent. Gradually, for this coercive discipline he substituted a dis- cipline by moral forces. One by one he in- troduced new trades, till the number prac- ticed amounted to forty-three; and he al- lowed each prisoner to choose the trade he would learn. One-fourth of the profits of their labor was given to the prisoners for their immediate use ; one - fourth was re- served, to be paid to them on their dis- WINES : CRIME AND CRIMINALS. 697 charge ; and only the remaining half went to the establishment. So great was the stimulus to industry supplied by a partici- pation in their earnings, that the moiety left, after appropriating one-half to the prison- ers, sufficed for all expenses, without a dol- lar's aid from the Government. Now, what was the effect of this system as regards re- lapses ? For the first two years no impres- sion was made ; the proportion of recommit- tals remained as before. Aggregating the results for the next ten years of his adminis- tration, not more than one per cent, return- ed to a life of crime ; and, during the last three years, not a solitary man who had been subjected to the discipline of the prison came back to it. Does this seem wonderful to any ? It is less so than it appears. It is simply the fruit of a Christian system of penitentiary training. Colonel Montesinos did not foolishly attempt to repeal the laws of Heaven. He seized those great principles which the Creator has impressed on the hu- man soul, and molded them to his purpose. He aimed to develop manhood, not to crush it ; to gain the will, not to coerce the body ; to secure the co-operation of the prisoner by kindness, not to awaken his hostility by harshness and severity. He thus employed the law of love in his work of reclaiming and saving fallen men, and he found love the most powerful of all laws. He acted upon his men not only by urging them to self-con- trol, self-discipline, and self-reformation, but by giving them an interest in these great attainments. He encouraged and enabled them to raise their position, step by step, by their own industry and good conduct. And, finally, he discharged them before the expi- ration of their sentences (and the hope of this was ever kept before them), when he had satisfied himself that they desired to do well ; that they had acquired the power and the will to earn an honest living ; and that they had attaiued to such a degree of self- command as to be able to say "no" to the tempter. In which few leading facts do wo not clearly see that the essential peculiari- ties are no more restraint than is absolute- ly necessary ; self-support as far as possible ; extra benefits earned by extra labor; self- conquest encouraged and re warded; increased comforts resulting from increased industry and improved character ; and as much grat- ifying exercise of the faculties as prison life will permit ? In 1840, Alexander Maconochie, a captain in the British navy, commenced an experi- ment in prison discipline in the penal colo- ny of Norfolk Island, Australia, which, un- happily, was terminated in 1844 ; but within that brief period of four years moral trans- formations were wrought which seemed little less than miracles. At that time Norfolk Isl- and contained one thousand five hundred cou- [ victs of the very worst classes sent out from the mother country. Maconochie was a man of large heart, and of a broad and penetrating intellect. His insight was intuitive and pro- found. He saw clearly that, as regards crim- inals, the best service to society is to reform them ; and he saw just as clearly that they can not be reformed against their own con- sent, nor without their free personal co-op- eration. The problem was, how to secure these essential conditions. Captain Macon- ochie can not have been the first to see that hope is the only power competent to secure this end ; but he wlas certainly the first to feel that absolute confidence in it which was needed to make it the cardinal work- ing principle of a system of prison disci- pline. He said to himself, What is the fun- damental force which, in free society, stimu- lates men to industry, order, virtue, and pie- ty? It is hope: hope of a living, hope of wealth, hope of influence, hope of ease, hope of the respect and love of their fellows, hope of forgiveness, hope of heaven. He said fur- ther, What is the form which this hope or- dinarily takes in free life ? It is wages or money, and the conveniences which money procures. Take away the hope of this re- ward from talent, skill, industry, and char- acter, and you paralyze them at a blow. Maconochie then inquired, How can hope be made as operative in prisons as in free- dom? And he said to himself, Only by adopting, in some form, and making practi- cal, the idea and the inspiration of wages. He therefore devised a system of marks, whose operation in prison should be similar to that of wages outside ; and his plan pro- posed to substitute for sentences measured by time so many hundred or so many thou- sand good marks, to be earned, as the solo condition of release, by diligence, study, and general good conduct. He thus placed the fafe of the prisoner, measurably, in his own hands, just as Providence, within certain limits, puts the fate of every mau in his own power. Such a system makes the pris- on an image of real life. It brings into play aud enlists on the side of reformation all the motives which act on men in free society as stimulants to order, industry, and good mor- als. But Maconochie contrived to produce in prison life a still closer resemblance to free life, by giving to his marks a financial as well as a moral value. He would give nothing to prisoners in health but what they earned and paid for in marks. Thus his marks were made to represent money as well as progress toward liberation. A pris- oner could, by diligence in work, attention to study, and good moral conduct, earn a daily maximum of marks. A certain pro- portion of these (say one-half) must go to supply his daily necessities of food, cloth- ing, bed, schooling, etc. ; so that the surplus only of his earnings the savings, so to C93 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. speak counted toward his release. It is seen at a glance that, if a prisoner failed to earn a surplus, either by falling below the maximum or by expending all he earned, he became, by his own act and choice, a prison- er for life ; whereas, by denying himself lit- tle comforts and luxuries, the hour of liber- ty, the sweetest possession of man, was con- stantly approaching, and with comparative rapidity. Now, what benefit did Maconochie get from this system f First, his marks, thus made to represent money, gave him wages, which supplied him with a body of willing and progressively skilled laborers. Next, they gave him fines, which saved him from the necessity of imposing brutal and demor- alizing punishments. Thirdly, they gave him school fees, for, although he was anx- ious to encourage education among his pris- oners, nevertheless, as he refused thsm ra- tions gratuitously, so he compelled them to yield marks for their schooling also. Fourth- ly, they gave him bail bonds, in cases of minor and even of great offenses ; a period of close confinement being often remitted in consideration of a number of other prison- ers of good conduct becoming bound for the improved behavior of the offender, under penalty of the forfeiture of a certain num- ber of marks on a repetition of the offense. Even in the establishment of a sick club and a burial club he applied the inflexible rule of "nothing for nothing;" that is to say, here, as in all things, he made the disci- pline of the prison as much as possible like the discipline of Providence in free life. The prisoners, like free citizens, were thus made to depend for every necessary and comfort on their own industry and personal deserts, Avhile their prison offenses were restrained by penalties free from every element calcu- lated to imbitter or degrade them. Such is the general outline of his plan. What were its results ? Reformations were effected to an extent and of a character un- known, either before or since, in any of the penal colonies of Great Britain. He told the whole story himself when he said, "I found the island a turbulent, brutal hell ; I left it a peaceful, well-ordered community." This statement might be questioned, if it rested on his personal authority only; but its truth is attested by disinterested wit- nesses, too numerous and too respectable to leave any room for doubt. He modestly adds that the results accomplished were not nearly so wonderful as they appeared, because all the time he was working with nature instead of against it. He studied God's plan of dealing with men, and, in his humble measure, copied it, as ho was able, making always most especial use of relig- ions instruction and culture! t What is now called the Croft on prison | system, but was formerly known as the Irish system, is an outgrowth from that of Macon- ochie. Sir Walter Croftou, an English gen- tleman of high administrative powers, was made, twenty years ago, chief director of the Irish convict prisons, then in such a deplor- able condition that the Australasian colo- nies had refused to receive any more con- victs from them. Sir Walter, in devising a new prison system for Ireland, adopted the mark system of Maconochie. with modi- fications which improved it in some respects, but with curtailments no doubt resulting from restrictions imposed on him by the laws which, in my opinion, weakened its force. The Crofton system consists of three stages : A penal stage of separate imprison- ment, continuing eight months ; a reforma- tory stage, longer or shorter, according to the length of sentence, with separation at night and associated labor by day, in which the principle of progressive classification is applied, with a gradual lifting of restraint and enlargement of privilege, including an increased share in his earnings, as the pris- oner advances from class to class ; and a testing stage, designed to verify the reform- atory power of the preceding discipline, and also to serve as a period of natural training, which is intended to gradually prepare the prisoner for full liberty. I have enjoyed ample opportunities for a personal study of the organization and working of this sys- tem ; and while there are some things in it, as practiced in Ireland, which I could wish to see modified, it has, on the whole, filled me with hope. The greater part of the pris- oners earn their promotion from class to class within the minimum time, leave the estab- lishment reformed, and become an industri- ous and useful element in free society. Lusk, the prison where the third stage is passed if an establishment without an inclosing wall, and equally without bolts, bars, or grates, yet from which only two escapes bave taken place in seventeen years, can be called a prison I look upon as one of the grandest achievements of the nineteenth icntury, worthy to take rank with the pow- T-loom, the steam-engine, and the magnetic telegraph ; and the name of Crofton will have as honorable and bright a fame in the ;omiug ages as those of Arkwright, Fulton, and Morse. The impression made by the Crofton sys- ;em on the mind of the late Lord Brougham, when, a few years before his death, the Brit- ish Social Science Congress was held in Dub- in, was expressed with his customary energy, n the declaration made from the President's 2hair, that "Sir Walter Crofton had anni- lilated crime in Ireland." One of the most difficult of the problems in the whole range of penitentiary science has been solved by Sir Walter's method, through the interme- diate prison at Lusk, a creation of his owu WINES: CRIME AND CRIMINALS. geiiius and completely original ; that is, how to dispose of discharged convicts, so that they shall be quietly but successfully re- absorbed into the labor market, and so into virtuous society. The labor market is fully open to the prisoners discharged from Lusk, insomuch that the demand for convict labor is often greater than the supply. More than one employer has been heard to declare that the men whom he gets from the convict es- tablishment are among his best hands a superiority due to the wise and kindly train- ing which they have received in the prison. Russia, too a country from which, per- haps, we should hardly have expected it joins her voice to the voices of the countries from which we have already heard. Count Sollohub, a man of vigorous intellect and broad sympathies, some six or eight years ago inaugurated a prison system at Moscow which has yielded remarkable fruits. In his house of correction and industry in that city, he has shown what may be done by a humane and Christian treatment in the way of reforming criminals. The distinguished count devised a new scheme of penitentiary labor, which would take too much time and space to describe in detail in the present pa- per. I can only say, in a general way, that not only is every prisoner, not in possession of a trade at the time of committal, required to learn one, but he is permitted to choose the trade which he will learn. So long as the convict continues an apprentice, he gets no part of the product of his labor ; but as soou as he is adjudged to be a master-work- man, he receives a proportion equal to two- thirds of his entire earnings, the most of which, however, is reserved for him against the day of his liberation. So potent is the influence of hope, thus applied, that instances are not rare in which the convict appren- tices learn their trades and are declared master-workmen in two months. The first general result of this system is, that niue- teuths of the prisoners master a trade so completely that, on their discharge, they are capable of taking the position of foreman in a workshop ; and the second is, that there are scarcely any relapses. On the contrary, criminals who have been subjected to its discipline and have been discharged are, al- most to a man, earning an honest living at the trades which they learned in prison. Of two thousand one hundred and twenty-eight prisoners released from the establishment in six years, only nine less than half of one percent. were returned to it. There remains time only for a word or two on the second branch of the inquiry, viz., On what principles must a reformato- ry prison discipline be based, and what are the agencies to be employed in working it T There is a single principle, which is broad I enough and strong enough to bear the whole ! weight of such a discipline. It is HOPE im- planted in the breast of the prisoner, and kept there throughout the whole term of his ! incarceration, as an ever-present, ever-act- ive, ever- living force. Hope, as we have seen, is the great inspiration of all human effort in free society. But men do not lose their character as men simply because pris- on doors have closed behind them, nor do they cease to be moved by that supreme force which produces all the activities, struggles, and competitions of the busy world outside. It follows that hope is just as vitally at the root of all true prison discipline as of all free human life. Quench hope in human society, or in a single human bosom, and you strike with instant paralysis the will, the conscience, the heart, and the understanding. It is hope that exerts the broadest, most constant, and most stimulating influence on our universal humanity. What the woo- ing light and air are to plants, hope is to the human heart and will ; and that in- side as well as outside of prison bars. The inscription over the entrance to Dante's In- ferno, " Let all who enter here leave hope be- hind," stood for ages over the prison gate, crushing every aspiration, and paralyzing all effort, except the effort to escape from the hated hell, in the hope and purpose of wreaking vengeance on society, believed by these wretched beings to be the great wrong- doer. In place of this device, so contrary to all human progress and elevation, must be written henceforth over the door of the pris- on, " Now abideth hope " for the convict and the prisoner, as well as for all God's crea- tures. This is the root of that truly Chris- tian scheme of prison discipline which, with God's blessing and earnest work, is destined to change the prison-house into a moral hos- pital, and to multiply, to a number without number, histories like that enacted at the scene of the crucifixion, when, to a criminal of deepest dye, now penitent and believing, the expiring Redeemer uttered those words of kingly grace, which so lovingly invite the approach of all other criminals, "To-day shalt thon be with Me in Paradise." As regards the methods or agencies to be employed in applying this foundation prin- ciple, a branch of the subject which has al- most infinite ramifications, I can only say here that work, education, and religion are the three great forces to be employed in the reformation of criminals, as they are in the general progress of society. The necessity of labor is the most con- stant and controlling of all the laws of Providence in free society ; and it is, at the same time, the most benignant, the most educational, the most disciplinary, and the most elevating of all human necessities. As Providence creates this necessity in free life, 700 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. so the State, or Christianity acting through the State, must create it iii prison life. And the labor of the prison must be industrial not a mere grinding of the wind. Boot- less labor is as distasteful and irksome to a prisoner as to a freeman. Further, pris- on labor must be not simply industrial, but voluntarily industrial. A free choice of labor by the prisoner is an essential condi- tion of a reformatory prison discipline. The arrangements of the prison must be such that, if the convict work diligently and be- have well, he will have a comfortable sub- sistence ; but, if he be idle and disobedient, ho will suffer hunger just as it happens to the diligent and the indolent outside. This is a consideration of fundamental impor- tance ; it is a condition absolutely essential, a sine qua non, if wo really mean to change bad men into good ones. When a prisoner, under this sharp but natural spur, begins to exert himself, he does so by his own will. Ifc is an inward impulse, not a mere out- ward pressure, that moves him. This little circumstance makes all the difference be- tween an automaton and a man. The pro- cess which, under this state of things, induces in the prisoner habits of labor, is a process by which his self-control and self-assertion are strengthened; and this is precisely what is wanted to make him a better citizen. It is to no purpose, or to a bad one, that you make him work by an outward coercion ; for when he is again free, and the coercion is thereby withdrawn, he will be what he was before. The force which impels him to work must be an inward power, which he shall take with him out of prison, to abide with and control him in his after-life. It avails little that you force him to work ; he must force himself to work. This is the law which, like a decree of fate, controls free life. In freedom, inactivity entails want ; while, con- versely, activity assures competence, if not abundance. There is an ordained connec- tion in ordinary life between, exertion and the satisfaction of certain imperative needs. The same connection must be established in prison life ; yet always in such manner that as much latitude shall be given to free agen- cy as can be made at all consistent with the maintenance of proper discipline. Education is another of the vital forces to be employed in the reformation of criminals, who have generally sinned through some form of ignorance, conjoined with vice. Its tendency is to quicken intellect, give new ideas, supply food for thought, inspire self- respect, excite honorable ambition, open new fields of exertion, and afford a healthful sub- stitute forlow and vicious amusements. Need more be said to show its value in this work T But nothing can supply the place of ear- nest, faithful, religious teaching, drawn from the Word of God, and based on its everlast- ing verities. I have a profound conviction of the incfficacy of all measures of reforma- tion, except such as are based on the Gospel, pervaded by its spirit, and vivified by its power. In vain are all devices of repression and coercion, if the heart and conscience, which are beyond all power of external re- straint, are left untouched. Religion is the only power that is able to resist the irritation that saps the moral forces of these men of powerful impulses, whose neglect of its teach- ings has been the occasion of their being im- mured within prison walls. In reflecting on this subject, it has seemed to me that we might take a A r aluable lesson in our treatment of criminals from God's treatment of a world in criminal revolt against his law. "With loving -kindness have I drawn thee," are the words in which he declares his device for bringing back the wanderers to his fold. While we abhor and punish the crime, loving-kindness is the only medicine that will heal and restore the crim- inal. Sensibility to kindness keeps a linger- ing hold upon our nature, even in the last and lowest degree of human wickedness. This one germ of a dormant manhood is found to outlive the destruction of all the others, insomuch that, fallen as a brother may be from the moralities that once adorn- ed him, the manifested good-will of his fel- low-men still carries with it a charm and an influence, Avhich are well-nigh omnipotent. There lies just here a regenerative and re- demptive power, which no degradation can crush, and no depravity can obliterate. Since these things are so, and since, moreover, one- fifth of our convicts are minors, and two- thirds under thirty years, and therefore still in the plastic and impressible period, with Christian principles, Christian methods, and Christian agents in our prisons the first two adopted from the heart, and the last working with the heart it is my conviction that the mass of imprisoned criminals can be and will bo returned to society, as the demoniac was restored to his friends, " clothed and in their right mind." INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS AS AN AGENCY IN THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. BY REV. E. ROBIN, PARIS. MR. PRESIDENT AND BELOVED BRETHREN, The first thing which attracted my atten- tion after setting foot on the soil of America were the words, written in large letters over the entrance of a street-car, "Beware of Pick- pockets." It was a notice dictated by pru- dence. I do not say that such a notice is more necessary in America than in any oth- er country of the world. Pickpockets are not found in Ameriqa only. The tribe ex- ists elsewhere. In all countries the army of crime is organized in the bosom of socie- ty. It is, iu truth, an ARMY. It has its sol- diers, concealed in the crowd, who live only by the depredations and the crimes which they commit. They elbow us in our streets, in our public conveyances, and even with- in the precincts of our temples. Prudence, then, is not a needless precaution, since it leaves less facility to malefactors for the commission of their misdeeds. In other times, when society succeeded in seizing one of these enemies of its safety, it inflicted upon him horrible tortures. In our day, manners are softened ; the prisoner is a brother gone astray, who is to be won back to virtue. A notable progress that. But if we could keep the army of criminals from recruiting their forces, and thus destroy crime, that would be still better. This proc- ess would surely bo more efficacious and more economical. In your State prisons, the average annual cost of each imprisoned crim- inal is two hundred dollars ; and, for the most part, he remains a criminal. In the lodging-houses which I have visited in New York, and which are institutions of a pre- ventive character, the Children's Aid Socie- ty expends only two dollars a year on each child, and makes of the greater part of these children moral and industrious citizens. Deducting, in both cases, from these expen- ditures, the product of the labor, and leav- ing wholly out of the account the injury done to society by the criminals, it is found that forty-five times more is expended for each individual in the prisons than in the preventive establishments, and that with lit- tle or no moral results, so far as the crimi- nals are concerned. The preventive meth- od is, in this regard, immensely superior. It has been said with truth, " It is better to pre- vent crime than to punish crime." It is of this preventive work that I propose to treat in addressing you on the subject of Indus- trial Schools. I. While placing questions of doctrine and of religious science at the head of its pro- gramme, the Evangelical Alliance could not neglect to give their due importance to prac- tical questions ; in other words, to works of Christian charity. To show the power of Christian principles, when applied to the evils from which society is suffering, is, at the same time, to offer the best defense of Christianity itself. Two of these evils are formidable : ignorance and idleness. In- struction and the love of work, penetrating to the lower strata of society, are the means by which alone these evils may be averted from future generations. Christianity has power to raise, has strength to preserve, from evil. If we may hope for the moral trans- formation of a man, already grown old iu ignorance and given up to idleness and vice, this work will be yet easier if it be under- taken in favor of young minds, still docile and impressible. The whole future of soci- ety depends on a good Christian education, extending to all children, from the highest to the lowest classes. All can not aspire to the advantage of a superior education, but none ought to bo deprived of the minimum of instruction, in- dispensable in our modern life. This mini- mum, besides the moral and religious prin- ciples which are its essential basis, should contain a double element : primary instruc- tion and the knowledge of a profession or business. Among all the nations which take thought for the future, persevering efforts are being made to attain this twofold object : to give to the rising generation a general and a professional education. As to France, though a notable progress has been realized within the last ten years, much remains to be done in this respect. In 1864, at an annual meeting of the " In- stitute,"* it was stated that out of one hun- dred young men, twenty years of age, there were more than twenty-seven who could not read, that is, nearly one-third; and it appears from an official documcntt that out of one hundred newly married people, thir- * Public annual meeting of the five Academies of the Institute, the 16th of August, 1S64 : Speech of Gen- eral A. Morin, President, pp. 11, 12. t Report to the Emperor (Monitcur), March 6, 18C5. roa CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. ty-fivo could not sign their names. Tlieso facts do not go so far back even as ten years. Since then important reforms have been inaugurated. The position of school- masters and school-mistresses, whose salary reduced them to something akin to indi- gence, is improving ; schools are multiply- ing; and instruction is placed within the reach of all. There arc, however and here I speak particularly of the state of things in my own country special classes, among whom instruction does not penetrate, and who re- main complete strangers to it. If we examine the different categories of children for whom elementary instruction is designed, we can distinguish four princi- pal divisions. Those of the first category, belonging to rich families, are destined to receive a su- perior education, and to occupy the highest places in society. Those of the second, the children of shop-keepers and small land-hold- ers, avail themselves of the special instruc- tion instituted for them, which excludes, ordinarily, classical teaching. The third class comprises the children of mechanics and farm laborers, who receive only prima- ry instruction, more or less complete. In the education of this class we have to regret many deficiencies ; but efforts are making to bring it to the proper standard. There re- mains a fourth category, consisting of de- serted children, vagrants, and beggars, who are allowed, on account of the destitution or the neglect of their parents, to grow up in the most absolute ignorance both of ele- mentary and professional instruction, and who thus live exposed to all the tempta- tions of want, idleness, and vice. Hitherto no measxires have been taken in France to secure the benefits of instruction to this class of children. Compulsory instruc- tion does not exist among us. The principle has many earnest advocates ; but the difficul- ty of applying it, arising from paternal au- thority on the one hand, and, on the other, from the impossibility of obtaining general consent to the infliction of penalties on par- ents who should refuse to conform to its prescriptions, has raised up many adver- saries. Yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that it is imperatively necessary not to abandon to themselves and to the sugges- tions of destitution these children, whom the absolute want of guidance, or the per- nicious influences with which they are sur- rounded, must infallibly lead to vice, and thence to crime and to prison. We must protect them against the misfortune of their birth, against the culpable indifference of their parents, were it but in the interest of social order. This must be done by insur- ing to them the benefit of instruction, there- by obviating the danger which they create for society. The question of which we are treating here is a question at once of chari- ly and of public security. These children, who roam about onrhigh- I ways or in the streets of our cities, are un- i deniably those who most need elementary and industrial instruction. If such instruc- tion ought to be made obligatory for any, it certainly should be for them. Yet of all the children comprised in the different cate- gories of which we have just spoken, these are precisely the ones who have no share in its benefits, and who derive no advantage from the improvement of our present or- ganization and the progress that has been accomplished. Refusing to receive instruc- tion, they must be constrained to accept it. Eventually constraint will be necessary ; but its use will then be late and ineffectual ; the evil will have gained strength, and will be more difficult to overcome. For then this ignorant young vagabond will have become vicious, and will have- taken, perhaps for- ever, a fatal path. The State, in the end, takes under its charge the child frequently convicted of vagrancy and mendicity, and places him in a house for correctional educa- tion. It would be better to begin sooner, and not wait till the evil has become well- nigh irreparable. The establishments for correctional education are, as their name im- ports, repressive institutions, i. e., prisons ; and it is not in prisons that children should be brought up, but in schools. The prison, designed for the repression of evil, often in- creases it ; the school only can effectually prevent it. When a child has been convicted of beg- ging or vagrancy, he undergoes a first com- mitment, which exposes him, always for sev- eral hours, and often for several days, to the most demoralizing association. Until his case has been examined, he is placed with preco- ciously depraved children, who exert the most deplorable influence on his mind and heart. After the first commitment, he