petites?" "Is an epicure or debauchee a meet person to be a senator?" "Is it not to be wished that all who sit at this honorable board might be of a religious character?"

How faithfully these officers of Congregational churches were consulted in important state affairs, and how closely followed their advice generally was, no one familiar with the history need be informed. Their opinion, however, was influential for its reasons, not officially dictatorial. John Cotton was largely influential in all the civil affairs of his Colony; and yet, when he, in a sermon before the General Court, tried to secure the re-election of Winthrop as governor, on the dangerous principle that the office belongs during good behavior to the office-holder, the people turned out Winthrop, and put in Dudley. With equally good effect in illustrating the falsity of their own principles have other ministers tried to preach candidates into their offices. In the war of the Revolution the preaching of Congregational pastors was no small contribution to the cause of civil liberty. The opinion of the elder Adams is said to have been expressed to a French statesman, that American independence was mainly due to the clergy; that is, to the Congregational ministers of New England. Nor was the cause of civil liberty, both in earlier times and in the War for Independence, represented by the clergy in sermons and prayers alone. They were fined and went to jail for the public teaching of the principles of freedom. They even fought as well as preached, and gave gunpowder as well as inflammatory addresses. I need not mention the amazing and

1 See, for examples, the Essay of Rev. William C. Fowler on the Ministers of Connecticut in the Revolution, Centennial Papers, pp.

ludicrous courage of Dr. Daggett, who rode his ancient black mare furiously to battle as he went, fowlingpiece in hand, alone to oppose a column of twenty-five hundred British soldiers. The annals written for this purpose have recorded not a few instances of equally genuine and wiser courage in Congregational pastors. We may readily believe that the ministers of New England were "not parasites on the body politic." We may even refrain from dissent to the sweeping declaration of Dr. Leavitt, when he goes so far as to say, "The Puritan Congregationalists have been the means, under God, of nearly all the civil and religious liberty in the world."1 Certain it is, that whatever contributions they made to the world's civil liberty they made out of the treasury of principles of liberty in the Church state accumulated for all the Lord's people. As the freemen of the Lord, having a voice in all the affairs of the Church, they proposed so to organize the State as to have a voice there also, and, having once gained that position in the State, they proposed to retain and defend it.2

Nor has the service of this principle of our church order, which cultivates the spirit of a reasonable individualism, been wanting to the cause of reform in civil iniquities. When we learn that the motion made in 1788 by the Association of the Western District of New-Haven County, declaring the slave-trade to be unjust, and calling for its abolition by law, preceded the year in which the State of Connecticut actually enacted laws for its abolition, we have an indication of the course of this entire reform. How unjust the charge would be that Congregational pastors and churches in

1 Christian Spectator, 1832, p. 377.

2 See Congregational Tracts, No. II., p. 1.

general stood in the way of the antislavery movement, may be abundantly proved.1 The same impulse to move the disinthralling of men has, in general, incited our Congregational pastors and churches to use their influence as citizens in favor of the so-called temperance reform. The early course of this reform in Connecticut is traced somewhat in detail in a volume of Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of that State. The sermon of Rev. Ebenezer Porter, preached in 1806, made the first profound impression upon the public mind. Roused by this sermon, the South Association of Litchfield County appointed a committee to report a remedy for the evil of intemperance. In 1812 the Fairfield West Association issued a temperance address to its ministers and churches: on the 13th of October in that year, they, the first of all ecclesiastical bodies to adopt this measure, resolved, "that the customary use of ardent spirits shall be wholly discontinued from this hour." In 1826 the six memorable sermons of Lyman Beecher were delivered in Litchfield, Conn. In 1827 the General Association placed itself upon record as to this reform. The earliest and most efficient county temperance society in the State was organized Sept. 2, 1828, in the Congregational church at Haddam. The State Temperance Society had as its first president Dr. Jeremiah Day, President of Yale College; and Congregational clergymen were its first chairman of the executive committee, and corresponding secretary. Of a list of about forty most notable temperance publications issued in this State between the years 1806 and 1840, the great majority are by the pens of Congregational pastors. It is doubtful whether the narrative of the reform of

1 See Contributions to Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, p. 58, f, and art. of Dr. Cushing in Congregational Quarterly, 1876, pp. 550, ff.

the intemperate in other New-England States would be notably unlike that in Connecticut.

In general, and in all places, the adherents of Congregational principles have been among the foremost to act as Christian citizens for the remedying of public wrongs and for the reforming of public morals. And the very point to be noticed in this connection lies in the truth that this prompt and efficient activity is the direct outgrowth of the effort to apply the principles of a true church polity to the citizenship of the members of the churches. Of those principles, the one which affirms the exclusive rulership of Jesus Christ over his churches, and the one which places every individual under that rulership upon a platform of equality and self-control with every other, have exercised directest and most potent influence over the welfare of man in civil life. They have done much to secure the liberties. both of the churches and of the people at large. The former principle provides that every person and every church shall, in the formation and expression of religious belief, and in the enjoyment of religious services, be free from governmental control. It provides also, that churches shall not themselves so far usurp the authority of Jesus Christ as to try by the civil arm, either to control other churches, or to force their own religious opinions and forms of worship upon the communities in which they are planted. The experience of our fathers shows also the weakness and inefficiency of an effort to construct a state out of the churches for the exercise of such authority over men as belongs only to Christ. The second principle stimulates and encourages every man in the endeavor to stand, both in the Church and in the State, beside every fellow-man, as alike entitled to the powers and privileges of a freeman: it also obligates

each one to concede to every other the powers and privileges which he claims for himself. It is largely under the influences from these religious principles, that modern society, especially in England and America, has been permeated with the ideas and spirit of civil freedom.

We close this discussion with certain suggestions as to fit conduct in Congregational pastors which have been made prominent by our theme.

Congregational pastors should be especially careful not to give to the people the impression that they are allied with aristocratic ideas and movements in history. To seem to be a partisan of any class injures the influence of any Christian pastor. Demagogism is peculiarly despicable in a minister. Few ministers, however, in our churches, have practised demagogism, or suffered from its just reproaches. Few have even been suspected of it. But Congregational churches and their pastors have suffered, not unfrequently, from the too plausible suspicion of being over-aristocratic. For some time in New England they comprised and constituted nearly all the aristocracy. The citizenship, the honors, the control, the offices, were in their hands. It has been said that in Connecticut, "every Governor in either Colony before the Union, and afterwards every Governor in the united Colony, down to the year 1811, was in his own town a member of the Congregational church in full communion.” The facts were similar in all the NewEngland States. There can be little doubt that no other so good governors were likely at these times to be found in New England outside of Congregational churches. There can be as little doubt that during these times the aristocratic position of these churches was separating 1 Centennial Papers of the General Conference of Connecticut, p. 165.

1