But the whole subject is one to be approached only with those rarer virtues, the deepest reverence, and the highest wisdom, and with the most earnest prayer. A profane hand alone dare touch and tamper with the Ark of God. More faith, more obedience, more self-sacrifice, more taking Christ at His word, and less of self-will and presumption are what the Church now needs. Nor ought we to forget that multitudes without, are even now giving up their prejudices and owning allegiance to that glorious old Reformed Martyr Church of England which has proved herself the conservator of Primitive Truth, and which, we trust, is to be the Palladium of Constitutional Liberty in England and the United States. We think we understand the position which the Puritans of other days occupied; nor ought we to wonder at the tenacity with which their de scendants still cling to their hatred. Still time will do its work, and we can afford to wait. We dare trust the future; especially when we see men like Bancroft liberalized by study into a truer Catholicity, and witness the remarkable changes of sentiment and tone which appear in the earlier and later editions of his History. All that we contend for, is, that the record of those stirring and pregnant times to which we have adverted shall be given with unsparing fidelity; and that record we are willing to leave to the verdict of all honest-minded and truthloving readers.

ART. VI. THE POSTSCRIPT TO THE MEMORIAL.

TO THE RT. REV. JAMES HERVEY OTEY, D. D., BISHOP OF TENNESSEE, CHAIRMAN OF A COMMISSION OF BISHOPS, APPOINTED ON THE MEMORIAL OF SUNDRY PRESBYTERS, &c.

REVEREND FATHER IN GOD :-At so late a day in the history of your Commission I should not venture to address you, except with the primary purpose of expressing, for myself and others, an earnest desire that your Commission should be continued for a longer time, if not perpetuated. That your Report is already prepared, and your work in some sense complete, I suppose should be taken for granted. But I trust it will not be found inconsistent with any result you may have reached to consider the expediency of a further prosecution of the great objects to which you have successfully directed the attention of the Church, but which are too important, and as yet too little digested, to be in a shape for legislation. The idea of an entirely abortive conclusion to beginnings, so promising and so wholesome, I cannot for a moment entertain; and yet, even this might be a result, less deplorable, than hasty and crude attempts at reforms.

Intending to press this appeal in the conclusion of this letter, I shall endeavor to show, in the course of it, that great and momentous matters are now fairly before the Church, as the result, under GOD, of the appointment of your Commission, the discussion and settlement of which are the work of an age, and not of a moment; and to which hearts, and minds, and souls must elevate themselves by sympathies, and studies, and progressive piety, before they can be competent to the grave task of attempting the improvement of what is now so precious and so practically good, and withal so sacred, as the work of our fathers.

If the expression, at the outset, of a spirit so cautious, if not timid, should be judged inconsistent with a deep interest in the Memorial, on which your Commission was raised, allow me to say that such will be found to be the spirit of that Postscript to the Memorial, to which alone I am a subscriber, and in coincidence with which, rather than with the Memorial itself, I now venture to address you.

Emboldened by a kind personal invitation from yourself I address, through you, the Commission over which you preside,

the rather late than earlier, because I have felt that the Memorialists themselves had the first right to be heard, and to place their cause fully before the Church. In speaking to a body of Reverend Fathers in God, even upon invitation, I have desired, moreover, to think much upon what I venture to say. It was my hope, too, that another, who had a better right, would undertake to speak a word for us, the signers of the Postscript. Hitherto we have had much from the Memorialists and their opponents. Since no one pre-occupies the place, I beg to say a word for a class who are, strictly speaking, neither of the one nor the other description; a class which I trust may prove the largest in the end, and use their power with the better effect, for the influences which will be made to bear upon them from both extremes.

The signers of the Postscript to the Memorial, at least some of them, were influenced by a desire to see the matters embraced in that document taken up by the House of Bishops in an earnest spirit, but with that superior wisdom and experience which their apostolic gifts and their large acquaintance with the wants of the Church would, of necessity, supply. They felt that the Memorial was the product of deep and pious feeling, and of pure benevolence; and that nothing more illustrative of the divine Constitution of the Church had, for a long time, been presented, than the fact that such a document, instead of being placed before the more popular portion of our great Council in the form of resolutions, or instead of being thrown before the Church at random, in newspaper clamors for reform, was brought with filial reverence, and submitted with humility to the College of our Apostles, expressly for them to improve, develop, and reduce to a form less crude, if they should deem it worthy of the pains. Here was a beautiful instance of the working of conscience in the spirit of the Church! Elsewhere every one's psalm and doctrine must be forced into notice on the strength of individual convictions, but in that body which Christ has organized, and in which we are members one of another, the reformer seeks to be felt only through the organs and channels which have been ordained to healthful functions, and by which the body, according to the effectual working, in the measure of every part, maketh increase of itself in love. Whatever were its faults, I thought, therefore, that it deserved attention. It was evidence in itself of an augmenting interest among the Clergy, in their holy relations to souls, without and within the Church; and it proceeded principally from a brother, whose pure example, and patient energy, and fervent zeal are worthy of imitation; think what we may of the schemes which

his charity has inspired, and which he maintains with due subordination to those who are over him in the Lord.