is generally given back to his parents. Restored to lib- erty, he commits the same offense again and again, until the court sends him to a house of correction. Some of these children have been taken up ten times, and oftener, before becoming the subjects of this last measure. Thus, in Paris alone, the number of children, under sixteen, arrested during the year 1872, was 3004, of whom more than half 1644 were apprehended for vagrancy and begging. Out of this number, 2307 were sent into the above-named establishments, i. e., into the houses of correctional education. There are in France fifty-five establish- ments, private and public, of this nature, in which there are 15,000 children, of whom 4500 are merely vagrants or beggars. There the children of every category vagabonds, beggars, and young criminals are mingled together, most generally until their majori- ty. This promiscuity is a great evil, and ROBIN: INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 703 aggravates the position of these children, who are often more unfortunate than culpa- ble ; and it must, at whatever cost, be done away with. The State, putting itself in the place of the parents, undertakes the education of these children. In doing so, it places them among these unwholesome surroundings, where they are condemned to live for five, eight, ten, and even twelve years with other children who have already reached a degree of corruption and wickedness which makes their influence most formidable. The State must interfere sooner in their behalf, and, without waiting for the evil to be pact rem- edy, it must apply the principle of obligation to them, creating special scholastic and in- dustrial establishments, where, without in- curring the risk of demoralizing contact, they may receive the education of which they have been deprived. These children require establishments of a strictly pre- ventive character, without any punitive ele- ment, where they shall be protected against the contagious influence of evil. They must have, not prisons, but schools, as we have al- ready said. No doubt whatever can be en- tertained as to the danger which menaces society from the administrative measure which places these children in the midst of the imwholesome influences we have de- scribed. The most enlightened solicitude, the wisest regulations, and the most vigilant supervision, whether exercised by the direct- ors of these establishments or by the prison administration, can not lessen the peril of this corrupting contact. The only effectual means of putting an end to the evil is to separate these children from those already criminal, and to create for them a new pop- ular educational establishment, where they can obtain the double benefit of elementary and professional that is, industrial educa- tion, without incurring the dangers we have pointed out. This insufficiency in the means of educa- tion provided by the law in behalf of the category of children now under considera- tion is evident. It has been fully admitted among our neighbors in England, and here in America, wherever public attention has been seriously turned to their condition. In those countries the separation we propose has been made, and special establishments have been founded. These establishments, of which we shall speak farther on, have re- ceived, ill England, the name of Industrial Schools, to indicate that the children learn a trade there, as well as the elements of pri- mary instruction. Onr French establishments for correction- al education, otherwise called agricultural colonies, were created solely to supply the want which was felt of making a first sep- aration in our prisons between the adults and the young prisoners. They laid the foundation of a first progress, of which France may justly claim the honor. We had our excellent law of 1850 in relation to young prisoners, our special houses for chil- dren, provisional liberation, and patronage, when in England the children were still mixed in the prisons with criminal adults. It was only in 1854 that the separation was made in that country, and the English have acknowledged that the adoption of the prac- tice by them was owing to our example, and that their reformatories were founded in imitation of our penitentiary colonies. But having once entered on this course after us, they have made a step in advance. They soon perceived the necessity of a new sep- aration between the children profoundly versed in evil courses and those whose er- rors were caused by want of a good educa- tion, including in that term religious as well as secular instruction. Three years after having separated the children from the adults, they separated these neglected children from the young criminals by insti- tuting for them industrial schools.* Since ten years the number of reformatories, which had previously been increasing every year, has remained stationary, the number being then, as now, sixty-five; whereas the indus- trial schools have, during that period, mul- tiplied rapidly. In 1860 there were forty of these ; fifty in 1865 ; ninety-one in 1870 ; and at the end of 1872 the number had reached one hundred. Similar establishments, strict- ly preventive in character, have also been founded in the United States. Each State of the Union which joined the movement for reform has opened asylums and refuges for this class of children, where, besides shel- ter and food, they receive the instruction in which they were deficient, and often learn a trade which will give them the means of earning their living honestly. We French- men, in our turn, ought to imitate this ex- ample by founding industrial schools. II. How, then, should these schools be or- ganized? The object of the new institu- tion to give the children admitted to it an education which should enable them to pro- vide for themselves by their labor, and to become useful members of society indicates the nature of its essential organization. It should give both elementary instruction and industrial training. The elementary instruction should be the same as that of the primary schools. The same programme should be followed, the studies should be subjected to the same tests; the pupils of the industrial schools should compete with those of other schools, public and private, viz., for the certificates of instruction, if the school is a private one ; or for the savings-bank credits, attested by * "English Efforts to prevent Crime," by Charles Ford, Esq. 704 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. the little pass-books, if it is a public estab- lishment. Those who distinguish them- selves in these examinations should be en- titled to gratuitous admission to our schools for commercial instruction. The industrial school would thus be put on exactly the same footing as the primary schools ; and j the State would thus insure all the advan- tages of a complete primary education to these children, who would have their share in the benefit of obligatory instruction ; and we dwell on this similarity because, accord- ing to our conception, they should be really schools, and not penitentiary establishments. This would be the first part of their education. To primary education should be added industrial teaching. A child's education is not complete until he has been made fit to provide for himself by learning a trade or business. The apprentice school thus be- comes the complement of the primary school. The city of Paris has recently instituted an apprentice school, and has thus begun to make practical the idea that -general in- struction must be completed by industrial teaching. Various establishments, similar in kind, exist already both in Paris and iu the departments, under the name of profes- sional schools. The industrial school, found- ed for a special object, would unite the two classes of establishments, f. e., the primary and the professional school, but with this special characteristic, that it would be de- signed for children who could not hope for admittance to the apprentice schools, which is the completion of primary studies. For the apprentice school, in accordance with the idea which led to its institution, is des- tined for, and can only be useful to, such children as have already received good pri- mary instruction, and are thus prepared to ac- quire general professional knowledge, which may qualify them for the position of foremen in the workshops, and for becoming, should circumstances favor them, masters in their turn. The children admitted to the indus- trial schools have, on the contrary, received only very imperfect primary instruction, and often none at all. The greater number have passed the usual age of admission to prima- ry schools, and reached the age for learning a trade. They must, therefore, have the means given to them of making up for lost time, and for acquiring the instruction of the school and that of the workshop togeth- er. Hence the double character of the es- tablishment for popular education, of which we are now treating. We do not enter into the details of the organization of work and of the different trades to be taught. It should be like that of other similar establishments. The time for study should alternate with the time for work, a larger or a smaller share being given to the former, in proportion as the pupil's in- struction has been more or less neglected. The school once founded, it would be nec- essary to regulate the conditions of admis- sion with respect to morality, age, and school fees. The industrial school being instituted specially for children who, from the above- mentioned causes, would remain deprived of the benefit of instruction, whether general or professional, unless it were forced upon them, it is necessary that this class should be strictly defined. The English law originally established four categories, the children belonging to any one of which may be sent to an indus- trial school, viz., first, beggars; second, va- grants ; third, destitute ; fourth, those asso- ciating with thieves or other bad company. To these four categories, meant to include the various classes of deserted or vagrant children, the law, in its paternal character, adds three others: the child under twelve years of age guilty of an offense punishable by imprisonment, provided he be not con- victed of felony; the child disobedient to his parents. [These children the French law sends to a house of correction if the parents desire it.] The third class com- prises the insubordinate work -house chil- dren, whom also, in France, the administra- tion of public assistance, representing pa- ternal authority, has a right to send to a house of correctional education.* These various categories of children com- prise all those for whom the industrial school is designed. It would, therefore, receive children taken up for vagrancy or begging, those without means of support, those as- sociating with people of ill fame, insubordi- nate children, and those judicially convicted under the age of twelve. So far as to the moral conditions. As to age, the Englisli law fixes fourteen as the latest period for a child's admittance to the school, and sixteen as the extreme limit of his stay in it. There would remain, then, only to fix the earliest age at which a child can be admitted. Without wishing to limit strictly this minimum, we think that the industrial school, intended solely to fill a gap in our system of national education, ought not to take in children too young. Ten or eleven might be this limit, until which time they would have the resource of the primary school. Here an objection presents itself, prompt- ed by the fear that parents might yield to the temptation to free themselves from the task of bringing up their children by throw- ing them on the care of the State or of char- itable institutions. To guard against this abuse, it would be necessary to exact the payment of school fees from all parents able to afford that expense. We ask to have in- struction made obligatory for the class of children of whom we are speaking, but not * Act relating to Industrial School?, August 10, 18CC. ROBIN: INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 705 gratuitous in all cases. This has been wise- ly decided by the English law, which, when the circumstances of the parents justify it, requires payment, which may go as high as five shillings a week. These points being settled, the authority competent to order a child's admission to the school must be designated. In England it is the magistrate, justice of the peace, or alderman, who gives this order. The School Board must submit the case of every child whom they propose placing in the indus- trial school to the judge chosen by the law. This wise provision of the law is intended to guard against the abuse of arbitrary de- tention, and to provide the needful guaran- ties for the child's liberty, as well as for pa- ternal rights. In France it will be neces- sary to decide to whom this office should be intrusted whether to the justice of the peace, or to the president of the civil tribu- nal, in concert with the public prosecutor, as is the case with children placed under paternal correction. It is a question, to be decided by the legislator. English law very prudently provides be- forehand against an objection which might be raised in the interest of religious free- dom. It requires that the justices or the magistrates, when choosing a school, shall ascertain to what religion the child belongs, and'shall send him to a school of that per- suasion [Art. 18], and, if an error should oc- cur, the child's parents or guardians have a right to protest, and may themselves choose a school where the child shall be instructed according to the principles of their religious belief. The school being thus founded, and all the conditions of admission being regulated, it has still to be decided whether the new establishment should be a boarding or a day school. Both have been tried in En- gland, in Scotland, and elsewhere. England has adhered exclusively to the former, while Scotland seems to prefer the latter. The boarding-schools are organized in this man- ner: They are generally gotten up by pri- vate enterprise or by the School Board. Private individuals or a charitable associa- tion establish the school and have if exam- ined by legally appointed inspectors. If the needful requirements have been com- plied with, the school is "certified" by the administration, which, in this case, pays a fixed sum per week for each child. It is this legislative grant, together with chari- table contributions, which defray the expen- ses of the boarding-school. These expen- ses comprise, in addition to the cost of in- stallation, clothing, food, school requisites, and the salaries of officials. These board- ing-schools not being prisons, but education- al establishments, the rules and the law leave a certain latitude to the managing committee. The child spends there only the 45 time necessary for his education. He may be apprenticed out, according to circum- stances, after some mouths, a year, or two years, without, however, ceasing to belong to the establishment, and to be subject to the rules of the school, although he no long- er lives in it, so that, if he behaves badly at his master's, he is at once sent back to the house. He may be restored to his relatives, if they seem able and willing to continue his education, but he remains subject to the rules of the house, as in the former case. I have read of boarding-schools in Ameri- ca, though I believe the number is not great, where the pupils attend public lectures, or learn a trade in neighboring workshops and come back to the establishment at night. In the day-school system, as it is practiced in Scotland, and particularly at Aberdeen, the child stays in the school the whole day, which is divided into two parts, the one part being devoted to elementary, and the other to industrial instruction. The children get three meals in the school, and go home at night to their parents. Regular attendance atschool is thus insured. The School Board is authorized to appoint a special agent, or to call upon the police, who bring back, at the beginning of each week, the child who has missed school the week before. But the alimentary diet of the school is highly ap- preciated by these children, who are wretch- edly supplied at home, and it is sufficient to insure their regularity. Each of the two systems has its special advantages, and the choice between the two would depend on circumstances. The board- ing-school withdraws the child from the evil influences of his family and from the tempta- tion to vagrancy; but its protection is only temporary and somewhat artificial, for, soon- er or later, he must be put back into ordi- nary life, where he will continue to be ex- posed to former temptations. Then it breaks the family ties, putting the authority of the school entirely in the place of that at home ; and, finally, it has another drawback it is very costly. The day-school leaves the child in every-day life among his family, upon whom he may exercise a good influence ; and, above all, it has the advantage of cost- ing less. We think both systems may be adopted according to the locality. One point more remains to be considered. Who is to take the initiative in the creation of this new establishment of popular educa- tion private individuals or the State t In England, at the outset, the movement was inaugurated solely by private enter- prise. The law merely established the prin- ciples in accordance Avith which the indus- trial schools should be certified and aided by the administration. Several States of the American Union have grunted charters to establishments of this kind, which thus bear the character of quasi public iustitu- TOG CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL REFORMS. tions. There can not be an unvarying prin- ciple on this subject. The habits and cus- toms of each people must be consulted. Pri- vate effort has great advantages, when it is practicable, and when it only needs to be en- couraged by law. We think it might have its share in this work of national education in France, provided that the law, as in En- gland, should allow for each child regularly admitted in virtue of a magistrate's order, a fixed sum, which should partially compen- sate these establishments for the sacrifices they make, and thus cover a part of their expenses. It would bo the contribution of the State in aid of charitable efforts ; and in this it would only be applying to the new institution of industrial schools the provis- ions of the law relative to the houses of correctional education, founded by private individuals, and certified by the State, to which the administration pays seventy cen- times a day for every child it places in them. There is no doubt that private initiative might be of great help to the State in the founding of industrial schools, as it was in that of the penitentiary colonies. It woiftd suffice that the law should seek and should favor it. In our country, perhaps, it would be too much to expect that private effort should suffice for the founding of these schools. There are four thousand five hundred va- grants in our houses of correction, and this number does not by any means represent all those to be provided for. The founding of public establishments would supplement the deficiency of private ones. We should thus have public and private establishments in this new category of scholastic institutions, as in the case of ordinary primary schools ; the first making up for the deficiency of the second, and each completing the other. A fruitful emulation would thus be estab- lished by the union of various efforts tending all to the same end that of saving children from ignorance, idleness, and vice. The com- bined efforts of all in this great work of na- tional preservation would not be more than is needful. We are of the opinion, therefore, as to this point, that it is desirable that the State, while encouraging private initiative, should itself undertake the establishment of these institutions. In brief: The necessity of industrial schools, embodying the principle of com- pulsory instruction elementary and pro- fessional seems to us demonstrated by the duty of protecting an entire class of children who are liable, through the neglect of their parents, to remain without the advantages of instruction, and thus to become danger- ous to society. The new institution of national education, whose outlines we have just traced, ought to be placed on the same footing as our ordina- ry scholastic establishments, whether public or private. Thus would be accomplished a work of vast importance for the protection and ele- vation of society by the moral training of those children who, from their circumstances, as already explained, would be likely to be- come an element of disorder and peril to the State. I recall, in concluding, that compassion- ate word of our Savionr : " I was in prison, and ye came unto me." Our Lord regards as done to himself what we do in behalf of prisoners. We ought to take pity on them, because our visits are, for them, a consola- tion and a relief. In reflecting on those poor children exposed in our streets to so many temptations of misery and of crime, I seem also to hear our blessed Saviour repeat, with a slight variation, this other compas- sionate word : " Suffer these deserted chil- dren to come unto me ; take them under your care; and save them from the prison by instructing them, and by teaching them to earn their living by honest labor." FAREWELL ADDRESS. BY THE REV. NOAH HUNT SCHENCK, D.D., BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. Delivered at the close of the Valedictory Services in the Academy of Music, New York, Sunday night, October 12, 1873. MR. CHAIRMAN, BRETHREN, AND CHRIS- TIAN FRIENDS ; For the first time since the world began the lovers of God have met in Catholic Council on this Western Hemi- sphere. That Council now belongs to his- tory. To-night we gather with deep emo- tion around an altar we have all helped to build. The hymns we sing, the prayers we put up, the words we speak, are designed as a spiritual libation to our common God, and as a valedictory office for those who part to-night, no more to meet this side the grave. I can but feel that the occasion is august. Memorable, it will assuredly bo held by all who are now within these walls. The atmosphere we breathe is charged with solemnity. As I look on this vast audience, how overwhelming is the idea that the thou- sands gathered to the sessions of the Con- ference now closing, and assembled here and at this moment elsewhere in New York in halls crowded like this, have come together obedient to a common attraction, and under the gravitation of a common sentiment ; that all have invoked the same spiritual bap- tism, and all, we trust, received the same blessing; and that, as they separate to- night on their various lines of departure, each faithful man may bo supposed to car- ry away and take to his home, be it near or far, a gift from God, dispensed at this high altar of holy catholic communion by Him " who didst preside in the councils of the blessed apostles," and who has given un- mistakable testimony of His presence with this Conference, from first to last, in quick- ening grace and manifold spiritual power. Aud upon this meeting to-night, constituted though it be of frail and fallible creatures, I would fain believe that the eyes of angels look almost tearlessly. For, if man may present a spectacle of moral grandeur to the vision of the skies, it is, as here, where thousands of minds and hearts blend and fuse in a concerted purpose to enthrone re- ligious truth, and assert a world-wide fra- ternity iu Christ, and display the reality of catholic communion in the Beloved where all are marshaled under the twin sentiment of giving God all glory and helping all men heavenward. The Sixth General Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance, marking as an epoch the twenty -seventh year of its organized life, now ends. Over London and Paris, over Berlin, Geneva, and Amsterdam, the aureola of the Alliance has shone. And now around the brow of New York, the Metropolis of America, the great entrepot of the Western World, is this girdle of grace, this spiritual corona. We would hold all these capitals as thus peculiarly consecrated. We would thread these fair cities, as so many goodly pearls, upon the golden chord of Christian love, and adorn the Bride of Christ with the precious necklace. The summons from New York for the as- sembling of this Conference, the call for the gathering of the tribes, has gone echoing round the world, and kindly reverberations have come answeriugback from almost every zone. From the Peiho and the Ganges in the far distant East, rolling westward over the high table-lauds of Central Asia, rich and romantic in Aryan tradition, across the per- turbed civilizations of Europe to where the silvery Seine and golden Guadalquiver pour their sparkling tributes to the sea ; from the land where the superstitions of Thor and Odin have dissolved before the march of 708 SCHENCK: FAEEWELL ADDRESS. Christian truth, southward to the continents and islands which lie under the starlight of the great southern Cross from every quar- ter of our peopled planet the responses to the call for this Conference have been as deep calling and answering to deep. And we came together as members of one great family, as children of the one common Sire, "after whom the whole family in heav- en and earth is named." The membership of this Conference is a representation of the Church invisible, still on earth, and mili- tant. We have not come clothed in the livery of bigoted organization, not as spokes- men of conflicting schools of thought, or as wearing the ecclesiastical vestments of the several religious denominations to whom we profess allegiance. We represent no con- stituency save that of the elect in Christ, no sentiment save that under which the brotherhoods of the Redeemed are coalesced in Christ. A convention thus constituted is one "Where names and sects and parties fall, And Jesus Christ is all in all." The purpose of this Conference is not to organize a new church, or indulge vain fan- tasies of organic unity, or sketch ntopian pictures of unified doctrine and uniform practice in religious theory and ecclesias- tical method. We recognize the great fact that the Church on earth is a working Church, and therefore not a incture in pro- phetic elements of the Church in heaven, which is a Church at rest. Here there are, and are to be, " diversities of gifts," and " dif- ferences of administrations," and "diversi- ties of operations ;" but there, where the dis- tinctions between the Church visible and in- visible shall have ceased, in the "one fold" and under the " one Shepherd," there shall be no variety in unity, but soul shall answer to soul in the exact reflections of the Divine likeness. We rally here for no purpose that is selfish or secular, doctrinal or ecclesiastic- al. We have come simply for God's honor and man's help. Wo have not assembled for the defense of Protestantism. The ne- cessity for that is passed, thank God ! Its great principles have been promulgated and vindicated in trumpet tones of triumph all round the world, and to-day arc enthroned in the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and the hearts of Christ's most loyal serv- ants. The Protestant idea has a following that is fully adequate to every exigency of defense and every purpose cf propagation. But this Christian Convocation has been summoned for fresh declarations of unity realized, for the interchange of the elements of varied Christian civilizations, for debating and arming in flefense of Christian liberty, for asserting the franchise of free conscience, for making full exposition of catholic ortho- doxy in applied religion 1 , proving that the Evangelical Alliance holds and enforces those measures of truth which all Christian de- nominations confess and apply as essential for righteous rule in government, the cor- rect ordering of society, and the salvation of the soul. It is not a part of the office I fill to-night to speak of the sweet social reunions and the hospitable interchanges we have enjoy- ed. Neither is this the occasion for review- ing the programme of learned disquisition and dignified debate to which this Confer- ence has given its time and thought for the last ten days. Let it suffice that the most important and pressing issues in religion and morals that could possibly challenge the at- tention of earnest minds have been discussed before us by those whose native gifts, whoso specific and profound research, and whose rich and well-ripened thought have most abundantly qualified them for the great didactic office they have filled. In the few sentences of valediction that I have to offer, my supreme desire and effort is to rise with you now, dear friends in Christ, to the highest spiritual level to which our Lord may be pleased to lift us, that wo may realize the liberty of sous of God yea, perfect freedom in Christ, and oneness in the Beloved. The immediate influence and results of this Conference are quite beyond the most sanguine expectations indulged by its friends and promoters, and are simply amazing to those who looked with little heart or hopo to the gathering of this Protestant Council. In fact, the Conference has astonished Amer- SCHENCK: FAEEWELL ADDRESS. 