non-sectarian. Many pastors commend families and individuals withdrawing from their charge with as great readiness to Presbyterian ministers as to those of their own order. New England Congregationalists moving into the West are more than likely to join Presbyterian churches. In comparison with either the Methodist, the Episcopal, or the Baptist church, the Congregational church lacks esprit de corps. It, therefore, fails to exhibit its increasing influence in lengthening rolls of members.

In reference to the means of increasing the membership of the Congregational Church there is little need, as there is little space, for me to write. The causes of its slow growth suggest, by contrast, the methods and instrument for its rapid propagation. Its churches should be more closely joined each to the other in the County and the State Conference. In the newer States, or those specially under the superintendency of the Home Missionary Society, the agents of the society should be the ablest administrators. They should not only be bishops, they should also be worthy to be bishops. There ought also to be devotion more thorough, consecration more hearty on the part of laymen and especially of ministers to the spiritual interests of the church. The last would I be to decry the importance of the intellectual element in church life and ecclesiastical progress; but the present need is of increased emphasis upon the spiritual side.

ARTICLE VI.—THE PRESENT CLAIMS OF THE CLERICAL PROFESSION ON CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN.

IN the story of Ben Hur, in which the Roman and the Jew figure on terms of personal friendship, at the opening of the Christian era, Massala, the bright young Roman, thus addresses his Jewish friend: "Yes, I pity you, my fine Judah. From the college to the synagogue, then to the temple; then, O! crowning glory, the seat in the Sanhedrim. A life without opportunity; the gods help you! But I,-Ah, the world is not all conquered. The sea has islands unseen. In the north there are nations yet unvisited. The glory of completing Alexander's march to the far East remains to some one. what possibilities lie before a Roman!"

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That ambitious young Roman still lives in this Western world and indulges in similar dreams. It is to be noted, however, that Massala's commiseration of his Jewish friend was unnecessary. Contrary to his prophecy, it is Judah that has taken possession of the islands of the sea; Judah that completes the march of Alexander to the East. As a prophecy much older than Massala's reads: "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise; thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee."

The event proved that the Roman glory was soon to pass away, and that Judah, the man of the college, the synagogue, the Sanhedrim, the man that had the poorest show for a life success, was the coming man, destined to lead the thought of a

new age.

The possibilities of American life at the present day are extremely inviting. The American Massala gets the ear of his college friend, and makes him think that he has only a dull life before him, especially in the clerical profession; and forthwith there is a great rush for mining and sheep raising; manufacturing, banking, merchandising; some great Alexander march for world conquests.

I am requested to say a few things on "The present claims of the Clerical Profession upon Christian Young Men." And shall make out the claim, chiefly,

1. From the present condition of religious or theological thought; and 2, the hope inspired by it. This thought is in a very unsettled state. I hardly need allude to the councils, ministers' meetings, religious journals that bear testimony on this point. And these things probably signify even more discontent than they actually bring to light. Our creeds are assailed and handled as if there was nothing venerable about them; and that too by reverent and devout thinkers; as able and intelligent also as they are sincere. It is certainly a breaking up time, in matters of religious thought, and good men are looking around them to examine foundations, which it was supposed were sure beyond question. And whichever way the drift is, whether towards a clearer theism, or a more pronounced atheism; in either case there must be for the time, an increase of skepticism and infidelity; more or less of recklessness and falling away. Revelation is on trial, and the ordeal is an uncommonly severe one. Young men now called to preach the gospel must settle the question to begin with, whether there is a gospel, whether there is a Christ, whether there is a God. This is the situation, and the ground of the special claim upon Christian young men.

