THE CONGREGATIONAL MAGAZINE. DECEMBER, 1841. AN ADDRESS ON HOME MISSIONS.* CHRISTIAN BRETHREN.-The subject on which I am requested to offer some observations to you, is that of Home Missions; that department of our labour which we find nearest to us-at home. There is a charm and music in the word home which English hearts are best prepared and most attuned to feel. Applied to our habitation, what peace, security, comfort, relations, affections are associated with it. We possess, beyond all other people, the means of making our home the abode of intelligence, of love, of those active and expansive charities which are twice blessed, blessing those who give as well as those who receive. It is a national characteristic, of which we need not be ashamed, that we are disposed to make all the extraordinary advantages of our wonderful political position bear upon the conveniences, embellishments, and endearments of home; that home is the centre of our earthly existence, out of the spell of whose attraction we never can, and never wish, to escape, an into which we delight to bring whatever can minister to its enjoyment. We give to the word home a wider range of thought and meaning when we apply it to our country. It then includes all the habitations situated within a certain boundary, and to which our own sustains certain relations, connected with laws, government, civil institutions, languages; community of interests in the varied accumulations of historyin the present possession of knowledge, character, influence, dominion, resources-in the prospective destinies to which we commit our posterity. In this wider meaning of the term, we have as much reason for grateful and honest exultation as in the narrower and more domestic sense; and we should lay a good foundation on which to place the duties we * Delivered by the Rev. Thomas Stratten, of Hull, in Castle Gate Chapel, Nottingham, on Thursday evening, October 21, to the members of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, at its adjourned Autumnal Meeting, 1841. N. S. VOL. V. 50 owe to the home of our country had we time, at large, to show what a home it is in which God's providence has placed us, and appointed our vocation and mission. Encircled by the ocean, how clearly marked and defined its boundary! Secluded by the waters which roll around it, how convenient as a receptacle for concentrating the patriotic feelings of the heart! Spread out into every variety of hill, and valley, and spacious plain; of mountain stream, and gliding river, and tide-rolling estuary; of park and moorland, of pasture and cornfield, of solitudes for nature's devotees, of hamlet, village, town, and crowded marts for manufactures and commerce, how ample for every purpose of communion with God in his works, and with man in all the diversified combinations of his social condition! Venerable with the monumental remains of several nations which have settled or sojourned upon our shores, and of several forms of society which have succeeded each other, each leaving some portion of its more enduring materials on the soil, how closely linked and multiform our associations with the past! and how deeply laid, and firm the foundations on which our social structure is built! Enriched by the commerce of all nations; exalted by dominion in every region; fruitful in the most numerous and powerful family of colonies which ever fatherland sent forth; how imposing our attitude! how lofty our throne amongst the empires of mankind! Shall I speak of the intellectual treasures of our country? of the boundless stores of knowledge deposited in our language? and of a wonder-working press which proffers, on such easy terms, communion in their works with the noblest thoughts and deeds of the master spirits of our kindred? Shall I add, to crown the whole, the perfect freedom we enjoy to utter every opinion we entertain, to follow out every conviction we cherish, to pursue, alone or associated, every object we hold dear, undeterred by fierce and impatient democratic tyranny, on the one hand, or by the watchful jealousy of the solitary despot, on the other? Our country, whatever be its faults, is as a home unequalled; and the more deeply this conviction is rooted in our mind, the more warmly and expansively will our affections flow out and settle upon it; and the more easy shall we find it to rouse up and devote whatever energies we possess to preserve it as the sanctuary of religious, as well as political, freedom, and to cultivate every moral waste yet remaining upon its surface with the seeds of scriptural truth and piety. The earlier history, objects, and usages of our Home Missionary Society have inconveniently limited the range of our thoughts in employing its designation; have confined our attention, almost exclusively, to the rural districts, instead of leading us to embrace the country at large. Might not our Home Missions, like the Home Office in the political administration, represent to our minds, not the villages in distinction from the towns, but the Home department of Missionary labour in distinction from the Foreign? whatever the country, in any of the larger or smaller assemblages of its population, might require and receive from our united efforts?-the Society not indeed possessing the power, nor desiring the work of legislation, nor interfering with local arrangements, but directing a watchful and benevolent eye over the length and breadth of the land-collecting information from all quarters-classifying, condensing, circulating, wherever it might be required, the information obtained-communicating the results of different modes of operationassisting, to the extent of its power, every unobjectionable mode-and by links of fraternal intercourse, affection, and co-operation, combining into one great harmonious and active fellowship all those, who work for the extension of the same principles, even though they might not be united in one common and central administration? If the country at large, on this occasion, demand our attention, we must survey our own relative position before we can understand the work assigned us to perform. We do not assume that our own ecclesiastical demarcations enclose all the truth and piety in the land, and that none go safely to heaven, who do not pass through them. We do not make calculations of numbers, and suppose that questions of truth and error can be decided, one way or another, by majorities. We have no desire to proselyte other bodies of Christians that they may become incorporated with our own. We make no pretensions to the sole work of evangelizing the country, and reclaiming its moral wastes. We rejoice in the labours of others, and wish them more abundant success. We admit that our position, as Nonconformists, has not only its peculiarities, but its difficulties and disadvantages arising out of those peculiarities. The whole weight of secular power and influence is thrown into the scale against us ancient bigotry and prejudice, dull and heavy as lead when in repose, but fierce as the flames of the fiery furnace when