ART. V.

The Aggressive Spirit of Christianity.

Ir is one of the paradoxes of spiritual history that He whom prophecy characterized as the Prince of Peace, should have introduced the most turbulent controversies that ever agitated mankind; that He whose advent was preluded by the angelic proclamation of "Peace on earth and good will to men," should have declared, "I came not to send peace, but a sword."1 This declaration affirms, not the ultimate aim of his mission, but its immediate and incidental consequences. The ultimate aim was the reconciliation of all things to God, and the attendant harmony and happiness of the world. The immediate consequences were discord, conflict, hatred and revolution-the effect of bringing the righteousness of God into collision with the sinfulness of man. The wisdom from above exacts purity, in order that it may confer peace. It never attempts to establish peace on the basis of impurity. It never assumes to reconcile men any faster than it makes them holy.

When man became a sinner and was expelled from Eden, the Lord hung a "flaming sword" at the gate that closed on the exile. That sword is the symbol of his subsequent condition; he is in a state of conflict. The gospel waves the cherubic sword around him so long as he is implicated in transgression; but when he ceases to sin, and re-instates himself in the circle of divine order, the retributive sword falls from the open gate, and the palm and olive are the sentry and usher of paradise.

The practical inference from all this is, that the gospel must be the occasion of discord, inasmuch as hostile elements stand in its way, and in proportion to the fidelity with which it is administered. It must occupy an aggressive and martial attitude, and exhibit a vigilant and mandatory spirit, so long as one fortification of injustice remains unsubdued, or one piratical vice whose black flag has not been struck to this queen of the seas.

In reading the records of the church, ancient or modern, one is in danger of mistaking, altogether, the prosperous and adverse periods of the gospel. The peaceable periods would naturally be confounded with the periods of progress; and the stormy days would be set in the calendar of Christian disaster. Thus, the records of the primitive church reveal incessant commotion and bloody proscription. It is tossed on an ocean of moral and political agitation. It is beleagured by persecution. The rich and the powerful reject it. Mobs and emperors unite to beat it down. Scholars brighten their wits to confute its testimonies and ridicule its rites. The apostles fall sacrifices to their zeal; the scattered bands of believers are everywhere beset by peril and sorrow; and the path of faith, as it winds westward, is red with the foot-prints of the martyrs. There are few who would estimate this as a favorable, or prosperous, period of gospel history. And yet the sagacious eye of the Christian philosopher-surveying the wintry and critical period that lies between Nero and Marcus Aurelius-sees germinating the seed of a triumphant church. Under that sanguinary husbandry, the field was harrowed that was to nourish impending ages; and the harvest was quickened that was to fill the garners of nations yet uncreated.

When we pass on to the reign of Constantine, we find the church girded by powerful patronage, and invested with supreme authority. It has triumphed over the hostility, though not over the superstition of the Pagan, and seen the Jew disarmed of his malignity in the doom that obliterated Jerusalem. It enjoys what we call a prosperous, because a peaceful period. Yet, here again, the flattering appearance deceives us. It is under this outward tranquillity that inward corruption begins. It is under the sunshine of imperial favor that the decay of faith commences, and a new cycle of superstition is introduced. It is a time of intestine dissensions, of intriguing ambition, and of spiritual retrogression— a time in which the church, rescued from the furnace of affliction, spent its zeal in metaphysical debates, lavished its learning upon sectarian architecture, and forgot its errand in ceremonial rehearsals and theological scene-painting. The period of Constantine-free from persecution and sheltered from calamity-is, nevertheless, the most disastrous and unpromising age of the early church; and marks the

first great point in that decline of faith which carried the ark of Christ almost to the level of heathenism, and buried it at the feet of the hierarchy.

When the European world became fast locked in the bands of Catholic unity, and the arch of ecclesiastical dependence was consolidated in the culminating despotism of the twelfth century-when there was no inquiry, no investigation, no dissent, no agitation, no outbreaks from authority that foreboded independence-when, in fact, there was a general concord of sentiment because there was no reflection, and uniform peace because there was no moral vitality -shall we call that a fortunate condition of Christendom? As well might we take a cemetery to represent a fortunate state of society. There "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." There, are no struggles with adversity, poverty, or sorrow; no rivalries, no failures, or defeats; no bickerings about creeds, no strife between master and servant, no popular tumults, and no presidential elections. But, alas! there," man has no pre-eminence over the beast." There, are no illustrious virtues and no brave achievements; no endurance that conquers by faith, and no heroism that flashes immortal fire from the ponderous blow of oppression. There, is indeed all-pervading peace, but it rests upon all-pervading death.

