To Those Throughout the World Who Love the Lord Jesus in Sincerity
An Address on Behalf of the Proposed Evangelical Alliance
The church of Christ has all along been one. It is made up of all those, and only those, who in every place, and of every party, believe on the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, and obey him as their sovereign. One life pervades the whole band of discipleship — that life of which the regenerating spirit is the source; so that they are vitally one. And in the eye of Omniscience, one prevailing character marks them all — a character predominating over all singularities of creed, and peculiarities of temper and practice — the all-absorbing feature of oneness with Christ. Vitally one — viewed from the highest of all standing-points, they are visibly one.
And there was once a time when nothing was more notorious than the church’s unity. From no peculiar garb, from no studious uniformity, but from the warmth of their affections and the depth of their sympathies, so obvious was their oneness that mere onlookers said, “Behold these Christians, how they love one another!” Filled with the Holy Ghost, “the multitude of believers were of one heart and of one soul.”
But these days have passed away, and for ages a divided church has been the lamentation of the holiest men; and the healing of its divisions has been the anxious problem of many of the church’s wisest members. Various schemes have been suggested. Some have sought the remedy in vigorous legislation. They have recommended as the cure of discord a general council, followed up by the edicts of kings and emperors. They have said, “Let the most learned divines assemble and determine the true theology, and then let the rulers of the land enforce it; let royal proclamation or act of parliament enjoin one creed, one worship, and one polity throughout the country, and then we shall have unity.” And it is with this view that the decrees of councils have so often been enforced by civil law, and that dissent from the legalized religion has so often been made a crime forbidden by the statute, and punished by the judge. But another and milder class, aware that compulsion is not concord, and that a forced concession is not faith, have tried another plan. They have taken up the points of difference, and have defined, and explained, and distinguished, and have attempted to show that after all there is no real diversity, but that Lutherans, and Calvinists, and Arminians, mean the same thing, though they have an unfortunate way of expressing their mutual harmony; or if there really be some discrepancy, it is so slight that they might well consent to spht the difference. On this system Richard Baxter tried to reconcile the advocates of a limited and a universal atonement, and Archbishop Usher sought to unite the opposing forms of episcopacy and presbytery. But the usual upshot of these eclectic efforts is a new division, and the via media proves a via terda. The difference is split, but the division is not healed. Another, and an increasing class, have, therefore, felt that Christian concord can never be effected by civil compulsion on the one hand, nor by a scheme of giving and taking on the other. They feel that Christian union is an affair of neither legislation nor logic, but, as in the beginning, must be the result of love. Intelligent enough to distinguish the outward differences of his brethren, but perspicacious enough, through all peculiarities, to discover their vital identity — magnanimous enough to overlook much that he may reckon odd or erroneous for the sake of more that he deems noble and right — full of that regenerate instinct which hails the Saviour’s image rather than his own facsimile, and shining in those holy beauties which win each Christian heart — so amiable as to make his fellowship an object of desire, so cordial and catholic that he rejoices to give it, but, withal, so zealous for the truth, and so expHcit in his conduct, that he can give it without suspicion of his personal soundness; his is the right attitude for Christian union, whose personal piety is constantly attracting brotherly love, and whose prompt affection instantly reciprocates each overture of brotherly kindness. In healing the dissensions of a divided church, legislation will fail and logic will fail, but LOVE will never fail.
