solutely just and perfect than their opposites. We believe their spirit more true to that of the gospel and more in tone with it. Why, then, shall we not expect from minds formed under them a juster theology? The world has heard of the "New Divinity" from New England. It is something remarkable that, as the Anglo-Saxon mind has framed but one essentially distinctive polity, so it has conceived but one distinctive theology since the Reformation; and the birth-place of the two was the same. Minds constitutionally or by training inclined to aristocratic ideas, expressed in an aristocratic polity, have found themselves so suited by a theology wrought out under the formative influence of aristocratic institutions, that, in the language of John Robinson, "they stick fast where they were left by Luther and Calvin, those great men of God, who yet saw not all things." But the strongly free and equalizing spirit of the newly revived polity, starting with the theology of those instruments of the Reformation, was necessitated to pursue modifications until it secured theological statements in harmony with itself. Such changes of the older theology were a foregone certainty whenever it should come before able men like Edwards, trained under the triple spirit, and encouraged by the principles of this polity, and protected by the institutions it creates. Examine their "improvements in the ology," and which one is not an illustration of this law? On the side of Godhis nature or character, the absoluteness or extent of his glorious sovereignty they modify nothing. Calvin is not more intent upon exalting his excellent greatness. For they recognized in him that one Master before whom they could the more prostrate themselves, and to whom they the more ascribed an absolute sovereignty, because he was their one Master, and divided reverence with no intermediate claimants. But on the side of man they were forced to restate theology with note-worthy changes. The nature of sin or holiness in the creature; imputation; the atonement; the relations of divine and human agency; the constitution and administration of churches, whatever the point, we see the effort constantly made to place men nearly as possible upon freedom and equality. They find the Scriptures representing men as free to choose and to act; sin or holiness is conceived to be personal, and ceases to be imputable; every man is found to be on trial for himself, standing or falling to his own Master, and none is condemned for another's crime; since all are alike lost by their own sin, and God is no respecter of persons, Christ dies for every man, so that all alike shall be placed upon a footing of salvability; in repentance and faith, the free personal will is not overborne, superseded, or destroyed, but is made concurrent and coäcting with the Spirit of God; while perdition itself is not from inequalities of divine mercy or power, but the result, in every instance, of an equally free will suiting itself with evil. Everywhere the law suggested is visible. zon. We acknowledge our indebtedness to these New England theologians. They advanced us toward clearness and certainty. They deepened our insight of the Scriptures. They widened our horiThey have insensibly pervaded other bodies in the Church with their liberating apprehensions of divine truth. But let us not forget how much we owe in them to the spirit and principles of that polity which not only formed them to such acquisition of the truth, but protected them in it, as perhaps none other would have done. Let us not forget that it thus exhorts us to invigorate freedom of inquiry-large expectancies of an outcome of still more light. As a body, we are under law to no human symbols, that we should be limited or overawed by them. We stand before the world, pledged by our history and principles to encourage devout inquiry, never imagining ourselves or our fathers to have touched the outer rim of truth. We hear them invoking us to urge our way on into the unexplored depths of God's Word and Spirit, as the astronomer pushes his researches into the depths above. Let us not impair this great inheritance. We revere the "Confessions." But it is the high prerogative of Christ's members, guaranteed by the principles of this biblical polity, to carry appeal beyond all symbols of human creating; to refuse to plead at the bar of Edwards, of Luther, of Calvin, or Augustine; to refuse to be judged by his agreement or disagreement with Councils or Assemblies. As Congregationalists, calling no man master, we carry appeal over and beyond them all to the Word of God; "to the law and the testimony." We believe in the right of private judgment. "The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," should be the standard of Protestants, of Christians. We will not be impeded in our progress; we will not be prevented from receiving or preaching or walking in any new truth which "the Lord has yet to break forth out of his holy Word." Standing under a higher noon; surrounded by a clearer, because freer, air; acted upon by influences and institutions more sympathetic with the gospel itself; why