unity of the church except through the inspiration of some such great benevolent work as this, no human lordship over Christ's churches, but the unity in all of the same Divine Spirit, God's own method of carrying forward to its final triumph his own glorious kingdom." LECTURE XII. PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE TENDENCIES OF CONGRE GATIONALISM. IF the course followed in these Lectures has been well taken, we should by this time have reached a point of view from which to make a somewhat wider and more intelligent survey of our entire field. It will belong, indeed, to those who come after us, to discover impartially the drifts or tendencies which are carrying forward the present generation of individuals and churches. Yet we who are of this generation may expect, by the study of principles as they are embodied in the institutions of our own time, to acquire some power of discernment. We may hope to discover even those very drifts or tendencies which are carrying us, with others, along upon themselves. It is wise for us occasionally to ask, By what larger influences, and in what remoter directions, are we being moved? It is not safe for us to misunderstand those influences, or to mistake their directions. Let the plan of these Lectures be at this point momentarily recalled to mind. Their whole intent has been to present an analysis and survey of the principles which underlie the true Church Polity, especially as that polity has been more or less completely realized in Modern Congregationalism. That our own church order has been the only or the complete exemplification of all these principles, we have not once claimed. The analysis, having first been made, has afterward been justified by finding the very same principles which it discovered interwoven with, and giving form and life to, all the distinctive movements of the most Christian churches. It has been seen that the Word of God in the Scriptures must, according to our formal principle, be regarded as giving the indestructible norm of a true church polity: it has also been seen that the doctrinal substance of this polity is, according to the material principle, concealed in this persuasion, — every individual believer, and every particular visible church of Christ, has full and immediate communion, for purposes of doctrine and of self-control, with the illumining Spirit of Christ. Communion of the soul with God, communion of the spiritually enlightened human spirit with the illumining Divine Spirit, is, then, the one underlying and organific idea of our church order. The way in which this church order emphasizes and strives to realize this idea, both for the individual believer and for the particular visible church, accounts for all those more patent distinctions which differentiate it from the other church orders of Christendom. It differs from them, not in that it asserts, while they deny, its formal and its material principle: it differs, rather, in the degree of intensity and thoroughness with which it asserts both these principles. Certain selected topics have been discussed in the light of this analysis, and with a view to show the pertinency in application of these principles to all the more important activities and interests of church life. We trust, that, even by the dim shining of our words, these principles have been seen to be not only noble in them selves, but nobly adapted to the needs of manhood and to the necessities of faith, and as well capable of wide and vigorous self-propagation over the face of the whole earth. A single caution with reference to the course traversed, and we will then turn our faces from the past to look upon the surrounding present, and toward that future which lies just before. Doubtless much dissatisfaction may arise in your minds as to the indefiniteness in which certain questions bravely and frankly raised by our church order have finally been left. The mind likes the thought of the infallible in church polity as well as in doctrine and life. There is a sort of premonitory aching in the heart of the young minister for some guaranteed and patented charm against mistakes of judgment and against the fruits of such mistakes. Ah! if he could but be told beforehand precisely what to do in each emergency which is liable or possible to arise. The church order which has a Bishop or a Book of Discipline to relieve this very natural anxiety brings a great balm of consolation to such an aching heart. On the other hand, the pastor of long standing, whose church affairs have not gone conspicuously well, is tempted to think that they would have gone much better under a different way of ordering church affairs. And this feeling may not unfrequently be true; for the Congregational way of managing churches is confessedly not favorable to the success of men as pastors, who must either lean hard on others for support, or else have a mistaken and overweening confidence in their ability to stand alone. It will be one coveted result of our common work of inquiry, if we are all immediately persuaded to abandon the expectation of attaining the infallible in church polity. Even if the infallible in doctrine, as to all its details and precise shades of statement, be to be found outside of the Divine Mind itself, it is certain that there is no infallible system for the constitution, discipline, and worship of the churches. At least, such an infallible polity is not to be practically attained this side of the completed wisdom and perfected holiness of all the members of the churches. If we should decide it better not to bear those ills we have, and so the rather "fly to others that we know not of," and if in our flight we should take the wings of the morning, and go to the uttermost confines of the church universal and of universal church history, we should still be far removed from an "infallible polity." We should probably, however, discover more both of our blessings and of our own faults. We should discover, that upon the very features of our church order now esteemed less honorable, we ought to have bestowed the more abundant honor. We should, perhaps, also discover that the really covetable features of the other denominations are those which we have, in fact, not coveted, and are those which we might imitate with no great difficulty while remaining in our own. For instance, the zeal, self-denial, versatility, and audacity of Methodism are the very qualities which we have most need to borrow from them, rather than rebuke in them; but we have need to avoid, rather than to covet, their bishop, presiding elder, compacted organization, and hot sectarianism. Doubtless, let the admission be at once and frankly made, in making the very applications of those principles which have been most discussed in these Lectures, many important contingencies not contemplated herein may at times arise. To plant ourselves, for instance, upon the principle of a regenerate membership, in both |