Church or State, more fully and completely representative. Church power relates to three things: First, to matters of doctrine. The Church must interpret God's law and frame her creed as based on that law. Second, to matters of government. She must determine, in the light of God's Word, her own form of government. Third, to matters of worship. She must determine, subject to the written Word, the rules for the ordering of worship. Now if church power covers this wide field and all power vests in the people, then back to the people at last must come every question of doctrine and government and worship. So the Presbyterian Church believes. Every member of her communion votes. These votes elect the elders. These elders rule. We freely move in the grooves of law, for we make the grooves. If we do not like them, we need not break them. We can change them. The process is slow and long and guarded, as it ought to be. Changes in any constitution, but especially in the constitution of the Church of God, should not be made in a spasm. But they can be had, and by the people, if the people will.

I pass now to the seventh and last of the underlying principles framed by the Fathers and set in this marvelous. first chapter of our Form of Government.

They are unanimously of opinion :

Seventh. That all church power, whether exercised by the body in general, or.........by delegated authority, is only ministerial and declarative; that is to say, that the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and manners; that no church judiciary ought to pretend to make laws, to bind the conscience, in virtue of their own authority; and that all their decisions should be founded upon the revealed will of God."

Thus we are reminded that in the last resort the constitution of the Presbyterian Church is the inspired and infallible Word of God. The final question with every Presbyterian conscience is, What saith the Scriptures? "Synods

and Councils may err," frankly say these men of God. Human standards, even as interpretations of Holy Scripture are fallible. The Presbyterian Church does not claim that she has any authoritative court of Christ, of which it can be said, "When it speaks, God speaks." We call the standards of doctrine and government and worship, the Constitution of our Church. And so they are, but only in a modified sense. They are the subordinate standards. The court of final appeal is the Word of God. "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, and man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or tradition of men." •

We reach now the last section of this matchless chapter. It is the beautiful, magnificent and irresistible corollary from the seven preceding scriptural and rational principles.

The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America are unanimously of the opinion:

Eighth. That if the preceding scriptural and rational principles be steadfastly adhered to, the vigor and strictness of its discipline will contribute to the glory and happiness of any church.

And here follows the closing sentence that should be written in letters of golden light over the door of every judiciary of our beloved Zion.

"Since ecclesiastical discipline must be purely moral or spiritual in its object, and not attended with any civil effects, it can derive no force whatever but from its own. justice, the approbation of an impartial public, and the countenance and blessing of the great Head of the Church Universal."

Bare majorities would never have passed extreme measures in our church, the knife of discipline would never

have cut clean through the whole quivering body of our church, and the bitterness of strife would often have been drowned in a deluge of patience and good will, if the spirit breathed in these words had always dominated in our Presbyteries and Synods and General Assemblies.

And this does not mean a boneless, pulpy, flabby theology. Much less does it mean a peace purchased at the price of any truth of God. It means a spirit that can keep the balances amidst the profoundest agitation of great debate; that will at any cost hear the other side and all of it; that will believe the positive statements and frank disclaimers of a brother in Christ, rather than even its own fallible inferences; that has learned something from the old battles with which the bride of Christ has been torn and rent, the issues of those fierce strifes often having proved that they were mainly wars of words. Would to God that across our seven-jeweled crown of church government, placed here by the Fathers over the very threshold of our Palace of Law-would that across this sevenjeweled crown of government might be set in immortal brilliants to be known and read of all the Presbyterian host, this ever memorable truth: "Ecclesiastical discipline can derive no force whatever but from its own justice, the approbation of an impartial public, and the countenance and blessing of the great Head of the Church Universal."

I have thus passed in review the seven great principles that enter vitally into the structure of Presbyterian polity. I have called them the seven jewels in our crown of government. They might well be named our seven great bulwarks-bulwarks alike of liberty and of law.

With these we face the foe, and in the name of the omnipotent Jehovah, fling down our challenge to the world, the flesh and the devil. We blaze their names upon our battle-scarred banner, and joyfully bear them aloft before our bannered host: Christ's lordship of conscience; wide open communion; heaven ordained officers, with parity of

rule; inseparableness of truth and duty; guardianship of truth; universal suffrage; and Holy Scriptures the last appeal. These are indeed bulwarks of liberty and bulwarks of law.

How they stand for liberty. They declare for the inalienable right of private judgment and enthrone the conscience as free from the doctrines and commandments of men, and to be bound by no man-made laws that are not also the laws of God. They swing wide open the door of church communion; and, like heaven's door, whosoever believeth may go in thereat. They unchurch no Christian. They shut no one out of God's banqueting house who loves Jesus Christ. They put a ballot in every hand that takes the bread and wine of communion; and the ballot may be cast by man, woman or child, in the fear of God for the government of the church.

But this large liberty is no license. See how these bulwarks stand for law. They declare for officers of rule and instruction authorized by Christ, the King, "for the preservation both of truth and duty," to preach his word, administer his sacraments, and shield his flock.

They brand as pernicious and absurd the opinion that degrades truth to a level with falsehood, by making it of no consequence what a man's opinions are.

And giving truth its regnant, transcendent place in God's Kingdom, they safe-guard truth by providing that all teachers of truth shall be sound in the faith.

And above all, they enthrone Christ, not only as Lord. of the conscience, but King of his Church and Lord of all, upon whose shoulder government is, whose name is the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end, King of kings and Lord of lords, who is far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, Prophet, Priest and King,

Saviour and Head of His Church, containing in himself by way of eminency all the offices of his Church. How could there be lawless license under such acknowledged Kingship, with Word of God as infallible rule, and officers of Christ bound by ordination vows to keep and guard the published faith as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture?

Law and liberty, therefore, hold their balanced and coordinate place in the government of our Church. We have "superiority without tyranny," "parity without confusion," "subjection without slavery." We voice the unity of the Church in our graded assemblies of elders, but neither in Session nor Presbytery, nor Synod nor General Assembly, does any officer come to pre-eminence of power or jurisdiction.

Such a Church must needs have stood for civil, as well as religious, liberty. Who that reads can doubt it? History is ablaze with the record of Presbyterian fidelities in the battles against oppression.

Her Kingship of Christ and liberty of conscience and election by the people, commit the Presbyterian Church to civil liberty as naturally and inevitably as the sun commits the day to light and cheer.

So, too, is she fore-pledged to education by the very logic of her systems both of government and doctrine. By the law of Christ her King, power rests in the people. Popular election of church officers, necessitates intelligence. A blind ballot is a deadly weapon. A sufficient number of them means possible revolution any hour in Church or State. Hence Presbyterians have always been, by preference and conviction, patrons of the school. Students flocked to Geneva and Calvin. Bancroft says, "Calvin was the father of popular education and the inventor of the system of free schools."

If now, under these principles, we have ever been intolerant, or hedged God's free communion about with extend