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they speak positively and explicitly, their decision is paramount and final; and that no opinion or practice, unsanctioned by them, is to be received as a necessary and essential part of the Christian scheme." pp. 203, 204.

The pretensions which are so ably treated in the volume before us, are not known to us only as belonging to the history of religion in another land. There is a High Church party in this country, which, if it have not yet accepted all the propositions of the Oxford Tractarians, evidently relishes their writings and looks with favor upon the principles which they have advanced. The point on which their discussions and counsels turn, is every day acquiring fresh interest. The controversies of the next few years may, not improbably, revolve around it. This point is the Church. What is the Church? What is its authority? What its importance? What its true place among Christian ideas, or Christian influences? These questions demand attention, and deserve an answer. We propose in the remainder of this article — taking advantage of the opportunity afforded us by our notice of Mr. Madge's book-to offer a few remarks that may indicate the true reply, especially to the last of these questions.

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A high value, then, we at once admit, and, if necessary, are prepared to show, is placed upon the Church, in the New Testament. It is spoken of as something, whether it be an institution or a community-an organization to which the form is essential, or a brotherhood which exists only through the force of sentiment, it is spoken of as something entitled to the special regards of the believer. It is represented as sustaining important relations, and the union between the Church and Christ in particular is made the subject of frequent notice and highly wrought description. It needs not a very close study of the language which is used, to satisfy us that neither the Evangelists nor the Apostles considered the Church as a visible organization, deriving its validity from the form in which it was cast. The Church in the New Testament is the whole company of believers, the uncounted and wide-spread congregation of those who receive the Gospel as the law of life. It is co-extensive with Christianity; it is the living Christianity of the time, be that more or less, be it express

ed in one mode of worship or another, in one or another variety of internal discipline. The Church of Christ comprehends, and is composed of all his followers.

This is the simple idea of the Church which we find in the New Testament. And to this idea, as we have said, the minds of the sacred writers were fond of recurring. They loved to collect the members of Christ, as they styled them, under one idea, and present them to their readers in this relation of unity. Thus viewed, the Church became the emblem of Christian influences and Christian benefits. It expressed all that Christ had lived for, or died for. He had "loved it, and given himself for it." It was "the pillar and ground of the truth." It was "the body," of which he was the head.

But there was another idea on which the Apostles, in imitation of their Master, insisted yet more strenuously the idea of the individual. They taught the importance of the individual soul. Around this, as the one object of interest, were gathered the revelations and commandments of the Gospel. Personal responsibleness—in view of privileges, duties, sins, and temptations was their great theme. They preached the Gospel to the soul in its individual exposure and want. It is the peculiarity of our religion, its vital peculiarity, that it makes the individual the object of its address, its influence, its immediate and its final action. Christianity divested of this distinction becomes powerless, and void of meaning. It contradicts and subverts itself. The instructions, the warnings, the promises, the aids of the Gospel are concentrated upon each disciple in all their force, as if he were alone in the world.

Here, then, we find two ideas, each of them inseparable from the Christian faith, which seem to be contrary to one another. Is there an actual collision between them, or may they be harmonized? Are they mutually destructive

these ideas of the Church and the individual? And must we take our choice between them, give up the Church that we may retain our personal relation to Christ, or sacrifice individuality to our belief in the Church? No, neither. The two ideas cannot be irreconcilable, because they both belong to the Gospel, which includes no inharmonious elements. Yet how shall they be reconciled?

This is one of the problems which past ages have been

required to solve, and which our age is busy in examining. Whether the past has offered, or whether the present is likely to find the true solution, may appear after a few words.

The method by which alone the two ideas can be brought into harmony is obvious. One must be made subsidiary to the other. Though both be important, or both essential, one must be allowed greater prominence than the other, and by that which is entitled to hold the first place the other must be qualified and controlled. We can have no hesitation in determining to which of the two we should assign the chief importance. Christianity was given primarily and chiefly for the individual. The Church was but a consequence of its effect upon those, who collectively formed the Church, but were separately brought under its influence. And when the Church, through the conversion of those of whom it was constituted, had acquired a visible existence, had passed from a prophecy into a fact, from a conception into a reality, it became, and from that period has ever since been, a means of increasing that spiritual life in the souls of men to which we trace its origin. The Church is a means, and not an end. It exists for the individual, and not the individual for the Church. As Jesus said of the Sabbath, that "it was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," so we say, according to our apprehension of the Gospel, that the Church is constituted for the sake of the believer, not the believer chosen for the sake of the Church. If there be any discrepancy between the two, it arises from overlooking the law of their mutual relation. If there be any conflict, the Church must yield its pretensions to the welfare of the individual, rather than the individual be sacrificed to the Church. For the Church is the subordinate idea, the individual is the central idea.

