“Smeman ©atljoHe” 
 
 A BRIEF CRITIQUE 
 
 * 
 
 By 
 
 CHARLES HENRY BABCOCK, D. D 
 
 Contributing Editor of “ The Chronicle ” 
 
 * 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SOCIETY 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 PROMOTION OF EVANGELICAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 1913 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/americancatholicOObabc 
 
“£lmnican Catfjolic” 
 
 A BRIEF CRITIQUE 
 
 * 
 
 By 
 
 CHARLES HENRY BABCOCK, D. D 
 
 Contributing Editor of “ The Chronicle” 
 
 * 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SOCIETY 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 PROMOTION OF EVANGELICAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 1913 
 
THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL 
 EDUCATIONAL SERIES 
 
 Already Issued: 
 
 I. PROTESTANTISM 
 
 By Leighton Parks, D.D., 
 
 Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church, New 
 York. 
 
 II. THE A T TITUDB OF PRAYER-BOOK 
 CHURCHMEN TOWARDS THE LATEST AT¬ 
 TEMPT TO CHANGE THE NAME OF THE 
 CHURCH. 
 
 By Randolph H. McIyim, D.D., LL.D., 
 D.C.L., Rector of the Church of the Epiphany, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 III. SPIRITUAL RENAISSANCE: AN ESSAY IN 
 PROTESTANTISM 
 
 By Charles Henry Babcock, D.D., 
 
 General Chairman of the Church Congress (of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church) in the 
 United States. 
 
 IY. “PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL:” A PLEA FOR 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL STUDY OF THE 
 CHURCH’S NAME 
 
 By Henry S. Nash, D.D., 
 
 Professor, Episcopal Theological School, Cam¬ 
 bridge, Mass. 
 
 5 
 
V. PROTESTANTISM AND DEMOCRACY: A 
 PRESENT DAY PROBLEM 
 
 By Leighton Parks, D.D., 
 
 Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church, New 
 York. 
 
 VI. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH—A QUEST 
 
 By John G. Bacchus, D.D., 
 
 Rector of the Church of the Incarnation, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y r . 
 
 VII. “AMERICAN CATHOLICA BRIEF . 
 CRITIQUE 
 
 By Charles Henry Babcock, D.D., 
 
 General Chairman of the Church Congress in 
 the United States. 
 
 Contributing Editor of “The Chronicle.” 
 
 6 
 
I. 
 
 “AMERICAN CATHOLIC.”* 
 
 When, as now, it has been definitely proposed to erase 
 “Protestant Episcopal" from the ’scutcheon of this 
 church in order to write “American Catholic” in its 
 place it is natural for us to seek to know the value of the 
 proposed new name. We, therefore, address ourselves to 
 a short and easy consideration of the possible profit, or 
 loss, involved in this change of name which we are, with 
 such calm assurance, invited to make. Incidentally we 
 will point to some historical and to some liturgical facts 
 of permanent significance and of present use to us in 
 the handling of our subject. 
 
 First, as to “Catholic”—what is it ecclesiastically 
 today but a word which has lost all meaning save 
 that which designates the Roman Catholic Church ? 
 It had great meaning once—this term so aged,—but 
 it has been emptied of that meaning, now many a 
 day. Indeed, the word has had divers and sundry 
 meanings during its long existence,—which of them, 
 we ask, except the one already mentioned, really now 
 survives ? What sort of Catholic, then, is intended 
 by the proposers of the new name ? Are we to take 
 the Word in its earliest sense, as meaning all the bap¬ 
 tized everywhere, as distinguished from the disciples in 
 some particular locality, say Antioch or Jerusalem? 
 Or, are we to understand by it the later connotation, 
 
 * The substance of these brief essays appeared as editorials in the 
 “Chronicle” magazine during 1912-13. C. H B. 
 
 7 
 
of all who hold “the correct opinion” in theology? Or, 
 are we to take it, in the still later sense, of those who 
 submit to Papal authority; or, in the sense of the ad¬ 
 herents of the Oxford Movement, or, with the mean¬ 
 ing of the Boston-Milwaukee-California school of cath¬ 
 olicity in our own time and country? These are rea¬ 
 sonable questions. If we are to be “Catholic” we surely 
 must know of what sort , and the varieties of Catholi¬ 
 cism rival in number the various Protestant “sects” 
 upon which so much “Catholic” vituperation has been 
 expended. And then, in connection with this, as to 
 “American,”—what is meant by that? Is the word 
 here to convey to our minds North, or South or Cen¬ 
 tral American? Names, we should remember, are signs 
 of things and when we are requested to be “American 
 Catholic” it is in good order to inquire what sort of 
 thing that is. We are suspicious that the brand of 
 Catholic for the most part existing in Central or in 
 South America and parts adjacent would not blend 
 with the proposed Protestant Episcopal variety without 
 considerable resultant discoloration and effervesence. 
 
 As a matter of fact “American Catholic” is a con¬ 
 tradiction in terms, as if one should say a “Local Uni¬ 
 versal,” or a “Partial Whole.” The proposal of it as a 
 substitute for the name of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church may provoke an indulgent and deferential smile, 
 due to the ancient atmosphere in which it was gener¬ 
 ated, but surely it is not to be very seriously taken by 
 any modern body alive to the fitness of things. 
 
 One of the irrefragable truths which ultimately dom¬ 
 inate church and state is that “youth will be served,” 
 which may be also rendered “the world moves on!” 
 
 8 
 
The world moved on in due time to Protestantism and 
 the measure of its progress was seen in the fourteenth, 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The impetus of that 
 stupendous and splendid movement is far from being 
 spent and its destination has not yet been reached. 
 The dream-children of the Middle Ages born in our 
 day cannot be expected to appreciate the value of the 
 trend of the world's young, vigorous, religious life of 
 these glorious and entrancing times. It would be too 
 much to demand of such that they accept with eager 
 alacrity Protestantism with all the priceless modernity 
 with which it is bound up and of which it is a vital 
 part. Their religious convictions are for the most part 
 rooted in times agone and dim with distance. That 
 distance, somehow, does not lend enchantment to our 
 view of many of the religious sentiments and practices 
 of which it vouchsafes us a partial revelation. Are we 
 to permit any man or any number of men to bring out 
 of that dim distance Catholic, the old, and compel us 
 to wed it to American, the young, for the institution 
 of a new family of heaven on earth ? Aside from the 
 absurdity of the family name—“American Catholic,”— 
 which would be thus perpetrated, there is an incongrui¬ 
 ty of age and origin which protests loud and long 
 against such an unnatural marriage. Before any man 
 or any number of men can do that thing and bind us 
 to it, they must create a condition of things suited to 
 their purpose. They must secure consent to repudiate 
 the modern and adopt the ancient, as, for example, 
 abandon the railway for the post coach, and the steam¬ 
 ship for the slave-rowed galley; legislate out of ex¬ 
 istence all modern means of locomotion; extinguish the 
 
 9 
 
electric lights and return to candles; smash machinery 
 in all its uses and revert to hand labor exclusively; 
 banish the Copernican, and re-establish the Ptolemaic, 
 astronomy and do a lot of things equally preposterous 
 and injurious to human life. Let it all go together,— 
 this odious Protestantism, and when his gone, the fit¬ 
 ness of things will countenance the proposed wedding 
 of the aged and the youthful by the adoption of “Amer¬ 
 ican Catholic” as a substitute for the present and the 
 eminently appropriate name of our Church. But let 
 us congratulate our selves that such a condition of 
 things is not yet, and probably will never come to be. 
 As the late Bishop of Connecticut used sometimes com¬ 
 ically to say, when considering something which seemed 
 ludicrously impossible, so we in the present case may 
 exclaim, “Non tempus uno,” and adopt the good 
 Bishop’s translation, “Nary time once” ! 
 
