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THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH

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THE CHURCH IDEA. An Essay
towards Unity.
CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY.
[Out of print.}
THE CAUSES OF THE SOUL.
A Book of Sermons.

Wqz aSoijIm lectures for 1891

THE

PEACE OF THE CHURCH

BY

WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON
EECTOE OF GRACE CHURCH NEW YORK

Veritate Victoria

Nefo f orft
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1891

Copyiight, 1891, by
William Keed Huntington.

All rights reserved.

hi 34-

iHntbrasttg $ress:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

TO
THE DEAR MEMORY OF
H. H.
WHO ALIKE BY PRECEPT AND BY EXAMPLE
TAUGHT ME HOPE.

THE JOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHIP.

John Bohlen, who died in this city on the twenty-sixth day of
April, 1874, bequeathed to trustees a fund of One Hundred Thousand
Dollars, to be distributed to religious and charitable objects in accord
ance with the well-known wishes of the testator.
By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the trustees, under the
will of Mr. Bohlen, transferred and paid over to " The Rector,
Church Wardens, and Vestrymen of the Church of the Holy Trinity,
Philadelphia," in trust, a sum of money for certain designated pur
poses, out of which fund the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars was set
apart for the endowment of The John Bohlen Lectureship, upon
the following terms and conditions • —
u The money shall be invested in good, substantial, and safe securities, and
held in trust for a fund to be called The John Bohlen Lectureship j and the
income shall be applied annually to the payment of a qualified person, whether
clergyman or layman, for the delivery and publication of at least one hundred
copies of two or more lecture sermons. These lectures shall be delivered at
such time and place, in the city of Philadelphia, as the persons nominated to
appoint the lecturer shall from time to time determine, giving at least six
months' notice to the person appointed to deliver the same, when the same may
conveniently be done, and in no case selecting the same person as lecturer a
second time within a period of five years. The payment shall be made to said
lecturer, after the lectures have been printed, and received by the trustees, of all
the income for the year derived from said fund, after defraying the expense
of printing the lectures, and the other incidental expenses attending the same.
" The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within the terms set forth in
the will of the Kev. John Bampton, for the delivery of what are known as the
'Bampton Lectures,' at Oxford, or any other subject distinctively connected
with or relating to the Christian religion.
" The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month of May, or as soon
thereafter as can conveniently be done, by the persons who for the time being
shall hold the offices of Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Dio
cese in which is the Church of the Holy Trinity ; the Kector of said Church ;
the Professor of Biblical Learning, the Professor of Systematic Divinity, and
the Professor of Ecclesiastical History, in the Divinity School of the Protestant
Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
" In case either of said offices are vacant, the others may nominate the
lecturer "
Under this trust the Reverend William R. Huntington, D.D.,
D.C.L., Rector of Grace Church, New York, was appointed to
deliver the lectures for the Year 1891.
Philadelphia, Easter, 1891,

THE WANT OF A PEOPLE S CHURCH IS A WANT THAT
CANNOT BE SUPPLIED BY ANYTHING ELSE.
VON DOLLINGER.

PREFACE.

A natural comment upon the general drift of
argument and appeal in the following pages would
be that it is too conspicuously Protestant. Are the
children of the Reformation, the author might very
plausibly be asked, the only Christian folk to be
counted in forecasting the contour and proportions
of our national Church? Is no significance to be
attached to the marvellous growth and spread among
us of the Latin form of Christ's religion in these
recent days ? And have we no word of invitation
for those who differ with us in their estimate of the
value of the results Luther and Cranmer brought to
pass ? Certainly there is force in these expostula
tions. To wink the advance of Roman Catholic re
ligion in this country out of sight is as foolish as
the letting ourselves be irritated by what we see is
weak. Neither are those to be commended who can see
in the activity of the Papal forces nothing less
or other than a distinct menace to our civilization.
The real reason why the conciliatory effort of this
book bends wholly towards a different point of the

x PREFACE.
compass is that, for the present, any attempt from
without to influence the Roman Catholic Church is
absolutely hopeless. The Vatican decrees of 1870
have accomplished what the framers and promoters
of them doubtless meant that they should accom
plish. — the utter overthrow of any hopes of " peace
with Rome " on ground other than that of uncondi
tional surrender. Meanwhile there is much to en
courage the belief that, in ways hidden from the eyes
of outsiders, a change is going on within the confines
of the Roman Church in this country, likely, at no
very distant day, to become knowable and readable
of all men. The German and the Irish elements,
there is reason to suspect, consort as ill together
within the one fold as ever did Guelph and Ghibel-
line of old ; and it would not be the strangest thing
in all the world, if the indisposition of the faithful
laity to receive their politics from Rome were to
expand into a large unwillingness to accept foreign
dictation in any department of thought and life.
" Ultramarine " may grow to be as obnoxious an ad
jective in America as ever " ultramontane " was in
Europe. With the upspringing of a genuine and general
" Old Catholic " movement among the Romanists of
the United States, many things now seemingly impos
sible might become possible, — among them an Eng
lished and reformed Missal, a modified Confessional,
and a rehabilitation of the primitive Creeds as the
only oecumenical symbols of binding force. When

PREFACE. xi
this state of things shall have been reached (and
events in Europe as well as in America may be
hastening it more rapidly than we suppose), it will
be time enough to begin waving our olive branch
towards the extreme right ; the two religions will
at least have come within speaking distance of each
other. For the present, the only hopeful outlook for non-
Roman Christians seeking unity is in the direction
of the great, restless, ill-compacted and ill-contented
mass of reformed Christendom. To aid those who,
deeply dissatisfied with things as they are, are feeling
about in the dark for pillars strong enough to hold up
things as they ought to be, has been the author's one
endeavor. The task set before the Christian Church in Amer
ica is her familiar one of conquest ; but open-eyed
observers have to acknowledge that the conditions of
the warfare are, in many respects, unparalleled. What
we are witnessing is not the hopeful approach of a
new religion to minds wholly unfamiliar with its mes
sage, but rather the painful endeavor of an old reli
gion to maintain its hold upon a mixed multitude,
already nominally under its sway, but so situated as to
be peculiarly open to the temptation to revolt. The
suggestion that possibly America may not continue
permanently Christian is undoubtedly a painful one
whether to make or to receive; but honest students
of the signs of the times cannot, with a clear con
science, refuse to take it into account. To a religious

xii PREFACE.
mind, that horoscope of our national destinies looks
to be infinitely the most worthy which sees in the
land that has been given us an opportunity for the
upbuilding of the Kingdom of God on earth such as
never before was put within a people's grasp. No
where, it would seem, so easily as here might Chris
tian civilization, taught by the blunders of the past
and unimpeded by the rubbish of old failure, essay
to build anew the perfect city. The very fairness of
the vision is to some eyes sufficient evidence that the
dream is certain to come true. We stumble not at
believing what with the whole heart we most desire
to believe, except, indeed, when the obstacles to our
faith are of the overwhelming sort; and this ideal
picture of the new Civitas Dei destined to spring up
on a continent mysteriously kept out of sight until the
old errors of construction had betrayed themselves
and all things were ready for a new attempt, has
a subtile charm in it to which the imagination easily
succumbs. But men engaged in the administration of impor
tant trusts are bound to take counsel of their just
apprehensions as well as of their sanguine hopes ;
and the Christian Church, as the trustee of the faith,
may not too confidently assume that all things will
fall out happily for her, and as they ought to do, in
this new world. Some fears are reasonable and
proper fears, and to shut our eyes on them is but
to invite them to fulfil themselves.
There are those of us who have become convinced

PREFACE. xm
that only in a genuine, thorough-going, actual and vis
ible unity is there hope for the survival of what is best
in the Christian life of the Republic. But we do not
desire to compass our end, or rather what we like to
think of as God's purpose, by any hypocritical veiling
of real difficulties, or insincere attempts to put obsta
cles out of existence by putting them temporarily out
of mind. " Things are what they are," and no bandy
ing of pleasant words or exchange of platform courte
sies can alter the everlasting fact that unity, in order
to endure, must rest on truth.
W. R. H.
New York, May 1, 1891.

CONTENTS.

page
A Protocol  3

II.
The Archives  51
III.
The Credenda  99
IV.
The Signs and Seals  139
V.
Pilotage  173
VI.
A Church by Love Established  209

THE QUADRILATERAL.

I.
The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as
" containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being
the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
II.
The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol ; and the
Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian
faith. III.
The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself, — Bap
tism and the Supper of the Lord, • — ministered with unfailing
use of Christ's words of institution, and of the elements
ordained by Him. IV.
The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods
of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and
peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.

I.
A PROTOCOL.

As the safety of the whole is the interest of the whole, and cannot be
provided for without govei'nment, either one or more or many, let us inquire
whether one good government is not, relative to the object in question, more
competent than any other given number whatever. — The Federalist.

THE PEACE OE THE CHURCH

i.
A PROTOCOL.
Theee was once what was known as " the peace of
the Empire." There is destined to arrive the peace
of the Church. The peace of the Empire meant a
civil tranquillity, brought about and held secure by
a strong central force posited at Rome.
From this huge dynamo went out the threads that
carried light and heat to the farthest extremities of
the old Mediterranean world. It was a powerful
plant that could propel energy along such tenuous
conductors, and to such distances. The strength and
wit of many generations had gone to the construction
of the machine ; but once created, it acquired a cer
tain momentum of its own, a running force largely
independent of circumstances. It was not like one
of those delicate mechanisms which a grain of sand
or a knot in the thread brings to a stand-still; the
rollers kept their motion, and the long arms their
thrust, quite regardless of petty obstructions of what
ever sort. The Caesars were merely men intrusted

4 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
with the running of the dynamo; oftener than not,
they were themselves crushed among the wheels. So
impressive was this self-perpetuating aspect of the
Empire that men came to look at the vast organism
as immortal, a thing that could not die ; and secular
poets, eager to welcome back the Golden Age, could
picture to themselves no better fulfilment of their
hopes than such a stretching of the peace of the
Empire as would make it cover the whole earth. A
world " lapt in universal law," —
and that law Roman law, — was the goal of their
most sanguine dreams.
The Christian mind of to-day sees in all this a
divinely ordered preparation for the spread of the
gospel. The peace of the Empire made the spiritual
conquest of the Empire possible. The military roads
were as available for the evangelist as for the legion
ary, and the imperial posts could carry epistles as
easily as rescripts.
Hence it is no wonder that when the time was
fulfilled for the so-called conversion of the Empire,
the notion should have taken possession of the minds
of many that the City of God was already come. But
really, in point of fact, the Empire never was con
verted. Doubtless manners were softened, jurispru
dence modified, the general look of things a good deal
altered for the better ; but the Empire, as such, ex
perienced no change of heart. It continued what it

A PROTOCOL. 5
had always been, — a wonderfully well-contrived admin
istrative framework, penetrated and backed by phy
sical force. The painting of a new monogram on the
plate of the machine may have served in some meas
ure to discredit Caesar ; it implied no real enthrone
ment of Christ.
But just because the Empire was ineligible for
conversion, it became liable to fall, — and fell.
To the bulk of its .immemorial possessions, — some
of them precious, a good many of them embarrassing,
a few deadly, — the Roman Church fell heir ; and nota
bly to the old tradition that associated efficiency with
centralization. We have come, in modern times, to
know more about the structure of the human body
than the ancients did, and we have learned from that
best of all object-lessons to anticipate in a perfect
organism the distribution of centres of force.
To the Roman mind such a thought as this was
wholly foreign. Unless the law went forth from
Rome, how could there be unity ? As this question
had seemed to the emperors to admit of but one reply ;
so it came to seem also to the popes. Hence when
the consciousness of nationality awoke strongly in
the northern races, the clash followed that passes in
history under the name of the Reformation.
I am not attempting a complete statement of the
causes of that momentous quarrel. Besides its po
litical character, the movement had also its still
more serious doctrinal aspects. The indictment
found against the Latins included the charge of a

6 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
superstitious adulteration of the ancient faith with
Pagan ingredients, as well as that of an infringement
of the ancient liberties. Were I inviting you to a
thorough analysis of the Roman Catholic controversy,
all this would have to be taken into account; but
for our immediate purpose, the effect of the Reforma
tion upon polity is more important than its effect
upon dogma.
We are working our way towards an understanding
of the ecclesiastical state of things that confronts us
in America ; and it is essential to a just appreciation
of facts as they are that we should remind ourselves
of facts as they were. There was a time then, and
that not so very long ago, when there had succeeded
to the peace of the Empire something that was sup
posed to be, in an equally real sense, the peace of the
Church. To be sure it was ruffled by disturbances
and heart-burnings not a few ; but so, for that matter,
had the peace of the Empire been, even at its best
estate. Nevertheless, the great fact stared men in
the face that there existed a region, bounded by geo
graphical lines more or less definite, known under the
comprehensive name of Christendom.
Throughout this tract of country certain great re
ligious institutes found unvarying recognition and
acceptance. One could go from land to land and find every
where the same priesthood, the same sacraments, the
same pious usages, with which he had been familiar
in his own home from childhood. I am not now

A PROTOCOL. 7
speaking of the blemishes and drawbacks that at
tached to this order of things ; I am calling attention
to what was attractive, and, upon the surface at least,
admirable in it all. Certainly a traveller would not
find such privilege of sanctuary amiss to-day if he
could share it. It would add to the enjoyment of
a journey in Spain, for instance, if in a homesick
moment one could cross the threshold of Cordova's
great church, or kneel down on the floor of some
lesser house of God by the roadside, and feel that he
did so by as good a right and with as sincere a wel
come as if he were native to the soil.
How can we wonder, then, that devout minds of
a conservative cast, and keenly alive to the excellen
cies of the then existing system, should have felt
disposed to fight to the death a movement which by
implication threatened, even if it did not avowedly
assail, the integrity of this same Christendom ? And
how can we wonder that in our own days ardent and
imaginative souls, viewing the past in the warm golden
light that smooths rough outlines and makes the hard
exterior of distant objects beautiful, should have felt
disposed to insist that only by retracing their steps
and going back to the Catholic beliefs and usages of
the old days before the quarrel, could Christendom
be re-achieved?
But before we take up with that timid philosophy
of history which can see in the Reformation nothing
better than a blunder, we must consider whether any
such return to cover as the one proposed is practicable.

8 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
It is one thing to maintain an existing system against
innovation, it is another and much harder task to re
establish a system that has suffered fracture. The
genie of the Arabian story was with difficulty coaxed
back into the casket that had been his prison. The
spirit set free at the Reformation is not incapable of
being housed, but it will never consent to return
to quarters no roomier than those from which it
broke away. Least of all can the proposal to rehabil
itate the Christendom that was before Luther and
Cranmer, make a plausible showing in America. In
countries that once formed a part of the Roman sys
tem, even though they lay upon the outer edge of it,
a plea for reconstruction upon the old lines can boast
a certain modicum of weight. When the leaders of
the Anglo-Catholic movement, for example, began
some fifty years ago to dream of carrying England
back into " the Latin obedience," the forlornness of
their hope was not at first apparent. All the forces
of romanticism were on their side ; they knew that
the\r could count upon considerable dissatisfaction,
born of despondency, in the liberal ranks, and there
Was a rallying centre ready to their hands in the old
families among the nobility that through all fortunes
had remained loyal to the ancient order. England
had once held a place in the Roman framework ; why
might she not again ?
Par less excuse have they who, here in America,
turn for reconstructive help to Italy. Notions that
were tenable in the days when the earth was supposed

A PROTOCOL. 9
to be the centre of the universe, ceased to be tenable
after the heliocentric astronomy had come in, and
notions that were tenable under the heliocentric hy
pothesis as first understood, have ceased to be ten
able now that we suspect that even the sun itself has
motion and an orbit. No more can an ecclesiastical
polity, originally fashioned to fit the Roman Empire
as closely as a cloud-bank moulds itself to the land
scape on which it lies, answer for the needs of a world
dimensioned out of all proportion to the Christendom
that used to be.
This does not necessarily mean that the Americas
and Australia must needs construct for themselves
forms of Church life and governance that shall stand
wholly unrelated to what has gone before. That is
not God's way of working, nor the way of wise men
who seek to imitate the Maker's methods. The Co
pernican astronomy, to go back to our parable, did
indeed displace, but it by no means wholly discredited
the Ptolemaic astronomy. All that was true in the
old system passed over into the new. The ancient
observations had not lost their value because a revised
grammar of their significance had come in.
There are structural principles the knowledge of
which is as old as human society itself, and which no
revolutions can supersede. In any future unification
of the Christian body these principles will have recog
nition and play. They cannot be disowned, because
they are written on the nature of man, and rank among
the primal facts. To disentangle from whatever ought

10 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
to be reckoned transitory, secondary, and adventitious,
these first principles of social house-building will be
my main endeavor in these lectures. It is always by
returning to the true principia, and never by a mere
going back to old times, that society, whether in its
civil or its -ecclesiastical form, finds safety.
It will be well to begin by considering the magni
tude and complexity of the problem that offers itself
for solution here in the United States, — a country
which is at once the hope and the despair of believers in
the reunion of Christendom ; their despair, because no
where else has the process of division and subdivision
been further carried ; their hope, because nowhere is
there less of outward constraint to hinder a complete
reconciliation, if only the true basis of amity can be
found. I invite you then to a quick review of our ecclesias
tical past.
With the adoption of the Constitution, the United
States became a nation, and by a stroke of the pen
embarrassments innumerable that had vexed the life
of the ill-compacted Confederation were put away.
No such summary process of reconstruction and con
solidation was possible for the scattered religious so
cieties which from time to time during the colonial
period had been planted along the Atlantic seaboard,
and now found themselves, each with its own little
stock of inherited prejudices and convictions, maxims
of polity and formulas of faith, about starting on a
new career. The time had been in the Old World

A PROTOCOL. 11
when the successful assertion by a people of its
proper civil unity would have been followed, as a
matter of course, by the establishment of a corres
ponding unity ecclesiastical. The question with the
England of the seventeenth century had not been
whether there should or should not be an established
religion, but whether the religion to be established
should be Anglican, Presbyterian, or Papal. Such
was not the case with the newly liberated colonies
in the closing years of the century that followed the
seventeenth. The day for acts of uniformity had
manifestly gone by ; and although to religious minds
deeply impressed with the evils of sectarian strife
there must have come a mingled sense of envy and
self-reproach in noting the comparative ease with
which the State had accomplished oneness, all sensi
ble people settled down to the conclusion that so far
as the Church was concerned the case was one in
which patience must be allowed to have her perfect
work. If it was a scandal, and a scandal it doubtless
was, to see religion arrayed in a coat of many colors,
rather than in her own proper seamless robe, there
was at least the comfort of remembering that foreign
weavers and old-time looms were responsible for the
garment's tints and texture. L; is true that the deter
mination utterly to free religion from State control
has the look of having been an after-thought with the
framers of the Constitution, appearing, as it does, in
the form of an amendment, to that instrument, and
not as one of the original articles. The fact, how-

12 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ever, that the amendment, when proposed, excited no
active opposition, and was promptly ratified, shows
how wide-spread and deep-rooted in the mind of the
nascent republic was the conviction that Congress
ought to "make no law respecting an establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
That this view of the situation was shared by leading
minds among the Anglican portion of the community
is evidenced by the way in which the framers of the
American Prayer-book expressed themselves. There
were then present on our soil some ten or twelve forms
of organized Christianity, of which the Anglican was
one. In the face of this fact, what attitude did the
Church-of-England men think it becoming in them to
assume ? Did they assert an ecclesiastical monopoly ?
Did they put forward any imperious claim to suprem
acy, or even to primacy ? Not at all ; they simply, in
all humility of mind, remarked that, as a result of the
political revolution that had taken place, " the different
religious denominations of Christians " in what had
been the Colonies, but had now become the States,
had been " left at full and equal liberty to model and
organize their respective churches and forms of wor
ship and discipline in such manner as they might
judge most convenient for their future prosperity,
consistently with the constitution and laws of their
country." 1
This paragraph has been criticised for its naivete,
and for a lack of that proper self-assertion which
1 See Preface to the American Book of Common Prayer.

A PROTOCOL. 13
Anglicans alive to their hereditary rights and privi
leges should have maintained. It was, however, the
language of men who, before all else, were bent on
looking the actual facts of their position in the face,
undisturbed by any a priori theories of ecclesiastical
" mission and jurisdiction."
They may have entertained individually the very
strongest convictions as to the exclusive rightfulness
of the Episcopal regimen ; they may have held te
naciously in their own minds to the apostolicity of
liturgical worship; but they had the good judgment
to perceive that to ask from their fellow-citizens any
thing more than a fair field and no favor would be
folly. To have planted the Anglican standard in the
spirit in which the last of the Bourbons hoisted at
Frohsdorf the white flag of his house, crying to
Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Republicans alike, " This
or nothing," might have gained them the sort of
admiration we accord the captain of a sinking ship
who refuses to quit his quarter-deck, but it would
have cost us, the children, our inheritance. White
and his compeers chose a wiser course. Persuaded of
the innate vitality of their principles, they cheerfully
refrained from anything that might look like an arro
gant assertion of them, well content to abide the
working of that law of survival which, though un
formulated in their day, was, in its practical bearing
upon the affairs of human life, as clearly discernible
then as now.
. But what, in point of historical fact, were the

14 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
" different religious denominations," referred to in
the preface of the Prayer-book ? Roughly classified,
and named in the order of their earliest organized
beginnings they were these : Episcopalians (1607),
Congregationalists (1620), Reformed Dutch (1628),
Roman Catholics (1634), Baptists (1639), Lutherans
(1669), Friends (1672), Presbyterians (1684), Men-
nonites (1708), Moravians (1734), Methodists (1773).1
This list might be lengthened by expanding genera
into species, — particularly in the case of the Baptists
and of the Presbyterians, of which there were even
then several varieties; but for the purposes of a general
view tho enumeration as it stands is adequate.
Ethnologically considered, the bulk of the people
were of English stock ; but the Dutch, German, and
Scandinavian elements were not inconsiderable, and
there was also a certain small though very precious
infusion of French Huguenot blood. It is evident
that this is a strong Protestant showing. With the
single exception of Maryland, itself largely Angli
can, the newly enfranchised States may be said to
have stood for the Reformation. It looked as if the
two religions had divided the two Americas between
them, Protestant Europe having said, I will take the
North ; and Papal Europe, I will take the South. It
should be acknowledged, however, that with respect
to that one of the two continents with which we are
the more directly interested, this remark calls for
qualification. French Roman Catholics flanked the
1 Dorchester's Christianity in the United States, pp. 35-43.

A PROTOCOL 15
infant republic on the northeast, and Spanish Roman
Catholics on the south, and both of these ante
dated, the one by nearly a century, and the other
by some years, the Protestant occupancy of North
America. Such, then, was the ecclesiastical state of things at
the time when this country first came forward to take
her place in the family of nations. We set out upon
our career pledged in the temporal order to unity,
but given over in the spiritual order to what might be
called, by a seeming solecism, classified confusion.
In a few of the States the sanction by government
of some one denomination to the discredit of the
others survived the shock of the Revolution; but it
was only for a little. The doctrine of establish
ments had received its death-blow ; and in a few
years all semblance of a desire on the part of the civil
authorities to control the religious affiliations of the
citizen vanished. Church and State became almost
as distinctly separated as they had been before Con-
stantine's day. I say " almost," because absolutely
separate Church and State never can become in any
country where the bulk of the people hold the Chris
tian faith. Wherever property interests and questions
of contract come in, there the State has a hold.
Public worship calls for a roof and walls ; and where
these are there is property, with all its liabilities to
taxation, attachment, mortgage, confiscation and the
like. The fact that a house has been consecrated to
religious uses does not take it out of that area of

16 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
tilings material in which the State enjoys eminent
domain. Then there is marriage, a contract or a
sacrament according as we look at it from a common-
law or a canon-law standpoint. As an agreement
between two individuals, it is a matter for judges
and juries to pronounce upon; as a "holy estate"
it is the Church's affair, one of the sanctities with
which no extraneous power may intermeddle. With
limitations the same thing holds good of education
and of the administration of charity. These are
matters which the State may almost be said to have
taken up at the suggestion, or, at any rate, influenced
by the example of the Church. To put it in graphic
form, the one circle overlaps the other, and certain
interests are found resident in the space which belongs
exclusively to neither of them, while yet geometrically
a segment of each.
While, therefore, if we mean to be accurate, it is
necessary to remember that with the Christianized
peoples things secular can never be wholly severed
from things sacred, we have, speaking broadly, a
perfect right to say that the Revolution broke up
completely the old-time alliance between Church and
State, leaving the former of the two at perfect liberty
to build itself up as best it might.
Why is it then, that the Church has lagged so far
behind the State in the matter of achieving unity ?
For the simple reason that the State holds and wields
the power of the sword. The thirteen colonies did
not become a republic because the people as a whole

A PROTOCOL. 17
wanted a republic, for it is notorious that many of
them were at heart warmly attached to the monarchy.
The republic was born of the wishes of the most part,
— a most part so strong that it would have been hope
less for the lesser part to attempt resistance. The
framers of the Declaration of Independence had said
of governments that they derived " their just powers
from the consent of the governed." By the " governed "
they must of course have meant the greater number of
the governed, for probably no government has ever
enjoyed the unanimous good-will of those who lived
under its laws. The State, in matters of the State,
does not and cannot tolerate organized dissent ; the
law of self-preservation compels it to insist on unity.
There may be, and in free countries there is entire
liberty to think, and a large liberty to speak in this
way or in that as to the wisdom of existing arrange
ments ; but no attempt to act as if these arrangements
did not exist is tolerated for a moment. A citizen of
Pennsylvania is free to hold the opinion that the
Supreme Court of that State is an unjust tribunal,
and he is also free to exert himself in every way to
bring about the abolition of it by legislative process ;
but the moment he makes bold to act in defiance of
the judgments of that court he finds himself under
arrest. The Bourbons stamped their cannon with
the legend Regum ratio ultima. They were not speak
ing for monarchy only. All civil government,
whether it be called democratic or imperial, resorts
to force as its final argument. When discontent
2

18 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
grows strong enough, and is sufficiently excited to
strike back, then we have riot, rebellion, or civil war,
as the case may be ; but ordinarily things go on much
as they would do if all men agreed. There is acquies
cence even when there is not assent ; so evidently true
is it of a civil community, that in the ordering of its
affairs it is quite impossible that every man should
have his own way. That would be a singular com
monwealth, indeed, which should allow the impe
rialists, the monarchists, the republicans, and the
socialists within its borders " full and equal liberty
to model and organize " their respective governments
" in such manner as they might judge most convenient
for their future prosperity." What keeps these
various groups of theorists from attempting of their
own motion so to embody their ideas, is the fact that
the government actually in possession is backed by
force, and will not let them do it.
But the spiritual society which we know under the
name of the Church is precluded, by the very law of
its being, from maintaining unity after this fashion.
The Church is a "union of hearts." The power of
the sword is nowhere discoverable in its charter. Its
only weapon is persuasion, its only fetter the bond of
charity, its only punishment a withdrawal of sacra
mental privilege. We have to acknowledge that often
and again the Church has lost all this out of mind, and
acted as if fear rather than love were the real unify
ing power ; but in the beginning it was not so. Christ
instanced the fact that his disciples were not fighting

A PROTOCOL. 19
men as an evidence of the unworldly character of his
kingdom. The implication was that in the building
up of the new social order He had come to announce
and to begin, no reliance would be placed on force.
He put his followers upon their honor, and trusted
them to serve Him without fear. In a common loy
alty to Himself they were to find the essential motive
to unity. The rest would follow in due time.
In the light of these thoughts the tardy pace at
which the Church moves here in America toward
the achievement of her own proper unity is easily
understood. In the matter of civil organization we
forced our way ; in the matter of ecclesiastical organ
ization we are feeling our way.
First of all, there has had to be awakened in men's
minds a proper sense of the discredit that attaches to
our present broken estate. Since denominationalism
came in as a recognized state of things, all sorts of
pleasant parables have been devised to make it appear
lovely. Even the rainbow has been forced to lend
its manifold beauty in aid of the exigencies of the
argument, and we are exhorted to discern in our
wretched divisions a divinely ordered variety every
shade of which is essential to the full chromatic
effect. Since the fathers fell asleep, all things, for
the denominationalist, continue as they were from
the beginning. It is his steadfast averment that
matters are well enough as they are, and that it is
downright ecclesiastical Quioxtism to attempt to
better them.

20 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Sometimes in defence of his view the denomination-
alist presses the argument from design, sometimes
the argument from despair. The Creator, he reminds
us, has made men's temperaments as various as their
faces. If the familiar reminder that two blades of
grass are never found alike fails to convince us, we
are further referred to Charles the Fifth and the
story of the monastery clocks. Surely by such wealth
of illustration we ought to be persuaded that the
sects into which the Christian Church has let itself
be splintered are really no accident, but contrari
wise the fruit of a beneficent purpose, an intelligent
and harmonious design. Let us school ourselves to
see in our denominations only so many flower-beds
in the great garden God has planted, and in which
He walks. Here are roses, there carnations, yonder
lilies of the valley that love the shade ; but it is all
one garden, planned by one mind, laid out by one
hand, fed by one sunshine.
All this has a familiar sound. We have heard it,
time and again. But often when the difficulty of
reconciling this pretty parable, or these pretty para
bles, with certain very distinct words of Holy Scrip
ture, not to mention certain hard facts of human life,
has been pressed home so vigorously that there is no
escape, the denominationalist falls back on the argu
ment from despair. True, he says, it would indeed
have been most delightful could the dream of the ear
ly Fathers of the Church have been fulfilled ; could
Cyprian and Augustine have had their way. But it

A PROTOCOL. 21
was not to be. The experiment was tried, and tried on
a large scale, and it failed, and that was the end of it;
there is nothing more to be said or to be attempted.
Thus what the flower-garden was to the argument
from design, the shattered image becomes to the argu
ment from despair. The experiment of unifying the
Church on the plan and by the method of imperialism
having come to nought, we must, forsooth, sit down
with folded hands convinced that because Christen
dom is to-day divided, divided it must always be.
And yet, so flagrant are the practical evils of denom-
inationalism as a system ; so foolish does the awk
ward contrivance look when we attempt to carry it
to the heathen ; so unsightly in real life is the result
of taking it for granted that the entreaties, " Be ye
all of one mind," " Mark them that cause divisions
among you," " Love as brethren," were never meant
to be literally understood, that even the apologists of
things as they are begin to speak in broken tones,
and to murmur under their breath that there must
be some more excellent way if only it could be found.
Not so often as of old is the voice of the orator heard
on public days exulting over the number of the spires
in an American village, and drawing from the specta
cle his bad inference that competition in religion is as
wholesome as in trade. As the battle with the com
mon enemy waxes hot, the tactical advantage of the
" moving square " becomes manifest. Economic con
siderations also have their weight in the mind of a
people naturally thrifty, and common-sense demands

22 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
to be informed why it should be necessary to keep
three or four sets of parochial functionaries in pay,
merely to enable three or four groups of fellow-
townsmen, who differ in opinion on three or four
points of belief which nobody accounts essential, to
enjoy the luxury of being walled off from one another
while they say their prayers.
It is no slight step taken towards unity, that this
mood of dissatisfaction with the actual state of things
should have become so generally prevalent. Made
aware of the existence of his ailment, the sick man
begins to bestir himself to find remedies ; so long as
the disease lies latent there is nothing to prompt his
going in search of a cure. We in America have at
last reached this stage of solicitude. For a long while
only a voice here and a voice there was to be heard
protesting against our state of schism ; but now the
complainants utter themselves in chorus. " Give peace
in our time," has become common prayer.
The practical methods of attaining the desired end
are reducible under three heads : —
First: The unconditional surrender of all to one.
Secondly : Confederation upon equal terms, each
denomination preserving its own proper identity, but
entering into formal counsel with the others with
respect to all common interests.
Thirdly: Consolidation under one self-consistent
and well understood system of polity and doctrine ;
with ample constitutional guarantees for a permitted
diversity in the methods of worship and of work.

A PROTOCOL. 23
To a study of the comparative merits of these three
methods, which for the sake of convenience may be
given the catch-words " Submission," " Confederation,"
and " Consolidation," I propose devoting the remain
der of this lecture.
The foremost representative of the doctrine of un
conditional surrender as the only proper pathway
to unity is the Church of Rome. Let American
Christians, of whatever name, forthwith give in their
adhesion to the self-styled Queen and Mother of the
Churches, and the thing is done, the secret of reunion
has been found, the problem solved, the Ecclesia Ameri
cana built. There is a simplicity in the suggestion
that commends it. So short a cross-path to his desti
nation is singularly attractive to the foot-sore pilgrim,
who would gladly, if he might, sing his last song of
degrees, and enter with thanksgiving the city that is
at unity in itself. But the maxim, " All roads lead
to Rome," does not apply in lands severed from Italy
by the pathless sea, and certain facts both of ancient
and of contemporary history, to which we cannot
shut our eyes, make dead against the notion that
our help in this matter is coming to us from the
seven hills.
The Roman claim, subjected to analysis, resolves
itself into the following elements : (1) The a priori
necessity of one visible head, if the Church is to exist
as a corporate society on the earth. (2) The au
thority given to Peter to act as this visible head.
(3) The transmission by Peter to his successors in

24 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the see of Rome of the visible headship that was his.
(4) The absence of rival claimants to the supremacy.
Supplementary to these considerations, which bind
the whole world if they bind anybody, are certain
others, supposed to be specially applicable to the
United States, to wit : (5) The fact of the discovery
of the New World by a devout Roman Catholic, sail
ing under Roman Catholic auspices. (6) The undis
puted ecclesiastical jurisdiction exercised by the Holy
Father on this side of the ocean for more than a
hundred years before any dissentients had made their
appearance here. And finally, (7) the need of an au
thority backed, in a sense, by the past of all Europe,
rather than by the traditions of only a single nation,
if spiritual sovereignty is to be asserted over such a
medley of foreign stocks and races as the Republic in
this latter half of the nineteenth century has become.
It is manifestly impossible in a single lecture to
enter upon an exhaustive examination of the papal
claims ; but I can and will indicate briefly the weak
points of the arguments to which I have just referred.
To urge that a visible headship is, in the very nature
of things, essential to the being of such a body as the
Church of God on earth, is in reality to beg the ques
tion at issue. When St. Paul speaks of the ascended
Christ as having been made " head over all things to
the Church," he does so without limitation or qualifi
cation. He says nothing whatever about vicar or
vicegerent. He would seem to have been haunted
by no misgiving as to the impracticability of Christ's

A PROTOCOL. 25
ruling his people from a heavenly throne. So far as
centres of administration are concerned, he betrays
no preference for one over another, although now
and then the special personal affection for Jerusalem
proper to every Hebrew heart asserts itself.
If, indeed, it could be shown that executive power
is never efficiently wielded save when lodged with a
dictator, then the a priori argument for the Papacy
would have weight.
But the facts of history are against the acceptance
of such a postulate. Venice under her Council and
France under her Directory, to go no farther afield,
are witnesses that administrative ability is not of
necessity beholden solely to the " one-man power."
Nothing could have been more natural than for
Romans, born under the Empire, to imagine that the
new society they saw emerging out of the invisible
would never attain the climax of efficiency without a
recognized and localized Imperator ; and if the theory
of papal origins outlined at the beginning of this
lecture be the true one, such was the way in which
they did actually reason. But to us looking at the
matter in the light of the Empire's decline and fall,
as well as of its birth and growth, it is by no means
axiomatic that human society to be well ordered must
needs discover and acknowledge in some one mortal
man its visible controller. The universe as a whole,
so Christians believe, is governed by council. We
recognize in Deity something other and better than
the bare expression of singleness. Why then assume

26 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
that of necessity the oversight of the Holy Catholic
Church in order to be thorough must be lodged with
a solitary potentate ? The world secular is to-day
kept in tranquillity by forces emanating from London,
Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Washington, as
completely as it ever was when all power centred at
Rome. If such can be the case in the temporal order,
why not also in the spiritual ?
But what if our Lord, it is asked, did actually give
to Simon Peter the prerogative of supremacy ? Why
then, of course, for Christians the case is closed, and
a priori reasons either for or against become at once
irrelevant. We pass therefore from abstract to his
torical ground, and look to see what the New Testa
ment has to say, or may be supposed to say, in support
of the Roman claim. It would seem on general prin
ciples as if the Epistles credited to St. Peter himself
ought to yield the desired evidence. The encyclical
letters of the pontiffs who are supposed to hold from
him have never been reticent with respect to prerog
ative ; and if St. Peter was conscious of possessing
rights of supremacy over the whole Church, nothing
could have been more natural than that the fact should
leave its impress on his correspondence. And yet we
look in vain to this quarter for a single sentence cor
roborative of the claims of the Popes. The Apostle
does indeed exhort the elders of the Church, but he
is careful to do it as one who is " also an elder." In
fact, had he been expressly aiming to avoid the asser
tion of an authority different from and. superior to

A PROTOCOL. 27
that of his fellow Apostles, he could scarcely have
chosen a tone better fitted for his purpose than that
which pervades the whole range of his writings. A
similar poverty of allusion, or rather entire absence of
allusion, to the Petrine claim is observable in the
other Epistles ; and when it comes to the Book of
Acts, Paul is so clearly the hero of the story that
Peter's prominence in the earlier chapters is almost
lost out of mind before we reach the end. When the
case has been narrowed down, as it must be, to the
four Gospels, we discover that the real issue hangs
on the right interpretation of three palmary passages ;
that which records Peter's confession of Jesus as the
Christ, and our Lord's answering declaration ; x that
in which Christ assures Peter of His having prayed
for him that his faith fail not ; 2 and that in which,
after the resurrection, Christ with a most noticeable
earnestness exhorts Peter by the love he bears Him,
"Feed my sheep."3
Upon these three texts the Scriptural argument for
the Papacy really rests. What shall we say to them?
Briefly this, that so far as the earliest commentators
on the New Testament are concerned, the Fathers of
the primitive Church, the weight of testimony is
wholly against the papal interpretation. It was only
after the Holy See had established itself by other
means that there was read into these passages the
1 St. Matt. xvi. 13-20 ; St. Mark viii. 27-29 ; St. Luke ix.
18-20. 2 St. Luke xxii. 31, 32. 8 St. John xxi. 15-18.

