and to quicken the religious conscience of all who profess a Christian discipleship. And, re.

that the Baptist churches regard baptism as essential to salvation, and are surprised when told that they impute this sentiment to the only denomination who never held it; and exclaim, How is it that we have been under so strange a misapprehension! Sure enough, how is it?

Equally great is the misapprehension of our views and practice with regard to the Lord's Supper. It is supposed we do not invite members of other than Baptist churches to unite with us in that ordinance because we have not fellowship with them as christians.

And so wide-spread, and deeply inured is this misapprehension in the community, that even intelligent Christians sometimes meet the most authoritative corrections of it with incredulity. Indeed, the spread of Baptist views has not kept pace with Baptist professions: for we have reason to believe there are thousands who have entered Baptist churches from other denominations, who have been compelled by their convictions regarding the subject and mode of baptism, who nevertheless do but little understand their position and peculiarities; and who have no small disquietude because they not only know the existence of the impressions prevalent among christians of other denominations, but suppose those impressions to be correct. So far are they, in truth, however, from being correct, that it is one of the distinctive aims of the denomination to disabuse the Lord's Supper from the perversion which makes it a test of fellowship; and to restore it to its true position of a commemorative act, expressive of the faith of the church in the death of Christ as an expiatory offering for sin: as it is another distinctive aim of the denomination to vindicate the ordinance of baptism from the perversion which makes it a means of transition from death unto life, instead of being a public profession of it.

membering that the truth, when spoken in love, and accompanied with the demonstration of the Spirit, is mighty to the pulling down of strong holds, let them take care that all the weapons of their warfare be spiritual. And, above all things else, let them see that their individual religious character is such as to be a light to the world, and salt to the earth; awaking, in those with whom they mingle, the conviction that they have been with Jesus, and learned of the "meek and lowly in heart."

APPENDIX.

ADDRESS

(Referred to on page 83.)

Delivered at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the American Bible Society, on offering the following resolution:

RESOLVED, That the co-operation of different denominations of Christians, in the distribution of the Bible, without note or comment, has a happy tendency to allay party feeling, and to strengthen the cause of evangelical religion.

I hope I may be indulged, Mr. President, if, in attempting to support this resolution, I use the language of feeling, rather than of argument: for it is difficult for a man to reason straightly, when his heart is full; and it is difficult for one who "prays for the peace of Jerusalem," to witness or to contemplate the scenes of this day without an overflowing heart.

Happily, however, the resolution needs not, now, to be sustained by argument: its truth has been demonstrated by experiment. If it had not been, prudence might have required that, in supporting it, I

should preclude the suspicion of heresy, by prefacing my observations with the recital of my creed. For the time has been, when a man of any denomination, who should have advocated a religious co-operation on any other principle than absolute conformity to his own standard, would have been considered as having shipwrecked either his faith or his senses. And that such should be the state of things now, that the divers denominations of Christians should meet in harmony, and mingle their prayers, and their counsels, and their labors to extend the knowledge of God, cannot but be the occasion of intense feeling in every Christian breast; a feeling of astonishment to him who contemplates the past, and of holy exultation to him who looks to the future.

Who can compare the scenes which transpired in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the advocates of different tenets and rites met only for strife and debate; when, in the language of an early historian, "the substantials were lost in contending for externals;" when the Catholic drew the sword against the Protestant, and the Protestant lighted the faggot for the Dissenter, and the Dissenters, though groaning under the heavy hand of persecution from those in power, were anathematizing and proscribing each other; and when it seemed to be the only point in which they all agreed, that heterodoxy should be suppressed by the cogency of fire and steel-who, we say, can compare that state of things in the Christian community, with that which now

permits a convocation of those various denominations in peaceful and affectionate co-operation, without being affected, deeply and joyfully affected with the later triumphs of the Gospel over human passion and prejudice, and feeling that the scene we now witness, is both a prognostic and an earnest of the latter-day glory?

I have said, that to him who contemplates the past, it is a matter of astonishment that the different denominations should now exhibit the spectacle of harmonious co-operation; but I am happy to indulge the belief, that I shall better express the feelings of those who hear me, if I take the converse of that position and say, that to him who has caught the spirit that hallows this convocation, it is matter of astonishment, and I will add, of hearty grief, that it should ever have been otherwise.

I add, of grief, Sir, because the bitterness which has been manifested toward each other by those who professed to have been reconciled to God by the same atonement, has stripped Christianity both of her loveliness and her strength; and held her forth in the aspect of deformity, to the world's contempt!

I add, of grief, Sir, because Christian animosity, a monster in the moral creation, so long as it shall be permitted to exist, will stand at the gate of Paradise, though God may have given it into Mercy's charge, and most wofully guard the tree of life from the access of perishing sinners; and because I feel the conviction, that more of the infidelity of Chris