We hear a great deal about improvements in theology, and probably there is substantial agreement in the judgment that the statements and restatements of the last two centuries have made clearer and more consistent and so more effective-some portions of that doctrinal system which evangelical Christians believe the bible to teach. And the question has been sometimes asked, Why may we not look for improvements in the practical development of Church life, as well as in doctrine—in the doctrine of Church life, as well as the doctrine of individual faith? Especially in that rediscussion of our fundamentals which has been stimulated by the near approach of the proposed National Council of the Congregational churches of the land, it has been inquired whether there are not some improvements upon the way of our fathers (possibly upon our own present way)

the suggestion of two centuries and a half of experience-which may worthily claim recognition and commendation from that body.

This is a fair question, and a timely one. It is one on which we desire the privilege of a few words.

(under the oversight of the guiding Spirit), is the one only, sufficient, first and last authority and guide; so that whatever the Bible teaches, by precept, example, or necessary inference, is binding upon all men at all times, while nothing which it does not so teach can be imperative upon any man at any time. Out of this grow the two following subordinate fundamental laws of Congregationalism; viz.:

(1.) Any suitable company of Christian confessors has the right to associate by voluntary compact, under Christ, for Christian worship and work; and, so associated, is a self-complete and independent Church of Christ.

(2.) Every such Church though self-complete and independent-owes duties to other churches, and has claims of duty upon other churches; duties of fellowship and of co-working for the general good of the cause of Christ among men.

All questions of theory and practice in Congregationalism may find just and sufficient answer through reference to these two principles, with whatever further light may be cast upon them by special scriptural precept or usage.

Following these two principles, then,

Our deepest foundation truth we conceive to be this: that the Bible, interpreted by sanctified

common

written form; the messengers of neighbor churches, present by invitation, then giving them the right hand of fellowship in token of fraternity. Subsequently this latter part of the ceremonial was made more weighty; a council of neighboring churches being formally called, to whose advice the whole question of the expediency of forming any such Church as intended, and of the suitableness, on the one hand, of the proffered creed, or covenant (or both), and, on the other, of the individual members to their proposed place and work, was submitted; their advice being final, at least so far as embodiment at that time was concerned.

This latter step was a real improvement, being a natural and indeed necessary outgrowth of the second fundamental principle; since the general good of the cause of Christ is always liable to be imperilled by churches hastily and injudiciously formed, or unwisely placed, matters on which the general judgment of the churches of the neighborhood should always be taken. We are not aware that any further step is proposed or desired by any one, except that in some cases where a little company of impetuous persons have persisted in going on, notwithstanding the advice of council to the contrary, to a short-lived and ill-omened career, some equally impetuous persons would like to give the council power of supervision, to squelch that procedure. But, aside from the fact that, in the last analysis, no Church judicature, even of the straitest sort, that is not armed with the power of the civil sword, can compel obedience, such an "improvement" would be unconstitutional for us, because in direct violation of our first foundation principle. The true remedy in such a case is, kindly and patiently letting such persons alone until they "come to themselves."

2. Doctrinal Basis of Churches. Our first New England churches adopted no creeds, further than some flavor of a creed

was in their covenant.1 Subsequently, partly with the purpose of quieting solicitude in England in regard to their orthodoxy in these new settlements, the elaborate Confession of Faith, wrought out at Westminster, was substantially accepted, in 1648, by the New England churches in council. This, as modified at the Savoy, was again owned and consented unto by the council at Boston in 1680; and was set forth by some of the churches as the public expression of their view of divine truth, to which candidates were expected privately to give their assent, for substance, before publicly taking the covenant.2 This was not imposed as a condition of churchmembership, but was merely a declaration of what, for substance, all united in holding as the teaching of the word - as an embodiment of religious truth in distinction from religious error. At a later date, in the dissensions that followed the great revival, and particularly when churches were gathered out of churches in the Unitarian separation, most churches in New England adopted a very brief condensation of the essential substance of the Savoy confession in the form of "Articles of Faith." to which they required all candidates for membership publicly to give assent, before taking the covenant. Thus two evils grew up: (1) In the desire to condense the truth so far as to make as lenient a test as possible for the admission of Christ's real follow

1 We are quite well aware that this has been earnestly denied by Dr. Felt, Dr. Worcester, and others. But although we have not space here to prove our position-we think Judge White and our Unitarian friends had the best of the argument in that controversy; and that the verdict of history will be that all our earliest churches here relied upon individual confessions from their constituent members, rather than upon avowed "Articles of Faith" according to the pattern afterwards adopted.

