self-recognition, to develop its distinguishing principles, and take final shape under better conditions than a preoccupied Europe could offer.

Here, then, on American ground properly began its career. It stands alone in this. It is, then, the American polity. Thoroughly rooted at Plymouth and brought to self-acquaintance, it was prepared to meet the settlers of Salem and Boston when arrived, ten years later, as the polity "in advance of all others" this side the water. Governors Endicott and Winthrop, pastors Higgenson and Cotton, though leaving England with other notions, having freely conferred with the Plymouth brethren, were fully persuaded of its promises, and embraced them. We may doubt whether they had so easily fallen upon it but for this aid. For that early emigration to Massachusetts belonged rather to the Episcopal and Presbyterial parties than to the Independents. We find the Presbyterian Baylie, in his "Dissuasives" (published, A. D. 1645, against Independency, i. e. Congregationalism), making this record, for example: "Master Cotton a man of very excellent parts— contrary much to his former judgment, having fallen into a liking of the Congregational way, and by his great wit and learning having refined it, became the chief instrument of drawing to it not only the thousands of those who left England, but also, by his letters to his friends who abode in their country, made it become lovely to many who had never before appeared in the least degree affected toward it; for, so long as he abode in England, he went not beyond Cartwright and the Presbyterians; with the way of the Separatists he was then well acquainted, but declared himself against it in print." Pastor Cotton had been a Non-conformist and Presbyterian. So Gov. Winthrop had been a conforming Episcopalian, until-in the complaining language of this irate brother concerning John Cotton, disappointed that Church extension in his day

"he

should have taken such a turn did taste of the New England air, when he fell into so passionate an affection with the religion he found there, that incontinent he began to persuade it with more zeal and success than before he had opposed it." Would it not be well if some of her wandering children might taste again this New England air? Simply "Non-conformists" as they mostly were then, the leading men about Massachusetts Bay might easily have adopted Presbyterianism or a modified Episcopacy as did most of their friends left behind; but when consulting as to their new tabernacle, a more desirable pattern was showed them in the mount at Plymouth. We may thank God for the effect of pre-occupation of the ground by one decided Congregational Church upon the subsequent ecclesiastical and civil history of New England and of the world. In various external conditions those later comers were diverse from that body of the Lord's "free" but poor people whose planting and training had been at Plymouth. From a different grade in society, many of them were men of high endowments, large fortune, and the best of education; scholars well versed in the learning of the age; clergymen ranking with the most able in the realm. Yet they took counsel of these Plymouth brethren; observed closely the working of their polity, comparing it with Scripture; caught its spirit, and adopted it for themselves. Rejecting consolidation, and "establishing their religious congregations on the basis of external independence" and internal equality, they "contracted a passionate affection" for this polity, and so diffused it through the later colonies that all New England became a unit in its support.

From thence, well matured, approved by its fruits, and arrived at self-understanding, it spread east and west. It returned to the lately forbidden soil of Old England with a multiplying power partly shown by that ingathering of a

million dollars for Church erection at the recent bi-centennial shaking of its boughs. It propagated itself westward also; in due time sowing its seed-vital and prolific across the land; until now the representatives of twelve or fifteen hundred churches of like faith and order, beyond the Hudson, gather in annual festival with brethren from the New England centre, and are no longer regarded, if not as aliens from the commonwealth, yet as living on the farther side of Jordan. But, spreading east or west, it is a significant fact, that it has found not only its home but almost its limits, till now, within that race to which supremely belongs the craving for freedom, equality and brotherhood. With this glance at their movement, we come back to the question, What necessity was that laid upon our fathers to separate from those Christian bodies wherein they had been nurtured, and of which they had been the godly, peaceable, and, in some cases, the honored members?

Was it dogmatic dissent? Were they dissatisfied with the received standards? Could they no longer symbolize with adherents of the Thirty-nine Articles, or with the Reformed on the continent? John Robinson says, "We acknowledge before God and men that we harmonize so perfectly with the Reformed churches of the Netherlands in matters of religion as to be ready to subscribe their Articles of Faith, and every one of them, as set forth in their Confessions."

That venerated standard, the Westminister Confession, was it not in its dogmatic deliverances joint production of Presbyterians and Independents? Was it not readily indorsed by New England Congregationalists, then in synod at Cambridge, as "very holy, judicious, and orthodox, in all matters of faith, (due exception being taken to its polity), and therefore to be freely consented unto for the substance thereof"?

If not dogmatic divergence, what was that necessity? It is said, "They divided

on polity and ecclesiastical organization." We are sometimes told that "there is no difference worth sacrifices between their system and another; nothing beyond trifling matters of government; questions of mere structural form." Forced to answer, we ask, But what necessitated this new structural form? Was the Spirit so straitened as to demand it? What set of principles was that, not yet distributed, or not yet exemplified, and what class of functions belonging to His kingdom not yet happily undertaken, that a new organization, with all the inevitable frictions, must be called into being?

