THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE.
"We meet," said the Rev. Dr. Adams, in his address of welcome to the members of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, "to manifest and express our Christian unity. Divers are the names which we bear, both as to countries and churches—German, French, Swiss, Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish; Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Independent—but we desire and intend to show that, amid all this variety of form and circumstances, there is a real unity of faith and life; believing, according to the familiar expression of our common Christian creed, in the 'Holy Catholic Church and the communion of saints.'" Dr. Adams only gave expression to a thought which was uppermost in the minds of nearly all those five or six hundred gentlemen who assembled in this city from the four quarters of the globe in the early part of October, and filled the newspapers with hymns and speeches, and professions of love, and little disputes and quarrels. "We are living," continued Dr. Adams, "in times when, all over the world, there is a manifest longing for more of visible unity." So the first business of the conference, after the preliminary survey of the condition of Protestantism in the midst of the Catholic populations of Europe—the review and inspection, so to speak, of the army in the field—was to devote a whole day to the discussion of Christian unity, in the hope of persuading themselves and the rest of mankind that these warring sects were really one body of Christian believers, and this theological battle, in which they pass fifty-one weeks of the year, was nothing else than the communion of saints. Indeed, a day was not too long for such a task. Anglicans and Baptists, followers of John Wesley and disciples of Calvin, the clergy of Calvary and the preachers of the Greene Street meeting-house, deans of the English Establishment and dissenters who hate prelacy as an invention of the devil—they were all here together, trying to agree upon something, and to reconcile the fact of their Alliance with the fundamental doctrine confessed by Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, as the motto of the conference as well as the excuse for its existence, that "The Church of Christ is one." We say it was no easy matter to reconcile the fact of the Alliance with the confession of this truth. An alliance supposes independent forces, acting together for a special and temporary purpose, but preserving distinct organizations, and acknowledging different commanders. There can be no "alliance" between the members of the "one body in Christ," any more than there can be an alliance between the right and left eyes, or the foot and the great toe. Every one of the speakers was painfully conscious of this false position. "There is no more common reproach against Christians," said Dr. Hodge, "than that they are so much divided in their belief. There is some truth in this; but, my hearers, we are one in faith." We confess we do not fully comprehend the distinction. Matters of faith, according to Dr. Hodge's definition, seem to be those great truths which all members of the Evangelical Alliance hold in common; and matters of belief or opinion are everything else. The existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the resurrection of the dead, the punishment of hell, the rewards of heaven, and a few other doctrines, more or less—these are the Evangelical articles of faith. But on what authority does Dr. Hodge restrict his creed to these few points? Every sect represented in the Alliance has a more or less extensive formulary of belief, resting upon supposed divine revelation, and including a good many other tenets besides the half-dozen or so held up by Dr. Hodge. All depend upon precisely the same sanction. All are supposed to be drawn from the same source. The Baptist has just the same ground for insisting upon immersion that he has for believing in the resurrection. The Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity has the same basis as the Calvinistic belief in a divine Saviour. The Anglican theory of an inspired but occasionally corrupt and lying church is just as well supported as the Anglican's faith in the Trinity. What right have the members of the Alliance to decide that this dogma is a matter of faith, and that other is only a matter of opinion? All the contradictory doctrines, they tell us, are found in the Bible. Who has the right to decide which are binding upon the conscience, and which are open to individual choice; which are certain, and which are only probable? Oh! these reverend gentlemen will tell us, the essential points of faith are those upon which we all agree. Very well. Whom do you mean by "we"? What right have you to restrict the company of the faithful to your eight or nine sects? You are not a majority of the Christians in the world. You are even a small minority of those who believe in the very points which you make the test of evangelical Christianity. There are more than two hundred millions of Christians who believe, just as you do, in God, in the Incarnation, in the resurrection, and in heaven and hell; but you do not pretend to be one body with them. If all who accept what you style the points of faith are fellow-members with you, why do you not include Catholics? And, besides, if you are to arrive at unity by a process of elimination—throwing out one dogma after another until you reach a condition of theological indifferentism where a certain number of sects can meet without quarrelling—why should you stop at one point rather than another? There is no logical reason why you should not eliminate the doctrine of eternal punishment, and take in the Universalists; or the Trinity, and take in the Unitarians; or Christian marriage, and take in the Latter Day Saints; or the whole Bible, and take in evolutionists, and pure theists, and the prophets and followers of free religion. Once begin to make arbitrary discriminations between faith and belief, as you now do, calling everything upon which your various denominations agree a matter of ascertained truth, and everything upon which they differ a subject of individual opinion, and it becomes impossible to say why your common creed should not be narrowed down to a single dogma—for example, to the omnipotence of God, or the existence of matter, or the atomic theory, or the nebular hypothesis. Then, at least, you would be consistent, and your Alliance would be a much more powerful body than it seems to be at present.
