worship, which are not to be found clearly set forth in the New Testament, but are very largely an outgrowth from it in church history under divine Providence. The Methodist Church, for example, has a modified episcopate, liturgy, and articles, which it inherited directly from the Church of England, remotely from the Church of Rome, though without other accompanying dogmas held in those churches. Third. The Protestant body in its recoil from Romanism may have gone too far away from Catholicism into such extremes as sectarianism, rationalism, and revivalism; but a healthy reaction has already begun, as we have shown, in regard to the historic liturgy, and it may yet extend to the other diseases or abuses of Protestantism, until a true church unity shall have taken the place of our sectarianism, and our latest rationalism at length give way to the vindicated Catholic faith. Fourth. The Roman Church and the chief Protestant churches, notwithstanding their wide differences, rest primarily upon the same Holy Scriptures and share largely the same Catholic Christianity; and it is at least conceivable that in the lapse of time, by the transmuting force of American institutions, and under the pressure of common dangers, they may be brought slowly together from their present extremes, having shed their respective errors until at last they join in the one essential faith of Protestant Catholicism as the full flower of New Testament Christianity. Professor Crooks himself argues very forcibly that the chief Roman dogma of sacerdotal supremacy is doomed to die out, both in Church and State, in the wake of political causes; and he may thus refute his own imaginary picture of an immediate crude coalition of" Romanists and Protestants in one ecclesiastical government." Fifth. The English liturgy, as we have seen, affords the grounds and germs of such a gradual coalescence of Protestant with Catholic Christianity in the American churches; and when the Methodist Episcopal Church completes its reaction with the rest, the Wesleyan prayer-book, instead of lying a nullity, will serve to bring it into more visible communion and organic connection with the other great historic churches of Christendom. Dr. Crooks, as a representative of episcopacy without apostolical succession, finds no organic bond between the Greek, Latin, and Anglican churches, but hopes for some closer union of the Protestant churches, to be reached by recognizing their essential spiritual unity as a divine fact, by acknowledging one another's churchly standing in their intercourse, and by coming into more organic coöperation for the great ends of their common Christianity. PRESBYTERIAN OPINIONS. THE two representatives of the Presbyterian Church have reviewed the essay from different standpoints. The late Dr. Archibald Alexander Hodge, as if with a prophetic utterance, and in an elevated Christian tone befitting the theme, discussed the doctrine of the invisible Catholic Church, and set forth in glowing terms its unbroken unity, as including not merely all true believers on earth, but the whole company of the redeemed in heaven. The surviving disputants may well recognize such doctrine as common ground, while still taking to themselves the reproach that the visible church as yet so little reflects the glorious oneness of the church invisible. Unhappily, our existing denominations cannot be viewed merely as so many harmonious groups of organized churches, or legitimate varieties of church organization, dwelling together in manifest unity. Having been largely produced by warring sects and factions, excommunicating and unchurching one another, they exhibit an apparent dismemberment of the very body of Christ, which has become the great flagrant scandal of our age and country, and has made it the plain duty as well as impulse of all Christian people to seek for more outward organic unity, as well as to hail the providential signs of its inward growth and expression. In any other view, we could only adjourn our questions of doctrine to the millennium, and wait until we may all join in the perfect liturgy of heaven. Practically, indeed, this is the course taken by some extremists who would consecrate mere denominationalism, extenuate sectarianism, and make schism itself chronic, in the face of their own false dormant ideal of an invisible Catholic Church. In contrast with such errors, Dr. Hodge has impressively shown that the various church organizations, through the indwelling Spirit, will yet grow together toward a true organic unity, consistent with due variety, as but so many members in the one mystical body of Christ. And the latter part of his letter refers to such unity in the three organic spheres of doctrine, polity, and worship. As to the first, his hopeful view of the dogmatic consensus of Protestant Trinitarian churches is a most valuable and timely contribution to the general argument for church unity, and would be only more complete could it include, on the basis of a common American Christianity, those Unitarian churches which express the flower of Puritan culture, as well as that great Roman Catholic Church which is already in the lead on such social questions as marriage, temperance, education, and property. As to the second opinion, that unity in polity would be more difficult than