them from anything approaching the ancient curse of "the angel of the Lord,"-" Curse ye Meroz, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." We would they were no longer Laodiceans, neither cold nor hot.

SEPARATION OF CHURCHES THE MEANS OF UNITY.

MANY

ANY Free Churchmen are not a little astonished at the desperate tenacity with which liberal aud intelligent Episcopalians cling to the idea of a National Church. That men who feel, as some of the Episcopal party do feel, the miseries of bondage, should not be willing to accept freedom, or even to take it by force, whatever might be the possible alterations which would be brought about in their ecclesiastical position, is to the free men passing strange. But it is a plain fact that even those in the Church of England who can most clearly see the evils of their present condition, and are most ready to acknowledge the existence of good and precious things in the dissenting communities, shrink with dread from the idea of their National Church becoming "one of a multitude of sects." To their mind the voice of the Nonconformists, who call upon them to cut themselves loose from their "body of death" and come out into liberty, assuring them of a cordial welcome, is but as the voice of another serpent, inviting to a fall most grievous, under promise of a higher life.

It is not difficult to conceive the form of thought of which their hesitation is the outcome. To the Churchman, outward unity is one of the chief necessities of the Christian Church. To him the notion of "a multitude of sects" is entirely inconsistent with the idea of "one Catholic Church." To lose that outward unity is, to his mind, to lose the right to be accounted the Church of Christ. He will acknowledge that the inward

unity is a greater thing than the outward; but he can no more conceive of the existence of a thorough internal unity without an external unity and organized symmetry, than he can of the existence of an animating life in a body which has been rent in pieces and cast abroad. Without the State connection he does not see how what he considers to be the Church of Christ in England can be held together, and for it not to be held together is, in his judgment, for it to cease to be a Church at all.

To meet this form of thought there can be, we hold, but one satisfactory line of argument adopted, but that happily is one with which a large portion of the free churches have a lengthened acquaintance. The Congregational Churches have not drifted into the adoption of their independency. The men who first publicly advocated the Congregational form of Church polity started with the assertion, that it was folly and wickedness to attempt to bring all Christians into exact unity of opinions, by labouring for an outward uniformity or an allembracing organization. They affirmed it to be Christ's law, that Christian men should be gathered into assemblies-that each assembly should rule, govern, and direct itself--that each should allow to all other assemblies the liberty it used itself; and that it should be left to Him who alone was equal to the control of so great a business, to bind into one complete whole these many independent parts. Thus, and thus only, they held, could the Church of the living Lord be at peace within itself, and be ordered by Him according to His own blessed will.

The experience of three centuries has but confirmed their saying. As, with individual men, the "perfect law of liberty" does truly bring the life into more perfect conformity with Christ's will than the "law of commandments" ever could; so with Churches, liberty by separation produces an unity by peaceful agreement and loving appreciation, which no constrained uniformity could possibly assist. This truth is so fully established among the Congregational Churches, that very largely it may be forgotten how important it is to bring it forth before the eyes of men, and press it upon their notice. Certain it is that there are many who, though rejoicing in the possession of benefits which the adoption of this principle has

secured for them, fail to see the application of the principle to matters of present moment, and consequently do and say things which, to outsiders, preach contrary to the doctrine which we profess.

For the observant Churchman, studying the sects, finds himself evermore presented with the sight of "denominations," some large and some small, but all appearing to him to claim notice as denominational wholes, and each of them seeming to thrust away the others from relationship to itself, more or less determinedly. All talk of unity, with such a state of things existing, is to him incomprehensible. What seems to be claimed is not the unity of the Church, but the unity of a denomination. Now, he (of course we are speaking of a very liberal Churchman) regards his Church as being intended to include all the Christianity in the land; that it falls short of his ideal, he deeply regrets; but for the present he clings to its State connexion as its last hope. To become a denomination simply, and thus for ever to put away from it all other denominations, would be to him the suicide of his Church. He cannot do it.

