USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of the First church in Boston, 1630-1880 > Part 5
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wrought more gradually, more quietly, more without notice or observation, than in the First Church. There is absolutely nothing found upon its records indicating even a disturbed harmony or a divided vote, as, in the election of successive pastors, degrees of rigidness, or of increased liberality of doctrinal belief or spirit, would make one candidate preferable to another. There were three parties in every one of the old parishes, cach of which had dis- tinct influence and agency in the attitude assumed towards the gradual relaxing of the original Puritan creed: these were the minister, the members of the church in covenant, and the general parishioners or proprietors taxed to support the ministry, commonly called the congregation. It was because all three of these parties in the First Church' shared equally in the modifications and softenings of opinion and doctrinal views, working through the com- munity, that the consequent adaptations in talents and belief which were needed in the pulpit were so placidly provided for. Sharp contentions there were in some other parishes consequent upon the relations assumed in either of the three following contingencies, or in combinations of them: the minister might retain the old rigidness of the creed, and by restricting accessions to the church, might keep that body steadfast to Orthodoxy; the church itself might claim separate and paramount authority in the selection of a new minister; the congregation, taxed for the support of the institution, might refuse to receive a minister whose views were objectionable to them.
The First Church was served by a succession of minis- ters of native abilities, furnished with the best education of their times, and well trained in professional tastes, aptitudes, and sympathies. Besides holding as close fraternal rela- tions with their clerical brethren as do the priests of the Roman communion in their bachelor fraternities and their
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secret councils, in which the laity have no share, they enjoyed what those priests do not, -the privileges of domestic life, and of intimate converse with their fellow- creatures in every grade and range of social condition, and especially with those of thought and culture. The com- pany of scholars was for a long time a limited one. The compass of literature, compared with what it is to us, was narrow, and nearly all of what was current here for a cen- tury and a half was theological. It was simply by bringing. the action of their minds to bear upon the creed in which they had been educated, and noting the restlessness which it stirred in every effort to qualify or readjust it, that they outgrew its limitations. It has often been affirmed, that if our Congregational divines had been held to a form of ser- vice and the repetition of the creeds, they and their people would have been saved from heresy in various forms. But they would not by this process have been saved from that worst heresy, the profession by the lips of what is false to the mind and the heart.
When the human mind, in the carnest, intelligent, and conscientious exercise of its faculties, fixes its searching study upon what is offered to it as a creed, - a summary statement of tenets for belief, - two distinct processes may be defined for its inquiry. The first will engage upon the substance or contents of the creed, its propositions, their meaning, and their consistency with what is known or fairly inferred in other departments of truth. The second inquiry will concern the authority, the source, the sanction from and by which the creed is derived and certified.
We do not hear now, nor have to plead to, as an earlier generation among us did, aspersions and prohibitions cast upon the exercise of our reasoning faculties in matters for religious belief. The familiar protest once was, - and it was conclusive to our Puritan ancestry, - human reason has
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no rightful exercise upon truths or mysteries, doctrines or things to be believed, which God has graciously revealed ; we have simply to accept them with humble submission and confidence. Honest and earnest men soon learned to answer that they were not challenging nor even reasoning upon God's ways and will, but simply the views and inter- pretations of them in religious doctrines, which were set forth in the words of other men. The only alternative to reliance on the exercise of one's own reason is reliance on the exercise of the reason of other persons, which, accord- ing to circumstances, it may be wise or unwise to yield ; and the willingness to do it is the result of the use of more or less reason. No form of religious faith, ecclesiastical or doctrinal, was ever recognized which did not at some stage of it require or engage the exercise of the reasoning power. Even when anything is entertained as " revealed " or miraculously communicated, reason steps in to infer, interpret, or apply. "The angel of the Lord appears unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush." Nevertheless, the sight is not interpreted for him till he " turns aside " and makes a study of the wonder. There is a transparent fallacy in the plea, " If God has revealed this or that, no human being, child, subject of his, should question or dispute it." The question is thrown back and becomes, " Has God revealed it, and how and to whom? and how does he reveal it to nie ?" Never was there a human being who would deny anything that he believed God had revealed. Under the firm and unswerving belief that God had revealed the articles of their stern creed, the Puritans, enthralled and subdued by the conviction, bowed themselves to a loyal and steadfast acceptance of it. There are millions of waiting and aching minds and hearts more than ready and willing to do the same to-day, if they can feel the same assurance of a revelation from God. But
