Presbyterian

“ This Presbyterian believes that billions of years before that baby in the cradle—that little dimpled child, basking in the light of a mother's smile—was born, God had made up His mind to damn it; and when Talmage looks at one of those children who will probably be damned he is cheerful about it; he enjoys it. That is Presbyterianism—that God made man and damned him for His own glory. If there is such a God, I hate Him with every drop of my blood; and if there is a heaven it must be where He is not. Now think of that doctrine! ”

“ Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others’ preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony. It is not so in the districts where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival, if they had power. ”

“ For while the extravagances into which the sects fell, appearing in various forms one after the other, necessarily offended those who did not belong to them, the Presbyterian preachers, after it came to an open breach in the Assembly, distinctly attacked the Independents from the pulpit; and they were still by far the more powerful. The common people, sure of their faith, desired the Presbyterian forms, stringent church discipline, even excommunication, and rejected toleration. ”

“ In a word, the condition of the Presbyterian sects throughout the world was such that a general council of its leading men was highly desirable, provided that there remained in the sects anything worth saving, and they possessed in themselves the power of saving it. For ourselves, we believe that the mutilated fragments of Christian truth still retained by the majority of the Presbyterian laity and by a considerable number of the Presbyterian ministers are well worth saving; but we fear that the Presbyterians themselves will not, or cannot, save them. ”

“ The Presbyterian Church, South—that Church whose history has been characterized by a loyalty so unswerving to the doctrinal standards of Presbyterianism, by a spirit so wisely aggressive in evangelistic and missionary effort, and by a ministry so scholarly and eloquent, has, in the matter of public worship, shown as constant a fidelity to the Westminster Directory as in doctrine it has shown to the Confession of Faith. ”

“ As long as the ministers of the Presbyterian Church are men of God, recognizing His call to the sacred office of the ministry, and believing that those whom He calls He equips with needed grace and gifts for their work, so long will they be able to lead the congregations to which they minister in worship that shall be at once honoring to God and a help to the spiritual life of the people: when they cease to be such men forms may become, not only expedient, but essential. ”

“ Presbyterians are remarkable for their regard to each other, without respect to distinctions—it is a characteristic of God's people. In the case, then, of raising a colored church, the prevailing opinion seemed to be, an organization of colored people where church government could be committed to, and governed by them, and that without separating from Presbyterian bodies, or alienating themselves from their fellow Christians. ”

“ They cannot boast, therefore, that Presbytery was established for its own sake; but they must admit that William would have sanctioned Episcopacy in the Church, if the Bishops and Clergy could have sanctioned the change in the government of the State. Such was the origin of the Presbyterian establishment in 1689, though its advocates affect to believe, that it was owing to the express voice and wish of the nation. ”

“ That history is such as need cause no Presbyterian to blush when it is related side by aide with that of any other Church; surely they must be bold souls who would propose to introduce a radical change into the genius of Presbyterianism, or to relinquish principles which have led to such success, for others that have yet to show an equal vitality and vigor.
Our free and untrammeled worship demands from the worshipper his best; it brings him face to face with his God, and forbids him to rest in any mere repetition of a familiar form ”

“ We went into the Presbyterian Church. Those men of God threw their arms around us, almost with shouts of hallelujah, in the room just back of our house. The [139] Presbytery met us and welcomed us, and I had the satisfaction of seeing this church taken into fellowship with that denomination where they are to-day, and where I trust the church will ever abide and prosper under God's blessing. I say devoutly that we did not lose our membership by the change. I believe there were two communicants who took some offense. ”

“ So I turned my back on the Oxford Presbytery, and rode to Lawrenceburg again; and the next Sunday morning I announced to my congregation the result of my week’s pilgrimage, told them of the vote which declared their church vacant, and said to them: ‘Now, brethren, one of two things is necessary: you must get somebody else to preach for you, or you must declare yourselves independent of the Presbyterian Church.’ It was no sooner said than done. ”

“ A man whose intellectual faculties are strongly developed, who will reason and demonstrate every thing rationally, will be a Presbyterian. Hence the expression “long-faced Presbyterian.” It is very common for them to be long-faced. They are very actual, never have much feeling, and sit perfectly quiet. The minister must do all the talking, and the singers must do all the singing. The round, full-faced, emotional kind of man will not be a Presbyterian. ”

“ The secluded members being Presbyterians to a man, there was at once an enthusiastic recollection of the edicts of the Long Parliament between 1643 and 1648, setting up Presbytery as the national Religion, with a determination to revert in detail to those symbols and forms of the Presbyterian system which the triumph of Independency had set aside during the Commonwealth, and which had been allowed only partially, and side by side with their contraries, in the broad Church-Establishment of the Protectorate. ”

“ In all the Presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are thoroughly established, it is by nobler and better arts that the established clergy in general endeavour to gain the favour of their superiors; by their learning, by the irreproachable regularity of their life, and by the faithful and diligent discharge of their duty. ”

“ The leaders in that day also, such men as Henderson, Gillespie, Rutherford and Baillie, understood the spirit of Presbyterianism and the need of the Church quite as fully as did any leaders of either an earlier or a later day. It is not to be forgotten that, in an age that produced men whose names must never be omitted when the roll of Scotland's greatest sons is called, the Presbyterian Church stood firmly for absolute liberty in worship from prescribed forms. ”

