CHAPTER XIII.

A UNITY IMPOSSIBLE.

As I looked with dismay and sorrow on the membra dis jecta of Presbyterianism, lying around me in wild disorder, like the broken columns of some tower, rent and scattered by the bolts of an angry sky; and particularly as I gazed on the torn and withering limbs of the venerable tree under which my fathers worshipped two centuries ago, now riven and strown over the land, as by the visitation of some mighty wind from heaven: if the question had been put to me, “Can these broken columns rise again into their tower, and can these shattered branches be gathered again into their ancient tree?" I must have answered, with the prophet over the bones of the valley, "O Lord God, thou knowest!" Still, I believed that a day was yet to come when there should be a noise, and a shaking, and a restoration of the branches to their tree. Not a pulse of my heart ever beat in sympathy with those now numerous Presbyterians, who regard it as a matter of gratulation, rather than of regret, that such differences exist in the Christian world. I could never have been brought to think that it was either the intention or the proper result of Christianity, so to alienate and sunder the members of the body. I held it to be a libel on the dignity of our religion that, without a centre-a mouth-piece-a church, to regulate such matters, it should be so vastly accommodating as ever

and anon to change its hues with the different varieties of mind on which it might happen to alight, like the chameleon, assuming the various complexion of the objects over which it passes. These varying forms and creeds, which to the eyes. of many of my brethren were like the variegated plumes and banners of the different regiments of an army moving together under One Great Captain: were to me like the hectic hues of autumn, the result, not of vigor, but of decay; the harbinger, not of a mellow sunshine ripening the fields into a golden harvest, but of a cheerless winter arresting the circulation of nature, and killing the life of all that is green upon earth. And there was a time, as we have seen, when the Presbyterians themselves made noble answer to the Congregationalists, when the latter offered the plea of conscience as a plea for schism. They never undervalued unity, nor spoke of it in so sour a tone, until unity, like the vine, binding its grapes joyfully together in its branches, grew up beyond their reach just as Melancthon, and Calvin, and Grotius, and Le Clerc, and the Synod of Dort, entertained a veneration for the ancient Episcopacy; and their children never thought slight of it until they perceived that it was irrecoverably gone, and that they must cast about them for a new foundation.

I know the "philosophical" objections to the resurrection of the flesh: How can the elements that now compose this body, when drifted and driven in a thousand combinations through the world, be brought back, and restored to the unity and identity in which they now exist? And I know the objection to the restoration of Unity in the Body of Christ: How can the elements of thought, drifting and driving wildly in a thousand combinations through the world, be recovered and remoulded into the beauty and harmony of One Body, feeling the same life, thinking the same thought, moving with the same will, and happy in the same affection? But why

should it be thought a thing incredible with us that God should restore us Unity? Like the resurrection, it may be the great miracle in reserve, the crowning beauty of the fullness of the times of grace. Whether the elements that go to form the body do or do not acquire a mysterious affinity for each other that shall one day re-unite them: it is certain that the members of the Body of Christ have an affinity and fondness, and will draw together, so soon as "that which letteth" -the force that keeps them so unnaturally apart, be it the pride of private judgment, or be it the dark influence of Evil hovering over for a time-" shall be taken out of the way." The power of God is equal to His goodness. His goodness has promised it; His power shall perform it. "And there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd."

But, as we believe in the resurrection of the body, chiefly because Christ is risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept: so, while yet a Presbyterian, I believed in the future unity of the Church, because the Church, in the time of her first-fruits, had long ago been visibly one upon earth. I had but to look through the dust of recent creeds, and beyond the ruins and fragments of sectarianism piled around me, back to a period of glorious memory, when the smallest beginning of "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ," was arrested by the burning admonition, "Is Christ divided?" Yes, there was a time when Asiatic, European, African, and Islander, the white man, the red man, and the negro, Greek and Barbarian, Jew and Scythian, the bond and the free, were in one communion and brotherhood: and this, too, not in an age friendly, like the present, to coalescence and coalition, but presenting for midable barriers of language, country, clime, government, education, tastes, and manners, and a thousand influences, social and political, to keep the Christians in the different nations irreconcilably apart. I had but to look back to hap

pier days, when the smallest schism was frowned out of the pale of Christianity, as unworthy to exist within it ;-the glorious days, when a question so unimportant as the time of keeping Easter, brought holy Bishops out of Asia, over many a league of sea and land, to consult their brethren in Europe, when, at every step of their way, the sword of persecution gleamed in the sun by day, and the fires of the martyrs burned on the hills by night ;-all from the heavenly motive of producing concert in the time, as well as consent (which was universal already) in the fact, of the observance of Easter-glorious days, when such questions, only because they might possibly have a remote bearing upon Christian unity, were matter of painful and prolonged anxiety throughout the Christian Church. How sublime this spectacle! How perfectly identified with the birth of Christianity, this doctrine of visible unity! Nations just emerging from the isolation, and selfishness, and wars of heathenism, grasping the mighty conception of universality and unity! And be it remembered that these men who made the journey out of Asia into Italy, were born in the days of the Apostles. And was not the same spectacle exhibited when dissensions about circumcision, and other such matters, arose among the Apostles themselves, and Apostles left their flocks in the wilderness, to "go up to Jerusalem" and settle, in holy synod, a uniformity of practice? And was it not still the same, three hundred years after, when a like question, whether infants should be baptized chiefly or exclusively on the eighth day after birth, brought together a great council of bishops in Egypt? Such was the sublime unity of the Church in the first few centuries-the faith settled-the Apostles' Creed the bond-the Episcopacy the symbol of Union-and the Church One;-nothing in which to differ from each other, throughout the body universal, but the exact time for commemorating the Lord's resurrection, and the precise day for receiving infants to His Baptism: ques

tions absurd to the modern sectarian, but important indeed to men who felt that touching Unity was "touching the apple of the eye."

How could I, as a Presbyterian, undervalue unity? As a Presbyterian, let me go back to the fourth century. I here find Episcopacy universal on the three continents. Yet so wonderful a revolution as the entire overthrow of the apostolic institution of Presbytery, and the supervening of Epis copacy on its ruins, did not tempt a solitary country, or province, or city, that we hear of, to produce a "schism in the body!" What, therefore, said I, did the Presbyterian Church, think of Unity then? Why, evidently, they thought it of such paramount importance, that apostolic Presbytery must be universally and unresistingly surrendered, rather than retain it in any church on earth at the expense of Unity! They parted with Presbytery to purchase Unity: but our modern Presbyterians give Unity to the winds, to get back Presbytery! Which horn of the dilemma will you choose? Either it is not true that Presbyterianism existed, and was overthrown or else the universal Church was pleased to see every Presbytery on earth sunk into the sea, rather than behold celestial charity broken in the violation of Unity. The Church of the first century, according to your own showing, would not purchase tinsel at the price of gold-Presbytery at the expense of Unity! No, none but heretics would perpetrate schism in those days; Ebion, Arius, Pelagius,-the daring heretic alone ventured out from the Ark upon the wave, and exhibited, in those days, the hideous phenomenon of schism. And it is to be observed again, that the "heresies,” and “damnable heresies," spoken of in the New Testament as things then future, signify also, in the Greek, "schisms” and "damnable schisms." And when, after six hundred years Unity, Rome set up her peculiarities, and created breaches, by claiming a new authority, and proclaiming new terms of

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