natural co-operation with the sons of the Pilgrims, in disseminating Christianity with less of exclusiveness and sectarian character than belongs to any other body of Christians.

It remains to be seen whether there is sufficient of liberality and charity in the age to justify such a procedure, or whether this generosity of the Presbyterian Church shall be met with such an amount of exclusiveness, as to receive an impulse while imparting one, and thus to become assimilated in this respect to the sects by which it is surrounded.

The General Assembly has under its care 19 synods, 101 presbyteries, and nearly 1500 ministers.

In concluding this statement it may not be improper to remark, that when other denominations have been alluded to, it has been done for the sake of setting forth distinctly the character and position of the Presbyterian Church. Not a wish has been indulged to wound the feelings of other communions. The prelatical churches, from which we differ so widely on the great principles of ecclesiastical liberty, we nevertheless regard as churches of Christ, and would as cordially invite them to our pulpits and our communion, if they would reciprocate our kindness, as we do the clergy and communicants of other denominations, and we feel even an unaffected grief that they should be prevented by their system from meeting us as the ministers of Christ, and members of the Church Universal. We would gladly have passed over all allusion to the division of our own church in 1838; but it seemed otherwise impossible to make a fair statement of the characteristics and condition of the Presbyterian Church. We have aimed to avoid all offence in speaking of the parties as leaning respectively towards the strictness of the Scotch Church, and the readier tendency to yield and to assimilate with others manifested by the descendants of the English Puritans. It cannot be denied, that many Presbyterians originally of the Scotch school, both clergy and laity, as the Synod of Virginia and others, are among our most liberal constitutional Presbyterians, nor that some of the clergy and people born and educated among the Pilgrim sons of New England, are among the straitest class of those connected with the church of the Annual Assembly. We only mean a general characteristic of the parties as such, when we give them these appellations. With that church the writer, as an individual-and he is confident the same may be said of most of his brethren-has no personal difficulties. He has been for a term of five years together connected with a presbytery, in which nearly every member sympathized with that party. The kindly intercourse enjoyed with his brethren of Louisiana will not be

easily forgotten. If we have spoken of our own church as the true constitutional Presbyterian Church, it was not to question the rights of others. It was only because we really think it such. Undoubtedly others think differently with equal sincerity. Our prayer is that both may prosper, and only provoke one another to love and good works, and that all those churches who hold Christ the head may unite their energies against all those forms of sin that resist the progress of our common Christianity.

In preparing the above article, thoughts and language have been taken from such sources of information as were accessible to us. In doing this it was less trouble and more favourable to typographical beauty, and to rendering the whole readable, to avoid frequent quotation marks and notes in the margin. Acknowledgments are due to the Confession of Faith, Catechisms, and Directory of the Presbyterian Church; The Assembly's Digest; Dr. Hill's and Dr. Hodge's Histories of the Presbyterian Church; Dr. Miller's Tract on Presbyterianism, and his article on the same subject in the Religious Encyclopædia; Judge Rogers' Charge to the Jury on the trial of the Church case; Letter of the Committee ad interim of the General Assembly, and the Decision of Chief Justice Gibson in the case of the Church of York, Pennsylvania.

REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

BY THE REV. JOHN N. M'LEOD, D. D.,

NEW YORK.

THE Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States of America derives her origin from the old Reformation Church of Scotland. Her history, therefore, down to the period of her organization in this country, is necessarily involved in that of the parent church herself. It deserves remembrance to her honour, that Scotland was among the last of the nations to submit to the usurpation of the Church of Rome. Until the beginning of the eleventh century she possessed a Christian church which maintained her spiritual independence, and refused to bow to the Papal supremacy. But Antichrist at length prevailed, and substituted his ruinous formalism for the ancient Christianity. From the beginning of the eleventh to that of the sixteenth century, "darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the ⚫ people" of insular as well as continental Europe.

