Watchman Of The South

From the Hartford Watchman.

REPENTANCE A REMEDY FOR DIVISION.

It may be, and it may not be. It cannot always be, because the Gospel has not decided that division is, in all circumstances, wrong. The Gospel requires churches to withdraw from every brother who walketh disorderly, and forbids them in the plainest terms to give any countenance to false teachers, who bring not the doctrines of Christ with them. It abounds, in impressive cautions and warnings against false teachers and false doctrines. It commends in strong terms those who repudiated a doctrine which the Son of God hated. Before repentance is proposed as a remedy for division, it ought to be shown that the circumstances suggesting it, are not those in which it is a duty. To overlook the instructions of Christ and his apostles, and disregard this obvious distinction, and make an indiscriminate call for repentance, may please those who are in the wrong, but cannot benefit those who are in the path of duty.

From its first existence in the world, there have been exigencies in the church when division, in some form, was among the essential means of its salvation. A thorough acquaintance with its past history will leave no doubt of the truth of this position on the mind of any one who will seek it.

To assume the principle that sin is the cause of all division, and mutual repentance a specific remedy, condemns at once the past efforts of the church in different periods and places, to escape the thraldom of error, and check the progress of corruption in her pale. On this assumption, Luther, Calvin, Knox, and their compeers, were mistaken as to the general course of their action.— Then too, the Scottish church should have slept during her memorable struggle for purity in doctrine. If division is not in some circumstances a first duty, then many churches in Massachusetts have exceedingly erred in breaking away from those who had departed from the faith, denying the Lord who brought them. The advocates of this remedy cannot insist on it as proposed, and at the same time vindicate the course of these churches, unless it be as a subterfuge, employed for the purpose of diversion. But if it be only a subterfuge, and not a practical remedy, it ought not to be insisted on at all. Whether it is practicable, in existing circumstances, let the candid, judge. And. if any honestly believe it is, let them insist on it till it is applied. We had supposed the point settled, that no union can be permanent and felicitous which is not based on principle or oneness of sentiment. To profess one thing and believe another, may satisfy those who consider unity of professions the proper and only basis of union in affection and pursuit. But, if a permanent union may be based on mere professions, and if, as regards it, principles are of minor consideration. then the way is prepared to merge the claims of different sects, and to give free scope to latitudinarian sentiments. A very convenient and summary way this to quiet agitations, and silence those who conscientiously believe that the sacred claims of truth are not in any emergency to be set aside. The door of profession, with the privilege of liberal mental reservations, and the aid of the double sense, is wide enough to take in all the conflicting and contradictory opinions of the present or any period. If it be set open, not a few, we fear, will be found to enter it, holding in one hand an orthodox creed, and in the other its contradictory explanation.

The leading characteristic of a homily on repentance in such a crisis, is its neutrality. In the stirring times of the Reformation, one who wished to look on the great moral change which God was producing, and who chose to be on neutral ground, might have taken his stand just half way between Protestantism and Popery, and proclaimed that sin was the cause of all division, and that to prevent division, it was only necessary for Protestants and Papists to repent of their sins. He might have managed to keep this ground through all the struggles which gave civil and religious freedom to the world, and rid the church of a mass of error and corruption; but the question is, would Luther, and Calvin, and Knox, have felt the force of his instructions, or paused in their noble career to thank him for his homilies? If they had listened for a moment, would they not have demanded some specifications of the sins which they were indulging at the expense of union? Would they not have found it difficult to repent of those self-denying and unpopular exertions which they were putting forth under a strong sense of duty to God and his church? A man on neutral ground, at such a crisis, would have cut a sorry figure. Still, he might have argued, and plausibly too. that the truth and his duty were not on either of the extremes, and that it was safest and best for him to steer about equally between them. It would, however, remain a question of serious moment, whether, at that important crisis, any individual could have stood thus in regard to Protestantism, without giving his whole influence to strengthen the bands of Popery.

It was not irrelevant to introduce this hypothetical illustration of the principle of neutrality; for the circumstances which make it of any account are never widely different from those in which the reformers acted. They are always the same in kind, and they differ only in degree. In a time of general agreement in the great doctrines of the gospel, and in the practice of its precepts, there could be no conceivable occasion for such'a principle; and no importance is ever attached to it, except when the friends of the truth are called upon to act in relation to existing errors. It is a principle, therefore, which comes into favor only in times of trial, occasioned by the rise and spread of error.

But the characteristic aside, the ground on which repentance is urged is new and peculiar. It is insisted on as a remedy against approaching evil. It is urged as a means of securing good and avoiding evil. Division is always an evil, therefore repentance, in view of the things which indicate it, is always a duty. The premise is false, and the conclusion cannot be true. But it is the nature of sin, as committed against God, which comes into the account of genuine repentance. Any repentance not thus distinguished, would need to be repented of, and would be no remedy against continued marks of the divine displeasure, and of course could not be expected to exert any influence in healing dissensions and restoring peace. The sooner this repentance is exercised by all who have departed from the testimony and statutes of the Lord, the better will it be for the church and for the world. If such repentance be exercised. where occasion for it exists, it will be indicated by the speedy return of humility to portions of the church which have seemed to be almost divested of it. Some homilies on the subject, which should dwell on the grounds and nature and duty of true repentance, and should have a definite application, would be exceedingly desirable, and well adapted to do good at the present eventful crisis.

It is indeed a crisis, when there is awful danger of misjudged and hurtful action, and when the danger of such action is enhanced by injudicious advice, by the sad decline of the meek and quiet graces of Christianity, and by that spirit of disorder and resistance to scriptural measures of reform which is operating to extinguish the feeble light of the church, and which exposes her to further corrections from the hand of God.