Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 46:184 (Oct 1889)
Article: Critical Notes
Author: Anonymous

BSac 46:184 (Oct 1889) p. 721

Critical Notes

I. “Union Efforts Between Congregationalists And Presbyterians: Results And Lessons.”

This is the title of a vigorous pamphlet by our esteemed contributor, Dr. A. H. Ross, written with special reference to the question of church union which has been under consideration for some months past in Japan. Both the value of the pamphlet and the eminence of the author make it proper to give a brief summary of it, and to comment upon some of the positions taken, especially since they bear upon the future policy of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Dr. Ross maintains that church “polity is the great divisive element,” striking even deeper than doctrines and rites, and that no bridge can span the chasm between the four main theories of church government into which Christendom is divided. Unity can only come in the triumph of the divinely authorized polity.

As an illustration of the futility of attempting a permanent union on the basis of doctrine in disregard of the principles of church polity, the famous Plan of Union between the Congregationalists and Presbyterians of the United States of America in the early part of this century is adduced. This plan, according to Dr. Ross, “produced strife and often divisions in local churches, the bitterest alienations in wider communities, and the disrupture of the General Assembly. Had it never been devised by Congregational ministers and approved by the Presbyterian Church, but instead, had each denomination, as now, worked separately on its own lines, better work would have been done, and that too without the alienations and separations which marred that half-century of union effort.”

This is, we are aware, the rather prevalent opinion at the present time respecting the operation of the Plan of Union, but it rests rather upon the statements of partisans of the one or the other of these forms of government, than upon the judgment of the scientific historian, familiar by his study with the exact facts of the case. It is significant in this connection that the representatives of the two polities involved have combined to declare that the plan was injurious, but each has said that the injury was to his own side. While the Congregationalist has dwelt upon the loss of churches which his denomination has suffered, the Presbyterian has magnified the damage done,

BSac 46:184 (Oct 1889) p. 722

within the circle of strict Presbyterian organization, by the Plan of Union, to the theology and the discipline of the church. But we think that the impartial judgment of the future will decide that the Plan was a manful effort to do a thing which needed to be done, viz., to combine the forces of similar evangelical churches in one vigorous extens...