With the sixteenth century, however, commenced that glorious revival of evangelical religion, the Protestant Reformation. Scotland felt its influence, and awoke from her slumber. John Knox of famous memory, had lighted his torch at the candle of God's word, which had just been rescued from under the bushel where Antichrist had hidden it for ages. He carried it through his native land, and her nobles, her people, and many even of the priests of Rome, were enlightened in the truths of the gospel. In the year 1560 Popery was abolished; the Bible was declared free to all; a Confession of Faith, containing an admirable summary of divine truth, was prepared; a book of discipline, declaring the government of the church to be presbyterial, was adopted; and all ranks of men in the nation bound themselves to each other and to God, in a solemn covenant engagement, to maintain and perpetuate the Reformation which had been established. This is what is usually denominated in Scottish history the "first reformation," or reformation from Popery. And thus arose

the Reformed Presbyterian Church. For more than thirty years after this period, the church enjoyed great temporal and spiritual prosperity. But from the year 1592 to 1688, her history, with the exception of a twelve years' interval of rest and triumph, is one of warfare and suffering. Her most powerful enemies were unprincipled civilians. They sought to make her a mere engine of state policy, an instrument of their own despotism; and when she would not submit, they attempted to coërce her by the sword. During the greater part of the reigns of James VI., and his son and grandson, the first and second Charles, the Reformed Presbyterian Church was struggling for existence against the power of the state, which assumed an antichristian supremacy over her, and proceeded to dictate to her the doctrine, worship, and order she should receive and observe under pain of imprisonment, banishment, and death.

Adversity tests the character of systems as well as of men; and never was the worth of the Reformed Presbyterian system more signally manifested, than during the period the church was in the furnace of affliction. Thousands maintained her principles in the face of the persecutor. The life and power of godliness was most remarkably displayed, and multitudes of holy martyrs sealed with their blood the testimony which they held.

Of the interval of relief to which reference has already been had, it is sufficient to say, that it was the period between 1638 and 1650: the era of the Solemn League and Covenant; of the Westminster Assembly of divines; of the revolution which dethroned the first Charles, and asserted those principles of civil and religious liberty which all enlightened Christians and statesmen now regard as axiomatic and undeniable. This is the period of what is usually styled the "second reformation," and it was for a strict adherence to its principles that Cameron and Renwick, and their valiant coadjutors, were called to pour out their blood on the high places of the field. To these principles, as of universal importance and applicability, Reformed Presbyterians still avow their attachment.

In the year 1688, William of Nassau was called to the throne of the three kingdoms. He proceeded, among the first acts of his reign, to give a civil establishment to religion in his dominions. Episcopacy was established in England and Ireland, and Presbytery in Scotland, by the sole authority of the king and parliament, even before the assembly of the church was permitted to meet. And thus the old principle of the royal supremacy over the church was retained, and incorporated with the very vitals of the revolution settlement. The object of the civil rulers was, as usual, to make the church a tool of

the State. Into an establishment of this description the old consistent Covenanters could not go. They stood aloof and dissented from it as imperfect, Erastian, and immoral. The principal objections which they urged against incorporation with the revolution settlement, were: 1st. That the Solemn League and Covenant, which they considered the constitution of the empire, was entirely disregarded in its arrangements, and 2d. That the civil rulers usurped an authority over the church, which virtually destroyed her spiritual independence, and was at variance with the sole headship of the Redeemer himself. The world has just witnessed the spectacle of the large majority of the Scottish establishment becoming "dissenters" on this very ground: a testimony that the old Reformed Presbyterians were right. For more than sixteen years they remained without a ministry; but they were not discouraged. Though a small minority, they organized themselves into praying societies, in which they statedly met for religious worship. They exercised a watchful care over the moral and religious deportment of each other. They fostered the spirit of attachment to Reformation principles, and waited until God would send them pastors. And at length they were gratified. In the year 1706, the Rev. John McMillan acceded to them from the established church. In 1743 he was joined by the Rev. Mr. Nairne, from the Secession Church, which had been recently organized, and they with ruling elders constituted the "Reformed Presbytery." Through this, as the line of their connexion with the ancient church, the Reformed Presbyterians in this country received their present ministry. They had, however, a ministry as well as a people in the North American colonies, before the Reformed Presbytery in Scotland was organized by the Rev. Mr. McMillan and his coadjutors.

In the same series of persecutions which drove the Huguenots of France and the Puritans of England to these shores, many of the Scottish and Irish Reformed Presbyterians, were banished from their native lands, and scattered among the American colonies. In crossing the ocean and changing their habitation, they had not changed their religious attachments. And when first visited by the ministers who came to their aid, they were found with their children collected into praying societies, and fostering with care the principles of civil and religious freedom, for which they and their ancestors had suffered. Though the name Covenanter, like that of Puritan, was given them by way of reproach, they did not refuse it. Esteeming it their honour to be in covenant with God and with one another, to do their whole duty, they accepted the designation, and even attempted in a public manner, to practise the thing which it indicates. In the year