minister, they are egregiously misled by him. The Church, in this sense of it, is a pure fiction. The real thing, answering not to the true Church of Christ, but to the simple sectarian institution on which the minister really relies, is one thing in America, another thing in England, and still another in Rome. In America, in the United States, “the Church” thus pretentiously and often so arrogantly referred to is the entirely human institution organized by a convention of worthy Episcopalian gentlemen in Philadelphia, after the Revolutionary war, and periodically administered by triennial conventions, which revised for use here the English Prayer-Book, and from time to time establishes canons for its own government. A very excellent institution in the main, — providing for its disciples prayers, articles of religion, etc., - but not to be confounded or identified with “ the Church of the living God.” When English Episcopal clergymen, in the same pretentious way, tell their disciples that the Church has provided so and so for them, the Church which they refer to is the CranmerianElizabethan-Parliamentary creation, whose history from its origin to the present day is quite a sublunary affair. Something, then, in fact, quite unlike the true thing which we may in good faith call “ the Church,” is thus pretentiously and deceivingly offered as a refuge from the exacting tasks of thorough inquiry, and from the limited satisfaction to be derived from testing controverted points by texts of Scripture. “ The Church " comes in as a co-ordinate and complementary authority. If she can justly claim as much as this, why not demand for her a paramount authority ? Many ministers who use this plea, if they do not intend that their hearers should infer, do at least leave them to infer, that such documents as the Nicene Creed, and such doctrinal digests as the Thirtynine Articles, have an organic sanction in the exposition of the Christian faith derived from a divinely directed ecclesiastical constitution and tradition. The fiction which underlies all these pretensions is a most shallow one. Not a single distinguishing test-mark can Episcopalians define for any such sanction claimed by them for any peculiarity of their own Church, or even for anything which it has in common with other prelatical churches, which may not be claimed specifi

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cally for the Church of Rome through the Council of Trent, or by a party of the English Dissenters through the Westminster Assembly of Divines. There is no reason for believing that any synod or council subsequent to that described in Acts xv. ever had divine authority or commission for deciding any matter of faith, or digesting any scheme of doctrine, or establishing any form of church institution. There is a legend preserved in the Alexandrian Church, which, if it could be verified as positive history, would go some ways towards verifying the fictitious plea with which we are dealing. The legend is to the effect, that, though only 318 bishops, occupying just as many thrones when they were seated, were convened at the Council of Nice, yet, when they rose to be called over to confirm the decrees of the Council, they counted 319. Though the trial was repeatedly made, this additional figure always mysteriously appeared in the count. The last of the grave men standing up to be enumerated turned into the likeness of his neighbor. The legend was explained satisfactorily to generations before our own, by regarding that mysterious but welcome intruder as the Holy Ghost, present to sanction the results of the Council. This element of fact, as fact, is just what“ the Church ” supplies from imagination.

The appeal to an available Church authority, co-ordinate with, and complementary to, the materials furnished in the Scriptures, involves a very abstruse and puzzling argument, even as advanced by the Church of Rome. But the argument is managed with comparative ease by that Church, because it may

be rounded and made complete and thorough in its application, instead of being fragmentary, and because it is consistent with other parts of the theory and history of that Church. But the argument for such an appeal made by the English Church, and by any affiliated daughter of hers, is tortuous and embarrassing in the extreme, requiring the most forced special pleading; it is deceptive, and of course disappointing to any one who sharply tests it, as has been proved by hundreds of its own divines, who have within our generation gone over to the Church of Rome. For an origin independent of a Roman derivation, the English Church leans upon legends. Midway in its history it was revolutionary, schismatic, and VOL. LXXIII. 5TH S. VOL. XI. NO. I.

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put under the ban of excommunication as regards an authority which it had previously recognized. Its present tenure is Parliamentary. For such an institution to lay claim to any special divine prerogative, is to demand what we cannot admit without better proof than is offered us. Of course, we allow, and in other connections should earnestly insist and rely upon, a sense in which very moderately for dogmatical purposes, but largely and richly for ends and uses of edification and Christian guidance, an appeal is to be made to “the Church of Christ as a traditional, a perpetual institution. definition would not cover the prelatical meaning or use of the word Church. Professed Christians have really no common ground or material beyond and outside of the New Testament. Our arguments, pleas, controversies, must lie within its covers. Our faith in Christianity, our doctrinal beliefs, our authoritative ordinances and institutions, must derive their original, if not their sole, sanction from those sacred pages. If we extend our ground or material beyond that volume, into patristic, or traditional, or ecclesiastical confines, we involve ourselves in perplexities which greatly outbalance any helps which we receive.

