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is a huge machine, working by rote, and grinding out its results like some monster mill, is surely a melancholy creed. But how much drearier to believe that nature has no God, and that all her phenomena are at the mercy of mere Chance! We are surrounded by colossal agencies, and if these were released from control we could not count upon our safety for a single instant. Around us is an atmosphere which might be lashed into daily tempest, so that nothing could withstand its fury, or corrupted into a noxious compound, so that no organized thing could breathe it without injury. Beneath us are lakes of molten matter into which whole cities might occasionally sink; and earthquakes, now chained in their subterranean lair, might rend the ground or keep it in a state of perpetual palsy. Above us the lightnings lie sleeping in the clouds or hidden in the soft bosom of the mists; and yet, if suddenly unloosed, their stroke would destroy every living thing within their range. The sea itself is but a magazine of inflammable matter, for if its constituent gases were temporarily divorced, a single spark might set the world in a blaze. The elements of pestilence are flitting about us in every direction, and, if left to gather strength, both man and beast would soon succumb to their subtle poison. Locusts and other insect nuisances might multiply in such prodigious profusion that the world would constantly labour under plagues as terrible as those of Egypt. But these gigantic powers are all kept in check. We know that there are reins to the hurricane, and laws for the volcano. The only thing, in fact, which can comfort the student of nature when he glances at the stupendous forces which are ever busy around him, and which a single day's Chance government might hurl into hopeless anarchy, is that there is a strong arm at the helm of the universe, and a mind of Unsearchable Wisdom to regulate all its affairs.

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VII.

CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES.

A HUNDRED years ago Bolingbroke wrote the lamentation, "The grief of soul is this-I see that the Tory party is gone," and the lapse of another century indicates that the days of all party are numbered. Mr. Disraeli may assure the citizens of London that "it is quite impossible a vigorous and direct policy can be maintained in this country unless the principles of party are recognised as one of the first bonds of public life," and his genius may irradiate the moribund theme with a momentary lustre; but the spirit of the times will not care to reanimate the languishing vitality. The reason is obvious. If a great social problem be submitted to the adjudication of a man or a multitude with common sense, their natural impulse is to deal with it, not according to the ancient tenets of their creed, but with their common sense-a procedure which, we submit, is diametrically opposed to the perpetuation of mere partisanship. And this principle is as true of religious as of political action. Christian men of all denominations are caring less for the formulæ of their sect, and looking more to the harmony of their lives and acts with the simple genius of the gospel. Hence the present has become an age, not of sceptical but thoughtful transition in ecclesiastical matters; and the growing spiritual energies of the Christian church are seen chafing against many a barrier of technicality and traditionalism, abandoning the shibboleths of denominationalism, and struggling for free and generous action.

There are, however, many even pious men who may be altogether anaware of these facts, or who may fail to recognise the momentous results which are already arising, and which are destined mightily to affect the future of the Christian church in England and her dependencies. The careless, who scarcely ever look beyond the confines of their own community, and the narrow-minded, who conceive that their own denomination is alone endowed with immaculate perfection, and that all others are essentially corrupt these are not likely to understand the signs of the times. But the thoughtful, as they stand upon the watch-towers of the Christian church, will descry beneath the flux and reflux of the wavelets that ripple the surface of events, the flow of mighty currents of influence which are destined to sweep away many an ancient bulwark of ecclesiasticism, and to pour their healthful tide over the cultured plains and neglected wilds of Christendom.

Hence the question naturally presents itself, what are these tendencies, and whence do they arise? Are they towards ritualism or rationalism, traditionalism or empiricism, prelacy or latitudinarianism? Our present design is to address ourselves to these inquiries. In doing so, we wish first to remove any suspicion of the impartiality of our tribunal. It is, we are aware, easy to reason towards a foregone

conclusion, and to see events through the medium of our own predilections. In illustrating therefore the principles to which we have to call attention, we shall chiefly concern ourselves with summoning witnesses of unquestionable competence and impartiality, who will thus have an opportunity of giving expression to facts and opinions, on which the reader will be able to form his own judgment.

But before proceeding, we may premise one or two facts which no one will controvert. Several denominations have inculcated and practised the principle of Voluntaryism, but it has been the lot of Congregationalism to advocate-in more thorough unison than any other body-the two principles of self-support and self-government. That the Christian church may not look for patronage or control to the smiles or the sceptres of kings, and that each Christian society is a spiritual republic, containing within itself all the powers necessary for its own discipline, these are the essential principles of the polity of Congregationalism-principles which, it is believed, are ancient as apostolic days, and are transcribed from the apostolic rubric. We now venture to our assertion that these two truths are daily acquiring fresh prominence and power, far beyond the confines of the community with which they are identified..

The first of these principles is, that the Christian church should be self-supporting that it is dishonoured by the patronage of the world, and that it is wronged by compulsory exactions of the worldly. "Christianity," said Paley, "is not a code of civil law. It can only reach public institutions through private character. A religious Establishment is no part of Christianity." Hence it will be better to gather our illustrations of the spread of this principle of self-support from that denomination, which, by its alliance with the State, naturally looks to the State at once for patronage and control.

The mere recognition of the principle of Voluntaryism by an Establishment dates a new epoch in its history, since the two ideas are virtually irreconcileable. The existence of a State Church is a declaration that it is the duty of the Government to provide the ordinances of religion for the people, while the adoption of Voluntaryism is a confession that the State is unable to discharge this real or supposed duty; it is also the introduction of a principle which will undermine and eventually supersede the system it at first was only designed to supplement.