For years there has existed, in almost all quarters of Christendom, a strong desire to draw more closely together, and to show, in some overt and signal way, the actual oneness of the body of Christ. Both on the continent, and in America and England, much has been written to clear away difficuhies and expedite the issue. Repeated meetings have been held, not only to explain the truth, but to exhibit it; and whatever other effect the great assemblage of June 1, 1843, may have produced, it at least helped all present to understand the blessed oneness and joyful worship of the upper sanctuary. Not only was the name of Jesus so predominant that every other name was forgotten, but he himlelf was so sensibly near, that no disciple could then and there have felt it difficult to die. That London meeting was followed up in Dublin, and elsewhere; and in the various forms of a dull discomfort and at the present state of true religion, or a vehement yearning after better acquaintance and closer alliance with other Christians, or an intelligent perception of the mighty results likely to follow a large embodiment and striking manifestation of Christian oneness, the union-spirit has been widely spreading. Last autumn, after many prayers and communings among themselves, ministers and members of seven denominations in Scotland issued a circular, inviting their friends in England and Ireland to a conference at Liverpool, on the first day of the bygone October. Though many most appropriate individuals, and even denominations, were unintentionally omitted in sending round the invitation, and many whose hearts were in it forbore to attend till they should see what form the movement took’, upward of two hundred attended — representing the talent, zeal, and piety, of seventeen of the largest Christian societies in the empire. To enumerate the names — illustrious in the history of modern evangelism there assembled, or to describe the heart-melting, the brotherly kindness and mutual confidence, the devotional enlargement and sacred joy of those everto-be-remembered days, is not the object of this address. It must suffice to say that the Lord was with us of a truth, and that, after ample consultation and prayer, it was resolved to convene a more extensive meeting in London next June,* to which Christians from all parts of the world shall be invited. It was agreed that the persons invited to this great conference should be persons holding what are usually understood to be evangelical views regarding such important doctrines as — :-.
“1. The divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of Holy Scripture.
*’ 2. The unity of the Godhead, and the trinity of persons therein.
“3. The utter depravity of human nature, in consequence of the fall.
“4. The incarnation of the Son of God, and his work of atonement for sinners of mankind.
*’ 5. The justification of the sinner by faith alone.
*’6. The work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion and sanctification of the sinner.
“7. The right and the duty of private
* The time was subsequently altered to the month of August.
judgment in the interpretation of Holy Scripture.
“8. The divine institution of the Christian nninistry, and the authority and perpetuity of the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s supper.”
It was, among other suggestions, agreed to recommend to this conference of ecumenical evangelism the formation of an institution, to be called The Evangelical Alliance, for carrying out the objects included in Christian Union.
In fulfilment of a duty devolved on them at the Liverpool conference, the London branch of the provisional committee have issued this brief address, in order to convey to their brethren a general idea of the principles on which it is proposed to establish the intended alliance, and to mention some of the objects which it might hopefully seek. And to prevent misconceptions, it may be well to state in the outset some of the things which it is not, and at which it does not aim.
L The proposed alliance asks no surrender of conscientious conviction. There is nothing which a good man values more than his religious belief. There are some things which it may cost him an effort to abandon, and some things which may cost him little. He may be called on to part with his money, and may be able to tell it down, and hand it over to its new possessor without a moment’s pang or the most secret murmur. He may be constrained to part with some object of endeared affection, and may feel that in its vanishing his better and happier self has gone away; but when he feels that the Lord hath taken it, he feels a mournful blessedness, a sublime self-abdication, in letting it go. And he may be forced to surrender some memorial of distant affection or departed friendship; and however brawny the arm which wrings it from his grasp, he almost feels that there is a sacrilege in not letting life go with it. But in all these cases, at the worst they are the natural feelings which are wounded; the conscience remains unhurt. It is far otherwise, however, when a man is called to abandon a truth which his Saviour has taught him to believe, or a duty which his Saviour has taught him to practise. The matter may be minute, but if he believes it to be his Saviour’s will, he can not sacrifice it without a dismal sense of delinquency. He feels that he is a traitor. His conscience is lacerated at the moment; and even should the deadly wound be healed — should he contrive to argue or cajole himself into subsequent self-complacency, the scar of such a wound, by making conscience more callous, leaves his religious vitahty less. Hence many went to the Liverpool conference with a painful misgiving. They felt that if, in order to union, they must surrender an iota of what they believed to be the truth in Jesus, they could not purchase even so great a blessing at such a perilous price. Looking over all the tenets in their creed, they could not find one so mite-like that they dared to buy even union with it. And in this they were right, for there is not a tenet in “the faith once delivered to the saints” so insignificant, but some saint has thought it worth while to be a martyr for it.