“ So, in more than one parish, instead of three may now be found four Presbyterian places of worship: the Established Church, the United Free Church, which often has practically taken its place, the Free Presbyterian, and a congregation belonging to that rump of the Free Church which denounced the Union. ”

“ Presbyterianism in Virginia and the states south of it from colonial days, as well as the recent revival in Kentucky, gave them ground for saying: “We are not the only Presbyterians who view the doctrine of the atonement different from the Confession.”
But the Springfield Presbytery was only a transition stage. These five men might make their independent presbytery the nucleus of a new Presbyterian body, as the Seceders and others had done in Scotland long before, and as the Cumberland Presbyterians were to do a little later; or they might cease to be Presbyterians. ”

“ It has always been maintained by the Presbyterian Church, that of these different elements of worship, none should be neglected, inasmuch as all of them have Divine sanction, and that to these nothing should be added, inasmuch as any addition made, could possess human sanction only, and would be a transgression of the principle that Scripture and Scripture alone contains authority for the government and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Thirdly, I found it best as unto point of time, because many of the soldiers were wholly for it, and many of the Independant party; and I had abundance of worthy men in the House of Commons, my assured friends, no lovers of Presbytery, which then were in great esteem, and able to protect the art; for should the Presbyterian party have prevailed, as they thought of nothing less than to be Lords of all, I knew well they would have silenced my pen annually, and committed the Introduction unto everlasting silence. ”

“ Why should not a Presbyterian Church, based on this considerable and important, though not essential principle, of the congregation's share in the church-management, be established,—with equal rank for its chiefs with the chiefs of Episcopacy, and with admissibility of its ministers, under a revised system of patronage and preferment to benefices,—side by side with the Episcopal Church, as the Calvinist and Lutheran Churches are established side by side in France and Germany? ”

“ To Presbyterians, therefore, thankful as they are for an historic past that has in it so much to arouse gratitude to God and loyalty to the Church they love, the citing of the practice of their forefathers in Reformation times, or even that of the early fathers of the Church, can never be a final argument for the acceptance of any particular method in worship. ”

“ After the union of the relief and other secession churches, which resulted in the formation of the united presbyterian church in 1847, he was appointed professor of sacred languages and biblical criticism by the synod of the new denomination, and with John Brown, James Harper, Neil McMichael, and John Eadie formed the staff of the United Presbyterian Hall. ”

“ In Table E the Protestant churches are grouped according to their polity. It will be seen that about 1,600 have a Congregational form of government, in which authority rests in the local church; that in nearly 1,200 churches the polity is Presbyterian, in which authority is largely in the local church, but partly in a representative body of several churches grouped in districts. Under the title of “Episcopal Bodies” are grouped denominations comprising 2,721 churches, or more than the total number of the Presbyterian and Congregational combined. ”

“ The United Presbyterian Church in America, the result of so many happy unions, has always regarded simplicity in worship as an end earnestly to be desired, and worthy of all serious effort to secure. Its influence has, therefore, been uniformly in favor of that avoidance of forms against which the Seceders of Scotland, whom it represents on this continent, so often protested. ”

“ They are anxious to form a Presbyterian congregation among themselves, and they ought to be assisted and encouraged (particularly by those who are connected with that denomination) , to carry their wishes into effect. And now a most favorable opportunity for accomplishing this object has occurred, which if suffered "to pass without improvement, may not soon return. There is at this time in Philadelphia, a man of color, who is a licensed preacher of the Presbyterian Church, and has been employed by the committee of missions, to labor for some time among the blacks of this place. ”

“ My father's family was proselyted to the Presbyterian faith, and four of them joined that church, namely, my mother Lucy, my brothers Hyrum and Samuel Harrison, and my sister Sophronia.
"During this time of great excitement my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness. * * * * The Presbyterians were most decided against the Baptists and Methodists, and used all their powers of either reason or sophistry to prove their errors, or at least to make the people think they were in error. ”

“ If a judgment may be formed from the movements that have just been reviewed, it is probable that at least for some time to come, the Presbyterian Church will continue to walk in the paths that have become familiar through long usage. ”

“ United Presbyterians, a body of Presbyterians in Scotland who dissent from the Established Church on chiefly ecclesiastical grounds, and had their origin in union in 1847 of the Secession Church of 1733 with the Relief Church of 1752, bodies previously in dissent as well. A further union of the United Presbyterian body with the Free Church is to all appearance about to be consummated. ”

“ Such a purpose the Society emphatically disavowed, and insisted that there was no desire on the part of its members to encroach upon the simplicity of Presbyterian worship, but claimed rather the desire to redeem the same from lifelessness and lack of a devotional spirit with which they declared it is so likely to be characterized. So effectively have the fears of those who first uttered their objections been allayed, that the Society is said to comprise in its membership, at the present time, more than one-third of the ordained ministers of the Established Church. ”

“ That spirit, at once of independence as regards man, and of dependence as regards God, has characterized Presbyterianism in its most vigorous and progressive periods; by that spirit must it still be characterized if, in succeeding ages, the work allotted to it is to be faithfully and well performed. ”

“ There were no other colored churches of other denominations. It can be seen at a glance that to raise up and establish a Presbyterian Church in the city was a movement as judicious as necessary, and wise as desirable; thus we may conceive them laboring to this end. In the brief notice I have taken of Mr. Gloucester and of his labors I called attention to the method at first adopted of gathering up the people, by preaching and holding prayer meetings in private houses, and often in the street. ”