grace of God they are enabled to make a personal profession of faith in Christ.

(3) Courts in gradation. The session may receive or exclude church members; the presbytery may unite or divide congregations; the synod, presbyteries; the general assembly, synods. The records of the session are reviewed by the presbytery; those of the presbytery, by the synod; those of the synod, by the general assembly. The appeal of the session is to the presbytery; that of the presbytery, to the synod; that of the synod, to the general assembly.

If the decision of any one of the lower courts should prove unsatisfactory, there is a larger and higher to which the case may be submitted. The humblest lay member of the Church has the right of an appeal from an adverse decision of the session, through each successive court, up to the general assembly, the highest of all.

Besides, by such an ascending series of judicatories, the oneness of the body ecclesiastic is made actual and visible. Not only local congregations but one far-extended Church is organized, there being "the same power in every tribunal that is in any tribunal, whilst the power of the greater part is over the power of the smaller part."

(4) Catholicity. Presbyterian organization, it is held, though necessary to a formally perfect church, is not necessary to a true church. The various Presbyterian denominations, therefore, seek to live in practical and cordial fellowship with all other evangelical communions. Holding faith above form, and discriminating between essential and non-essential truths, they offer the hand of brotherly coöperation to any religious body whose heart is as their heart concerning Christ the King.

4. ESTIMATE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN POLITY.

Is the Presbyterian system one of ecclesiastical republicanism? Not if this word be permitted to bear its usual significance. For in republicanism the representative is elected for a limited time -a year or a term of years-and so may be changed to suit the

changing views and wishes of his constituency; but the eldership is for life.' Calvin has said with reference to the State: "Indeed, if these three forms of government [monarchy, aristocracy, democracy] which are stated by philosophers, be considered in themselves, I shall by no means deny that either aristocracy or a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, far excels all others." Was not the form of government which he constructed for the Church a "mixture of aristocracy and democracy”—with the former element largely predominating?

The strength of the Presbyterian polity is in its conservatism. A representative conciliar government, it is neither greatly diffused nor greatly concentrated. It avoids extremes escaping, in one direction, the instabilities of restless or unenlightened popular feeling, and, in the opposite direction, the committal of large governmental power into the hands of a single officer, or even of an exclusively ministerial council. It provides what Isaac Taylor describes, though with some exaggeration, as "that necessary balance of powers, clerical and lay, apart from which the choice must always lie between hierarchical despotism or democratic despotism; that is to say, between an unabated spiritual supremacy or impracticable and ungovernable popular caprice." It is steady, strong, and stable."

But, like all other systems, Presbyterianism must pay the price of its advantages. Does it not miss the benefit of the people's constant coöperation, on the one hand, and of the quickening and aggressive leadership of individual superintendency, on the other? Let it not die of respectability.

One may reasonably believe that no other system of govern

'With the exception noted above, p. 402, n.

Institutes, IV., xx. 8.

Modern Presbyterianism, which, take it for all in all, and through all its fields of labor, is undoubtedly one of the noblest and most fruitful forms of Christian organization. . . . Regarded in general and in all its dimensions, as a Church organization, Presbyterianism is a masterpiece.

"There is in the world no moral ascendency of any force or forces over national character and life equal to that of Presbyterianism in Scotland. The discipline its churches furnish for the nation is unequaled in its power and thoroughness." (Rigg, "Church Organization,” pp. 124, 141, 142.)

ment would have so well suited the prevailing conditions at the time of the Reformation, as the Presbyterial. While setting its orderly senate of rulers and judges over against the hierarchy of Rome, it may be supposed to have committed both to presbyters and to people as large responsibilities as they were ready to accept and discharge. It would hardly be maintained that congregational, or prelatic, or Methodist churches, for example, would have proved as timely. Nevertheless, it does not follow that this notably compact and symmetrical system is equally well suited to other and very different conditions. Therefore its wisdom is shown in not refusing such modifications and additions— the "rotary eldership" and the appointment of deaconesses, for example as may be demanded by providential calls and opportunities.

III.

THE EPISCOPAL IDEA: PRELATIC, SUCCESSIONAL.

IN Congregationalism the Church is governed by local congregations, each legislating solely for itself—a pure democracy; in Presbyterianism, by elders elected by the people—a modified form of representative, or republican, democracy; in Prelatic Episcopacy, by bishops, in whose election the people may or not take a part-an oligarchy or federation of monarchies.

It is the fundamental principles of prelacy, that to the bishops of the Church has been intrusted, by Christ's own ordinance, all governmental authority. Practically it may be found expedient that they associate with themselves other ministers, or even laymen, in this governing office-and they ought to do what is expedient; but primarily the right of rule inheres in them alone. The will of the bishop, officially declared, is the law of the Church. Accordingly, as a matter not of courtesy but of simple fact, this man is "Lord Bishop."

Now the simple episcopal office is a natural and easily justifiable development. Its principle is no other than that of a strong executive. That it should have arisen in the Church is therefore not a matter of surprise. In its primitive form-that of the pastorship of a single congregation-the office, as every one will agree, was inevitable. But its further extension was hardly less So. As congregations multiplied, the demand for unity of doctrine, liturgy, and discipline would be enlarged, so as to call for a more general superintendence—the supervision of a single minister over a number of associated churches. Because it is a person, not a body of persons, a leader and not a legislature, that best satisfies the demand for unity. Thus would arise the diocesan episcopate.*

""For in recent years there has been going on in our [the Congregational] polity a process of development which reminds one, by its inner and almost unconscious necessity, of the natural development of the Episcopate, as

The prototype is found in the New Testament. The Apostles were itinerant general superintendents. Sent forth by their Lord as witnesses of his resurrection and as divinely illumined teachers of his gospel, they also exercised a fatherly care, more or less specific, over the congregations that were gathered here and there through their own and others' ministry. It could hardly have been otherwise. "Besides those things that are without,” says the farthest-traveling evangelist of them all, "there is that which presses upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches." We also find Paul associating others with him, tried and able men, as assistants in the work, and leaving them in this or that placeTimothy in Ephesus, Titus in Crete—to ordain elders, to regulate teaching and discipline, to set things in order, in his own absence.

Is it not reasonable, then, to suppose that subsequently to the ministry of the Apostles, the Christian churches, constantly increasing in number and subjected to various perils from without and within, should feel the need of some similar personal oversight? In a word, was the supervision of the churches a peculiar feature of the Apostolate, transient and inimitable-like that of bearing witness as men who had "seen the Lord," or that of inspired interpretation of the facts of redemption-or was it a service that might be possible and appropriate in the ordinary circumstances of the Church? It was certainly the latter.'

many historians agree in describing it, in the sub-apostolic Church." (Newman Smyth, “Address to the Episcopal Clergy of Connecticut," 1908.)

"Many Presbyterians feel the inefficiency of the Presbytery very keenly, and are prepared to advance to the permanent moderator or superintendent. Why not call him bishop? The tendency in the Presbyterian Church is toward such a bishop, who will give the Presbytery an executive head and make it more efficient." (C. A. Briggs, in “Church Reunion,” p. 49.)

"It may confidently be affirmed that, where Christianity is not enfeebled by adverse influences, its visible organization will always tend to something of an episcopal form, however much the name of episcopacy may be repudiated." (Litton, "The Church of Christ," p. 314)

"In modern Congregationalism something of this work of oversight and ministerial appointment has been managed by the home missionary Superintendents of the various states, generally with assistants working under them.

. . We might call them diocesan 'apostles.' Or, if you please, bishops,