709 ica. Here in New York, where we are ac- customed to the rapid succession of notice- able events, even here, there has been a strange and almost unprecedented kindling of interest. And wherever the press has conveyed the proceedings of this body, ev- erywhere the public eye has been widely opened to read and mark its daily deliver- ances. The most emphatic indications of the immediate influence of the Conference is to be observed in the great numbers that have thronged the different halls of audi- ence to give ready and untiring ear to the utterances of our distinguished delegates. The interest excited and the personal attend- ance given to the daily sessions have been something unexampled in any convention of a moral or religious character ever held in this country. Nor may we omit to re- mark upon the voluntary and valuable serv- ices of the secular press. Never before in the history of religious or moral movements on this side the Atlantic, or probably the other, have the important offices of the press been so largely enlisted. I would take oc- casion here and now to make befitting ac- knowledgment for this grateful contribution to our great evangelic enterprise. There was a time when the public press of New York was stigmatized as " satanic," because led on by a Journal professing neither relig- ion nor morals, but professedly conducted upon a mere mercenary basis; but, if we may argue from the posture of the press to- ward the Evangelical Alliance, this great power has experienced a glorious regenera- tion. Whether this new baptism has been of its own seeking, or the involuntary result of the great influence freshly created and wielded by this Conference, is not for me to pronounce. The immediate influence upon those of us who have waited day by day upon its devo- tional and business Sessions, in the personal experiences of our souls, is something quite too important and memorable to pass over without a word of thanksgiving. I may not freely speak for others ; but for myself I am glad and grateful to confess that, for the lighting up of my mind and the lifting up of my heart in the things of Christ, I have had no experiences surpassing the en- gagements at Amsterdam in 1867, and these at New York in 1873, since I first attempted the following of the Master. Under the sweet spiritual influences evoked by these earnest- minded, warm-hearted Christian men, who have come together " out of all lands " to counsel and commune, have we not, day by day, and night after night, been newly clothed upon of Christ, and freshly charged with his heavenly Spirit, and largely en- couraged for all the valiant ventures of faith ? Touching the permanent results of this Conference it may be premature to speak ; but never yet has one of these convocations of the Alliance been held in the cities of Europe without entailing upon the locality appreciable and invaluable consequences to Christ and society. My brethren from abroad, I know, will give their emphatic testimony to this. Where the drum-call of the Evangelic- al Alliance has summoned the faithful, and the banner of Jesus waved over its solemn de- liberations, there an influence has been born whose sacred vitality has developed and been disseminated in measures of blessing to the individual and to society as enduring as they have been beneficent. As elsewhere, so here, how many " who came to scoff remain- ed to pray ;" how many who heretofore have regarded religion as a professional or per- functory thing, after looking upon and list- ening to these learned and pious pilgrims who have come to us from regions remote, who have crossed laud and sea to give their testimony for Christ and the truth, to bow their faces before the altar here set up, for the common worship and catholic commun- ion of the Christian allies ; how many are there, I claim, who will henceforth regard religion, its offices, its franchises, and its blessings, as objects to be coveted, and courted, and possessed who will substitute veneration for indifference, and, it may be, devotion for defiance ! There is no doubt that the Conference has created or produced a great religious influ- ence in this country. The question is, how this influence can be best administered for God's glory, the Church's welfare, and the 710 SCHENCK: FAREWELL ADDRESS. soul's progress. Ouly yesterday it was de- termined, at a general meeting of the United States Alliance, to hold a biennial session for the discussion of living issues in relig- ion, morals, and sociology. It is fondly hoped that this meeting on alternate years may keep the Christians of America "well armed for the defense of religious liberty may afford satisfactory exemplifications of Christian nuity, and give ample opportuni- ty for the great ventures of orthodox Chris- tianity to be faithfully studied, and thor- oughly sustained, and actively furthered. Will you pardon me for again referring to the Conference as an event of magnitude, because of one or more aspects and relations to which I have not yet adverted ? We are wont to accept the Latin proverb, "Omne ignotum pro magnifico ;" but, in the instance before us, immediate proximity has not de- tracted from, but rather augmented, the idea of moral grandeur ; the closer our pro- pinquity, the greater our reverence for the elements of the Conference, and the richer our enjoyment of its sacred atmosphere. May I ask you to regard this meeting of the Alliance as the sublimest possible ex- hibition of true internationalism f In this age of political convulsions, and when the facilities of intercourse are bent to the serv- ice of secular and selfish ends, what an im- mediate assurance is it, and what a pledge to the future, that we, as a body, appeal from all that is individualistic and economic, and ask for the commerce of higher sym- pathies as between Christian nationalities all over the world ! The Evangelical Alli- ance inaugurates "the era of good feeling." The sentiment of internationality which dominates in the Conferences proposes not to communize labor interests, or fortify the strongholds of capital, or accomplish the peaceful arbitration of political differences ; but rather to proffer to all, whatever each nation has that is excellent, in spiritual re- ligion, in practical morals, and the science of society so dictating and directing the free interchange of all that is cherished and held dear by each, that the honor of God may be vindicated, the soul advanced in spiritual culture, that civil and religious liberty may go hand in hand, and every franchise that conditions and embellishes our noblest man- hood may be asserted and conserved. This is the internationalism of the Evangelical Alliance, not only proposed, but practiced. This Conference is historic. The greet- ings which it has received from so many and such dignified ecclesiastical sources must se- cure for it noticeable recognition and large space in the Church history of the period. The brave reformers, who, under fearful pressure, are now prosecuting a great in- ner mission, laboring to restore poor blinded, bigoted Rome to her primitive Christian life, have just sent to us from the very spot where Huss was martyred, from this scene where they are gathered in solemn congress, from the shores of Lake Constance, again vocal with protests against papal arrogance and usurpation, and over the signatures of a bishop and others, called and consecrated un- der the genius of Catholic revival thence has come to this Conference a greeting and a Godspeed, the reach of fraternal hands, and the pledge of sympathetic souls. Similar salutations from the Archbishop of Canter- bury and the Metropolitan of Canada have been borne to us by eminent Christian leg- ates. And then, from the churches set up in the heart of heathen nations, and far off in the islands of the sea, missionary greet- ings have come that have gladdened the hearts of the Alliance men, and linked this Conference with the history of the Church- at-work in a way at once primitive and Christly. That this Conference should have had of- ficial and kindly recognition by the Em- peror of Germany, and that it goes to-mor- row to our National Capital to be formally received by the Chief Magistrate of this country, gives it a certain political relation which of itself is historic. Nay, more, we have good reason to believe that it has at- tracted the attention of many of the great ruling powers. It has come to bo recognized as an engine of such great moral and relig- ious force that no one can afford to ignore its existence, despise its teachings, or bo careless to its influence. And would to God that in immediate spir- SCHENCK: FAREWELL ADDRESS. 711 itual agency it might also be historic ! and that this Evangelical Congress might, under God, be empowered to excite the energies of religious revival, and inaugurate a new Pentecost ; so that, after our continuing for ten days with one accord in one place, in prayer and Christly counsel, the Spirit of God might descend in plenteous showers of grace, and accomplish the conversion of thou- sands to the saving faith of the Lord Jesus ! And now, I would address myself espe- cially to you, dear brethren, who have come to ns from various parts of Christendom, and give you our formal but feeling fare- well. You have come hither not as the Ar- gonauts of old seeking a fabulous amulet ; not as pilgrims to some profane Mecca ; not as Crusaders, proposing to retrieve by mate- rial forces for Him whose kingdom is not of this world, and whose triumphs are achieved neither by might nor by power, but by His Spirit, that which shall enhance the glory of the second dispensation of Christ. You have come not as the Genoese adventurer, stretching away from Palos, seeking India and stumbling upon a continent ; neither have you come in the blind infatuation of the Romish pilgrims of to-day, who are flocking to French shrines to make their superstitious devotions. By what impulse driven, by what magnetism drawn, under what sublime gravitation are you here? What other than the love of God in Christ and the welfare of a fallen race ? You have come from all the peopled lauds of Christen- dom, bringing in the banners of the several army corps of the great host of Christ, and stacking them around this common altar, while high above all is lifted the imperial standard of the Great Captain of our com- mon salvation. Oh, the history of these bat- tle-flags of the Church militant ! How mauy are tattered and torn, riddled and slit with shot and shell ! How many are banners rolled in blood! How many have been ig- nominiously trailed through the corridors of the Inquisition, and struck with the mil- dew and the death-damps of its hideous dun- geons! How many have floated triumph- antly upon the air, in lands where heroic hands have held them up as faith-flags, and where the breath of God's favor has played upon their graceful undulations! We are here bringing together the several ensigns under which we and our churches have contended for "the faith once delivered to the saints." There is a missionary who has worked for Christ twenty years in the heart of China. There is a Christianized Hin- doo, one who has crowned the graces of gen- tle breeding and scholarly culture with the diadem of the religion of Jesus, and who has just given us, in tones almost prophetic, the pictured realizations of the Church's hopes touching the evangelization of the world. I see before me men from Spain and Mexico. Before me are those who live in the shad- ows of the snow-crowned mountains of Eu- rope and the rocky sierras of America. All are charged with the sentiment of Christ's mission, and all pledged to the work of the Church of Christ. All have the same office, and all are braced and buoyed by a common hope. How in eternity shall we rehearse Avith rapture this gathering of the regiments here in New York, in the year of grace 1873 ? In what triumphant anthems shall we fight our battles over again in that better land, where all militant notes shall be lost in the grand diapason of the conquering chorus of the Church triumphant ! I can but feel that the Evangelical Alli- ance, as it has here exhibited its principles, projects, and practical character in the pro- ceedings of the Conference now ending, has unconsciously exercised a prophetical office. Who can fail to accept the idea here so em- phatically yet silently suggested, that this Christian Congress is a prototype of the com- ing civilization of the world ? How eloquent- ly does it declare that the time is near when there is to be a catholic civilization ; when the provincialisms of districts not only, but the provincialisms of nations shall end; when there shall bo such free trade in liter- ature, religion, custom, and mechanical art, in every thing that enters into moral, so- cial, and economic life, transfused through the nations, and races, and localities under the administration of new-born and newly adapted science, that human society shall become homogeneous, characterized every- 712 8CHENCK: FAREWELL ADDRESS. where by like conditions and conduct and purpose ! Even now we behold the fulfill- ment of the prophecy of many running to and fro, and knowledge being increased. The scores of Orientals, who are being edu- cated in our seminaries, or otherwise study- ing the laws and developments of our West- ern civilization, is sufficient illustration. Ere long the ends of the earth shall be as our neighbors. Through the marvelous fa- cilities of intercommunication the great bar- ter of intelligence and material is prosecuted each year in a ratio rapidly augmenting. Whatever is valuable in the society or trade life of any one laud is now being promptly apprehended and practically applied to the wants of every other. Representatives of every nation are abroad gathering up and carrying home whatever is valuable wher- ever found. In this wise shall the problem of a catholic civilization be worked out. And this Alliance is the token and pledge of the golden age which lies onward. Then the dissonance of Babel shall be lost in a common speech restored for the free com- merce of the world's thought, and the clash of religious sentiment cease in the univer- sal acceptance of the religion of Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as here in this Christian Confer- ence we have but one heart and one tongue, one principle and one aspiration, is it too much to claim that before us is the prophet- ic picture of the one-voiced Christian civil- ization which shall ere long make the whole world akin ? I love the Evangelical Alliance, not so much, because it provides for the commun- ion of saints. This I can find elsewhere. Not so much because of its important de- liverances in the great issues of moral sci- ence and religious culture. There are other oracles of equal wisdom and dignity from which these tuitions may be had. Again, I revere this organization, not so much because it is a defender of religious liberty and illus- trator of Christian unity. I might point you to other agents of the one, and exemplifica- tions of the other, though possibly inferior and less effective. But with my heart of hearts do I love this Christian alliance, be- cause it is, at least to me, an antepast cf heaven, a foregleam of the soul's supernal state. Now, as it is true that " God is no re- specter of persons," not even in the matter of church-membership, but that " in every na- tion he that feareth Him and worketh right- eousness is accepted with Him ;"and as men "shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God ;" and as there are sheep of various folds who shall be brought in by the great Saviour, that there may be " one fold and one Shepherd ;" and as all who love the Lcrd Jesus Christ are de- clared to be "no more strangers and for- eigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God ; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone ; in whom all the build- ing, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord ; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit;" and as those "whom God has cleansed" no man may without blasphemy " call common ;" and as there is the " same Spirit," and the " same Lord," and the " same God," though there be " diversi- ties of gifts," and " differences of adminis- trations," and "diversities of operations;" and, again, as, according to the vision of John on Patmos, the worshiping host who stand "before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and cry with a loud voice, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb," are a " great multitude, which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" of a surety may we not aver that here, in this Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance, we have produced, dear brethren in Christ, before heaven and among men, the richest possible realization that earth can be supposed to afford of the ce- lestial life to which we all aspire. It only remains that I give you, cherished friends in the faith of the Lord Jesus, the farewell of America to its honored guests, the Good-bye of the United States Alliance to the Delegates of sister Alliances here as- sembled in solemn Conference; and that SCHENCK : FAREWELL ADDRESS. 713 " Good-bye " is a simple but soul-felt " God bless you !" I "would fain reach forth my hand and lay it upon your heads, and pro- nounce for each one the Benediction of Peace. As it is, I give you my heart, and offer the exchange of throb for throb in the reciprocal pulsations of Christian affection, in the precious brotherhood of a common love and life in the Blessed Jesus. Nay, more, I would invoke the everlasting arms to wind round us as we are here grouped together, and hold us now and forever as one in the Beloved. Go to yonr homes, brothers in the love and work of Jesus, and carry our hearts with you. Here we have " taken sweet counsel together." You have blessed us in your presence and by your prayers, and now, as you go hence, we give you Christian God- speed. May the Spirit of Christ always abound in your hearts, and the love of Jesus always be the great governing law of your lives! God be with you as you return to those who are waiting for you with loving eyes, looking westward for the ship that shall bear you to the sweet embraces of family and home. There are welcomes awaiting you beyond the sea, wifely and filial welcomes from those whose " eyes will watch your coming, and grow brighter as you come." We part to-night only to meet beyond the flood. Some of us will doubtless flow together in the sweet communions of earth. But the members of this Conference, as a body complete, will only re-assemble in the New Jerusalem. God grant us safe-conduct to that City which hath foundations. But as we linger here in our fond farewells, and ere we relinquish the loving clasp of fraternal hands, shall we not send to God, on wings of faith, the catholic prayer, that He who by his "Holy Spirit didst preside in the councils of the blessed apostles, and hast promised through his Son Jesus Christ, to be with the Church to the end of the world, will have been so present with the Council of his Church here assembled in his name and presence, as to save them from all error, ignorance, pride, and prejudice ; and to di- rect, sanctify, and govern them in their pres- ent work, by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, that the comfortable Gospel of Christ may be truly preached, truly received, and truly followed in all places, to the breaking down the kingdom of sin, Satan, and death ; till at length the whole of the dispersed sheep, being gathered into one fold, shall become par- talcers of everlasting life, through the merits and death of Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen." APPENDIX I. LETTERS OF GREETING. APPENDIX L-CONTENTS, [The following letters of greeting from religious societies and distinguished individuals were brought before the General Conference, and selected for publication. A large number of private letters were also received, conveying the good wishes of invited guests unable to attend. Official communications of foreign branches of the Alliance, and letters of eminent public men in Europe, endorsing the objects of the General Conference, were published in connection with the Editor's re- port on his first Alliance mission to Europe, 18G9, in Document No. III., pp. 34-39. Ed.~\ PAGK 1 . MEELE D' AUBIGNE : Testamentary Address 717 2. BRITISH ALLIANCE : .Letter of Greeting 719 3. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: Letter to the Dean of Canterbury. . . 720 4. GERMAN CHURCH DIET : Letter of Greeting 720 5. COMMITTEE FOR INNER MISSIONS, GERMANY : Fraternal Salutations. . 721 0. EMPEROR OF GERMANY: "Cordial Greeting and Best Wishes" 721 7. EVANGELICAL OBER-KIRCHENRATII : Cordial Greeting 721 8. RossEEuw ST. HILAIRE: Letter of Regret and of Fraternal Greeting 722 9. DUFF : Letter to Hon. George II. Stuart, Philadelphia 723 10. DOEDES:- "A Word of Sympathy, icith my lest Wishes" 724 11. WINTHROP : Letter to the Rev. Dr. Adams, of New York 724 TESTAMENTARY ADDRESS OF THE LATE DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNE", OF GENEVA, SWITZERLAND.* To the President and Members of the Ecumenical Assembly of Evangelical Christians at New York: DEAR AND HONORED BRETHREN IN CHRIST, There are many reasons which would have made me wish to be among you at present. The assembly which brings together at New York, in the western hemisphere, Christians of the Old and the NewWorld, is unique of its kind in the history of Protestantism. Also, when your zealous deputy, the Rev. Dr. Schaff, invited me in your name to take part in it, I would willingly have answered yes ; but my age was an obstacle altogether insurmountable. I desire, however, to ad- dress you a few words in writing. If the meeting for which you have assem- bled is an important one, the period at which it is held is equally so, not only on account of the great things which God is accomplish- ing iu the world, but also by reason of the great evils which the spirit of darkness is spreading throughout Christendom. The despotic and arrogant pretensions of Rome have reached in our days their highest pitch, and we are consequently more than ever called upon to contend against that power which dares to usurp the Divine attributes. But that is not all. While superstition has increased, unbelief has done so still more. Until now, the eighteenth century the age of Voltaire was regarded as the epoch of most decided infidelity ; but how far does the present time surpass it in this respect ! Voltaire himself protested against the phi- losophy which he called atheistic, and said, " God is necessarily the great, the only, the eternal artificer of all nature " (" Dialogues," 25). But the pretended philosophers of our day leave such ideas far behind, and regard them as antiquated superstitious. Matcrial- * [This document of the distinguished historian of the Reformation was prepared for the Conference in 13TO, and, after its postponement, intended for the Conference of 1873 ; but the author was called to his eternal reward October 21, 1S72. It was handed to me by his widow, at London, in July, 1873, "as a proof of the great interest which Dr. Merle d'Au- bign6 felt in the proposed Conference and in his brethren in the United States." P.S.] ism and atheism have taken the place of the true God in many minds. Science, which was Christian in the finest intellects of for- mer days, in those to whom we owe the greatest discoveries, has become atheistic among men who now talk the loudest. They imagine that by means of general laws which govern the physical world, they can do with- out Him from whom those laws proceed. Some remains of animals found in ancient strata of our globe, make them reject the creation of which the Bible inaugurates the account by these solemn words : " In the be- ginning God created the heaven and the earth." Eminent literary men continually put for- ward in their writings what is called posi- tivism, rejecting every thing that goes be- yond the limit of the senses, and disdaining all that is supernatural. These evils, which had formerly only reached the upper ranks of society, have now spread to the working classes, and some among them may be heard to say, " When man is dead, all is dead." But there is a still sadder feature of our times : unbelief has reached even the minis- try of the Word. Pastors belonging to Prot- estant churches iu France, Switzerland, Ger- many, and other Continental countries, not only reject the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but also deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and see in him nothing more than a man who, according to many among them, was even subject to errors and faults. A synod of the Reformed Church in Hol- land has lately decreed, that when a minis- ter baptizes he need not do so " in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." A journal, when relating this fact, adds : " Will they, then, baptize in the name of the god Abyss?" At an important assembly held lately iu German Switzerland, at which were present many men of position, both in the Church and State, the basis of a new religion was laid down. 2fo doctrines! was the watch- word on that occasion. "No new doctrines, whatever they may be, in place of the old. Liberty alone." Which means, liberty to overthrow every thing ; and too truly, some of those ministers believe neither iu a per- sonal God nor in the immortality of the soul. For a portion of the European pop- ulation, there is no other gospel than that 718 APPENDIX I. of Spinoza, and often much less even than that, Gentlemen, ought all this to make us lose courage f By no means. " Fear not, little flock," Bays our Lord, " for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom " (Luke xii., 32). The Church is built on an immovable rock, which is Christ, " and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it " (Matt, xvi., 18). " The word of the Lord endureth forever" (1 Peter i., 25). Yes, brethren and dear sirs, whatever may be the shouts of triumph of the champions of infidelity, there will always be on earth thousands who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal; but we must desire more than that. We must defend the kingdom of God against its enemies and extend it over all the globe. Seeing a great assembly from both hemi- spheres about to be gathered at New York in such critical ti mes as the present, a thought has presented itself to my mind, and I would desire to communicate it to you. Ought not your meeting to be above all things (excuse the expression that I employ) like a council of war, in which to determine the plan of the great campaign which is approaching, or, rather, which has already begun ? You are not merely an academy summoned to hear eloquent essays ; you are rather an as- sembly called to deliberate upon the pub- lic affairs of Christianity. I can not banish from my mind the thought that such has been the object of the Divine Head of the Church in bringing together this Christian Congress. At all times, and among all na- tions, whenever great dangers have threat- ened the father-land, recourse has been had to the wisdom of the most enlightened, in order to determine what are the best means to adopt for its safety. The adversaries of Christianity are now in many places taking able counsel with one another, or holding tu- multuous meetings for the purpose of plan- ning its destruction. Shall not we also unite to consider the best means of saving it ? or shall it be true that " the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light ?" (Luke xvi., 8). The great question for every individual is al- ways this : "What must I do to be saved ?" The great question for the Church at this time is: What must be done to save the Church? He who saves is Christ. "Nei- ther is there salvation in any other" (Acts iv., 12). But, as says the apostle, " We are laborers together with God" (1 Cor. iii., 9). Gentlemen, there is now an important work to be done ; a crisis has arrived, per- ilous, decisive, which reminds me of those words of one of our French .poets, the great Corneille : "Et je pnis dire enfin, qne jamais potentat N'ent ii deliberer d'un si grand conp d'etat." You have to deliberate upon the triumph of the Gospel in Christendom. If you seek your wisdom from Him who " giveth to all men liberally " (James i., 5), there will, with- out doubt, result from your meeting unex- pected light, effective, powerful means for remedying the ills which afflict us. It is not I, gentlemen ; it is not a man of times already past, who can find here the guiding clue. A philosopher has said, "In periods of great difficulty the young are generally more discerning than the aged." However, as those who have convoked your assembly have asked me to speak, I shall address you, not some advice, but a few questions. 1st. Ought we not, in order to triumph over infidelity, to employ science itself, humble and healthy science, in opposition to a partial, proud, and sickly science, which seeks the knowledge of creation, but rejects the knowledge of the Creator, from whence result moral and intellectual enfeeblement and continual change? A system lasts a, few years, and then it is succeeded by an- other. A scholar will affirm that we de- rive our origin from one of the lower ani- mals which gradually became a man; and he may succeed in leading many superficial minds to adopt his theory, and then he will retract, but without being able, most likely, to bring back those whom he has led into error. Men of genius who have been the great lights of humanity Bacon, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Leibnitz, Euler, Haller, and many others studied the creation, but they also acknowledged the Creator; and their theories have become the basis of all our science. Unfortunately, some of the learn- ed men of our day (I do not say all) have not such elevated minds. The knowledge of visible things will only be sound when it is accompanied by the knowledge of the in- visible God who is the author of them. 2d. Is it not important to uphold ener- getically the rights of the mind, in contra- distinction to the extravagant and humili- ating pretensions of matter t Let us defend manfully the superior attributes of man. Let us affirm that the faculties in virtue of which he is capable of knowing God, the Invisible, the Infinite, the Origin and End of man, are immensely above those by vir- tue of which he crawls upon this earth. How paltry is humanity if deprived of com- munion with the eternal God ! Fallen, de- based, we must say of him as did the proph- et, " The crown is fallen from his head." 3d. Should not reform begin in the min- istry of the Word? The princes of this world seek continually to remodel their armies, improve their soldiers, their rifles, their cannon ; and shall the army of Jesus Christ alone do .nothing for its improve- ment? Many are the changes that ought to be made in the ministry, but I shall men- tion only one, and that in the words of our APPENDIX I. 719 great reformer, John Calvin. Proofs and arguments are necessary with unbelievers, but that is not sufficient. There must also be sound doctrines, and there is, besides, a right way of presenting them to the peo- ple. Calvin shows that the minister must not be satisfied with reading a sermon cold- ly or reciting it correctly. "True preach- ing," says the reformer, " must not be dead, but living and effective. There is a force, there is an energy, which should be found in those who desire to be good and loyal ministers of the Word. No parade of rhet- oric, but the Spirit of God must resound in their voice in order to operate with power" (V Esprit de Dieu dolt resonner en leur voix, pour tesoigner en vertu). Thus spoke Calvin. Doubtless one sometimes hears such voices, but they are rare. The progress which we have to make is a revival of the ministry of the apostles and of the Reformation. It was for the Church of England, and to the regent of the kingdom, the uncle of Edward VI., that Calvin wrote these words in 1548, but they are applicable to every church. May the Spirit of God resound in our voices ! 