ished intellect, the finer conscience, which the Church has expelled by her timidity and superstition, her false assumptions of an unchanging, dogmatic system of Christian belief, her pretensions to an infallible Bible or an infallible priesthood. While the Church continues so largely to prefer the control of the ignorant, the superstitious, and the timid to the friendship and sympathy of the wise, the enlightened, and the courageous, it will have the apathy or contempt of those who, in all other departments of life, in politics, in art, in literature, and in ethics, are shaping and controlling the world. If, for the purpose of giving a superstitious validity to alleged sacraments, the figment of apostolic succession is maintained in the face of history; if to re-enforce a childish emphasis on the mode of baptism by immersion, instead of by sprinkling, a complete new translation of the Bible is made, and a rival Bible Society started and maintained at great expense; if a committee of learned men may be appointed (as in a late convention) to decide whether a comma or a semicolon is the proper punctuation in a line of the Apostles' Creed; if the ordinary version of the Scriptures may continue to be published, with its purely modern headings at the beginning of the chapters, and at the top of the pages, declaring what truths and what doctrines are taught in the text, and leaving the multitude under the impression that these Trinitarian and Calvinistic commentaries are really authoritative parts of the Bible itself; if the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is still tacitly assumed, or even positively affirmed, as a base of operations on popular credulity by those who know, their capacity of scholars, the utter untenableness of the assumption; if the word "Evangelical" is to be systematically used as identical with "Orthodox," and Orthodoxy to mean Protestant Trinitarianism, excluding all Catholics and all Liberal Christians from any participation in Gospel truth; if, for sectarian purposes, or as ecclesiastical strategy, or as a moral policy, these things are to be winked at, and the men and the sects who have the courage, the independence, and the honesty to refuse to connive at them are to be charged in with infidelity and impiety, - it will certainly soon come to pass that the vigor, boldness, knowledge, and worth of society will all be found in what is called the world, instead of being found in the Church, where it is so much needed. Can we look back without shame and sorrow upon the position occupied by the modern Church, throughout all the great antislavery struggle of this nation, preceding the dreadful war that terminated it? The early abolitionists were mostly truly religious men, and ministers or members of intensely "Orthodox" churches. Aroused by Christian sensibility to the iniquity of slavery, they called on their own churches and communions to support their conscientious protests against it. But they found themselves met with faces of indignant expostulation, and, finally, with acts of violent expulsion, for daring to introduce a question fraught with so much. excitement. Almost to a man, they were driven, not only out of their churches, but out of all faith in their own Orthodox creeds, by this practical experience of what these creeds meant and whither they tended. So identified with liberal Christian ideas did abolitionism thus become, that both were prejudiced in the minds of the public,- Liberal Christianity being charged with political fanaticism and revolutionary tendencies, and abolitionism with infidel sympathies and heterodox affiliations. A distinguished leader of that body lately said, that it became an important policy with the abolitionists to prevent their clerical converts from deserting Orthodox colors, as it injured their antislavery influence in the quarters. where they wished it most to penetrate. Now, suppose the Church, the natural and appointed defender of the down-trodden and oppressed, the sworn friend and recognizer of the human soul under all disguises of color and outward state, had early and generally joined in the recognition of the inhumanity, wrongfulness, and evil of slavery, would politicians and commercial interests and popular prejudices and vulgar feelings have been able to poison and deform our public opinion on this subject so widely that a horrible civil war, risking two and a half millions of lives on both sides, and costing five thousand millions of money, was necessarily invoked to untie this false knot in the skein of human progress, and to straighten out this national crookedness that was growing into incurableness? Does not the Church become the mere tool and servant of wealth and power, when it forgets its protest against sin and oppression, in the alleged interest of order and quiet? The depth of this degradation we have seen in the policy of that "Medieval" Church which vies with Roman Catholicism itself in its reverence for established errors, and seems now more solicitous than any religious body in this country to identify itself with the compromising politicians and calculating conservatives of the North, and with the impenitent rebels and recusants of the South; mixing up half-loyal governors of the North with disloyal bishops of the South in one grand amnesty, and giving to those in whom the country has least confidence, the leading influence in her councils. Can any one believe, that the undogmatic, unsectarian fraternization of the last four years, in camps and hospitals, on battle-fields, and in councils of benevolence, has not helped to