primitive church, when Christ would have the body constituted with diversity not all head, or hands, or feet; not all hearing, seeing, or smelling, but a body with many members, and each member its own function-he yet did not think it necessary this diversity should be sectarian in order to be Christian. He did not give some to be Episcopalians-high, and low, and ritualistic; some to be Congregationalists-associated, and consociated, and independent; some to be Methodists-Protestant, Primitive, and Episcopal; some to be Baptists—open and close; some to be Presbyterians-old and new, Cumberland and Covenanter, Associate Reformed and Presbyterian Reformed, and others perhaps unreformed, to say nothing of Burgher and Anti-burgher, Secession and Relief. Here was variety a very millennium of it, such as it was. It was a variety, however, that finds no place in the New Testament, and no mention in Christ's catalogue of particulars. This was his list of bestowments that Paul enumerates, when he "gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Having these, the body was thought to be well furnished without the modern inventions above specified. Here was variety, and here was efficiency. "Many members, but one body." "Diversities of gifts, but one spirit." "Differences of administration, but the same Lord." "Diversities of operations, but the same God, which worketh all in all." Read the whole 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians and the 4th of Ephesians, and see how amply diversified is the church of God: all the more beautiful and useful for the reason Paul here declares, that God has so constructed it that there should be "no schism in the body." The variety and beauty lie in the varied members and their varied functions; not as our sectarian conservatives would have it, in there being different organic bodies with features facing all ways, hands striking one against another, feet moving off in independent directions, and lips uttering the whole alphabet of shibboleths.

Here comes in again the influence we are so much insisting upon, of the church work God is giving us increasingly to do. It is enough for all the church; it is adapted to every grade of talent in the church. It is one work in all its numerous de

partments a diversity in unity the furthest removed from monotony.

The second powerful cause at work to promote the coming unity is education. Everywhere it is the illiterate who are of narrowest mental range, and cannot look beyond their neighborhood boundaries to the world beyond. They are the untaught minds in our churches who find it so difficult to discover any good outside the sectarian enclosure. And conversely of this, the clergy and laity of the different denominations, in the ratio of their advance in intelligence, come into fellowship and recognize the good that each has for the other. One fact is most significant, that which separates the churches from one another is, after all, not difference of doctrine or of ordinance. The interchanges constantly occurring between the denominations are traceable mainly to another cause than change of creed. The question with such persons is not, which church is nearest to the apostolic model, but which is best suited to my individual taste? Where shall I be most at home in the gratifying of my mental and moral preferences, and in meeting my social wants? The general conviction is, that any of the evangelical sects have enough of the truth to make them true churches, and graduate their members into the church of the first born in Heaven. But it is not every one of these churches that can give me such associations as I prefer on my way to heaven. At any rate, there is a difference which I am at liberty to regard in this thing, and though I may hope to feel at home with all the saints hereafter, yet just now and here that home feeling is better cared for in this church more than in the other. And so one, on the strength of the home feeling, decides for one church, and another for another, and in a majority of cases this is a determining reason.

Well, where is there so powerful an assimilation of mental, and social tastes as education? Who does not see how it is at work in all the churches as never before, and that it is by its help in great measure that Christians of all names are able to meet together and be at home together in acts of worship and labors of love. Let our Public School system go on with its upleveling work for a generation longer, and to that be added all the power of our Sunday-schoo's, our academies, and colleges,

and the desired assimilation will be well nigh complete. Gone for ever will be the barrier that once so divided Methodist from Presbyterian, that they could neither pray nor exhort together with comfort, nor make the hymnings of one communion to be much better than howlings in the ear of the other.