4th. Ought not Christians in the times in which we live, the faithful and the pastors, to attach themselves more and more to the person of JESUS CHRIST ? We must do so in order to contend against infidelity, and, still more, against popery. Let us, therefore, cleave with a living faith, with earnest love, not, indeed, to a fantastic ideal of Jesus, in- vented by unbelieving imaginations, but to the true person of Jesus Christ, such as the Holy Scriptures alone make him known to us, in all his humility, but also in all his beauty, his power, and his glory. Let us at- tach ourselves to him, not only for our own peace, but also for the salvation of the Church. We are in a great crisis, I would almost say in great distress ; but if we are under the eye of such a friend, who has said with truth, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth " (Matt, xxviii., 18) ; and if he has added, " I am with you alway " (Matt, xxviii., 20), should we not be sense- less if, in this pressing danger, we did not apply for help to that friend ? Well, those words were addressed to us by the Son of God. * We are full of confidence in the real- ity of his promises; let us act accordingly. GREETING FROM THE BRITISH ALLI- ANCE. From the Council of the British Organization of the Evangelical Alliance to the Council and Members of the Evangelical Alliance of the United States of America. BELOVED AND HONORED BRETHREN, We avail ourselves of the opportunity afforded us by our delegates proceeding to the Gen- eral Conference about to be held in New York, to commend them to your fraternal fel- lowship and regard. We present, by them, to yourselves and to the Christian brethren gathered together from different lands, our cordial and affectionate greeting, and our sincere congratulations on the auspicious occasion of your assembly. We desire gratefully to acknowledge the hand of our gracious God in the removal of all causes for further delay in holding in your own city the Sixth General Conference of Christians of various nations, and in bringing to a successful termination the ar- rangements made in many different coun- tries for a suitable representation being present to take part in its interesting pro- ceedings. The Conference itself and its re- sults will be regarded with deep interest by multitudes in this and other lands who de- sire to see the Christian churches both of the Old and New World brought into closer communion and co-operation, for the de- fense of religious liberty and the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom among all people. Profoundly impressed with the importance of the meetings and the subjects about to be brought under your consideration, we in- vited the members of the Alliance through- out the United Kingdom to make special and united prayer to Almighty God for his blessing, that the approaching Conference may issue in results greatly to his glory, and the increase of unity, peace, and concord among all true Christians. To move the springs of united prayer has been one of the peculiar privileges of this Alliance, and on no previous occasion does it appear to us that the supplications of God's children were more needed or more suitable than at the present time, when wise and holy men of both hemispheres are drawn together for fraternal fellowship, for spirit- ual profit, for mutual counsel, and for com- bined effort in the cause of truth and right- eousness throughout the world. May the Spirit of Grace and Supplication be poured out upon your assemblies. May the Great Head of the Church himself be with you. Allow us, beloved brethren, to assure you of our cordial sympathy, and our readiness at all times to co-operate with you, and with the sister organizations in various countries, in making this Association increasingly a power for good. We have rejoiced in the formation of so large and influential an Evan- gelical Alliance as the one already establish- ed in your own country, and of which the present Conference may be regarded as one of the good fruits ; and we record with thankfulness the valuable aid recently ren- dered by yourselves and our European asso- ciations in pleading effectually for the op- pressed in a distant land. We are thus re- minded continually of a great and holy work committed to our hauds the defense 720 APPENDIX I. of persecuted Christians suffering for right- eousness' sake ; the spread of the Gospel in all lands ; the practice of Christian charity among ourselves, and commending it to the sympathy and practice of our fellow-believ- ers; conflicts with infidelity and ungodli- ness in varied forms these are claiming the most serious attention of Christians, and pressing upon them everywhere to unite, and by a common service to their one Lord draw closer the bands of brotherly love. Only thus united in holy activity can we be assured that doubts as to the divine author- ity of the doctrines we hold will diminish, and the promise of our Lord be not far from its final and glorious accomplishment " that the world may believe." May the God of peace and love enable you with one heart and mouth to glorify him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so make manifest that the Prince of Peace has guided, controlled, and blessed your counsels. Again we offer yon our paternal and affec- tionate salutations. On behalf of the Couu- cil, EBURY, President. CHICHESTER, EGBERT LUSH, WILLIAM ASHLEY, E. J. ROBERTSON (Lord Benholm), Vice-presidents. ALFRED S. CHURCHILL, Chairman of N. T. Conf. Com. JOHN FINCH, Treasurer. JAMES DAVIS, Secretary. HERMANN SCHMETTAU, Foreign Secretary. to me in that Church, which has generally been regarded as the bulwark of the Eefor- mation, without praying for God's blessing on all earnest efforts to spread the great Gospel doctrines which the Reformation vin- dicated. Never since the Eeformation has it been more important that Christian men should learn to understand and co-operato with one another, and that they should, by the manifestation of their union in faith and good works, offer an effectual opposition to the growing progress of superstition and iufidelity. And never has this union been more earnestly longed for than in the pres- ent day. I trust that the Holy Spirit of God may guide all who take part in your discussions at New York ; and that the solution of the great social and religious questions of which ! you propose to treat may be advanced by i the mutual intercourse of minds accustomed, many of them, to regard these questions in different aspects, according to the peculiari- ties of their several countries. That God may hasten the time when the differences, which at present tend too much to keep Christians asunder, may be removed, and when all who love the Lord Jesus Christ sincerely may be able, without compromise of principle, to unite both outwardly and in spirit, is my heart's prayer. Believe me to be, my dear Dean, yours very sincerely, A. C. CANTUAR. The very Reverend The DEAN OF CANTEKBCEY. LETTER FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. Addington Park, Croydon, August 1, 18T3. MY DEAR DEAN, I can not allow the Dean of my Cathedral to go to America to at- tend a general conference of Christians of all countries, without expressing my good wishes and earnest hope that his efforts to promote unity in Christ's Church may be blessed. In 1870 (before the proposed Conference was postponed, owing to the unhappy war between two great Christian nations) I wrote a letter to the late lamented Bishop M'llvaine, which he kindly undertook to present to the Conference. I hope that you will, on the present occasion, be the bearer of my good wishes in the place of one whose loss has been felt by Christian men wherever the English language is spoken. You are aware that I have never been a member of the Evangelical Alliance, under the auspices of which the Conference is to be convened. But it is not possible for me to hold the position which God lias assigned GREETING FROM THE GERMAN CHURCH DIET.* Berlin, September 1, 1873. THE German Evangelical Church Diet, represented by two members of their Exec- utive Committee, viz., Professor Dr. Dorner and Consistorial Councilor Noel, send broth- erly greetings to the Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance about to convene in New 1 York City ; with the expression of their heartfelt desire that in the battle against I the dark powers of infidelity and supersti- tion the bond of peace may draw closer and closer together all soldiers of the Lord on i both sides of the great deep, and that to this end the approaching assembly may be bless- ed in its testimonies, prayers, and thanks- : givings. * [The German Church Diet was founded during i the revolutionary commotions of 1848, and met for the first time over the graves of Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg. It is a free society of Evangelical I Christians in Germany, meeting from time to time i for the discussion of subjects of common interest. I It is the same for the various evangelical denomina- ! tions of the German nation, that the Evangelical Al- ; liance is for Evangelical Christians of all nationalities I And tongues. It aimed first at a confederation of churches, but this idea has been abandoned. P. S.] APPENDIX I. 721 In behalf of the Executive Committee of the German Evangelical Church Diet, the acting Vice-president : D. P. RUD. KOGEL, D.D., Chaplain to the King of Prussia. FROM THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR INNER MISSIONS OF THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH. To the highly venerable Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance, to meet in New York in October next, the undersigned Central Committee, through its Vice-president, Dr. Doruer, of Berlin, and its worthy friend and agent, Pastor Krummacher, of Brandenburg, herewith respectfully bears its fraternal sal- utations. These gentlemen have at our request accepted the commission to express to the highly venerable Assembly our warm inter- est in the deliberations, especially in those which pertain to the great work of Home Mission, and are of such vast importance to the Christian nations and the Evangelical Church in the present and the future. Above all do we earnestly desire that the Assembly may be in the condition to assist in supplying the hosts of evangelical emi- grants who annually arrive at your shores from all parts of Germany, with the bless- ings of evangelical worship, evangelical pas- toral care, and evangelical schools, and to secure the same unto their children in their new home. What hitherto was possible to be done for these purposes in North Amer- ica, partly by the joint assistance from Ger- many, for it we take occasion to express our sincerest thanks to those worthy and noble men who, with faith and many sacrifices, have co-operated with us. We pray them not to grow weary in their endeavors, and assure them of our readiness to work to- gether with them for this end according to our strength and by all possible means. We beg the Assembly to furnish these gen- tlemen, Dr. Dorner and Pastor Krummacher, whom you will also recognize and cordial- ly welcome as our representatives in your midst, with such thoughts and wishes as may be of importance for the spiritual in- terests of our evangelical countrymen, and ought to claim our attention and demand our action. We pray that the Lord of the Church will fill the Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance with his Holy Spirit, and abundantly bless and direct it to the end that, in the midst of these serious times of conflict, his holy work of peace may prosper, and among all nations the kingdom of Jesus Christ be built up, to the praise of his name. DR. WICHEHN. Bci-liu aud Hamburg, July 24, 1S73. 46 FROM THE EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY. AT a private interview with his Majesty W'illiam I., Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, held at Bad Gastein, August 10, 1873, the Rev. Dr. Schaif, acting houorary secretary of the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance, after a full and free discussion of the principles and aims of the Evangelical Alliance and the programme of the General Conference, was authorized and requested to convey his Majesty's " cordial greeting and best wishes (herzlichen Gruss und Segenswunsch) to the General Conference to be held in New York, and to assure it of hi entire sympathy with the evangelical princi- ples and union efforts (evangelische Gnmdsdtzc und Einlmtsbestrebungeri) of the Alliance." The Emperor desired it to bo understood that he sustained the same friendly relation to the Alliance which his brother, King Frederick William IV. of Prussia, had pub- licly expressed in 1857, on the occasion of the General Conference then held at Berlin, when he hospitably entertained the delegates at his palace in Potsdam. It was his fervent wish and prayer that the approaching Confer- ence might receive from above the spirit of wisdom and power, aud lead to a closer union among Christians of all denominations and countries, which his Majesty felt to be of the utmost importance, especially in these times of growing conflict with infidelity on the one hand, and with superstition on the other. Only a united army can conquer the enemy and enjoy the fruits of victory. In laboring for true Christian union, we act in the spirit of Christ, who prayed for it before he offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Emperor also expressed his gratification that his chief chaplain, Dr. Hoffmann, and Professor Godet (the tutor of his only son, the Crown-prince of Germany) were to at- tend the Conference in New York, and said ho would give Dr. Hoffmann every facility to do so ; but this distinguished divine was then lying ill at Berlin, aud died a few weeks afterward (August 28). These expressions of interest in the Alli- ance on the part of the venerable Emperor were remarkably frank aud cordial, and were repeated afterward by his Majesty at the dinner -table before several distinguished guests. They do credit to his personal char- acter, and are of great weight in view of his official position as the royal patron of Evan- gelical Protestantism on the Continent of Europe. FROM THE EVANGELICAL OBERKIR- CHENRATH IN BERLIN. THE Rev. Dr. Dorner conveyed to the Con- ference a message from Dr. Herrmann, Pres- ident of the ObcrkircJtcnralh (which is the 722 APPENDIX I. highest council of the United Evangelical Church of Prussia), sending, in behalf of this body, a cordial greeting to the General Con- ference, with the prayer that it may be rich- ly blessed in its noble efforts to bring about a closer union among Christiana of different lauds and nations. FROM PROFESSOR ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, VERSAILLES, Member of the Institute of France. Neuchatel, Sept. 12, 1S73. To the Kev. Dr. Schaff: DEAR AXD HONORED BROTHER, You have asked from me a few lines, which you may submit to our brethren of every language and of every country whom the great festi- val of the Evangelical Alliance is about to assemble in New York. I am happy to accede, were it only to be able to express to you and to all our breth- ren my deep regret at not being able to take part with them in this family cele- bration, and to enjoy upon earth that fore- taste of heaven which is called Unity in Christ. But imperious duties detain me in France ; they are all comprised in one, that of devoting myself entirely, in my impotence and weakness, to the regeneration of my un- happy country. It is a solemn moment ; never has union among Christians been more necessary, more desired by God ; never, if it is realized, could it bear more blessed fruits ; but (we can not repeat it too often) the world has its eye upon us. Evangelical Christians ! it watches us, it studies us, to see what we will do ; to follow us if we advance to a defined and blessed goal, to despise and disgrace us if we remain at a stanU-still or retreat. The crisis is universal in every domain religious, political, and social. Here we have only to occupy ourselves with the first ; our battle-field is religion. It is there we must conquer or perish. Religion has already passed through two great crises : that of its founding, and that of its reform. It touches now upon a third, not less formidable, not less decisive. The question is to know if it is compatible with the needs and the tendencies of society in our days ; if it has run its course, and must abdicate, to yield its place to the gross ma- terialism which aspires to succeed it, seeing whether, putting itself at the head of mod- ern civilization to purify it and permeate it with its spirit, it will conduct it toward new destinies. It has converted barbarians ; will it suc- ceed in converting the civilized world ? Romanism, with the Council of the Vati- can, has exhausted its vital principle. It has declared war against all the aspirations of the century ; it has alienated from itself its most intelligent and most reasoning adlrer- eiits ; it only retains blind votaries : in a word, it has ceased to be a religion ; it is no longer any thing but a machine of war and government. And we Christians, we Prot- estants, are we fitted to inherit its privi- leges, to try and fill, in hearts and con- sciences, the place it has left vacant f I do not know what others will have to answer for their countries ; but for France I answer, without hesitation, No ! I say it in deep sad- ness, nothing is more melancholy than the aspect presented by Protestantism in the South, which I have twice visited and thor- oughly examined since the war. Every- where infidel pastors, or orthodox pastors who are in reality dead, doing still more evil in preventing souls starving for truth from leaving the Church and going else- where to seek the life they could not find in it. And if the pastors are dead, what shall I say of their congregations T The only cheering prospect in the midst of all this gloom is the movement which begins to work in several of these dead churches in the South of France. Living souls come out from them to form beside them a kind of free church to which the name only is wanting, and they group themselves round faithful pastors, supported, not by the State, but by the congregation. The great question of Separation of Church and State is floating in the air, and propounds itself where no one would dare propound it. It is everywhere at present, but above all in the little town from which I write, Neu- chatel, in Switzerland, which perhaps will have the honor of being the first to present to the world the solution of this great dis- cussion. As regards Romanism, it must no longer be studied in Rome, but in France. In Rome it stated its premises, but it ap- plied them and put its maxims into prac- tice in France. It no longer demands be- lief, but obedience from the souls it has en- thralled. It is at variance with the State, at variance with the century. It has made a waste of the human soul, to enthrone it- self upon the ruins ! But if it reigns in France at this moment, it is an ephemeral reign which can not last, for the bent of the spirit of the century is opposed to it. This does not mean that it is less to be feared for other countries. Ban- ished from the new German empire, the Jes- uits have invaded England, and threaten the United States, notwithstanding the Atlantic which separates them. In these two great nations (so dissimilar, and yet united by a common tie, the Bible, which serves as a base to all their social edifice), Romanism, grown more powerful beneath the shadow of the very liberties it wishes to destroy, attacks Protestantism to pervert and cor- rupt it. Therefore, we will say to our dear brethren assembled at New York, as we have APPENDIX I. 723 said for fifteen years to France, Beware of Romanism, under whatever name it dis- guises itself! Beware of that descent to- ward it, strewn with flowers, called Ritual- ism ! But take care, also, not to imitate the Latin races, who, impeded in their flight by Romanism, know no other door of es- cape but unbelief. And nevertheless, even in France (which now is forcing itself to re- turn to the Middle Ages, and to imitate ev- ery thing belonging to them except their faith), Romanism has lost much ground. The Republic has given it its death-blow, above all among the less enlightened class- es, where, unhappily, it has too often killed faith at the same time. Our radicals, enter- ing as if from below, have not understood that there are no durable liberties but those which are founded on beliefs. Poor France ! a void is by degrees taking possession of souls. Because of her having passed from one extreme to another, and having built only to overthrow, she has finished by be- lieving in nothing, not even in herself, and attacks the very basis of society in the three columns which support it God, the family, and property. Where is the remedy for all these evils ? There is but one, and you, Christians of all countries, assembled at New York, you have it in your hands. It is the Bible, the Word of God. In almost nineteen centuries that the Gospel has ex- isted, has it lost its vigor? has its immortal youth faded? No; it is the same yester- day, to-day, and to-morrow the same for eternity. If it no longer performs mira- cles, it is not Christ's fault, but that of his disciples. Jesus walks still upon the wa- ters, but Peter no longer ventures to go to him ; ho looks at the tempest, and not at his Saviour; and, nevertheless, when all reels around us, when society appears to tremble upon its foundations, the secret for walking with a firm step on this moving ground, where Peter only sinks because he doubts, is " to look to Jesus !" ROSSEEUW ST. HlLAIRE. FROM THE REV. ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D. Extract from a Letter to Hon. George H. Stu- art, of Philadelphia, dated at Edinburgh, llth September, 1873. MY VERY DEAR FRIEXD AND BROTHER IX THE LORD, From what you state, you will, in a day or two, be leaving the shores of this " Old World " of ours for those of your own "New World" across the Atlantic. Would that it were in my power to accompany you ! for my heart always warms toward Ameri- ca whenever I recall to mind the multiplied kindnesses which I once experienced at the hands of yourself and other noble Christian brethren in that great laud. But, from pre- vious communications, you know how, un- der present circumstances, it is impractica- ble for me to give effect to my wishes. Soon in New York " The Empire City," as I was wont to hear it called will assem- ble the great Evangelical Congress, toward which, for a week, will be converging the eyes of all Christendom, as toward a focus of concentrated light and influence. And my fervent prayer is, that the presence and illumination of the Holy Spirit may be abun- dantly experienced in the midst of it. In the programme of subjects to be dis- cussed, I find that the subject of missions, or that of the world's evangelization, occupies a deservedly conspicuous place. Indeed, if properly viewed in the light of Scripture, it is the grandest of all subjects ; since the accomplishment of the object contemplated therein is the one for which the world itself is preserved in being, and in the consumma- tion of which alone the divine and glorified Redeemer will behold of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. I do trust, therefore, that it will be solemnly viewed, and wor- thily treated in all its height and depth, and length and breadth! seeing that the world's evangelization includes not only that of avowed heathendom, with its eight hun- dred millions, but also that of nominal Chris- tendom, with its hundreds of millions, who are members of superstitious and idolatrous communities, or wrapped up in the folds of cold indifferentism or open infidelity, or wallowing in the filth and mire of abomiua- able wickedness. Yea, more ! There is a true sense in which, according to the remark of one of the holiest of your own divines, now, alas ! no more, the purest of even our Prot- estant churches need not only to be revived, but reconverted, or converted again ; that is, brought back to a state of real Scriptural humility, simplicity, holiness, and love. Now, the difficulties in the way of this twofold evangelization of the professing Church of Christ and the heathen world are so enormous, alike in number and in magnitude, that I do not think they can possibly be exaggerated. I say this em- phatically, because if there be, as is some- times alleged, in some quarters a tendency to depict them in colors that are too dark, there is assuredly in other quarters a tend- ency to make comparatively light of them, and so to magnify partial successes as to make it appear that the whole world is rap- idly on the highway toward easy and com- plete evangelization. The latter tendency I can not but regard as a fatal and deadly one, fraught with al- most infinite mischief; lulling the Church of Christ asleep in the bosom of inaction and carnal self-complacency, instead of rous- ing it into tenfold or a hundred -fold greater activity and energy in confronting the mul- titudinous foes that are now marshaled in 724 APPENDIX I. battle array against the cause of truth and righteousness throughout all the realms of earth, under the leadership of tbe apostate spirit who now " worketh in the children of disobedience." Many seem to be afraid of looking at, or attempting to realize, the foruiidableuess of these opposing forces, lest discouragement, depression, and dismay should surge over the ranks of the sacramental host, under the banner of our adored Emmanuel. Such ap- prehension, however, is not only an indica- tion of base cowardliness, but of feeble faith, or a total want of faith, in Jehovah's eternal purposes and promises. Looking steadfast- ly at these, and placing implicit reliance on them, as revealed in his holy oracles, we have nothing to fear or dread, even if the difficulties in the way were vastly greater, and the forces arrayed against us vastly mightier than they really are. By these we are assured, in terms the clearest and most positive, that the most glowing visions of the prophetic muse relative to the ulti- mate destruction of all error and sin, and the universal reign of truth aud righteous- ness, shall one day be triumphantly realized. No matter, then, though now there may seem to be oceans of difficulties, and mount- ains of impossibilities in the way, faith a living faith in Jehovah's purposes and prom- ises ought to prevail, and intensify the assurance that, in Jiis own way and time, God's omnipotency will interpose and level these mountains, roll out these oceans into emptiness, rend the heavens, and pour down the richest effusions of the Spirit's grace over a ransomed and gladdened world. While, then, gratefully acknowledging God's sovereign goodness, and fervently thanking him for any blessing which he may have undeservedly bestowed on her poor and unworthy labors in times past, it surely is the duty, the paramount duty, of the Evangelical Church of Christ through- out all her borders, in obedience to the Di- vine command, to awake and arise from present sloth and slumber; and forgetting the things that are behind in the sphere of evangelizing operations at home and abroad, because of their littleness, and paltriness,- and utter inadequacy, go forth in the heroic spirit of prophets and apostles, confessors and martyrs, to the spiritual conquest of the nations, resolved, through all -sustain- ing grace, never, never to relax, but rather, more and more to increase her self-sacrifi- cing efforts until the citadels of sin and Sa- tan in every land be utterly demolished, and all the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and his Christ. And now " Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Je- sus Christ." Ever, very affectionately yours, ALEXANDER DUFF. FROM PROFESSOR J. I. DOEDES, D.D. Utrecht, Holland, Aug., 13T3. To the Honorable President of the General Con- ference of the El-angelical Alliance at Few York: HONORED SIR, I can not abstain from sending the Conference now held at New York, a word of sympathy Avith my best wishes. Feeling gratified to get a special invita- tion to attend the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, I should have liked very much to meet the brethren and hear their interesting accounts, and to take an active part myself in all that is to be done in order to promote the glorious aim the Conference has in view. But the distance, as well as my academical duties, keeps me back. However, though I can not be present, I take the greatest interest in the labors of the Conference. With the utmost sympathy I i look at the aim aud strivings of the Evangel- i ical Alliance the more so in these days, ! now that in Hollaud, at least, not a few try | to bring about an ecclesiastical alliance be- twixt those who confess the Christ of the Holy Scripture and the adherents of mod- ern liberalism. Averse to an official eccle- siastical alliance, I highly approve of each endeavor to bring together and fraternize those who love the same Saviour of the world, and long to see the same Gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ preached and professed. No amalgamation of the hetero- geneous elements, but free co-operation of the evangelical churches, and spiritual union of all who desire to stand firm in their belief in " the Divine-human Person and atoning work of our Lord and Saviour Jesns Christ as the only and sufficient source of salvation, as the heart and soul of Christianity, and as the centre of all true Christian union and fellowship." By this we truly may expect, with God's blessing, prosperity and bliss for the evangelical churches. And now, wishing your Conference may not be in vain, but may strengthen the hearts of all who are present, I take leave, and remain yours in Christ, our common Lord and Saviour, J. I. DOEDES, Prof. ofTlicol, Unit', of Utrecht. FROM THE HONORABLE ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D. A Letter addressed to the 7?er. Dr. William Ad- ams, Chairman of the Committee on the Pro- gramme. Brookline (Boston), Oct. 11, 1ST3. MY DEAR DR. ADAMS, I owed to your kindness the first invitation, which I re- ceived some months ago, to be present at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, APPENDIX I. 725 and which I was obliged to decline. More recently I gave my consent most gladly that my name should be included in the organ- ization of the meeting, with the full under- standing that it would be out of my power to be present. But as I have read, from day to day, the stirring reports of what has been said and done during the past week, I have regretted sincerely that I could not have broken away from a complication of engage- ments at home, and have run on, even at the eleventh hour, to manifest my sympathy in the objects and in the utterances of the oc- casion. I should have eagerly embraced the op- portunity to offer my most grateful acknowl- edgments to those who had thought me wor- thy to bo named in your list of Vice-presi- dents an honor which I could not but hold all the more distinguished and all the more dear, as associating me in some humble measure with the venerable President of your Assembly, Dr. Woolsey, whose signal and most successful labors in every good cause, whether religious, literary, educa- tional, or international, have given him a deserved pre-eminence, which I should re- joice to have publicly recognized. I confess that my heart burned within me to be at his side when those thrilling w r ords of his open- ing address came leaping over the telegraph- ic wires: " We are here, each one of us, what- ever our form of worship, whatever our dis- cipline, whatever our old recollections de- rived from our Christian forefathers, we are here as one body ; with separate badges and banners, it may be, to mark our national or denominational differences, but all recog- nizing our supreme allegiance to one great standard of the Cross." This was the sub- stance, if not the exact language, of an ad- dress which gave the key-note to all which followed. I can not but feel, my dear sir, that there has been something of unspeakable impress- iveness and grandeur in this multitudinous gathering from all quarters of our country and of the world, which New York has been privileged to witness. We have been ac- customed of late years to vast assemblies, here and elsewhere. We have been enter- tained, almost to satiety, with what have been called " monster meetings," in almost all regions of the earth, and especially in our own region. We have seen grand exposi- tions of art and industry in the principal cities of Europe and America in Paris, in London, in New York, and Boston, and more lately in Vienna. We have seen the vota- ries of agriculture, on our own and other soils, rallying together to exhibit the tri- umphs and to advance the interests of their own pre-eminent department of labor. We have seen, almost annually, British associa- tions and American associations of Science meeting together to compare opinions, to proclaim results, and to encourage investi- gation and research. Grand musical jubi- lees, too, for which the most accomplished and renowned artists, and the most gigan- tic chorus-bands, have been enlisted, are no strangers to our own or other lands. Al- most every interest among worldly occupa- tions and pursuits, civil and military, polit- ical, literary, scientific, and mechanic, has heretofore had its mass meetings or conven- tions, and has challenged and chained the attention and sympathy of mankind by ap- peals to the eye or to the ear. But the wonderful gathering at New York, which is just now about to separate, has been, I need not say, of a different sort, and in a different spirit. It was convened to discuss no mere secular subjects, to ad- vance no mere material interests. It as- sembled in no pride of human invention or human intellect. The learning of Germany, the piety of Switzerland, the roused religious inquiry of France or Spain or Italy, the schol- arship and eloquence of English universities or cathedrals or Independent Churches, met together for no purpose of competition or rivalry, and with no view to ostentations display. No contests were to be waged; no triumphs to be achieved ; no prizes to bo won, save only that " prize of the high call- ing of God in Christ Jesus," toward which the great apostle represented himself as so eagerly pressing. All, all came together to lay aside for a time the differences which had so long separated them, and to remem- ber only the better and higher things in which they agreed. They met to give pub- lic and united recognition of the truth, that religion is above all dogmas, precious as some of those dogmas may be ; that faith is above all forms, dear as many of those forms may be ; that postures and vestments and prayer-books are secondary matters, strong- ly as those prayer-books may be cherished, and justly as they may be prized; that uni- ty and uniformity are two different things ; that there may be separation without es- trangement ; antagonism, even, without al- ienation ; and that the cause of Christ and his kingdom, and his Church universal, " which is the blessed company of all faith- ful people," is to be preferred far, far above the cause of any particular church, however venerable its history, or however valuable its organization. Who can overestimate the importance and the influence of such a meeting even if its only effect were to draw men out for a time from the narrow circles of their own denom- inations ; to impress upon them that those circles are, after all, concentric circles, whose radii reach back alike to one and the same great Sun of righteousness ; and thus to give them a broader margin and a wider circum- ference for their Christian charity and their Christian fellowship ! 