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PRESENT-DAY LECTURES

TO A

ia|tist ^0itjgr^0ati0m

BY
T. HARWOOD PATTISON.

*' But while Protestants, to avoid the due labour of understanding their own religion, are content
to lodge it in the breasts, or rather in the books, of a clergyman, and to take it thence by scraps and
mammocks, as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dde, they will be always learning and never
knowing 3 always in&nts ; always either his vassals, as lay papists to their priests 3 or at odds with
him, as Reformed principles give them some light to be not wholly conformable — whence infinitt
disturbances in the State, as they do must needs follow/' — Milton.

LONDON :
YATES & ALEXANDER, Symonds Inn, Chancery Lane.
PEWTRESS BROS. & GOULD, Ave Maria Lane.
1872.

PREFACE.

-The following five Lectures were delivered as a short
Sunday evening course to the congregation meeting in West
Street Chapel, Rochdale. My wish was, to supply for those
who regularly worship at that chapel, a lack which I myself
felt strongly when first I began to think upon these matters :
I mean a brief and popular guide to the main arguments in
favour of the position which is occupied by the extreme
section of Protestant Christians. As they were delivered,, so
these Lectures are printed. I say this much, becaus.e I should
be sorry that any reader should take up this little book ex
pecting a more exhaustive treatment of the subjects touched
upon than he will find» " In a popular lecture," as Mr. E. A.
Freeman has recently observed, "it is impossible to deal with
everything with which it is desirable to deal ; it is impossible
to go to the bottom of those things which one picks out to
deal with. It is enough — because it is all that can be done — if
the choice of subjects is fairly well made, and if the treatment
of those that are chosen, though necessarily inadequate, is
accurate so far as it goes. Many things must be left out
altogether ; many things must be treated very imperfectly ;
the attention of the hearers must be caught by putting some
things in a more highly-wrought shape than one would choose
3t another time. The object is gained if the lecturer awakens

IV preface.
in his hearers a real interest in the subject on which he
speaks, and if he sends them to the proper sources of more
minute knowledge." *
The order in which the subjecits are taken may seem to
some of my readers the reverse of what they themselves would
have chosen. Scientifically, perhaps, it would have been more
accurate to have selected the largest class first, and then to
have gradually reduced the groups until the point was
reached peculiar to the; advocates for Believers' Baptism. But
I have preferred, in a series which is by no means controver
sial, to take the opposite course. My purpose was. not at all
to make converts from other bodies of Christians, but only to
give to my own congregation a fair idea of the ground upon
which they were standing. I was happy, too, in the confi
dence that with each lecture the number of those who agreed
with me grew larger and larger. And so the best wine was
kept to the last. The reader, therefore, will do well to open
this little volume at the Lecture which promises to enlighten
him upon the views which he himself holds. I shall be glad
of his company throughout the entire course which is
travelled, but my chief anxiety is that he be one with me,
heart and soul, when the final stage is reached.
* "Growth ofthe English Constitution,''

Engelberg, August nth, 1872.

CONTENTS.

"Why are we Baptists ?

*' They are no * Anabaptists ' ; they are honest sober Christians: — they expect to be used as men," —
OUver CromweU. II.
Why are we Congregationalists ? . , . . 21
*' It is He, and not the carven timbers and the jewelled stones which we may biing, that makes the
place of His feet glorious. 1 think, wilh St. Augustine, ' Where Christ is, there is the Church ; ' and where
Christ is not, no congregation of individuals, nor accumulation of resources, nor splendour of worship, nor
purity of doctrine, or zeal and earnestness, can make up for the lacking. His presence makes a
community j without Him it is, at tbe best, but a mob." — Rev, Mexander Maclartn,
III.
Why are we Nonconformists ? . . . . 37
** I smell a Lollard in the wind." — Chaucer.
*' Meanwhile, in our era of tbe world, these same church-clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at -elbows." —
Carlyle, IV,
Why are we Protestants ?  55
** The priests were the class"of men that gave me the least trouble. They were at first all against me ;
I allowed them to wear violet- coloured stockings, and from that moment tbey were all for me." —
Napoleon,

Why are we Christians ?  73
** Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with padnes of bright gold ;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his .motion like an angel sings.
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls—
But whilst this muddy virtues of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." — Shakspearf,
Harmony is better than unison, " Yes," says Lord Bacon ; " and it is so not only in sounds, but in
affections."

«fe Mt kt ^u^Mb ?
" They are no ' Anabaptists' j they are honest sober Christians :— they expect to be used as men.*
OUver Cromwell.

I.
WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS?

It is out of no desire to engage in religious controversy that
I propose to answer certain important questions in regard to
our position as Baptists, Congregationalists, Nonconformists,
Protestants, and Christians. I shall only try to supply for
you — and especially for the young men and women gathering
here — a lack which I felt most powerfully when I myself began-
to think upon these matters. Tb do this will be in harmony
with the words in which the Evangelist Luke opens his
Gospel : " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth
in order a declaration of those things which are most surely
believed among: us, . . . it seemed good to me also to write
unto thee, in order that thou mightest know the certainty of
those things, wherein thou hast been instructed." There is
no countenancing here of miserable and embittering, religious-
controversy ; but there is an emphatic declaration that we
ought to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us.
Speaking, a few days agO; upon religion and science, Mr.
Gladstone said : " I am one of those who believe firmly, that
on the one hand religious faith and feeling in the individual
are to be recognised and honoured wherever we may find
them, if genuine. ii;i their character, however partial their
development may be. But, on the other hand, when we
speak of a religion which is to be transmitted from generation
to generation, which is to be permanent in its action upon

6 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ?
mankind — that religion must address itself to the reason as
well as to the conviction and feelings of the man. It must
cover the whole of human nature in its scope, and its purpose ;
in a word, it must be clothed in forms which are definite and
positive."* In the course which we are about to pursue,
religion must be definite, and it must be personal. You are
not religious by virtue of your birth or descent. If that were
the case, a vast number of us would not be Baptists, but
Paedobaptists, for such were our fathers ; a still vaster pro
portion of us would not be Protestants, but Papists, for such
were our fathers also ; and all of us would be heathen (if we
care to go so far back), and not Christians, for upon these very
hills, and in these very valleys, our rude progenitors raised
their altars, and offered up their sacrifices to false gods.
Neither are you religious because you have a number of
dim cloudy feelings and sentiments, which float through your
mind, and seem to you, and to others, to be very devout and
pious. A man is a Christian only when he can give clear and
satisfactory answers to his own mind — I don't say to the mind
of others — as to what he believes. I am convinced that a
great deal of doubt and uncertainty in the minds of the
young arises from just this : they will not honestly confront
their difiiculties, and patiently search as to whether these
things are so or not. You have been instructed (after a
¦ fashion) in certain matters, but it is only by personal and
persistent inquiry that you can come to know of their
certainty. It is in the earnest hope that you will be led to
do this, that I propose to furnish some reasons foi^ the
position which we occupy.
And because it includes the smallest number of ad
herents — for there are more Congregationalists than Baptists,
more Nonconformists than Congregationalists, more Pro
testants than Nonconformists, and more Christians than
Protestants — because it is that which marks us out, therefore,
* " Daily News," May 15, 1872; " Manchester Examiner," May 16, 1872.

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ? 7
from all others, T wish to answer this evening the inquiry,
" Why are we Baptists ? " I am free to confess, however, that
it is very questionable, to my own mind, whether we are
Baptists, after all. If the name Baptist be given to those who
exaggerate and magnify this rite, so as to dwarf others, then
we are not Baptists, for we do not thrust this ordinance
forward, nor do we claim for it a foremost place among the
things which are to be most surely believed. I have no wish
to make it the prominent feature in my ministry, " For Christ
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel." I do not
press it on the attention of the distressed in soul, or of the
perplexed in mind ; for to such it is Christ — not any of His
ordinances — who alone can give rest. I do not presume to
debar from the Lord's Table those who do not practise bap
tism, nor do I refuse to recognise in such persons members of
Christ's Church on earth. I submit, therefore, that the name
" Baptists " belongs not so much to us, as to those who say,
with the Romanist, in the decrees of the Council of Trent
"Whoever shall atfirm that baptism is indiff'erent, that is, not
necessary to salvation — let him be accursed."* It belongs tf»
those who refuse to lay decently and reverently beneath the
churchyard sod any dying unbaptized, or out of the Established
communion ; and it belongs to those who are actually carrying
through Parliament, at the present time, a Bill declaring that
for such unreconciled Nonconformists "no service of any
kind whatever shall be used, read, or performed at their
interment."! Let them be buried with the burial of a dog, if
they dare to die, as they have lived, faithful to the dictates of
their own consciences ! But if by Baptists be meant those
who believe that, as a profession of personal faith, it is right
and Scriptural to profess our dedication to Christ by immer
sion, then we acknowledge to the name. In this sense we
* Canon 5. Cramp's " Handbook of Popery," p. 158,
\ A Bill intituled, "An Act to Amend the Law of Burials in England and Wales,"
A.D. 1872.

8 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ?
are Baptists. So was Peter a Baptist, when he cried at
Pentecost, " Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the
name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins." So was
Philip a Baptist, when he and the Ethiopian " went down
both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch ; and he
baptized him." So was Paul a Baptist, when, as the darkness
fell from his eyes in the chamber at Damascus, he "arose, and
was baptized." So was Our Lord Himself, when, in fulfilling
all righteousness. He came " from Galilee to Jordan, unto
John, to be baptized of him." If we be asked, " Why are ws
Baptists ? here are answers sufficient. We are so in protest
against error ; we are so in no other sense than the word
applies to Peter or Philip, Paul or Christ.
We protest hereby, for one thing, against errors of doctrine.
" Christ," says Mr. Robertson of Brighton, " revealed the
fact that all men are God's children. This was the Gospel —
so peculiarly the essential truth of the Gospel, that Paul calls
it 'the mystery.' That Gentiles and Jews .should be fellow-
heirs is the message of the Gospel to the world ; baptism is
that message to the individual. You, personally, especially,
by name A or B, are hereby informed of that truth — you are
God's child. All who are bom into the world are God's
children, by right. They are not so, in fact, until they recog
nise it, and believe it, and live as such."* This is the view
of a large party who get the credit for being peculiarly
broad and liberal in their teaching as to the Fatherhood of
God. Now, I believe that there must be a sense in which we
are, all of us, God's children. It was to heathen that Paul
declared, " forasmuch then as we are tbe offspring of God ; "
it was the multitude that Our Lord taught to say, " Our Father
who art in heaven." This relationship is not to be affected
by any outward rite performed on a child in the unconscious
ness of infancy. It is as much God's child before, as it is
after it has been sprinkled with water from a font. But there
* " Life and Letters," ii. 66.

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ? 9
js another sense in which we become children only when we
" receive the spirit of adoptio-n,, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
Then the Spirit itself " beareth witness with our spirit, that we
are the children of God ; and if children, then heirs,, heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so, be that we suffer with
Him, that we may he also glorified together." Then, and
not till then, are we " followers of God, as dear children.."
Baptism in infancy is not the message of all this to, the indi
vidual : that it cannot be, for to. have a spirit capable of
witnessing that we are heirs of God, to be able to. become
day by day followers of Him, we must first of all have the use
of our reasoning and receptive faculties ; we must have
ceased to .speak as a child, to understand as a. child,, to think
as a child — we must have put away chUdish things. The
privilege of sonship is n-ot to be placed in the keeping of the
helpless and unconscious infant ; it is a mockery of the
unspeakable gift to assert that it is. The message reaches us
only when we come to ourselves, return, to Our Father, cry,
"Father, I haye sinned,'' and hear from His own lips 'the
welcome, "This my son was dead,, and is aliye again ; he was
lost, and is found.!'
We are Baptists, again, in. protest against errors, of sentiment.
The danger in all rites, even the simplest, is that they hide
the very truth which they are meant to. exhibit. The New
Testament baptism is a thing so simple and unadorned, that
it is almost impossible to conceiwe of its getting distorted and
abused. The New Testament records no office or religious
service as having been used in the administration of baptism ;
nor any particular form of words for the Christian profession
of those who are baptized. Although at least nine different
instances of baptism are expressly related in tbe Acts of the
' Apostles, besides all the allusions in the Epistles, yet in none
of them is the actual form or manner of the administration
given. The historian seems to have been restrained from
giving any such details, lest a superstitious use should

10 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS.^
afterwards be made of them.* How necessary this primitive
simplicity was, is proved by the fact that as early as the
middle of the second century the tendency appears, " to
dwell more strongly upon the outward rite, and to speak
of it more positively, as if it were in itself a direct cause of the
inward and spiritual blessings sacramentally connected with
it."f Thus early, superstition began to weave its web around
one of the plainest of Christian observances. The parent
was made to believe that this ceremony was absolutely
essential to salvation ; elaborate ritual crusted over, and by-
and-by completely concealed it, until now it demands the
ingenuity of a special pleader to see in that infant in its
mother's arms any likeness to the gaoler at Philippi ; in
that robed priest any descendant of the prisoner Paul ; in
that elaborate form of words any similarity to the simple
" I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God," of the
Ethiopian eunuch. The only thing, indeed, which has not
increased is the baptistery, and that has dwindled down to a
hand-basin. We appeal against this, because whatever fosters
superstition also fosters scepticism. No man would have been
made an infidel, or helped towards being one, by the baptism
of the Acts of the Apostles ; the thing would have spoken for
itself, and he would have recognised, even if he had not
bowed before, its fitness and beauty. But I am convinced,
that it is to the superstition and ritual — to the pranks played
by priestcraft before high heaven, in juggling with simple
Scripture, and dishonestly twisting and perverting it — that we
Owe those violent rebounds into scepticism, which occur
when nations rise up in half-maddened protest, and, denying
the very existence of God, give loose to all the vilest and
most horrible passions in which human nature is capable of
indulging. We are Baptists, then, -as a protest on behalf ' of humanity. If
* Jacob's " Ecclesiastical Polity ofthe New Testament," p. 248,
¦|- Ibid. p. 259.

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS.? II
there be any virtue whatever in infant baptism, then the in
ference to be drawn, by any reasonable man, is, that those
who neglect or abstain from it lose that virtue. Such -virtue,
by the almost if not quite universal consent of those that
practise it, there is. "It secures," says the Rev. Richard
Watson, in his 'Theological Institutes,' "the gift ofthe Holy
Spirit, in these secret spiritual influences by which the actual
regeneration of those children who die in infancy is effected."*
" It is," says a tract published by the Congregational Union,
" the initiatory ordinance of Christianity, the gateway to the
heavenly kingdom, bringing the subjects of it into direct and
visible relation to tbe Christian economy."f " In baptism," says
the child in its Church Catechism. " I was made a "member of
Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven."! "Whoever shall affirm," says the Council of Trent,
" that children are not to be reckoned among the faithful by
the reception of baptism, because they do not actually believe :
let him be accursed."§ If, then, my child has not been
baptized, it has not secured the gift of the Spirit ; it has not
been brought into direct relation to the Christian econorny ;
it has not been made an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven ;
it is not to be reckoned among the faithful. And now, speaking
to many, doubtless, who have lost children in their infancy,
let me ask whether you do not yourself bear me out in pro
testing against these conclusions ? As to what these conclusions
lead to, we are not left in ignorance. I meet with men not
unfrequently who have no hesitation in assuring me that such
children are for ever lost. The Church of Rome, "which is
the mother and mistress" (as she affirms) "of all churches,
and is certainly the mother and mistress of this doctrine, does
* « Wrong and Right Place of Christian Baptism," Rev. W. Brock, p. 31.
-f- Ibid. p. 36.
J " Church Catechism."
§ Canon 13. Cramp, p. 159.