 II. 
 
 m 
 
 We read in the Acts of the Apostles that “the dis¬ 
 ciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” And 
 as we read we muse and wonder if future generations 
 will somewhere find it recorded that the disciples were 
 called Christians last by a certain sect within the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, which substituted “Cath¬ 
 olics” for “Christians” when speaking of themselves in 
 the Church of Christ. The wonder is not without color 
 of justification in view of the present vogue of this 
 word “Catholic.” The minds of Churchmen and others 
 have been assiduously sown with it for long and the 
 
 10 
 
verbal harvest from that sowing is now abundant. 
 We have, springing up on every side the plainest evi¬ 
 dences of this. There is a rich multiplicity of things 
 “Catholic” by name. We have pressed upon us catholic 
 views, catholic practices, catholic dogma, catholic in¬ 
 terpretations, catholic usages, catholic vestments, cath¬ 
 olic statesmen, catholic aspirations and—to go no fur¬ 
 ther—even catholic Congregationalists, which last are 
 quite as paradoxical as the would-be “American Catho¬ 
 lics” in the Protestant Episcopal Church. What does 
 it all mean? It means, if we may venture to say so, 
 that a new fashion ecclesiastical has come to town, 
 This new style changes quite marvellously the appear¬ 
 ance of those who adopt it. The “disciples in Antioch” 
 plainly habited as mere “Christians” would hardly be 
 recognized in our kaleidoscopic catholicity as learners in 
 the school of Jesus Christ. The word Christian seems 
 in some danger, at any rate, of extinction—of being 
 lost from the lips of men. “Christian” is apparently 
 very much out of date and behind the times with our 
 ecclesiastical fashionables. Derived as it is from the 
 Master’s most significant title and having, moreover, 
 the sanction of remote antiquity,—it is nevertheless 
 being set aside in favor of this word “Catholic,” the 
 present day significance of which, is so difficult to as¬ 
 certain. We wonder at the seeming attractiveness of 
 the latter word. It is reasonable to suppose that it 
 came into churchly being as a colloquialism. It must 
 have been used casually in conversation. When people 
 in the earliest Christian times, wanted to speak of the 
 Church “on the whole” they said, “Catholic” and every 
 
 11 
 
listening body knew what was meant. From employ¬ 
 ment in that easy way it would naturally acquire a sort 
 of “Use” which would gradually bring it into literature 
 and it would in consequence harden into a technical 
 term. Thus used it was before very long applied to in¬ 
 dicate, not only the “whole” church, but the “whole” 
 orthodox or “correct” teaching as well. But so far as 
 authoritative official sanction is concerned “Catholic” 
 was rather late in getting it. The word did not appear 
 at all in the Creed of the Council of Nice (A. D. 325) 
 but was added to the Nicene Creed at the Council of 
 Constantinople (A. D. 381). Tt was first inserted in 
 the so-called Apostles’ Creed in the fifth century (A. 
 D. 452) by Nicetas, bishop of Aquileia—a pretty far 
 cry from the birthtime of Christianity! The word 
 thus belated in recognition officially by the Church 
 seems to have been one of those almost fortuitous ones 
 which sometimes creep into language and presently ac¬ 
 quire an importance to which they are not intrinsically 
 entitled. It emitted its greatest glory in the shadowy - 
 Middle Ages when the “organic unity” of the One Holy 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church made possible (let us 
 not forget it!) the most iniquitous ecclesiastical tyranny 
 the Christian world has known. 
 
 We observe that “Catholic” was not, and is not, 
 essential to the Christian religion. Indeed, it is not 
 essential to anything save one of the weaknesses of 
 human nature, namely, a better-than-thou sort of spirit 
 in matters churchly. Why a “better-than-thou” spirit 
 on account of “Catholic,” it is difficult to explain, but, 
 notwithstanding, we have seen it in the flesh. And yet 
 
 12 
 
to use this word without connecting’ it with some gen¬ 
 eric* term to vitalize it is to express, in strictness, noth¬ 
 ing at all. To say, ‘'I am a Catholic'’ without adding 
 “Christian," or some other interpretative expression, 
 means merely, “I am on the whole,” or “I am general," 
 or “universal.” Hence, as we have said, the word was 
 never essential to Christianity but was merely descrip¬ 
 tive of some aspects or conditions existing in the Church. 
 Very different in kind is the name Christian applied in 
 Xew Testament times to the disciples at Antioch. It 
 may have been originally used as a derisive epithet by 
 the enemies of the religion of the Risen One; but, never¬ 
 theless, adopted by His disciples it became the only 
 really essential name for the followers of Jesus Christ. 
 It is the generic term in relation to which all other de¬ 
 scriptive titles are subservient or, it may be, antagon¬ 
 istic. It is the necessary antithesis of “heathen” or 
 “pagan'’ while “Catholic" is not necessarily antithetical, 
 or opposed, to either of them. Speaking hypercritic- 
 ally one might conceivably be a catholic heathen or a 
 catholic pagan, for “Catholic,” as we have intimated, is 
 not generic but accidental or dependent on circum¬ 
 stances for signification. Of course, we know there are 
 some who base the meaning of “Catholic” upon the 
 famous dictum of a gentleman of the fifth century, 
 known in history as Vincent of Lerins, who defined 
 Catholics as those who hold and teach those and only 
 those doctrines of the Church which have been be¬ 
 lieved “everywhere, always and by all.” This at first 
 blush seems plausible. But the insuperable obstacle to 
 extracting clarity or comfort from this definition is that 
 there are not, and never have been, any such doctrines. 
 
 13 
 
There is not a dogma of the church or a teaching in 
 Christendom which has not been stoutly controverted 
 or utterly rejected sometime, by some Christians some¬ 
 where. If, therefore, we hold a brief for this Vin¬ 
 centian rule we can exploit it only by arguing in a 
 vicious circle, which will land us in the conclusion that 
 there are a number of doctrines which have been re¬ 
 ceived in the Church “always and everywhere/’ by all 
 those who have always and everywhere received them. 
 This is doubtless satisfactory to the Vincentian type ol 
 mind and the rest of the world who “know not the 
 law” are, also doubtless, cursed. It must not, however, 
 be left unnoticed in connection with this that many 
 men of high ability and reputation, to whom, for many 
 reasons, we doff our hats in respect and admiration, 
 have been led into the aforesaid Vincentian delusion 
 by an o’erweening desire to share with the Church of 
 Rome possession of the name “Catholic” altho’ held in 
 what they regard as a better because a more Christian 
 sense. But do we really want to possess that word in 
 our name at all ?—a word lacking, as it is, in essential¬ 
 ness and exhibiting in its history only an arbitrary, or 
 else an ambiguous, character. Would it bring us any¬ 
 thing more than confusion on the one hand and de¬ 
 rision on the other? Can we possibly have any use for 
 it in our work in the time o' day in which we live and 
 labor? We cannot perceive that we have, but, on the 
 contrary, we are quite sure that we have not. 
 
 When, therefore, we are solicited by a fraction of our 
 Church, obsessed with the antique, to denude ourselves 
 of our good and comprehensive Name and reclothe our¬ 
 selves in “American Catholic” we are shy—we hang 
 
 14 
 
our heads in contemplation of the proposed new ap¬ 
 parel as we modestly protest, “We would rather be ex¬ 
 cused, sirs, if you please,” especially as the identical title 
 proposed has been adopted and used by Roman Catho¬ 
 lics in this country in describing the work of their 
 Church in these United States! 
 
 III. 
 
 Certain names always bring to mind, in their use, 
 certain other names associated with them historically 
 or otherwise. This is a mere commonplace in psychol¬ 
 ogy, but it has interest in connection with our present 
 subject. Let us, for the sake of clearness, illustrate: 
 When we hear some one say “Westminster Abbey” we 
 at once recur to Edward the Confessor and not to him 
 alone but, if we have a range of memories, to the great 
 abbots and deans of Westminster and other celebrities 
 as well. Or, if the name of Pickwick—unique creation 
 of Charles Dickens’ genius—occurs in conversation 
 there troop along inevitably with that name in our 
 minds Mrs. Bardell and Sergeant Buzzfuz and also the 
 immortal Wellers, Tony and Sam. Similarly with 
 other names, too numerous and quite unnecessary to 
 mention, and conspicuous amongst them, for our pur¬ 
 pose, is that well-worn and over-fondled name “catho¬ 
 lic.” At mention of it there rise to mental view St. 
 Peter’s and the Vatican and an endless procession of 
 popes, councils, cardinals, inquisitors, priests and 
 masses, but always and everywhere and above all, 
 priests ,—not only the officials but the function and the 
 
 15 
 
fundamental notion of priesthood—are conjured up by 
 association of ideas with “catholic.” We say “catholic” 
 and immediately we think “priest/' If we are de¬ 
 clared “catholics" it is taken for granted that we be¬ 
 lieve in priests, for “priest” is a cardinal note of 
 “catholic.” And then believing in priests we believe 
 in priestly sacrifices, for priests involve sacrifices and 
 altars upon which to offer them and consequently priest¬ 
 ly interventions between God and men. It seems quite 
 superfluous to dwell upon this statement of facts. It is, 
 to our thinking, as plain as unclouded sunrise that 
 “catholic” and “priest” go together and also that “priest” 
 means essentially a sacrificing official who in his palm¬ 
 iest days, either personally or by an assistant, cut the 
 throat of the victim and used the blood that therefrom 
 flowed as a sacrificial means to placate an offended 
 deity. 
 
