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DISCOURSE XIII.1

THE VOICE OF THE CHURCH, ONE, UNDER THE SUCCESSIVE FORMS OF CHRISTIANITY.

"The Church, scattered over the world, proclaims, teaches, and hands down this faith, as though it had but one mouth. For though there be many different modes of expression in the world, the strength of the truth, variously transmitted, is one and the same eternally; as the sun, that creation of God, is one and the same throughout the universe."IRENEUS, Adv. hæreses, lib. i, c. 3.

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ENTLEMEN,—How vast is the activity and how various are the labours and efforts of men on earth! Yet time levels most of their works; and even if they attempt to raise a tower to the skies, their lofty structure is overthrown, and mingled, after a few generations, with the sands of the desert.

Nothing but Christianity is durable here below. Christianity alone is unchangeable like its Author. It is the rock of ages, against which the waves have ever dashed, and will ever dash, without shaking it.

If any man, therefore, is desirous of giving a character of stability and perpetuity to his labours on earth, he must connect them with Christianity. They will receive from that eternal religion the imprint of immortality.

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These truths, gentlemen, are not universally acknowledged; and we find two capital errors among men on this point. Some pretend that there is no perpetuity in the spirit of Christianity itself. The Christian doctrine," they say, " is merely a peculiar form of religious opinions. This form has succeeded another, and will itself be followed by still another. ligion of the Saviour," they add, "was a necessary consequence of the state in which humanity was in the days of the

The re

'Delivered at the annual meeting of the Theological Seminary in Geneva, on the 1st of May, 1834.

Cæsars; just as the blossoms and flowers of a tree come forth naturally in the spring." To this singular error rationalism has been obliged to resort; but it has been strikingly refuted by history. No; Christianity is not merely a human apparition. History, that unquestionable witness, shows that, far from harmonizing with the various tendencies of the human mind at the time when it first appeared, it was in direct opposition to them. It was not the wisdom of the world that gave it birth; on the contrary, it strove to crush it. Christianity was not the child of its own times; it was at once their enemy and their renovator. It was not from the dust of the earth that this precious fruit came forth; and it can not return to dust. Heaven committed to the world that unchangeable treasure, which successive generations were to hand down, uninjured, from hand to hand; we have received it in our day, and will reverently and carefully transmit it, in our earthen vessels, to our descendants; and it will remain unchanged among men until heaven and earth flee away, and there shall be found no place for them.

But if, on the one hand, we meet with the opinions of the levellers of Christianity, we find on the other the pretensions of an inflexible dogmatism, which would assign a constantly uniform appearance to Christianity throughout the whole existence of the Church. There is something in Christianity that never changes: and that is its essence; and there is something in it that does change; that is its aspects. It is by neglecting to distinguish the appearance from the reality that many have mistaken the unvarying nature of the religion of Jesus Christ. The appearance of a man changes in the various stages of his life; yet he is always the same man.

Like every thing else that enters into the sphere of humanity, Christianity was to be invested with a human form from the moment that it came down from heaven. The external circumstances of every epoch have exerted a decided influence on the development of Christian truths. One form has followed another. These successive forms have not been matters of indifference. One may have been preferable to another; but the same essential truth has always existed in all its past forms, and will always exist in the future ones.

Gentlemen, the work in which we are engaged to-day, and which we shall communicate to you, is a very feeble and paltry one; but its glory is, that it relates to the eternal work. If we wished to argue in favour of matters connected with some aspect of the religion of Jesus Christ, we should have no pledge of durability for the cause which we would defend. The next revolution of human society would send it to its grave, with every thing that is merely accidental. But if we keep hold of very essence of Christianity, then the sacred cause to which our efforts are devoted will participate in the perpetuity of the work of God. We may fail; and soon, going the way of all the living, we shall fail; our Seminary may fail; but the cause to which it is consecrated will never fail, either in this city or in the world. In the words of an ancient oracle, "To it shall the gathering of the people be."

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Yes, gentlemen, this is the foundation of our hopes, amid many difficulties and trials. It is this that, by God's grace, encourages us. And perhaps it will be worth our while to consecrate a few moments to acquainting you with this characteristic phenomenon of the religion of Jesus Christ: The unchangeableness of the doctrines of Christianity, in the midst of the diversity of its forms; the Voice of the Church, one and ever the same in all ages.