enkindled, resist us - cloistered learning furbishes and buckles on its heavy armour, and profane wit sharpens its lighter missiles to assail us-while base and needy traitors, for a piece of silver, or a morsel of bread, show how willingly, if they could, they would betray us into the hands of our enemies. We need not wish to conceal from ourselves, nor from others, our actual position. It is one with which truth, in the person of her Lord himself, as well as in the persons of his disciples, has been sufficiently familiar; in which she loves to try the fidelity of her chosen servants, before she crowns them with the rewards of victory. It may, however, yield some satisfaction, and minister some increased degree of peace and firmness to our minds, if we ask-How came we into the position which we occupy? Is it one that we have capriciously chosen for ourselves? or one to which we have been providentially directed and appointed? We go back to the origin of our nonconformity. We are satisfied that the first step was right. It has borne nearly two centuries of investiga tion, amid the searching lights most likely to find out any obliquity of movement, or want of firmness, had such there been, in the ground which was taken. But no. The two thousand men who, in one day, -call it not black Bartholomew, but give it a name accordant with the nature of the mental and moral triumph achieved by the noble confessors, who then illustrated in their deed the power of Christian principle, and kindled a flame of light and liberty in their country, which no powers of darkness ever have, or ever will, be able to extinguishthe two thousand men who, on that day, sacrificed their earthly all, at the stern bidding of conscience and truth, went forward in the clear but rugged path of duty, and placed their feet upon the firm though barren rock. That rock has not worn away, nor been cut away, from beneath them. It has become the pedestal of the monument on which their names are inscribed with imperishable honour. In similar circumstances, were our virtues equal to theirs, we should ourselves be impelled to act as they did. They have left us their example in heroic suffering, as well as the truths for which they suffered, a sacred and invaluable legacy, a solemn and responsible trust. Has there since been any period at which their descendants could, without blame, relinquish the trust? could they say, the purposes for which it was left have been fully accomplished? Have the pulpits, from which they were ejected, become accessible to those who cannot submit to the ordinances of man, when they interfere with primary and plenary obedience to the commandments of God? Has there since been, on the part of those who committed or participated in the violence and tyranny which produced this great religious division in our country, any thing approaching to a cordial effort for healing the division? From necessity our fathers became Nonconformists. From the same necessity-blended now with conviction and choice, arising from the greater expansion, illustration, confirmation of the principles for which they suffered-yet from the same necessity, we, their descendants, continue in the position they left to us, and advance in the truth they marked out before us. But we are permitted to see in that event, and to trace from that day, something more than what, at first sight, might appear to be the unequal contest between power, bigotry, arrogance, on the one hand, and exiled, suffering righteousness, on the other. There is a deeper truth evolving itself in the operations, already accomplished, of a superintending Providence, and a brighter hope in what that Providence has yet in store. What has been accomplished? A godly ministry, in the true apostolic succession of self-denial and reproach, as well as evangelical doctrine and purity, has been continued and multiplied in the land. The rights of conscience have been vindicated, preserved, inwrought into the framework of the British constitution; extended and secured to multitudes who do not find it convenient to know to whom they are indebted for them. Liberty and charity, affianced in the loved home of our country, have brought forth a godlike progney, which have made the world the field of their labour, and will not cease, nor rest, till they have united all its nations in one common peaceful brotherhood. Brethren! our mission at home has not been barren and unfruitful. It has already produced real and substantial benefits to our country; benefits, not chronicled in the history of party strifes and vulgar victories, but realized in the infusion of those higher principles of truth and freedom into the general habits of thought in the public mind, which, like the more subtle and powerful agencies of nature, are unseen, yet every where present, and every where operative; and in those more visible and palpable realities, the "congregations of faithful men," who voluntarily support the religious ordinances they enjoy, and diffuse the leaven of their influence on the population around them. We may, then, safely assume that the position we occupy, is not one which we have chosen for ourselves, but one in which an all-superintending Providence has placed us. It may have its difficulties and trials the closer, therefore, its analogies with the position of the most illustrious of our race, "of whom the world was not worthy"-the clearer, if these difficulties arise from our love and avowal of disregarded truth, the proof that we sustain it by Divine appointment. And what does that appointment of Providence contemplate? It is a part of one purpose and arrangement, commencing with the sufferings and labours of our fathers, and continuing to the present time; comprehending all the truth which has been published; all the results in individual conversion and salvation, and in general influence on the country and the world, which have followed; all the circumstances under which the testimony for the truth has been maintained, and the sufferings for it have been endured. Does the purpose terminate at the point which we have now reached? Is the whole issue now realized? Have we nothing more to do for God? And He nothing more to do by us? Would a negative conclusion to these questions bear examination in the light of the analogies of Providence? in the light of the example of our fathers? in the light of the present state and wants of our country? in the light of the widening dispensations of mercy for all the tribes and families of mankind? Believing then, as we assuredly may, that our past history and present condition do neither, nor both, fill up God's purposes towards our country through and by us-believing that there are larger and brighter issues yet to be realized, we come to the question, What is our mission in our country? We have reached the ground which commands the prospect. Let us, with all possible brevity, sketch out the work before us. We have to guard, with sleepless and untiring vigilance, the sacred flame of religious liberty-the liberty wherewith Christ has made us |
