hundred years ago, they were still among the foremost of all the Christian sects in point of numbers, and were in effect established by law; the Congregationalists in New England, the Episcopalians in the greater part of the remaining States. At the present day, they stand next each other when American sects are arranged in the order of numerical strength; but instead of standing at the head of the list, they are the seventh and eighth in rank-the Congregational body being in advance.* But each in its own way, they are influential out of all proportion to their numerical strength; so that it is a matter of interest to all Christian citizens to study their manifestations and tendencies in their bearing on the general interests of the whole Christian commonwealth. There is a like close analogy between the two meetings that have just been held. Both of them are confessedly and even ostentatiously without any legislative power whatever. Both of them have recently and contemporaneously grown into periodical institutions; the "Church Congress," notwithstanding the existence of a representative legislative body for its communion, and the "National Council" all the more for the absence of any such body. Each of them not being, effectively, a business organization, followed closely after the great business meeting to which it stood related -the Church Congress after the Triennial Convention, at Boston, and the National Council after that most magnificent of American religious festivals, the Annual Meeting of the "American Board,” held this year at Providence. Add that in both cases the proceedings were marked by no very signal displays of ability, unless in some two or three of the papers presented at Detroit, and that in both there was an excellent spirit of mutual good will among the members; although at New York the somewhat timid precaution against a possible manifestation of antagonistic feeling suggest a certain consciousness of walking per ignes suppositos cineri doloso. * See Professor Diman's article, "Religion in America, 1776-1876," in the North American Review, January, 1876. So much for the points of resemblance between the two meetings and between the two bodies represented in them. The points of unlikeness are equally striking. Whenever some clever student in Ecclesiastical History shall write the book that so needs to be written, on the history of the Roman Catholic Sects and of the Protestant Unity, he will draw the parallel between the "Orders" of the Latin Church, and the Protestant denominations. Perhaps the most malignant fruits of sectarianism never have been borne by the emulation of the sects, as they have been by the sharp competition of the Orders; though Heaven knows they have been sad enough in either case. And on the other hand, the advantages of diversity, and of special organizations for special services are visible in both. Capuchin, Benedictine, Dominican, Jesuit, are not more distinct in the history of modern Romanism, than Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian and Congregationalist, in the various developments of Protestantism, especially in America. Only, when this instructive parallel comes to be traced, it will be found that Protestantism suffers in the comparison, first for lack of some co-ordinating authority, and secondly, from the fact that its divisions, instead of being limited to the clergy, run down through the lowest strata of the people, and become denser and heavier as they go lower. Now among the Protestant sects there are none whose missions and methods seem more distinct and definite than the two that have just held their "Congress" and "Council." The distinctive work of American Episcopalians, in the Commonwealth of the American Church, may be mainly included under the title, The Conduct of a Parish. They are happy in having kept, more clearly than most American sects, the idea of the parish. And in some departments of parish work they stand not only superior but almost alone. Chiefly, in the organization of public worship. In this, indeed, they have until lately done little but follow a well ordered traditionary routine; but even thus, they have been at vast advantage over others who had nothing but the negation of a tradition to follow, by which the medium of common worship is committed to the offhand dictation of an individual, whose sovereign authority in the matter is limited only by the right of the congregation to quarrel with him. It is both a proof and a promise of increased intellectual and spiritual vitality in the Episcopal Church, that its more enterprising clergy are no longer content with the mere grind of the old routine, but are studying the meaning and principles of it, with the intention of applying them--to the vast disgust of their conservative brethren. But meanwhile it is curious to observe how, by general consent, that whole study of the Methods of Worship is left to this one Order, none of the others having so much as a professor of Liturgik in any of their Theological Seminaries. It is especially in the department of religious esthetics that this leadership of the Episcopalians is manifest. It is they, working from English models, who set the architectural fashions for all the rest; so that Methodist, Puritan and Presbyterian churches are built with chancel-apses which they do not know what to do with, and which task the ingenuity