unity in dogma, I have nothing to add to the former paper, except what may be found in the sequel. As to the third, it may be said that the argument from numbers against the growth of liturgical communion, like most statistical arguments, can be used on both sides of the question, and will probably be met from the other side by such answers as the following: First. That the liturgical churches of Christendom outnumber in membership the non-liturgical churches as three or four to one. Second. That in this country it is the least ecclesiastical denominations, the evanescent sects, that are without liturgical tendencies, as they are also crude in their doctrine and polity; while only the historical churches, of European origin, can yield the proper data of the church problem, and these are vitally connected with the contents of the English liturgy in a ratio of forty or fifty to one. Moreover, as we have seen, they are already, knowingly or unknowingly, resuming elements and portions of that liturgy in their worship, and logically tend to it as the best devotional formulary of Catholic and Protestant Christianity. This starts the only question in the other letter demanding attention. In meeting it, I must reluctantly forsake, for the moment, an independent position, and come down to the denominational ground which the critic has taken. The Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby, declaring himself an out-and-out Presbyterian, offers seven objections to the prayer-book as received opinions in the Presbyterian Church. With due respect, I am obliged to say that not one of them has any foundation in the recognized standards of that body. My replies must be brief. First. The Directory for Public Worship (ch. v.) does not "object to the stereotyped prayer, however excellent," but does object to "mean, irregular, or extravagant effusions, as a disgrace of Divine service." Such effusions, becoming themselves stereotyped, are worse than any "open-eyed reading of prayer," and in fact sometimes open the eyes of the unhappy listeners. Second. The Larger Catechism (Q. 186188) does not object to the invocation, peroration, and well-ordered brief petitions which it finds in the Lord's Prayer as being "too artificial and tending to a mechanical mode of worship"; but it does prescribe the right use of that liturgical form and didactic model of common prayer. To repeat it at least once in each public office is not treating it" as a mere magical formula," but is keeping strictly within the scriptural rubric, When ye pray, say Our Father. Third. The Shorter Catechism (Q. 99) also enjoins the whole word of God as a rule of prayer; and if therefore any "Presbyterians object to the Litany in toto as putting the believer far off from God and calling on Him to spare him as a miserable sinner," they simply object with the Pharisee to the very words of the contrite Publican, as well as to the penitential prayers of priest and people weeping between the porch and the altar. If they object to its devout repetitions as " unmeaning," they must object to the like repetitions in Holy Scripture. If they could object to its solemn. pleadings and tender entreaties and manifold intercessions as "having no feature suited to the child of God or joint heir with Christ," they would object to the supplications of the prophets and apostles themselves. But before they object to its scriptural petition against sudden death as "a relic of Romanism," they should consult the Roman original (a subitanea et improvisa morte) or the Anglo-Saxon version (a subita et eterna morte). They might also profitably consider the beams in their own extempore litanies, the "irreverent," the "sarcastic," the "tedious prayers," etc., of which that accomplished Presbyterian divine, Dr. Samuel Miller, speaks in his useful treatise. Fourth. The Form of Government (ch. iii.v.) does not "hold that all believers are priests' in the sense of being ministers, or that "a minister is only an ordained ruler and leader of the people, with no more authority to pronounce absolution upon the penitent than any one who is not a minister"; but it does most plainly distinguish him from the mere representatives of the people as a minister of Christ and ambassador from God, declaring pardon in Christ's stead. The Confession also (ch. xxx.) names among his high functions, "power to open the kingdom of heaven unto penitent sinners by the ministry of the Gospel, and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require." Consistently with such teaching, the declarative Absolution, prefixed to the English daily service, is simply an authoritative proclamation of the Gospel, made solemn and direct by a special act of worship on the part both of minister and people. If any Presbyterians are thoughtless enough to object to that formula as "a remnant of the Roman Absolution," they should be informed that its very motive was as Protestant as its meaning; that it was first suggested by Calvin himself; that it was taken very largely from a Calvinistic liturgy; and that it was alternatively called the Absolution or Remission of sins, in deference to Puritan scruples against a word of Popish sound. Fifth. The Confession of Faith (ch. xxviii.) does not "abhor the doctrine of baptismal regeneration" as rightly stated, but does