TEE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN
AND
GENESEE EVANGELIST.
A Religions and Family Newspaper,
IH THB IftTBBKST OP THE
Constitutional Presbyterian Church.
PUBLISHED EVERT THURSDAY,
AT THE PRESBYTERIAN HOUSE,
1334 Chestnut Street, (2d story,) Philadelphia.
Rev. John W. Hears, Editor and Publisher.
Rev. B. B. Hotchhln, Editor of News and
-' Family Departments.
Rev. ft S P. Bash, Corresponding Editor,
Rochester,». T.
ftomtan
THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1865.
CONTENTS OF INSIDE PAGES,
Second Page—The Family Circle :
Paul Gerhard’s Hymn—The Clouded Intellect—
Checking Perspiration-Good Natnred-The Storm,
the Wolves, and the Bird—A Pleasant Parlor Pas
time—Onr Idol.
For the Little Folks: Familiar Talks with the
Children—The New Scholar—Refining by Fire
Rural Economy: Indelible Ink—A Hint to Gar
deners—Cure for Dogs—The Seasons, Crops, etc.
Third Page—Editor’s Table:
‘' Mary, the Handmaid of the Lord”—Smith’s " Al
fred Hagart’s Household”—Tennyson’s "Songs for
all Seasons —Pamphlets and Periodicals. .
Miscellaneous: Who Shall Vote in the South ?
Sixth Page—Correspondence :
Words for Toug Converts —A Happy Sufferer-—Re
construction—ln the Market Place—Mrs. Lucy L.
Page—Republican Prayer—The Devil Doing Good.
Seventh, Page—Religious Intelligence :
Presbyterian—Congregational—Methodist— Baptist
Toe Jews —Missionary—Miscellaneous—ltems.
• J*y®o®*la.neous • Position of the Evangelical Party
id the Episcopal Church—-Wesley *s Preaching—Take
which Road You Please—Acuteness of the Hindoos.
THE CHRISTIAN’S LIFE PLAN.
The thoughtful Christian naturally desires
*o cultivate his new character, and to nourish
his new life, with some degree of system.
It is an education of. the religious nature,
and it requires method for its highest mea
sure of success, quite as much as does the
training of the intellectual part. A reli
gious life without a plan, without specific
objects, without intelligent foresight will be
unsatisfactory in its results. The comman
der of an army must sit down first, and
consult whether he be able to meet him
that cometh against him. If not, even
though successful, he may lose the best re
sults of victory. The thoughtless, uncal
culating Christian may be saved; yet.there
will be much of wood, hay, and stubble
built upon the immutable foundations,
which must perish, and himself will be
saved as by fire. By the strength of
Christ, the Christian may be master of the
situation; —he may comprehend its needs,
its perils, its advantages, and may intelli
gently and prayerfully make ample arrang
ments to meet them all.
Some general directions may not be in
appropriate to the Christian, who would
make the culture of his religious nature
more expressly the business of his life.
1. God has already planned our lives,
and one important part of our plan is, to
recognize and fall in with, this plan of
God. By our assigned position in the
world, our wealth or poverty, our business
or profession, our family connections and
responsibilities, our endowments and culture,
and by the great events and providences of
our lives, we' may learn this plan of God.
From day to day it reveals itself, the ever
unfolding apocalypse of life. What God
would have all men do, is written in the
Bible; what he would have you do, how he
would have you train your characters, he
hints to you at every turn of the daily
round of your life. Bo the duty that lies
nearest. Do not frame a scheme of cul
ture from which you must descend, as from
a transcendental region of piety, to the
every day affairs of life. Conceive not of
a life of unnatural seclusion and isolation
from the ordinary circumstances of men,
as more favourable to spiritual culture. It
may produce a rapid, but it must be au un
healthy, growth. It will partake of the
hot-house; it may be a curiosity, like the
cloister life of Elizabeth of Hungary. But
he that desires a large, genial, and well
balanced development of the religious na
ture, will seek it in the open-air of God’s
great school-house, the world—the world of
business and of home. One’s daily duties
are appointed to train the fundamental
principles, the broad common-place virtues
of Christian character, to develope the
primal affections and to elevate them all
' into the new atmosphere of piety
We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbor and our work farewell,
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky.
The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask:
Boom to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily near to God.
