We frankly confess that as an expression of doctrinal agreement this formula is, beyond all precedents known to us, empty of definite meaning. Whether it means less or more than absolute silence would have meant, is a question on which antiquaries may dispute in some distant age hereafter, but on which we hazard no opinion. The single word, Evangelical, or Orthodox, without any explanation, would have been comparatively definite; but if the intention had been to say nothing in particular, while seeming to say something, the formula as it stands would have been exceedingly felicitous. What the intention was of the committee which contrived that exquisite collocation of words, or what was the intention of the assembly which adopted it by a vote, we could not say without being liable to the charge of temerity,—perhaps not without seeming to express a disrespectful sentiment which we do not feel. Taking the words in their successive clauses, we find, first, that the Congregational churches invited to coöperate under the constitution are those whose interpretation of the Scriptures is "in substantial accordance with the great doctrines of the Christian faith;" secondly, that the great doctrines of the Christian faith with which the interpretation of the Scriptures by the aforesaid churches is in substantial accordance are "commonly called Evangelical;" thirdly, that these doctrines, commonly called Evangelical, have been held in our own churches from the early times; fourthly, that they have been sufficiently set forth by former councils; and, fifthly, that what they are the authors of the constitution do not tell us, preferring, evidently, that every particular church be at liberty to determine the question according to its own knowledge of theology and of dogmatic history.

But, on the whole, awkward as this formula is, we are compelled to doubt whether the committee that framed it, or the assembly that voted it, could have done much better. Somehow, the impression is made that the constitution invites to its National Council not the Unitarian churches, nor the assemblies of Univeralists, nor the synagogues of Judaism, be they ever so Congregational in the management of their affairs, but only such Congregational churches of the United States as are commonly called Orthodox, or Evangelical. What more do we want? If the National Council were to

have control over the churches-if it were to have the power of determining who shall be ordained to office in the churches, who shall be authenticated as qualified to preach the gospel, and who shall be received to communion or excluded—if it were to be a court of appeals in trials for heresy—in brief, if instead of three thousand distinct and self-governing churches, we were to have one church distributed into three thousand assemblies under one government, a sectarian church geographically co-extensive with the nation, and making proselytes to its "denomination" in other lands-then some doctrinal standard besides the Bible and the Spirit of Christ in His churches, would be necessary-or, at least would be possible. But all these matters, pertaining either to the internal government of churches, or to their communion one with another, are left just where they were "from the early times"-just where they would be if the National Council had never been thought of Every church will continue to administer the law of Christ according to its own judgment. Every church will choose its bishops and deacons, and ordain them as heretofore, according to the grace given to it. Churches will give and receive advice as heretofore, at their discretion. Associated pastors will continue to examine and approbate (or, as the word goes, license) candidates for the ministry, and they will do this under rules of their own making, and according to their own ideas of what constitutes fitness for the work of preaching. The standing of a church as Evangelical or non-Evangelical—the question whether it shall be counted in or counted out when the constituency of the National Council is to be reckoned up-will be a question for neighboring churches, and not for any higher judicature. The churches to be represented in that triennial synod of elders and messengers are not an organized and governed sect; and for that reason they neither have nor need to have sectarian symbols.

Some are anxious to know how the churches, notoriously though freely Calvinistic from the beginning, will retain their "distinctive doctrines," unless it be maintained that the National Council stands on a sectarian basis. They think it will be "hard to see how a pastor is to know what he is authorized to teach" if the "doctrinal basis" is understood to be, like that

of the Tract Society, only Evangelical. "Every shade of Calvinistic or predestinarian faith is to be put into the shade” (they say), if a church that is not clear on the doctrine of the Divine decrees, or that of the perseverance of all saints, can be represented in the National Council. In friendly deference to such a feeling, we may be allowed to say that, if the churches continue to be Evangelical in doctrine, and to demand that their ministers shall be not flashy and fluent speakers only but thinkers, well educated in theology, their Calvinism will take care of itself; and we say, farther, that the pastor who must have a satisfactory interpretation of that singular combination of phrases called "the doctrinal basis," in order "to know what he is authorized to teach," should be advised to "go a fishing rather than to pursue a work for which he is unfit. A man may hold all the theology of John Wesley (shallow as his theology would seem to Edwards or to Taylor), and yet be far more fit for the pastoral office in one of our churches or for a seat in our National Council, than the man who, not being able to discover a sectarian symbol for his rule of faith, does not know that he is authorized to teach whatever the Bible teaches, and that he must teach it whether men will hear or forbear. Surely every Congregational pastor, if he knows at all what Congregationalism is in its genius and history, acknowledges that God's commission to him is not, Teach what the symbol of your denomination authorizes,-but, "Preach the preaching that I bid thee."