They are called to the rather perilous responsibility of examining our theological nomenclature, or creed statements, as these are largely in question. No mortal power can avert this necessity. The issue is forced upon us. Either we must examine anew, and independently, or give up our religious heritage. Not to see this necessity, is to give up the case. If it costs something like a struggle to admit even so much of infallibility in our formulas of doctrine, we should remember two things:

First, In the progress of thought it has been found necessary to change the forms of statement, in which truth has been cast. Our Saviour astonishes the Jews by doing this very thing. As regards Moses' law of retaliation, our Saviour subjects it to a thorough re-statement: showing that the mercy of its administration was all there was in it worth saving. Also the divorce

law of Moses, and the law of the Sabbath, he restates in such a way as to enlarge our conception of their meaning and spirit and make them such a working power in the changed conditions of life as Moses' times did not admit of. So we learn not to cherish too strong a presumption against a change in forms of statement. "All men sinned in Adam." We give up the phrase it may be. Do we therefore give up the truth or principle underlying those words, viz: the principle of hereditary transmission of character? Do we not better conserve the truth by a change of phrase? Our Saviour rebuked his disciples because they interpreted him too literally, and taught them that the seeming absurdity of his words disappeared, when they understood that the eating of his flesh, and drinking of his blood, meant spiritual union with him. And so, very many literal phrases may be called in question, without questioning the real truth, of which they are the exponent. And it is doing this that sometimes looks like unfaithfulness to creeds, while it is really an improved loyalty to them.

The second thing to remember is, that our theology has the disadvantage of being somewhat fragmentary and occasional; that is, constructed upon occasions; in certain historical exigences, upon which certain truths are cast, and necessarily in the heat of partisan warfare, when a favorite philosophy is more influential than Holy Scripture, and an opponent is tempted to push a truth to extreme statements, and then consider the statement as the only safety of the truth. Augustine built up his somber theology very much out of his own bitter experience of sin; and when pushed by Pelagius, used language that must subsequently be modified. The partisan influence, in the earlier creeds, is simply notorious. Call to mind the famous council in Florence over the "filioque." Remember also the violent reactions that gave birth to statements of belief: as, for example, in Luther's case, who in getting rid of his own sin by faith cast it upon Christ, in such a sense as to make Christ the actual sinner. In his recoil from good works, he used language that misrepresented Christ as the sin-bearer, as if sin passed from one to the other by actual transfer. The old disputes in New England about predestination and free will, undoubtedly distorted the truth sometimes.

and gave great trouble to religious enquirers. Calvin himself, the great teacher of sovereignty, having learned the lesson himself, like Moses in the mount of terror, advanced it too near the center of religious thought, and like Moses, said some things that successors must re-state, for subsequent times. That mighty man of God loved the divine majesty. He saw all human activity hidden, as it were, in the bosom of the divine. sovereignty; too near to God for explanation-clothed with God's greatness and strength. Man became great in the greatness of God. With a kind of dark fascination, subsequent ages have moved around this glorious truth, the more on account of its mystery, in the tuition of the great master, till fear had become too large an element in religion, and confusions and controversies have sprung up, and misconceptions have multiplied, till the whole evangelical system, and even the character of God have seemed to suffer obscuration: the same thing that happened to astronomy when the earth was the center of the solar system.

It would be strange if in the warmth of controversy it should not be so. Favorite philosophies, historical exigences, individual experiences, and all in the warmth of partisan zeal, could hardly fail to turn out theologies, fragmentary and unsymmetrical, perhaps in formulas that cannot stand the advance of thought without revision. It must be conceded, I think, that creed statements thus formed and lying long unquestioned, may very properly come up for reconsideration on the score of loyalty to truth. Phillips Brooks says, "Old dogmas, like old jewelry are precious, but may be re-cast sometimes, in the heat of thought." Joseph Cook expresses the same idea thus: "Fresh materials for belief may crystallize around old beliefs as new investigations go on." Prof. Tucker (Andover) expresses the same idea thus: "Spiritual forces, newly developed, may have affinity with the history and tradi tions of the past. The very intensity of the old culture may fuse the two in one."

How can we expect theological science to remain stationary any more than other sciences? As we know more of nature, the sciences of Astronomy, Geology, Botany, enlarge their respective domains and correct old mistakes. The better