2. But the appointments of Providence
are to be found not only in the form of en
couragements or of plain opportunities.
With these vre can fall in. There are
events and circumstances which seem posi
tively hostile to any purpose of piety; in
the presence of which we must rely entire
ly upon inward force and principle. Our
lives are not merely full of tasks and diffi
culties which an ardent nature may find
actually stimulating; they abound in ma
lignant enmities, in situations that require
courage, devotion, sacrifice; that conduct
through dark and terrible hours of strug
gle, where we must resist sometimes untc
blood, striving against sin. These antag
onisms caused by sin, are permitted and
employed by God, in his plan of our lives.
By them we may cultivate new depths of
•oharaoteT. As we come in contact with them,
ISTew Series, YoL 11, No. 28.
as they would forceps out of the path of
duty, as they would crush our principles,
as they loom up threatening to hide God
and heaven from our eyes, there arise more
critical but still greater opportunities of
self-culture than before. No longer led
gently forward by the common opportuni
ties of life, in which God, our teacher,
with patient iteration sets us our daily les
son, we find his enemy and ours stretched
completely across the way, and shaking
his fearful dart at our lives, our property,
our dearest earthly good. These are choice
and frequently most profitable seasons of
self-culture, when great and life-long les
sons are learned, and when the roots of
storm-rocked principles strike deep into the
soul.
,3. The general fact of temperament’pre
sents a broad and ever present field of cul
ture to the Christian. Learn what your
temperament is; whether impetuous or
listless, whether sanguine or melancholic,
whether amiable or fretful, and lay your
plans accordingly. It is here you will fre
quently find the besetting sin of your lives.
4. Finally there is one aim, beside which
you must count all things as loss, to win
Christ and to he found in him. Dare not
lay an elaborate plan in which this is not
fundamental. To'-have Christ formed in
you by faith; to put on Christ; to be dead
to the law and married to him; to be cruci
fied with him, and yet to live, —not our
selves but be living in us, —to be rooted
and grounded in love; to aim at that “per
fect man” which is measured by the stature
of the fulness of Christ; to grow up into
him in all things, from whom the whole
body, fitly joined together and compacted,
. . maketh ..increase of the body unto the
edifying of itself in love ; to he complete in
3ih; this is the one sure method, and
this the consummation of all Christian cul
ture. • Here is the Christian’s Life Plan.
Add to your Faith, Virtue. All else' is
Pharisaism, or hollow, inefficient, philoso
phical morality.
POLICY AND DUTY OF PUNISHING
REBEL LEADERS* IY.
FOREIGN OPINION AND PRECEDENT.
To the two special reasons for punishing
traitors against our free Government given
in our last, we now add a third; namely:—
We have almost nothing to maintain social
and civil order throughout the entire range
of our municipal, county, State and na
tional arrangements, but respect for law
among the masses of the people. We .have
no standing armies; we' have no supersti
tious reverence for the persons of our rulers;
no cherished figment of hereditary divine
right to prop up their authority. We sur
round our rulers and their acts with no
artificial state or splendor. Everything is
managed with republican frankness and
simplicity.
The question might well be raised, how
Government, under such conditions, can
be sustained at all. Foreigners, accustomed
to monarchy and imperialism, have doubted
its permanence, and have been confidently
waiting to see “ the bubble burst.” If
there is no all-pervading, deeply rooted re
verence for our laws; if there is no habi
tual expectation of their prompt and righte
ous execution, such as instinctively to pre
dispose even bad men to avoid trangressing
them, then indeed there is no security for
a republican form of government. And
the rebellion itself was originated by men
who have been nurtured in a disregard for
both human and divine law; men prepared
by the education of slave-institutions for
any aet of arrogance and self-will; men
who counted on an equal indifference to the
sacredness of civil order and the national
authority in the North, and who, if they had
been characterized by an equal reverence
for law with the Northern people, would
never have been guilty of such a crime.
We maintain, therefore, that the great
security for our existence as an orderly
community, is the popular sentiment of
reverence for law; and when the most
monstrous and flagrant violations of law
possible, have been committed, then, unless
the sentiment is to be utterly ignored and
irreparably damaged, the most conspicuous
illustrations of the majesty, inflexibility,
and severity of the law must be made.
The very fact that we have so very few de
fences for our Government, makes it neces
sary to be more scrupulous in guarding
what we have.