I Z WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ?
not conceal the matter; does not speak (as others do) of
' committing them to the uncovenanted mercies of God ' ; but
boldly asserts that "-the law of baptism as established by Our
Lord extends to all, insomuch that unless they are regenerated
by the grace of bapxtism, be their parents Christians or infidels,
they are born to eternal misery, and everlasting destruction."*
Nor does it leave us here ; it descends into hell, and describes
in detail the eternal torments of the little child. From a
book,f designed for the use- of children and parents (and
which teachers are ofificially recommended to read to those
under their charge and instruction), I dare, for pity's sake,
only extract one sentence. And I do even that only that you
may know what sort of religious instruction we endow when
we support Romanist schools in this country, as we are doing
now: "The fifth dungeon is- the red-hot oven.. Hear L The
little child is in this red-hot. oven-. Hear, how it screams to
come out. See, how it turns and twists itself about in the
fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven ; it stamps
its little feet on the floor. God was very good to- this child.
Very likely God saw it would, get worse and worse, and would
never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more
in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in
its early childhood."'
I stand here this evening, a Baptist, to plead for the sake of
humanity against this — forthesake.ofGod, forthe sake of Christ,
for the sake of the tenderest and divinest feelings which are
implanted in. our nature.. Admit the error of Infant Baptism,
under any form whatever, call it by what name you may, you
have taken the first step, in the direction which lands you at
last with the priests who authorise that fearful and revolting
description. Before we pass further, let us listen to Christ
¦Himself ; and do you vow before God this evening that you
* Cramp, p. 259. Catechism.
f " Roman Catholic Priests and National Schools," by Gerald Fitzgibbon. Long-
m.-ihs, London. 1872.

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS .'' 1 3
will strain every nerve to resist that Antichrist who, if he
gets the power in this country, will teach your children this
doctrine of devils, and close against you that Book wherein we
read these words : "And they brought young children unto
Him, that He should touch them : and the disciples rebuked
them that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was
much displeased, and said unto them. Suffer the little children
to come unto Me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the
kingdom of God. And He took them up in His arms, put
His hands upon them, and blessed them !" Blessed Jesus !
keep our children in Thine arms, now and for ever !
But we are not Baptists only as a protest against errors of doc
trine and sentiment, or against such outrages upon humanity
as I have referred to. We are, further, Baptists as a plea. We
plead, then, that the authority of Scripture is all-sufficient.
This is an important principle, of wide and varied application.
Abandon it for a moment, and you are at the mercy of this or
that church ; of creeds and councils ; of the traditions and
the authority of men. We dare, therefore, do no other than
cling to it in its integrity. Now, two points are tolerably clear,
if we determine that the Scriptures are our sole authority in
matters of faith and practice. It is clear that Infant Baptism
is not to be found there ; it is equally clear that Believers'
Baptism is. Writing upon this subject, Dr. Jacob, an eminent
scholar, and a clergyman in the Established Church, says :
" Notwithstanding all that has been written by learned men
upon this subject, it remains indisputable that Infant Baptism
is not mentioned in the New Testament. No instance of it
is recorded there ; no allusion is made to its effects ; no
directions are given for its administration. It ought to be
distinctly acknowledged that it is not an apostolic ordinance."*
Now, this is the testimony of a scholar and of a churchman.
The practice is not, says he, to be found in the New Testa
ment. But we remind him, and others, that in the New Tes-
* Jacob, p. 270.

1 4 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ;
tament this is to be found : " If any man preach any other
gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be ac
cursed." And this is to be found, again : " If any man shall
add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book ; and if any man shall take away
from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take
away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city,
and from the things which are written in this book." It
is clear, moreover, that the New Testament does set before
us " Believers' Baptism." I quote from Dr. Jacob once more,
when he writes : "The force of Christ's commission, in Matt.
xxviii. 1 9, is somewhat obscured in our English version. It
ought to be, 'Go, and make disciples of all the nations'; and
then follows the mode or process by which such disciples
were» to be made : namely, first, ' by baptizing them into the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,'—
riot, of course, without some intelligent apprehension of what
the Divine name, and the baptism into it, implied ; and,
secondly, by teaching those who had been baptized to observe
all the commandments of Christ."* Now, these two things
being plain, and especially the last (namelj', that this is the
baptism ofthe NewTestament), we are Baptists, as a plea for
its observance. " On a profession of the faith," we say to the
candidate. " I baptize thee into the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and we appeal against
any other observance being palmed off upon us as baptism.
Learned men try to lead us back to the Fathers, and to anti
quity ; but we are content with something more venerable than
the Fathers.more ancient than antiquity. Eager controversialists
make desperate efforts to carry their font back into the third
and even the second centuries ; but we stand beside the River
Jordan, while the first Christian century was yet in its teens,
and we say, "We don't want any more water ; we have the bap
tistery, and that is sufficient for our need." Lovers of Church
* Jacob, p. 246.

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS } 1 5
history ply us with Irenaeus and Tertullian, with Jerome and
Augustine ; but we turn from them to the Master, and ask,
" Lord, to whom shall we go .'' Thou hast the words of eternal
life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God."
What, to us, is antiquity } What the authority of the Fathers 1
What the practice of the second or third centuries } In the
first century itself, when we step outside of the Apostles'
teaching, we have errors enough to convince us that we are
only safe when we stand close to Christ. The Corinthian
Church was founded in the first century, and it was speedily
invaded by sins of disgraceful excess ; shall we therefore
justify intemperance 1 The Galatian Church was founded in
the ' first century, and it was, ere long, beguiled into ritual ;
shall we therefore turn ritualists .? The Roman Church was
founded in the first century, and it was quickly infected with
bigotry ; shall we therefore- become bigots .? The Church is
not our authority ; the centuries (early or late) are. not our .
precedents. " One is our Master, even Christ, and all we
are brethren." The Fathers — who were they 7 Had they a
Divine inspiration which we have not received } Men of like
passions with ourselves, they were also men of narrower
range arid' more limited knowledge than the scholars of
to-day. Fathers of errors and of perplexities and of word-
twistings they were, but our fathers they were not ; we own
only to the Fatherhood of God, who is " the Father of lights,
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
What is meant by antiquity } If it be meant the oldest
authority to whom we can turn for guidance, then we will
pass beyond the darkness in which much early teaching is
involved; we will not stay- our steps until we stand besides
the Ancient of Eternal Days, He who was with God in the
beginning, and yet iu the fulness of time became flesh and
dwelt among us. " For unto us a Child is born ; unto us
a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His

1 6 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS .'
shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Coun
sellor, the Mighty God, tbe Everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace." " Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord ? — or,
being His counsellor, hath taught Him ? " Fathers and
churches, creeds and decretals, antiquity and authority, let
them hush their strife of tongues. If they speak in accor
dance with the Scriptures, we have the same source as they
had whence to draw our knowledge, and to' learn what is our
duty; if they do not, we refuse to listen to them, out of
loyalty to Christ and love for His all-sufficient words :
*' Should all the forms that men devise
Assault my faith with treacherous art,
I'd call them vanity and lies.
And nail the Gospel to my hfart."
Nor is it enough to say that we are Baptists in protest and in
plea. We are so, further, and in conclusion, as a Professiun
We profess, by baptism, Faith in Christ. " He that believeth
and is baptized," said the Saviour, "shall be saved"; and
what was to be believed we gather from the words of the
eunuch, — "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."
How much is contained in that short sentence I cannot pause
to inquire. The Sent of God, the Saviour from sin, the Son of the
Most High — it was in Him the eunuch professed faith. But we
occupy an almost singular position, although not by virtue of
this fact, for every religious action of devout men and women
(whatever church they belong to) is a profession of faith in
Christ. Our peculiar tenet is that baptism is a purely personal
thing — an act of individual consecration, not connected with
fellowship in any particular church, or admission to any other
privilege — but simply a matter between the believer and His
Saviour. It may lie on the threshold of church- fellowship,
just as it lies on the threshold of much work and worship in
Christ's name ; but it has no essential dependence upon any
thing but itself. The eunuch was a baptized believer, but I
do not know that he was a member of a church, or that he

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ? 1 7
ever partook of the Lord's Supper; all I do know is that
he believed, and was therefore baptized. " By me," saith
Christ of His Church, " by me, if any man enter in, he shall
be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture." Christ,
not baptism, is the door into Christ's Church. Baptism is
indeed required, but as the outward sign of inward grace. If
the inward grace is there, then, baptism or no baptism, you
are a member of Christ's fold ; and then (not till then) you
ask, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do.?" — then, not
till then (for faith precedes everything else). He answers,
" Be baptized."
Now the preservation of this doctrine — that religion is per
sonal, not to be lost in a crowd, but to set us apart, " seeing
no man but Jesus only" — is of infinite importance. Men
speak of Christendom ; there is no other Christendom than
that which consists of the individual believers on earth at
this hour. We boast of our Christian land ; there is no such
thing as a Christian land in existence. Would to God there
were ! But never can there be, whilst in this land is one
solitary soul out of Christ. We hear of the Christian Church ;
the only Christian Church there ever was, or ever will be, is
the multitude of single believers, who, in various communities
and societies, calling themselves by different and often anta
gonistic names, " love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and
truth." For the preservation and increase of this faith, we, as Baptists,
believe in open profession. But a man has no need to be bap
tized openly, except in so far as it is a testimony for Christ
and His Gospel, an obeying of the words of Jesus, " Let your
light so shine before men, that they shall see your good
works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." This, I
think, was probably what the Apostle Peter meant by " the
answer of a good conscience toward God."
And now, having brought our inquiry thus far, where better
could we leave it }
We are Baptists, as a protest against errors of doctrine, false
B

I 8 WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS ?
sentiment, superstition, insults, and outrages against hu
manity. We are Baptists, as a plea for the supreme and solitary
authority of the New Testament, rising, like a peerless moun
tain, above the storms which rage around its base, and the
shadows which sweep across the plain at its foot, and flashing
high in the pure and lustrous majesty of heaven's own light
and splendour.
We are Baptists, as a Profession of our faith in the all-suffi
ciency of Our Saviour, in the necessity for an open and public
confession of Him before men, and, above all, in the cardinal
truth, that there is no religion acceptable before God, but
that which has a personal enjoyment " of His favour, which is
life, and His lovingkindness, which is better than life."
We are not troubled because we hold these views in a small
and insignificant minority — because not " many wise men after
the flesh, not many mighty, not many^noble, are called." If
we are in a minority, so are the Nonconformists generally, for
the Established Churches have far more in nominal member
ship than they ; so are the Protestants, for Rome has her tens
of thousands when they have but their thousands ; so are the
Christians, for only a seventh of the population of the globe
profess the faith of Christ. But we say, again, that since re
ligion is a distinctly personal matter, between me and my God,
it matters not who are with me — I am bound to obey, and to walk
according to the convictions of my own judgment. I read
the Scriptures for myself, not through the spectacles of the
Churches, with their dim religious light; not through the tele
scope which sweeps its vision back to the fathers ; not through
the microscope, that diminishes the Jordan until it dwindles
into a font ; not through the magnifying-glass, which swells the
simplest of symbols into an elaborate and unmeaning cere
monial. I read the Scriptures, not through any of these, but
through such eyes as God has given me. And so doing, I
stand, by tbe command of Christ, by the water to which His
words lead me ; and I say, with Luther, in his remarkable

WHY ARE WE BAPTISTS.? 1 9
hour of trial, whatever be the assaults made upon me,
either from without or from within, " Here 1 am ; I cannot
do otherwise ; God help me 1 " I beseech you all to be true to
your consciences also. Thus, and only thus, shall we have
boldness before Christ at His appearing. If you have pro
fessed Christ by baptism, let the world know you not so
much as Baptists, but as Christians, zealous to gather others
- into the one fold, that has but one Shepherd. If you are still
outside; convinced but not obedient, or too fearful lest you be
converted to inquire, or too thoughtless to give heed to the
one thing needful, let me press this upon you. The simpler
the form of worship, the nearer to apostolic models the service
and method of professing faith, the clearer of all human error
and entanglement the Gospel which is presented to you, the
more fearful must be your condemnation, if you neglect so great
salvation. This day we commemorate the Pentecost of old,
when under the first preaching, so full of Christ and His
saving mercy, thousands gave themselves to the Lord, were
baptized, and joined to the fellowship of the faithful. We
preach that same Saviour ; we have to repent of just such
sins ; the same spirit is shed abroad to-day as then ; the
same outward form of profession is urged upon us ; the
same inward grace is freely and fully offered to us. " Men
and brethren," does some one say, awakening the echoes
of that memorable day of Pentecost, " what shall we do } "
With Peter I say, " Repent, and be baptized, every one of
you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins,
and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

B 2

Wi^io uxt kt ^m^xt^Ktmulmisl
'* It is He, and not the carven timbers and the jewelled stones which we may bring, that makes the
pJace of His feet glorious. I think, with St. Augustine, ' Where Christ is, there is the Church, ' and
where Christ is not, no congregation of individuals, nor accumulation of resources, or splendour of
worship, nor purity of doctrine, or zeal and earnestness, can make up for the lacking. His presence
makes a community, without Him it is at the best but a mob." — Rtv. j^exander Maclaren,

11.
WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS?

In the synagogue of Nazareth, one Sabbath-day, nineteen
centuries ago, a young man appeared, and struck the key
note, of the new and final dispensation. "The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me," he read in the .prophetic roll, " because.
He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; He
hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty them, that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year
of the Lord." And then He lifted these words up, and
brought past and future together in one glorious and merno-
rable present, by adding, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled
in your ears."
It is little to be wondered at that, in our admiration of the
gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth, we should
have paid slight attention to the outward circumstances of
that first discourse. To us the speaker is the Christ, and
He speaks as one having authority; But to the hearers in
Nazareth it was not so. This' was Joseph's son, in the
familiar scene where he had worshipped as a boy and as a
young man, with all the homely unheroic surroundings of the
place. where he had been brought up, a prophet not accepted
in his own country. Yet, (this is the point to which I wish to
direct your attention), this Galilean carpenter, clad in no
prifestly dress, vested with no sacerdotal dignity, is distinctly
invited by the master of that synagogue to lead the devotions
of the people that Sabbath morning. In the temple this could

24 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ?
not have happened ; but in the synagogue it might, and did.
The distinction affects us, because herein lies the difference
between two great sections ofthe Church ofChrist on earth.
The one cleaves to the temple — ^uses its terms, its ofiices, its
robes ; the other clings to the synagogue, and embodies in
principle its spirit and its faith. This last is Congregationalism,
about which I propose to speak at present. The first it is
needless to point out ; it exists everywhere, and creeps into
every mode of worship and every form of faith,unless a continual
and vigorous stand be made against it. " It was tbe temple
system, with its imposing services, its associations of awe and
mystery, that naturally appealed to the imagination and
feelings of men ; and accordingly, from the beginning of the
third century, portions of this system began, and continued
increasingly, to be introduced into the Church."'* Not so,
however, was it in the Apostles' days, or with any of their
ordinances and institutions. They retained and adapted to
Christian use some Jewish forms and regulations ; but they
were taken altogether, not from the temple, but from the
synagogue. The Apostles had been divinely taught that the
priests and services of the temple were typical forms and
shadows, which were all centred, and fulfilled, and done
away in Christ; and to reinstate them in the Christian
Church would have been, in their judgment, to go back to
the bondage of "weak and beggarly elements," from the
liberty, strength, and rich completeness of the Gospel dis
pensation. For two centuries this primitive simplicity was
maintained. In all leading features the Christian churches
followed the model of the synagogue, and not of the temple.
Their places of worship (which had no one part more sacred
than another) were actually so called, if we may take the words
of James literally : " If there come into your synagogue a man
in goodly apparel, and also a poor man in vile raiment, &c."
The services in both were alike ; no restriction of persons
* Jacob's "Ecclesiastical Polity ofthe New Testament," chapter iii.

