which lies at the base of the Calvinistic scheme. Every speculative objection to infant baptism was equally an argument against the realistic conception which pervaded the old theology. As a natural result of this attitude no characteristic of the Baptists has been more marked than their contempt for all the historical statements of Christianity. They have made their appeal to Scripture as the sole authority. This indeed is defined by their most eminent American representative as their "fundamental principle"; and to this principle, through all their history, they have steadfastly adhered. The muchvaunted maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only," has found with them its most consistent advocates. Like the Methodists, they have undergone, in the course of a century, a great change in external features. Renouncing their preference for "lowly preaching," they have become zealous promoters of ministerial education; among their divines are men whose names are ornaments of American scholarship, but it is a noticeable fact that their valuable contributions to religious literature have all been in the line of Biblical exegesis; to speculative theology they have made no important addition. Nor can it be doubted that their great popular success is due to the concrete simplicity of their creed, coupled with their extremely democratic polity. And whatever their technical theological position, their whole denominational strain has been in the direction of revolt from antiquity, tradition, and church authority.

But the boldest renunciation of dogmatic faith was witnessed among the descendants of the Puritans. This outbreak had two phases. The restrained and scholarly Arminianism which made its appearance first, appealed to Scripture from human creeds; yet in its philosophical method and formal conceptions of religious truth it did not differ from the Calvinism to which it stood opposed. Both accepted Locke, whose system sapped the foundations of the old theology. The real revolt was the rise of the Transcendental school, which threw all external authority to the winds, and owned no guide but the spiritual intuitions. The "Address to the Divinity School" was the veritable proclamation of a new gospel, a gospel which indeed "ravished the souls" of the elect, but proved too subtle and ethereal to become "bread of life to millions." This ambrosial

food was transmuted into homelier diet by Mr. Parker, and has served to furnish the board of the later Free Religionists.

In resisting the Unitarians the more numerous section of the Congregationalists were betrayed into a position which their own traditions did not justify, and the way to the Lord's table was fenced with "sound forms of words." But various influences soon began to work in an opposite direction. The Evangelical revival, by laying as it did such stress on emotional experience, weakened the hold of objective truth. The great impulse given at Andover to Biblical study, under the inspiring lead of Stuart, disclosed the weakness of the old exegesis, and introduced the more comprehensive methods of German criticism. And a small, but thoughtful and cultivated section, deriving from Coleridge the fruitful maxim that "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a living process," rallied the Transcendental philosophy to the support of Christian faith. Thus the orthodox mind of New England was gradually loosed from its old moorings. The change was shown less in direct antagonism to any specific doctrine than in silent modification of mental habits. What had been betokened by more than one significant sign was at last brought clearly to light in the Congregational Council convened at Boston in 1865, an assembly which justly attracted attention for its intelligence and dignity. At this convention an attempt was made to agree upon some doctrinal basis for the denomination; but after earnest discussion the utmost that could be accomplished was to "affirm substantially" the Confessions of 1648 and 1680, in face of the declaration made by a leading member of the body that "there is language in every one of these old standards which not a man upon this floor receives." Many preferred a declaration "according to the fresh language of the present time," but the committee to whom the matter was referred declined to present one, for the reason "that it could not be harmoniously adopted." And in taking their action it was expressly understood that the council affirmed those venerable formulas "only in a qualified manner." A "compromise document" was subsequently adopted by the council, with much solemnity, at Plymouth. But so rapid was the march of opinion that at the Oberlin Council, held only six years later, the

declaration adopted at Plymouth was discarded on the ground of "committing the denomination to old and minute confessions"; and a new one was adopted, "being in substance the great doctrines of the Christian faith," of which the odd remark was made that it "did not perfectly express the exact wishes of any party." Of this council a very high authority declared, "It may truly and frankly be called a new departure." This new departure consisted in the fact that, without disowning old confessions, it "refused to make them tests of fellowship." Accordingly the council received as full members the Kentucky delegates, who distinctly explained that "their churches were organized on the evangelical basis, ignoring all distinction between Calvinist and Arminian." "There can be no doubt," wrote a prominent member of the council," that the progress of Congregationalism has been greatly retarded by the former limitation of its denominational fellowship to Calvinistic ministers and churches." Here is a distinct repudiation of the position asserted with so much earnestness sixty years before.

