as if the increase of knowledge could be purchased only at the expense of virtue; and therefore ignorance is the safest! I had been home but a few days before I heard a Reverend gentleman confess to the presiding officer of one of our Anniversaries at New-York, in his speech on the platform, "Sir, I have been guilty of the sin of going abroad!" The admonition served upon me four years previous was very naturally suggested by this confession.

Be this as it may, a righteous imputation or an unworthy prejudice—and if a prejudice, not very honcurable to our country-it is doubtless true, that foreign travel enlarges the scope of one's vision, and gives him new views of men and things. Whatever may be the general fact, it can be owing only to a defect of virtue in him, if it does not fit him for a better and more usefu sphere at home, whenever he shall return to it. If he is a statesman, he ought to be a wiser and better statesman; and if he is a patriot, there is little doubt that he will be so. If he is a literary and scientific man, it ought to inspire him to greater diligence in his pursuits; and it can scarcely fail to have such an influence. If he is an artist, let who will laud the inspirations and sufficiency of a self-taught genius, a visit to the principal capitals of Europe is indispensable to his highest possible attainments. If he is a Christian, or a Christian minister, I see no necessary reason in experience, or within the range of my observation, why, with the world before him, with his Bible in his portmanteau, with the ocean or the land, town or country, as his place of prayer, his Christian graces should not be improved and invigorated, with the increased advantages of that enlargedness of mind, which a knowledge of the world, seeing it as it is, affords him. He ought to have a higher and a stronger character, and be better qualified for influence and doing good, wherever he may be.

If, however, it be assumed that the model of Christian and ministerial character, intellectual and moral, which is the unavoidable doom of the narrowest possible sphere of action and observation, is of course and always the

best; and that a proportionate deterioration of character is the necessary consequence of every degree of extension given to that sphere, other things being equal, why, then, there is no more to be said, inasmuch as an admitted axiom cannot be contested.

With regard to myself, I confess, that one of two things must have been true on my return to my native land-either that the very civil and courteous augury of my friend and brother had come to pass in my own person, viz. that "going abroad had spoiled me," or else my country was spoiled. I do not mean, however, that my country was spoiled in everything, nor wholly spoiled in that particular to which I allude. But I do mean, that the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations of Christians, to which I had ever been attached, and in which I felt the deepest interest, seemed to me, to a very great extent, lying under the blighting desolation of the new and extravagant measures, by which religious excitements had been attempted and managed on the one hand, and of endless and bitter theological controversy on the other. I will not say, that I was shocked, because it came before me gradually; I was partly prepared for it by what I had heard; yet I had not conceived the extent of the evil.

It was impossible I should not pause over this melancholy picture, as I approached it, and was about to come in contact with it. I had been providentially and for a time eradicated from American society, and had returned to plant myself again in its bosom. And it was the Christian ministry, in which I wished and felt it my duty to be engaged. But almost the entire mass of the body of Christians to which I belonged, was pervaded with one or the other of two great evils, and their cognate ramifications-to me evils-from which my taste, my habits, my feelings, my whole soul revolted: extravagance and controversy. It seemed as if I was indeed "spoiled" for enjoyment or usefulness in that connexion. For the first time in my life, driven by the considerations of these great and afflicting results staring me in the face, I began to question the expediency and adequacy

of that system of church organization, which had not kept out these evils, and apparently could neither remedy nor abate them.

It is singular, and singularly true, how inconveniences, difficulties, and embarrassments, inherent in a system, and necessarily growing out of it, may be borne for years, perhaps through life, and the cause not be apparent to those who suffer these disadvantages. They are set down as evils of the human condition-the lot of manof which all must have their portion in some shape.

