ANDO-HARVARD

THEOLOC.CAL LIBRARY CAMBRIDGE, MASS. GE, MASS.

481,563

5-4-53

AND ITS CORRUPTIONS.

VOL. III.

DEPARTMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

A SERIES OF DISCOURSES

DELIVERED IN HOPEDALE, MASS.,

A. D. 1871-72,

BY ADIN BALLOU.

EDITED BY WILLIAM S. HEYWOOD.

"For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."—1 Pet. ii. 25.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." - John x. 27.

"Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all author. ity."— Titus ii. 14, 15.

LOWELL, MASS.:

THOMPSON & HILL, PRINTERS. THE VOX POPULI PRESS.

1900.

882 B 193 for 1370°

V.3

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

This Volume is the third and concluding one of the series projected by the author and prepared in part for publication some years before his decease. Like those already issued, it is composed of certain Discourses written and delivered in the usual order of Sunday service, while he was Minister of an independent Religious Society in Hopedale, Mass., his place of residence for nearly fifty years. In its completed form the work may be regarded as embodying his mature and undoubted convictions touching the great questions of truth and duty which engaged his attention and taxed his energies during the greater portion of his long and active life; as his last contribution to the religious literature of the world; his legacy to inquiring and progressive minds in generations that were to come when he should have passed beyond the scenes of earth and time. It is the fruit of a definite and disinterested purpose on the part of the writer to serve his Maker and his fellow-men in some substantial,

enduring way- a purpose which dominated his whole being and which gave meaning, dignity, and worth to his character and career.

The three volumes which make up the series, all bearing the common title of "PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY AND ITS CORRUPTIONS," follow each other in the natural and logical order of succession. The first, under the sub-title of "THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES," treating of the Divine Order of the world and universe and the Moral Government under which all rational and responsible beings therein exist, constitutes the foundation upon which the theory and practice set forth in the subsequent ones rest. The second, devoted to that

department of the common subject denominated "PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS," is designed to portray and illustrate the quality of character and order of life in the individual which are generated and required by the ethical principles and spiritual forces the first essays to disclose, elucidate, and commend. The third, pursuing the same line of thought and carrying the same method of proceedure out to larger issues and to more comprehensive results, endeavors to delineate, under the head of "ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY," the true nature, purpose, and work of the Christian Church, as indicated in the life, teachings, and example of its Founder; its purpose and work being, not simply to formulate, maintain, and promulgate a given system of faith or scheme of doctrine through the agency of carefully devised and appropriate institutions, ordinances, and ceremonial observances, but to make that faith or doctrine conduce to the renovation of personal character, to the extension of the realm of human brotherhood, to the right ordering of the conduct of men in all their relations to each other, to the reconstruction of society and the modeling it after the Christian ideal, and to the building up, in righteousness, love, peace, and joy, of a heavenly kingdom on the earth.

The special object or design of these volumes cannot be easily misunderstood. It is to restore the long-lost simplicity and purity of the religion of Jesus Christ to the thoughts and hearts of men; to lead the lovers of truth and good back from the errors with which ignorance, superstition and barbarism had obscured the person, the teachings, and the mission of Jesus to the real man of Nazareth, as he was when he went about Galilee and Judea doing good; healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and turning men from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, and from the power of Satan unto God. It is to portray him, not as he has been represented for fifteen hundred years by theologians, dogmatists, and creed-makers, but as he actually appeared to those who gathered about him when he was upon the earth, listening to his words, and catching the contagion of his pure and disinterested life; to affirm and empha