This difficulty seems to have been passed over by the Conference in New York; but the fact of denominational differences could not be forgotten. It stared the meeting in the face at every turn. It got into nearly all the speeches. It appeared in almost every prayer. One after another, the preachers and essayists were moved to apologize for it and explain it. Dr. Hodge laid down the rule, with great applause from his uneasy listeners, that any organization formed for the worship of Christ was a church, and every church must be recognized by every other; that churches differed so radically about the great truths of religion was no more to be wondered at, and no more to be regretted, than that men and women should be organized into different towns, and states, and nations; and, as a consequence, he held that the sacraments of one church were just as good as the sacraments of another, and the orders of one just as good as the orders of another. In fact, said he, "no church can make a minister any more than it can make a Christian." This remark was also received with applause, in which it is to be hoped that the Church of England delegates and the Episcopalians cordially joined. There were three bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Conference; and after the centuries of war which their denomination has waged for the validity of Anglican orders and the unbroken apostolic succession, it must have been an inexpressible comfort to them to be told by the Alliance that they were no more bishops than Henry Ward Beecher, and Octavius B. Frothingham, and the Rev. Phœbe Hanaford. They took it meekly, however, and did not even mind being told that their church could not make a bishop or any other minister. The Dean of Canterbury was there, as the representative of the Primate of all England, and he took the rather singular position, for a churchman, that denominational differences are rather an advantage than otherwise. God's works in nature, he said, are marked by variety. All creation, from inanimate objects up to man, is characterized by diversity. So it is also, he continues, with religions. The parallel, of course, supposes that the religions are imperfect and "natural" works, which we hardly expected an Anglican dean to admit. An imperfect religion is one that is partly true and partly false; that is to say, it is a system of human devising, and not a revelation from God. And Dean Smith confesses that all the churches embraced in the Alliance are natural rather than supernatural works when he accounts for their diversities by the limitations of human reason. "The gift of instinct," he tells us, "is perfect, and produces uniformity;" but "reason is full of diversity." It is "tentative." "It tries and fails, and tries again, and improves its methods, and succeeds partially, and so advances indefinitely onward, and, it may be, at times falls back, but never becomes perfect." All this means, if it means anything, that the cardinal points of agreement between the so-called Evangelical sects, or their faith, as Dr. Hodge terms it, are the only points of any creed which are not subject to constant change. The dogma which is professed to-day may be repudiated to-morrow, and taken up again next week. The creed for which Cranmer went to the stake may be denounced as heresy by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and preached as "moderately true" by the Archbishop of York. In fine, Anglicans get their faith in God and the resurrection by instinct, and the rest of the Thirty-nine Articles by reason; and the result, of course, is that the proportion of truth there may be in religion is regulated entirely by the intellectual capacity of the believer. Salvation, according to this view, is largely the result of a school education.