720 APPENDIX I. "Surely it ia a strange fact," wrote an Episcopal clergyman of au English church to me, not many weeks ago, " and one preg- nant with hope for the yet unchristianized portions of the earth, tbat, in the good prov- idence of God, the Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive of Egypt, ambassadors of Japan, and the Shah of Persia potentates hereto- fore shut up in their unapproachable ex- clusiveness should be moved by a desire to visit the nations of Europe. But how- should it shame us that we are unprepared, by our unhappy divisions, to exhibit the oneness of the ' truth as it is in Jesus,' and so render nugatory our blessed Lord's prayer that his disciples may ' all be one, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me !' " And how just and forcible were the words of the excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, in the letter brought over by our friend the learned and liberal Dean of that cathedral, whose presence has added so much to the occasion : " Never," says the Primate of all England " never since the Eeformation has it been more important that Christian men should learn to labor with one another that they should, by the manifestation of their union in faith and good wishes, offer effectual opposition to the growing purposes of superstition and infidelity. And never," he adds, " has this union been more earnest- ly longed for than in the present day." I owe you an apology, my dear Dr. Adams, for so long a letter, recapitulating what is so familiar to you already. But as you had more than once most kindly urged my at- tendance at the meeting, you will know how to pardon my trespassing upon you. I desired to show you how deeply the meet- ing has impressed me as a churchman and as a layman ; and to give you, too, the text upon which I should have ventured to offer a few words, if I could have succeeded in getting to New York even in season for the closing exercises to-morrow night. It was my good fortune to see Professor Christlieb for a few moments before he went on to New York, and I have read his mas- terly essay with the greatest interest. The Dean of Canterbury passed a day with me. Let me only hope, in conclusion, that the spirit which has animated the delegates may be kindled in millions of other hearts, and that to this great meeting in New York may be traced hereafter the lighting up anew of a flame of Christian faith and hope and chari- ty which may catch and spread throughout the world, and which neither superstition nor infidelity shall be able to extinguish or withstand. Believe me, reverend and dear sir, with the highest respect and regard, yours sin- cerely, ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Rev. WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D. APPENDIX II. REPORT OF PROGRAMME COMMITTEE, WITH ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS AND RESOLUTIONS. APPENDIX II-CONTENTS, PAOE 1. COMMITTEE ox PROGRAMME : Closing Report 729 2. PEACE SOCIETY, LONDON : Peaceful Arbitration 730 3. LONG : England and Jtussia in Central Asia 731 4. GENEVA COMMITTEE OF. Swiss SOCIETY: On Sunday Legislation .. 733 5. WORKING MEN'S LORD'S DAY REST ASSOCIATION, LONDON : 734 6. VAN OOSTERZEE: International Christian Evidence Society 734 7. ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, LONDON: Abolition of the Slave- Trade. .. 735 8. BRAZIL BRANCH, EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE : Protestantism in Brazil. . 736 9. TURKEY BRANCH, Ev. ALLIANCE: Religious Liberty in Turkey... 736 10. TURKEY BRANCH, Ev. ALLIANCE: Memorial on the Opium Trade.. 739 1 1. BERGH : Cruelty to Animals 740 12. HALL : American Seamen" 1 's Friend Society 741 13. SCHMUCKER: Plan for a General Protestant Union ' 742 14. ADDRESSES AND RESOLUTIONS OF THANKS. . , . 746 APPENDIX II. CLOSING REPORT OF THE COMMIT- TEE ON THE PROGRAMME. AT the closing session, the Rev. Dr. John Hall, in behalf of the Programme Commit- tee, made the following report : Christian, friends have forwarded to the Committee on the Programme papers and suggestions, on which it is deemed proper and respectful to make a report here, for the satisfaction of those who have opened communication with the Alliance in this manner, and for the purpose of completing the materials of the volume or volumes which will constitute the permanent record of this Conference. And it is proper to re- call, in this connection, that the Conference does not pass resolutions of a legislative character. It is, in its own department, precisely identical with those great assem- blies of students of science or of social reform whom observation and experience have taught that comparison of views, state- ment of opinions, and consequent impulse to thought and inquiry, are adequate results of their meetings and ample rewards for their labors. In making their final announcements to the Conference, the Committee on the Pro- gramme beg leave to say that in all their preparatory arrangements it was their hon- est aim and endeavor to exercise the utmost impartiality as regards denominations, na- tionalities, and sections. Few can bo aware of the manifold difficulties to be snrmount- ed in realizing such an ideal, involving fre- quent correspondence with persons dispersed over two continents, or the amount of time and labor actually expended on the general programme. If this programme does not exhibit such an exact adjustment and bal- ancing of devious interests as is entirely sat- isfactory to all, it must be borne in mind that the names of several persons for whom an appropriate place Avas provided do not appear in this document solely because they disappointed the confident expectations of the Committee at an hour too late to ar- range for substitutes. No. 1. A paper has been presented by the American Society for the Prevention of Cru- elty to Animals. The Committee recom- mend that an opportunity be afforded to Mr. Henry Bergh, the President of the So- ciety, to make a concise statement to the Conference, and have arranged accordingly. No. 2. In regard to the important subjects of war and peaceful arbitration, concerning which several memorials from England and the United States have been presented, the Committee report that these topics, togeth- er with pauperism, its causes and remedies (too important to be overlooked by the Evangelical Alliance), had been committed to persons of the highest ability, whose presence Avas expected till within a few days of the opening of the Conference ; and with this explanation they recommend that the memorials* now referred to be printed in their proper place in the proceedings of the Conference. No. 3. Three papers have come from the Rochester branch of the Alliance in rela- tion to infringements of the law of tolera- tion in a nominally Christian country. In the judgment of the Committee, the inter- ests of the sufferers would not be promoted, nor the cause of toleration served, by giving publicity to this report at the present time ; and the Committee recommend that the pa- pers be handed to the Alliance here, with the request that they be the subject of inquiry and of communication with the British Alli- ance, in order to concerted and efficient ac- tion, should cause appear. No. 4. A careful paper on the subject of the Church of Rome in Canada, by Mr. Mur- ray, the Committee recommend to be taken as read, and handed to the editor of the forthcoming volume.t No. 5. The same recommendation is made in reference to a communication from the Rev. James Long, on the Christian Aspects of Russian Progress in Asia a subject lit- tle thought of, and of great practical impor- tance. No. 6. A communication has been received from a newly-formed Branch in Brazil, con- ceived in the best spirit, and expressing re- gret that a personal representative could not be sent. The Committee recommend * [One of these papers came to the editor's hands incomplete and without any indication of its author- ship, and hence hns been omitted. Ed.~\ t [This paper was returned to the author at his own request. i'd.] 730 APPENDIX II. the Branch for enrollment, and that a copy of the report, when issued, be sent to its Corresponding Secretary. No. 7. Two connected communications in French have been received from tbe Sab- bath Committee of Geneva, signed A. Lom- bard, with a plan for concerted action among Sabbath Committees in Europe and Ameri- ca. The Committee recommend that these be referred to the Sabbath Committee of this city. No. 8. A paper from the Antislavery Soci- ety of London, bearing upon the slave-trade in Egypt and elsewhere, is recommended for insertion in the volume of reports, as a means of keeping this fearful evil before the public mind, and promoting that civil and religious liberty, the furtherance of which is one dis- tinctive aim of the Evangelical Alliance. No. 9. The same recommendation is made as to a paper from the Turkish branch, on the opium trade. PEACEFUL ARBITRATION. To the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at New York: DEAR FRIENDS, We, the Committee of the London Peace Society, representing a considerable body of persons who are united together, irrespective of religious or political distinctions, for the one sole purpose of pro- moting peace on earth and good-will among men, venture respectfully, but most earnest- ly, to call the attention of the Conference to a question scarcely second in importance or urgency to any that can engage the delib- erations of your great Assembly. As those who are associated to promote Christian union among men of all nations, the rela- tions which exist between those nations as organized communities can not be a matter outside the province or the sympathies of such a body as yours ; and as Christians, it is impossible that the present state of those relations generally can be regarded by yon with any other than feelings of profound humiliation and sorrow. No one can deny that Christianity is emphatically a religion of peace and charity and brotherly love. No one can deny that the obvious tendency, as the avowed design of its teaching, is not only to unite men with God, but to unite them with each other, without regard to di- versities of race or country or language, by virtue of the common fatherhood of God and the common brotherhood of Christ. No one can deny that among the glorious hopes of the future on which it has taught human- ity to rely, none are more clear and precise than those which relate to the disappearance of war and the establishment of universal peace. But, alas ! how sad is the contrast of what ought to be and what actually is. Near the end of the nineteenth century of the Chris- tian era, we find the earth, and even that part of the earth which professes to submit to Christian authority, tilled with violence and blood. Within the last twenty years, those nations who collectively call them- selves Christendom have been engaged in six desolating and sanguinary wars, which have involved the sacrifice of between two and three millions of human lives, while the waste and destruction of property, and the suffering and demoralization they have oc- casioned, are absolutely incalculable. And what is still more sad and dishearten- ing, when the actual conflicts have ceased, we find the studies, the labors, and the re- sources of peace incessantly directed to ex- tending and perfecting an enormous war or- ganization, as though the chief end of hu- man life is to fight and to prepare for fight- ing. It is estimated that there are between four and five millions of the picked men of Europe dedicated wholly to the service of war, besides as many more who are partly trained to the use of arms. The cost, direct and indirect, to European nations of these armaments, and the interest of their war debts, can not be less than 500,000,000 ster- ling annually, while they are growing and, according to the present race of emulation, must grow rapidly year after year. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the evils of this system of armed rivalry. It ulcerates the heart of nations with mutual terror, hatred, and jealousy. It is the means of diffusing through society an amount of immorality and vice which it is fearful to contemplate. It diverts to purposes of de- struction incalculable resources in men and money which might otherwise be devoted to the moral and material amelioration of the people, and to the furtherance of the great objects of Christian civilization. It mocks the spirit of the Gospel and belies the hopes it has held forth to the world, and gives ample scope to the infidel and the heathen to scoff at its pretensions and prom- ises as a religion of peace. Is it not time, then, that the Christian Church should gird itself to confront and resist this portentous system? Is it be- coming that it should stand as, alas ! it has too long stood, dumb and cowed in the pres- ence of an evil so appalling, uttering at best only faint and faltering words of general lamentation, too often conniving at it. if not using in reference to it, language of direct apology and sanction ? We appeal to the Conference of the Evan- gelical Alliance at New York to lift up its voice like a trumpet, and that with no un- certain sound, in favor of international peace. A signal, a glorious illustration has been re- cently given, by the example of Great Britain and the United States, of the fact, that there are other means than an appeal to the sword APPENDIX II. 731 by which Christian nations can settle their differences means more in accordance with reason and justice, humanity and religion. And still more recently the British House of Commons has, by a deliberate vote, recog- nized as susceptible of general application the principle which in that instance was applied with such auspicious results. May we not hope that a voice may issue from the bosom of your Conference which may strengthen the hands of those who, in the face of great opposition and manifold discouragements, are laboring to establish the dominion of right over might, to substi- tute the reign of law in the place of brute force, in regulating the relations and inter- course of civilized states ? HENRY PEASE, President. CHARLES WISE, Treasurer. HENRY EICHARD, Secretary. Offices of the Peace Society, 19 New Broad Street, London, September 3d, 1ST3. ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA, IN RELATION TO THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZA- TION IN THE EAST. By the REV. J. LONG, Church Missionary in Calcutta. MUCH has been written on the political and military aspects of Russia in the East, but scarcely any thing on what is, for Chris- tian men, a very important subject : THE PRESENT POSITION OF RUSSIA IN CEN- TRAL ASIA IN RELATION TO THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST. I myself having labored twenty -eight years in India as a missionary, and having visited Russia twice in 1863 for five months, and lately for fifteen mouths the above ques- tion has constantly come before me in rela- tion to mission work. I have discussed it with many Russians as well as Englishmen, and have published several pamphlets on the subject. I regret it is not in abler hands, but I will do my best to open it in its bearings on Christianity. The present position of Russia in Central Asia is practically that of a neighbor to En- gland in her Indian dominions. The recent conquest of Khiva and Bokhara has given Russia a strong point on which to move ei- ther for war or peaceable development in relation to England and the East. Russia, with a great future before her in respect to extension of dominion down to Eastern Turkistan and the Chinese Wall, is laying slowly but surely the foundations of a mighty Eastern empire in connection with Central Asia, as England has already done in Southern Asia. Arising out of this new state of things, the great problem is, "Are these two great empires to be like France and Germany, thwarting and impeding each other? are they to be military rivals, as France and En- gland were in the last century, pursuing a policy of antagonism destructive to the real interests of both in the East ? Or are they to pursue a nobler career to rival each other in the arts of peace, in improving the native races, in giving that protection of life and property so necessary as the basis of missionary, mercantile, and philanthrop- ic efforts ; to set an example of what good Christian government is ; and to extinguish the last glimmering rays of hope in Asiatic feudalism and in Islamism, whose strength has been, like that of Romanism, in main- taining the temporal power? The recent conquest of Khiva by Russia, like the fall of Bokhara "The Holy" is a severe blow to Mohammedanism. England has brought down Moslem pride in Delhi and Lakhran, as Russia is now doing in Samarcand and Khiva. Islam is struggling to recover lost power iu Asia. In Central Asia the Moslem chiefs and priests proclaimed a jehad, or holy war, against Russia that has signally failed, as has the corresponding Wahati movement in India. The Euphrates is drying up for the kings of the East to pass over. They have thrown their last stake now, in exciting the mutual jealousies of England and Eussia, hop- ing, in the spirit of the common proverb, " When rogues fall out, honest men come by their own." As allies with the Mohammedans, in mak- ing " a cat's-paw " of England and Russia, are all the millions in Asia who are opposed to regular government and to industrious habits, and who, like the sipahis of the In- dian mutiny, owl-like, shun the light of Christian civilization the adherents of fallen, worn-out dynasties the priesthood of a decaying idolatry those who have nothing to lose and every thing to gain by revolution, who wish for a life of plunder and bloodshed all these exult like the pe- trel in prospect of the storm, hoping it might redress their desperate fortunes ; they look to war as the straw for the drowning man. With these are allied all native princes and chiefs who wish to rule their subjects with a rod of iron, like the Khan of Khiva, who ap- pealed to England for support against Rus- sia ; but England wisely declined to take any step to support such abarbarous government. I have lived in intimate intercourse with natives in India for more than a quarter of a century; and of all the arguments brought by them against Christianity, the one I found most difficult to meet was this : If your religion be so good, how is it that Christians have acted so bad ? The history of Christian nations is one series of wars ; the annals of Europe are written in blood. See how those Christians hate one another ! 732 APPENDIX II. Should two such empires as those of En- gland and Russia come into collision in Asia, or maintain a hostile policy, what ad- ditional food will be given to these objec- tions T England is doing a great work in India in promoting Christianity and civilization, and in training up the natives for self-gov- ernment : much of this would be paralyzed by a hostile policy between England and Russia. America and Germany have an interest in this question in relation to their mercantile and missionary establishments, which flour- ish under the aegis of British protection. Russia is making great progress since her glorious work of serf -emancipation. The Russia of the present day is very different from the Russia of Nicholas, and her spirit of reform deserves our thorough sympathy. I have made the tour of Russia from the Caucasus to Finland, and have observed with deep in- terest the contrast the Russian Church pre- sents to the Romish, in her having an open Bible: everywhere I saw encouragement given to the circulation of the Scriptures. The Russian Church is not bound by a Council of Trent, or shackled by the eccle- siastical despotism of a papacy; there is no law of celibacy isolating her priesthood from the laity; but much of the present and proposed reform would be checked by a war, or mere military objects. It is obvious, then, what advantages would arise from a good understanding between Russia and England the two great empires of Asia in enabling them to co-operate with each other against the common foe of igno- rance, feudal oppression, the cruel rites of paganism, and the destructive tendencies of Islamism. The governments of England and Russia are in friendly relations ; and were the peo- ples of both empires to know each other better, they would be still more so. In this respect the visit of the Czarowitz to En- gland and the proposed marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to the Emperor of Rus- sia's only daughter, are auxiliaries to the cause of peace. Englishmen and Russians should see more of each other. But the shield has a reverse. While the Russian people is pacific, and the Czar a friend of peace, there is a strong military party in Russia, influential in the press, whose policy is aggressive and intriguing in Central Asia, looking forward to a war ultimately with England on Asiatic ques- tions. This party is reckless, for it has not to pay the costs or penalties of war. The Russian press, ignorant of Asiatic af- fairs, is too much influenced by this party, and is becoming more opposed to England, thinking she is averse to Russian progress in Asia. On the other hand, England is jealous of any Russian encroachment that may endanger the stability of her Indian empire by undermining her outworks, and by the exercise of a disturbing power in India, while little is known in England of the progress of peaceful reform in Russia. I am neither an alarmist nor a Russopho-. bist; but the political aspect looks lower- ing there are grave issues at hand. In our present relations, ambitious generals or intriguing diplomatists may any day endan- ger peace between the two empires. Many pamphlets have been written on the Central Asia question ; the majority take only the military aspect of the question, that England and Russia must some day fight about Central Asia, ignoring the mu- tual interests of both countries. If Christian men leave this important question in the hands of military men, tor- tuous diplomatists, or mere secular politi- cians, natural animosities and susceptibili- ties may be so inflamed that England and Russia, like as in the Crimean war, may drift into, or be driven by an unenlightened public opinion into war, or an armed peace almost as bad as war. The friends of Christianity and civiliza- tion in the East must take this up. We know that on the recent Alabama question their influence had something to do with the peaceful solution of the difficulty, which saved two kindred nations from the horrors of war. An enlightened public opinion must be brought to bear on the action of diplomats, and a counter action must be used against military writers on both sides who regard a state of war as the natural condition of so- ciety. The public mind must be indoctri- nated with the view that the points in which England and Russia agree are far more im- portant than those in which they differ; that, as the two leading Christian empires of Asia, their real interest is to welcome each other as co-workers; that England should not view with such jealousy Russian ad- vances in Asia, nor should Russia encroach too closely on the Indian frontier ; that both empires have sea-room enough in Asia, and they should so act that contact may not lead to collision. As one of the means for rousing public attention to this side of the question, the plan of prize essays may be of use. A prize of from 300 to 500 might be offered for the best essay, or essays, on the following subject : A good understanding teticcen England and Russia on the Central Asia question of great importance to the spread of Christianity and civilization in the East. The obstacles to this good understanding, and the lest icay of remov- ing them. The very advertising this subject in the leading journals of Europe would arouse at- tention to this aspect of the question, which APPENDIX II. 733 lias, strange to say, been so much overlook- ed. Men have written as if the only solu- tion of the problem was the ultima ratio re- gum war. The present time is favorable, as the two governments of England and Russia have shown in their recent correspondence on the Central Asia question a calm and peaceable spirit. It is not when men's passions are inflamed, and the storm of war hushes the quiet voice of calm discussion that the ques- tion can be raised. The writers for the prize essay should treat, not of mere platitudes on the advantages of peace in general, but of peace between En- gland and Russia ; they should point out that the past relations of England and Rus- sia have, with the exception of the Crimean war, been on a friendly footing ; that in Eu- rope commercial, social, literary, and relig- ious ties tend to maintain that friendly foot- ing, secured still more by the spirit of re- form in Russia; that in Asia friendly rela- tions might conduce most powerfully, not only to the moral and material interests of both empires in Asia, but might also serve as a weapon against their common foe Asiatic barbarism, ignorance, superstition, the tyranny of native princes and chiefs ; that nations may be on friendly relations, though not agreeing in all points of pol- icy. But the writers should grapple mainly with the best modes of removing the chief obstacles to this good understanding viz., the influence of political and military agents on the frontiers in intriguing, sowing dis- sensions on both sides ; a tortuous, double- dealing diplomacy, which regards patriotism as hating other countries ; the Press, fed by correspondents who love to fish in troubled waters, and to publish sensational articles ; the Turkish question as connected with the Central Asia one ; the Russian public's ig- norance of the great moral and material improvements carried on by England in In- dia ; the English public's corresponding ig- norance of the reforms being worked out in Russia, and of Russia's natural and necessa- ry tendency to development in an easterly direction ; the unsettled condition of the Persian and Afghan frontiers. Much of the future progress of Christian- ity and civilization in Asia may depend on a good understanding between England and Russia ; the points in which they agree are far more important than those in which they differ ; and both should remember that the eyes of the Moslem world now regard a rupture between England and Russia as the only means of their regaining lost power. The crescent and the cross are placed face to face. CONCERTED ACTION ON SUNDAY LEGISLATION. [A communication to the Conference was presented by Professor Pronier from Mr. Alexander Lombard, of Geneva, President of the Swiss Society for the sanc- tiflcatiou of the Lord's day, inviting the Conference to take some action in favor of securing to the working classes of Europe the benefits of the weekly rest-day, and inclosing a draft of such a measure as it was hoped the Conference would adopt. As the Conference was precluded by its rules from recommending or taking such action, this communication and the accompany- ing paper were referred to the New York Sabbath Committee ; but in view of the importance of the sub- ject, and iu justice to the author, they are here insert- ed.