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deemer and his great work of redemption do not reach the depth of this real and vital union with the Redeemer himself. Doctrine is good, but it is not life. The new and divine life which Christ actually introduces into the soul of man is that principle around which the Church crystallizes and develops. Without this inward life in Christ there can be no true Church, let it be as venerable, as orderly, as outwardly beautiful, as it may. We think that Christians will not differ here. They may differ in their views of the best external form of the Church, in their opinions as to the scriptural institutions of Congregationalism, or Presbyterianism, or Episcopacy; but they cannot deny the fundamental truth that Christ is the vital centre of the kingdom or Church of God; that this kingdom exists alone in the person of him who is invested with the true power and spirit of God; who is God's "beloved Son;" who manifests the nature of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who by his incarnation, life, and atoning death, actually brings the souls of believers into personal union with God in him. In this way a living Church is formed out of the world. In this way alone the real fellowship of the Church could be attained, by union with One who is above all and in all. The true Church, therefore, call it what you will, visible or invisible, has its foundation in the person of Christ, and is composed of souls who depend upon Christ and live in him. They look to him in spiritual things. He is formed within them the hope of glory. Their wills acknowledge him as Lord in whom all dominion dwells. In contrast to the merely natural and transient life of this world, such souls, by their real union with Christ, have an eternal life in them. This it is that imparts to the Church an everlasting and divine life that makes it a kingdom that shall have no end.

2. A common possession of the spiritual graces, or the true spirit of Christ

and God. This is a necessary corollary and consequence of what has gone before. Where Christ is formed as the life of a soul, or of a number of souls who compose the Church, there his spiritual features must of necessity come out with more or less of distinctness. What are these spiritual features or graces which characterize the true Church everywhere and in all ages? In other words, to reduce it to the simplest form, what is true religion? Where true religion is, it will not, we think, be denied, there the true Church is.

Many answers have been made to this question, What is true religion? Some have found it sufficient to say that it is the working of the natural sentiment of devotion, the sense of the infinite in man; of something higher and superior, which leads him at times out of and above himself. There is, doubtless, such a sentiment in man; but this is not enough to insure that strong feeling of binding obligation to God in the conscience and affections which is implied in true religion, neither does such a vague sentiment account for that power and living energy which true religion exhibits.

Religion has also been explained to be the development of the divine in human nature. In so far as man is a divine creation, and made in the image of God with immortal powers, he is indeed divine; but if there be such a divine nature in man as makes him by the constitution of his being a part or child of God, why does not the divine principle in man manifest itself from the beginning and irresistibly in him? Why does his nature develop itself invariably, under all circumstances, favorable or unfavorable, in human imperfection, sorrow, and unholiness?

But leaving such outside definitions, let us look at some of those which have more of scriptural and vital truth in them. One such definition of true religion as we have named is comprehended in the idea of duty; making the principle of

obedience to rightful law to be the essence of religion. The word "duty" is truly a noble word. It has been the watchword of great deeds. It is, moreover, an essential element of true religion. The human will must come into subjection to the will of God before any man can lead a religious life. Religion is certainly the doing of what man ought to do. The law has its grand and appropriate place in the gospel. It can no more be blotted out or lost sight of than ean Mount Sinai in the whole scenery of spiritual truth; but the law has no renewing power. The tie which has been broken cannot rebind itself to God. It cannot of itself reform the lost relation, nor continue to hold man in a state of living and joyful union with his heavenly Father. "The law," the Apostle says,

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was not made for the righteous man, but for the sinner;" it is to reprove of sin, to slay false confidence of the mind, to warn, to restrain, to judge, to shine before the soul as a constant and holy standard of duty, to lead as a schoolmaster to Christ; but it has in it no spring of a new life, or of a new and holy Church. If the best man's life were judged merely by what he has done, it would be seen to be fragmentary, imperfect, and sad. There would be no finished lives among us, nor in the whole circle of the Church on earth; for it is love alone that gives to life the touch and glory of divine perfection.

