Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Excerpt from Eight Annual Address of the Bishop of the Diocese of Illinois, 1859
Christian courtesy and watchful respect. The Psalms which once echoed among the hills and valleys of Palestine, as the feet of the people travelled Zionward - the gushing tones of David's yearning for religious fellowship, or lament for the depriva tion of it - the burning love for Jerusalem, which prefers that the tongue should be dumb and the arm palsied rather than her weal and woe forgotten - these are guides to our aspirations, even as in the prayer of prayers we lift ourselves to the angels for the standard of obedience. We need'not forget that their altar fire, as our own must be, was kindled with clouds of smoke, and many a gust of human passion to disturb and scatter it. The private and national history shows that they were men of like passions with ourselves, and that the practical result might be imperfect and discord ant. But the grand ideal was to them as a sun and shield. The obligation and privilege of the annual festival grouped them closer around God, and merged the selfish littleness of the individual in the common honor as His chosen, and the jealous relation to His glory. We all feel the desire for more representative unity and what a load would be taken from our hearts if all that name the name of Christ stood confessed in the one Lord, one faith, one baptism. But we now only reach the conception as an abstraction, and feel it most in our distinctive associations, as we appreciate the wide world by what our eye can sweep, or concentrate our philanthropy in family love. Diocesan relations are to us thus the epitome of the Church, and the Convention becomes earnest of its unity in doctrine and discipline, heart and work, as it gathers in one voluntary band under rule and law, to legislate for the jurisdiction, and arrange plans and means by which the executive may be guided and sustained. The term shows how much of the popular element exists in our church government in this country, and how near the resemblance between the. State and Federal administration, and our system of independent Dioceses with their respective conventions, and the General Convention with its two Houses in coordinate power and check on each other's action. We.
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