narrow limits of the East. Surely if anywhere any form of Christian Polity had shown excellent fruits of grace, this had shown them there; and having been faithful and successful with a few things, why should its competency to larger fields have been doubted?

Yet it had come to pass that the churches of our order had fallen under a sense of geographical straitness, and were consenting to rest in it as an ordinance of heaven, or as a compact of comity equally binding. Its bounds were set and its numbers. sealed up. The Hudson was impassable; and lest this Order of the Churches should in some impulsive moment be tempted to break over and expatiate in the regions beyond, it was carefully fenced off, that it might not even come nigh to the borders of that stream. For many years, so far as any premeditated or allowed extension of itself is concerned, the name only of Congregationalism would ever have been known beyond New England. Its work was done, save only to till the old fields, and continue to deport itself with all beautiful and gracious propriety, and send abroad with most liberal hand every good thing under heaven but itself-never itself-for, behold! mysterious bonds were upon it to be and remain New England Congregationalism, most laudable in its place, while out of that it would manifestly no longer be the New England thing at all, nor at all to be commended or endured. With singular docility and self-denial all this was practically accepted, and became the prevalent faith of the East. And its works were accordant. Of all our Christian denominations, the Congregational alone has consented to forego the right, nay, to decline the duty-for with thoroughness of conviction enough to inspire it with selfrespect, it is even a duty-of declaring, justifying, and teaching itself. With exceptions, the pulpit, the press, and the theological chair have passed in silence, or with tender haste and hesitancy, this so delicate topic of the merits of the New England ecclesiastical system. Compare the seminaries at Andover and New Haven, with those of Princeton and New York, as to the prominence given by them to their respective church politics as a matter of resolute and earnest teaching. No student leaves the latter, who has not been made as familiar with the reasons for Presbyterianism as with the reasons against New England divinity. And for this self-conservative wisdom let us commend them. Our theological schools would do well to do somewhat likewise. Conscious of broad and tenable ground beneath it, and earnest enough in its persuasion to make it a decent thing to continue its existence among men, every denomination

should provide for the due instruction of its membership and its ministry in the peculiarities of its system.

This has long been neglected among us. Was it that we had tacitly given pledges to abide within bounds? And were we provident of the certainty that if this Order of the Churches which had evinced such vitality and fruitfulness at home should present and commend its claims and care for itself as others do, New England would be no more continent of its principles than of its population-that the Rubicon would be passed, and the children of the East, as they went forth over the face of the land, would remember what they were taught and never depart from it? And then, would there not be that which was not New England Congregationalism? Look at this half century since 1801, the period in which New England's covenant of self-abnegation, the Plan of Union, has been in operation, the period during which the East has been creating the West, giving sons and daughters, schools and colleges, teachers and preachers, and money in all manner of ways, everything with liberal heart and hand, except that one most precious thing through which the Gospel made her what she is, her Way of the Churches; or, if this has at all gone there, the East did not mean it, and for a long time was incredulous that it was there. And when the cry came back that it was not New England Congregationalism, the fathers turned away their faces from the children, not yet understanding that cry. Certain it is that during this period our Northwestern states have been peopled in large part from the membership of Eastern churches, and that through all the former part of it they seem to have felt themselves under covenant obligation to abstain from the formation of distinctive Congregational churches. Over that broad field the Presbyterian churches have grown by absorbing these New England contributions.

But within a few years a change has been going on in that field. By no intent of the East, churches on the New England footing have come into existence there. Groups of Eastern families, cherishing the order and spirit of their fathers, and conscious of no wrong in so doing, have set up churches after the manner which they had known and loved. The ground once broken, such churches came rapidly into being. Weak at first, these have grown; and so far as they have cleared themselves of alliances which held them in obscurity and weakness, these churches have in the last ten years more than tenfolded in numbers and strength. And the fact at length stands forth, known, and no more to be ignored in any quarter, that Congregationalism will do for the West-that denied all special

fostering, set forward by no denominational zeal of extension, it has come into being and strength by force of popular preference, and has proved within the sphere of its operation that it can do for the West, by actually doing for it. The problem of its applicability to these out-lying fields has been solved by actual experiment; and whatever else may be thought of our system, its capability of existence and prevalence wherever intelligent piety and Puritan training are found, will probably be questioned no more.

The recognition of this fact for a little time past has had its legitimate influence among us. It has led extensively to a reconsideration of the self-postponing policy which has prevailed with us, and awakened a confidence not before felt in the adaptation of our system to the new fields whither it has gone. And this was not least among the motives which contributed to the attendance and interest of the Albany Convention.

But there was a further question, which was putting itself more and more importunately among the churches and pastors of the East: Is this system well administered in the West? It has gone there, doubtless, and will probably abide and work there in some sort, whatever the East may think or the South may say of it. What is the truth of this Western Congregationalism? Is it a spurious or degenerate variety, disorderly in practice, heterodox in faith, and Ishmaelitish in manners? This was on all the tongues of rumor. With every session of the General Assembly came the annual crop of suspicious and broad assertions derogatory to the churches of our order in the West. Were these to be credited? Or were these churches true to their name, and worthy of full confidence and affectionate fellowship? This question had grown to be urgent and almost universal among us. It was felt that the time had fully come to probe this matter to the heart of it. And this was another incitement to such a gathering of our fathers and brethren in Convention.

