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munications it opens between heaven and earth are shut. Deism is followed by naturalism, naturalism by materialism,—a materialism] not a whit the less Pagan because adorned with taste, learning, and a liberal application of those terms of Christian phraseology, and those external habits of decorum, which are the inestimable boon and heritage transmitted from the disowned creed of the Gospels. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost dwindles into an attenuated, æsthetic impression of a regular, natural Providence. The special act of that Person, regeneration, is dwarfed into a self-improvement by the human will. The liberty of genuine prayer is shortened-if prayer survives in articulate forms at all-into a dull and barren process of self-stimulation which yields effects like dropping new or multiplied buckets into empty wells;-for a fixed order of events cannot hear supplication, praise, or thanksgiving. The life dies out of both private and public devotion. Man's part of the business usurps the interest that belongs to God's part;— the professed worshiper is more anxious to be enlightened or entertained or electrified by figures of rhetoric, or bursts of declamation or ethical lecturing, than to be pardoned for his sins, or to have his soul borne up in self-forgetful homage. Through a sentimental fear of charging God with severity, a cruel blow is struck at his equity, and his majestic attribute of mercy is construed to mean a fond indulgence of all sorts of people in all sorts of things. The very possibility of mercy or forgiveness is taken away, for where there is no penalty there is no clemency; indifferentism has nothing to forgive. A general infirmity creeps into religious action. A taste grows up for that sort of instruction which leaves all consciences equally at ease, substituting descriptions of a desirable goodness for the Apostle's abrupt and searching rebuke, 'Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out;' or the Saviour's own, 'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.' Other themes than those which lie close to the heart of the Gospel are the popular subjects of the pulpit, till Paul's magnifying of his office is exchanged for an effectual obscuration of it in a wonderful variety of offices. Of course the distinctive ecclesiastical honors are lowered. Missions are languid or unknown. Enthusiasm is chilled. Not replenished by the reactionary strength of an aggressive and progressive zeal, the parishes are deadened at home. Discussions or diversions occupy the empty room of the prayer meeting. The Sunday school fails to supply its pupils with an answer to those that ask them what they believe. The world' reaps an easy harvest. And of course, where these tendencies predominate, the question whether anything which can properly be called a Church of Christ will continue is only a question of time.*

"Were it to be affirmed that these tendencies always work themselves out immediately, or in all individuals who reject the Triune declaration, the insult to com. mon sense would be as gross as the breach of catholic amity. Devout men and

"* That the term 'Trinity' is not Scriptural furnishes no argument against the Scriptural authority for the doctrine, so long as the truth is asserted and reasserted in the Scriptures. So the terms Divinity,' 'Deity,' 'Humanity,' 'Incarnation,' 'Missions,' even 'Christianity,' and many more, are not less used as true because not found in the Bible. The veneration for the letter of Scripture which thus insists on a mere name, if consistent, would involve other conclusions for which the supposed objector would hardly be prepared."

women who turn a revering and affectionate heart to Christ, and yet persist in that dogmatic rejection, are found in our day, as they have been in other days. To us they seem exceptional cases, standing somewhat apart from the vigorous currents of Christian life in the Church, indebted after all to hereditary influences which they do not acknowledge, not very successful in handing down their piety from one generation to another, and denied some opportunities and privileges which, in a clearer doctrinal agreement with the ancient standards, would enlarge their usefulness along with their satisfactions. They also seem to us,-if the remark may be allowed,-to suffer soon or late under a degree of theological inconsistency, exalting Christ in their reverent affections to a place which they refuse him in a deliberate and express confession. But it must be a narrow construction of the substance of faith which does not cheerfully and gratefully recognize in them a sincere and beautiful imitation of much in the Master's example. We are aware that there are those who fail to connect the evils we have just enumerated with the cause to which we have ascribed them. But when we consider how marvelously God binds causes and effects together, and how at last he blends all revealed truth with righteous practice and accepted institutions, it does not seem very strange that an error respecting so supreme a reality as the nature of God, Christ, and the Spirit, should entail damaging consequences not readily traced in all the links of their succession, by the eye, on all the interests of personal and social religion. Undoubtedly, too, there are faults enough in those branches of the Church where the truth we are advocating is fully held. But the common imperfections of human nature are not to blind us to the existence of real contrasts, nor justify us in ignoring conclusions equally enforced by the interior nature and the exterior history of the Christian system." pp. 399–403.

We had intended to present some extracts from other sermons in this volume, all of which breathe the same evangelical and affectionate spirit, and some of which invest with great beauty and freshness the cardinal truths of the Gospel, affording happy illustrations of the householder's art, "who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." We have spent so much space, however, upon the twentieth sermon, which is indeed by far the longest, and will attract most attention, that we must pass over other discourses we had marked, to say a word in conclusion upon the accomplished fact, which now ranks Dr. Huntington among the supporters of Trinitarian Christianity. It was a gradual history, and no one could have anticipated any more rapid development under such circumstances; and it is an event illustrating at once the wisdom of the polity and the strength of the faith we have inherited from our Fathers. That polity has been brought into suspicion, and many who have been nurtured under it have assailed and re