But such apprehensions were entirely chimerical. The conference was no conspiracy to inveigle the members into a sanction of each other’s opinions, or into a surrender of their own. No man was asked to leave his peculiarities outside the door; and it was not the fault of the conference if each did not carry back to London and Leeds, to Dublin and Edinburgh, all the theology which he brought to Liverpool.
It was felt and allowed that important diversities of sentiment exist among those who give every evidence of sincere discipleship; and it was also felt that it would be a happy day which witnessed the melting of these diversities into a blessed unanimity. But then it was equally acknowledged that some other things must first be effected, and it was for one of these anterior things that the conference had now assembled. It was not met for the discussion of dogmas, but for the diffusion of brotherly love. It was not to sit as a reconciler of conflicting sentiments, but as the restorer of ancient affections. It did not arbitrate denominational differences, but it sought the outlet and increase of Christian charity. It rejoiced to find that the points were many and momentous on which all present agreed; but it neither said that the points on which they dissented were trivial, nor that these disagreements could be discussed and settled there. It allowed that all the members might be equally sincere in their creed, and honest in their peculiarities; and not wishing any man to abandon his convictions till he could abandon them conscientiously, it left all to keep intact and inviolate their respective opinions, till the flow of mutual love had increased their common Christianity.
2. But more than this: the Evangelical Alliance asks no one to conceal his religious convictions. A lover of truth loves to proclaim it. When he finds it, he calls his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. He invites them to share it with him; and to bid him be silent, is to bid him be selfish. But if it really be truth which the man has discovered, and if it really be philanthropy which makes him proclaim it, he will neither emulate the roar of the lion, nor borrow the Pharisee’s trumpet. Truth, as the gospel conveys it, is benignant and mellowing; and the man who finds it in joy will speak it in love. He will also speak it at right times and right places, and in tones whose intensity shall bear some proportion to the intrinsic worth of the subject. But with such provisoes — provisoes which the Christian wisdom of many has already suggested to themselves — the Evangelical Alliance would concede to all who hold in common vital truth, the utmost freedom of discourse. As it asks no man to surrender an iota of his creed, so it would ask no man to abate by a single atom his Christian “liberty of prophesying.” As it is not a union of denominations, so neither is it a silencing of particular testimonies.
3. After this, we need scarcely add that the Evangelical Alliance does not ask any cessation of denominational effort, nor demand of any community to suspend its attempts at ecclesiastical development. Just as every individual disciple is in constant danger of seeking his own things more than the things of Jesus Christ, so every Christian society incurs the same hazard; and whether they be individuals or societies, they cease to be in a wholesome state when their own things become dearer than the church of Christ and its wide interests. It is a sad inversion of the apostolic spirit, when the transference of a conspicuous proselyte from one section of the church to another is a source of higher exultation than the accession to the church of the saved of some notorious sinner from an ungodly world. The one event excites rapture in heaven; perhaps the other is too trivial to attract any notice there. Still there is a limit within which denominational zeal might be innocent, and even salutary. lu civil society we have often witnessed an honest rivalry between different families — a strife who should count up the largest list of worthies, and send out into the commonwealth the goodliest band of brave, or patriotic, or learned sons; and this competition occasioned no heart-burnings and no bloodshed — nothing but a higher style of family nobility. Would to God that the different clans and families in the Saviour’s kingdom had the same loyalty and patriotism; and instead of wasting their strength in mutual extermination, were striving who should send out the noblest missions and the most devoted ministers — who should produce the holiest people and the most numerous converts — who should supply the largest contribution to the common Christianity, and achieve the greatest services for the common Saviour! To do this, the perfecting of denominational machinery, and the development of denominational resources, might be needful; but there would be no need to demolish our neighbor’s implements, or abstract our neighbor’s workmen. There need be no breaking into each other’s fold, so long as there are so many sheep in the wilderness; and there need be no strife between the herdmen, so long as each may dig his own well, and write over it — “Rehoboth.”
But it is time now to be telling what the Evangelical Alliance actually is, and what is its absolute aim.
