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THE SUSPENSE AND RESTORATION OF FAITH.

WE would bespeak a careful reading for the following extract from an article in the Episcopal Quarterly, by Rev. John Cotton Smith, late Assistant Minister on the Greene Foundation, Trinity Church, Boston, in whose removal to New York our city has sustained a very serious loss.

If we could have an Episcopal Church reconstructed according to the ideal herein set forth, there would be, we are confident, large bodies of Christians who would desire nothing more. But the good time is, we fear, far off.

"A great difficulty in reference to a common understanding and reception of historic Christianity has arisen from the fact, that men have failed to distinguish between what they hold as a systematic statement of their theology, and what they hold as a simple statement of the two great facts of revealed religion, the Fall and the Redemption. A system of theology, although it may be exceedingly. desirable, is, to a great extent, a matter of opinion. It is not a simple statement of the truths of revelation, but there is in it a very large proportion of the human element of philosophy, and of conclusions dependent upon long trains of reasoning. Such systems, we admit, are exceedingly important, but they have been unwarrantably elevated into an importance to which they have no claim; so that they have been held as of the essence of Christianity itself, and conformity to them required as a test of communion in the Christian Church. We have thus had an exhibition of the extraordinary spectacle of "covenants of faith," which required as a condition of membership in a Christian Church a belief in certain articles, which the very framers of the articles themselves would not claim to be essential to a saving faith in Christ. When men come to understand that there is a distinction to be made between a system of theology and a simple statement of the fundamental principles of Christianity, and that a man may hold his particular system of theology without having a Church committed to it, and may retain his connection with historic Christianity by the reception of these universally acknowledged fundamental truths; then we shall find that a union upon the basis of historic Christianity is something practicable and likely to be attained. But so long as matters of opinion are made as important as matters of faith, and the deductions of human reason are considered as bind

ing as the simple statements of revelation, just so long will it be impossible to bring historic Christianity into its proper place, as the doctrinal system of the Universal Church. Historic Christianity indorses no elaborate theological systems. It knows only the simplest elements of the Christian faith.

"In what we have said of historic Christianity we shall not be understood as discrediting in the slightest degree the great Protestant principles, that the Scriptures are the only Rule of Faith, and that the right of private judgment is to be maintained. Each one must be free to find his own creed in the Word of God; but it is his privilege certainly, if he chooses to do so, to interpret the Scriptures by the light, and confirm his own judgment by the testimony of all ages of the Christian Church.

"There would be no difficulty in determining what the fundamental principles of Christianity are, if it was made a question simply of the interpretation of the Scriptures; or what is the testimony of historic Christianity, if the question were made one merely of history. But, beside this, we are to inquire what materials are within our reach out of which may be constructed the external form of the Church of the Future. The grand conditions which, upon Dr. Bellows's general principles, must be essential to this form, are, that it shall impose no unnecessary restrictions; and that it shall have its roots in existing institutions, thus connecting it with the whole past of the Christian Church. The problem is to construct, or to find already constructed, an organization by which these conditions shall be satisfied, and in which historic Christianity may be or is already enshrined.

"The business of constructing a Catholic Church one would think to be, in this age of the world, a well-nigh hopeless undertaking. Dr. Bellows has no expectation of accomplishing it. The fact is, if there is not a Catholic Church already, we never shall have one, and a common basis of union, in a living body, will be forever impossible.

"We are to seek, therefore, for the elements of it in what already exists. Our search is to be made among existing institutions to find, if possible, the germ of historic Christianity in a Catholic Church. Dr. Bellows furnishes us with some valuable assistance in this respect by intimating where the nearest approach is made to a satisfaction of the great want which he has so eloquently described. We take his own words. In the Sequel to the Suspense of Faith he says:

'I think it [the Episcopal Church in this country] the most respectable church organization in Protestant Christendom, and the best entitled to imitation and adoption if any model is to prevail.'

"It would be hardly respectful to Dr. Bellows not to follow out the suggestion he has so generously made. We wish, therefore, to inquire what elements there are in the Episcopal Church in this country which are favorable to this great cause of union, and which fit it to be the rallying-ground of Christians.