28 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
sense which Roman controversialists now allege as
the only proper one. In the case of the first of the
three passages some of the Fathers see in Christ's
words " this rock " an allusion to Himself, that one
foundation other than which no man can lay ; some
understand it to signify the truth of our Lord's divin
ity to which Peter had just borne the earliest human
witness ; while still others connect the promise with
those providential features in Peter's personal history
which made him the first stone in that great edifice,
the building of which is still in progress. In a true
sense the Church began with Peter, for it was he who
led at Pentecost, and it was he whose first use of " the
keys of the kingdom of heaven" threw open to the
nations the door that had been shut against them so
long. But Jerusalem and Caesarea, not Rome, are
the geographical names we associate with these
greatest of the acts of Peter ; and there lies a wide
gap between assent to the primacy of this foremost
of the Twelve, and consent to the doctrine that
dominion has been given to the Bishops of Rome even
to the end of the world.
The fact of Peter's leadership among the disciples,
in itself sufficiently evidenced by the position given
to his name in all of the lists, is a sufficient clew to
the meaning of the second of the great papal texts.
Nothing could be more natural than the singling
out for special prayer the man who had been bold to
say, " Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God,"
and nothing could have been more natural than to

A PROTOCOL. 29
select him to be the strengthener of his brethren in
their hour of need ; but that this strengthening function
was not peculiar to the Apostle Peter is evident from
its being associated in the New Testament with no
fewer than four of St. Peter's colleagues in the work
of evangelization.
With respect to the scene upon the shore of the
sea of Tiberias, where Jesus said to Simon Peter once,
" Feed my lambs," twice, " Feed my sheep," the last
of the alleged Gospel evidences in behalf of the Pa
pacy, it would seem to be enough simply to put in
contrast the view which sees in it an exclusive be
stowal of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and that which
discerns, rather, a singularly tender and touching sug
gestion of a duty that appertains to every shepherd
of souls as such. Peter had three times denied his
Master ; three times, therefore, does the Master re
establish Peter in his pastoral office ; but His doing
so in no sense .disestablishes the rest. If any mystical
and symbolic inference with respect to the perpetual
government of the Church is to be forced out of this
beautiful closing chapter of the Fourth Gospel, it
would seem as if St. John, rather than St. Peter,
ought to have the benefit of it, for of him are those
strange words written, " If I will that he tarry till I
come, what is that to thee ? " If this thing had been
said of Simon Peter, what volumes of rhetoric might it
not have furnished to the upholders of the papal claim?
But the Roman Catholic argument from the New
Testament is supplemented by another from tradition.

30 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
St. Peter, we are assured, was the first bishop of
Rome, and as such transmitted his plenary powers
to those who have succeeded him in that see, from
Linus, the first, to Leo XIIL, the latest of them.
Protestant writers who spend their strength in try
ing to prove that St. Peter never was at Rome make
a mistake. Very possibly they are right ; but it is pro
verbially hard to prove a negative, and in making so
much effort to demonstrate this particular negative
they betray a misgiving that unless it can be done
the case is lost. Even when it has been conceded
that St. Peter, in the course of his travels, may have
visited Rome, it by no means follows that he was
either the exclusive founder or the first bishop of the
Roman Church. St. Paul prided himself on never
trespassing on the missionary fields of other Apostles.
But we have among St. Paul's writings a letter to
the Church of the* Romans. Would he have been
likely to write his Epistle had there been a bishop
in charge at Rome ? And supposing that bishop to
have been no less a dignitary than the Apostle Peter,
should we find no reference made to him in the long
list of salutations with which the writer closes his
communication ?
An early author of repute (Irenaeus) makes St. Peter
and St. Paul jointly the founders of the Roman Church.
According to him, Linus was the first bishop of the
series, not the second, and received his commission
at the hands of both of the great Apostles. A happy
omen this of the better day to come, when St. Peter,

A PROTOCOL. 31
as the representative of ecclesiastical order, and St.
Paul, as the representative of the freedom that comes
with faith, shall strike hands in that " Holy Catholic
Church " in which, spite of all set-backs and discour
agements, those who say the Apostles' Creed continue
to believe.1
But it is still further urged that, in the absence of
any other claimant, Rome ought to hold supremacy
by virtue of her being, so to speak, the residuary
legatee. If Jerusalem, or Antioch, or even Alexan
dria had maintained an unbroken line of bishops
from the beginning, there might be grounds for par
titioning the sovereignty among all the survivors, but
inasmuch as Rome is actually the only survivor, ought
not the whole inheritance to be hers ?2
Yes, perhaps so, if we can agree about what the
inheritance is. If it be simply an inheritance of fair
fame, certainly all who value what is ancient for its
own sake, and who hold that what is time-honored
ought to be by man honored as well, will concede the
thing asked for not only cheerfully but thankfully.
There never has been a time when the Church of
Rome, if content to be the Church of Rome, would
not have received from the rest of Christendom her
1 For an admirable summary of the heads of the Roman con
troversy, see Dr. Salmon's " Infallibility of the Church," a work
characterized by the late Von Dollinger as one of the great polem
ical achievements of the century.
2 See " A Letter to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion
of Mr. Gladstone's recent Expostulation," by John Henry New
man, D.D., of the Oratory, London, 1875, p 26, § 3.

32 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
full measure of respect. It is not against the Church
of Rome, it is against the self-styled Mother and Mis
tress of all the Churches that we have made war, or
rather are defending ourselves.
But just as the disproof of the Scriptural argument
for the supremacy of St. Peter turned the flank of the
argument from tradition, so the disproof of the a priori
argument for the necessity of a single visible headship
over the Church, may be said to have anticipated the
defeat of this argument from survival. If it could be
proved that the Church absolutely required for its ef
ficiency the recognition of a supreme Pontiff, why then
the fact that there lived within our horizon only one
pretender to the post would unquestionably make the
claim of such survivor a very strong one. But if, on
the other hand, the supposition in question be, as we
have seen that it is, a wholly gratuitous one, why then
Rome's cry, " Come unto me, for there is none other
whom it is possible for you to seek," falls dead.
There remain to be considered the supplementary
arguments that are supposed to make Rome's conten
tion a particularly strong one in the case of the
United States.
It is hardly possible to take seriously the argument
that because Christopher Columbus was a Roman
Catholic, therefore all of us who occupy the new world
he discovered ought to be of his religion. In the fif
teenth century all Europe was under the Papacy ;
the note of revolt had not yet been sounded, and if
America was to be discovered by a European it must

A PROTOCOL. 33
needs be a Roman Catholic who should discover it.
The planting of the cross on the soil of San Salvador
was indeed an act of high significance ; but the Papacy
can scarcely claim an exclusive interest in the cross,
a symbol that had acquired its significance long before
St. Peter is alleged even to have seen Rome.
The claim founded upon a long continued assertion
of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the New World, would
carry greater weight in this connection than it does,
if it could be shown that the jurisdiction was ever to
any considerable extent either exercised or acknowl
edged on the Atlantic seaboard in the colonial period ;
or in other words, had the people who in 1789 consti
tuted themselves a republic, ever recognized the right
of the Roman Pontiff to reign over them. We know
that the contrary was notoriously the fact. Perhaps a
moiety of the Marylanders were Roman Catholic ; but
over against these stood multitudes whose very pres
ence here was owing to their hatred of whatever even
so much as approximated to the religion of Rome.
In the Spanish possessions, and in what had been the
French, the Roman Catholic Church had an unques
tioned foothold ; but Canada and Florida lay beyond
the limits of the Republic, and what was true of them
was not true of it. Substantially this was an Eng
lishman's country when it set out upon its course,
and it was England that had been "the bulwark of
the Reformation."
Yes, the Roman Catholic replies, an Englishman's
country it was once, but an Englishman's country

34 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
it long ago ceased to lie. Europe has poured itself
into America, and to-day what is needed to effect
the unifying process is such a power as can appeal
to memories that are common to all the national
ities of the Old World. There is no such power,
save the Papacy.
The answer to this is two-fold. A reconciliation
imposed upon us from abroad and by an extraneous
power is not the sort of reconciliation of which we
are in search. As a people, we think that we can
best settle our family quarrel among ourselves. But
aside from this, is there not good reason to think that
the extent of the Europeanizing process covered by
the last fifty years has been grossly exaggerated ? It
is true that there has been an immense infusion of
foreign blood ; but is it true that this has sufficed
really to overmaster the original strain ? There is
good authority for the statement that of the people
now inhabiting the territory of the United States
considerably more than half are the direct descend
ants of grandparents or great-grandparents who
were living here in the year 1800. Moreover, law
and language are forces that link us almost indis-
solubly to an English past. Our common law is
English. The "free institutions " of which we are
so proud are of English parentage. Above all, our
speech is English. The affectionate appeals of the
Holy Father calling us back to our allegiance have
to be translated. The ring of the sentences is so
norous, but our ears miss the mother element. The

A PROTOCOL. 35
children of our public schools, from whatever quarter
of the globe they may have come, are taught to think,
to speak, to write in English. Sentences from the
great masters of English letters, snatches of English
oratory, couplets of English verse creep into their
minds, and stay there moulding thought and action
in a thousand unsuspected ways. The importance of
this fact it is quite impossible to overstate. Here
and there in the vast stretch of our possessions little
areas are to be found where bi-lingual education has
to be tolerated for a time ; but it is only for a time.
The English language has a grasp upon this country
that can by no means be shaken off, and even race
distinctions, deeply rooted as they are, must sooner or
later inevitably yield to the formative touch of this
all-conquering tongue. As yet, the Roman ecclesias
tics and theologians, born Roman, have not acquired
the power of writing English with much force. In
this department of their propaganda they have been
dependent on recruits from the Anglican ranks. Un
til they shall have acquired this gift of utterance, the
mere fact that the population of the United States,
classified by its race affinities, represents the whole of
Europe, will not greatly help their missionary effort.
I have thought it right to deal thus promptly with
the Roman Catholic claims, for the simple reason that
if these are valid, any further discussion of means
and methods must prove superfluous. If our first
duty as Christians be to obey the voice that says to
us from Peter's chair, " Come unto me," why then

36 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the case is closed. America, on that supposition, has
only to do what England did when Queen Mary suc
ceeded to King Edward, namely, to haul down the
flag of the Reformation, and to give up the ship.
There is, however, an alternative form of uncon
ditional surrender to which I ought perhaps to make
at least a passing reference before we take our final
leave of this first of the three theories of unity, the
theory of submission. There are a few souls san
guine enough to imagine it possible that the absolute
submission refused to the Roman Pontiff, may still
be secured at the dictate of the Anglican Episcopacy.
Let all dissentients at once give in their allegiance
to the Protestant Episcopal Church ; conform to the
canons of the General Convention, and consent to
worship publicly no otherwise than in accordance
with the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, and
the thing is done. We have our Church of America
off-hand and without vexatious delay. But if Angli
canism pure and simple, with all the adventitious aids
it enjoys in the land of its birth, with all the charm
that ancient architecture can lend and all the pres
tige old national traditions and long inherited titles
avail to foster, has nevertheless failed to keep within
one fold even the half of the people of Great Britain,
is it to be supposed that any new summons, issued at
this late day, " Go to, become forthwith what we
are," is likely to win submission.
Happily it has ceased to be any longer necessary to
argue seriously against this form of the doctrine of un-

A PROTOCOL. 37
conditional surrender, for the reason that the bishops
of the English-speaking race, in council assembled,
have themselves given it a quietus. By the Declaration
set forth at Chicago in 1886, and ratified at Lambeth
in 1888, the Anglican Communion throughout the
world committed itself, so far as by the voice of its
chief pastors it could be committed, to a far larger
and more generous platform of unity than any of
which the framers of the Act of Uniformity ever
dreamed. But I am anticipating matters by this
reference. I was led into making it because other
wise our study of the various phases of the submission
doctrine would have been incomplete.
We have next to consider the theory of ecclesias
tical unity through confederation, the second of the
three methods that have found advocates. The con-
federative theory contemplates some such combina
tion of the various religious bodies of the land as
would exist in the case of labor unions, were there a
single General Assembly empowered to legislate for
them all in matters of common interest, while yet
each separate union retained control over the affairs
of its own trade. Under this scheme denomination-
alism would not cease to be, but its more flagrant
evils might conceivably be diminished; the conduct of
missions, for example, being relegated to the General
Assembly, and the heathen thus saved the scandal of
being called to look upon a piebald Christianity. In
short " confederation " is but another name for some

38 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
modus vivendi under which we might live along to
gether very much as we are living now, only in rather
pleasanter mutual relations than at present, with more
of concert and with less of friction. That the pro
posal has a certain plausibility upon the face of it,
it is needless to deny. It has the great advantage of
involving a minimum of change. So deep rooted have
our denominational traditions grown to be, so vast are
the property interests at stake, so complicated is the
network of missionary and educational enterprise to
which the various religious bodies stand committed,
that any scheme of unity which proposes at the outset
to hold all these things harmless and to ensure their
integrity for an indefinite time future, is sure to win
at least a momentary approval.
But confederation weighed in the balances is found
wanting. In itself considered, it is the weakest of all
the forms of unity, and the least stable. Its proper
symbol is the fagot, which has unity indeed, but
unity of a very precarious sort, fragile, ill-compacted,
easily terminable. The parts of a confederacy are
mechanically not chemically combined ; they hold
together less by affinity than by cohesion. Confeder
acy has no power to weather tribulation, the mere
touch of trouble makes shipwreck of it. We Ameri
cans tried confederation as our first experiment in
the direction of national unity ; and a very poor thing
we found it. Our Constitution grew directly out of
a desire for " a more perfect union " than the mere
bundling process of confederation could bring to pass.

A PROTOCOL. 39
In fact, there are no two words in the political vocabu
lary of Americans more conspicuously ill-omened than
" confederacy " and " confederation." They are words
synonymous with transitoriness and failure ; no
slightest promise of permanence is to be found in
them. If all this be true of the confederative idea as
it stands related to national interests and the life of
states, how much more impracticable is the applica
tion of the principle to our ecclesiastical condition.
If the confederation of communities each of which
occupies a well-ascertained geographical area, and
has a certain personal identity of its own, is a thing
compassed about with difficulty, what shall we say to
a scheme that proposes to bind together by treaty
ties social organizations that already cover the same
space, and recognize no territorial boundary lines ?
We can imagine France resolving itself into a con
federacy, and giving to each one of its present De
partments a sovereignty of its own. Such an act
would be a step backward, but it is conceivable. Is
it conceivable, however, that the French, in despair
over their partisan condition, should vote to allow the
adherents of each of the great parties to organize
according to its own notion of political wisdom, — the
Bonapartists carrying on an empire, the Legitimists
an absolute monarchy, the Orleanists a limited mon
archy, the Moderates a republic, and the Reds a com
mune, all at the same time, and within the limits of
the same France, — provided only they agree to fash
ion themselves into a confederation ? This is really,

40 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
when we look the facts in the face, what Christian
Unity would mean here in America under a scheme of
denominational confederation. It would be an attempt
to knit together for working purposes methods of
polity that from the very nature of things cannot
co-exist in one and the same system. It would be a
clearing-house, not a Church.
Denominational confederation has been ably urged
upon us under the attractive phrase, " The United
Churches of the United States." 1 If one might be
permitted to drop out two letters from this taking
title, so that it should read " The United Church of
the United States," the words would then express the
very thing we need. But the lurking fallacy in the
expression as it stands is this ; a parallelism is sug
gested which does not exist. The " States " that
make up the national Union are territorial and social
entities, each of which has its well-defined metes and
bounds ; whereas the Churches out of which it is pro
posed to construct the ecclesiastical Union are bodies
of men scattered, with a greater or less evenness
of distribution, over the whole country, and, what is
still more to the point, each of them organized with
1 See " The United Churches of the United States," by the
Rev. Charles W. Shields, D. D., in the "Century Magazine " for
November, 1885. The allusion in the text must by no means be
understood as indicating any failure on the writer's part to appre
ciate the immense value of the service rendered by Professor
Shields to the cause of Christian unity. No one has done more
than he to waken in the people of this country a sense of whole
some shame at the spectacle of their " unhappy divisions."

A PROTOCOL. 41
a view to ministering to the spiritual needs of the
whole country. If the supposed case of the confed
erated labor-unions be urged as furnishing a more
serviceable analogy, the reply is obvious, that the
various trades although not segregated in space are
segregated as respects the ends they have severally
in view. They have therefore a certain separateness
that makes confederation possible. The Bricklayers'
Union aspires to do all the bricklaying, and the Car
penters' Union aspires to do all the joinery-work
needed by the people of the United States. The
bricklayers have no desire to touch a single stick of
timber, nor do the carpenters wish to lay a single
brick. Not such is the case as it stands between the
Baptists and the Presbyterians. The Baptists have it
for their aim, so far as in them lies, to make Christians
of all the people of the land ; and the Presbyterians
have it for their aim to do the very same thing.
Unless they can find a better sort of unity than " con
federation " offers, they must from the very nature of
the case continue what they are now, rivals in the
same field, competitive rather than co-operant.
With " submission " and " confederation," both of
them discarded, there remains as a final resort the
method of consolidation ; more fully defined already
as a union under one self-consistent and well-under
stood system of polity and doctrine, with ample con
stitutional guarantees for a permitted diversity in the
methods of worship and of work. The theory of con
solidation differs from the theory of submission which

42 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
it may be charged with resembling in this, that al
though it does undoubtedly presuppose the selection
of one denomination from among the rest to form
a rallying centre, it provides at the same time for the
generous inclusion and careful conservation of what
ever the re-entering companies of believers count most
precious among their heirlooms. Every one of the
great denominations has its own hallowed memories,
its own roll of martyrs, its own cherished manner of
worship, its own long-tried methods of missionary
work, above all its own revered type of Christian
character. There is no reason why sudden violence
should be done to these sacred things. The theory
of submission would compel their prompt abandon
ment. The theory of consolidation supposes not
only their permitted but their constitutionally guarded
continuance. Take divine service, for example ; con
solidation would not involve the displacement of ex
temporaneous methods of worship among those who
value them, by an insistence upon either the Missal
or the Prayer-book, but on the contrary would guard
the preferences of the non-liturgical families in the
one household as jealously as it would protect those
whose traditions were of the other sort. There would
be nothing to forbid the recognition, in a truly Catho
lic American Church, of a Puritan rite, an Anglican
rite, a Latin rite, and a German rite. Such diversities
of method in the line of worship might perfectly well
co-exist under one general and comprehensive scheme
of polity. Such titles as " Episcopalian," and " Pres-

A PROTOCOL. 43
byterian," and " Congregationalist " would have to go
by the board, because these would indicate a real
schism in the body, a state of things like that just now
supposed in the case of a re-organized France ; but
the disappearance of these names would by no means
necessarily involve the loss of anything that is really
precious in the spiritual possessions of the communions
at present burdened with them. In fact it would be a
distinct impoverishment, rather than a gain, were we to
lose the fine types of character which the denominations
I have mentioned have severally cultivated and ma
tured. We should be merging our differences to little
purpose, if in the process we were to forfeit any con
siderable portion of the treasures accumulated by the
several tribes during their years of exile and separa
tion. In the Catholic Church of America there must
be room for the stern virtues of the Covenanter, as
well as for the gentler qualities that make the devout
follower of George Fox lovable, and the Anglican
type of sainthood attractive. True catholicity can
never come about as the "result of either an eclectic
or a levelling process. There is nothing manufactured
or artificial about it. It never was or will be made
to order. It manifests itself spontaneously and grows
as the flowers grow, when once the multitude of the
brethren consent to dwell together in unity. How,
then, can even so much as a beginning be made ?
Supposing what I have called consolidation upon a
definite and well-understood basis, or, as it might be
otherwise expressed, crystallization about a fixed

44 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
nucleus, to have been accepted as the true principle ;
by what law of natural or spiritual selection can we
imagine the desired discrimination wrought, the
right basis or nucleus determined? We can think of
various possible criteria, by aid of which a decision
might be reached, if only all could be counted upon to
acquiesce in, and to abide by the result. There is,
for example, the criterion of antiquity. Were this
test accepted (as, taken by itself, it certainly would
not be), the question would be narrowed down to a
choice between the Episcopal and the Roman Catholic
Churches, both of which bodies have an historic life
that antedates the Reformation. Again, there is the
criterion of numbers, — a favorite standard of judg
ment with all democracies. Were this accepted, the
Methodists or the Baptists would have claims such as
no competing organizations could dispute. Yet again,
Congregationalists and Presbyterians might very
properly plead the large influence their ideas have
exercised upon the growth of American institutions,
as a reason why one or other of them should be taken
as the basis of the United Church. Between them
these two bodies dominated the period of the Eng
lish Commonwealth, and if the Republic be, as in a
real sense and in a certain measure it undoubtedly
is, the child of the Commonwealth and the heir of its
political philosophy, that in itself is a strong prima
facie argument in favor of entrusting our ecclesiasti
cal destinies to the same hands that under God have
so largely shaped our national and civil fortunes.

A PROTOCOL. 45
But even supposing ourselves to have reached a
point where we acknowledge that a choice between
these various rallying centres is desirable, there still
remains the stubborn question, Who is to choose ?
There is no dictator who can settle the point by
throwing his sword into the scale ; for we have agreed
that this is a matter to which the sword is wholly
irrelevant, and we have ruled dictators out of court.
Resort to the ballot would be ludicrous, and a general
election impossible. The putting of the Roman Em
pire up at auction was a scandal, but the sending of
all Christians to the polls to vote upon a proposed
constitution for the Kingdom of Heaven would be
a greater.
No, there is nothing to be done, but for each of the
existing organizations of those within our borders
who profess and call themselves Christians, to apply
itself to the study of the problem, and having done
so to set forth in the fewest and plainest words pos
sible, the result of its thinking. Let us hear from
each denomination what, in its deliberate judgment, is
the most generous platform of union it can conscien
tiously offer to the rest. Once in possession of these
ultimata our American Christendom as a whole will
be in a far better condition to form a judgment than
it is to-day. When it is found, as doubtless it will
be found, that the resemblances between the various
formulas of concord are far more striking than the
differences, such a cry for unity will go up from the
whole nation as shall assuredly enter into the ears of

46 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the Lord of Sabaoth and bring the answer He alone
can give.
One of our denominations, as it happens, has done
this very thing already, and is first in the field with
its suggestion of the true basis of unity. The sugges
tion may be a mistaken one. There may inhere in it
some fatal logical or historical flaw. It claims no
note of infallibility, but as a suggestion it has at least
one merit, the merit of having been made.
The Chicago-Lambeth platform, as it may fairly
enough be called, sets forth that the data essential to
the establishment of a visible unity among Christians
are as follows : —
First. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament as containing all things necessary to Sal
vation, and as being the rule and ultimate standard of
faith. Secondly. The Apostles' Creed as the Baptismal
symbol ; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient state
ment of the Christian Faith.
Thirdly. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ
Himself, — Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, —
ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of
institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.
Fourthly. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted
in the methods of its administration to the varying
needs of the nations and peoples called of God into
the unity of his Church.1
This is the answer of the Bishops of the Anglican
1 Official Report of the Lambeth Conference of 1888, p. 86.

A PROTOCOL. 47
faith and order throughout the world to the question,
What do Anglicans account the minimum of agree
ment prerequisite to any practical steps toward the
achievement of a bona fide unity ? My purpose in
these lectures will be to unfold the contents of this
utterance of theirs, and to set forth as clearly as
possible the bearings of it. Firmly persuaded myself
of the solidity of the ground taken by the Bishops, I
do not pretend to an attitude of indifferentism, but
frankly confess myself an advocate. It is needless to
say that I speak with no authority other than that of
one who has given the subject patient thought. In
the last resort the Bishops must be their own inter
preters ; no commentator can force a meaning upon
their words which they themselves are unwilling to
avow. And yet it is to be remembered that the
general judgment of mankind is but the aggregate
of the personal judgments of the members of the
race ; and however valueless a solitary expression
of opinion or belief may seem, those who sit over
against the treasury of truth do ill to flout it
altogether. The coral insect lives and dies far down under the
surface of the sea. A tiny speck of solid substance
hidden out of sight is all his memorial. By and by,
overhead there rises up an island ; groves of palm
are on it ; birds build their nests there, and at last
men their homes.

II.
THE ARCHIVES.

The Christian character in its completeness is the result and outgrowth
of all that series of events of which the Bible is iti part, but in the most im
portant part, the record . . The Bible exhibits it in various stages, in
various forms, not always perfect, yet always going on to what is higher
and purer, and shown to us at last, after the passage of so many ages and
generations, so many efforts and failures and slow steps of progress, in its
finished and flawless perfectness in the person of the divine Son of Man.
— Richard William Church.
I have been forced by the peculiar circumstances of niy work to regard
from many sides the difficulties which beset our historic faith. If I know
by experience their significance and their gravity; if I readily allow that on
many points I wish for fuller light; then I claim to be heard when I say
without reserve that I have found each region of anxious trial fruitful in
blessing; that I found my devout reverence for every word of the Bible
quickened and deepened, when I have acknowledged that it demands the
exercise of every faculty with which I have been endowed, and, that as
it touches the life of man at every point, it welcomes for its fuller under
standing the help which comes from every gain of human knowledge.
— Brooke Foss Westcott.
I have always been strongly in favor of secular education, m the sense
of education without theology; but I must confess I have been no less se
riously perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious feeling,
which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up, in the present
utterly chaotic state of opinion upon these matters, without the use of the
Bible. — Thomas Henry Huxley.

II.
THE ARCHIVES.
First in their list of essentials the Bishops at
Lambeth placed the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures,
characterizing them thus : " TJie Holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments, as ' containing all things
necessary to salvation,' and as being the rule and ulti
mate standard of faith."
The statement that Holy Scripture " containeth all
things necessary to salvation" has a positive and a
negative side. Positively, it asserts that in Holy
Scripture " things necessary to salvation" are to be
found ; negatively, it withholds from any and every
extra-Scriptural demand upon our faith, the power to
bind. The statement, on its affirmative side, does
not allege that a knowledge of all things in Holy
Scripture is necessary to salvation ; nor yet on its
negative side does it declare that nothing beyond the
range of Holy Scripture is good to be believed ; but
that which by implication is averred is, that if we
want to find the things essential to the soul's safety,
we shall do well to look into the Scriptures rather
than elsewhere to find them ; and that which by im
plication is denied is, that anything over and above
what Scripture sets forth ought to be counted among

52 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the possessions which the soul must have if it would
escape eternal loss. On the one hand, therefore, the
statement is exclusive of the merely literary view
which sees in the Bible only one among many collec
tions of writings alleged to be sacred ; while, on the
other, it opposes itself to the Roman Catholic doc
trine that we must supplement Scripture by Tradition
if we wish to be well assured of " all things necessary
to salvation." Accordingly, I propose to take up in
this connection the general question, — How. ought
we of these times to think about the, Bible ? Or, to
put it otherwise, Has anything occurred in the in
tellectual movement of our day to compel a change
of attitude on the part of reasonable men towards the
book, or books, heretofore dignified by the title Word
of God ? Have such words as " revelation " and " in
spiration " really become meaningless, or if not quite
meaningless, at any rate so thoroughly diluted as to
be void of any distinctive flavor ? In short, do the
Bishops betray themselves as men belated and be
hind their time when they speak to us of the Bible as
being " the rule and ultimate standard of faith " ? I
make bold to answer these questions in the negative.
I hope to be able to give sound reasons for believing
that the unique character hitherto conceded to the
Christian Scriptures is destined to continue to attach
to them ; that the Bible substantially as it is may be
counted upon to survive the shock of criticism, and
to stand, as it has stood, the accredited classic of
religion, a hand-book of belief indispensable to man.

THE ARCHIVES. 53
My method will not be that of minute inquiry into
questions of date and authorship connected with the
various books of the Bible, a task for which I am not
adequately furnished, and which I could only accom
plish as a borrower; but, instead, such a discussion
of the first principles involved in the question at
issue, as will demand of those whom I address no
other preparative than that always praiseworthy pos
session, an open mind. I cannot help thinking that
on such a line I shall better succeed in justifying the
prominence given in the Lambeth platform to the
Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,
than if I were to bewilder you with citations and
overload your memories with dates.
Can God disclose his mind to man ?
Has He at any time or times actually done so ?
Is there record of such disclosure or disclosures ?
Have we such a record in the writings that col
lectively make up the Bible ?
These are simple questions which it is perfectly
possible to deal with in a plain and intelligible way.
To have them answered for us is to have the mind
set permanently at rest with respect to what is most
central to religion.
I begin with the remark that so far as the intellec
tual life of the race is concerned, there can be no
denying that it has, from time to time, received im
pulse and acceleration from the impact of new truth
announced at the lips of men called discoverers.
Sometimes in groups and clusters, sometimes singly

54 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
and at long intervals, men have come upon the scene
equipped to teach their fellow-men things not before
known. The gap that separates these men of genius,
as they are commonly called, from the rank and file
of their fellow-students in the lower class-room is
so portentously wide, that evolution is overtaxed in
the effort to account for their appearance upon any
theory of progress by infinitesimal increments. It is
true that we must distinguish between such discov
eries as are the product of profound and long-sus
tained reflection, and those that have been happened
upon by what we call chance. In the case of certain
discoveries, that of anaesthesia, for example, there is
no evidence of genius whatsoever. The thing was
blundered into, not reason&d out ; and the same may
be said of countless chance findings that pass in the
books under the same general head with those great
disclosures that have followed upon hard thinking.
The mere discovery of a new star, or of a hundred
new stars, is a small matter as compared with the
glory of discerning, for the first time, one of the
structural principles involved in the celestial me
chanics ; and even to have added an item to the cat
alogue of the chemical elements is an achievement
in no measure comparable with the working out of
a fresh rationale of the molecular motions. Of the
discoverers of great principles my remark holds good,
that the difference between them and other men is
so sharply accentuated as almost to warrant us in
thinking it one of kind rather than of degree.

THE ARCHIVES. 55
Of such men as Galileo and Newton, the most
natural account would seem to be that they were
sent into the world so marvellously endowed for the
express purpose of communicating a message and
bestowing a blessing. If the universe had a con
scious designer, and all theists, whether Christian
or not, must so believe, the great truths of the
mathematics are common to his mind and to ours.
That one after another of these truths should have
come to light among us, we are accustomed to
explain by saying that Euclid lived, that Kepler
lived ; but why not go farther back, and say : God
lives, who by the lips of his servant Euclid has taught
us the properties of angles, and at the mouth of his
servant Kepler has revealed to us the principles of
curves ? Of course it is possible for the materialist
to block any such movement back towards the pur
poseful Author and Maker by a flat denial of any con
sciousness in the universe other than that of which
each one of us knows himself to be possessed ; but, as
I just intimated, my appeal is to the theists, not to
the atheists. Under a theistic scheme of evolution,
nothing could be more reasonable than to picture
God educating his creature man by a succession of
messengers empowered to impart truth as fast as the
pupil shall be found " able to bear it." Not only so ;
we can imagine Him using races as well as individ
uals for teachers, and as apprenticing man first to this
people, then to that, according to the need to be met.
Such a theory has, of course, its margin of unex-

56 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
plained phenomena ; it does not satisfactorily account
for everything ; but is there a single one among the
great generalizations of science that can show a map
with no shadowed patches, no tracts or even zones
that have to be marked " unexplored " ? Accepted
as a working hypothesis, the theistic interpretation of
history clears up a greater number of dark places than
any other interpretation that has been suggested. As
a matter of fact, we find the world indebted for its
advancement to certain definite individuals, and to
certain definite races, as to no otber individuals and
to no other races. The whole family has been in
pupilage to one great man after another ; to one
select race after another ; has gone to school, as we
may say, now in Phoenicia, now at Athens, now at
Jerusalem. To discover a purpose in all this, to
catch the outline of a plan, is surely not the unintel
ligent thing some would have us account it. If there
be a more reasonable method of explaining what our
eyes see, let us by all means be told what it is.
The link between these thoughts and the subject in
hand is obvious. The Christian plea for the Scriptures
is that they contain disclosures not elsewhere to be
found with respect to the character and purposes of
God, and the duty and destiny of man. It is not
asserted that no intimations upon these weighty mat
ters are to be found in literatures other than the
Hebrew, for one need only be tolerably well-informed
in order to know that the contrary is the fact. But
intimations are very different things from disclosures.

