BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. I.-JULY, 1861.-No. 4.

ARTICLE I.

METES AND BOUNDS, COMPASS AND CHAIN.

"BLESSED are the peace-makers." And surely Deacon Allen was one of them. We remember him from earliest childhood. For with compass and chain and old records, he came often into our region to hunt up ancient bounds, and so make peace between conterminous and contending neighbors.

When fences in the deep woods had gone to decay with those who set them, or the marked tree had fallen with the pioneer who blazed it, or one had beautified his yards and fields by encroaching on the highway, or another had come under the Mosaic curse by removing his neighbor's landmark, then the deacon was called as the great peace-maker. Yellow and soiled documents of a former generation were carefully unfolded, a common bound was agreed on, the compass was set, and the chain drawn out.

The North Star had not moved since the original survey; there was no disturbed balance of the sensibilities in the needle; a link was still just one link, and the old land-creed said so many rods and chains so and so, with such and such bearings. The contending parties busied themselves in an examination of the tattered deed, in carrying the chain, and in cutting away the Young America undergrowth of saplings and brushwood that obscured the sighting over the old lines. Our juvenile

eyes were wandering, the while, around the mysterious compass.

And thus the company moved on from station to station. Inevitably at each angle the foot of the deacon rested on the bound of the "stake and stones," or the spade revealed the covered monument. The deacon knew nothing of any "improvements" that had been made or attempted in straightening crooked paths, or shunning rough places, or securing the ends of justice. These things were not mentioned in the deed, nor did the compass indicate them. The needle pointed just as it did fifty years before. And as it guided, like the finger of destiny, to the old metes and bounds, totally regardless of the lines and limits of modern progress, it was interesting to see how the tones of controversy softened. Old landmarks, once brought to light, restored old memories and friendships. Even he of speculation and improvement, the new-school man, who had added a very liberal and pleasing border to his pleasure-grounds by encroaching on the highway laid out by the Puritan fathers, bowed submissively to the musty records and the unfeeling compass, though it cost him the resetting of his new fences. And so the quaint, conservative deacon, with his documents of a past generation and his unprogressive compass, was a most efficient man in promoting correct views and friendly feelings in neighborhood life.

Nothing is better fitted to promote a pure theology, practical godliness, and the peace of the church, than frequent resurveys of the old metes and bounds in Christian doctrine. In the modern passion for progress and improvement, and in the flippant use of new phrases, and in a sneering disregard for conservative tendencies, it is no easy and popular labor, to “stand in the ways, and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein." Doctrinal labor in the church and pulpit and Sabbath-school is at a discount; sitting at the feet of the fathers is unprogressive and unmanly; having a definite creed is an antiquated notion; the use of precise phrases, that generations have accurately defined, and a long procession of saints hallowed, is servile; a Calvinistic theology is mainly of service to swear by; and Puritan, Plymouth, and Pilgrim history serves its main end by furnishing popular titles for writers

and churches. He who proposes to uncover, in their grassy bed, old corner-stones, and to run anew old lines, and to set up again the hedges that have been broken down, is an antiquary, an "Old Mortality." He is breathing life into fossils, and may be pitied and passed by. If, in hunting up the "old paths," and fixing on the ancient corners, one runs through any modern innovations or "improvements," so called, he is creating a "divisive movement." Surveyors and county commissioners are sometimes accused of making similar movements, when they urge a man to move back his progressive fence out of the ancient highway.

"To tell or to hear some new thing" in theology, is the law of the hour. If one be not acquisitive or inventive enough for this, he is unfortunate. He has, however, an alternative, and may make himself famous by lifting up axes upon the thick trees that the fathers set, or by breaking down the carved work of the sanctuary, as out of date and style.

All this is wrong. It is a wrong done to Christianity, to piety, and to philosophy. For, among the means for human use, the strength of the church of God lies in its doctrines; and its power for aggression and conquest is in the unfolding and application of these doctrines. Aside from the special and providential interpositions of God, the church has no other source of power. Her capital, under God, is in her doctrines; and so her business, activity, and success depend on her doctrinal investments. And, if we may continue the commercial figure, the church has already her maximum of capital. No new and true doctrine can be added to her funds. The divine founder of the institution made all addition impossible by the completeness of the original grants and legacies.