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when we examine the grounds and evidence on which those profound convictions of the Puritans rested, many find that they cannot in sincerity - the first quality of all religious life and faith - admit that the tests, methods, and results of the reasoning powers of the Puritans are valid to them- selves. It is mere trifling to assert that this state of mind « is peculiar to the avowed members of one denomination or fellowship of professed Christians, or to a class of persons called rationalistic, conceited, self-opinionated, and boastful of their mental freedom. It needs no argument or illustra- tion to certify to us the fact, familiar to our reflections and observations, that the different results rested in for creeds, by individuals and religious fellowships, are largely decided by the different starting-points, the assumptions made, the concession yielded, the matter taken for granted as true, from which they proceed to deduce or to add their further articles of belief. Different seekers, questioners, and rea- soners choose or adopt different starting-points, are ready to assume or to yield different assumptions or concessions, to consider different positions to be taken for granted or brought to the question. In this process some go farther back, so to speak, are more inquisitive, more radical than others. The convert in training for discipleship in the Roman Church is expected to accept a certain theory as to the idea, the institution, and the authority of the super- natural society which Jesus Christ founded on this earth. The Protestant goes back of the assumptions here made for a starting-point, and puts them to the tests of search and evidence. Some bodies of Protestants start with cer- tain assumptions about the Bible; other Protestants chal- lenge those assumptions and wish to be certified of their validity. Some pet phrases and forms of expression have a marvellous efficacy and potency for some minds, as for instance, " the form of sound words," or " the faith once
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delivered to the saints " applied to a creed. The glamour of the past, the fond and tender ties and filaments of asso- ciation with ancient forms of reverential belief, make more than acceptable, indeed very precious, to some devout persons, narrations which, if set in the light and glare of the actual present, would at once lose their charm and power. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children would sternly take in hand any bald-headed prophet whose " cursing" should in these days set two she-bears to tear forty-two little children (2 Kings ii. 23, 24). A modern ecclesiastical council, local, provincial, or ecumenical, is what the average and combined wisdom, discretion, and limitations of view of the members make it. Was it ever otherwise? True, the pleasant legend tells us that though only three hundred and eighteen bishops were summoned to the Council of Nicaa, and only three hundred and eighteen seats were provided for them, yet whenever the forms of the members were counted, the count always yielded three hundred and nineteen. The unsummoned and unseated visitant was the Holy Ghost. Ilis ballot, if it could have been recorded, would have outweighed all the rest.
We should have to look back to a date far beyond that of this famous council to find the earliest exercise of the activity and fertility of the human brain and fancy, in trans- forming the simple gospel of Jesus Christ, which began with the parables and the Sermon on the Mount, into the metaphysical, sacerdotal, and doctrinal system, which for so many ages has stood to represent the Christian religion. The highest and most satisfactory view - that which alone reconciles us to all the poor, mean, and imbittered elements of the strife - to be taken of the long contention between those who have called themselves Christians, is that the wisest and best of those who have had part in it have thus
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sought to work their way back to the substance of the original Gospel. They have wished to put themselves in the position and fellowship of those of whom it is written, "When He was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth and taught them."
The Roman Pontiff tells us that his church is of Divine creation, organization, and sanction, supernaturally guided, built up of materials and elements in harmony with its celestial origin. To one who searches the often repulsive pages of " church history," so called, the claim is similar to that which should assert that the great temple of that faith, St. Peter's at Rome, had a Divine architect and plan, was reared from consecrated quarries, endowed with the pure, free gifts of pious trust and gratitude, and made the holy shrine of a humble, self-denying, and unworldly devo- tion. We know well how heathen temples and palaces were spoiled, from wall to foundation, for the stone blocks of that temple; how greed and extortion, the sale of " in- dulgences," and all the arts and appliances of superstition and priestcraft were plied to gather funds for its con- struction and lavish adornment; and we know how from its gilded pontifical throne there have gone forth edicts which have scourged the earth. The upbuilding, composition, and sway of the Roman hierarchy itself, the materials wrought into it, and the ends which it has been made to serve, are perfectly paralleled in that analysis of its great temple. The unbiassed and unprofessional reader of his- tory can trace the dates and processes by which each and every accretion, usurpation, priestly device, and ecclesiasti- cal extension of claim and prerogative was advanced and adopted in the Roman system; precisely as a local his- torian can inform us how a section of the earth, once virgin soil, was transmuted by time, civilization, art, and labor, into a great city, with all its noble and elevating
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institutions, and also with the means, temptations, and hiding-places which minister to other than the innocent, pure, and honest proclivities of human nature.
And yet that Church, by the providential intervention and overruling which limit the range of the wrong and folly of man, has pages of its history, deeds and services of holy love and mercy, heroisms of sanctity and piety, consummate examples of every quality of nobleness and virtue, in grateful recognition of which civilized humanity will always reverently bow. But time and circumstances and occasion ripened the era when that church had to yield to the stern challenge of reformation. That process once begun has as yet found no limit or end. Christianity is the only religion ever known on this earth that could en- dure this process of reform. The Puritans thought they had set the model and standard for the completion of that work. But they left a doctrinal creed, in part the inheri- tance from the old ingenuities of human brains, and in part a contribution of their own sincere but bewildered picty, which has given serious perplexity and dismay to those who have come into their inheritance.
