mistakes of the past do not commit it to an eternal repetition of them. We have confidence in the general adaptability and elasticity of Congregationalism to free itself of everything and anything which is seen to be an incumbrance. Our "household of faith" has grown into the present state of this matter and it must grow out of it. Sudden change is not desirable, and not possible. The process is already going on. The experiment of shortening and diluting the creeds and bringing them down to minimum proportions and to the character of a catechism for young children, though we have raised our voice against it, must after all be characterized as a blind movement toward the light. Much intelligent work is going on. Much thought and discussion is directed to the subject. Many candid minds are continually feeling over the ground. There is too much wisdom in the ministry to allow the churches to be shaken by convulsive changes, and the evil, such as it is, has been borne too long, and by many with too little sense of its greatness, to make it a case in which patience ceases to be a virtue.

Some attempts to reach the case have been made which seem to require at least an allusion. We say nothing of the abbreviation or simplification of test creeds, for the reason that when such work is ended it only reduces the amount of poison in the cup. Some have gone more boldly to work and left the articles of belief in position, as fundamental doctrines on which the church is to stand, but abolished their use as tests, and annexed to them some simpler form of admission, drawn as nearly as possible in accordance with the fundamental charter of the Christian Church.

Others have used these articles only as the guide and support of faith, but, requiring no farther assent to them than that developed in the examination of the candidate before the church or its officers, have directed their inquiries to the simple end of finding good reason to believe that the person in question is a regenerate disciple of Jesus Christ. The public confession and admission to covenant privileges is thus founded on the results of such previous inquiry, and not on the very barren fact that the candidate has been willing to stand up in the church and nod in assent to a longer or shorter digest of evangelical doctrine.

The amount of change required to bring our churches under the operation of such a method of admission as this last is very slight. We know of ministers who, in the use of that official power which Congregationalism in book and journal, and on the platform, is always denying that it possesses, and which the churches are as steadily allowing to be practiced, have made the change nemine contradicente.

But when such change is accomplished there comes into view a peril which every thorough student of this question must be familiar with. Does not such a course open the door to laxity? Would it not admit into the government of the church itself a body whose orthodoxy is but half formed, and who because of their unsettled opinion on many grave matters it would be unsafe to trust, and who might even overturn the foundations of the church itself?

These are inquiries which we have no disposition to slight In our judgment they bring into view the real core of the solid objection which may be made to the views we have advanced. As far, however, as they relate to the introduction of laxity and the corruption of personal faith, we conceive that enough has already been said to quiet that fear—or at least to quiet it as far as it can be quieted under any system at all. It is probably a danger that exists in the nature of the case and cannot be removed, but only diminished and guarded. The safety of the church lies, in part, in cherishing the fear and in deriving from it an incitement to vigilance and faithful administration. The danger to which it refers has its seat, however, in the human mind more than in the kind of statute by which the church seeks to control its members,

Moreover, it must be remembered that the church adheres to Christ, its central life and power, not so much by force of uniform opinion, as by virtue of the divine and regenerate life of its members in Him. The New Testament, and especially the Book of the Acts, displays a sublime trust in the unifying and all controlling power of the practical principle of regenerate and regenerating faith. Doctrine is worth much to feed, guide and support this faith; doctrinal examination is worth much to discover and verify it. But the great clue to guide a soul to the church, the cord to attach it to it, and the principle

to fit it to abide there, is this faith in Christ. Therefore the apostles trusted it with a sublime and single confidence. Therefore let us trust it too. There is nothing in anything without it. With it the church will sail through its troubles and abide in purity and strength.

The governmental peril however remains, and requires, as we freely admit, some more thorough consideration than we are now prepared to give it.

It is a peril which our churches, by their democratic organization, are peculiarly exposed to. The Congregational denomination, when it opens its communion to a believer, gives him (with the exception in some cases of women and minors) political rights in the church. We have not made that distinction between what may be called the covenant rights of the Church Catholic and the political rights of the church local which in most of the denominations is so carefully guarded. With the exception made above, a Congregational church member is invested with ecclesiastical power and becomes a church ruler. He votes on all questions. As the matter now stands, he has an influence in framing the Articles of Faith.

It would certainly be an act of sublime confidence in the simple principle of faith for any church to commit all its powers to those whose one qualification to administer them is this. It may prove in practice that such universal suffrage in the kingdom of God is the true policy. But should it be found that such a liberal policy would endanger too much the govern ment or the church, there is nothing to prevent the separation being made between the covenant rights of membership in the Church Catholic and the political rights which would then be conferred by the local church on a mere limited body whom they conceive to be qualified to wield them.

In fact, the traditional policy of the Congregational churches did this in withholding a vote from women and minors. A more arbitrary and indefensible measure it would be hard to imagine. And a denomination which to this day has not shaken off the habit entirely, could certainly have nothing to say against committing its political rights to a restricted body with superior qualifications.

We are not yet willing to undertake the advocacy of such a

measure. We only allude to it to show that should the churches throw themselves on the free charter which has been given them, they would still have it in their power to reserve in their own hands the administration of those ecclesiasticopolitical forms which it might be found unsafe to commit to believers in the first and simple stages of their Christian progress.

At all events, it can never be safe to allow the questions of local church government to overpower the liberty or the rights of the Church of the covenant and the sacraments as founded by Christ. It can never be safe to appeal to the political exigencies of a local organization in extenuation of a curtailment of those rights and of those privileges which all denomi nations exist only to foster and to cherish.

ARTICLE VII.-THE STUDY OF WORDS.

WHEN we designate a person as a brilliant speaker, we are not merely employing a figure of speech; we are using an idiom and expressing an idea belonging to an antiquity beyond our tracing, and probably among man's primeval conceptions. The same Greek word* means both man and light, and it is derived from a verbal root+ which means both speak and shine. These correspondences imply that man is the light of this lower world, and that it is through speech that he shines. It is in accordance with this linguistic phenomenon that in the records of Divine revelation, the Author of Christianity is called equally the Word of God and the Light of the World.

We propose, in this Article, to speak of the light that there is in words, their importance as not merely means, but as subjects of study and instruction, as often condensing in themselves more knowledge than they can convey by their accustomed uses. Men have embodied in their words a profounder wisdom than their own, have, like all great architects, "built better than they knew." There are many words whose very form is full of instruction, many words in common use, in which we virtually recognize great truths that we practically ignore,—many which are enduring monuments of marked epochs in human thought or experience, many which in their deflection form their pristine sense their abuse superseding their native use — are tokens of perverted sentiments or retrograde movements, and thus stand as finger-posts pointing the way to reform and progress.

We sometimes hear of the making of new words by individ⚫ual speakers or writers. This never takes place. Words are not made; they grow. An individual may, indeed, coin a word to express some conception of his own; but unless society needs it, he cannot give it currency. It must strike the public ear and mind; else it perishes on the tongue or pen that vainly strives to give it birth. But if it be a word that meets an actual

* φῶς.

† Φάω, whence both Φημί and Φαίνω.