We cannot afford, as perhaps some firmly
seated tyrant might, from within the circle
of ten centuries of precedent and of habit/)
strengthened by a hundred thousand bayo
nets and by garrisoned towns and military
posts in every quarter of the land, —we
cannot afford as such a one might, to dis
pense with an impressive and wholesome
lesson of the vigor of the law. The very
lightness and easiness of our Government
PHILADELPHIA, THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1865.
makes it necessary that treason against it
should be signally punished, lest it should
cease indeed to be a Government at all,
and secession itself get the broadest justifi
cation from the very power which has
crushed it. We call, therefore, upon our
authorities to contribute the new and need
ed confirmation to the highest law of the
land, and through it, to all laws of State,
county, city, and town, by promptly,
solemnly, and condignly punishing the
guilty authors and abettors of this rebel
lion. Let the ineffaceble infamy of the
gibbet be stamped upon traitor leadership.
Let the conviction be more than ever sent'
home to the hearts of the people, that the
law of the land is supreme, that it must be
obeyed and reverenced, that it cannot be
broken with impunity, that the outrageously
wicked attempt to overthrow the law itself
.will recoil with tenfold force upon the head
of him who attempts it, and who misleads
millions of his fellow-citizens in the attempt.
Never, never can we feel safe again, if
traitor leaders in such a rebellion are suf
fered to go unhung.
Precedents are urged against the capital
punishment of traitor leaders. It is said
that such punishments have always reacted
in favor of the victims, have made martys
of them, and have but rendered sacred the
cause for which they died. But the truth
is, we lack precedents. There has never
been a parallel in the world’s history to the
causelessness, the unrighteousness, the
atrocity of this rebellion. No rebel leaders,
no foiled traitors, have ever been in
mid-air. with half so heavy a burden upon
their souls, as these disappointed plotters
against the life of the American Republic
would carry. From the history of what
nation shall we draw parallels ? From that
of Russia-in her dealings with the rebellious
Poles, or of Austria in ,her treatment of
rebel Hungarians and Italians, or of Spain
in dealing with the revolted Netherlands ?
lit is, indeed true, that the sanguinary course
of these' Governments towards discomfited
rebels have , made them martyrs, and has
reconsecrated their cause in the eye*
of the world;. hut their cause was already
sacred before they suffered for it. They
perished in upholding liberty. How can-
Southern traitors, arrested in, their mad
scheme for destroying a free
and for perpetuating oppression,—that is
for attempting the very reverse of these
acts of Polish, Hungarian, and Dutch
rebels, —rise into the same honorable posi
tion before the world, because treated in the
same manner ? The judgment of the people
is not so perverse. If it has been gene
rally on the side of political criminals, the
reason is because, as human governments
have usually been constructed and adminis
tered, the fair presumption has most fre
quently been in favor of the justice of the
rebel cause.
But where the rebellion has been with
out adequate justification, no reasonable
and properly administered punishment has
wrought the change in favor of the con
demned and executed authors, which we
are urged to believe has been and must be
the case. Turning to an Old Testament
illustration, we observe that Absalom was
not indeed brought to a formal trial; but
his cause was lost while he yet hung alive
in the oak. Joab slew him, not as the leader
of a hostile army, for that army was flying
in confusion, _ and Absalom abandoned and
incapable of striking another blow. He
slays him as a conquered traitor. That was
not only a bold and able deed in view of the
king’s unmanly and dangerous partiality for
the youth, but it utterly broke the spirit of
the rebellion. In spite of the powerful im
pression made by Absalom’s appearance and
bearing upon the people, in spite of the
king’s deep and manifest attachment tor
him and bitter sorrow for his death, we
cannot find the slightest trace of a disposi
tion among the Israelites, nor in all subse
quent literature, to make a martyr of the
man who fell a victim to his effeminacy and
who was caught, like Jeff. Davis himself,
with some falsely appropriated marks of
womanhood upon him. We read in Samuel
xix. 10, that the final reason assigned by
the insurgent tribes for returning to their
allegiance and settling all disturbances in
the kingdom, is the death of Absalom.
