THE CONCESSIONS OF THE CHURCH TO THE WORLD.

THERE are very many Christians in our day who are disposed to meet the world at least half-way, in not a few points of faith and matters of practice, affirming that both justice and expediency demand large concessions. There are very many other Christians who will hear to nothing of the sort, but, on the contrary, resist every proposed allowance of possible error in dogma or discipline, as a fatal admission, sure to be followed by another and still another demand, until every position shall have been abandoned. Between these extremists, the lover of truth often holds his ground with much difficulty, and at great temporary disadvantage, charged by the one party with obstinate conservatism, and by the other with a reckless liberalism. What shall he do?

We answer, in this as in everything else, he must be true, he must fight the good fight of faith and bear his cross, steadily maintaining his intellectual integrity and his moral simplicity, whilst he guards the ancient beliefs and sanctities. It is easy to baptize heathen, but to change them into Christians is not so easy; it saves a vast deal of trouble to decline all recognition of the doubts and difficulties which press upon the minds and hearts of really honest and earnest seekers for the truth, but such a course must needs alienate the more discerning and thoughtful from the Church that should be seeking by all fair means to allure them into her fold, and is fearfully conducive to hypocrisy, and one who really confides in the Master will cheerfully and bravely face every inquirer, and weigh every sincerely spoken word. We cannot consent to seem to make Christians, instead of really making them, it is not enough merely to convert men (if one can use the word "convert" in such a connection) to what is called Christianity, to a Gospel from which all mysteries and sanctities, all great be

liefs, and all exceeding righteousness, have been carefully eliminated, nor yet, on the other hand, will we draw ourselves up in stately magisterial attitude, and put down every suggestion of allowance to a world which complains, whether with or without cause, of the unreasonableness or asceticism of the Church, of her idolatry of letter and form, and of her contempt of human nature. Let us, at all hazards, be just. The Church is built upon a rock. It appeals to a Divine promise. Does God need to have lies told for him? Do we not greatly dishonor him, when we either court the favor of the worldly and erring, and bring down his truth to their baseness and folly, or, on the other hand, affect to patronize the Gospel, and put it under guardianship as unreliable, incompetent to go alone and stand upon its own merits? We believe that we shall render some slight aid to a true conservatism in religion and in morals, by directing the thoughts of our readers for a moment at once to the duty and the danger of concession on the part of the Church to what are called "the demands of the age." We must limit ourselves to a few suggestions.

1. We cannot take our places with those who will hear of no least departure from ancient theological statements, or rigorous and puritanical strictness. The temptation so to do is at times very strong, but it is a temptation which must be resisted. It is hard to be regarded as sceptics and dangerous innovators, because we cannot drop quietly and without question into the old paths; but conviction is sacred, and we have a duty to perform to honest inquirers, and often the ancient and venerable lives and works only upon condition that it be clothed in new forms. In the language of the writer to the Hebrews, we must take away the first, that we may establish the second. Those who have grown up in an atmosphere of great religious freedom, who, it may be, have enjoyed even more than was good of this great blessing, can form but a feeble conception of the sacrifices which are often demanded of strong, original, and earnest thinkers, whose lot has been cast within the enclosures of Christian

denominations that are esteemed orthodox or Evangelical. Holding fast, as they believe, by the old verities, they cannot accept the theology in which they are expressed, — devotedly attached to the old Church, they are yet compelled, in all honesty, to use much freedom in the interpretation of its symbols, the advocates of a strict Christian morality, they must yet admit that some of the demands of the popular religion upon its adherents have only a conventional validity.

