Should any Presbyterian Church be cast into the crucible, it is to be hoped that it will come through the ordeal like gold tried in the fire seven times purified. In common with all other religious denominations, the chief mission of the Presbyterian Church is to proclaim salvation to lost. men, and its organization will only be prized in so far as it is conducive to this great end. It should never be forgotten that the Church is a Theocracy, possessing a spiritual life derived directly from the baptism and indwelling of the Holy Ghost; and every organization should be the outward expression of this new life. With this renewed mind the Presbyterian system is in full harmony, and is therefore worthy of the confidence of al who desire to see the kingdom of God set up in this world. In the external symbols of its faith and worship alterations may be made to suit the varying minds of changing men, but the principles of Presbyterianism should be retained in their integrity. They have been tried and not found wanting; they rest on the twofold basis of reason and revelation; they combine liberty with order; they administer an even-handed justice to the humblest as well as to the highest; and through them the popular forces are evoked, before which evil is overcome and righteousness is established in the earth. The members of the Presbyterian Churches have no need indeed to be ashamed of the faith in which they have been nurtured, and it is their duty, wherever they go, to hold up its standard and keep its banners flying.

INDEPENDENCY, OR LOCAL CHURCH

GOVERNMENT.

BY THE REV. Edward WHITE

(Ex-Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales). NEARLY forty years ago I spent ten years of my life in the little western city of Hereford on the Wye, where, among our ten thousand people, we had religious folk of almost every species known in England: Anglicans of every type-High Church, Broad Church, Low Church; Roman Catholics; Methodists of each section-Wesleyan, Primitive, New Connection; Quakers; Baptists; Plymouth Brethren, of two or three shades, hived in separate "rooms," who loved God so much that they would scarcely speak to one another in the streets; Congregationalists; Unitarians; and professors of every type of Modern Agnosticism and Nothingarianism, together with a few active Infidels and Atheists. It was a strange experience. It was also an interesting opportunity. I was intimate with specimens of almost each variety of thought and character, from Deans and Canons and Roman Catholic Priests, down to hyper-Calvinists and God-denying materialists, who had revolted altogether against modern Christianity. It was a position almost resembling that of Noah in the ark, where one could study close at hand every species, sometimes well-nigh watching their evolution of varieties and transformations. I was almost the only person in the city who seemed to wish to know all sects and parties; and, though not popular with any of them, they taught me many things which subsequent experience in this vast sea of souls in London has only confirmed during the subsequent forty years.

One of the chief of these lessons in the natural history of religion was the perception of the fact that all really good and God-fearing men are very much alike inside. If you could, as Plato somewhere imagines, cleave them down the centre, and lay open a section of their inmost characters, you would find them all, including many of the doubters, earnest for truth-seeking, provided you did not expect them to seek truth outside their own little sheepfolds, for then the passion for truth-seeking begins to diminish in intensity; men are so much more under the influence of their friends and acquaintances than of abstract conscientious considerations. And yet, within these limits how much one could learn to love and admire round the whole circle! All the good men-I do not say all the professedly religious men, or all the pretenders-seemed to desire the right, and tried to enjoy the lower pleasures of life with due regard to the higher delights and duties possible to mankind. All the good men were diligent,

generous, temperate, hospitable, and truth-speaking; clean-handed, reverent, and compassionate. And one had the feeling that, if their souls could have been taken out of their bodies, and especially out of the religious or non-religious bodies to which they belonged, they would together have composed a Catholic and Apostolic Church, which would have proved a mighty force against the powers of darkness in that Cathedral City, which indeed were considerable both in the lay and clerical depart

ments.

We see modern Christianity under many disadvantages. The full breadth and depth of abstract Christianity is now found only, I think, in its own original documents, which are strikingly different from the more developed creeds and churches of later Christendom. If the Apostles had gone forth to attack Judaism, or the heathenism of the Greeks and Romans and Asiatics, with the Athanasian Creed, or the Assembly's Catechism, or the Declaration of Faith of the Methodist or Presbyterian or Congregational bodies in one hand, and the Cross in the other, I suppose no one thinks they would have had much success in the overthrow of ancient Paganism. The stupidity and ignorance of multitudes of both saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers, is an enormously powerful factor in the history of the world; though it is undoubtedly far better to have one eye than to have none, or even to have a cast in your one eye than to be stone blind.

I fear we must admit that the impartial and passionate search for truth is not so common an attribute of humanity as some imagine it to be. Thinking generally leads to the dissatisfaction of the set in which you are born, and that prospect, with the practical consequences following, seems to make a man think twice, before he thinks with the desperate resolution of perfect honesty in any direction.

Nevertheless, religious men are more closely related together within than often appears on the surface; just as one might think the whale a fish because he flounders and dives in the deep sea; whereas he is not a fish, but a hot-blooded mammal, and first cousin to the amphibious mammals both in skeleton and physiological structure, and is a fish only in his environments; just as many of us who are Congregationalists feel, thank God, much more closely related to the excellent Canon who lectured to you last Sunday afternoon than we do to some outward and congenital types of Nonconformity.

