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ation, who subsequently assumed a human body and became our Redeemer, and who, for his great service and perfect character, has been exalted to deity, and now reigns with the Father. This solution, again, was rejected. There was a beginning of the doctrine and a standard in the original revelation, and that taught the eternal and true deity of the Son, who could not be "advanced" to deity-a conception of deity substantially pagan. Hence, at Nice in 325, the church fathers fell back on the only other logically possible supposition as to Christ's divine nature, and taught that he was consubstantial with the Father,-having the same substance with the Father, true deity, and yet in some respect different from him,-which is the precise doctrine of John's prologue, "with God" and "God." This was the final settlement of the question. For more than fifty years the disputes continued to rage, for the result of the Council was beyond the status of conviction and understanding in the church, and clearness and assured certainty could be obtained only by full discussion. But ultimately, at Constantinople in 381, the result was reaffirmed, and it remains yet undisturbed, and was even verbally incorporated in 1883 by a committee of American Congregationalists in the creed they wrote for the Congregational churches. A God, numerically one, but existing in three eternal personific factors-this in modern phrase is the one permanent and unchanged doctrine of Nice and of the church.

Here is evolution. A highly abstract product of thought is gradually arrived at by logical processes in which the original elements of revelation are carefully guarded. It is true because founded on revelation, which is the communication by God of truth as to himself. It is also seen to be true because it is a true evolution,-a reaction and continuous adjustment of inner life to outer relations, a coming of the church into harmony with objective fact.

ARTICLE IX.

THE NEW PAROCHIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
OF THE CHURCH.

BY THE REVEREND THOMAS CHALMERS.

In the history of Christianity, there have been two general forms of religious activity, and these forms, though always in some measure coexistent, have usually succeeded each other in great eras. One form is that of evangelization, and the other is that of parochialization; and the thesis which this article proposes is, that American Christianity is passing, and should pass, into an era of parochialization. I say this as one who has had full sympathy with the traditional type of evangelism. But evangelism is not to continue as it has the dominant form of militant Christianity. The popular conception of vital and aggressive religion which was to persist in this country for more than a century and a half was fixed by the Great Awakening at Northampton. And it has been a distinctly American conception.1 Since that day American Protestantism has judged of earnest, virile Christianity almost wholly by the evangelistic standard. When revivals have been frequent and sweeping, the church has enjoyed the consciousness of prosperity. When they have ceased, the church has lauguished, or lived on in the patient hope of their return. They have been the one great object of the prayers of the faithful.

This era of evangelization has been one of the most beneficent epochs in the history of the church. The Great

1"The idea of revivals is the gift of American to foreign Calvinism." -A. V. G. Allen, in Jonathan Edwards, p. 136.

Awakening transformed the moral and religious life of New England.1 The fervor it kindled in the church enabled Christianity to overtake the tides of migration westward, establishing, as the fruits of successive revivals, in cities, villages, and country districts, the permanent institutions of Christian life and worship. Without financial aid or recognition from the state, our Christianity has covered the continent with its churches. It is a feat of evangelization almost unparalleled in the history of Christianity. The denominations which were best calculated to give expression to the spirit of the Great Awakening have reaped the harvests of the century and a half. The Methodists and Baptists, never having enjoyed the prestige of state patronage, unfrightened by threatened respectability, have surrendered themselves fully to the evangelistic idea, and have been, therefore, the great religious forces of the country. The Presbyterians and Congregationalists have prospered in almost exact proportion as they too have interpreted the spirit of the era. The Episcopal Church has shared neither in its spirit nor its prosperity.

But there are already indications that the era is passing, and it is natural that it should. Some form of evangelism must have a perpetual place, but it will not determine, as it has done, the character of our Christianity. Among the indications of a transition, we mention the general apprehension that the days of the great revivals are gone. Mr. Moody's successor is not looked for. Denominations that have depended most exclusively on evangelism express alarm that they have ceased to progress or are losing ground. The denominations, on the other hand, like the Lutherans and Episcopalians, that depend more on parochial than on evangelistic efficiency, are in the ascendant. Greater attention is being given by all our churches to the care of the local parish.

1 Jonathan Edwards, p. 185.

This is shown by the awakening interest in the catechumenate. Some two dozen catechisms of various types have been prepared by Congregational pastors alone, and pastors' classes for the moral and religious instruction of the young are becoming general. Efforts have been made on a considerable scale for a decade past by institutional churches to meet the social and spiritual needs of the parish. These churches have been so far at least in the cities-the best exponents of the parish idea. They have ignored denominational lines, and have sought to serve the community. The ordinary denominational church contents itself with being surrounded by the homes of scattered parishioners. The institutional church, in the difficult attempt to restore the parochial idea, has sought to surround itself by a parish. It has not been an entire success, but it has borne witness to the principle that geographical location should, on the whole, mean more in church affiliation than denominational ancestry. At present our churches are points, each with a scattered constituency. There is little definite assumption of responsibility for territory as such. Between these points are the valleys of neglect, where the population lives in semi-heathenism. This churchless population is the menace of the civilization. The vast majority of the boys and girls who go wrong are from this churchless class. These valleys cannot be evangelized by the traditional evangelism. Revival meetings barely touch them. This churchless population is Protestant. There is no churchless Roman Catholic population in this country worth speaking of. The parochial efficiency of the Roman Church prevents it. The heathenism of this country is ours, and it is judging the Protestant Church. It must be conquered by us as efficiently as the churchless Romanism that preceded the priest to America has been, and is being, conquered by the Roman Church. It cannot be conquered by the agencies we

have been relying upon, but I believe it can be conquered by a calm, quiet, patient, and general return to parochial methods, and for this belief I have the rich confirmation of history.

IN THE FIRST ERA.

The first era of the Christian church, which was evangelistic, blended into an era of parochialization. Means were adopted by which the results of the apostolic preaching were conserved; the church became established, and pastors settled over pastorless congregations; limits to ecclesiastical jurisdiction were fixed; the character and function of the pastor as the spiritual counselor of his people were defined; he kept himself acquainted by system with the condition of the souls of his people; the catechumenate stood at the door of the church to bar the insincere, to lead the earnest into the path of eternal life, and to lay bare the sins that damned the age. In short, the task the church had before her was definitely perceived, and she went about it with a clearness of vision and a regularity of movement, without which victory could never have come, and which could not have characterized a purely evangelistic era.

IN THE GERMAN REFORMATION.

The first period of the German Reformation was one of evangelization. The gospel of justification by faith was proclaimed, wherever the German language was spoken, by an army of converted, monks and priests. Every intelligent convert became an evangelist, and "every place," says D'Aubigné, "became a temple." The gospel of God's free grace was preached in market-places, cemeteries, groves, and lime-tree meadows by transient evangelists until the Lutheran doctrines were popularly prevalent throughout the German-speaking world. But this era of evangel

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