Its objects are —
1. To promote a closer intercourse and warmer affection among the people of God now scattered abroad.
2. To exhibit before the world the actual oneness of the church of Christ.
3. To adopt united measures for the defence and extension of the common Christianity. In other words, mutual affection, MANIFESTED UNITY, and COMMON
MEASURES, are the one, though threefold, object of the Evangelical Alliance.
I. The Evangelical Alliance seeks to extend and strengthen the mutual affection of the people of God, irrespective of the countries where they dwell, and the communities to which they belong. This object is specific, and of itself sufficiently important to merit all the effort. Love to the brethren is as much a duty as sobriety or the sanctification of the sabbath, and it is a duty much forgotten. If it be worth while to form societies for the better observance of the fourth commandment, or the sixth, it is surely as legitimate, and at the present moment as needful, to establish one for the better observance of Christ’s personal commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.” And though the Alliance should turn out nothing more than a peace-society for Christendom — a society for softening asperities, and for healing deadly feuds between individual disciples — it would accomplish a sufficient end: one which would identify it with the 6*
Prince of Peace, and serve it heir to the seventh beatitude.
So precious are kindness, and confidence, and mutual endearment, that the intercourse of secular life is chiefly an effort to secure them. The visits of neighbors to one another — their friendly meetings and fireside communings — are an acknowledgment that love is a pearl of great price; and although the genuine pearl can not be found in the field of secular society, it is well worthy of the most wistful search. The meetings of learned men, their literary reunions and scientific conversaziones, imply, not only that their frequenters are the devotees of science, but that their ardor for discovery has given them an affinity for one another. They are not content to read the researches of their brethren, the dry results in the transactions of their several societies, but they long to see their associates face to face. And if Christians had as much brotherly love as worldly men have neighborly kindness; if they had as much zeal for Christianity as our philosophers have zeal for chymistry or natural history, they would long to find themselves in one another’s company; and though they might differ on some questions of detail, like two astronomers on opposite sides of the nebular hypothesis, but on the same side of the Newtonian theory, their large agreement and common ultimatum would make it a happy meeting, and supply materials for animated and long-remembered intercourse. And if at this moment there are Christians so cold to Christianity, or so shy of one another, that they had rather never meet, it is an urgent reason for their coming together without longer loss of time. Nothing will so soon banish from their fancies the printed chimera as a sight of the living saint.
The Evangelical Alliance will therefore seek to “cherish in the various branches of the church of Christ the spirit of brotherly love, and will open and maintain, by correspendence and otherwise, fraternal intercourse between all parts of the Christian world.” Evangelic Christendom is at this moment in the predicament of a country which has suffered from the repeated shocks of an earthquake. In its territory there are many flaws and fissures; but the great gulfs are few. So narrow are some of the separations, that they would long since have healed; the crevices would, of their own accord, have closed, had not party zeal driven down its wedges to make the gap perpetual; and even where the chasms are widest, they are not so wide but a lofty intellect or a loving spirit might easily cross them. The real barrier to intercourse is not the breadth of divisions, but the bitterness of controversy. It is not the separateness of the church’s different portions, but the sectarianism of the separate. It is the rancor of debate, the personal malignity, the odium theologicum, which, if not the grand perpetuation of party, is the stronghold of bigotry, and the great obstacle to Christian intercourse. It is this which into the narrower clefts forces the wedges which shall keep them for ever open. It is this which plants its sentinels along the obscure boundary, to prevent uninstructed feet from overstepping it. It is this which seizes the gangways which conciliation or magnanimity has thrown across the wider rents, and hurls them indignant down into the deep. And it is this which flings from its Tarpeian rock the traitors who have been detected paying friendly visits beyond the interdicted line.
Now, controversy may for the present be needful; but there never was, and never will be, need for its rancor. We may have all its victories without its virulence, all its truths without its personal tragedies; and that will be the most wholesome state of the church when discussions wax kindly, and controversies are conducted in the spirit, not of party feuds, but of friendly investigations. Iron sharpens iron: and the day may come, when, like honest experimenters in physics, earnest inquirers in theology will employ their respective acumen, not in perplexing one another, but in pursuing joint researches; and will find their full reward, not in a bewildered public, but in a text clearly interpreted and a doctrine finally demonstrated, in a long debate concluded, and a weary question for ever set at rest.
