AN ADDRESS

ON

Giving the Right Hand of Fellowship,

DELIVERED AT THE INSTALLATION OF

REV. THOMAS OSBORNE RICE

AS PASTOR OF THE

Independent or Congregational (Circular) Church,

CHARLESTON, S. C., APRIL 1, 1860,

BY REV. THOMAS SMYTH, D. D.,

OF CHARLESTON, S. C.

CHARLESTON:

PRINTED BY EVANS & COGSWELL,

3 Broad and 103 East Bay Sts.

ADDRESS.

Reverend and dear Brother: In discharging the office assigned to me, as part of these interesting and solemn services, (and which you have informed me ought, according to your order, to be accompanied with some remarks,) I begin by observing, that while it might have seemed to me that it would have been more properly performed by one of your own brethren,* yet I have not felt that it would have been proper for me to decline, as I fully appreciate the courtesy and kind feeling which led to the appointment-and desire to reciprocate them.

It is true I am a Presbyterian; but I rejoice in being connected with a denomination of which no one can be consistently a member, and be either a dogmatist, a sectarian, or a bigot. Were it timely, I might illustrate this from the whole spirit and matter of its teachings. I might allude to its doctrines of liberty of conscience, of the holy catholic church, and of the communion of saints, and to its simple terms of christian and church, as distinct from those of ministerial and official communion. But it is sufficient to refer to its express declaration in words, in the Statements preliminary to the form of Government, in which it is taught, that, in consistency with the principle of private judgment, every christian church is entitled to declare its whole system of internal government; and again, in chap. vi, while asserting, "that it is agreeable to Scripture and the practice of the primitive churches, to be governed by congregational, presbyterial and synodical assemblies," it is added, "in full consistency with this belief, we embrace, in the spirit of charity, those christians who differ from us in opinion or in practice on these points." In the arms of that charity, therefore, my dear brother, I now embrace you, and most cordially extend to you the right hand of fellowship.

You, sir, are a Congregationalist, and as such have been now installed Pastor of this church. Now, I would like, in a few words, to show why, as such, I can welcome you among us. Considered as a polity, Congregationalism, according to its ancient platforms,† will be found to embody the three fundamental principles which lie at the basis of every form of nonepiscopal government. It contains, in its entirety, the doctrine of the presbyter, as the one and only order of ministers instituted by Christ. It contains, in its substantial verity, the doctrine of the catholic, visible church, to which is given primarily

*The Rev. Drs. Nehemiah Adams and George W. Blagden, of Boston, and Rev. John Todd, D. D., of Pittsfield, Mass., who officiated.

† See the Platforms as published by the Congregational Board of Publication, Boston, 1855.

whatever of executive authority Christ has delegated to his people; and it contains, also, the principle of representation, by which the people elect their own officers to represent them, and more or less fully to govern the church. But the polity of any church is, after all, only the outside shell which preserves the kernel; the organism through which the soul is enabled to develop or employ its energies; the instrumentality by which it carries out the chief, the final end of the church of God as a visible economy-even the proclamation, the propagation, and the perpetuation of the glorious gospel of the blessed God! And in this view of Congregationalism, according to its ancient platforms,† we are not only almost, but altogether one. For, let it be borne in mind, that in the womb of that august, learned and, in some respects, incomparable Assembly, which gave to the world, and, we trust, to all time, the Westminster Confession and Catechism; while two ecclesiastical polities, Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, struggled for birth, both parties perfectly agreed, during their nearly six years' continuous labors, in these doctrinal standards; and even after their subsequent separation, both adopted them as their own. The Congregationalists on three several occasions: at the Savoy, in England; at Cambridge, in New England, in 1648; and again in Boston, in 1680, after being twice publicly read, examined and approved, "by the elders and messengers of the churches," not only received them as their own; but, as they beautifully say, they "chose to express themselves in the words of these reverend Assemblies, that so they might not only with one heart, but also with one mouth, glorify God and our Lord Jesus Christ." And so, my brother, may we; and so may God help us to do.*

You, sir, are from New England, and from Massachusetts, the very colony from which came that band of Puritans who (animated by that self-sacrificing zeal for Christ and his truth which made their fathers willing exiles from their mother country) planted two churches in this then Southern wilderness; one at Dorchester in this neighborhood, and one in Dorchester in Georgia, which still flourishes in a green and fruitful old age. Grievous defection from the faith once delivered by these Puritan fathers has, it is true, spread through many of the churches of that land. And in our own time an equally lamentable defection has taken place from the patriot faith of

†See, also, the works of the Rev. John Robinson (its modern founder) in 3 vols., as published by the same Board.

*See Preface to Platforms, p. 91. In no part of our country have more successful efforts been made to revive and extend the family, Sabbath school, and Collegiate use of the Shorter Catechism, than in New England, and particularly by Rev. Dr. Todd, in his "stories on" it, and the Rev. A. R. Baker's "Catechism Tested by the Bible, or Consecutive Question Book," Boston, Jewett & Co., 210th thousand, and especially by its publication in various forms, by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society.