It must, therefore, be a hard lesson for one who has been reared in the bosom of an Establishment to learn, that religious institutions ought to be produced and sustained by the spiritual life of the Christian church. It must be still more difficult to carry out this principle in a denomination which in all its details is interwoven with an intricate State system, in which private legal rights are bound up with those which are public and national; where the extremes of want and wealth are in immediate juxtaposition; where precedent cannot be changed without innovation; where alteration cannot be made without confiscation; where ancient legal bulwarks have served more to embarrass the friend

than to exclude the enemy; where the free agency of spiritual life has to act, as best it may, through an elaborate and rigid apparatus of technicality and law.

Meanwhile, the Establishment-conscious of the irreconcileable relation of these two principles and aware that every success of Voluntaryism is a practical disparagement of the State-church principledoesits best to impair the energies of its young rival. But on this point let Episcopalians themselves bear witness. No principle," said the Times, when adverting to this very subject-"no principle has fair play while it is only half appealed to; but throw yourself entirely upon it, and it will respond generously. Its effectiveness lies in this reliance upon it, and in this reliance being unreserved. If you have a reserve in the background-an aid from the State or some society-you make people suppose that you are dependent at the bottom upon them, and the force of your appeal to them is gone. They do not feel that the responsibility of the Church's support lies upon them. But make them feel their responsibility, and you have a hold upon them which they cannot escape. Any appeal to the Voluntary principle on behalf of the Church of this country.... would probably be a great failure, because the principle of an Establishment occupies the ground; and people do not understand being called on to pay for their clergy, when there is an Establishment in the country." Yet that journal allows that Methodism has "got the secret of the appeal to the purse," since its leaders are "always bleeding their congregations, and their congregations seem rather to like it than not." The Guardian newspaper, the organ of the High Church party, discussing this subject, gives expression to the same opinion. We all know," it says, "how independent exertion and enterprise are stifled by the feeling that a great power is behind us, ready to do our work, and push us through our difficulties. . . . . It is not merely that the Church loses self-reliance while she rests on the things of earth-she loses reliance in what is higher than self. It is not merely that she becomes content with things as they are, and forgets to meditate, to plan, to venture, to struggle-she entangles herself in a thousand embarrassing rela tions; for every favour which she receives from the powers that be, she is led to contract, or is boldly assumed to have contracted, a fresh obligation towards them, interfering, sometimes more fatally, with a single-eyed devotion to that one cause which should be her all-in-all. And at last, with her devotion and independence, she loses the practical usefulness for which alone she is valued by statesmen and philosophers, and becomes, first, a mass of endowments, to be devoured by patrons and ministers; and, next, an abuse, to be abandoned to the vengeance of reformers. There is an evil inherent in the very nature of endow ments, whether Roman, Anglican, or Presbyterian. They tendand they are often advocated by irreligious men, because they tend-to secularize the priesthood, to overlay it with those ideas of professional advancement, those aspirations after comfortable com

petence, which so often in all callings, and so banefully in the most holy ones, smooth the descent to worldliness. The creatures of human law endowments form around themselves an atmosphere of law and custom, and oppress with a weight of established precedent whatever is bold, or novel, or distasteful to the world. They engender a habit of relying on secular alliances, secular reasonings, secular devices, rather than those nobler aims which, if we can trust them, become, when we least expect it, and as we least expect it, mighty to the pulling down of strongholds."

Twenty years ago the English Government resolved to apply the "fixed" principle to the Colonies, and laboured so strenuously for this purpose, and to stifle all Voluntary action, that loyal men were driven almost to the verge of insurrection. But the Colonies rejected the incubus, and at length a better spirit is arising among men in high places at home. Thus, for instance, Mr. W. E. Gladstone expressed himself when speaking on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. He urged that the liberal assistance of the society should meet the special difficulties of the first stage of colonial life; but that "for their own sakes," they should as early as possible be taught to take the entire burden of their own Christian institutions upon themselves, lest dependence should induce weakness and pauperism. "It is the characteristic," he says, "of human nature, that if other people are ever ready to do something for us, we feel no anxiety to do it for ourselves. Not only that, but the habit so formed acquires such a command and a dominion over us as at length to induce us gradually into the belief that what we have not been accustomed to do we are not able to do." Thus it was, he informs us, with the Colonial church, which had “almost arrived at the comfortable belief that it was dependent on the nursing hand of this society, and that the nursing was to be perpetual. It had condemned itself to perpetual childhood, in the belief that it was impossible to move without aid in the support of its own bishops and clergy."

Mr. Gladstone indicated precisely the same truth, when referring to the withdrawal from the Propagation Society of the assistance formerly obtained for it from the "Queen's Letter," and which amounted to about £10,000 a year. Thinking of it as a State Churchman, he deplored the loss; but soon his Christianity turned the lamentation into a pæan, and he expressed the assurance that the very withdrawal of these "artificial props" would be beneficial, since the Church would thus be led to "fall back more unreservedly upon her faith, her zeal, her prayers-her appeals to the faith, the love, the zeal, the prayers, the alms, the service of Christian people; and for every pound that she amassed through the machinery of which she now loses the use, she will obtain many pounds without being indebted for them to anything, only excepting the love of the members of the Church of England.'

How pleasant is it thus to see the cold sneer of the politician's unbelief in anything but State patronage and endowment relax in

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