^.] Geneva, August 1, 1873. To the Committee of the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at New York : DEAR AND HONORED BRETHREN IN CHRIST, As I am unable to comply with the kind invitation of the Committee of the Confer- ence about to be held in New York, I must transfer to others the duty of representing our society. I can not do better than to charge with this mission my honored friends, Professor Pronier and Pastor Couliu, who are delegated to your Conference by the Evangelical Alliance of this city. They will be very glad, I am sure, to car- ry word to you in our name, and to aid in carrying out the views formally expressed by the Conference of 1867, at Amsterdam, which I with certain friends proposed. It is a result more and more to be desired, that a joint arrangement be made on a prac- ticable basis for an energetic and united action before the political authorities and the managers of the great industries, for the purpose of securing to every man the enjoy- ment of his weekly rest-day, and the ben- etits temporal and spiritual of the Lord's day. Since it is not permitted mo to make my feeble voice heai'd among you, and since the thoughts expressed in my essay on "the State and Sunday Laws," transmitted at your request, in 1870, do not fully meet the pres- ent requirement, I dare to hope that at any rate the essential result which our society proposes will be reached in some measure, and that the questions relating to the Chris- tian and social functions of the Lord's day will be examined with the attention they deserve. I know that they have place in your Conferences, and that Christian men qualified for the task have been designated by your Committee to treat them ; but what I must needs wish is that some more sub- stantial results follow from your Conference than from that at Amsterdam. If the basis of an accord is once fixed, it will devolve on you to carry it into effect, and, with the help of our God, we lovo to hope that the revival of the divine institution of the Lord's day in Europe, and everywhere, will date from the Conference at New York. 734 APPENDIX II. Receive, dear and honored brethren in Christ, the expression of my respectful con- sideration, ALEXANDER LOMBARD, President of the Geneva Committee, etc. ACTION PROPOSED TO BE TAKEN BY THE GENERAL CONFERENCE AT NEW YORK. The General Conference of the Evangel- ical Alliance at New York, in view of the resolution with reference to the Lord's day, adopted at Amsterdam in 1867, and desirous of advancing the cause of the weekly rest- day in Europe, and of obtaining for the work- ing classes a participation in its temporal and spiritual benefits, resolves as follows : Resolved, That the Committee of the Evangelical Alliance of New York is invited to put itself in com- munication with similar committees in Europe, and to send delegates to act unitedly with them in suita- ble ways for the purpose of obtaining from govern- ments and the managers of the great industries some practical measures for securing respect to the holy day, and for granting to those who are deprived there- of their enjoyment of its privileges. WORKING-MEN'S LORD'S DAY REST ASSOCIATION. Object: To secure to the People their natural and Scriptural right to the rest of the Lord's Day. President : The Eight Honorable The Earl of Shaftes- bury, K.G. To the Conference of Christians of all Nations assembled in Neic York : MR. CHARLES REED, Member of Parliament, and Vice-president of the above Association, and Mr. James Girdlestone, Chairman of its Committee (tried friends of the cause), hav- ing announced their intention of attending the Conference, the Committee commends them to the brethren assembled, and desires to send through them their brotherly greet- ing. The Committee recognizes the perpetual obligation of the Divine Law of holy rest on the Lord's day, and is convinced that this rest is one of the natural and Scriptural rights of man. The Committee acknowledges with grati- tude the civil laws in the United States and England that preserve the day of rest for the people of both nations, and believes that much of their prosperity is due to the na- tional observance of the day. The Committee deeply regrets that in so many ways the Sabbath is desecrated, and that so many thousands of our fellow-men are unnecessarily required to labor on that day, and earnestly hopes that the Confer- ence will not separate without a declaration of opinion on this most important subject. [Adopted at a special meeting of the Com- mittee, held on the llth September, 1873.] CHARLES HILL, Secretary, 13 Bedford Row, London, W. C. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. Proposed by the Rev. Dr. VAN OOBTERZEK, Professor of Theology at Utrecht, Holland. THE Rev. Dr. M. Cohen Stuart, of Rotter- dam, laid before the Programme Committee of the General Conference, at the request of the Rev. Dr. van Oosterzee, who was un- avoidably absent, a printed communication, the substance of which is contained in the following extract : " When, in the month of July, 1871, depu- ties from different branches of the Evangel- ical Alliance met together in Stuttgart, in order to make an effort in behalf of the re- ligious freedom of their fellow -Christians in the Baltic provinces of Russia, and some days went by while we were waiting for the desired audience, the suggestion was made by one of those present, and earnestly sup- ported by others, that the exceptional occa- sion of Christian friends from all parts of Europe and America bound to each other by unity of spirit being met together might still, in another way and for another aim than that which had brought us thither, be made useful for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. "All unanimously felt the high impor- tance of the time in which we actually live, and acknowledged, without reserve, that nev- er, since the establishment of Christ's Church, had the spirit of forsaking and assailing the Gospel been so daring and dangerous as in this second half of the nineteenth century. All agreed in the conviction that not merely a part of religious truth, one or other dog- matic formula or Church confession, how- ever important in itself, is now called in question, but that even the maintenance of those really fundamental truths on which the whole belief in Christian revelation at all times was founded yes, of those great principles on which necessarily rests every confession of religion whatever was at stake. They all felt that it might be called a good and holy work if Christians from different parts of the world were to join for the defense and maintenance of the faith in these days of struggle, thereto uniting and concentrating as much as possible all the forces which Christian science in various lands and churches would be able to supply. " The motion for establishing an Interna- tional Association for the defense of the Chris- tian faith against its actual aggressors, brought forward by the writer of these lines, and eloquently and urgently seconded by others with various arguments, was carried; and the undersigned was deputed to submit to the different branches of the Evangelical Alliance, and to other corporations and in- dividuals from whom sympathy and support might be expected, the suggestion which was APPENDIX II. 735 made, in order by these means to lay the first foundation for a more elaborate plan. "This International Association, accord- ing to the spirit in which the proposition was made, ought to rest on the principles of an unshaken belief in the main facts and truths of the Gospel, but at the same time on those of true Christian love and toler- ation, and therefore not present a limited confessional, but a universal and cosmopolite character. As its aim, it ought to consider the thetic-apologetic maintenance of those foundations on which religion in general, and revelation more especially, is grounded, and therefore be fixed on the basis of the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, in its supernatural and ethical character. It would be its task to take notice of, and join with all that is done in various lands and churches for the furtherance of the same object, in order to co-operate with these as much as possible, so as to become a central point for divers endeavors now often too much iso- lated, taking thus an independent and prom- inent place, not against, but among others. The Association should, moreover, have at its disposal a fund, which, duly administer- ed, might serve for a liberal reward for prize essays called forth by the Association, and judged by the most competent authorities. It is proposed to form a Board consisting of ten or twelve men from different countries in Europe and America, best known in the domain of theological, and especially apolo- getic science, which could meet perhaps once a year, and whose duty it would be to pro- mote the publication of various apologetic writings bearing a popular, but at the same time, truly scientific character. Good trans- lations of different existing apologetic works, now often confined to the narrow circle of one country, Avould seem advisable too. In a word, an international apologetic intercourse would in this way be promoted in defiance of the power of unbelief, for the strengthen- ing of Christian faith, and to the glory of Him who, according to the prophetic word, " shall reign in the midst of his foes." J. J. VAX OOSTERZEE, 1'rofessor of Divinity. [The Programme Committee, which was over- whelmed with the pressure of business during the sessions of the Conference, referred the paper of this distinguished divine to the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the Evangelical Alliance.. It was accordingly brought before this body, which, while duly appreciating the importance of the sub- ject, saw such formidable difficulties in the way of organizing, under the auspices of the Alliance, an In- ternational Apologetic Association, that action was indefinitely postponed. It is hoped, however, that the plan may continue to receive serious considera- tion, and be brought up in a practicable shape and by regular appointment, at some future meeting of the General Conference. JEtf.] ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. Antislavery Society, Offices, 27 New Broad St., London, E. C., September 6, 18T3. DEAR SIR, The Committee of the Brit- ish and Foreign Autislavery Society have addressed, through the Honorary Secreta- ries, a letter to the Rev. James Davis, the Secretary of the British Organization of the Evangelical Alliance, asking that the atten- tion of the Conference of all Nations may specially be called to the subject of the slave-trade and slavery, with a view to awaken attention to .these wide-spread evils, and to take such action as the Conference shall think best in this matter. From a variety of circumstances the pub- lic have till lately indulged in the belief that, save in one or two places, and to a very limited extent, the slave-trade is suppressed and slavery is well-nigh extinct. How such an illusion exists is to some of us difficult to understand. There is slavery throughout Egypt, Turkey, Persia, Muscat, at Zanzibar, in Mozambique, etc., where tens of thousands are deprived of their birthright of personal liberty. In Madagascar, I have reason to believe, there are thousands of slaves held at the disposal and will of the owners. These markets must be supplied, and hence, so long as slavery exists, the slave- trade will be carried on. Accordingly, this has been flourishing at Zanzibar; and though a treaty to suppress it has been signed by the Sultan, the traders will seek an outlet elsewhere. In the Upper Nile district, slave- hunting has been conducted on a large scale ; and last year over 30,000 slaves were carried away from the interior of the Gall a country. From the Lake Tchad district it is estimated that annually at least 4000 slaves are taken. We grieve, too, to see that in Cuba there are 350,000 slaves, nearly ev- ery one of whom is entitled to his liberty under British treaty rights; and in Brazil there are 1,500,000 human beings doomed to a life-long bondage ; in addition to this, wo have the Portuguese China coolie - trade from Macao to Peru and Cuba, involving fearful misery and sacrifice of life, and the importation into those countries of from 20,000 to 25,000 Chinese, many of whom arc in a more wretched state than the negro slave in Cuba. There is also the Polynesian kidnapping, which continues to flourish. With all this evil it surely becomes the Conference of Christians to give the subject the gravest consideration, and to take suita- ble action. There is also another point demanding at- tention. Sir Bartle Frere, in his memoran- da on the present state of the slave-trade and slavery in Egypt, says, " I was not at all prepared for the very general testimony as to the extent of the slave -holding among Christians, especially among the Copts, Syri- 736 APPENDIX II. ans,Abyssiuiaus,etc.,and I found it was gen- erally regarded by residents who have the means of knowing as a practice which has .spread in iii-lt among the Christiana of lute years, and is on the increase." A missionary in Syria also writes: "It seems the Turks, Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews think they can not live without keeping slaves." This is a matter which affects the cause of Christ at large, and. we should be glad to know that the Conference of all Christians will be able to give these topics their atten- tion, and to give such utterance as shall as- sist to bring an end to such a state of things. The Committee will be thankful for any aid you will give in this matter. They are as- sured of your thorough sympathy, and will be cheered by seeing that you have been able to take action. I am yours truly, BENJ. MILLARD, Secretary. PROTESTANTISM IN BRAZIL. 1 Rua Nova de Sao Jose, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Aug. 13, 1873. To the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance to be held in the city of Xew Tork, October 2, 1873 : REV. FATHERS AND DEAR BRETHREN IN OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, We have the honor to inform you that at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Con- ference of the Province of Sao Paulo, Brazil, held on the 21st of July, 1873, in Santa Bar- bara, the Evangelical Alliance of Brazil was organized. We inclose a copy of our Basis and Con- stitution, which is similar to the one adopt- ed by the Evangelical Alliance of the Unit- ed States, and also a list of officers elected. Though containing but few Brazilian names, we are thankful for these ; and if the work of evangelizing this nation progress in the future as it has in the past, we have no doubt whatever that the Lord in his own good time will raise others to join us. We request your united prayers in our be- half. We are in the midst of extreme ultra- montanism, and consequently in the midst of gross superstition and bold skepticism. The bishops have lately rebelled against the government, and openly declare to acknowl- edge no other authority but the infallible Pope. The final result must be separation of Church and State. We do not enjoy religions liberty, but merely religious toleration, and are subject to much annoyance in the exercise of our religious privileges. In some places the peo- ple are compelled by the military to kneel down in the streets when the host passes ; in others, either the mob or the police breaks up religious gatherings, as Avas not long ago the case in Pernambuco. We are not per- mitted to build houses of worship in the form of churches or temples. Our Protest- ant national guards are compelled to do serv- ice on the Lord's day, and to accompany un- covered any procession of images which the priests may see fit to order. But blessed be the Lord our God, the good seed is taking root in the hearts of the na- tion. The colporteurs sell annually thou- sands of dollars' worth of Bibles, Testament.-. and religious reading. Churches are being organized, and in many places the people request the preaching of the Gospel. The Catholic priesthood here is demoralized, cor- rupted, and the people are tired of these their spiritual teachers. We regret that we can not be personally represented at your General Conference, but we are especially instructed to assure you of our deep interest in all your deliberations. May the Spirit of God dwell richly in you and among you. May the world have once more a proof of the vital union of true be- lievers. May all your discussions be to the glory of God and of his Son. We shall be most happy to receive reports of the proceedings of your Conference for distribution among our members and peo- ple, and at the same time request the secre- taries of the different branches to favor us with any publication or information which they may deem useful to us. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ bo with you all. Your humble and obedient brethren in Christ Jesus, our Lord, E. VANORDEN, JOHN IRWIN LEE, M. P. B. DE CARVALHOSA, Cor. See's, E. A., Brazil. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TURKEY, AND THE CONDITION OF ITS PROTESTANT POPULATION. WHEN the famous Haiti Sherif, extorted from the Turkish government in the begin- ning of the reign of Sultan Abdul-Medjid (circa 1840), was confirmed and strengthen- ed by the treaty of Paris in February, 1856, Christian nations, and notably the Protest- ant nations of Great Britain and the United States, regarded the contest over, the ques- tion of religious liberty in Turkey as virtu- ally settled, the victory as substantially won. The concessions made were taken as made in good faith ; the promises were accepted as meaning what they seemed to mean. Yet even in the years immediately suc- ceeding the Crimean War, there were not wanting those who maintained that the con- cessions unwillingly made under pressure were little worth, and that every possible difficulty would be thrown in the way of their realization. Now, after seventeen years. APPENDIX II. 737 if we see evidence both of an honest purpose on the part of the Turkish government to re- deem its pledges, and actual progress in re- deeming them, no doubt it is all we can fair- ly demand. But the fact that the Turkey Branch of the Evangelical Alliance feels bound to present a memorial on this subject to the General Alliance meeting in New York shows that we fail to find evidence of such progress as we are entitled to expect. We remark, however, in passing, that there are many men, and some of them influential men in government counsels, who honestly desire not only to meet the literal and tech- nical sense of the imperial grants above re- ferred to, but to secure and maintain in Tur- key full religious liberty for all classes. On the other hand, it should also be re- marked that the government has always of- ficially maintained that it never intended to concede to Christian powers any right of -in- terference in relation to any class of its sub- jects, and most emphatically so in relation to its Moslem subjects, and has always con- sistently declared that it reserves to itself the exclusive and absolute right of control in respect to all the affairs of all its subjects. When we have acknowledged a formal and official granting of religious toleration, and the abrogation of the death penalty as pun- . ishment for a change of faith as such, we have acknowledged the fact as it really exists. We now proceed to cite evidence that re- ligious liberty is still seriously interfered with, not only in relation to Mohammedans becoming Christians, but in the case of evan- gelical Christians generally. We readily ac- knowledge, indeed, that the government has formidable difficulties to contend with in the fact that the principles of religious liberty are neither understood nor appreciated by the mass of the people of its various nation- alities; we admit also that most of the grievances that have been suffered have arisen, not from the spontaneous action of the government, but from the intrigues often of several sects against our Protestant breth- ren, the fault of the authorities being that the local governor lent himself, in most in- stances, to be the tool of oppression, while redress from the Porto was tardy and inef- ficient ; nay, we shall even admit that, in some instances, the native Protestants may not have sought the attainment of their ob- jects, such as the building of churches and schools, in the precise order and method re- quired by law and custom. Still, after all 1 these deductions, we fail to find evidence of such a disposition on the part of the govern- ment to grant religious liberty to their Prot- estant subjects as the national engagements fairly entitle us to expect ; and we maintain that those solemn pledges of the sovereign imply the obligation of seeing to it that what is promised by the central government shall not be rendered a dead letter through 47 the intrigues of fanatics, the venality of lo- cal magistrates, or even the ignorance and errors of the sufferers themselves. We ob- serve, then, that 1. The Protestant communities are, to a large extent, denied the right of representa- tion in the general, provincial, and local coun- cils of the empire. Complaints come up repeatedly, and are loudly urged from all the provinces, that in- justice and bad faith characterize the acts of the government in this regard ; and the most earnest and repeated efforts of the civil head of the Protestants ai'e without avail to correct the evil. The council in which the Protestants naturally desire to be represent- ed is the Council of Justice ; but the ex- perience of Protestants is that they are al- most always kept out of these councils, and when once admitted, are again thrust out on the slightest pretext, and that a most invid- ious distinction is made to their disadvan- tage when compared not only "with Osman- lees, but also with the other Christian, and especially with the Roman Catholic subjects of the Porte. For example : In the province of Aleppo, with a popula- tion of some seven thousand Protestants, they have no representative in the Central Provincial Council. In the large communi- ties of Aiutab, Marash, and Oorfa (in the province of Aleppo), there are no Protestant representatives in the local councils of jus- tice ; while the Eoman Catholics, with much smaller communities, are represented. In one instance, where the Protestants largely outnumbered the Roman Catholics (six to one), and a Protestant was chosen to repre- sent both communities, he was set aside, and a Roman Catholic received by the government. In like manner, in the province of Sivas r Protestants have tried in vain to secure the same rights as others ; and even in the cities of Sivas, Yozgat, and Marsovau, where at one time Protestants sat in the councils, they were afterward removed. The same is true in the provinces of Diarbekir, Erzroom, and Angora, and in Syria. In keeping with this, it is not long since the head of the whole Protestant community of the empire suffered the indignity of being placed, on days of formal presentation to the Sultan, out of the order and rank he formerly held along with other representatives of Christian sects, and was put after the Jewish representative. 2. The declaration that Christian testi- mony is received on an equality with Mos- lem testimony is not borne out by facts, es- pecially where Moslem interests are affected. Christians are constantly exposed to the old indignity of having their testimony set aside by Moslem judges; and it is always easy, and constantly practiced, so to control the process of a cause as to preserve the old injustice, even where the appearance of fail- dealing is kept up. But in large portions of 738 APPENDIX II. the empire this new concession is absolutely a dead letter. 3. All the efforts of Protestants, both na- tive and foreign, to build churches, schools, houses for the pastor, or such like, are hin- dered to the last degree by the government, or by local officials. The government professes to foster edu- cation and favor eleemosynary institutions. But Robert College waited seven years for leave to be. A theological seminary at Mar- sovan was not, it is true, hindered in the building ; but the local government was aft- erward so vexed because it had not prevent- ed it, that now, for two years and a half, a missionary is hindered from building a house for himself, when there is confessedly no real objection to it ; and this, too, although the American legation has done its best to secure justice in this instance. Most of the places of Protestant worship throughout the country were built under the name of houses, or sometimes that of schools, as less likely to rouse opposition than that of church, the government haviug rendered the procuring of permission for the erection of a church so nearly impossible as greatly to discourage attempts on the part of Prot- estant communities to provide places of wor- ship recognized as such. Whether the real difficulty consists in the opposition of the central government, or in the antipathies of local officials, or in the state of the laws they have to administer, it is not for us to say ; we simply state the facts as we find them. In numerous instances, also, where for many years the ringing of a chapel bell for the regular services of the Sabbath had been permitted, such ringing has lately been summarily and arbitrarily forbidden. 4. The government has within the last dec- ade made a persistent and, to a large ex- tent, a successful effort to crush out relig- ious inquiry among Mohammedans. Some years ago there was considerable open inquiry concerning Christian truth among Moslems. In the summer of 1864 the government arrested, imprisoned, and ban- ished all upon whom it could lay hands of those wholly or partially committed to Chris- tianity ; and the intimidation and espionage then and subsequently practiced have borne their expected fruit in keeping back inquir- ers, and making the impression upon Mo- hammedans that religious liberty does not exist in fact at least, for them. Instances could be cited from Constantinople, Asia Mi- nor, and Syria, did our limits allow of de- tails. It is but right, however, to add that the Osmanlee converts to Christianity who stood firm in 1864 have since been allowed to profess their adopted faith, and even to labor actively for its diffusion, without molesta- tion, though doubtless under our protection. On the other hand, it is a cause of serious complaint that rude attacks upon Christian- ity are allowed by the government to be pub- lished in the Turkish language, while no re- ply is permitted, and that although half the population of the empire professes the ca- lumniated faith. By what right is our faith reviled, and at the same time our mouths pe- remptorily closed f 5. Notwithstanding all paper professions and promises of the government in regard to the administration of justice, the testi- mony reaching us from all parts of the em- pire testimony oftentimes most explicit and damaging to the government shows either insincerity or imbecility in carrying out auy principles of justice at all, or lim- iting the oppression felt by the Christian population to be so galling. Redress of ac- knowledged wrongs is excessively tardy, and delinquent officials, when removed for mis- demeanor, are often reinstated or promoted, in defiance of all justice or even decency. 6. There is no part of this whole subject which more fitly calls for the thoughtful at- tention of Christians from all Protestant countries, as represented in the Evangelical Alliance, than the fact that during the last decade the Protestant powers have taken a new departure, pursued a new line of policy, in relation to Turkey. The Sublime Porte has claimed to have exclusive control in its own internal affairs, and has shown itself increasingly unwilling to brook dictation, or even advice, from for- eign powers in relation to its management of the religious affairs of its own subjects of all denominations. In deference to this claim on the part of Turkey, and perhaps with a laudable desire to respect the rights of Turkey as an independent state, recog- nized as a member of the body politic of Europe, the Protestant powers have taken long steps backward since the time when Lord Stratford de Redcliffe represented Great Britain at the Sublime Porte. The conse- quence is that now ministers and embassa- dors of Protestant powers receive such in- structions from their governments with ref- erence to interfering in religious matters in Turkey, and the tendency toward absolute non-interference is so strong, that wo may well fear results unfavorable to Protestant, and even to all Christian interests in this country. Roman Catholics, indeed, seem still to be efficiently protected; but Protestants seem in danger of being left to the uncertain justice of Turkish officials, with what result our previous remarks sufficiently enable us to foresee. While stating these grievances, we would not be understood as denying that Protest- ants, native and foreign, enjoy many impor- tant privileges in Turkey. The publication and circulation of the Holy Scriptures, and of religious books in general, are freely per- mitted, in all languages, all over the empire. The opening of schools is not interfered APPENDIX II. 739 with, nor are any prohibited from meeting in each other's houses for divine worship, or from organizing themselves into churches or ecclesiastical unions. In regard to such things, it is but a few years since Turkey contrasted most favorably with most of the states of Europe. We thankfully acknowl- edge all this ; and we only desire that the Turkish government should go forward, and grant to its Protestant subjects the unham- pered enjoyment of those rights and priv- ileges which are their due, and which the liberal conduct of the Porte, at a time when such liberality was rare, led us confidently to expect would never be withheld from them. In conclusion, it appears to us that the ex- igencies of the subject which forms the head- ing of this paper call for the following ac- tion on the part of the Evangelical Alliance : 1. That that body give publicity to the facts we have presented, in order to awaken the attention of the Christian world, and enlist for our cause the support of Christian public opinion. 2. That the Alliance memorialize the gov- ernment of Great Britain, as the power to which the Protestants of Turkey have al- ways been taught to look especially for pro- tection in time of need, and deprecate any \vithdrawal of the most efficient support of liberty of conscience, and of perfect religious equality among all subjects of the Porte. The Committee of the Turkey Branch of the Evangelical Alliance, GEORGE W. WOOD, ALEXANDER THOMSON, GEORGE F. HERRICK. CONSTANTINOPLE, August 29, 1ST3. APPENDIX. Two illustrations of the tendency we fear we must say the wish of the government to ignore the existence of its Protestant sub- jects have been brought under our notice in time only to be referred to here. 1. Sal Nameh is an official annual register of all the government establishments and principal officers of the empire, including nearly all the clergy of every denomination. But here you will search in vain for any mention of the Protestant clergy, or of their local civil heads ; nor is there any mention even of the Vckeel of the whole Protestant community, though he is a recognized officer of the government, with chambers assigned to him at the Sublime Porte. 2. Jahriri Emlak is an official census of the population and property of the empire. All other denominations are here duly enumer- ated, but there is no rubric assigned to the Protestants, who are therefore included un- der one or other of the other denominations, as the officiating clerk found most conven- ient. We can not but regard this as a mean insult to a community which presents no less than eighty per cent, of its population of both sexes as able to read, and which, during the thirty years of its existence, has afforded no instance of conviction for any crime. A community presenting so striking a contrast to the other bodies of the empire was surely entitled to ordinary courtesy at the hands of their rulers. MEMOKIAL ON THE OPIUM TRADE. To the Eepresentatives of the Evangelical Al- liance assembled in New York : BELOVED BRETHREN, We, the members of the Turkey Branch of the Evangelical Al- liance, beg leave to call your attention to a most momentous subject, hoping that you will take it into serious consideration. The dearest object of our desires being the salva- tion of the whole human race from its lost estate, we would use all proper means for the removal of hinderauces to its accomplish- ment. Such a hinderance we are pained to see lamentably effectual in preventing the moral renovation of a people comprising nearly one third of the earth's inhabitants ; but which is removable, we believe, by the united influence of evangelical Christendom. In order to this end, we ask for earnest ac- tion on your part. The fact to which we re- fer is the opium trade in China. Feeling keenly the reproach that rests upon us and our religion when Christian nations carry on this nefarious business, we unite in present- ing this case for your consideration, urging your attention to the following points, viz. : 1. The physical, mental, and moral ruin wrought by the habitual use of opium, and the sad spectacle presented by so mighty a nation falling victims to its power. What other spectacle upon the face of the earth can move more strongly the Christian heart ? What object is more worthy to rouse Chris- tians to united action than the hope of re- moving this curse ? Unless the evil be speed- ily checked, centuries of sadder degradation and deeper misery must result to the people of China. 