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including nearly thirteen hundred communicants. The Protestant population connected with these churches, attending upon their worship, and professing to acknowledge theirs as the true Christianity, is counted by thousands, and is continually increasing. These Protestant churches, formed and guided by our missionaries, have obtained from the government, not merely a promise that their existence shall be winked at, but a legal standing and a recognized place among the distinct communities that constitute the empire. Turkish Protestantism has its charter of incorporation as a civil community, its own internal government, its civil chief and representative at the imperial metropolis. In an empire which consists of many distinct nations dispersed and interspersed through various provinces, religious and ecclesiastical connection, rather than country or community of origin or of speech, being the essence of nationality-the native Protestantism, that had no existence till within the last few years, has become a nation. And among those nationalities, it is distinguished by two characteristics equally American and Christian.-First, in that internal self-government which is its chartered privilege, it is purely republican. Its local officers are chosen by popular election, each local community being (like the inhabitants of a New England town, though with far less of personal liberty) a municipal democracy. Its civil chief and his official council at Constantinople are chosen by the united suffrages of all the local communities throughout the empire. Thus Protestantism in Turkey is an organized and chartered republic, with limited powers, under the sovereignty of the Sultan; while in all that empire there is no other rudiment or germ of republicanism. The second characteristic is, that by the Protestants in Turkey, the distinction between church and state is clearly drawn and persistently maintained. Every other nationality is recognized and governed simply as a national church, through its ecclesiastical officers; its patriarch or metropolitan bishop being the organ of communication between the community and the imperial government. These two peculiarities of the Protestant organization are not without a marked effect on the character and position of the Protestants as a body; and the

influence of the unique institution is beginning to be felt in other communities. This Protestantism-or, as we might say, this Americanism—with its internal democracy, civil and religious, and with its careful and palpable separation of secular offices from ecclesiastical functions, is the most vital and growing thing in Turkey. To its converts from the old Monophysite communion of the Armenian nation, from the Jacobite Syrian church, from the Greek church, and from the various Papal sects, it is now adding converts from Islamism. The spirit of inquiry concerning this reformed Christianity that abhors idolatry, and that rests on no other authority than the Holy Scriptures, is manifesting itself in every direction. Nothing but the embarrassment of the Board with its limited resources, and with its burden of indebtedness caused by the successes in that field, seems to prevent an almost indefinite expansion of the work. The missions in Turkey have become in some respects without a parallel among the missionary enterprises of the age. No other mission opens such prospects. In none is the crisis so imminent. In none are such results dependent on the question of seizing or neglecting the present opportunity. More than one third of all the annual expenditure of the Board has been concentrated there, and twice as much might be expended there to advantage. If those who make the Board their almoner fail not in the exigency, there is good reason for the confidence that in a few years more, unless some great catastrophe shall intervene, the Protestantism of Turkey will be able to provide for itself.

What may we expect from the next half century of foreign missions? One of the four young men, whose consecration of themselves to the service of Christ among the heathen in 1810, led to the institution of the American Board of Commissioners, is still among the living. So of the young men who are this year offering themselves to the same service, some may return and live to join in the celebration of that second jubilee. And what changes will they have seen! This first half century is only the beginning of the story; the sequel is to come. What an age is that in which the children of this passing generation are to have their period of activity! What signs of

the future do we see! How grand the shadows which coming events, even now, are projecting into the field of mortal vision! Think of this great Union of States, just now beginning to unfold its capacity of wealth and power and growth-just beginning to escape from the danger of impending barbarism, and to achieve its own predestined place in history-its churches, of so many evangelical names and forms, just beginning to appreciate, yet hardly daring to accept the fact that not the forms of dogma and of discipline which divide them, but the faith which they hold in common, is the power of God unto salvation-its Christian zeal just beginning to be kindled with the consciousness of powers and opportunities to be employed in filling the world with light and liberty. Think of Europe, where great changes are now going forward, which all men recognize as harbingers of greater changes soon to follow. Think of the human masses everywhere, slowly lifted up from immemorial degradation, as by the cosmic forces that lifted up the plains and mountains from the chaotic deep, when God had said, "Let there be light!" and the beauty of the new creation was to be revealed. Think how recently the dissevered parts of this terraqueous world have been brought into intimate connection with each other-all regions opening to peaceful commerce-the nations becoming conscious of their mutual dependence-steamships everywhere scorning the currents, puffing at the winds, and bringing the remotest shores into proximity-the ever-lengthening lines of railway, already more than long enough to girdle the earth-the nerves of telegraphic communication stretching from city to city, penetrating every continent, underlying the seas, crossing the oceans, and beginning to make the whole world one great organism through which intelligence flashes with the instantaneousness of thought. Think of those mysterious religious influences— mysterious to all who do not recognize God in them—which have so lately moved whole nations as by a simultaneous impulse. What hath God wrought! And what a future is it which is heralded by the marvelous changes so marvelously crowded into these last few years! That is no distant future. We who are living to-day are related to it. We are not only to expect it, we are to labor for it.