“And Absalom whom we* anointed over us,
is dead in battle. Now, therefore, why
speak ye not a word of bringing the king
■ back?” Joab was wise enough to know
that the best way to secure ultimate pacifi
cation, was not simply to put down rebel
lion by force of arms and spare the leader,
but it was to make a prompt and conspicu
ous example. Those who would have us,
out of mere clemency, spare the leaders of
the late rebellion, show about as much
judgment as David, who was fast going into
his dotage, showed in regard to saving the
life of Absalom.
. Has modern literature or English opinion
canonized the Jacobites, those obstinate
adherents of a bad and ruined cause, who
had a certain specious glitter of legitimacy
to recommend them; does any perceptible
quality- of reverence hang around their
memory as of martyrs, because some of
their leaders met with the treatment they de
served? Who, but Irish Catholics hold in
honor the victims of the unsuccessful re
bellions which-Papal fanaticism has stirred
up in unhappy Erin? Or if any others
share with' the Irish, their regard for these
unsuccessful bursts of national feeling, it is
not because their authors fell, but because
they are regarded as having in some mea
sure deserved a better fate. Nor has the
doom visited upon the leaders of the Cana
da rebellion; of twenty-five years ago, at all
helped to save it from almost utter oblivion,
but has hastened and deepened it. In
truth, the nations from whom this advice
now so officiously comes, have invariably,
and in recent times, pursued the policy of
dealing rigorously with captured rebels.
The pages of their history are stained by
needless and revolting cruelties, and we
may, if we choose to be unceremonious and
outspoken, reply to their extraordinary
appeals for clemency, in the famous words
of General Butler's farewell to the citizens
of New Orleans:—
“To be sure,” he says, “I might have
regaled you with the amenities of British
civilization and yet been within the supposed
rules of civilized warfare. Yon might have
been smoked to death in caverns, as were the
Covenanters of Scotland, by the command
of a General of the royal house of Eng
land; or roasted like the inhabitants of
Algiers during the French campaign ; or
you might have been scalped and toma
hawed, as oUr mothers were at Wyoming,
by the savage allies of Great Britain in our
own revolution ; your property could have
been turned over to indiscriminate ‘ loot’
like the palace of the Empeor of China;-
Works of art which adorned your buildings
might have been sent away, like those of
the Vatican; yoiir sons might have been
blown away from the mouths of cannon, like
the Sepoys'at Delhi; and yet all this would
have been within the rules of civilized war
fare as practised by the most polished and
most hypocritical nations of Europe.”
Here we leave those nations. Their
advice is unbecoming the# own precedents
and utterly inapplicable to the case in
hand. Eor ourselves, we deem it sufficient
here to observe that our whole policy since
our beginning as a nation, has been one of
eminently dangerous leniency to disturbers
of the public peace. It is a fact that
no one has ever been executed for treason
under our laws besides John Brown ! We
let Aaron Burr and all his comrades go.
We never punished, no, never touched the
hair of the head of a single nullifier. An
drew Jackson, in his last sickness, declared
that-in reflecting on his administration, he
chiefly regretted that he had not had John
C. Calhoun executed®for treason. “My
country,” said the General, “ would have
sustained me in the act, and his fate would
have been a warning to traitors in all time
to come.”* Who knows but this severe
course would have created such a whole
some impression as even entirely to have
prevented the breaking out of the late re
bellion, the legitimate fruit of seed sown
by the arch-conspirator ?
O, let us pray to God that no Executive
officer called to act in this far more solemn
and significant era, shall have terrible cause
to take similar regrets upon dying lips.
Save, 0 save the country from what must
be the far worse consequence of a neglect
of Executive duty in a time so pregnant of
influence upon all generations to come, as
this.
* Parton’sLife, 3. 447. Mason, Brothers
New York, 1861.
Ford’s Theatre. —We announced Ig.st
week, in a single sentence, that the pur
chase of Ford’s theatre, for the use of
the Young Men’s Christian Association,
had failed of being consummated. When
the time, July 1, came for the first pay
ment, the trustees for the purchase re
garded the prospects for future payments
too dubious to justify them in making
the beginning, and so allowed the
arrangement to fall through. We are
sorry that any discouragement should
befal noble hearted Christians, while de
vising. liberal things for religion. Still,
for reasons which we have before ex
pressed, while speaking of this proposed
purchase, we cannot regret its failure.
We have also heard it hinted, we hope
without foundation, that under the pro
posed local management, there would
have been some uncertainty about the
room being made free for public discus
sions, on some subjects, which must
occupy the attention of the Christian
public. Such, for example, -as the politi
cal status of the colored people.