should we think it impossible for us, or our children, to go further, in many things, than those "instruments of the Reformation, who yet penetrated not into the whole counsel of God"? Thus, too, for defenders of the truth, where shall we look, if not to a system wherein a sense of freedom and equality in obligation to it is most nurtured and diffused? The conflict of God's life and truth is being always renewed against Romanism on this hand, and Pantheism on that. By Romanism we intend that assertion of churchly supremacy which militates against the full freedom and proper equality of the whole brotherhood. By Pantheism we intend that realistic philosophy (whether in metaphysics, theology, or polity; whether in the church, or out of it) which militates against the sense of rounded completeness in a person, submerging and losing his sense of personality in the vast unit of some huge developing body. These two mighty enemies, rising at opposite poles, yet converge against God's truth and spirit; both of them discharging the accountable soul from all proper conviction of being an entire unit, standing out alone, as it were, and by itself, before God. How shall they be met? By what weakens, or by what strengthens, the sense of personal and separate individuality? Invading error is not daunted by the brandishing of symbols, and first confesses repulse when it meets the living wall of living men wielding the sword of the spirit with a faith not derived from "confessions," "articles,” or “catechisms;" from "councils," "assemblies," or the "voice of the church;" but from what, as separate souls, conscious of experience, they have felt and known. Now the system before us seems, beyond others, favorable to this, throwing its adherents back upon their personal experience, obliging each man to maintain what he has felt and known, because he has known and felt it, and is himself a free brother in the Lord, and an equal in the body. Now what can Pantheism do, on the one hand, with a man trained after this fashion, or Romanism on the other? Is there another polity whose spirit and principles will raise up so many, or so invincible, obstacles before them? A great work remains to be done toward bringing in the theology, experience, and polity of "the full stature." The pervading presence of our triple idea is a necessity for that. To this end God has injointed this denomination among the members. It rests on us to invigorate the progress of the whole body in the several directions which have been named. Our principles are seen spreading into all communions. We may justly be full of courage for what remains. 3. It peculiarly rests on this body to invigorate and enlarge those forms of Christian work which especially regard the masses of the people. The Providence of God is breaking down the barriers not only between nations, but also between classes, that men may flow together. The ideas of democracy — i. e., equality, liberty, and brotherhoodare germinating everywhere underneath aristocracies and thrones with overturning force. The broad stream of God's agency in history is bearing steadily on toward their realization. The general spirit of religion sends its adherents forth to save all men. It was the glory of our Lord that, while sending none empty away, he so taught and so shaped his efforts as to reach that great mass lying below the upper classes. "The common people heard him gladly and thronged him.” The field is the world. But "the world" is everywhere common people, poor folk. fair one, whether we have not been withdrawing from the commonest of the people, and claiming the upper classes for our portion? Has it not been asserted by some, and thought by more, that" our polity and our affinities are for the cultivated and intelligent - that they are ill suited to any below the middle classes, and, therefore, poorly fitted, especially for Western and Southern populations?" A bitter condemnation and all-sufficient, were it so. Are we not also unconsciously putting limitation upon our plans and our field in another way? We are revolving very much about such phrases as, "The polity of New England," "The New England zone," "Descendants of the Pilgrims," etc., as though our sphere were somehow pent up within such limits. But let us not give up to a section what was meant for mankind. The whole world is for our ideas. Shall we hide them in a napkin? Or shall we make all men partakers of this grace, wherein we stand? What though God ordained this polity in modern times, to nurse its callow strength high up on that rocky eyrie; shall it now, with strengthened pinions, make no wider circuits? or has it rather been maturing its powers for this great hour, when the nation - North and South, East and West-is being made ready, as never before, to receive its presence and principles, and to live by them? for this great hour, when their enunciation is thirstingly sought by the listening ears of mankind? - for this great hour, when millions of men, black and white, throughout one half of our nation, are in perishing need, in order to any right reconstruction of society, of their most vigorous