of the joiner to fill up with a big bulk of a pulpit and with sofas and chairs and other cabinet-work. It is they, too, that have drawn the churches of the country after them in the cultivation of fancy solo singing; and any one who will rummage the precious piles of rubbish that have been published for church quartets during the last thirty years, will be impressed with the proportion of it that is prepared primarily for the use of the "P. E. C.," and borrowed by all the rest. Now, at last, under the influence of transatlantic example, they are started in a way of musical reform, in which pray Heaven their example may be not less effective than in the corruption that has gone before. Having an evident leadership in such important matters, the American Episcopalians are content, in other things, to be followers. They have no theologians and no distinctive theology. They have one famous and excellent preacher. They have no eminent scholars or authors. They never have had a first-class college. Their religious newspapers are made up with a double ob ject-first, to instruct the reader on the af- It will be remarked that all the characteristic qualities and methods of this body are of the sort that tell incidentally on its own advancement. And when we add to this a certain notion of exclusive divine right, which is not seriously believed in the denomination to such an extent as to burden any one with a grave sense of responsibility, but only enough to deaden any scruples of good taste against vigorous proselyting, it is easy to see that here must be a most prosperous sect. All these elements are favored by the fact that for the time being it is "the fashion." The result is that for many years the draft from other denominations towards this once decaying and almost perishing body is strong and constant, and the return current almost nil. If we had spoken further of that consolidated organization which brings the power of the whole denomination to the support of every part, we should have completed the contrast between the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists. For the special work of this latter sect, its peculiar function in the great vital growth of American Christianity, has been of a sort ministering vastly to the common good, but not especially to its own corporate advantage. If one were to seek a Scriptural motto for the history of the American Congregationalists, it should be this: "Go, teach." How gravely deficient they have been in some things, we shall frankly show. But as educators to the American people they have a record the splendor of which has beer veiled only by their own carelessness to write their names upon their own achievements. They have been the Collegebuilders of the country, not only in New England, but at the West and South. The founding of Princeton is due to them, as much as the founding of Yale or Western Reserve; and since the opening of the South, they have established there no less than eight chartered colleges, giving the highest education which the people are capable of receiving. To an extent out of all proportion to their numbers, they have furnished the great religious books and sermons of the country. The religious newspapers of the country, having general circulation and influence, have commonly been founded and conducted by Congregationalists. It would be interesting, although it would take too long, to illustrate these statements by particulars. In Foreign Missions, too, they were the first in time and have ever been among the foremost in labors and successes. And in all the combinations for common Christian labor for the general good, the Congregationalists have been eager to make large gifts and sacrifices, and content with a small share in the results. There has been that sort of evangelic chivalry among them which seemed to take all the more delight in works of charity and missions that were to minister to the common advancement of the kingdom of heaven but not to their prosperity. So far have they been from the vulgar spirit of proselytism, that they have ungrudgingly given away their own sons, for the upbuilding of other orders. Not incongruously, this habit of wide outlook has been associated with a disposition to broadcasting rather than hand-culture; and Congregationalists have been distinguished more in preaching, and in revival preaching, than in the thorough organization and conduct of parish work. But their preaching (speaking generally) and their church-institutions have tended commonly to attract and help persons of a certain grade of culture, and some of their writers have frankly accepted it as the mission of this order of Christians to maintain a certain high standard of religious thought and practice to which believers generally were not to be expected to attain. They have done noble work in Home Missions, but the great rough pioneering work at the West, and even, to some extent, the reaching of the less edu cated classes in their own original States, has been almost explicitly resigned to the Methodists and the Baptists. The Congregationalists, knowing and confessing that there must needs be other preachers than college-bred men, have stubbornly refused to provide or recognize such, in their own organization. They have delighted in whatever good work has been wrought by Methodist preachers; and even contributed largely to set on foot an