Genesee Evangelist, TSTo. 999.
On Friday, July 7, David B. Harold,
the companion of Booth in his flight; Geo.
A. Atzerodt, appointed to murder the then
Vice President, Mr. Johnson, and a con
spirator in the entire assassination plot;
Lewis Payne, the assailant of Secretary
Seward and his family; and Mrs. Mary E.
Suratt, the directress of many of the par
ticulars of the scheme, and confidential
friend and hostess of the conspirators, were
hung at the national Capital, in merited
punishment of the great and historically
unparalleled crime of which they were
guilty. Michael O’Laughlin, appointed to :
murder General Grant; Samuel Arnold, an
accomplice some tiing before the assassina
tion; Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who was in
the full confidence of Booth six months
before the act, and who rendered him
medical aid and assistance in his attempted
escape—these three subordinate actors have
been sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor
for life. Edward Spangler, the carpenter,
who facilitated Booth’s flight from the
stage of the theatre, and hindered pursuit,
was sentenced to imprisonment at hard
labor for six years.
These sentences were in substance the
findings of the military court, which Presi
dent Johnson approved without alteration;
and which were carried into execution on
the very next day after they were promul
gated.
The people in mass respond Amen ! to
this simple act of justice. Anything less
than this would have outraged their deep
est convictions, their dearest principles,
aind. their mournful and tender reverence
for the noble victim of the conspiracy.
The American people behold with satisfac
tion this evidence of the fidelity of the
Executive and his subordinates to the re
quirements of the law. They have not
hesitated to enforce it with the full rigor
which the enormity of the crime demands.
They have shown themselves no vain
bearers of the magisterial sword. The
case.was indeed clear, and the course of
duty too plain to be mistaken, yet the na
tion has an unquestionable feeling of relief,
an increased sense_of security, in the fact
that so plain an act of justice has been
done; and that the first decisive intimation
of the temper of our Government in regard
t j extreme cases has been put upon record.
The hanging and imprisonment of these
wretches will not be without salutary effect
upon such as are still disposed to cleave to
the cause for which, in reality, they suf
fered ; it is no uncertain intimation of what
may yet be expected of the Government in
dealing mth the conspicuous and deeply
dyed traitors who are in its custody, and to
whom this conspiracy and other atrocities
ot the rebellion can be clearly traced.
A BELIEVER, OR AN ATHEIST 1
John Stuart Mill, the well-known
philosophical and political writer of Eng
land, long a leading contributor to the in
fidel pages of the Westminster Review, and
more lately known as the earnest and able
defender of the National cause in our late
conflict, is candidate for a seat in the House
of Commons for Westminster, London. Mr.
Mill is a rationalist of the advanced school.
Especially in the Review just mentioned
he is associated with all the prominent as
sailants of a supernatural revelation in his
country; with the supporters of Colenso and
the Essayists and Reviewers, and with the
systematic detractors of all works written in
the interest of Scripture truth, and the ready
ushers to public notice and favor of every in
fidel production in Europe, Asia, or America;
Theodore Parker coming, we believe,
nearest to their idea of what a religious
man should be and believe.
It is perhaps too much to say that Mr.
Mill goes to the full length of these doc
trines—that he is fairly represented by the
Westminster Review but the question has
arisen among his proposed constituents,
whether he is not too radical an unbeliever
to represent Westminster. And we must
say we are gratified with the state of opin
ion in the electors of London, which de
mands such an investigation, and which
will not suffer even such eminent services
and talents in the scientific world as those
of Mr. Mill, to protect from challenge the
grave religious defects in his teachings,
when he becomes a candidate for a high
public position.
The opponent of Mr. Mill is Mr. Smith,
the great news-agent of the United King
dom. He is represented as a conservative,
though not a slavish one. His supporters
have issued an address considered as the
ablest electioneering document on the Con
servative side. In this they quote from, or
refer to a sentence in, Mill’s recent work
on Sir Wm. Hamilton’s’philsophy, as proof
that Mill is an atheist. The drift of the
sentence is somewhat Byronic, or in the
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semi-blasphemous spirit of Shelley; a kind
of defiance of the God in whom he regards
evangelical Christians as believing; but it
can scarcely be set down as a declaration
of speculative atheism, to whatever practi
cal rejection of the true God it may tend.*
But if the address has used extravagant
language, Mr. Mill himself, in a letter to a
friend on the subject, has more than al
anced accounts. He not only reiterates
his belief in the correctness of all his pub?
lished views on religions subjects, but in
regard to the passage quoted by his oppo
nents, he has the presumption to assert
that it is one of the most religious and
Christian expressions of feeling in all recent
literature”!! He also defies any one to
point out in his writings a single passage*
“ that conflicts with what the best religious
minds of our age accept as Christianity.”
