Year: 1867

The Advance"

 The N. Y Independent, originally start ed as an organ of tho Congregationalists, recently announced that it was no longer a denominational paper. This was Q fact of which all it's readers of any intelligence must have long been aware. Yet it has occasioned considerable i'll feeling among Congregationalists, and some unfriendly action on the part of their Associations and Consociations towards Mir. Hilton and his paper. These bodies have especially pc titioned for the establishment of papers strictly Congregational to take the place hitherto occupied by tho L1dependem

 While there can Do no possible objection to starting denominational papers for the purposes to which denominational papers are fitted, it seems to us a great mistake to suppose that any such paper can take the place of the N. Y. LadependeM That jour- nal owes its influence to the fact that it is not an organ of any sect of Christians It is on the picket line far in advance of the organized bodies into which Christians arc enrolled, and where the strict discipline that governs the evolutions of such bodies would be entirely out of place. It is no mofe in the power of any denomination to start another hadependem than it would be in the power ot Q joint stock corporation to get up another Wendell Philips.

 We rise moro thoroughly convinced of this fact from perusal of the first number of 1.-The Advance" new Congregational paper just started at Chicago. This journal evidently imagines itself an opponent of the Independent. It may perhaps prove an excellent Congregational organ: but on the road it is now travelling it is in no danger of overtaking the great Tribune of the religious press. After its title and it's excellent motto, {" for getting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before" VIC look in vain through its eight succeeding pages for anything like an ''ad- vance," We find conservative article from Senator Trumbull, opposing Senator Sum- ners Universal Suffrage bill, wonderfully inconclusive allegory against women s rights, and an elaborate excuse for it's own existence, based on the "general looseness of doctrine and pEactice' of the Ladepend- em! That Mr. Hilton is shaky regarding the doctrine of "total depravity," and that one of his chief coadjutors may havc been seen sitting down with ''extreme ibe- rals'' and such like publicans and sinners ill Boston as averred in the Adoance is no doubt true Probably there is heresy in the Independent; but is not religious error as sure a concomitant of religious progress, as political error of political progress? Il the new Chicago weekly is really to de- servo it's title, it must expect to be con stantly accused, and sometimes guilty o heresy.

 The false policy which induces so many Conservatives to cry ''Hush, when any on, expresses religious views not cut out afte any known pattern, seems to us as fatal tt religious as to political truth. In fre country we must expect endless diversit, of religious opinion. No one religious de nomination is large enough to hold al Americans, any more than any one politica denomination. From one extreme of ou body polite to the other-from Charle Sumner at tho end of it's nose to c. c Vallandigham at the tip of its tail-seem a great way; yet there is no more thal the space actually necessary for all the va rieties of political opinion held by th' most intelligent, tolerant, and progressive people under the sun. Equally great ar' the differences between Christians in and out of denominations. We see no reaso1 to hope that they can ever unite in one wis lbie church. Nevertheless, when they come to see upon how few essentials they mus usagree, and upon how many they can agree, they may perhaps at last feel that they are all members of one Universa Church.

 Religious Federation is, in fact, in its infancy; we need ''progress'' there as vel as elsewhere; and it is precisely because the religious press, generally, stands il such cowardly fear of the stale eggs labell ed s.heresy" that are cast at the prophets in our day, and because the I"dependen fears them so little, that we desire its sue cess more than that of any mere sectarian journal