de clare it a "great sin to contemn this ordinance," guards carefully against the abuse of it, and defines it as a "sign and seal of regeneration even unto infants" (Q. 177). And the Baptismal Offices merely express the substantial sense of this definition in strong liturgical terms. Any Presbyterians who abhor such doctrine may find it discreetly maintained by that saintly man, the late Dr. Archibald Alexander, in the second chapter of his work on religious experience. As to the Holy Supper, the Confession takes some higher views of the Real Presence than can anywhere be found in the English communion office. In fact, the only "remnant of transubstantiation" that 'appears in that office is a solemn ordinance against it as "idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians." Presbyterians who are horrified at such a rag of popery will have their horror increased on learning that the stringent rubric was first procured by that uncompromising reformer, John Knox, in 1552, and fully confirmed at the last revision in 1661, according to Mr. Procter's history of the prayer-book, "in compliance with the wishes of the Presbyterians." Sixth. The chiefframers of the above-named standards, though certainly "not in love with the Episcopal liturgy" as it was imposed upon them by the Act of Uniformity two centuries ago, protested that they had "not the least thought of depraving or reproaching the Book of Common Prayer," but wished only to "avoid both the extreme that would have no forms and the contrary extreme that would have nothing but forms"; and their. exceptions to the prayer-book, in matters of mere usage and taste as well as principle, like some of the objections before us, have long since been fully met by the changed conditions of American Presbyterianism, which now neither enjoins nor forbids the use of a liturgy. Seventh. The Presbyterian Book of Common Prayer affords a summary refutation to Dr. Crosby's objections, all and each of them. Among the legal revisers of the English liturgy in 1661 were the very authors of the Presbyterian formularies, such as Anthony Tuckney, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, who had written nearly the whole of the Larger Catechism; John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, who had been secretary to the Westminster divines, and had himself prepared the Shorter Catechism; Edward Reynolds, afterwards Bishop of Norwich and author of the General Thanksgiving, who had composed the most important parts of * Documents of Revision, 1661. The Book of Common Prayer, as amended by the Presbyterian Divines in the Royal Commission of the Confession of Faith; Edmund Calamy, the very leader of the Presbyterian clergy, who with Spurstow, Newcomen, and Arrowsmith had been in the Assembly's committees that framed the Directory of Worship and Church Government; to say nothing of the learned Lightfoot, the silver-tongued Bates, the saintly Baxter, and other great Presbyterian scholars and martyrs whose praise is in all the churches. The emendations and exceptions of such men, duly modified by American authorities, precedents, and usages, yield an editiont of the prayer-book to which no Presbyterian can bring any objections whatever without taking the ground from under his feet. Dr. Crosby, as an out-and-out Presbyterian, will henceforth become a valiant champion, not merely of the prayer-book, but of that church unity which is an essential principle of Presbyterian polity as well as the flower of Christian charity. Resuming now our task, we may sum up Presbyterian opinion, according to the teaching of Dr. Hodge, as based upon the inward spiritual oneness of the churches, yet looking forward to their outward organic oneness, still to be attained through the slow ripening of their knowledge, love, and zeal, and other graces of the Holy Spirit. CONGREGATIONALIST OPINIONS. THE letters of the two learned divines representing the Orthodox Congregational churches, though making no allusion to the essay, admit of a logical connection with it as affording valuable opinions needed to complete this survey. President Seelye, of Amherst College, gives a profoundly spiritual view of the fellowship of saints and of churches, and likens the universal church to the universal state, as being one in its essence, though manifold in its forms, Congregational, Presbyterial, Episcopal, and as tending finally to a Christian theocracy, in which the autonomy of the particular church shall be consistent with the autocracy of the universal church. Professor Fisher, of Yale College, in his more practical and very suggestive letter, maintains that, since the decree of Papal infallibility, Christian union is practicable only among Protestant denominations; and he finds three obstacles to such union-in the reigning dogmatic intolerance, in the prevalent ritual diversity, especially as to the rite of baptism, and in the divine-right theory of church government as held by Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and some Congregationalists. At the same time, he admits that a mere governmental, as 1661, and in agreement with the Directory for Public Worship of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. With a supplementary treatise. distinguished from a sacerdotal Episcopacy, among the conditions