There are men, we are sorry to say, who seem to think that their relation to Christ, whether as ministers of his gospel or as disciples, is, and can be, only through a sectarian organization. The conception of a church belonging directly to Christ, instead of belonging to him through its connection with one of the organized sects, seems to be quite beyond the range of their thinking. If any such are among the readers of what we are writing, we say to them that the legitimate definition of a Congregational church is that it is a church of Christ and nothing else—a church belonging directly to Christ and independent of sectarian symbols and sectarian arrangements. Such churches accept a doctrine not because it is Calvinistic or Arminian, Edwardean or Wesleyan, but only because it is

Evangelical. In like manner their polity is simply what they find in the New Testament, the Evangelical polity, and nothing else. On the basis of the gospel as given in the New Testament the doctrine which is according to godliness, and the order of the gospel-they have communion one with another, and communion as far as it is practicable with churches which, having added sectarianism to the gospel, hold forth the compound in their sectarian symbols. What was attempted by the earliest English Congregationalists-the martyrs and confessors under Elizabeth, the exiles in Holland, the Pilgrim Fathers of New England-was simply to fall back upon the gospel and nothing else. Their ideal was Evangelical truth and Evangelical order. If they were exclusively Calvinists, it was because they did not recognize the distinctive doctrine of Whitgift or Laud as Evangelical. If they were Separatists from the Church of England, it was for a polity that was to be Evangelical and nothing else. What they proposed to themselves, what they attempted as an example to Christendom, was "union on a simply Evangelical basis of polity as well as doctrine." The pole-star by which they steered was "gospel rules and patterns;" and so far as those who call themselves Congregationalists swerve from the purely Evangelical basis, and attempt to be a sect among the sects, and to rejoice in sectarian symbols, "by so many degrees," as John Davenport might say, "will the compass of their conclusions vary toward the antarctic."

ARTICLE VIII.-NOTES AND COMMENTS.

IN a review of Récit d'une Sœur, in the January number of the New Englander, we called attention to a discrepancy between the original French edition of Messrs. Didier & Co., of Paris, and an English translation published in this country by the Catholic Publication Society of New York. In Récit d'une Soeur-the original Memoir of Alexandrine de la Ferronnays, written by her sister, Mrs. Craven-the Profession of Faith is given which she made when she abjured Protestantism and submitted to the Roman Catholic Church. It is a document which she signed in the presence of at least six persons, whose names are appended as witnesses. Our statement in the January number was that this Profession of Faith was such an one as we should suppose would naturally have been drawn up at this time for Alexandrine by those whom she had selected as her spiritual advisers. It is expressed in very general terms, and there is nothing to alarm her prejudices and nothing which would appear especially distasteful to one in her situation whose life had been spent out of the communion of the Roman Catholic Church, and who was not yet very far advanced in her faith." But in the English translation of which we have spoken-called A Sister's Story-a very different document is inserted as the Profession of Faith which Alexandrine made on this occasion; and the names of the same six persons are appended as witnesses. In view of this manifest discrepancy, and the fact that this last document with its minute details with regard to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church seems under the circumstances of the case somewhat unnatural and even suspicious, we said that it was incumbent in the Catholic Publication Society to offer an explanation. In the "Literary Bulletin" of the Catholic World, for April, the following reply was made. "The Catholic Publication Society's edition is printed exactly, word for word, from the first London edition, published by the respectable house of Bentley, in three volumes. If any deviation from the French was made, the Catholic Publication Society did not make it, but followed the London edition in good faith.” This statement was of course enough to clear the society of responsibility in the matter; but they went further and offered to 50

VOL. XXXI.