If we enquire into the various human formas which the unchangeable truth of God has successively taken in different periods of history, we find that they have been very numerous. We must collect them, unite them, and form them into an extensive whole. We shall thus obtain, as a last synthesis, four principal periods or forms. The first is the primitive form, or form of life. The second is the form of dogma. The third is the form of the schools. The fourth is the form of the Reformation. The Church of Christ, according to a scriptural comparison, is like one man. It has had its youth, its manhood, and its old age; and then, yet without dying, it has had, so to speak, a powerful resurrection. These have been the four eras or ages of the church of Jesus Christ.

We shall rapidly survey these four forms, so different, I may say so opposed in appearance, to see whether we will find in each the same unchangeable truth. We shall listen to the

voices of the teachers. It is true that the assertions of a single man will not suffice to acquaint us with the belief of the Church; but if, by consulting the writings of men who have lived in various countries at a distance from one another, we find, amid great variety of views, certain doctrines in which all agree, may we not with reason conclude that those doctrines were the doctrines of the Church, scattered over the whole world? To what points then shall our enquiries be directed?

The whole of Christianity, as well as the whole of religious philosophy, necessarily reverts to three principal points. In the first place it refers to GOD; in the second place, to MAN; and in the third place, to the relation which exists between God and man, or the means by which God unites man to himself: that is, REDEMPTION. Let us see then what the voice of the Church, in the various periods of Christianity, teaches us respecting these three points.

THE VITAL ERA.-We exclude from the primitive period the days of the apostles, which must be considered separately. In our opinion, that primitive form begins with the successors of the apostles, and extends to the times of Arius. The principal characteristic of this period was life. The Christian truths were not yet proclaimed with that precision and systematic order for which they were afterwards distinguished. Men lived for the Saviour in the midst of an idolatrous world; they died for the Saviour in the arena or at the stake; and this without much discussion respecting his person or his work. Christianity was content to exist, and to know and profess that it existed, without enumerating and classifying all the essential parts which constituted it; in the same way that man is long satisfied with possessing existence and life, without examining or carefully explaining in what this existence and this life consist. A few rationalist doctors (who have not been undeceived by a certain degeee of learning which is only too superficial) have very strangely concluded, from this characteristic of the primitive form, that the Christian truths did not exist at that early period, and that there were no dogmas, because there was no dogmatism. But to infer, from this want of precision in dogmas, that the Christian truths did not exist, is a mode of reasoning as singular and as false as that of an unskilful

controversialist would be, if he pretended that the periods of his being of which a man can not give a precise and accurate account, never had an existence !

The result of this characteristic of the primitive form was, that the controversies of that period seldom had respect to dogmas. Their tendencies, rather than their dogmas, were different. We meet with families presenting various aspects, rather than sects sustaining opposite doctrines. Let us trace the consequence of these various families, before we state the doctrines which the voice of the Church then proclaimed.

The simple Christianity of the apostolic fathers followed the divine inspiration of the apostles. It seems that in this case the usual order was inverted, and that the ingenuousness and simplicity of childhood succeeded the power and maturity of the full-grown man. The Church, under the guidance of Ignatius, Polycarp, and many other faithful disciples, lived under the influence of the great idea of the approaching return of Jesus Christ. "There are three constitutions or dispensations of the Lord," says one of those fathers, Barnabus, who inclined to another direction: "the hope of life (the Old Testament); the commencement of life (the New Testament); and the consummation of life (the kingdom of heaven)." But by degrees this heavenward tendency seemed to cease in the Church. There arose a generation which did not penetrate so deeply into the spirit of Jesus Christ. Curious traditions were collected respecting the appearance of Christ on earth. Carnal Jews, who expected a human Messiah, preserved their gross views under the name of Christians. It seems as though the Church, weary of its upward flight, fell back to the earth. Let us not wonder at this; we almost always find a period of stupor following a great revival.

Then there appeared on the borders, and almost beyond the borders of Christianity, a tendency diametrically opposite. Oriental philosophy was desirous of uniting with the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. It deprived it of its practical character, and changed it into systems which soared among the clouds. Gnosticism substituted for the wholesome doctrine a fantastical cosmogony, by means of which it endeavoured to explain that which is inexplicable, and an enthusiastic theosophy, which