Moreover, says the dean, if we knew just what to believe, we should not take much interest in religion. "Truth and the Bible are nowhere valued, except where there is discussion, and debate, and controversy about them." It adds wonderful zest to a dogma to have to dig for it; and faith, like the biceps muscle, is developed by violent contention. But if this is so, what does the world want of Evangelical Alliances? If religious truth is only struck out in the heat of religious wranglings, like sparks from the contact of flint and steel, the more fighting the better. The Church of England must have found out pretty much everything worth knowing in the persecuting days of Edward and Elizabeth, and forgotten more than half of it in the subsequent years of peace; while the era of brotherly love, towards which the Alliance looks with longing eyes, will be a period of religious indifference or of almost universal negation.
Dean Smith is logical in one thing. "If our state," he says, "is not one of attainment, but one of progress; if, at the most, we are feelers and seekers after God," why, then, of course, we must look upon all denominations with equal favor. One is just as good as another where none has any faith. But what, then, becomes of the Anglican idea of a visible church and an apostolic succession? Where is that depository of divine truth to which churchmen comfort themselves by referring? What is the meaning of that prayer in the litany of the Anglican and Episcopal service, "From heresy and schism good Lord deliver us"? Dr. Hodge, indeed, believes that "no church can make a minister"; but the Protestant Episcopal Church is very positive and particular about its orders, and is entirely satisfied that it can make bishops, priests, and deacons; that nobody else among Protestants can make them; and that they are necessary to the legitimate administration of sacraments and the well-being of Christian society. Pray, how are these contradictions to be settled? There was a charming illustration of unity one Sunday during the sessions of the Conference, when six clergymen, representing five or six different denominations, joined in a celebration of the Lord's Supper at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church; and a very pretty row there was about it afterwards. The service was held in the afternoon, and the company of celebrants included the Dean of Canterbury (Anglican), the Rev. Dr. Adams (Presbyterian), the Rev. Matteo Prochet, of Genoa (Waldensian), Narayan Sheshadri, the Bombay convert, who has been ordained, we believe, according to the rite of the Free Church of Scotland, Bp. Schweinitz (Moravian), and Dr. Angus, of London (Baptist). So far as we can understand the ceremony, no particular liturgy or custom was followed, but the representative of each sect threw in a little of his own religion. Dr. Adams opened the exercises with a prologue. The dean followed with an apology, and then read the Apostles' Creed and a collect from the Book of Common Prayer. Dr. Angus "gave thanks for the bread," his prayer serving, apparently, instead of a consecration. Then the bread was handed around by the lay deacons of the church. "Bp. Schweinitz was called on to give thanks for the cup, which was afterward passed to the congregation." After some further address, the dean dismissed the assemblage with a benediction. We can understand how the various dissenting ministers might reasonably take part in such a ceremony; but the spectacle of a dignitary of the Church of England in such a situation would be incomprehensible, had not long experience taught us that all manner of amazing and inconsistent things are to be looked for in the Anglican Church as matters of course. No sooner had the story of this joint-communion service appeared in the newspapers than the bubble of Christian unity burst with a tremendous report. An ex-bishop of the Anglican Establishment, the Right Rev. Dr. Tozer, of Central Africa, who happened to be in New York, addressed a letter of remonstrance to the Protestant Episcopal bishop of this diocese. He was shocked at the dean's breach of ecclesiastical order, and terrified at the consequences which might follow his rash and insubordinate conduct. If one service is just as good as another, why naturally, says Bp. Tozer, people will run after the attractive worship of the Church of Rome; and "the promise held out by the Episcopal Church in this land, of becoming a haven of rest to men who are tossed to and fro by the multiplicity of contending creeds and systems, is nothing else than a mistake and a delusion." Dr. Tozer's letter found its way into the newspapers; and then a bitter controversy broke out among the Episcopalians, bishops, priests, and laymen berating one another in the secular press, and striving in vain to determine whether their church was a church or not. Only one thing seems to have been finally settled by the quarrel, and that was, that on two of the most important of religious questions—one relating to the very foundation of the visible church organization, the other to the most solemn of religious rites—the Anglican denomination has no fixed belief at all. That very dignified and exclusive body, which sets so much store by the apostolical succession, and has strained history and