ing some reputation, I allude to the New York Review,* expressly, and in so many words, condemns the right ("fancied" right he calls it) of private judgment and religious freedom, pronounces the principle of the Congregationalists" arrogant dogma," and contends strongly for the necessity of an authoritative church, and an authoritative interpreter of Scripture. These views connect themselves with the claims of Prelacy and the doctrine of apostolical succession, which have been of late urged with such frequency and obtrusiveness in portions of our country, from the pulpit, and in the leading Episcopal Journals, several of which are pledged to the support of the doctrines of the Oxford divines, that it has been found necessary to take the field, and already a goodly sized octavo, manifesting no little industry and research, has appeared, printed in this city, though written by a Presbyterian of the South, in refutation of these, as we are accustomed to consider, perfectly absurd and obsolete claims. The whole constitutes a phenomenon of little importance in itself, but yet, as Carlyle would say, noteworthy in this our nineteenth century, and in our republican America.

These are instances in which the uses of an acquaintance with Ecclesiastical History are manifest. True, the chief business of a minister should not be controversy. He may seldom be called to engage in it, perhaps never. He may preach what he conceives to be the unadulterated truths of Christianity, and never touch, if he can help it, on sectarian distinctions and differences. Still it is desirable that he should be able to defend his opinions when attacked. He will have more confidence in himself, and feel more at ease, and more self-possessed, in consequence of his familiarity with the past history of his religion, with the mode of its reception and administration by various minds and by different classes of Christians, with the foreign influences to which it has been subjected, and the traces they have left upon it, and which it still retains.

None of this knowledge will be superfluous, and occasions may occur in which the want of it would be felt as a serious misfortune. Old controversies are from time to time revived,

*For Jan. 1842.

†The Prelatical Doctrine of Apostolical Succession Examined, and the Protestant Ministry Defended against the Assumptions of Popery and High Churchism, in a series of Lectures. By THOMAS SMYTH, Pastor of the 2nd Presbyterian Church, Charleston, S. C. Boston,

1841.

and new ones are continually springing up, and in neither of them will the lights of the past be wholly useless.

A quarter of a century ago we were in the midst of an earnest controversy on nearly all the great questions which have divided the theological world, the Trinity, Calvinism, and the power of the churches. And the controversy on some of these points, though the language we sometimes hear would lead us to the contrary supposition, still continues, and will long continue, where Unitarian societies exist in the bosom of orthodox communities, and in parts of our land remote from us, and well informed champions of truth, as well as eloquent preachers, are needed on all our frontier posts. The battle for liberty is not yet ended, the time of protest is not yet past, nor will soon be past, beyond the boundaries of this little peninsula and its immediate vicinity, if even here.

The advocates of religious inquiry and intellectual freedom are as yet by no means authorized to count on their enemies as finally extirpated, but must still sleep on their arms, ready to seize them, whenever the trumpet shall call, and go forth to do battle valliantly in the name of the God of truth. Surely we may say in regard to truth and freedom, that knowledge is power; it puts the weapons into our hands; and if we resign them, the Philistines will be upon us, and the ark will yet be taken captive, and as a sect, or class of Christians, we shall be swept, not from this land merely, but from the earth; I say not within twenty years, if I may allude to the language of last evening,* but certainly in the end. The spirit of orthodoxy has continued the same from the days of Athanasius and Augustine to the present time, only occasionally modified by the protests and arguments of the friends of freedom and a more rational theology; and it is not now going to surrender without a contest. It is not yet in its death struggle. With comparatively few exceptions, if any, it yet closes its pulpits against you, and denounces you, and despises your sympathy, and laughs at your projects of amalgamation, and will continue to do so for a long time yet to come. Orthodoxy is not yet dead nor dying. Let it alone, cease to protest against it, and it will trample you in the dust, or drag you in triumph at its chariot wheels, before the end of fifty years. Such are the lessons taught us by the last fifteen centuries.

* The Annual Meeting of the American Unitarian Association.

We may think that there is no need of an appeal to history on questions of the kind alluded to, that the instinctive convictions of our own minds are enough to settle them. But we cannot always choose our weapons of attack and defence. There are some who will be embarrassed by the historical argument, and there are those who will insist on urging it, because with them authority is everything; and we must meet them on their own ground. It is often so in religious controversy. We are called on to prove that the sun shines in a clear day at noon, that black is black, and white is white. Melancholy enough, to be sure; but there is no help for it. It is not always sufficient to say that such a doctrine, or such a position, is intrinsically absurd or incredible. It may appear so to us, but not to another, and he will be convinced only when he sees the supports on which he rests sink under the blows of the adversary. Luther, as I said, began the Reformation without a knowledge of Ecclesiastical History, and with an appeal only to common sense; but in its progress he was compelled to call in the aid of historical learning, which he diligently sought, and which he wielded with great effect, beating down by means of it the last strong hold of the Potentate on the Seven Hills.

