It

latter. That moral sentiment or relation which includes another must be the greater or more important of the two. 3. Sacramental communion is covenant communion. It implies covenant relations with God and with the brotherhood. It signifies to the world that one has chosen God for his portion. It is an act by which he gives his fellow-Christians increased evidence of his union to Christ, and thereby draws towards him more warmly and more rationally their Christian regards. 4. The scriptures represent sacramental communion as the highest form of Christian intercourse. is eating Christ's body and drinking his blood, denoting that we dwell in Christ and Christ dwells in us. The purest and richest experiences of the Christian also testify that he never gets so near his Saviour, nor enjoys such endeared communion with those who are like him, as at the memorial feast. 5. The persistent refusal of sacramental communion renders full Christian communion impossible. Communion is more than love; it is mutual love, or rather the result of mutual love. It is a reciprocity of the social principle. Hence, it always implies a choice in each mutually directed to eacha delightful mingling of mutual sympathies. I may love another when he makes no return, may even pursue him with tenderest compassion while he repels it. But I cannot commune with another unless his affections flow out and meet mine flowing towards him. Communion is the confluence of two smoothly flowing streams. If one ceases its onward flow, or becomes refluent, communion ceases. Communion also implies reciprocal confidence and esteem. The least perception of the want of confidence in a supposed friend, especially the indication that he deems us unqualified for the intimacy of his family, at once disturbs our affections and diminishes the pleasure of our intercourse.

The affections are regulated by certain laws, and close communion cannot be disengaged from these laws. It will be almost sure to hold back the Christian sympathies of the excluded from gushing forth as they otherwise would towards their excluders. On the other hand the close communionist

checks the warm flow of his own Christian sympathies towards the excluded. Hear a free communionist among the Baptists on this point: "There seems to be the same spontaneity of mind toward open communion on the part of the young convert as towards immersion. .... How many a babe in Christ has felt a chill run through his new heart of love, and a certain crushing of his free sympathies, when the close communionist has begun to bring down upon him his logical propositions, which he may not answer, but which he feels to be lead and iron upon his soul. Moreover, is it not the desire of most in our churches to receive at the Lord's table some unbaptized ones whom they know? They wish it were the Lord's will that they should do it. But they check their sympathies by calling to mind the old dictum: Baptism is prerequisite to the communion.' And so, nerving themselves up, and pacifying themselves in the thought that they are true to a principle, they shut down the gate of sympathy, and conscientiously proceed with the sacred ordinance."

This sentiment we heartily endorse. Hence, we believe entire obedience to the law of Christian love, or the full realization of the unity for which the Saviour prayed between bodies of acknowledged Christians, is a psychological impossibility, while one shuts the other from the sacramental board.

The above are a few of the alleged principles which are supposed to justify the distinction between "Christian and sacramental communion," forming a basis for restricted communion. This brief review is enough to show their untenableness. Consequently, the thesis that the laws of associa ted Christianity demand free sacramental communion as their complement stands unimpaired.1 Indeed, the bare fact that these principles, theories, and hypotheses, put forth by the acutest and most scholarly minds to establish this arbitrary distinction a distinction hidden from the church for generations after the apostles were in their graves, and the book

1 Above, pp. 496, 498.

of revelation was finished, are found indefensible, strongly indicates that the distinction itself is undemonstrable; and that the position, " Accredited membership of Christ's visible body entitles to communion in the sacramental emblems of his body natural," is impregnable.

ARTICLE IV.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.1

BY REV. GEORGE F. MAGOUN, PRESIDENT OF IOWA COLLEGE.

[The object of this Article is to set forth the condition, progress, and prospects of theological education among English Congregationalists. Most of the public institutions in Great Britain for the training of Congregational ministers are in England. One is in Scotland — the Theological

11. Minutes of the Proceedings of a Conference of Delegates from the Committees of various Theological Colleges connected with the Independent Churches of England and Wales, held in the Congregational Library, Blomfield Street, London, Jan. 7th and 8th, 1845. pp. 73. London: Published by the Confer

ence.

2. Minutes of a Similar Conference (Wales not represented), same place, Jan. 24th and 25th, 1865. pp. 89.

3. The Congregational Year Book, 1865, 1867. pp. 380, 424.

4. Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Theological Training (of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland), 1863. pp. 21. Appendix, “Vidimus of the

Theological training of different Denominations." pp. 16-21.