reason for so many years to establish the validity of its own orders, has practically treated ordination as a thing of no consequence whatever. It has admitted Presbyterian preachers to its benefices, and recognized the validity of priestly functions performed by men to whom it denies the priestly character; and the best explanation its defenders can give of such inconsequent conduct is that the "intrusion of unordained persons into English livings" was one of the "irregularities of the Reformation period." (See letter of "Theologicus" to the New York Tribune of Oct. 20, 1873.) With regard to the Lord's Supper, the position of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Churches is still more curious. All the members of those two organizations believe it to be a sacrament of peculiar, if not awful, sacredness. The majority probably hold that the body and blood of our Lord, in some mysterious and indefinite way, are communicated to the devout receiver of the consecrated bread and wine, if they are not literally present with the visible elements; and some High Churchmen actually believe in the real presence. Yet, in the face of all this, we find the Episcopal Church admitting that the proper celebration of the Lord's Supper does not require the intervention of a regularly ordained minister. Any kind of a service will do, and any kind of a celebrant, even a layman. It is a great mistake to suppose, as some Episcopalians did, that there was anything novel or unbecoming in the Dean of Canterbury's participation with heretics in the performance of a mutilated and nondescript service. The Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley) did a similar thing at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in Berlin in 1859, and an overzealous churchman who complained of it to the Archbishop of Canterbury was rebuked for his pains. Dr. Muhlenberg, one of the leading Protestant Episcopal clergymen of this city, expressed the only logical Protestant view of the joint communion question in an address before the Alliance on the last day of its meeting. The Lord's Supper, according to Dr. Muhlenberg, is "the highest social act of religion," and the custom of restricting its celebration, each denomination to itself, is in the highest degree objectionable. As a matter of convenience, it is better, as an ordinary rule, that communicants should have their own "church homes, so to call them, where, under their own pastors, and amid their families and friends, they feel it a good and pleasant thing so to participate in the sacred feast. They have an indisposition to go for it beyond these companies of immediate brethren. Nor is this unsocial, if it be merely a preference for their own associations, for the sacramental modes and customs to which they, like their fathers before them, have been accustomed; but when they do it on religious grounds, when they make it a matter of conscience, when they would forego the communion altogether rather than partake of it outside of their own societies, then it is that unsocialness, to call it by its mildest name, which it is hard to reconcile with aught of hearty realization of membership in the one body of Christ."
Dr. Muhlenberg's position is so peculiar that we have given his statement of it in his own language, lest we may be accused of misrepresenting him. It never occurred to us to complain of heresy and schism on the ground that they are "so unsociable," and we never supposed that the most liberal of Protestant sects defended denominationalism on the plea of custom and education. The manner of taking communion, according to Dr. Muhlenberg, seems to be as much the result of habit as anything else—like the manner of dining or chewing tobacco. An Episcopalian has no better reason for kneeling reverently at the chancel-rail, and consuming the consecrated bread and wine, rather than sitting at ease in his pew while unconsecrated food and drink are passed to him by lay deacons, than the reason that he was brought up to that fashion, and feels more comfortable in the society of his own friends and neighbors. This being the case, it follows, of course, that the bread and wine are just as good without consecration as with it; just as much the body and blood of Christ in the bakery and the wine-shop as on the altar; and the most rigorous Anglican will be entirely justified in communicating according to any rite that he fancies. Indeed, Dr. Muhlenberg declares that the various sacramental rites and ceremonies are all more or less agreeable to Scripture, but not essential. The sacrament is just as good without any of them. Our Lord commanded us to celebrate the holy communion in remembrance of him. Well, then, let us go and do it, each in his own way, each after his own idea of what it means, each admitting that every other way is good, and perfectly indifferent to the tremendous question whether the elements are the body and blood of the Saviour or only common bread and wine. Nay, there is no need of an officiating ministry. The Christian eucharist is only the antitype of the Jewish Passover; and as "an officiating ministry was not required for the ancient priestly dispensation, surely none can be demanded for the antitype under the unpriestly dispensation of the Gospel." That simplifies