A faithful record of the doctrines, the institutions and rituals of the church, is its true history. These, and not merely or chiefly its conflicts, its trials, and its triumphs, disclose the true genius and spirit of Christianity. But the study of these two great branches of Christian Archæology, the history of its ceremonials and of its doctrines, indispensible to all who would rightly read the history of the ancient church, has been almost totally neglected in this country. Neither of them, we believe, is made a separate and distinct subject of study in any of our theological seminaries; nor has a single course of lectures on either of these topics, so far as the writer is informed, ever been delivered by any public lecturer or professor of ecclesiastical history in our land.
This neglect presents our course of theological study in humiliating contrast with that of the European nations, particularly the Germans. In their universities, no course of theological instruction is complete without an independent and extended series of lectures in the history both of the doctrines, and of the polity and rites of the ancient church.
Neander has evinced his sense of the importance of these studies by the space devoted to them in his immortal work. But in connection with his public lectures on ecclesiastical history, he was accustomed uniformly to deliver a parallel course, equally full and extensive, on the Antiquities of the Church. Both were, in his estimation, equally important, as essential and independent parts of the History of the Church. Moreover, the rapidity with which works of this character are thrown off from the German press, the wide and extensive range of topics which they comprehend, indicate the importance which this branch of ecclesiastical history, by us so generally neglected, has assumed in that country.
And yet the rites and forms of the ancient church have, to the American churches, an interest and importance unknown to those to whom we are chiefly indebted for information respecting the early institutions of the Christian church. However [17] discordant in sentiment the Lutheran churches may be, they are harmonious in their government and rites of worship. The learned of their communion carefully scrutinize the ancient church, not to justify or defend their own ecclesiastical usages, about which they have no controversy, but as the means of discerning the real character of primitive Christianity.
[More to follow.]