We hold that this view of matters is greatly encouraged by our denominationalism; and that the only way to set forth the true view to the minds of such men is, to bring up and bring out, more continually and strongly, our first principle of the separateness, freedom, and equality, of the Churches.

A denomination is to us only what Walker or Webster would define it to be a name, an epithet, a term, a designation-it has no place in our eccclesiastical principles. We hold that there are many Churches, each being an assembly of Christian people, and one universal Church, known to and ordered by the Great Head of the Church Himself; but we acknowledge no other body, or division of parts.

Here is a Church denominated "Independent," and in the same street is one denominated "Baptist." The denomination creates no real difference of species; they are two Christian Churches, each having the same standing. They slightly differ in one of their rites, but one of the main uses of our congregationalism is to make differences possible without disturbance. That Baptist Church is as fully and truly a sister Church to

the Independent one, as is any other which is called Independent. This is the simplest and most natural deduction from the principle of congregationalism. There are but two ways that we see of denying it. The one by asserting that any difference of opinion or diversity of form destroys the right of a community to be called a Christian Church: and that, no congregationalist would allow any man to say unrebuked; the other by asserting that the Lord has ordained that his Churches should be classified according to their ways, denominated by names, and set apart in sections. No man that we know of has said this openly, but hundreds say it covertly. It is implied in all their doings. But surely nothing should separate two Churches in mutual estimation and recognition, except the departure of one from Christianity itself. Separation is not an inevitable effect of diversity in opinion or practice, for amongst the so-called Independent Churches at this day, wide diversities exist, many of them strongly contended for as essential to Christianity by those who hold or practise them; but no man has ever thought it needful to separately denominate the Calvinistic communities from the Arminian, or those who subsist on voluntary offerings from the exactors of pewrents.

The maintenance of the denominational idea is really the obscuration of the one great truth which the Congregational Churches possess; and while it is held up, it must be expected that very few onlookers will see anything in them but an attempt to compass within narrower limits the same object which the Established Church has sought in vain.

But let the truth show fairly out; let men see the real principle we hold, that there is not, should not be, cannot be any form of Christian organization but the simple and separate assembly, that the only true unity beyond this consists in internal estimation and external recognition of all Christian Churches, without formal alliance with them, and there is then something for them to ponder. Instead of a weaker form of their own constitution, they will see a polity of an altogether different order, and may find it possible to enter upon the inquiry, Will this principle really help us to reach the end we desiderate, better than that we have hitherto used? Will it

help to bind up in true unity the disunited and contending divisions of Christ's Church in England? And this inquiry

is the very thing we should desire.

The mission of that portion of the free Churches of England who follow the Congregational order, towards the Church of England and other "denominations" is, to show that it is possible, and to testify that it is right, that in all England there should be but one universal Church, or rather a geographical section of it; but that, not by any attempt to include all Churches in one great organization, with one polity, creed, and ritual, but by the abolition of the denominational idea, and the recognition of each separate Church which holds the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a part of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church in England. They already hold the fundamental principles; they need but to consider them fully, and honestly carry them out.

DR. JOHN CAMPBELL.*

ACCORDING to the old Greeks, no man ought to be es

teemed fortunate till after his death. In these days we may fairly carry their idea one step further, and say that no man can safely be pronounced fortunate until his biography has been written. We live in a day when it seems to be thought necessary to give the world an elaborate biography of every man who has occupied a position of any prominence in the public There may have been but little of incident in his career, and possibly the little there was had much better be consigned to oblivion: the lessons of his life may not be altogether such as admiring friends would desire to enforce: it may not be easy to tell the story with anything like fairness and truth, without ripping up old wounds and inflicting a great deal of needless pain. Still, if a man has achieved some sort of public repu

eye.

*"Life and Labours of John Campbell, D.D.," by Rev. Robert Ferguson, LL.D., and Rev. A. Morton Brown, LL.D. London: Richard Bentley.