its solemnity, its rich flavor of antiquity, and its social element?

66

In regard to the question of the true method of increasing the life, interest, and fervor of Congregational worship, we will only add one or two remarks, hoping at another time, under a more definite topic, to give this subject a fuller treatment. The following general conclusions, we think, should, first of all, be admitted and firmly settled in our minds as Congregational Christians, viz: that our Congregational form of worship is a genuine form of public worship, is a true historic cultus," however simple, and that it combines most if not all of the great essential elements of a true Christian publie worship; also, that as nothing human is perfect, our form of worship, like others, may in some respects be incomplete, may lack some subordinate elements of power, may still be open here and there to improvement or at least to development, without at the same time losing its great distinctive characteristics; also, that any improvement or reformation which may be needed is not to be made by giving up our Congregational form of worship, by surrendering its historic and characteristic order, which is as true a product of the religious feeling and thought of centuries as any other form of public worship in existence for this regular order, let it be ever so simple, is itself a power, and, therefore, even greater uniformity should be striven for, both in the public worship of the same church, and in that of all Congregational Churches; and again, that as forms of worship are matters of growth, springing from the hearts, wants, faith, and emergencies of the people through long periods of time, they cannot be transferred, at the pleasure of the individual church or pastor, from one to another denomination whose types or ideas of worship essentially differ. We cannot adopt the Episcopal form or liturgy without becoming Episcopalians. Whatever form of worship we have, it must be genuinely our own.

Dr. Bacon, in his Article on "The Puritan Ritual" (New Englander, Aug. 1855), has stated this principle with almost axiomatic and conclusive authority. He says: "Nothing like a formal liturgy after the manner of the Anglican Churches, or even after the manner of the Reformed Churches on the

European Continent, is possible in the Congregational Churches." He also says in the same Article: "Yet the churches of the New England polity have an interest in the discussion of the order and decencies of public worship. There are not a few devout and gifted men most earnest in their attachment to our doctrinal theology and our polity, who feel that our public worship is at present less becoming, and therefore less edifying (see the Pauline rubric, 1 Cor., xiv., 26, 40) than it ought to be, and who are looking in various directions for a remedy." Strengthened by such an admission from so important a source, we would reaffirm this want, and ask if there be no remedy, if there can be no development of our system to supply its own deficiencies, to enrich its barrenness, to round out and complete its simple yet noble ritual, to give unity, harmony, fulness, and vitality to its public worship of God, not in an æsthetic sense merely, as lending outward attractiveness, but as affording a true medium to the spiritual devotion of the people? If the only possible answer to these questions is the adoption of a formal liturgical form of worship throughout, thus radically and vitally changing our whole system, then we would say that Christianity is more important than Congregationalism, and Congregationalism must bend to higher interests, and could and would do so. Or if the introduction of the liturgical element in some modified and subordinate form were an adequate answer to these questions, then this should be done. But we believe that we have not yet arrived at either of these dilemmas. The question lying back of both of these is yet to be satisfactorily settled, whether in an essentially unliturgical form of worship, the elements of power, truth, and beauty that a liturgical form may possess, may not be equally secured, and the evils which are wrapped up in the latter system be at the same time avoided? This is the interesting and difficult question, which, in the presence of an advancing civilization, of a more general cultivation of the æsthetic sense, of the power of the human element which is making itself more and more felt in all religious things, of the lowering of the high tone of primitive piety, or its assumption of other phases that are apparently a decay of the highest spiritual life-this is the practical question that the Congrega

tional Churches of New England and the West have now to meet and work out.

The time may come when in all these questions of church worship, polity, benevolence, and life, Christian men of all bodies and sects may be able to rise above their denominational platforms, and have regard only to the interests of their "common faith;" when they may be able to aid each other in arriving at the truest method of serving and glorifying God; when one body of Christian worshipers may impart to another whatever portion of truth or power it is more peculiarly in possession of; when the name "Christian" may be above every sectarian name, and all who love Christ may delight to walk, and counsel, and toil, and worship together.

ARTICLE VI.-THE LATE REV. DR. DUTTON.

