the structure of modern society itself. The noblest and costliest church edifices in all our great cities are open equally to rich and poor: with the stateliest form of service, the most elaborate symbols of devotion, music the most expensive and exquisitely trained, it is all open, free of cost, to whoever will come and share; at a cost almost insignificant to those who require personal comfort and ease in listening. The reason is, that the Roman Church, which sustains these splendid edifices and this sumptuous worship, represents, not a sentiment, but a polity. It is a spiritual government, an established order, which assumes its right, with every government, to exact its own revenues according to its own theory of its claim. We may dislike the method, and reject the doctrine, and pity the superstition which suffers it to exist. What we cannot fail to see is, that it fulfils at least one condition of a true Church, which, under our Protestant dispensation, is fast becoming, not only impossible, but scarce even an object of desire or aim. A successful Protestant city church (as success in such matters is often reckoned) is simply a very costly machinery for securing a certain line of personal culture, or a certain amount of the personal luxury and delight of religious art. We do not condemn it for being only that. If a rich man has paid five thousand dollars for a single evening's entertainment or ten thousand for the horse he drives, he is not to be blamed for seeking his Sunday luxuries on a corresponding scale of expense. After all, his church will probably cost him only half as much as his tobacco or his club. What we object to is calling this thing Christianity. At best, it is only an ornament, or a help. The error we are moved to call it the guilt -consists in assuming, that this pomp and luxury of worship really represents the idea of the Christian Church, or discharges the function of religion in the community. These handsome parlor churches, costing from fifty to five hundred thousand dollars; these tasteful services, involving an annual outlay of five to fifteen thousand more; these aisles so richly carpeted, and these pews so sumptuously furnished, that, for their delicateness and their tenderness, no poor man's foot can adventure itself

upon them, it is mere mockery to call these the fruits and offerings of Christian piety. They affect us like the luxuries of rich men's parlors and the delicacies of their tables, which we share, perhaps, glad of their hospitality, admiring their taste, not envying their lot or repining at our own. They are good as fruits of a high refinement, as signs of something better than mere worldly aspiration and aim, as efforts after a purer happiness and a finer culture than secular ambitions and prosperities have brought, the fairest flower of our civilization. But at best they secure for a few individuals— and those the most privileged, cultured, and refined of all— something of that privilege which it is the aim of religion to bestow equally on all. Existing side by side with unchurched masses, the ignorant, the profligate, the wretched, for whom a bare chapel-wall and a charity-gospel are offered at the best, or a jail and hospital and almshouse at the worst, they are at once the most gorgeous and the most painful proofs, that the voluntary system has failed to do its work.

That work will be done, we think, not by any great further multiplication of societies of the present type,- though that is the only way in which the matter presents itself to many persons, and though these organizations have still their precious and indispensable office to fulfil; but by something more like those spontaneous associations of piety, charity, and fellowship, or for more direct objects of instruction and reform, which are coming into existence with every year. We say "spontaneous," though in almost every instance, we believe, they grow directly out of the efforts, and are directed by the action, of persons actively and earnestly interested in our existing churches. But, in their essential features, they are shaped, not by old traditions, but by present needs. In particular, it is a basis of lay fellowship and action they are founded on, and one which utterly discards and ignores (in proportion as it is true to itself) all idea of sectarian association and exclusion of creed. The groundwork is not theological, but spiritual. The work is not the work of sentiment or religious culture; but definite, external Christian work, to be done precisely where there is most need of it. It requires

no funds to be raised for the support of a visible institution or a particular profession; but only for the direct obvious needs of the actual task in hand.* In proportion as this style of association is carried out, it will very much widen the range of religious action and efficiency, putting more and more of it in the hands of responsible committees of conscientious men and women, and dispelling the harmful delusion, that it is in any special sense "professional" work. It will not abolish or supersede the work of the Christian pulpit, or of a class of men who shall be the trained, devout, eloquent expounders of religious truth. But it seems probable, that, in course of time, it will greatly limit and specialize the function of the pulpit, and take more and more of its work from the hands of the ministry. Its office and use are more obvious in cities, where the first experiments have been made so hopefully. But if our ideal of a "working parish" should ever be realized, with something of the straightforward energy and efficiency that marked our great national charities during the war, it is easy to anticipate, that one thoroughly devoted and able man could do more real service, in inspiring and directing such a work over a whole State or country, than is now done by the harassed and fettered ministry of a dozen of our country parishes.

