The Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, who acted as President of
the Congregational Union at Liverpool on Tuesday last, delivered there a very striking address against the policy of driving out from among them, by the device of inventing new theological confessions, those doubters in their body who might have betrayed a desire to get the creed of the Congregational Churches relaxed. Mr. Brown's general principle was that while no sincere Christian .could abate the least of his own Christian faith, or present it in any mutilated form, from a weak desire to conciliate hesitating sceptics, yet it is neither wise nor charitable to force hesitating consciences into an act of prompt submission or repudiation, when it is quite certain that as time goes on, such doubters must find their true spiritual latitude, and either leave a Church from the faith of which they have really fallen away, or discover that it was their doubts and difficulties which were unreal, and their faith which was real. Lithe course of his fine address, Mr. Brown, as usual, found occasion to speak with a severity amounting to moral indignation of "prelates," spiritual peers, and tithe-sup- ported Churches; and yet on the following day, he appeared equally indignant that one of the Churches he had thus denounced did not send the Congregational Union any special message of fraternity and sympathy. No doubt, it was a pity. The Bishop of Man- chester, we will undertake to say, appreciates even more highly the spiritual life in the community represented by Mr. Baldwin Brown, than Mr. Baldwin Brown appreciates the spiritual life in the community represented by the Bishop of Manchester. But surely it is a little inconsistent to smite so hard one day, and complain the next that the community smitten is not enthusias- tically grateful for the stripes. Mr. Baldwin Brown has but one fanaticism, but that is a very tenacious one,—a fanaticism against Established Churches as such,—including, we suppose, the Church of David, as well as the Church of Knox.
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