seminary for the training of ministers, it is strange that the leaders did not recur to the action of the churches in founding Harvard College, and so make the piety of the churches. the guardian of its faith, polity, and bequests. Instead, they resorted to legal expedients, went to Egypt for help, as did Judah.1 They tried to hedge the school about by creed and subscription and visitors, as well as trustees, so that no one could leap over or crawl through the legal fences. We say nothing on the occasion or merits of the recent attempt: to apply these guards; but the expense, and delay, and disappointment experienced by the friends of these legal expedients, must convince them that the original safeguard of Harvard-the churches-would have been better. But reliance on the state had then become a habit too strong to allow a return to Christ's appointed guardians, had the churches then been organized into local and state associations. SLOW ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT. When our fathers planted churches independent under Christ, all Christendom,-Greek, Roman, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian,-except Holland, refused to tolerate them. They stood alone in defence of a church order which, if it succeeded, had in it the death of other polities, and was itself a return in principle to what is now generally conceded to be the apostolic church order. Those independent churches. were wisely jealous of their liberties. They guaranteed them by civil law, as has been shown. In becoming identified with the state, state courts became also ecclesiastical tribunals. "Thus, when the General Court took cognizance of ecclesiastical affairs, it was but the whole body of the church legislating for its parts; and this with the important peculiarity, that all the legislators by whom the church exercised its supreme power were of the laity. The system had 1 Isa. xxxi. I. no element or resemblance to prelacy or presbytery. It was pure democracy installed in the ecclesiastical government."1 So long as this state of things lasted, there was no need of stated synods or associations of churches, they had them, with power, in the General Courts. The ministers, not meeting in these annual courts, soon formed stated associations for consultation and improvement.2 The need also of local church associations was felt; for as early as 1641, to prevent " errors and offences," and to promote "brotherly communion," there was put into "the body of laws," adopted by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, provision for the stated meeting of "ministers and elders of the churches near adjoining together, with any other of the brethren." "3 Had this permissive law been followed, the history of organic Congregationalism would have been differ ent. During the long period of struggle to retain their special privileges, from supreme control in the seventeenth century to entire separation of church and state in New England in the nineteenth century, no successful effort was made to combine our churches in organizations meeting statedly. For a century and a half, they contended for a losing cause without organization. When their battle for prerogatives was lost, and our churches had no further hope of state help, they began to look to one another in conferences or associations without authority. The earliest in New England, as we have shown elsewhere, was the Brookfield Association, 1821; the next year the State Convention of Vermont so altered its constitution as to admit laymen. The National Council was organized in 1871; and twenty years later the first International Congregational Council was held in Lon 1 Palfrey's Hist. of New England, Vol ii. p. 40. 2 Congregational Quarterly, Vol. ii. p. 203 seq. Felt's Ecclesiastical History of New England, Vol. i. p. 440. 4 The Church-Kingdom, pp. 296–298, 306–311. don. Effective organization of Congregationalism in the line of local church activity, of associated evangelization, of associated advice, and of church fellowship, was therein presented;1 but the record reveals a slow development, due, in part, and we believe largely, to the state connection of our churches in New England. RETARDED DENOMINATIONAL GROWTH. The persistent resistance to disestablishment, fighting it at every step to the last; the consequent demoralization in discipline and courage; devout reverence for the customs and methods which had all along alienated the great body of the people; a distrust of their polity so deep that desertion from it was constantly advised in influential quarters; the consequent union efforts which not only helped other denominations, but actually transferred over two thousand Congregational churches to them; the feeling, thus engendered and still widely prevalent, that no church can be hopefully planted in western, and much less in foreign, fields, unless there is found existing there already "a congregational element," that is, a nucleus of previously trained Congregationalists; the want of the evangelistic spirit and methods everywhere belonging to state established churches. -these are enough to answer the question, which a correspondent of The Guardian, the organ of the Anglican Church asks; namely, "Why has Congregationalism in the United States, which had the start and the ground, allowed all the newer organizations to outstrip it?"2 We had the start and the This question is pertinent. ground; we threw them away. Why? As late as 1776, in wealth and power our churches were far in the lead, though even then the persecuted Baptists outnumbered them; but, in 1890, they stand sixth among Protestant denominations in 1 International Congregational Council, 1891, pp. 104-107. 2 Quoted in The Andover Review, Vol. xvi. p. 293. the United States, the Methodist having eleven times as many churches and nine times as many communicants, while the Baptists have ten times as many churches and over eight times as many members. The Andover Review indeed says: "Congregationalism is proving itself a conserving and saving force in the rush of immigration into the newer states; and its growth there, as compared with its previous growths, is phenomenal; and this later growth, it is to be remembered, is religious, not chiefly educational or political.1 Our retarded growth as a denomination is mainly due, we believe, to the church-state in New England, and its direct and indirect results. And its recent more rapid growth is due mainly, we believe, to emancipation, in part, from the impediments we have given; to the stated fellowship of our churches in conferences and associations; to the cessation of union efforts, which have always ended in failure;2 and to the freedom inherent in our polity, so in harmony with this democratic age. When our free polity strips itself of its remaining hindrances, inherited from its connection with the state, American Congregationalism will clothe itself with the power and growth of the primitive churches. Its liberty, purity, and efficiency will commend it. 1 Vol. xvi. p. 293. 2 Union Efforts between Congregationalists and Presbyterians: Results and Lessons. A Pamphlet. ARTICLE IV. STUDIES IN CHRISTOLOGY; WITH CRITICISMS UPON THE THEORIES OF PROFESSOR BY FRANK HUGH FOSTER. I. THE study of history in the Christian church, like every other study, has distinct practical aims. If to some the cultivation of historical science is the worship of a "himmlische Göttin," who is to be revered for her own sake, to those who are engaged, like the church, in the most momentous of practical problems, it is the pursuit of that instruction which "philosophy teaching by example" is pre-eminently able to give. In beginning these "studies in christology," the writer does not hesitate to avow a distinct purpose. History is employed in our day, and by no one more vigorously and consciously than by the eminent Professor Harnack of Berlin, as a means of influencing the course of dogmatic thought. If such a use is legitimate for the critical and destructive schools of theology, it is legitimate for the conservative and constructive; and it is as necessary as it is absolutely legitimate. If Harnack's description of the historical development of Christian doctrine, drawn out in his Dogmengeschichte, by which it is viewed as the product of Greek thought, corrupting and overloading with a mass of foreign conceptions the simple ideas of primitive Christianity, be accepted as correct, the great Christian system, though the product of many former ages, will be |