The Practical Church Member: being a Guide to the Principles and Practice of the Congregational Churches of New England. By John Mitchell [pp. 243-268]

Mitchell's Church Member.
place of worship and social influence by the pretensions of
caste; the tendency of the spirit of the ties to insubordination and violence; the dissemination of agrarian doctrine;
the designs of atheists and of anarchists to explode the
authority of the Bible-these are some of the sources of disorder and ruin that threaten the secure enjoyment of all that
is dear to an American Christian. The evils cannot be
reached from the pulpit. With the laity rests most of the
responsibility of meeting the danger in its inception and
scattering the materials of the projected ruin. They can
reach the springs that move the mass. They have the ear
of those whom it is necessary to affect.
But the clergy have much to do in inciting and aiding in
the work. They can arouse the members of the church to
their personal duty and echo the exhortation of the apostle
that each should be found in the diligent exercise of his peculiar gift, that the whole body may be energetic and united
in its toils and rejoice together in their promised triumph.
The church needs, for its own sake, such a rousing of its
power. Thousands of its members are inactive because they
have none to lead them into useful enterprise. They have
energy that lies torpid from year to year for the want of fit
excitement and direction to bring it into use. The overseers
must make this a great object in the case of their flocks, and
not only declaim on the evils of Christian idleness, but show
the labourers a field.
ART. V.- The Practical Church Member: being a
Guide to the Principles and Practice of the Congrega tional Churches of New England. By John Mitchell,
Pastor of the Congregational Church, Fair-Haven,
Connecticut. 12mo. pp. 252-New Haven-Nathan
Whiting, 1835.
WE are glad to see discussions on the nature and importance of ecclesiastical order becoming more frequent, and engaging more of the attention of intelligent Christians than
formerly. Not that we by any means consider the form of
Church government as a fundamental matter in religion.
Our doctrine is, that he who is the subject of "repentance
towardss God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," will be
1836.]
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