The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-07-28
A NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH.

! REMARKABLE SERMON ny DIR BELLOWS, OF NEW YORK.
From the Boston Advertiser, July 20.
The iorty-third visitation of the Divinity School
at Cambridge, took place the 10th of July. After
the dinner, which followed the delivery OF
speeches by the graduating scholars of the Divinity
School, the alumni assembled in the old chapel and
listened to an address from Rev. DR.. Bellows, of
New York:
Dr. Bellows stated his subject as 'Susrense
of Faith" proposing an examination of the charac
teristic ideas, positive or negative, of our epoch
with special reference to the good evil influence
they have exerted upon the faith of Unitarians, and
its embodiment
In brilliant and fervid address he then exam
ined at length the symptoms of the life of this cen
fury. lie spoke first of the work of the Unitarian
denomination, where he found in comparison with
its earlier history, an indifference to missionary
effort for the extension of its peculiar tenets of
doctrine. He considered this the necessary re-
suit OF the position of Unitarians as Protestans of
the Protestants; and them at much greater length,
proceeded to view of Professionalism, and of this
age as Protestant age (tOr he denied the
lstence OF any living Catholic church). Here he
claimed or he conceded that the legitimate logical
result, if logical result only be examined of Pro-
testantism, is tendency to intense individualism,
and he highest ambition of its pulpit to make re-
hgon out of self-respect, right living self culture
to insist that aspiration is worship-that truth is
God-that goodness is religion.
Examining, in the third place, this tendency which
he had studied this historical fact in its philosophi
cal and universal relations he showed that mankind
be governed by two-fod law; that there are two
motions of the spirit essential to the very existence
| OF generic or individual man in relation to Coda
centrifugal motion and a centripetal-the motion
| that sends man away from God to learn his free
dom, to develope his personal powers and faculties
and the motion that draws him back to God to re-
| ceclye the Inspiration, nurture and endowment
winch he has become strong enough to hold. Trac-
ing these two motions historically, he arrived at
the statement that in Christianity Romanism repre-
sents the centripetal force and Protestatism the
centrifugal; Romansm standing for external or Di-
vine authority, Professionalism for internal liberty
and individual freedom; Romanism leading to wor-
! ship, Professionalism to work. There is no doubt
! he SAID, that Romanism, merely as 4 religion, full
hlled Its junction more perfectly than Protestant
ism, the main sciences of Professionalism having been
rendered directly to humanity and only indirectly
to religion And here, therefore, he asked whether
as Protestants of the Protestauts, the Unitarians
were not at the apogee of their orbit. He thought
| that in one cycle the whole body of Protestant
Christians to which he belonged had come to the
end of seltdirecting, sefasserting, selEcuurin =;
| having enlarged our faculties, We want a use for
them. And this, he said, was the painful pause
the suspended animation now felt and seen throug
| ChristendOm.
In closing this description of the Christendom of
our day, he asked if any one could believe or de-
sires to believe that the nineteenth century how
ever important in its place, is to be indefinitely
continued? That the spirit and temper of this in
ventive busting irreverent and selfassertinr time
| is to govern the whole future: a time in which
knowingness, curiosity, wit covetousness and pub
Hcitr, external accomplishments, arts and achieve
ments have so largely taken the place the deeper
passions and richer experiences of the SOUL and in
which coniugal love, paterna care, flia reverence
domestic quietude, true friendship spiritual art,
| poetic imagination and private peace seem so
| lamentably in abeyance. Mans body, tasked bv
| this quick time, is furrowed with the lash and beGs
| for mercy; his nerves have come to the surface
with the unnatural strain his spirits tagged or un-
| duly stimulated, send him mopng or maudlin to
d. hOnSn II ilr an narl
while his architecture, gay with cumulative cost,
covers cheerless home; his churches splendid
| with sectaran rivalry, shelter unworshipping
hearts. His phianthrOpc assemblies crowded and
| frequent, breathe violence and hatred. while the q
| advocate the rights of man and rebuke the church
| in the tones of Mephstopheles; and age, that has
to be busy to save itself from knowing its own des
tituti0n, to which leisure is burden and solitude
! calamity What Is there which we can desire to
see peTpetuated in the peculiar spirit of an age like
this?
And when this spirit which now animates the
highest and most influential classes of society, and
produces the sefcriticsm, the dsintegrating indi-
vidualism, the pride that kills hospitality and the
strain of social emulation which makes elegant for
tresses of mems homes; the esoteric want behind
the exoteric abundance; when the cold polish the
brilliant surface the dead enthusiasm of the best
and most characteristic products of the nineteenth
century come to strike downwards and to be seen
in connection with the inferior culture, the more
vulgar tastes, the coarser grain of the
the origin OF the alarming symptoms of our nation
al life, its vulgar credulity and as vulgar infdeIity
its denial of so many things that are true; and af
hrmation of so many things that false, its un-
spirituality and spiritualism, its faith in the Old
| Testament, and interest in the Mormon Bible and
the Spiritual Telegraph.
After this review of the present SYMPTOMS of the
life of the time, which he had pronounced not ir-
religious, but eminenty unreligious, he closed by
indicating the direction in which the want unveT.
sally felt was to be supplied. This was by the re-
cOgnition of the church as the legitimate and
only complete religious instructor of society
Granting that God can and does commune with
separate hearts, still he claims that .the Word OF
Cod" 'the Holy Spirit" could speak to 9th,
Church" alone. No prophecy could be ofprivat
Interpretation, and the separate individual men !
was impossible that the whole of Gods will io
men could be untolded. Dwelling earnestly on
this idea, he asked not for a victory for the
old Catholic church, but for development ofth
new Catholic church, which should indeed inform
modern civilization with its religious life. The
work of the church, he said, is so to speak to the
world in the orOtund of the great historic
incidents; so to preach by emphasizing
the commemorative days and illumina
ting the holy symbols, and pausing OF
the successive events which made the doctrines O
Christianity as gradually to thunder into the dea
ear of humanity the saving lesson of the Gospel
No lecture-rOom can do this; no preaching man car
do this; no thin ghostly individualism or congrega
tionalism can do this. 1t calls for the organic in
sttuted Titualized, mpersOnal, steady, patient work
of the church-which, taking infancy into its arms
shall baptize it, not family custom, but church
sacrament, which shall speak to the growing chill
dren by imaginative symbols and holy festivals
and not merely by Sunday-school lessons and straw
berry feasts which shall confirm them and tax,
them into the more immediate bosom of the church
they attain adult years aud are about to step be
yOnd the threshold of domestic life which sha!
make marriage aud burial both rites of the immedi
ate altar, and give back to the communion servic
the mystic sanctity which two centuries have beel
successfully striving to dspel, without gaining b.
its nationality anything except the prospect of it
extinction.
/ A new Catholic church-a church in which th
needed but painful experience of Professionalism sha
) have taught us how to maintain a dgnfed SYN
bolic and mystic church organization without tn
aid of the State the authority of the Pope-hei
! support being now supplied by the camorous want
, of our starved imaginations and suppressed devC
tional instincts; this is the demand of the weary
/ unchurched humanity of our era. How to remov
: the various obStaces-how to inaugurate the var
Gus steps to it's probably more than any man
wisdomi is adequate to direct just now. But to al
t ticuae, even try to articulate, the dumb want
' of the religious times is, at least one step to il
4 1t is cry for help which God will hear, and wi
answer by some word from the Holy Ghos
when humanity ia able and willing IN hpar