THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1851.

Miscellaneous Articles.

PRESBYTERIAN UNION.

THERE is a perfect consistency between a strong attachment to our own branch of Christ's Church, and an enlarged and most tender love for "all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." 1 Cor. i. 2. How remarkably this was exemplified in the late Dr. Chalmers, is known to all wellinformed Presbyterians. The acknowledged leader of the Free Church of Scotland, the uncompromising champion of her distinguishing principles, and the eloquent advocate of her public measures, he was at the same time alive to every interest of the body catholic, not excepting those organizations in which he saw much to deplore and to condemn. In this his character stands as a rebuke, first to the narrowness of such as never look over the low wall of their own petty enclosure, and then of all who think it necessary to buy a seeming union at the price of every thing peculiar in our creed and order.

Presbyterianism in America has a work before it which was never dreamed of by the McKemies, and Henrys, and Taylors, and Wilsons, who laboured among our early plantations. We can scarcely credit the statistics before our eyes when we look over our States, territories, and missions, and read such figures as one hundred and twenty-seven Presbyteries, one thousand nine hundred and twentysix ministers, and two hundred and seven thousand communicants. These are not scattered individuals, however closely allied, but an organized Church, which, though claiming no exclusive possession of the ark, are bound together and identified by a common creed, a uniform polity, and a happy gradation of courts. By God's unspeakable grace, this union is not documentary, symbolical, or VOL. I.-No. 5. 26

simply nominal, but to a good degree real; our nineteen hundred ministers are as much agreed in their tenets as any equal number of men in any church since the days of the Apostles. A like concord prevails in regard to nine out of ten of the great questions which fearfully agitate the religious community at the present time; that is, in regard to missions, revivals of religion, education, and slavery. It is our part to rejoice with trembling, in so great a favour, and to employ to the uttermost the power entrusted to our hands.

The life of an individual minister is too short for any part of it to be wasted in empty debates or weakening divisions. Loyalty to our beloved Church, proceeding from admiration of its history, thankfulness for its successes, conviction of its creed, love for its members, and prayer for its increase, will consolidate and magnify our body in an unexampled degree. We who are ministers, the nineteen hundred who go before the many thousands of Israel, are solemnly called upon to love our Church, and to love one another, with an ardency which we have never known. With such a spirit of humble brotherly affection, ready to sacrifice every paltry sectional or individual interest, and resolved under God to hold together, even though all others should fall asunder, "how should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight!" Deut. xxxii. 30.

This union must prevail among ministers, or it can never prevail among the people; and one of the most important questions which can come before us is, how this delightful Presbyterian unity may be promoted and maintained. We have perhaps been too ready to confound it with a contentious upholding of our principles against those who are without. But it is evident that a man may be triumphantly polemical towards adversaries, and yet may turn the edge and temper of his sword against those also who are within; may fight friends as well as foes. Just here is the chief danger of a widely extended church; and, since there was schism in the world, no church has ever been so widely extended. Just here, therefore, we need to set our strongest guard. No external conventional arrangements, will secure this unity of strength. It must proceed from inward principle, and from principle that belongs to the spirituality of religion. The hearty, gracious union of all ministers in our Church; with a love of one another's persons and a zeal for one another's success; a resolution to sink differences, and abhor dissensions; and a purpose to live and die in a unanimous struggle for the great ends in which we are agreed, would be followed by an aggression on the host of adversaries such as might give hope of Christ's coming. That union which is strength, and which is pre-eminently our Presbyterian strength, in which we thankfully and humbly hold ourselves more favoured than our Episcopalian and Congregational neighbours; that union which we would perpetuate must have a deeper root than any thing external. It is not to be secured by our church courts. We yield to none in

admiration of presbytery as the form of government most accordant with American institutions; deeming this accordance, however, infinitely less important than its agreement with the New Testament model. We know, and we more and more love and revere, that beautiful and well compacted series of judicatures, which secures the largest Christian freedom, while it distinguishes us for ever from the ever shifting and factitious simulation of unity among independent societies. But we also know, that Christian love may die out of the best ordered external fraternity, and be wanting as truly in a synod as in a church-meeting. And we have often observed the facility with which brethren, who do not know one another, fall into factious opposition, and fix themselves in party hostilities in church courts. The united action which we ought to pray for every hour of our lives, is frequently precluded by hasty and ill considered measures in deliberative assemblies. Brethren sometimes find themselves farther apart after a vote. Majority is not unity. A party triumph may be a defeat in respect to the grand united contest. There are some questions which ought never to come to a vote, especially in our higher courts. Such are all those in which a bare majority, perhaps the majority of a single year, force through some favourite opinion, while they do not carry the united representation, much less the united Church.

The true preventive of such disastrous policy may be suggested to us, if we will look for a moment at the benign effect of brotherly intercourse among church officers. A familiar instance occurs to us. A number of ministers and elders, from different States, all commissioners to the General Assembly, fall into the same public conveyance at some junction of roads on the great highway, and travel together for several days. At first meeting they are shy, if not opposed. They break into little groups and coteries. At length the freemasonry of religious friendship exchanges signals; the very countenances radiate a familiar telegraphic language; they talk together, pray together, sing God's praise together, love as brethren, are pitiful, are courteous, till after five hundred miles. of fellow-suffering and fellow-joying, they meet on the common platform, with an incapacity of suspecting each other's hearts. Can any experienced man deny that something like this takes place every year? It is indeed one of the blessed effects of our annual festival. It knits groups together, and if all the groups could so meet, it would go far to knit all together. That so universal a concurrence should take place, in fact it would be visionary to expect; but the instance brings us back to the principle of harmony. Needless bickering and enfeebling separation in ecclesiastical bodies, are to be prevented by the blessing of God on fraternal intercourse out of ecclesiastical bodies. We invert the true order. Let us not seek brotherly love from union in church measures, but union in church measures from brotherly love.

In order to a united Presbyterianism which shall make itself felt with the energy of a victorious army in every unconquered region