would be but sheer impertinence; and these self-boastful "reformers" would seem to rank as a class of restless busy-bodies and intermeddlers.

For the better class of the original Puritans, to whom, at the first, this name was given as a term of reproach, we have in certain aspects of their character and history, considerable respect. That man has no true reverence for goodness, who condemns these men unqualifiedly and without exception. In all the great questions which mark historical epochs, there are always two sides. There are two sides here. In that day of practical license and doctrinal laxity, when such a man as Dean Swift, who was hobnobbing with such a man as Bolingbroke, and caricaturing such a man as Robert Boyle, hoped to be a Bishop; when Archbishop Tillotson was denying the Eternity of Punishment, disparaging the Athanasian Creed, and preaching a cold Morality in the place of the Cross of Christ; in such a day, the Puritans laid hold of, and presented to the world, certain living truths and principles, however much these truths and principles were twisted, and narrowed, and perverted in their hands. Notwithstanding their cant and nasal twang, notwithstanding their sacrilegious and horrible trampling upon sacred places and things, notwithstanding their overstrained morality, which afterwards rebounded with such shocking results, notwithstanding the sheer hypocrisy, the self-will, the quenchless thirst for power, an ambition, whose motto seemed to be "rule or ruin," notwithstanding the sheer hypocrisy which, in not a few of their leaders, concealed the grossest moral delinquency behind a solemn sanctimonious visage-notwithstanding all this, there was among them real genuine sanctity, and their position was an honest, fearless protest against doctrinal and practical degeneracy.

The Puritans did not represent the best life of the English Church. In this respect, the greatest injustice has been done to the Church at that period. Puritanism then, and Wesleyanism a century later, were extreme developments of a great religious movement in the English Church, which reached the very heart and soul of the Establishment; and the breadth and depth, and power of the current of Christian life were not

the less real, even though they lacked the noisy demonstration of shallower streams. Let it ever be remembered, also, that every living truth and principle which they represented, every true element of power which they possessed, and every lofty and commanding virtue which they exhibited, they inherited as their birth-right from the good old Mother Church of England, of which they were all members, and the better part of them ordained Ministers.

When these men came to the New World they brought with them their high estimate of Education. Not a few of them were thorough scholars. Thus, John Cotton spoke the Hebrew and Latin languages, the latter fluently, and wrote it elegantly, and read the Greek readily. They knew what Oxford and Cambridge had to do with England's greatness; and one of their first efforts here was to plant those two Institutions, Harvard and Yale, still the leading Colleges of the country. In this respect they were wise men. Would that Churchmen in this country, even now, understood the matter as well. They were not mistaken as to the source from whence the moving power of a people and a nation emanates. But the Puritans, in coming here, left the Church behind them; that Church, which a company of them, on setting sail from England, thus addressed :

"We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our company, as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes; but acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breast. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there; but blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body."

Sadly at variance with all this was the course of the Puritans on landing upon our shores; how sadly, this is not the place to describe. We do not think their conduct very surprising. They had been taught by old Rome that Bishops and

* Hubbard's New England, pp. 126-7.

Priests were essentially of the same Order, that both were of Ecclesiastical origin and authority only, and that the Pope's authority was alone divine. The writings of the earliest Christian Fathers had been for centuries ignored, and were almost wholly unknown. The renaissance of learning had spread the knowledge and power of the Written Word, but had not as yet diffused the writings of the men who wrote or compiled that Written Word. The Forged Decretals, that stupendous magazine of abominable lies, had not yet been exposed, and were supposed to rest on the same authority that makes Bishops. It is not strange, that even the English Reformers sometimes stumbled and blundered at first, and that Mr. William Goode, and they who cite him as an authority, can prove almost anything from them that they wish.

The tribute of those old Puritans to the Mother Church of England, which we have just quoted, is also noteworthy, in that it shows how deserving she was of their confidence and affection as a system of Doctrine and Life. But here, in this

New World, they determined to start a new Church for themselves. They proscribed the Church of England. They excluded and persecuted her. They renounced her Ministry and Worship. They created, or attempted to create, a Church and Ministry and Worship. In place of the old Faith of the Primitive Creeds, they substituted John Calvin's philosophical dogmas. What the result of all this has been, we need not here repeat. Their modern Creeds are abandoned, and with them have gone the essential doctrines of the Faith of Christ; and, in their stead, has been developed a Rationalism, whose daring impieties and horrible blasphemies, are known and read of all men. In forsaking the Church which Christ constituted, and as He constituted it, alas for them, that Church was "the pillar and ground of the Truth."

