was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, was completely happy in the realms of the just." To which Hume answered, "Though I throw out my speculalations to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine." This is a solitary instance, and, if really genuine, is altogether exceptional. When he drew near his own end, with all his faculties entire, he amused himself and his friends with jests about crossing the Styx, and how he would banter old Charon, and detain him as long as he could on this side the river before he entered the ferry-boat.*

Hume's principles, of necessity, made him many enemies. We may praise the zeal of those who opposed him, but we can also admire the calm, self-possessed spirit which bore the opposition with meekness and patience. There is a story, well authenticated, that when an old man, and very heavy, he fell into the swamp at the bottom of the wall that surrounded Edinburgh Castle. He was unable to get out, and in great dread of there ending his life, he called to an old woman for assistance. The old woman told him that he was Mr. Hume the Deist, and she would help none of him." "But, my good woman," said Hume, piteously, "does not your religion teach you to do good even to your enemies?" "That may be," she replied, but ye shall'na come out o' that till ye become a Christian yoursel', and repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Belief." He performed the task, and got the promised assistance. David Hume is not the first whom ability to say the Creed has helped out of a ditch. JOHN HUNT.

* A saying of Bishop Horne to Hume illustrates this defect in the sceptic's character. Hume had used it as an argument against the alleged consolatory effect of religion, that all the religious men he had met with were melancholy persons. "The sight of you," replied Horne, "is enough to make a religious man melancholy at any time."-ÉD.

ART. VIII.-HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE REUNION.

By J. F. STEARNS, D. D., Newark, N. J.

THE wise man tells us "there is a time to rend and a time to sew," ""a time to break down and a time to build up." And, no doubt, as the world now is, seasons of separation and disintegration must be expected to occur which, in the economy of God's inscrutable providence, may be made to subserve important and useful ends. Such is the case manifestly in the history of the Christian church. The rending and the breaking down perform important functions in the freeing and the purifying. And this may serve to reconcile us, in many instances, to what must otherwise have been regarded as an unmitigated evil.

In the deplorable separation which, for more than thirty years, has impaired the influence and hindered the progress of the Presbyterian Church, we find much to illustrate this principle. Those whose memory runs back to the years immediately preceding the rupture of 1838 will readily call to mind the strife and turmoil which, from year to year, disturbed the deliberations of the General Assembly, and provoked the harsh, and certainly not elegant remark, of one who himself shared the contentions, that "Hell itself, held a jubilee whenever that body was in session." Matters had come to such a pass that of two evils that of separation was the least. And, though many believed that the difficulties might and ought to have been settled and the rupture avoided, all must acknowledge, as they look back, that important ends have been subserved by the long season of mutual rivalry and separate action into which the two parties were precipitated. Problems have been wrought out, on the one side and the other, by the logic of experience, which all the arguments of the most cogent reasoners could not have solved. Slavery and anti-slavery, ecclesiastical Boards and voluntary Associations, liberty of thought and expression and a vigilant inquisition against heresy" the ipsissima verba" and "the substance of doctrine," Divine sovereignty and the free agency of mantime has done that for the adjustment of these questions, and to bring about a common understanding in respect to them, which continued controversy, within the pale of the same church, would only have hindered. And, meanwhile, each party going its own way, and acting on its own convictions and preferences, has been able, it may be conceded, to accom

plish more for the general cause than it could have done in any such union as might then have been practicable.

But separation, whatever temporary or incidental benefits may accrue from it, is not by any means the normal condition of the church, as the whole character and design of the institution as well as the explicit assertions of the Holy Scriptures, constrain us to believe. Temporary necessity may require it. But it is always an evil. They who create the necessity or without a necessity force it on, must be held responsible. And when the necessity passes away, immediately the obligation to reunion becomes imperative. Two bodies of professed Christians occupying the same field, holding substantially the same faith, practicing the same form of worship, governed by the same law, and pursuing the same methods of action, may justly be required to show cause why they should hold towards each other so unnatural a relation. In default of reasons, and those strong and tangible, they can not but be held guilty of schism, and incur severe censure in the eyes of the church at large and of all reasonable men.

