StumblingBlocks Author:Gail Hamilton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1864 Original Publisher: Ticknor and Fields Subjects: Church Christian life Church and the world Mission of the church Religion / Christian Life / General Religion / Christian Theology / General Religion / Christian Theology / Ecclesiology Religion / Christia... more »n Church / General Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: III. ORDINANCES. "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of toe new moon, or of the Sabbath days : which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." -- Col. li. 16,17. who are Congregationalists have small reverence for the Apostolic succession. We can hardly believe that virtue has been conducted over an unbroken line of fingers eighteen centuries long, and we are rather surprised at the credulity of our Episcopal brethren. Yet we sometimes pay ourselves, and demand from others, as great a reverence for certain forms, as if those forms had been intrusted to our keeping by the great Head of the Church. We are as inconsistent as we fancy " Churchmen " to be credulous. They logically require reverence for what they believe to be a true apostolic succession. We illogically demand equal reverence for that for which we claim only human origin. I suppose the whole Protestant world is a unitas regards the necessity and propriety of assembling together on the first day of the week for the purpose of worshipping God in a direct and especial manner. The teaching of Scripture, both by precept and example, and the experience of the Christian world, have shown that the social element of man's religious nature needs this for its adequate sustenance and generous growth. But ...« less