A Discourse delivered January 31, 1866, at the Funeral of the Rev. Samuel W. S. Dutton, D. D., Pastor of the North Church in New Haven. By LEONARD BACON, Pastor of the First Church in New Haven. 8vo. pp. 32.

THE necessary delay in the publication of Dr. Bacon's Discourse prevented us from recording on these pages our sense of the bereavement which the friends of the New Englander, in common with the rest of the community, have suffered in the death of Dr. Dutton. We propose to present, now, neither an extended analysis of his character nor a description of his services; but, availing ourselves of the sermon before us, we would connect with passages from it a few observations of our own. Of the early life of Dr. Dutton, Dr. Bacon says:

Samuel William Southmayd Dutton was born at Guilford, March, 1814, the fourth child and the second son of the Rev. Aaron Dutton, long the faithful and honored pastor of the First Church in that ancient town. His training for the ministry of the gospel may be said to have commenced at his birth. He was born into a home where the old strictness of domestic discipline—instead of being a harsh bondage, as no doubt it has been in the experience of some households-was administered in love, and was the security of all domestic happiness; and where a mother, (O, how many such have there been and are there now in the homes of New England pastors!) gentle, firm, intelligent, appreciative of knowledge as better than riches, and of religion as better than all human wisdom, was the guardian angel of her children, and her husband's light and joy. From the first opening of his mind to receive knowledge and to be moulded by moral and religious influences, he was carefully taught and carefully restrained and guided; he became familiar with the religious sanctions of all duty; he breathed an atmosphere of intelligence and devotion as well as of love; he felt that the daily prayers were as much a matter of course as the daily meals; he saw what the work was of a faithful minister in the charge of a great parish; and through the hospitalities of his father's house, he saw many other ministers from far and near, and often heard them talking about their studies and the books and controversies of the time, their work, their trials and discouragements, and their joys. All who knew him in his ripest manhood, may easily understand what he was as he grew up in that old town of Guilford, an active, bright, frolicsome boy, sometimes mischievous in play, but never malicious; brave, honest, chivalrous, and the best wrestler on the village green.

Some traits of his boyhood I have happened to know, which are strikingly identical with the noblest features of his character as a man. There was a boy of the same age, but of a more delicate frame and of a less muscular force, with whom he formed a close friendship, which never has been broken till now. Of that schoolmate and playmate, whose very delicacy and sensitiveness exposed him to jeers and occasionally to violence from stronger and ruder boys, he made himself the champion; and often (as I once heard him say), has he stood concealed, waiting for his little friend to pass a particular point, and then darting out to give battle in his defense, at the first appearance of the enemy. Of course it is not strange that, through all after years, he loved old Guilford with the characteristic affection of a "Guilford soul." Some things occurred, it is true, which might have estranged him. His father, while not yet an old man, was constrained to resign the charge of the parish; the dear homestead that looked out upon the Green, passed into other hands; he could not think of his departed mother but with the thought,

"Children not thine have trod our nursery floor;"

there was no family tie drawing him to the old place; but to him it was old Guilford, after all and to the last; the graves of mother and father, and of sisters and brothers who died long ago, were there; and his conversation was always enlivened with vivid and hearty remembrances of the place, in all its peculiarities and all its traditions.

Among those "vivid and hearty remembrances" were numerous anecdotes of a humorous character; and all who knew him well will recollect the zest with which they were given. Prepared for college chiefly under the tuition of his elder sister at home, he attained high rank as a scholar and was graduated at Yale in 1833. In the revival of 1831, while a member of College, he personally consecrated himself to the service of Christ. His guide in this critical period was Dr. Taylor, whose lucid instructions he ever remembered with thankfulness. When his mind was confused and hesitating, he resorted to Dr. Taylor, and as he said himself, Dr. Taylor told him so clearly what he had to do to be saved, that he felt he could go right to his room and do it.' After teaching for a year in Baltimore, he became Rector of the Grammar School in New Haven-a classical school, of a high order, for boysand in 1836 he became one of the tutors in Yale College. When the question of his appointment to the tutorship was brought before the College Faculty, some one mentioned that he had been known to take his stand on the door-stone of his school-house and allow the boys en masse to try to push him off. "And did they succeed?" inquired Professor Silliman.