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ? 25
to a particular tribe or class was shown in either, but any fit
person might be appointed to minister. The idea of a priest
hood was only brought into the Church, at the end of the
second century, by the influence of paganism. No vestments
of any particular character were used in the synagogues or in
the Christian assemblies. There is not in the New Testa
ment the slightest intimation that any peculiar or official
dress was worn by church officers in their public ministra
tions, or in private life. And, finally, the synagogue and
the Christian meeting-house had both of them the raised
desk or pulpit for the reader, but no altar.
Glancing once more at the contrast between the temple and
the synagogue, it cannot be better expressed than by saying,
" that the temple exhibited, in a grand combination of typical
places, persons, and actions, God dwelling with man, recon
ciling the world unto Himself in the person and work of
Christ, and pardoning, justifying, and graciously receiving
those who come to Him through the appointed Saviour :
while the synagogue exhibited a congregation of men already
reconciled to God, assembled as devout worshippers for
prayer and praise, for instruction -in Divine knowledge, and
edification in righteous living." " In the temple there was
no pulpit ; in the synagogue there was no altar."
As Congregationalists, we hold by the pulpit and not by the
altar ; believing, on the one 'handy that the final and complete
sacrifice for sin has been offered up once for all, and, there
fore, that to raise an altar now is directly to crucify the Son of
Man afresh, and to put Him to an open shame ; and, on the
other hand, that God- is pleased by " the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe," for "faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the-Word of God." We cannot wonder,
however, that the splendour and elaborateness of the temple
service should still have charms for those who refuse to hear,
in Christ's words to the woman of Samaria, the death-knell of
sensuous worship : " The hour cometh, and now is, when
the true worshippers shall worship- the Father in spirit and in

2 6 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS }
truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." But we
shrink from indulging, never so slightly, in such care and reve
rence for the mere externals of the spiritual life as may, in the
hands of ignorant or sentimental persons, degenerate into
symbolism and superstition. There is risk in imitating the
form of the old churches and cathedrals ; in calling our meet
ing-houses by their names; in giving the title of " Reverend"
to our ministers ; in favouring a certain and peculiar dress,
whether in or out of the pulpit, as distinctive of a class ; in
surrendering to the minister any of those functions which
every Christian householder ought to perform for himself —
risk not trivial or childish, because from such slight concessions
have grown up those" customs and forms which have robbed
us of the simplicity that is in Christ, shorn us of our vigour
and strength, and hidden away under conventional masks and
disguises the irresistible charm and mighty power of the first
Christian's faith.
I believe Congregationalism, taking that word in its broadest
and fullest sense, to be a resolute and determined effort to
obey the words of the Lord : " Stand ye in the ways, and see
and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk
therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." Its essence, as
far as I understand it, consists in fidelity to the assurance of
Christ, "Where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am I in the midst of them." "Where Christ is,"
says Augustine, " there is the Church." You may say that this
is the leading article in the creed of a purely spiritual worship
and life, whereas to you Congregationalism has ever been
associated with a mere system — one of many now extant — of
church polity. But to say this much and there to stop, is to
forget or deny what I hold to be a great truth, namely, that
the church polity, its government, its external forms, its disci
pline, and so on, is an utterly vain and worthless thing, unless
it flow forth naturally from the inward and spiritual life. If
we do battle on its behalf, therefore, it is expressly on this
ground. To a careless spectator, what could seem so utterly

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ? 27
foolish and infatuated as the struggle for the standard on the
field of battle ? — a hundred swords flashing out for the pro
tection of a few yards of tom and riddled bunting, and the
wild conflict seething and roaring about that, as though it
were a crowned and sceptred sovereign. Yes, and so it is !
it is the symbol of a people's life, and, the pledge of a people's
liberty. So this Congregationalism is to us the standard for
which we do battle, out of pure loyalty- to the person of Him
who has gathered into Himself all rule, and all authority,
and all power ; who has " made us," all of us if we be be
lievers, "kings and priests unto God and His Father;" and
whose alone shall " be the glory and dominion for ever."
Return to that verseagaiia, " Where two or three are gathered
in my name, there am I in the midst of- them ;" aad kt me
find in it the foundation stone of •Cp'hgregationalism, which
is, that every Church is complete in-itself.
Of course, if this be so, then we- bid a long farewell to
any union with earthly government ; we cannot court State
patronage, or submit to State control, ' This, however, is but
a minor point, because there is not much probability that we
shall do either, and it is much more important to fight even a
dwarf that actually defies our peace and invades our border,
than the tallest giant that ever lived as long as he is invisible,
and not even casting his long shadow athwart our threshold.
The entire independence of each Church means not only that
we are free from the patronage and control of the State, but also
from the patronage and control of other churches. Bishops,
cardinals, popes, sjiiods, conferences, convocations; can have
no authoritative power over our church life. Neither can Baptist
Unions nor County Associations. Advice or warning, counsel or
help of more substantial character, these may be given with
much advantage, supposing that the Churcb which needs
them has the grace to ask for them, and- the still rarer grace to
receive them with thankfulness. But -nothing must be said or
done to weaken the principle that each fellowship of believers
(however poor, ignorant, obscure}-is a cbmplete .society. .-.The

28 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ?
first Council — that of which there is an account in the isth of
the Acts of the Apostles — was a council that advised and ex
horted, but even it did not absolutely command ; and for us,
who all draw our wisdom from one common source, open and
accessible to all, there can be no scriptural reason for either
assuming, or assenting to the assumption of, any prin
ciple which endangers the independency of each separate
Church. The Church which does not cleave hard and fast by this
truth puts itself in a false position at once. It deserts its
confidence in the presence of Christ, and iri His promise of
the Spirit, as the sole Governor and Guide of His people.
By such desertion, concealed under much politer terms, a
church may advance itself in outward pomp and circum
stance, ally itself to wealthy or wise patrons, get a character
for being politic and shrewd, become one of a cluster of bright
particular stars — but it has, nevertheless, destroyed itself.
The Church exists, not while it trumpets its own name, or
swells its roll of members, or raises its costly sanctuaries, or
sends out its famous missioriaries — but only when it remains
true to " Jesus Christ, the chief Corner-stone, in whom all
the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy
temple in the Lord, an habitation of God through the
Spirit." " If, for one hour, Christendom were one, what in
that hour might it not achieve ! If this ever come, it will
come, not by the adopting of each other's errors, nor by the
servile copying of each other's defects — nor yet by agreeing
to call diversity agreement, and palpable schism unity. It
will come by the faithful and searching reformation of each
communion for itself, and by itself; it will come by the
turning, not of each tb Other, but of each and all to the
common centre—Christ."* Every church, therefore, can fix
upon its own form- of worship, choose its own minister,
admit its own members, exercise discipline upon its own
* Magee : " The Breaking Net."

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ? 2g
number, just because of its close and indissoluble union
with Him who has said, " Here am I, in the midst of you."
From this we pass on, then, to notice what is the true
definition of a Church. Tt is not, and cannot be, a body of
people existing for the purpose of attacking or setting right
other churches ; it is a church in contrast to the world which
is its opposite, its ceaseless and unrelenting foe. Parochial
divisions, therefore, cannot Hmit the Church, any more than
they cari limit the extent of disease or pauperism. Hereditary
membership cannot have anything to do with the matter ;
since vital religion is not — like physical peculiarities, or the
accidents of wealth and title — something which can be .willed
and bequeathed. Adherence to creeds or ordinances cannot
define it ; because these are only outward and visible signs,
sometimes of inward and spiritual grace ; unfortunately,
sometimes, also, of ignorance, superstition, formalism, and
even hypocrisy. The Church is composed of all those, and
only of those, who can truly say, " I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and
the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
This is the true kingdom of God on earth : and wherever two
or three such believers associate together, (I care not with
what outer forms, or what absence of outer forms), for the
purposes of Christian work and worship, there is a Church
of Christ.
But I am covinced that- we are bound to be faithful, not
only to this glorious and inspiring truth, but also to its
alternative. Those who have no such life, but who refuse to
accept Christ as the sole way into this kingdom, cannot be
counted as its citizens. The very tolerance of the Gospel
compels it to be intolerant at the same time. Because
Christ says, " He that is not against us is for us," He
adds, " He that is not with me is against me." There
is, I know, a false charity, (the falseness of which I
can see, but not the charity of it), which shrinks back

30 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS }
from this conclusion. But since this kingdom of God
.3 open to all men, since all men are pressed to enter
into it, what but mercy can there be in warning men
that a free and full salvation is their one and only
hope, and that the burthen of guilt and the doom of
perdition impend over those who refuse to accept it ? The
same voice, matchless in its Divine passion for seeking and
saving the lost, and its infinite pathos over the rebel and the
wanderer, declares — " Him that cometh unto me I will in
nowise cast out," and also, " No man cometh unto the
Father but by me."
We have seen that a Church is a society (whether small or
large it does not matter at all) of persons, each of whom has this
mysterious and wonderful presence of an indwelling Saviour,
and that every such society is absolutely perfect and complete
in itself. Out of these two truths springs the theological dis
tinction which Congregationalism conserves. After the Day of
Pentecost, when the disciples were filled with the Holy
Ghost, their boldness astonished not a little the High Priests,
•Elders, Rulers, and Scribes. They knew these men for what
they were outwardly, and there was nothing very inspiring in
the publican's robe, or in the fisher-coat. These Galileans
were not men of cultured manners, or soft and gracious
speech. They did not indulge in long prayers, or make wide
their phylacteries. No college had given them titles, and the
Sanhedrim did not court their company. They were, em
phatically, "unlearned and ignorant men." Therefore, these
priests, with that ounce o'f mother-wit which is worth a
.pound of clergy, did for once find their way to a great truth :
"They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus."
This is the truth which the rulers of Jerusalem apprehended
— ^that there was a superhuman relationship between Christ
and His disciples, which actually shone forth in such visible
and audible signs as boldness, and eloquence, and fearless
heroism. It existed (did this mysterious union) between
Christ and Peter, for instance, not because he was an Apostle,

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS.'' 3 1
or one specially inspired, but simply because he was a
believer. And it has never ceased to exist between Christ
and all His disciples. This is what He meant when He said,
" Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.''
As this supernatural and Divine presence is the life of
the believer, so must it be the life of any fellowship of
believers, joined together in obedience to the Master's com
mand, " to consider one another, to provoke unto love, and
to good works.'' Again, let me insist upon it, that this is the
sole and, the all-sufficient life of the Church. It explained to
the priests at Jerusalem the unexpected — we might say the un
natural — daring and confidence of that little knot of Galileans ;
and so it still remains as the only -solution which I can find
of stores of unexpected and, in the same sense, unnatural
graces, discoverable in Christian fellowships.
Asked, for example, how it is that without any authoritative
creed — Apostolic, Nicene, Athanasian, or the like, — we do so
far preserve loyalty to the faith once delivered to the saints, I
can find no other explanation. Creeds are born of councils and
synods ; they are the embodiment of a human fearfulness
which cannot trust entirely to an indwelling Saviour to main
tain His own honour. Believers they have never made, but
doubters and scoffers they have. They have no more made mad
men sensible than has a strait-waistcoat, but, like that piece of
torture, they have sometimes irritated sensible men into mad
ness. Our hope, if we earnestly desire to be loyal to the faith,
lies wholly in being loyal to tbe presence of Christ. It is thus,
when we stand dubious at the place . in our church-life where
the two roads meet, that we pray to Him, who is closer to us
than any external chart — call it creed, or confession, or decre
tal, or what not — can- be : "Thou, Lord, which knowest the
hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen."
It is thus, in the bewildering eclipse of earthly wisdom and
teaching, that we sing —
" Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom —
Lead thou me on ;

32 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS .'
The night is dark, and I am fer from home —
Lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet — I do not ask to see
The distant scene — one step enough for me."*
In loyalty to this principle lies our safety.
Asked, again, as we are continually, with more or less of shal
low scorn, or philosophic incredulity, or Philistine insolence ;
by what possible law, human or Divine, a handful of undistin
guished men and women (labourers, artisans, busy tradesmen,
and the like) — simple, honest, and quite unheroic persons — can
have power and ability to exercise gifts, to maintain discipline,
and to fulfil the vocation of a Christian church, this is my only
reply : — I acknowledge that there might be something ludi
crous and offensive in all this, were it a purely secular piece of
business tbey were at, though even then I should see
something worthy of admiration in such self-reliance and
independence. But with this I do not concern myself. The
presence of Christ in the Church glorifies these humble faces,
ennobles these lowly lives, and guides these common faculties
into things that are true and wise and good. If we forget that
the presence of Christ, " the wisdom of God and the power of
God," is our refuge and strength, then we shall go astray,
and in proportion to the loftiness of our pretensions will be
the humiliation of our fall. The weapons of our warfare are
not carnal, and when we fly to such resources, we are not long
in finding out a certain bitter side to that great declaration,
" Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble are called." In loyalty to this faith, in the super
natural relationship which exists between Christ and His
disciples, lies the only but the all-sufficient vindication for our
church-life. Challenged, once more, to defend the course which we pursue
as Congregationalists, and especially as Baptists, in instituting
a distinct class in the national and social community — a
fellowship, that is, of persons who combine together to run
* John Henry Newman,

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS.? 33
counter to the maxims of society, and sometimes even to the
laws of human government— I can find no other apology than
this : — Christian life is (or ought to be) a Hfe singular^
separate from, sometimes even passionately defiant of all
other life. It will not blend gracefuHy with the life in
the midst of which it exists. It is an imperium in imperio.
It can go to prison or to judgment ; but it cannot mingle
with the throng, to cry of Herod, " The voice of a God, and not
of a man." It can stand at the criminals' bar; but it cannot
sit beside Festus and Agrippa, with jests upon its lips, and a
coiHng serpent of mistrust in its heart. It can lay its head,
grim and bloody, on the golden charger, but it cannot foHow
with fascinated delight the sensuous dance of Herodias'
daughter. In no current meaning of the phrase can it make
the best of both worlds.
But how is this singular position justified .'' The man who
is eccentric for the mere sake of the thing is sometimes a
knave and sometimes a fool ; always one or the other. We
have to account for the fact, however, that thousands and
tens of thousands of men and women, distinguished for truth
and soberness, deliberately assume an attitude which is one
of defiance to the common habits and customs of this world.
Now, unless there be a higher law than that of the realm, we
are bound to be supremely loyal to that ; unless there be nobler
maxims than those which pass as current coin with the mer
chants of this earth, it is our wisest policy to learn these ;
unless there be a purer tone than that of the society in which
we move, we are fully justified in catching and spreading that.
Dissent from laws, maxims, and tone, is wholly unjust and
foolish, if the laws be the highest, the maxims the wisest, and
the tone the purest at our command. But here you are con
fronted with the spectacle of groups of men, not springing
from a royal, or from a sacerdotal class, yet calling themselves
" kings and priests unto God ;" not gifted with prophetic
inspiration, yet " looking for and hasting unto the coming of
the day of God ; " not dowered with a strength of mind, a
c

34 "WHY ARE WE CONGR-EGATIONALIST.S t
wealth of intellect, a fervour of enthusiasm, at all out of the
common, yet standing forth with determined fixedness of pur
pose, and maintaining that stand with unshaken patience ; at
last passing away, one by one, with the gleam of quenchless
hope flashing from their eyes, and the glory of a far-off" and
eternal sunrise bathing their faces in its dawning splendour.
It is false to all the laws of reason, as well as to all the plead
ings of charity, to speak of such men as mad or fanatic.
The supernatural influence possessing them is not born of a
phrensied brain or a fevered mind. They are not " such stuff
as dreams are made of," — their little life is not "rounded
with a sleep." Christ, in His spiritual presence, is the very
fabric in which their being is woven ; and their life is rounded,
perfected, filled v/ith light and sweetness, only through Him.
In loyalty to this principle, then, lies our defence from all
charges of spiritual pride and pharisaic exclusiveness. The
maintenance of this conviction ensures fidelity to Christ, and
to His nature, as revealed in the Gospel, arid then revealed
to afresh in our hearts ; and it answers all the aspirations,
appetites, yearnings of the soul —
" 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ;
My flesh that I seek in the Godhead ;
I seek, and 1 flnd it.
«' O Saul ! it shall be
A fece like my face, that receives thee,
A man like to me
Thou shalt love, and be loved by for ever !
A hand like this hand
Shall thjpw open the gates of new life to thee !
See the Christ stand !"*
If, then, we uphold Congregationalism, it is not because it
is a mere system of Church polity, (if that were all, it might
have its day and cease to be), but it is because its prac
tice is so closely connected with our faith, that to resis
» Robert Browning's " Saul."

WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIOlfALISTS ?

35

the one is inevitably to do violence to the other. " Our
system of government is the expression of our faith, that
those who believe in Christ, and enter His Church, have re
ceived the very Hfe of God, possess the direct illumination of
the Holy Ghost, and have the special and supernatural pre-
.sence and help of the Lord Jesus Christ, whenever they meet
together in His name."*
At the commencement of this discourse, I ventured to draw
a parallel between the Christian church and the Jewish syna
gogue. It may possibly have suggested itself to you then
that the comparison was open to a still more striking resem
blance ; and with this I conclude. Once a year, these Jewish
synagogues poured their congregations forth, to go from
strength to strength, until their feet stood at last in the one
common Ternple at Jerusalem. The prayer and praise and
preaching of the smaller gatherings, the year through, were
but stepping-stones to the burst of universal gladness with
which every one of them in Zion appeared before God. No
Jew could have brooked the thought that the service and fel
lowship of the synagogue were to end upon themselves. They
were trickling rills upon the mountain-sides, all flowing to
the vast and glorious river of a nation's united religious life.
So is it with us. We renounce temple and priest, sacrifice
and ceremonial, to-day, but only because we look for an en
trance ministered abundantly into "the holy city, the new
Jerusalem," " whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name
of the Lord." " And I saw no temple therein ; for the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it ; and the
nations of them which are saved- shall walk in the light of- it;
and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour
with it."
We cling to the confidence that wherever Christ is, there is
the Church — not that we may split up and sever the body of
, * R. W. Dale: "Congregationalist," January, 1872.
C 2

36 WHY ARE WE CONGREGATIONALISTS ?
the faithful, but rather that, with all who likewise hold the
Head, we may be knit together, and increased with the in
crease of God. And even whilst we do so, growing with our
growth, strengthening with our strength, rises the inspiring
persuasion, that hereby we actually hasten the coming and
kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, when " there shall be one
fold, and one Shepherd." Even so come. Lord Jesus"!
" Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices
Shout to the saints, and to the deaf are dumb ;
Surely lie cometh, and the earth rejoices,
Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come.
"This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him.^
This shall He do, and can we still despair ?
Come, let us quickly fling oui-selves before Him,
Cast at His feet the burthen of our care ;
" Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm ;
Then, through all life, and what is after living,
Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm.
" Yea, through life, death, through sorrow, and through sinning.
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed :
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ."

I^g Kxt kt '^mtmiaxxaxBh^
" I smell a Lollard in the wind." — Chaucer.
'* Meanwhile, in our era of tbe world, these same church-clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows."
Carlyle,

III.
WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS,?

The question which we have to answer this evening will have
no reference whatever to political opinions, I say this at
once, in order that it may be plainly understood, because if is
sometimes supposed that Nonconformity means chiefly, if not
altogether, an appeal against the union of Church and State,
" If the Church of England were disestablished to-morrow,"
said Mr. Spurgeon, a few weeks since, " I should remain as
much a Dissenter as I am now ; for my objection to the Church
of England rests in her doctrines, and I think we ought to
have a society that takes up the religious. side ofthe question.
I would like to have a society not exactly anti the State
Church, but anti that Church which is a State Church now.
We proclaim war to the knife, if we take the basis of its Cate
chism, and much of its teaching, as being its profession of
faith." Whilst laying it down, however, very distinctly, that our dis
cussion is not to trench upon the political aspects of the ques
tion, I do not wish it to be thought that such aspects can be,
or ought to be, banished from our hours of worship. It may
have been possible to do this in the first days ; but now the
triumph of Christianity has borne its spirit into our laws and
customs, and increasingly asserts itself in our national thought
and action. To proclaim a divorce between our religion and
the great questions demanding the consideration of the people
of this country, is virtually to take that very leaven out of the
lump which Christ declares will by-and-by leaven the whole.

40 WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS i
We are bound, I believe, to view every one of our relation
ships from the standpoint of the Cross. If you are a house
holder, you must be a Christian liouseholder ; if a burgess,
you must be a Christian burgess ; if you have a vote in the
borough, you are responsible before God for your use or abuse
of that privilege ; if you have any post, municipal or civic, to
Hi.ra you will have to answer for your stewardship ; if you are
a citizen, you must be a Christian citizen, and if a patrio't a
Christian patriot. When our Lord said, "My kingdom is not of
this worid," I take Him to have taught, not that His kingdom
had nothing to do with this world, but, on the contrary, that
it was a power not springing from, or out of, this world,
drawing its strength from a heavenly source, but at the same
lime aiming to be the ruling power here below. " It seeks
the world as the sphere of its influence, the field of its con
quest, the realm of its rule." *
A very mean and beggarly view of religion is that which
suffices for too many people, who think of it as a great
machine which accomplishes all its work when it saves their
souls (perhaps only on their death-beds) from perdition. We
claim for it a complete sway over the entire life, " Wbether>
therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the
glory of God," No wonder that men, and these even pro
fessing Christians, shrink from this searching command ; no
wonder they confine the whole aspect of the Gospel to the
bare salvation of souls. They dare not carry the book which
contains the Sermon on the Mount to the workshop, the mill,
the polling-booth, the town-council ; and so, under a guise of
reverence for religion, they shut it up in certain buildings,
which they call, indeed, places of religion ; and drive it back
into one day, which they call the Lord's Day ; whereas the
whole teaching of Christ and His Apostles goes to claim for
Christianity a ceaseless influence permeating the entire course,
^respective of " days and months, times and years,"
* Rev. J. Baldwin Brown,

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS i^ 4 1
I am not speaking without sufficient grounds when I say
that religion has broken away from this restraint in a very
marked manner during the last quarter of a century, so that it
is no longer possible to ignore it altogether, or to politely
tolerate it, as it once was. Mr. Disraeli speaks thus in refe
rence to this very point : "I rather think that we are on the
eve of a period when the influence of religion on public affairs
will be more prominent than ever. It is very difficult in a
popular assembly to talk on a subject in which religion is- con
cerned, and I remember that when, nearly thirty years ago,
religious questions were constantly cropping up in the House,
it was curious' and interesting to observe how both sides of the
House agreed to confine themselves to the discussions of
details whilst employed in legislation, and not to touch on the
controversy or the sentiment of our subject. This, however,
is now entirely changed."
It is not, therefore, from any sympathy with the notion that
religionis so purely spiritual that -it cannot breathe in the
atmosphere of public life, that I propose this evening to ask
your attention to the distinctly theological side of our sub
ject ; but only because that, after all, is the most important
side of it. ¦ Politicians may possibly some day adjust
righteously the relations of Church and State, but they cannot
do any more than this. Spiritual things must be spiritually
discerned. A church which has definite articles, creeds, and
catechism, and which demands of every man in -this country
that he conform to these, because she is the national repfe-
sentative of religion, is herself answerable for such lectures as
the present. We are bound as good citizens, fearing God,
honouring the king, anxious to obey the laws, thankful for
our peace and happiness as a people, to justify ourselves for
becoming or remaining Nonconformists. We owe it to our
country, — we owe it to ourselves,-!— we owe it to our God,
But, indeed, it is absurd to speak of political nonconformity
as though it were a thing separate and distinct of itself.
Political nonconformity has been made by political conformity,

42 WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?
and that is itself the appeal of professedly religious persons
to the civil power to back up their position, and give them a
monopoly of spiritual influence. Once let that appeal be
made, and the days of that spiritual influence are numbered.
A crusade is proclaimed against Hberty of conscience and
the right of private judgment, the two birthright privileges
of every living soul, and which God will never suffer us to
lose, without withholding His smile and blessing from the
spoilers. " The founders of our Nonconformity were not poH
tical dreamers, who approached the religious question from the
side of impracticable political ideals. They were men who
earnestly desired to be quiet, and to do their own business,
but whose consciences were so bitterly grieved by the dis
honour of Christ, and of spiritual truth, which was forced on
their sight day by day, in the conduct of the national religious
affairs, that they did not dare be silent, but were pressed in
spirit to lift up their voices and bear witness for a more ex-
eeHent and Christian way,"*
In enforcing the Book of Common Prayer, and worship
accordant therewith, upon this people of England, the national
church was guilty of tyrarmous acts, which must still call a
blush to the cheek of her; defenders. No Nonconformist
could hold oflSce in any municipal body ; the ministers who
would not yield acquiescence to her service were driven out
from their places of worship, and commanded to be silent ;
no Nonconformist was allowed to hold a meeting at which
more than five persons, in addition to the family, were pre
sent ; all Nonconformists were .prohibited from coming within
five miles of any corporate borough ;, and all employment,
civil, naval, and military, under the Government was denied
to'them.f Now, if it be political to dwell on these persecu
tions, it is not political to consider that it was a religious
system which gave them birth. We judge of a tree by its
* Rev. J, Baldwin Brown,
t Skeat's " History ofthe Free Churches," p. 75.

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?

43

fruits, and the fruits of the Book of Common Prayer have
not been pure or lovely, or of a good report. That book
still remains ; all attempts to amend it or to revise it are
defeated ; plainly, it is the backbone of the party, which has
never ceased to inveigh against the great sin of Noncon
formity, and to plot for the absorption of all religious Hfe into
the endowed and established hierarchy of the State Church.
We often meet with men, now-a-days, who speak and act as
though it depended very much on the sort of churchmanship
in their neighbourhood, whether they were to remain Dissen
ters or not. We meet with men who assert that the Church
of England has become so comprehensive, that there is within
her rule just what, ought to suit every reasonable taste ; and
that she has become so charitable that she bears no likeness
whatever to the 'Unscrupulous tyrant she was two centuries
ago. We meet with others, again, who assure us that, once
dissolve the connection between State and Church, and then
thousands of Nonconformists would flock as doves to their
windows, thankful to return to the ark from .which they have
been banished for so- long. ¦ And we meet with others, beside
all these, who consider that a judicious revisal of the Book of
Common Prayer would make it so palatable to the earnest and
sincere, that there would no longer be a decent pretext for
worshipping in any ptherway than through its forms.
My present purpose is to show that, holding such opinions
as they profess to hold, Nonconformists cannot worship with
comfort in any church where the Prayer-book is- used, be the
priest high or low, evangelical or ritualistic. This, and
not any accidental union with the civil power, is the real
difficulty; it is one far older than the other, and far more
important. As an eminent churchman has said, s'o am I
convinced, " It is the Prayer-book that really hinders the
bishops from suppressing the Catholic (that is, the Ritualistic)
revival ; and that, n'ot from-this or that .sentence in it, but
from its whole spirit, and its whole tenor."'*
* Lord Ebuiy.

44- "VVHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS .'
I am very sorry when I hear the objection to the Prayer-
book urged as though it were nothing deeper than a question
of prayers read, or prayers dehvered extempore. " He who
will never use a form in public prayer casts away the wisdom
of the past. He who will use only forms casts away the hope
of utterances to be giv^n by the Spirit at present, and even
shuts up the future in the stiff hand of the past. Whatever
Church forbids a Christian congregation, no matter what may
be their fears, troubles, joys, or special and pressing need,
ever to send up prayer to God, except in words framed by
other men in other ages, uses an authority which was never
delegated. To object to all forms is narrowness. To doom
a Christian temple to be a place wherein a simple and im
promptu cry may never arise to hea-ven is superstition."*
We have not to concern ourselves with this controversy
now. Our present position is, that it is from this Prayer-book
— not from any One, generally, but emphatically from this one
in particular — that we are forced, in all honesty to our convic
tions, to dissent. Wc are Nonconformists in reference to
much of its ritual, much of its doctrine, and much of its
spirit. It is not from accidental features in it that we dissent,
but from so large and powerful a proportion of it, that nothing
short of 'a miracle could bring it into harmony with our faith
and practice. ¦ I shall now proceed to show some leading
points which justify this assertion, and - prove that it is not
exaggerated or uncharitable.
We are Baptists ; and therefore we are Nonconformists.
If there be any part of the Prayer-book about which no
mistake can be made, it is that part which declares the virtues
of Infant Baptism. Whilst the child is yet unable to judge and
decide for itself, it is to be brought to the priest, under tbe
charge of godfathers and godmothers, who shall in its name
" renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and
glory of this world, with all covetous desires of the s'&.me,
• Arthur: "Tongue of Fire," p. 22.

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS 7 45
and the carnal desires of the flesh." This being done, the
following prayer is to be offered up, on the express plea that
Christ " gave- commandment to His disciples that they should
go teach all nations, and baptize them" — " Regard, we be
seech Thee, the supplications of Thy congregation ; sanctify
this water to the mystical washing away of sin ; and grant
that this child, now to be baptized therein, may receive the
fulness of Thy grace, and ever remain in the number of Thy
faithful and elect children." Then the child is to be discreetly
and warily dipped in the water, and the priest shall say, " We
receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock, and
do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that here
after he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ
crucified." All this must convey to the mind of intelligent
spectators no other conception than that an actual grace has
been given to the child by the service ; and in harmony with
such conception are the words of the concluding prayer:
"We yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it
hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy
Spirit, to receive him for Thine own child by adoption, and
to incorporate him with Thy Holy Church," To the mind of
the child, moreover, when it is taught to repeat the Catechism,
no less a fact than that of positive transformation of nature, in
virtue of this rite, can possibly present itself. In my baptism
" I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an
inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven." Language such as
this the Apostles, in the full assurance of- faith, might have
perhaps used, but as a fact they rarely employ any expressions
¦ so decided in tone. The believer at the present time, conscioug
of the finished work of Christ for him personally, and of the
indwelling of the Divine Spirit, might venture to affirm as much
also, but even he would rejoice with trembling, and speak
with holy dread of his own standing hereafter before God.
But what can we say when we hear this sentence, from which
even the holiest shrinks in well-warranted diffidence, fearlessly
shouted by a class of unthinking and ignorant children .'' So

4& WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?
long as we hold to it that personal faith precedes baptism, so
long we must dissent from, and protest against, this perilous
teaching; and so long as we hold, further, that baptism has in
itself no virtue whatever, no mystical power, so long we must
remain Nonconformists from any system which deliberately
lays a foundation-stone that is not only unscriptural, but even
a base and dangerous imitation of the foundation laid by our
Lord Himself.
With ingenious, learned, and devout explanations of these
words of the Catechism and Baptismal Service of the Estab
lished Church, I do not now concern myself, because I hold that
words so important ought to carry their meaning with them ;
and I appeal to any one who shall read them in simplicity of
mind, and honesty of conscience, whether they do not convey
to his mind a meaning as easy to understand as any sentences
ever written in the English tongue. But, indeed, it is no dis
pute about words. The whole drift and spirit of the teaching
appear to me to be in distinct opposition to what we find as to
regeneration in the New Testament. Every priest, parent,
godfather, godmother, child, adopting the language of the
Book of Common Prayer, is nothing more nor less than a
Dissenter — dissenting, I mean to say, in word and in conduct,
from the plain words of the One Mediator between God and
man, the man Christ Jesus : " He that believeth and is bap
tized shall be saved ; he that believeth not shall be damned."
We are Congregationalists, and therefore Nonconformists.
There is no need for me to retrace the ground which we have
already travelled, in our endeavour to define Congrega
tionalism. The essence of that system Hes, as has been
previously shown, in our belief that each separate Church
needs only the presence of Christ in its midst, to be capable
of fulfilHng the functions of Christian fellowship. " It is
' Christ with us,' Christ only, Christ always, Christ in each of
us, that makes the strength and power of our association. It
is from Him that we draw the power for all our work. We
are partakers of a mystical and real spiritual Hfe derived from

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ? 4-'
Him, which alone makes us competent for the service of His
Church, and that derivation of strength comes only by the
closeness of our individual approach to our living Lord and
Master,"* When Christ said, "Wherever two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of
them," I understand that He ensured His presence in a
distinctly different sense from the indwelling vouchsafed to
each believer. It was to the group, as a group gathered
together, that He promised to appear ; it was in Iheir midst,
not only in each individual heart, that He declared He would
be. Now any system, whether Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or
Methodist, which denies the ability and right of each such
fellowship — large or small, ignorant or learned, wealthy or
poor — -to do its own work and enjoy its own privileges, quite
independent of all others, on the simple ground that Jesus is
in its midst, calls for our protest. We are Nonconformists
in the face of synods, conferences, convocations, conclaves,
and presbyteries.
We dissent, on the ground of this great conviction of ours,
from them all ; but we do so most earnestly when one of
these arrogates to itself supreme authority, and, forsaking
the purely spiritual basis of church-life, builds its fabric on a
political foundation. We are not unloyal to our Sovereign
in declaring that in no true sense can she be termed the
Head of the Church, or the Defender of the Faith. Things
that belong unto Csesar are to be rendered to Caesar, but it is
no unloyalty to his rightful claims to resolutely refuse to
render to him things that belong to God, Accordingly, we
are driven to protest against the command of the Queen in
things that pertain to religion, not from any political opinions,
but simply because we hold by Christ as the one and only
authority in spiritual matters.
The appointment of bishops and archbishops is notori
ously a political business, dependent upon the Government
* Rev. A. Maclaren.