2 The Old South Church, in Boston, still stands on that platform, requiring its pastors to make public assent to the Savoy confession, on election; but requiring its private members only to assent publicly to the covenant.

ers, who yet were weak in faith, the public testimony borne by the Church to the truth, though its confession, was painfully abridged; and (2), notwithstanding this, our churches have been still compelled to exclude from their communion many who appear to be real subjects of experimental religion, but have difficulty with some doctrine named in the creed, to that extent that they cannot conscientiously give public assent to it as their idea of the truth of God.

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We suggest that it would be an improvement, in this particular, for our churches to go back to the way of the fathers; to adopt, as the creed of the denomination, such modification of the Savoy confession as the present state of theological opinion - old school and new - seems to make desirable, in order to render it the honest and exact exponent of our religious views, and then to have each Church print that, in full, in its manual, as its doctrinal symbol, which its children should be taught to understand, accept, and love; which should be expounded article by article, in a course of doctrinal sermons, at least once in every five years, by its pastor; then to abolish all our starved skeletons of " Articles of Faith," and require candidates to make clear privately to the Church, the facts of their hopeful piety, and of their substantial conformity with this "confession" in their views of biblical truth, and then admit them on public assent to a suitable covenant merely. We hope that the National Council, in its proposed action upon a "Declaration of Christian Faith," will give the denomination such a revision of the work of the Boston Council of 1680, as shall provide all our churches, of every "school," with just what they need for this great improvement -a course which it seems to us would do more to arrest all superficial and undoctrinal and anti-doctrinal tendencies among us than any other within our reach. 3. Theory of the Ministry. The original Congregational theory of the minister

was of purely a Church officer, - being that he was the pastor of a particular Church; that his ministry ceased when pastorship ceased; and that ordination was simply the formal recognition of him by his Church in that capacity. Later, as a call for missionary labor grew up-it being held that no unordained person could administer the sacraments, and it being desirable that such missionaries should have that power of administration the notion of "ordination as an evangelist" gained recognition. Also, as the term of pastoral labor with particular churches became less extended, and dismissed pastors desired to retain the ministerial character, and as churches whose pastorate was temporarily vacant desired to employ them in that character, and as the growth of colleges and seminaries and benevolent societies demanded the service, as presidents and professors and secretaries and agents, of ex-pastors, who desired (and for whom it was desirable) to retain the ministerial functions, the old theory became modified so far as to look more kindly toward the idea of the ministry as a distinct order of men, having authority — on conditions directly from Christ, and not from one of his churches; with the correlate idea that ordination is not the institution of a man as the pastor of a particular Church, but the introduction of him to the order and function of the ministry. This-with the theory of the evangelist—it is claimed, is an "improvement," which it is hoped will receive indorsement from the National Council.

It is urged in favor of it, that the logic of events exacts it; that the fact that many vacant churches are always needing temporary pastoral service, which the many honorably dismissed pastors are needed to render, with the fact that wide fields have opened, and are especially now opening, at the West and South, where the work of ministers authorized to administer the Word and the Sacra

ments is imperatively demanded, with the further fact that our system ought to provide an honorable ministerial position for such true ministers of the gospel as minister not directly to any particular Church, but indirectly to all the churches, through their relation to our seminaries of learning, and our great benevolent organizations, has the force of practical necessity; a necessity which has graduually forced itself upon the notice of the denomination, and already compelled its own recognition in the face of the Cambridge Platform, and of all the theories of the past.

On the other hand, it is objected against these views, that there is no tittle of scriptural evidence either that the "Evangelist" was intended to be a permanent order of workers in connection with the churches, any more than the "Apostle;" or that there is any such thing as an order of the ministry, as an office under Christ separate from pastorship: (i. e., the official leadership of a Church,) that the idea of an order of the ministry is a Presbyterian and prelatical notion brought into our ranks from systems hostile to our own; and to admit these innovations will be to graft inconsistency (and so weakness) upon Congregationalism, inasmuch as the genius of it is against any clerocracy, wherein lies the strength of the hierarchal systems; while all the benefits sought to be gained by these modifications can be as well secured by falling back upon the purely Congregational theory, that no ordination as an evangelist is needed for the authorization of the fullest Christian labor (including, where expedient and necessary, the temporary administration of the sacraments) by any suitably qualified laymen when requested (and thus authorized) to do so by the vote of any company of believers: 3 that all vacant

