INTRODUCTION.

"THE MINISTERS' INSTITUTE" is an association of Unitarian and other ministers willing to work with them for the promotion of critical and independent studies in theology and religion. It was founded in 1876, and has had only two sessions. Its method is to assign, through a committee, to the best scholars, whether within or without its ranks, whose services it can obtain, such subjects as most require critical and learned treatment, and to give the writers at least a year's time to prepare their papers. A session of four days is held every other year, at some central and accessible place, at which these papers are read and discussed. Hitherto about one hundred and fifty ministers have been in attendance as members, and many others of various ecclesiastical connections as hearers. There are usually eight papers read; and an effort is made to have each important subject treated by two scholars known to incline to opposite sides of the question. Each day is thus given up to some one theme, on all sides of which light is thrown,- first by experts, and then by open discussion.

The present volume speaks for itself. It is a collection of the papers read at Providence, R.I., in October last, at the second session of the Institute. These papers were quite fully reported in the Christian Register of November first; but they are now printed from the original manuscripts, with the exception of one paper,- Rev. J. B. Harrison's, which

could not be procured. They are published at the earnest request of many of those who not only heard them, but have read them in newspaper form, and wish to have them in a shape more convenient for reconsideration and preservation.

The business agent of the Christian Register has generously assumed the risk of the volume; and the least I can do, to show my sense of the value and credit of his enterprise, is to comply with his request to furnish a brief introduction.

The object of the Ministers' Institute, as may be inferred from the account already given, is not to proclaim fixed results, but to exhibit the best methods of study in theology and religion; to stimulate inquiry into matters still unsettled or unknown to the bottom, and to encourage and aim at a scientific mode in treating them. It is already plain that the Institute has not mistaken its way, and that its original aim and object is one deemed practicable and useful. When the Institute was first projected, it was supposed that the study of theological problems and the critical pursuit of truth in matters of religion was a work so nearly akin to that of theological schools, that only ministers anxious to continue the studies commenced there would be interested in its meetings. It was even seriously proposed to exclude the laity, lest any temptation to adapt the papers to their supposed tastes might lessen their frankness and rob them of the scientific severity which was so much desired by professional students. The experience of two sessions has proved that this notion did injustice to the laity; that they are quite as eager for thorough, scholarly, logical, and scientific treatment of theological questions as the ministers themselves, and no more alarmed at the light which learned criticism is throwing upon the history of the religious sentiment, the relations of the great religions to each other, the origin of our own sacred writings, nor at the changes which modern science, and especially anthropology, is making necessary in our views of inspiration and revelation, than those who have been professionally trained to the investigation of these theories.

Thoughtful people are discovering that the scientific method properly understood is just as applicable to one form of truth as to another; that religion can no more escape it, nor profit by neglecting it, than political economy or agriculture; in short, that it is simply treason to truth to doubt or deny that the same logic, the same caution, the same thoroughness, the same reliance on critical rules, should be applied to the investigation of religious truth as to all other. When it is understood that the scientific method is only another name for the employment of all the best means for discovering or testing truth, and involves in the treatment of every department of knowledge the use of the means that are appropriate to that department, the remaining prejudice against its employment will disappear. Some have carelessly imagined that the affections of the heart, the light of the conscience, the native sensibilities, were to be ignored by science; but when we are studying what concerns the heart, science will compel us to take the heart itself into counsel as the chief witness. To study theology without faith is a vain effort. To pursue religion in an irreligious spirit is futile. No doubt the study of metaphysics by physical methods and of theology by unspiritual methods will prove barren, and will be soon discovered to be as unscientific as it is destructive.

These papers are presented as studies only. The Ministers' Institute has no creed. It does not even except the Christian religion, its authority or its origin, from the themes which may be re-investigated, and on which new light may be thrown. In theory it is not even an association of Unitarian ministers or Christian ministers. It cordially welcomes the testimony of religious minds of all faiths, when it knows them to be learned, earnest, and profound. It will hear the Jew and the Gentile, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant, the Hindoo and the Persian, if men of virtuous and pious lives, of accredited learning and high gifts of expression, will come and teach them what they think they know. But hitherto the chief difficulty has been in getting Christian theologians of any school but the

Unitarian to come and share their studies and communicate their best thoughts and most exact opinions. It is hoped that this obstacle will sooner or later give way. Meanwhile, the Ministers' Institute will improve such opportunities as it finds open for broadening the platform of religious truth and sweetening the charity of common seekers after God.

H. W. B.

FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST.

BY REV. S. R. CALTHROP.

"Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."— MATTHEW Xxviii., 19.

Το

THIS is the ancient formula into which the generations of Christendom have been baptized. It was the truth underlying this formula which gave a new life to the world. To set forth that truth in nineteenth-century language, and to apply that truth to our own times and needs, will be our task to-night. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: let us take these three names in order, each by itself. Then best can we answer the question, Are these three names one Name?

I. The name of the Father. "Our Father who art in heaven." The Lord's Prayer is the true orthodox creed, or verbal statement of right thinking in religion. It is the creed of Jesus himself, the one form of words in which he embodied his statement of the faith. Take away from the gospel the Lord's Prayer, and the divine ideas it contains, and you have no gospel left,- no good tidings at all to tell to any man. But keep the Lord's Prayer, and, if you had nothing else, the glad tidings of salvation could still be joyously sounded into the ears and hearts of men.

If a man believes from his soul that he has a Father in heaven,— that is, if he knows that the infinite God is not only the all-wise and all-powerful Maker of the universe, but that he is also the just and tender Lover of all souls, that all mankind were begotten by that love, and rest forever in the bosom of that Love; if he hallows that Father's name,— that is, if from his soul he reverences truth, justice, purity,