ake of union-that is but a sectarian sneer; ut union as the very heart in the body of Christ and crown of all the graces; union as duty no less than as a sentiment; union or the maintenance of truth and religion and irtue; union to prevent so immense a waste nd friction in our charities and missions; union or the preservation of Christianity itself amid langers hitherto unknown; union against the materialism that is corrupting the life of the ation; against the socialism that is assailing roperty, marriage, government, law, and der; against the agnosticism that is underraining all creeds, codes, and manners; against he sectarianism that is parleying and wranging in full view of such enemies; union, if need e, against the very disunion that would keep he churches, as it would have kept the States, iscordant and dismembered, in the supreme our of peril.

Never were the signs, as well as the needs, f such union more apparent. Never was the eeling so deep and growing that the divisions the Christian Church must somehow come o an end. It will not be stopped by such adjectives as "sentimental," "romantic," "utopian." Sectarian interests may throw obstacles n the way, a false conservatism may raise alarms, and veteran divines draw the sword to ight their battles over again, but in vain. In this movement the people are more determined than their rulers, and the church universal will prove stronger than any sect or party. Look at the progress made since the question was opened in these columns a few months ago. The chief denominations of the country have been taking practical steps towards church unity in distinction from mere Christian union. The Congregational churches of New England have been removing the walls which separate Baptists from Pedobaptist communions. The Presbyterian churches of the Middle States have been settling the vexed question of their psalmody, while those of the South and the North are adjusting their political differences, and those of the East are in conference with the Reformed churches, Dutch and German. The Cumberland Presbyterian and Methodist churches of the West are blending Calvinism with Arminianism. The great Lutheran churches give signs of becoming more homogeneous and American. The Baptist churches have declared for union of denominations. The Episcopal Church has been inwardly moved as never before towards other Protestant churches. The Evangelical Alliance is taking the form of a national league. And as a visible presage of the new era, we have already had what might be called a provisional congress of the "United Churches of the United States."

In the midst of these remarkable movements, the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church has sent forth a noble and farreaching declaration seeking to embrace all branches of Christendom in the bonds of a true church unity. The four terms proposed are so large and fair that they will almost carry consent in their statement.

The Holy Scriptures are already the accepted basis of all Christian churches, besides affording the consensus of Christianity with Judaism, and with heathenism in the work of missions.

The Nicene Creed was simply the faith of the undivided early Church and still expresses the most essential consensus of nearly all modern churches, with room for their later creeds, such as the Thirty-nine Articles, the Westminster, Augsburg, and Heidelberg confessions.

The Divine Sacraments, whenever and wherever rightly administered, cannot but exhibit the communion of that Catholic visible Church which includes all baptized Christians and their children.

The Historic Episcopate might become an added bond among existing church systems, if viewed according to the meaning of the phrase, as a fact rather than as a doctrine, without raising the question whether it has been a development of the apostolate or of the presbyterate of the early Church.

It is this last proposal which is likely to stir the keenest debate, and all eyes are now turned towards one point as the focus of the discussion. If the unifying movement is to go forward, it is plain that it should be led and guided by those churches or systems which are historically and logically most nearly allied in doctrine, polity, and worship, as well as providentially fitted to represent the Protestant and Catholic wings of Christendom. Now these conditions are met by Presbytery and Episcopacy: by Presbytery as included in the Lutheran, Reformed, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches; and by Episcopacy as found in the Greek, Latin, Anglican and Protestant Episcopal churches not Presbytery and Episcopacy, viewed merely as complemental institutions in an ideal polity, but also as kindred ecclesiastical elements, with the same roots in Scripture and in history, and having a true and vital affinity for each other.