THE ARCHIVES. 57
The Christian contention is that to one selected peo
ple, there was given for the sake of, and with a view to,
all the other peoples of the earth, a knowledge of cer
tain great verities wholly undiscoverable by the ordi
nary processes of human intelligence. It is one thing
for a document to be generally pervaded by what we
may call a religious or spiritual tone ; the sacred books
of the East give voluminous evidence that such is^ the
case. But it is quite another thing for a writing to
acquire sacredness because of the serious and down
right way in which it sets forth such statements as
that God has sent his Son into the world, that Christ
is risen from the dead, that the time is coming in
which there shall be new heavens and a new earth.
These, and the like, are announcements as distinct,
and certainly as grave, as the announcement, " The
world goes around the sun ; " " Every particle of
matter attracts every other particle with a force in
versely proportional to the square of the distance."
Moreover, it is to be observed that the truths in ques
tion are not presented to us in the Bible as the out
come of the broodings of devout souls ; they are put
into the form of messages. God, it is declared, has
sent us word that things are thus and so between
Him and us, and that certain events are destined to
come to pass for which we are bound to be ready.
I lay stress upon this point in the hope that by doing
so I may disabuse some minds of the notion that if we
will only be patient, natural science, which has already
done so much to widen the area of our knowledge,

58 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
will confer upon us the still further boon of a demon
strable religion. Natural science deals with number,
mass, and force ; it can count and weigh and register ;
but of the relations of persons to one another it
neither knows nor professes to know anything at all.
No conceivable enlargement of our acquaintance with
the material world can ever give us the answer to the
weightier questions of religion, for these are all of
them personal. Even though the arithmetic of the
heavens and the earth were to be worked out to the last
figure, — every star tabulated, every period computed,
every atom weighed, — we should still be as far as ever
from finding the solution of the problems that lie
most heavily upon the mind. If God have what we
understand by personality, that is to say, self-con
sciousness and will, we as persons must stand related
to Him in some definite way ; He must have a purpose
with respect to us, and we a duty towards Him.
But how can natural science help us here ? It can
indeed throw some light upon the care that must be
taken of the body, if it is to be kept healthy ; and
since man's trusteeship of his five senses is a doc
trine of religion, we need not deny to such sciences
as anatomy and physiology, a certain auxiliary value
in making us more fully acquainted with our duty
towards God- But the care of the body is only one
department of religion. Man is not adequately con
sidered when we think of him only in his solitariness
as an individual. Account has to be taken of the
thousand and one complications that arise as soon as

THE ARCHIVES. 59
you bring man into contact with his fellow-men, and
look at him in the light of father, brother, neighbor,
townsman, citizen.
In this region of man's social relations, natural
science, strictly so called, can help us not at all.
Such mixed sciences as sociology and political econ
omy can indeed throw light upon the matter ; they
can minister to the needs of the body politic, just as
we have seen that anatomy and physiology can minis
ter to the needs of the body physical ; but even they,
when confronted with the blunt question, Why must
I do right, when every instinct in me is prompting
me to do otherwise ? are powerless to give a satisfac
tory answer. Confessing no God, they have no room
in their vocabulary for the word Ought. But if
science, even when mixed with too many foreign in
gredients to allow of our speaking of it as " pure,"
is clearly unequal to the task of telling men in what
manner and on what terms they ought to live with
one another, how utterly incompetent it must be to
instruct them in the right way of living with their
God ! Christians believe that upon this highest of all
subjects intelligence has been received by message.
God, they say, has declared his will, and given his
commandment ; nay, more than this, has to a certain
limited extent revealed his purpose. If there have
been disclosures in physics, why doubt that there have
also been disclosures in ethics ? Did Newton's Prin-
cipia throw any more light on the motions of stars,
than Moses in the Decalogue threw upon the relations

60 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
of souls ? Is it not the better conclusion then, that
both men were revealers, chosen of God to be such,
sent here to tell us new truth ? Or, again, take such
questions as touch the future, and consider how help
less we are, apart from the aid given us by disclosure.
Interesting as is the problem of origins, the problem
of destiny is more so. That our tenancy of this
planet had a beginning is demonstrable ; that it will
have an ending is therefore probable ; but what sort of
an ending ? Is there nothing better in store for the
round world than the becoming either an ice-pack or a
cinder ? To this question natural science, as at pres
ent informed, says No. But Christians hold that
however things may turn out with the globe itself,
we who live upon it have received by message certain
definite and precious promises, that assure to the
family a brighter destiny than awaits the homestead.
In other words, natural science can predict the
world's physical future, with a certain measure of
accuracy ; but religion alone professes to have any
thing to tell as to the moral and spiritual issues
wrapped up with the great fact that an end certainly
is to come. Science can prophesy in a sense ; there
are certain things it can foretell ; but if the prophecy
is to be translated, the meaning of the writing shown,
the real issues determined, a Daniel must be called to
judgment, one " in whom is the spirit of the holy
Gods," a messenger competent to interpret and to
declare. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into

THE ARCHIVES. 61
one of credentials. Are these voices to which Chris
tians have given assent trustworthy ? Can the mes
sengers, the witnesses, the interpreters, call them
which you choose, stand the cross-questioning to
which the modern spirit is determined to subject all
comers who make a claim upon its confidence ? We
are living in the midst of this cross-questioning pro
cess ; it is going on before our eyes ; the witnesses
are under fire ; and the world, looking on, abides the
result. But you and I cannot afford to sit aside with
folded hands, waiting for a verdict that may not be
announced at the lips of the learned for a century to
come. What are we to do ? How are we to settle
for ourselves the question of credibility ? In precisely
the same way, I venture to suggest, that the specta
tors at an ordinary trial, who are not themselves in
the jury box, make up their minds as to the rights
and wrongs of the question at issue ; namely, by
looking the witnesses squarely in the face and forming
an independent judgment as to their honesty. In a
deeper sense than the poet himself imagined is " full
assurance " sometimes " given by looks." It is possi
ble with one's Bible in hand to look Moses, Isaiah, St.
John, St. Paul, not to name the holiest of all the
names, directly in the eye, and to answer to one's own
satisfaction the question, Is this man a deceiver, or do
his features bear the stamp of honesty ? Even in Old
Testament times, uncritical as we are assured those
times were, it was customary to subject all who gave
themselves forth as messengers of God and unveilers

62 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
of his mind, to very searching tests. They discrim
inated carefully between prophets and " false proph
ets," the men who had the genuine gift of vision and
the men who only pretended to have it. " Woe unto
the false prophets," vehemently exclaimed one of the
true ones, " who follow their own spirit and have
seen nothing." Doubtless the method of detecting
the false prophets was that simple one which I have
called " looking in the face." Insincerity has a way
of betraying itself, if not upon the moment, sooner or
later. The holy prophets which have been since the
world began, have held their own all these centuries,
because the successive generations of men have found
that good, and only good, came of taking them at
their word. To the argument in their favor afforded
by the very manner of their speech, has been added
the argument which credits a tree with goodness be
cause of the goodness of the fruit ; and the two argu
ments taken together have been very helpful to plain
people, as in fact they are likely to continue to be.
But we are told that the time has come when it is
fatal to the life of any religion that it should be under
the necessity of confessing itself a " book-religion " ;
and that since this is a confession which Christianity
must needs make, the inference necessarily follows
that the days of Christianity are numbered. What
shall we say to this ? First of all, that we are not in
the least degree ashamed of making our confession.
The fact is as alleged ; it is impossible to deny that,
for better or for worse, the fortunes of Christ's reli-

THE ARCHIVES. 63
gion have been knitted to a book. There is no escap
ing this. The real downfall of the Bible would mean
the break-up of Christendom. It is of no avail to
argue that because the Church was in existence before
the manuscripts, so equally it might endure and flour
ish if bereft of them. A word-of-mouth gospel sufficed
so long as men who had had " perfect understanding
of all things from the very first " were still alive to
tell their story ; but with the passing away of that
generation there came in the need of an authenticated
record, a trustworthy chronicle, a written recital of
facts. This need has existed from then till now, and
must continue to exist so long as the conditions of
human life are what they are.
Equally futile is the assurance that no matter what
may happen to the letter of the Bible, the spirit of it
is certain to survive. Doubtless the spirit of ether
survives the breaking of the bottle in which it has
been kept ; but survives where ? A Christianity so
thinly diffused as to be nowhere definitely discover
able will prove a sorry help in the work-a-day process
of bettering mankind. But the fact that the downfall
of the Bible would mean the break-up of Christendom
need not trouble us unless we have reason to fear
that the Bible is likely to fall down. We are accus
tomed to speak well of bridges that carry us safely
over, and to give them the credit of soundness until
they have been proved rotten. The Bible enjoys an
established reputation of this sort, has, in fact, so
good a name, that we need not feel the slightest

64 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
nervousness or anxiety about going down to the
bottom of things, and calmly considering the ques
tion whether the bare fact that the Bible is a book
be or be not fatal to the continuance of the religion
whose book it is.
To charge Christianity with being a book-religion
is only another way of condemning it for being of an
historical character, and having a foothold in the
past. It is the fond conceit of some that a day is
coming when religion will be able to dispense with
documents altogether. Before very long, they hope
to see the matter in such a shape that a few simple
propositions, received on their own merits as self-
evident, and unincumbered by any wearisome appeal
to history, will be accepted as an all-sufficient basis
for the holy life, a trustworthy index of the perfect
way. Why, they ask contemptuously, should faith be
compelled to limp along fettered to a huge volume,
clogged by the weight of ancient chronicles, and bend
ing beneath a burden of old prophecies hard to be un
derstood ? The remonstrance has a plausible sound,
and for the moment we feel disposed to yield to it,
to throw away the parchments as things not worth
remembering, and to start out with a light heart in
search of this simple and easy religion of the future.
But when we sit down quietly to think the whole
matter over before actually committing ourselves to
this new departure, slowly it begins to dawn on us
that a religion which has nothing to tell about the
past ; which can point to no evidences of the working

THE ARCHIVES. 65
of God in history ; affects to be beyond the need of
way-marks and footprints ; acknowledges no epochs
of unveiling, no seasons of special vision ; cannot
say, " There, there, and there He passed, and men
felt the breath of his presence as He went by," — it
begins to be made plain to us that a religion which
can do none of these things, but, instead, boasts of
itself as being wholly without records and quite free
from such troublesome impedimenta as sacred annals,
is scarcely a religion we can afford implicitly to trust.
A God who is " to everlasting " does not suffice us ;
we would have one who is " from everlasting " also.
The present is of immense importance, but somehow
it seems to lose vitality, to become anaemic, when the
ligaments that tie it to the past have been cut. If
religion were nothing more or better than theosophy,
nothing other, that is to say, than an attempt at un
derstanding the inner nature of the Divine Being by
dint of blank contemplation, a patient sitting under
the fig-tree of pure thought, then, indeed, there might
be something to say in behalf of this proposal to break
wholly with the past, and to begin afresh, as it were,
with a newly-discovered God. But to the mind that
is in earnest, to the heart aflame with eager interest
to justify the ways of God to man, such a limiting
of religion's scope, such a narrowing of her range is
most distasteful and ominous. We crave evidence
that God has always " from the beginning " taken an
interest in the affairs of earth ; that the long story of
the world's troubles and triumphs has a thread of
5

66 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
connection running through it ; that the generations
have been knit together by a tie of purpose ; that
events are leading the race up to a definite crisis in
the future, for which the whole past has been a prep
aration ; and that the things concerning us men have
an end.
This is the meaning of those strong appeals to God
in which the Christian Scriptures abound, as the God
of the ancient times and of the former peoples ; faith
in Him as the God of Abraham is strong, but faith in
Him as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob
is trebly strong. In other words, the argument for
belief is cumulative, gathering weight and momentum
as the cycles unfold. Listen to David at one of his
moments of distress when in the deep waters he is
grasping after some bit of floating truth, some frag
ment of conviction buoyant enough to save him from
wholly going under, — "0 my God," he cries, " our
fathers hoped in thee, they trusted in thee, and thou
didst deliver them." He would have been all at sea
without the record, the memorandum.
Listen to Solomon at the dedication of the temple
gathering up his long supplication into one compre
hensive suffrage, — " The Lord our God be with us as
He was with our fathers ; Let Him not leave us nor
forsake us." How came it to be possible for the one
monarch in his calamity, and for the other at his
supreme hour of triumph, thus to make identically
the same appeal to Deity as a " God of the fathers " ?
Clearly because a tradition had been handed on, a

THE ARCHIVES. 67
chronicle maintained, a record kept. To enable sup
pliants thus to press God with a major premise, to
urge upon Him old loving-kindnesses as a reason for
bestowing new ones, there must be a memory that
can and does reach far back into the past. Experi
ence cannot be extemporized. The reach even of a
lifetime, if it be a disconnected lifetime, is insuffi
cient to breed the confidence we hunger after.
The only trustworthy basis on which to build the
fabric of hope is memory, and a far-reaching memory
at that, — "the foundations of many generations."
A religion tangent to human affairs at only one point
is inadequate ; we want one that coheres with all the
past. But such a religion will be from the very neces
sities of the case a book-religion. If God be indeed
a conscious person who " at sundry times and in
divers manners" has from the beginning been com
municating with his creature man, how should we of
this day be at all the better for that fact unless the
word spoken and the deed done had been chronicled ?
But the chronicle, whether it be graven on brass, or
cut in stone, or written on parchment, or printed on
paper, is, to all intents and purposes, the Book.
Moreover, not only are records essential to our
knowing God ; they are equally essential to our know
ing man ; and the knowledge of our fellow-man is no
slight part of religion. Records help us to know man
by enlarging the mirror in which we study his re
flected image. Nineteenth century man, taken alone,
is not man, he is a mere fragment of man. If we

68 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
would know man in his entirety we must study
him in every ascertainable stage of his existence.
The cave-dweller whose likeness was opportunely
scratched for us on a bit of reindeer horn, the Egyp
tian whose profile we know from wall paintings as old
as Thebes, the Assyrian warrior pushing on his char
iot of stone and horses of stone against the stone
enemy he can never overtake, — these people have a
kinship with us as real as theirs who looked down on
us from the walls of last year's Salon.
But, it may be asked, why not prosecute this study
of man as he shows himself from China to Peru, and
as he has shown himself from the first day until
now ; in the pages of the so-called secular historians ?
Why should Biblical annalists be accounted especially
valuable in such an undertaking ? Are not a Gibbon
and a Hallam as helpful as a Moses and an Ezra ? To
which the proper reply would seem to be, This ought
ye to have done and not to leave the other undone.
Doubtless all history is rich in the materials of a true
anthropology. But the noticeable characteristic of
the Bible writers is that they, in a unique sense, have
given us the biography of the human conscience. The
Greek tragedians can perhaps be said to come near
them in this line, but it is only with an occasional
approach. In what we know as "Holy Scripture,"
and in that only of all the literatures of the earth,
man walks ever either in the approving or the con
demning presence of a watchful Judge. In these
chronicles heaven's verdict is pronounced on every

THE ARCHIVES. 69
mortal career with passionless precision. We are not
deceived by false epithets as in popular histories.
Jezebel is not named "the Fair," nor Herod styled
" the Great." The fact that " he did evil in the sight
of the Lord " constitutes in these pages the condem
nation of a king, no matter how much he may have
added to the national territory or advanced the credit
of the tribes. Next in importance to the definite
announcements of fact, to which I have already re
ferred as making the true differentia of the Bible,
ought to be reckoned this pervasive flavor of right
eousness. Other sacred books contain in abundance
what we know as religious sentiment, vague aspira
tion, pathetic unrest, the consciousness of insignifi
cance, the sense of mystery ; the Bible alone insists on
knowing, first of all, whether the heart of the devotee
be set on doing the thing that is right.
Looked at as the literature of a people the Scrip
tures have certainly much in common with other
literatures. There is poetry there, there is history,
there is biography, there is mental philosophy, there
is drama, there is correspondence, there are the pithy
sayings into which a people 's mind condenses its wise
conclusions, there is impassioned eloquence, there is
allegory, there are confessions, there are forecastings
of the future, there are commentaries upon the past,
there is a book of laws and there is a book of psalms.
Kings move across the pages ; soldiers and armies are
in motion hither and thither, courtiers and nobles,
laboring men and peasants, women, maidens, children,

70 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
— all are there, coming and going. Sometimes the
scene lies in the city, sometimes in the fields, some
times the background is of woods and mountains. But
even so are all great national literatures fashioned.
Into every one of them enter these component parts.
Across the field of each marches and countermarches
the like procession. How then differs the Bible from
them all ? What is that distinguishing note or mark
by means of which we distinguish the Book from all
books beside ? It is the presence throughout the
Scriptures of what we may call the flavor of right
eousness. These sacred writers, as they are properly
named, all of them look at life and at the earth's vari
ous history from a single standpoint ; they are critics
of conduct ; they not only narrate, they judge.
It is, indeed, conceivable that men may one day
rise up and banish religion in every form and shape
frorh the earth, sometimes it looks as if they were
really meaning to do that ; but if religion is to stay
with us, the Bible, simply by dint of its surpassing
spiritual vigor, and for lack of any adequate com
petitor, is certain to outlive all rivals. The ethnic
scriptures have become easily accessible within recent
years, they are to be found in English translations on
the shelves of all well-appointed public libraries, and
it is possible for anybody to institute on his own ac
count such a comparison as I have suggested. Look
for yourselves into the sacred books of Brahmins,
Buddhists, and Confucians, and see whether anywhere
you catch the peculiar quality of voice, at once manda-

THE ARCHIVES. 71
tory and persuasive, so easily audible in our own
Scriptures. Where in them do we find anything
that strikes home to the conscience with the sturdy
strength that lives in the arm of Moses, man of God,
or lies back of the well-aimed blow of Paul, soldier
and servant of Jesus Christ ? Many bitter things
have been said about the Bible, first and last, by
those who have had a grudge against it ; but no one,
so far as I know, has ever ventured upon calling it a
weak book. Virility penetrates every page of it ; for
any slightest trace of feebleness or sentimentality
we search the Scriptures to no purpose ; it is not
there. To strength add delicacy. The Bible writers are
not only of stalwart breed, they show everywhere
what we may call religious refinement, a certain sen
sitiveness of retina in the matter of discerning nice
shades of spiritual difference. Let the student of
comparative religion match if he can the dignity of
the Psalms ; the clear-voiced witness of the greater
and the lesser prophets against the materialism of
their times ; the lucid simplicity of speech in which
St. John, the eagle of the Evangelists, tells the story
of the Word made flesh.
But most of all, and with carefulest search, let him
try whether he can find elsewhere anything resem
bling the Bible's guarantee of forgiveness and promise
of eternal life. Here we come back to what I have
already emphasized as the announcements of Scrip
ture. With trifling exceptions, the parables of Na-

72 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ture make strongly against belief in the forgiveness
of sins, and are subversive of " the blessed hope of ever
lasting life." The Bible, with a voice of authority,
speaks to us and gives assurance of both pardon and
immortality. Here is the secret of the book's per
petuity ; live it must, because of the good news in it.
Men's hearts are not so rich in hope that they can
willingly, or for any long time, shut their ears against
the only message annunciatory of better things to come
that has ever yet commanded and held the assent
of any considerable number of minds acknowledged
great. Do not understand me as wishing to cast the slight
est slur upon what is praiseworthy in the sacred
books of the heathen peoples. In order to prove our
own Scriptures invaluable, it is not necessary to de
clare all other Scriptures valueless. Goodness and
truth, wherever we find them, and in whatever meas
ure, are of God, and whenever we discover their pres
ence, we are bound to acknowledge their origin.
We have St. Paul's warrant for believing that the
heathen have not been left wholly without witness,
so far as concerns one of the gravest interests of re
ligion, moral responsibility ; and doubtless not a few
rays of the light which lighteth " every man," may
be found garnered in the Scriptures of faiths other
than ours. But voluntarily and gratuitously to pro
pose to exchange our daylight for their twilight is to
flatter the heathen overmuch. Our safety does not
lie in eclecticism. Not by any piecing together of

THE ARCHIVES. 73
fragments of religions, not by picking up a pebble
here and a pebble there, as artists in mosaic make
their pictures, are we to find our portraiture of the
God and Father of us all. No matching of selected
features gathered from all faiths, however ingeniously
put together, will ever work a displacement of the
likeness already accepted by the Christian conscious
ness as true, so manifestly does the Bible picture of
the Divine Majesty surpass all competing attempts to
show us what God is like. The Christian Evidence
Societies could do the public no better service than to
print for purposes of contrast an edition, say, of the
Gospel of St. John, interleaved with the very best
sentences it is possible to gather from the sacred lit
eratures of the East. The whole controversy would,
in that case, be condensed into a simple " Look here
upon this picture, and on this."
So far as we have as yet developed it, the argument
may be put into three sentences. First, the world
cannot live, at least cannot live contentedly, without
religion. Secondly, religion cannot live, at least can
not adequately live, without records, without an
authenticated history, a book of words and acts.
Thirdly, among such books, and they are many, the
Christian Scriptures, even by the confession of un
friendly critics, stand supreme.
I pass now to consider the function of criticism
with respect to the Scriptures, and the construction
that ought to be put upon the words Inspiration and
Revelation. It is obvious to remark that without

74 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
what we understand by criticism we never should
have had the Bible in its present shape at all. Criti
cism is the exercise of discernment ; as an instrument
it may be likened to the flail. The critic essays to
separate the more from the less precious, and to tell
us why he does so. In some instances criticism is
the work of an individual, sometimes of a delibera
tive body supposed to be composed of qualified
judges ; and sometimes, again, it is the slow action
of a public opinion that makes itself heard in only
half articulate ways, and at odd intervals, but still
does, sooner or later, carry its point and hold the
field. Beginners in theology are apt to be very much
disturbed in mind because nobody can give them a
hard and fast account of the precise manner in which
the canon of the Old Testament and the canon of the
New were originally determined. The instinct in us
that craves precision is piqued when it is discovered
that, in an important inquiry, day and date are miss
ing. It is well known that in the early Church there
were differences of opinion with respect to the limits
of the canon. There were certain books universally
received ; there were certain others open to challenge.
In some congregations lessons were read from the
Shepherd of Hermas, for example, a Scripture with
which at present only patristic students are familiar.
How was it ever brought to pass that there did finally
emerge the collection we now have as the New Tes
tament? An intelligent believer will be likely to

THE ARCHIVES. 75
answer the question thus, The result was brought to
pass under the oversight of Almighty God by the
instrumentality of criticism.
The criticism was doubtless exercised by all three
of the methods I just named. Solitary scholars, each
man working by himself, had part in it ; councils of
bishops had part in it ; public opinion, declaring itself
in all sorts of unclassified ways, had part in it. Fin
ally, as the result of the best judgment of the times
there came forth the collection as we have it; the
canon, as we say, was closed. A not wholly dissimi
lar process gave us, in the region of secular literature,
what we know as " the classics." It is impossible to
say precisely who assorted the ancient authors, and
decided just which should be and which should not be
accounted classical. All the same we have the clas
sics ; that they exist is an unquestionable fact ; no
one can shut his eyes to their presence" in literature ;
they are here. Moreover, the fact is one that is not
at all imperilled by the confessed possibility of error
on the part of those who originally determined the
metes and bounds of classicality. Because the right
of this or that obscure poet of post-Augustan times
to a place among the Latin classics may happen to be
disputed, no one trembles for Catullus or for Virgil.
The Amen of many generations has given sanction to
the list as a whole, and though modern criticism
may nibble at the edges of the codex, the substance
remains. We ought to be equally confident with respect to

76 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the classics of religion, the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments. Through aid of criticism they were
originally marked off from other Scriptures, and iso
lated as having in them a certain distinctive some
thing not elsewhere to be found. If criticism did us
this good service some seventeen or eighteen hundred
years ago, why look askance at criticism when it
comes in nineteenth century guise proposing to re
open questions of authorship and canonicity in con
nection with our sacred books ? It may be urged
against this way of looking at the matter that since
it has pleased God to shroud the beginnings of many
beneficent growths, that of the State, for instance, in
darkness, a reverent prudence would discountenance
any attempt to investigate the beginnings of the Bible.
The remonstrance has a certain measure of reason
ableness in it, and deserves a hearing ; to sneer at it
as childish is more easy than wise. Doubtless it is, in
a sense, calamitous for society when the analytical
fit seizes it, and all life comes to be written over
with interrogation marks. There is a sickly as well as
a healthy curiosity, and that is by no means the best
horticulture which is for ever bent on pulling things
up by the roots with the professed object of seeing
how they began. On the compiler of every document
that in any measure is expected to bind posterity, be
it constitution, code, or canon, a specially solemn re
sponsibility rests of doing what is to be done in such
a workmanlike manner that there will be slight need
of revision. Particularly in matters that touch the

THE ARCHIVES. 77
conscience is it desirable that the presumption should
be as strong as possible in favor of things as they
are, and against the needless re-investigation of origins.
It is better to keep the Ten Commandments as they
stand, than to become so deeply versed in the methods
of ethics as to be doubtful whether the keeping them
or the breaking them makes very much difference in
the end.
But while all this is true, it is equally indisputable
that occasions do arise when the reinvestigation of
beginnings is imperative. A man whose house is on
the river's bank may live in it for years without a
moment's uneasiness ; but if by and by his neighbors
come to him, one after another, with the alarming
statement that the current is wearing away his foun
dations, he is a fool if he refuses to allow an expert
to investigate the matter. He may personally feel
very sure that the neighbors are mistaken, and that
no real danger threatens ; nevertheless, if it be only
to set the mind of the community at rest, and to
quiet the clamor, he will do well not merely to allow
but to encourage investigation. The principle holds
good not of houses only but of treasures of all sorts ;
the owners of family diamonds who are afraid to sub
mit them to the judgment of the lapidary, the coiner
who shrinks from letting the sharp acid touch his
gold, are persons of doubtful wealth. There is a cer
tain holy intrepidity which thorough-going believers
are bound to cultivate. If the Bible have in it, as
Christians hold, an authentic message from heaven to

78 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
earth, there is no corrosive known to scholarship that
can eat away the substance of it. When our Lord
Jesus Christ said " Search the Scriptures," he gave
biblical criticism its everlasting warrant.
The practical question, therefore, is this : Are pres
ent circumstances such as make a reinvestigation of
the whole matter desirable ? A great company of
thoughtful and not undevout people are saying Yes ;
and whether they are right or wrong, more harm is
likely to come of trying to prevent their having their
way, than can possibly accrue from cordially letting
them have it, and starting them with a Bon voyage.
It is impossible that the friends of God should really
have anything to fear from what an honest scholar
ship may attempt ; and that man, I do not hesitate to
affirm, who happens to be to-day the one who is doing
the most to throw white light upon the things written
in the Bible has better right than any other living to
be entitled Defender of the Faith.
A little more than fifty years ago, Arnold of Rugby
predicted the crisis in the midst of which we find
ourselves. " Have you seen," he wrote to his friend
Mr. Justice Coleridge, " your uncle's ' Letters on In
spiration,' which I believe are to be published ? They
are well fitted to break ground in the approaches to
that momentous question which involves in it so great
a shock to existing notions ; the greatest, probably,
that has ever been given since the discovery of the
falsehood of the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility.
Yet it must come ; and will end, in spite of the fears

THE ARCHIVES. 79
and clamors of the weak and bigoted, in the higher
exalting and more sure establishing of Christian
truth." So spoke a true prophet, little dreaming of the
parts a son and a granddaughter of his own were
destined to play in the commotion he foresaw.
The " existing notions " to which Arnold referred
were doubtless such as had to do with the nature and
methods of inspiration. That the words of Scripture
had been actually dictated, syllable by syllable, to the
writers of the several books by a voice from without
themselves ; that for the purposes of composition
evangelists and apostles had been, to use the cant of
spiritualism, simply " trance mediums," unconscious
of what they did, — this was the notion upon which
the disciple of Niebuhr and the friend of Whately felt
sure that doom had been pronounced. No one whose
eyes are open to the movements of contemporary
thought can fail to see that the revolution predicted
is in progress. It is no longer held or taught by in
telligent theologians anywhere that the writers of the
books of the Bible were mere amanuenses, no more
personally accountable for their words than the autom
aton chess-player for his moves. On the contrary,
these authors are acknowledged to have been such in
the proper sense of the word. They are spoken of
as compilers ; they are compared one with another in
respect to the facilities they severally enjoyed for
gathering accurate information ; each is recognized
as having his own proper literary style, and, in mat-

80 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ters where temper and spirit come in, his own per
sonal equation.
But because our estimate of the scope and manner
of inspiration has been modified, does it follow that
our faith in the Bible as a bona fide message from
God must suffer shipwreck ? By no means. When
we think of it we see that it is impossible for any
book, no matter how sacred, to be inspired. Only
that which has life can breathe, and breath enters
into the very definition of inspiration. It is men who
are inspired, not books ; prophets and saints who
breathe in the truth of God, not the papyrus or the
wax which serve them as their instruments of trans
mission. The familiar phrase " the inspiration of
the Bible " must, therefore, in order to become intel
ligible, be expanded into the inspiration of the men
who wrote the Bible. The evidence that the men
who wrote the Bible were, as a matter of fact,
breathed into by Almighty God in such a way as
to give to what they wrote a value wholly unique,
is to be sought for in the characteristics of the book
taken as a whole, and in the history of what it has
done for the peoples which have accepted it as trust
worthy. Of the characteristics of the Bible over and above
those that have been already emphasized, by far the
most striking is its unity. The book is symmetri
cal and self-consistent to a wonderful degree. I am
aware that symmetry is sometimes an accidental pro
duct. If I throw a thousand handfuls of sand succes-

THE ARCHIVES. 81
sively upon the floor, it may happen in one instance
out of the thousand that the particles will be found
arranged in such a manner as to suggest a set pat
tern. But the impression produced on the mind by
this result is very different from that which follows
from seeing the grains of sand sprinkled over the
surface of a metallic disk arrange themselves in a
particular geometrical shape in response to the par
ticular note of sound that has set the disk to vibrat
ing. In this instance we recognize a symmetry
intentionally brought to pass by the experimentalist,
who knew before striking the note just what result
would follow. I do not assert that the evidence of
unity of plan afforded by the symmetry of the Bible,
is such as to be overwhelmingly demonstrative. I do
say that to many minds it has commended itself as
singularly persuasive.
Had the Scriptures all of them been written within
a year or within ten years, or even within a single gen
eration, there would be nothing wonderful about their
possessing unity of plan. In the case of a book like
the Koran the wonder is that it has not more sym
metry than it has. But we are to remember that in
the case of the Bible, the dates of the authorship of
the various parts differ by centuries, and we must
reckon at least sixteen hundred years to get the span
of the whole arch.
Clearly the most reasonable hypothesis upon which
to account for the Bible's symmetry, granting that it
exists, is the supposition of an extraneous guidance
6

82 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
that moved the authors in such manner, and with
such force, as to make all of them co-ope rant to a
common end. For such providential guidance, sup
plied from above, there can be no better name than
inspiration, — that inbreathing of a more enlightened
spirit than man's own, whereby he is enabled to
"think those things that are good."
But more to the point by far than " inspiration " is
the allied word " revelation." What we really want
to know is whether the Bible writers do actually un
veil to us certain facts of grave moment which we
could never know but for such help. The matters to
which I refer are such as these, the personality of
God, the pre-existence of Jesus Christ, man's survival
of death, the prospect of an ultimate restitution
of all things, the reality of heaven, the reality of
hell ; these are points with respect to which centuries
of philosophizing can help us not one whit. If such
truths, supposing them to be truths, are to be known
at all, they must become known by a drawing aside
of the curtain ; no otherwise is it conceivable that we
should become aware of them. The study of Nature
and of the human mind may furnish illustrations, and
what may even be charitably construed as corroborative
evidence, of the matters thus disclosed ; but to disclose
them it is powerless. The logical mind is shut up to
a choice between Pyrrhonism and revelation.
The advantage gained by shifting the burden of
argument from inspiration to revelation is further evi
dent when we consider that inspiration is a thing of

THE ARCHIVES. 83
degrees, a matter of more and less, whereas, with re
spect to revelation all we have to ask is, Has it or has it
not occurred ? There is a sense of the word in which
inspiration is credited to all men who accomplish
more than the common. Bezaleel is said in the Book
of Exodus to have been filled with the Spirit of God
" to work in gold and in silver and in brass, and
in cutting of stones to set them, and in carving of
timber." This is a definition of inspiration large
enough to cover the case of Leonardo da Vinci, the
Bezaleel of the Renaissance So then, if Christians
confine themselves to a claim of "inspiration" for
the authors of Scripture, they may find men putting
the Bible on the same shelf with other sacred books,
wedging it in between Plato and Confucius, and quite
content to claim for Isaiah and St. Paul only such
a measure of the Spirit as they are willing to concede
to Dante, Bunyan, and a-Kempis. A revelation, on
the other hand, does not admit of degrees. Either it
has been made or it has not been made ; either the
heavens have been opened and God has showed us the
truth, or they are brass over our head for ever.
To a mind studying the Bible from the point of
approach now indicated, many of the so-called diffi
culties of faith shrink into insignificance. The in
timation, for example, of little inaccuracies in the
record, whether of an historical, a geographical, or a
scientific sort, cease to alarm. Are the great struc
tural lines of the whole fabric right and true ? is the
real question. Because I accept the erratum of some

84 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
chronologist who has discovered a wrong date in the
Books of Chronicles, it does not follow that I am logi
cally bound to welcome with open arms a whole troop
of interpreters who are bent on writing the Resurrec
tion down a myth, and distilling the personality of
God into a figure of speech. Let every proposition be
tried on its own merits, 'and, above all, let us distin
guish magnitudes. We are never really the poorer
for having been told the truth ; but we are sometimes
frightened into taking for true, statements contradic
tory to cherished beliefs, when really it is the new
announcement rather than the old faith that lacks
verification. We do not the less enjoy the glories
of the sunset because it has been discovered that
the going down of the sun means really the backing
around of the earth ; but every now and then credulous
people are thrown into a paroxysm of alarm by some
pseudo-scientific announcement that a great cosmic
disturbance is impending. There is a difference in
the two cases. In like manner, if I am asked to give
up the Bible as the Word of God because Solomon,
reputed the wisest of men and inspired, was cer
tainly mistaken when he spoke of the clouds as
dropping down the dew, and probably mistaken in
what he said about the habits of ants, I decline to be
so foolish as to let my heart fail me on any such
grounds. My confidence in the Bible as an authentic
unfolding of the truth, the will, and the purposes of
God has anchorage deeper down.
The simple fact of the matter is this ; modern re-

THE ARCHIVES. 85
search is modifying, — some say revolutionizing, but
it is more accurate to say modifying, old opinions as
to the process by which the various books of the
Bible were brought into their present combination,
and made into the volume as we have it now. Mod
ern research, be it also observed, is doing what it is
doing after a fashion not unlike that in which Sedg
wick, Murchison, and Lyell changed, our old concep
tions of the manner in which the globe was brought
to be what to-day it is. But the earth itself is pre
cisely what it was before the geologists began to
investigate, and the book we know as the Bible is
precisely what it was before the critics began to criti
cise. And just as there are those of us who while
thankfully accepting all that Geology can really prove
with respect to the formation of the earth's crust,
nevertheless hold fast the old-fashioned faith which
expresses itself in the words, " I believe in God, the
Father Almighty, Maker ; " so there are those of us,
and their number is reckoned by tens of thousands,
who while ready cheerfully to concede whatever the
best critical scholarship may be able to establish
regarding the formation of the Scriptures as an his
torical process, are not at all shaken in their
confidence that as the record of God's revelation of
Himself, the Bible, substantially as we have it now,
will stand to the end of time.
What I mean is that the man must be either of a
singularly sanguine temperament, or else strangely
forgetful of the oscillations of scholarship in the past,

86 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
who fancies that the books of the Bible will ever be,
by general consent, redistributed and renamed to suit
the conclusions of contemporary criticism. All sorts
of theories may, from time to time, be set afloat as to
the proper chronological order of the volume's compo
nent parts, and these theories may make converts
many and distinguished, but the volume itself will
continue, as at present, to begin with the book called
Genesis and to end with the book called Revelation.
To the eye of criticism Jehovist and Elohist may grow
to seem more distinctly separable than ever, but like
flies in amber the two will continue to maintain their
twin existence in the narrative as at this day. It is
unlikely, in other words, that any scheme for remod
elling the whole structure of the Bible will ever get
beyond the academic stage. The thing may be dis
cussed and urged, but the moment action becomes
imminent a still more recent scholarship will step
in to affirm that, if change there is to be, it should
proceed on lines different from those proposed. In
saying this I am not charging scholarship with fickle
ness, I am merely calling attention to the fact that in
the field of Biblical science absolute demonstration is
unattainable, and to the probability that since such is
the case, no one hypothesis will ever so effectually
distance all the others that the maintainers of it will
be allowed to reconstruct the canon at their pleasure.
The argument against the authenticity of II. Peter, for
example, and the argument in favor of the multiple
authorship of Isaiah may both of them become in tlie

THE ARCHIVES. 87
future very much stronger than they are to-day, but
it is in the highest degree unlikely that such a com
plete consensus of critical opinion will ultimately be
secured as to warrant, say, the Syndics of the Univer
sity Press in dropping the one book and in subdivid
ing the other.
Not only so, but when it comes to fretting our
selves over the detection of petty errors and faults in
the text of Scripture, we shall do well to re-read our
Butler, and having got ourselves thoroughly into the
spirit of the Analogy to make note of the singular
fact that none of the creations of God as we observe.
them in the outer world are perfect, according to our
human conceptions and definitions of perfectness. Of
man it has been truly said,
" The type of perfect in his mind
In Nature can he nowhere find."
Why stumble then at discovering in the Book of
Revelation a characteristic equally discernible in the
Book of Nature, supposing the two books to have had
one and the same author ? Who, for instance, ever
saw an absolutely flawless petal on a stem ? But do
we, for that reason, doubt God's having made the
roses ? A draughtsman with a pencil and a ruler
can, in a few moments, plot for us on paper an out
line of the perfect hexagonal prism which is the ideal
form of a quartz crystal, — the form in which, as we say
(greatly presuming in saying so), that quartz "ought"
to crystallize. But we may search the quarries and

88 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
grottoes of the world in vain for any bit of actual
quartz that shall conform absolutely and without the
slightest deviation to the draughtsman's pattern. Are
we to assume for this reason that the draughts
man has a better mind than God ? or account the
hand which can draw so easily the lines of an ideal
crystal defter than the Hand which has been shaping
the real crystal through uncounted ages ? Not if we
have weighed well the purport of that ancient chal
lenge, — " He that made the eye, shall He not see ? "
Scarcely enough seems to have been made of this
particular argument from analogy in recent apolo
getics. For if we find what look to our eye blemishes
in workmanship which we know to be wholly God's,
such as the flowers and the rocks, ought we to be
troubled at discovering the like signs and tokens to
be characteristic of a book in the making of which
God may be said to have taken man into partnership ?
Why not have the good sense to look at the Bible
as we look at everything else that has been subject to
the necessary conditions of life and growth, and not
let the knees of our faith knock together in alarm the
moment this or that student of the text points out
to us some fleck or flaw, as he is pleased to think it,
in the workmanship of Almighty God ? Some lynx-
eyed Old Testament critic assures me, with the air
of a Samson pulling down the temple, that he has
discovered a discrepancy between a certain statement
in the Book of Leviticus and a certain other state
ment in the Book of Deuteronomy.