48 WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?
which happens to be in power at the time. These function
aries are put into their places by the Queen's mandate for
their consecration. Yet the Church of England perpetuates
the hollow mockery of a Divine grace, by virtue of which the
office is wisely filled. Does she pretend that this Divine
grace is enjoyed by the Prime Minister for the time being ?
The secular, which is the only essential ground of appoint
ment, is kept very much out of sight during the Consecration
Service, however ; and the archbishop and bishops lay their
hands upon the head of the elected bishop, saying, "Receive
the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a bishop in the
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition
of our hand : in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost, Amen. And remember that thou stir
up the grace of God which is given thee by this imposition
of our hands ; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear,
but of power, and love, and soberness,"
There can be no question that these words do solemnly
assume that the consecrating bishops are in the enjoyment
of the Apostolical Succession. We deny, first, that the
Church of England, which was. constituted at the Reformation
in virtue of an Act of Parliament, and styled, "The Protestant
Church of England, as by law established " — not as by Christ
established, not as established by the Apostles — can, by any
torture of history, or any twisting of records, claim an un
broken descent from the Apostles. We deny, further, that
there ever was vested in any hierarchy a mystical power
called the " Apostolical Succession." And, then, we deny
altogether that any official — whether appointed by political or
ecclesiastical courts matters not — has Scriptural authority for
dictating to, or interfering with, the life and work of any two
or three believers gathered in the name of Christ. To do
this is to usurp the power which belongs to Him who is our
one M.aster, the sole Head of the Church, Christ the Lord.
Advancing a step further, we say that we are Protestants,
and therefore Nonconformists.

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ? 49
As I shall have to show in my next lecture, I understand
by a Protestant, not a man who holds by Luther, or by
Cranmer, but only a man who protests against the errors
which swelled to such magnitude at the time of the Reforma
tion, That Reformation did not sweep these errors entirely
away. The Reformed Churches, on the contrary, retained a
great deal of unscriptural doctrine, which after-ages ought to
have gradually purged out ; and so they might, but that the
Reformers arrested progress, and checked further reform, by
setting up a Prayer-book, vested with authority second only to
Scripture, which has continued from their day to ours to sow
both the wheat and the tares, teaching in germ the very errors
against which Luther and his fellow-workers rose to protest.
The mysterious sacramental efficacy of that unscriptural
ceremony Infant Baptism is distinctly taught. When the can
didate comes up for Confirmation, the faith of the Church is
declared in the prayer of the bishop, " Almighty and everliving
God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these Thy servants
by water and the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them
forgiveness of all their sins, fill them with the Spirit of Thy
holy fear, now and for ever," Now, we believe that the pro
test of the Reformers against the virtue inherent in outer
ceremonies stopped short of its real terminus. It should have
declared that the service in which the water is sprinkled in the
face of an unconscious child, though attended with prayer and
performed by a so-called priest, just left that child where it
found it — except, indeed, that a dangerous and delusive
doctrine had been committed ' into the hands of the parents
and sponsors, to impress upon that child as its mind opened.
Thanks to this Church and its Book of Common Prayer, all
children brought up in its communion " go astray as soon as
they be born, speaking lies."
Another great truth which the Reformers grasped was the
equality of all believers, as priests and kings unto God. The
protest against the headship of the Pope of Rome must have
gathered its force from the conviction that " One is our Master,
D

so WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?
even Christ, and all we are brethren." The right of any man
to usurp the power, which belongs to God alone, and to receive
confession of sin, and to grant absolution in virtue of that
usurpation, was indignantly denied. Yet the Prayer-book
teaches both these in principle and in practice. In the
"Visitation of the Sick" it is ordered by the Rubric, that
the priest shall go to the sick person, who is to be moved by
the priest to make a special confession of his sins, after which
the priest is to absolve him after this sort : " Our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners
who truly repent, and believe in Him, of His great mercy
- forgive thee thine offences : and by His authority committed to
me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," " Here is ' oral
confession,' here is 'absolution,' as complete as ever was
heard in the Church of Rome,"*
Another most dangerous error, against which the Reformers
protested, is that of the Real Presence of Christ in the
bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. .We believe that it
is only in a spiritual sense that Christ is present, and that
no change whatever passes over the elements used in the
service. This is, no doubt, further than the first Reformers
went, but it is the end to which their teaching pointed.
We are able now to decide what, in the opinion of arch
bishops, bishops, ecclesiastical authorities, and judges of this
realm, the Prayer-book holds. The celebrated Case, which
has occupied the attention of many good and useful ministers
of the Established Church, who might haye been occupied in
far nobler matters ; and which has, moreover, demanded the
skin of eminent judges, who are in the pay of this country,
and ought therefore to be expending their learning in
national concerns, not in recondite religious squabbles, is
concluded at last, after three years of incessant litigation, and
the expenditure of thousands of pounds,t The decision of
* Cobbett's " Legacy to Parsons."
+ " Daily News," Report ofthe Bennett Case, June lo, 187a.

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ,' 5 I
these priests and judges leaves it open to any clergyman in
the Established Church to affirm that Christ is indeed present
in the bread and wine in a sense " objective, real, actual, and
spiritual," The defendant in this protracted trial is now at
Hberty to teach, as he has hitherto been teaching, that there
is nothing in the Articles repugnant to the affirmation of
Christ's actual presence in the bread and wine ; that there is
a repeated sacrifice placed upon what is called the altar, when
the elements are there ; and that these elements are to be
adored with the adoration due to Christ alone, "on the
ground that under their veil was the sacred body and blood
of our Lord," The Church of England, as established by
Act of Parliament, is powerless, after years of expensive con
tention, to stop one of its ministers from teaching all this.
The Church of Rome teaches no more. It is Popery of the
most distinct and undisguised kind, and all true Protestants
should ask themselves whether, in the face of this decision,
they are not driven to be Nonconforrriists as well.
Let me not be mistaken when I add that — We are Christians,
and therefore Nonconformists. The true ideal of Christian faith
and practice must be derived from the New Testament, and
the more I study that, the more am I forced to the conviction,
that though many of its members are adorning the doctrine
of Christ their Saviour, yet the Established Church itself is
fatally opposed to the true genius of Christianity. The
Prayer-book has. a faith in priests, in sacraments, and in what
it calls the Church, which the New Testament altogether
ignores. The Prayer-book makes it the great aim of man to be
in unison with the Church, and to be receiving grace through
its appointed channels; the New Testament insists on a
union of the individual soul with Christ, by means of which
all spiritual blessings will flow into his soul. The Prayer-
book views man as the recipient of a mysterious influence in
the sacraments ; we look upon him as a free and intelligent
agent, coming to Christ by the exercise of his own personal
¦will, sanctified by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. " There
D 2

5 2 WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ?
is a vital principle involved in our objection to the Book of
Common Prayer. We could find many errors of taste in it,
many repetitions, many things which should at least qualify
the strong eulogiums pronounced upon it ; but it is because
of the strong sacramentarianism with which it is saturated —
which is not contained simply in a few isolated phrases .or
particular services, but is its ruling principle, which sets forth
another gospel that is not a gospel — that we dissent from the
Church which adopts it as the standard of its faith and
manual of its devotion."*
In conclusion, let me most emphatically declare that our
Nonconformity, whilst it separates us from the Established
Church, and puts us in opposition to its Prayer-book, never
ought to alienate us from Christian brethren who remain in
its fellowship. We rejoice in the life which now stirs with
• revived power within their hearts. We might wish to see
less priestly assumption, less of gorgeous ceremonialism, less
of misguiding reliance upon sacraments ; but still it is our
Saviour and theirs who is the power of God to salvation in
their preaching — who is the guide to homes of misery, suffer
ing, and shame in their ministrations — who is the object of
faith, hope, and love in their upward and onward glances —
¦who is the centre of the Holy Church universal, the Com
munion of Saints, in their future home and in ours.
Would God that we all saw as clearly as we ought, that
between us and Christ no priest, minister, service, or book of
any sort, ought to interpose ! " Oh that we could take that
simple view of things, as to feel that the one thing which lies
before us is to please God ! What gain is it to please the
world, to please the great, nay, even to please those whom
we love, compared with this ? What gain is it to be ap
plauded, admired, courted, followed, compared with this one
aim of not being disobedient to a heavenly vision ? What
can this world offer compared with that insight into spiritual
things, that keen faith, that heavenly peace, that high sanctity,
* " The Congregationalist," May, 1872.

WHY ARE WE NONCONFORMISTS ? 53
that everlasting righteousness, that hope of glory, which they
have who in sincerity love and follow our Lord Jesus Christ ?
Let us beg and pray Him day by day to reveal Himself to our
souls more fully, to quicken our senses, to give us sight and
hearing, taste and touch of the world to come, so to work
within us that we may sincerely say, Thou shalt guide me
with Thy counsel, and after that receive rae to glory.- Whom
have I in heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth
that I desire in comparison of Thee. My flesh and my heart
faileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion
for ever."*

1^^ mt kt "^xattBtmtB?
" The priests were the class of men that gave me the least trouble. They were at
first all against me ; I allowed them to wear violet-coloured stockings, and from that
moment they were all for me," — Napoleon.

TV.
.-!i
"WHT a:R E "WE .'P"Rt) T E ST ATTTS?

In the year I'szg 'the last 'attempt at -concord between the
Romanists and the Reformers broke down at the- Diet of
Spires, in consequence of a resolution' which mude it law that
" the Reformation could neither be extended into those
places where as yet it 1?^aS' unknowfi, nor be established on
solid 'foundations in those where it already existed,"* It was
against the tyrannical and unjust decisions of this' decree that
the 'Gospellers, as the/wefe "caUe^d; ¦protested "'before God,
•our only 'Creator, 'Preserver, Reddeiner, and Saviour, and who
will one day "be our Judge;" Most Worthy wfcre 'these'men of
the name df Gospellers, as is jiroved'by the folio-wing senti^
ments set forth in their protest : " Seeing that there is no
sure doctrine but such as is conformable to the Word Of God ;
that the Lord forbids the teaching Of any* cither 'doctrine^
that each text df the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained
by other and clearer teJtts ; that this Holy Book is, in all
things necessary for the Christian, easy of understanding,
and calculated to scatter the darkness : we are resolved, with
the grace of God, to maintain the pure and exclusive preach
ing of His only Word, such as it is contairned in the Biblical
books of the Old and New Testament, without adding any
thing thereto that may be contrary to It. This word is the
* D'Aubigne : iv. 56. Ed, R. T. Society,

¦S'S WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS .'
only truth ; it is the sure rule of all doctrine and of all life,
and can never fail or deceive us."*
¦ This protest— which, as D'Aubigne, the historian of the
Reformation, declares, constitutes "the very essence of
Protestantism " — in the first place, rejects the civil power in
Divine things, and says, with the Prophets and Apostles, "We
must obey God rather than man :" and, in the second place,
lays down the principle, that all human teaching should be
subordinate to the oracles of God, From these two
sources of living water flow all the, streams of evangelical
truth which have been, and still are, for the healing of the
nations. We are Protestants, because we heartily subscribe to both
of them. No civil power must interfere with spiritual matters.
The Bible and not the Church, the Word of God and not the
word of any man, or council of men, is our supreme authority.
In its entirety, the word Protestant ought never to have been
applicable to any boxiy of Christians who received the
patronage, or submitted to the control, of the State. But this
is not the point to which I shall draw special attention now.
Far more important is it to see plainly that they are neither.
Gospellers nor Protestants who bow to the authority of any
so-called Church rather than to the voice of God as it is con
tained in tbe Holy Scriptures.
It seems to me a fatal error, which Christian men commit
when they ally themselves to civil government in religious
matters, and confess that an earthly sovereign can be the Head
of the Church ; it seems to me a gross violation of the very.
commonest laws of morality, when, after doing this, these
same men set the civil authorities at defiance, and, whilst
never backward to take State pay, scoff" openly at the State
control, to. which they have soleiimly sworn obedience.
But I am concerned now with another question, neither
directly political, nor simply moral, although it lies at the
foundation of all poHtical liberty,, and of the loftiest and
* D'Aubigne : iv, 59. Ed. R. T. Society.