precedent to church would not be repugnant to other Protestants, unity. and that an optional liturgy, used alternatively with spontaneous worship, might in some cases prove an advantage. Although both of these writers say but little of any organization beyond the limits of the local church or parish, yet it is well known that such organization exists, more or less ecclesiastical in its tendencies and without destroying the self-government of congregations, as is seen in their voluntary association for some church purposes, as well as in that practical congregationalism which prevails under presbyterial and episcopal systems. Two eloquent divines have spoken for the Unitarian Congregational churches. We can all agree with the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, when he asserts that Christian unity exists in America now, in the sense in which he understands it. But church unity, the fusion of Christian sects into the one church, does not exist; nor can "people who want it find it by going out-of-doors," by simply mingling together in humane recreations, however good and healthful. The civilized Christian of this epoch does not always live out-ofdoors. Church organizations, with creed and ritual rooted far back in history, have earned their right to be; and just now they are reasserting that right. Dr. Hale very aptly likens them to the independent colonies before they had become compacted in the national union; and denies that "the work of the church is better done by its several sections when they keep up a strict organization among themselves, and each lets the other sections severely alone." That was once the war cry, we remember, of a large section of the United States; and now and then we hear something like it among the united churches. But if ever we get a good working constitution for them, it will harmonize the local with the general church in all forms of Christian well-doing, and, unlike that. lost formula which our accomplished critic describes, it can neither be mislaid nor burned in a Boston fire. With a generous largeness of view, Professor A. P. Peabody, of Harvard University, reveals the ground common to Unitarianism and Orthodoxy in the divine humanity of Christ; though he maintains, like other correspondents, that full agreement in the realm of metaphysical divinity is not attainable, nor desirable. His practical conclusion is that Christians should unite in recognizing heartily their common Christ-likeness, in promoting Christian righteousness, and in maintaining Christian worship so far as the common faith will allow. These are not only important grounds of Christian union, but may also be ranked As an able representative of the Baptist Congregational churches, the Rev. Dr. R. S. MacArthur, of New York City, dwells upon the growth of union in worship by means of liturgies as well as revivals, and upon the large amount of essential unity in doctrine which already exists in default of anything like organic union. But when Dr. MacArthur so intrepidly maintains that" organic union can only be reached at the baptistery," because many scholars have admitted that immersion is a scriptural mode of baptism, he forgets what an insignificant minority have held that it is the only scriptural mode, and how prevalent infant baptism has been in the universal church. The spread of open communion in his own denomination is one of the most cheering signs of the times, and affords practical ground for the hope that pedobaptist and anabaptist congregations might yet be embraced within the same denominational or ecclesiastical system. The need of the hour is not concession, but toleration. Of all the Congregationalist letters, Orthodox, Unitarian, Baptist, it may now be summarily remarked that not one of them has exhibited congregationalism as hostile to church unity or as wholly inconsistent with some ecclesiastical organization of congregations, which did not trench upon their local rights and privileges. Such are the three chief sets of opinions now before us for comparison. At first sight the differences might seem to be very great; but it will be found that some of them are greater within the same denomination than between different denominations, or greater within the same group than between different groups of churches. And it will also be found that all the differences are much less vital and important than the agreements. In the first place, there is a consensus of Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian opinions in regard to the spiritual oneness of all true Christians, however variously they may be organized in their different churches and denominations. This unity has been described with more or less clearness as a communion of saints, a universal fellowship of believers, a spiritual unity of churches, an invisible Catholic Church; but, however expressed, it is a note of essential harmony amid the apparent discord. It enables the strictest churchman, whether he be an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, or a Congregationalist, to recognize heartily the Christian character of multitudes, now attached to organized forms of Christianity, which he believes to be false and pernicious, and cannot by any official act recognize as regular or valid; and it affords a broad platform on which our