We find a striking illustration of what we mean in the volume of Lectures and Addresses, by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, a notice of which will be found in the Collectanea of this number of our journal. As earnest and devoted a believer in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Church of our day can boast, he was yet denounced as latitudinarian and neologic, as unmindful of his great Christian trust, as sadly unclerical, if not unchristian. Exeter Hall sent down to Brighton a lecturer to discourse upon Neology, with no result, as it proved, so far as the thronged attendance upon Mr. Robertson's ministrations was concerned, and yet, one cannot help thinking, sadly to his discomfort, as one who would avoid even the appearance of evil. He lived and wrought and died under a cloud of suspicion. He was much blamed for refusing to confine the deep and transcendent mysteries of our holy religion within the formularies of a dry and technical theology, a procedure as needless and unjustifiable on the part of orthodoxy as on the part of heterodoxy; he gave great offence by declining to confound the Sabbath of the Jew with the Lord's day of the Christian; and there were those who were filled with amazement, that a clergyman could be found willing to draw attention, in a literary lecture, to the works of a writer of fiction, even of one as true to the best interests and purest aims of humanity as Charles Dickens. A Church of England minister commending Dickens! Why, it was worse than fox-hunting and card-playing! And yet Robertson, with Arnold and Kingsley and Maurice and

Jowett, could not avoid seeing that new times demand, not new truths, but new statements of old truths, revisions of mere opinions, new means for reaching old ends, a recognition of the Christian spirit in departments of literature which were once given up to heathenism, but have now been in part reclaimed for Christian and sanctuary uses. The Christian Church lives and grows; its mind and heart are ever expanding; its views of its own truth, and its opinions upon life and duty, though essentially, radically, the same through all Christian ages, demand new expressions and continual readjustments. Duty may require a concession of the old form for the sake of the substance which it sets forth. If we mean to keep the citadel of Faith, we must be careful not to undertake the defence of anything untenable. The multitude are very likely to mistake the capture of an insignificant outpost, into which, with the carelessness of superior strength, the garrison had thrown themselves, for the overthrow of the strong-hold itself. The distinction between believing a great many things and believing much, must never be lost sight of. The ablest advocates and the best servants of the prevailing creeds are those who have restated them in terms which the thoughtful and discerning of our day can accept.

We hold Andover and New Haven to be truer friends even to what is called Orthodoxy than Princeton. The great preacher of Brooklyn will persuade more of the sad fact of depravity, than scores and scores of those who insist upon prefixing to this noun the adjective "total." We always look with much anxiety at books in part religious and in part scientific, the object of which is to make Moses to have been a teacher of science, — of astronomy or of geology, as well as of religion. Such special pleas satisfy no one who has had his attention directed that way, and as for the multitude of plain Bible Christians, they do not need them. It is sad when the advocate of Christianity undertakes so much, that at best he can only escape defeat.

Moreover, if Puritanism and Christianity are not identi

cal, it will be greatly for the advantage of Christianity that this should be distinctly understood. Does an earnest Christian profession include rigid abstinence from amusements, innocent in themselves, though trivial in comparison with the devotedness and aspiration of the saint? Is it right or wrong, necessary or unnecessary, to say to the young man or young woman about to make a Christian confession. You must refrain henceforth from dancing, from the theatre, from the opera, from all save the most solemn festivities? Is there not a line to be drawn here be

tween use and abuse? Are there not questions of age, time, place, and temperament to be settled? Must we not leave a great deal here to be determined by the individual conscience, and controlled by the inward spirit? When we send our children to the dancing-school, are we depart ing from Christianity, or only from Puritanism? May we not believe that the heart is right in the sight of God, and vitally joined to Christ, even when the Divine Spirit has not yet lifted the whole being into the highest plane of love and heroism? "He that is not against us is on our part." These things are to be considered by all who protest against every modification of doctrine or relaxation of discipline, as a mischievous concession to unbelief and unrighteousness.

2. But there are great dangers in concession. It is often carried, and in all honesty, to most ruinous lengths. We find that the human understanding is unwilling to accept the facts and doctrines of the Gospel. A sceptical philosophy pauses at miracles, hesitates to acknowledge the reality of Divine forgiveness, cannot believe in the efficacy of prayer, save as a self-magnetizing process, is utterly confounded by the affirmation of the personality of God, finds endless perplexities in the assertion of a conscious immortality of the human soul;- what is to be done? These things are not to be denied, certainly not in terms, — for in that case, what becomes of your Gospel, and what remains for men to be converted to, and what pretence is there any longer of a struggle of faith? And yet since so many will