army of evangelical book-peddlers; but the world might perish before they would bring down their standard of ministerial dignity by ordaining men with less than seven years' scholastic training or its equivalent, or before they would compromise their dogma of "ministerial parity" by ordaining inferior men to inferior work. It is needless to remark that all the characteristic traits of the Congregationalists have been of the contrary sort from those that tend to the wide propagation of the sect. Both these bodies, then, (whatever may be the half-serious, half-jocose pretensions sometimes put forth for the Protestant Episcopalians,) do, by restricting themselves to certain lines of labor, certain ways of organization, certain uses of worship, that are confessedly not the whole of Christian service, plainly announce themselves as being not churches, but merely Orders in the Church. But any Christian man, whose interest and allegiance are attached to the whole brotherhood of believers, is interested, on such an occasion as these two meetings, to study the tendencies of two such important factors of American Christianity. We think it will be observed, in comparing the reports of the two meetings, that both the bodies show a marked tendency to broaden, both in sentiment and in methods. They do not cease to be sects, and to cherish their sectarian traditions; but they show, each of them, a disposition to do a whole work rather than a partial one; and thus broadening, they tend to abandon some of their old negations and come nearer each other's positions. In the "Church Congress" of the Protestant Episcopalians, for instance, and still more in some other manifestations of the same body, may be remarked the progress which has been made in converting the Episcopal Church into a revivalist church. If any thing rather than another used to characterize this body, it was its earnest and constant protest against "spasmodic religion," and its happy complacency in commending its own calm, dignified and superior way of saving souls by the steady going operation of the institutions of the Church. But the earnest piety and zeal of the Ritualist party have restored traveling evangelists, revivals, and "protracted meetings" to their due place, perhaps more than their place, among the methods of evangelical work; and are now laboring, through much evil report, to introduce, under another name and form, the " anxious bench" and inquiry meeting." We may well look with anxiety to see what sort of use will be made, in these unpracticed hands, of agencies which, even under the most experienced revivalists, have been attended with serious drawbacks and dangers. Another former characteristic of the Episcopal Church was its aversion to any dealing on the part of the pulpit with questions of political duty and morality. During the long conflict of the American Church with the drinking usages of society, and its still fiercer conflict with slavery, hardly a finger's weight of help came from the Episcopalian clergy. It was their chosen duty rather to sit by and rebuke their brethren of other communions for indecorum and excitement over these political questions, while offering a secure and quiet harbor of repose to those whose consciences had been too rudely rasped by "political preaching." It shows a great and noble advance of the whole denomination, on this line, to read of the debates or rather the essays, for debate was not encouraged-in the "Church Congress," on Spiritual Forces in Civilization, and the Influence of the Pulpit on Modern Thought and Life, with eulogies on the agency of the Church in the abolition of slavery, and rebukes of the government's dealing with the Indians, and digs-yes, courageous and unmistakable digs--at some of the most respectable people in New York for voting for the Honorable Mr. Morrissey. But the most signal and honorable illustration of the progress of the denomination in moral principle and moral courage is its position on the subject of divorce. On this politico-moral subject it has set an example to all other Protestant communions by enacting into a canon the rule of duty which ought to be plain enough without-that (whatever the law of the State may do or leave undone) the Church and its ministers. shall be governed in their dealing with marriage and divorce simply by the law of Christ. It is an honor to the Episcopal Church and a shame to all the rest, that it should have so much the lead in this bold and righteous interference with politics. But the expressions of many of the speakers on the Influence of the Pulpit on Modern Thought and Life are a happy recantation of the habitual language of the Episcopalian clergy in that forlorn ante bellum period which is sometimes spoken of as “the time of the Babylonish captivity." One more tendency, manifest, not only in the "Church Congress," but in other recent Episcopalian meetings and documents, deserves mention to the honor of that sect. We mean its growth in courtesy towards fellow-Christians. It is a matter to which too much importance ought not be attached. Quite a needless amount of annoyance used to be felt by Christian folk generally, at the incivility and bad taste of their Episcopalian brethren; and no sufficient allowance was made for the circumstances and temptations by which this sort of talk was stimulated. It ought to be remembered, in excuse for