the administration very much; but it occurs to us that a sincere Episcopalian, of less liberal views than Dr. Muhlenberg, might be embarrassed by the joint communions which he so strongly recommends. We can imagine such a man going into Dr. Adams's church, while the Dean of Canterbury, and the Presbyterian and Baptist, and other ministers, stood grouped together before the pulpit, and asking what the ceremony meant. A deacon answers, "Oh! it is nothing but the communion service; you had better join us." "But what is your communion service? Is it the participation of the body and blood of Christ?" "Not at all; it is merely the highest social act of religion." "Have the bread and wine been consecrated?" "Oh! yes—that is to say, no; well, you see, these gentlemen don't all think alike about it. One says it is the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, and another says it is nothing but a rite of hospitality; and we let every man choose for himself." "But has there been no blessing of the elements? No prayer over them?" "Yes; a plenty of prayers." "And what was the intention of the celebrant? The intention, of course, regulates the quality of the act." "Oh! there were five or six intentions; for there were five or six celebrants, and no two of them meant the same thing." Here the inquirer, if he had any sense, would probably conclude that the ceremony was nothing but a sacrilegious travesty on the holy communion, and would retire deeply scandalized; and remembering, first, that the Thirty-nine Articles of his creed forbid "any man to take upon him the office of ministering the sacraments before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same," and, secondly, that the preface to the ordination service of the Episcopal Church declares that no man shall be suffered to execute any of the functions of a minister in Christ's church except he be duly ordained by a bishop, he will doubtless be not a little puzzled to account for the presence of a dignitary like the Dean of Canterbury in such a motley assemblage.
The protests against joint communion are not confined, however, to the Episcopal denomination. The Baptists are likewise exercised in mind about it. They refuse to recognize the validity of infant baptism, or to admit to the Lord's Supper those who have not been duly baptized; and hence, with the great majority of Christians they do not feel at liberty to communicate. The Baptist clergyman from London who participated in the performance at Dr. Adams's church has exposed himself to violent criticism from his own brethren, and, like Dean Smith, is accused of forgetting ecclesiastical discipline and theological orthodoxy under the impulse of a moment of gushing enthusiasm. What a charming illustration of Christian unity this joint-communion service has afforded!
The more closely we look into the Alliance, the more preposterous appear its attempts to jumble up conflicting doctrines, mingle contradictions, and confuse intelligence. If it is right for different sects to communicate together, it must be right for them to perform all other religious services together, and doctrine and ritual become alike insignificant. Hence, we are not surprised to find among the papers presented to the Conference an essay on the Interchange of Pulpits, in which the Rev. Mr. Conrad, of Philadelphia, argues that it is a Christian duty for Episcopal congregations sometimes to listen to the sermons of Baptist preachers, and for Baptists to invite the ministrations of a Presbyterian, and so on—hands across, down the middle and up again; orthodox to-day, heretic next week. Is it necessary to believe anything? Is there any such thing as faith? Is there any reality in religions which have no dogmas, and which look upon truth and falsehood, worship and blasphemy, as perfectly indifferent? Surely this is reducing Protestantism to absurdity. You gentlemen have adopted the principle of individual infallibility, first, to declare that the church of God is the mother of falsehood, and then to accuse each other of error and deceit; and after multiplying your subdivisions till there is danger of universal ruin and dissension, you come together and declare that there is no such thing as religious certitude; no choice between one sect and another; no difference between God's messengers and the lying prophets of Baal. Your plan of composing controversies is to obliterate the distinction between good and evil; and if we can believe Mr. Conrad, the plan of the apostles was the same. They founded independent congregations, and gave them such lax notions of faith that, as Mr. Conrad remarks, "the primitive church was inoculated with error." Nevertheless, the apostles and their first disciples went about freely from church to church, exchanging pulpits, so to speak; and we do not read that the denomination to which Peter belonged had any objection to an occasional sermon from Paul, or that the Beloved Disciple was not welcomed as a good Christian minister when he visited the sect established by S. Luke. In those blessed days there was, we believe, a true interchange of pulpits. But Mr. Conrad neglects to explain the warning which S. Paul gave to the Christians at Rome:
"Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned; and to avoid them.