Analyzing this new polity, we find it differing from its predecessors chiefly, if not wholly, in respect to the three-fold and cognate ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity; liberty to the individual, equality to the member, fraternity throughout the body; and then, on broader scale, mutual independence, equality, and fraternal relations among the churches. This polity was not peculiar in limiting membership to the hopefully regenerated; it was not peculiar in providing government and order; but it was peculiar (a) in asserting the sacraments to belong to the believer, and not to the Church; to faith, and not to organization; (b) in asserting every particular Church to be a society of certain of the "Lord's free people," joined in covenant for specified purposes, and under law to none but Him; and unto Him, under positive law, to limit government of the member within bounds, mutually ascertained at the outset ; unto Him under law never to demit administration to the law, as being an act hostile to freedom, equality, fraternity; but complete for itself in Him, and subject in anything to none but Him. This was peculiar to the new polity; we do not wonder that it found itself opposed by monarchies or aristocracies in Church and State; for its peculiarity reveals with exceeding clearness that the Lord's

This distinctive office may appear to some as of inferior dignity. But to whom has a nobler special trust been committed? If we examine the state of the world when this word of the Lord, "Call no man master," came forth as a new evangel, to be energized afresh in a living polity, to shame down assumptions, to roll away despotisms, and make the humblest a conscious king and priest unto God, invested equally as the highest with rights, franchises, and liberties in the city of God, we shall then be able to answer whether the body called to rescue and to stand for this great portion of the heritage, in behalf of all that profess and call themselves Christians for ages to come, was not intrusted with a service of more abundant honor. It certainly seemed no common trust to the great calm minds by which it was first apprehended. In it, and for it, they took joyfully the spoiling of their little goods, and were willing to endure the loss of all things. Inspired by it, and to open the way for those behind them, they gathered the whole sheaf of sufferings into their bosoms. With a great sum did they obtain this freedom, and we were free-born. We have known nothing of their sacrifices, but it is granted to us to spread their principles till the whole Church is blessed by them. Standing now in presence of the history, the distinctive principles, and the position thus assigned the denomination, we are better prepared to return specific answers in two or three directions to our main question.

1. It is peculiarly obligatory upon it to invigorate the national life. The life of a nation is in its originating ideas. It was the triple thought of liberty, equality, fraternity, in earthly things that created this nation. It is written on the forefront of our history that the grand office assigned it in preparing the way for Christ's kingdom was this: to make the

triple yet one great thought. The nation was drifting away from its office and its own life, with so much unity of consent as to seem almost beyond salvation. At this moment, the swift-descending current suddenly paused upon the brink. No momentum already on it, no pressure from behind, could prevent even its backward flow. A power was present to save it. God had come. He revived the ideas in which our national life is hid. The strife is deeper than that of armies. The nation may conquer, and yet be conquered. Its physical forces shall destroy the rebellion, and yet its organic ideas perish in the very moment, and even as the result of its success. It largely belongs to us as a denomination, holding a place of power in the land, to provide against such a contingency. The nation has this claim on us beyond others. What part our polity has had in bringing it to refuse unrighteousness, and thus preparing it for this crisis; how conspicuously it has deepened conviction of divine authority, attaching to those ideas in which our national life consists; all this is matter of history. Our record is on high. It was the genius of our system. Our pulpits and our papers could not have been Congregational pulpits and papers without doing this. New England has been reviled by the minions of the aristocratic spirit. Fools! it is not New England, but that cherished polity - vital in every part with its triple idea that has been penetrating the nation's sleeping and waking thoughts with such moral convictions.

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It is no reproach to it, though often urged as such, that our polity has never gained foothold and expansion in the South. For this reason it has been stigmatized as sectional. More than two hundred years ago, "ministers in

vited from Boston to the Puritan settlements in Virginia, bearing letters from Gov. Winthrop, by order of the General Court of Massachusetts, were silenced

by the government, and ordered to leave the country." The Governor, Sir William Berkeley, "was very malignant toward the way of the New England churches." By no accident was our polity thus odious to the slave-holding and caste-loving South. The sensitive instincts of slavery instantly discriminate against it as an irreconcilable antagonist. But times are changed. "Puritan settlements' are now being made in Virginia of a sort not likely to permit "ministers invited from Boston," or else where, to be ordered out of the country by any party "malignant toward the way of the New England churches." New conditions arise to us out of that Southern chaos. A wide and effectual door opens before us.

2. It peculiarly rests on this body to invigorate throughout the Church of God this triple spirit in the several directions of theology, and experience, and polity.

For brevity we confine illustration here to the first of these three. Success in advancing or maintaining the domains of theology demands for the devout inquirer the feeling of personal freedom, obligating equality, and of fraternity in rights and duties respecting divine truth. Our polity protects that feeling. The idea is fundamental with it that there shall be no "period" to theology; that, as from the book of nature, so God has yet more light to break forth from the book of revelation; penetrated as this shall be more deeply, apprehended more sympathetically, and interpreted more justly by an ever-rising average of Christian experience, an ever-advancing Christian consciousness. Believing in such an advancement toward deeper things, carrying the whole body upon it, as a ship its passengers, we expect to find the children beyond the fathers.

We are

sometimes urged to more stringent symbolism, to counteract what some are pleased to term our " centrifugal tendencies;" urged to erect some authoritative and final dogmatic standard with its ter

rors and limitations. There are men fearful of being free, impatiently restless to be bound, recognizing no security but that of enclosing walls, covetous of being tethered by cords of prescribed length to some stake of human driving. If such symbolism as this be intended, our polity will have none of it.

With devout gratitude we accept the treasure of Christian doctrine and experience accumulated for us in the ages of suffering and thought and communion with God, which have gone over the Church. We sit at the feet of venerated symbols which have condensed into themselves so much of that result, — at the feet of the men, "great and shining lights," through whom God's clear truth came with least refraction. But none of them "remember, it is an article of your Church covenant"-shall be tolerated one moment as a master over the inquiring mind of this humblest but equally free child of that God who has often been pleased to hide from the wise and prudent what he reveals sometime unto babes, that the excellency of wisdom may be to himself, and not to us.

Most of the received symbols and theologies in the Church were wrought out by minds formed under despotic or aristocratic institutions. The word and spirit of God are, indeed, not bound. But who will say this absolutely for the strongest of finite minds—that obscurities, disproportionate or even distorted "views in theology" will not come from educational training? Who shall say, for example, that a Luther, or a Calvin, or a John Robinson, living now, amidst not only our enlarged scriptural inheritance exegetic, dogmatic, experimental