Dear brethren, the Evangelical Alliance is primarily a society for the increase and diffusion of Christian love. Love is a noble grace, and any pains expended in fostering and spreading it will be well bestowed. The magnanimity which bears the infirmities of the weak, the charily which receives one another as Christ also received us, the considerateness which denies itself and pleases a neighbor for his good, the love which ‘* beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” — this love is as rare as it is Christ-like, as difficult as it is divine. ‘To our proud carnality there may be something more commanding in the boisterous and belligerent attributes; but to a sanctified apprehension there is something more sublime in his brave charity who quells a feud, or subdues his own offended spirit. He maybe a valiant man who points the gun in the hour of battle; but he is a bolder man who lifts the shell from the crowded deck and flings it hissing into the surge. He may be a valiant spirit who, muzzle to muzzle, plies his roaring artillery on a belabored and reluctant church, and waves his victorious stump as he sees the hostile flag come down; but he is the truest hero who, espying an explosive mischief on the deck — a bomb fraught with foolish questions and wordy strifes — contrives to pitch it timely overboard. There may be something august in the dark thunder-cloud as it frowns and grumbles over quaking fields; but there is somethino; miohtier and more wondrous in the lightning-rod which is gradually stealing from that cloud its fiery elements, and converting its dingy wrath into harmless vapor. And there is something commanding in the flashing zeal and muttering orthodoxy of the surcharged disputant — something that calls a rueful attention to himself in the wilful spirit as he heaves his lowering bulk between a happy church and the smiling firmament; but there is something nobler in that wise and quiet spirit, that lightning-rod whose gentle interference and noiseless operation are drawing off the angry sparkles, and thinning the gloomy mischief into azure and daylight again. And there may be grandeur in the hailstorm which hurls its icy boulders over a dismantled province — which strews the battered sod with dead birds and draggled branches, and leaves the forest a grisly waste of riven trunks and leafless antlers. But who does not rather bless the benignant rain as it comes tenderly down on the mown grass, or the rainbow as it melts in fragrant drops and glowing flowers, and then from grateful fields and laughing hills glides back into its parent sun? Even so there may a terrible importance attend the rattling zealot who sends a storm of frozen dogmas through Christendom, or through his particular society, and leaves it a desolation; who certainly kills some weeds, but demolishes each radiant flower, and annihilates the season’s crop. Yet who does not rather pray that his may be the brotherly kindness which dissolves in mild enchantment on sullen natures, and in genial invigoration on such as are drooping or dying — a transforming love, like His whose calm descending is forthwith followed by the flourishing of righteousness, and the abundance of peace?
11. A second object of the Evangelical Alliance is to manifest the large agreement which actually subsists between the genuine members of the church of Christ; that is, to exhibit as far as possible the existing oneness of the Christian church. It may sometimes be a mere pretext for carelessness, but we believe it is often a real stumbling-block to earnestness, that Christians are so divided; and though it may be very just to argue that amid all this diversity there is an actual identity, it would be more convenient
to exhibit it. The communion of saints is a tenet in every creed, and a matter of regenerate consciousness with every Christian; but to a worldly man it is a thing so recondite, an affair of such delicate induction, and contradicted by so many appearances, that he may well be excused for overlooking it. As a source of comfort to Christians, this latent unity is valuable; but before it can become an argument and an element of influence on those who are without, this latent unity must be made obvious and palpable, and, if possible, notorious.
