"We have not unfrequently thought that the combination of infidel philanthropy, angry political violence, and religious devotion which has been enlisted against slavery, was the cause of the ill success which has thus far befallen this work. .

"We hardly know how to speak in fitting terms, in the brief space which is allotted to our editorial column, of the theoretical and practical infidelity of the present day. It certainly presents an entirely different phase from that which was witnessed in the days of Paine and Voltaire and their associates. Instead of the ribaldry, sensuality, and blasphemy of that day, it presents to us now seriousness, philanthropy, and religion."

When Paul "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come, Felix trembled." When infidelity reasons of "seriousness, philanthropy, and religion," the Felix of the day has a right to tremble. But how blind the writer must be!

As if the Church of God was

a place, and not a power! Why, when the news of this great experiment in the West Indies came to this country, as your preacher tells it, the infidels asked, "Is the man temperate? Does he love his brother and not shed his blood? Does he respect his wife? Does he teach his children?" and the Church asked, "Does he make as much rum as he did before? Are there as many hogsheads of sugar exported from Jamaica? Show me the statistics!" God said, "Justice! When I founded the universe, I saw to it that right should be profitable." Infidelity said, "Amen! I cannot see, but I believe." The Church said, "Prove it!"

THE PULPIT.

A Discourse before the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Music Hall, November 18, 1860.

I

AM going to use the hour you lend me this morning in speaking of the pulpit. Not that I expect to say anything new to you who have statedly frequented these seats for many years; but the subject commends itself to my interest just at this moment when we all feel so earnestly the propriety and the duty of endeavoring to perpetuate this legacy of Theodore Parker.

This pulpit, there are two elements which distinguish it from all other pulpits in New England, which distinguish it emphatically from all other pulpits in the city. One is this: you allow it to be occupied by men and by women, by black men and white men, by the clergy and by laymen. That is a very short statement, and seemingly a very simple one; but how vast an interval of progress is measured by the extent of that simple statement! It seems to me the first, the very first time that the central idea of New England has gotten expression; for if there be anything that lies at the very root of New England moral life, it is a protest against the idea of a priesthood, a select class, set apart with peculiar authority, and capable, and they alone, of peculiar functions. Our churches have drifted away from the old idea; but New England was the vanguard of that Protestant protest against the idea of a priest, the idea

that the laying on of hands, or the consent of a brotherhood of peculiar devotion, could so set apart one individual as to make him more capable of certain functions, or more entitled to instruct. You, it seems to me, are the first who have boldly faced the ultimate consequences of that principle. Congregationalism blossoms in its "bright, consummate flower" here. I feel a peculiar interest in this principle. The first man, if you will allow me to go back for a moment, the first man who bore my name this side of the ocean, said to his church at Watertown, when they proceeded to induct him to office because of his calling in England, "If they would have him stand minister by that calling which he received from the prelates in England, he would leave them." When, a year later, Governor Winthrop went to Watertown to settle certain dissensions there, the church said to him, "If you come as a magistrate you have no business here; if you come with authority from the court we have no business with you; if you come as friends from a neighbor church you are welcome." That was a fair representation of the original spirit of New England. When you initiated your church, you remembered it. Down to the present moment it has grown and unfolded, until at last you stand here with a platform which recognizes nothing but moral purpose; which ignores sex, race, profession; which goes down to the central root of the pulpit, a moral purpose, and says, practically, Whoever can help us in that is welcome here.

The second element that distinguishes you is, no creed. You have remembered another great philosophical principle, that men never can unite on metaphysics. The human machine cannot beat time in unison with a million of others. Charles V., when he endeavored to crowd Europe into one creed, and resigned, tried, you remember, to make a dozen watches beat time together,

and failed. Then he said, "What a fool I have been all my life, trying to make a million of minds beat time together!" But there is one thing which can melt multitudes together, which can make a million of men one. It is not metaphysics, it is not dogma, but it is purpose, the same which moulds a political party into one thunderbolt, the same which at all times aggregates men, travelling over different routes, and actuated by different motives, to one single end.

You are not as new in that as your enemies would have it believed; for it is a singular but forgotten fact that the first churches in New England, the first three in this city, and the general church throughout New England at its earliest day, had no statement of doctrine in their creeds. They confined themselves to a simple statement of purpose; for our fathers did not attempt to refine, they felt, which has always been the strength of all ages, and obeying, with simple, childlike loyalty, that instinctive feeling, they shaped their churches to serve their age. You are in that but the descendants, the legitimate children of New England ideas. Not that I think it necessary to prove that Protestantism sustains us, but simply to show that the ignorance and short-sightedness of critics fail to see that you are not an abnormal monster, but the normal growth of New England progress. I should spend the whole hour that you give me if I insisted, as it deserves, on this first or this second element of your difference from the churches about you, but it is enough to state them.

Let us look now for a moment at the essence of the pulpit, and in order to that, in a moment, I will read you my text. There is no mystery about a pulpit. There is no necessary connection between a church and a pulpit, a very common mistake. You may have as much or as little of a church as you please. I believe in

more of a church than most of you do. I think the experience of centuries has shown that an organization of men for the culture of what you may consider the religious sentiment and devotional feeling, the unfolding of these two elements of our nature, is a good thing. I think that to a certain extent the "ordinances" of what are called churches are good. Understand me, I would never join one of those petty despotisms which usurp in our day the name of a Christian Church. I would never put my neck into that yoke of ignorance and superstition led by a Yankee Pope, and give my good name as a football for their spleen and bigotry. That lesson I learned of my father long before boyhood ceased.

I could never see any essential difference between the one portentious Roman Pope and the thousand petty ones. who ape him in our pulpits. In the fervor of the Reformation, men dreamed they were getting rid of the claim to infallibility and the right to excommunicate. But the Protestant Church, in consequence of the original sin of its constitution, soon lapsed into the same dogmatism and despotism. Indeed, Macaulay does not seem to believe that there ever was any real intent in the Reformers to surrender these prerogatives. "The scheme was," he says, "merely to rob the Babylonian enchantress of her ornaments, to transfer the cup of her sorceries to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the way." But I quite agree with the last speaker who occupied this desk, Mr. Sanborn of Concord, when he intimated the eminent utility, perhaps necessity, of a pastor in the full sense of that term. The many needs of your daily domestic life in which he could aid you are evident.

But a pulpit has no connection with a church. The Roman Catholic Church, which makes seven sacraments and bases her whole religious life and purpose upon sacraments, gives very little or no importance whatever