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS .!" 59
purest system of morality" which has yet been revealed to
us upon earth : I speak of the supreme authority of God's
Word. "The best of allies that you can give us," wrote
Garibaldi, when the dawn of better days was breaking
over his country, "is the Bible, which wiH bring us the
reality of freedom," Events have proved how true these
words were. Not to the soldier's bravery, nor to the states
man's foresight, is it owing that that hoary superstition, old
but not venerable, full of years but not full of honour, which
has for centuries cast its dark shadow across the fairest fields
of Europe, is tottering at this hour. The mightiest blows
against it have been struck by the sword of the Spirit, which
is the Word of God.
Meanwhile, the state of religion in our own country demands
that we define afresh who are, and who are not, Protestants,
If the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Pro
testants, then neither the party who obey man rather than
God, nor the party who obey the Church rather than God,
deserve the title. To do them credit, many of them are not
anxious to claim it. It is not amongst Romanists alone, but
amongst active and zealous members of what was once called
the Protestant Church of England, that Luther is maligned
and cursed. Unable to take the measurement of a man
whose religious faith was born through long agony and awful
experiences, -wilfully ignorant of their own country's history —
which bears on every page of it the proof that it is to the prin
ciples of the Reformation that they owe their national liberties,
if not indeed their national life — ^these priests of a professedly
Protestant Church are not sparing in their abuse of one
who prized the Bible above the Mass -book ; cared more for
men and women than for millinery and mummery ; did not
labour to intone unintelligible words, hut in bis honest mother-
tongue spoke God's truth ; did not kindle into enthusiasm
over albs and altar-cloths, matins and vespers, saints' days
and celebrations, but was aflame, heart and soul and strength,
with that sacred passion for the salvation of perishing souls,

6o TVHY ARE -WE PROTTESTANTS ?
which Js.not<;aught.in the dim religious light of the chancel,
but only in the holiest of all, into which we have -boldness to
enter by the blood of Jesus.
In the allegory so dear to maiiy of us, Giants Pagan and
Pope .sit -by the wayside, decrepit and weak, flinging im
potent venom on the pilgrims to the "Celestial City. But
Giant Pope has-a-child in England now, worthy of his sire,
who .has stolen his ¦•father's robes, and plays such pranks
before -high -heaven, dressed out in this -faded finery, as
rouse afresh the dying hopes of the two old giants, either
of wJiom might be .proud to own an him a son and heir.
"We give our people the -fact, the real doctrine of the
mass first," I quote the words of the RituaHstic leaders,
" the -name will come of itself by-and-by. -So with regard
to the cultus -of the Virgin. We shall Only be able to
estabhsh -this by slow -and cautious steps. We are one 'with
Roman Catholics in faith, and we -have a common ifoe to
fight."* More than twenty years ago. Earl -Russell wrote, dn- a letter
which deserves to be remembered now : " There is a danger
which alarms -me much more than any aggression of a foreign
sovereign. Clergymen of our own Church, who have sub
scribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and -acknowledged 'in 'ex
plicit terms the Queen's supremacy, ha-v^e been the most
forward in leading their flocks, ' step by step, to the very
verge of the precipice.' The honour paid to saiiits, the
claim of infallibility for the Church, the superstitious use of
the sign of the cross, the muttering of the Liturgy, so as to
disguise the language in which it is written, the recom
mendation of auricular confession, and the administration of
penance and absolution— all these things are pointed out by
clergymen ofthe Church of England as worthy of adoption."
To -my own mind, I confess that every outbreak of that
superstition which .modern civilisation boasted to have for
ever crushed, every new growth of that error which intellectual
* " The Union Review," July, 1867, p. 411,

WHY ARE Wfi PROTESTANTS ."- 6 1
progress vaunted to have finally uprooted; confirms me in the
conviction that we must go deeper than Ritualism, or Popery,
or Paganism, if we want to heal the tainted fountains of the
blood, and make men genuinely free. There fs nothing new
under the sun. The awfiil errors which are- rousing alarm,
as they are seen in germ; and bud in the Romanizing section
of the Church of England, are the very same which bloom in
full flower under the Papacy ;¦ and' these, in their turn, are
the very' same which grow ripe and then rotten under the sway
of Paganism, When the two giants in " Pilgrim's Progress "
appeal to a Church professedly -Protestant, they really appeal
for support to the passions and predilections of our unsanc
tified nature, find it where you may. All threeplead for a
human system, complicated, elaborate, plausible. All three set
at defiance " Heaven's simple, artless, unencumbered plan."
But let us remember, that in proportion to the light and
truth which they enjoy, is the evil which such systems have
it in their power to inflict. Paganism is man's religion, built
up on the yearnings after God which devout souls have felt
in all ages. "Popery is nothing but man's own religion
embellished with the spoils of Christianity."* Ritualism is
man's religion fortified by the renewed life and earnestness
which the Reformation awakened, in the souls of men. So
every wave of progress bears forward, not only the good, but
also tbe evil. "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how
great is that darkness 1 " This is the darkness of every
human system of religion springing up at the foot of Christ's
cross. Bringing to their task, not alone a knowledge of the
ambition, the lust, the pride, the fearfulness of fallen nature,
which crave to be catered for ; but also an acquaintance with
the outer forms and surface beauties of Christianity, the
framers of such a system have to aid them, both the lords of
the Philistines and also their poor blind Samson, once strong
and majestic in the favour of God, still in his ruin bearing
the traces of His handiwork. * Isaac Taylor.

62 WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS ?
" They take fi-om heaven the sacred spell,
But weave it by a torch irom hell."
Protestantism is not only a protest against the Romish
Church. It is much more than this. It is a protest against
the errors which, whilst they so notoriously distinguish
Popery open and undisguised, are to be found in all other
religious systems in which human presumption has dared to
usurp Divine authority.
I am driven more and more to suspect and hold aloof
from any religion which makes peace with human nature
by means of human machinery. We are not fit to be
trusted to lay a finger on the work of saving and sanctify
ing the soul. Take any religion that you will in which man
has had a hand — Heathenism as it existed in old Rome, or
the wild and simple superstition of our own forefathers, or
the complicated faiths of India or China, or Romanism,
whether festering abroad under the shadow of the Papacy, or
flourishing at home under the recent judgment in the Bennett
case — take all or either of these, and you will find that human
nature has just prescribed for its own disease, healing slightly its
own wound, and saying, " Peace, peace ! " when the Lord has
said that there can be no peace. You will discover- that in
every case pride is flattered, selfishness nourished, ambition
satisfied, conscience cajoled, fear smothered, and every other
unsanctified feeling, passion, or desire either drugged with
opiates or quickened with stimulants. This is just what we
naturally long for, and it is to this (not to State patronage
or royal favour) that I attribute the success of all these
systems, which launch men through the gate that is wide into
the way that is broad,- with the assurance that the end
thereof is everlasting life.
Paganism and Popery are alike distinguished by four great
features — asceticism, sensualism, superstition, and despotism •
and each of these is the direct outcome of fallen human
nature seeking to gratify its own desires.

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS ? ' 63
By Asceticism 1 mean that system which, in the heathen
world, drove men apart from their fellows to find virtue in
solitude, to repress the natural instincts and emotions of the
heart, to abstain from public life and its duties, to make
personal happiness and safety the exclusive and absorbing
aim of existence, and to look on annihilation, sought for here
and attained hereafter, as the noblest end of being.* I
mean, also, that vast- and powerful network which, in the
Romish world, here in England and all over the Continent,
covers the land with its monasteries, nunneries, retreats, reli
gious hospitals, conventual schools, and the- Hke, in which —
secure at present, unfortunately, from government inspection —
all manner of abuses may be practised and connived at. I
will not so much as glance at the abominations inevitable, to
this unnatural conception of the whole duty of man ; but it is
not to be forgotten, that whilst recently an itinerant agitator,
who devoted his life, to exposing these horrors, was forbidden
to circulate the volume in which he unveiled the hideous mass
of corruption, and was beaten to death by an ignorant and
priest-ridden mob, the veracity of his statements remains
to this hour uncontradicted. His murderers have been re
leased, his book has been suppressed, but the horrible ini
quities which he depicted are sufi"ered to hold on their way ;
and our Protestant Government refuses to exercise even a
reasonable control over institutions which have been, in every
land where they have been established, nurseries of idleness,
hotbeds of vice, and schools for ignorance and superstition.
But whence has asceticism its rise ? It has its rise in the
unwillingness, common fo us all, to live up to the prayer of
Christ : " I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of
the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil,"
Our Lord claims to regulate the entire life, not -when with
drawn from the throng, but when plunged into the tide, and
fighting with manifold temptations. Against this claim human
* Cf. Lecky's "History of European Morals," vol, i, p, 106, et uj.

64 WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS .''
nature rebels, Indblence wearies at the prospect of a per
petual warfare; cowardice shrinks from the forecast of possi
ble defeat ; and then follows some sort of compromise. Now
it takes the shape of ignoble flight from the world, and the
man carries himself off to the- calm- retreat, the cloistered cell,
the communion of solitude. But now, again, it takes another
form, and one- much more familiar tous. It separates religion
from daily life, and Hves two lives entirely distinct ; visits the
sick, relieves the poor, worships in the sanctuary, subscribes
to the mission-; but all the while- is hard-fisted at. a bargain,
greedy of gain, hasty in temper, proud at heart, and, for a
greater part of the week, has fellowship with the unfruitful
works of darkness. When your religion has control only over
your purse in occasional charities, over your lips in unfrequent
prayers, and over your hours of Sunday-worship, then is there
as urgent a call for protest as when the same spirit which pos
sesses you takes other men off to the monastery and the
hermitage. " Pure religion, and undefiled before God and
the Father, is this : to visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
A second feature in all human systems of religion you will
find to be Sensualism. Let me be understood, when I use this
word, to employ it in no narrow meaning. I apply it to
any inordinate gratification of the senses. God has given to
us all a love for beauty, an ear to drink in sweet sounds, an
eye to delight in fair forms, an imagination to kindle with
rapture, a heart to glow with passion. But these feelings ought
always to be kept in check. The intellect, the judgment, the
conscience, are higher than they. We protest, -therefore,
against a religion which maintains its hold by ministering
excessively to the lower faculties with which man has been
endowed. The worship of the Virgin Mary is one result of
sensualism. " The Virgin Mother," says a Romanist writer,
"has a certain jurisdiction over the flowing of all graces.
She is the queen of mercy, the temple of God, the habitation
of the Holy Spirit, always sitting at the right hand of Christ

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS } 6$
in eternal glory. Therefore, she is to be venerated, to be
saluted, to be adored; and she sits at the right hand of
Christ, that as often as you adore Him, you may adore His
mother also."*
The nobler side of this mistaken worship is found in the
rightful feelings which man is bound to cherish toward
woman, made by God to be a helpmeet for him. It is these
very feelings of love, admiration, chivalrous bravery, and
ready self-devotion which feed perpetually the error of Mario
latry, But the baser side is one so base that I cannot touch
upon it here, for it is displayed in the obscene rites with
which Ashtaroth was adored by the Phoenicians, Venus by the
Romans, and which are stiH prevalent in some of the temples
of Hindostan,
This religion of the senses is one so deeply-rooted and so
plausible, that we are all of us in danger of being carried
away by it. In the- Church of Rome it has a complete
mastery. " There is a mixture of the sensuous and the spiritual
¦which it is almost impossible for us to conceive. The whole
worship is one consistent and majestic symbolism. The long
aisles are filled with worshippers who are not intended to hear
and understand — to see the act from afar, to know when to
prostrate themselves in adoration of their present deity, is to
partake of the service. Each part of the building, each
motion of the priest, each colour of his vestments, has a
meaning — is a means of expression of the one great truth of
the mediation of the priest for the people, the sacrifice of
the Christ-God, offered up in the flesh before their eyes by
him."t I need not spend time in proving that the Ritualist move
ment points in tbe same direction. One High Church in Lon
don spends ,^1,000 for its choir", whilst it gives forty shillings
to foreign missions. The appeal is entirely to the e3'-e and
the ear, the transient emotions, and the surface-passions. It
gratifies the senses, and the poor unforgiven sinner is deluded
• Bemardine of Sienna. ")¦ "Eraser's Magazine," August, 1868, p. 228.
E

66 WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7
into the confidence, that by attendance at so many services
he has made himself acceptable to that God who seeketh only
that men should worship Him in spirit and in truth.
But we ourselves — are we free from guilt in this
matter ? Have we no hymns which dwell with repul
sive fondness on the mere bodily sufferings of Jesus ?
Have we no itching ears, which love to be entranced with
passionate appeals to shaHow emotions ? Are not our feehngs
quickly stirred by pictures of want and woe, just as they are
in reading a romance by the imaginary sorrows of the hero 7
And with no sort of good resulting, have we no delight in the
sound of the music, whilst the solemn and inspiring words
are utterly unheeded 7 Our own temptation is to pay much
attention to the outward service of the house of God, as an
excuse for our neglect of our own inner spiritual life, to seek
to be pleased rather than to long to be built up, to rest
satisfied at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, to which our
lame faith has carried us, instead of entering into the holiest
of all, leaping and walking and praising God,
A third feature in human religion is Superstition. We are
c-ompounds of hopes and fears, and are under their control
to a far larger extent than we care to allow. Those who have
framed false systems of religion, have known enough of
themselves to see that they will soonest attain to the pow>-r
they aspire after if they pro-vdde for these mighty emotions.
The _ Gospel addresses itself to these when it bids us fear
intensely sin, and hope intensely for salvation ready to be re
vealed to the believer in Christ. But the faith essential to
this Christian confidence is beset with difiiculties. It calls
for a life-long struggle. We must agonise to enter in at the
strait gate. We must burn in upon our hearts the words of
that Apostle who preached most impressively the great doc
trine of Justification by Faith : " I therefore so run, not as
uncertainly ; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air. But I
keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that
by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS,? 67
be a castaway," The awful delusion that a man can live as
heedlessly as he pleases, without God and without hope in the
worid, and yet obtain God, and snatch at hope, as he goes out
ofthe world — an insult to Christ's sacrifice, a defiance of Divine-
justice, a rejection of the work of the Spirit — this finds no
place in the Gospel. Paul does not say, " The death that I
die in my solitary chamber I die by the faith "—but, " The life
which I now live in the flesh I Hve by the faith of the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
The Reformation was a great awakening to this truth. Reli
gion is not a system of fines, penances, payments, and pilgrim
ages, by which you may pass through the fires of purgatory to
life hereafter. It is a present life of holiness, purity, truthful
ness, love, well worth your Hving were there no future life what
ever. Luther was roused to protest, not, first of all, by errors of
doctrine, but by the scandalous life led by the Pope, car
dinals, and priests in Rome, as he saw it with amazed horror
with his own eyes. Calvin was from his boyhood distin
guished by the keenest moral sensibility, and was declared
by Scaliger to have been, at twenty-three, not only the most
learned man in Europe, but the most elevated moral character
since the Apostle Paul. The sermons of Knox and Latimer
overflow with invectives against the common sins which
disgraced kin^, courtier, merchant, artisan, and peasant, in
their days. The Reformers fearlessly carried their Bibles
into all political and social circles ; and the Christian states
men of those times (Hke the greatest orator of our own*)
knew of no nobler or more convincing climax than a passage
from the Word of God with which to engage the minds, win
the hearts, or appeal to the consciences of their hearers, '
History can reveal to you no religious system, from the be
ginning until now, which has produced such lofty characters,
raised so high a general standard of morality, and swayed as
mighty a sceptre of justice and truthfulness, as the Calvinism
which once kept the whole city of Geneva pure, and carried
* John Bright, E 2

58 - WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7
terror even into the poor worthless nature of the Queen of
Scots, "Calvinism as it existed at Geneva (under Calvin), and
as it endeavoured to be wherever it took root for a century and
a half after him, was not a system 6f opinion, but an attempt to
make the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, an authori
tative guide for social as well as personal direction. If it was
a dream, it was at least a noble one. The Calvinists have
been called intolerant. Intolerance of an enemy who is
trying to kill you seems to me a pardonable state of mind.
It is no easy matter to tolerate lies, clearly convicted of being
Hes, under any circumstances; specially it is not easy to tole
rate lies which strut about in the name of religion. The
Calvinists attracted to their ranks almost every man in Western
Europe that hated a lie. They were crushed down, but they
rose again. They were splintered and torn, but no power
could bend or melt them. They had many faults ; let him
that is without sin cast a stone at them. They abhorred, as no
body of men ever more abhorred, all conscious mendacity,
all impuritj', all moral wrong of every kind, as far as they
could recognise it."*
But whilst Protestantism meets the hopes and fears of men
in this fashion, sweeping away all lying vanities, and offering
Christ as the only power able to calm our fears and glorify
our hopes, Romanism has other weapons at her command-
" Without money and without price " is the motto ofthe first,
as it proffers the great salvation by faith alone. " Nothing for
nothing, but everything for pay," is the watchword of the
other as it sets forth salvation by works. " The inveterate bias
of the human heart is to make Christianity meat and drink, and
to ¦ put fasts and festivals in the place of righteousness and
religious, rejoicing. This is human nature, and this is
Romanism. It consults man's carnality. It eases the con
science without changing the will. It cannot put Christ in
the heart, but it can hang a cross round the neck, or press a
crucifix close to the bosom. It cannot wash the robes of the
* J. A. Proude's "Calvinism," pp. 54, 56.