 Now, hard by the residence of priesthood there runs 
 
 a line of cleavage in the Christian Church. Upon one 
 
 side of that line are those who delight to be called 
 
 “catholics” and who hold the theory that the Christian 
 
 «/ 
 
 Ministry is a priesthood. That theory is known as 
 Sacerdotalism and those who hold it are called sacer- 
 dotalists. They came to be historically what they are 
 because Paganism and Judaism were what they were, 
 outside of and before the Church. In other words 
 Paganism and Judaism are responsible for the being 
 of “priests” in Christendom. The infant Church of 
 Christ was innocent of all such officials. There is no 
 mention in the New Testament of such an one as having 
 been created or accepted by Jesus Chrust or as.existing 
 within the confines of Christianity. The great organizer 
 
 16 
 
of the church, St. Paul, tells us that its officers, in his 
 time and before, comprised apostles, prophets, teachers, 
 helpers those gifted with healing and with languages, 
 but he does not mention priests. There were also gov¬ 
 ernmental or executive officials, namely, presbyters, 
 deacons and presiding or over-seeing presbyters, other¬ 
 wise called bishops, but again no priests. In short, 
 nothing can be found in the earliest Christian writings 
 providing, justifying or testifying to priests as minis- 
 trants or official residents in Christ’s religion. On the 
 contrary we find amongst those earliest writings the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews in which familiar sacerdotal 
 words are figurative^ used to comfort the Hebrews ad- 
 dressed, under what they evidently regarded as their 
 loss in the absolute and complete elimination of priest¬ 
 hood and sacrifice from religion, by the Divine Author 
 of Christianity. Sacrifice and intercessory priests pre¬ 
 senting vicarious victims are utterly lacking in the re¬ 
 ligion of Jesus, because He, in yielding His will to the 
 will of the Father, satisfied all the demands of God for 
 offerings, from His Son and from all His children, 
 thenceforth and forever. When Christianity came in, 
 priesthood went out and that it did not stay out was 
 no fault of Christianity, which is Christ. 
 
 But when the infant Church went forth to win the 
 world for Jesus aud His service, it encountered priests 
 on every hand, for they were deeply rooted in the re¬ 
 ligious soil of the world. Priests had had too long a 
 tenure of religious office to readily relinquish it under 
 the teachings of Christianity. It was of course against 
 the interests of priests to have their order abolished 
 and their caste destroyed. Their pecuniary prosperity 
 
 17 
 
and powerful influence, as priests, involved too much 
 of value to be surrendered. The pagan people, too, 
 were wedded to the priestly institution. How could 
 they give it up? It provided a bulwark between them 
 and vindictive deities. It offered sacrifices to preserve 
 them from afflictions and torments and losses, physical 
 and spiritual. It came to them by inheritance from 
 times afar and was associated with ancestral beliefs, 
 customs and doings not easy to forget or to sultify by 
 apostasy. When, therefore, Christianity, priestless and 
 unsacrificial, was presented for pagan acceptance it was 
 not strange that many viewed it with head critically 
 one-sided as they thought “what a curious and unde¬ 
 sirable religion this must be”—without priests or altars 
 or sacrifices or symbolized deities of any kind. 
 
 Christianity, engaged in its mission, preaching Jesus 
 and eternal life, was taunted by pagans with being 
 ridiculously destitute of priests and sacrifices and those 
 taunts had, naturally some influence which in course of 
 time produced deplorable changes in the ministry and 
 worship of the church. The Jewish proselytes to Chris¬ 
 tianity also contributed to the same end. Judaism was, 
 in a way, ancestral to Christianity. Its Scriptures, 
 splendid in prophetical literature, but still shot through 
 with sacrificial priestly teaching, constituted at first the 
 only sacred books or Bible of the Christians. The pages 
 of the Old Testament provided the early disciples of 
 Jesus with nourishment for the sacerdotal idea when it 
 was born, of Paganism, in the church. That idea, en¬ 
 couraged directly and indirectly by Jew and Pagan, 
 anon gave token of quiescent and then of active life in 
 the Christian Body; it grew a little and then it grew 
 
 18 
 
apace and so, for the sake of ministering to Pagans, ac¬ 
 ceptably to themselves, and of adaptation to long estab¬ 
 lished practices of the Hebrews, sacerdotalism insidious¬ 
 ly, gradually, harmfully invaded Christianity until in 
 the third century the process of corrupting pure Chris¬ 
 tianity with priesthood was pretty well advanced and 
 the fourth century saw sacerdotalism firmly established 
 in the church and bringing forth abundantly fruits 
 after its kind. Amongst those fruits, early or late, 
 were an ecclesiastical hierarchy assuming an unearthly 
 dignity and “lording it over Cod’s heritage;" confession 
 of sins and secrets in the ear of a priest intervening be¬ 
 tween God and penitent sinners; spiritual direction 
 and control of a penitent’s life by the prescription of 
 pains and penalties called penance; the constantly re¬ 
 peated miracle of the Mass, whereby the bread and wine 
 in the Lord’s Supper were transubstantiated into the 
 actual Body and Blood of Christ and thus offered sac- 
 rificially on the altar;—these with their consequences 
 and accompaniments of idolatrous poses, prostrations, 
 genuflexions and various superstitions characterized the 
 church through the “catholic” ages, as the result of 
 sacerdotalism, until in the slow but sure vital progress 
 of humanity, the Benaissance or New-Birth of the 
 human mind occured, bringing with it the great Refor¬ 
 mation of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Do the things above enumerated, and their like, we 
 inquire,—constitute the American ideal of religion ? Do 
 they commend themselves to the genius of the Ameri¬ 
 can people? Does the word “catholic” which historic¬ 
 ally represents them blend harmoniously*with the word 
 which stands for the vast continent and country wherein 
 
 19 
 
our lot is cast? Let us remember, as we face these 
 questions, that “catholic'’ and “priest,” in the Natural 
 History of Christianity, go together; let us clearly un¬ 
 derstand that priests are, by derivation and legitimate 
 occupation, sacrificing officials and then let us ask our¬ 
 selves if we desire to advertise to the religious world 
 that our Ministry is in these days a company of 
 “priests” and that our Protestant character as a church 
 has been so completely changed that it may now be 
 fittingly described as “American Catholic?” If we do 
 desire to so advertise, of course we will do it; but, while 
 we are thinking about it, it may, perhaps, be helpful to 
 recall that it was written of old time, “Those whom the 
 gods destroy they first make mad!” 
 
 “Words may make this way or that way,” says the 
 cynical critic, speaking of theology and philosophy, and 
 he is more or less encouraged in his sneer by those 
 churchmen who tell us that there are “priests” and 
 “priests,” and that we must discriminate clearly, if not 
 sharply, between them. This is the refuge of those in 
 the church who, for conscientious reasons, seek to wrest 
 the word “priest” to its own destruction by using it 
 with an unnatural meaning or with a forced and figura¬ 
 tive definition. They remind us, by so doing, of some¬ 
 thing which has been said about keeping a promise to 
 the ear and breaking it to the heart. To claim exist¬ 
 ence for two sorts of priests is bitterly to disappoint 
 
 20 
 
the originals of I lie two and—what is of more conse¬ 
 quence—is as fatal to lucidity as the advocacy of a 
 double morality, or of more than one sort of catholics. 
 A priest, let us repeat, is a sacrificing official and the 
 discharge of his function requires a propitiatory victim. 
 As such the priest has been a figure in history from 
 time immemorial. His form rises to view in ancient 
 Egypt, in Babylonia, in Assyria, in Israel, in Greece 
 and Borne and in all he may be seen pursuing his in¬ 
 tercessory vocation, ottering the sacrifices, slaughtering 
 the victims, maintaining the altar fires, removing the 
 ashes, caring for the temple furnishings and so on, in 
 the just and conscientious discharge of duty as a priest. 
 What a clean-cut historic picture he appears! How un¬ 
 equivocally he defines himself! Can we look at him at 
 work and doubt what a priest is ? Could such a con¬ 
 spicuous and perfectly outlined official be removed from 
 religion,—as he was removed by Christianity,—and yet 
 his name be retained without involving infinite con¬ 
 fusion and harm? To call any other kind of function¬ 
 ary a priest in a loose or a figurative way is to incur 
 the protest of common sense—which is the Universal 
 Reason—against the violation, by so doing, of a truth of 
 history. 
 
