PREFACE.

THIS little book has grown out of four lectures delivered in the Memorial Hall in connection with what has been called the Down Grade controversy. The first two chapters of

the volume deal with some of the incidents of that unfortunate discussion. The others are of a more general character, and treat of questions of vital interest to all our Churches. The idea of the lectures and the book was in my own mind some time before the appearance of the Down Grade articles, and was originally suggested by the frequent attacks made upon Congregational Churches. Those articles and the excitement which they produced gave a more definite character to this humble endeavour to indicate the position held, I believe, by a large number of Congregationalists, whether Baptists or pædo-Baptists. The responsibility of this volume is mine alone. We are apt to glide too easily into the use of the term "we"-adopted at first from modesty, but unintentionally suggesting to the world that we speak on behalf of others as well as ourselves. We may thus intentionally or otherwise secure for our words a weight which would not belong to them as the expression of our own opinion. There is a story of a dean in the North of England who had been visiting Rome, and in a conversation with the Pope telling him