the ministers are not to suppose that a more real and efficient communion can come to the churches through any increase and compacted organizing of their ministerial authority.

In a closing word let me recall the thought to those pure, holy, and nourishing principles, from which we started in our excursion over rough and debatable grounds. The prayer for a manifested unity amongst his people lies still upon the sacred heart of Jesus Christ. Were he not our now glorified Redeemer, we might even fear that the longing for this consummation of his desire would weary and burden that sacred heart: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." To refuse the manifestation of this union for which Jesus prayed, and to force upon others divisive forms of manifesting a union in opinion or action which is not real, are alike to contravene this holy prayer. Schism, and hierarchical or ecclesiastical systematizing, engender each the other; and both are together to vanish when the Father answers the prayer of the Son by causing his spirit to dominate the entire church.

LECTURE X.

THE SELF-PROPAGATION OF CONGREGATIONALISM.

It is self-evident that the principles, the consideration of which has thus far been kept constantly before our minds, must have very important practical applications to the growth of the kingdom of God on earth. Other systems of church order, even those which give narrowest scope and most meagre acknowledgment to these principles, have, indeed, been integral parts of the historic manifestation of this kingdom. But the wider scope and more generous acknowledgment of the principles are necessary to the final manifestation of the kingdom. We can scarcely trace the organic development of the Church of Christ from his day until the present, without admitting that this development was during several centuries expressed chiefly in the hierarchical system of Rome. Nor can the history of the Jewish Church be studied as an organic whole without admitting the fact that the triumph of the spirit of hierarchy in that church did not utterly check its general development. Several of those elements of the true church polity which its later exhibition professedly derives from the New-Testament churches, these NewTestament churches themselves derived from the Jewish Church. Such elements of Congregationalism survived the compression and stricture which the Jewish Church

felt continuously, and in increasing measure, from the return of the exiles to the breaking of its bands in Christ.

We do not, then, claim that a free manifestation and obvious growth of Congregational principles are necessary to the existence, or even, within certain limits, to the development, of the Christian Church. That wider outreach and forward movement of those divine forces which make for righteousness and for the final supremacy of the divine self-revelation in redemption, and which we call in their totality the power of the kingdom of God on earth, is certainly not altogether measured by such thoughts as. have occupied us in this Course of Lectures. And yet these thoughts are most intimately concerned with the progress of this kingdom. They will be yet more and more intimately concerned with this progress as its centuries roll onward in the great world-period which is taken out of infinite time. The principles of the true Church Polity are by their very nature certified to have power to exert a growing influence over regenerate men. By this same nature they are made fit to exercise more and more of influence over the world at large. To Congregationalism considered as a matter of principles, the future obviously belongs. As a matter of principles, it is certain to triumph, and possess the church catholic, as fast as the church catholic becomes visibly catholic, and possesses the earth. We should have all the confidence in the ultimate triumph of this church order which makes the Romanist so strong: we should, however, quite purge this confidence of those elements of weakness, error, and violence, which have brought upon Romanism so much of her guilt and shame.

This certainty of the future, which belongs to these

principles, is made apparent by a thoughtful consideration, especially of those two which we have recognized as the primary and fundamental. More and more will the Word of God in Scripture, as that Word is read at the point of illumination where the rays of Christian reason converge upon it, have control over the constitution and life as well as doctrine of the church. More and more abundantly will the work of the Divine Spirit be manifested, more and more gladly acknowledged, among men. As the formal and the material principles of our church order gain more perfect control over all the disciples of Christ, these disciples will, in fact, be won to its other principles, if not to its name; and whether to the name or not, if only to the principles, we scarcely care to inquire.

A careful examination of each one of those seven principles which have been designated as secondary, or derived, will show that the promise of the future belongs also to them. They are principles given to the church in the doctrine and history of the New Testament: they are, therefore, designed for the church in all ages and nations. The triumph of counteracting forces for a time may be regarded as only preparatory for the final triumph of these principles. When the ancient prophetic spirit of Judaism slumbered and slept, it was only that it might awake invigorated at the coming of the Bridegroom, Christ. The priestly spirit which had doubtless, in the service of the divine pedagogy, prepared the way for the setting-up of the great high priest, was denied entrance into the temple by Him whose way it had prepared. The principle of Christ's exclusive rulership, the principle of individual equality and self-control, the principle of a regenerate membership, the principle of the autonomy of the local

church, the principle of the communion of the churches, the principle of conserving the results of common experience, the principle of progress through individual inquiry, to these principles the future of the Church of Christ will certainly conform its institutions, customs, laws, and entire manner of life. The forces which have hitherto counteracted these principles are teachers in the great divine pedagogy of the Christian Church; but they are teachers with whose services the great Master · of Instruction will more and more dispense. Their work has been temporary, has been in order that the other forces which express themselves in such principles as are of enduring authority might have more room to work.

It follows, from what has been said above, that the application of the principles of Congregationalism to the growth of the kingdom of God on earth is both most important, and most certain really to be made. It follows, also, that this application should be attempted as widely and speedily as possible by their advocates. Congregationalists, that is to say, are morally bound to disseminate their principles. And if we hold that the teaching of these Lectures, in so far as they have considered Congregationalism as essentially a matter of principles, is true, then it is obvious that the obligation to disseminate the principles is an obligation to self-propagation. It is of the self-propagation of Congregationalism that we are now to treat. The practical truth which dominates and gives force and character to all the other subordinate truths of our treatment is this: The propagation of Congregationalism as a matter of principles to be embodied in an ever-increasing number of New-Testament churches is the duty of Congregationalists.