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CHRISTIAN COMPREHENSIVENESS.

We are not among those who regard the Christian sects as equivalent to so many schisms. Neither is it necessary, in our view, to the unity of the church, that it should be politically one; indeed the polity of the Anglican establishment and that of the American Episcopal church are as truly separate, one from the other, as the latter from the Congregational polity. As little is it necessary to the unity of Christ's body, that the several polities should be similar to each other; for here again it can be shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the polity of the Anglican establishment is less resembled, as regards all practical purposes, to that of the American Episcopal church, than the latter to the Congregational. So if we speak of brotherly love or the unity of the Spirit, it is clear that distinct and dissimilar forms of polity work no necessary detriment. How often indeed is it proved that proximity exasperates disagreements, and that men will only hate each other the more cordially, the closer the bond which unites them. Doubtless there is such a thing as schism, divisions that are wrought by evil passions, therefore dishonorable, hurtful and criminal; and such is the weakness of our nature that there are doubt less vestiges of schism, in all Christian bodies. Still it is our privilege, on the whole, and being our privilege, our duty, to regard the Chris tian sects, not as divisions, but as distributions rather; for it is one of the highest problems of divine government in the church, as in all other forms of society, how to effect the most complete and happy distribution-such a distribution as will meet all wants and conditions, content the longings, pacify the diversities and edify the common growth Thus it may be said that

of all. VOL. VI.

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the present distribution of the church, abating what is due to causes that are criminal, makes it more completely one; just as an army, set off into companies and battalions, some trained to serve as infantry and some as horse, some with artillery and some with the rifle, undergoing each a form of exercise and discipline peculiar to itself, becomes thereby not several and distinct armies, but because of the orderly distribution made, a more complete and perfect whole-in the field, an engine of greater power, because it unites so many forms of action and bears so many sorts of armor.

At the same time, it is not to be denied that this manifold distribution of the church has its propriety, in causes and events that imply a crude state, or a state of only partial development. Therefore, while we do not regret the distribution, or proclaim it as the public shame of religion, we may well desire a riper state, in which the Christian body shall coalesce more perfectly and draw itself towards a more compre hensive and catholic polity. The work of distribution and redistribu tion has already gone far enough, as most Christians appear to suppose. We see, indeed, that unity is rising, now, as a new ideal upon the Christian world. They pray for a closer fellowship; they flock together from the ends of the world to consult for unity. A proper and true catholic church is before the mind, as an object of longing and secret hope as never before

it is named in distant places, and by men who have had no concert, save through the Spirit of God and the spirit of the age. And if these are signs of capacity for a more catholic state, it may also be seen, in the few persons rising up here and there to speak of a more com

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prehensive faith, or to handle questions of polity and doctrine in a more comprehensive spirit, that there are powers coming into the field, which possibly God has trained for the preparation of a new catholic age. Probably never until now has the world been ready to conceive the true idea of a comprehensive Christianity. Nor is it ready now, save in part. The idea itself is yet in its twilight, dimly seen, only by a few-by none save those who are up to watch for the morning.

Our object, in this article, is to say what we are able of a subject formerly so remote from the world. We confess that, in our own apprehension, we seem rather to stammer than to speak plainly. Still, as it is by stammering that we learn to speak, we go to our rudimental effort suffering no pride to detain us.

What we mean by comprehensiveness, or a comprehensive Christianity, may be illustrated, in part, from the manner and teachings of Christ himself, who is the Lord of Christianity. In nothing did Christ prove his superhuman quality more convincingly, than by the comprehensiveness of his spirit and his doctrine. He held his equilibrium, flew into no eccentricities, saved what was valuable in what he destroyed, destroyed nothing, where it was desirable rather to fulfil than to destroy. It is the common infirmity of mere human reformers that, when they rise up to cast out an error, it is generally not till they have kindled their passions against it. If they begin with reason, they are commonly moved, in the last degree, by their animosities instead of reason. And, as animos ities are blind, they, of course, see nothing to respect, nothing to spare. The question whether possibly there may not be some truth or good in the error assailed, which is needed to qualify and save the equilibrium

of their own opposing truth, is not once entertained. Hence it is that men, in expelling one error, are perpetually thrusting themselves into another, as if unwilling, or unable to hold more than half the truth at once. And so if any advance be made, it is wrought out between battles and successive contraries, in which, as society is swayed from side to side, a kind of irregular and desultory progress is maintained. Thus if any human reformer had risen up to assail the tithings, washings and other tedious observances of the Pharisees, observances the more easy to regard as odious, because the men themselves were odious-a sanctimonious race of op pressors and hypocrites, who live by forming the public superstitions