So had I always been accustomed to view the evils of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism—for it cannot be denied that there are some, and not a few, of a grave character, in each of these systems. The moment that my attention was challenged to the defects of these systems, as separate wholes, in view of the present state and prospects of religion in our country, it was natural and unavoidable for the mind to recur to past experience. All that I had observed, enjoyed, suffered, as a member of the Presbyterian community, and in the experience of a Presbyterian clergyman for many years, came under review in each particular item for a purpose to me entirely new it was to prove the system-and so far as I was able, to do it in the light of comparison. It is true, I had experience on one side, and little else on the other but theory and observation. So far, indeed, as the forms of public worship are concerned, I had become quite used to them in England; my prejudices against them, so far as I had any, and which were never strong, had been principally subdued. To these forms I could easily be reconciled; nay, I had discovered in them many comparative advantages; had enjoyed much satisfaction in the use of them; had even attained to no inconsiderable degree of complacency in them; and in this particular, was nearly "spoiled."

The abuses and enormities of the English church establishment my eyes were open to: I had seen and felt them; had sympathized with those who are oppressed by them; but my own good sense, what little I have, as I think will be the case with every sober man, had distin

guished between Episcopacy and this accident-between its own proper organization and this adventitious alliance -between its forms of worship and its political connexion with the state in Great Britain. This relation, in my view, is not natural, but unnatural, and no less unfortunate; and although, in the estimation of the world, this form of Christianity is vitiated, and necessarily suffers on that account, sober, reflecting, and sensible minds will discriminate.

Late, and in many respects inconvenient, as it might seem for me to agitate this question, I felt that, in the existing circumstances of our country and of the world, it should be viewed as a great public question. Independent of its claims as binding on the conscience, or at least as more satisfactory, I first came to its consideration in the light of expediency. Formerly-and I know not that my confidence had been materially shaken, certainly not so much so as to induce me to entertain the idea of change—I had thought that Presbyterianism was the best organization. But when I returned from abroad after an absence of four years, a period most prolific in rapid, important, and momentous developments of Ameriican society, political and religious, and standing in all the additional light of a distant point of observation, it cannot be a subject of wonder, it was natural, unavoidable, that these new, and in many respects painful events, transpiring in the experiment and history of the Presbyterian church, should bring my mind to a pause, as I approached and felt myself coming in contact with the reality. Everybody felt and acknowledged, that it was bad, unhappy, and threatened to be ruinous.

Of course, if nothing had suggested a re-examination of the principles of Presbyterianism, or shaken my confidence in them, as compared with the principles and operation of another system, these occurrences, viewed only in the light of misfortunes, should have bound me stronger to my former connexion, and resolved me in company with my brethren to redeem it or die with it. It would be unmanly, pusillanimous, to desert a good cause merely because it is in difficulty. But in the case

of the leading Christian and Protestant sects of our country and of the world, they are all interested in the same great cause; they acknowledge each other as brethren, although they appear under separate standards. It is optional with every Christian to resolve in his own conscience what denomination he will attach himself to, and no other has a right to complain of his choice. In the exercise of the same prerogative he may transfer his relation from one to another: he does not desert the cause; he only moves and acts in a different corps of the same catholic host.

Of late years, especially since I have been abroad, I have been led to an examination of different systems of society, civil and religious, and to a consideration of their comparative merits. Had I remained a pastor in one place, it would have been impossible for me to make that comparison of Presbyterianism with other systems, which, coming as I did from a distant position, it was equally impossible for me not to make, especially in view of the facts which suggested it; and having got upon this inquiry, the practical operation of Presbyterianism in all its parts and as a whole, as it lay before me in the experience of many years, came at once and unavoidably under review. I had seen it in all its forms, and in the practical operation of all its principles, in a pastoral life of ten years, and from the lowest to the highest court, comprehending the powers and practice of the church Session, of Presbytery, of Synod, and of the General Assembly. I was intimately concerned in the revision of the statutes of the Presbyterian church, as a member of the General Assembly for two years, while that business was in hand. I have sat as moderator of different courts employed in public investigations and trials under these laws, in all, many weeks, not to say months, and in some instances several days in succession.

Of course, all Presbyterians consider the business of these courts, from the lowest to the highest, necessary, and so have I been accustomed to consider them. But I think I may safely appeal to the experience of every Presbyterian clergyman, that for the most part the busi