Politically and Socially, Puritanism has not worked successfully, even in its best estate. Oliver Cromwell illustrated the spirit of Puritanism, when he tried to convert, or to conquer Ireland; and, in the attempt, was guilty of atrocities, even the reading of which, makes humanity shudder, and the blood curdle with horror. Ireland has never forgotten the lesson.

The Puritans exhibited the genuine spirit of the system in Holland, where the Dutch Clergy pronounced them, as the historian says, "a set of discontented, factious, and conceited men, with whom it would be safest to have no connection." And their own explanation of the reason for leaving a country, where, for eleven years, they had had every liberty that they could desire, was, that "inasmuch as in ten years time, whilst we sojourned among them, we could not bring them to reform anything amiss among them!"

We shall not trace the political history of Puritanism in this country. It began its career, as we have already said, as a politico-religious establishment, forced itself upon the people. by the most arbitrary and unjust laws, and proscribed all other forms of Faith by Statutes written in blood. It consented to Toleration, at last, not gracefully, and only from sheer necessity. Some of the old pæans about "Freedom of Conscience,' which it used to sing on "Forefather's-day," have been shamed into silence; and some of the old libels upon the English Church, and our own, which used to disgrace our Histories and School-books, and which were taught to our children at our own expense, have at last been given up. But its restless, intermeddling, grasping spirit seems to be still alive. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. All that we have attempted now, has been to shew that it has sought, and is still seeking, amidst and by means of the present distracted condition of the country, to force itself upon uncongenial soil; and where both the men and the measures are alike held in intense dislike; and where such interference in the relations which subsist between the two races, if persisted in, will assuredly end in mischief, and only serve to hinder the return of National Union, peace and prosperity.

Directly at variance, and in open contrast, with all this, is the manner in which the Church is entering upon the work to which she is called by events of the times. To invite specialattention to this work, and to the principles on which it is conducted, to show how those principles differ from the principles and policy of certain active organizations about us, is the object of our present paper. That work is indicated by the "Occasional Paper" at the head of this Article. It is worthy of the con

fidence and support of all Christian men; and the method which it proposes to pursue is the only one by which real and permanent good can be effected, amid difficulties so peculiar and delicate in their character. How, and why this is so, we think has been already shown in our previous pages.

The Church recognizes Southern Christians as members with us of the One Body of Christ. She recognizes, also, the special duties and responsibilities which belong, first of all, to the appointed leaders of the Church of God at the South. She takes for granted, that, as Christian men, they know what those duties. and responsibilities are; and especially to the destitute and degraded population around them. Northern Churchmen ask to co-operate with their Southern brethren in this great work, and to share their burdens. They know that the welfare, the very existence of the colored race requires that the kindest relations shall exist between the two classes; and that the two races must live side by side in harmony, or that one or the other must perish.

Our brethren at the South understand this whole subject in all its bearings, and are alive to its magnitude and pressing importance. Leading Bishops and Clergy, Ecclesiastical Conventions, public bodies, clerical and lay, have given official expression to sentiments which cover the whole ground, and which, in their scope and spirit, are all that Christianity and philanthropy can suggest or desire. Measures have been instituted for the intellectual, moral, and spiritual training of the colored population, such as shall fit them for their new duties and responsibilities. Our brethren at the South invite our aid, in the same confidence with which it has been proffered. It is a great and glorious work. It appeals only to Christian feelings, and uses only Christian motives and methods. It blends the sympathies, and unites the hearts of brethren. It is a work of love, and so it is Christlike, Godlike. It will tend to bind together the most distant sections of our country, by the strongest of all bonds, mutual affection and confidence. It is only by such ties as these, not by standing armies, that, by the very nature and genius of our Institutions, the body politic can be one, in its future progress of national power and glory.