Nevertheless, there was a church. There were religious institutions. They were accepted. They were implied. And the moment the apostles began to preach outside of Judæa where there was no temple, and where there were no synagogues, they were organized, they were officered, and there came to be laws and methods and usages; and the apostles commanded them, interpreted them, and ranked them.

Therefore, if any man say that there is no warrant in the word of God for any church organization, I think he misses the mark on one extreme, as much as the hierarch misses it on the other when he declares that there was a specific form of organization prescribed for the Christian Church. These are the extremists on the one side and on the other.

Secondly, it is recognized that there is perfect freedom in taking up and laying down the ordinances, the usages, the laws, the customs, and the instructing methods of the New Testament. You can make You can make your election among them. You can avail yourselves of them, not according to any prescribed divinely appointed scheme, but according to the exigencies and necessities of the work which you yourselves have in hand; for the liberty of man, by virtue of his adhesion to the Lord Jesus Christ, is the axis of the teaching of the New Testament. We are individually free on account of our being joined to Christ. So we have liberty of judgment, liberty of interpretation, and liberty of action, within the sphere of Christ-likeness or of the Christ-spirit; and no man has a right to judge another in regard to his usages, his ordinances, his forms of church organization, and his methods of instruction. To his own master he stands or falls. There are methods, there is ecclesiastical organization, there are doctrines and ceremonies, there is polity, and there are governments; these are recognized in the New Testament; and the teachers and members of Christ's body are declared to be at liberty to select among them, taking those which are best adapted to themselves, to the exigencies of their age, and to the service which a special providence may demand from them.

The personal freedom of man sacrificed to ordinances

or to churches-that is one extreme; an intense individualism which refuses all laws, all ordinances, and all polity, under the name of personal liberty, is another extreme; and the history of religion has been a history of vibration between these two extremes. One age, or one clan, has insisted upon it that men should all be gathered into one church, under regular officers who should prescribe for them their thoughts, their feelings, their ethical duties, almost fixing the hour and the minute, so that all individualism should be sucked up into organization; and men were considered as good for little else than to make churches. They lost their individual power.

Then came a brief reaction from that. Men threw off all the restrictions which had been laid upon them by laws and regulations, and rebounded to the other extreme, and asserted and cultivated their personal rights and liberties, and were jealous of ministers and usages and ordinances, and said, "I am a free man in Christ Jesus, and I shall speak as I choose, and do as I like no man shall lay any authority on me."

This spirit of individualism, logically carried out, is one which makes it impossible for Christians to work together.

Now, both of these principles are right, and both of them are in endless operation in society. First there is that spirit which tends to produce individual liberty and independency of thought and feeling. That spirit makes sturdy men; but men who cannot work together peaceably and efficiently. There is nothing in them which leads them to give up their own rights for the sake of promoting the cause which they are endeavoring to serve. Excessive individuality breaks men up into minims, so that they are like isolated particles of sand, and are but little better than those particles, compared to the aggregated power of the great body of the church. And then there is that spirit which would take away all individual liberty and independency of thought and feelingand that kills the individual.

So there is to be a medium. Both elements are to be continually studied. There is to be the power of the church as a whole, and there is to be the power of individuals as separate members. The power of the whole church, like

that of the State, is made greater by the strength of each individual. The government must be strong enough for the common welfare; but if it be too strong, it is apt to beat down the citizens; and when the citizens are weakened, their weakness reflects itself upon the government. There must be a coöperation of these opposite elements so that they shall work together. There is to be a large liberty given to the power of the individual, for the sake of giving to the whole commonwealth liberty and power. And as it is in the State,

so is it in the church.

Hence, the right of men to associate themselves together for the sake of teaching certain doctrinal systems is not to be gainsaid. There has been a spirit of doctrinal despotism established, largely; though men ridicule creeds and dogmas to-day. If I have seemed to have a share in this untoward spirit in my speaking, it has been from the over-action of intensity rather than from any deliberate purpose; because I recognize the fact that no man thinks to any purpose who does not think dogmatically. Any man who thinks consecutively must think systematically; and systematic thinking leads to the formation of systems; and truths stated positively in the form of a system are always dogmatic. Nevertheless, when dogmas become imperious; when men's personal liberty is interfered with by the imposition upon them of creeds, then creeds become oppressive and are wrong -wrong not in and of themselves, necessarily, but in their use.