"It is important, in the first place, to ascertain what is absolutely essential to the Episcopal Church, because objections against such of its rites, usages, or principles as are local or temporary are not objections against the Church itself. We hold, therefore, that what is essential to the Church is the historic form and the historic doctrine, which make it precisely that historic and comprehensive Church for which so many of the best minds of the age are seeking. Those who are outside of the Church are apt to take it for granted that the historic form of the Church in an episcopally constituted ministry necessarily involves all the evils which have been connected with the assumptions of the Papacy, or the peculiarities of a State Church. They are apt to take it for granted, also, that the Church, as such, is committed to some system of doctrine, some considering the theology of the Church as essentially Arminian, and others as essentially Calvinistic. Whereas the truth is, that all that is essential in the form of the Church is the episcopally constituted ministry for the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments; and all that is absolutely essential in its doctrine is in the fundamental, evangelical truths of the Scriptures, as expressed in the Apostles' Creed. This is all which reason, aided by the testimony of all Christian ages, can find in the Bible as essential elements of the Church. We shall not be understood, of course, as saying that there are no other distinctive peculiarities of the Episcopal Church. And we would take this opportunity to dissent from the idea of enlarging the basis of the Church by hastily sacrificing or attempting to reform peculiarities which have become distinctive. We feel thus because it is our earnest conviction that these very peculiarities which are objected to will finally be the very things which will commend the Church to the better judgment and taste of the age. But the point which we wish to make is this, that there is scarcely any serious objection entertained anywhere to what is really essential in the Episcopal Church, since

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all acknowledge the validity of Episcopal ordination, even if they do not hold to its necessity; and certainly all Evangelical Christians accept the statements of the Apostles' Creed.

"No other Christian body surely occupies a position so favorable to unity. The essential features of the various denominations are such that they cannot unite with each other without ignoring or abandoning their essential characteristics. But the absolutely essential elements of the Episcopal Church would require no sacrifice which a believer in the fundamental verities of Christianity need hesitate to make.

"We know it will be said that practically the distinction which we make between that which is absolutely essential and those peculiarities which have become distinctive in the Church is worthless, for these very distinctive peculiarities, so long as we retain them, are as insuperable obstacles to union as if they were essential features in the Church. But it is certainly something gained, it seems to us, to have it understood, that they do not constitute the essence of the Church, and that under the pressure of some mighty emergency, like that of the entering in of large bodies of Christians, they might be, so far at least as these bodies were concerned, modified or dispensed with altogether. This is a very different thing, however, from inviting a return by such modifications and proposed reforms, since these would only have the effect of pandering to the very evil which union is intended to cure."

THE ATHENS OF AMERICA AND THE ATHENS OF GREECE.

PASSING, the other evening, our noble public library, I was much cheered as the bright light streamed out upon me from the windows, and I looked in upon the comfortable group of readers, gathered in a room which looked almost hospitable. Yes, cheered and uplifted too into not a little pride of heart. How our world is moving onward! said I to myself. What a noble sequel is this to our grand system of public instruction, and how secure is the civilization which takes such pains to foster the intelligence of the people! Perhaps my thought was reasonable enough, and yet let us be on our guard against conceit. You who are called modern Athenians by those who would honestly commend, or mischievously flatter, or sneeringly depreciate, into your famous Library, and take from the shelves Grote's His

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tory of Greece, and read as follows: "Without pretending to determine with numerical accuracy how many dramas were composed in each year, the general fact of unexampled abundance in the productions of the tragic Muse is both authentic and interesting.. Moreover, what is not less important to notice, all this abundance found its way to the minds of the great body of the citizens, not excepting the poorest. We cannot doubt that the effect of these compositions upon the public sympathies, as well as upon the public judgment and intelligence, must have been beneficial and moralizing in a high degree. Though the subjects and persons are legendary, the relations between them are all human and simple, exalted above the level of humanity only in such measure as to present a stronger claim to the hearer's admiration or pity. So powerful a body of poetical influence has probably never been brought to act upon the emotions of any other population; and when we consider the extraordinary beauty of these immortal compositions which first stamped tragedy as a separate department of poetry, and gave to it a dignity never since reached, we shall be satisfied that the tastes, the sentiments, and the intellectual standard of the Athenian multitude must have been sensibly improved and exalted by such lessons. The reception of such pleasures through the eye and the ear, as well as amidst a sympathizing crowd, was a fact of no small importance in the mental history of Athens. It contributed to exalt their imagination, like the grand edifices and ornaments added during the same period to their Acropolis." Has not the Athens of America lost as well as gained something? We do not say, Go to the theatre and see, but only, Read the play-bills!

E.

"GUIDE not the hand of God, nor order the finger of the Almighty unto thy will and pleasure; but sit quiet in the soft showers of Providence and favorable distributions in this world, either to thyself or others. And since not only judgments have their errands, but mercies their commissions, snatch not at every favor, nor think thyself passed by if they fall upon thy neighbor."

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