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7

69

immortal spirit in the great expiation, but it can bleach the
surplice white as snow. It cannot clothe its members in the
righteousness of Christ, but it can clothe its friars in brown
serge and grey flannel. It cannot sprinkle the clean water of
renovating grace on the conscience, but it can shower holy
water on men's hands and their faces ; and though it dare
hardly hope salvation for heretics, like Leighton and Usher
and Howard, it has a sure and certain hope of a glorious re
surrection for the drunken debauchee who, in his stentorious
convulsions, could hardly swallow the viaticum, but who, with
monks chanting masses for his soul, now sleeps in the odour
of sanctity, and locked up from the devil's reach in the fire
proof safe of a consecrated burying-ground." *
I have no heart to turn to that which has always seemed to
me the most pitiful side of this playing with men's fears ^nd
fooling with men's hopes: I mean the control this same
system gets over some very noble natures, whilst they are
convulsed and racked with the search after truth. At the
moment when Christ should be set before the anxious en
quirer, the so-called Church takes His place. In the Church
he is assured there is peace and satisfaction. He must
submit to her voice, surrender the right of private judgment,
listen only to her interpretation of Scripture, and he shall find
rest to his soul. When you meet with foolish and empty-
headed lads, who have caught the trick of Popery and learned
its vocabulary, turning religion into a contemptible farce in
their RituaHstic services, do not be deceived into thinking that
they could either have originated or sustained a revolt against
Protestantism such as the Church of England is waging at this
hour. They are as far off" from the leaders of the movement
as a powder-monkey is from a general. The fathers of this
reaction are men who have long ago reached the melancholy
goal for which, unknown to themselves, they started when
they forsook the supreme authority of God's Word, Men of
profound scholarship, of deep devotion, of intense earnest-
' * Dr. James Hamilton. " Life," p. 396.

70 WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7
ness, they have carried their intellectual and spiritual force
over to the aid of that host to which our saddened hearts, if
not our mournful lips, often cannot forbear to apply the
words of Paul—" For many walk of whom I have told you
often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
enemies of the cross of Christ."
I pass now to the fourth feature in all false systems — Des
potism. This again appeals to a deep-seated passion in the
hearts of many— namely, the love for rule. Romanism begins
with a compromise. It claims for its priesthood supremacy
in all spiritual matters, professing to leave temporal concerns
to the laity. But this is done in obedience to the same
shrewd knowledge of human nature. He who has once
gained the control of your soul, to whom you have sur-
' rendered your present and your future religious life, has the
pass-key to your whole being, and to every action you per
form. Religion will assert its power, and you. cannot prevent
it. Once yield into the hand of any man the soul, and you
have given up the helm of the vessel; the entire ship is his
as well — he can now turn it whithersoever he will. Ac
cordingly, no despotism has been as mighty as that which
has been exercised by hierarchical tyranny. Bishop Stross-
mayer, in speaking at the CEcumenical Council at Rome,
boldly exposed this abuse, heedless of the cries of the vene
rable fathers by whom he was surrounded: "Having read the
whole New Testament, I declare before God that I have found
no trace of the Papacy as it exists at this moment, Christ for
bad Peter and his colleagues to reign, or to exercise lordship,
or to have authority over the faithful. If St. Peter had been
elected Pope, Jesus would not have spoken thus, because,
according to our tradition, the Papacy holds in its hands two
swords, symbols of spiritual and temporal power," The as
sumption of the priest is not confined to Pagan of Romish
Church, It underlies all the services of the Book of Common
Prayer, It is not any fellow-believers, but only the priest,
who can sprinkle the infant, administer the Communion, pro-

WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7 7 i
nounce Absolution, and bury the dead in sure and certain
hope. The Reformation in England was, in its -main cha
racteristics, "the abridgment of the special prerogatives of
the clergy." " But the clergy nowadays affect to sever them
selves from the rest of the community — to assume thecha-
racter, claim the powers, and secure the privileges of a priestly
caste." But I dare not stop here. We are ourselves guilty of nur
turing this love of power, if we suffer our ministers to assume,
never so slightly, the priestly position. We sever them from
the examples of the Apostle.s and first Christians, when we
look that they shall wear a peculiar dress, live a Hfe apart
from the Hfe in which Paul bids us do all to the glory
of God, take the place of the father of the household
at family prayers, say grace (of itself a Popish term) at
meals, and by other little but most significant acts assume a
priestly part. But you do so far more when you separate
between the man and his office, and think that it is the ofifice
makes the man, and not the man that makes the office. It is
good that your minister should share with you the pleasures as
well as the sorrows of life, but let him do it as your friend,
one with you in the fellowship of the Gospel,- It is fitting
that he should be found at the cradle, at the wedding-day, at
the bed of sickness, and beside the grave at the last. Let it
be, however, not because he carries any sacramental grace by
virtue of his profession, but because he has in some measure —
how faintly and feebly his own heart knows right well — been
with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of
mind and with many tears and temptations, keeping back
nothing that was profitable unto you, but showing you, and
teaching you publicly, and from house to house, testifying
repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Protestantism, in its widest and deepest meaning, is all this.
It is the appeal of the spirit of all truth against the inherent
tendencies of our natures — tendencies which will mar and
disfigure us all our pilgrimage through, and which can only

72 WHY ARE WE PROTESTANTS 7
be kept in subjection if we live in the Spirit and walk in the
Spirit. We are all of us tempted to divorce things secular
from things sacred; to be entranced by the outward and
visible, and so to lose sight of the inward and spiritual ; to
seek for false ground for our hopes, and futile assuagements
for our fears ; to nourish pride, and strive after power and rule.
It is against all this that we are bound to struggle every hour.
Protestantism was indeed the noblest intellectual and the
mightiest political revolt ; but these features sink into insig
nificance before the fact that it was a Divinely-prompted
revolt of man's whole spiritual being against the baser
passions within himself, which were bringing him into sub
jection to the powers of darkness. It was a revolt nourished
by the Holy Spirit, and carried through under the banner of
an open Bible, "A perusal of Luther's history must surely
bring home to the mind a powerful conviction of this truth —
that the doctrine of grace, the freeness, sufficiency, and
unencumbered efficacy of the justification obtained through
faith in Christ's work, and His once oflfered sacrifice, was the
spring and reason of the Reformation. To be rid of Popery
we must have recourse, if not to Atheism, to the Gospel — the
very same Gospel, in substance, by a recovery of which Luther,
and the great men who were his associates, in his own and
other countries, broke the despotism of Rome, and opened
the way for its final and now approaching overthrow. Many,
even among those whose temper and prejudices have inclined
them always to side with authority, legitimate or illegitimate,
have, by the irresistible tendency of a deeper influence, been
compelled to speak and act on the side of Hberty, when
drawn or driven to make their protest for the Gospel, So
true is the word, whether understood as addressed to men
individually or socially, ' If the Son shall make you free, ye
shaH be free indeed ; ' and, again, ' Where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty,' "* * Isaac Taylor

I^g mt kt €^xxBimnB f

*' Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick Inlaid with patines of bright gold j
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls — •
But whilst this muddy virtues of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." ^Shakspeare.
Harmony is better than unison, "Yes," saj s Lord Bacon; *' and it is so not only in sounds, but in
affections.'*

V.
WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS.?

One of the best-known passages in "Butler's Analogy" is
that in which, when arguing that death is not the destruction
of the living being, he appeals to experience for proof that
"men may lose their Hmbs, their organs of sense,and even
the greatest part of their bodies, and yet remain the same
living agents."
In answering the question, "Why are we Christians 7" we
shall have to take a somewhat similar course. If a man be a
Christian indeed, he may, as a consequence, be distinguished
by many characteristics, which, although they naturally ac
company, are nevertheless not of the essence of Christianity,
Jle may subscribe to a creed, insist upon obedience to
ordinances, and attach himself to certain forms of church-
polity ; he may exaggerate the importance of these, and give
to them a foremost place in his faith and practice, and yet
the secret of his one great hope may not lie in any of them.
We shall, I suppose, be all willing to own, that if a man be
a Christian, his being so is in no way attributable to any cere
mony to which he has submitted. You cannot manufacture
men into Christians. If any one really believed in the saving
virtue of Infant- Baptism (which is the most extensive scheme
¦ ever propounded for the manufacture of Christians), then I
cannot imagine him to be blest with even common humanity.

7& WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS 7
if he does not follow in the footsteps of Francis Xavier, who
"refers with expressions of intense delight to the vast multi
tude of infants whom he had baptized, and whom death had
transferred to Paradise, in the untarnished bloom of their
baptismal innocency. It is indeed a subject of curious
inquiry, why the adherents of this doctrine do not arise to
the more than human and yet easy office of love, which
invites them. By employing a few active emissaries to bap
tize infant Hindoos, they would confer on the race of man
benefits infinitely eclipsing all the results of all the labours
of all the philanthropists who have trodden this earth from
the days of Adam to our own. Why, then, is this mighty
work of benevolence unattempted 7 It is because they who
are driven by a tyrannical logic to these most marvellous
consequences escape the pressure of them by something
which is superior to all logic, and proof against all argumen
tation, even by those indestructible instincts of our nature,
and by that free spirit of the Gospel, which will dash to
pieces the inference and the belief that the Almighty Father
of us all has really made the eternal weal or woe of our chil
dren to depend on the observance or neglect of an ablution
to be sprinkled by the hand, and of a benediction to be
pronounced by the lips of mortal man."* Obedience to
ordinances must be struck, out as not of the essence of
Christianity, although very necessary to him who desires to
fulfil all righteousness.
In the same way, I further observe, that if you cannot
manufacture a man into a Christian, neither can you
argue him into a Christian. However useful the elaborate
apologies for Christianity may be which still remain as
monuments of human industry in our immense library of
Evidences, Defences, and- Demonstrations — monuments
which are many of them as .perfect as reason can make
them, and as uninteresting as perfection generally is to our
imperfect natures — yet I think that by this time it must be
* Sir James Stephen's " Essays," p. 133.

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS.^ 77
plain, from all experience of the matter, that no single soul
was ever inspired with the Divine life through these volumes.
Indeed, their effect frequently is to repel, but very rarely to
attract, " Eighteen hundred years ago," thus runs the argu
ment, "there lived a man in Nazareth, who claimed to have
come down from heaven, and to be the Son of God, and who
proved His claim by miracles. He re-edited the moral law,
and enforced it by new sanctions. He declared that His
death should obtain forgiveness of sins for those who should
accept it on the conditions of repentance and amendment of
Hfe. He proved our immortality by His resurrection from
the dead, and His ascension into heaven. All this can be
demonstrated by strictly historical evidences. Believe it,
and you shall be rewarded by eternal salvation ; believe it
not, and you shall be punished by eternal damnation. Now,
whatever eff'ect this statement may have upon the faith and
life -of Christians, it certainly has the eff'ect of violently
repelling those who, are not Christians. The result of this
hard, dry, logical attempt at demonstrating the supernatural
to the intellect is that the companion whom we would win
starts from our side at once, and refuses to walk with us
another step."* It is "with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness," and all processes for implanting tbe life of
true religion in the nature which overlook this run counter to
the teaching of Scripture, the examples of the Apostles, and
the voice of centuries of experience.
Once more, a man cannot be counted a Christian by virtue of
his adherence to any human rules of faith and practice. Whether
you be Romanist or Protestant, Baptist or Psedobaptist, Presby
terian, Episcopalian, or CongregationaHst, your profession oU'
these moot points has no vital connection with your Christian-
life. Over them all, so far from writing that you have seen the
end of all perfection, yoil had much better write that you have
not even seen the beginning. No one of them aH but has had',
* Magee's Sermon " On the Christian Theory ofthe Origin of Life," p. 9.

7 8 WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS.?
at its head prominent, loud-tongued, zealous adherents, who
have shown no faintest signs of the true Hfe, but have instead
brought their fellowship into disgrace, and made it a byword
and a reproach. No one of them, either, has been fruitless
in holy, earnest, consistent disciples of Christ. Yet no one
of them is big enough to enclose in its domains the Holy
Catholic Church, which is the Communion of Saints.
Our Hymn-book has been aptly called, " The "Voice of
Christian Life in Song." But what a company we have there
of sweet singers, whose voices on earth were often in discord
one with another, and who could not by any stretch of what
is called Christian charity have joined in any one ordinance,
subscribed to any one creed, or agreed upon any one form of
church-polity 1 In all these matters they are widely sepa
rated. Wesley is an Arminian ; Toplady is a Calvinist.
Luther is the bulwark of Protestantism ; Xavier is the pioneer
of Jesuitism. Keble is a High Churchman ; Watts is no
Churchman at all, Doddridge holds by ordinances ; Cowper
for years will not even pray, Fawcett is a Baptist ; Bernard
never heard of that sect, and would have given them hard
measure if he had. Many of these men were personally
estranged one from the other ; outside this cage they were
almost birds of prey ; but once within its golden bars, trans
formed into minstrels of -harmonious notes, they "join in a
song of sweet accord, and thus surround the throne."
The same line of thought is suggested, if we turn from our
hymn-writers to our devotional treasury. The men who have
bared their heart, and revealed the record of their inner lives,
to minister to the sorrows and strengthen the hopes of
Christian people, have seemed, during their earthly careers
to have no external bond of union. What communion has
Thomas ^ Kempis with Richard Baxter.? What fellowship
has George Herbert with Samuel Rutherford .? Newton and
Augustin, Pascal and Bunyan, Leighton and Bossuet  what is
it that these sons of consolation have in common 7 Why,
the throb of life is in them all. And whatever that life may

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS .?