weaken the ever-thinning cord of the theological creed· we use the words in careful distinction from the religious faith of this country? We firmly believe, that the common sense for which the American people is distinguished is in half-conscious, but soon to be in thoroughly aroused, protest against the still professed creeds of our popular churches. The people are tired of technical divinity, of metaphysical distinctions, of schemes and bodies of doctrine, of theological puzzles and abstrusities; they are sighing for plain, practical, rational, credible, religious teaching, which will tell them how to carry the fear and love of God, and the commandments of Christ, into their daily lives and conversation, — into their business, their politics, and their homes. The old Trinitarian and Calvinistic creeds, the old ecclesiastical superstitions, are much more extensively honey-combed and undermined than is commonly supposed; and we may expect, at any time, a serious caving-in of the whole structure. It is not without reason that science and philosophy desert such a tottering structure. And it behooves those who have seen the political superstitions, prejudices, and party platforms of this whole nation going to absolute ruin under a spell that was irresisti ble, and with a speed which not even the wisest could have foreseen or thought possible, to take warning that a similar fate may be in store for the whole system of theological dogmas which merely veneer the real religious faith of this country. - And what is to take the place of the doomed creeds of the popular churches? Is there any form of Christian faith now before the American mind to which it can turn with confidence and hope, as fit to meet the wants of a newly emancipated mass of people, with warm Christian instincts and affections, but with unsettled, vague, and unadjusted thoughts, and a habit of moving only in large bodies, and with something like general assent? It certainly cannot be claimed, that the leaders of organized Liberal Christianity, in any of its forms, have yet discovered how to present it so as to satisfy the cravings of the great American mind, or even of that portion of it detached from the popular churches. The progress of Unitarianism in the intellectual classes, of Universalism in the middle classes, and of Christian-ism among the farming populations, testing the applicability of liberal, uncreeded, rational Christianity to all ranks, has in neither case given any considerable satisfaction to those who know what true success is in matter of faith and worship. It is not safe to apply the rules that govern progress in other matters economical, scientific, and moral-to religious reforms. They are rather like political revolutions, which succeed at once, or fail for a century. Gradual recruiting will not answer: there must be a general rising of the people. All the great religious movements - Peter the Hermit's, the Lutheran, the Wesleyan- took the public mind by storm, and carried the world as with a whirlwind. They spread like wild-fire, and partook of the character of a contagion. What fed them was in the general mind,- foregone conclusions, yearnings and tendencies which they simply expressed, and to which they gave "local habitation and a name." It did not need argument, but only boldness and stout assertion to carry them. Neither genius, logic, nor address, but courage and confidence, born of utter conviction, were their spokesmen. Religious sects may be built up by diligence, prudence, and personal tact in leadership; but a religious sect is one thing, a religious reformation is another. Liberal Christianity has never yet succeeded in doing any thing more, in any of its forms, than in taking a place by the side of other religious denominations, a small cluster of sects among the large variety that crowd the ecclesiastical firmament of America. But who regards the progress of ordinary Christian sects, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, valuable and excellent as the practical religious influence of all of them is, as one whose rivalries or victories over each other are of any importance to the general interests of truth, freedom, and goodness? It is not quite so with Orthodox Congregationalism, because, however tightly tied up it is in the theory of the old theology, -as appeared in its late National Council at Boston, - many of its ministers possess an adroitness which those famous jugglers, the Brothers Davenport, might envy, in loosening themselves the moment attention is withdrawn, and walking at large before their audience in a freedom wholly unaccountable to those who saw them lately tied hand and foot, with their own full consent. It is certain that Liberal Christianity is either a foreshadowed reformation of the Christianity of the whole Church, or it is nothing. As a sectarian demonstration, it deserves little notice. It is only when it finds faith and courage to claim universal attention; to challenge the professed theology of the Church as a dry husk around the green and living ear of the gospel; to announce itself as the owner and rightful heir of the people's affections, that it becomes significant and promising, and assumes the port and step of a conqueror. This bearing it will not learn in the study of itself, but only in the study of the heart of the time. Its success, if it ever realizes it, will be prepared before it. In our judgment, it is prepared; and the public mind, in and out of the churches, is ready to respond to any voices that speak confidently and clearly, and in the tones of Christian faith and - |