THE ARCHIVES. 89
First of all, I ask him whether he is quite sure that
he is right ; but even when convinced that his dis
covery is genuine, I decline to feel as seriously con
cerned over it as he would like to have me feel. If
God has seen fit to inject his revelation into the
midst of human affairs, I am not surprised to find
the history of it subject to the same disabilities that
attach to ordinary history. " I adore," says Athen-
agoras, " the Being who harmonized the strains and
leads the melody, not the instrument which he plays.
What umpires at the games, omitting to crown the
minstrel, place the garland upon the lyre."
The Bible, as we know it to-day, is an accomplished
fact, and what it is it is. It stands out before us like
a great tree that has attained its growth. As such it
has a complete contour of its own, and we might as
well attempt to kill a tree by criticism as hope to
make away with the Bible by philosophizing on the
method and order of its growth. On a sunny slope
in an English nobleman's park, flourishing far away
from the country and climate of its birth, we find a
stately, heavy-f oliaged cedar, one of those great " trees
of the Lord " of which the Psalmists tell, the pride of
Lebanon. English soil of itself never could have pro
duced the tree ; the land in which it first had root
and from which it was transplanted is the land of
Palestine, the land called " Holy. " But is it here and
now any the less the cedar, any the less " tree of Je
hovah " on that account ? Does the fact of its being
an exotic destroy its beauty or its value ? No, it is as

90 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
much a tree of God's planting in England as ever
it could have been in Syria. We notice, here and
there upon the trunk, gnarled spots that tell of an
irregular growth, and betray some past departure
from the normal movement of the juices within.
Is it the less a cedar, the less worthy to be called God's
tree for that reason ? At the extremity of one of the
limbs there happens to be a dead branch ; it suggests
curious thoughts. Why did that particular branch
wither ? All the adjoining foliage is quick and beau
tiful and fresh as ever ; why should that one outer- •
most shred of the tree's vesture thus have shrivelled ?
Did disease attack it from within, or has some blight
struck it from without ? We cannot tell ; we are as
much perplexed as we were by the flaws on the rough
surface of the bark. But what of that ? Do we for
a moment distrust the venerable cedar, question its
genuineness, deny its authenticity ? No ; we look at
it with reverent awe ; we glory in it just as it is ;
we say, — Truly it is the Lord's tree, all the marks of
his undoubted workmanship are here ; it is Jeho
vah's cedar ; He made it. Under the shadow of the
branches I will lay me down and take my rest."
Our answer then to the question, How ought men in
these times to think about the Bible ? so far as the
positive side of the Anglican statement is concerned,
should be this. We ought to account the Bible to be
the permanent hand-book of authentic religion, — a
hand-book open always to new and larger interpreta
tions as fast as human knowledge widens, a hand-book

THE ARCHIVES. 91
which scholars must be permitted to criticise and re-
edit with the same absolute freedom with which they
criticise and re-edit the text of the secular classics,
but a hand-book destined to continue substantially
what it is to-day until the end of the age, still, as of
old, the Word of God to man.
But before this question of the Scriptures is wholly
left behind, something ought to be said with reference
to the alleged insufficiency of the Bible as a repository
of religious truth. Attention has thus far been en
grossed with the arguments of the left, but what the
Bishops have to say upon this subject is also open to
attack from the extreme right. Roman Catholics take
the ground that the Scriptures unsupplemented by
something more are inadequate, that they are good as
far as they go, but that they do not go far enough.
This theory of a duplex revelation has been suc
cinctly stated thus : " Every sort of doctrine which is
to be delivered to the faithful is contained in the Word
of God, which is divided into Scripture and Tradition." 1
That tradition has been by most Protestant contro
versialists greatly undervalued, is doubtless true. In
matters secular we could ill afford to spare knowledge
that has come down to us in all sorts of informal and
irregular and unauthenticated ways. Even so precise
a thing as statute law demands of its interpreter some
acquaintance with old uses and time-worn consent,
with the things that " go without saying." We should
consider the historian foolish who based his account
1 Catechism of Council of Trent, Preface, Qu. xii,

92 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
of a people's beginnings wholly upon folk-lore, with the
expectation of having what he wrote considered trust
worthy, but on the other hand to rule out the folk-lore
altogether would be almost as great a folly. It would
be unsafe to assume, for instance, that the Arthurian
legend had no grain of truth in it ; and though the hero
of the Robin Hood ballads may never have existed, the
ballads themselves certainly throw light on the man
ners and customs, the popular loves and hatreds of
Norman England.
If the Roman Catholic would be content to treat
tradition as illustrative, and not insist on our re
ceiving it as demonstrative, we should have no quar
rel with him. The Church of England avails itself of
tradition as a side-light when in the preface to its
Ordinal it calls in " ancient authors " to buttress by
their testimony the Scriptural argument for Episco
pacy. Most Anglicans are also glad to take up with
- such help as tradition has to give in the matter of infant
baptism, and the transference of the Sabbatical sanc
tion from the last to the first day of the week. And
yet, on the other hand, it ought carefully to be observed
that the Church of England has nowhere given to any
one of these contentions the dignity of an article of
the faith. The statement, " The baptism of young
children is in any wise to be retained in the Church,
as most agreeable with the institution of Christ," 2 is
not put upon a level with the statement, " The third
day He rose again from the dead."
1 Article xxvii.

THE ARCHIVES. 93
Acceptance of the belief that "from the Apostles'
time there have been these orders of ministers in
Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons,"
is not made a prerequisite to receiving the Holy
Communion. Only to such propositions as she has
held, whether rightly or wrongly, to be demonstrably
scriptural, has the Church of England ever demanded
the assent of all her children.1
The necessity of taking this rigid attitude towards
tradition, if a religion is to be kept pure, is occa
sioned by the fecundity that inheres in tradition by
the very nature of the thing. The Bible piques as
well as gratifies our curiosity. To one question that
it answers, it raises a dozen which it leaves unan
swered. The curious mind of man cannot let these
unsolved problems alone ; in fact, they are all the
more fascinating for having been left unsolved. The
interest in the Sibylline books that were bought must
have been as nothing compared with the longing
desire to know what had been on the pages of the
burned volumes. And as demand creates supply,
so is there great danger that in proportion to the
weight with which the silence of Scripture presses
on the mind, will be the effort of self-evolving tra
dition to make good the deficiency. This has to be
acknowledged on all hands in the case of the elder
revelation. We have it upon the authority of Christ
Himself, that in his day the Word of God had been
"made of none effect," stifled, He seems to have
1 Article viii.

94 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
meant, by the traditions. It is the old story of the
sleeping beauty in the wood. He who comes to seek
must cut his way through " bur and brake and briar,"
before he finds himself even at the door of the en
chanted palace.
A clever Mohammedan writer1 has lately told us
that the same thing holds good of Islam.
"You read the Koran," he says, " and you think you
know Islamism. That is a great mistake. . . . Besides
the Koran, there are traditions which are as powerful and
even more respected than the Koran itself. It is difficult
for a European to know these traditions. The whole
science of Asia, everything which is good or useful, has
been attributed to Islam. It is an ocean where you can
find everything which is good to be known ; and it offers
all kinds of facilities, not in the Koran alone, but in the
traditions, for the progress of the people."
This liability to overgrowth which neither Judaism
nor Islam has been able to escape, attaches to Chris
tianity as well. Nor need the liability be greatly
deprecated or deplored so long as the traditions
pass for what they are worth and for no more. It
is only through gross carelessness on the part of cus
todians, that the ivy and the lichen ever become the
destroyers of the masonry they adorn. There is a
great deal that is beautiful in the life of the Church
for which it would be difficult to find explicit Scrip
ture warrant. It was narrow of the Puritans to think
1 Prince Malcolm Khan.

THE ARCHIVES. 95
that no names were good enough for Christian chil
dren but Bible names ; and it is silly of the ultra-
Protestant of our own day to demand a " proof text "
for every pious usage that former generations have
handed on. But it is neither narrow nor silly to in
sist that when it comes to the ascertainment of the
essentials of our religion, regard shall be had only
to what stands unmistakably on record. Text and
margin are separable things, and should be kept
apart.

III.
THE CREDENDA.

The older I grew, the smaller stress I laid on those controversies and
curiosities (though still my intellect abhorreth confusion), as finding greater
uncertainties in them than I at first discovered, and finding less usefulness
where there is the greatest certainty. The Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and
the Ten Commandments are now to me as my daily bread and drink, and as
I can speak and write over them again and again, so I had rather read and
hear of them than of any of the school niceties. And this I observed also
with Richard Hooker and with many other men. — Richard Baxter.
I have found in this way the preciousness of the simple creeds of an
tiquity, the inward witness which a Gospel of facts possesses, and which a
Gospel of notions must always want; how the most awful and absolute
truths, which notions displace or obscure, are involved in facts and through
facts, may be entertained and embraced by those who do not possess the
faculty of comparing notions, and have a blessed incapacity of resting in
them. — F. D. Maurice.
No sober-minded man will hold an opinion against reason, no Christian
against Scripture, no lover of peace against the Church. — St. Augustine.

III.
THE CREDENDA.
No memorandum of the first principles of Church
Unity is complete that leaves dogma wholly out
of the account. Men cannot act in concert without
credenda, and since Christianity, looked at as a great
movement for the betterment of human life, of neces
sity demands concert of action, of necessity also cre
denda it must have. Aware of this, the Bishops at
Lambeth assembled set forth, under the head of dogma,
" The Apostles' Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol ; and
the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the
Christian Faith."
We shall be the better able to appreciate the
strength of this position if, first of all, some thought
be given to the manner in which dogma, as such,
stands related to religion. It may be objected that
this is a question for the schools, and for the schools
only ; but the days of the discipline of the secret are
ended. Theology can no longer rest content with
sitting, in pillared seclusion, far away from the com
mon resorts of men. The other sciences have quitted
their academic retirement and have come out into the
open. Queen of them though she be, Theology has

100 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
no choice but to do as they have done, or run the risk
of being thought to have abdicated her sovereignty.
In these democratic days queens who are only such in
posse make a poor showing. I venture therefore upon
a definition, and ask you to think of a dogma as a
statement set forth, either by an individual teacher or
by some teaching body, to be taken for true, while
confessedly not susceptible of logical demonstration.
It is evident that, as thus defined, dogmas are by
no means the exclusive possession of the Christian
Church. Pure science employs dogma very sparingly,
but the mixed sciences are tolerant of it in large
measure. Geometry, for example, a pure science,
makes use of dogma under the name of the " postu
late ; " the postulate being an unproved assertion, the
taking of which for granted facilitates the proof of
other things, and thus by a sort of retroaction jus
tifies itself. Nevertheless, Geometry, as a rule, is
shy of dogma, and deals for the most part with what
is directly provable. Not so Biology, and the mixed
sciences in general ; — here dogma abounds, com
monly veiled under the name of " working hypothe
sis." The so-called " law " of natural selection is an
instance in point. No one alleges that natural selec
tion has been demonstrated, or is demonstrable ;
nevertheless, it is taught, and taught with much posi-
tiveness, by those who hold it. In fact, to question
this particular working hypothesis brings down upon
the questioner in some quarters censure as sharp, if
not as heavy, as that which in old times fell to the lot

THE CREDENDA. 101
of those who disparaged the dogmas of the Church.
Politics also and Sociology are full of dogma. The
proposition " Universal suffrage makes for the good
of a free people " is a dogma. The nation to which
we belong sets it forth as a thing to be believed, al
though nobody pretends that it is susceptible of proof.
It is an American dogma. The different schools of
medicine again set forth dogma almost without stint.
There is, for example, the antiseptic dogma, and over
against it the aseptic ; the very fact of the co-exist
ence of the two dogmas being of itself evidence that
neither the antiseptic nor the aseptic hypothesis ad
mits of absolute proof. Should proof be ultimately
forthcoming, the dogma that triumphed would thence
forth cease to be dogma, having become transmuted
into verified fact. Meanwhile, nevertheless, the sur
geons, whether of the antiseptic or the aseptic way of
thinking, do not scruple to go on practising in accord
ance with that one of "the two dogmatic bases to
which they the more incline.
But if the thing itself be so obvious a necessity of
human thought and life, how, one may very naturally
ask, has the name for the thing come to incur the
odium which, as all must own, attaches to it ?
An easy way of answering the question would be to
attribute the unpopularity of religious dogma directly
to the hardness of men's hearts, to their obstinate
determination to stay in the dark when the choice of
walking in the light is offered them. But of the most
intensely dogmatic teacher that ever trod the earth,

102 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
it is written that " the common people heard Him
gladly." He taught as one having authority, that is
to say, dogmatically, and the multitude followed Him
all the more gladly on that account. It is there
fore only reasonable to suppose that some portion at
least of the disfavor in which dogma has come to be
held is a deserved disfavor, the unpopularity an un
popularity merited and earned.
We shall be strengthened in this conviction if we
consider two or three of the ways in which the prin
ciple of dogma has been abused, wounded in the
house of its friends. There has been, for instance, a
strong disposition always, on the part of opinionated
men, to set forth their own private notions upon all
sorts of subjects, as if, instead of being notions, they
were decrees. A dogma, like a projectile, has mo
mentum in proportion to the amount and strength of
the explosive back of it. When a toy pistol is fired
off with all the pomp and circumstance that usually
attend the discharge of a three-hundred pounder, the
lookers-on smile, they cannot help it. The dogmatist
in this way does dogma more harm in a sentence
than he can undo in a volume ; for the thought of
authority enters into all our conceptions of dogma,
and for a personal utterance to carry authority the
man who makes it must convince us either that he is
inspired of some intelligence higher than the human,
or that he is an expert in the department in which
he undertakes to instruct us, or else that he is the
mouth-piece of a very considerable number of con-

THE CREDENDA. 103
senting minds. Whoever ventures dogmatically to
address us simply in his capacity of brother-man
makes himself ridiculous, and does what he can to
make dogma as such ridiculous also.
But not only have individuals brought discredit
upon dogma by their misuse of the dogmatic method,
churches are in the same condemnation. Under the
somewhat misleading even though pleasantly allit
erative title of The Creeds of Christendom, a living
divine has brought together dogmatic utterances, Ro
man and Reformed, numerous enough to fill three
massive volumes. The compilation has proved a most
valuable help to the student ; but when it is considered
that the New Testament, the fountain-head of Chris
tian doctrine, is commonly printed in one volume, and
a small volume at that, it becomes evident that the
makers of the Confessions have very considerably
overdone their work. Yes, it must be frankly ac
knowledged that for no inconsiderable measure of the
unpopularity of dogma the teachers of religion have
been themselves to blame. They have tried to make
men believe too much. Really it has been against
the multiplicity of dogmas, rather than against the
dogmatic principle itself, that opposition has kindled
into flame. In order to form a just judgment in the
matter we must learn carefully to distinguish between
essential dogma, — those statements, that is to say,
which make the essence of Christian belief, — and the
many other propositions which from time to time
have been set forth as logical inferences from these

104 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
first-hand truths. When a living poet, in a stanza
which has become hackneyed quite as much through
misuse as through right use, speaks of our " little
systems " having their day and ceasing to be, it is
not, we may be very sure, the articles of the Creed he
has in mind, but rather those complicated frame
works of theological opinion which under the name
of platforms, confessions, and bodies of divinity have
been again and again clamped and riveted together,
only to fall in pieces as soon as there has been time
enough for the corrosive influences of the atmosphere
to eat away the bolts.
But the chief ground of complaint against Christian
dogma is of another sort. I have been making allow
ance for what is justifiable in the unpopularity under
which the word labors ; let us now look at what is
unjustifiable in it. Men mislike Christian dogma be
cause of its unchangeableness, its fixity. The politi
cians have their dogmas, as we have seen ; but then
they alter them to meet fresh emergencies, and re
make the platform as occasion may require. With
the philosophers and the naturalists there is the same
readiness to allow for revision. Our dogmas, say the
metaphysicians, we are at any moment willing to
throw into solution that they may crystallize afresh.
And ours, chime in the naturalists, are only acknowl
edged stepping-stones to higher and larger and firmer
ground ; we can, and if occasion arises, we shall re
vise them to-morrow. But the Church keeps on say
ing the same thing. She alone among the teaching

THE CREDENDA. 105
voices to which man is asked to listen has nothing
new to tell. Her dogma, like the Medo-Persian law,
altereth not, and that is why we weary of it and wish
it out of the way.
Here again the Church has a reason to give, and a
sound one, as we shall see. Return to the Apostles'
Creed, for a moment, and consider attentively of what
sort of statements it is made up. In the very first
clause of it we have no fewer than four dogmatic as
sertions : namely, that there is a God ; that fatherli-
ness is one of his characteristics ; that infinite power
is another ; and furthermore that he puts this power
into active exercise. " I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth." What is
there here that the Church can fairly be called on to
revise ? If she had gathered these dogmas, as the
political economist gathers his, by observation of what
goes on in human society ; if she had gathered them
as the metaphysician gathers his, by observing what
goes on in the mind of man ; if she had gathered
them as the naturalist gathers his, by observing what
goes on in the world material, why then it would be
perfectly proper to insist on frequently testing her
methods and verifying her results.
But the Church maintains that she came into pos
session of her dogmas in another way altogether.
She did not find them out; they were told to her.
They are hers, not by right of discovery but by bene
fit of gift. The first paragraph of the Creed is the
common property of the Jewish and the Christian

106 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Churches, the second and the third owe their exist
ence to the coming into the world of One who as
serted Himself the Son of God ; but all three sections
are alike in this, that their contents rest for authority
on testimony, — the testimony of men who have some
how made themselves believed.
But testimony once recorded must remain what it
is, unless indeed you can impeach the witnesses.
Here, for example, are certain definite statements
made by the first century writers as to what Jesus
said of Himself, of life, of death, of things present
and things to come. Out of them and other like
material the dogmas of the Church have been fash
ioned. We may reject the dogmas, we may utterly
refuse to receive them ; but to ask the Church to alter
them merely in obedience to the popular demand for
change is most unreasonable. It is sometimes granted
us to forget what has been done, but never is it our
privilege to undo it.
1 ' Not Heaven itself upon the past hath power,
But what hath been, hath been.''
The chemist may reinvestigate the atomic weight
of silver, the astronomer may recompute the elements
of a planet's period of revolution, but who shall call
back from the dead, John, Apostle and Evangelist, that
he may be cross-questioned and re-examined ?
Has religion then nothing to learn from the new
pages man's finger is continually turning in the book
of knowledge ? Has the Church no share in the

THE CREDENDA. 107
harvest of light in which the world of our time
rejoices ?
Most assuredly, Yes ; — but the way in which the
new knowledge is destined to help the Church is not
by destroying her dogmas, it is rather by illustrating
and enforcing them more powerfully than ever was
possible before.
There is not an article of the Creed that has been
shaken out of its place thus far by any thunderclap
of discovery ; neither is there one of them that has
not been rendered more significant, more comprehen
sive, more august, by our knowledge of the things
discovered. Holding fast, then, whatever has been
with unanimity believed by Christians, let us read
into it deeper and still deeper meanings, as knowl
edge grows " from more to more." The unpopularity
of dogma is but a passing phase of feeling. The
ages of faith have not really been outlived. Still, as
of old, it is man's best privilege in regions where
he cannot know, to trust ; where he cannot prove,
to hope.
Another way of reaching conclusions is by a study
of alternatives. Let us try the reduetio ad absurdum.
Suppose that in a moment of disgust at dogmatism
we determine once for all to throw the dogmatic prin
ciple overboard, how will it fare with us then ? Very
much, I fancy, as it might with an imperilled ship
whose frightened crew, not content with casting the
superabundant cargo into the sea, were to discharge
the ballast also. Even when relieved of what threat-

108 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ened to sink it, a craft so circumstanced would still
need something to steady it.
Nothing is more instructive in this regard than the
experience of those who from time to time start out
full of hope and full of courage to establish and to
administer a purely undogmatic religion. Zeal for
ethical as distinguished from theological interests is
usually the mainspring of such movements. It is
a most praiseworthy incentive; and whether the at
tempt take the title of " Free Religious Association "
or " Society for Ethical Culture " or " University Hall
Lectureship," we cannot but applaud the courage that
refuses to despair of goodness even after the cause
of theology has been given up for lost. But can an
undogmatic religion achieve organization ? Is it not
like asking a jelly-fish to walk ? The question is not
intended as a slur, I put it seriously. The movement
I am venturing thus incidentally to criticise is no out
break of ignorant fanaticism ; it enjoys the leadership
of brilliant minds ; it has eloquence and learning and
moral earnestness enlisted in its support. What it
is dreaming of is a Catholic Church of humanity, a
fellowship into which Christian, Jew, and Moslem
may enter unchallenged, provided only each confesses
to an aspiration towards the true, the beautiful, and
the good.
This new remedy proposed for our spiritual ills
differs from what used to be called free-thinking in
its attitude towards Christianity. Free-thinking was
avowedly hostile to the received faith ; free religion,

THE CREDENDA. 109
to choose for convenience' sake one out of the many
names the movement has taken on, disclaims hostility
and mildly proposes conciliation.
Free-thinking was essentially destructive in its
aims ; free religion aspires, however hopelessly, to be
constructive. Free-thinking placed its dependence
on the head alone ; free religion both recognizes and
emphasizes the holy alliance between head and heart.
Free-thinking had a baldness eminently repulsive to
the imaginative mind ; free religion exalts the imagi
nation, and appeals as readily to the poetical as to
the ratiocinative faculties of the soul. Your free
thinker was disposed to shut men up to hard-and-fast
logic ; your free-religionist is as ready as was Saint
Ambrose to insist that not by dialectics only has it
pleased God to save his heritage. In all this the free
religion of to-day has an apparent advantage over
the free-thinking' of yesterday; it deals more fairly
by the facts of human nature, it breathes a better
flavor and seems to offer a richer promise. " These
Christians meant well," it says, " but they have lamen
tably blundered. Listen, and let us make plain to you
the secret of their failure." Any voice that utters
itself after this fashion, especially if it be one that
has in it the unmistakable quality honest conviction
gives to voices, is sure of a certain measure of atten
tion. No sensible person or careful observer is so
completely satisfied with things as they are as not to
be willing to acknowledge that they might conceivably
be bettered. " You may be right," society says to

110 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
each new prophet as he appears. " Speak out, tell us
what you think. Propound your plan."
I suggest therefore that we look a little carefully
into the case for free religion, as a preliminary step
towards a better understanding of the dogmatic posi
tion taken up at Lambeth.
The initial point from which the anti-dogmatists
make their start, is the existence in man of a reli
gious instinct. This instinct, so the argument runs,
is the universal heritage of the race. In greater or
less force it exists and has existed everywhere, and in
all. Climatic, temperamental, and other causes have
conspired to give to the external manifestations of
this instinct, which is still everywhere essentially the
same, a singular diversity. Religions, like plants,
have their classes and orders. One and the same
kind of life pervades all forms of vegetation from the
lichen to the cedar, and the scientific mind sees in
the countless faiths of the world only the parti-colored
clothing which the religious instinct of mankind has
wrapped about itself.
It would be doing injustice to the advocates of the
new religion to press this last illustration to extremi
ties. " The meanest flower that blows " has as good
a claim to a continued existence in the world's flora
as any other. The Free Religionists would not say
this of the meanest superstition. They would, to be
sure, admit the representative of the superstition to
their conclave ; but they would do it in the hope that
the society of wiser and better souls would purge

THE CREDENDA. Ill
his ignorance. Hence they would give him, so to
speak, a seat without a vote. They are not so weak
as to maintain that all religions are equally true and
equally good ; only they would make their amnesty,
at the outset, cover all, trusting to some happy law of
natural selection to weed out error in " the process
of the suns."
The illustration of the flora is, however, thus far
good that it does explain, unless I unintentionally
misconceive their theory, the notion of the advocates
of the new scheme with regard to the origin of the
existing state of things. Religions, so they argue, are
what they are because the laws of the universe are
what they are. We human creatures are no more to
blame for not agreeing in one faith than the brute
earth is to blame because she finds herself belted
with zones of varying temperature, and districted
among families of men who cannot understand each
other's speech.
It is easy to see what place Christianity must hold
in such a scheme. It is at best a religio licita, and
only a religio pro tempore licita at that. Jesus may
have his place in the new Pantheon, but the statue
must stand upon no raised dais. The Nazarene must
not overtop him of the Porch, or even him of the
Garden. Indeed a disciple of the new religion will,
if he be consistent, claim the right to sink Christi
anity a little below the level of average religions. A
late leader of English thought plainly intimated that
in his judgment the religion of the cross would be

112 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
improved by a larger infusion of pagan virtue ; and I
well remember the adroit way in which a New Eng
land Brahmin years ago parried a question which
some of his speculations had called forth. " Will not
such reasoning," asked the disciple, " carry us back
again into heathenism ? " " Say rather forward into
heathenism," was" the acute reply. Yes, let the Chris
tian candidate for entrance into the fellowship of un
dogmatic religion fully and clearly understand that
he goes as a contributor, nothing more. Whatever
else may be allowed, the claim of the Son of Mary to
universal kingship will never be. Our new prophets
simply propose to cast into the blast-furnace of public
opinion all the old worn-out creeds they can lay hands
on, in the vague hope that when, after fusion, the
molten stream of mingled faiths flows out, it may
spontaneously run itself into some shape of beauty
that shall entrance mankind. But the religion we
have thus far professed has ever shown itself un
friendly to any amalgam or alloy. Christianity is at
once the most inclusive and the most exclusive of all
religions. It is inclusive, because it proposes to itself
no less a task than the conversion of the world ; but
then the world is to be converted to Christianity, not
to something else. Forget this, if you would enter
into the spirit and the life of the new movement.
But why do I say " movement " ? If the new re
ligion were only what I have thus far pictured it,
would it deserve so dignified a name ? It might rank
as a fresh system of theological eclecticism, but

THE CREDENDA. 113
scarcely as " a movement " in any adequate sense of
that word. And yet we shall see, as we look further
into our subject, that in the very fact of its being a
movement lies the really distinctive feature of the
scheme we have stepped aside to study. For a num
ber of metaphysical minds to interest themselves in
following out certain processes of formal logic is one
thing. For these same minds to attempt important
changes in the structure of civil society, in order that
it may the better harmonize with their conclusions, is
quite another thing. Now this last is what the new
religion proposes. To its recognition of the religious
instinct in man, it superadds a recognition of the
social instinct, and, rightly persuaded that no good
results can follow unless these two instincts cordially
conspire, it says, " We must have organization." But
ca.n there be organization with no formula of concord
upon which to build ? Can there be, I mean, any bet
ter and more lasting organization than is implied in
getting together under one roof, choosing an officer
to preside over the meeting, and appointing a secre
tary and a treasurer ?
Not if it be true, as true I have been maintaining it
to be, that all forms of associated life, whether secular
or religious, whether called churches, states, confed
erations, fraternities, or leagues, owe their stability to
a corner-stone of dogma.
The apostles of ethical culture have a great many
beautiful and eloquent things to say about "work."
We ought to forsake controversy, they tell us, and
8

114 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
take to working together in the fellowship of the
spirit to bless our fellow-men. Quite right. But
what is work ? Waiving the very highest definition
of all, — " This is the work of God, that ye believe on
Him whom He hath sent," take instead some such
interpretation of the word as all will be willing to
accept. Here is one : — " Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this ; to visit the father
less and widows in their affliction." This is a kind
of " work " which all will agree ought to be done.
But how ? Not simply by carrying supplies of food
and clothing to the house of sorrow. If there be
poverty under the roof it may be well, delicately, to
do this ; but you are a sorry " worker " if you can do
no more. The fatherless and widows whom the au
thor of our phrase had in mind were not neces
sarily paupers. What these orphaned and desolate
fellow-creatures of yours have the most need of, and
the best right to ask for, is the ministry of comfort.
You enter determined, in a thoroughly anti-dogmatic
spirit, to exercise it. You discover, perhaps a little
to your dismay, that grief has questions to ask, urgent
questions, questions that will not be put by. How do
you propose to set to " work " to satisfy this widowed
soul? "Tell me, thou minister of comfort," the
woman vehemently demands, " is there any hope?"
" Some have thought so," — you may answer, if you
will ; but beware of letting any such tone of confi
dence betray itself in your voice as might offend your
brother the Agnostic, or your brother the Pantheist,

THE CREDENDA. 115
or your brother the Positivist. You are pledged to
" work " with them : " work " is the gracious object
that has brought you into one common fraternity ;
possibly these brethren have happened to come with
you on this very errand of consolation. Remember
the terms of the compact. Your co-operation is to be
strictly " undogmatic," a working together in " the
fellowship of the spirit." Should you be rash enough
to tell those questioning souls anything definite about
a living God and a life to come, these companions of
yours would, as they valued truth, be bound to declare
after you had gone that your " living God " and your
"life to come" were only make-believe. Would not
the widow and the fatherless have been the happier
had they been left unvisited ? Might not the doing
of such work as this more properly be called undoing ?
This is not exaggeration ; it is the simple testing of
a theory by the acid of common sense. If three men
cannot " work " together in comforting one household,
is anything better to be expected from those more
ambitious efforts that look towards the amelioration
of the life of whole communities ? You may build a
benevolent institution as large as St. Peter's, and
write it all over with the catch-words of advanced
thought, but unless you have some better thing to say
to the unfortunates whom you put into it than merely,
" Be ye warmed and filled," it is a failure. The truth
is, this generation owes its aspirations after philan
thropy to that very faith which it proposes to displace.
The first Napoleon has been called the matricide of

116 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
democracy. The child of the Revolution, he scrupled
not to kill in cold blood the mother that bore him.
A ghost for ever haunts his dynasty. Even so, should
our new religion become the matricide of the Church
of Christ, the memory of the sweet mother slain
would follow it reproachfully to the end.
Another fatal defect in the practical working of
the proposed scheme must lie in its utter want of any
cultus worthy to be called such. By a cultus we un
derstand that growth of usages, habits, observances,
and associations that springs up spontaneously around
any settled form of faith. The cultus may be said to
clothe the dogma, just as the flesh of a human body
clothes the hard, strong framework upon which it
rests. Public worship, consecrated buildings, sacramen
tal rites, holy days and seasons, these make a part of
the Christian cultus. But only think how it would
impoverish human life were all these things to be
obliterated. What would become of art and literature,
to say nothing of social intercourse, if all that they
have drawn from the treasure-house of the Christian
Church were to be disowned and put out of sight ?
Look, for instance, at the only substitute the new
religion has to offer for the time-honored observance
of public worship. A liturgy is out of the question, for
a liturgy must of necessity be inwrought with dogma.
Where there is uncertainty as to whether the God
addressed be personal or impersonal, all spoken
prayer is aimless ; it is impossible to give any pro-

THE CREDENDA. 117
longed utterance to blank aspiration ; the list of the
interjections is brief. Take out of the Litany of the
Book of Common Prayer, for example, all that links
it to special circumstances, either in our Saviour's
life or in our own, and what is left ? Nothing. The
new religion must, therefore, limit its public exercises
to an exchange of thought between mind and mind.
Lectures and discussions are its only " means of
grace;" a club, a library, or a reading-room its holiest
sanctuary. Should we be gainers by the change ? I
venture to think not. Essays are entertaining and
instructive sometimes, and debates exciting ; but are
these things valid substitutes for the worship of the
ages ? Would they not be likely, in the long run, to
pall upon the taste even more seriously than the dull
sermons and formal prayers and lifeless hymns of
which we hear so much complaint ? The non-Chris
tian critics are continually falling out of patience with
our " cant." Does it never occur to them that, one
day, they may fall out of patience with their own ?
No cant is so unspeakably wearisome as the cant of
unbelief. We can bear to be reminded once and twice
and thrice that we are in leading-strings, that we are
clogs upon the wheels of progress, that we love dark
ness rather than light, that the curse of barrenness is
upon all our thought ; but really we hear so much of
this that one questions what will be left in the Millen
nium of the new religion to form the staple of dis
course. It is worth thinking of whether it will not be
well, even when the golden year of Liberalism has

118 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
come, to retain a few representatives of the old order
for the purposes of practice in rhetorical invective
if for nothing else ?
But it is said, What need of any cultus ? Let life
itself, the common daily life of men, answer for the
clothing of religion. When Sundays and Churches
and Sacraments and all such ancient superstitions
have been removed out of the way, then life itself
will be so pure, so beautiful, that no special cultus
will be needed to make it more so. Ah, we know
what that means. We know what human life would
be, robbed of all outward aids to holiness. We know
that it would speedily become self-centred, grasping,
churlish, sensual, devilish. Perhaps it is possible for
a few men of refined sensibilities and a naturally
quick moral instinct to cut themselves loose from the
old moorings and still remain themselves generous,
high-minded, and unselfish. But what is possible for
an individual may not be possible for a community.
We know that in England, for example, the refined
Positivism of the Universities as it filters down
through the strata of society thickens into secularism
in the class just above the lowest, and hardens into
animalism in the lowest class of all. And so we
might find that were the creedless religion to be gen
erally accepted here in America, it would cease to
be, as it now is, eloquent in the praise of the Chris
tian graces, and would become for the many the cloak
of selfishness and vice. Listen to what Sainte-Beuve
writes to M. Taine, — agnostics both of them.