It is at this point that false theories and reasonings have arisen. Men have assumed that the science of revealed theology is susceptible of the same improving changes that are wrought in any of the natural sciences. The abundant and profound revelations from the chemical world during the last half-century, have necessitated vast changes in the theories, principles, and appliances of chemistry. The same remark is pertinent to the entire field of natural science. With this fascinating and stimulating fact before them, speculative theologians

have assumed that revealed theology may be subjected to the same improvements in theory, principle, and use. They cannot see why the theology of an Apostolic Church may not be made progressive as well as the astronomy of the congrega

tion.

A great fact is not recognized. All the material for a full and perfect system of revealed religion was given in eighteen centuries ago. It was the gift of God. He then completed and concluded the furnishing of facts, and principles and truths. And since that time these have been cast into so many forms and around so many theories, that a strictly new theology is impossible. We are shut up to a choice among old systems of truth or error. The change, and progress, and new theology of which we hear so much, are but the reproduction of old heresies under new guise and name. They are a reinvention of old improvements and patents, laid aside ages ago in the attic of God's house. And so what with many pass as novelties and profound discoveries in theology, the student in the history of doctrines marks, not only as antiquities, but as exploded and obsolete fallacies. Old-school theology does not monopolize the "fossils." The Pelagian strata, the Socinian, and Arminian, are quite as rich in them as the Genevan or Augustinian. If certain notions, silently popular, on the nature of sin, human depravity, free-will, and atonement, were presented with all the dust that the ages have thrown over them, that antiquated and obsolete work," The Assembly's Catechism," would appear as a hot letter-press volume of yesterday, in comparison.

We do not mean by this remark to deny the credit of originality to any whose speculations have led them away from the faith. What others find in old folios they may have thought out independently. We only wish to intimate that if its age is an objection to doctrine—and so creeds are to be rejected in the order of seniority-much of the improved and new theology will be cast off before we come down, chronologically, to Calvinism. The Pelagian creed is as mossy as the Augustinian.

We have been speaking, of course only, of revealed theology, in what we have said of improvements. But when we leave revealed, and turn to natural, theology, the case is different. Constant progress in the natural sciences is adding constantly

to the materials for a better natural theology. In this department, therefore, of sacred studies, change, progress, and improvement are legitimate and necessary. And yet because progress in almost everything but the way and means of salvation, is the spirit of the age and the order of the times, and because men love to tell or hear some new thing, the old doctrines of Paul and Calvin, and the Catechism are passed by. If presented with the clearness and earnestness and frequency of the Apostles, trivial and superficial men say: "Our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes.

In these circumstances some pastors, more attentive to the wishes than to the wants of their unthinking hearers, give them new things. They preach natural, rather than revealed theology and science in its relations to God rather than God's redemptive scheme in its relations to lost men in their congregation. They find that natural hearts are better pleased with expositions of Silliman's Journal than of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. And such preachers are said to be progressive men, and up with the times.

The end of all this is rationalism, naturalism, and deism. For such men, be they preachers or hearers, soon weary of doctrines, creeds, and catechisms, that will not keep pace with them. And at length a Bible, so rigid and notional that it will not allow them to revise, expurgate, and republish it, with corrections, additions, and supplementary notes, over-riding the text with the revelations of modern science, must be cast aside as antiquated and obsolete. And so the passion for the new in theology ends in old infidelity.

Another necessity for the frequent use of the compass and chain, and antique records, of the surveyor is found in the everrecurring and constant wants of a rising generation. The preacher has always before him a youthful class who are in every stage of indoctrination. A loose or negligent treatment of doctrine before these for a few years will turn an entire congregation from the faith. Illustrations of this point are abundant and painful. A multitude of churches could be named, which, under an indifferent, or merely "practical" ́pulpit, apostatized from the evangelical basis. A sound creed is no