Religion, yet again, is often comprehended in the thoroughly Christian principle of self-sacrifice; which truth has still more of the Christlike element in it, is a still purer emanation of the cross, and enters more profoundly into the very marrow and life of religion. We all feel the deep power of self-sacrifice; that they who have moved us most to strive after goodness have been they who, like the Saviour, have sacrificed most for goodness' sake. Something of this inward consecration or surrender of self to the Master must belong to every

Christian in order to bear him through the common trials and temptations of life. The school of the Christian in which he hardens and trains himself for the prize of a higher life is the school of self-denial. There can be no strong virtue that is not rooted by having stood trial. But even this strong and pure principle, this prominent characteristic quality of Christianity, cannot of itself comprehend the whole of religion, because it must be regarded as a result or fruit of true religion in the heart, rather than the thing itself. And the same might be said of the truth of repentance; because although a man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven without a hearty repentance of his sins, yet, when he repents of his sins, how is he to answer for the least of them before God, and how is he to become and continue a holy man? So, to go no further, although these qualities that have been named are in the highest degree religious qualities, and must enter into all true religion, yet true religion itself, or the religious life that produces and comprehends them, is the Spirit of God in the heart; and this, above all, is the spirit of love. That defines it in the shortest term. "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." Religion in its purest fact and essence is the being planted in that divine love in which the withered and sin-deadened soul of man begins to put forth once more heavenly bloom and fruit.

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What we have said is, we think, fully confirmed by Scripture. Jesus, when asked the direct question, in what true religion, whereby man inherited eternal life, consisted, answered, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength"- and "thy neighbor as thyself." Nothing is needed to be added to this, but only to develop and explain it.

For this we might go abundantly to the Apostle John; but we will rather go

to the rugged and argumentative Paul. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians are devoted to the subject of the Church, to its gifts, graces, and religious life. The apostle speaks of the miraculous gifts of prophecy, tongues, and healing; and of the commoner gifts of knowledge, teaching, government, alms-giving and so on. These all he represents as but partial gifts of the Church of God, that will pass away with the need of them. They are in a sense temporal in their nature, and are suited to the condition of the Church while on earth. Then he takes up charity as that essential and divine principle that perfects and comprehends all the gifts and graces of the Church, and ends with the words, "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity." Here we seem to come to the substance, or the abiding essence of all that is good, of true religion. We can ourselves see that this is so, and that there never was or could be true religion, and above all true Christianity, without these eternal elements uniting us with God, keeping us in the enjoyment of God, and imparting to us the Spirit of God. Love, which is called the greatest of these, is indeed in a peculiar sense the everlasting ground-work of religion, in which as in a divine soil all the plants of Christian virtue grow.

"Faith worketh by love," and without love would be but a dead orthodoxy. Self-sacrifice without love would be gloomy stoicism, and there must be love for genuine self-denial to spring from; repentance without love would be remorse, self-hatred, and despair; prayer without love would be but lip-service, like the praying of the Pharisees at the corners of the streets to be seen of men. Love is thus not so much a definite act or virtue, as it is the spirit of a man that enters into all his acts, faculties, and being. It is not a mere feeling, but rather the steady principle of all right

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eousness. It can even hide its face of sweetness and tender compassion, and put on the stern countenance of justice as does God himself. But it does all things for the highest good of all as does God. It has no element of selfishness, no drop of bitterness or malice, in it. It goes out continually for the good of others. It is the same principle of life and action that moves God. It is the simplest state of the regenerate mind born into the divine likeness. It is in a word the new spirit of God and Christ; and a man is thus brought to share in the life of God, and "made a partaker of the divine nature." We can indeed go no farther than this in our analysis of religion, and of the essence of the invisible Church. It comes in fact all to this, that true religion is not to be found in man, but alone in the life and Spirit of God. He that is born through Christ into this new spirit of love and of God belongs to the true Church, whatever be his name or nation; and will manifest more and more of the divine character and fruits of this inward principle.

