THE INSTALLATION.

577 sary. Dr. Duryea, who had promised to give the right hand of fellowship, pleaded another engagement, as the council was adjourning, and Dr. McKenzie undertook this part of the service, and performed it with great acceptance. Dr. Webb, who had accepted an invitation to offer the installing prayer, asked to be excused, and Dr. Merriman officiated in his stead. The venerable Dr. Blagden made the prayer of invocation, and this, we think, was the last pulpit service performed by him. Dr. Tucker preached the sermon from 2 Cor. iv. 13: "We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written [Psalm cxvi. 10] I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak." Dr. Barbour gave the charge to the pastor, and Dr. Herrick addressed the people. An original hymn, by Dr. Tarbox, was sung before the sermon, and another, by a member of the church, at the close of the services. Mr. Gordon pronounced the benediction. The exercises were admirable in every particular, and were greatly enjoyed by those who were able to forget some of the occurrences of the afternoon.

When the action of the minority in the council became the subject of general and rather severe criticism, some of the leaders sought to justify themselves by the plea that they had been conscientious in what they had done. Conscience, as we know, has been the excuse for nearly all the persecution of the later Christian centuries, so that one may well exclaim in the words of Madame Roland, slightly changed, O Conscience, how many crimes have been committed in thy name! Without calling in question the conscientiousness of religious persecutors in general, it must be conceded, we think, that the conscientiousness of the persecuted is much more noble and much more heroic. Certainly it is a much nobler thing to resign church preferment for the sake of our convictions than to keep another man out of a desirable pulpit because he does not agree with us, a much more heroic thing to submit to the thumbscrew and the rack rather than be false to ourselves, than to apply these instruments of torture, or their modern equivalents, to others who will not accept our standards for their guidance in belief and conduct. That it is also a much more blessed thing, we have the teaching of the Lord himself, for his last beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount was reserved for his disciples when persecuted for his name's sake, that is, we suppose, for the sake of his truth, and he had none

1 Songs and Hymns, by Increase N. Tarbox, p. 135.

to pronounce upon the men who, even for the sake of his truth, as they imagine, inflict the persecution.

There is a conscience which, in its exercise, is not dependent upon time or place or numbers, and which is never so grandly courageous as when it represents a small minority or is alone, and this we must regard as the Christian conscience; and there is another, which is especially valiant when a large majority stands behind it, or wherever it has full control, and this we may call the ecclesiastical conscience. Two years after the Old South council of 1884 there was another installation council in Boston, in which all the men who had led in the opposition to Mr. Gordon were present, with others of the extreme conservative party; and as the theological opinions of both pastors-elect were alike progressive, it was to have been expected that those who had been impelled by their consciences to multiply questions, to protest and to condemn in the one instance, would be equally outspoken and uncompromising in • defence of orthodoxy as defined by themselves in the other. Any such expectation, however, was unfulfilled, for, in the later council, hardly an interrogatory was put, no exceptions were taken, and no discussion was allowed to disturb for a moment the peacefulness of the hour. By any uninformed spectator it might easily have been taken for an installation council in those earlier years of Congregationalism, "when our churches were crude in polity and vague in faith." We will not affirm that there was any thought in the minds of the reactionary leaders on the later occasion of the questions and answers of the earlier one, of the vote of two to one against them, or of the strictures which their course then called forth; but we hazard little in the assertion that in the proceedings of the Shawmut Council of 1886 there was too little ecclesiastical conscience, or in those of the Old South Council of 1884 there was altogether too much.

A prominent pastor one of those who stood nobly by the Old South in the private session of the council remarked a few days later that in the trying experiences of the occasion, both the new pastor and the church "suffered vicariously," and that other churches, with their pastors-elect, in time to come, would be the better able to maintain their rights against ecclesiastical encroachments, because of this contest and this victory. Nor, as we think, was this the first instance in its history in which the church had suffered vicariously, if indeed there

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can be any suffering, corporate or individual, in the cause of freedom, religious or civil, which is not vicarious. "For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself."