 Figurative language, we pause to observe, has its 
 value but it is not wholly valuable for purposes of defini¬ 
 tion. It decorates sentences and lends sprightliness to 
 pages, nevertheless it is always in some degree danger¬ 
 ous to use because it is susceptible of being taken liter¬ 
 ally. Figurative language was largely responsible for 
 transmuting the Lord’s Supper into the Eucharistic 
 Sacrifice; the same sort of language also had its share 
 
 21 
 
in providing the concept which developed into Transub- 
 stantiation, centuries before that doctrine was defined 
 and made dogmatic in a Council of the Church. Hence, 
 and for other specific reasons, wisdom would seem to ad¬ 
 vise a certain wariness in the use of figures of speech, 
 or in the double use of adjudicated words, which comes 
 to much the same thing. A priest is a priest and we 
 know what that is; to say he is that and also something 
 quite different is, as it seems to us, unconsciously to 
 play fast and loose with words and make a deplorable 
 mess of many things in many minds. If, indeed, any¬ 
 one, for his own private purposes, should see fit to de¬ 
 clare that a Presbyterian deacon is a “priest” we pre¬ 
 sume that he would be, for those purposes, privileged 
 to do so; but we fancy the deacon would thereupon re¬ 
 pudiate the title, while the rest of the world, if in¬ 
 formed, would wonder what under the sun the singular 
 man was talking about. To attribute to any officer in 
 any church a “priestly” character in a poetic or ro¬ 
 mantic way is in our view to thoroughly misrepresent 
 him. Or, to describe a “priest” as other than a sacri¬ 
 ficing official; to define him as an Illuminator of the 
 way of Truth, or as a Leader of the people in the path 
 of spiritual progress, or as an exceptional Advocate and 
 Exemplar of righteousness and service is to evacuate 
 his official character of its distinctive meaning and to 
 hopelessly confound him with the prophet—his anti¬ 
 thesis, if not his antagonist, in all respects. We have no 
 moral right, we opine, to promote indefiniteness of 
 speech and induce confusion of mind in a great mass 
 of people by any such romantic or figurative use of 
 language. 
 
 22 
 
But here it is pertinent for someone to remind us that 
 “priest” is mentioned in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 We take the reminder sympathetically, for we, too, 
 have noticed that Priest is in the Prayer Book and we 
 beg to state that, as loyal churchmen, we accept it, in 
 the sense in which it is therein contained. We do not 
 take “Priest” in the Prayer Book, literally, nor yet fig¬ 
 uratively, but only in a titular sense. The name itself, 
 we hardly need say, was an inheritance from the old 
 Service Books of pre-Reformation times and was a word 
 familiar and dear to the people by its long association 
 with some of the most sacred events in their lives. 
 There was fear and trembling in many English hearts 
 in Reformation days—there was genuine apprehension 
 lest the changes being made in religious forms should 
 imperil or impair, in the popular mind, the substance 
 of religion itself. And so, for the sake of soothing 
 those apprehensions and reassuring the people by a 
 familiar sound it was thought best to retain the word 
 “priest,” in spite of grave doctrinal objections to it, 
 seeking, however, to neutralize any misleading influ¬ 
 ence it might have, by placing it in the Prayer Book in 
 propinquity with another word of clerical signification. 
 For, “Minister” also, we take leave to notice, is in the 
 Book of Common Prayer and the historical atmosphere 
 in which Prayer Book compilation was conducted re¬ 
 veals that “Minister” and “Priest,” in the Prayer Book 
 sense, are synonymous terms, meaning “Pastor” and 
 having no sacerdotal or sacrificial significance whatever 
 “Priest” appears in the Prayer Book without regard to 
 its antecedents and for the purposes of rubrical in¬ 
 structions, not for the sake of sacerdotal recognition. 
 
 23 
 
The things the titular “Priest'’ is instructed to do are 
 not priestly performances at all, but are matters of de¬ 
 tail for conducting our Protestant Services with Prot¬ 
 estant decency and order. To give a “Minister” rub¬ 
 rical direction as to when, or where, he is to stand in 
 church and how he is to arrange things liturgical for 
 his convenience, is not by any means to confer upon 
 him, or to presuppose that he has, sacerdotal character 
 or duty. The “Priest” whom the rubrics direct in the 
 Services might just as well be uniformly designated 
 either Minister, or Presbyter, or Pastor, so far as the 
 mind of this church regarding his official character is 
 concerned. It is the particular thing to be done and 
 not the particularly named functionary who is to do it 
 that the church indicates when in the Prayer Book she 
 uses the word we now have under consideration. To 
 be sure, “Priest” is, in some instances, the accredited 
 title of the man who is to do the given things; but if 
 we are intent upon knowing what that title means we 
 must go, in the first place, not to rubrics or Services, 
 but to the Ordinal , or the “Form and Manner of order¬ 
 ing Priests,” in our Communion. Therein we may 
 plainly see how a “Priest” is defined in this church, by 
 the light of the promises a candidate is called upon to 
 make, previous to, and justifying, his ordination. He 
 makes no promise and receives no authority, to be a 
 sacrificing official offering propitiatory victims; but he 
 pledges himself to instruct out of the Holy Scriptures 
 the people committed to his charge; to give faithful 
 diligence alwnys to minister the Doctrine and Sacra¬ 
 ments and the discipline of Christ as the Lord hath 
 commanded and as this church hath received the same; 
 
 24 
 
to be ready to banish and drive away from the church 
 all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s 
 Word and to exhort both in public and in private the 
 sick and the well as occasion may be given; to be dili¬ 
 gent in Prayers and in reading the Holy Scriptures 
 and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the 
 same; to fashion himself and his family according to 
 the doctrine of Christ; to maintain, as much as possi¬ 
 ble quietness, peace and love among all Christian peo 
 pie and to obey his Bishop and other Ministers who 
 may lawfully have charge and government over him. 
 These are the promises which a candidate for Orders, 
 at the proper time, in our church makes, and there¬ 
 upon the Bishop who is to ordain him prays that God 
 will give the man strength and power to perform the 
 same and then proceeds to confer upon him authority 
 to execute the office of a Priest in the Church of God 
 in which he is to he “a faithful Dispenser of the Word 
 of God and of the Holy Sacraments.” Is there any¬ 
 thing in those promises and their culmination in or¬ 
 dination which the most tortured ingenuity of the 
 human mind could convincingly twist into a declara¬ 
 tion, a hint, a suspicion even, that a “priest” in our 
 church is a sacrificing official offering victims, or is 
 anything less, or more, than a consistent religious 
 teacher of Christianity and a leader and representative 
 of the people in public worship and in matters pertain¬ 
 ing to the same? If there is not, then we would like 
 to ask what becomes of that solitary phrase in the Office 
 for the ’’Institution of Ministers” (italics our)—solitary 
 in the Prayer Book “as a sparrow alone upon the house 
 top” and yet a phrase so valiantly waved by those of us 
 
 25 
 
who need its inspiration—what, we earnestly desire to 
 ask, becomes of “sacerdotal Function” in view of the 
 utter lack of evidence in the Ordinal to justify it or 
 anything like it? Why, its fate might be described by 
 some—not churchmen—as a vanishing into “airy noth¬ 
 ing signifying naught;” but we, who are churchmen 
 and, as such, loyal to the core, would simply say that it 
 lapses into the purely figurative—exhibits itself as one 
 of those figures of speech against the use of which we 
 have already warned ourselves, because, however allur¬ 
 ing, they are dangerous to use on account of the possi¬ 
 bility that someone may take them literally. Where 
 there is literally no sacerdotal function in the Ministry, 
 how can any Minister literally possess power to exercise 
 it? “Sacerdotal Function/’ for aught we know, may be 
 an euphemism for the saying of Morning and Evening 
 Prayer. 
 
 y. 
 