79

be, which is the only heritage common to all believers, in
that, be sure, Hes the essence of Christianity.
Turning, therefore, from systems of church-government,
articles and forms of faith, ordinances and sacraments, we
must give ourselves to the investigation of this life, which has
plainly shone forth in the' conduct and character of Calvinists
and Arminians, Huguenots and Protestants, Jesuits and Jan-
senists. High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Conformists
and Dissenters.
Christianity is, first, faith in a Person; and then,\the in
dwelling in our ¦nature of that Person's life.
It is not worthy the name of Christianity unless it be both
faith and life. "If you had asked the Twelve Apostles, in their
day, 'What do yoii believe in .?' they would not have stopped
to go round about with a long sermon, but they would have
pointed to their Master, and they would have said, ' We believe
Him ! ' 'But what are your doctrines .? ' — ' There they stand in
carnate.' ' But what is your practice ? ' — ' There stands our
practice. He is our example ; our creed, our body of divinity,
our whole theology, is summed up in the person of Christ
Jesus.' The Apostle preached doctrine, but the doctrine was
Christ; he preached practice, but the practice was all in
Christ."* To say that Christianity meant only a faith would be miser
ably inadequate, because we might understand, then, that all
that is requisite to our being Christians could be formulated
into a string of assertions, and agreed to by hand or voice.
Christianity means a Hfe which is Christ in us. With a dis
tinctness, which has no parallel in the history of earthly
teachers, Jesus declared, " I am the Life." This belief in a
Divine, a supernatural life, struggling and conquering in the
soul, is the dearest confidence of the Apostles, A life of
Jesus has been made manifest in their bodies ; they have
been quickened together with Christ ; they are crucified with
Christ, nevertheless they live ; yet not they, but Christ liveth
* Spurgeon : " De Propaganda Fide,"

00 WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS 7
in them ; and the Hfe which they now Hve in the flesh, they
Hve by the faith of the Son of God, who loved them, and gave
Himself for them. They are dead, and their life is hid with
Christ in God. When Christ, who is their Hfe, shall appear,
then shall they also appear with Him in glory,
I have called this Hfe supernatural, and I have always felt
that it is the one feature in Christianity which utterly defies
human wisdom to account for it, or to explain it away.
If it could be proved that the Miracles performed by Christ
were only so many lying wonders, or if they could all be traced
up to natural causes ; if, moreover, it could be shown that the
Sermon on the Mount, -v^'ith all its noble morality, was already
in existence in the teachings of the Rabbis ; if, furthermore,
it could be demonstrated that the' Resurrection of Jesus from
the dead was all a cunning delusion ; if the attempt of R^nan
to bring our Lord down to the level of a very exquisite but
quite natural human character had been successful ; if the
claim of Professor Tyndall to shut out Prayer from the region
of actual daily Hfe were conceded ; if the experiment of the
author of " Ecce Homo " to depict Christ, as " simply a young
man of promise, popular with those who knew Him, and
appearing to enjoy the Divine favour,"* had been a practi
cable test ; if all these eff'orts to drive out the supernatural
from Christianity had been crowned with victory, it would yet
' lie at the very heart of the system, as distinct and authorita
tive as ever. No other teacher, save Jesus Christ, has claimed
to be Life — not to impart or to reveal it, notice, but abso
lutely to be the thing itself; and whether they were fools or
knaves, it is perfectly certain that the Apostles of Christ traced
to this indwelling life of their Master the unparalleled course
which they were pursuing, " In a word, we claim for Chris
tianity that it is not a code of morals merely, nor a philosophy,
nor a creed, nor a system of rehgious discipline ; but that,
over and above all these, it is a life, a new and real vital force
* Preface to " Ecce Homo,"

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS ? 8 t
in the world — a Hfe, with its own conditions of existence, its
own laws of development, its own peculiar phenomena, as
real and as distinct as those of any other form of life, which
science investigates and classifies ; and that this life is in
Christ, for ' this is our record, that God has given to us eter
nal life, and this life is in His Son,' "*
Suppose, again, that the various systems of theology which
have grown up in the course of the centuries were put aside;
if the doctrine of original sin, of universal depravity, of elec
tion, of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, of the eternal
punishment of the impenitent sinner, and others which hold
prominent places in volumes of systematic divinity : if all
these were contemptuously swept away, or respectfully con
signed to oblivion, even then the cardinal assumption of
Christianity, which is also its grandest triumph, would remain
unassailed. This would still shine forth as the claim of Jesus,
" He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the
Son of God hath not Hfe ;" and the fact would still remain,
that thousands and tens of thousands of men and women have
actually exhibited, in their character and conduct, a Hfe, which
not even the credulity of scepticism could attribute to birth,
education, outward circumstances, or natural disposition. It
is this life which is the most stubborn and obstinate barrier
in the path of men who aspire to eliminate the supernatural
from Christianity.
This supernatural life is not capable of demonstration,
"Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness;"
and it must remain a mystery to the end,^-a secret, that is to
say, which has been revealed, but not explained. In any
case of conversion (by which I mean the implanting of this
Divine Hfe), the witnesses of it can get no further than did the
parents of the blind man at Jerusalem : " We know that this
is our son, and that he was born blind ; but by what means
he now seeth we know not, or who hath opened his eyes we
know not ;" and the converted man himself can often do little
' Magee's " Christian Theoiy," p. 7.- F

82 WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS .?
more than affirm, " One thing I know, that, whereas I was
blind, now I see."
Although I can pretend to no knowledge of science myself,
yet I would venture to ask our men of science, to whom I
am convinced Christianity owes as much for their suggested
analogies as civilization does for their brilliant discoveries,
whether this mystery of Divine Hfe is altogether unique .? So
far as I can understand the researches of these men, they
lead us back along the various channels which life takes to its
source and spring ; but when they get there, they acknowledge
that the secret of life is a veiled secret still. There it is — that
they know ; but what it is, what lies at back of it, what are its
essential forces, what are the laws of its being, they know not.
So far from regarding science as in opposition to religion, I
seem to discover that the phenomena of both, when traced
back to their first cause, end in a mystery. There is a point
where the professor turns from his diagrams, and confesses
that science, which, let us remember, is the knowledge of facts,
will lead him no further, although his wondering mind dares
venture, in obedience to one of its grandest prerogatives, to
hang above an abyss, in whose depth he sees as yet no ground
to rest upon. And so, also, there is a point where the Chris
tian drops his Apologies, and Evidences, and Systems of
Theology, and cries, "O the depths ofthe riches both ofthe
wisdom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways past finding out I "
Science and religion, unless I give them credit for more of
the humility of true wisdom than they deserve, can both join
to sing — "Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy fiice.
By faith, and ftiith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.
" We have but feith ; we cannot know ;
For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trast it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness ; let it grow.

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS 7 83
'* Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell ;
That mind and soul, according well.
May make one music as before,
'"Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth ;
Forgive them where they &ilin tmth,
And in Thy wisdom make me wise."*
The analogy between spiritual and physical Hfe holds good
in another feature. Although both may be traced up to a
mystery which human powers of demonstration fail to make
manifest, yet both are capable of being detected by certain
outward and visible signs. If the philosopher tells me that
the sunbeam motes are only so many myriads of living
organisms, I have a right to ask for ocular demonstration,
and no reasonable man of science will deny me satisfaction.
In like manner, if a professing Christian tells me that he has
this Divine life filling his whole nature, then I have a right to
ask for ocular demonstration of that, also, and all his assertions
that he feels the grace of assurance, that he is confident of
his election, that he has the unseen witness of the Spirit,
shall not- prevent my denying that he has this life, unless it be
exhibited in his conduct and conversation, "The fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance," and any one of these, if it be
really in the man, must make itself heard, and seen, and felt
in his outward life.
This supernatural Hfe, then, cleaves for its waters external
and visible channels. Now, to my mind, it is this volume of
Christian evidences, the volume made up of living epistles
known and read of all men, which forms the mightiest argu
ment with which to confront a hardened, an unbelieving, a
rebellious world.
Take such a case as occurs in every congregation ; I dare
believe, indeed, that you will scarcely find a street in this or any
* In Memoriam.

S+ WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS .?
Other town which will not furnish you with an example of what I
mean. Supposing that I am speaking to any one this eveni.ng
who has very little faith in the Gospel — let me ask him whether
he cannot, without going very far, find an instance of what we
call conversion, which it utterly confounds his philosophy, his
reason, his common-sense, to explain from purely natural
causes. Here is a man endowed with no splendid intellectual
faculties, not naturally a particularly shining moral character,
with quite the average share of passions and failings, and who,
once upon a time, within your own memory, was just what
might have been expected. He was not at all more reverent,
temperate, devout, self-denying than those about him. He
was as good as other men, and as bad.
In consequence, however, of certain occurrences in that
man's life which you cannot explain, a change passed over
his entire nature. He took pleasure in things which were
but yesterday to him flat and unprofitable ; he ceased to care
for objects which formerly absorbed his time and thoughts.
You yourself are the witness that now he swears not at all ; that
he is scrupulously honest ; that he is strictly temperate ; that he
does not fret himself to death because times are bad ; that he
bears even prosperity modestly ; that he does not talk con
tinually of dogs and pigeons and horses (which is the lower
form of speculation) ; or of stocks and shares and rates of
interest, which is the higher form of speculation; that he does
not spend his evenings in a tap-room, drinking himself
drunk, whilst his wife and children work to the bone at un
timely ages and untimely hours, which is the idea that Lazarus
has of enjoying himself; nor give solemn dinners, and frivo
lous dances, and senseless evenings-at-home where no one
is so little at home as himself, which is the idea that Dives
has of enjoying himself. The man is utterly altered : -old
things have passed away — behold, all things are become new,
No-w, I ask you, how can you account for this 7 What
law has brought it about .? You yourself confess that if
he is a changed man it is not due to his coming of a certain

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS ." 85
family, to his Hving in a certain neighbourhood, to his
getting into connection with a certain sect. For this
new life developes itself with a strange independence of
outward circumstances. It does not always appear in the
most amiable niembers of a family. It cannot be foretold
like the comet. Go into the Christian circle, where all
the influences and agencies ought to produce it, and you
are perplexed to find, instead, the prodigal, the sceptical, the
utterly careless, living there without God and without hope in
the world. Go into the crowded court, and you shall be
amazed to discover this life growing up strong, healthy,
vigorous, amidst curses, blows, drunkenness, foul immorality.
Its range is as wide as that taken by the natural life which
springs in the hyssop from the wall, and rejoices in the
stately beauty of the cedar that groweth on Lebanon.
I am thankful to confess that the life I speak of is
so far dependent on godly examples and training that
they are likeliest to produce it ; but I appeal to the expe
rience of every household, and every street, and every town, to
bear me out in saying, that oftentimes the example and train
ing of religious parents bring forth only evil fruit, whilst the
example and training of unconverted parents cannot hinder
this most mysterious life bursting forth in unexpected places.
Let me further ask you to notice that, Hke all true life, it is per
fectly natural. You say of the subject of this change that he
is quite another man from what he was formerly ; and yet does
that express the truth .? Would it not be fairer to say that now
forthe first time he has come to himself.? All the main
features of his character remain, although they are found in a
new setting. The harp is the same, but other fingers nov/
touch its chords, and so. the song is other than it was. The
man himself has no sense of having, undergone a wrench and
twist, but rather he feels for the first time a free man. His
moral qualities, bis mental resources, can now have full play.
He is not afraid to be generous, or to be lighthearted, or to be
moved with sympathy. He never kept such high company as

86 WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS .?
now, for he has fellowship with the men of whom the world
was not worthy. He never kept such low company, either,
for he loves to seek and save that which was lost ; he was
never so ambitious as now, for he aspires to be a labourer
together with God ; he never was so humble, either, for he de
clares, " We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the ex
cellency of the power may be of God, and not of us," He
never was so adventurous as now, for he aims to comprehend
the height and depth, the length and breadth, of a love that
¦passes knowledge ; he never was so restful as now, either, for
he has learned in whatsoever state he is therewith to be con
tent. My friends; this is Christianity, These are the visible
victories which this unseen life in the soul achieves every hour
in innumerable natures. All the world over, on this present
Sunday evening, men are to be found who, could you gather
them together, would be of one voice and of one mind in de
claring that they have within them a supernatural life, which
is moulding, controlling, impelling, restraining, and inspiring
their outward course.
On no one article to be discovered in human creeds can I
promise you uniformity ; on no one ordinance or sacra
ment can I presage agreement ; on no one system of
order and discipline can I anticipate perfect accord. But
I would bring all Christians together into one place, could
that place be found this side of Heaven, and write up in
the view of every eye the words, " He is our life," with
the most entire confidence that, provided we looked all at
Him, and not at one another, no solitary lip would refuse
to express in that sentence its loftiest hope and its firmest
conviction, I say, then, that this life which is common to all believers
and which none but believers enjoy, is the essence of Chris
tianity — and that nothing else is. Make subscription to any
articles of faith, submission to any ceremony, adherence to
any order of government, the gateway to the Communion of
Saints, and you are def}-ing the determinate counsel and fore-

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS ,? 87
knowledge of God, who, by the voice of His Son Jesus Christ,
has said, " I am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall
be saved, and shall go in and out, and find .pasture," Every
man is a Christian who has this life ; and no man Is a Chris
tian who has it not.
Having reached this poiut, I must beg of you to consider
this truth which I have tried to lay down, in its bearing on our
position and practice,
I find that in the House of Commons last week, Mr. Hughes
charged the party who are demanding, the severance of the
Church from the State with holding that " the sole duty of
the State was the preservation of bodies and goods." If this
be a fair and sufficient representation of the views of that
party, then I have very little sympathy with it, for I am con
vinced that the Government should .do- its utmost to train up
its citizens to moral habits and pure wa.ys of life. The
magistrate is set by God for the punishment of evildoers, and
for the praise of them that do well. But his functions, and
the functions of any earthly government, must cease when
that supernatural life is approached. And .since by the
Church I understand the company of those, and only those,
who have this Hfe, I am compelled to protest against the
supposition that any human authority, be it Commons,
Peers, or Sovereign, can exercise lordship over it.
So with regard to a. National Education, , The State cannot
teach rehgion ; because religion is nothing more nor less than
this supernatural life, which cannot be taught by any man,
and can only be shown forth, by way of examjjle, in fhe Hves
of those who have it in their hearts. You may teach the Ten
Commandments, if you will, or the Sermon on the Mount, but
they are not religion. No man can speak of the love of God,
of the sacrifice of Jesus, of the presence "of the Spirit, of the
hope of eternal happiness, of the joy there is in believing,
until he has this well of water in himself which springeth up
unto everiasting life. The only teaching of religion worth
anything, and which is not a wretched caricature, a delusion,

88 WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS.?
and a snare, is that which cannot be given by unconverted
men and women, even though they be teachers in the Sunday-
school, or preachers in the pulpit ; for its first right to speak
is found in the assurance which declares, "That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands
have handled, of the Word of Life ; that which we have seen
and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellow
ship with us ; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and
with His Son Jesus Christ,"
In the department of Morals the same law dominates also.
This age of ours is distinguished by the great number of
schemes, societies, and associations formed for the moral
reformation of society. Tbe Christian man must rejoice in
them all, and take his part in promoting them. But with
all that they may succeed in achieving, be sure you will find
in the end that human nature is not altered by any of them.
I don't believe that men are more humane, charitable,
generous, magnanimous, now, than they were two thousand
years ago. I fear that I could lead you to instances of
villainy, brutality, impurity, scoundrelism, meanness, within
gunshot of this or any other chapel in town or country, as
shameful and shocking as any in old Rome or Corinth,
But if the life of Christ be in men, then they have a
power (and the only power that has yet succeeded in doing
it), to lift them out of the earthly, and sensual, and devilish.
You may surround that Divine Hfe with all the sanctities of
home ; you may defend it by vows and pledges, and the like ;
but you do not create it by these safeguards, nor do you des
troy it if they are all swept away. If a professing Christian's
religion cannot keep him sober, how dwelleth the love of God
in him .? If the life of Christ within him does not revolt from
the indecent, and shrink back from the dishonest, and restrain
him from the brutal, then I have no faith in his having the life
at all. The whole system of popular morals, with its reforma
tories, its pure literature societies, its Acts of Parliament, its

WHY ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 8g
teetotal pledges, its associations for the protection ofthe young
and the tempted, its vast network of .benevolence, has grownup
under the fostering shade of Christianity. But it is not
Christianity. It may be the shadow ; it certainly is not the
substance. And when you suff'er it to take the chiefest
place, you make an idol of your own imagination, and let the
creature of your own hands occupy the throne which belongs
to God alone. In vain all your attempts to make men honest
"by filling the streets with police, or pure-minded by stringent
legislation against vice, or temperate by Parliamentary res
trictions ; you may smother the fire, but it smoulders still, and
will break out otherwhere ere long. The Hfe of Christ in the
soul alone goes to the root of the evil, for it gains the heart,
and controls the passions, " bringing into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ," and ruling by virtue of
the expulsive powers of a new affection.
Christ is come, my dear friends, that we may have life — a
life in our homes, in our business, in our national history, in
our world-wide relationship, such as never man dreamed of
before His advent ; -but He is also come that we may have
life more abundantly — the life which struggles upward from
this earthly soil, and climbs heavenward in prayer, and ordi
nance, and fellowship, and polity — the Hfe of God in the soul.
By-and-by these aids to faith shall fall away, like the
scaff'olding of a temple ; that which is perfect shall come, and
that which is in part shall be done away, and we shall learn
throughout eternity what depth and fulness and perfectUess
of being there is for the man who has this secret force within
him, beating with the power of an endless life.
" In that last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood
and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me,
and drink." "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And
let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst
come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life
freely."

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