THE CREDENDA. 119
" You make an observation upon my ' Port Royal.'
. . . There is a fine basis, you say, a broad basis in
natural morality, in virtue as understood by Aristotle,
Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, etc. I must confess to you
that what has always embarrassed the expression of
my thought in this direction and kept my adhesion
back, is the fact that I have not as optimistic an opin
ion of humanity as that which I see among all these
natural moralists. I am much more struck by the
miseries, the imperfections, the vices, the animal
coarseness, over which people imagine that it is easy
to triumph. This ' natural morality ' of which I de
sire the reign, and which in antiquity was the lot of
an elite, seems to me very little advanced among the
moderns, especially if you consider the masses. The
nations which are praised sur parole and celebrated at
a distance, are found to be far in arrears. You must
be a Laboulaye before you believe that there is no
corruption in North America. Our Algeria is dy
ing of absinthe ; so are our manufacturing cities of
the north. If Rome is rotting, Geneva is becoming
coarse. I see everywhere an animality and a brutal
ity, which discourage me and adjourn my hope of
the triumph of a healthy and scientific morality ; I
am contented with admiring and respecting it in a
few." This is honest certainly ; and we have from a writer
of similar genius on the other side of the English
Channel a like testimony. " The history of self-sacri
fice during the last eighteen hundred years," writes Mr.

120 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Lecky, in the closing paragraphs of the book that first
brought him into notice, " has been mainly the his
tory of the action of Christianity on the world." He
glories over the great advances of modern civilization,
with which he credits the principle of free thought.
" But then, " he adds, " when we look back to the
cheerful alacrity with which, in some former ages,
men sacrificed all their material and intellectual in
terests to what they believed to be right, and when
we realize the unclouded assurance that was their
reward, it is impossible to deny that we have lost
something in our progress."
Was there ever a better illustration than this scho
lium affords of Moses' boast, — " Their rock is not as
our rock, even our enemies themselves being the
judges " ?
The pursuit of undogmatic religion entails yet an
other disappointment. We have seen that without
dogma there can be no concert of action between man
and man and no cultus worthy of the name. These
are losses that concern associated life. But it is fur
ther true that without dogma there can be for the
individual no such thing as intellectual peace. Se
rious men are not content to catch at truth as chil
dren catch at fire-flies, pleased with success and almost
equally content with failure. In the great emergen
cies of life, the mind brought face to face with the
problem of destiny longs for the ability to say with a
clear voice, " I believe." To man thus circumstanced
the Christian Church exhibits her immemorial wit-

THE CREDENDA. 121
ness; while free religion offers him only the sorry
comfort of a guess.
It is true that the " full assurance " secured by as
sent to the Church's witness is " the full assurance of
faith," in contrast with the full assurance that follows
upon demonstration, but the certitude attained is none
the less satisfactory in the one case than in the other ;
it avails for the purposes of living, and that is the
main point. Christ's religion asserts that it has a
distinct message for us ; undogmatic religion boasts
that it has none, the broken chrysalis is its strongest
argument for immortality, a song-bird its best proof
that " God is love." The Christian Church meets a
man with the Creed in her hands, the simple Creed of
universal Christendom ; and she says, " I cannot force
this faith upon you, I cannot compel you to accept it.
I can only say that if you do welcome it, if you will
make it the foundation-stone of all your religious
thinking, there will follow, as consequence upon cause,
intellectual peace. Of course there rests' with you,
in this matter, the power of contrary choice ; but on
the whole, considering how this Creed of mine stands
accredited by the past, considering all it has accom
plished in the earth for peoples as well as for single
souls, is it not a more reasonable thing on your part
to believe than it would be to disbelieve ? Is not the
case for faith indefinitely stronger than the case for
no faith ? Does not the postulate justify itself in the
results ? "
The promise held out by the adversaries of dogma

122 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
is an enticing one ; " Liberty " and " Truth " are their
favorite watchwords. But to be landed in nega
tion is to find one's self fast bound in misery and
iron, — a strange sort of liberty ; and as for " truth,"
what is it worth to us if we are under oath never to
set it forth without an interrogation mark attached ?
Augustine puts it well in the Confessions. He also,
it appears, while philosophizing in the schools of Car
thage, had heard this same illusive and elusive prom
ise. " They cried out ' Truth ! Truth ! ' and spake
much thereof to me ; yet it was not in them. 0
Truth ! Truth ! how inwardly did even then the mar
row of my soul pant after thee, when they often and
in many books echoed of thee to me, though it was
an echo and no more ! "
Passing now from the negative line of reasoning
to the less ungracious and more congenial positive
method, I call attention to a certain close intimacy
that knits together two things, frequently, but
most unwisely, represented as mutually antagonistic,
" faith " and " the faith." Many persons now-a-days
who confess themselves eager for more faith turn
frigid at any mention of " the faith," as if an iceberg
had suddenly swum into their sea. But the New
Testament writers to a man are unconscious of the
supposed dissonance. They never weary of ringing
the changes on the possibilities of faith. Sometimes
they seem to be thinking of it as an appetency, some
times as an energy of the soul, now as the hand
stretched out to grasp, and again as the mouth opened

THE CREDENDA. 123
to receive ; but, be it this or that, be it active effort or
passive receptivity, faith as a spiritual characteristic
stands at the head of the list, the one indispensable
condition precedent to our knowledge of the God who
made us.
On the other hand, we kill the climax of one of
Paul's most animating utterances if we disallow the
contrasted phrase, for he sums up the whole record
of his life's struggle thus, — "I have kept the faith."
Manifestly if he had kept the faith, there must have
been in his judgment a faith to keep, — a certain some
thing to be most surely believed, most tenaciously
grasped, clung to through evil report and good. It is
the tone not of one who has guessed out a philosophy of
religion ; rather he speaks as the man into whose cus
tody there has been given a definite deposit of truth.
Unless Paul in all this was utterly mistaken, it follows
that faith has an intellectual as well as an emotional
side, and that to define it as being wholly and only
" a feeling " is a weak concession to the demands of
the hour. The affections and the mind are both of
them beholden to faith, and faith to them. In these
days of easy divorce men clamor for a separation
between head and heart ; but woe be to him who puts
asunder those whom God has joined together. " Faith "
is the offspring of wedded heart and head, and " the
faith " is the inheritance to which, by the terms both
of the Old Testament and of its codicil the New, this
child is heir.
Faith as an intellectual energy starts from the prop-

124 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
osition " God is." Manifestly the mind must accept this
modicum of fact before the feelings and the will can
have anything to act upon. Whenever we see living
flowers upon a stalk, somewhere we may be sure there
either is or was a root. Dogma is the root of faith,
and there can be no blossoming of the religious affec
tions that does not consciously or unconsciously draw
vitality through that. We risk nothing in thus conced
ing to the mind an important part in the act of faith.
The vice of rationalism is not that it honors reason,
but that it confounds faith with knowledge, and de
mands from God mathematical demonstrations of his
truth. There is a difference between believing and
knowing. Were there no difference we should not
need the two words. I know that the whole is greater
than any of its parts. I believe in the resurrection of
the dead. Yet the believing is just as much an intel
lectual process as the knowing, and I cannot possibly
say the Creed without an exercise of the mind.
But is this all ? Have we exhausted the meaning
of faith when we have found that it is the assent of
the judgment, the acquiescence of the thinking part
of us ? Certainly not. Faith means more than this,
a vast deal more, otherwise might the demons who
believe no longer shudder. The biographer of Fred
erick Robertson tells us in one place how it was a
characteristic of that sensitive and high-born spirit to
be for ever pondering the question, What constitutes
the essence of a " saving " faith ? He rebelled, as well
he might, against the notion that correct thinking

THE CREDENDA. 125
could of itself carry a man into the kingdom of God.
He was determined that his final definition of faith
should, when he formed it, do full justice to the
heart. And what does faith mean to the heart ?
Evidently trust, confidence, reliance, loyalty, — feel
ings all of them, and feelings moreover that call for
a person, a conscious some one, towards whom they
are to be exercised. A child clinging to his father's
hand in a forest-path at night and feeling safe be
cause it is his father's hand to which he clings, — this
is faith. A woman believing in her lover's constancy
although oceans divide him from her, and no message
has come home for months, — this is faith. A boat's
crew saved from a wreck trusting themselves wholly
to the direction and control of one of their number,
because they believe him most fit from his experience
of seamanship to be their pilot, — this is faith. A
handful of soldiers following a brave man on some
forlorn hope, not forlorn for them because they love
their leader and hold his courage as the pledge of vic
tory, — this is faith. Heart-work in every instance,
and heart-work moreover of a sort that necessitates
a personal object. It is only by a metaphor, a figure
of speech, that we can associate faith, the feeling, with
an inanimate object. We may say that a workman
has " confidence " in his tools, that a woodsman
" trusts " the bough by which he swings himself
across a mountain stream, that a capitalist " puts
faith" in his bank; but in so speaking we use the
words " confidence " and " trust " and " faith " in a

126 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
figurative sense. These words convey their full and
legitimate meaning only when it is a person in whom
we confide or trust or put faith, for we can only feel
towards one who is, or has been, himself capable of
feeling. This position once accepted, — namely, that faith
means for the mind assent, for the heart trust, — it
follows as a matter of course that there cannot be head-
faith without a statement to be believed, or heart-faith
without a person to be believed in. Faith as an appetite
of the intellect demands for its food statements that
are true. Faith as an appetite of the heart calls for a
person worthy to be trusted. Truth and the true One,
these taken together are what faith demands. How
does the Christian religion set itself to the task of
meeting and satisfying this twofold need ? Not in
any one-sided, scant, or partial way ; not by freezing
all religion into dogma, nor yet by melting it all into
emotion. How then ? Simply by so presenting what
Paul proudly calls " the faith " that men shall see and
own in it the living presence of the person Christ.
It is told us in connection with Paul's visit to Athens,
that the philosophers who met him in the market
place were moved to curiosity and willingness to hear
him further, because he preached unto them " Jesus
and the resurrection." Here in four words lies wrapt
the secret after which many a weary seeker in our
day has toiled in vain. Flouted by Stoics and pitied
by Epicureans, Paul preached " Jesus and the resur
rection." He slighted, that is to say, neither of the

THE CREDENDA. 127
two claims of faith. To the mind he presented for
acceptance a new truth, " the resurrection," to the
heart a new object of affectionate confidence, " Jesus."
Believe the fact, believe in the person, — this was his
appeal. Passing from Athens to Rome, what is it that we
find distinguishing Christian people from other people
in the days of the Caesars ? Clearly the holding of a
distinctive and a definable faith, and the holding it
with fervor. Whenever the populace raised the cry
" The Christians to the lions ! " there was always one
Way of escape, — renunciation of the faith. On one
side lay the implements of torture ; on the other, home,
friends, and a life of quietness. All hinged on the
answer to the judge's question, Wilt thou or wilt thou
not disown this faith ? Evidently an undogmatic re
ligion would in those days have saved many a life.
But would the Church have lived?
"If blessed Paul had staid in cot or learned shade,
With the priest's white attire, and the saints' tuneful choir,
Men had not gnashed their teeth, nor risen to slay,
But thou hadst been a heathen in thy day."
We do ill, therefore, to set " faith " and " the faith "
in opposition, saying to the one, " Thy dominion is of
the heart," and to the other, " Thine is of the head."
A complete religion is one in which we see the faith
spelt out in words that may be known and read of all
men, while yet there is not one single letter in the
whole epigraph that does not glow with flame.

128 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
The Bishops at Lambeth took up a definite position
with respect to dogma. Their estimate of the meas
ure of dogmatic agreement antecedently essential to
the attainment of unity was expressed in the follow
ing words, " The Apostles' Creed as the Baptismal
Symbol ; and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient state
ment of the Christian Faith."
When we remember how large an amount of dogma
used to be insisted upon as necessary, this has, upon
the face of it, the look of taking in sail under stress
of weather, — and in that sense many observers, both
within and without the pale of the Christian Church,
have doubtless understood it. Here, they have said,
is a plain concession to the menaces of criticism.
Modern scholarship has proved itself too much for
the confessions, and the creed-principle is evidently
doomed. It is not to be yielded at once, but what we
see is the beginning of the end.
Such inferences have a plausible look, and yet,
when we think of it, all that the Bishops did was to
reaffirm the doctrinal position of the early Church.
Short confessions were the rule in the beginning ; to
return to them is unquestionably an acknowledgment
of having gained wisdom by experience, but is by no
means tantamount to a surrender of first principles,
— on the contrary, it is a solemn reassertion of first
principles. Were the Creed to be reduced to a single
proposition, that one statement would carry with it
as effective an assertion of authority, as four-score
sentences could do. The length of the armature is

THE CREDENDA. 129
no test of the reality of the magnet. The question
is, What is resident in the steel ?
But over and above an implied insistence upon the
principle of dogma, we note in the Lambeth state
ment an evident intention to discriminate between
classes of believers. The Apostles' Creed is spoken
of as a formulary for universal use ; it is the " baptis
mal symbol," a thing to be written, as it were, on the
very door-posts of the Church, an entrance lesson, a
part of the initiative process itself. None is to be
accounted too ignorant to be taught so much as this,
none is to be thought of as so well-informed that with
this he may dispense ; it binds all : it is the minimum
of Christian dogma. Equally evident is the intention
to set forth the Nicene Creed as the maximum of the
Church's doctrinal requirement, for this formulary
is declared to be the " sufficient " statement of the
Christian faith. In other words, the Apostles' Creed
is to be regarded as the popular, and the Nicene
Creed as the precise and, so to say, scientific setting
forth of " those things which are most surely believed
among us." It is not that the one Creed is supposed
really to contain any more truth than the other, but
only that the shorter of the two formularies is by its
wording the better adapted to the needs of all sorts
and conditions of men, while the longer more com
pletely meets the requirements of those who critically
demand of the Church her " statement." And I say
this not forgetful of the fact that the difference be
tween the two creeds finds its historical explanation
9

130 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
in the contrast between Eastern and Western methods
of religious thought. The Nicene formulary germi
nated in Asiatic, the Apostles' in European soil, and
each reflects the intellectual habitudes of the region
that gave it birth. In other words, the distinction I
have drawn between a scientific and a popular mode
of statement seems not to have been had in view at
the outset. Oriental teachers simply expressed them
selves after their fashion, occidental teachers after
theirs. But seeing that the two creeds do really, both
in form and substance, suggest to a western eye such
a contrast as I have described, the Bishops at Lam
beth chose wisely in phrasing their utterance as they
did. Turning to the question of the adaptability of these
ancient formularies to present-day needs, I observe
that the ultimate analysis resolves each of them into
the Christian Name of God. Whether we take the
Apostolic or the Nicene symbol, we find in either case
that the three paragraphs answer severally to "Fath
er," " Son," and " Holy Ghost." In the one formu
lary the amplification is comparatively slight, in the
other comparatively full, but one and the same tri-
personal framework is common to them both. About
the name of the Father are grouped the thoughts
proper to creation, origin, and source ; about the
name of the Son, the characteristics of mediatorship ;
about the name of the Spirit, the unitive and energiz
ing functions of the Eternal ; but it is all one Name
set forth in one strong confession ; it is the voice of

THE CREDENDA. 131
the Holy Church throughout all the world acknowl
edging the Father, of an infinite Majesty, the ador
able, true, and only Son, also the Holy Ghost the
Comforter. The special value of the Apostles' Creed for popu
lar use and as a doctrinal test of fitness for admission
to Church privileges reveals itself in these four fea
tures, simplicity of language, brevity of compass,
positiveness of form, antiquity of origin. Because it
is simply worded, the unlettered can be taught it ;
because it is short, little children can have it stamped
upon their memories for ever ; because it is affirma
tive, it encourages hope ; because it is ancient, it com
mands confidence ; that which has outlasted the
wear and tear of many generations will, we are en
couraged to believe, manifest the same staying pow
er till the end. It is true that " the new Astronomy "
(scarcely any longer new) and " the new Chemistry "
and "the new Biology" have suggested certain diffi
culties of interpretation in the case of two of the
articles of this Creed, the Descent into hell and the
Resurrection of the body, the stress of which was
hardly felt in former times ; but the difficulties are
surface difficulties, and the putting them forward has
only served the purpose of making our insight into
the real meaning of the phrases themselves more
profound than was possible before.
The chief value of the longer Creed set forth at
Nicaea in a.d. 325 and given its final form at Con
stantinople fifty-six years later, lies in its uncompro-

132 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
mising assertion of the divinity of Christ. This is a
question that cannot be waived ; it is the old test
question " Whose Son is he ?" To treat it as a point
of purely theological interest having no real contact
with practical religion is to mislead. Between the
two propositions," Jesus Christ was a man, and a man
only," " Jesus Christ was man and God," there is a
great gulf fixed. Our whole attitude towards Jesus
Christ is affected and determined according as we
elect to throw in our lot with the one estimate or the
other. If it be urged, as urged it often is, that while
Christ was here in the flesh, the giving in of adhesion
to Him was a much simpler affair, involving only an
expression of personal confidence, the proper reply is
that the essence of discipleship is now precisely what
it was then, with this single point of difference, — that
the present withdrawal of the Christ from the field of
open vision necessitates our knowing Him by picture,
instead of by person. The Creed is this picture.
To wipe out of it the lines that indicate divinity
would mean not merely to impair, but to destroy the
likeness. Only occasionally, it is true, were even the
twelve disciples privileged to see
"... the God within Him light his face,"
and before only three out of these twelve was He
transfigured ; and yet, just as we say of a portrait
that it ought to show a man at his best, so may we
say reverently of the Creed that unless it presents
Christ to us at his highest it fails.

THE CREDENDA. 133
A criticism of a very different sort is sometimes
passed upon the Nicene Creed. Theologians of a
certain school insist that as a formulary it is inade
quate to the needs of the modern Church, because it
has almost nothing to say about " the plan of salva
tion," — lays so little stress on the natural depravity
of man, and observes complete silence with respect to
many of the points that seem essential for the strategy
of present-day controversialists. But, as a profound
religious thinker not so very many years ago re
marked, " to base theology upon the dogma of sin,
instead of on the dogma of God, is a mistake." Per
haps it was by their clear perception of this truth
that the Bishops were moved to choose the adjective
they did. " The Nicene Creed as the sufficient state
ment of the Christian Faith " is their phrase. " Suf
ficient " indeed it is, setting forth, as it so grandly
does, what God has told us of Himself, and leaving
unsaid what we may safely be trusted to find out for
ourselves, in our wretchedness and poverty, namely,
our sore need of the One who can be thus described.
Yes, anthropology can be trusted to teach itself, for
" what man knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of man which is in him ; " it is theology, the
knowledge of the true God, we need to have instilled
into us. Only let men become persuaded of the high
dignity of Him who for them and for their salvation
came down from heaven, and there will be little doubt
fulness in their minds as to the gravity of the crisis, the
soreness of the emergency, that made such a humili-

134 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ation necessary. Among ourselves, the spectacle of
another's greatness is often as effectual a lesson in
modesty as painful meditations upon our own little
ness ; and it is equally true in religion that when once
convinced of the high lineage of Him whom the Nicene
Creed declares to be one with the Father in whatever is
essential to divinity, we cannot hesitate long as to the
attitude it behooves us to take as suppliants before
the throne. Was a person of this dignity " crucified
dead, and buried " ? The very statement carries with
it an implication of unworthiness on man's part such
as ten thousand penitential litanies would be insuffi
cient to express. That " the Infinite " and " the Ab
solute " of the philosophers is in reality such a one as
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, such a one as
the life pictured in the four Gospels would suggest, —
this is what we need to be told, and this is what the
Creed tells us. Having been told this, we may be
trusted to give the right shading to our doctrine of
human nature without help from formularies. When
once the sun has risen, the eye has little trouble in
picking out the dark spots in the landscape. We
conclude, then, that in spite of its silence upon human
nature and its depravity the Nicene Creed is a " suffi
cient statement of the Christian faith."
Doubtless even after this shall have been conceded
there will remain for discussion and settlement sun
dry important questions of detail. Historical scholars
will have to have their say as to the limits of the for
mulary ; textual critics will wish to know all that can

THE CREDENDA. 135
be known as to the authentic wording of it ; while
students of English are scarcely likely to rest satisfied
with the present inadequate and, in some points, ab
solutely misleading translation. But these are fields
of discussion upon which I do not propose to enter.
Similar embarrassments have from the beginning be
set all efforts to give currency to Holy Scripture, but
in spite of them the Bible has become the great book
of the people, and is certain to continue such.
The strong point of both the Apostles' and the
Nicene Creeds as respects fitness for the task of uni
fying the believers is their sturdy realism. Modern
creed-makers have condescended to argument; these
ancient voices simply enunciate the facts. They set
forth certain great objects of faith, and say to man,
Look at them. They invite, not to the speculative
discussion, but to the reverent contemplation of things
that have been, are, and are yet for to come. The
manger, the cross, the broken sepulchre, these after
all are what make the real centre of unity. About
these sacred places men of the most divergent ways
of thinking may be well content to meet, suffering all
their controversies to be swallowed up in the glad
confession that " God has visited and redeemed his
people." The time for originating creeds, if indeed there
ever was such a time, has gone by. You may make
a brand-new one to-day, and fondly flatter yourself
that you have put into it not only the accumulated
wisdom of the past, but also all the newer truth that

136 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
modern discovery has unveiled ; to-morrow's critic
will find a flaw in your work, and before you are an
old man yourself your creed will have been forgotten.
Meanwhile, there will live on, while you live and after
you have gone, those ancient formularies, incompara
ble for simplicity and sturdy strength, which have
been the shelter of holy and humble men of heart
through many generations, — "I believe in God the
Father Almighty " their first words ; " the life of the
world to come " their last.

IV.
THE SIGNS AND SEALS.

AU things, as many as pertain to offices and matters ecclesiastical, be
full of divine significations and mysteries, and overflow with a celestial
sweetness; if so be that a man be diligent in his study of them, and know
how to draw honey from the rock, and oil from the hardest stone. , . .
Wherefore I, William, by the alone tender mercy of God, Bishop of the
Holy Church which is in Mende, will knock diligently at the door, if so be
that the Key of David will open unto me; that the King may bring me in
to his treasury and show unto me the heavenly pattern which was showed
unto Moses in the mount. — Durandus. Preface to the Rationale.
Because there are two great sermons of the Gospel, which are the sum
total and abbreviative of the whole word of God, the great messages of the
Word incarnate, Christ was pleased to invest these two words with two sacra
ments, and assist those two sacraments, as He did the whole word of God,
with the presence of his Spirit, that in them we might do more signally and
solemnly what was in the ordinary ministrations done plainly and without
extraordinary regards. — Jeremy Taylor.

IV.
THE SIGNS AND SEALS.
Having affirmed the relation of the Scriptures and
of the Creeds to unity, the Bishops at Lambeth give
the third place in their summary of essentials to " the
Sacraments." Their minimum under this head is thus
defined : —
" The two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself, —
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, — ministered with
unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and of
the elements ordained by Him''
Thus addressed, we find ourselves face to face with
the great question of symbolism, — the origin of it, the
uses of it, the measure of it. In the whole territory
of religious thought there is scarcely a patch of ground
that has been more hotly contested. Some go the
length of making symbolism and religion contermin
ous. Take away our tokens, they declare, and you
extinguish our faith. Others again are so nervously
sensitive to the peril of conceding to the outward
and visible sign the honors rightfully due only to the
inward and invisible thing signified, that they let
their dislike of symbolism carry them to the point of
setting aside, as having been intended for merely
temporary use, even the two sacraments ordained by

140 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Christ Himself. Divergencies so grave as this are
never without cause ; the origin of them is usually
to be sought far back in the very groundwork of
human nature itself. But formidable though the
task of search may look, we are bound to undertake
it ; for we shall find it impossible to do justice to the
position taken up at Lambeth unless we can first
attain to clear notions with respect to certain prin
ciples that underlie, not the two sacraments only, but
equally whatsoever else there may be in life that
deserves to be called sacramental. Undoubtedly the
nexus that binds symbolism to religion is a knotted
and tangled skein ; but unless we can somehow con
trive to straighten out the threads, we shall have to
reconcile ourselves, as best we may, to a confused
theology. To so disappointing a conclusion we ought
not to let ourselves be shut up without effort.
By a symbol is commonly meant either an object or
an action understood to be emblematic and represen
tative of some spiritual, or, if not spiritual, at any rate
invisible reality. Tersely defined, symbolism is that
whereby the outward eye of the body aids the inner eye
of the mind in the exercise of its own proper vision.
I say this, not forgetful of the fact that forms of words
are sometimes spoken of as symbols, and this too in
direct connection with theology. A writer on dogma
tics, when he treats of symbols and symbolism, has in
mind creeds and the study of them; forms of faith,
and not at all such forms as come under the definition
I just now gave. Thus we read in Church history of

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 141
" the symbol of Nicsea," " the Athanasian symbol,"
" the symbolical books of the Reformation ; " and, in
fact, this very summary we are studying has, as we
have just seen, the expression, " the Apostles' Creed,
as the baptismal symbol." This is clearly a very dif
ferent use of language from that which we follow
when we speak of incense as a symbol ; or of lights,
vestments, bowings, crossings, and genuflexions as
symbolic. The reason why one and the same word should have
two such apparently dissimilar meanings, is not far to
seek ; and since it will involve no very prolonged
excursus into the region of etymology, I shall ask you
to go with me on the search.
" Symbol " comes from a familiar Greek verb, mean
ing to throw together. But one of the commonest mo
tives for throwing things together is that they may be
compared, and their points of likeness and of unlikeness
brought to view. This is just what is accomplished
by the material symbol. By aid of it the visible and
the invisible, the thing seen and the thing unseen are
thrown together, collated, so to speak, in order that
by the aid of the more familiar the less familiar may
be understood, as when we make black the symbol of
sorrow, or light the symbol of truth, or weeds the
symbol of the spreading power that seems to inhere
in wickedness. This is plain enough ; but how came
creeds ever to be known as symbols ? What is there
about sharp-cut verbal statements of doctrine that en
titles them to be given the same name by which we

142 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
describe a token or emblem ? Why, indeed, unless it
be that words when we look at them long enough are
seen to be themselves nothing but emblems of the
unseen realities for which they stand ? All language
is in its very nature figurative, representative ; and, in
the last analysis, is found to be a mere aggregation
of symbols. This fact forces itself upon us in such
expressions as, " the head of the army " and " the
foot of the mountain." It is less evident when we
speak of an action as " sublime," or of a man as
" ambitious ; " but a glance at the Latin lexicon
shows us that these phrases are in reality every
bit as figurative as the others. The sentence " God
is a spirit " would seem to be, on the face of it, the
very negation of symbolism. What could be further
from our notion of material things than " spirit,"
and yet — " The spirit doth but mean the breath."
Archbishop Trench, in his " Synonymes of the New
Testament," quotes approvingly Jerome's remark on
the Apocalypse : " There are in it as many sacra
ments as there are words." But why not give to
Jerome's pithy statement a still wider application ?
Why limit it to the last book of the Bible ? Why
not say of " Webster's Unabridged," Quot verba, tot
sacramenta ? For it certainly is true of all words, with
out exception, that they are sacraments in the sense
of being emblems, — representative signs of the reali
ties for which they stand ; the main difference between

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 143
them and other tokens being that in the one case it is
the eye, and in the other case the ear, that is addressed.
" Words," says Hobbes, " are wise men's counters,
. . . but they are the money of fools." The maxim is
harshly phrased, but it gives us the substance of the
whole matter in a nutshell, and abundantly justifies
the instinct that led the early Christians, with only a
dim consciousness perhaps of the reason why they did
so, to call their forms of sound words " symbols ; " for
a creed, regarded as a summary or compendium of
" the words of eternal life," is notably a symbol of
God's thought.
So then, if we cared to enlarge our first definition
so as to make it cover both the dogmatic and the
ritual uses of the word we are studying, we might
affirm symbolism to be the conversion of the invisible
into terms of the visible, whether by the agency of
objects or of sounds.
Profoundly studied, the two sacraments ordained
by Christ himself are seen to combine both of these
characteristics of symbolism, — were intended, that is
to say, to help us both by eye and ear. They are
not dumb tokens, they are vocal ; there are words
attached to each, and of these words the Lambeth
platform insists that they be unfailingly employed as
part and parcel of the actions to which they have
been by the voice of Christ authoritatively attached.
Both of the language of institution and of the elements
ordained, there is to be, so the Declaration runs, " un
failing use."

144 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
But while all this is true, we cannot help feeling
that in the case of the sacraments, the material
symbolism, as contrasted with the verbal, has the
predominance and was meant to have it. They are
never spoken of as doctrines, though they might very
properly have been called that, were the lessons con
veyed in the respective formulas of institution the
only thing intended to be had in mind. In fact, they
are rather actions accompanied by words, than words
accompanied by actions ; neither word nor action,
however, having value of its own save as related
to the sacred reality to which the whole symbolism
points. We return, therefore, for the present to the study
of material as distinguished from verbal symbolism,
persuaded that here, rather than elsewhere, the clew
to a just interpretation of the sacraments is to be
sought. We must remember that whatever else and more
than signs the sacraments may be, signs, in the first
instance and upon the face of things, they unques
tionably are. No alarmist cry of " Zuinglianism ! "
can put out of remembrance the fact that the Book
of Common Prayer answers the question, " What
meanest thou by this word ' Sacrament ' ? " as follows,
" I mean an outward and visible sign."
As to what the outward and visible sign imports
and conveys, that is a matter for further instruc
tion; but that sacraments present themselves to our
attention first of all as signs, cannot be gainsaid.