it, that this habit of language grew up at a period when the denomination was just emerging from extreme moral and numerical weakness, and was apprehensive about its position. At such a time, a certain amount of bumptious self-assertion and innocent swagger about its grand relations in foreign parts, ought not to be reckoned to it as an unpardonable sin. Nothing is so good for this sort of thing as a generous allowance of substantial prosperity and genuine self-respect. And just in proportion as the Episcopal church has risen to its present assured place among the very foremost of the minor sects of America, and grown in the sense of power and responsibility, it has put away these childish things, and learned to speak more with the dignity of a grown man and the courtesy of a gentleman. It would be an unworthy piece of ill-nature to remember against it the petty follies of its hobbledeboy-days. To turn now to the "National Congregational Council," one of the first things that strikes the reader of the reports is that while the explicitly anti-revivalist Episcopal church is admitting into its system all the agencies of revivals, the Congregationalists, whose system of forty years ago was stigmatized by zealous young Mr. Coxe, not without a measure of justice, as "revivalism," are now turning, we will not say upon the opposite tack, but upon a thoughtful middle course. The "epoch-making" book of Dr. Bushnell on "Christian Nurture and Subjects Adjacent Thereto," was the beginning of this change; and the remarkable and large-minded sermon of Dr. Zachary Eddy on "The Rain and the Dew," heard with patience and acceptance by the Detroit Council, marks the accomplishment of it. The natural result of this change of view is an increased attention to the conduct of the parish on the part of the whole denomination. Twenty years ago, the time of a National Council would have been largely occupied with questions of general public concern, matters of political morality, discussions of the forms of doctrine, and methods of preaching for the widest and most effective diffusion of the Gospel. Now, a very large part of the discussions is devoted to the methods of parish organization and culture. And the very existence of the National Council as a periodical meeting illustrates the growing corporate feeling of the denomination, and a disposition to bring to bear the common influence of the whole for the support of the individual churches. But it is amusing to see how tremulously the denomination treads in unwonted directions, as if there were danger for it from a centralized authority, from ministers doing a general or supervisory work, or from thorough parish organization and well ordered methods of worship. Whatever caution such instrumentalities may require in other circumstances, they are absolutely safe from abuse in a system so jealous for freedom as this. But that the Congregationalists are not departing from their grandest traditions was made nobly manifest in the warmest debate of the Council,—on a resolution commending the secular State Universities, as well as the religious Colleges of the denomination itself, to the confidence of the churches. The personnel of the debate showed to what extent this sect is fulfilling its ancient mission as the great educating sect of the nation, by the fact that together with the heads of so many high-class denominational colleges, there were present also so many of the heads of State Colleges. And that it holds this conceded position from the general confidence not only in its power and culture, but also in its unselfish magnanimity, was clear from the high tone of the discussion. It is doubtful whether there is another such body in the world that would deliberately have entertained an argument for laying aside its chief corporate glory and defense out of regard for its " responsibility, as a denomination for the state of the people as a whole."* It is from the position of one owing allegiance to the whole church in America, *We beg to suggest a line of policy by which the interests sought in the denominational colleges night be completely reconciled with the high duty towards the State and people involved in the encouragement and improvement of the State Universities. It is the policy of maintaining, near these Universities, College Halls under distinct and specific religious control. If in the State of Michigan (for example) Olivet College should leave behind it in the country its preparatory department, and move down to Ann Arbor, with a corps of only three or four teachers, with a small library for home use, and special facilities for pursuing the studies of the University, it would add to itself all the splendid advantages of the University without abating one jot of its high religious influence, but rather widening it without making it less deep and strong; and it would greatly enrich the University in the elements of spiritual and How admirably a College, under intellectual life. strict personal and religious direction, might adjust itself to most advantageous relations with the University, may be studied in the relation of College to University at Oxford or Cambridge. Such a College planted alongside of the Sheffield Scientific School at there to maintain a dormitory and a Commons Hall, New Haven, would repay a comparatively trifling ex penditure with immense beneficial results. |