knowledge, and virtue, which formed part of the original stock of Puritan character." Gradually primary schools passed into public hands entirely; secondary schools never but in part; the New England colleges never at all. Christian benev olence, the mother of all three, to this day claims the last, and, more munificently than State power can, provides for them. The student of history sees at once and clearly how the tide has run. The State university movement is not an ancient but a later one, "a reaction,"* against which the tide. is now turning, and in favor of the methods of our fathers. The reasons why they adopted a different policy for that education which should and can be for the whole people, and for that which cannot are obvious to the scholar, the patriot, and the Christian. To discuss the validity of those reasons is no part of the object of this historical inquiry.

*New Englander, July, 1873.

ARTICLE V.-ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF A SOCIETY IN CONNECTION WITH A CHURCH.*

THE "church" is a voluntary spiritual association, having no civil rights or powers, and not known, at all, in civil law. The "Society," or "Parish,” is a civil corporation which holds the property and manages the temporalities of the community or congregation of people who associate together for the employment of a pastor, and the maintenance of religious worship. It usually includes the adult males of the congregation, whether or not they are members of the church.

The necessity for the existence of the Society, and its utility to the church, are just now coming into prominent discussion. Does the church need any helping Society? Is the Society really helpful to the church? Is this co-partnership of the spiritual and the temporal right? Ought the church to manage its own temporal concerns? The inquiry is equally pertinent to all denominations whose financial affairs are managed by "vestrymen" or "trustees," however named. The Episcopalians are discussing the question, and in some dioceses, only communicants of the church are eligible to the office of vestryman. The Baptists have some churches without Societies. Conflicts or friction between the church and the Society are frequent and sometimes deplorably harmful. Many churches in the Western States have no allied Society, and think that they manage their finances more successfully without it, than they could with it. The acknowledged importance of the subject led the National Congregational Council of 1874, to appoint a committee of seven to report upon it at the Council of 1877. An inquiry into the subject includes four points, viz: as to I. The origin and history of the Society ;

II. Its advantages;

III. Its disadvantages;

IV. The desirableness of the church's assuming the whole management of the temporalities.

Prepared by appointment as a report to the General Association of New York, and presented at the annual meeting in Norwich, N. Y., Oct. 25, 1875.

I. When, where, and why did the Society originate?

Our Lord Jesus found the church associated with the civil government, and sustained by it. But in His reconstruction of His church, He practically took it out of this connection with the civil government, as to control and material support, and placed it on a spiritual and voluntary basis. In the admirable description and picture of the Apostolic church, Acts ii, 44–47; iv, 32-37, no form of a co-operative secular Society is discernible. "Neither was there any among them that lacked." The church, a voluntary spiritual association, was complete and sufficient in itself for all the purposes of its existence. Thus starting out, it was immediately successful. For three centuries, the primitive churches, without the aid of secular societies, but in the face of hostility and persecution from the civil authority, grew and multiplied and managed their temporalities with success and rapidity of increase, which, if repeated in this nineteenth century, would fill God's people with joy unspeakable.

By the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity was acknowledged by the Roman empire, and the hitherto independent spiritual churches became incorporated with the civil government in a union of Church and State for thirteen hundred years. Of course this period of history furnishes nothing pertinent to our inquiry concerning churches as voluntary spiritual bodies. We come down to the settlement of America, and the planting of churches here, in the seventeenth century.

Historically the churches of all denominations in our country have inherited their church and society system as a relic from the union of church and State in the countries in Europe from which the first colonists to America came. Here, as in their native countries, they held the obligation of the civil government, or of all the inhabitants, in some manner to support or help to support the church. Every nation in Europe considered the church essential to its life, and a part of itself. The idea of a complete, formal separation of church and State had not then dawned upon the human mind. This result we have reached only step by step, through the slow progress of more than two centuries of discussion and struggling in England and the United States. The Puritans had it as the first step in their mission to develop and establish the congregational or

democratic polity of the church. The entire separation of the church from the dictation, control, and support of the State was an after growth. The General Court of Massachusetts, in every grant of a new township organization, stipulated as one condition that the town should set apart a lot for a meetinghouse, build the house, and support a minister. It was recommended that "every man voluntarily set down what he is willing to allow to that end and use." This voluntary method. was successfully acted upon by many churches, though not by all, prior to the year 1654. In other towns church support was by legal taxation and appropriation. The chief current financial business of a church is the raising of the pastor's salary. On each Sabbath, in Puritan Massachusetts, the people brought their voluntary offerings, in money, or goods, or pledges, to the sanctuary, and delivered them to the deacons for the minister's support. Thus the towns, as civil corporations, voted to support the preaching of the gospel, but left th e method of its doing to individual free action.

The parish and the town were territorially the same. Only church members were voting citizens, until 1665. But when dissenters from "the standing order" grew up among them, or immigrants of a different creed, or of no creed, came in, and refused to pay toward the minister's support, the civil government, in accordance with the spirit of the age, assessed and collected an equitable rate from the dissenters' property. Still later, after the desolating French and Indian wars, the State granted special pecuniary aid to many impoverished churches,— still on the ground of the necessity of the church to the prosperity of the State. As we follow down the current of history, we find that dissension and changing legislation continued, until, in the year 1833, it was thought that the State was completely divorced from the churches. Unhappily this separation was not allowed to remain complete.

For the sentiment yet lingered, the inheritance of timehonored education and habit, that the churches needed and had a right to some sort of civil support, though not direct and formal, or support from citizens not communicants in the church. The church was as fully as ever before, the benefactor of the State. "Societies," or "Parishes," were therefore volun

tarily organized, to own and control the meeting-house and other church property, to employ and pay the pastor, and in all financial matters to have a separate or a co ordinate power with the church, the churches not then suspecting that in seeking a servant, or helper, they were getting a master. Practically the separation of church and State thus gained, for the protection of the church from contamination by secular power, was the putting of the church outside of law and civil recognition, making it incapable of managing its pecuniary affairs, like an idiot, a minor, or a convict, and so making it need a civil guardian.

In Connecticut, after the abolition of compulsory support of churches of "the standing order," in 1784, and of all churches, in 1821, the Society was still maintained, on the ground that all persons who contributed, even voluntarily, to the support of the church, ought to have a voice in the expenditure of their money. In that state, the Society has legal power to tax the property of its members, though this method is not usually practiced.

These traditions from the early colonists, prevailing in all denominations, and the general tenor of civil legislation to control property, have carried the society or parish system into all the States.

II. What advantages accrue to the church from the "Society," or "Parish,”—or from a board of "Trustees," or "Vestrymen," chosen by the congregation?

1. Since the civil government ignores churches, as spiritual associations, having a creed and covenant and ordinances, it is supposed that a civil society is a legal necessity, as a body corporate, to hold property, to make contracts, to sue and be sued, and to authoritatively transact any financial business. Thus, a minister can collect his salary of the Society, or Trustees, but not of the church, by process of law. The general statute of this state, New York, provides that any male citizen, who has statedly attended any church services, and paid toward their support, and whose name has been in possession of the clerk of the church, during one year, may vote in the election of trustees, or vestrymen. This statute at once creates a "Society,"makes the congregation a civil society for every church,