"

* A very interesting illustration of all that is here said will be found in "A Sermon preached by E. E. Hale, with the Reports of the Christian Unity from its Beginning" (Boston, 1866). We understand that a church is about organizing under similar auspices in a neighboring city, on the basis of a purely lay administration, with no provision for a stated ministry at all. Such were the churches founded of old at Corinth and Ephesus and Antioch. Of the Christian Unity" Mr. Hale says, " Seventy families are united together in this mutual organization. They are united to help each other in any want of body, soul, and mind; and they ask help, they say, as readily as they offer it. As an organization, they undertake the work of a minister at large: they visit the suffering, they nurse the sick, they feed the hungry, they clothe the freezing. They maintain a Sunday school, a singing school, a regular Sunday service, a sewing society, a weekly meeting for religious conference, and a well-adjusted system of ministration to the sick. Connected with them is their Young Men's Improvement Society, uniting, perhaps, fifty young men in the exercises of body, soul, and spirit, which I have described. Connected with the Sunday school, again, is a Temperance Society of the children" (p. 11).

And there is one more thought connected with this matter, for whose illustration we trust there will be only a single generation longer to wait. The ancient ecclesiastical system of New England rested on the conviction avowed in the Charter of Political Rights, that "the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of a government, essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality." But the method provided to meet this want was an organization avowedly "Protestant," really dogmatic and sectarian. In the course of time, it was inevitable that it should pass away. But meanwhile a system of public education has been growing up under State auspices, on a basis purely secular and unsectarian, very defective in method and aim as yet, but fast developing into great thoroughness and perfection in its kind. In it the State asserts the right and duty of educating every child, and of offering instruction to every ignorant grown-up person. It asserts the right and duty, at need, of compelling all to pay and all to learn. The system is even more impor tant, perhaps, as a means of moral discipline, than as a means of intellectual improvement. As public intelligence gains ground, and the old doctrinal beliefs are more completely outgrown, there will come about, more and more, a tacit harmony of view as to those principles of piety and morality which must lie at the foundation of a true commonwealth; and with it an experience of the need, that they should be tenderly, constantly, effectually taught. The sophistical nonsense of political theorists, teaching that the State has nothing to do with character, will be discarded as soon as the true scientific basis of the formation of character comes to be understood. Instruction and charity and prison discipline are already adopted into our politics; and so it must come to be with the essential foundations of morality. In this way, and with a consent more intelligent, more harmonious, and far more permanent than was possible before, we look to see the State re-assert those functions which most nearly ally it with the Church, and frankly assume the task of providing for the spiritual health of all its children.

VOL. LXXXIV. -NEW SERIES, VOL. V. No. II.

20

ART. VII.- REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

is

THE Volume by Rev. Dr. Stowe, on the "Books of the Bible," one of that useful class which make the results of scholarship accessible to the mass of the community. To prepare such a book is an undertaking having its peculiar difficulties. A middle way must be found between the extremes of the abstruse and the superficial; and the style, while it must not have the close, unornamented aspect of a theological treatise, must be guarded with equal care against the looseness of mere declamation. In this difficult task Dr. Stowe has succeeded, if not as well as Stanley in his book on the Jewish Church, yet to a creditable extent. The volume begins with a view of Popular Objections to the Bible; then speaks of the Evidence to the Books of the New Testament; and describes some of the most ancient manuscripts in an interesting manner, making the description clear by fac-simile illustrations. The fourth chapter gives brief biographies of one hundred of the ancient Fathers and other early witnesses. This is followed by the Testimony for the Historical Books, and particularly the Gospels. These are then compared with the Apocryphal Gospels, from which copious extracts are made. Then follows a chapter on the Biographies of Jesus, or works on the Gospel history, by Strauss, Weisse, Gfrörer, Bruno Bauer, F. C. Baur, Renan, and Schenkel. The remaining Books of the New Testament are considered, and the evidence for them presented, in the four succeeding chapters; the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation being compared with apocryphal writings claiming similar character. Then follow a comparison of the Prophets of the Bible with the Heathen Oracles, and an account of the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament. This last chapter is connected in subject with the portion of the work, still in preparation, on the Old Testament; but is inserted here chiefly to equalize the size of the volumes.

* Origin and History of the Books of the Bible, both the Canonical and the Apocryphal, designed to show what the Bible is not, what it is, and how to use it. By Professor C. E. STOWE, D.D. (The New Testament.) Illustrated. Published by subscription only, by Hartford Publishing Company, Hartford, Conn., 1867. 8vo, pp. 583.