And does not this unity exist? Independently of the outward character which they exhibit, are there not certain great fads which all Christians credit, and certain feelings which all Christians share in common? That the Bible is the word of God; that our earth was visited eighteen centuries ago by the Son of God incarnate; that in his sufferings and death he effected an atonement for sinners of mankind; that this atonement is available to the entire and instant justification of the sinner who believes in Jesus; that Christ now lives and reigns the head of his ransomed church; and that the Holy Spirit is sent forth into the world to convince of sin, and to conduct souls to the Saviour, and to sanctify the children of God: truths Uke these every Christian credits. There may be favorite ways of stating them, and there may be different ways of systematizing and arranging them; but there is no variance as to their revealed reality and historic verity: they are facts which have the suffrage of consenting Christendom. And even so, there are certain feelings which distinguish the whole family of the faithful: complacency in the revealed character of the living God, love to his holy law, hatred of sin, a desire to do their heavenly Father’s will and possess his conscious favor, zeal for his honor, love to his people, and delight in bis worship: these affections, whether constant or intermitting, whether vivid or more vague, every disciple of Jesus knows them. Every man is a Christian who rests on the
Lord Jesus as his Saviour, who obeys him as his Lord, and who rejoices in him as his all-sufficient friend. And as these are their common characteristics, why should they not unite in proclaiming to the world that
LOVE AND LOYALTY TO THE LoRD JeSUS,
in which they are all agreed?
The basis of the projected union comprehends a body of doctrine, regarding which the Evangelical Alliance might send forth, if needful, its united testimony. Should a controversy arise respecting the composition of some mineral, and should ten chymists all agree in discovering gold and silver in it, while some detected traces of other metals, would there be any harm in the ten subscribing a declaration regarding the two ingredients which they all alike had ascertained, leaving it to the rest to send forth their separate statements regarding those additional substances which they believed to be also present? And when the question is asked, “What saith the Scripture?” and the further question —
“What doth it mean by these sayings?” if there be certain paramount doctrines which we all alike discover in these sayings, but others regarding which we are not absolutely unanimous, is our disagreement regarding the latter sufficient reason for not signing a joint declaration regarding the former? The Evangelical Alliance asks no man to abandon the amplitude of his denominational articles; but if in his own more copious confession he has already included certain vital doctrines, we beg his suffrage in the general testimony. And should he belong to a society which owns no confession but the Bible, we do not ask him to impose our basis on his society; but if he has found these truths in his bible, we ask him to join his name to ours in telling the world that these things are so. And thus, in some form, which may meet the views of all, we hope to be able to tell the world some truths of surpassing moment, in which we are all agreed; and when the
Jew, or the skeptic, or the Romanist, asks, “What is evangelical Christianity?” we shall find in our basis of union the materials of an answer — the manifesto of evangeHcal Christendom.
But even though no doctrinal statement were prepared, we might exhibit, in the cordiality of our meetings, in the promptitude of our sympathy, in the simultaneousness of our movements, and the oneness of our aims, such a spectacle of vital and inward identity as would answer every purpose. We do not wish to dogmatize on the best means of accomphshingthe object. We would rather leave it to the thoughts and prayers of the church meanwhile, and to the Lord’s teaching when we meet next summer, to decide the most excellent way. We are content to mention it as one object of the Evangelical Alliance — an imbodiment, or visible exhibition, of the actual oneness of the church of Christ.
III. The third object of the proposed alliance is, to adopt united measures for the defence and extension of the common Christianity.
Even now there are many antichrists. There are systems which make the sinner his own Saviour, and others which reserve what the Saviour revealed, and shut those Scriptures which he bids us search. And while his supremacy is rejected by a lawless world and a large amount of licentious professorship, every office of our blessed Lord is assailed by Socinianism on the one hand, and by Romanism on the other. There are many adversaries; and it is time that right-hearted men were striving together in the defence of the gospel. To meet the insidious infidelity and the atheistic blasphemy of some — the soul-deluding superstition of others — the profligacy and flagrant immorality of many more — to meet the endre ungodliness of this bible-burning, and bible-wresting age, demands the united energies of all to whom the Bible is inspiration, and the Saviour divine.