It is this spirit of love and of the gospel that is continually working like a hidden leaven in the world, to bring men out from the kingdom of selfishness and sin, into the heavenly freedom and brotherhood of the Church of God. Let us express the hope that there are many thus born into this invisible Church, who have not as yet become members of the visible Church. We may hold this belief, without at the same time yielding in the least our conviction of the necessity and importance of the visible Church. Are we not permitted to point to an illustrious example of this encouraging hope? May we not rejoice to believe that although he did not live to become a public confessor of the Christian faith, the unselfishness, gentleness, and humility of him whom the nation mourns, breathing the loving Spirit of Christ, was an evidence that

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A CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH was or- Lee was installed pastor of the Church ganized in Bristol, R. I., May 8, 1687, on the day of its formation. Mr. Lee although public worship had been held sailed for England in 1691, but was there for six years previous by the Rev. taken captive by the French, and died Benjamin Woodbridge. One of the of prison fever at St. Maloes soon eight original male members of the after. Rev. John Sparhawk was his Church was the hero of Philip's war, successor. He was ordained June 12, Col. Benjamin Church. Rev. Samuel 1695; and died April 29, 1718, in the

twenty-third year of his ministry. The third pastor, Mr. Nathaniel Cotton, was ordained Aug. 20, 1721. He was son of Rev. Roland Cotton of Sandwich, and grandson of Rev. John Cotton of Boston. He died July 3, 1729, in the thirty-first year of his age, and the eighth of his ministry. Rev. Barnabas Taylor was next ordained, Dec. 24, 1729; dismissed June 3, 1740. He was followed by Rev. John Burt, who was ordained May 13, 1741. He died Oct. 7, 1775, in the fiftyninth year of his age, and the thirtyfifth year of his ministry. Rev. Henry Wight was next settled, Jan. 5, 1785. He retired in 1828, and Rev. Joel Mann was ordained as his colleague in Nov., 1815, who was dismissed Sept. 14, 1826. Rev. Isaac Lewis, D. D., was installed the eighth pastor in Nov., 1828, but was dismissed on account of the failure of his voice, Sept. 28, 1831. Rev. John Starkweather was installed the ninth

pastor, Dec. 14, 1831; was dismissed Dec. 29, 1834. The present pastor, Rev. Thomas Shepard, D. D., was installed April 30, 1835. The Church now numbers eighty-three males and one hundred and sixty-two females, a total of two hundred and forty-five, and is in a very harmonious and flourishing condition.

The new house of worship, of which we give a fine engraving herewith, was built of stone, in 1856. It is situated on the corner of Bradford and High streets, fronting the latter. Its dimensions are, length one hundred and one feet, width sixty-seven feet, walls twenty-eight feet in the clear, and thirty-nine feet from the floor to the apex of the "nave of the main arch." There are one hundred and fourteen pews on the floor, and thirty in the gallery; seating between seven hundred and eight hundred perThe architect was Seth Ingalls, Esq., of New Bedford.

sons.

AN ODE.

[Said to have been written by Philip Sidney on his death-bed. See Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries, i. 671.]

Ir is not that I dye: I doe but leave an inne,

Where harboured was with me all filthy kind of sinne.

It is not that I dye: I do but now begin

Into eternal joys by faith to enter in.

Why mourne ye then, my servants, friends, and kin?
Lament ye when I lose; -why weepe ye when I win?
Weary of sinne, but not of sinninge,

Striving to gain, but never winninge,
Seeking an end without beginninge,
Thus doe I lead my life.

My ways are pitfalls, smoothly hidden,
My passions resty coults unridden,
My pastimes pleasures still forbidden,

My peace is inward strife;

My meditation, thoughts unholy,
My resolution yielding folly,

My conscience Sathan's monopoly,

Sinne doth my soul inherit.

My penitence doth ill persever,

My faithe is fraile, hope constant never,
Yet this my comfort is for ever,

God saves not man for merit.

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