It is a characteristic of American religious life, compounded as it is of such various elements, that it presents many diverse phenomena; and we should run the risk of very imperfect generalization if any one class were made too prominent. Coupled with this marked reaction against a dogmatic apprehension of religion, there has been a tendency equally marked and equally important in an opposite direction, a tendency that does not any less deserve to be regarded as a representative movement in our religious history. In all countries where a connection between church and state is recognized, whether Catholic or Protestant, the ecclesiastical power is subject to important limitation, for the permanent contact of the spiritual and temporal authority requires that the sphere of either should be precisely marked. This rule holds as well in Portugal as it holds in Prussia. Thus when the relations of the two are not inimical, the free action of the church is fettered. Hence in this country, where for the first time since Constantine the religious element has been left absolutely without restraint, conditions of ecclesiastical development have been supplied such as exist nowhere else in Christendom.

Each religious organization has been allowed free scope to unfold according to its own interior law, and solve after its own way its distinctive ecclesiastical problem. The result has been a quickening of ecclesiastical activity, and an impulse to ecclesiastical development, which already constitutes a significant feature of our history, and promises to revive questions which were supposed to have been forever settled. Here, again, an interesting question presents itself, the question whether any connection can be traced between this tendency to strong religious organizations and the general laxity in our political ideas. It is certain that the ecclesiastical life of the Middle Age was greatly stimulated by the prevailing political anarchy, and it seems not unlikely that the increasing fluctuation of our own political life may have disposed some to look with more favor upon stable ecclesiastical forms. But whatever may be the occult cause of the phenomenon, its existence is beyond question. It is a common impression that the prevailing impulse of American religion is to split up into an endless variety of sects. "How can I live in a country," Dr. Döllinger is reported to have said, "where they found a new church every day?" But nothing appears more certain, from a review of our religious history, than the gradual working of a tendency in precisely the opposite direction. The multiplicity of sects is, indeed, a patent fact, and in a land where expres sion of opinion on all subjects is unrestrained, and where combination for every purpose is allowed, such a result is not surprising; but most of the petty organizations that go to swell the portentous aggregate are but ripples on the surface of the stream, appearing for a moment and then vanishing forever. In their most repulsive forms they are mere social excrescences, deriving their morbid growth mainly from foreign sources. The most characteristic fact of our religious history, as the census clearly shows, is not the tendency of American Christianity to split up into a multiplicity of sects, but its disposition to aggregate itself under a few great denominational types. This conservative preference of the vast majority for stable ecclesiastical order is a leading and unmistakable distinction of cur religious life. Whatever may have been the tendency at an earlier period, at the present time it is undeniably in this direction.

We have already noticed that the religious organizations which were transplanted to this country seemed, under the inspiration of our institutions, to acquire new energy. This result was witnessed with the Methodists, who, in England, during Wesley's life, had clung to the skirts of the Establishment, but here boldly organized a complete church, and proceeded to the institution of bishops. The success of the Methodists was due hardly less to their autocratic discipline than to their burning zeal. And it should be observed that it is the recognized value of the system which has commended it to popular regard. But a more important illustration of the same principle is presented in the Presbyterian church. The history of this influential body, which now ranks as third in the country, is especially instructive, for the reason that its uniform and healthy growth is not connected, as is that of the Methodists, with exceptional phenomena, but is the evident result of the persistent and intelligent administration of an admirable polity. In the face of the proudest monarchy of Europe, it had proclaimed its capacity of selfdirection, and in the new field which this country opened it was not backward in asserting a logical development. No sooner was the Revolution ended, than the Presbyterians took the first steps towards a complete organization; and before the Federal government had gone into operation, the constitution of the church was adopted as it now stands. From the outset it assumed the character of a missionary church, and in the earliest General Assembly a plan was adopted for promoting the evangelization of the West; and in the most gloomy period of our religious history, the closing decade of the last century, when the wide diffusion of French Revolutionary maxims "threatened the dissolution of religious society," the growth of the Presbyterian church was uniform and rapid. Nothing is so characteristic of this church as the resolution with which it has adhered to its theological and its ecclesiastical traditions. Amid the great movements of modern thought, it has stood unflinchingly to its Confession, and in the great crises of its history been thoroughly consistent with itself. When the West was frenzied with religious excitement, rather than relax its requirements for the ministry, she