 “Priest" in the Prayer Book indicating, as we have 
 seen, a titular officer—that is, one inheriting the title of 
 priest without the priestly function,—we may expect to 
 find evidence of this, not only in the Ordination Service, 
 which we have examined, but also in the other Prayer 
 Book Services, at one of the most important of which, 
 for our purpose, we now propose to glance. “Sacerdotal 
 Function” we have easily perceived to be a figure of 
 speech, poetizing, amongst other ministerial duties, the 
 saying of Morning and Evening Prayer, in which the 
 titles Priest and Minister sympathetically commingle 
 as they also do in the Order for the Holy Communion. 
 
 26 
 
It would be passing strange if one figurative expression 
 in our Service Book should dominate and set aside a 
 multitude of literal expressions which, in the same 
 Book, contradict it. That lonesome figure of speech— 
 “sacerdotal function”—must therefore, in reason, be 
 interpreted by the whole character of the rest of the 
 Prayer Book including, of course, the Communion 
 Office. 
 
 Now, what is the Holy Communion in the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church? To begin with and on the very face 
 of it, it is not a sacerdotal Rite or Ceremony. The 
 Church distinctly, in the Book of Common Prayer, de¬ 
 clares it to be “The Lord’s Supper.” It is, as we are 
 again instructed by the Church, one of the two only 
 Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself and a sacra¬ 
 ment, the Church further says, is an outward and visi¬ 
 ble sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us, 
 and is one means whereby we receive that spiritual grace 
 and is also a pledge to assure us that we do receive it. 
 The Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper is, there¬ 
 fore, plainly not a sacerdotal Rite—il is not the “mass,” 
 nor a mass. For, what is the “mass”? The word is of 
 uncertain origin and has been the subject of much dis¬ 
 putatious discussion as to that point and other particu¬ 
 lars. It may have been derived from its occurrence in 
 Latin at the conclusion of ordinary Church services to 
 indicate that the unbaptized, or “catechumens” were 
 to “go” or depart before the beginning of the Com¬ 
 munion Office, or perhaps, it came from the use of the 
 same word after the conclusion of the Holy Communion, 
 bidding the communicants depart in peace; or perhaps 
 
 27 
 
with greater probability, it may have issued from a He¬ 
 brew word meaning oblation or offering, originally con¬ 
 nected with the sacrifices in the Jewish Church. But, 
 waiving the question of verbal derivation, which is of 
 no great consequence after all, there can be no reason¬ 
 able doubt that the proper, technical sense expressed 
 by “mass” is that of “offering,” involving the idea of 
 sacrifice, which, by Jewish and Pagan associations im¬ 
 plied a victim offered by a priest. Long before the 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century this word “mass" 
 had been exclusively employed to mean what we desig¬ 
 nate as the Holy Communion, and was identified with 
 that sacrificial aspect of the Sacrament which it was the 
 chief endeavor of the Reformers to banish from the 
 Church. In the vigorous controversial language of the 
 Reformation period the “mass” was roughly handled,— 
 one most eminent English Reformer declaring it to be 
 “a very masking and mockery of the true supper of the 
 Lord,” and in the thirty-first Article of Religion of the 
 Church of England,—corresponding with the same ar¬ 
 ticle of the Protestant Episcopal Church—“the sacri¬ 
 fices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that 
 the Priest did offer Christ, for the quick and the dead 
 to have remission of pain or guilt,” are denounced as 
 “blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” 
 
 We hereupon observe that that conception of the 
 Lord's Supper which is known as the “mass” and which 
 is denounced by the Churches of the Anglican Com¬ 
 munion, is characterized by the offering on an altar by 
 a priest, of Christ as a sacrifice in order that thereby 
 the living and the dead may have remission of pain 
 or guilt. These are the notes of the “mass” and they 
 
 28 
 
necessitate the transnbstantiation of bread and wine in 
 the Lord’s Supper into the actual Body and Blood of 
 Christ. Of course there is no difficulty in perceiving 
 that this theory of the Lord’s Supper requires for its 
 practice a sacrificing priest offering a propitiatory vic¬ 
 tim. But do we find any such requirement in the “Or¬ 
 der for the administration of the Lord's Supper,” in 
 our Prayer Book? Let us see. According to that “Or¬ 
 der” the Lord’s Supper is administered from a “Table/’ 
 not upon an altar. “The ‘Table’ at the Communion¬ 
 time/’ says the rubric, “having a fair white linen cloth 
 upon it shall stand in the body of the church, or in the 
 chancel.” The Lord's Prayer and the Ten Command¬ 
 ments having been said by the “Minister ” and respond¬ 
 ed to by the congregation; the other parts of the ser¬ 
 vice, including the recital of the Creed and the recep¬ 
 tion of the Alms and other Devotions of the people, 
 having been duly rendered, the “Priest” (=" Minister”) 
 is to stand before the “Table'’ and say the “Prayer of 
 Consecration” of the bread and wine. Thus far in our 
 observation not the slightest indication of a sacerdotal 
 Rite has appeared. No altar, no victim, no sacrifice, no 
 sacrificing priest has been so much as faintly intimated. 
 Still further: if the “Prayer of Consecration” to which, 
 in our examination, we have now come had been de¬ 
 liberately composed as a polemical treatise against the 
 doctrine of priestly sacrifice it could not have been 
 stronger, or clearer, or more pointed that way than it 
 is. Over and over again in this Prayer it is affirmed 
 that the Lord’s Supper is a “memorial.” With studied 
 frequency this fact is brought to view. It is a Service 
 “in remembrance of Christ’s death and passion.” It is 
 
 29 
 
a fulfilling of Christ’s commandment “to continue a 
 perpetual memory of His precious death and sacrifice.” 
 In it we do make with “holy gifts” of offered bread 
 and wine “the memorial the Son has commanded us to 
 make.” The one “full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, 
 oblation and satisfaction,” by Christ, “for the sins of 
 the whole world” is thankfully remembered in the Lord’s 
 Supper and in that remembrance Christ’s commandment 
 is fully recognized and obeyed. There are “offerings” 
 in this Service, but not of victims. There are figurative 
 “sacrifices” made, but not propitiatory. The “sacrifice 
 of praise and thanksgiving” is therein offered to God, 
 but praise and thanksgiving are not “victims” and can¬ 
 not, therefore, be sacrificed in any literal or sacerdotal 
 sense. The offering of “ourselves, our souls and 
 bodies” and of “our bounden duty and service” are not 
 offerings of “victims” either, their offering is simply the 
 declaration and performance of a duty to extend our 
 lives Godward, according to the commandments and ex¬ 
 ample of Jesus Christ. All through the Office, the me¬ 
 morial and non-sacrificial view of the Lord’s Supper is 
 
 taken and clearly expressed; the elements in the Sup¬ 
 per are called, even after the act of consecration, “bread 
 and wine,” and any of the consecrated “Bread and 
 Wine” which may remain “after the Communion” are 
 to be consumed by the “Minister and other Communi¬ 
 cants.” There is not, in this Service, the remotest sug¬ 
 gestion of the “Mass” or of the doctrinal teachings and 
 assumptions upon which the Catholic Eucharistic Use is 
 based. 
 
 30 
 
Where, then, and by what authority can we locate a 
 priest and his sacrificial work in the Protestant Epis¬ 
 copal Church? Having no recognition in the official 
 standards and no duty assigned him in the worship of 
 this Church the occupation of a priest—excepting a 
 titular one—would be, if he existed in our Communion, 
 like that of Othello, gone. By what possible affinity, 
 then, can our church be qualified for “American Cath¬ 
 olic” as a name? Catholic, we remember, at once sug¬ 
 gests by association, priest and altar and sacrificial 
 masses, and priestly intervention between God and men ; 
 while we by right of Protestant inheritance and deter¬ 
 mination are divested and innocent of all such. What 
 notable thing, then, could we accomplish by displaying 
 “American Catholic” on our escutcheon for the edifi¬ 
 cation of the world? Well, by thus stultifying our¬ 
 selves we could possibly cleave our church in twain, 
 make a failure of our mission to the people of these 
 United States, constitute our church a laughing stock 
 to Roman Catholics wherever to them we are known 
 and become a religious by-word and a token of reproach 
 to the great Protestant bodies surrounded by which we 
 live. Perhaps, for most of us that would be too notable 
 and also just a little too much. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Jesus Christ founded no Church; but the Church 
 came naturally and necessarily into being as a means 
 for the publication of the Good News which He pro¬ 
 claimed. That News was, that all men are sons of God 
 
 31 
 
and therefore bound by the great ethical law of per¬ 
 fection in living because their Origin, namely, their 
 Father in heaven, is perfect. Knowledge of this, with 
 all that it involves is to be proclaimed, according to the 
 will of Jesus, throughout the world to every human 
 creature. Hence, the necessity for an institution —an 
 established gathering of people—whose duty it shall be 
 to preserve and spread abroad the Master’s Good News. 
 