2. The Chinese government and many of the intelligent among the people are alive to the damage this opium traffic is doing. They are anxious to save the multitudinous inhabitants of the empire from this blight. Heathen China supplicates the help of Chris- tian nations in putting down this diabolical trade, and shall she supplicate in vain ? 3. The position of any Christian nation en- gaged in this traffic, protecting it by law and by force, with no other reason to give for such a course than the great revenues ac- cruing therefrom, is contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and injurious to its name these gains being at the sacrifice of the in- terests, temporal and eternal, of myriads in China. This wrong done by Christians is, in 740 APPENDIX II. the eyes of the Chinese people, a blot upon Christianity, an evidence of its inferiority to their own heathenism as a system of morals, and a bar to its progress among them. We therefore earnestly beseech you to take this subject in hand, and unite, as far as may be, the sentiment of the Christian world ; and by delegations, the press, the pulpit, or otherwise, exert a strong influence for the suppression of this opium traffic, or, at least, for the deliverance of the Christian name from the stain that traffic has brought upon it. Our hearts have thrilled at the boldness and success with which the Alliance has during past years come to the defense of religious freedom in Turkey and Russia ; but lo ! here is a cause more mighty ; here we see imperiled vaster interests. God grant that, after having been so successful in plead- ing the cause of oppressed Christians, your influence may be equally powerful in rescu- ing the purity of the Christian name. Believing, as we do, that a right use of your influence may, under God, result in so great a boon to China as her deliverance from the fetters of a fearful vice, and dispose her people more favorably toward the relig- ion of Jesus Christ, we can not do otherwise than entreat you, in humble dependence on Almighty aid, to exert your utmost power in all legitimate ways for the accomplishment of this object. GEORGE W. WOOD, Chairman. GEOKOB F. HEKKICK, Secretary. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. BY HENRY BERGH, ESQ., OF NEW YORK. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I am inclined to believe that, on my appearance upon this platform, sentiments of the sort I am about to mention are uppermost in your minds, to wit : " What assurance, what audacity, what folly, in that man to venture where angels might fear to tread is he mad that he thus dares to open his mouth within these classic and elegant walls, which have resounded with the eloquence of the most renowned speakers of the day, and now echo with the wisdom of God's servants, assembled here from all parts of the civilized world f " But the privilege has been graciously ac- corded me to invite your attention for the space of ten minutes to a subject which is of real importance to the world at large I mean our religious duty to that vast portion of God's creation, the inferior animals. Rel- atively, ten minutes is a brief period of time, and yet in ten minutes what deeds of good or evil may be enacted deeds which may influence the destinies of men and nations for all time. Brief, therefore, as is this frac- tion of life which every ticking of the clock continually abbreviates I am truly grate- ful for the opportunity which is procured mo of giving utterance to a few reflections in your hearing. Eight years ago, those precious creatures, which clothe us, and feed us, and work for us, were regarded by the statutory laws of our country only as property. Feeling sen- sible of the magnitude of this error, in a moral as well as material point of view, I humbly undertook the initiative of a reform. What progress has been made in that direc- tion may be inferred from the fact that twen- ty-seven States and Territories of our Union and of Canada have enacted laws and char- tered societies for the protection from cruel- ty of these speechless and devoted servants of mankind. But so much yet remains to be done that I am here to-day to ask you, through the medium of your holy office, to come to our aid. And no more appropriate occasion for so doing, it seems to me, could offer than the present, during the presence in this city of the delegated servants of the Most High, assembled here from almost ev- ery Christian nation of the world. In a ma- terial point of view, mankind generally ad- mit the positive utility of dumb animals ; but as to their moral responsibilities to them in return, their admissions are not so gen- eral. The omnipotent Creator of all things, in hi dealings with his human children, em- ploys mysterious means to accomplish his purposes. Last winter, for example, his sovereign will was manifested, in a manner as terrible as it was efficacious, through the agency of the epizootic. This widespread and deso- lating scourge was the means of bringing home to the understanding of the most cruel and obtuse their dependence on the horse. If consequences so replete with disorder and alarm could ensue by reason of one race of animals being partially disabled, what would be the result if mankind were suddenly de- prived of the use of all others as well f Could a deluge or an earthquake be more disas- trous ? How often in my pity and admira- tion of these speechless servants of mankind have I been met with this complaint : " Why are you always occupying your time with dumb beasts ; why not elevate your thoughts to the level of your own race, which is much more worthy of your labors ?" If, my friends, we cast our eyes over the earth, do we not find that half of that which charms our senses and satisfies our hearts is derived from the animal kingdom ? If we look about for some relation of life in which the animal kingdom has no connection with mankind, frankly speaking, we can not find one. If we think of agriculture, science, lit- erature, poetry, music, pleasure, industry of any sort they are every where represented. Let us begin with pleasure. Shall it be fishing and the chase ? Three species of an- imals are required, viz., the bird, the fish, and the quadruped. Is it ridiug? The horse, APPENDIX II. 741 the mule, the ass, the ox, the camel, and the reindeer are necessary, according to the lo- cality we inhabit. Is it the banquet ? What a meagre repast it would be, if among the delicacies these poor animals were wanting to the menu. Is it that last and loveliest of all living objects, a beautiful woman ? Ex- amine and enumerate the attire which sets off her charms. Look at the dazzling robe of silk, the dainty gloves, the minion shoes, the plumes which ornament her hair, the pearls which hang about her neck, the Cash- mere shawl, the furs, and sometimes even the ruby color of her cheeks, and tell me, if you please, whence do all these come? Is not this truth, therefore, forced upon us : that while these animals can live under the protection of Nature alone, man can not live without them ? The Old Testament makes numerous allusions to them, and in our prayer-books we find expressions such as these the innocent lamb, the heavenly dove, etc. ; and, finally, Jesus, coming into the world, was permitted to be born in a manger, between an ox and an ass, and upon one of the latter the Saviour of the world made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As to Poetry, she is nourished by fiction ; she also compares not the beautiful woman to one of her sex, but rather to the swan, the butterfly, and gazelle. If we speak of Mu- sic, were they not our first masters ? Do they not furnish the chords which draw such exquisite sound from the violin and harp, and provide the piano-forte with its snow- white ivory? With what burning eloquence, wit, sarcasm, and romantic histories, tales, and poems has not the goose-quill lent its aid ! Where is derived the candle which the poet, the student, and the minister lights to aid his meditations ? the oil within the bea- con light ? and then, after the fatigues of the day, is it not upon feathers, hair, and wool that aching limbs recline ? What ! Shall we give in return to these creatures, made of flesh and blood like ourselves, and so de- voted, useful, and intelligent, only violence and disdain? Blows and neglect for their labor and the product of their bodies ? Tor- ment and death for real love and disinter- ested affection ? Ah ! my friends of the human race, you imagine yourselves independent of these in- ferior creatures, and you are amazed that men and women should form themselves into societies for their protection. You interro- gate us with the impious demand, " Why do you waste your time in defending senseless brutes?" Creatures, remember, which the great Maker of all has condescended to call into being. You freely bestow your love and admiration on a gem or flower which serves for an hour the indulgence of your pride or caprice, and then is laid aside, while these animals give you their affection in return for a few caresses, and place their lives and services at your disposal for a handful of hay and a bucket of water! True, they speak not to our ears, but by their deeds do they not address themselves to our hearts, if we have any ? Inquire of him that has felt the pressure of time in his soul, and experienced the misery of humanity sickness, poverty, and the abandonment of his kind ; ask him his sentiment of these confiding beings. What a treasure to the suffering paralytic in his chamber is the little feathered prisoner which sings to him of joy and hope ! What profound attachment is formed between the unfortunate captive of the Bastile and the little animal which shares his solitude, no matter how mean and insignificant it be ! The instinct of cruelty is opposed to relig- ion, and is not less a sin because the object of it is a speechless brute ; nay, the senti- ment of mercy seems all the more lovely in proportion to the humbleness and depend- ence of the recipient of it. We have voices to make our wrongs heard and respected, but these humble beings have only the faculties of feeling and endurance. In a word, I venture to declare that this cause of mercy to the inferior animals is one of the most essential elements of true relig- ion ; and that no man or woman can be an. acceptable Christian, in the sight of that just Being whose chief attribute is mercy to all his creatures, and yet be insensible to its holy and universal significance. AMERICAN SEAMEN'S FRIEND SOCI- ETY. [Sent to the Committee on the Programme by Rev. Dr. S. H. Hall, for the use of the Conference. .Ed.] This society was organized May, 1828 (in- corporated April, 1833), " to improve the so- cial, moral, and religious condition of sea- men ; to protect them from imposition and fraud; to prevent them from becoming a curse to each other and the world ; to res- cue them from sin and its consequences, and to save their souls." It proposes to sanctify commerce, an interest and a power in the earth second only to religion itself, and make it every where serve as the handmaid of Christianity. Its first president was the Hon. Smith Thompson, and the late Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio, its first corresponding secretary. It is estimated that there are 3,000,000 of men engaged in operating the commerce of the world. These men "doing business on the great waters" are largely deprived of the means of grace. Nor are they readily reach- ed by the efforts of the Church to give the Gospel to the destitute, but special efforts in their behalf have been attended with great success, and particularly the agency of this national society, which, while non-denomi- national, according to its charter, is heartily indorsed by the leading ecclesiastical bodies 742 APPENDIX II. of the country, and commended to the church- es as doing important service in the great work of the world's evangelization. The society aims to secure the preaching of the Gospel to seamen by missionaries and chap- lains, and the maintenance of Bethels in the principal ports of the United States and for- eign countries, locating them at the tempo- rary centres of an ever-changing commerce. Besides preaching the Gospel to seamen on shipboard and on shore, and to those em- ployed upon our inland waters, chaplains visit the sick and dying in hospitals and elsewhere, and as far as possible supply the place of parents and friends. The society also encourages the estab- lishment of Sailors' Homes, Reading-rooms, Savings Banks, etc., and the wide distribu- tion of Bibles, tracts, etc. The Sailor's Home, 190 Cherry Street, New York, is the property and under the direction of the society. It was opened in 1842, siuce which time it has accommodated 85,000 boarders. This one in- stitution has saved to seamen and their rela- tives $1,500,000. More or less shipwrecked seamen of various nationalities are constant- ly provided for at the Home, where a mis- sionary of the society is in daily attendance, and religious meetings, besides the regular family worship, are held on week-day even- ings. Similar institutions exist iu other cit- ies under the care of auxiliaries. A few years ago the society inaugurated the work of supplying sea-going vessels with loan libraries, averaging forty -five volumes, including the Bible and some other care- fully selected religious books, put up in a neat case, and intrusted as a general thing to converted sailors, who thus become for the time effective missionaries among their shipmates. Since this work was inaugu- rated over 4500 libraries have gone forth, with 195,000 volumes, which by frequent re- shipment have been accessible to probably 200,000 men. More than eight hundred hope- ful conversions at sea have been reported from this single agency. The society publishes (monthly) the Sail- or's Magazine, designed to collect and com- municate information, and to enlist the sym- pathy and co-operation of Christians of ev- ery name in securing its object ; the Seamen's Friend, gratuitously furnished chaplains and missionaries for distribution among seamen ; and the Life-Boat, for the use of Sabbath- schools. During the last year the Society had near- ly fifty chaplains, missionaries, etc., in its service, and expended in its world-wide work $65,000. It is steadily extending its useful- ness, and of late has been signally blessed by the great Head of the Church. The rooms of the Society are at No. 80 Wall Street, New York. R. P. BUCK, Esq., President. 8. H. HALI, D.D., Cor. Sec. and Treat. FRATERNAL APPEAL TO TUB FRIENDS OF THE EVANGELICAL AL- LIANCE AND OF CHRISTIAN UN- ION GENERALLY; WITH A PROVISIONAL SKETCH OF A PLAN FOK A GENERAL PROTESTANT UNION. [This Appeal of the late Rev. Dr. Schmucker, of Gettysburg, Penn., who took part in the organization of the Evaogelical Alliance iu London, 1846, and would have addressed the General Conference but for his la- mented death, was brought before the Committee on the Programme, by his friend, the Kev. Dr. Conrad, of Philadelphia, with the request that it may be al- lowed a place in the official proceedings, which was cheerfully granted, iri justice to the memory of the au- thor and his zealous labors for Christian union. It presents an elaborate plan for an official confedera- tion of the Protestant denominations. This is a prop- er subject for discussion at a Conference, and possi- bly for future action, though not by the Alliance as now constituted. The Alliance aims simply at a vol- untary union of individual Christians of different churches, without interfering with their denomina- tional relations or assuming any power of ecclesias- tical legislation. .Ed.] DEAR BRETHREN IN CHRIST, We, the un- dersigned, invite your serious attention to a matter which the Sou of God considered of sufficient importance to make it the subject of a detailed prayer to his heavenly Father near the close of his incarnate mission. " Fa- ther," said he, " the hour is come : glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." And again : " I pray that they all may be one : as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Hero the Saviour himself represents the unity of his followers as an important means for the triumph of his kingdom and extension of his glory. Let, therefore, no believer in Christ henceforth regard the subject of Christian union as of secondary moment, or refuse to listen to its claims, especially in these latter days, "when many are running to and fro, and knowledge shall be in- creased." For centuries past the Protestant church- es have suffered more or less from intestiuo dissensions. The reformation of the corrupt Church of Rome was effected separately in the dif- ferent countries of Europe by theologians and civil rulers, who, though generally sin- cere and faithful, were possessed of different degrees of qualifications for the work, and who, though agreed on all points of funda- mental doctrine, yet differed in some things of less moment. In each country the doc- trinal basis or confession naturally express- ed the views of those who composed it, whether they were Lutherans or Reformed, Episcopalians or Presbyterians, and these were then established by law. Such were the Augsburg Confession, the Thirty-nine Articles of the Episcopal Church, the West- APPENDIX II. 743 minster Confession, etc. The differences be- tween these principal historic creeds were not, as is sometimes popularly supposed, the result of sectarian divisions among Protest- ants ; for they were written and first pub- lished separately, by different persons, iu dif- ferent countries, and without any special ref- erence to each other. Unfortunately, none of these different creeds gave sufficient promi- nence to the fundamental unity and agree- ment of the Church of Christ, nor did the latter of them express a full and cordial rec- ognition of all other Protestant Churches, as integral parts of the one body of Christ. And during several centuries no stated inter- course existed between the churches of dif- ferent Protestant countries. Where only one of these denominations occupied an entire country, as did the Lutherans in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, there was little or no difficulty. But where, two or even more denominations occupied the same territory, and naturally each professed its own creed, the conflict of sentiments became more obvious, and opposing interests gave rise to angry controversies. Many of these confessions, unlike the oecumenical creeds of the earlier ages, were of great length, con- taining not only the grand cardinal doctrines of the Gospel, but also a vast number of mi- nor tenets, less distinctly revealed in God's Word, which the mass of Christians never have, and in this world probably never will all understand alike. The polemical spirit generated in the conflicts with the Papists, and the Romish intolerance still adhering to many Protestant theologians, induced them to engage in unprofitable controversies among themselves on non-essential doc- trines, which often disturbed the peace of the Church. But in the United States the evils of sec- tarianism that is, of opposing creeds and de- nominations, on the same ground have been exemplified in the highest degree, which has naturally arisen from the peculiarity of our history and situation. The several earliest colonies which emi- grated to this country were generally char- acterized by the religious homogeneity of each ; the Puritans occupying the Northeast- ern States, while the Episcopalians predom- inated in Virginia and other southern por- tions of the country. But for a century past emigration has proceeded from almost every part of Europe, and every one of the different religious organizations in those countries has its representatives iu nearly all the cities and towns of our land. Every part of this population would naturally en- deavor to establish a congregation of its own denomination, though the aggregate amount of all the inhabitants of any given town or village numbered not more than five hundred or a thousand souls. The conflict for the es- tablishment and enlargement of half a dozen or more denominations on the same territo- ry, and of half a hundred in our cities, still continues, and is productive of unhappy in- tellectual, material, social, and religious con- sequences. But of the immense waste of the resources of the churches, both pecuniary and intel- lectual, by the erection and foundation of twice as many theological seminaries as are requisite for the number of students, by the location of at least twice as many ministers in every town and village as are necessary to minister to the whole population ; and of the great conflict of interests thus caused between different denominations, the jeal- ousies and rivalries of every kind, we can not here speak in detail. A somewhat similar state of things has arisen in Great Britain, from the large num- ber of Dissenting denominations existing there. This lamentable condition of the Protest- ant churches has long been deplored by the most enlightened and devoted disciples of Christ ; especially in view of the constant secret machinations of the papal leaders, and progressive aggressions of their compact and well-organized legions in this country, toward gaining control of our government and of the education of the rising genera- tion. Various efforts have been made to remedy these evils, by inaugurating measures to pro- mote the cause of Christian union and fra- ternal co-operation among Protestants. The first Society, so far as we know, ever formed for the express purpose of promoting Chris- tian" union, was that organized during the anniversaries of 1839, in the Tract Society's rooms in New York. After its organization, the society purchased several hundred cop- ies of the little volume bearing the title, " Fraternal Appeal to the American Church- es," and distributed them gratuitously among the members and other friends of the cause iu different parts of the land. Owing, how- ever, to the disturbed state of the ecclesias- tical atmosphere, and other causes, the soci- ety accomplished but little, and was soon permitted to expire. A few years later, in the fall of 1845, the present writer, in order to recall attention to the subject, prepared an extended address on the subject of Christian union, and hav- ing obtained the assent and promise of co- operation from about fifty of the leading di- vines and friends of union, he added their names, and distributed it under the title of " Overture on Christian Union ;" inviting a meeting in New York during the anniversa- ry week of 1846. Soon after its publication, however, the invitation to the Evangelical Alliance in London, in August, 1846, reached this country. As the leading friends of un- ion desired to attend this World's Conven- tion, and many of them to start before the 744 APPENDIX II. May meetings in New York, that meeting was dropped by common consent ; and since then the great Evangelical Alliance has taken the place of all other societies for the subject of Christian union, until of late. While it is admitted that the Evangelical Alliance has accomplished a great and glori- ous work, throughout the length and breadth of the Protestant world, in diffusing the spirit of brotherly love and union among all denominations and among Christians indi- vidually, and has vindicated the cause of the oppressed, its results have mainly been of a public nature, and it has not exerted its full influence on individual churches, and on the Christian community at large. It is believed that its power for good would be greatly augmented by some additional or- ganization, calculated to extend its influence into the individual judicatories and church- es, and among church members. Such a plan has lately been submitted to the Chris- tian public, and the object .of this Appeal is still further to explain the character of that plan, and to inaugurate measures by the friends of the Kedeemer for its amendment and adoption. I. This plan is perfectly feasible, because all the parts of which it is to consist not only now exist, but are already in actual and suc- cessful operation in the Protestant world. It does not contemplate the formation of any new association or society, it requires no additional meetings of those already in ex- istence, and involves no additional trouble or expense, except such as may arise from increased activity for the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom. This plan embraces (1.) The existing World's Evangelical Alliance. (2.) The several existing National Alliances : the British, the American, the German, the Dutch, the French, the Swiss, etc. (3.) The existing highest ecclesiastical body of each denomination in the United States ; and in foreign nations the auxiliaries of each National Branch, which are also voluntary associations. II. This plan does not propose to interfere with the denominational standards and in- stitutions, doctrinal, disciplinarian, or char- itable, of the several churches adopting it ; but leaves to each one the entire control over its own affairs. III. This plan simply proposes to add to the two grades of the Evangelical Alliance, namely, the World's Alliance and the Nation- al Alliances, the existing highest ecclesi- astical judicatory or body of each evangel- ical denomination in this country, and to unite them all as individual bodies into one voluntary advisory union or confederation, by the adoption of certain fraternal terms of association by each of the several confed- erated bodies. And by this simple arrange- ment, so easily effected) if deemed wise and desirable, a fraternal, voluntary, and adviso- ry organic union will be accomplished be- tween all the confederate denominations, closer than that organic union of the church- es in the apostolic age. By this arrange- ment the great subjects of Christian duty and enterprise, which from year to year may occupy the attention of the Evangelical Al- liance, will regularly become the subjects of discussion, deliberation, and action to twenty times more judicatories, and reach the ministry and membership of nearly the whole Protestant Church. IV. Finally, this plan does not in the least preclude other judicious local efforts and manifestations of Christian union, or union of homogeneous bodies, but rather promotes them. The only additions necessary to be made to the existing rules and regulations of these several bodies are the following : I. Additions to the existing Constitution and Rules of the World's Alliance; being also, in a few cases, easy modifications of them : (1.) The World's Alliance ought to consist of about one hundred delegates from the bounds of each National Alliance : to be elected, in the United States, by the highest judicatory of each confederate denomination, in equal numbers of clerical and lay delegates. In other countries the delegates are to be elected by the members of the National Al- liances, or in any other way designated by each National Alliance for itself. (2.) The World's Evangelical Alliance should meet every seven years, and as often intermediately as may be deemed desirable. (3.) The doctrinal basis of the World's Al- liance, and of all its National Branches, is that adopted at the formation of that body at London, in September, 1846. Nor shall any person be admitted to a seat, either in the World's Alliance or any of its National Branches, until he has authenticated himself as a regular member of some confederate church or congregation; has signed the doc- trinal pledge ; has avowed his approval of the Design and Constitution of the Alliance ; and paid into the treasury from one to five dollars, or more, for the necessary expenses and objects of the meeting. (4.) The powers of the Evangelical Alliance, and all its Branches, are only those of an Advisory Council; and its operations are in- tended, not to interfere with existing eccle- siastical organizations, but to promote the same objects of common interest. (5.) The design and great icork of the World's Evangelical Alliance is to take under its re- view the general interests of Christianity and of humanity in all nations, throughout the entire field, which, the Saviour says, is the world. This comprehends, (a.) The religious interests of the heathen world, the sugges- tion of the most suitable locations for For- eign Christian Missions, and the proper priu- APPENDIX II. 745 ciples of non-interference between them, etc. ; organized efforts to prevent the intro- duction of intoxicating liquors and narcotic substances among the heathen, and to pro- mote the diffusion of Gospel light among them. (&.) It embraces all international re- lations and subjects, such as the discussion and circulation of the principles of Christian- ity on the subject of peace, and the evils and guilt of offensive war ; the desirableness and feasibility and duty of Christian nations to abstain from war, and to settle all their dif- ferences, either by referring them to a third power for arbitration, or by both parties ap- pointing ministers plenipotentiary to discuss and decide them ; or by urging the nations to establish an International Court. Each nation should appoint one or two members, and the whole decide by majority of votes, adopting as their juridical code the acknowl- edged Laws of Nations, interpreted by the spir- it of Christianity, (c.) To discuss and pro- mote the cause of religious liberty, by adopt- ing and publishing correct principles on this subject, and by appealing, on proper occa- sions, to civil rulers of nations in behalf of the oppressed. II. Proposed additions to the Constitution and Rules of the National Branch Alliances : (1.) The American Branch Alliance shall consist of an equal number of delegates, lay and clerical, as near as can be, from each of the confederated denominations, and shall meet triennially, and as much oftener as may hereafter be agreed on. An equal or sena- torial delegation, rather than one propor- tioned to the size of each denomination, is preferred, in order to prevent a few large denominations from controlling the whole confederation the fear of which would pre- vent some denominations from adopting the plan. Otherwise, the two largest denomina- tions of our country (the Baptist and Meth- odist) would have as many delegates as all the others combined. Nor will the larger denominations have reason to complain, or to apprehend maladministration, as the ulti- mate execution of the purposes of the Alli- ance within their bounds will be effected mainly through their own judicatories, pas- tors, and church members ; and the immediate agents of the Alliance, if any are employed, will always be instructed to act in conjunc- tion with them. The delegates to the Amer- ican National Alliance, in addition to the qualifications above named (I., 3), shall also present certificates of their election duly at- tested. (2.) The delegates to the American Branch Alliance shall be elected by the highest judi- catory or ecclesiastical body of the several confederate denominations, consisting of at least five hundred ministers each. The small- er bodies may aggregate numerically, and when amounting to five hundred ministers or more, the aggregate shall be entitled to the same number of clerical and lay delegates as one of the large denominations, and each body a fractional proportion of them. At present, the number of delegates from each denomination may be twenty-five, and here- after it shall be fixed, from time to time, by