coming into direct contact with a large body of the alumni, and for ascertaining their position on the points in controversy, by arriving in town an hour or two after the close of the anniversary exercises. In all this, and in the general course pursued by the newspaper organs of the reactionary party, we see, as we think, an evident distrust of the churches, and a purpose to keep them in the dark, so far as possible, as to what is going on in the Congregational House for the suppression of free thought and free speech in the seminaries of the denomination, and among the missionaries of the American Board. But all such efforts at concealment are sure to fail in the end, and all endeavors to circumscribe the liberties of the churches must come to naught. Sooner or later, the churches will insist on passing judgment for themselves on every disputed question of polity or of doctrine, at home or abroad, without dictation from any quarter. And least of all will they rest content to be dictated to, or dominated by any of their own agencies organized for benevolent work. The denomination is in no sense dependent upon these agencies for its existence or its prosperity. They were created for certain defined purposes, and they are valuable only so far and so long as they fulfill those purposes. "A breath may make them, as a breath has made." The Portland meeting of 1882, with all its mischievous results, will prove to have been not altogether an unmixed evil, if from the controversies and dissensions which it engendered there shall come the restoration of the American Board to its original position of subordination and dependence, and a willingness, on the part of its officials, once again to receive instructions as well as money from their principals, the churches.1 Hamilton Andrews Hill.

BOSTON, MASS.

1 Since this second article was written and, for the most part, put in type, the American Board has met at Springfield, and its proceedings there have passed into history. The time has not yet come to write at length about this meeting, but one or two remarks may be made upon it, in connection with what we have said above. The Board has devoted three meetings - Portland, Des Moines, and Springfield — to theological discussion. This is to be deplored, but the reactionary conservatives have not yet spent as much of the time of the society in trying to stay the progress of theological inquiry as their predecessors, a generation ago, wasted in their endeavors to resist the agitation against slavery and the slave-trade.

Comparing what took place at Springfield with the proceedings in Portland five years since, we observe a decided improvement in the character and tone of the discussions. At Springfield, the conservatives, we believe, did not once intimate that their opponents were agnostics or materialists; it is true, they charged them with having given up the Bible and the Christian Sabbath, but

even Professor Boardman, if we understood him, would go so far as to give recognition to the professors at Andover and New Haven as theists. This indicates a marked advance toward Christian courtesy. Again, at Portland the discussion was all on one side. The progressive men who were there exhibited a marvelous power of self-restraint. They either thought that the personal resentments which inspired the meeting would soon spend themselves, and that the infatuation which these resentments awakened in the minds of many was temporary, or they felt such a confidence in their position as enabled them quietly to abide their time. Dr. Hopkins indeed, in his memorable address, rebuked in temperate and dignified but telling sentences those who had used the meeting as an occasion for theological strife, although, strange to say, they did not then see the bearing of his remarks.

At Springfield there was no doubt on the part of the progressive men as to its being the opportune time to speak, and they spoke freely, and with the utmost plainness. They did more than this: they voted. One third of the corporate members present protested by hand-vote and by ballot against the spirit of faction and intolerance which has become regnant in the Board; and what was represented by this vote, of strength and standing, in the churches, the colleges, and the seminaries, no one knows better than the secretary against whose official acts this positive and emphatic protest was made.

We heard nothing at Springfield about the opposition to the present policy of the Board, as being that of "a decreasing minority," or as a "local" trouble. Earnest and eloquent speakers from all parts of the country made it impossible to continue that kind of argument, and these speakers gave no uncertain sound. For two days the Home Secretary and his followers in the Prudential Committee had to sit and listen to severe and searching criticism from some of the foremost men in the denomination. On the other hand, it seemed to us that Dr. Alden did not receive very vigorous or hearty support from his friends. They may have thought that it was unnecessary to argue very strongly on their side of the question, seeing that they held undoubted possession of the Board and all its machinery, and were sure of votes enough and more than enough to perpetuate their power. The opinion of the New York Times an unprejudiced observer is as follows: "So far as discussion is concerned, the progressive party had the field; there was nothing said by the conservatives that counted for weight in the discussion. They had the votes, and the other side had the intelligence and brains." However this may have been, most of the conservative speakers appeared to be more intent on making explanations in their own behalf than in defending their chief. Professor Boardman, for example, was busy with a defense of himself and the churches against certain phantoms which flitted before his excited imagination. Dr. Goodwin felt called upon to defend millenarianism and the sermon preached by him at Portland, which fitly introduced the proceedings there. Dr. Taylor was defending himself against Dr. Parker, and Dr. Quint was insisting on his right and on that of his brethren, each to hold a pet heresy of his own. Dr. Plumb, confessedly, in speaking for the secretary, spoke quite as much in behalf of himself and his associates on the Prudential Committee. In recalling the debate, we think special mention should be made, and, on the part of the conservatives, grateful mention should be made of the zealous championship of the Rev. Mr. Pentecost, the Rev. Dr. Todd, and Mr. Joseph Cook. Two of these gentlemen spoke twice, and the third would have spoken a second time had he been permitted to do so.

As to the methods employed by the majority at Springfield, what shall we say? Had it been suggested to Dr. Alden and his friends at Portland in 1882 that five years later an annual meeting of the Board would be carried on upon a programme prescribed for it by a private and partisan caucus,"conference," we believe, its promoters wish us to call it, and that the officers would owe their election to a party ticket made up by the same caucus or "conference," they would have scouted the supposition as almost insulting; but precisely this came to pass. Of course, the result was a party triumph. One of the conservative speakers from the West had the frankness to say that he had come to the meeting to vote. Had Dr. Walker, in his magnificent speech, been pleading for the suffrages of the intelligent audience before him, instead of those of a compact body of men voting under caucus or conference" dictation, behind him, the immediate result of his appeal would have been very different from what it was. To quote from the Providence

Journal: "There was an iron relentlessness in the movement of the machinery, and it ground out the vindication of Secretary Alden, without in the least being moved by the appeals and arguments on the other side."