 In connection with this we notice that in the meeting 
 of the disciples at Pentecost there were distinguished 
 manifestations of gifts of the Holy Spirit in the interest 
 of the proclamation of the Master’s Gospel. Therein we 
 perceive the incipient or initiatory institution of the 
 Christian Church. Begun then, its primitive organiza¬ 
 tion was completed later. Being an organization for the 
 practical purpose of preaching the Gospel, the Church 
 contained potentially a ministry of gospel proclamation 
 and a government or order of institutional life. This 
 two-fold function of the leaders and representatives of 
 the church was necessary to the continued existence and 
 the fruitful work of the Christian Institution. There 
 must be preaching and there must be order. Hence, 
 there must be men devoted to preaching and to ordering. 
 Such a ministry, therefore, speedily developed, and the 
 easy and almost casual way in which, seemingly, it 
 came is most noticeable. Like a fruit from a tree, or a 
 flower from a plant the ministry was put forth by the 
 Body of the believers and the simplicity with which it 
 was established was due to its essentialness to the pur¬ 
 pose for which the Church existed. The essential in 
 life, we notice, arrives without fuss, while the arbitrary 
 is inducted ceremoniously and with much din. 
 
 32 
 
Now, .Christianity, bo it remembered, was born, so to 
 speak, in the residence of Judaism and the household 
 belongings of Judaism were round about it. There was 
 the Jewish temple with its sacrificial paraphernalia— 
 its altar, its incense, its holy places, its imposing cere¬ 
 monies, its atmosphere of awe-creating mystery and its 
 company of priests. There, too, were the synagogues— 
 “the houses of assembling" and of teaching—ancient in 
 origin and to this our day in use amongst the Jews. 
 The synagogue was destitute of altar, sacrifices, incense 
 and holp places; but it contained a pulpit at which the 
 Scriptures were read, religion and morality were ex¬ 
 pounded, and from which the devotions of the people in 
 the synagogue Service were led. It runs with our pur¬ 
 pose in writing this that the reader, the preacher and 
 the leader of devotions were “unconsecrated by any 
 special rites and unrestricted by any rule of succession / 5 
 
 Briefly thus we recall the religious dualism which ex¬ 
 isted in Judaism at the beginning of, and long before, 
 the Christian era. The Temple and the Synagogue, 
 with all that they implied,—the temple without a pulpit 
 and the synagogue without an altar—composed that 
 duality, dwelling together as they did in peace and har¬ 
 mony and, moreover, in close contact with primitive 
 Christianity, constituting for it an environment most 
 influential for formative purposes. 
 
 Now, the dominant men amongst the disciples, name¬ 
 ly, the Apostles, when the Christian Church was taking 
 shape, were perfectly familiar, by birth and by habit of 
 life, with both the Temple and the Synagogue and the 
 religious procedures therein. They were well acquainted 
 
 33 
 
with the richness of the Temple ceremonial and its sen¬ 
 suous appeal and also with the severe simplicity of the 
 Synagogue service with its moral and spiritual edifica¬ 
 tion. Life-long education had convinced them of the 
 need of sacrifices for sins and intuitively they must 
 have been aware that their companions in life loved 
 gorgeousness in religious services with oriental fervor. 
 Why then, did the apostles, when they sought a pattern 
 for shaping the Christian Church turn from the ritual 
 superiority of the Temple to the comparative inferiority 
 of the institutes of the Synagogue? For, that was what 
 they did and there could have been but one reason jus¬ 
 tifying such a course. That reason was in the fact that 
 the apostles knew the transitory and prophetic nature 
 of the Temple Service. Under the influence of Jesus 
 they had come to understand that the sacrificial con¬ 
 tents of the Temple were only types and portents of 
 Jesus Christ and His one and onlv sacrifice for the 
 sins of the whole w r orld. Convinced of that, of what 
 further use was the Temple and its accessories to the 
 apostles, or to the Christian community? The Temple 
 types, having been completely realized, w T ere no longer 
 available for effective employment. They had expended 
 their value and would have been empty and merely in¬ 
 trusive in the organization of the New Religion born 
 in the house of Judaism, but destined to supercede it in 
 the spiritual service of mankind. Priests were no long¬ 
 er necessary. No longer were bleeding victims and 
 smoking altars significant of anything to come. All 
 that could come had come and the waiting world was 
 already taking deep breath of the new life in Christ and 
 sighing with ecstatic relief. It was a saved world out 
 
 34 
 
upon which the apostles looked, their eyes shining with 
 the purpose of eternal life. It was a world no longer in 
 need of sacrifice, but ’twas desperately in need 
 of teaching. It was waiting to be instructed in 
 the truth as it is in Jesus, to be grounded and settled 
 in His revelation and built up in the faith of Him. 
 That form of Christian institution which could best do 
 teaching, would be the one best adapted to work, under 
 the apostolic commission to preach the Gospel. And 
 there, ready to hand as a model, was the Synagogue of 
 God's ancient people, with no color of sacrifice in its 
 composition and no vested priesthood to perpetuate a 
 memory of a vanishing Past. The Christian Church, 
 therefore, soon took shape on the lines of the Synagogue. 
 From some points of view it might seem as if the Church 
 took bodily possession of the Synagogue for its own oc¬ 
 cupancy. At all events it is true that in officially fur¬ 
 nishing the Church, so to speak, the apostles took noth¬ 
 ing from the ecclesiastical machinery of the Temple but, 
 on the contrary, introduced much which corresponded 
 remarkably and unmistakably with arrangements in 
 the other Institution. 
 
 The governing and ministering body of the Syna¬ 
 gogue consisted, we know, of elders, some of whom 
 judged the affairs of the congregation, and others of¬ 
 ficiated publicly as religious ministers. These led the 
 prayers, provided for reading the Scriptures, or Law, 
 and upon occasion preached. They were known, indi¬ 
 vidually, as the “Angel of the Church/’ or “bishop of 
 the Congregation.” This is, obviously, suggestive of the 
 origin of an eminent ecclesiastical title of later days. 
 The “Minister of the Synagogue,” as he was also called, 
 
 35 
 
did not himself read the Scriptures publicly, but at every 
 Service be called out of the congregation some of those 
 lie considered qualified to read, and then, during the 
 reading stood by, carefully watching or overseeing the 
 reader and correcting him if he made mistakes. Hence, 
 he was “Overseer" or “Episcopos." We also learn of al¬ 
 moners or “deacons” in the synagogue, whose duty it 
 was to care for the poor, and who were called “Pastors" 
 by virtue of their ministrations. That these and other 
 characteristics of the Synagogue adopted by the apos¬ 
 tles in instituting the Church, bare mention of which 
 must content us, give evidence that there was no priest¬ 
 hood therein, seems plain enough to the open mind. 
 Not only, however, in the names of the primitive 
 Church office-holders, but in the numerous places of re¬ 
 ligious Service, in the nature of the Services them¬ 
 selves, in the absence of Vestments, in the lack of Min¬ 
 isterial Succession and of an altar, in the pulpit or 
 raised desk for the reader and preacher—in these pe¬ 
 culiarities, common as they were to both the Synagogue 
 and the Church, there is ample proof that the public 
 worship of God in the Synagogue, which was moral and 
 not sacrificial, was transferred by the apostles to the 
 spiritual regimen of the Christian Institution. Much 
 more evidence to the same end might easily be adduced 
 if we were writing an extended essay instead of our pres¬ 
 ent endeavor. But even the scanty allusions we have 
 made may quicken memories, and thus illustrate anew 
 the truth that “a word to the wise is sufficient.” 
 
 Did somebody say that “American Catholic" would be 
 a good name for our Branch of the Church, rooted, as 
 it is, in primitive Christianity and the Protestantism 
 
 36 
 
which restored it in Reformation times? We believe 
 somebody did so say, and the hearing of it makes us 
 wonder if the authors of the proposed name expect to 
 float it with inspiration drawn from the early days of 
 pure Christianity ecclesiastically modelled on the sim¬ 
 plicity of the “houses of assembling" or Synagogue of 
 God. If not from that source, then, whence will our 
 “American Catholics 7 ’ derive inspiration to demonstrate 
 the fitness of their name? 
 
