to no immediate or early consummation. The way is open indeed for a cordial welcome of the Reformed Church, as soon as it sees its way clear to a fusion with us. We know that this feeling is largely reciprocated among our Reformed brethren. How far the traditions, institutions and property trusts, or other difficulties, whether substantial or technical, may interfere with or delay this consummation, they understand best.

As the Cumberland Presbyterians can not unite with us, unless we modify or expunge some of the more Calvinistic articles of our Confession of Faith, such union on such conditions is out of the question.

It is hardly necessary to speak of the result of the overtures to the Southern Presbyterian Church, or the reasons of it. It has become so plain, not only that no union is feasible while the feeling, which now prevails, continues, but that the very agitation of the subject only serves to intensify it, that we think the interests of truth and charity best subserved by a "great silence," till time heals some of the wounds thus exacerbated. No good can come at present from any extended reply to the accusations against our Church, or from crimination and recrimination. That which ought to satisfy, and in the end we believe will satisfy, just at present would only exasperate.

We are, however, none the less glad that our last Assembly took the precise course it did. It was simply declaratory not legislative. It declared what had already been made true by previous action incorporated in the covenants of reunion, so far as relates to any action taken by either branch of the reunited Church touching our Southern brethren, viz., that all such action is null and void. So far as any votes of those Assemblies imposed unconstitutional or anti-scriptural tests of Christian character or conditions of admission to our communion, they were null of themselves, and have been treated as void. But, nevertheless, we are glad to see their nullity expressly declared. As to resolutions merely expressive of the sentiments of any meeting, ecclesiastical or otherwise, so long as they enjoin no action, and are not regularly made a part of the constitution, they bind nobody, have no authority, and no weight or significance whatever, except as the expressed opinions of the persons voting for them. They bind no subsequent assemblies, no smaller ecclesiastical bodies, no individuals.

The action taken by the last Assembly in the premises goes to the furthest allowable limit in respect to the past action of Old and New School Assemblies in the premises. Certainly any process of reviewing, censuring, criticising the acts of either or both of those Assemblies by the United Church, would be alike unwarranted, impracticable, and diviNot only so, if such procedure is insisted on from us, it will cer

sive.

tainly be demanded by us from the Southern Church as a condition precedent to reunion. No reunion is possible which does not let bygones be by-gones.

As to any compact about refraining from political deliverances in the future, such as our Southern brethren have been urging as a sine qua non, it will be in time to discuss it, if they will formulate in definite phrase by which they are willing to abide in all exigencies, what they require to be adopted. We greatly mistake if they do not find difficulties in the attempt, when seriously made, which will cool their ardor. Let them try to frame such a covenant against the political action they deprecate, as would not fetter the Assembly in carrying out the unquestionable requirements of Scripture and our Standards in regard to our duties to civil government, and to the cause of humanity, morals and religion as those are in manifold ways bound up with civil government, and we suspect the undertaking will be found somewhat formidable. To say nothing of the immense mass of legislation demanded in repression of vice, as intemperance, licentiousness, profane swearing and Sabbath breaking, in support of the sanctity of the oath, marriage, the family, the secure ownership of Church property, the use of the Bible in common schools; what if the Papists should realize their dream, their avowed purpose, of obtaining control of our Government, and then should propose to use their power as they ever have used political power, in repressing and persecuting the various forms of Protestant Christianity? Must we bind ourselves to be forever dumb, as a Church, about such politics? We could not and ought not to disable ourselves and our successors from proper action in such cases if we would. We would not if we could. Any power for right action may by abuse become a power for wrong action. In the hands of imperfectly sanctified men of course it may be abused. Churches are not always infallible. We must incur the risk of occasional mistaken action in the best body of Christians the earth contains-certainly in ourselves. We can only be sure that, if they hold fast the Head, and the great essentials of his truth, they will be preserved from fatal error and apostacy. We may hope as well as pray that they may grow up more and more into Him, who is the Head in all things, even Christ who promises to be with his Church even unto the end of the world, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We cannot "despise the Church of God" of which this is true, except at our peril, or without suffering loss. On the other hand, vain and worse than vain are all attempts organically to unite those bodies whose mutual confidence does not lift them up to this estimate of one another, and bring them, in all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, to forbear one another in love, as they endeavor

to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Meanwhile, whereunto we have attained, let us walk by the same rule and mind the same thing.

Negotiations with the United Presbyterian Church some time since, developed the impossibility of any immediate organic union with them. INFANT BAPTISM AND CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP.

The article on this subject, in this number, will, we are quite sure, command attention. We had engaged an additional article, from a high source, advocating the only view of church-membership recognized among us which differs at all from this. We regret that ill health has prevented the preparation of it, as we had desired to have our readers see at once the full strength of the argument on the different sides, so far as there are any different sides of this important subject. We are quite clear, however, that the main positions taken by Mr. White are in accord with our standards, when their meaning is fairly elicited by a comparison of their various parts, and that these in turn are in accord with the Scriptures.