ARTICLE X. THE PRINCETON REVIEW ON DR. TAYLOR, AND THE EDWARDEAN THEOLOGY.

The Princeton Review for July, 1859, Article III; and October, 1858, Article I.

THE Princeton Review for July, 1859, contains an elaborate Article upon "Dr. Taylor's Lectures on the Moral Government of God." Our first reading of this paper was cursory and imperfect, for we confess to have been moved to so great impatience by the injustice of a few passages, that we were glad to lay it aside, and leave the greater part unread. We should have preferred never to see or think of it again, but have been constrained by our sense of what is due to the memory of the departed to give it a careful perusal and criticism.

Before we begin this criticism, we have a word to say in respect to the conductors of the Princeton Review, and the mode in which they are wont to write of many New England theo logians. We regard these gentlemen as scholars and fellow Christians. We do not, indeed, accept all their views of Christian doctrine; for in some points they have sadly deviated from the simplicity of the gospel through the influence of a scholastic philosophy, and do not seem to be aware that what they set forth as the pure evangelical doctrine is a metaphysical corruption of the same through the tradition of the elders. But though we deplore their error in these particulars, and are often amazed at the simplicity of their complete unconsciousness of it, we do not for this reason exclude them from our fellowship, nor call in question their essential orthodoxy. We acknowledge their Christian piety and zeal, and gladly extend to them the right hand of fellowship as to brethren in the family and church of Christ. But while we cheerfully share with them an equal claim to the orthodox and Christian name, we concede to them no monopoly of either, and no precedence above other men of different schools. Any exclusive pretensions in either direction which they may make, whether

directly or indirectly asserted, move us we scarcely know whether more to smiles or tears. Whatever arguments they may present for our conviction, we will patiently consider. Whatever imposing airs they may assume, or vituperative epithets they may employ, whatever real or affected pity they may express, we shall consider as intended to influence another portion of their readers. Certainly they excite in us no other feelings than sorrow that they should possibly think us so weak as to be moved by such appliances.

We find, indeed, an argument to our charity, in the peculiar position which they hold with their patrons and constituents. They are in some sense the organ for a considerable portion of the once undivided Presbyterian Church. Their constituency is well organized and carefully trained to believe in its own superiority, and to provide for its own efficiency. It is essential to its prosperity that an intense church feeling should be fostered among all its ministers and members. Nothing tends to this result so directly as the constant assertion of their own superior orthodoxy. The more confidently this is done, the more boldly these assertions are repeated, the more intense is the self-satisfaction of their adherents, and at times the more sublimely unconscious is their self-complacence. To complete the impression designed, it is required that all dissentients should be stigmatized as lax, latitudinarian, Pelagian, heretical; with the appropriate expressions of pity and grief. Their opinions and measures should never be noticed or alluded to except in connection with such invidious epithets, in order that repetition may accomplish the work of argument and the constant reiteration of names may gain over the confiding and credulous to a confirmed faith. This course of controversial tactics must also be prosecuted for years, during which their adversaries should never be named with a generous word, nor their opinions be fairly conceived or charitably interpreted.

Such a policy is favorable to vigorous writing, so favorable, that it only requires moderate intellectual ability with the requisite practice, to train a corps of forcible and spirited writers, capable, to use a phrase from Dr. Alexander's Letters,

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