"For they that are such serve not Christ our Lord, but their own belly: and by pleasing speeches, and good words, seduce the hearts of the innocent."[130]
What have the Episcopalians, with their fiction of a hierarchy, to say of this plan of undenominational preaching? How are we to reconcile the presence of a Presbyterian parson in one of their pulpits with the rule, already quoted, which forbids the exercise of ministerial functions by one who has not received Episcopal ordination? And what would a Baptist say to a service conducted in one of their churches by a Methodist who had been sprinkled in infancy, and therefore, according to the Baptist view, not baptized at all?
The plain truth of the whole matter is that there is no such thing as Christian unity in any of these periodical performances of the Evangelical Alliance. The sects are not drawing closer together. Denominational differences are not disappearing. The quarrelling is as angry and as noisy as ever. But Protestantism has taken alarm. It is confronted by two dangerous enemies, which are growing stronger and stronger every day, and it is anxious to keep the peace for a little while in its own family, that it may the better look after its defence. One of these dangers is the philosophical infidelity which Protestantism itself has bred. The other is the Catholic faith, against which Protestantism is a rebellion. An address, prepared by the late Merle d'Aubigné for the conference which was to have been held three years ago, was presented at the meeting in New York. The historian of the Reformation tells his brethren some plain and unwelcome truths about their condition. "The despotic and arrogant pretensions of Rome," he says, "have reached in our days their highest pitch, and we are consequently more than ever called upon to contend against that power which dares to usurp the divine attributes. But that is not all. While superstition has increased, unbelief has done so still more.... Materialism and atheism have in many minds taken the place of the true God. Science, which was Christian in the finest intellects of former days, in those to whom we owe the greatest discoveries, has become atheistic among men who now talk the loudest.... Eminent literary men continually put forward in their writings what is called positivism, rejecting everything that goes beyond the limit of the senses, and disdaining all that is supernatural.... Unbelief has reached even the ministry of the word. Pastors belonging to Protestant churches in France, Switzerland, Germany, and other Continental countries, not only reject the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but also deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and see in him nothing more than a man who, according to many among them, was even subject to errors and faults. A Synod of the Reformed Church in Holland has lately decreed that, when a minister baptizes, he need not do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.... At an important assembly held lately in German Switzerland, at which were present many men of position, both in the church and state, the basis of the new religion was laid down: 'No doctrines' was the watchword on that occasion; 'no new doctrines, whatever they may be, in place of the old; liberty alone.' Which means liberty to overthrow everything; and too truly some of those ministers believe neither in a personal God nor in the immortality of the soul." Nor was Merle d'Aubigné alone in his bitter judgment of European Protestantism. The same feeling is more or less clearly manifest in the essays of various foreign delegates. Mr. Prochet, the Waldensian minister from Genoa, in presenting a sketch of the religious condition of Italy, laid great stress upon the close union, brotherly feeling, and unflagging energy of the priesthood. "The clergy," said he, "with few exceptions, have gathered themselves more closely around the Holy See, determined to stand or fall with it." Father Hyacinthe lectured in Rome; "but the clergy left him alone, or his few adherents were such that nothing of any importance could be done by them." Among the laity there is a large proportion of devout adherents of the church. There is a great multitude which does not practise any religion, and takes more interest in politics than in faith; but this party has not renounced its allegiance to the church, and believes in Rome as far as it believes in anything. Atheists are not numerous, but their influence is constantly increasing. Protestants are the fewest and the weakest of all. There are congregations of foreign Protestants, but "their influence is of very little value." The Waldensians have a theological school at Florence; but we are puzzled to know what they can teach, for "it is open to students of every denomination; they are never asked to leave their religion