 VII. 
 
 Man has been defined as a religious animal, and he 
 may also be described, in a general way, as an ungrate¬ 
 ful animal, especially in the higher region of his re¬ 
 ligious life. Created with a religious instinct which is 
 an essential part of his being and by virtue of which he 
 is naturally religious, he originally exercised this in¬ 
 stinct with a very crude and imperfect notion of what 
 it was. In common with all that man had and w^s, in 
 the beginning, religion was low in its expressions of 
 life. But it was not to remain low. From its early 
 crudities—its deification of natural objects, its fetishes, 
 its dark fears and superstitions, its cruelties and im¬ 
 moralities it was destined to evolve, as the ages rolled 
 along, the highest human qualities and relations, until 
 “in the fulness of the times” it should illumine the 
 world with the splendor of man’s spiritual destination. 
 That destination was early indicated by intimations, 
 intuitive and prophetic, of the subordination of the 
 physical and temporal to the spiritual and eternal in 
 life, embracing as it does religion. Passing through 
 
 37 
 
phase after phase of development on its upward way, 
 religion at last brought man to Christianity, or, to speak 
 more accurately, in these technical days, to the religion 
 of Jesus Christ. Therefrom the sun of righteousness 
 shone in full effulgence upon man, revealing to him his 
 divine family origin with its necessary implications, one 
 of which was the spiritual nature of the worship which 
 he must render the Almighty Father in heaven. Because 
 God is a Spirit He must be worshiped by man in spirit 
 and in truth. This is the teaching of Jesus Christ re¬ 
 garding worship. Mankind was slowly led to the ful¬ 
 ness of that teaching by numerous preceding and partial 
 school-masters, notable and final amongst which was 
 Judaism. When Judaism could carry man no further 
 towards his destiny it halted on the threshold of Chris¬ 
 tianity and surrendered its pupil to the waiting Christ. 
 Under His tutelage formal religion, sanctioned by ex¬ 
 ternal authority, was clearly perceived to illustrate a 
 mistaken conception of the Divine Father’s will. Man 
 had not, indeed, altogether missed this truth all the 
 days of his schooling, although it had lurked and nes¬ 
 tled in the shadows cast in times of ignorance at which 
 God is said to have winked. But now there was no 
 blinking the old partially expressed truth which Jesus 
 Christ made whole and new by his full declaration and 
 enforcement of it. God’s worship must be in man’s 
 spirit —his body cannot conceive it. Bodily expressions 
 are no essential part of worship. Burnt offerings and 
 sacrifices and offerings for sin God would not—but the 
 human will bent before the will of God and the spirit 
 of man soaring to God in adoration and praise con¬ 
 stitute the worship which the Father demands, for 
 
 38 
 
which there is no substitute and with which there can 
 be no pompromise. 
 
 Conditioning this, however, is the fact that expres¬ 
 sion is the imperative mood of human nature, and that 
 therefore man’s spirit without power or means of ex¬ 
 pressing itself would be in evil case in a world of flesh 
 and sense. Hence man has power of expression by 
 means of physical instrumentation of his spiritual con¬ 
 ceptions and emotions. And so the early Christians, 
 fresh and warm from the Master's teaching, released 
 their heartful worship in simple, spontaneous activities, 
 inspired by memories of the precepts and example of 
 their departed Lord. 
 
 The material and arrangement of Christian services 
 in the days of the Apostles would, doubtless, be rejected 
 by many modern Christians as esthetically poverty- 
 stricken and liturgically lean. But in the first warm 
 flush of spiritual enthusiasm over the new found and 
 priceless treasure of the gospel, worshipful expression 
 was valued by its earnestness and depth of sincerity, 
 rather than by its ornateness and glitter. We gather 
 the details of Apostolic worship from the New Testa¬ 
 ment itself. There was prayer and praise and admoni¬ 
 tion. The gathered disciples taught and admonished 
 each other in all wisdom in Psalms and Hymns, in 
 spiritual songs, singing w r ith gratitude in their hearts 
 to the Lord, giving thanks at all times on account of 
 all things to the God and Father of all. There were 
 supplications and prayers and intercessions for all mefi; 
 there was reading of the scriptures as a part of the 
 service; there was preaching, or exhortation and in¬ 
 struction addressed to the congregation; there were 
 
 39 
 
formal contributions to the needs of the poorer breth¬ 
 ren and there was “the breaking of the Loaf” or the 
 administration of the Lord's Supper. It was all very 
 simple and unpretentious, yet joyous with tuneful 
 tokens of the melody which was ringing in grateful 
 hearts. The services thus alluded to were some of them— 
 probably not many—held in Jewish Synagogues whose 
 congregations had probably in a body been converted 
 to Christianity. There were other meeting places— 
 upper chambers or worship rooms; later, specially con¬ 
 structed buildings before the times when basilicas, 
 those splendid public halls where Roman Justice took 
 her seat, were by favor of Christian Emperors occupied 
 for Church Services. Upon these and the like things 
 we need not dwell. Exteriors did not count for much 
 with the disciples in those days, for the interior life 
 of the Church was so illumined and glorified by the 
 Good-News of Jesus, that mere buildings, together with 
 the ceremonies performed therein, were matters of 
 entirely secondary importance, and inferior interest. 
 
 But this was not so for long. Soon the shadows of 
 coming changes were casting themselves before. The 
 pristine simplicity of “the sweet Gallilean dream” come 
 true in the hearts and lives of men, began to be blurred 
 and confused with memories issuing from the religious 
 life which had gone before. Amongst the Jewish con¬ 
 verts arose Judaizing teachers mingling the elements 
 of the Law with the truth of the Gospel. These strove 
 to restore the principles, and in modified application, the 
 practices of the ancient Jewish religion. Defeated, gen¬ 
 erally, in their purpose, they succeeded to some extent, 
 and bye-and-bye they succeeded some more. Old 
 
 40 
 
habits are difficult to extirpate. Long accepted prin¬ 
 ciples, even after rejection, have wondrous recuperative 
 power. The peace of early Christianity was disturbed 
 because these things were so, and aided anon by pagan 
 influences a covert revolution worked, and gradually 
 the old ideas and the old words came into new use, 
 and “priest,” “altar,” “sacrifice” were again—and this 
 time in Christianity—on the lips and influencing the 
 lives of men. 
 
 The claim that this condition of things was the 
 natural result of a legitimate process of development, 
 dissolves in the recollection that development in 
 Christendom is of two kinds, namely, a biological and 
 an ecclesiastical, the last mentioned being false and 
 the other natural and true. A biological development 
 is from within; it is a growth or unfolding from a 
 germ of true, though hidden life, and must, therefore, 
 be in the Church in accordance with the Master’s will 
 and intention. Contrariwise, an ecclesiastical develop¬ 
 ment is from without—it is an accretion—something 
 stuck on externally—it clings barnacle-like to the sur¬ 
 face of the Christian Institution, impeding its prog¬ 
 ress, to its haven across the waves of this troublous 
 world. Of this latter, or false, sort of development 
 was the recrudesence of sacerdotalism in religion when 
 it appeared in Christianity. It was reactionary. It 
 was a facing away from the new illumination of Truth 
 and Love towards the shadowy background againsf 
 which that Light of the world was gloriously displayed. 
 It meant a rejection of the liberty where-with Christ 
 had made men free—for a return to the bondage from 
 which they had been delivered. It meant a lot of 
 
 41 
 
tilings derogatory to man, but deepest and most of all, 
 when traced to its roots, it meant that man was un¬ 
 grateful in the higher region of his religious life. Un¬ 
 grateful he certainty seems to have been for some of 
 the richest blessings vouchsafed him in early Christian¬ 
 ity pure and true; freedom from the law, from pro- 
 pitiary sacrifice, from priestly intervention, and we 
 cannot repress the suspicion that he must have been 
 ungrateful for every lift—every upward movement—in 
 the progress of religion from the beginning of his earth¬ 
 ly career. History seems in very many instances to 
 justify our suspicion and to make us uncertain whether 
 the sins of the fathers will be interminably repeated 
 by the children in the matter of ungrateful hearts. 
 
 Are we prepared to perpetuate in our day and gen¬ 
 eration the basest of all sins, ingratitude, and in the 
 highest region of our life ? Are we so unappreciative 
 of our Protestant Christian heritage—do we hold it 
 so lightly—that we will ever consent to call ourselves 
 “American Catholics” and then become such in spirit 
 and in truth? 
 