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 145
I remark, then, that material symbols or signs may
best be classified, and most advantageously studied,
as (a) commemorative, (6) representative, and (e)
effectual. A commemorative symbol is one that
serves to keep alive the memory of a past event.
Medals and monuments are of this order. Some
times there is an evident connection between the
symbol and the fact commemorated, sometimes there
is none. Medals usually tell their own story to the
eye, but monuments have often to depend upon oral
tradition to interpret them. There is nothing for
example in the mere sight of the obelisk on Bunker
Hill to suggest to the mind of a wholly ignorant per
son the fact that a battle was there fought. The
pillar Jacob set up at Bethel, and the heap of stones
he and Laban piled up and called Mizpah, were both
of them commemorative symbols, the one of a vision,
the other of a covenant. Joshua gave a like charac
ter to the twelve stones he caused to be laid on the
bed of Jordan, when he said, " These stones shall be
for a memorial."
As civilization advances and history begins to take
the place of tradition, commemorative symbols, pure
and simple, fall more or less into disuse. Medals are
still struck and monuments built in connection with
historical events, but nobody accounts our need of
these things imperative, as it used to be accounted
before the invention of printing. In cases where the
ancients would have heaped up stones, we make a
book and store it in a library. Still the liking for
10

146 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
symbols solely commemorative is by no means extinct,
as the countless memorial buildings and statues set
up in our own country since the civil war abundantly
testify. What I have called a " representative " symbol is
one that images, not a past event as the commem
orative symbol does, but a present though invisible
reality. The universe is full of symbolism of this
sort, and human speech is, as I have already pointed
out, largely if not entirely based upon it. Represen
tative symbolism is, indeed, the very food and drink
of imaginative souls ; poets cannot live without it,
and philosophers and theologians are almost as
closely dependent upon it as they. In fact, some
have ventured to assert that the whole frame of
nature, rightly apprehended, is only one vast scheme
of representative symbolism, a delicately articulated
and carefully enunciated Word of God to man. " With
out a parable spake He not unto them." We may not
be prepared to go all lengths with Swedenbbrg, and to
hold as he does that Nature is throughout, and in
the minutest details, a counterpart and metaphor
of things invisible ; still less may we be willing to
accept his arbitrary and often grotesque interpreta
tions ; but no thoughtful student in any department
of human knowledge can go far without discovering
his dependence upon representative symbolism for
the very tools with which he is to work.
Effectual symbols (the expression has an Anglican
sanction) are those that not only represent outwardly

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 147
either a past event or an invisible fact, but more than
this are actually charged with power to bring about
'results. The commission of an army officer is a good
illustration. The commission is really given at the
moment when the appointing power, be it king or
governor, has decided upon its man, but the " effectual
symbol" of the commission is the signed and sealed
piece of parchment or paper that empowers the ap
pointee to act in his new capacity.
Again, the essence of marriage undoubtedly lies in
the mutual consent of a man and a woman to be hus
band and wife. This is what constitutes the spiritual
fact. Nevertheless society rightly refuses to recognize
any marriage as lawful or genuine when the " effectual
symbol " of some ceremony, either secular or religious,
has been omitted. The invisible fact must consent to
let itself be expressed by a tangible sign, ring, ser
vice, certificate, what you please, or it passes for no
fact at all.
But while we distinguish between these three sorts
of symbols, the commemorative, the representative,
and the effectual, we must guard ourselves against
supposing that the three are necessarily exclusive of
one another. A symbol may be solely commemora
tive, or solely representative, or solely effectual ; but it
is perfectly possible for any two of these character
istics, or, indeed, for all three of them, to be com
bined in a single act or object. A good instance of
such a combination is afforded by our national flag,
which exhibits the threefold symbolism in its com-

148 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
pleteness. The thirteen stripes of alternate white
and red make the flag a commemorative symbol.
They recall the historical and unchangeable fact that
the Colonies from which the present States have
grown were, at the time of the formation of the
federal government, in number thirteen. But the
usage which provides that with the accession of
every fresh State a new star shall be added to those
already emblazoned on the field, makes the flag a
representative symbol as well, for the cluster is the
emblem of the present fact that in the unity of the
Republic as many commonwealths have place as there
are stars displayed. Thus the flag is seen to be at
once historically commemorative and politically repre
sentative. But more even than this ; for the flag
becomes what we know as an effectual symbol when
ever it is employed for the purpose of asserting sove
reignty. When the stars and stripes were first hoisted
in Alaska, the flag served as the effectual symbol of
the transfer of that territory from Russian to Ameri
can jurisdiction. Can we wonder at the power of
symbolism over the affections ? Can we wonder that
for a flag some " would even dare to die " ? I have
thus far intentionally drawn the most of my illus
trations from the field of secular life, with a view to
making it plain that symbolism is not an affair of reli
gion only, but that it enters and re-enters continually
upon the area of our daily interests and occupations.
Confining ourselves now to " effectual " symbols, with
a view to the concentration of our thought upon the

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 149
sacraments, we shall do well to make note of a cer
tain diversity in the methods whereby the effectual
symbols bring their effects to pass. A symbol may be
of such a sort as to become effectual mainly through
its didactic power as an object-lesson ; or again through
its control over the heart, either as a pledge of reas
surance or as a means for the actual conveyance of
blessing. That symbolic actions and objects do have a didac
tic or educational value, and that their effect in this
direction is a very real effect, Christian people now-
a-days are pretty generally agreed. It is in most
communions simply a question of more or less, — the
general principle is admitted. Time was when an
open Bible, an -oil lamp of antique pattern, and a few
other emblems of the sort found in printers' sample
books, made up all the symbolism the average Prot
estant would allow himself ; but now, even the icono
clast, so soft have manners become, refuses to lay
about him indiscriminately and holds his hammer at
a poise before deciding to strike. Everybody knows
what fierce battles were fought in Reformation times
over the sign of the cross in baptism and the use of
the ring in marriage. We must not say too hastily
that these contests were idle. So long as the sign of
the cross was looked upon by multitudes of ignorant
people as a form of exorcism, and so long as the
ring was supposed to carry a charm with it, opposi
tion to these really innocent tokens was certainly not
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150 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
been excessive. Men do right to resist strictly what
ever they honestly believe to be the symbolism of
falsehood. As respects wealth of didactic power the two sac
raments differ widely. The symbolism of Holy Bap
tism is exceedingly simple ; the symbolism of Holy
Communion exceedingly complex. In Baptism, the
lustral feature is the main thing. The idea meant to
be suggested to the eye by the "water wherein the
person is baptized " is the cleansing of the soul. Our
Lord in his discourses uses water as the emblem of
that which alone can quench spiritual thirst ; but
such is clearly not the mystical or figurative value
of this element as employed in baptism. Here its
main purpose is to convey to the mind, through the
agency of the sense of sight, a firm persuasion that as
the body has been " washed with pure water " so the
soul has in some sense, actual or hypothetical, we will
not pause to argue which, similarly been made clean.
" Ye were washed, ye were sanctified," writes Paul to
his Corinthians, remonstrating with them for their
lapse into the impurities from which the water of
Baptism ought to have cut them off as by a Red
Sea flood for ever.
When Baptism is administered by immersion, there
comes in the secondary symbolism of burial. The
man goes down into the grave of waters in order that,
leaving there the dead tissues of a former self, he
presently may rise again into the pureness, freshness,
newness of the life called holy. But for the sanction

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 151
twice given to it in the writings of St. Paul, this in
terpretation of the figurative significance of Baptism
would probably strike us as far-fetched. It certainly
cannot be said to commend itself to the mind of the
observer as promptly as the other and more familiar
translation of the sacramental action does.
Studied as an effectual symbol, Baptism is found to
have for a chief end and aim the transfer of the per
son washed and cleansed from one environment to
another. At least this would appear to be the teaching
of Anglican theology, for, in answer to a question as
to the inward and spiritual grace or blessing conveyed
in this sacrament, the child is instructed in the Church
Catechism to reply, " A death unto sin and a new
birth unto righteousness." But the only thing that
death and birth may be said to have in common is this,
that each marks a transition from one stage or con
dition of existence to another. By natural birth man
is brought into relations with society, he becomes a
recognized member of the human race. Similarly by
the new birth of Baptism he is brought into relations
with all the baptized, and from having been simply a
member of the race becomes also a member of the
society of Christ. So again with death ; that also as,
Christians believe, is an event as contrasted with a
condition ; it is not an eternal sleep, it is the gateway
from an old and inferior sort of life to a new and
different one. In so far then as the grace of Baptism
can properly be spoken of as a " death," we must be
meant to understand that by it as by a door we

152 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
pass from the worse environment to the better, from
a state of existence clouded and clogged by " sin "
into a state of existence made luminous and free by
" righteousness." All this of course is uttered in the
high and rarefied atmosphere of idealism. As a mat
ter of fact, we do not always discern this edifying con
trast between the lives of the baptized and the lives of
the unbaptized, — would that we did ! I am speak
ing of the theory of the thing. Possibly if we were to
institute a like comparison between the theory of the
State and the practice of the State, we should find
an even more portentous gulf sundering things as
they are from things as they ought to be. And yet
both State and Church, be it never forgotten, are of
God. We must not let ourselves despair of either
of them. Of the whole body of the baptized we cer
tainly may say with truthfulness, that as contrasted
with the whole body of the unbaptized, it gives evidence
of spiritual superiority. Armies have their poltroons
and families their black sheep ; but we do not for
that reason condemn the institute of family life as a
failure, or say of the army that as an instrument of
conquest it is useless. The like figure thereunto, even
Baptism, doth also now save society, for by it we are
born children into the family of God, and by it we are
enrolled soldiers in the army of his Christ.
I spoke of the symbolism of the second of the two
sacraments as being more complicated, and for that
reason more difficult of interpretation, than the sym
bolism of the first. Baptism, for instance, cannot be

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 153
said to have any commemorative character, except,
indeed, in so far as any usage whatsoever may be said
to commemorate the originator of it ; but in the case
of Holy Communion the commemorative feature is, as
we shall see, the most prominent ; I do not say neces
sarily the most important, but certainly the most pro
minent of all. - Baptism, again, is representatively
symbolic in only two, or at most three senses. Holy
Communion, on the other hand, possesses a represen
tative symbolism so manifold that it is perhaps im
possible for any analysis to do it complete justice.
I have always been impressed by the suggestiveness
of that sentence in the Communion Office of the Book
of Common Prayer in which we pray God that, by
the merits and death of his Son Jesus Christ and
through faith in his blood, we and all his whole Church
may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits
of his passion. " All other benefits of his passion," —
it is as if the soul of the worshipper despaired of ever
being able thoroughly to search into all the wealth of
meaning and of blessing stored up in that transcend
ent sacrifice. Remission of sin, — yes, that is one
thing; but how much more, who knows ? And so also
with the sacrament designed to put that sacrifice as
it were before our very eyes ; is it not just what we
ought to expect that the sign, like the thing signified,
should be, with respect to its contents, unsearchable.
Nevertheless, even as we may without presumption
or irreverence seek to look into the meaning and pur
port of the sacrifice itself, although assured beforehand

154 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH. .
that we can only know in part, so may we also with a
certain holy fearlessness essay to interpret the sym
bolism prescribed by Christ himself as a help to our
better appreciation of the sacrifice.
I pause here to observe that the controversy with
the Church of Rome over the number of the sacra
ments is, in great measure, a mere quibble of words.
Every theological student knows perfectly well that
other things besides Baptism and the Lord's Supper
passed among the primitive Christians under the
general name of sacrament. The Latin fathers seem
to have used the word in the sense of a sacred sym
bol or religious emblem of any sort. The School
men, with their love of exact classification, gladly
fastened the mystic number " seven " upon the sacra
ments, but had five or nine been needed by the
Church authorities of their day, no doubt the meta
physics of Peter Lombard and Saint Thomas would
have been equal to the emergency. Among the many
conceivable sacraments, Anglican religion recognizes
but two of which it is willing to say positively, first,
that they were " ordained " by Christ Himself, and
secondly, that they are " means of grace."
But to come back to our study of the Holy Com
munion. The first and, as I have said, the most
obvious of the aspects of the eucharistic symbolism
is the commemorative one. The Book of Common
Prayer, the only authoritative mouthpiece of Angli
can religion, insists upon this with doubled and re
doubled emphasis. " Why," the child is asked in the

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 155
Catechism, " was the sacrament of the Lord's Sup
per ordained ? " No question could be more direct,
and the answer is not less so. " For the continual
remembrance of the death of Christ, and of the benefits
which we receive thereby." In the Exhortation of the
Communion Office we have the same point urged, for
we are there told that " to the end that we should
always remember " the exceeding great love of our
Master and only Saviour, he instituted and ordained
these holy mysteries. So then, whatever other and
further estimates of this sacrament's significance we
may be bound to form, it can never be right for us to
neglect or obscure the memorial signification. Neither
are we left in any uncertainty as to what that is which
is commemorated. This frequently recurring act of
reminder, this observance of which it has been pre
dicted that it shall endure so long as man and the
earth maintain their present relations to one another,
is, in the language of St. Paul, a showing* forth of the
death of Christ. Such language suggests, even if it
does not assert, that in that death there had lain some
marvellous significance, some singular efficacy, some
thing to justify the calling it, as we do when speaking
devotionally and from the heart, a " precious " death.
Nothing is easier than to explain away by surface
reasoning the mystery of the great sacrifice. We may
accustom ourselves to speak of Christ on the Cross in
the same tone and manner in which we speak of More
on the scaffold and Cranmer at the stake ; but after
we have, as we fancy, emptied the whole thing of mys-

156 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
tery, flooded the entire field with the dry light of the
reason, we look up and there, to our unfeigned sur
prise, stands the Cross still, as of old, riveting the gaze
of the whole human family, in no slightest measure
shaken or disturbed, but rooted to its ancient place, —
the same easily explainable thing which yet will not
be explained it always was.
The truth is, the essence of the Christian religion
lies in the principle of sacrifice. There is nothing
on earth so deep as sacrifice, nothing in heaven so
high. It is the secret of true life, the witness of sin
cerity, the root and bond of love. We are constantly
reminded of this in our purely human relations. Sac
rifice whenever and wherever seen, if believed to be
genuine, draws admiration. Look about over the
circle of your acquaintance. Which are the lives
that challenge your reverence, — those in which sac
rifice is prominent, or those from which it has been
sedulously banished ? It is needful for man's spirit
ual well-being that his thoughts should be turned
as often as possible in the direction of sacrifice.
There is a call for some one perfect embodiment
and illustration of the principle, and it is found in
the person of Him who says in the hearing of us
all, " Lo I come to do thy will, 0 God."
Sacrifice has never been wholly absent from reli
gion. We trace the history of it as a formal rite from
the earliest times. The smoke of altars rises all along
the line of human history. A very dim and confused
notion of the real meaning of what they did, those

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 157
primitive worshippers may have had, yet must this
truth with more or less of distinctness have reached
them, that with the giving up of life in God's ser
vice there is associated the winning back of a better
life. The man who came to the altar, and left there
as an offering to God something that had cost him
toil and effort, and went away with a sense of par
don and reconciliation, was still a long way off, we
must confess, from the point reached by him who
could say, " The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; "
but he was on the way to that point, he was being
made ready to receive that higher truth. In the
presence of the cross of Christ, high and lifted up,
henceforth to be for ever recognized as the one au
thentic and supreme symbol of sacrifice, those old
altar fires flicker and die. There is no longer any
need of them ; for now the Son of God is come, and
in place of their dim adumbrations has given us
vision to discern that the real sacrifice is a thing
inward and of the will, only acceptable when pat
terned after his own. To keep always vivid before
the eyes of the mind, and ever printed freshly on
the remembrance, this truth that God's best revela
tion of Himself to man has been effected through
sacrifice, this is what we may call the first intention of
the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. We
do what we do in perpetual memory of the arche
typal sacrifice. Had the fortunes of that great ob
ject-lesson we call the Cross been entrusted to
tradition, the thing might have been forgotten, for

158 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
records are perishable, and manuscripts may suffer
mutilation ; but the consecrated observance, the hal
lowed use lives on. Not only so, but even had the
doctrine survived, what assurance have we that it
might not have dropped out of men's regard, lost
its hold on their affections, been distorted, cast aside
as obsolete, caricatured out of all likeness to itself?
Such a fate has befallen doctrines not a few ; it might
have befallen this one. But somehow as sacrament
the thing endures, outrivalling tradition in persist
ency, excelling dogma in many-sidedness, — a per
petual witness to the love of Christ, an unfailing
memorial of the tender mercy of our God.
An ancient name for the Lord's Supper is the
Eucharist. The word has never fairly rooted itself
in English speech, and does not seem to lose with
time much of its foreign look. And yet it has a
very simple and precious meaning ; " Eucharist " is
thanksgiving. Under what title could we better
describe the true purport of a service from first to
last so eloquent of gratitude.
But Holy Communion has other aspects besides its
memorial and eucharistic ones. It ministers to that
need of the soul which is best described under the
similitude of hunger and thirst. Faintness and ex
haustion are not confined to the body. The real self,
of which the body is but the tent or cottage, that also
has its season of weakness and insufficiency. The
law of nourishment binds everything that lives, be
it plant or soul. To possess vitality means, so far

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 159
as our human observation extends, to require food.
One feature, and it was a significant one, of the
ancient ritual of sacrifice was the feast upon the
victim. On what they slew they fed. They became,
as the phrase ran, " partakers of the altar." This
observance also Christ lifted up and glorified when,
in that upper room where He had gathered his dis
ciples to eat the Passover with Him before He suf
fered, He turned the paschal meal into a parable of
the true spiritual nourishment. " Take, eat," said
He, " this is my body." " Drink ye all of this."
" This is my blood." When we have become familiar
enough with Nature's processes to understand how
it is that common food is turned to flesh and bone,
and these mortal bodies of ours continually renewed
and built up by nourishment, it will be time enough
to start minute inquiries as to those more subtile
methods by which He " in whom all spirits live "
repairs the waste and loss to which the soul is sub
ject. Meantime devout and trusting hearts will con
tinue to take comfort, as for many generations they
have been taking comfort, in such sentences as these :
" I am the bread of life." " He that cometh to Me
shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me
shall never thirst." " I am the living bread which
came down from heaven." " If any man eat of this
bread he shall live for ever ; and the bread that I
will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of
the world." It is not necessary that we should
thoroughly comprehend the methods of spiritual nutri-

160 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
tion whereby such promises as these are made good ;
it is a great happiness to believe that as a matter
of fact they are made good, and that God does really
feed the soul. True, we ought never to forget that
the symbolism is representative, lest we fall into the
error of confusing the material with the spiritual,
so joining together things which God has put ever
lastingly asunder ; but neither ought we to forget that
the symbolism is effectual as well. The symbolism
of parental love is effectual to the conveyance of
blessing though we know not how. It is said that
infants who struggle up into childhood without any
fondling and caressing, most commonly show by un
mistakable signs that the loss of what they ought to
have enjoyed has told upon their constitutions. Bereft
of all the pledges of love, the poor little things show
like starvelings, even though they may have had as
much material food and drink as other children.
Disparage as vehemently as we may the value of
outward and visible signs, here is an instance in
which the lack of them has been well-nigh fatal to
life itself. The truth is, there is such a thing as
being too much on the alert against superstition.
To believe that when the soul hungers Christ can
feed it, that when the soul thirsts Christ can give
it drink, — surely there is no superstition in this;
nor do we superstitiously regard the symbolism of
Communion when we take it to be effectual through
the Spirit to this end. Christ is the real minister of
the Sacrament. It is He Himself who gives Him-

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 161
self. The earthly priest breaks perishable bread ; it
is the heavenly Priest who says, " Eat, and thy soul
shall live."
The real danger-line in eucharistic symbolism ought
to be drawn at the point when a disposition to adore
what is on the altar begins to betray itself, for here
we do come in real peril of idolatry. With one con
senting voice, the true prophets of God have from the
beginning warned man against the notion that God
can be worshipped under the form of any dead ma
terial whatever. The Roman doctrine of the Mass
evades Isaiah's invective only by the forced conclusion
that what is on the altar after consecration is not what
the senses assert it to be, but " the veritable body of
our Lord and his veritable blood, together with his
soul and divinity." * Once persuaded that such is,
indeed, the fact, the worshipper may with an un
troubled conscience adore what is on the altar. To
call such a one an idolater is slander. He is per
suaded that Christ is there upon that spot as actually
as when his sacred feet touched the temple pavement
in Jerusalem ; and, what is still more to the point, he
is persuaded that nothing else is there. Why should
he not bend all his worship towards the divine person
so enthroned before his eyes ?
The case is otherwise when we are invited to
worship Christ under the "form" or "veil" of elements,
which it is frankly acknowledged are what they look
to be, namely God's " gifts and creatures of bread and
1 Council of Trent, Sess. xiii., ch. 4.
11

162 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
wine." The appeal to the ritual worship of the
Chosen People does not help the matter. It is true
that the Old Testament abounds in material symbolism.
The tabernacle and the temple were full of it. But
of what were these material emblems symbolic? — that
is the all-important point. Invariably they were sym
bolical of relations between persons, never of personal
ity itself. The ark of the covenant, the altar of incense,
the shew-bread and the lamps of fire, — these were
all of them material things made serviceable for the
instruction of the devout soul ; but not one of them
conveyed the suggestion of a Deity resident within or
beneath the form. They were but tokens intended to
reveal God's thought and his intention ; they were
in no sense the environment of his person. From
the suggestion that gold or needle-work could in any
way become the investiture of Jehovah, the pious
Israelite would have recoiled as if one of Astarte's
priests had touched him. In fact, it was their stout
refusal to allow God to be worshipped by symbol that
gave the Israelites the lonely pre-eminence they
enjoyed. They were not more brave in war, not
more skilled in the arts, not better versed in philos
ophy, than some of the other nations their contempo
raries ; but in their doctrine of God they stood alone.
The account given of the ark of the covenant, that
sacred receptacle which in" their sanctuary occupied
the place of honor, brings out this point distinctly.
Other religions than the Hebrew made use of arks.
Sculptured representations of them may be seen upon

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 163
Egyptian monuments to-day. But what held they?
An ibis possibly, or a handful of scarabs, nothing
better; paltry images these of that divine Majesty
which neither the heaven nor the heaven of heavens
can contain. But listen to what the chronicler has
to tell us of the true ark of God. The sentence I
have in mind occurs in that magnificent chapter,
the finest perhaps of all the spectacular passages
of the Old Testament, the account of the dedica
tion of the temple. Of this august scene the sacred
ark, set down in what it was fondly hoped would
prove its final resting-place, was centre. Stood there
or lay there in it any material token, sign, or emblem
of the adorable One ? No ; there was a symbol, but it
was not that. The sacred thing there hidden was the
expression not of the person, but of the will of the
Almighty. " There was nothing in the ark," writes
the historian with lofty simplicity, " save the two
tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb
when the Lord made a covenant with the children of
Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt."
One chief provocative of the great revolt against
mediaeval notions of religion that passes under the
name of the Reformation, was the desire on the part
of the best minds to escape from such symbolism as
was set forth by pyx and gong and monstrance, to the
true and safe — safe, because true — position, that
things spiritual can only spiritually be discerned.
Two other aspects of eucharistic symbolism remain
to be noted, namely the two that are associated with

164 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
the name " Communion." Even when the word is
understood only of such intercourse as we hold with
one another, we see easily how poor and tasteless a
thing human life would be without communion. The
greater part of such enjoyment as we have grows out
of the interchange of thought and feeling that goes on
between ourselves and those about us. Cut off from
society, man sinks to something less than man. This
is the reason why people are sometimes found declar
ing that they would rather be blind than deaf ; a
contention that looks at first sight insincere. And
this is the reason also why, next to death, banishment
has always been considered the capital punishment ;
even as excommunication was ever reckoned, in days
when the Church dealt more freely in penalties than
she now does, the extremest form of discipline ; for
excommunication is, after its kind, a banishment,
being the shutting out of the offender from the com
munion, that is to say, the society of his fellow-believers,
— the declaring him an exile from the commonwealth
of God. We ought to think of Christ as coming in
the power of the Spirit to meet us in this sacrament,
as friend meets friend ; not, indeed, as friends who
meet on equal terms, but in such fellowship as Lord
and liegeman have. There are those among our
fellow-creatures of whom we say that merely to come
into their presence is like receiving a benediction.
We certainly cannot think less gratefully or less
reverentially of his approach and nearness whose
very raiment's edge carried healing in it for the touch

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 165
of faith. No doctrine of a real presence is so health
ful or so helpful as that which seeks to draw us into
the real presence of the living Christ. If we go back
in thought to the night when the sacrament was insti
tuted, and ask the disciples gathered about that board,
wherein their chief joy lies while they look and listen,
there cannot be any doubt as to how they will reply.
" We are happy," they will say to us, " because He is
near ; our comfort is in his presence, our joy comes
from his smile, our peace is in this holy communion
we are having with Him." This is what they would
say to us ; and what the real presence meant to them,
that it may best mean to us.1 We have his own war
rant for believing that it is the Spirit which really
brings to us the treasure of a more abundant life. It
is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh (even were
their fable of transubstantiation true) could profit
nothing. But besides this fellowship of the soul with the
Saviour, there lives in Holy Communion the further
1 Compare the story of the walk to Emmaus, as told by St.
Luke. The obvious inference with respect to the nature of "the
real presence " drawn from the facts of the Last Supper is some
times evaded by arguing that our Lord spoke in an anticipatory
way, and indicated what the elements were destined to be after his
decease at Jerusalem should have been accomplished. But at
Emmaus we see Him again taking bread, blessing and breaking it,
and giving to his disciples. When it is written that immediately
"their eyes were opened and they knew Him," can it possibly
mean that they " knew Him " as being in any sense resident in
the bread ] And this, be it carefully observed, happened after the
resurrection.

166 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
thought of a mutual fellowship among those who
in one another's presence take and eat. How scan
tily this truth is realized, how feebly acted upon in
everyday life, we know to our mortification. And
yet even such a meagre embodiment of " the com
munion of saints " as we do have is better than
nothing. We live by dreaming of golden times to
come. We are for ever reaching after and hasting
unto the vanishing horizon of our hopes. And of
nothing is this more true than of Christ's doctrine
of human brotherhood. It is spreading, slowly but
surely spreading everywhere. Little by little the
race is opening its eyes to the truth of the one
family. Purblind visions abound ; men are seen " as
trees walking," and all that; but the eucharistic
symbol of the one loaf is making itself understood,
and onward, through dark and light, we move steadily
to the end ordained.
Do we seem to have wandered a long way from
Lambeth and the Bishops ? It is an imaginary dis
tance. At no moment since our first departure have
they been beyond call ; for dissent as vehemently as
you may from all that I have been saying about the
significance of sacraments, take a view as much
higher or a view as much lower as you choose, our
very differences will but illustrate the wisdom of
these peace-makers, the Bishops, who insist that pro
vided men will only use the sacraments ; reverently
careful, in the using, not to omit the words and ele
ments ordained by Christ, they may, if they will, go

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 167
on and philosophize about them to their hearts' con
tent. Not so much by thoroughly understanding the
sacraments as by gladly availing ourselves of them
are we helped. The truth is, the sacraments are in
stitutes not propositions. They cannot be explained
in a hard and fast way ; the manifoldness of their
significance forbids it. It may be possible, and at
times necessary, to say that they are not this or that,
but to declare in set terms all that they actually are
is far from easy. In this respect they differ no whit
from other great institutes of human life. We speak of
"the press," of "the ballot," of "the jury system;" but
who will undertake to put into a single affirmative
sentence all that any one of these imports ? An insti
tute is like a mountain or any other great object in
Nature, you get the effect of it in a hundred different
ways that utterly defy classification. I cannot say
in a sentence what Niagara does for me, nor formu
late in set phrase the impression made upon mind,
heart and soul by a first look at the sea. Object-
lessons differ in kind from language-lessons, — they
are more intricate ; they appeal to a greater variety of
apprehensive powers within us ; they do not address
themselves exclusively to the logical faculty, but
are on good terms with the imagination also, and
take hold upon our lives, our hopes, our fears, in fact
all that is within us. You can dissect dead systems
of thought, you can run your knife edge between the
two premises of a syllogism ; but a living institute
must be studied in its movements and its processes,

168 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
— at the too eager touch of a scalpel the life flies, and
the secret of which you are in search goes with it.
Try, for example, to analyze the process by which
that holy institute the Christian home exerts its
influence, — it cannot be done. All are agreed that
a good home is an outward and visible sign of an
inward and spiritual grace, but who will venture to
declare precisely how and why it is such ?
We have to content ourselves with saying to those
who would break down the institute, — Destroy it not,
for a blessing is in it. But how the blessing came
to be there, and by what delicate processes of trans
mission it is conveyed, we cannot say in terms.
In a truly Catholic Church we shall have to recon
cile ourselves to a very wide range of opinion with
respect to the rationale of the sacraments. We can
not afford to purge out of our fellowship the great
company of the mystics, those to whose hearts the
eucharistic symbolism is as the very love language
of the soul. We may not be able to think about
Holy Communion precisely as they do, but that is
no reason why we should not partake of it together.
The man born without an ear for music does him
self no credit, when out of his own ignorance he ridi
cules the ecstasies of those who are living in a loftier
world than he knows anything about. Possibly there
may be similar differences of susceptibility in the
region of worship, and it is at least conceivable that
to certain natures the truth of God and the love of
God are brought home by sacramental symbolism

THE SIGNS AND SEALS. 169
with a power which, in their case at least, the sym
bolism of spoken words is unable to exert. On the
other hand, let the mystical souls be themselves
charitable towards the non-mystical. Let them re
member that to the rigid enforcement of a " sacra
mental system," so called, the disruption of the former
Christendom was in great measure due. It would
be undoubtedly a hardship were poetry to be ruled
out of life ; but we are not for that reason to forget
that prose is what makes the common medium of
intercourse between man and man, and that it would
be an injustice to insist upon the exclusive use of
the more beautiful, and, if you will, more perfect
form of speech.
The Bishops have therefore done wisely in setting
the boundary pillars of sacramental usage wide apart.
On the one hand, they make Baptism and the Lord's
Supper an integral part of the Church's life, guard
ing thus against the constant drift of theology towards
a philosophical idealism ; while, on the other hand,
they insist that, provided the words and elements
by Christ ordained be strictly held to, we ought not
to let ourselves be set asunder either by differences
of opinion as to the modus operandi of the sacra
ments, or by differences of taste as to the ritual ad
ministration of them. Idolatrous misuse is by the very
word " sacrament " ruled out on the right, a pseudo-
spiritual disuse is ruled out on the left, — another way
of saying that we are to use without abusing these
great institutes of God, suspicious alike of the old

170 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
alchemy by which the mediasval theologians sought
to transmute the elements into something that they
were not," and of the new chemistry which by a
wholly different process would vaporize them into a
metaphor.

V.
PILOTAGE.

It is a just and equal thing that every member of society should submit
to the laws and orders of it; for every man is supposed upon those terms
to enter into, and to abide in it ; every man is deemed to owe such obedi
ence, in answer to his enjoyment of privileges, and partaking of advantages
thereby. . . .
The same is also a comely and amiable thing, yielding much grace, pro
curing great honor to the Church, highly advancing and crediting religion.
It is a goodly sight to behold things proceeding orderly ; to see every per
son quietly resting in his post, or moving evenly in his rank; to observe
superiors calmly leading, inferiors gladly following, and equals lovingly
accompanying each other. This is the Psalmist's Ecce quam bonum!
Isaac Barrow.
The safety and preservation of the truth requires the ministerial office.
As the laws of England would never be preserved without lawyers and
judges, by the common people; so the Scriptures and the faith, sacraments
and worship, could never have been brought to us as they are without a
stated ministry, whose interest, office, and work it is continually to use
them. — Richard Baxter.

V.
PILOTAGE.
Over and above chart, rudder, and compass, a ship
requires the sort of personal supervision we call
pilotage. The safe conveyance of the passengers is
indeed the main point ; but to this end officers and
a crew are needed. Hence the prominence given
in all consultations over the well-being of the Church
to the question, How shall the ship be manned ? We
have already discussed the Scriptures, the Creeds, and
the Sacraments, — possessions that correspond fairly
well to the various helps to seamanship of which
I just made mention ; it remains to consider pilotage,
or, as it is more commonly named, polity. Happily
there exists no difference of opinion as to the actual
headship ; we all agree that Christ is in the ship ;
and where He is, there controversy as to precedence
dies. It is a question as to how we may most ac
ceptably and most efficiently co-operate with Him in
working sails and oars ; or, to go further back, it is
a question as to whether He made provision, before
his visible presence was withdrawn, for the main
tenance of order and method in the execution of the
task in hand.

174 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Whether rightly or wrongly, the Bishops at Lam
beth thought it plainly incumbent on them to put
into what we may name their invitation an utterance
upon this subject. The fourth and last of their pro
posed articles of peace reads thus : —
" The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the
methods of its administration to the varying needs
of the nations and peoples called of God into the
unity of his Church."
This opens the whole question of the Christian
Ministry, — - its origin, its transmission, its proper
reach and scope. It is a large subject to be dealt
with in a single lecture. I have no right to be am
bitious of doing more than to let fly a few winged
words of suggestion. Mere hints sometimes prove as
efficacious towards the actual reaching of a result
as labored proofs ; at any rate, they are apt to be
more kindly received by minds of the better order,
for it is always pleasanter to be led to a conclusion
than to be driven to one.
It is deserving of remark as a thing not a little
singular that so few writers on the subject of the
ministry should have seen fit, in handling their ma
terial, to begin at the beginning. Some start from
things as they are, and finding in the Christian com
munity of to-day a great and greatly diversified
company of officials called variously priests, clergy
men, and ministers, set themselves to constructing
some theory of the facts that shall show this to be
the best of all possible worlds ecclesiastical. Others

PILOTAGE. 175
go back to that period of Church history at which the
ministry of the particular denomination to which they
are personally attached came into existence, and are
impatient of any doctrine upon the subject that would
suggest or involve the need of earlier origins. Still
others think, with a late Bampton lecturer, that if we
would find the fountain of trustworthy information
under this head, what remains of the literature of
the sub-apostolic period is our true resort ; though we
no sooner reach this ground than we are met by
a rival school, assuring us that we ought by no means
to stop here, but to push on until we come within
the actual circuit of New Testament times, and face
to face with the apostolic men themselves.
But- even this is not to begin at the beginning.
I invite you to a line of search that runs back not
only of the second century, but of the first. I sug
gest that we look for the initial impulse that finally
brought to pass what we know as the Christian min
istry in those words of the great Householder, " I will
send my Son." Here we have an expression of pur
pose that antedates Bethlehem itself.
What I mean is that Jesus Christ is to be accounted
the first Christian minister, not in rank only but in
time, and that if we would understand what " the
ministry " is in essence we must go straight to Him
and study Him. Head of the race, He was content
to call Himself our "minister," and laid the foun
dation of the " historic episcopate " by washing his
disciples' feet. I am' not at all scandalized as some

176 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
seem to be by the strong language of the Ignatian
Epistles with respect to the function and dignity
of the Bishop. Even if the words should turn out
to have been interpolated, a thing quite conceiva
ble, notwithstanding the triumphant shouts of most
Anglican reviewers over Lightfoot's finished work,1
I should still be glad to accept them on their own
merits as testifying to a profound truth. To be sure
it startles one, for the moment, to be told that we ought
to think of the Bishop as representing Christ ; but
if I were to change the phrase a little, and declare
that no Bishop deserved the high title of " Minister"
who misrepresented Christ, it would not seem an
over-statement. The Christian ministry, — nay, I will put it more
strongly, — the Christian religion rests on the fact
that man is a creature who stands in continual need
of help. So plainly unequal is he to the task of self-
maintenance that he would long ago have perished
from the face of the earth but for aid rendered him
from without. I am speaking now of man in his
physical aspect, and as he finds himself besieged by
the forces of external nature. No animal compares
with man as respects the length of the period of
infancy. But even after he has been helped by
friendly hands over this long pathway of approach
1 Ignatian Difficulties and Historic Doubts. A Letter to the
Very Reverend the Dean of Peterborough, by Robert C. Jenkins,
M. A., Hon. Curator of the Library of Lambeth Palace. London ;
David Nutt, 1890.

