churches were none the better, or the State would be greatly the worse by its continuing to provide for their pecuniary support, this sustenance was withdrawn. But the doctrine was never renounced, and it never can be until Atheism becomes the practical creed of a community, that the State is bound to render protection and friendly countenance to every organized association for Christian worship. We do not deny that serious evils grew out of the connection of the church and the State, even in the guarded and limited form in which in New England it was held as a theory or administered in fact. We are well aware that the struggles which led to its dissolution reacted with serious and permanent evil consequences upon many of the churches of the so-called standing order. Not a few of these churches and parishes suffer to this day from the manifold roots of bitterness, which were the growths of this bitter and protracted politico-religious controversy. But on the other hand it is true that it is worth not a little to live on a soil, upon which at one time, all the population acknowledged in its inmost convictions that the Christian church with its living truths and its sacred worship was the chief interest for which man can live or die, and over whose returning Sabbaths nature brooded with a stillness so complete that the bells from valley to hill-top, could almost hear one another calling the people to worship. The convictions which moulded and sustained these communities are not yet wholly rooted out, and so long as they continue to influence our individual or social life, they bring with them an advantage and an opportunity which the present generation should not lightly disesteem.

The political organization with which the individual church had the nearest concern was the Town, and the town was at first usually identical with the parish. We omit altogether the political relationship of the self-governed church to the democratic town meeting which grew out of it, and of which DeTocqueville has made so much, and confine ourselves to the existence and functions of the town in its special relations to the church, or when acting as a parish or society. In the old times the parish of necessity included every family, as bound by law to contribute to the support of the church and as desiring and expecting to share in the spiritual blessings which the

church could impart. The propriety of attaching to the church. such an appendage as a parish is questioned by those Congregational doctrinaires who argue that in theory it can only be a burden and a curse, and that in practice it has wrought manifold evils and only evils. The fathers thought very differently. They were so far from desiring that any individual or family should escape from parochial relations, that they would not allow them to do so if they desired it. They assumed, asserted, and enforced the doctrine that every member of the community owed it as a duty to the State to be a member and supporter of some parish. The majority willingly consented to the obligation, chiefly because they thereby brought themselves within the reach of Christian privileges and in a sense confessed their faith in Christian truth and their desire for the blessings of the gospel. Every man who asked to be admitted as a member of the parish did by that act bring himself into a special connection with the kingdom of God, hoping and expecting thereby in due time to receive the fullness of its blessings in the present life and the life to come. In the earlier times every citizen who came to man's estate who had not denied the faith would do this as a matter of course. These traditions and feelings have not yet ceased to exert their influence. They once bound the entire community to the house of worship and its pastor by a net-work which was the stronger because unfelt. In a sense they held every family to Christian privileges and Christian hopes. Many of these hallowed social ties are now broken. Many households in the lurking places of the villages, in the secluded vallies, or on the rugged hill-sides, are practically unchristian so far as their attendance upon Christian worship would indicate. Many more as they remove from the country into the city or village are content to wander for a while from one church to another and soon to neglect all church attendance, and finally to relapse into a self-satisfied heathenism. The new-fashioned Congregational pastor, by a rigid but most unapostolical application of the theory that his church is only a voluntary society, and that his parish is limited to his pew-holders, fortified with a squeamish delicacy about proselyting and the rights of conscience, or yielding to a most unchristian torpor and indolence,

leaves these heathen alone, or conceives his duty and that of his flock to be discharged when the house of worship has been opened and a few free seats have been provided, and the bell rings out its weekly proclamation that "the happy gates of gospel grace stand open "-for an hour. It is difficult to say what should be done in city or numerous village to repair the loss that has come of the neglects and sectarian strifes of other days. It is certain that in the country, where every man knows his neighbor and where the traditions of the past linger with more or less of living force, the pastor of the church that took possession and has held possession of the soil and its inhabitants should be foremost in his zeal to arrest the growth of this heathenism which begins with the dry rot of stupid Atheism and so swiftly and so often breaks out in some malignant ulcer of horrid crime.

