Report of the Convention of the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill WHAT THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH STANDS FOR BY WILUAM HENRY ROBERTS, D.D., IX..D. The churches of a nation are both causes and effects in relation to national development and welfare. As causes they operate to make the national life a distinctive life with marked characteristics. As effects they reveal in their own life features which are stamped upon them by the nation of which they are an integral part. The churches and the nation influence each other reciprocally and powerfully. The church of Scotland, for example, has been a potent influence in the development of the Scotch nation, and the Scotch character has imparted much of its rugged strength and intellectual clearness to the church which has been the mother of many other Presbyterian churches. Further, the Protestant churches have been, sources of life, power, and progress in a marked way to the nations in which they predominate, and these nations have made the churches themselves increasingly enterprising, earnest, and vigorous. What is true of Scotland and other lands is true also of the United States of America. The American churches are different in certain respects from the Christian churches of other continents, just as the American nation is distinct from all other nations. The American nation is, in an emphatic sense, the outgrowth of the American churches, and the churches have been influenced greatly in their development by the nation. Both churches and nation, because they are American, are instinct with the democratic spirit, are full of a restless life which seeks through all outward forms the spiritual realities for which the forms stand, and are possessed in a marked way with world-wide ideas and hopes. This fact is true even of American churches of the monarchial type in government. Such ...