sympathy with him, or by him and any other church, cannot cover the whole case as a mutual council would do, and so it cannot give the perfect redress our polity should render.

Hence, in case of injustice in excluding a minister from standing in any association of churches or of ministers, the injured should ask the body doing the wrong to join in calling a council to review the whole case, and advise in the matter. The result of such mutual council would be final and entitled to the confidence of the whole denomination. Thus the ultimate appeal, in all cases of question, will be to a council. This is essential to completeness, justice, purity, unity, and liberty.

21. The whole communion of churches protected.-If an association lapse from the faith or walk disorderly, it can be dealt with, and, if incorrigible, the Constitution of the State Association will cut its members off from our communion. And if a State Association lapse from our faith and order, the Constitution of the National Council will exclude it. The District, State, and National bodies have Constitutions with Doctrinal Articles or conditions, on assent to which membership is had in them. Any church or body of churches, any minister or body of ministers, violating these conditions of fellowship, can, on proof, be cut off. Thus the whole fraternity of churches is protected as really, but not in the same manner, as when General Courts were ecclesiastical assemblies carrying both the crook and the sword.

This is not the case with councils which die when they give birth to their results, and have no resurrection. They can never redress a wrong, be called to account, be held responsible, or give subsequent reasons for their action. They may be small, chosen to do a disrupting thing, and surely they cannot be trusted alone to determine fellowship or standing.

22. Our Congregational system again complete.-The reëstablishment of these neglected factors-ministerial discipline, and ministerial standing-in the line of recent development, will give our polity the unity, completeness, and protection without the coercive element, which characterized it at the outset, but which it has lacked through much of its career. A few churches cannot force fellowship upon the many, a part is no longer greater than the whole; but each church manages its

own affairs as it pleases; it joins with neighboring churches in fellowship and work, protecting its purity and theirs, in requir ing responsible ministerial standing in church associations; it unites with the churches of the State and Nation, but only because it complies with common conditions of fellowship and responsibility. The church and its minister are accountable to the association of which they are members; the association is accountable to the State Association; and the State Association to the National Council; not by way of authority or coercive power, such as our fathers in New England used, but by way of responsible ecclesiastical fellowship, so that the many may protect themselves from the invasion of the unworthy few. It is not coercion, but protection; not force, but liberty; not disintegration, but unity. The whole communion of churches has at least power to protect itself from corrupting members. And the way we have indicated is free from all Presbyterial elements, is complete, and gives redress to every

wrong.

We believe this reinstatement of the neglected factors of immediate and imperative importance. The position, that ministerial standing and fellowship is to be determined alone by councils, is fatal to organized fellowship; it has long been denied by the churches in the Western States, in constitutions and in practice; it has been impliedly denied by repeated action of the National Councils; and no private interpretation should be allowed to attempt its reëstablishment. We must add to councils the normal and sufficient guard of ministerial standing in associations of churches, with appeal to a mutual council in case of unjust treatment.

We would, in conclusion, suggest three things, which will, in our opinion, aid in the normal development of Congregationalism, namely:

(1.) Let the National Council define ministerial standing, referred to in its past acts, as the responsible membership of Congregational ministers in associations of churches.

(2.) Let it favor the reference of all alleged grievances committed by associations in their treatment of ministers or churches to mutual councils chosen by the parties to the alleged wrong.

(3.) Let it adopt a rule defining that no name shall appear in the annual list of Congregational Ministers in the Year Book, as in good and regular standing in our communion of churches, which shall not have been certified to as in good standing on the roll of some association in connection. Let all others be starred.

This will furnish the needed checks to councils and associations, will not trench on the independence of the churches, will prevent a few churches from forcing unfit men into the coveted fellowship of the whole fraternity of churches, and will give us the substantial completeness of the original Cambridge Platform, shorn of its "coercive power of the magistrate."

