Sabbath-School Book Society, organized by the Synod of Philadelphia a few years before. The Assembly of 1839, the fiftieth year having now been completed since this supreme judicatory had first convened, recommended the second Sabbath of December for a semicentenary celebration, a day of jubilee thanksgiving for past mercies; and the offering at that time, by all the members of the church, of gifts for the endowment of the new board. The fund raised reached the sum of forty thousand dollars. This sum, with about twentyeight thousand dollars donated for building purposes a few years later, has been the nucleus of all that board's permanent property.

Before the division, two boards had been organized: The Board of Missions, now of Domestic Missions, for the home work, in 1816; and in 1819, The Board of Education, to aid candidates for the ministry; both located in Philadelphia. These had been fostered by the Old School, while, as a party, the New School had preferred The American Home Missionary Society, and The American Education Society, voluntary associa tions in which Congregationalists participated.

The Board of Missions had, in 1844, the business of church extension, or church erection, added to its other operations. This was carried on by a special committee, which, ten years afterward, for greater effect, was enlarged. But in 1855, an independent Committee of Church Extension was established at St. Louis, the name of which was changed, in 1860, to that of the Board of Church Building, then the Board of Church Extension.

In 1845, after several years' agitation of the subject,

the Assembly directed the Board of Missions to appoint an Executive Committee at Louisville, furnished with a secretary and other officers, co-ordinate with the Executive Committee at Philadelphia, and to have the care of the western and south-western fields. In 1859, a South-western Advisory Committee, with a district secretary at New Orleans, was ordered, and the next year a similar Committee of the Pacific Coast at San Francisco; but in 1862, all this additional machinery was discontinued, as cumbersome, expensive, and unprofitable, and the management placed upon its previous simpler footing.

The sphere of the Board of Education was enlarged, in 1846 and the two years following, so as to include the assistance and care of Presbyterian colleges, academies, and primary schools, a part of its work which has grown constantly, though not rapidly.

Two other departments of Christian liberality and effort have been committed to similar agencies. For more than a century and a half the Presbyterian Church has systematically raised funds for the relief of disabled ministers and their families. But, in 1849, the General Assembly ordered collections for this purpose to be disbursed by the Board of Publication, a business transferred in 1852 to its own trustees; and in 1861 a secretary was appointed to devote his time mainly to this enterprise, which has since more prosperously advanced. In 1864, the condition of the Freedmen at the South demanding immediate attention, two committees, one in Philadelphia, the other in Indianapolis, were appointed to take charge of educational and general evangelistic work among this

class; and the next year, in place of the two, a single Committee on Freedmen was established and located at Pittsburg.

In 1840, the Assembly determined that an efficient system of agencies, by which the churches should be visited from year to year, was, in the existing condition of Christian feeling and knowledge on the subject of benevolent operation, absolutely indispensable. But gradually that system has passed away, yet the liberality of the churches has greatly increased. This result has been attained in part through a standing committee on Systematic Benevolence, appointed first by the Assembly of 1854, and reporting every year. Although many congregations yet fail of making regular contributions to every scheme of the church, the plan of striving to cultivate in ecclesiastical judicatories and individual Christians a sense of their responsibility, and leaving the matter with them, has proved in such a degree effectual, that any system of special agencies for the collection of ordinary benevolent contributions would now find little remaining favor.

In 1842, the Assembly gave a unanimous decision that ruling elders should not lay on hands in the ordination of ministers; yet afterward the matter was laid over, in mere courtesy, for the action of the next Assembly, in which was also agitated the question, whether there could be a quorum of presbytery or synod, without the presence of any ruling elder. A controversy on these subjects, carried on for several years in ecclesiastical judicatories and in periodical and other publications, excited no little interest. The office of ruling elder has been regarded almost unanimously, in

the Presbyterian Church, as of divine appointment, but with a considerable latitude of opinion as to its exact Scriptural warrant, and its relations to the office of the preaching elder. On these points at least four distinct theories have been propounded. (1.) One is, that the term elder in the New Testament, as applied to Christian ecclesiastics, is used only to designate ministers of the word and sacraments, who are also, as universally admitted, rulers in the most general sense, including all ecclesiastical functions. The scriptural words then designating those now called ruling elders are such as rulers and governments. The other theories all agree in the supposition, that the same New Testament term includes both the ruling and the preaching elders of our day, but from this common starting point diverge widely. (2.) One of the three supposes two orders of elders; that is, two kinds distinguished by ordinations essentially different. The two remaining theories alike represent all elders as of exactly the same order or ordination; but (3) one of them supposes all to be fundamentally rulers, and the office of preaching to be a mere superadded function or gift; while (4) the other makes all fundamentally ministers of the word, the fact that some do not much addict themselves to this ministry being due, in part to a wrongful ordination of incompetent persons, in part to an allowable diversity of service. The latter two theories seem to have been confined pretty much to this country. Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, Dr. Thornwell, and others who maintained either of them, naturally enough contended that ruling and preaching elders alike should unite in presbyterial ordinations. They argued, moreover, that

as ordination was an act of presbytery, participation in every part of it was the right of every member of presbytery. It was rather inconsistent with either of these theories to maintain, that without the presence of one or more ruling elders no church court could be properly constituted; but Dr. Breckinridge and other advocates of the latter doctrine based it chiefly upon certain expressions in the form of government. The ready reply was that these expressions had received ar authoritative interpretation to the contrary by immemorial and nearly uniform and unquestioned practice. Against any innovation upon that practice very large majorities decided in both 1843 and 1844; and this quieted the agitation of the subject.

Of a later date, in the Old School Church, and of much less notoriety, has been the question, whether ruling elders may be elected to serve for a limited time -one year or a term of years. The Assembly of 1835 had condemned such an election; but recent tactitians having devised plans for turning the flank of both the supreme judicatory and the form of gov ernment at this point, they met with a more decisive check in the Assembly of 1869.

The year 1843 was the two hundredth since the first meeting of the ever-memorable Westminster Assembly of Divines, and it was made itself memorable by the thrilling exodus of the Free Church of Scotland. The Old School Assembly of the previous year had appointed a committee to mature a plan for a bi-centennial commemoration, in which other Presbyterian bodies also might be interested. Now it was resolved to recommend a more general indoctrination of both