this human reformer would have said, 'away with you hypocrites, and away with your works. Let your tithings go, and, if you will do any thing right, come back to the weightier matters of judgment, mer cy and faith.' This Christ did not say. Detesting the cruelties and base hypocrisies of the sect, as he certainly did, he is yet able to see some benefit in their practices, some truth in their opinions. Therefore he says, 'These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone'-comprehending, at once, the exact and the free, the disciplinary and the useful, offerings to God and labors for mankind. And the most remarkable feature in his sermon on the mount is the fact that, while he perfectly transforms the old doctrines and laws, he yet annihilates nothing. I came not to destroy, but to fulfill-to bring spirit to form, extend the outward law to the inward thought, to fill out the terms of knowledge and the statutes of duty, but to suffer no jot or tittle of the law to perish.' It is by this singu lar comprehensiveness, in the spirit of Christ, that the grandeur of his life and doctrine is most of all con spicuous. For by this it was that

he set himself in advance, most clearly, of his own and of all subsequent times. With men, if they ever attain to any thing of a comprehensive aim, it is only in what may be called the second age of the church or society, the historical and critical age. In the first age, they see truth; in the second they consid. er the seeings of others and their import. In the first age they regard the forms of truth as identical with truth itself; therefore they stand, every man, for his own form, having no choice but to live or die by it, and no thought, perhaps, but to make others live or die by it too. But in the second age, opinions become a subject of comparison, their laws are inquired after, their forms become plastic and are seen melting into each other. Under contrary forms, are found common truths, and one form is seen to be the complement of another-all forms, we may almost say, the complement of all others. But it was in no such philosophic and critical method that Christ attained to so great comprehensiveness. He found it rather, in' the native grandeur of his own spirit. Speaking not as a critic, but as a seer, his simple seeing placed him thousands of years in advance of us, under all the lights of history. We seem now to be just beginning to spell out in syllables, and by a laborious criticism, that which Christ seized upon, as an original intuition.

But we must enter, if possible, into the more interior merits of our subject. It was given out a few years ago, by the distinguished French philosopher, M. Cousin, that there are, in philosophy, three pos sible schools of opinion, which must each have an era to itself-one that begins with the ideal, or absolute; a second that begins with the ernpiric, or conditional; a third which seeks to adjust the relations of the two, producing an ideal-empiric, or, as he would call it, an eclectic school.

Besides these three, he declares that it is even impossible to invent another. And the latter of the three he regards as the ripe school, one that will contain the last and fully matured results of philosophic inquiry. Now as human life lies between the infinite and the finite, as regards thought and the objects of thought, having contact in fact with both, there is certainly a show of truth in the theory offered. The history of opinions too may be made, without any great violence, to yield it a complexion of favor. Still it is easy to show in what manner other and more various oppositions may arise, and how they may be multiplied almost without number. They are, in fact, so multiplied, both in philosophy and in religious doctrine.

Having it, then, for our subject, in this article, to investigate, as far as we are able, the causes out of which religious oppositions arise, and to suggest the true remedy, let us, first of all, glance at the methods in which the Christian world fall into so many repugnant attitudes.

Doubtless it is true, in part, as M. Cousin suggests, that many of these repugnances are due to the fact that the material of thought is itself divided between what is absolute or ideal, and what is actual or empirical; so that a mind, viewing any subject partially, that is from one pole, is likely to conflict with one viewing it from the other, and both with one who endeavors to view it from both poles at once.

But there are divisions, or repug. nances, that are due as much to the incomprehensibility of the matter of thought, as to the twofold nature of its contents. The matter of thought is infinite in quantity, as well as ideal or empirical in quality. Hence it results that, as the minds of men are finite, they can only pull at the hem of the garment, and must there. fore be expected to pull in different ways, accordingly as they fall upon the hem on one side or on the other.

For as the garment is, to each, nothing but the hem, in that part where he has hold of it, he is likely to make up his sect or school according to the view he has. But after long ages of debate, wherein every part of the hem is brought into view, then it is possible, certainly, for any disciple, who will look through the eyes of all, to form to himself some view of it, that is broader and more comprehensive.

Then again there are reasons for the rise of repugnant views, in thought and religious doctrine, which lie in what may be called the contents of persons. For it is not merely the contents of thought, but quite as much the contents of the thinkers, that give birth to contrary opinions and sects. We speak here of personal temperament, or of national temperament, working in the subject; of that which history has produced, or waits to have produced; of impulses, wants, all of which need as much to have their day and be tried, as the subject matter of thought itself. For example, the Pelagian doctrine of will, or self-supporting virtue, and the Quaker doctrine of quietism, may arise, in no small de gree, from varieties of personal temperament. And since temperament is as much a reality as thought itself, what can ever display the manifold forms of a perfect and complete doctrine, unless temperament also is allowed to have its trial? So also prelacy was produced by historic causes, that is, by impulses and sympathies historically prepared. So also of independency or equality. It was something in the convenience of political power, or private ambition, or Christian experience, that produced these repug. nant methods of organization, and set them in conflict. And now, since they are both set before the mind, as exhibited on trial, it is possible to decide, with greater confidence, on the method most congenial to the Christian scheme-per

haps on a method that combines the excellences of both.

