CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY. 1850-1880. (FIFTH VOLUME IN THE SERIES, COMPLETING THE WORK.) BY JOHN WADDINGTON, D.D., AUTHOR OF "CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY," 1200-1567; "CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY," 1567-1700 ; London: 3344 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1880. PREFACE. THE last volume of " CONGREGATIONAL HISTORY" (continuation to 1850) left the story respecting the character, labours, and testimony of several of the eminent leaders who have recently passed away, incomplete. More is due in justice to their memory. The institutions formed by them have been fairly tested, and we now reap the fruit of their anxious. thought and of their self-denying toil-we enter into their labours. To understand clearly the extent of our obligation and the weight of our responsibilities, it is important to ascertain the point to which we have reached. In the review of the last thirty years, with considerable excitement at intervals and some lost opportunities, we may mark decided stages of progress. At the beginning of this period persistent efforts were made to change our simple order of worship, and to modify the preaching either in substance or in form, in order to meet the requirements of the age. This demand, reiterated with great pertinacity, was strenuously resisted, on the ground that the pretended reform was neither needed, nor on any account to be desired. The simple polity derived from the New Testament, and beautiful in its Divine simplicity, it was contended, would continue with churches spiritually minded unchanged from age to age, and the Gospel, inmutable as its Author, and meeting the deepest wants of man, would never lose its peerless value. Venerable men who had preached that Gospel for nearly half a century watched the agitation on the part of some of the younger ministers with trembling solicitude for the future, and entreated them with their dying breath to hold fast the truth so precious to themselves, and which had been such a blessing to others. "We are allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel," and without the fulfilment of our sacred obligations in reference to it, no eloquence or learning can secure its continuance. This sense of responsibility was felt by a few earnest laymen who devoted property, influence, and personal effort for the diffusion of the Gospel in the neglected districts of the country by the agency of a revived Home Missionary Society. This glowing zeal would have been chilled by the influence of doubt as to the Divine authenticity of Holy Scripture, and of this there was no small danger. A party of Anglican clergymen published a series |