The International Theological Library. EDITED BY CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological AND STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis, CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. BY ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN, D.D. CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS BY ALEXANDER Vold. ALLEN, D.D. = PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL IN CAMBRIDGE 46 AUTHOR OF THE CONTINUITY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT," LIFE OF COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 03-18 31 2018 3-17681 THIS treatise is a summary of the church's history from the point of view of its institutions. The effort has been made to show how organization, creeds, and cultus are related to the spiritual life and to the growth of Christian civilization. The field covered by the title, Christian Institutions, is so large that the selection of the subjects to be treated, and the proportion of space assigned to each, must reflect to some extent the personality of the author, obliging him to tell what connected impressions he has gained from the wide survey. Otherwise the work would become a small dictionary of Christian antiquities, or a series of brief imperfect monographs. Hitherto no attempt has been made in a formal manner to study the institutions of Christianity with reference to their mutual relationships. Even the term Institutions' requires to be defined. Its expansion to cover creeds and doctrines, as well as organization and ritual, must be justified by that growing use of the word which makes it include the prominent features of the church, its rules of procedure, habits of action, or those related facts regulating its conduct in the attainment of its end. The work was begun some five years ago, when, through the kindness of Augustus Lowell, Esq., it took shape as a course of Lowell Lectures. Its preparation for the press was soon after interrupted, and three years elapsed before it was again resumed, under a sense of pressure in conse |