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Dedication

TO PROFESSOR GEORGE P. FISHER:

May I dedicate this volume to you, as a slight tribute to your services for Congregationalism and the Church Universal, and as a grateful recognition of your life-long interest in me and mine?

E. L. H.

PREFACE

DEMOCRACY is a sacred word among us in America, not only in the State but in the Church. In American Protestantism, more than forty per cent of the churches have Democracy as the basis of their polity. If we include indirect democracy, nearly all our churches may be classed as democratic. It is this theme, Democracy in the Church, which we set before us. We shall study it from the standpoint of one of the democratic bodies, the Congregationalists.

For many years there has been no treatise on Congregational polity. Statements of polity have appeared, and histories, but no fresh attempt to draw democratic principles from their source and lead them, life-giving, across the fields of church activity. Dexter, Ross and Ladd served a previous generation. But the years since their works were published have been full of change. The sciences of Exegesis and Church History have made great advance, and with this advance comes the need of readjustment in the theories of church polity. New problems have arisen in our denominational life. The present air is filled with clamorous voices, demanding a more centralized polity, or warning us that any step in that direction is a sale of our birthright. "We must become more compact," say some, "if we are to do our work in the Kingdom. Consolidation is the tendency of the age." "What is wanted," says another, "is not a change of system but a change of heart."

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