But it is not in connexion with the controversies which have agitated, or which may hereafter agitate, the church, that the Christian minister will take most pleasure in reading the past history of his religion, or will find the study of it of most value to him. He will read it that he may derive from it new impressions of the worth of Christianity itself,- that he may learn its power from its beautiful effects.

I have said that Ecclesiastical History exhibits human nature under some of its worst and most degrading aspects. It also exhibits it under some of its noblest. It is a history of the religious sentiment, or capacity, and its manifestations for a succession of ages, and in connexion with the highest revelations of truth and the law of love ever made to the world. As such it must not merely afford pleasure, but furnishes a subject by the study of which the teacher of religion especially can hardly fail to profit, and profit greatly.

How much has Christianity done for the world. How has it connected itself with all the deep workings of the human intellect. What joy and hope has it lighted up in the breasts of millions of our sinning and sorrowing race. What power

of endurance, of self-sacrificing benevolence, and sympathy has it awakened. What wonderful transformations has it wrought. What new life has it infused into the cold, dead heart. How has it stirred the conscience, and by its trumpet tones roused the spiritual slumberer. It has bent over the couch of the sick and dying, and stood by the martyr's stake. It has planted truths in the heart, soul-awakening, hope-inspiring truths, truths which address the spirit in language suited to all its varying moods of joy and sorrow, of devout aspiration and penitence, truths which survive amid all changes, and of the value of which the experience of life, and gradual falling away of our earthly hopes, only serve to produce a new and growing conviction. The words of Christ uttered on the hill-sides of Judea, eighteen hundred years ago, in the streets, in the temple, in the dwellings of his friends, in Gethsemane, and on Calvary, how wonderful their power! The seed, which was sown in darkness and amid tears, has sprung up and grown, and to multitudes of earthly pilgrims has yielded the healing fruits of life. Look for the greenest spots in the past, you find them where Christianity has been. When there has been elsewhere nothing on which the eye could rest with delight, but all has been moral barrenness, and deformity, and death, Christianity, like a beneficent stream, flowed on, and along its secret, winding channel, on either side, verdure has sprung up to fringe its banks, and flowers have scented the air, and birds have sung in the branches.

has

This power of Christianity, visible in its effects, it will become the most pleasing part of the employment of the minister of religion to trace, and he will derive benefit from the employment in different ways. There are, I suppose, in the life 1 of every clergyman, moments of weariness and despondency, when the mind needs the lessons of the past to dissipate its gloom, and infuse into it new energy and hope. And it will not go back in vain to visit the mouldering relics and venerable images of the faith of former ages. It will not only come home refreshed and invigorated for the moment, but it will bring away something by which it may be rendered better and happier forever after. The imagination will be kindled, and the affections elevated, and the soul will be enriched with new germs of thought. As the ancient Christians visited the tombs of the martyrs, not only that they might honor the memory of the departed, but that they might derive courage and a quick

ening influence from meditating on their virtues, their patience, and their crown, so the preacher of religion will sometimes make excursions into the past, that by the monuments of its piety, which will everywhere greet the eye, as he travels on, his heart may be strengthened, and his devotions grow more warm, and the fruits of his ministry yet more abound.

He must call

Again, the preacher must possess a knowledge of human nature; and to obtain this knowledge perfectly, I hardly need say, that he must not only observe society as it exists around him, "catch the living manners as they rise," but he must penetrate the domain of by-gone ages. up the dead from their tombs, and again live over their lives with them, trace their passions as they exhibited themselves on the theatre of the world, and have been preserved in the pages of the faithful chronicler. The history of religion is the history of human nature, under relations which lead to some of the most extraordinary developments of character. Nowhere are the inconsistencies of man, the warring elements of his nature, the divine and the devilish in him, more strikingly manifested than in his religious history. What grotesque shapes do his virtues often put on, and to what miserable sophistry do his passions and vices frequently resort. What strange unions and contrasts are witnessed, the true and the false, the beautiful and the deformed, springing up side by side, worthless and parasitical plants attaching themselves to the noblest productions of the soil, sapping their vigor, and overlaying and crushing them by their pernicious growth.

Whatever is most singular and fantastic in man, as well as what is most constant and uniform, exhibits itself in connexion with religion. Over his religious history we alternately weep and smile, feel reverence, or pity, or disgust, and without an acquaintance with it, our knowledge of him must be very imperfect, and imperfect in those very points in regard to which it most concerns us, as Christian ministers, to know him, his susceptibility of religious influences and his conduct under them. Such are some of the general uses of Ecclesiactical History to the minister. There are others which are more specific, one or two of which I will endeavor to illustrate by examples.

One of the effects of reading the history of Christianity should be to teach us not to dogmatize, - not to attach too much importance to difference of opinion, or make our own