Among these “ best religious minds of our
age” he refers to “a Bishop” in the Lon
don Spectator and to the Spectator itself—
“ a most religious journal” he calls it—
though the Bishop was probably Colenso,
and the “ religion” of the Spectator is
about that of the Westminster Review.
These two authorities having endorsed the
Christianity of the sentence, no one “ who
reads the passage and the context fairly,
could pronounce it other than Christian in
the truest sense."
John Stuart Mill, instead of being an
atheist, thinks he ought to be regarded as
an eminent Christian, and his works as
leading issues of the Christian literature of
the times ! What a culpable piece of neg
legence that our Tract Societies have not
long ago secured his inestimable services,
or at least that our Theological Seminaries
have not included his treatises among their
leading text books ! What an admirable
stroke of electioneering policy, when one is
accused of being an atheist, to claim to
be a better Christian than one's opponent
and to quote a live Bishop in proof of it!
Certainly it shows that the reputation of
being a believer is of some account in the
eyes of the Westminster constituency, and
that the charge of atheism must be flung
off if one would get the votes of these men.
Whether they are likely to be blinded by
such dust as Mr. Mill throws, in speaking
of his perfect accordance with the “ best
religious minds of qur age,” and of “ the
Bishop" who endorsed his piety in the
Spectator, especially as the candidate abso
lutely refuses to answer any questions on
his religious opinions, we cannot say. We
look with interest for the result.
*“lf,” he says, “instead of the ’glad tidings'
that there exists a Being in whom all the ex
cellencies, which the highest human mind can
conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to us,
I am informed that the world is ruled by a
being whose attributes are infinite, but what
they are we cannot learn, nor what are the
principles of his government, except ‘ the high
est morality of which we are capable of con
ceiving’ does not sanction them; convince me
of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But
when I am told that I must believe this, and at
the same time call this being by the names
which express and affirm the highest morality,
I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever
power such a being may have over me, there is
one thing which he' shall not do: he shall not
compel me to worship him. I will call no
being good who is not what I mean when I ap
ply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if
such a being can sentence me to hell for not so
calling him, to hell I will go. ”
A New Fusion to be Expected.
There is little doubt but the hope is
strongly entertained that the new eccle
siastical organization about to be made
up from the non-Episcopal Methodist
churches, may be induced, at no distant*
day, to become a part of the Congregar
tional body. The Western Methodist Pro
testant,one of the most important papers of
the Methodist churches concerned, speak
ing of the late National Council’s “Decla
ration of Faith,” while as yet it was
under discussion, said:—
“We shall note the action of the Coundlon
this paper, which contains a brief but clear
and comprehensive declaration of the funda
mental and essential doctrines of the Christian
faith, on which all orthodox Christians may
fully unite. It is one of the most hopeful
signs of the times, that Christians who agree
on essential points of doctrine are seeking a
more intimate union with each other, and
manifest a disposition, in matters of indiffer
ence, to permit the most enlarged liberty,
while in all things they exercise charity.”
Still more significant is the following
from the last number of The Oongrega
tionalist, on the Cleveland Convention
Methodists:—
‘ ‘The spirit of the convention was eminently
fraternal and Christian. With scarcely an
exception, the principles advocated by Con
gregationalists were those insisted on as the
true basis of church government. . There is
evident progress in the right direction among
our Methodist brethren, and we should bid
them a hearty “Godspeed.” Much frater
nal interest and sympathy were manifested by
the convention in the movements of the Con
gregational churches. When a proposition
was made to send a greeting to the National
Council in session at Boston, it was warmly
seconded, and carried unanimously; and the
reply was received with marked expressions
of pleasure and good will. I have no doubt
that the ultimate result of this movement
will be. all that the friends of Christian liberty
and primitive church polity could desire.”