5. The Patriot (newspaper) London, 1865-66. The English Independent (the Patriot and British Standard united.) London, 1867.

6. Pamphlet Reports of different Colleges.

2 Twenty years ago, as these pamphlets show, the names "Independent" and Congregational were used interchangeably in Great Britain, and to some extent, though less frequently, are still. Dr. Robert Vaughan, in his "Notes on the United States since the War" (British Quarterly Review, Oct. 1865), mentions as " one point in which the Congregationalism of the United States is wiser" than that of England-"it eschews the name 'Independency.'" Dr. Vaughan himself, however, finds the old habit too strong for him. So does the Year Book, whose list of Congregational ministers has for the running-title, "Independent." In the second pamphlet named above, this title does not once

Hall at Edinburg, founded 1811, Rev. W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D., and Rev. A. T. Gowan, D.D., Professors. Two are in Wales - Brecon Independent College, founded 1813, and North Wales Independent College, Bala, 1842. There are, besides, three institutions of the same character in the British Dependencies - one in British North America, at Montreal, established 1839, and two in Australia, at Melbourne in Victoria (1861), and at Sydney in New South Wales (1863). Ten of the "theological colleges," as they are termed, are in England.' They represent fairly the whole number in Great Britain and her colonies. The statements that follow are drawn in part from the documents named below, and other publications, and are in part the result of personal examination and inquiries.]

THE late Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, uttered in his place in Parliament, not long before his retirement, emphatic and weighty testimony to the character and intelligence of the English Congregational body, as the leading one among the "Dissenters." Critics of the established church have recently made very significant admissions concerning the superior ability of the ministry of the Congregational churches. The Dean of Canterbury, for example, reviewing in the Contemporary Review four volumes of sermons, by Dr. Raleigh, Rev. R. W. Dale, Rev. H. R. Reynolds, and the late Mr. Hull, pronounces them "far, very far above the average of such publications" in the church of England. "An Anglican volume owes its publication most frequently," says the Dean, "to the eminence of the preacher, or to the affection of the flock, or to the occasion of delivery; very seldom, indeed, to the fact that the sermons are in themselves worth publishing. Already the Nonconformists have passed us by in biblical scholarship and ministerial training; the specimens which we have given of their sermons are such as the church of England in our day could hardly show." The

as it seems

occur, and upon the title-page it is displaced by " Congregational,' to have been in all the discussions and essays of the Conference. Dr. Vaughan himself writes "Congregational" only in this pamphlet. The tendency clearly is to adhere to this name and drop the other.

1 Year Book, 1867, p. 330. In the Statistical Summary, p. 422, the count is, "England, eight," and two preparatory institutions, which had been previously classed as colleges, namely, Bristol and Nottingham.

great majority of the present English Congregational ministers were educated at the "theological colleges"- eleven hundred and twelve out of eighteen hundred and twenty-six. The Scotch universities supplied eighty-eight; the Irish, eighteen; University College, London, six; and the English church, supposably through the national universities, five. Private training is credited with two hundred and forty-three, and the education of two hundred and forty-two is unknown.1 Inferior, therefore, as the seminaries of the Dissenters must be, in much, to the great and wealthy educational establishments enjoyed by the sect "by law established," they do not appear to produce an inferior ministry. Dr. Vaughan indeed says: 2 "A high order of ability is not so much the rule in our ministry as the exception." "We have few, if any, masters of theological learning," testifies the London Patriot. Dr. Falding, principal of Rotherham College, adverts "to the recognized insufficiency of able pastors and preachers" and to the difficulty in filling the college chairs, three or four able men having been invited to nearly all of them successively, while vacancies in the faculties never call out any strong competition. Perhaps the dissenting standard of ability is higher than the established one. At a church congress not many months since, Dean Alford gave a deplorable account of the qualifications of Episcopal clergymen. Mr. Litton, an examining chaplain, also stated that "the usual knowledge of theology is limited to an ability to give scripture proof of the Articles. As to the Old Testament the standard is little superior to that of the higher classes in a good national school." Dean Alford proposed a sort of apprenticeship to incumbents for candidates for orders, and also class lists at the universities by which those who do not attend divinity lectures shall be known. Commenting upon these disclosures, the London Times alleged that "men enter the church every day destitute either of theological knowl

1 Year Book for 1867, p. 423.

2 Minutes of Conference of 1865. p. 61.

8 Ibid. p. 17, seq. There are different grades among the colleges, noted hereafter, as there are not among the universities.