3 See this whole matter ably and thoroughly discussed in Davidson's Eccles. Polity of the New Testament, pp. 278–286.

churches can be thus supplied - precisely as they are now supplied by young laymen just from our seminaries and not yet ordained, only that the churches have scripturally a right to go further, and, on fit occasions, request and receive the ordinances from their hands, which is not now common;- and that our secretaries and professors do not require any more right to act as ministers than they get from their obvious qualifications so to act, which of themselves sufficiently open their way (whether their possessors be called laymen or ministers) to all truly Congregational pulpits; and that the evils of the disgrace to the ministerial character from so many white-cravatted men, sharp-set on secular pursuitskeeping stores and boarding-houses, or practising medicine, or peddling books, or working hard at some remunerative occupation six days in the week, and preaching (out of their old barrel) for the most money they can get on the seventh; of churches spiritually starving on the meager and musty rations dispensed by such "stated supplies," who can afford to ride ten or twenty miles on Sabbath morning, preach twice, and return in the evening (so as to be on hand bright and early for their real work on Monday morning), a good deal cheaper than such churches can support a pastor who shall give himself soul and body to their welfare; more than counterbalance any possible good which could be reasonably anticipated from the indorsement of any change of the old way in this particular.

The present writer-well aware that in this he differs with one of his associates in this journal, and with many other able and honored doctors of the Congregational law-confesses his strong sympathy with these objections; his fear that it would be a most unscriptural and unwise step back toward papal and prelatical assumption, and consequent corruption, for the proposed council to indorse departure in these particulars from the way of our fathers, and his

hope that they will give most earnest and prayerful heed to the subject in all its bearings, before they shall do any such thing.

4. Councils. The pure Congregational idea of an Ecclesiastical Council is of churches meeting by delegation to advise with each other; generally to the end of special relief in some perplexity on the part of the Church inviting the council, or for the pupose of fellowship with that Church in some such act as its ordination of a pastor. Its function is one purely of friendly advice; the Church calling it retaining the right to act in view of that advice, as its own judgment of Christian propriety, and of the will of the Great Head, shall demand.

Sometimes it has happened that the advice tendered by such a council has not been followed. The difficulty—if one had invited consideration has not been settled as the council thought expedient; or the candidate whom the council thought unworthy has been still chosen as its pastor by the Church; or the pastor whose dismission the council thought ought to be only on certain conditions, has been dismissed by the Church without regard to those conditions.

It has, therefore, been thought expedient by some, that our Congregationalism in this respect be "improved," by conferring, by common consent, some sort of power upon our councils, so that they shall hold a relation of authority in our system not unlike that held in the Presbyterian system by the Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly.

It has been urged in favor of this, that some power is needed, other, prompter, and more stringent, than that indirect .and necessarily slow-moving, merely moral, power of public sentiment, on which we have relied, because, even when its result proves sufficient in the end, much harm may transpire before that end can be reached.

On the other hand, it is objected to it, that nothing would be practically

gained by such an innovation, even could its adoption be secured, because in our system of society there is, and in the nature of the case can be, no power of enforcing the decisions of a Church judicature, which does not run back to the pure force of moral obligation in the end; so that to make our councils presbyteries would not compel our churches to obey their decisions, they having the same right then to withdraw from the force of such a verdict which they now have to disregard the advice of council; so that what is morally right in the matter must be left to settle it in the end, through its power over the general Christian conscience, as now.

But it is clear that such an "improvement" would be radically inconsistent with our first principle of the self-completeness under Christ of the individual Church. No Congregational Church has, or can have, a right to demit its own proper responsibility to its Great Head, for all its decisions, by laying it off upon the authority of council or Presbytery. Christ demands that it do its own work, and holds each of its members responsible that that work be rightly done. It may, it ought to, get all the light it can from the friendliness of its neighbors; but then it is under obligation to decide for itself. And its neighbors are under obligation not merely to permit such decision, but acquiescingly to respect it; that case only excepted in which consciences on both sides differ so radically as to admit of no honest compromise. In that event, each must clear its own skirts of wrong. The Church must do what it feels compelled to do to its own purity and edification, and trust Providence to bring, eventually, its neighbors to the same mind. The churches which have met in council must do what they feel constrained to do, to preserve their own purity, and promote the general edification, and trust Providence, in its own good time, to bring the Church, which they now conceive to be erring, to