Accepting, as we must, the conditions under which we receive as an inheritance the faith of a past age, subject to all the questionings and tests which are to ratify it for the present age, we need above all other things a thorough loyalty to truth, and a hearty confidence that no harm can come to us from anything which it has yet to disclose. There is undoubtedly an additional sanction and charm in a creed, or in any portion of a creed which has for us the power of household attachments and of ancestral ties. To believe as our fathers believed, and as the good and faithful of all Christian ages have believed, will make our belief stronger and holier for our hearts. But when, by the healthful and progressive reachings of the mind toward high truth, any of the old grounds or tenets of faith come under question, there is but one course open to us consistent with Christian discipleship. One of the experimental evidences of new truth is that it adds to the testimony for old truth. If our fathers had good grounds for the tenets which they introduced into their creeds, the subjectmatter of those creeds is happily of such a nature as will allow us, in putting the question to a test, to establish our own faith by the same and by additional reasons. But the weak frights and the strong prejudices entertained about all the free questionings of the bolder minds of our time, indicate not only a dread of new truth, but also a determination that what claims to be such shall not have either a fair hearing or an opportunity to assure itself. Under such a state of things, the risk is that the old faith will decay without leaving any substitute for itself digested from the rich and abundant materials for it within the reach of our own generation. The clerical ban which forbids free inquiry fosters ignorance in one generation, and prepares the hardest and dreariest form of unbelief for the next.

ART. IV.- THE ART OF AMERICA AND THE “ OLD MASTERS.”

:

1. Le Vite de' piu eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architetti, di GIORGIO

VASARI, pubblicate per cura di una Società di Amatori delle Arti

Belle. Vols. 13. Firenze : Felice Le Monnier. 1846 - 62. 2. “ Two Hundred and Forty Years Ago.” A Lecture by HENRY

WARD BEECHER, before the Society of the Sons of New England, December, 21, 1860.

Do we, the composite people now forming on this continent, possess taste?

At this juncture, when old things are being made new, and fresh and novel forms of thought and action are developing among us, the question has a practical bearing.

Surely we have taste, decided and positive. Do we not give evidence of it in our likes and dislikes, the houses we build and furnish, the clothes we wear, the art we condemn or approve, the people we detest or admire ? In fine, in what does not taste display itself every hour of our lives?

It is true that every one has instinctive loves and hates,enjoys one object and is repelled by another. In its common acceptation, taste is the individual like or dislike. Sometimes it is capricious, partial, and prejudiced, often arbitrarily ruled

by crude fancy, erratic imagination, or mere force of local or personal association, independent of intellectual analysis and judgment. Hence its manifestations are frequently onesided, ignorant, and intolerant. In these instances, satisfied with its limited pleasures, like the Chinese with their limited knowledge, it esteems all judgments different from its own isolated preference as barbarous or foolish. If pressed for a reason for its dogmatism and its bizarre displays in dress, in building, in whatever it conceives as adornment, it evades all reference to law, and replies, “ It is handsome, superb, splendid, - I like it," — drawing snail-like within its shell of un

enlightened instincts, as if outside of them there were no appeal, and beyond them no progress.

True taste, however, has a broader and deeper significance. It is a riper judgment than this. Primarily it is based upon feeling, but is improved and strengthened by reason. Certain preferences, born with the individual man, manifest themselves spontaneously, and often give, as it were, a local coloring to an entire life. But there is also in him a capacity for intellectual progress and spiritual insight. The right aim of education is the gradual unfolding of this capacity. And the result of this unfolding, in manners, fashion, art, in all that makes up the refined enjoyment of life, is termed good taste.

The external aspects of things, form and color, are what we at first chiefly take note of. But as our faculties are cultivated, objects which at first gave only a superficial satisfaction address us in a more spiritual language. The difference in degree and quality of enjoyment in the one case and in the other is the measure of the distance that divides a cultivated from an uncultivated taste. The latter in its instincts may be purer than the former; but cultivation expands and strengthens its powers, separating still more widely the finely attuned soul from the heavier nature whose light comes through a denser medium. Hence, although the first requisite for a refined and enlightened taste is a keen native susceptibility to the true and beautiful, to be freely and spontaneously indulged, undeterred by fear of pedantry or criticism, still its possessor should bring it to the test of reason. Impressions are an excellent barometer of our moral and intel

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