jected it because the chief development of Unitarianism in this country has taken place beneath its wings. They have been ignorant or uncandid enough to deny that in England the saine defection took place in the Presbyterian fold, and that, unlike the course of events in New England, the whole body lapsed from the faith, and in place of exile churches rising up beside the defected ones, and gradually supplanting them, the very name itself changed its import, and was as commonly associated with Socinianism in the popular mind, as it had been with Calvinism. The Presbyterianism that once fenced error out, acted as well to fence it in. But with us this is no argument against the polity, and we cite it only as an offset to the reproach which is sometimes cast upon the way of Congregational churches. The truth is, church polity never was intended, and never can be relied on, to protect the church from false doctrine; we might as well attempt to exclude the pestilence from our houses by bars and bolts. The laws which govern the thoughts and sympathies of men, which determine the course of speculation, and raise successive tides of opinion, act independently of church organization, and must be met in their own sphere by corresponding and appropriate influences, or they cannot be met at all, and all outward hindrances will act rather as helps; the fire will find fuel in such attempts to smother it. We claim, therefore, a priori, from the very nature of the case, that the freedom of our polity, which imposes no restraint upon the life of the spiritual body within, but yields as readily to error, when it has intrenched itself in the conviction of men, is an excellence, for it does not assume to be a conservator of the truth, which it never can be, but warns the ministry and the church alike, that nothing can effectually keep heresy out, but that which keeps the faith in the hearts of the people. The first and most essential thing to be done, in protecting a city from invasion, is to expose the insufficiency of its trusted defenses. If the maintenance of spiritual life be the only safeguard against death, and eternal vigilance the price of security, it is vital that the church should know it; and that polity is best which attracts least confidence to itself, gives freest motion to the life within, and concentrates

attention upon the only conserving power. We may add now to these theoretical reasonings the corroborations of facts. The movement of mind which brought in Unitarianism, and introduced it into our churches, because they were free, has been followed by another movement which finds equally free access to restore the faith that was cast out, and which, coming back after such an experience, is entrenched in the pulpit and at the communion table as it never could be by canons and subscriptions. It is now just half a century since Trinitarianism was taught in the pulpit of Harvard College Chapel; and under the free workings of the Congregational polity, it has come back again; not by imposition, which could only dishonor the truth, but by invitation, because, in the state of the college, an evangelical—we do not say Trinitarian—ministry was desired. We are constrained to add, however, that in striking contrast with the freedom of our principles, has been the narrowness of some among us in working them. When it was first announced, several years ago, that some of the prominent ministers of Unitarian churches in the city of Boston were evangelical in their tendencies, and had actually embraced some of the formative elements of Trinitarianism, the announcement, in place of awakening sympathy and aid, aroused an inveterate spirit of suspicion, started investigation as to what they did not believe, rather than what they did, and because thinking and cultured men, coming out of the bosom of Unitarian fellowship, and working their way carefully but manfully through spiritual and intellectual battles, of which the inheritors of a traditional theology have no comprehension,because these men could not at once pronounce all the shibboleths of provincialism, they were denounced, and their good was evil spoken of. When one of their number, Dr. Huntington, was called to Harvard, instead of making it a subject of congratulation, they warned the friends of truth the more against the institution; and when he published a sermon on the Deity of Christ, in which any sympathetic and candid inind would have discovered the seeds of his later and matured Trinitarianism, these heresy hunters saw, or affected to see, only a treacherous Sabellianism; and when, on the basis of

this substantial agreement of faith, the pastor of the North Church, New Haven, gave him the right hand of fellowship, and invited him to preach, it was the occasion of a renewed assault alike upon the Harvard professor and the New Haven divines. And when another pastor of a Unitarian Church in Boston, Rev. Mr. Coolidge, had passed through all intermediate phases of belief, had planted himself broadly and unmistakably upon Orthodox Christianity, carrying his congregation with him, at least in personal attachment to himself, and the Unitarian proprietors were willing that the church should fall into line, as an Orthodox Congregational Church, had the Orthodox community accepted and sustained it; through suspi cion in some, and indifference in more, Mr. Coolidge was permitted to stand alone, his tie to the church to be dissolved, the congregation to disband, the house to be sold, and we are glad to learn, as the last item in this strange history, that it has passed into the hands of a Presbyterian society. Under such an administration of Orthodoxy in the old Puritan metropolis, it is no matter of surprise that the decadence of Unitarianism should not strengthen and dignify our Orthodox Congregationalism. Mr. Coolidge has entered into the Episcopal Church, and should Dr. Huntington be led, from any considerations, to resign the ministry in Harvard College, which he exercises so much to his own credit, the good of the institution, and the benefit of Christ's church at large, and should he find himself, by such resignation, a preacher of Trinitarian Christianity, but disconnected by any formal ties with any Trinitarian communion, it is more to be hoped than expected, that he would seek a union with Orthodox Congregationalists. But the facts to which we have alluded, however much they are to be lamented, and all the more so because of the contrast they form to our principles, we need hardly add, do not represent our churches or ministry; they are to be traced to a sinall number, and the only thing to be wondered at is, that they should have been suffered to represent and misrepresent a communion which we believe to be the freest of all Protestant denominations from sectarianism, and the most catholic in sympathies and adaptations.

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