young and old in the Westminster standards, and instruction by pastors, on the first of July, the anniversary of the assembling of the divines, or at some other convenient time, in the history of the church's strug gles and sufferings for the maintenance of gospel faith and order. A resolution of sympathy with that portion of the Church of Scotland which was contending and bearing reproach for the truth's sake, was also adopted. A few weeks afterward, intelligence came of the secession from that church of four hundred and seventy ministers, with about six hundred congregations, two thousand ruling elders, and at least one million of worshippers. "Since the Act of Uniformity," it was well said, "there had been no such public and general sacrifice of interest to principle, and it could not fail to secure the approbation and admiration of the Christian world." The seceding ministers relinquished yearly stipends amounting, in the aggre gate, to about half a million of dollars, and the people their places of worship-the church homes, where their fathers before them, for many generations, had called upon the name of the Lord and waited for his word. The next year, the Rev. Messrs. George Lewis and William Chalmers appeared in the Assembly as representatives from the Free Church, of which they gave most interesting and soul-stirring accounts; and resolutions of the warmest welcome and sympathy were passed. Contributions also, to aid the Free Church, were recommended. Other delegates, among whom were Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Burns, subsequently, by their public addresses, extended this glow of sympathy all over the land. It may here be added,

that out of the bi-centenary commemoration of the Westminster Assembly, at Edinburgh, in July, 1843, grew the Evangelical Alliance formed in August, 1846.

The subject of slavery had for many years, in some degree, agitated the church; but the General Assembly had taken thereupon no decided action between 1818 and 1845. In the latter year, by a vote of one hundred and sixty-eight to thirteen, an important minute was adopted, which itself became, at once, a matter of more or less dispute. Extreme abolitionists and extreme pro-slavery men alike, the former with chagrin, the latter with exultation, maintained that it virtually annulled the action of 1818; which, though unanimously approved then by the southern as well as the northern commissioners, had condemned slavery as "a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature," and declared it to be "the duty of all Christians. . to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors . as speedily as possible, to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery throughout Christendom." But by the church at large the deliverance of 1845 has been constantly understood to deny only certain unjus tifiable inferences from that of 1818, particularly that slave-holders ought to be excluded from membership in the visible church of Christ. The doctrine of the Old School, from first to last, consistently was, that slavery was a great evil, which, as soon as it might be safely, ought to be abolished; that slave-holding, however, was not always or necessarily a sin; but that masters ought faithfully to give to their servants "that which was just and equal," seeking diligently their improvement

and preparation for freedom. The doctrine, advanced chiefly in later times, and which found some advocates in the Presbyterian Church at the South, that slavery, like the family relation, was a divine institution, was never at all countenanced by the church at large; but was virtually and decisively condemned, over and over again, in several well considered and unanimously or almost unanimously approved deliverances. In 1846, the Assembly's previous action was declared consistent throughout, and all that was needed; a declaration which in substance was reiterated in 1849.

But ultra men from the North or South were not the only ones that troubled the church about this matter. It was pressed upon the Assembly with strong determination, and occasionally, in the view of many, with severe, if not unchristian expression, in its foreign correspondence. The Irish General Assembly, in particular, took upon itself the office of rebuke, which led, in 1854, to a suspension of intercourse with that body, a letter from which it was resolved not to answer.

During the whole protracted controversy on this subject, the General Assembly continued to enjoin, from time to time, upon the southern churches, increased attention to the moral and religious improvement of the slaves; and particularly from 1845 to 1861, we find in its narratives of the state of religion frequent accounts of diligent efforts and good success in this great work. The importance of those efforts, as a providential pre parative for emancipation, can scarcely be overestimated. The Boards of Domestic Missions and Education were heartily interested and engaged in them; the former, while that distinguished Georgian, the Rev. Dr.

C. C. Jones, was its secretary, to an unusual degree and with the happiest effect. No man better than he understood the demands of evangelical work among the slave population of the South; for he had spent his ministerial life in it, and published several important volumes as the fruit of his long experience. Speaking of the improvement of this class, the Assembly convened at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1855, said in its narrative, "In few, if any of our Southern States, are laws enforced forbidding that slaves be taught to read. Usually, as far as among any other class, Sabbath schools are sustained for their instruction. . . . And we believe ourselves to be speaking the language of sober truth, when we say there are in our southern churches thousands of slave-owners, whose desire and effort is to prepare those whom an inscrutable providence has cast upon their care, for a state of liberty and self-control they cannot yet enjoy; and whose fervent prayer is, that God would hasten the day of safe and salutary freedom to men of every clime."

It is a significant fact, that the emancipation of the slaves by military and civil authority in 1863 and afterward, with the general rejoicing over this great event at the North, and the fervor of thanksgiving which it excited, did not render it necessary for the Old School Church to rescind or modify one of its deliverances upon the subject of slavery. It is believed that those deliverances express its mind at the present time as truly as they ever did. And when the Assembly of 1864 was called, in God's providence, to frame a minute expressive of its sentiments, in view of the emancipation decreed by our national government, all

the grand abiding principles of that minute were quoted carefully from its own previous utterances. Yet the paper fully satisfied the public mind, even at a moment of the greatest excitement and clamor. Happily this whole subject seems to have been put, in God's goodness, beyond the possibility of further dis turbing the church's peace.

Sometimes it has been intimated, that pro-slavery tendencies on the part of the Old School were among the most influential causes of the division of 1838. No allegation could be more entirely opposed to historical truth. A careful reading of all the official documents of that time, when, too, crimination and recrimination were loosely prevalent, will not disclose the slightest hint of such a charge from any quarter. Nay, the Assembly of 1835, in which there was a decided Old School majority, appointed a committee to report upon slavery; but the Assembly of 1836, in which the New School had altogether their own way, postponed the whole subject indefinitely by a vote of one hundred and fifty-four to eighty-seven.

When, in 1812, the first theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church was established at Princeton, there was a very general sentiment in favor of concentrating the resources of the whole church in a single thoroughly equipped institution. Even then, however, the advocates of this plan encountered a few warm opposers; and these, with the increase of Presbyterianism, and its spread over a constantly widening territory, grew so numerous and powerful as to change altogether the policy of the church in this respect. In favor of the multiplication of seminaries have been urged, the