An Address ON THE

FUTURE OF CONGREGATIONALISM, DELIVERED BEFORE THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES DURING ITS SIXTH TRIENNIAL SESSION, CHICAGO, OCTOBER 14, 1886, BY HENRY A. STIMSON, D. D., PASTOR PILGRIM CHURCH, ST. LOUIS.

SAINT LOUIS, MO.

MDCCCLXXXVI.

"At mihi contingat patrios celebrare Penates Reddereque antiquo menstrua thura Lari."

TIBULLUS.

MR. MODERATOR, FATHERS, AND BRETHREN:

The voice you were to have heard to-day discoursing upon this theme is now engaged in recounting to the angels the wonders of the redemptive grace. The joy into which our brother has entered is the reward of those who illustrate in their lives the truth they teach. A tireless worker, a devout soldier of Christ, a successful winner of souls, a self-forgetting servant of God, and a large-hearted lover of his fellowmen, is gone. Heaven is richer, and earth to us so much the poorer, because the Master has taken Constans Goodell to Himself.

I take it for granted that the subject assigned me is entirely serious. I am aware that no one exposes Himself to such gratuitous obloquy as the man who sets up for a prophet. But, gathered as we are, in a city where the storm and stress of the forces which threaten, not religion only, but organized society, are at the fiercest; where the Haymarket is still stained with the blood of officers of the law murdered while in the execution of their duty; where the community is still oppressed with anxiety as to the possibility of punishing evil-doers and protecting itself against defiant anarchy, the future becomes a part of the present; and no question of to-day can be regarded as settled until it has been considered in its bearing upon to-morrow.