They came together with almost every variety of opinion and anticipation respecting this phenomenon of extra-New England Congregationalism. Already not a few had pierced the secret of these manifold aspersions, and understood their source and significance. But many came in fear and painful doubt, and some with stern convictions against their accused brethren. All desired to know the truth of the matter. And it is one of the most precious results of that Council, that after full and patient investigation, the vague and irresponsible "insinuations and charges of heresy in doctrine and disorder in practice," on

which distrust had fed, were rated at their true desert, and but a minority of one voice remained to do them reverence.

All this, it is now plain, needed nothing else than ventilation. Charges of the gravest nature were current; the parties were distant; communication by ecclesiastical correspondence was onerous and infrequent; and the accused, were unspecified parts of a body of churches scattered over a vast and remote region. Altogether the conditions of the case were singularly favorable to misconception. We do not wonder at this protracted and inveterate uncertainty of opinion here at the far East. Every facility existed for the growth of aspersions founded on mistaken and misstated facts. What native shape or color would even the tradition of a truth retain, falling from the lips of some unscrupulous "commissioner," then tortured with much comment in full General Assembly, and then blown on all the winds! But what if it were only the fraction of a truth, or no truth at all, to begin with? There was needed just this resolved inspection of the whole matter-this summoning of the thin shapes that were flitting about us, to stand and give answer of their contents.

It is somewhat difficult for those at a distance to comprehend the posture and whole environment of our Western churches, with the completeness necessary to do them justice. Another denomination was in the field, claiming a species of territorial right by preoccupancy, and loudly insisting upon its superior fitness to grapple with the difficulties incident to a heterogeneous population and an unsettled state of society. It has been diligently set forth and maintained with all the force of assertion and earnest iteration that Congregationalism, compared with the Presbyterian system, was loose and prone to disorder-that it worked well, indeed, in old and ripe communities, but lacked the exactness and summary promptness requisite among the emergencies of a new field. This was assumed as an axiomthe case was too clear against the New England polity to need any argument, and too hopeless to warrant a trial. This prevailed for many years, and, except in a few cases, effectually prevented the formation of independent and fully Congregational churches. If Christians of Eastern origin could not be dissuaded from retaining something of their preferences, and must needs form a Congregational church, its subjection to Presbytery was urged as its only hope of safety. And when, but a little time since, this assumption began to be disregarded, and churches were formed, here one and there another, in the confidence that with the helps of grace they were competent to the ordering of their own affairs, it was protested against as

a perilous innovation, as a rash, disorderly act, foredoomed to disastrous failure. We know whereof we affirm. Ten years ago, and in many regions much more recently than that, the organizing of an independent Congregational church in the West. was a deed which could have no justification or apology. It could not be done aright-it could not be needful-it could not, when so organized, be either an orderly or an orthodox church. There was no help for it. If Christian men would choose this way, they must take the consequences. Hence these tears. They are still shed with just the same passionate and clamorous grief, whenever new ground is broken and Congregationalism emerges, to the dismay of those who believe that order must die, if it be not written in a Book. Witness

the recent spasm at St. Louis! And more recently still, the suppressed and comparatively resigned grief at Chicago. In the greater part of the West this state of things has somewhat passed by. The experiment has been tried, and has falsified the predictions of evil under which it was attempted. Whenever Congregationalism has become a fixed fact, it has at length silenced these reproaches, and gradually won for itself a more tolerant estimation and a position of respect.

Now can the East so enter into all this as to understand the West? A little considerate sympathy will go very far in clearing this whole matter. Can it not be seen even a thousand miles off, that a church which takes the liberty to be, where its being is itself an offense and a disorder, must abide the liabilities of its position, and had need to be a company of just men made perfect, to escape reproach? It becomes at once a mark for the eyes of men. Its affairs are keenly scrutinized, and its faults find little candor of construction. It is the . claim of our brethren in that distant field, and the nature of the case sustains the claim, that of the crude theology, the loose morality, and the imperfect order, which have more or less afflicted the West, the churches which bear our name have only had their share. If it has been in the churches as it has been with the ministry, we know this to be true. Neither the Presbyterians nor we can man the ministry of our new states with select and thoroughly studied men. Ripe scholars and trained theologians do not, for some reason, affect itinerating among sparse settlements for some indefinable portion of four hundred dollars a year. Men go there, of brief study and imperfect discipline-ready men, of more practical than systematic divinity, and quite as likely to be Presbyterians as Congregationalists; more likely to be Methodists than either. Yet poorly furnished as they are, and with all their Arminianism, and with worse Perfectionism than Oberlin was ever