 “He that's ungrateful has no guilt but one, 
 
 All other crimes may pass for virtues in him A 
 
 VIII. 
 
 We have endeavored in these pages to present impres¬ 
 sions produced upon our mind by various important 
 phases of history and a number of plain facts in our 
 Prayer Book which seem to bear upon the proposal to 
 substitute. “American Catholic” for the name of the 
 
 42 
 
Protestant Episcopal Church. In so doing we have not 
 entered upon a controversy, nor have we engaged in a 
 discussion; for it seems to us doubtful if controversy 
 ever really converted anybody, and discussion, while in¬ 
 teresting in a way, proves oftentimes, eventually, a 
 weariness to the soul. But “impressions” are more easily 
 carried and make smaller demands upon sustained crit¬ 
 ical attention. They are quite a fashion of our time, 
 too,—with painters and sculptors and writers, also, they 
 have vogue, and with such they seem to lend themselves 
 to rather satisfactory results, at any rate in the opinions 
 of many. And so, we have been giving “impressions," 
 religious .and ecclesiastical, and we were impressed as 
 we passed along, with the ingratitude of man especially 
 in the higher region of his religious life. 
 
 Ingratitude was a sin conspicuously seen, we thought, 
 in the reaction amongst the early Christians from pure 
 Christianity to priesthood and propitiary sacrifices, 
 which were characteristics of Judaism and Paganism. 
 From regarding God as a Sovereign and a dread Judge 
 to be appeased, approachable only through a long ave¬ 
 nue of sacerdotal representatives, men were led by His 
 Son Christ to regard God as the beneficent Father, 
 close at hand, directly accessible, easy to be entreated 
 and constantly ready to bless and comfort with His love 
 and favor. Men had been set free from the inferior 
 bindings of religion and yet so unappreciative of their 
 spiritual freedom did they soon become, that they un¬ 
 gratefully turned back to bondage and made as nought 
 the wonderful deliverance achieved for them by Jesus 
 Christ. It seems to us as we reflect, a case of ingrati¬ 
 tude, and ingratitude, we fancy, runs characteristically, 
 
 43 
 
like a black thread, through all the pages of religious 
 history. 
 
 Xow, ingratitude appears as a matter of necessity to 
 issue in disloyalty. To be ungrateful for benefits seems 
 inevitably to involve disloyalty to the source or the 
 ideals of given benefactions. The Christian ideal of 
 life is a spiritually safe life, built on belief and trust 
 in the unfailing love of God as revealed in Jesus 
 Christ. The upbuilding of that life is to be, and must 
 be, an individual human achievement. Ho man and 
 no number of men can possibly build for any other 
 man, or number of men, a safe spiritual life. Every 
 man, according to the principles, or ideals, of Chris¬ 
 tianity is to “build himself up"—is to “work out his 
 own salvation/’ which means possession of a character, 
 safe to possess at any time, in any world. To this 
 end God works with men, inspiring them by His Spirit, 
 leading them, directing them, as they work on them¬ 
 selves, to His glory which is their own best being. 
 Hence, for men to vacate this high privilege and duty 
 in favor of a body of priests, who are merely other men 
 after all; to accept from those other men the offering 
 of propitiatory sacrifices and all, or any, of the com¬ 
 plicated religious externalities of times before Christ, 
 was upon the part of certain early Christians, if we 
 see straight, an exhibition of ingratitude embodied in 
 disloyalty to the ideals of religious life, uplifted for 
 our guidance heavenward by the Son of Man. 
 
 Later on in the history of Christianity the same sort 
 of thing may be observed. Priestcraft and all that 
 goes therewith having obtained residence in the 
 Church, by the unconscious disloyalty of those early 
 
 44 
 
Christians, held its place for centuries until the great 
 awakening of the spirit of primitive Christianity in 
 the Reformation—which event is pleasantly referred 
 to by some enthusiastic “American Catholics'' as “the 
 catastrophe of the sixteenth century!" The heroic 
 struggles made for liberty in Christ at that strenuous 
 period of the Church's life; the martyrs' blood so free¬ 
 ly shed; the fires that so fiercely burned at Smithfield 
 and at Oxford; the matchless courage for the truth 
 then displayed, need not to be recounted here,—the 
 memory of those deeds and days lives now in countless 
 hearts as having won in England's realm the inherit¬ 
 ance of our own dear Church in this free land, the 
 blessings of Protestant Christianity which we cherish 
 and defend. But history repeats itself in what looks 
 to us very like ingratitude and disloyalty to-day, and 
 Reformation battles seem likely, in our generation, 
 and later, to be fought again. It is lacking in “breadth" 
 to be grateful for divine blessings—is it not? It is 
 “narrow" to be loyal—is it not ? It is “intolerant"—is 
 it? or is it not?—to resist attempted destruction,—to 
 resent the caressing hand upon one's shoulder, so to 
 speak, when the fellow-hand is seen to hold threaten¬ 
 ingly the gleaming knife all ready, just underneath 
 one's rib number five! These are general questions, 
 impersonally addressed, but answers volunteered to 
 them may indicate one's attitude towards the preserva¬ 
 tion of the truth “As this Church hath received the 
 same." Every clergyman ministering in “this Church" 
 is so doing upon testimony of his loyalty to the doc¬ 
 trine, discipline and worship of the Protestant Episco¬ 
 pal Church. Do “masses" constitute a part of that 
 
 45 
 
worship ? Are auricular confession and penance a part 
 of that discipline? Are the Immaculate Conception 
 and Mariolatry included in that doctrine? Is there 
 any legitimate or essential difference between our teach¬ 
 ing and liturgical practices and those of the Roman 
 Catholic Church? There are clergymen officiating in 
 our chancels who apparently do not clearly recognize 
 such differences. They name and conduct services, 
 they wear vestments and adopt attitudes and poses 
 which unmistakably suggest a religious world other than 
 Protestant. They advertise and, presumably, they offer 
 “masses,” high, low and requiem—of what other varie¬ 
 ties, if any, we are not informed. If “Mass” were 
 merely another and a synonymous name for the Lord’s 
 Supper, even then the use of it would be confusing and 
 unwarranted. But as it stands for something doc- 
 trinally quite different from and opposed to our doc¬ 
 trine of the Lord’s Supper—namely, a propitiatory sac¬ 
 rifice—to use it in our Church involves, as it seems 
 to us, disloyalty to our well known Protestant stand¬ 
 ards to which we are solemnly pledged. The clergy¬ 
 men who do this and other such things ecclesiastical in 
 our Church are most active in agitation for the adop¬ 
 tion of “American Catholic” in lieu of the name we 
 have borne so long. It is, therefore, a short and easy 
 inference from the proposal to change our name, to the 
 principles and practices which lie behind the offered 
 name and give distinctive color and intention to the 
 proposal. To name us and then to make us “catholic” 
 seems to be the plan. Does anybody imagine that the 
 out-carrying of such a plan would commend us to the 
 confidence and admiration of the American people ? 
 
 46 
 
How much we have already lost in the regard of the 
 people in this land by the growing sacerdotalism, 
 which, during fifty years last past, has assumed to rep¬ 
 resent us, no man can with anything like precision, be¬ 
 gin to tell. We venture, however, the tentative opin- 
 ion, that had it not been for that sacerdotal growth and 
 misrepresentation, two million communicants instead 
 of about one million would be recorded to the credit 
 of the Protestant Episcopal Church to-day. 
 
 That name for us, after all is said, is ideally descrip¬ 
 tive. It is peculiarly felicitous because it is so accurate 
 a reflection of our Churchly character. We are not 
 Roman Episcopal, nor Creek Episcopal, but Protestant 
 Episcopal. Were we named merely the Protestant 
 Church, the name would be meaningless in a land full 
 of other Protestants. Had we been christened the Epis¬ 
 copal Church, we should be, as Professor Nash said, 
 “standing on one leg/’ and our course would, in con¬ 
 sequence, be irregular and halting. But the combination 
 of Protestant and Episcopal so happily presents the 
 doctrinal and the governmental characteristics which 
 distinguish us, that the greatest difficulty has long been 
 experienced in attempting a better or even another one. 
 Our last impression is, that we will surely be loyal to 
 this name,—we surely will if we know in this, our day, 
 the things which will make with us for prosperity and 
 peace. 
 
 As for “American Catholic” we dismiss it with grave 
 regard to the limbo of a multitude of forgotten follies. 
 
 47 
 
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