and immediate operation there? Yet, as the eye ranges abroad, it is these that seem as sheep without a shepherd. What denomination can be regarded as contented to work for them and as being of them? It shames us that we are so eager for the few and so careless of the many. It would seem that the origin and distinctive principles of this polity must pledge its devotion to the common people. This polity is Christianity on its democratic side. None other so insists on the equality and fraternity of men. None so levels prerogative and utterly repudiates aristocratic tendencies. Its origin was not from loins enthroned, from prelate or common clergy, but from humble souls amidst the masses, "enlightened by the word of God, and inflamed with heavenly zeal for his truth." Such was the rock - "poor people of the humbler sort". whence it was hewn. And yet the question is a We must come back with true mission Human nature is none other now than when the common people thronged the preaching of Christ. The great, sorrowing, guilty heart of the multitudes waits not less for the consolations of God. And on ary yearning to these masses. what Christian body does this so press, as on one whose polity preeminently argues the essential equality of men? What other has such motives for striking down to the lowest stratum, and outward to the farthest limits? What one, for example, so empowered by every essential condition, to lead the way at this hour, and to call upon God's people to follow it in labor for the enfranchised blacks of our own country and the whites about them, -deep sunk in degradation together, planting churches which shall teach and use these equalizing and fraternizing Christian ideas? 4. It peculiarly rests on this body to invigorate and spread its own polity, principles, and institutions. The whole analysis of the case asserts the duty, and the immeasurable value of fidelity to it. History compels us to believe that the well-being, not of God's people only, but of the world, depends upon it. We cannot expect other polities to undertake our distinctive ministration. Each member hath its own office. Nor are we ready to decline for ourselves the work committed to us. Its spirit is in our hearts. And yet it has been asked, sometimes in sneer, sometimes in sorrow, and sometimes in mere scepticism," whether we are to believe in a denominational mission as belonging to this polity and its adherents? whether it must be understood that anything of self-propagation is laid upon it of God?" We cannot refuse the duty if we would. So manifestly enjoined upon us by the word and spirit of God, by the necessities of the church and the world, specially in our own country, its negglect would be crime. If we have been ignorant of it, let the time past suffice. Whatever sacrifices are involved, let us plant our polity, its principles and institutions, its churches and its life, east and west, north and south. Let us concentrate and unify our energies for power upon affairs. Concentration is power. How unify? Upon what basis? That of doctrinal symbolism, or dogmatic confession? This were futile. That of ecclesiastical government, lodging legislative, judicial, and executive power in a common centre; consolidating the churches, and lessening their individual freedom? No. The free spirit is crushed beneath such weights. How then? This desired unity and concentration must be found, not in a common central government, not in a common symbol of faith, but on the broad field of Christian activity, in a common system of work, gathering into itself the sympathies, the energies, the means, the spiritual fervors, and carried on under the combined and properly represented counsels and wisdom of the whole denomination. A unifying and concentration of the body by such means, it is hardly necessary to add, would impart to it a most gratifying inward strength, and augment incalculably the majesty and power of its external movements. With humble faith we may take up our work. God will be with us as he was with our fathers. We will spread what they have transmitted. History advances toward fulfilment. Liberty, equality, and fraternity these are the words written on the swift-coming future. The polity that inscribes them on its standards, the denomination that bears them in its heart and makes them omnipresent, will be hailed with grateful joy by a disinthralled and regenerated world. Total, Last year, 27 6 33 32 2,227 85 17 102 238 27,330 150 40 190 128 17,731 39 9 48 60 2,449 242 26 268 386 52,893 209 23 232 248 36,207 123 18 141 131 15,733 349 16,600 89 5,308 126 23,039 163 11,053 129 31 160 230 16,772 77 16 93 95 16 111 71 6 77 163 40 203 98 12 110 123 21 144 21 21 43 7,877 73 13 86 158 12,866 64 10 74 140 6,600 120 17 137 162 9,547 99 14 113 149 14,016 5,856 965 6,821 8,205 829,379 98,941 928,320 $197,620 76 $14,860 91 $17,347 77 5,885 903 6,788 8,156 822,845 100,549 923,394 $391,073 02 $11,633 90 $12,534 46 1,738 11,225 4,224 83 239 28 192 07 3,429 25,909 12,886 77 577 94 684 20 4,043 37,582 29,385 43 894 53 834 20 2,977 30,325 29,566 39 751 28 1,134 07 4,827 25,611 11,143 03 813 14,482 |