Your wish to hear some account of different "Centres of Spiritual Activity" has interested me much, although I cannot pretend to offer Independency to you as a short and easy road to the land of Beulah. I was born on this roadside, and one of the best things I have to say of itis, that the Independents of to-day persecute you and punish you less than any other set of religious people known to me for your individual beliefs on serious questions. As much as most men living I have gone against some of the theological principles which they hold in common with other reli

gious bodies, and against some others special to themselves and their tradi tions; and yet they made me their Chairman by a pretty unanimous vote two years ago. And I felt much more confident of having been chosen to that post as a sign of catholic brotherhood, than as a sign of advancing sympathy with my particular opinions. The original Independents of the Tudor and Stuart reigns were, I suspect, what we should now think a rather narrow and obstinate set of men, full of conscience, and very godly, but rather fierce and bitter in their goodness, and ready to behave to Queen Elizabeth in such a manner as to make us wonder less at her desire to hang them; and under the Stuarts ready to become fighting Cromwellian Ironsides, if you did not at once fall in with their decisions in theology and ecclesiastical affairs. But the modern Independents have laid aside the sword for the pen, and, I think, have learned the noble lesson of tempering their love of freedom and of local Church government by the ruling influence of the Divine Spirit of sympathy, and by a readiness to submit to that influence in religion, however made known, by learning, judgment, and criticism.

Without pretending to set them up as exceptionally wise men, I venture to think that their history has taught them some lessons of exceeding value in assisting the development of minds moving in the midst of our modern chaos of conflicting beliefs and no beliefs. My duty, however, is not so much to praise or defend the Independents as to describe them, and classify them amidst other varieties of militant Christians. I believe most of their leading men would agree with me in saying that their attachment to Independency is built rather on its being less of an ecclesiastical system than any other known in England, except that of the Open Communion Baptists, who are Independents with one ritualistic difference. The main attraction is a readiness for local union with all sincere and obedient Christians as soon as ever the said local Christians of different colours are wishful to unite with them on a broad basis in worship, in work, and in public usefulness. The very wideness of their aspirations works, however, in some degree against their success. A good party-cry has always more attractive power over the vulgar crowd than a great truth, and a well upholstered ritual has a better chance of popularity than either. Music, and dress, and office, are lawful accompaniments of every combination; but we hold that they ought to take a secondary place in a religion which deals chiefly with the unseen and eternal in both God and Man. It is to the credit of the Christian Scriptures that they are too full of thought and aspiration to be the textbook of ecclesiastical milliners and mantua makers; or of people who go almost mad with rage if you even offer to argue with them on any one of their so-called "Articles of Faith." You cannot even imagine St. Paul's letters being addressed to the parishioners of a great London parish. The ratepayers of St. Pancras or St. Marylebone, I am sure, would consider the Epistle to the Romans utterly unintelligible if addressed to them. And yet it originally was addressed to a recently con

Iverted company of Jews and Greeks and Romans. Early Christianity was a far more intellectual movement than it sometimes gets credit for, to say s nothing of its moral qualifications. Each Church was an intellectual and a moral Ecclesia, or selection of the fittest.

Now the attractions of this system to the Independents lie in these directions:

¿ It is an attempt to fall back on original Christianity as set forth in the Apostolic documents. This type we find far more credible than the form s which traditional Christianity has assumed in later ages. Take, as one #example, the doctrine of the nature of God. The Creed of St. Athanasius

It

(falsely so-called, for he lived in the earlier part of the fourth century; but this "Creed" is not found in Greek at all, and not even in Latin, as Canon Swainson has proved, till the eighth century)-this Creed insists on the use of phrases concerning the Divine Nature such as Trinity and Three Persons in One God, which are found nowhere in the New Testament. speaks of the Son and Spirit as "equal to the Father." The New Testament speaks of the Father as specially GoD: "One God the Father," and "one Lord Jesus Christ." And we prefer the New Testament language, and no one is rebuked for adhering to it. For myself, having been a preacher for forty-seven years, I have never once used the phrases, Trinity, or Three Persons in One God, in my public addresses and prayers, simply because they are not apostolic; and no one has ever reprimanded me for the omission.

There is no doubt that the seven or eight thousand Independent and Baptist Churches, and the far larger number in America, firmly maintain that the language of Christ and His Inspired Apostles signifies that in His Person there was some awful and sublime mystery of Incarnation, as it is termed, some unique union of a Divine Nature with the Human Life, which constituted Christ's personality as an unexampled combination of the finite with the Infinite, and they hold that it was this union which lifts Him up into the dignity of Son of God, makes Him the object of faith and worship, and gives Him power to bestow eternal life on His followers. We firmly believe that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, or King, promised to the Jewish people and to mankind from early times, and that He is the "Saviour of the world," through whom the Infinite and Eternal Love deals in gentleness and mercy with sinful men, pardons us, and opens to us the prospect of admission into that great and everlasting union of worlds, which Astronomy now dimly unveils to our apprehensions; so that Christianity is closely connected with all the greatest thoughts and aspirations possible to humanity.

I give this only as an example. We hold the general principle that Christians ought to strive by study and honest criticism to get back to Original Christianity in thought and spirit-and, even when we make mistakes, we sympathize with each other in this endeavour; for our onesided mistakes are often "right creeds in the making."