PILOTAGE. 177
to maturity, he would still have small chance for
survival in the face of the tremendous odds against
him, were it not for the assistance that comes to him
through society. Single-handed, man would inev
itably have succumbed long ago ; he has kept his
foothold by dint of co-operation, and co-operation is
but another name for mutual help. What we know
as the Christian religion is best apprehended when
we conceive it as a divine provision for extending
to man in his spiritual relations a help akin to that
which in his temporal and wholly earthly affairs he
so evidently needs. It is pre-eminently a device for
seeking and saving what if unsought and unsaved
would inevitably perish. Christ comes into the world
as the great Helper. Quietly, through unobserved
years, He makes himself useful with his hands ; then
He comes out into the clear light of public life and
makes Himself useful by his words. "I am among
you as he that serveth," is his motto from first to last,
whether He speaks as carpenter's son or as Messiah.
The very word we use to describe the three years,
more or less, of his observable life tells the whole
story ; we name it his " Ministry." Christ then was
what I have called Him, the first of Christian minis
ters, and the key-word to the innermost significance
of his work is helpfulness.
We have next to note the fact that in actively
carrying out this ministry of helpfulness, Jesus Christ
made use not only of words but of persons. Himself
the first of helpers, He must needs have those who
12

178 THF PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
should help Him in helping. " He appointed twelve,"
writes one of the evangelists, " that they might be
with Him, and that He might send them forth to
preach, and to have authority to cast out devils ; "
" whom also," adds another, " He named Apostles."
Here, then, is a leading fact, full of significance.
Jesus Christ appears among men and announces Him
self the founder of a new social order, which He names
the Kingdom of Heaven ; and one of his very first
acts, as legislator, is to appoint a " ministry." He
gathers about Himself a definite number of men,
invests them with definite privileges, and charges
them with definite duties. We are not to suppose
that these twelve men were the only ones in all Judea
who were willing to leave their farms and nets and
shops in order to be his companions. Neither are we
to suppose that they were the only ones among the
multitude of believers who possessed the requisite
qualities for missionary work. Others may have been
as devout, others as true-hearted, others as able ; but
He chose twelve, neither more nor less, and these
alone He named Apostles, that is to say, messengers.
It was not left to the chance impulse, no, not even to the
serious inward conviction of any man, to commission
himself a messenger : the appointment came in the
first instance from the Head. " These are the men
whom I accredit," He virtually said. We strike upon
a principle here ; we see that the Christian ministry
bore at the first the character not so much of a task
assumed, as of a duty assigned. The Twelve did not

PILOTAGE. 179
say to Jesus ; " we have chosen you, and we will be
your ministers ; " but Jesus said to the Twelve, " I chose
you, and appointed you." So obvious a fact as this
would scarcely need to be stated, save for its bearing
upon other matters to which we shall come by and by.
That our Lord admitted twelve men to certain priv
ileges, and laid upon them certain responsibilities
which the great body of the believers did not share,
must appear to everybody who accepts the Gospels as
authentic, to be beyond controversy.
But was it Christ's purpose that this ministry
should extend beyond the term of his own presence
on the earth, or was it to lapse with his departure ?
Clearly the former of the two intentions was his ;
since we find these same men, after the Resurrec
tion, re-commissioned by the voice that first appointed
them to go out into the world in all directions in the
capacity of witnesses, preachers and absolvers. It
may be urged that it was only in their character of
men who had personally companied with Christ, and
could testify from memory to the fact of his Resur
rection, that they were thus sent forth ; and that for
this reason they could have no successors, properly
so-called, in the generation that followed upon their
own. This objection certainly has weight, and does
avail to break in some measure the force of what
would otherwise be the unanswerable argument from
the case of the election of Matthias to fill the vacant
place of Judas ; for we are expressly told that the
election was narrowed to a choice from among those

180 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
who had been personally known to the Lord Jesus,
and had been eye-witnesses of his risen life. But
when we pass to the Book of Acts, and to the unques
tioned Epistles, and find, as we do find, an officered
body of believers gradually coming into existence
without break of continuity, we can scarcely refuse
to acknowledge that, whether or not the apostolate
was intended to last over under that name, a ministry
that had the countenance of the Apostles, and, as we
may say, held from them, did as a matter of fact
emerge, and did as a matter of fact proceed to carry
forward that very work of spiritual helpfulness which
the Twelve were originally appointed to discharge. This
is all I am concerned to insist upon for the present.
We have for starting-ground, first, the fact that a
ministry was by Christ Himself established to help
Him in the work of helping others ; and, secondly,
the fact that a ministry answering to this one in all
that was most essential, enjoyed general acceptance in
the very first age of all, — namely, the generation
covered by the New Testament writings themselves.
Christianity, that is to say, set out upon its course
equipped with a ministry as an integral part of its
provision for the saving of the world. Man was to
be helped in ways many and various ; but notably, as
in the day when Christ Himself was here, by chosen
and commissioned men.
We have now to look with as close a scrutiny as
possible into the nature of this ministry of help. The
thing has scope and reach, method and manner, and

PILOTAGE. 181
these, to be appreciated, must come under analysis
both quantitative and qualitative.
Of course that function of the ministry which at
the first found exercise in bearing testimony from
memory to the fact of the Resurrection, soon fell into
abeyance. The body of men for whom it was possi
ble in that sense to preach the Gospel of the Resur
rection, died out. There were none left who could
say, " I saw Hun, spoke with Him, was blessed by
Him after He rose from the dead." This is not to
affirm that the place of the Resurrection, in the order
of Christian preaching, has ceased to be a foremost
place. Never since the beginning has there been a
time when the duty of preaching Christ risen and
living was more imperative upon his ministers than
to-day. But what I mean is that in making up our
estimate of characteristics vital to the very idea of
the Christian ministry, and of necessity lastingly resi
dent in it, this element of eye-witness is to be left out.
How and wherein may one who has never " seen
Christ after the flesh," make full proof of his minis
try, — fill out, that is to say, the circle which his
helpfulness ought to cover ? In seeking an answer to
this question we might, if we chose, place our main
reliance on the evidence of tradition. What men
have always thought about the ministry and its work,
that it will be safe for us to think. There is a good
deal to be said for this method. The great callings
of human life do retain their main characteristics
through long stretches of time, and in spite of the

182 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
changes that pass upon the world. In matter of detail,
in things accidental and incidental, there is altera
tion ; but not in the proper work of the calling itself.
Battles are fought with different weapons, according
to changed tactics, cases are tried under new codes,
diseases are treated by novel methods ; but the soldier,
the lawyer, the physician stand, in the main, in the
same relation to modern society in which they stood to
ancient. Their profiles are as distinctly outlined against
the background of human life in general as ever they
were. So true is this felt to be, that we are not for a
moment surprised when we find the dramatists of two
thousand years ago putting into the mouths of their
soldiers, lawyers, and physicians just such character
istic sayings as we are accustomed to hear from the
men who follow these same callings to-day.
There is no reason why we should not look to find
the like persistency of type in connection with the
Christian ministry ; in fact, we do find it. Chaucer's
parish priest draws our affections and holds our confi
dence as closely as if no great gulf of Reformation lay
between him and us. Nay, St. Paul himself, were he
to come back to us to-morrow, and resume his inter
rupted work, would find it in all essential points just
what he left it, notwithstanding the changes that have
come over the complexion of society meantime.
But this appeal to tradition would hardly be in
accord with the canon we laid down for ourselves at
the outset, which was to keep as close as possible to
the fount of ministerial authority, — Jesus Christ

PILOTAGE. 183
Himself. When He used the memorable words, " As
my Father hath sent Me, even so I send you," He gave
us the golden key to the inner significance of every
minister's work, and a standard by which to measure
the completeness of it. For since we know from his
own lips his functions as the eternal Minister to man,
we cannot help inferring what it must mean for
modern ministers properly to represent Him.
The Son of God has given us to understand that
He holds to the human race three distinct relations,
which, taken together, make up the whole of his
ministry. He is our Prophet, our Priest, our King.
As Prophet, He unfolds to us the truth ; as Priest, in
our behalf He offers sacrifice ; as King, He rules us.
All these functions of His He exercises in the world
spiritual ; out of the darkness comes the voice that
teaches us ; against a sky we cannot see rises the
smoke of incense ; on supports no mortal hand has
builded rests the throne. But these things are not
unreal because invisible. This threefold work of
Jesus Christ in men's behalf is as real as real can
be, and it is for the purpose of making us the more
sure of this that the ministry stands ordained. Those
who receive it are charged as the representatives of
Christ, his disciples, with a work closely correspond
ing in this feature of manifoldness with his work.
The same law of triplicity that makes such a striking
note of his mission is the note also of his represent
atives' mission. Answering to Christ's function of
prophecy, stands the minister's function of preach-

184 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ing ; answering to his priesthood, is the minister's
leadership of worship ; answering to his royalty, is
the minister's responsibility for pastoral care. In
what respect has lapse of time, the passing of many
generations, altered or abridged this classification of
ministerial duty ? In no respect, save only in giving
the modern Church a deeper and richer conception of
what the preachership, the priesthood, and the pastor
ate should be.
Take the first of the three departments of minis
terial duty, instruction in things spiritual, is it not
in its essence just ¦ what it always was ? Man has
still to be persuaded to believe in God, still to be
persuaded that this God in whom he believes so
loved the world as to send into it his Son to suffer
with and for us, still to be persuaded that fellowship
with the Spirit of holiness is the only guarantee of
peace of mind in this or in any world. These per
suasions do not come by nature : men are not born
with these convictions rooted in their minds ; they
have come, if come they have, through the aid of
others, who as God's messengers have spoken to
them, told them the truth. If these beliefs were
really native to the soul, we should find them as
serting themselves everywhere, without respect to
race or climate, or the measure of civilization. They
would be as rife in China and Japan as in America
and Europe. In point of fact, we know that such
is not the case. We know that these beliefs prevail
in lands where the Christian pulpit has been set up,

PILOTAGE. 185
where the voice of prophecy has made itself heard,
not elsewhere. Moreover, they are truths of which
the human heart and conscience have need. In that
sense it is true that they are native to us. They are
recognized, when once fairly seen, as being the very
food we require to keep our spirits from sinking
into death. But until they have been set before us
we do not see them ; and the setting them before us
in such fashion that we shall know them to be what
they are and value them for what they are worth,
is the preacher's task. He does but take of the
things of Christ and show them to us, prophet in
his name.
Some are of opinion that this work of preachership
is coming to an end. Partly because the clergy
have ceased to be what they were once, the only
educated class, and partly because such wealth of
new knowledge is pouring into man's possession
that old faiths seem likely to be flooded and sub
merged, the pulpit we are assured is doomed. The
conclusion is a rash one. As for the rise in the
general level of intelligence, so far from being a
discouragement to the preacher it ought to prove and
will prove his stimulus and spur. The preacher
differs from other teachers, in that his work is not
merely to instruct but to persuade. The truth he
has to convey requires a certain preparation of the
heart in the receiver, — the feelings must be touched,
the conscience wakened, the will moved, the whole
man roused into activity ; and it is hard to see how

186 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
any increment of intelligence can free a community,
any more than it frees an individual man, from the
necessity of being brought under the personal influ
ence of one who has been himself persuaded, if per
suasion is to be made effectual. The teacher's chair
can never take the place of the preacher's pulpit.
How was it at the beginning? Andrew persuaded
finds his own brother Simon, and persuades him.
Philip persuaded finds Nathaniel, and persuades him.
Here lies the central power in preachership; it is
persuasion. How then can any access of intellect
uality avail to make persuasion needless, or to su
perannuate the preacher's work ? Then as to this
promised inflow of new and unsuspected truth, this
enlarged knowledge of the universe and its laws,
why should that unsettle for a moment the founda
tions of the pulpit ? Whatever goes to enrich the
common treasury of wisdom enriches at the same
time the teacher of religion. The discovery of new
truths puts no strain upon the Creed of Christendom ;
that Creed is not a brittle thing that it should break.
What happens to the Creed when larger knowledge
comes to man, is simply what happened to it in your
mind and mine when we passed from childhood into
maturity, — it takes on a grander meaning, is inter
preted by a more worthy standard, in a word, is better
appreciated than before. Christianity is the religion
of light. It has everything to hope and nothing to
fear from more light. Time may irradiate the Creed,
it never will annul it,

PILOTAGE. 187
To the prophetic or teaching office the minister as
reflecting or representing Christ adds intercession,
priesthood. He is the recognized leader of his peo
ple's worship. Here again we come upon the ques
tion of transitoriness or permanency. Is worship on
the decline ? Are men ceasing to care to pray ?
Has the altar become a meaningless symbol ? and
will the voice of supplication presently be hushed
through all the world ? Some are faint hearted enough
to think so. But philosophy and history, let alone
theology, ought to make us ashamed of entertaining
such a fear. Man is a worshipping creature. The
book of his biography is full of the proofs of this.
As well forbid the smoke to rise, as forbid the
heart to pray. The great needs of the soul are per
manent, — forgiveness, quietness of mind, courage
to bear the ills of life, comfort in bereavement,
guidance amid the difficulties of the way, — can we
imagine a state of civilization, no matter how far
advanced, in which man will cease to feel a hunger
ing desire for these ? No student of liturgies can
fail to be impressed by the marvellous vitality of
certain ancient prayers. Most of them were origi
nally put into words by men who lived and died
more than a thousand years ago. Within that period
many growths have had time to spring up and to pass
away, empires have risen, flourished, and decayed, but
these simple forms of supplication have not become
antiquated ; no man wearies of the Collect for Peace,
and the Collect for Grace ; no one desires any new

188 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
thing in their stead. They are as fresh as they were
when they fell from the lips of the men who made
them. The very reason why they were treasured up,
accepted as the family jewels of the household of God,
was their indestructibility. Men saw that they had
in them that which could not die, and time has
justified the judgment. No doubt priesthood like
prophecy must adapt itself in some measure to the
circumstances of season and place. The temper of
one generation may be more friendly or more hostile
than was the temper of its predecessor to simplicity
and plainness in the forms of worship. One race
may take more kindly than another to ritual and
ceremonial. But these considerations are foreign to
the main point, which is, that the instinct of wor
ship, the disposition to look up, the desire to plead
with the mysterious power that holds the keys of
life and of death, is in us as a part of ourselves,
not to be criticised as if it were a passing fashion,
not to be ridiculed out of existence or bargained
with to come to an end and cease. Priesthood, then,
like prophecy is permanent so long as the age en
dures. What shall happen to them after that hid
den day when " cometh the end " none can tell ; but
while the world continues, and seed-time and harvest,
summer and winter, day and night, are what they
are, the pulpit and the altar will hold their places.
But what now of the third great office of the one
Mediator, the kingship ? Is there anything answer
ing to that in the work of the Christian ministry?

PILOTAGE. 189
At first we are disposed to cry, " Certainly there is
not, and cannot be. We are the citizens of a Re
public. There must be no ingredient of royalty in
any ministry that attempts to minister to us." And
yet if the main thought which has underlain all that
I have been saying be a true thought, if the ministry
of man to his fellow-man be indeed meant to shadow
forth and represent the work of Christ Himself, it
must be that there is something in this sacred office
answering to the kingship of the Lord. You will, I
am sure, acquit the suggestion of any taint of arrogance
or pride when I define that answering something as
being, what it is, the minister's pastoral duty. It is
hard to associate absolutism, or any of the offensive
features of royalty, with so simple, so inoffensive a
symbol as the shepherd's crook. And yet the best
and purest tradition of royalty after all is that which
identifies the sceptre with the pastoral staff. The
Homeric monarch is the shepherd of the people.
No fault can be found with a kingship which glories
in making itself useful. What more Christlike in
the line of conduct has been seen in these times than
the spectacle of the man whose style declares him
" by the grace of God and by the will of the people,
King of Italy," going deliberately into the city of the
plague, determined there to remain allaying panic by
his presence until the pestilence should be stayed.
The sceptre of such a monarch is transfigured into.
the pastoral staff, and men see in him a fulfilment
of the gracious words, " the good Shepherd giveth

190 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
his life for the sheep." Will any one care to deny
to the minister of Christ this royal prerogative of
service ?
Our own times have witnessed very considerable
modifications in the department of pastoral care, —
in large cities especially the change has been most
noticeable. There is about it vastly more of what
must be called, though with no disparaging intent,
machinery. We classify and specialize in the work
of doing good to a degree never known before, and
what used to be regarded as the simple task of
caring for the flock has become so complicated a
thing, that administrative gifts and executive ability
have acquired a market value, and are accounted
almost as essential in the Christian minister as good
ness of heart. And yet, after all, it is goodness of
heart that must lie behind all the activity and ani
mate all the mechanism, or presently we find the rat
tle of the wheels and shafts drowning the music of our
worship. As with the prophetic and the priestly sides
of the minister's work, so with the pastoral side ; the
pith, the heart of the thing has been the same from
the beginning, in spite of shifting forms and chan
ging methods and new names. The essence of pas
toral duty is sympathy ; in the eye of the true
shepherd his own flock is always his " beautiful
flock." To care for the needy in his distress, to
comfort the sorrowful, to cheer the desponding heart,
to win back the wandering, to seek the lost, and to
do this for the love of it, — such is true pastoral sue-

PILOTAGE. 191
cess, such the kind of service that best reflects the
royalty of Christ.
The question next presents itself, — and a deeply
interesting question it is, — Did Christ intend this
Ministry of his to abide in the world as an institute
or as a succession; which? By an. institute I mean
a form or mode of life which has permanency for one
of its main characteristics, but which is not so ab
solutely dependent upon a continuous existence that
it can by no means be reproduced or reconstructed
if once broken up. Take monarchy, than which
there could not be a better illustration of my thought.
We speak of the institute of monarchy, meaning by
the phrase that method of civil government which
accords supreme authority to one person who is
theoretically irremovable. It is of the utmost im
portance to the prestige of monarchy that there
should be associated with it the legend of a long past
during which power has been handed on from ruler
to ruler without break. Legitimacy is another thought
that consorts easily and pleasantly with monarchy.
Kings have always felt themselves strengthened, and,
in point of fact, have been greatly reinforced by the
prevalence of a popular belief in their divine right to
rule. As the anointed of the Lord, a king may do
and dare many things which subjects sceptical of
his being such, would not tolerate. And yet mon
archy pure and simple, monarchy the institute, is
really independent of both of these adjuncts of an
tiquity and legitimacy ; it can be established where

192 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
it has never existed, and it can be restored in lands
where after having once flourished it was overthrown
and put away. We speak of the English monarchy
as having lasted a thousand years ; but this does not
mean that during that long period there has been
a continuous and unbroken line of kings and queens
whose titles to the crown were flawless. It is the
institute of monarchy that has endured ; the princi
ple of legitimacy has suffered violence more than
once. Again, we have distinctions between different
kinds of monarchy : there is absolute monarchy, lim
ited monarchy, hereditary monarchy, elective mon
archy ; — these are all of them varieties of the one
institute, the only essential requirement of which is
that the social system shall be pyramidal, with one
man at the top.
Very unlike what I have called the institute is
the body known in law as the close corporation.
Here the element of succession is paramount. A
close corporation is made up of members empow
ered to fill the vacancies in their own number as they
arise, and who are thus enabled to secure for the or
ganism of which they are parts, a kind of earthly
immortality. But if, by any chance, death does be
fall the corporation, there is then an utter end. The
institute, as we saw, may be revived, restored, re
established; but the close corporation once dead is
dead for ever. This is the penalty it pays for resem
bling so nearly as it does, in assimilative and repara
tive power, the human body, and for enjoying a sort

PILOTAGE. 193
of personal identity to which the institute lays no
claim. Under one or other of these two heads, most
of the existing opinions about the nature of the min
istry may be marshalled. Men incline to think of
the thing either as admitting of revival and recon
struction when occasion calls, or else as a succession
to which the characteristic of unbroken continuity
is all essential. Which of the two theories is right,
and which is wrong? With some diffidence I ven
ture to suggest that neither view is defensible unless
account be also taken of the other. Before hastily
stigmatizing this line of remark as unworthy, it may
be well to consider what there is to be said in behalf
of each of the two sides. It will facilitate the discus
sion to call the one conception of the nature of the
ministry the institutional, and the other the succes-
sional idea.
In favor of the institutional idea may be pleaded,
first of all, the analogy of civil government, which is
itself plainly an institute rather than a succession.
The notion of a " social contract," as an historical
event of the remote past, in virtue of which man
came under government, has indeed been laughed
out of court ; but that it is possible for men to band
together, originate courts of justice, choose rulers,
and set up a state wholly out of continuity with any
previously existing authority, is too plain to need
demonstration. What is known in diplomacy as the
recognition of a new sovereignty — an act of frequent
occurrence — is evidence in point. But if the civil
13

194 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
society may, under the stress of necessity, or of what
looks like necessity, make to itself rulers and guides
who stand in no direct successional relation to any
antecedent authorities, why may not the spiritual
society do the same ? If a company of explorers,
adventurers, if you will, have the right, in entering
upon possession of some newly discovered and wholly
unoccupied territory in Central Africa, to set up a
civil order in virtue of their manhood, and of the
social bond that necessarily exists where two or three
are gathered together, why may they not also set up a
holy order, and call upon it to minister the word and
sacraments ? " Authority " is a subtle word not easy
to define ; but whatever it may mean, it is difficult to
see how anybody who believes both Church and State
to have come from God can deny under the one form
of social order what he concedes under the other ; can
admit, that is to say, the possible origination of a king,
while refusing to admit the possible origination of a
priest. Not to revive the somewhat stale illustration
of the desert island and the Bible washed ashore, let
us suppose every minister of the Christian religion, of
whatever name, the world over, were to be struck dead
to-night, would not the spiritual society, in virtue of
the powers lodged in it by the Head, be able to
reproduce the institute of the Ministry ? Hooker,
than whom the science of Polity owns no greater
master, evidently was of opinion that this question
should be answered in the affirmative. This is what
he says : —

PILOTAGE. 195
" Another extraordinary kind of vocation is, when the
exigence of necessity doth constrain to leave the usual
ways of the Church, which otherwise we would willingly
keep ; where the Church must needs have some ordained
and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to or
dain ; in case of such necessity, the ordinary institution
of God hath given oftentimes, and may give, place. And
therefore we are not simply without exception to urge a
lineal descent of power from the Apostles by continued
succession of bishops in every effectual ordination." 1
Again, there is the very powerful argument deriva
ble from observation of results. If a piece of steel is
shown me, I do not deny it to be steel merely because
I happen to know that it was made by the Bessemer
process. That process was for some time looked at
suspiciously as an innovation ; but it held its ground,
and secured establishment and recognition, and for
the sufficient reason that the steel made in accordance
with its formula was found to be good steel. It is not
to be wondered at that men should reason after a like
fashion with respect to the ministry and the products
of the ministry. The proper product of the minis
try is character. Bishops, priests, and deacons exist
primarily in order that souls may through their
instrumentality be rounded into symmetry, — made
what God meant them to be. Any ecclesiastical phi
losophizing that tends to blur this great central fact
of all, is self-condemned. The Church is God's device
1 Eccles. Polity, Book VII. xiv. [11].

196 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
for bringing spiritual fruit to perfection. If ever the
under-gardeners forget this, and from fear of "the
wild boar out of the wood " turn all their attention
to keeping the hedges in repair, the purpose of the
Householder is thwarted.
When, therefore, we see, as we cannot help seeing
unless our eyes are wilfully and persistently shut,
that unique product known as Christian character
abundantly developed under a ministry of the word
and sacraments that does not claim for itself succes-
sional validity, we are moved to cry, What does it
matter whether Holy Orders have the sort of legiti
macy conferred by unbroken continuity of transmis
sion or not? — here is the thing itself to produce which
Holy Orders were originally designed ; let us reason
back from the fruit to the tree, from the cluster to the
vine ; if the thing borne is good, it must be that the
stock from which it sprang is healthy. Moreover, this
position appears to be strongly buttressed by a most
suggestive precedent in Christ's own ministry. I
mean, of course, the case of the man whom even the
beloved Apostle desired to see formally condemned,
because, while following not with the Twelve, he yet
ventured upon casting out devils in the holy Name.
The parallelism here would seem to be perfect ; and
is, in fact, so singularly striking, that for those who
believe the Gospels to have been written for our learn
ing, it must be hard not to see in it an intended lesson
for us of these denominational days. The man was
in the strictest sense of the word a volunteer. He

PILOTAGE. 197
had received no commission, not even the most in
formal one. But he had, so to say, all alone by him
self, fallen in love with Jesus Christ ; and finding
himself, like Stephen, full of faith and of the Holy
Ghost, had assumed to exercise that primary function
of the ministry of help, — the driving out of those
evil tenants that bar the gate of the soul against God's
entrance. Very possibly some of the Apostles, with the story
of Dathan and Abiram fresh in mind, had looked to
see the earth open and swallow him up ; failing this,
the least they could expect was that his mouth should
be officially shut, and his exorcisms declared invalid.
But no, nothing of the sort ensued ; Christ was con
tent simply to utter that weighty sentence, which
ought to be named the golden rule of ecclesiastical
polity, — " Forbid him not, for there is no man which
shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak
evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our
part." It is true that we have in another connec
tion the contrasted saying, " He that is not for me
is against me ; " but there is no real conflict of pur
port in the two dicta. In declaring that whoever
is not for Him is against Him, Christ speaks in the
singular number, and what He has in mind is the
necessity of whole-heartedness in religion. Personal
loyalty, He is reminding us, admits of no compro
mises. "No man can serve two masters" is his other
way of putting the same thought. But in his com
ment on the doings of the self-appointed minister

198 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
whom the duly authorized Apostles desired to see put
out of countenance, our Lord uses not the singular
but the plural. The word is not " me " but " us,"
and for the simple reason that in this case the ques
tion of personal allegiance is not raised at all. It is
not so much as alleged that the man is casting out
devils boastfully in his own name ; he is confessedly
doing it in .Christ's name. But if so he must be
personally on Christ's side, and wholly on Christ's
side. He would be powerless to cast out devils if he
were not. The only trouble with him is that he has
failed to discern, and to identify himself with, the
true " stream of tendency." And yet, in spite of this,
what he does is not thrown away ; the little tribu
tary rills that flow with but slight momentum into
the river as it moves strongly on, may not seem to
add very much either to the volume or to the swift
ness of the current ; but in so far as they are " not
against" it, they may fairly enough be said to be
" for " it. The river could flow without any partic
ular one of them ; but they all help. Not to any
voluntary association for the promotion of Christian
ity does the promise run that the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it, and yet there is nothing to
forbid that the rivers of the flood thereof should
make glad the city of God. Surely this is a better
way of estimating modern denominationalism in its
relation to Christendom as a whole, than to go rum
maging about among the early centuries, bent on dis
covering the particular heresies and sects to which

PILOTAGE. 199
present-day forms of Christianity may with most of
likelihood be compared.
And this gives me an easy point of transition to
the other side of the argument, for the argument, as
I began by insisting, has its two sides. Although
Christ was full of charity for the volunteer exorcist,
and flatly refused either to censure or to silence him,
He showed by the very language He employed that
He considered the advantage to lie with the main
body, — with those who were serving under a system
of orderly appointment. What other meaning can we
attach to those phrases, " with us," " on our side " ?
Who are included in these plurals ? Clearly and
beyond all question the Apostles themselves. There
is a side ; God's battle has begun ; and the Leader
says to his staff, Don't quarrel with anybody whom
you find fighting in my name, even if he be nothing
more than a skirmisher ; he is on our side.
Let us look then at some of the strong points of
the successional idea. The great advantage of strict
notions with respect to the orderly handing on of
authority is that they make for the interest of rever
ence and tranquillity. Grant that there may be times
when it is needful to shock reverence and to break
up tranquillity, concede in other words the abstract
" right of revolution " for cause ; nevertheless, it will
hardly be disputed that alike in State and Church
reverence and tranquillity are desirable possessions
where they may be had. Hence even democracies
are careful not to dispense wholly with the visible

200 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
and audible welding process whereby the incoming
administration is fastened to the outgoing one. No
appearance of absolute fracture is permitted ; the gov
ernment is, as we say, handed on. This conserves
reverence for authority, and helps the maintenance
of quietness ; for legitimacy takes sanction from the
past, and even Republics grow stronger after they
have had time to age. The mere fact of our know
ing that not a civil government on earth can boast
of having held its authority in unbroken continuity
from time immemorial, does not nullify this sort of
reverence in us. True, we say to ourselves, there is
but one river of authority that flows on endlessly; all
power is of God ; but it is well to approximate as
nearly as we can to the stately movement of that
eternal stream. We will not needlessly and wantonly
break with the past. Hence we have in ecclesiastical
history the noteworthy fact, that spiritual commu
nities to whom what I have called the successional
idea is bitterly repugnant because they cannot with
out torturing the record reconcile it with their actual
beginnings, are often markedly tenacious of whatever
prestige may have come to the body denominational
by dint of long survival and continuance. They feel
that a slur is cast upon their ministry if it be ranked
with that of a sect born yesterday. But if there be
nothing at all in the successional idea, if the whole
notion of transmitted holy orders be delusive, anti
democratic, and unspiritual, why should there be,
under the supposed circumstances, any such pride

PILOTAGE. 201
of place, any disposition to look patronizingly on the
latest born in the denominational family ? Ought it
not rather, in its r61e of infant Church, to be wel
comed and to have everything made pleasant for it ?
It would appear, therefore, that even those who repu
diate in terms the successional principle, do tacitly
attach a certain amount of importance to it. They
are unwilling to base their ministry upon that idea;
but neither do they object to seeing that idea become
historically associated with their ministry. Other
things being equal, they hold it desirable that author
ity should be transmitted in an orderly and peaceable
manner, although if it were necessary to fight for the
institutional as against the successional conception of
the nature of the ministry, fight they would.
Broadly speaking, we may say that one of these
two ways of looking at the thing is characteristic of
the Catholic ; the other, of the Protestant mind. All
Romanists, most Anglicans, many Presbyterians,
make much of the successional aspect of the minis
try. With more or less of insistence they demand of
any one who proposes to exercise what are commonly
known as sacred functions, his ecclesiastical creden
tials. By what authority doest thou these things ?
they ask ; And who gave thee this authority ? In
the other Christian communities the full proof of a
man's ministry is looked for in the present rather
than in the past. Can he and does he, as a matter of
fact, convert souls from sin to righteousness ? If he
can and does, then let there be no minute investiga-

202 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
tion into pedigree, or captious search for title ; but let
the work authenticate the worker.
In the face of such divergencies as these, it would
seem as if any attempt at reconciliation must bear
failure written upon its face. The case looks still
more hopeless when we remind ourselves that these
contrasted estimates of the nature of the ministry
have their roots deep down in that subsoil of human
nature, which the ploughshare of logic does not so
much as touch. The causes that make some men
Nominalists and others Realists in philosophy, the
causes that have made your neighbor a conservative
and you a radical in politics, or vice versa, are resident
in a region back of consciousness.
" Out of darkness come the hands
That reach through Nature, moulding man."
If therefore anybody imagines that it is in the power
of council, conference, or synod to put forth an utter
ance potent to convert all the adherents of the institu
tional view to the successional idea, or all the adherents
of the successional view to the institutional idea, I can
simply answer that, for myself, I am under no such hal
lucination. I have no faith in any possible emulsion
of oil and water ; and while I admire the industry, I
have small respect for the judgment of those sanguine
mathematicians, who in their devotion to impossible
tasks emulate Sisyphus and his rolling stone. I am
contented to believe that parallel lines continued to
infinity can never meet, transcendentalists to the con-

PILOTAGE. 203
trary notwithstanding. And yet ideas that cannot be
theoretically reconciled admit sometimes of practical
adjustment. The solvitur ambulando principle applies
to other problems than that of motion. The differ
ences of opinion that divide men upon the subject of
Church polity are really no wider than those that
sunder them in the region of political philosophy.
Engage a group of statesmen in a discussion of the
principles of international law, provoke a club of
political economists into a debate over the definition
of wealth, propound at a social science congress the
question of the true nature of punishment, and straight
way almost as many judgments will emerge as there
are brains working. Nevertheless, the nations for the
most part live together in peace ; wealth, whatever
may be the true theory of it, is quietly amassed and
securely held ; and prison discipline is maintained.
It is true, as I have already admitted, that behind our
unity in these civil and social matters there lies the
hidden arm of force, ready at any moment, as repre
senting the convictions of the greater number, to pound
us into unity if we attempt anything subversive of
the established order. Yet, surely, Christians ought,
sooner or later, to learn under the compulsion of love
the lessons which citizens have to be taught by the
compulsion of force.
At any rate the men of the Lambeth Conference of
1888 were sanguine enough to account such an im
proved state of things at least imaginable, even if not
imminent or probable. Their utterance upon the sub-

204 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ject of the ministry has been, as was naturally to be ex
pected, more sharply criticised than any other portion
of their platform. Some have seen in it an offensive
assertion of prerogative ; others have interpreted it
as an invitation to all men to turn Anglican without
delay ; still others have been moved to ask, Who are
these Bishops that they should venture thus to speak
before they have been spoken to ? And yet these
ministers of Christ in conference assembled could
scarcely have used more carefully guarded language,
supposing them to have felt it their duty to say any
thing at all upon the subject. All they did was to
suggest a modus vivendi. Carefully avoiding the well-
known phrase "Apostolical Succession," which would
have committed them hopelessly to a particular phi
losophy of the ministry, and made the winning of those
who hold to the institutional idea impossible, they
fastened on certain words, the characteristic of which
is, that they express a fact without at all insisting
upon any theory of the fact. " The Historic Episco
pate," they said, " locally adapted in the methods of
its administration to the varying needs of the nations
and peoples called of God into the unity of his
Church." That government by oversight, which is
what " episcopacy " when translated means, has been
historically the prevailing method of polity in Chris
tendom, certainly from the second century onwards, is
beyond dispute. That associated with this episcopacy
there has been a constant endeavor (whether success
ful or no, I am not now arguing) to maintain orderly

PILOTAGE. 205
succession, nobody denies. To what then does the
Bishops' suggestion amount except to this, that if we
are to have organic unity at all, it is more reasonable
to expect that it should be brought about under this
method of pilotage than under any other. There would
seem to be nothing either unreasonable or arrogant
in this. It is a simple falling back on fact. Think
as you please, the Bishops seem to say, about the
nature and the sanction of the Christian ministry.
All we have to urge is that if a harmonious and self-
consistent method of administering the word and the
sacraments is the thing sought, the voice of human
experience uttering itself through history suggests
that a system of oversight safe-guarded by careful
ness in the transmission of authority is the more
excellent way. Had the Bishops said, " Take our
word for it, there has been no break anywhere in
our dynasty;" had they said, " Be ye sure of this, that
unless you company with us there is no grace in you,"
they would, indeed, as seekers after reconciliation, have
made themselves a gazing-stock. But these are the
things, be it observed, which they did not say.
If it be urged that there is a little interval of cloudi
ness between the New Testament days, when we see
Christ appointing Apostles and St. Paul appointing
deputies, and those not much later days, when by the
acknowledgment of all historians the system of over
sight is found everywhere established throughout
Christendom, the answer is, that however fatal this
circumstance may be, to alleged demonstrations of

206 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
" apostolical succession," it does not lay so much as
a feather's weight of opprobrium upon the argument
for " the historic episcopate." As is well known, the
authentic Christian literature of the times immedi
ately subsequent to the Apostolic age, is not abundant.
The Church grew noiselessly.
" The towers of Ilium like a mist arose.''
The city of God came not with observation, and the
builders were more careful to do their work than to
leave records of the process. If, however, as soon as
we come to the place where hints and vestiges begin
to abound, we again find the method of appointment
and commission as evidently the prevalent one, as we
saw it to be in the days on the other side of the cloud,
certainly the presumption, to use no stronger word, is
in favor of the belief that what was historical before,
and has been historical since, was also historical dur
ing that interval period upon which doubt has, in post-
Reformation times, been cast. And yet a presump
tion, strong as it may be, cannot be made the basis of
a proof ; and the Bishops did that for which posterity
will thank them, when they took the Historic Episco
pate rather than the Apostolical Succession for the
key-note of their appeal.

VI.
A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED.

Politics are from God; not only allowing and approving governments,
but commanding them, for the better manifestation of his own glory, and
men's greater good, temporal and spiritual. Hence it is evident that
politics, both civil and ecclesiastical, belong unto theology, and
are but a branch of the same. — George Lavvson.
Yes, by willing angels ; by the Hoi)' Ghost; by the inspired Word; by
indestructible sacraments; by many instruments and intermediates; but
chiefest of all by his own direct power in men both good and bad, in one
inspiring and in the other restraining, — He triumphantly defends the
Church and turns all her defeats into victories; putting her out among the
instabilities of the world and the whirl of its mutations as one thing that
cannot be shaken ; overthrowing nations, but preserving her; rolling a tide
here, in which empires, races, tongues, philosophies, arts, landmarks, codes,
thrones, and every conceivable grandeur and fancied immortality are
made to sink aud disappear like foundered ships, while on this same tide,
and over its peopled sepulchres, He causes this one indestructible to ride.
N. J. Burton.