We add still another to our list of efficient causes in the service of Organic Unity. It is the agency of interdenominational intercourse. The word of prophecy touching the pre-millennial days is this: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." We know what an annihilating foe travel has already become to provincialism. How thoroughly it has assimilated us as a people, making us, but for the inrolling floods of migration, a people virtually of one language and lineage. As it is, our constant intercommunication leaves us, from Maine to California, no such dialectic differences as you will find in crossing from one English county or French department to another. We are a nation of travelers, as is no other on the globe; and it is this, in the face of our rapidly enlarging domain, which is our salvation. States, widely separated territorially, are neighbors sympathetically and socially. And this political intercommunication is to the unity of the state what our denominational intercommunication will be to the unity of the church. Its effect is two-fold. It makes the various sects know the good that is in one another, and makes the good that is known still better. Each denomination has its special excellencies, and in the process of mutual acquaintance these become appreciated and appropriated. No one can help seeing how active this interchange is becoming, and how fruitful already in its results. What church is not already largely the gainer? Have not the Presbyterians learned of the Methodists how to sing with more spirit, and the Methodists of the Presbyterians how to pray with more understanding? The Baptist brethren have been in too open fraternity and fellowship with their neighbors not to have it take evident effect on their close communion. The Episcopalians are finding out. how to do pioneer work-witness their recent achievements in the new fields beyond the Rocky Mountains; and the nonEpiscopalians are ascertaining that it is not necessary to be more timid than Calvin and Knox of liturgical effects. High

Church exclusiveness has been wonderfully helped to abate from its lofty bearing, since statistical figures have given it an inkling of the swift movements of the non-prelatical sects. There was a moral reason why it should be recorded of the Pentecostal ingathering, that the number of the men was about five thousand. There is a power in the pertinent use of numbers when they run up into the thousands, and, in our day, the hundred thousands and millions. Such accessions to the membership, area, and resources of the sects make them respect one another. We study one another's methods to learn the secret of such progress, and end by appropriating the lesson to our own use.

Thirty years more of this acquaintance and interchange will work marvels of assimilation not now dreamed of. As a generation ago no one could have foreseen the unity of spirit, of method, and result, in the Sunday-school work, as it is now carried forward in all the churches, even to the reciting of the same lesson, the adopting the same style of lesson paper, Sunday-school journal, Scripture commentary, the singing of the same hymns to the same tunes, with the result, that when the teachers who have grown up in these schools meet in conference and assembly at Chautauqua, Cazenovia, and Sea Grove, they all seem to have been trained by one teacher: so no one can too enthusiastically forecast the vision of what shall be in the next thirty years in all other departments of church work and Christian worship. The image of Christ in one denomination will be his likeness in all; and their continued absorption in the great work he will be still laying upon all hearts and hands will keep the image ever bright and yet brighter.

The cheering fact is, we are nearer to the grand practical realization of Christ's prayer for a perfect unity than most believers for their sins dare credit. The situation is better than our unbelief deserves. But it is not better than the merits of Christ's prayer, and of the atoning sacrifice that followed, and in respect to which it is charged upon us, that if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

Art. VI. THE GREAT AWAKENING OF 1740.*

By LYMAN H. ATWATER.

THE great revival of 1740 in this country, in which WHITEFIELD, EDWARDS, and the TENNENTS were the most conspicuous human instruments, had for its efficient cause what will be assumed throughout this and the following article as the efficient cause of all genuine revivals, the sovereignly imparted and efficaciously transforming operation of the Spirit of God upon all who were the subjects of it. But, viewed from its human side, it had its upspring, mode of development, distinguishing features of truth and error, and results alike of immensely preponderating good, and incidental, but by no means insignificant evil, in a protest and reaction in behalf of.experimental religion against the formalism which had so largely supplanted it. This formalism had arisen from an abuse or perversion of the scriptural doctrine of infant church membership, the relation of baptized children to the church, and the proper conditions of their admission to the Lord's Supper. The true doctrine on this subject, which more or less distinctly and intelligently had been accepted as the basis of membership in the Congregational and Presbyterian, or in general, the Calvinistic churches of this country, is : I. That the visible church consists of those who profess the true religion and their children. 2. That these children were therefore proper subjects of baptism, and if properly taught and trained in the Christian religion, may be expected, through the inworking of the Spirit, blending with and rendering effectual this Christian nurture, to experience and manifest the saving and transforming power of the truths so taught and symbolized in their baptism; that is they will commonly be prepared, on reaching the years of discretion, adolescence or maturity, to "recognize their baptismal obligations," and come to the Lord's table upon an

* Thoughts on the Revival of 1740. By Jonathan Edwards, the elder, President of Princeton College.

The Great Awakening. History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield. By Joseph Tracy. 1842.