Now, I advocate the right of men to associate together for the purpose of making known any line of thought, whether it be in the department of science or in any part or sphere of human knowledge. Men have a right to associate together for the purpose of promoting right notions of art, of architecture, of medicine, of mechanics, of civil government, of church polity, or of religious doctrines. It is one of the great rights springing out of the individual liberty of a man, that he may call to himself as many as are in agreement with him, in order that they, by common counsel and effort, may make known and enforce, as far as they can, any particular line of thought or practice. I maintain the right of men to Arminianism, if they believe in Arminianism;

to Pelagianism, if they believe in Pelagianism; to semi-Pelagianism, if they believe in semi-Pelagianism; and to demisemi-Pelagianism, if they believe in demi-semi-Pelagianism. I declare the freest liberty of a man, being responsible to his God and not to men or magistrates, to the right of association, with the object of promoting any view of Calvinism, whether it be high-church, low-church, middle-church, broad-church, or no-church. The liberty of association is universal, and is not to be disputed, but is to be guaranteed as one of the inevitable results of the higher doctrine of the liberty of the individual.

For purposes of enforcing ordinances men also have a right to association. There is nothing in the genius of Christianity, there certainly is nothing in its precepts, which forbids men to separate themselves into bodies, or to make others understand the advantages of particular ordinances.

Now, so long as Mr. Faraday's name lives, we shall speak with great respect of the Sandemanians, who taught the practice of washing the feet of disciples. They felt that there was in that ordinance a great truth. I think that there was a great truth in it. I do not see why the washing of the disciples' feet did not carry with it a truth as sublime as that of the Lord's Supper, which was a part of that ordinance, and which was not separated from it by any line of demarkation. The Sandemanians held it to be an ordinance of perpetual validity in the church. I do not believe any ordinance to be authoritative.

When I form a sect (and that will be in a future state of existence), it will be a sect that uses all ordinances that it wants to, and that does not use any ordinance that it does not want to. It will be a sect that exercises liberty in the matter of ordinances. I think that ordinances are like a black-board in a school. It is good to put things on, but you do not want to put one thing on it every time. It is a thing to demonstrate by.

I do not think that infant baptism is insisted upon in the New Testament. I do not see a vestige of it there. At any rate, the nearest approach to it is a far-fetched inference. And yet, I practice infant baptism. Why do I do it? Be

cause I think it beautiful and helpful.

"Hem!" you very say, "is that the only foundation you have for it?" That is foundation enough. "To profit withal," says the apostle, meaning that these gifts of the spirit are to be profitable; and when any ordinance shows that it is profitable, that is all the warrant that you want for it. That it does good, is reason enough for any thing. But you claim to practice it because Christ taught it. Where did he teach it ?

Now, men may associate together for ordinances provided they will not quarrel; provided they will not use their liberty to break down other men; provided they will work in the spirit of Christ.

We find that the various churches have their different ordinances, and that they are characterized by them. We find that the Baptist churches are set apart from our Congregational churches by nothing greater than a peculiar mode of baptizing. Now, excuse me; for I love those brethren, and I honor their sturdy independence; and yet, the older I grow the more I feel amazed that a great body of intelligent, educated Christian men should make the spirit of the church in Christ Jesus to turn, not only on an external action, but even on a mode of performing that external action; and that they do not perceive that the essential element of Christianity is not represented by such minute particularities as that.

Some of them believe in keeping the seventh day of the week instead of the first; and so we have the "Seventh-day Baptists." Others have their own notion respecting man's free will. The principle of free will not having found any lodgment in the old Baptist denomination, a new one has been formed to show that there is such a will.

So three sects have grown out of one; and I assert the liberty of every one of them to organize and to make known their doctrines by organization, and to bring as many to their way of thinking as they can. And this liberty of theirs is not to be derided, certainly it is not to be over slaughed, though you may not agree with them.

But when any band of Christians, having associated themselves together for ordinances, say, not, "My conscience de