“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great magician.

“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”

We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform. Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom-house duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime. This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson's daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out of the world without having committed any special faults against society, leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects, where each one claims to be the one, the only one, the church of Christ. One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come at all if this is to be the result, [pg 384] this wrangling and jangling and eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people, who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife. Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals; which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to-day, as it has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the Nation said the other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice, though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away; and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting-place over the barren waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.

Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to-day as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling-block in the way of the much-desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices, but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another, and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church replies now as always: “Non possumus.” We cannot; God gave the laws to his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget [pg 385] that they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or maliciously, as at least fixed and united to-day as to-morrow, as yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be farther off than ever.

The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger, fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result? What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure; a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct, oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.

No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the Protestant religion today, it could not be given him; and the only right answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non-Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne. There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and all-sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While DÖllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such as they see alone in the Catholic Church.

In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth, pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover, we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the thousand-and-one [pg 386] such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore, be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist vs. Catholic,” for he recognizes181 no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high-handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.

It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our author's mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,” we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be. Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is thrown away.

A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the dissensions that [pg 387] seem racking and threatening to rend that body at present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives members of his community who “would give up their vantage-ground by concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their “maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning-note—like the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like Mr. Winkle's “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer's “conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church stands precisely at its first starting-point of some nineteen centuries ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.

The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church, Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a pamphlet of forty-two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least original.

“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”

Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items, which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject. He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the church to be a divine society”—human-divine, Catholics would say—“governed by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”

Here we have, then, according to the author's own words, a society, established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that person to to-day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing, validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its members practise to-day what they practised at the beginning—all that is nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”

If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have defined [pg 388] the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.

In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight generally uses to a thick-headed congregation, who take his words for wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the other; the citing of “well-known facts” and “notorious things” without substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.” Apropos of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that “the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression upon the theology of the Catholic (not then Roman Catholic) Church of the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX., or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes, reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.” In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation, inasmuch as we are saved before we receive it. He alleges, with reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: ? de ?????? p??set??e? t??? s???e???? ?a?? ?e?a? t? ?????s?a. The present participle s???e???? means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as were being saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming into the church through the merit of the death of [pg 389] Christ and the movements of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the author's fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious rendering of a passage in a dead language.

But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican, Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to-day that all our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.

“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer's salvation is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for work,” etc.

Now, this passage is the author's exposition of the true idea of a church, and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all-important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man's own conscience is his rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into consideration my relations; you tell [pg 390] me that all that has nothing to do with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it, I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read. The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings, rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us visibly, and is only known to us by faith.

Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There is no need of a church at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves. It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our neighbors.

Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions: But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong. Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on; but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom you have this personal [pg 391] union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,182 and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these things are so.”

In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his text into a puny quibble, which any well-instructed child might see through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The Lord added to the church daily those who are saved.” Ergo, “salvation was dealt with as a personal matter.”

If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer, and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child, but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.

But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would stand as built up by this writer.