To me, at least, it is a great proof that we the Post-scribers (if I may use the term) were right in our estimate of the Memorial, to find your reverend Commission acting in entire coincidence with our petition, although not according to the letter of the Memorial. In the questions addressed by the Commissioners to the clergy at large, we find the impulse of the Memorial, but not its aim. "It will be observed," say they, "that most of these questions do not touch the peculiar features of Dr. Muhlenberg's plan, but invoke suggestions as to the best method of increasing the efficiency of the Church as it is." Happy must be the author of the plan, which thus perishes in its own nest, if he is able to recognize its vitality in that which rises, like the Phoenix, from its ashes!

And yet much is to be said on the two great points specified in the Memorial itself. The Church has responded, by a general awakening, to the questions it starts as to our Ritual and Liturgy, and as to our relations to Christians, not in communion with the Church. The former is a question which must naturally revive from time to time; and the latter is one which I thank GOD has appeared in due season-for it is impossible that any Church, which is truly Apostolic, should long exist, without such a note of its Catholicity, and such an exhibition of conscious responsibility for the sheep of Christ's fold "that are dispersed abroad, and for his children, who are in the midst of this naughty world.”

I speak with great deference, but as a son of the Church ought to speak, in reply to reverend Fathers in God, who ask him questions, when I refer to the recognized principle, that, in the worship of GOD "different forms and usages may without offense be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be kept entire." Does not this principle, as true and of practical importance, make it probable that its uses must be brought to mind, by great changes, in times and circumstances; and ought a living and a healthful Church to be afraid of its oper tion? Whether such changes make it now desirable, and whether circumstances render it expedient, to entertain proposals of alteration or improvements in our worship is a second question. The primary consideration, that there is a happy "mean between too much stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admitting variations," makes it always lawful to entertain suggestions, or to hear complaints, and to know why we may safely disregard them. I own that, at first, I felt that something might be said in behalf, at least, of restorations, and that pos

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sibly a supplement to meet the want of German and Swedish congregations, admitted to one fellowship with us, might even be their due. Besides, our Prayer Book was settled in its present shape, at the close of the Revolution, in circumstances little favorable to a clean, entire, and perfect result. In a learned report, submitted to the Convention of 1844, many errors of oversight, and some of apparently culpable neglect, were exposed with pains-taking fidelity, and an important correction in the Calendar, besides several minor ones in the Service itself, were accepted and ratified by the Church. It is to the honor of the laborious brethren who prepared the Standard Edition of the Prayer Book, that they so scrupulously refrained from exercising the large powers with which they were entrusted, by the confidence of the Church, that they did not venture upon other amendments, not even of some which they reported as purely clerical, or the results of palpable inadvertence! As the consequence, however, bad grammar and glaring absurdities are parts of our Standard, and one of the most inexcusable blemishes has attracted the censure of a famous scholar of the continent of Europe, as unworthy of such a work. Was it unreasonable then, in 1853, that some of our brethren thought the work of 1789 required revision and completeness? In threescore years, virtual centuries have passed over the land. For existing wants, and for the strange relations we bear to the modern population of our country, our fathers could not legislate nor provide. Their one thought was how to separate the American Church from the womb of its mother without strangling in the birth. To us, they left the part of doing, for our times, an equally appropriate work, and the stimulus of their example, to do it well. Are we then unequal to the emergencies of our own day? To reform the Papists, reconcile the Methodists, and incorporate the Swedish Christians, who ought to be one with us, but whose case requires some departure from "stiffness in refusing" Liturgical varieties, this is the task to which we ought to address ourselves. Can we hope to do this, without yielding anything from "Dearly Beloved Brethren " to the last "Amen?" But while such were the considerations presented to my own mind, by the Memorial itself, I must add, with sorrow, that the Exposition which has been subsequently given, of the views of its author, in his own, and other, elaborate writings upon it, have produced an unfavorable reaction, in my own mind, and, I am persuaded, in the minds of others. The bold and sweeping alterations which are proposed, in a system which we have been taught to consider as only less reverend than the Bible itself, and whose