There are those of their lineage in land, in homes, and in Congregational churches, knit in close sympathies and associations by the ancient platform, who still profess a steadfast loyalty to the doctrinal creed and symbols of the Puritans. A considerable portion of these maintain that the creed is an essential element of the Puritan system of church polity, and so that they alone, excluding their former bretliren who are now called Unitarians, are entitled to the name and heritage of Congregationalists. There will be few who will care to throw much interest into this claim, seeing that there are all over this vast land large fellowships of Christians, under different denominational names, whose polity is substantially that of Congregation-
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alism. Far more importance is made - by an incident for ecclesiastical history in this passing year - to attach to the searching question whether those who now represent Con- gregationalism, as above limited, verily hold to the old Puritan doctrinal creed and symbols. Certain very nat- ural, yet very embarrassing and perplexing experiences have brought this question into restless discussion among those whom it chiefly concerns. In the examination of candidates for the Congregational ministry, in the debates of councils and conventions, and in the published sermons and books of some of their prominent preachers, unmis- takable tokens of heresy, of more or less, serious departures from and bold denials of the fundamentals of the old creed, have been constantly manifesting themselves. The occa- sions have been so frequent and of such notoriety in dis- cussion, and have been so annoyingly or mischievously played upon, that the representative men and the steadfast exponents of Congregationalism can no longer feel that they are faithful to themselves in failing to face an emer- gent demand on them. So, during this very year, the Congregationalists of this country, in general convention, provided for the selection and constitution of a large com- mittee of their most honored representative men, professors of theology in school and college, scholars, divines and pastors, charged with the trust of reconstructing or re- adjusting the terms, the phraseology, and the contents of their denominational creed. It may be an exigent, but it certainly is a most perilous commission, one beset with risks and apprehensions. It may be entered upon in har- mony, but with what spirit of demand and concession, of individual indulgence, and of general compliance it may proceed, and to what issue it will come, no human wisdom or foresight can trust itself to forecast. Nothing but a sense of high obligation to a constraining duty could have
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secured sanction to the measure. One who will follow the developments with only a less degree of interest than those who are nearest to its central responsibility, can but wish most sincerely that the old Puritan honesty, fearlessness, and heartiness of purpose to be "fully persuaded in his own mind" may control the action of the committee, and may set for the belief of others only the standard which without qualification they accept for themselves.
And here it may be that very many persons will real- ize a full sense of the mischief which was wrought when, for those who must have a creed, the Westminster Sym- bol, with all its daring and needless. ventures upon the fields of scholastic divinity, was substituted for the so- called "Apostles' Creed." This latter symbol is so en- gaged with Divine personages and, their relations, that it hardly makes any recognition of man, the human being, in his state and nature. It refers to him by implication only, as one whose sins may be forgiven, and whose body will rise from death. There is nothing about his fall, his birth- depravity, his state of ruin, his doom, or about the method of his deliverance. But, taken in the detail and sum of its specifications, its definitions and its affirmations, its positive assertions, and its nargued, undefended interpretations of Divine deeds and purposes, - what a subject for mental and spiritual task-work is the Westminster Symbol! It was undoubtedly intended that the Scripture references to book, chapter, and verse, attached as " Proof-Texts" to the doctrinal statements of the creed, should be a fair digest of the whole teachings of the Bible. We all know that such detached and dislocated sentences and passages of the Book present quite different impressions when read by us in their places and interpreted by " the harmony of the Scriptures." So manifold, indeed, are the lights and shades of the attributes and purposes of God, as presented
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in different parts of the Bible, that sentences of an incon- sistent and even directly opposite tenor might, in very many important cases, be set against the " Proof-Texts " which are, cited. One or more members of the revising committee may well be charged with special attention to this matter. And while the patient, carnest toil of chosen divines is to be given to this work, how are other classes of the world's great thinkers and teachers engaged in their different but as earnest searchings for high and needful truth about things human and divine! What questions crowd upon them ! - " Can we ascribe Personality to the Power working in and through the Universe? Is anything knowable of God? Can any human being trust him- self to interpret God's purposes and ways, or to formulate propositions about him? Was the origin of the human race in Unity or in Diversity? Is man a specific creation, or the issue of development or evolution? Was a degree of civilization or a state of abject barbarism his first state on the earth? Does a law of responsibility apply to man, any more or other than relatively applies to brute creatures? Is there ground or reason for a belief in a future life for man?" These and many other like searching and fearless questions, ploughing deep under the roots and foundations of all religious creeds, are tossed into the arena of public debate. They engage the thoughts of the profoundest philosopher, and of the artisan, the mechanic, and the husbandman who has an active brain. While these ques- tions, in debate or in decision, run through all the most fresh and current literature of the age, a group of selected scholars and divines are to readjust the contents of the Symbol of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, to guide on the religious believings of men and women till the indefinite time when a like labor may be needed and repeated. We have been made to understand how pro-
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foundly, either with full intelligence or with dull apprehen- sion, the revision of the English text of the New Testament has moved the English-speaking world of men and women. The proposed readjustment of the Orthodox creed will engage and stir a deeper anxiety, and will involve vastly more of restless and passionate variances than have as yet engaged public attention since the circulation of the re- vision. To very many persons who are startled, if not shocked, by the freedom and positiveness with which the Westminster Symbol speaks of the methods, attributes, purposes, and decrees of God, this boldness touches upon irreverence. It has all the confidence which appears in the reports of interviewers who have pried into the secrets of great personages.
