again; so that while the place, the date, the name, the deed, the monument remains the same, the memory shall be always fresh, the testimony always vivid. Luther finely describes this revivifying of the martyrs, in one of his songs of the Reformation.*

Quiet their ashes will not lie;

But, scattered far and near,

Stream, dungeon, bolt, and grave defy,

Their foeman's shame and fear.
Those whom alive the tyrant's wrongs
To silence could subdue,

He must, when dead, let sing the songs,
Which, in all languages and tongues,

Resound the wide world through.

This was again verified on last Bartholomew's Day-twice marked as a day of religious martyrdom,-when the voices of the Non-conforming ministers, whom the tyranny of Charles II. subdued to silence, broke forth in more than two thousand free pulpits of England, giving thanks to God for the triumphs of that faith by which they went out from their dear mother church, "knowing that bonds and afflictions awaited them in every city," yet "not counting their own lives dear to them, so that they might testify the gospel of the grace of God." On the 24th of August last, the Dissenting ministers of England, with reverent hands, uncovered to the people that grand testimony for conscience and religious freedom recorded two centuries ago, when William Bates, Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy, Stephen Charnock, Philip Henry, John Howe, John Owen-men who gave to theological literature its fiber, and to ecclesiastical polity its freedom,-and a hundred score of the

* Die Aschen will nicht lassen ab,

Sie staubt in allen Landen,

Hie hilft kein Bach, Loch, Grub noch Grab;

Sie Macht den Feind zu Schanden.

Die er im Leben durch den Mord

Zu Schweigen hat gedrungen,

Die muss er todt an allem Ort

Mit aller Stimm' und Zungen

Gar fröhlich lassen singen.

Quoted in Gieseler, IV, 311, from Rambach's Anthologie christl. Gesänge.

most devoted ministers in the establishment, in one day relinquished place, living, home, preferment, everything that good men might honestly desire, "and accepted the condition of poverty, ministerial silence, and long-continued persecution, set before them as the penalty of fidelity to conscience." Baxter testifies that "many hundreds of them with their wives and children, had neither house nor bread; the people they left were not able to relieve them, nor durst if they had been able, because it would have been called a maintenance of schism or faction. Many of the ministers, being afraid to lay down their ministry after they had been ordained to it, preached to such as would hear them, in fields and private houses, till they were apprehended and cast into jails, where many of them perished." The names of perhaps the majority of these witnesses have been effaced from the memory of men; but their Christian heroism is revived by the inheritors of the liberty for which they suffered; and its record now stands out so sharply that all England reads it as a fresh testimony against the interference of the state within the domain of conscience.

As an illustration of the testimony itself and of its results and uses, we take one example from among the less conspicnous of those ejected witnesses. When Charles II. came to the throne, there was officiating in the collegiate chapel of St. Katherine in the Tower of London, a venerable and godly man, Samuel Slater, who for forty years had there fulfilled his quiet, unobtrusive ministry. As he was ordained in the church of England, in the reign of James I., at about the time of the exodus of the Pilgrim Fathers, it is evident that he had then no sympathy with the Separatism or the Congregational polity of those exiles, however much he may have sympathized with their Biblical faith, and their devout spirit. Through all the troubled reign of Charles I., the Long Parliament, the Westminster Assembly, the civil war, the commonwealth of Cromwell, Slater exercised his ministry undisturbed hy Prelatist, Presbyterian, or Independent ;-from which it is inferred that his retired walk left him undisturbed in times of grave public commotion, though these so largely involved questions of religion. He was evidently not a man of faction or contention;

and was ready to sacrifice things indifferent-as between an Episcopalian and a Presbyterian establishment-for the sake of continued usefulness. Not that he was timid and time-serving; for he showed his courage by remaining at his post during the plague of 1625, and he showed his strength of principle by voluntarily relinquishing that post under the act of uniformity in 1662. This plain and pious preacher could pray according to the Episcopal prayer book or the Presbyterian directory; could acquiesce in a bench of bishops, or an assembly of divines at the head of the Church; could subscribe the 39 Articles or the Westminster Confession as the substance of his theology; could acknowledge Charles I., the Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, or Charles II., as head of the state; and in all this do nothing to scandalize his conscience, and be neither a zealot, a partisan, nor a turncoat-but a devoted minister of Christ, prizing the liberty to preach the gospel, above his own preferences as to forms and organizations. But when, soon after the Restoration, a bigoted and vindictive Parliament enjoined that by a certain Sunday every minister should publicly declare his intention to use every form of service in the book of common prayer, then tainted with reminiscences and associations of Rome-making the sign of the cross in baptism, pronouncing the formula of baptismal regeneration, kneeling at the Lord's supper, receiving all baptized persons to that ordinance, however scandalous in their lives, acknowledging god-parents in baptism who made no pretension to religion,-Slater felt that his pulpit would be brought under bonds to the civil power to do that which his conscience condemned. He could have remained in the church, reconstituted under the hierarchy and the Crown, if a reasonable liberty of judgment and of practice had been allowed; but with the visible tendencies of the restored court to a reaction toward the papacy, and the danger of misleading the popular mind by old Romish associations, he felt that an oath of strict conformity would bind him to teach and sanction error. He resolved to throw up his parish and to go forth free. In closing his farewell sermon he defined his position in these calm and touching words:

