The morning session ended with the appointment of the following committees by the chair: on finance, Hon. Elbridge T. Gerry and Mr. George S. Bowdoin; on audit, Messrs. Bryant Walker and Andrew McF. Davis; on nominations, Professors H. P. Judson, George L. Burr and Victor Coffin; on resolutions, Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, Professor James A. Woodburn and Professor John M. Vincent.
The public session of the Church History Section, presided over by its secretary, Rev. Dr. Samuel Macauley Jackson, was well attended. The first paper was by Professor George James Bayles, of Columbia University, and was entitled American Ecclesiology. His subject was not ecclesiology in the narrower sense of architectural antiquities, but in general that branch of social history which has to do with religion in America. The chief data were: a limited individual action for the purposes of religion, a limited co-operative action for the same, and a limited creation of corporation law. Throughout our history there had been an enlargement of the scope of individual and voluntary action in religion. Secondly, it seemed probable that the era of differentiation was coming to a close, and an era of absorption, consolidation and concentration opening. There had been a great growth of auxiliary organizations, with specialized functions; and many new forms of association had been evolved, such as federations of churches and other groupings. In the third respect, differentiating the concepts of the church, religious society, parish, and civil incorporation, he showed how the religious society, first, had been created by the civil power, and how, after the Revolution, great efforts were made to devise a good method whereby any religious body could receive incorporation. At the present time many laws recognize the organization and functionaries of churches, and give them authorization; while in some states there has been a tendency, likely to increase, toward the creation of corporations sole.
Professor Francis A. Christie of Meadville Theological Seminary, read an elaborate paper on the Date of the Ignatian Epistles. The date most often assigned to them has been about iio A. D. The external (Eusebian) authority on which this date was grounded being regarded by the essayist as baseless, internal evidence must be relied on. He argued for a date during the reign of Hadrian. The chief heresy attacked in the epistles is the Doketic denial of the flesh of Christ and the consequent withdrawal from the Eucharist as celebrated by the parish bishop. The letters were demonstrably written before the Gnostic speculations were combatted by means of the Logos doctrine, but at a time when Doketic