We deem the doctrinal aspect of the subject important because of its practical bearings upon Christian nurture and training. In our view God's covenant TO BE A GOD to our children, and the consequent annexation of the sacramental seal of his covenanted grace, puts them within the pale of the visible, or presumptive people of God—to whose very position, therefore, it belongs to think and feel, and live and act as the children of God, in all the ways appropriate to their years. They are to be dealt with as those who are not outsiders to the church, who may not consistently cast their lot with and live like heathens and publicans, until they undergo a conscious, inward transformation, of which they can give a clear account. "They are to be taught to pray, to abhor sin, to please God, and to obey the Lord Jesus Christ," (Directory for Worship, chap. IX), and that any other course is just as recreant to their covenanted privileges and obligations, and place in the Church, as in older persons who have come to the Lord's Table making a formal profession of religion. Further, agreeably to our Directory just quoted, they are to be taught and trained to have in view the coming to their first communion in the due exercise of faith and repentance, as soon as they reach the period of knowledge and discretion, when they can properly understand the meaning of the act, and take upon themselves its obligations.

It is our full belief that Christian nurture and training conducted on these principles, would result in saving very many children of the covenant who are now, under a different theory, made to feel that their place and their sympathies are rather "in the seat of scorners" than in

"the congregation of the righteous," and that a correspondent manner of living befits this position till at some future time they suffer some shock and commotion of soul consciously ab extra issuing in conversion. We fear that the effect of placing them virtually in such a conscious attitude is to make multitudes of them more and more aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world; and that great numbers. thus cast upon the dark mountains of sin, are left to wander and stumble to perdition.

On the other hand we believe that bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, in accordance with the doctrine and method of our standards, would be so attended with the presence and inworking of the Holy Spirit, that the manifestations of his sanctifying influence would grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength; that we should witness multiplying and delightful instances of those sanctified from infancy, yea, even from the womb; that Christian piety would be more ripe, mellow, and symmetrical; that, inwrought into all the springs and habitudes of action through the formative period of life, it would develop into a robust and beautiful prime, making the hoary head a crown of glory; that thus the church, by a normal development, would prolong and enlarge itself more by internal evolution than external aggregation. It is not indeed to be expected that children will cease to be children, or that "young Christians' will be wholly free from the follies of youth, any more than older Christians will be without spot or wrinkle, this side heaven. Nay, many children of the covenant, like many older professors, may prove Christians only in name. "All are not Israel that are of Israel." It may, like any other system, be perverted to formalism. With all due allowance for this, we believe that the true conception of infant baptism and churchmembership, duly carried out in Christian nurture, would prove an inestimable gain to the cause of religion in the family, the church and society. It is more nearly realized in the Presbyterianism of Scotland than in this country. In our opinion it has much to do with the hold which this glorious type of Christianity obtains and retains on all classes of the Scotch people, high and low, rich and poor, from generation to generation. Many of their churches, under zealous, evangelical pastors, have an almost constant revival, in the continual accession, with devout preparation and intelligent faith, of their baptized children to the Lord's Table.

The ground of infant baptism assigned by Mr. White is largely given in the Reformed theology and symbols, from which our own are largely

derived. Thus the first Helvetic Confession gives as a reason for the baptism of infants, that de eorum electione pié est præsumendum.

Vitringa says: "When God hath begun to manifest his grace to the parents, or either of them, we may not presume otherwise than that he will confer the like grace upon their infants, so long as the contrary does not appear: Non licet aliter præsumere quam illam leandem gratiam præstiturum infantibus, quamdiu nobis non liquet contrarium." For more passages to the same effect from DE MOOR, MARKIUS, WITSIUS, etc., see the little volume issued by our Board, entitled Children of the Church and Sealing Ordinances, pp. 101 et. seq. Dr. Watts says: "In my opinion, so far as they (infants) are in any way members of the visible church, it is upon supposition of their being (with their parents) members of the invisible church of God." "Supposition" here is equivalent to "presumption," in the sense above.

ART. XII.-CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A new translation, edited by the Rev. MARCUS Dods, M. A. Vol. VII. On the Trinity, translated by the Rev. A. W. Haddan. Vol. VIII. The Sermon on the Mount, translated by Rev. W. Findlay; and the Harmony of the Evangelists, translated by Rev. S. D. F. Salmond. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. Augustine's work on the Trinity, like all his larger treatises, is laid out on a comprehensive plan, which was not in all respects fully carried out, because incomplete copies of the unfinished manuscript got into circulation, and he brought it to a close sooner than he had intended. But it was the product of his mature years, having been published perhaps about 420, when he was over sixty years of age. It cer tainly contains some of the largest and most fertile speculations about the divine nature and the relation of the "persons" to the nature which are to be found in Christian antiquity. It is not a controversial, but rather, in the fullest sense, a theological treatise; and it is still worthy of careful study. Its great merits and influence in respect to the dogmatic shaping of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Western Church are hardly adequately recognized in the brief introduction of the careful scholar, Rev. A. W. Haddan, (lately deceased) to whom we are indebted for this faithful and excellent translation.

It is a somewhat singular fact that a bishop in Augustine's position should write such a treatise, spending years on it, and have nothing to say about Athanasius, or even the Nicene or Constantinopolitan creeds; never refer to any other Greek authors, nor in fact to any one with the exception of Hilary of Poictices; and that he should throughout define and defend his