"I would not occasion any discomposure of spirit that is not becoming you, but this I must say, for aught I know, you have the words of a dying man, and we used to say that the words of dying men are apt to make a somewhat deep impression. I mean a dying man, not in properness of speech, according to nature, though if it should be so I hope there would be cause of rejoicing on my part; but I speak the words of a dying man in respect to the ministerial office. "I suppose you all know there is an Act come forth by supreme authority and it is not for us to quarrel at all with it, but to submit to it, and hold corres pondency with it, so far as we can, with a good conscience; but there injunctions in it that many besides myself cannot comply with, therefo willing to submit to the penalty inflicted.

ng many

are

"This, I say, you have for many years had the benefit of my poor labors : have fulfilled near up towards forty years, I have performed my service to God, Christ, and His people, and I bless His name, not without acceptance and success. My work, so far as I know, is now at end. My desire is, that you, whose hearts have been inclined to wait upon God in the way of my ministry, may be faithful to God; and that you may have the blessing of the everlasting covenant coming upon your souls; and that you may have the power of the doctrine, held forth in this sermon, put forth on your hearts, that, as you profess these things, you carry it suitable to your profession; that you may walk in love to God, love to Christ and love to one another; that you may labor to manifest a noble, generous spirit in overcoming the world as to errors, corruptions, false doctrines, and unwarrantable worship; that you may in all things labor to approve yourselves unto God, and, 'little children, keep yourselves from idols.""

How admirable the spirit of this declaration! How full of the meekness and gentleness of Christ! How forbearing toward the authors of this wrong; how wise and careful for the interests of truth and charity! And yet how resolute withal for conscience, for duty, for God! To part from a flock that he had nourished for forty years-many of whom were his spiritual children and in sympathy with his views,-cost him a struggle that gives a tone of sadness to his farewell words. At three score and ten he could die with rejoicing, but might well shrink from poverty, separation, exile. But conscience is before all, and he will leave his pulpit rather than conform to an unrighteous edict of the state. Gathering around him a faithful few, he met with them as opportunity offered in private houses, breaking to them the bread of life, and communing with them in the body of Christ; and thus was formed the Weigh-House Chapel-now the most wealthy and influential Congregational Church of London. The eloquent pastor of that Chapel, Rev. Thos. Binney, to whom we are indebted for this outline

of Slater-thus discoursed of his predecessor, on the Bicenten

ary:

666

Being dead, he yet speaketh.' He speaks to us by his faith, his conscientiousness, and integrity; by all the principles embodied in his conduct, and even by his words which have just been read. Little did he imagine, on the day when these words were uttered, that on its return two hundred years after they would be uttered again-heard by a larger audience, and listened to as the words of one ecclesiastically related to themselves! Being dead, he yet speaketh;' he speaks to the world, through the existence of this church of which he was the founder, and by that line of ministers of which he was the first. The torch of truth, held by him, I am quite sure, in the hand of love, has come down transferred from one to another of his successors, to the present day. Whether or not the flame may be as pure and bright now as it ever was, I will not say; but this I will say, that it is held by a hand large and loving, ready to be extended, in frank brotherhood, to every true and earnest Christian man. In spite of diversities of creed and discipline-in spite of exclusiveness on one side or another-in spite of legalized prescription or sectarian traditions-in spite of anger, bitterness, controversy, contempt-in spite of Bicentenary misapprehensions, platform disputes, and Birmingham estrangements-we will hold to the culture of catholic sentiment-we will go forth in our sympathies to every member of 'God's holy Church throughout all the world,' and will say daily, in prayer and benediction, 'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity;' 'they that walk according to this rule,' whatsoever else they neglect or observe, 'grace be on them, and mercy, and on the Israel of God.'”

This is the true spirit of the polity which the Pilgrims brought with them from Leyden, and which the English Nonconformists of the next generation,-whether Episcopal, Presbyterian or Independent in their original preferences-had nearly all substantially adopted when the revolution of 1688 settled the right of toleration for Dissent. This must ever be the spirit of true Congregationalism;-a spirit jealous to the last degree of any interference with the autonomy of the local church, with the rights of conscience, and the freedom of the pulpit; yet insisting upon the largest liberty for all other faiths and forms, and maintaining the largest charity toward all who honor the truth and who follow Christ. As Count de Gasparin has finely said: "Regarding God as our sole authority, we learn to value liberty not for truth only, but for error, not for ourselves only, but for our opponents; yes, I can even say, the liberty of my opponents is more precious to me than my own; the liberty of error is more precious to me than that of truth;