The school, like the town and the commonwealth, was also recognized by our mother church as an institution essential to its own well-being, and yet as having the right to a separate and independent existence. It is very significant and eminently worthy of notice that while it is true on the one hand that Congregationalism made no provision and contemplated no possibility for any other form of polity than its own, it never set up anything like a parochial school, nor did it make the school dependent on the church. The church in New England was in the anticipations of its friends always to be Congregational. No one dreamed in the first century that any other church could possibly live upon the New England soil. And yet the school was managed from the first not by the church but by the Town and the State. Public education both elementary and university was deemed an essential of Christian civilization, and for that reason the provision of its appliances for all was regarded as a Christian and an ecclesiastical duty. The pastor of the church was recognized as qualified by his own education and his official character to be one of the guardians of these interests. In those communities which were undivided by denominational strife he was accustomed to use the school as the place in which to catechise the children of his flock, inasmuch as all the school children in such cases belonged to his flock. In later times when a child belonged to an Episcopal or

Wesleyan family, the Church was substituted for the Westminster catechism. As soon as there was occasion for further toleration of dissenting consciences, these consciences were relieved. Till then the community rejoiced to belong to one fold and to follow one shepherd. And yet from the first, the school was never managed by the church, but regarded as an institution coördinate with it. Under this theory, the religious question in our schools was rarely embarrassing. When systematic provision was made for common school instruction for all the children of the State, that instruction was just as religious as the prevailing condition of the community required or would accept. So long as any community has desired religious instruction or worship, in whatever form, and no man's faith is discussed or assailed, so long such instruction has been given. Whether it was by forecast of man or of God, it was a most happy circumstance, that the first civil States that provided the most amply for public instruction, also made these schools religious but not ecclesiastical.

The church dealt similarly and yet differently with its colleges; differently because they were from the first independent of church control, and by their charters were committed to the management of trustees. That these trustees should originally be clergymen was almost a matter of course in the condition of the community at that time. That they were never designed exclusively for the training of clergymen is written plainly in their his tory. That they were schools of liberal arts and sciences, such as the arts and scienes were, cannot be disputed. At the time when the two oldest colleges were founded no other churches than the Congregational existed in the States which founded them. It is an interesting and significant fact that one of the earlier presidents of one of these colleges was led to renounce the ecclesiastical theory of Congregationalism by reading treatises contained in its library. That their education and culture should have been administered by men who were themselves Congregationalists was at first a necessity. That this should have been true in later years is what would be expected, in view of the church connections of the great majority of their trustees and patrons. But these have never in any narrow or exclusive sense been ecclesiastical institutions, although they may have

rendered important service to the church catholic, and to the catholicity of the church in America.

The family was in the eyes of the New Englander a sacred institution. Its purity was guarded by the most jealous care. The violation of its covenant vows was punished as a crime. The duty of obedience to parents was enforced by the convictions, the feelings, and manners of the entire community. The blessing of God was believed to descend from one generation to another from parents to children. In the faith of this truth the baptism of children was scrupulously practiced, and the deprivation of this rite was esteemed a serious loss. What was more serious, the sins of ungodly fathers were supposed to be visited on the third and fourth generation, and the manifold curse of God was thought to cleave to the very walls of the habitation of the profane. Family worship was observed with strict and painful punctiliousness even by not a few whose lives were out of harmony with their prayers. The entire domestic life was hallowed by associations with the gospel and the church, and every dwelling was a little chapel built into the meeting-house.

The relation of our mother church to the Christian faith and to theological science, opens an inquiry of surpassing interest, and forces the discussion of topics which if not burning questions are likely to scorch the hands of the man who ventures to take them up. By Christian truth we mean those great truths which the facts of the Christian history attest and enforce, e. g., the Incarnation, Redemption, and Retribution. By Christian theology we mean the formulated statement of these truths in propositions of the Schools more or less exactly defined, and more or less fully defended by the declarations of the Scriptures or the inferences that are deduced from the same. The founders of our mother church brought with them no written theological creed. Two of the creeds which they afterwards formally accepted were not in existence till a generation after the first of these churches were founded. Their belief was pronouncedly and sharply Calvinistic, after the declarations of the Synod of Dort, which was the type of theology adopted by both the Puritans and the Separatists. The theology of Massachusetts and Connecticut, of Plymouth and New Haven did