SÉANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE

-THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

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N the city of Geneva, once the stronghold of the severest creed of the Reformation, Christianity itself has of late years received some very rude shocks. But special attempts have been recently made to counteract their effects and to re-organize the Christian congregations upon Evangelical principles. In pursuance of this design there have been delivered and published during the last few years a series of addresses by distinguished persons holding Evangelical sentiments, entitled Séances Historiques. The attention of the hearers was to be conciliated by the concrete form of these discourses; the phenomenon of the historical Christianity to be presented as a fact which could not be ignored, and which must be acknowledged to have had some special source; while, from time to time, as occasion offered, the more peculiar views of the speakers were to be instilled. But before this panorama of historic scenes had advanced beyond the period of the fall of heathenism in the West, there had emerged a remarkable discrepancy between the views of two of the authors, otherwise agreeing in the main.

It fell to the Comte Léon de Gasparin to illustrate

the reign of Constantine. He laid it down in the strongest manner, that the individualist principle supplies the true basis of the Church, and that by inaugurating the Union between Church and State Constantine introduced into Christianity the false and pagan principle of Multitudinism. M. Bungener followed in two lectures upon the age of Ambrose and Theodosius. He felt it necessary, for his own satisfaction and that of others, to express his dissent from these opinions. He agreed in the portraiture drawn by his predecessor of the so-called first Christian Emperor, and in his estimate of his personal character. But he maintained, that the multitudinist principle was not unlawful, nor essentially pagan; that it was recognised and consecrated in the example of the Jewish theocracy; that the greatest victories of Christianity have been won by it: that it showed itself under Apostolic sanction as early as the day of Pentecost;-for it would be absurd to suppose the three thousand who were joined to the Church on the preaching of Peter to have been all ' converted' persons in the modern Evangelical sense of the word. He especially pointed out, that the Churches which claim to be founded upon individualism, fall back themselves, when they become hereditary, upon the multitudinous principle. His brief, but very pertinent observations on that subject were concluded in these words :

'Le multitudinisme est une force qui peut, comme toute force, être mal dirigée, mal exploitée, mais qui peut aussi l'être au profit de la vérité, de la piété, de la vie. Les Eglises fondées sur un autre principe

ont aidé à rectifier celui-là; c'est un des incontestables services qu'elles ont rendus, de nos jours, à la cause de l'Evangile. Elles ont droit à notre reconnaissance; mais à Genève, qu'elles ne nous demandent pas ce que nous ne pouvons faire, et qu'on me permette de le dire, ce qu'elles ne font pas ellesmêmes. Oui! le multitudinisme génevois est resté vivant chez elles, et certainement elles lui doivent une portion notable de leur consistance au dedans, de leur influence au dehors. Elles font appel, comme nous, à ses souvenirs et à ses gloires; elles forment, avec nous, ce que le monde chrétien appelle et appellera toujours l'Eglise de Genève. Nous ne la renions, au fond, pas plus les uns que les autres. Elle a été, elle est, elle restera notre mère à tous."

Such are the feelings in favour of Nationalism on the part of M. Bungener, a member of the Genevan Church h; a Church to which many would not even concede that title, and of which the ecclesiastical renown centres upon one great name; while the civil history of the country presents but little of interest either in ancient or modern times. But the ques

tions at issue between these two Genevans are of wide Christian concern, and especially to ourselves. If the Genevans cannot be proud of their Calvin, as they cannot in all things-and even he is not truly their own-they have little else of which to speak before Christendom. Very different are the recollections which are awakened by the past history of

1 Séances Historiques. de Genève-Le Christianisme au 4ième Siècle, p. 153.

such a Church as ours. Its roots are found to penetrate deep into the history of the most freely and fully developed nationality in the world, and its firm hold upon the past is one of its best auguries for the future. It has lived through Saxon rudeness, Norman rapine, baronial oppression and bloodshed; it has survived the tyranny of Tudors, recovered from fanatical assaults, escaped the treachery of Stuarts; has not perished under coldness, nor been stifled with patronage, nor sunk utterly in a dull age, nor been entirely depraved in a corrupt one. Neither as a spiritual society, nor as a national institution, need there be any fear that the Church of this country, which has passed through so many ordeals, shall succumb, because we may be on the verge of some political and ecclesiastical changes. We, ourselves, cohere with those who have preceded us, under very different forms of civil constitution, and under a very different creed and externals of worship. The rude forefathers,' whose mouldering bones, layer upon layer, have raised the soil round the foundations of our old churches, adored the Host, worshipped the Virgin, signed themselves with the sign of the cross, sprinkled themselves with holy water, and paid money for masses for the relief of

souls in purgatory. But it is no reason, because we

trust that spiritually we are at one with the best of those who have gone before us in better things than these, that we should revert to their old-world practices; nor should we content ourselves with simply transmitting to those who shall follow us, traditions which have descended to ourselves, if we can trans

mit something better. There is a time for building up old waste places, and a time for raising fresh structures; a time for repairing the ancient paths, and a time for filling the valleys and lowering the hills in the constructing of new. The Jews, contemporaries of Jesus and his Apostles, were fighters against God, in refusing to accept a new application of things written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; the Romans in the time of Theodosius were fighters against Him, when they resisted the new religion with an appeal to old customs; so were the opponents of Wycliffe and his English Bible, and the opponents of Cranmer and his Reformation. 'Meddle not with them that are given to change' is a warning for some times, and self-willed persons may 'bring in damnable heresies;' at others, 'old things are to pass away,' and that is erroneously called heresy' by the blind, which is really a worshipping the God of the Fathers in a better way.

When signs of the times are beheld, foretelling change, it behoves those who think they perceive them to indicate them to others, not in any spirit of presumption or of haste; and, in no spirit of presumption, to suggest inquiries as to the best method of adjusting old things to new conditions.

Many evils are seen in various ages, if not to have issued directly, to have been intimately linked with the Christian profession-such as religious wars, persecutions, delusions, impositions, spiritual tyrannies; many goods of civilization in our own day, when men have run to and fro and knowledge has been increased, have apparently not the remotest connexion

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