churches may combine, more or less consciously and formally, in the confession of the same catholic creed, and largely in the use of the same historic liturgy. Underneath all existing structures of church polity ever remains this common Christianity, this united faith in Christ, as their one divine foundation. In the second place, even as to the remaining differences in polity, the writers are agreed that such barriers are not fixed and final, but shall yet, somehow, disappear in the church of the future. The Episcopalian may hope to see the episcopate supersede all other systems, or become their unifying bond and center. The Presbyterian may look forward to some further extension of the presbyterial principle through existing church organizations. The Congregationalist may anticipate self-governing congregations even under presbytery or episcopacy, as stripped of hierarchical claims. Each may project his ideal church into a millennium, more or less distant; may behold in that church a unity consistent with more or less diversity; and may see that church unity at length attained through causes more or less divine or human. But all will consent to view the present sectarian condition of Christianity, especially of Protestant Christianity, as abnormal and transient, and stand ready to welcome any hopeful means of promoting greater oneness and harmony. In the third place, the remaining differences in mere church polity admit, even now, of a theoretical adjustment. Without wandering off into a vague future, we can fancy an ecclesiastical system in which Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Episcopalianism, as we know them in this country, might so limit and modify each other as to co-exist without conflict, each in its own beneficent sphere of action. In such a complete polity presbytery would keep the equipoise between the centrifugal tendencies of congregationalism and the centripetal tendencies of episcopacy, ever preserving particular congregations in their due autonomy, and at the same time combining them in a true cathedral system of schools, missions, and charities. It may be the destiny of the American church thus to bring into normal connection and organic life three ecclesiastical elements, which in the Anglican establishment were forced together in false relations or driven out of it into hurtful extremes, but which in this new world have had full scope and development until now they are ready for a just coalescence. In this manner might be reached what was described in the former essay as "some comprehensive polity, which shall be at once Congregational, Presbyterial, and Episcopal, and wherein Protestant freedom and intelligence shall appear reconciled with Catholic authority and order." By this means the very terms Presbyterial, Congregational, Episcopal would lose their polemic sense, and all sectarian titles vanish in an organization which would be in fact, even if not in name, the American Catholic Church. In the fourth place, such an ideal adjustment. of differences in church polity has long been becoming actual in the history of the American churches. As we have seen, the old issues between them are all but dead, if not ready for honorable burial. The Cavalier, the Covenanter, and the Puritan now live only in history and romance. Their hot blood has become peacefully blended in their American descendants, and we now dwell upon their virtues rather than upon their faults. He must simply fight against himself who would fight against any one of them. In other words, the unconscious assimilation of churches, after a hundred years of intermarriage and social fusion, has reached a point where they differ more in names than in things. Congregationalists have now and then an extemporized presbytery called an association, and here and there a truly episcopal divine without the title of bishop. Presbyterians in emergencies practice the most independent congregationalism, and love to speak of their pastors as parochial bishops, lacking only the excellent rite of confirmation. Episcopalians, after having been also without that rite during the two hundred years of their colonial history, may now boast of presbyterian elements in their polity and a congregationalist freedom in their ritual. And all three are not only professing the same essential doctrines, but singing the same hymns and beginning to say the same prayers. Let such changes go on, and after awhile we may wake out of our useless strifes to find that we have only been viewing the same shield from different standpoints, the same church under different phases; becoming Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, by turns, without knowing it. In the fifth place, this gradual fusion of such ecclesiastical differences has at length come into public consciousness as an avowed aim for concerted action. Christian people all over the land are trying to find how much they agree, rather than how much they differ. Leading minds in the various churches from their several points of view are approaching the great problem of compacting our American Christianity against the gathering foes which menace it. Union in Church as well as in State is looming high and large as the question of questions before which all others must sink into insignificance. Not union for the mere |