to join another." Altogether, the Protestants of Italy, mere handful as they are, are divided into ten different denominations. The Rev. M. Cohen Stuart, of Rotterdam, gave a somewhat similar sketch of the situation in Holland. Nowhere, he said, has the Pope more pious devotees and more zealous adherents than in the land which gave England William of Orange and sheltered the Pilgrim Fathers. If the church is not increasing there in numbers, it is daily adding to its power and influence. "There is no rent of heresy in the solid mass of that mediæval building save the remarkable schism of the so-called Jansenists; ... but this sect, with its few thousands of adherents, is far more interesting from its history than important from actual influence." Protestantism, on the other hand, shows little but dissension, with a strong tendency towards scepticism. "There is a tide of neology, a flood of unbelief, which no dikes or moles can keep back.... A great many, a sadly increasing number, are more or less forsaking the Gospel and becoming estranged from Christian truth. Materialism and irreligion are slaying their tens of thousands in the ranks of so-called Christians." Mr. Stuart draws a fearful picture of the disputes of the different Protestant theological schools, and continues: "It is evident, indeed, that the utter confusion into which the Reformed Church of Holland has fallen cannot last very long, lest it should lead to a total disorganization and overthrow of the whole.... Nothing for this moment is left but to bear, though not without earnest protest, a state of things too abnormal and too absurd to last." Of Switzerland, again, we have almost precisely the same story. The Rev. Eugene Reichel, of Montmireil, complained of the activity of the Catholic Church in his little republic, and the great increase of infidelity among Protestants. "A deplorable unbelief has led captive the masses of the people. They have left their churches to engulf themselves in the vortex of business and worldly pleasure.... On every side infidelity is become rampant, and much more aggressive than in former years. Better organized than once, and finding an efficient support both in the indifference of the people and the countenance afforded by government, this insidious foe, closing up its ranks, is not slow to assail the truth." Of Spain Mr. Fliedner gave a vague and not over-brilliant account, and of Greece Mr. Kalopathakes could only say that Protestants had a very hard time of it there, and that there were very few of them. American missionaries have been sustained in Greece for forty years, and yet there is only one meeting-house in the kingdom. Mr. Decoppet, of Paris, declares that "the Protestant population of France is still but a feeble minority, which holds its own, but does not sensibly increase," while the church is evidently gaining every day in influence; and, moreover, Protestantism is torn by internal discords, and weakened by rationalistic tendencies, which give its enemies "a plausible pretext for their assertion that Protestantism leads necessarily to negation, and that it is on the high-road to dissolution." In Denmark, according to Dr. Kalkar, of Copenhagen, Catholicism has made rapid and extraordinary progress. In Protestant Sweden, "unbelief has spread among the people, especially among the educated classes," and "the moral condition of the people is tolerably low."
Upon the discussion of the various methods proposed in the conference to combat the enemies of Protestantism we do not know that we need linger. Infidel philosophy engaged most of the attention of the German and American delegates; but how could Protestantism do battle with its own offspring? The debate on the Darwinian theory was empty—nay, it was almost childish. The essays on the same subject were timid and inconsequential. And strange to say, when the day for demolishing the Pope of Rome came around, the fiery, aggressive spirit which animated the Alliance in former days was wanting. There were rumors of dissatisfaction among the brethren at the time-honored attitude of the Evangelical Alliance towards the Scarlet Woman of Babylon; and it was thought that while atheism was so rife, and faith so weak, and Protestantism dying, so to speak, of inanition, it was unwise to quarrel with any kind of Christianity which seemed able to arrest the downward progress. Those who judged thus instinctively felt, what they would be slow to acknowledge, that between the Catholic Church and no faith at all there is not a middle position. The whole Conference teaches the same truth. Protestantism drifts away into the darkness and the storm, but the Rock of Peter stands immovable, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for all time.
"Upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
FOOTNOTES:
[130] Romans xvi. 17, 18.