We cannot afford to congratulate the world on the tranquillity of any period, until we assure ourselves that the cause does not lie in the stagnation of the public mind, or in a general deterioration of moral sentiment. A plethoric body, anatomical or political, is to be deprecated, however pliant to established authority; while exuberant vigor is to be welcomed, though it threaten the proprieties and compel us to double the guard. All vital things are spiced with threatenings, that qualify our admiration with salutary fear. The free-flowing river, whose channel is grooved across a continent, may menace the art and safety of a city; but it forms the living artery of a new civilization, and deposits the alluvion of commercial power. The ocean is an agitator that defies all restraint; whose destructive energy is registered, with the recurring equinox, on the ledger of the merchant and the stone of the churchyard; but in its ample bosom is treasured the vitality of our planet, and sun and air become its ministers to diffuse the sustaining ichor

of nature through the globe. The moral forces are like the elemental: they agitate, but they also renovate.

When the time drew near for the birth of Protestantism, how the world dreaded the travail involved in that great revolt! Christendom had slumbered so long in quietonly burning a few martyrs, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, because they disturbed the drowsy house before day-that men were reluctant to follow their captain into battle. "I came not to bring peace, but a sword," was the stern declaration of the Divine Spirit to that age; and there was need enough of the sword, as all men confessed who saw satanic tyranny sitting on the throne of the church, and sensuality and ignorance immersing the whole papal pyramid in scandal and condemnation. There were reasons, most potent and convincing to the conservatism of that day, for declining the sword, and leaving satan to enjoy his usurpation: it would preserve the peace of the church; avert the inconvenience of a revolution; keep the tapestry of custom untorn; and secure the unity of baseness in the bonds of iniquity. We-standing at the judicious distance of three hundred years, with no Pope or faggots to molest or make us afraid-applaud the men who gallantly entered this contest, and scorn the poltroons who ran away from it; but, if we had been on the spot, having the choice to make, and the consequences to receive, in our own persons, with which party we should have identified ourselves cannot be infallibly known. It is easy to applaud the fidelity we are not required to match; and it may be allowable to censure weaknesses we are not liable to imitate; but history is a faithful mirror, and will render a frank transcript of those blemishes which our friends politely ignore. It is easy, now, to justify those who gave their fortunes and lives to protestant Christianity, and to estimate all their warfare and suffering as trivial, compared with the results that have been attained; because we have a long perspective in which to measure the movement, and trace out its consequences. But they, only, are on the elevation of that historic faith and courage, who dare protest, in their own day, against all that their consciences disown; who dare to strike the foremost lines of error and iniquity, cost what it may, in the sublime conviction that God and man will justify them also in the broad expanse and final generalization of time.

In later ages, observe what benefits have resulted to religion and to the race, from the fidelity of a few men, whose function it was not to make peace with unrighteousness, but to bear the sword in a life-long conflict. When England had set up a national church, after the model of the Romish pagoda, a sub-divided protestantism began to bolt from the Episcopal door. Puritan, Quaker, Baptist, and Unitarian swarmed out of that delectable State church which the bloody Tudor had instituted; built tabernacles and made. creeds of their own spontaneous faith; and paid penalties and suffered contumely, with true British spirit and patience, in order to discharge their part of the gospel errand. It involved a great sacrifice of tranquillity and comfort, of friendship and reputation; but the result was glorious. The flock was divided, but the faith was preserved and augmented. See how time has justified the dissenters of England. The vitality of the nation throbs in their organizations, and in the ideas which they have introduced and diffused. The literature, the genius, and the practical energy that distinguish the English mind, are indicative of the action of dissenting opinions in religion, rather than legitimate fruits of the established faith and polity. Indeed, the spirit of dissent works more conspicuously, just now, within the Anglican church, than among the avowed Independents; and the savage dogmas and narrow formulas that have provoked the scathing rhetoric of Martineau, are quietly ignored, or invested with harmless ambiguities, by men of such genial humanities as Robertson and Kingsley. If the church that claims apostolic consecration, could occupy its pulpits and seats of authority with men of this type, it would tend somewhat to authenticate pretensions that now border upon impudence. Meantime, the form of the national church remains, upheld by the State patronage, favored by the aristocracy, decorated by a few scolastic names; but so far deserted by the vital forces of the kingdom, that it resembles the monuments in Westminster Abbey-the silent memorial of opinions that no longer exist in living men, and of a state of society fast drifting into antiquity.

2The "Six Bloody Articles" identify the church of Henry VIII. with that of Rome-the only difference being that he, instead of Clement, was Pope.

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