growth. The Holy Catholic Church never has been divided, and never can be divided. And a genuine catholicity has nothing in it that can interfere with the largest enjoyments of personal enrichment, inquiry, or growth. But if there is to be kept open a highway, it must be a highway, not a blind alley. If the historic advance of Christianity is not to end, like the Rhine River, in extinction, then the stream must be kept wide and deep, and the little streams of individual selfinterest and self-development, even in devotion and spirituality, must flow into the great channel of the whole. Where the individual Christians all feel it needful to have the ritual modified to suit themselves, and the individual theologians all feel it necessary to add their "personal" touch, and the masses of the church at large are kept guessing whether these varieties of thought belong to the same class or not and whether the words used mean what they seem to mean, and have to carry on a perpetual game of hide-and-seek with symbolical meaning and critical guesses and economic theologies, the church may live; but it will be a weak, ill-fed, anæmic thing. In no respect is the need of the church so great at this moment as in this matter. If the mass of thinking men and women will come from the lanes and by-paths of personal selfassertion and self-gratification in which they have been wandering into the great common road of historic Christianity, and if the religious thinkers and preachers will all join in a grand and united affirmation of the simple essentials of the Christian gospel, and use the vernacular of common life, and deal with the processes and the practices with which common men are familiar, the tramp of the swelling forces will itself make a resounding that will awake echoes of the triumphant revivals of other days. Liberty has been achieved. Whether we can achieve the unity which is its custodian and protection, is the pressing question of the hour.

ARTICLE II.

IMPENDING CHANGES IN CONGREGATIONALISM.

BY MR. GEORGE PERRY MORRIS.

SOMETHING more than the fact that a new century has begun, makes a diagnosis of the age opportune. Thoughtful men realize that they are navigating waters where currents meet and surge; or, to change the figure, that they are living at a time when the topography of systems of belief and forms of polity are being changed by the heavings of fires within.

Landmarks that once were thought safe to steer by, and as everlasting, are gone. New peaks to guide the mariner have emerged. The tremors of the upheaval unnerve many, just as does the earthquake's weird and ominous thrill. There is an atmosphere of uncertainty as to the future, a disinclination to dogmatize; the mood of the hour is one of toleration, not only because some think it a lofty mood, but because others deem it a prudent mood. Reverent agnosticism is now permissible where formerly joyful certitude was thought to be indispensable. These are all signs of man's intuitive feeling or reasoned conviction that striking changes have come recently in the realm of theology and the realm of polity, and that other changes are impending.

Here and there pioneers who have forged ahead, fought with the enemy, explored the new territory, and sounded the depths of its streams and riches of its mines are certain that a New Epoch for Faith has arrived. But, to change the figure again and abruptly, the ground-swell of the storm which a few

have outridden or are outriding is still giving many a navigator-clerical and lay-serious qualms as to whether his anchors will hold if he elects to lie by, or whether his boat will breast and surmount the waves if he sails out into the gale and on the open sea.

What are some of the signs of the times?

Philosophical materialism is passing, but practical materialism is rife. Whether more or less than formerly is an open question on which wise and good men disagree, and it is not a question pertinent to this discussion. But that practical materialism is sufficiently diffused and dominant to cause some of the purest of American patriots and most loyal advocates of democracy to be pessimistic as to the future, will be conceded by all who are in touch with the thought of the time as it finds expression in sermon, current literature, and conversation. The state as an institution waxes mightier as men concede to it collective power formerly carefully retained by individuals. The school, symbolizing learning, multiplies numerically, adds to its endowment at a prodigious rate, both through gifts of individuals and public taxation, and grows in favor with Democracy, whether deemed an instrument for culture or for utilitarian ends. Per contra, both the church and the family wane in prestige and relative place in the social structure under the disintegrating influence of individualistic tendencies and standards of belief and conduct.

Economically and politically speaking, the individual man is losing much of his former liberty of choice, at the same time that domestically, intellectually, and spiritually he is gaining more. Authority is shifting from office to character, from institutions to individuals. It is becoming intrinsic rather than extrinsic, personal rather than official, at least in the church and family, and to some extent at least in the state.

Last, but not least, emphasis upon the subjective aspects of human thought and conduct, clearer knowledge of institutional origins, the growth of doctrine and development of codes of ethics; a passing over into the realm of Faith and Conduct of Science's dictum as to the relativity of truth; and man's accumulating knowledge, derived through induction, of the infinite variety of point of view which differing heredity, environment, attainment, and ambition among men make not only possible but certain-all these are subtly but surely working against an aforetime spirit of dogmatism, against confidence in the finality of definitions and fixity of forms which formerly were the bulwark of religion on its creedal and institutional sides, and this among Protestants as well as among Roman Catholics; for with the former the Reformation brought only a partial break with the static or deposit theory of truth.

Here it is a time of flux; there a time of crystallization. Varieties of intellectual and spiritual climate in the same community and in the same church to-day are as many as the varieties of climate within the borders of the United States. Some live in and are content with the ideals of an individualistic gospel, a Jeffersonian democracy, a master-and-servant order of industry; others believe in "a world a subject of redemption," a republic playing the part of an elder brother with dependencies in tutelage, and do not fear to see the state gradually made supreme in industry, all citizens being partners. Some abide with satisfaction in provincialism and sectionalism; others welcome enlarged nationalism, and intensified race consciousness. Some are loyal, convinced, and unalterable sectarians; others labor for denominational federation, and others for organic church unity. Some are of Paul or Apollos, some of Calvin or Wesley; and others are believers

in the supremacy of the present Holy Spirit, and call no man master. Some conceive of God as transcendent but only immanent in a very unmoral and unspiritual way; others believe in him as preeminently immanent; others as immanent but also transcendent.

Some conceive of the church as an end in itself; others as a means to an end-the Kingdom of God, instrument or means undergoing expected and proper eclipse or extinction as the end is gained. Some are in the stage of analysis of all the fundamental beliefs of philosophy, theology, or ethics; others have passed into the stage of synthesis or reconstruction; some know nothing of either analysis or synthesis, of either philosophy or theology, but, with mystic faith, and reliance on data derived from personal experience of God and his love, live untroubled in a troublous time. Some are still courtiers of Science, and think her sovereign everywhere; while others understand that her realm hath its strict bounds, and look forward with hope to serving once more with undivided loyalty in the realms of philosophy and theology.

It is to churches as composite as these conditions would imply, that the clergyman of to-day is asked to minister with satisfaction to all; and the wonder is that, even when his own mind is clear and his own pathway straight before him, he is able as often as he is to serve with wisdom and to mutual edification, and of course he does it best and most surely when he is deeply religious, and appeals to the universal religious needs and aspirations in language that is vital, because born of the experience of ordinary men in all times at all stages of history. It is doubtful whether the average layman to-day who is immersed in business or burdened with civic responsibilities is conversant with the intellectual, spiritual, and administrative