South Briton be uncouth, and their style of singing strange and queer; but men who had heard their grandfathers speak in that very way of the debates and battles of the first Covenanters, or had heard their mothers or grandmothers tell of singing Psalms in those very tones on the hillsides and in the glens of dear old Scotland, in the dark days of Graham, of Claverhouse, and Archbishop Sharp, were not the men to be frowned or laughed out of their speech or their psalmody. And those who had been at the defence of Londonderry, or had talked with saints who were there, when hearts strong in the Lord were instead of fortifications, and truths received by faith were for meat and drink, so that lips pale from famine and disease uttered day after day the resolution unfaltering as doom, "No surrender"-were not the people to be soon shamed or argued out of beliefs and ways consecrated by a long line of ancestral martyrdoms and deeds heroic. To many of them their whole system, down to its minutiæ, had almost as little to be accounted absurd or ridiculous as had the old weather-beaten tabernacle to an Israelite, who beheld it with thoughts of Moses and Aaron, of Joshua and Samuel, and above all, of the glorious Shekinah.

Nor is it strange that New Englanders, in spite of their laxity in church government, should be a little set in their notions. For it is possible to be "bigoted to laxness." The Scotch and Irish might sometimes return the laugh about pronunciation, and make game of—what have since been called-their Yankeeisms. But they, too, had their sacred memories. They had heard men speak and pray and sing just so, of whom the world was not worthy. And were not Brewster and Bradford, and Winthrop and Hooker, and Davenport and Eliot theirs? And Plymouth Rock-though then not so great a rock as now-was it not theirs, with associations

to wake noble thoughts? And there were Harvard College and Yale, and there Boston and New Haven and Hartford, taking hold on all that was venerable and of good report. Besides, had they not heard, and had not their associates from South Britain also heard, that the English Revolution of 1640, with all its grand religious and political hopes, had been frustrated in great part through the attempt to fasten the Scotch system of Presbyterianism upon the Independents and others? The past seemed to warn them, if not against Presbyterianism, yet against what they had been taught to dread as an excessively organizing, dominating, straitlaced churchism under that name.

The emigrants from Wales were of a race distinguished for their slowness to exchange their own, for the sentiments and habits of strangers. As the slopes and peaks and crags of their native hills and mountains to the winds and rains that beat upon them, so were their prominent characteristics to surrounding influences. And remembering that the evangelical seed was planted in their fatherland by the Brownist martyr, John ApHenry, and watered by men who labored under the liberal administration of the great Protector, they were likely to sympathize strongly in the reaction against High-Church Presbyterianism, which became so powerful after the Restoration.

Who need be told that the Huguenots, exiled for their faith, were no reeds shaken by the wind? Or that the stability of the Dutch was as the steadfastness of the dykes which their fathers raised against the waves of the sea? Such were the members of the Synod-anxious not to differ, but unapt to yield.

We are now prepared to ask: Was the Adopting Act a COMPROMISE? or was it so framed as WHOLLY TO SUIT THE PROPOSER AND HIS PARTY?

That it was a compromise is evident, first from the fact that less than six months after the writing of the aforesaid letter to Dr. Colman, it was unanimously recommended by a committee, of which Andrews and Dickinson and Thompson and Anderson were members, and was passed by the Synod without a dissenting voice. And then, the Act itself shows that it was not framed as Thompson and his associates would have framed it, to please themselves. It was in these words: "Although the Synod do not claim or pretend to any authority of imposing our faith upon other men's consciences, but do profess our just dissatisfaction with, and abhorrence of, such impositions, and do utterly disclaim all legislative power and authority in the Church, being willing to receive one another as Christ has received us to the glory of God, and admit to fellowship in sacred ordinances, all such as we have grounds to believe, Christ will at last admit to the kingdom of heaven. Yet we are undoubtedly obliged to take care that the faith, once delivered to the saints, be kept pure and uncorrupt among us, and so handed down to our posterity; and do therefore agree, that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement in, and approbation of, the Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine, and do also adopt the said Confession and Catechisms as the confession of our faith. And we do also agree that all the Presbyteries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate of the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function, but what declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscribing

the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister or candidate shall think best. And in case any minister of this Synod, or any candidate for the ministry, shall have any scruple with respect to any article or articles of said Confession or Catechisms, he shall, at the time of his making said declaration, declare his sentiments to the Presbytery or Synod, who shall, notwithstanding, admit him to the exercise of the ministry within our bounds, and to ministerial communion, if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge his scruple or mistake to be only about articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship, or government. But if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such ministers or candidates erroneous in essential and necessary articles of faith, the Synod or Presbytery shall declare them uncapable of communion with them. And the Synod do solemnly agree that none of us will traduce or use any opprobrious terms of those that differ from us in these extra-essential and not necessary points of doctrine, but treat them with the same friendship, kindness, and brotherly love as if they had not differed from us in such sentiments.”*

The length of this Article compels us, reluctantly, to postpone the remainder until the next Number.

* Records, 94.

ARTICLE II.

THE PUBLICATION CAUSE.

If there ever has been an age, or a land, demanding a living, acting, aggressive spirit in the Church, this is that age, and this that land. An age instinct with life, in a land whose one characteristic is life, demands a living Church.

In the highest import of the term, the Church's life depends upon her vital union with her living head;and may God vouchsafe to her more and more of that life!-but it is to that external life and activity, by which the inner life is impressed upon the world, that reference is now had. It is in this sense that a living Church is demanded by the land and age in which God has cast our lot. The Church that would make headway, that would be successful in doing its whole work, and leaving its mark upon our national life, must be a living, active, aggressive body.

The first element of power in such a Church, is a ministry with apostolic faith, joined to apostolic enterprise. The second element is the printed page, the auxiliary of such a ministry, explaining, confirming, and supplementing its teachings.

The thought is a trite one; its obvious truth has made it trite. It is a pity that it is so. Axioms often weigh less with the public than paradoxes, not that they are less weighty, but less new. Men wonder at the tornado, who think nothing of their daily allowance of atmospheric air; the sunlight to the mass is less impressive than the lightning's flash. So, having often