Such was the posture in which the Old and New School branches of the Presbyterian Church stood towards each other for more than thirty years. And though the attempt was constantly renewed, by unkind imputations on the one side, which were immediately and indignantly repudiated on the other, to exhibit a justifying ground, neither party ever succeeded in satisfying the judgment of impartial men, nor, with the exceptions of a few rigid sticklers for minute distinctions, their own consciences. Prejudices gained a hold here and there and were but slowly dislodged. But individual members passed from one side to the other and felt no difference. Ministers were transferred from one connection to the other and in a few months melted into the new fraternity as if they had always been of it. Efforts were made here and there to check this natural tendency. Members applying for certificates of dismission were informed that the church in - street was the only one of "our connection" in the place to which they were going, and they should take a recommendation to that, or, if they insisted, a form out of the regular course and containing a sort of protest was perhaps furnished them. We copy a specimen, the production of a distinguished Doctor of Divinity in one of our principal cities.

is a member of the

Presbyterian

"This may certify that Mrs. Church-in good and regular standing. As such she is affectionately com mended to the fellowship of God's people wherever her lot may be cast. She has -expressed a desire to connect herself with a branch of the Church of Christ not

in correspondence with the General Assembly with which this church is connected, and so no form of dimission is provided in such cases. But she is a dear child of God and we shall be happy to hear of her church relations being pleasantly foamed anywhere, as we feel sure she will be a comfort to her brethren in the Lord. Should she be received by any church it will confer a favor on us to be advised of that fact by the proper authority that her name may not be retained on the roll of this church.

1850.

BY ORDER OF THE SESSION.

This letter was intended for one of the oldest, soundest and most respected Presbyterian churches in the land, and shows the embarrassments into which good men were thrown in their efforts to keep up not only a distinction but a separation without a difference. In the nature of the case, such attempts could not succeed, except partially, and, as time wore on, their folly became every year more and more apparent.

The question may be entertained here, whether there ever was such difference in doctrine between the two parties as to justify the separation. From a careful examination of the whole matter, we are quite settled in the opinion that there was not. In every large body of earnest thinkers there will always be more or less of diversity. This every one must admit, although, in times of jealousy and sharp controversy, some will be very reluctant to give their opponents the advantage of an explicit admission of it. Besides minor differences, to which little regard will be paid, there will generally be found two opposite poles of thought, to one or the other of which differently constituted minds will be likely to tend. Among the adherents to the same system there will be an extreme right and an extreme left, as well as a juste milieu. Be as minute and stringent as you will in your definitions of orthodoxy, different men, adopting the same statements, and, as they verily believe, holding them in their true meaning and intent, will be found ranging themselves toward one or the other extreme. Cut the body in the middle, and one of the halves will take one of the extremes, and the other the other; and the two halves may be characterized accordingly, though the great body in both will still be substantially alike. Something like this took place in the great rupture of the Presbyterian church-not exactly, it is true, for as the differences of doctrine were but one among several causes of the separation, there was a considerable mixing up in this particular, and both parties had to tolerate more or less of both the opposite extremes.

The Presbyterian Church, as we all know, has a very minute, carefully digested, and clearly defined Confession of

Faith. Nobody can doubt that it contains essentially the Calvinistic or Reformed system distinctively so called. There is no compromise in it between Calvinism and Arminianism, as has been claimed for the "Thirty-nine Articles"-no intentionally ambiguous phrases which men may interpret differently to suit their convenience. But here two things are to be carefully noted. Even this sharply-defined and comprehensive system does not pretend to cover the whole ground of revealed truth, nor to distinguish between the different forms of Calvinistic doctrine. The Confession states, for the most part, only that which all good Calvinists, sublapsarian and supralapsarian, mediate imputationists like Calvin himself, and immediate imputationists, have held in common. Outside of this, the widest differences, whether of philosophy or of statement and illustration, are no breach of doctrinal unity. And then, again, the Presbyterian law of subscription, as contained in the questions answered at ordination, does not require the adoption of the "ipsissima verba" even of the Confession itself, nor allow it to be accepted by any as an infallible rule. This prerogative it reserves exclusively for the Scriptures, and prescribes the Confession only as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures. The real Basis of Presbytyrian orthodoxy is, after all, the Scriptures honestly and truly interpreted, and the Confession and Catechisms, important as they are, fall rather into the rank of declarations or testimony. This we say in no spirit of latitudinarianism. No man can receive and adopt the Confession of Faith who does not hold as true and Scriptural the system of doctrines contained in it. Therein are found the terms of our fellowship, a solemn affirmation to each other of what we actually believe, a systematic form of what we understand to be the leading truths of our religion. But the Confession of Faith is not the Bible, and the Bible, not the Confession of Faith, is the source and law of Presbyterian doctrine and preaching.

What we mean to affirm, then, in respect to the question before us, is just this, that, leaving aside extremes, which must exist everywhere, to be corrected or excluded as best they may, the doctrines of the Confession as prescribed in the questions for ordination, were at the time of the rupture, have been ever since, and are now, held and preached by the two bodies, in the same sense, with equal truth, sincerity and affection. Differences there are, no doubt. But whereas the differences between the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Trinitarian and the Arian or Socinian, are clear and well de