With this solution of the problem in our hands, we discover the great error of past ages, and a prevalent error of our own times. It has been maintained that the Church is the principal idea in the Gospel. It has been generally supposed that the individual exists for the Church. Ecclesiastics have contended, and the people have admitted, that the rights of the Church were stronger than the rights of its members; that the prosperity of the Church must be secured at the expense of the believer's peace and

independence; that, in a word, everything must be made to yield to the Church. We need not attempt to show how mischievous this error has been, what injustice it has wrought, what cruelty it has prompted; what chains it has placed upon the mind; what burthens it has imposed upon the conscience, which God did not lay there, and what burthens which God did lay upon the conscience, it has taken off; with what a paralysis it has affected the moral nature, and into what a mere mechanism it has converted the religious sensibilities; what obstacles it has put in the way of personal improvement, and what a barrier it has raised to the progress of society; how it has immured the worthy in dungeons, and lifted the worthless into thrones; how it has built up a hierarchy, and depressed a people; how it has kindled the fires of the Inquisition in Spain, and given an unrighteous authority to the decisions of a Convocation or an Assembly in England, and upheld persecution for opinion in the New World; how it has been the leprosy of the Roman Catholic Church, covering it all over with hideous disfigurement, and how it tainted the life-blood of Protestantism, so that this has had but a sickly growth almost from the day of its birth. We need not recite all the detail of evils which have resulted, and do still result, from transposing the proper order of the ideas which we are considering. We wish only to bring into notice the fact, that such a transposition has been the common mistake of former ages, and is widely prevalent in

our own.

The religious error which we are noticing, corresponds to the political error which covers so many pages of national history. In the political science of former ages the fundamental principle has been, that the individual exists for the State. Our age is beginning to learn that this notion is in direct contradiction of the truth. The difference between European legitimacy and American democracy turns on this point. The Government, says the former, is everything; the individual belongs to the State. The individual is the essential idea, replies the latter; the State belongs to the people. The great political controversy of future times, whether it be carried on by the pen or the sword, will arise out of the antagonism of these positions. It has arisen, and the sympathies of the people of this land are all on

one side. A similar controversy must be waged on theological ground. Shall not this country be found on the side of personal right, and personal responsibleness, here also? The individual is merged in the Church, the Church is the great idea,' cries all Catholic Europe; and Protestant England repeats the falsehood. Let America send back in clear and full tones the truth, that the Church exists but for the individual, that the great idea is personal char

acter.

The truth which we must maintain is this,—that important as are the uses of the Church, they are but uses, and the Church itself a means, not an end. And that we may maintain it with fidelity or success, we must apprehend its nature, its justice, and its relations. We must clearly discern the meaning of such a statement, we must perceive the support which it derives from the whole doctrine and spirit of Christianity, and must be able to define the change which its acknowledgment will produce in the character of almost all ecclesiastical action. We must not delude ourselves with the belief, that the error of the middle ages is unknown in our times or in our land. Our ears are becoming accustomed to language the import of which, if properly weighed, might lead us to think that the distance between us and those ages is not so great as we have supposed. When the Church is described as the channel through which alone the saving influences of religion descend, what is meant, if there be not an ascription to the Church of an office and a value such as Christ never authorized? The Church, the only appointed channel of Divine influence! If by any possibility such an expression could be justified, it must be either through the validity of a tradition (entrusted to the Church,) which is recognized as Divine, or through the promulgation (by the Church) of edicts to which a similar character is ascribed. Now we can neither submit to the latter, nor consent to the former, if we mean to be true to Protestantism and to the Gospel. Christianity has no tradition which it offers along with the written word, and sanctions no edicts but those which fell from the lips of Christ.

If we adopt this conclusion, we shall find it easy to give an answer to inquiries which are often raised concerning the unity and the authority of the Church. What other

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