The victims of persecution are, in many lands, pining away unbefriended and forgotten; localities which bloomed like the garden of God are given over to the beast of the field and the boar of the forest; the Lord’s day is losing its sacredness, and usages of olden piety are melting in the flood of a furious secularity; while the religious silence of our more decent literature supplies no counteractive to the grossness and ribaldry of the more outrageous press. Two thirds of our world’s population have never heard the Saviour’s name; and if a majority of minds enlightened in saving truth, and influenced by scriptural motives, be needful to constitute a Christian community, there yet exists no Christian land. To exalt the standard of personal piety, to retrieve the interests of public morality, to diff’use through Christendom the conviction that no member shall hereafter suffer, but all the members shall suffer with him — to stem the encroachments of superstition and infidelity, and diff’use the light and joy of the gospel — in objects like these there is ample room for division of labor and union of effort. Without devouring one another, the martial spirits among us may find outlet for all their chivalry, and use for all their logic, in fighting the battles of the faith; and those whose milder dispositions and less athletic mould are more inclined for peaceful exercises, may find abundant scope in the angelic errands and benignant applications of the gospel of the grace of God.
The small progress and scanty triumphs of that gospel are not owing to its inherent weakness, nor to the fewness of its friends. The gospel is mighty. The truth of eternity — the power of God is in it: and its believers are many — perhaps never so numerous as now; and their aggregate resources are immense. It is astonishing, when you consider the amount of learning, and intellectual opulence, and social influence — it is delightful to recount the various accomplishments and talents which, in one form or another, and within this living age, have been laid at the Saviour’s feet. And while the church is numerous and powerful, there is no lack of zeal. There is vitality, and there is energy, and sometimes stupendous exertion; but the misery is that so much of it is zeal misspent — that so much of it is energy devoted to mutual destruction. The elastic vapor which murmurs in the earthquake, or explodes in the mud-volcano, if properly secured and turned on in the right direction, might send the navy of an empire all round the world, or clothe with plenty an industrious realm. And the zeal which has hhherto rumbled in ecclesiastical earthquakes, and left no nobler mementoes than so many streaming cones — so many mud-craters, on the sides of the great controversial Jorullo — if rightly directed, might long before this time have sent the gospel all over the globe, and covered a rejoicing earth with the fruits of righteousness. The river which Ezekiel saw was a tiny rill when it first escaped from the temple, but a course of a thousand cubits made it ankle-deep, and a few more furlongs saw it a river that he could not pass over — the waters were waters to swim in. And this is the course of the gospel, when Christians do not hinder it.
But instead of clearing the common channel, and strengthening the main embankments for its universal and world-gladdening flow, the effort hitherto has been to divert it all into denominational reservoirs. Each one has gone with his spade and his pickaxe — has breached the grand embankment, and tried to tempt the mighty stream into his own more orthodox canal. And the consequence of these sectarian efforts — these poor attempts to monopolize the gospel — the consequence is, that like a certain river in the southern hemisphere, which has only been known to reach the ocean once during the last thirty years — between the scorching secularity overhead, and the selfish interruptions of the stream, it is only now and then that the gospel is allowed to flow far enough to fertilize new territory, and gladden weary souls. But a better day is coming, and in these movements we hail its dawn. Instead of monopolizing or dividing the stream — instead of breaking its banks, or interrupting its course — our individual and our united efforts shall hereafter seek to clear its channel and deepen its flow; and the work of our different denominations shall be, not to pierce the bank or dig diverting canals, but each to strengthen the enclosing mounds, and remove the interrupting rocks as it sweeps alongside of their respective territories. Thus acting, thus seeking not our own things, but the things of Jesus Christ, we shall soon behold the little stream which welled up at Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago, holding on in its prosperous course. We shall see life leaping in its sunny ripple, and a joyful world resorting to its genial current; we shall see one fold reposing on its green margin, and beside its still waters one Shepherd leading them. And best of all, on its teeming brink we shall again behold the long-exotic Tree of Life — its laden branches mirrored in the tranquil tide, and showering on the azure amplitudes its leaves of heavenly heahng.* November 25, 1845.
* The address, in its original form, concluded with some practical suggestions, which are now superseded by the formation of the Alliance.