It may be said, however, that those who are put in trust with this hazardous and exacting responsibility of read- justing the creed have a much more simple task. They can plead that they have nothing whatever to do with any of the radical and still debated and unsettled questions raised by philosophers and men of science. Their work is wholly aside from these, and will make no account of them whatever. They are to recast, qualify, rectify, and amend terms, phrases, and propositions of the creed solely by bringing it into closer fidelity to the spirit and teaching of the Bible. The Bible is still to them a revelation from God, accredited for all time, made more intelligible year by year, but parting with nothing of its sanctity, its author- ity, its supreme sufficiency for men as a Divine oracle. Of course there are those, steadfast and decided in what are to them convictions, who will be fully satisfied with this position. There are others, it remains to be seen in what proportion of those concerned, whose onward-looking views will be far from approving it. It is enough to say that the creed is committed to certain affirmations aboat the Bible
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as a whole, and in the composition of its parts, the doubt- ing, qualifying, and denying of which enter into the fore- most of the heresies in the Congregational and its affiliated bodies which have induced the subjection of the creed to the process it is now to undergo. The Bible - precious beyond terms of all estimate as it is, the crown and glory of the world's literature, bedewed and endeared by the fond piety of ages, more august and revered for its rule and law than all statute-books - is not to our age and its rep- resentative scholars and divines what it was to those of the age of the Westminster Assembly. Prelates and scholars of the English Church, divines and professors of theology in the Presbyterian Church, and their peers and fellows in all biblical learning in the Congregational body, - the very men set in high places to guard and defend the sanctity and claims of the Bible, - have themselves reduced the old estimate of it. The recent revision of the text has broken the spell of that stark superstition which attached literal inspiration and infallibility even to a translation of it. It has been admitted, even when not insisted upon, that where at certain points its contents touch the sphere of certified secular history and of positive science, it is faulted. The human element, and what is more, the legendary and myth- ical-fabulous element, is allowed to have an intrusive place in it, and when this allowance is yielded, its application will simply be a question of less or more, according to individ- ual judgments. Other allowances are made on the score of figurative and Oriental imagery, and rectifications are introduced of dates and authorship of parts of the sacred volume. Such matters as these never entered even into the dreams of the Westminster divines. So, of course, their creed was constructed not only without deference to them, but as we may say in defiance of them. And a ques- tion striking even deeper than these must not be slighted.
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When discussions arise upon words and sentences in the New Testament, as for instance on those which are used in arguing as to the doom of woe and horror for the vast major- ity of the human race, the question will not rest with asking merely the philology of the word Eternal, but will reach to examining the authority, the source of knowledge, and the infallibility of the writer of the words. How then can the readjustment of the creed be wisely and satisfactorily attempted without carrying the process into the modern estimate of the Holy Scriptures? The faith of millions in the Bible is still as their trust in the sunlight. But there is no occasion here for stating or urging the grounds on which, with multitudes of sincere, thoroughly informed, and responsible persons, its authority has ceased to be final on all religious subjects.
It is casy, in dismay or perplexity, to utter the protest : "If we cannot believe the Bible, where are we? We are all adrift concerning all that is serious and solemn in human life!" To say nothing of the fact that this has been and is now the case with the vast majority of the millions and millions of our race on the earth, the whole pertinency of the protest depends upon what is meant by belief in the Bible, and what are the grounds of that belief. It is certain that one condition of the validity of those grounds of confidence for those who share it will be the force and fairness with which they can commend them to other persons. At present the respective views which each of the two parties to an entire belief in the Bible seem to take of each other's position, as represented in our current literature, is as follows : The champion of the Bible says to the doubter, " Your pride of reason, your conceit, or your unregenerate heart leads you to reject the most precious gift of God to men." The doubter replies, " You believe because you allow your wishes and desires to persuade
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