There is yet one more source of repugnant and partial opinion, which is quite as fruitful as the others; namely, language. No matter wheth er we speak of philosophic doctrine, or of that which is derived from revelation, every opinion or truth must come into the world and make itself known, under the terms of language. And all the processes of ratiocina. tion, under which opinions are gen erated, are processes that are contained within the laws of language. But language can not convey any truth whole, or by a literal embodi ment. It can only show it on one side, and by a figure. Hence a great many shadows, or figures, are necessary to represent every truth; and hence, again, there will seem to be a kind of necessary conflict between the statements in which a truth is expressed. One statement will set forth a given truth or subject matter under one figure, and a second under another, and a third, possibly, under yet another. The doctrine of atonement, for ex ample, is offered, in Scripture, under a great variety of figures, and a history of the doctrine, up to this moment, consists, in a great degree, of the theologic wars of these fig ures, doing battle each for the su premacy. For as soon as any fig. ure of truth is taken to be the truth itself, and set up to govern all the reasons of the subject, by its own contents as a figure, argument itself settles into cant, and cant is enthroned as doctrine. For cant, in rigid definition, is the perpetual chanting, or canting of some phrase or figure, as the fixed equivalent of a truth. And as most men who speculate, both in philosophy and religion, are not fully aware of the power of words, or how, if they place a truth under one word in distinction from another, it will assuredly run them into dogmas that are only partially true; successive dogmas in theol.

coming upon the stage, and wearing themselves down into cant to die-in which, though they resemble themselves to the swans, it is yet with a difference; for the swans only sing when they die, but these sing themselves to death. The number of contrary theories that may be gathered round a given subject are limited, of course, only by the number of figures adjacent to it.

ogy or philosophy are perpetually to follow also, as asserted by M. Cousin, that there can arise, about any subject or question, only three schools of opinion-the schools of the extremes, and a third school, which undertakes to settle their relation, or comprehend them in a common view. And perhaps there can not in any legitimate way. Still it will be found, in historical fact, that men do not always proceed in a legitimate way. Other causes act upon them, which do not lie in the subject matter of inquiry. As we see them in actual controversy, they describe a history which may be well enough represented by the five stages or modes which follow.

Instead, therefore, of the single cause for repugnant, or opposing theories, discovered by M. Cousin, we find as many as four classes of causes; one that lies in the twofold quality of the contents of thought; a second in the infinite quantity of the contents; a third in the contents of persons, including society and history; a fourth in the containing powers of language, as an instrument of thought and speculation.

On the whole, it does not appear that the theory of M. Cousin is sufficient. It is less defective as relating to questions of philosophy or philosophic systems, for which it was specially intended, but it is defective even here; for nothing is more certain than that the thoughts and speculations of men are shaped by causes which do not lie in the quality of the subject matter of thought. Far more extensively true is this in matters of theology or revealed religion, where so much depends on questions of fact or interpretation questions that are not determinable by any philosophic or a priori method. Still the doctrine he advances that all questions of philosophy lie between two poles or extremes, is one that has a vast and almost universal application. So also of his doctrine that, inasmuch as men are after truth and not after falsehood, it may generally be assumed that under all extremes advanced there dwells a truth. And these will hold equally well in matters of theology.

Holding this view, it may seem

First comes up into the light one extreme and, with or without controversy, it is adopted. After awhile a second school, looking the dominant opinion or practice in the face, begins to see that there is something wrong or false in it, and rises up as an assailant, to assert the second extreme. Now comes the war between extremes. The parties are certain, both, that they have the truth.

They regard each other in their present half seeing state, as wholly repugnant and contrary. The war goes on, therefore, as a war between simple truth and falsehood, which no terms of peace can reconcile, and which permits no issue but one of life or death. Probably the new extreme will prevail, and the old subside into a secondary place.

Meantime, there is likely to appear a neutral school, made up of those who are disposed to peace, and deprecate war, and who can not escape the feeling that there is something extravagant or excessive, (as there certainly is,) in both the militant schools. These are the moderate men who praise moderate things

the wooden headed school, who dread nothing with so great reason as a combustion of any sort. Hence it is the real problem with them to divide distances, and settle them

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