Here we touch the embers of smoldering controversies, which a breath might kindle into a flame. It would be easy enough to recall old grievances and revive dying prejudices which arose in another age and country, when Presbyterians and Episcopalians made martyrs of each other by turns, in a

fierce and sectarian warfare, until, like two combatants chained apart, they were forced by the civil arm to settle down into the established churches of England and Scotland. There are those who would be in haste to import the waning castes of churchman and dissenter into a free republic, to apply the effete policy of the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, and to measure the wants of a hemisphere by those of an island. But the large hearts and noble minds on both sides will resolutely keep dead issues out of sight, will rise above sects and parties to the view of general and lasting interests, and will seek to minimize their trivial differences in order to gain the maximum amount of sincere and honorable agreement.

Approaching the question in this spirit, we shall be at no loss for favorable signs and arguments. Not only do the mother-churches of England and Scotland bear an original likeness as twin daughters of the Reformation, descended from the same Catholic Church, with the same historical continuity from the apostles' time, and only different lines of succession since they parted; not only may their existing standards be correlated and blended, the Book of Common Prayer as but a liturgical expression of the Directory for Public Worship, the Confession of Faith as but a logical expansion of the Articles of Religion, and the diocesan Episcopate as but a fit complement of the synodical Presbytery,-but, besides all this, the two forms of polity, as transplanted to our shores, have developed new types of church life and culture, which would be especially valuable in combination, and have already become leading factors in our AngloAmerican civilization, the one as expressive of the best Protestant, and the other of the most Catholic Christianity. Add still further: that for a hundred years past they have been unconsciously coming together, and growing like each other. At the very outset, when they became independent of the mother-churches, the American Directory was enriched with liturgical rules and suggestions, and the American Ordinal was enlarged by an alternative form of authorization. Ever since then American Presbyterianism has been steadily reacting from the narrow views of the Puritans and Covenanters towards a larger Christian culture and more liturgical mode of worship, as well as producing a pure theology and a learned ministry unsurpassed in the country; while American Episcopacy, having escaped from the Anglican establishment with its Catholic faith and noble liturgy, has been admitting presbyterial government, lay and clerical, into its dioceses and combining extempore prayers with its liturgy, until it

has surrendered the very points on which the Presbyterian party in the Church of England was defeated two centuries ago. We have lived to see Episcopalian prayer-meetings as well as Presbyterian prayer-books. The two hereditary foes have not merely met half way, but actually crossed the lines as in friendly rivalry on the battle-fields of former generations.

Now it seems worth while to ask if the ani cient family feud might not somehow be ef faced and forgotten. Both churches, after longestrangement, have come back to ground where they may well recognize and respect their com mon lineage, their organic likeness, and then reciprocal interests. Each of them, in fact has long since conceded enough, and mor than enough, for a full and frank understand ing. Had such concessions been made in the beginning, no separation could have occurred Were such concessions now more generally known, a reunion might soon follow. Ever that last barrier to reunion, the vexed ques tion of orders, when fairly met and sifted, may but disclose a ground or link of organic con nection in the one simple fact that Episco pal ordination could take nothing from, bu only add something to, Presbyterian ordina tion, howsoever either may be viewed by eith er party. Presbyterians do not differ from Episcopalians more than Episcopalians diffe from one another in estimating that rite. It such a state of opinion the differences ar no longer worth weighing against the agree ments and accruing advantages. As it might prove a great gain to American Episcopacy to be reënforced with Presbyterian orthodoxy and churchliness, so it might prove a great gain to American Presbytery to recover the Epis copal order and liturgy. The reunion would be as organic to each as the original rup ture was disorganizing to both. Indeed, it could easily be shown that the chief authors of the Presbyterian standards, if now living, would find their ideal in our Protestant Epis copacy; or, in other words, that the American Episcopacy of to-day has recovered English Presbytery of a classic type, and so fully recovered it that the two systems, at fit times and places, especially in our large cities and great missions, might wisely and well be conjoined or confederated, if not at length merged in one organization.