NOTE. The General Association of the Congregational Churches and Ministers of Michigan, at its meeting in May, 1883, in the line of its past action, adopted, with only two dissentient votes, the following:

"Resolved, That the General Association of Michigan deem it to be both orderly and expedient for a church or minister, that may be excluded or expelled from membership in any Association or Conference in connection, on grounds or charges claimed to be insufficient or false, to call the attention of the body doing the alleged wrong to the point of grievance, and to invite it to join in calling a mutual council to review the case and advise in the matter; and, on its refusal or neglect to do so, to call an ex-parte council for the same purposes.

ARTICLE IV. — BANCROFT AND DOYLE ON

COLONIAL MARYLAND.

THE publication almost simultaneously of two histories of our colonial period-the one of English authorship, the other of American, enables us to treat some problems of American history as solved, if they are ever to be solved. In the case of one of these two authors at least, we are to expect no further contribution to their solution in the way of original research. Mr. Bancroft entitles his first volume, just issued, "The Author's Last Revision." The preface is dated October, 1882. That of the original issue bears date June, 1834. A full half century of study and authorship, therefore, is indicated by these two prefaces. How extensive, pains-taking, and conscientious it has been, in every part and in all respects, goes without saying. All who admire thorough and carefully finished historical work, as well as all who take a just pride in the story of their country's settlement, independence, and progress, will hope that the now venerable scholar who has given his life to this great task may live in undiminished vigor to complete this Revision. No American author has a worthier monument.

Comparing it with the "Centenary" Revision of 1876, this first volume shows both expansion and condensation.* It contains six hundred and nineteen pages, covering the matter of the first volume of that year and half the second. Nineteen chapters bring us to "The Result thus far," the point at which the second volume of the original edition, and the one hundred and eighty-seventh page of the "Centenary," closed. But one chapter within these limits is expanded into three, and another into four. The order of topics is changed in several instances with manifest advantage. "Repetitions and redundancies have been removed; greater precision has been sought for;

* The chapters of this new volume number thirty-eight. The same ground in 1834-40 was gone over in eighteen, and in 1876 in twenty

seven.

the fitter word that offered itself accepted;" and criticism will doubtless accept the chastened style as an improved one, and one more fitting for a great history. Nothing could be more honorable to the author than his statement: "No well-founded criticism that has been seen, whether made here or abroad, with a good will or a bad one, has been neglected." Literary pride seems to have been conscientiously subordinated to accuracy and trustworthiness.

"The Colonization of Maryland," which occupied the seventh chapter in former editions, here occupies the tenth. "Maryland after the Restoration," a portion of the fourteenth chapter in the earlier ones (pp. 234-245), was the subject of the twenty-first-seven years ago (a new separate chapter)-and is now that of the ninth of "Part II."* All together, the historian has added little to his original sketch, perhaps less than to that of Virginia,† but he has kept the two colonial histories more distinct from each other, and he has reversed the order in which they were formerly treated. Colonial Maryland

under the second Charles now comes first. Here and there a sentence has disappeared, but most of the changes extend to but a word or two, and affect forms of expression only. The dates, which have heretofore stood in the margin, have been * "Part I.” is entitled, "The English People found a Nation in Virginia." "Part II." "The Colonies obtain Geographical Unity."

+ Chap. X. bears a new title, "How the Stuarts Rewarded the Loyalty of Virginia," twelve pages, and Chap. XI., another, "The Great Rebellion in Virginia," fourteen pages, combined with six given elsewhere previously in the original and the "Centenary" editions. The new matter and the rearrangement of the old make the story of the "Old Dominion" more continuous and clear than it was in the original chapter on "The Colonies on the Chesapeake Bay" (II., 188–255), or in those of the first and second volumes of the "Centenary" revision.

Not infrequently an apparently slight amendment contains a correction of importance. To illustrate from another subject, in the last chapter of this volume is the following: "Calvinism invoked intelligence against Satan, the great enemy of the human race; and the farmers and seamen of Massachusetts nourished its college with gifts of corn and strings of wampum, and wherever there were families built the free school." The words here italicized stand in place of the words "in every village," heretofore used. They are manifestly truer to the genius of the primitive Massachusetts Calvinism, and more accurately represent the popular origin of free voluntary schools before colleges, laws, or towns. Cf. New Englander, July, 1877, pp. 37, 38, 43.