it was exceedingly discourteous to assume so hastily not only that our highest judicatory, with the acquiescence of the Presbyteries, had for thirty-six years been acting in gross ignorance and violation of our Constitution, but that the General Association of Connecticut, had been acting in like ignorance and violation of theirs.

Verily if the sagacious may thank opponents for undesigned favors, then zealous Congregationalists may well thank the exscinders for doing such a thing and in such a way. It blighted the buds and blossoms of confidence and good-will towards Presbyterianism in New England and out of New England. It caused a current of bitter waters to flow from the East to the farthest West. And if from lack of contact with Congregationalism the exscinding branch of our Church has not been the principal sufferer from the spirit thus aroused, the authors of that divisive and alienating deed ought to feel none the less sure that Presbyterianism received a heavy blow at their hands. Oh! that ardent friends of the Westminster standards had been wise to discern tendencies, and to wait for results with calm confidence of the success of Presbyterianism through God's blessing on fairness and Christian charity, joined with love of constitutional order and doctrinal purity! Possessing a closer affinity to our republican institutions and a greater adaptation to our population than any other form of church government, Presbyterianism can afford to be magnanimous.

Let it not be inferred from what has been said of this lamentable work of excision, that we impute blame exclusively to the party that effected it. It must be admitted that in the days preceding the division, some persons connected with the other party were not

so careful to shun the appearance of slighting the Confession of Faith as they ought to have been; that some mistaking oddity for originality, and audacity for spirituality, preached and occasionally published crudities and impertinences more offensive-positively-than the wearisome common-place and the prim or grim sanctimony of the opposite extreme; and that some men though of great excellence may yet have failed at times to see precisely how far they “did well to be angry," so that if here and there an individual had ere this published his "Irenicum" a majority in both branches of the Church would probably have deemed such a peace-offering eminently proper. But what does all this-what. would ten times more than all this-prove as to the lawfulness and policy of exscinding?

THE GRAND LESSON taught by the history of the earlier and the latcr Schism, is THE INEXPEDIENCY OF BREAKING OUR CONSTITUTION TO PRESERVE IT; OF ATTEMPTING TO REMEDY DISORDER BY CONFUSION. In

1741 and in 1837, all dangerous error in doctrine and practice might have been repressed and the great truths of our Calvinistic faith maintained under the Constitution. If the excluding act of the former date cannot be justified, can the exscinding acts of the latter date be defended? And if the reunion of the Church a century ago was worthy the prayers, retractions and honest endeavours of all concerned, what ought we to think of the reunion of the Church in our own day? We rejoice over the healing of the one Schism; shall the other Schism be healed? Why not? Across the ages we seem to hear the people of 1958 asking: WHY NOT?

ARTICLE II.

The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History: by JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. In three volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858. Pp. 579, 582, 664.

THE story of the great struggle in the Netherlands for religious liberty and independence, however written, and from whatever point of view, can never be read without profound interest. The theatre was small; but what political drama has ever brought together so many actors whose fortunes involve such elements of the pathetic and the terrible!

Alva, Granvelle, Egmont and Horn, Don John of Austria and Alexander of Parma, the savage Noircarmes, the ferocious De la Marck, the invincible Spanish infantry, the terrible sea-beggars! And back of all on the one side, the calm, firm, unwavering endurance of William the Silent, and on. the other, the presiding genius of destruction, the relentless "Demon of the South."

It is the deepest and most genuine historical tragedy in the annals of time. It has a beginning, a middle and an end; unity, progress, completeness, and a satisfactory close.

For American readers, the subject has special attractions. It was from the Dutch Republic, the long agony of whose birth composes the theme of this history, that those sturdy enterprising Protestant burghers came, whose children at this day line the banks of the Hudson and the Mohawk. It was the example of the Dutch Republic and the principles infused by

her heroic struggle, that contributed to make even a mitigated oppression intolerable to our fathers.

Two distinguished American writers have recently treated this subject: Mr. Prescott as an incident to his Life of Philip the Second; Mr. Motley as his great theme. It was not indeed to be expected that the former should enter as largely into the history of the struggle as the latter. But we must add that he has not appreciated as thoroughly the principles on which it proceded, nor fathomed as truly the characters of the great actors. Whether from Spanish sympathies nursed by his previous historical studies, or from natural want of earnestness, or from fear of compromising the dignity of history, Mr. Prescott's narrative is often cold and unenthusiastic. We are not insensible to the graceful ease, and frequent poetical beauty of his style; but some portion of these quali ties might be advantageously bartered for a more hearty and sympathetic treatment of questions involving the dearest interests of humanity.

One of the unfortunate but very natural accompaniments of the first burst of the Reformation, was an extensive iconoclasm. The actual violence was confined to a small number of just that class of people who engage usually in street riots. Their long and hard degradation was so intimately associated in their minds with those stately structures, in which the persecuting priests enacted their mummery, and with those expensive, even where not idolatrous ornaments with which they were filled, that the popular fury struck at them first. At Antwerp they smashed the painted windows of the cathedral, demolished the magnificent organ, tore down the altars, and broke in pieces the images; yet with a judicious discrimination, left the colossal statues of the two thieves to

preside over the ruin, while they destroyed the middle sculpture which represented the Divine sufferer on the cross. It was a rude and barbarous but emphatic protest against the abuses of the Church which had so long held them in bondage. Mr. Prescott moralizes upon it in the following exquisitely frigid strain: "It is a melancholy fact that the earliest efforts of the Reformers were everywhere directed against those monuments of genius which had been created and cherished by the generous patronage of Catholicism. But if the first step of the Reformation was on the ruins of art, it cannot be denied that a compensation has been found in the good which it has done by breaking the fetters of the intellect, and opening a free range in those domains of science to which all access had been hitherto forbidden." Certainly, we imagine, it cannot very reasonably be denied! The emancipation of the human mind from the chains of _superstition and priestly authority, popular education, the whole material progress of society, free government, free worship, a free press, is a tolerable" compensation" for some shattered window-glass, a smashed and the broken heads of an unlimited quantity organ, of saints in stone.

Mr. Motley with a just feeling, not for art only, but for humanity, speaks of the same occurrences as follows:

"Art must forever weep over this bereavement. But it is impossible to censure very severely the spirit which prompted the brutal, but not ferocious deed. Those statues, associated as they were with the remorseless persecution, which had so long desolated the provinces, had ceased to be images. They had grown human and hateful; so that the people arose and devoted them to indiscriminate massacre.

"No doubt the inconoclastic fury is to be regretted; for