057. TO SPIRITUALIZE IS TO CONGREGATIONALIZE

TO SPIRITUALIZE IS TO CONGREGATIONALIZE The priesthood of the individual believer and his sole responsibility to Christ, the right of every member to interpret Scripture for himself and to have a voice in the government and discipline of the church, and the principle that truth is to be put before unity and the church to be first pure then peaceable, all these are wonderfully analogous to the characteristics of our civil polity. That very tenet of faith which is so much spoken against—our tenet of restricted communion—is the precise parallel to a cherished principle of our government,—the principle that foreigners cannot enjoy the elective franchise and other privileges of citizenship until they have been naturalized. Since baptism is the rite by which men are made citizens of the kingdom, we cannot grant to them the privileges of the kingdom until they have been baptized. He who claims that persons have a right to commune before they have been baptized should also hold that all emigrants from abroad must be permitted to vote before they have become citizens. I am glad to be able to quote Dr. John Hall, that stanch Presbyterian of New York City, in defense of this position. He expresses himself as follows, "If I believed, with the Baptists, that none are baptized but those who are immersed on profession of faith, I should, with them, refuse to commune with any others." And Dr. A. A. Hodge, in his "Systematic Theology," declares that The faith and practice of all the evangelical churches is that the communion is designed only for believers, and therefore that a credible profession of faith and obedience should be required of every applicant

We claim that our church government resembles our civil government in cultivating the spirit of freedom. Ritualism and prelacy benumb and enslave, and you cannot make men spiritual without making them also free. The late Dr. Dexter, one of the most eminent Congregationalists of the country, said that " to spiritualize and evangelize Romanism or High Churchism would be to Congregationalize it." And since Baptists are the most Congregational of the Congregationalists, we may say boldly that, just in proportion as hereditary and ritualistic churches are spiritualized, will they approach the Baptist polity. Now I do not believe that America will ever be less democratic than it is to-day. Revolutions never go backward, and the republican principle has come to stay. Instead of contracting our bounds, we are more likely to widen them, until British America, Cuba,¹ and South America have the flag of the free waving over them. The spirit of this Columbian year is the spirit of pride in our government and of gratitude for our institutions. I cannot believe that, with the world’s progress toward the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of republican forms of government, we are ever to be seduced from our political creed by the glamour of despotism. And can any one think that, with this universal tendency toward liberty in the State, the country or the world is going backward to despotism in the Church? Has prelacy any future in America? Are our people going to accept centralized or hierarchical government in religion, when they pride themselves more and more on their independence in politics? To ask the question is to answer it. Baptists have the great advantage in America of a church polity whose principles are analogous to the principles of our free civil government.

Sixthly: It is our Baptist advantage that we hold to a freedom of individual interpretation and opinion, which makes us capable of unlimited expansion with the expansion of the land in which we live. Monarchies need to be limited in extent. But it is not so with republics, Representation and freedom solve all difficulties. And what limit need there be to the growth of a denomination, so long as there is no common government and every member of it has the right of private judgment? With us there are no creeds which bind our faith and serve as a human standard to which we must conform. Our only standard is the New Testament, and that every member may interpret for himself. We have no church courts with their gradations and successive appeals; there is no hierarchy or authority superior to the local body of believers; there are no oaths of conformity or prosecutions for heresy. We recognize not only the right, but also the duty, of a progressive knowledge of Scripture and of a more perfect statement of doctrine. With John Smyth, that excellent Baptist who died at Amsterdam in 1612, we say, "I profess I have changed, and shall be ready still to change, for the better"; and, with John Robinson in his farewell address to the Pilgrim Fathers, " I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word." While other denominations have difficulty in adapting themselves to new surroundings and new phases of thought, the Baptist denomination has no Catechisms nor Confessions to bind it, but can freely adopt new measures or new ideas, as new study of the Bible and new needs of the times may require.