We well remember many of the discussions in the religious societies during the anti-slavery struggle, and our judgment, in a word, upon the extraordinary methods by which the action at Springfield was controlled is, that they have no parallel in the history of the Board, and that they were worthy of the worst days of the American Tract Society just before the War of the Rebellion. For the record of what the secretaries of that society then attempted, and of what they succeeded in doing, we refer our readers to the files of the Independent, the "Independent" of Beecher, Thompson, Cheever, and Storrs. How much reason the secretaries and the partisan members of the Tract Society had for self-gratulation a few years later, when they looked back upon their "victories," and upon what came from them, the files of the same paper, and of almost every other of the period, will show to those who need the information.

THE OPEN DOOR WHICH NONE CAN SHUT.

A MISSIONARY SERMON TO YOUNG MEN IN THE PRESENT CRISIS.1

"These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth and none shall shut, and that shutteth and none openeth I know thy works- behold, I have set before thee a door opened, which none can shut."-REV. iii. 7, 8.

THE most serious results which follow extreme action in matters of public concern are quite apt to be incidental to the purpose of the action. They are not in the original intention and plan. They are unforeseen, or if foreseen are underestimated. The

1 This sermon was preached in the Seminary Chapel, at Andover, on Sabbath afternoon, October 16th, and published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of the next day. It is reprinted by request on the pages of the REVIEW.

fear of consequences, which are indirect and undesigned, is seldom present in sufficient power to restrain men in a predetermined course, or to modify their action.

When the American Board met at Springfield, it was the evident purpose of a majority of the corporation to commit the Board to a definite and unmistakable policy in respect to the question of a Christian probation. The Board came and went, and fulfilled to the letter the will of the majority. Whatever it did, or failed to do, it did not fail to make clear the position of the Board in the present theological controversy. But, in accomplishing this purpose, it reached, as I fear, its most serious and most lasting result in the effect which it produced on the minds of many young men and women who had hoped to devote themselves "to the cause of Christ in heathen lands." The American Board, through its resolutions and votes, aimed at a theological dogma; it hit and wounded to the heart not a few of the most consecrated youths in the colleges and seminaries of New England and of the country.

In saying this, if I supposed that I were speaking simply in behalf of those who are before me, I should be silent. Your sentiments could be assumed. I speak in view of expressions which have come to my personal knowledge, not from you or through you, but from various and, in some cases, remote sources. "We went away from Springfield," said one young man, representing the feelings of those with whom he was in daily contact, "with our hearts burning with indignation. The cause of young men had no hearing at the meeting of the Board." "Of what use,' said another young man in official relation to mission work in one of our seminaries, " of what use for us to try any longer to develop the missionary spirit among our men?" "Nothing remains for us," said a young woman in one of our prominent colleges, "but to work for home missions. The foreign field is closed."

Expressions like these have been too frequent during the past days, and are too representative, to allow me to doubt their significance. I am aware of the answer which may be made. It has already been made. "The Board need give itself no trouble in the matter. It will have as many applicants as it can provide for." There may be truth in this answer, whether made in the spirit of indifference toward those who are excluded, or of hopefulness as to the number of those who may be received. But if true, it does not alter the fact before us, or lessen the responsibility for its existence. It still remains true that a grievous hurt has been inflicted upon the consecrated life of very many

within our schools and churches. And the most sacred thing in the keeping of the church for the use of our boards is this spirit of consecration. It is this which creates boards and makes them necessary. It was this which created the American Board. It was the persistent and plaintive cry of young men, "Who will send us?" which suggested the idea of an organization and supported its framers in the furtherance of their purpose. The mistake of the majority at Springfield, through which so many imbued with the missionary spirit were alienated, was due, as it seems to me, to the want of spiritual perspective, or of a true sense of proportion. For a variation in opinion, not in acknowledged doctrine, the zeal of missionary candidates, supported by all qualifications in belief and conduct, was suffered to pass for nothing. In the balance held in the hand of the Board, dogma was weighed against consecration, and consecration went up.

You ask me how this could have been otherwise in consistency with the thought and feeling-the honest thought and feelingof the majority. I do not propose to reopen the question of the rightfulness or fitness of committing the Board to a theological position on points under discussion in the churches. I put this by. Allowing the right of the majority to take such action, according to the precedent introduced at Des Moines and confirmed at Springfield, I contend that some method should have been devised by the majority by which the Board could have expressed, if necessary, its theological opinions and convictions, and yet have left itself free to judge applicants for service in their individual application and according to their personal fitness in all respects for the work. No one denied to the Board the right of theological examination. The plan of councils, which some advocated, did not deny this right. What was asked was, that there should be a full and fair examination, according to some acknowledged standard of belief, or through some authoritative body, which, in Congregational usage, would be a council. Either alternative would have been satisfactory. The answer which the Board made to this request was the arbitrary commitment of itself to a resolution, which resolution was to be interpreted by action already taken in specific cases, which action was to be continued through the reelection of those who had declared themselves determined "to stand by the record." Between the resolutions of the Board and its agents, young men and women applying for its commission are put between the upper and the nether millstone. I interpret the action taken at Springfield, in its spirit and intention and language,