the National Alliance. (3.) Each of the other National Alliances shall have exclusive power to settle the num- ber of its own delegates and mode of ap- pointing them. (4.) In addition to the delegates above named, who constitute the proper and equal- ly balanced body of the World's Evangelical Alliance, and of its National Branches, all such friends of the cause as see fit to attend the meetings of those bodies at their own ex- pense may do so, and have a seat provided for them as accepted visitors; provided they first duly authenticate themselves, as the delegates do, in regard to church member- ship, doctrinal subscription, and contribution to the funds of the meeting ; but they can not participate in any discussions or action of the body. (5.) Finally, church members, connected with any one of the confederated denominations in America, not finding it convenient to at- tend the meetings of their National Branch, may become connected with it, as contributing members, by forwarding to the treasurer at New York from one to five dollars, or more, together with a certificate of church mem- bership from their pastor or from any ac- credited minister of a. confederated church, and receive a certificate of such membership, stating the amount paid. This plan will grad- ually enlist a large number of church mem- bers throughout the cities, towns, and coun- try, connected with the Alliance, co-operat- ing with its salutary measures, and furnish- ing the necessary funds to carry on its oper- ations. (6.) If the highest judicatory of any de- nomination, of at least five hundred minis- ters, is unwilling to elect delegates to the National Alliance, and a considerable portion of it be favorably disposed, that portion may, by holding a convention, or in any equitable way, appoint or elect one half the quota of delegates due to each denomination, to be duly authenticated. (7.) As to the officers and working organ- ization of the American National Alliance, they are fully provided for in its Constitution. (8.) The grand objects aimed at by the American National Alliance, in addition to those already enumerated as originating in the World's Alliance, are such as the follow- ing, within the bounds of our own country: a. To promote harmony, non-interference, and efficiency in the effort of the evangelical churches to supply all the waste places in our land, and to proclaim the Gospel through- out the heathen world. b. To promote concert of effort in main- 746 APPENDIX II. taiuiug the daily reading of God's Word in all our public schools. c. To prepare and circulate suitable tracts and popular works on the grand objects of Christian benevolence and enterprise for which the association was instituted. d. To promote concert of action in provid- ing for Christianizing the numerous heathen immigrants who are flocking to our land, and erecting heathen temples among us. e. To promote love and free sacramental communion, recognition, and co-operation among Christians of different denominations in objects of common interest ; as well as to sustain each other's discipline. /. To devise means for correcting the wide- spread political corruption prevailing among some of our citizens and rulers, which threat- ens the destruction of our civil liberties, and can not fail to bring down upon us the judg- ments of a holy and righteous God. g. To co-operate in procuring stringent laws, prohibiting Congress and state legisla- tures from appropriating public funds or lands to any religious denomination, or for any religious denominational purpose. III. The Denominational, or Primary Branch- es. The action necessary to bring the de- nominational branches, or the supreme judi- catories or ecclesiastical bodies, into harmo- nious co-operation with this Alliance or Prot- estant Confederation is simple, and easily accomplished. These bodies are not required to make any change in their doctrinal or disciplinarian Constitution, nor to elect any new officers ; but, acting under their existing officers and rules, to pass the following reso- lutions : (1.) Each denomination of acknowledged evangelical character, containing at least five hundred ordained ministers, desiring to enter into this confederation, shall first, through its highest judicatory, pass a resolution ap- proving the Constitution and Design of the World's Evangelical Alliance, and its Amer- ican National Branch, as detailed in their constitutions. (2.) Said highest judicatory shall elect del- egates to the next American National, and the next World's Alliance, and send them, duly authenticated, as hereinbefore prescribed, to attend the next meetings. (3.) It shall also assign a particular time in its fixed order of business when the affairs relating to the Alliance shall be taken up and transacted. (4.) Such judicatory shall resolve that, whatever their powers may be when acting on other matters, all their action as a Branch of the Alliance shall be merely advisory. (5.) The stated duties of these highest ec- clesiastical bodies, or judicatories, as branch- es of the Alliance, are the following : a. To elect delegates to all the meetings of the American Branch Alliance, and also of the World's Alliance, ft. To receive from their delegation, through their chairman, a writ- ten report of the transactions of each meet- ing of the American Branch, and of the World's Alliance, c. To discuss the topics and recommendations of these reports, and, if approved, to take such action to carry them into effect as they may deem proper, and to invite the action of their inferior bodies, of their ministers and laymen, for the same pur- pose. (6.) Should any denomination become dis- satisfied with the influence of the Alliance, it may at any time withdraw from the connec- tion by a resolution of its highest judicatory announcing the fact. (7.) The details of this plan are to be re- garded as introduced provisionally, until the meeting of the elected delegates, who have full power to make such alterations and amend- ments in them as a majority of them may deem proper. [Signed by the Rev. Dr. S. S. SCHMUCKER, Emeritus Professor of the Theological Semi- nary at Gettysburg, and many others.] ADDRESSES AND RESOLUTIONS OF THANKS. [At the concluding business session of the Conference, on Saturday afternoon, October llth, Addresses of Thanks, from the several Foreign Delegations, were presented and read to the Conference, and warmly in- dorsed in brief speeches by members of these delegations. Sundry Resolutions of Thanks were then moved by different delegates, seconded and appropriately responded to by others, and adopted by unanimous vote of the assembly. The final resolution was one of thanks to the presiding officer of the Conference, and was followed by the closing remarks of the President, which are given in the "Historical Sketch," pp. 48-45. Ed.'] ADDRESSES OF THANKS FROM FOREIGN DELEGATIONS. FROM THE BRITISH DELEGATION. PRESENTED TO THE CONFERENCE BY LORD AL- FRED S. CHURCHILL, OF LONDON. At a meeting of the delegates from Great Britain and Ireland, held on the 10th of Oc- tober, 1873, Lord Alfred S. Churchill in the chair, it was moved by Charles Reed, Esq., M. P., of London, seconded by the Eight Rev. the Dean of Canterbury, and Resolved, That the delegates from Great Britain and Ireland to the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance now assembled in the city of New York feel constrained to express collectively their grateful appreciation of the thoughtful kindness and the abounding hospitality with which they have been re- ceived by the American brethren. They do not doubt that their own feelings are shared APPENDIX II. 747 by all the delegates from other countries ; but they have had special joy in the oppor- tunities afforded by the Conference for inter- course with those who are not only their kindred in Christ, but are related to them by the strong ties of language and of race. They earnestly desire that the labor and the liberality which have so largely contributed to make the present assembly memorable will be followed by great and abiding re- sults ; that the American churches may be invigorated for their Christian work ; that Christian men in other lands may be im- pelled to more self-sacrificing exertions for the evangelization of the masses of mankind; and that peace and amity may, year by year, increasingly characterize the relationships of individuals, of churches, and of nations. ALFRED S. CHURCHILL, Chairman. FROM THE GERMAN DELEGATION. PRESENTED BY THE KEV. T)R. DORNER, OF BERLIN. The German delegates to the Sixth Gen- eral Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at New York, in taking leave, desire pub- licly to express their cordial thanks for the exceedingly warm and hospitable reception which it was their privilege to enjoy in this couutry, and especially in the city of New York. As this gathering of evangel- ical men from all parts of the globe in such numbers was without precedent, so the hos- pitality extended by the representatives of Protestant churches, by numerous societies for art, science, and philanthropy, by great industrial associations, and by government officials and magistrates, was unexampled in its grandeur. We part with a deep sense of gratitude, and also with intensified con- sciousness of the unity which binds togeth- er the evangelical Christians of different nations, and we shall deem it an honor and pleasure, if an opportunity be given to us, to return to our American brethren visiting German y, as far as we may be able, the kind- ness here received. May the Lord bless this country, and increase the external and inter- nal happiness of its inhabitants, and shield with his protecting hand the national ban- ner. [The signatures of all the German dele- gates were appended.] FROM THE FRENCH-SPEAKING DELE- GATIONS. PRESENTED BY THE REV. DR. FISCII, OF PAKIS. MR. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BRANCH OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, The dele- gates of the three countries which form the French-speaking branch of the Evangelical Alliance France, Switzerland, and Belgium express hereby their deeply felt thanks for the admirable reception which they have met in this Conference. The thought of convoking here these great assizes of our evangelical churches came from God, who gave to our American friends perseverance in the pursuance of that purpose, and, after a long, incessant toil, they see now their la- bors crowned with a success which went far beyond all expectations. They have been instrumental in bringing upon all the evan- gelical churches a blessing which will be lasting, as we ask God for it. The cordiali- ty, the grandeur of their reception filled our hearts with gratitude. We shall go back to our homes and our labors much refreshed, quickened, and encouraged: The bonds of fellowship which tie us to our American brethren have been drawn much closer ; we love them already we shall love them much more henceforth. We hope that serious communion of prayer may sancti- fy these ties, and make them conducive of a great revival over all our respective countries. And with a last word, uttered from the bottom of our hearts, we say to our friends of this continent, God bless you. [Signed by the French delegates from the three countries.] FROM THE CANADIAN DELEGATIONS. PRESENTED BY THE REV. GEORGE M. GRANT, OF NOVA SCOTIA. At a meeting of the delegates from the Dominion of Canada, held on the 10th of Oc- tober, 1873, in the parlor of the Young Men's Christian Association Rooms, Rev. Dr. Green, of Toronto, in the chair, the following reso- lution was moved by R. Wilkes, Esq., M. P., seconded by the Rev. A. B. Simpson, of Ham- ilton, and unanimously agreed to : Eesolved, That the delegates from Canada to the Conference of the Evangelical Alli- ance now assembled in the city of New York can not part without expressing their grate- ful sense of the munificent hospitality which they, in common with the other foreign del- egates, have received at the hands of the United States Branch of the Evangelical Al- liance, the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, the managers of the various public institutions, and the civic authorities and citizens of New York and Brooklyn. The delegates rejoice to believe that the great ob- jects which the Alliance contemplates have been promoted in a marked manner by this, its first session in America. While there has been a cementing of Christian hearts from many lauds, they can not but trust that the ties of common origin, language, interests, and faith which bind together the United States and Canada may be especially strength- ened by the hallowed influences under which the Conference has held its meetings ; and they venture to hope that the Canadian 748 APPENDIX II. Branch may be able at no distant date to re- ciprocate in some measure the Christian cour- tesies and hospitality they have received. Signed, on behalf of the meeting, by ANSON GREEN, Chairman. GEOEOK MOJJKO GBANT, Secretary. RESOLUTIONS OF THANKS, ADOPTED BY THE CONFERENCE. THANKS TO ALMIGHTY GOD. MOVED BY THE REV. DR. ORMISTON, OF NEW TORE. Resolved, That,- in view of the great and manifold blessings of divine Providence vouchsafed to this meeting of the Evangel- ical Alliance, its members gratefully desire to record a humble and hearty expression of devout thankfulness to Almighty God for his goodness, and to commend each other to his care. TO THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION AND OTHERS. MOVED BY THE REV. PROF. JONES, OF WALES. Resolved, That the thanks of the Confer- ence are eminently due to the Young Men's Christian Association of this city for the use of their building, with all its elegant and commodious apartments, which has largely contributed to the success and comfort of the Conference. Our thanks are also pre- sented to Mr. Peter Cooper and the Messrs. Steinway for the gratuitous use of their halls, and to the trustees of the several churches whose buildings have been gener- ously placed at our disposal. TO PASTORS AND CHURCHES. MOVED BY THE REV. WM. ARNOT, OF EDIN- BURGH. Resolved, That the General Conference rec- ognizes with great satisfaction the interest which the pastors and churches of the city of New York, Brooklyn, and vicinity have taken in the Evangelical Alliance, which in- terest appears to pervade the whole coun- try. TO THE FAMILIES WHO HAVE ENTER- TAINED DELEGATES. MOVED BY THE REV. 3. C. HARRISON, OF LONDON. Resolved, That the most cordial thanks of the delegates from abroad are due and are hereby affectionately presented to the Chris- tian families of this city who have with so much hospitality received us into their homes, and contributed so largely to our comfort and happiness; the memory of which we shall cherish with gratitude when we return to our several countries, aiid through the remainder of our lives. TO THE PRESS. MOVED BY THE REV. DR. BUDINGTON, OF BROOK- LYN. Resolved, That the thanks of the Alliance are due, and are hereby tendered to the Press in this city and elsewhere, which has given to the public, and at great expense, reports remarkably full and accurate of the papers read and the speeches uttered at these assemblies ; and our acknowledgments are also made for the intelligent appreciation so generally shown of the objects and spirit of this Alliance. TO STEAM-SHIP AND RAILROAD COMPA- NIES, AND TO VARIOUS IN- STITUTIONS. MOVED BY THE REV. DR. SCHAFF, OF NEW YORK. Resolved, That the thanks of the Confer- ence be presented to the proprietors and agents of the several Transatlantic steam- ship lines who so generously furnished facil- ities of transportation for the foreign dele- gates, and to those American railroad com- panies who so kindly proffered free excur- sions to both foreign and American delegates, thereby greatly contributing to the success of the Conference and to the gratification of all its members ; also to the various institu- tions that have extended courtesies to the members of the Conference. TO THE COMMITTEES AND OFFICERS OF THE CONFERENCE. MOVED BY JAS. GIRDLESTONE, ESQ., OF LONDON. Resolved, That the thanks of the Confer- ence be presented to the several committees of the United States Alliance for their labors in making preparation for this Conference ; and to the officers of the Conference for their efforts to conduct its proceedings to a satis- factory result. TO PRESIDENT WOOLSEY. MOVED BY THE REV. DR. HALL, OF NEW YORK. Resolved, That the cordial thanks of the members and friends of the Evangelical Al- liance, now in Conference, be tendered to the venerable Dr. Woolsey for the wisdom, fidel- ity, and efficiency with which he has filled the chair of the President during these lengthened sessions. [The resolution having been seconded, was put by the mover, and carried with marked cordiality.] APPENDIX III. STATISTICAL TABLES ROLL OF MEMBERS- BASIS AND CONSTITUTION OF ALLIANCE IN MEMORIAM. APPENDIX HI, CONTENTS, PAGE A STATISTICAL EXHIBIT OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN THE UNITED STATES 75 1 ROLL OF THE SIXTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE EVANGELICAL AL- LIANCE 755 THE BASIS OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 760 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 761 To THE MEMORY OF PRONIER AND CARRASCO 762 A STATISTICAL EXHIBIT OF EVANGELICAL CHRIS- TIANITY IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 BY THE REV. DANIEL DORCHESTER, A.M., LOWELL, MASS. WITHIN the brief limits assigned to this paper, only a bare statement of numbers can be given, without comments, and with only such explanations as are indispensable. With very considerable labor and corre- spondence the data have been collected, as far as possible, from official sources, and the utmost care' and fidelity have been observed in the use that has been made of them. No comparisons with the past, showing the wonderful progress which American Chris- tianity has made, will be attempted. The exhibit for a single year of itself will bo deeply impressive and inspiring. The fig- ures, for the most part, will represent the year 1872, complete data for the present year from so broad a field not being yet obtainable. I. STATISTICS OF CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS, MINISTERS, AND COMMUNICANTS, FOR 1872. TABLE I. CHURCHES NOT EMBRACED IN ECCLESIASTICAL FAMILIES. Denominations. Churches. Ministers. Communicants. 3263 3201 318 tlO 2950 3004 239 218 57 405 72 7 916 50 6 000 270 325 39 100 German Evangelical Church Union, Bible"| Christians, Schwenkfelders, and a few> 35,000 Total 64S3 6652 703 555 TABLE II. 8 THE LUTHERAN FAMILY OF CHURCHES. Lutheran Bodies. Churches. Ministers. Communicants. General Synod of the U. States of America General Council of America 1148 872 605 470 103,320 138,117 1C9 91 11,844 Synodical Conference of North America.. . . Other Synods 1165 529 750 227 191,134 42,780 Total 38S3 2215 487,195 1 [This exhibit of Protestant Church Statistics was not brought before the Conference, but is here in- serted by direction of the Committee on the Pro- gramme, and may serve, in part, to supply the defi- ciency of the first division containing the Reports on the State of Religion. The author of this paper has in preparation a larger statistical work on the prog- ress of American Christianity during the national century now closing. P. S.] a From the Congrcriatioiial Quarterly, January, 1873, prepared by Rev. A. II. Quint, D.D. 3 From the "Episcopal Church Almanac for 1873." [According to the Protestant Episcopal Almanac for 1874, the number of bishops is 53 ; the number of oth- er clergy, 3055 ; the number of communicants, 246,051. The religious and social influence of this body is much greater than its numerical strength, especially in the large cities New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Quite recently a secession has taken place, headed by Dr. George David Cummins, lately Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky. It was organized in New York, December 2, 1S73, under the name of the Reform- ed Episcopal Church, on the basis of the provisional (Dr. White's) Prayer-book of 17S5, and has two bish- ops, George D. Cummins, and Charles E. Cheney, of Chicago, who was consecrated by the former. P. S.] 4 For 1871, from the Friend's Review, and embra- cing only the "evangelical" portion of the denomi- nation. 6 From the Moravian "Text-book" for 1873. 6 Estimated by Rev. Josiah Litch, a very worthy and leading minister among this class of Adveutists. Besides these, there are about 50,000 Adveutists who hold Arian and Materialistic views. 7 For 1867, from Professor Schem's tables. 8 These statistics were taken from the "New York Observer Year-book for 1873." [The "Lutheran Almanac " for 1874 gives the follow- ing numbers: Churches. Ministers. Coininu- General Synod of the United ( States o'f America i 1182 711 106,517 General Council of America. . Southern General Synod Synodical Conference of North ) MS 165 14-26 502 98 873 152.470 12,419 202,885 Other Synod 605 243 54,948 T"1 il... 4346 2432 528.639 -P. S.] 752 APPENDIX III. TABLE III. THE PRESBYTERIAN FAMILY OF CHURCHES. Bodies bearing the name " Presbyterian." Churches. MinUter*. Communicant*. Presbyterians, 1 O. S. & N. S., reunited in 1STO. 4802 4 534 472 023 " Southern* 1 685 809 9'! 903 " United"* of North America 772 591 73 452 Cumberland* 1 872 1 108 86 174 Synod of Reformed 6 100 90 8 782 " Free Synod "of -\ Associate Reformed Synod of the South' O. S. Synod of Missouri 7 .... 'TO 1 751 Estimated 30 000 Other minor bodies J General Synod of Reformed Church 8 132 58 10,009 Total Presbyterians 9 263 7 395 774 343 Kindred Bodies. Reformed Chnrch 7 (late Dutch Reformed) , 481 601 67 123 Reformed Church 7 (late German Reformed) 1,312 585 130 299 Total kindred bodies 1 793 1 OSC 197 422 Total Presbyterian Family 11 056 8 481 971 765 [X. B. The above Table has been submitted to Rer. Dr. Hatfield, and by him brought down to the latest accessible dates. Ed.] TABLE IV. THE BAPTIST FAMILY OF CHURCHES. Bodies bearing the name " Baptist." Churches. Ministers. Communicant,. Baptists 9 Regular (North and South) 19.720 11 S93 1 585 232 " Free-will 10 (main body) 1,463 1,197 69 910 Minor independent bodies 10 of Free-will Baptists The"] Chatahoochie, American, Tow River, West Virginia, Arkansas, United Indiana, Central Illinois, Southern Illinois, Union, Ky.,Cumberland,Ky., Alabama, North f Missouri, Sandy Creek, Illinois, Saline Co., Missouri, North-west Illinois, and North Carolina Associa- 246 12,610 Baptists Colored Southern 11 (Additional) 75 000 " Anti-Mission 12 40 000 78 86 7 ? 609 " Seventh-day, German 14 20 2 000 " Six Principle 14 22 20 3 000 Total Baptists by name 21,549 13,196 1,795,361 Kindred Bodies. 200,000 Chnrch of God, or Wiuebreunariaus 400 350 30,000 500 1,200 50,000 16,000 Total kindred bodies 900 1,550 296,000 Total Baptist Family . . . 22,449 14.746 2.091.361 1 From the "Minutes of General Assembly " for 1873. 2 From the " Minutes of the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church for 1873." 3 "Minutes" of the General Assembly of said Church for 1873. 4 "Minnies" of said Church for 1873. 6 "Minutes of the Synod for 1872." 8 "The Tercentenary-book" of Presbyterianism, pp. 195, 196. 7 From the " N. Y. Observer Year-book "4br 1873. 8 "Minutes of the Synod for 1S72." 9 From " Baptist Year-book for 1S73." The Regu- lar Baptists are divided into two General Conventions, North and South, which are entirely independent of each other. The Northern Convention represents 6052 churches, 4460 ministers, and 619,736 communi- cants; and the Southern Convention represents 13,608 churches, 7431 ministers, and 1,065, 496 communicants. 10 "Free -will Baptist Almanac for 1873." The sta- tistics of some of the minor bodies are for 1870. 11 Abont two-thirds of the colored Baptists in the South, although, according to Rev. N. G. Merry and other leading ministers of that body, independent of the Regular Baptists (white), in all their ecclesiastical associations, are nevertheless reckoned in with the Regular Baptists, in their Year-book (q. v.). The 75,000 "additional" is on the basis of numbers given to the compiler of these tables, by Rev. Mr. Merry, of Nash- ville, Tenn. 12 In the "Baptist Almanac for 1S01" as having80,000 communicants. They have since declined. They are estimated at 40.000 in 1872. 13 From official sources for 1870. 14 Estimated. 15 This denomination make no enrollment of com- municants. They are estimated at 350,000. Quite de- cided Arian tendencies have been manifested among them : but it is supposed that 200,000 of them may be classified as evangelical. 19 " Baptist Year-book for 1373." APPENDIX III. 753 TABLE V. THE METHODIST FAMILY OP CHURCHES. Bodies bearing the name " Methodist." Ministers. 1 Local Preachers. Probationers. Me-nber.. Total Communicants.? 10,242 11,964 185,945 1 272,496 1 468 683 " " South*.. " " Colored Church, ) South 5 / 3,013 5,134 6,838 651,146 67,888 654,159 67,888 Methodist Episcopal African (Bethel) 1 ! 1,000 5,000 25,000 350,000 376,000 Methodist Episcopal African (Zion)) 700 900 25,000 174,300 200,000 Methodist Protestant Church 423 70 000 70 423 100 10 000 10 100 143 158 1,196 5 828 7 165 26 167 455 2 667 3 148 " Reformed Church 3,200 3 200 " Welsh Calvinistic Church.. " Congregational Church " The Methodist Church " 20 110 766 432 1,796 2,000 8,000 52,000 2,000 8,000 54 562 Total Methodists 16,543 29,593 239,392 2,669,525 2 925 328 Kindred Bodies. Evangelical Association 660 453 81,690 82 350 United Brethren 870 831 125,464 126,334 "Bible Union," and other smaller) 12,000 12,000 Total kindred bodies 1,530 1,284 219,154 220,684 Total Methodist Family 18,073 30,877 239,Blii> 2,888,679 3,146,012 TABLE VI. GENERAL SUMMARY. Families of Churches, etc. Churches. Ministers. Communicants. 6 483 6,652 703 555 The Lutheran Family of Churches 3,883 2,215 487,195 11 056 8,481 971 765 The Baptist Family of Churches 22,449 14,746 2,091,361 The Methodist Family of Churches 27,538 6 18,073 3,146,012 71 409' 50,167 7,399,888 From the foregoing tables we have the following results, representing the forces of 1 Embraces ministerial members of the Annual Con- ferences. 2 Embraces ministers, members in full, and pro- bationers, all of whom, according to the Methodist usages, constitute the body of communicants. The ministers are reckoned in here because they are not numbered as members of the local societies, as in most other denominations. 3 From the Annual Minutes for 1872. 4 See Table in the Nashville Christian Advocate, April 5th, 1873. 6 Statistical report of the Special General Confer- ence, held at Augusta, Ga., March 19th, 1873. * The Annual Minutes of the various Methodist bodies do not report the number of societies, or church organizations. In many instances the name of a so- ciety which appears in the Minutes is only the lead- ing society of a "circuit," which often contains from two to ten or more email societies, served by several ministers. The above number has, therefore, been taken from the United States Census for 1870, which gives the number of church "organizations" as a distinct item from church edifices. It embraces 25,278 bearing the name Methodist, 815 of the Evan- gelical Association, and 1442 of the United Brethren. Total, 27,538. 7 When compared with the number given by the United States Census, there is an apparent discrepan- cy. According to that document, the whole number of Church organization!*, including Catholic and oth- er non-evangelical bodies, in 1870, was 72,459. This is, however, explained by the fact that most of the above are for a period two years later, and also by 48 Evangelical Christianity in the United States in the year 1872 : Ministers 50,167 Church organizations 71,409 Communicants 7,399,888 II. HIGHER EDUCATION. 8 Collegiate institutions authorized by the States to confer degrees in the arts : Congregationalists 21 Presbyterians (all kinds) 31 Baptists (all kinds) 3S Episcopalians 18 Methodists (all kinds) 53 United Brethren 5 Lutherans 16 Reformed (Dutch and German) 6 Friends 4 Evangelical Association Moravians _ Total 194 Number of professors reported in 162 institu-) j ^ tions .;/ Number of students reported in 157 institu-\ tions / the notes given by the Superintendent of the census on pages 515, 516, 517, 518, 519, 524, 525, and 526 of the Compendium. 8 The data for this table have been collected from the valuable Report on Education by General Eaton. Washington, D. C., 1872. 754 APPENDIX III. Theological Institutions. Congregationalism 8 Presbyterians (all kinds) 19 Baptist* (all kinds) 22 Moravians 1 United Brethren 1 Episcopalians 12 Methodists (all kinds) 13 Lutheran and German Reformed Churches. _21 Total "97 In the above list, in some cases, only a professorship of theology is represented, or a provision for quite limited theological in- struction. Professors reported in 82 institutions 304 Students reported in T8 institutions 2,825 Whole number of graduates reported from 45) institutions ) 19,531 All of the above institutions are under the patronage and supervision of the evan- gelical churches. III. FOREIGN MISSIONS. Foreign Missionary Boards in the United States 18 Foreign Missions 83 Foreign Stations and Sub-stations 2,273 Foreign Missionaries males 4S3\ QQ - " " females 514) Total laborers on foreign stations 3,908 Native converts enrolled 96,039 Scholars iu schools (day) (incomplete) 06,436 Woman's Missionary Boards 10 Auxiliaries 3,625 Foreign Missionaries supported 205 Assistant laborers, Bible-readers, etc. 293 Schools supported 195 IV. HOME MISSIONS. Home Missionary Boards, including societies') in aid of Freedmeu, American Sunday-school V 38 Union, etc ) Laborers Ministers, Licentiates, Colpor-) s -^ teurs. Teachers, etc j ' Localities supplied with religious instruction. 9,129 Conversions and additions to churches report-) n r QIC d iu one year / 26 ' 91S Sunday-schools organized in one year 4,621 V. RELIGIOUS PERIODICALS, BOOKS, TRACTS, ETC. About nineteen -twentieths of the relig- ious periodical literature is furnished by the evangelical churches. Number of periodicals*. 407 Regular circulat ion 4,764,358 Copies issued in one year 125,950,496 There are not less than twenty Religious Publication Boards sustained by the evan- gelical churches in the United States. The annual receipts from sales and charitable do- See United States Census for 1870. nations of sixteen of these houses amounted iu!872 to $4,165,370, of which$725,158.72 was received in charitable contributions by four- teen societies. Amount of Publications. \ otn American Bible Society, in 57 years, B1-) pn 9nn bles and Testaments / 30,390,824 American Tract Society, in 48 years 26,188,406 Methodist Book Concern, New York, in 16) , years / 28i363,306 American Tract Society, Boston, in ii\ 01 years f d,i5,92(, Total volumes by four houses in) _ . given years j- 85,848,461 Tracts. American Tract Society, in 48 years American Tract Society, Boston, in 11 years Methodist Book Concern, New York, in 12 years Total pages of tracts by three houses Page.. 2,635,108,095 92,980,520 63,344,8(Ki 2,791,433,415 The Presbyterian Board of Publication, in 33 years, published 18,609,656 copies of vol- umes and tracts. The Baptist Publication Board, in 49 years, published 46,232,017 copies of volumes and tracts, which were equal to 2,182,834,947 pages 18mo. . VI. PECUNIARY LIBERALITY. Receipts of leading benevolent societies, in a single year, in the United States (1872). For Foreign Missions $2,150,00(1 For Home Missions. 2,600, 000 For Church Extension 500,000 For Ministerial Education 450,000 For Religious Publication work 725,00 '/. .. : .*" A 001 032 760 9 f '' X V*2* ."."* '5rW' .* y * ' /.-