faith is not commonly coincident with the era of baptism, it has properly a less intimate association with regeneration. To make baptism distinctly the instrument or occasion of regeneration, under a scheme which commonly interposes an interval between self-surrendering faith in Christ and the administration of the rite, is to banish faith utterly from the primacy which the New Testament accords to it in the appropriation of salvation........ In fact it is given no more positive association with regeneration than is the ministry of the Word; so that it would be just as proper and scriptural to limit regeneration to an occasion of sermon-hearing as to limit it to an occasion of baptism.”

In another place he says:

"That the same Christ, who rebuked the ceremonial scrupulosity and littleness of the Pharaisees, .... meant to represent the renewing operation of the Spirit as bound to a ceremonial use of water is simply inconceivable."

The late Dr. John Shaw Banks of Headingly College, Leeds, England, in his "Manual of Christian Doctrine," has one whole paragraph under the caption of "Baptismal Regeneration." He writes:

"In the Baptismal form of the Prayer-Book the minister says, 'Seeing now that this child is regenerate.' and again 'We give thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit,' words which exclude the lower sense sometimes given to the term as simple reception to outward Church privileges. Scripture recognizes no such meaning."

The hopeless muddle of Protestantism and utter failure to grasp the real relationship between baptism and regeneration as distinct from conversion is fully expressed in the words of the same writer, for he goes on to say:

"According to this doctrine, every one baptized is spiritually a child of God, converted, sanctified. Everything affirmed of God's children is true of him. He is a new creature, has the Spirit of Christ and is led by the Spirit. The Baptized need no conversion."

Still more difficult would it be for a Protestant to say, "I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church." He can say the Apostles' Creed for everywhere in Protestantism the word "Catholic" means universal: universal in a geographical sense. Let Dr. W. N. Clark speak for those who wish to remain Protestants and yet be ordained to the sacred Priesthood. Speaking of the Church and its sacraments he says:

"The early church contained no priesthood.

If we wish to

speak correctly of 'the Church' as it has historically appeared we
shall be obliged to define it in a very catholic and comprehensive man-
ner, as including the sum of those organizations which have been
formed to serve as organs of Christ, for the expression and promo-
tion of his religion.
No organization has promise of per-
petuity, apart from its fitness for the Master's use, and Christianity
may yet express itself in new forms, if the old prove insufficient or
unadapted to its growing needs."

In both of the seminaries the writer attended the doctrine of Apostolical Succession was rejected. In one case the professor referred to it as "a Roman Catholic pipe-dream vainly struggled after by a few High Churchmen in the English Church." Let us hear the same two Methodist professors of theology,-one American, the other English.

Dr. Sheldon writes:

"In the aristocratic theory of the Orthodox Greek Church, and of the High Church party of the Anglican establishment, the stress is upon the episcopal office, viewed as held in continuous succession from the Apostles. Only that ecclesiastical organization, it is contended, which has bishops, standing in the unbroken line of descent from the apostles as respects their ordination, is any part of the true church. Episcopacy of the Anglican or Greek type is not even brought into view in the New Testament writings, much less set forth as a perpetual requirement."

Dr. Banks writes:

"If the bishops were the designed successors of the apostles, why was the name changed? Why was the ancient and scriptural term 'apostles' discarded for 'bishops'? It is here that the whole weakness of the theory is found. If it could be shown that it was ever the divine purpose that the Church should be constituted in this way, and in no other, we might be willing to assume a great deal as to the fulfillment, and to explain the deficiency of evidence by the scantiness of early records, as we do on other occasions. But it is not so. There is no doctrine of the church in scripture, standing in the same relation to the Roman and Anglican dogma, as the doctrine of the Trinity bears to the dogma of the Trinity, or as the teaching about the Lord's Day and Baptism in Scripture bears to the belief and practice of the Church on these questions."

The late Dr. Paisley, lecturing on the Christian Ministry said:

"There are no three orders of ministry. Bishops and Elders or Presbyters are the same. Priests there are none. There have been no priests since Christ. He and he alone had a sacrifice to offer. In one sense it is true that every man, woman and child is for himself or herself a priest before God. Any man who attempts to stand in any way between men and God is usurping a position for which there is no scriptural warrant. Deacons are laymen. The Congregationalists have the right idea of what a deacon really is. Stephen made the mistake of thinking he was in the ministry and started to preach instead of attending to his tables and you will remember, gentlemen, the trouble he found himself in."

The Methodist Church in America which claims to have Bishops, officially declares that its Bishops are nothing more than Elders elected to a governing position. Yet in practice they have a consecration service for their Bishops and it is their Bishops who ordain Deacons and Elders.

Bishop Quayle, when presiding over the Methodist Conference held in the People's Temple in Boston, some few years ago, declared that "there was but one genuine Apostolical Succession, namely, the succession of men baptized with the Holy Spirit: a gift which God was always willing to bestow upon all his ministers who truly seek that gift."

The culminating point of the whole matter is that there is no true conception in Protestantism of the sacramental nature of the Church.

There is no need to hesitate in saying that no Protestant minister can truthfully say that he believes the Nicene Creed. If there were such an one he could no longer remain with those who flatly deny what that Creed teaches. He would seek, not merely Episcopal ordination, but the fullest fellowship in the one Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We need not, therefore, change our canons; we need go no farther with the Concordat if the above statement is true. The Nicene Creed is an impassable barrier. Any man who comes seeking Episcopal ordination to the sacred priesthood but wishes to remain a Protestant minister does not believe or accept the Nicene Creed. We believe that ever within the councils of the true Church of Christ the Holy Spirit has been guiding its deliberations. How easy a thing it would have been for the Convention of 1919 to have made the suggested condition an acceptance of the Apostles' Creed instead of the Nicene Creed. Almost any Protestant could honestly have said that he did believe that the former, but he cannot the latter. Where we would have endangered the sacred trust of centuries, an allwise and guiding Providence has led the Church to erect, unconsciously it may be, a barrier against that which would endanger our sacred heritage.

Theory and Practice in Religious

IN

Education

MILDRED MERRILL

N the past fifty years education as a whole has undergone radical changes. New methods have been introduced, and old material has been made new, or it appears new, or it appears under a new form. The child of today is not the child of yesterday; and religious education as heretofore presented has been proved inadequate to meet the needs of the child. But wherein lies the failure? Surely not in the religion itself. The failure lies in the fact that religious educators as a whole do not understand psychology in its relation to the development of the child, and the methods of education required at each stage of develop

ment.

With the recognition of the fact that there are different stages of development, is the equally important fact that each stage is not isolated but integrated. According to Froebel, "The period of infancy demands fostering care, in childhood training prevails. Boyhood is the period of instruction. And all differences in kind are brought about by the gradual accumulation of differences in degree." Froebel is the acknowledged child psychologist. Froebel's ideal in education is to fertilize the seeds of thought native to the mind, and when they begin to grow, to provide the right nourishment in the right amount. Froebel made it clear that we are to fertilize the soil with right emotions. We have noted Froebel's application of psychology to education. Psychology has been aptly defined as the science of the soul. Let us apply our science to re