Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1868-10-15
From New York.

Special Correspondence of the PUBLIC LEDGER
New YORK, October 10. ls6S
There are now in session here two
great ecclesiastical conversations; one
the triennal general convention of the
Protestant Episcopal Church; and the
other the annual conference of the Uni
tarians or Liberal Christians-two re-
ligious organizations more unlike in
their character and object than any other
two in the long list of Christian sects.
The Episcopal Church believes in the au-
thority of usage and tradition and ad-
here's to ancient doctrines; while the
Unitarian Church, representing the ultra
Protestants, is opposed alike to the
forms, the spirit, and the theology of the
past The intensified devotion of the
first, as shown in the past few years, to
the old ideas of church and priestly au-
thority, and its persistence in relieving
the ancient forms of worship as they pre-
vailed before the reformation, have more
than doubled the width of the breach be-
tween Conservative aud Liberal Chris
| tiani.y, and threaten ultimately to split
| the Episcopal Church into two fragments
as difficult to join together again as II
| they had never been part of the same
great whole. This tendency in the
Episcopal Church to assume the ancient
features O.. Romanism is manfully OPP
posed by minority, among whom you
find the Tyngs, father and son, John
Cotton Smith, and others, intellectually
strong, but numerically weak. They
despair of being able to prevent the
Church from going over to the Pope, and
are now seriously contemplating sepa-
ration from the majority, and the estsb-
lishment of q new ecclesiastical body in
which the progressive Protestant element
shall be more faithfully represented.
Their opponents are having everything
their own way. To teach that man
cannot minister in the church unless he
has been ordained by the bishop in the
time of the apostolic succession; that
the true church should be outwardly one,
as we'll as one in spirit and faith (;
that an infant is regenerated by baptism,
that the holy supper is a sacrifice, and
not a memorial; and that, in GER
tain sense, the priest has authority to
absolve from sin. Rituslism is but an
embodiment Of these ideas, and involves
the adoption of medieval methods The
services as conducted in the Ritualist
churches are accompanied with all the
pemp and ceremony of the ancient sacri-
| fees. The Unitsrians, so far from
admiring doctrines and forms because
they have the sanction Of antiquity, make
this very antiquity ground for condem-
nation. They believe in progress, in the
continual discovery Of new truth, in the
superiority Of the present over the past,
and in the uutrammeled liberty OF the
individual Christian. They reject priestly
authority aud church restrictions, and
laugh at Riiualism as at Punch-and-
Judy exhibition. They expose the abb
surdities and contradictions with which
Christianity has been loaded down, and
have already compelled old.fashioned
| ORTHODOXY 70 modify many Of its claims,
and TO put on a show Of modesty in place
Of its time-honored arrogance.
The two conventions are doing very
veil There is good deal Of fQuabbling
fact that the millenium is close st hand,
The battles are made brief and bloodlsss,
I and the bishops and laymen will eafe-
| ries paribus, return 10 their homes in a