VI.
A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED.
In commending to English-speaking Christendom
a particular form of governance and ministry as most
agreeable to past precedent taken in the large, the
Bishops at Lambeth were careful to speak guardedly.
Had they supplemented their mention of the Historic
Episcopate with nothing more gracious than Pilate's
peremptory " What I have written I have written,"
the utterance which they intended as an invitation
would certainly have been construed as a demand.
As men appreciative of contemporary fact, while not
irreverent towards old tradition, they chose other
wise. Cheerfully tolerant of those lines of national
diversity which they knew it to have been the con
stant endeavor of the papal policy to wipe out, they
phrased their thought about governmental unity as
follows : " The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in
the methods of its administration to the varying needs
of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity
of his Church."
Nothing could be more evident than the intention
here to distinguish between what is permanent and
what is variable in connection with the episcopal
14

210 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
regimen. We have already studied the essentials of
episcopacy, as such, and found them to be reducible
under the two heads of Christlikeness as respects the
exercise of a threefold function, and continuity, pre
sumable even if not demonstrable, as respects the
tenure and transfer of authority. These central char
acteristics admit of no subtraction, they are of the
essence of the thing ; but whatever is more than
these may count for surplusage.
Few Americans, for instance, a hundred years ago,
had any more adequate notion of a bishop's attributes
than was conveyed by the engraved portraits of emi
nent prelates of the Georgian period that, here or
there adorned the walls of some colonial governor or
Church-of-England townsman. The full-bottomed
wig and ample display of lawn that made the body
of the picture, together with the mitre and pastoral
staff skilfully worked in as marginal features of the
plate, were most impressive in their way ; but the
savor was distinctly a savor of the things seen and
temporal. This disposition to look askance at epis
copacy as being presumably first cousin to royalty,
was, of course, strongest in the States that had been
originally founded in the anti-prelatical interest ; but
no doubt it was well-pronounced all along the coast.
It must be confessed that the solicitude of the
new democracy was not unnatural. Those were
Erastian days ; and the very mention of episcopacy
carried with it thoughts of lions, unicorns, kings,
lords, and commons. As well might an ardent non-

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 211
juror of Sussex or Kent have tried to persuade the
village squire at a parish dinner to make two separ
ate toasts of Throne and Altar, as White or Seabury
have labored to convince the Americans of their day,
that episcopacy was not in some sense an appanage
of the British Crown. How strongly this was felt by
White himself is evident throughout his pamphlet.
" The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United
States Considered." In the Preface to this brochure
he writes : " A prejudice has prevailed with many that
the Episcopal Churches cannot otherwise exist than
under the dominion of Great Britain. A Church
Government that would contain the constituent prin
ciples would remove that anxiety which at present
hangs over the Church of England, and yet be inde
pendent of foreign jurisdiction and influence on the
minds of many sincere persons." The very fact that
it had been found necessary to expurgate the Prayer-
book in order to banish the Royal Family from the
thoughts of the worshipping congregation, was of it
self prima facie evidence that episcopacy ought to
be reckoned as part and parcel of the old order of
things now put away for ever. Moreover, were there
not here and there in parishes, all the way from
Portsmouth to Savannah, glebes, parsonages, Queen
Anne Bibles and communion plate, and other visible
possessions, the legal title to which had, since the
surrender at Yorktown, rested solely upon the un
derstanding that the body claiming them as its prop
erty was historically and actually the successor and

212 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
legatee of the organization before known as The
Church of England in the Colonies ? And yet, in
spite of all the prejudices, convictions, and associa
tions thus engendered, no intelligent American to
day considers that there is any necessary connection
between a bishop, a full-bottomed wig, and a seat in
the House of Lords. We have learned something,
and are learning more. We perceive that the dis
tinction between the transient and the permanent, so
valuable in our studies of all things else, has value
also in the criticism of episcopacy. It is evident that
the acceptance by a people of this particular polity
does not necessarily involve a reception of all the
concomitants that in the mind of another people
may have been wrapped up with it.
An interesting question now presents itself. In the
case of the nation to which we ourselves by birth or
by adoption belong, what are the special " needs " to
which, in the "methods of its administration" the
Historic Episcopate might fairly be expected to
"adapt" itself? Here is this American people "called
of God into the unity of his Church," how shall the
Historic Episcopate mould itself into harmony with
the race instincts it here encounters ?
There is, of course, a base and unworthy sense in
which this notion of adaptation may be entertained ;
with that we have nothing to do. Any modification
of polity that should involve the lowering by a hair's
breadth of the standard of holiness whether for priests
or people would be fatal. There are American char-

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 213
acteristics to which the Historic Episcopate could
never adapt itself without playing traitor to- the
Bishop of bishops, the Shepherd of all souls.
But what are the great structural principles of
social life to which this nation, as a nation, stands
committed ? What maxims with respect to govern
ance and polity and organization have become such
current coin among us as to seem axiomatic ? Ac
curately to distinguish these Americana will be to
take a long step towards understanding what, in our
own case at least, the Lambeth language means.
Prominent among the better characteristics of our
national mind stands reverence for what is constitu
tional, as contrasted with what is arbitrary, in the
exercise of power. This trait came to us with our
English blood, having been perhaps intensified by a
century of life under a written constitution. Not
that there is any special efficacy in written consti
tutions which unwritten ones may not and do not
share; only it will scarcely be denied that the em
bodiment of great constitutional principles in actual
terms, known and read of all men, does tend to con
centrate, and by concentrating to intensify, a people's
reverence for its organic law. The document be
comes the visible symbol of that peculiar combination
of thoughts and feelings which gives a nation its
personal identity, and is cherished accordingly. The
Count de Maistre, a profound thinker on this sub
ject, in his dislike for whatever he suspects of hav
ing been extemporized, goes the length of denying

214 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
that there was or ever can be any such thing as a
written constitution in the true sense of the word.1
Had he lived to see the centenary of the Consti
tution of the United States, he might possibly have
modified the harshness of his utterances upon this
point. He was fond of buttressing his statements
with citations from Holy Scripture, and, had he
looked, he might have found a precedent for written
constitutions as far back as the days of the Judges.
"Then Samuel," the record runs, "told the people the
manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and
laid it up before the Lord." And yet, no doubt, the
material out of which Samuel made his book was con
stitutional material ; there was precedent, more or less
abundant, for the " manner of the kingdom ; " and De
Maistre must be allowed to be right, at least so far
as this, that when wise men write constitutions they
never do it off-hand and de novo, but only seek to put
into words things already found by experience to be
true. The great value of a constitution, whether writ
ten or only traditional, lies in its efficacy as a barrier
against despotism. This is what it means for a mon
archy to be "limited ;" the thing that limits is the con
stitution, which imposes on the kingdom its "manner"
or fixed form, to wit, the boundary lines that may not
be overstepped. We are accustomed to speak of the
United States as being that phenomenal thing, a na-
1 Essai sur le Principe Generateur des Constitutions Politiques,

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 215
tion "born in a day," and we puide ourselves on being
able to name the day ; but this is questionable talk.
The blossom of the century plant, when at last it
bursts, has all the suddenness of a miracle ; but only
the patient absorption of much now forgotten sunshine
has made the flowering possible. The Constitution
of the United States was not created instantaneously
out of nothing. Genius had much to do with it, but
Divine Providence had more. Its very first para
graph presupposes a knowledge of antecedent facts.
The Pentecost rather than the Fourth of July is the
day that ought to be honored as the real birth-day of
what we now know as civil liberty. It was then, to
speak accurately, that Christendom began to be. For
is it not clear that only by such a general diffusion of
right-mindedness as Christ's religion has brought to
pass, can government of a people by laws of its own
making, and rulers of its own choosing, be possible ?
Just in proportion as God pours out His spirit on all
flesh, can all flesh be trusted to walk alone. The
old attempts at free government perished, " having
not the Spirit." Even Samuel's limited monarchy
came to naught. But for a world baptized with the
Holy Ghost, better things are possible. Government
of the many by the few is necessary when the many
are in the dark, and only the few have light ; but when
the many get the light, then government by the few
becomes an anachronism, the hour for self-government
has struck. The de-Christianized race or nation loses
this self-governing faculty ; and that is the very peril

216 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
which is confronting as to-day. The human body, as
St. Paul so clearly discerned, is the only adequate
emblem or parable of the perfect social state, and
the human body, as Ave know, is governed in all its
motions by a pervasive indwelling spirit. The power
that opens or shuts the hand is a power transmitted
along threads of communication which are hidden, and
it asserts itself from within. When the crutch and
the splint are brought into use, it is instantly per
ceived by observers that something has gone wrong.
Hurt of one sort or another must have befallen the
man, we say, or these outward assistances would not
have been needed. The healthy body has all the es
sential mechanism of motion within itself. This is
the image of the thoroughly Christianized community,
every member of which speaks and acts as he is
moved to do by the spirit of God uttering itself in
and through the conscience. That we are far enough
from this ideal condition, I need not waste breath in
showing, but that this is the only working hypothesis
upon which a democracy can hope to enjoy perma
nence is a point which Christian teachers ought to
emphasize more strenuously than they do.
Now the constitution of the Church — I mean the en
tire Church, "Holy Church throughout all the world"
— is an unwritten body of practical maxims which have
accumulated under the teaching of the Spirit. There
is, as we know, electricity in action, and again there
is electricity stored, put away in reserve for use when
needed ; there is light in action, and again there is

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 217
light garnered and laid up in the veins of coal. So
with the spirit of wisdom, for the Spirit of God is
the spirit of wisdom, — this also admits of accumula
tion ; this also may be put away in store, secreted.
Thus the constitution of any given State — and the
same can be said of the constitution of any national
Church — is simply so much accumulated wisdom as it
may have been given to that State or to that Church
to discern and to embody. The constitution is to the
government, whether civil or ecclesiastical, precisely
what the balance-wheel is to the watch; it secures
the administration of affairs upon settled principles,
rather than by freak or whim or passing impulse. If
America and England deserve to be called the freest
countries of the earth, it is because they, more con
sistently and more thoroughly than any of their sister
nations, have carried out and embodied this concep
tion of what government ought to be. This Anglo-
American ideal stands forth the most clearly when we
contrast it with absolutism on the one hand, and with
out-and-out democracy on the other. Under absolu
tism, the ruler is supposed to hold a deposit of power
directly intrusted to him by the Almighty, and what
he says is law ; under democracy pure and simple,
the voice of the people is alleged to be the only au
thentic voice of God, and though it shout one thing
to-day and the contradictory of it to-morrow, it must
be accepted as God's voice all the same. But under
a free government, properly so-called, the voice of the
people is accepted as the trustworthy index of the

218 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
divine mind only in so far as it may be found upon
examination to be in harmony with the great sum
total of accumulated wisdom into possession of which
the children of men have, through the experience of
many generations, been gradually brought. This la
boriously earned increment of wisdom is what makes
a constitution. Doubtless, that is the supremely-fav
ored society in which " the common sense of most "
avails to hold in check the inevitable irrationality and
waywardness of some ; only in defining and determin
ing our " most," we must be very careful not to be
misled by merely temporary majorities ascertained by
cast of ballot, count of heads, or .°how of hands, but
to look rather to that great multitude of the wise and
good of all times, times present and times past, whose
judgment on the points at issue stands recorded.
In view of the profound attachment entertained
for these principles by the American people, it is
plain that no episcopate how historical soever will
be likely to commend itself to them as having been
locally adapted in the methods of its administration
to their own particular need, unless it be a constitu
tional episcopate.
This is the secret of the deep distrust entertained
by many, of the unitive schemes urged by the lov
able and saintly Muhlenberg and his associates, in
the so-called " Memorial Movement " of forty years
ago. The plan was for the Bishops of the Protestant
Episcopal Church to go forward on their own re
sponsibility, and quite independently of any powers

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 219
conferred on them in terms at their consecration,

to ordain ministers of the Gospel who should serve
wholly on the outside of Anglican lines. But it
was felt, and I venture to think rightly felt, by the
greater number, that however desirable it might be
for the Episcopal Church to come into closer com
munication with those beyond its pale, it could not
be right for any Bishop who had taken upon his lips
the words, " In the name of God, Amen, I, N  ,
do promise conformity and obedience to the doctrine,
discipline, and worship of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America," — that it
could not be right, I say, for any Bishop, so pledged
and sworn, to perform acts of which neither the Con
stitution nor the Ordinal of the Church whose Bishop
he was, made any mention. To the working of a
constitutional episcopate it is essential that Bishops
speak and act constitutionally.
We shall return by and by to this question of
the connection between constitutional methods and
eirenic plans ; but, meanwhile, I note a second gov
ernmental principle as one to which the American
mind is indissolubly wedded, namely, legislation by
representation in contrast with legislation by edict.
As the constitutional principle is the guarantee that
power, whether legislative, judicial, or executive, shall
not be arbitrarily employed regardless of the com
mon understanding, either tacitly maintained or else
registered in some great charter, so the representa
tive principle is our guarantee that the current laws

220 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
of the land shall be the expression of the people's will
and bear the stamp of their assent. Here, as before,
the Christian religion enters in as the controlling
factor in the problem. How is it conceivable that
any people can safely be entrusted with the making
of its own laws, except it be a people in whose heart
are God's ways ? Just as really, therefore, may it
be said of representative as of constitutional govern
ment, that without a doctrine of the Spirit it is futile.
At any rate, whatever may be thought of the applica
tion of this doctrine to the State, there ought to be
no doubt of our duty to recognize its workings in the
Church. Certainly to the body of believers, if not to
the Commonwealth, the Pentecostal promise runs that
the law from having been an imposition from with
out shall become an utterance from within. It is this
reversal of the point of view that really makes the
difference between the two Testaments, and it was
upon this issue that Moses, man of God, went out of
the world's premiership, and Jesus, Son of God, came
in. This is the democracy of the Magnificat, and the
only democracy that can stand. To this idea of law
making by fairly elected representatives, the Anglo-
American mind is knitted by tendons that bleed if
you cut them, and no episcopate that should seek to
waive or to nullify this feature of our social life could
for a moment allege with any show of reason that
it had been locally adapted in the methods of its ad
ministration to the needs of the people of the United
States.

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 221
And here I bid you note the encouraging fact, that
with respect to the desirability of law-making by repre
sentation, American Christendom, with the exception
of the Roman Catholic portion of it, is already prac
tically at one. Churches organized on the principle
of independency cannot of course permit the exercise
of legislative power by any body larger than the local
congregation ; though even these have their councils
and conferences, membership of which is conferred by
the representative method. But when it comes to the
case of those denominations that aim at organizing
themselves on national lines, it is safe to say that
the difference of principle involved in their respective
methods of legislation is so slight as to be inappre
ciable. Save for a few catch-words of no importance
worth the mentioning, a man with his eyes shut would
scarcely know whether he was in the Presbyterian
General Assembly, the Methodist General Conference,
or the Episcopal General Convention. What does it
matter whether a measure pending in a deliberative
body be called a " canon " or an " overture " ? It is
substantially the same thing in both cases, namely,
an attempt to give shape to what is believed to be
the popular will, by the representative method. It is
true that in one of the bodies I just mentioned, — the
Episcopal General Convention, — the law-making has
to be done by what is known as the concurrent action
of two houses, each of which has a power of veto
upon the decisions of the other ; but this, instead of
making it the less American, only makes it the more

222 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
so ; for legislation by single chamber has never found
favor in this country, but, on the contrary, our civil
laws, both State and Federal, have to run the gaunt
let of two sets of critics before they can be engrossed.
For ecclesiastical purposes either "council" or "synod"
is a far better word than " convention," which to the
American sense smacks of a political flavor ; and it is
pleasant to think how entirely at home in the popular
branch of the national synod or council of " The
United Church of the United States " we should all
find ourselves.
A third American characteristic is fondness for a
strong executive, when this may be had without any
sacrifice of the guarantees of constitutional and legisla
tive freedom. Our people almost worship efficiency.
They like the man who in times of dimness and diffi
culty can say, I take the responsibility. In this re
gard episcopacy needs no adaptation ; it is adapted
already, and it is this very characteristic that to-day
is commending it to the American mind. Fatherhood
and leadership make the very essence of episcopacy,
and in the task of prosecuting spiritual conquests,
winning a people for God, fatherhood and leadership
are what are needed most. The father's love and wis
dom, the leader's clear-sightedness and dash, — what
missionary qualifications are there that compare with
these ? In fact, is it not true that every denomination
of Christians has already, in one shape or another, an
episcopate of its own ? Is there one among them all
that does not look with more or less of deference to

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 223
its leading spirits, its controlling minds ? So true is
this, that the late Dean of Westminster with char
acteristic ingenuity proposed that the argument for
episcopacy should be shifted from sacerdotal grounds
altogether, and made to rest on the well-established
sociological fact that power of leadership is the in
heritance of only a certain percentage of human kind.
With St. Paul to back me in my choice of words,
I cannot think that 1 shall seem to you to be lower
ing the subject, if, while dwelling upon this phase of
it, I call attention to the way in which efficiency is
secured in handicrafts. In the familiar titles " fore
man," " journeyman " and " apprentice," do we not see
reflected Bishop, Priest, and Deacon ? And is it not
true that such a partitioning of functions, such a
distribution of effort, lies bedded in the very nature
of things, quite apart from all question of apostolical
precedent and canonical usage ? Contractor, carpen
ter, helper, — can you build your house without these ?
Yes, perhaps, after a fashion ; but in house-building
on a large scale it is wise to allow for the employ
ment of all these. It is a homely illustration, I
grant you, of the truth that a three-fold cord is not
quickly broken, but then we must remember that the
highest verities and the humblest often lie close to
gether. The parables of our Lord are in the same
condemnation, if condemnation it be.
The Hegelian philosophy of the Trinity finds strength
in the fact that it makes appeal to the familiar data of
consciousness, and it may be that my work-a-day argu-

224 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ment for Bishops, Priests, and Deacons may not prove
the less persuasive for having been based upon the
experience of common life. Efficiency is intrinsically
a homely theme, and must needs draw its illustra
tions from the prosaic side of life ; but then we have
to remember that Martha's place in the one house
hold of God is as real and as necessary as Mary's.
The ministers of Christ are servers always, and of
servers it is required that they be found efficient.
Another principle very precious to the Anglo-
American mind is that of the maintenance of or
ganic unity by what is known as the federal method,
— the combination, that is to say, of the two ideas of
sovereignty and of what has been happily called " sub-
sovereignty ; " the sovereignty being resident in the
Union, and the sub-sovereignty in the States. Here
again we shall discover that episcopacy suffers no vio
lence by adaptation, but, on the contrary, lends itself
with cheerful readiness to meet what is required of it.
For, when we think of it, every rightly-ordered com
munity is a union of householders, each of which has
its head. Just as the molecule is the unit of crystalline
structure and the cell the unit of vegetable structure, so
is the family the unit of social structure. The aggre
gate may be larger or smaller, so small perhaps as to
be called a tribe, so large as to be called a nation ; but,
whether tribe or nation, when analyzed it is found to
be made up of families, each one of which, while con
ceding sovereignty to the aggregate, retains meanwhile
a sub-sovereignty proper to itself, each father being

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 225
the head of his own household. In ecclesiastical
sociology, what would seem to answer best to this
relation between the family and the aggregate of
families? Most evidently a like relation between
the group that clusters itself about one spiritual
leader who answers to the father, and the aggregate
of such groups. If now for leader or father, we read
bishop ; and for aggregate, read national Church,
have we not the very thing that corresponds per
fectly with the American conception of organic unity
through federalism ?
I should like to pause here and dwell upon the
highly suggestive and sympathetic bearing of all
this on the ecclesiastical system known as Con
gregationalism, or, in its still more elementary form,
as Independency. The great truth embedded in Inde
pendency, and it cannot be too strongly emphasized,
is the sacredness of the ecclesiastical unit, and the
insistence that this unit shall be maintained by a
personal bond, an actual tie knitting the teacher to
the taught. Independency insists that without the
molecule there can be no crystal, without the cell no
body ; and if in its zeal in this direction it has suf
fered the crystal and the body themselves to fall out
of mind and be forgotten, we ought not for that reason
to be indifferent to the value of the lesson which the
story of Congregationalism in America, and especially
in New England, teaches. The Massachusetts and
Connecticut parish of early eighteenth-century days,
conterminous as it was with the township, and so
15

226 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
ordered that the whole population, men, women, and
children, came under the spiritual headship and guid
ance of one pastor, was probably the best illustration
of the ideal of what I have called the ecclesiastical
unit, that Christianity in this country has ever seen.
Assuredly no bishop of Anglican lineage has ever, on
this side of the ocean, exercised a territorial episco
pate (understanding the word for the moment in its
simple sense of spiritual oversight) that could com
pare for general acceptance with the unchallenged
rule of an Edwards or a Davenport. That Congre
gationalism even on its own chosen ground should
have failed to maintain its standing order, is a fact
for which those who account the system an imperfect
and one-sided one, have of course their own explana
tion. Upon this phase of the subject it would be un
gracious to dwell ; my main purpose in referring to
Independency at all having been my wish to bear
testimony to the unspeakable value of the principle
by which it has ever set such store ; namely, the truth
that the rudimentary unit of the visible body of Christ
is the group of souls clustered about one personal
centre, himself father or shepherd according as we
account his group to be " family " or " flock."
Whatever bright prospects may be beckoning for
ward the Episcopal Church in the United States, of one
thing we may be sure, that if this primeval truth concer
ning the unit is forgotten, there is nothing but disaster
in store. No aggrandizement of the diocese can possi
bly make up for the loss of the personal tie that ought

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 227
to link a shepherd of souls to every separate soul in
the flock over which the Holy Ghost may have made
him overseer. Should God grant this unity move
ment success upon a large scale, the number of souls
to be cared for would be so great that bishoprics
would shrink to very modest territorial limits indeed
In that event Counties might become Dioceses, and
States Provinces, — a reversion in one respect to the
well-known purpose of the organizers of the American
Episcopal Church, who were ever solicitous to observe
State lines. Under such an arrangement, the organi
zation of the Church would answer to the organization
of the Country almost as face to face, the aggregates
of the ecclesiastical units corresponding to the aggre
gates of civil units perfectly.
But what of the difficulty at the other end of the
line ? When it comes to the matter of aggregating
our ecclesiastical units, where, some one may very
naturally ask, are we to stop? What logical land
ing-place is there short of the seven hills where Leo
sits ? Why should the Christian Church, spiritual
corporation that it is, take any notice of civil bound
ary lines, which, as we know, are here to-day and
there to-morrow ? Would it not be better to accept
the principle of oecumenicity as the Roman Church
presents it to us, and consent to merge all our
units in the one great Latin union which is so ready
to receive and to absorb them ? This raises a point
so interesting that we cannot but wish to consider
it, so crucial that we have no right to shun it. The

228 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
philosophy of national churches, the whole question of
their genesis and their right to be, is a matter that
greatly needs clearing up. As everybody knows, they
are the bite noire of Rome. It was the national char
acter of the English Church that made it what, before
these Tractarian days, good Anglicans delighted to
call it, " the bulwark of the Reformation." To fight
a nation up in arms for what it believed to be its spiri
tual liberties was found even by a world-monarch no
laughing matter.
But why, if we admit the desirability of any ag
gregation of local churches, is not Rome right in
the contention ? Why is not her inviting catholi
city a better and truer thing than our eagerly
sought, and as yet confessedly not found national
ity ? National Churches, I answer, find their sanction
and warrant in these words of Jesus Christ, " My
kingdom is not of this world ; if my kingdom were of
this world, then would my servants fight." Rome
has misconceived this sentence as seriously as ever
Pilate did. Its true import is to this effect, that
since Christ's kingdom is a spiritual organism it
cannot push itself by material methods, but, so far
as localization and delimitation are concerned, must
conform itself to such boundary lines as the civil
power for its own purposes may have drawn. The
State is the great force-organization, the Church is
the great love-organization, and the moment the love-
organization begins to say, " I insist that the territory
shall be divided thus and so," that moment it usurps

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 229
the functions of the force-organization, discredits its
own title of " kingdom of heaven," and lapses into
worldliness. The papal theologians are fond of see
ing in the two swords the disciples in the Garden of
Gethsemane offered Christ, a symbol of the combined
temporal and spiritual authorities ; but it is more nat
ural to infer from our Lord's words, " It is enough,"
that his purpose was to disavow swords altogether.
" What have I to do with weapons such as these ? "
He seems to say ; and his healing of the hurt of Mai-
chus on the spot points to the same conclusion. For
that kind of work, He would have them understand,
He was not responsible ; his servants had misunder
stood Him. How they have gone on misunderstand
ing Him through all the so-called Christian ages, we
know only too well. The true answer, therefore, to
Rome's demand that there shall be a world-wide
visible Church is this, — Your motive is good, but
your endeavor is premature, fficumenicity is of itself a
most desirable thing ; but you are in too great a hurry
to catholicize the world. The love-organization can
not hope to be visibly unified over the whole globe,
until the force-organization shall first so have unified
itself. Hear what St. Paul saith, " That is not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and after
ward that which is spiritual." This is as true of the
ecclesiastical as it is of the human organism. Our
aggregate of units can be no larger than civil govern
ment will let it be. We Christians desire to see the
aggregates become as large as may be, and we should

230 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
hail with joy that advent of the " parliament of man "
which would make oecumenicity possible ; but, for the
present, the national church is the largest union at
tainable, and with this we must rest content. There
being no united world there can be no united church
of that dimension ; but no such moral impossibility
forbids our hope of a United Church of the United
States, for the course of this nation has happily been
peaceably ordered by God's governance, that it ought
to be possible here for his Church to serve Him " in
all godly quietness," which is but another name for
unity. This is our answer to Rome, and it is a suf
ficient answer.
We come back to the point from which we started,
namely, the feasibility of unifying American Chris
tianity by the method known as consolidation. In
the light of all that has been said, what practical
measures would seem to be possible ? One resort is
ever open to us, and perhaps, in the immediate pres
ent, only one, " Men ought always to pray." Nor do
we need, for that matter, to frame any new or un
tried supplication ; " Thy kingdom come," covers it
all. But how may we best follow up our prayer ? We
are American Christians, with certain grave respon
sibilities resting on us in virtue of our being Ameri
cans rather than Latins or Orientals ; what may we do
to make possible that concerted action on the part of
God's people in this land, the lack of which entails
such scandal ? This much, at least, to start with, —
We may recognize the fact that the material for the

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 231
United Church of the United States is ready to our
hand in the persons of all those who by whatever
hand have been baptized into the Name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. These constitute that
Church in posse which we would see become the
Church in esse. These make the citizenship of the
Kingdom. But how may the existing organizations
help the movement on ? Here are these ten or twelve
great churches ; what can they severally do to bring
to pass the one still greater Church ? I cannot without
presumption venture upon offering counsel to any
save that single one of the too numerous group to
which I am personally attached. To her, as her
loyal minister, I have a perfect right to speak, so
that I do it modestly and out of an honest heart, no
matter how little the thing said may deserve to
engage her thought.
My belief is that the Episcopal Church may best help
forward the movement we have been studying, by a
gradual and tentative moulding of her present Con
stitution into a closer conformity with the principles
formally enunciated at Lambeth. This statement of
essentials, although never given the force of statute
law by binding enactment, has, nevertheless, met
with such complete acquiescence on the part of the
clergy and people of the Anglican Communion through
out the world, that it may almost be said to have
been adopted by general consent. What now would
it mean to conform the written Constitution of the
American Episcopal Church to the principles of the

232 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
Lambeth platform ? This one thing it would mean if
no more ; the doing so would be the best possible
evidence of our sincerity and good faith in putting
forward the proposal in question. Some may think
that to let this consideration sway us would be a com
promise of our self-respect, — a sort of acknowledg
ment that others had had a right to suspect us of
shamming. But if our chief solicitude in this mat
ter be to preserve our dignity intact, we shall ac
complish little. The question is, Have not others a
perfect right to expect that, after having said we
would unite with them on certain terms, we should go
on and provide some method of making the accept
ance of the terms a practicable thing ? There is no
such method, nor can there be, unless by way of
constitutional enactment. Again I throw out the
caution, Let us shun the rock on which the Memorial
Movement split. Let all things be done in order.
Since the year 1789 the Constitution of the American
Episcopal Church has been amended fourteen times.
No proposal still further to amend it can therefore prop
erly be stigmatized as presumptuous or unprecedented.
One great improvement, entirely in the line of the
Lambeth proposals, would be to place at the very
beginning of the instrument the confession of our
faith.1 Surely the constitution of a Church is the
natural place to look when one is seeking to find out
1 The Council of Trent set a good example in this respect, if
in no other. In the forefront of its dogmatic utterances it places
the Nicene Creed.

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 233
what such Church considers fundamental to her very
being. But what do we find greeting us at the thresh
old of the Constitution of the American Episcopal
Church ? We find certain provisions regulating the time
and place for the meeting of the General Convention,
and specifying what shall be done in case of the break
ing out of an epidemic disease in the town or city pre
viously designated for such meeting. This is lament
ably, and but for the seriousness of the subject, I should
say, ludicrously inadequate. Doubtless, what prevented
the framers of the Constitution from putting anything
doctrinal into the first article of that instrument was
the sense of a certain ill-defined duty of allegiance to
the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
They failed to perceive, and considering the novelty
of the situation we cannot wonder at it, — that, in
drawing up a written constitution for a new national
Church, they were doing a thing that ought to work
the supersession of the Thirty-nine Articles altogether.1
They were undertaking to do for the Church what the
members of the Constitutional Convention, about the
1 So long ago as 1782, Bishop, then Doctor, White wrote as
follows with respect to the status of the Thirty-nine Articles :
" For the doctrinal part, it would perhaps be sufficient to demand
of all admitted to the ministry, or engaged in ecclesiastical legis
lation, the questions contained in the Book of Ordination, which
extends no further than an acknowledgment of the Scriptures as a
rule of faith and life ; yet some general sanction may be given to
the Thirty-nine Articles, so as to adopt their leading sense, which
is here proposed rather as a chain of union, than for exacting
entire uniformity of sentiment." (The Case of the Episcopal
Churches in the United States considered, p. 13).

234 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
same time, did for the State, — namely, to put in writ
ing the organic law. Their duty with respect to the
Thirty-nine Articles, then as now a part of the
organic law of the Church of England, was to incor
porate into the new Constitution of the Church so
much of their substance as they held to be essential,
and to let the rest drop. Instead of doing this, they
allowed the question of the true status of the Articles
to drag along in an indeterminate way until the year
1801, when at last a formal recognition was accorded
them. But it must be confessed that ever since their
transfer from English to American soil, the Thirty-
nine Articles have had a provisional and transitory
look. One of them has a title with nothing after it.
To another a saving clause has been added, to warn
readers of the Second Book of Homilies against cer
tain references therein contained to the constitution
and laws of England. Surely it can never have been
imagined that of such sort would be the permanent
dogmatic constitution of a great Church. Why not
look facts in the face ? The Thirty-nine Articles were
originally drawn up by the English Church as a defence
against the Rome of the sixteenth century. Rome
having, deliberately changed her base in the year of
our Lord 1870, does not our elaborate battery look, to
the critical eye of present-day strategists, a little out of
range ? Would not the embodiment in the first Article
of our Constitution of what the Bishops at Lambeth laid
down with respect to the Scriptures and the Creeds,
completely meet our needs ? In fact, upon any hy-

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 235
pothesis of consolidation, are we not in honor and
in duty bound, if we propose to stand by what these
Bishops said, to make this very adaptation ? It may be
that the time will come when the Thirty-nine Articles,
bound up with the Westminster Confession (not thrown
aside, but laid aside), will be given a place of honorary
retirement among the theological archives of the Eng
lish-speaking peoples. To disown these old confessions
would be for the great communions with whose history
they are respectively associated an act of deep ingrati
tude ; to disuse them might be an act of discriminating
wisdom. One other, and only one other, constitutional
point needs mentioning, and that is the matter of
worship. Probably no single feature of the unity
movement has occasioned more disquietude to con
servative minds in the Episcopal Church than the
absence from the Lambeth platform of any saving-
clause with respect to a prescribed form of worship.
Except as respects the actual words of institution in
the case of the two sacraments, the silence of the plat
form upon the subject of devotional formularies is com
plete. But does this mean that the favorers of unity
upon the Lambeth lines desire to alter by so much as
a letter the Book of Common Prayer, or to abridge in
the slightest degree the privileges of those to whom
the aroma of its devotions is as the breath of life ?
Certainly not. Perhaps no greater calamity could
befall either English or American religion than would
be involved in the disappearance of that particular

236 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.
type of Christian character which a loyal and faithful
use of the Book of Common Prayer engenders. The
really desirable thing is, not the destruction, but the
conservation of any and all types that are good. But
what is to hinder that within the pale of a consoli
dated Church various methods of worship should be
in use side by side — at least, until by general consent,
and in virtue of the law of the survival of the fittest,
one or another of them had come to be recognized as
the more excellent way ? A practical method of con
stitutionally carrying out this inclusive policy would be
the one already suggested, namely, that of classifying
local churches under such titles as Congregations of
the Anglican Rite, worshipping in accordance with the
Book of Common Prayer ; Congregations of the Ger
man Rite, worshipping in accordance with what are at
present known as Lutheran forms ; and Congregations
of the Puritan rite, worshipping without any liturgy
at all, except in so far as the sacramental words of
institution may be said of themselves to make a lit
urgy. This would not be absolute uniformity, I grant ;
but is anybody expecting absolute uniformity ? Is any
body desiring it ? To reduce the competing houses of
worship in our country villages even to three, would
be a distinct gain ; and with constitutional provision
made for " high ritual," "low ritual" and "no ritual,"
such a reduction ought, in a United Church of the
United States, to become possible. In that event no
Episcopalian need lose what is most precious to him ;
nor any Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or Methodist

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 237
suffer forfeiture of those precious associations that in
his mind are indissolubly linked to what he accounts
the simpler method of approaching the throne of God.
Meanwhile, the whole village would be the stronger for
knowing that one communion held both the Anglican
and the Covenanter in its embrace, — nothing having
been lost, much having been gained.
It will be said that the country is not prepared for
this. Nothing could be truer. The question is, —
Could we be better employed than in furthering the
needed preparation ? That a desired consummation
is a hundred years away, ought not to discourage
brave men from breaking ground and beginning the
approach ; and at any rate
" It never yet did hurt
To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope."
Of course, if one is persuaded that nothing in the
present state of things needs mending, his strength is
to sit still. But it is difficult to understand how such
a longing for a more perfect union, as evidently is in
the minds of many, should have arisen without cause.
So woe-begone and pitiful to some of us does the pres
ent broken, nay splintered, condition of contemporary
Christendom appear, that, as believers in the divine
origin of our religion, we cannot but seem to ourselves
to be shut up to one or other of two conclusions, —
either that Almighty God is bent on bringing to pass,
through all this disintegration, a better and truer unity
than has ever been before ; or else that what we see

238 THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH
going on before our eyes is the slow merging of the
ecclesiastical in the civil order, — the coming in of the
so-called "gospel of the secular life," the practical
obliteration of the Church, as of an institution that
has fulfilled its mission for the sanctifying of society.
For this latter alternative, in the face of a whole
world ying in wickedness, we are not prepared ; there
fore, we take the former. This drives us into build
ing-projects whether we will or no ; hence, if we vex
you by our importunity, try to think of us as of men
upon whom a necessity is laid ; if we seem the vic
tims of " a craze," try to remember that so Paul
looked to Festus, and Simon Peter to those who on
the day of Pentecost thought him " full of new wine."
To those of his Anglo-Catholic friends who with
indecent haste are for burying the Lambeth Platform
out of sight as a dead failure, because it has not
brought Christendom into unity within the space of
four years, the writer would commend one of George
Herbert's Jacula Prudentum, " Evening words are not
like to morning."
But, if build we must, only one point has to be de
cided. On what lines and according to what dimen
sions ought our edification to proceed ?
There are two perspective drawings of the Church
of Christ often hung up for us to look at and admire,
but neither of which, I venture to insist, deserves our
unqualified approval. One is a dreamy, Turneresque
representation of a building, large enough to be sure,
and lofty enough, but so completely wrapped about

A CHURCH BY LOVE ESTABLISHED. 239
with wreaths of mist, that we are left very much in the
dark as to what the structure is ; we cannot tell where
it begins or where it ends. The thought of the archi
tect is hopelessly concealed by the water-colorist's
too generous fog; the whole thing is a suggestion,
nothing more. The other picture represents a tidy
little building, snug and compact, jauntily balanced
upon a narrow ledge of rock. There is no mystery
about it at all. We see the whole thing at a glance.
It evidently will not accommodate many people ; but
then, nobody can deny that the outline is fault
less, the symbolism correct, and the masonry beyond
reproach. There is no mist in the air, there are no
clouds in the sky ; the whole thing is distinct, well-
defined, pretty to look at, small.
The one picture is from the hand of the liberalist,
the other from the hand of the sectarian, — Anglican,
sectarian, or another, it matters not. The former of
them gives us largeness without definiteness ; its com
panion, definiteness without size.
In our endeavors at unifying the national religion
and helping forward the People's Church, it will be
wise of us to take neither of these architectural
attempts for our accepted model, but rather to aim at
such lines of structure as shall impress themselves on
all observers as being alike generous and clean-cut.
THE END.