How far such union or fusion is now feasi ble need not here be discussed. Whatever changes of church law or practice might be needed, the way to them could be found as soon as there is the will to find them. Presby terian usage already concedes the validity of episcopal ordination, and the Episcopal Ordinal enjoins no polemic theory of presby

erial ordination, but is even held to involve resbyterial coördination. Why not begin at nce to act upon these facts and principles? Why should there be a so-called hypothetical rdination on the one side or a covert condional acceptance of it on the other. Let both tarties openly and generously recognize each ther in concurrent ordinations or reordinaons, as occasion requires. By such means Ell question of valid ministrations would at ength die out, as in a marriage of rival houses. The most extreme Episcopalian, from his own point of view, would only be sanctioning orhodox learning, churchly aims, and evangelial labors; and the most extreme Presbyterian, from his own point of view, would only be aining more authority or grace for a larger ervice; and the two together would simply e honoring both episcopacy and presbytery in the one catholic and apostolic Church of Christ.

Without claiming to speak for others, but ooking at the question from a strictly undenominational point of view, I venture to hope that in any union to be devised the historic piscopate can be retained, if only as one remaining bulwark against the well-meant but lawless evangelism which is running wild in our churches and bringing all the divine institutions of the Christian religion into contempt. The great revivalists, Whitefield and Wesley, were trained clergymen and ever appeared as such, even when driven from the pulpit into the field. But our lay evangelists are pressed from the field into the pulpit, and a divine success is claimed for them on the very ground that they are not clergymen but mere laymen. When earnest and gifted preachers of the Gospel, like Mr. Moody, decline to become ordained ministers of any church, while everywhere exercising ministerial functions, with learned divines and faithful pastors sitting at their feet, and the whole order of God's house set aside, can we wonder if the popular inference should be that the ministry itself is but a human convenience, if not already a failure. Is any transient good done by them to be weighed for one moment against the lasting evil of overthrowing the most sacred ordinances and institutions, to say nothing of feverish excitements, whose track is often that of the simoon through the fairest pastures of Christ? Our chief danger in this land and age of freedom is not hierarchy. Instead of too much ecclesiasticism, there is too little. The clergy are fast losing their normal rank and influence. The time may yet come when pure presbytery and true episcopacy shall appear not only congruous but inseparable, and together essential in maintaining that "catholic visible church unto which Christ

hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God."

There is also a large and growing class of minds in all churches for whom the historic episcopate, as now associated with the prayerbook, seems practically the only guarantee of a pure scriptural worship. Time was indeed when that liturgy had been so rigorously enforced as to extinguish all other forms of devotion. No wonder Milton could then cry out against it: "To imprison and confine by force, within a pin-fold of set words, those two most unimprisonable things, our prayers and that divine spirit of utterance which moves them, is a tyranny that would want longer hands than those giants who threatened bondage to heaven." But out of that tyranny we have long since fought our way to a ruinous victory. The time has now come to distinguish liberty from license in the worship of God and to assert order and decency against confusion in the assemblies of saints. Keep for fit times. and places the free, extempore service which has been so dearly won; but keep also that historic liturgy which has come down to us from all the Christian ages. Let the people have pure English and sound doctrine at least in their devotions; let them learn the whole word of God in appointed lessons; let them offer up prayers which they can call their own; let them follow their Lord, from his cradle to his cross, through each year of his grace; let them receive holy sacraments and rites, in the meet words of apostles, saints, and martyrs; let them thus worship with angels and archangels and the whole company of the redeemed on earth and in heaven. Already, indeed, some of these things have been reclaimed for them as their just heritage, and we are beginning to find that the prayer-book can co-exist with the prayer-meeting as easily as episcopacy can concur with presbytery.

Besides these advantages, the historic episcopate might also bring a valuable conservative force into our presbyterial systems of church government. Aside from the claim of apostolical succession, it is appreciated as a scriptural and ancient institution of the Christian religion, as fitted to secure the choicest wisdom, learning, and piety of the Church in the direction of its affairs, and as demanded by new exigencies which have arisen in our time and country. Since it became detached from the English peerage and monarchy, it has grown into harmony with our republican institutions, while supplying needed checks upon their radical tendencies. Moreover, it is certain that episcopacy as well as presbytery would have a voice in any Provisional Congress or General Council of the Lutheran, Reformed, Congregational, Presbyte