We have prepared this account of the proceedings in connection with Mr. Gordon's installation with great self-restraint. Much more might be said in reference to them, and should be said whenever the history of the passing controversies or of the new pastorate is written. Of this pastorate in its beginning we will only say that if strife and division prevailed in any measure outside the church, mutual confidence, absolute harmony, and hopeful expectation reigned within. Even the partisan opposition which had been brought to bear against Mr. Gordon's installation had its suggestion of encouragement; for, from the settlement of Benjamin Colman at the close of the seventeenth century onward, those ministers who at their com ing hither were most strenuously opposed by some of their brethren are now recognized as among the most faithful and successful in the long and honorable list of Boston pastors.1

"Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." In the membership of the Old South to-day there are descendants of some of its founders and earlier members; and they, together with those who stand with them in the succession, remembering with gratitude to God the works of faith and labors of love of the men and women who have gone before, and sympathizing with them in their sacred aims and aspirations, desire to emulate them in their devotion to this church and in their loyalty to Him who has ever been its Lord and Head. They desire also, in their turn, to bear faithful witness to the truth as it is in Him, and to transmit unimpaired to the next century and the next generation the spiritual inheritance which has come down to them.

1 The strength of historic Congregationalism has been its flexibility; and yet there are ministers in this generation who are seeking, as others before them have done, to make it more rigid and more uniform in its outward working, and to bring it under the control of a compacted and centralized administration. It seems to us that to add to the denominational machinery would be to multiply the opportunities for machine management, that is to say, if we may judge from recent events, for the use of political methods and for restless and aggressive parti

sanship; while to extend the principle of organization would be to place more power in fewer hands. So far as the benevolent work of the churches is concerned, what is wanted is, not more organization, but reorganization; as relates to their internal affairs, these churches are able, for the most part, to take care of themselves, or, if mutual assistance is called for at any time, this can be offered and accepted the most effectively, not under denominational regulation, but under the application by the brethren for themselves of the law of love.

Their prayer is that it may continue to be said, as it has been said hitherto, that in the history of the Third Church, — the Old South," century uttereth speech to century, and generation showeth knowledge to generation."

Sic dispensant verbum Dei

Quod nox nocti, lux diei

Indicant scientiam.

Archbishop Trench says, in a note on Adam of St. Victor's hymn from which we have taken these lines, that the opening verses of the nineteenth Psalm, mainly on the strength of the Apostle Paul's application of them, have constantly received a spiritual application. "The Church is the firmament which shews the handywork of God; in which day transmits to day and night to night in unbroken succession to the end of time, the wondrous story of the glory and grace of God." To this unceasing testimony of the church catholic the local churches are evermore contributing, each in its sphere. That this shall not fail from age to age we have the assurance of the Divine word; may the same promise find ample and perpetual fulfilment, as in the past, so in the future history of the Old South Church: "A seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

I. A LIST OF BOOKS, ETC., RELATING TO THE HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, SOCIETY, AND MEETING - HOUSE, ARRANGED ACCORDING TO DATE OF PUBLICATION.

The Necessity of Sincerity, in renewing Covenant: Opened and urged in a Sermon Preached to the Third gathered Church in Boston, New England; June 29. 1680. On the Day wherein they Solemnly renewed Covenant. By Samuel Willard, Teacher of that Church.

Boston, in New England, Printed by James Glen, for S. Sewall, 1682. 131-150, (1-6) pp. Small 8vo.

I

Forms part of Willard's "Covenant-Keeping The Way to Blessedness." Pp. (1-6) contain "The Church Renewed Covenant." Reformation The Great Duty of an Afflicted People. Setting forth The SIN and Danger there is in Neglecting of it, under the Continued and Repeated Judgments of God. Being the Substance of what was Preached on a Solemn Day of HUMILIATION, kept by the Third Gathered Church in Boston, on August 23d. 1694. By Samuel Willard, Teacher of the said Church.

Boston, in New England, Printed and Sold by Bartholomew Green, 1694. 76 pp. 16m0.

2

A Sermon Delivered By Thomas Prince, M. A. on Wensday [sic], October 1. 1718. At his Ordination to the Pastoral Charge Of the South Church in Boston, N. E. In Conjunction with the Reverend Mr. Joseph Sewall. Together with The Charge, By the Reverend Increase Mather, D. D. And a Copy of what was said at giving the Right Hand of Fellowship: By the Reverend Cotton Mather, D. D. To which is added, A Discourse Of the Validity of Ordination by the Hands of Presbyters, Previous to Mr. Sewall's on September 16. 1713. By the Late Reverend and Learned Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton, Pastor of the same Church.

Boston: Printed by F. Franklin for S. Gerrish, 1718. (8), 76, (4), 15 pp. 16m0.

3

Pemberton's Discourse occupies pages (4), 15, and has a separate title-page. The Holy Spirit the Gift of God Our Heavenly Father, To them that Ask Him. A Sermon Preach'd on a Day of Prayer with FASTING, kept by the South Church in Boston, to Ask of God the Effusion