The evils mentioned above, let it be remembered, are all more or less readily acknowledged to be evils. Nor are they peculiar to any one of the divisions of the Protestant church. They are in a great measure common to every division. They do not belong of course to God's plan of salvation.. Nor do they belong to any of the good things which all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and who are devoted to his service, have in common. They are all produced and cherished by causes and circumstances which belong to the members of the christian church as men and as imperfect and depraved beings. Hence it follows that they are to be removed, not by defending them as they may exist in our own particular denomination, or any where else, but by examining them and giving them their appropriate names-evils devices of men, and utterly inconsistent with christian character, as enlightened and sanctified by the spirit of God.

God's plan of salvation, let it be remembered, needs no aid from the policy of this world, to carry it out fully. Let us then study this plan as it is set before us in the Bible. Let every professor apply its holy and spiritual principles to himself, and let him never be afraid that any divine ordinance will be degraded or rendered inefficient by being so administered that all who give evidence that they belong to the great family of the redeemed, may wherever it is convenient for them to meet together, unite in celebrating and partaking of that ordinance. We close by applying the whole of what has been said to the present state of the Presbyterian church in these United States.. Shall we not take warning from our own mistakes and from the mistakes of those of other denominations? Shall we increase instead of removing the evils which have for one hundred and fifty years marked the visible church? Shall we follow other bodies of professing christians only in those measures, which can have no other tendency but to keep the church in the wilderness and in captivity and in a state of weakness? Are not the partition walls which are already erected between the acknowledged friends and servants of the Lord Jesus Christ sufficiently numerous and sufficiently strong and high? Do we not know and acknowledge that the whole undivided force of the Presbyterian church may have work enough in being directed entirely to the field which is the world, instead of being wasted in having all over our own land and over foreign countries, one division directed against another division? Shall the sword devour forever? Know we not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? How long shall it be ere our leaders shall bid the people return from following their brethren? And how long will the people follow thece leaders who have set, every man's hand against his brother?

RE-ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.

NO. II..

It was not thought, at the time of the issuing of our former No., to have added any thing further at present, to what is there contained on the subject of a re-organization of the Presbyterian church. It was intended, merely having thrown out the plan before the people, to have let it work its own way, fully convinced that it was but to be fairly brought before the minds of a well judging community to recommend itself to their good sense and approbation; at least as soon as the present storms and agitations which have been for some time so greatly disturbing the church, shall have been blown over, and the public feeling has had time and leave to settle itself down into something like a state of calmness and tranquility. That is, provided those good brethren who have taken such a deep interest in our ecclesiastical wars, and who, no doubt with the best, though very mistaken motives, have been so industrious and active in keeping up, and carrying on and carrying "out to their extreme results, these wars, will but permit such a state of peace and quiet again to return to our Zion.

We feel however disposed to follow up our previous remarks with a word or two more on the subject. The plan is designed and we believe calculated to be preeminently a peace measure; and we ask the Presbyterian public to look at it, and examine it calmly and dispassionately, and see if it be not in its nature such. Let it have a fair and impartial hearing, and let it not be put down by mere blind and obstinate prejudice, and noisy clamour, without examination, and without reason. Let us not take it for granted that merely because a thing always, or for a long time, has been so, that it ought therefore always to be so. It is this blind and pertinacious cleaving to old opinions, customs, and institutions, not from reason, or a regard to their propriety or utility, but from the mere instinctive force of habit-(by the way a very useful principle in our nature in its place, and within proper limits-but which when uncontroled and unguided by judgment and rea son, has been one of the greatest impediments to intellectual and moral improvement)-one of the greatest extinguishers upon the light of advancing truth, that the church or the world has ever encountered. How does old mother: church, as she would call heself,

of harlots, as we would call her-plead the antiquity of her own existence or of her abuses, as an argument in their defence and for their perpetuation. None of us will surely claim that the Presbyterian church has, just as it is, arrived at the ne plus ultra of perfection in its form of organization, and that no farther improvement is possible.

If so, then we have come to a dead stand-still in this respect, and all we have to do is just to get all the rest of the church to think with us -to come up to our perfect standard, and so far as church unity is concerned, usher in the millenium.

Let us not then be imposed upon, or too much carried away by a blind reverence for the antiquity of an institution, without regard to reason or sound judgment. Even had such a court as a General Assembly always existed in the Presbyterian church in these United States, it would be no reason why it should always exist, unless founded on the word of God, or the, radical principles of Presbyterianism; especially if it has ceased to subserve the good ends for which it was originally designed. But it has not always existed. The time was when there was no such body as the General Assembly, in its present form, known in the American Presbyterian church; and this of itself is sufficient to prove that it is not, in our theory of Church Government, necessarily required by the word of God, nor essential to Presbyterianism. Its continuance then, is resolved into a mere question of expediency. And as to the other point, it will require but little reasoning to show that it has ceased to subserve the ends for which it was originally designed. Instead of being as it was designed to be, a bond of union for the whole church, it has of late years become emphatically the occasion of disturbance, the origin and source of disunion, and the the great seat and theatre of wars for the whole church.

And this brings us to the remark which we were going to make in continuation, when it was said, a little while ago, that the plan of reorganization proposed is designed, and we believe calculated in its nature, to be preeminently a peace measure. Indeed we believe that it has been one of the great mistakes and follies of our beloved church, and one which has been the occasion, if not the cause, of her present distracted and divided state, that she has tried to retain in close ecclesiastical connection, with one common court of jurisdiction and final appeals, such a wide spread extent of territory, as our church has em braced in the prosperity and enlargement of her more recent days, with such a diversity of individual character, interests, and views, in the different sections. The natural, and almost necessary result in the present weak and imperfect state of poor, fallen human nature in the best of men, has been jealousies, fears, evil surmisings, heartburnings, strifes has sprung up. Brethren at the extremes, and as they have met and mingled with each other from the extremes, have not known, nor understood, nor had confidence in each other; but have been disposed to look upon each other with distrust and suspicion. Opportunity has thus been given to unhallowed ambition and sordid interest, (if they unhappily existed any where in the bosom of the

church; and, alas! her history but too plainly shows that they have, and even in the breasts of good men, in all ages,) as well as ignorant prejudice, and headstrong and determined dogmatism, to seize upon, and foment, and magnify these unhappy causes of dissention for sinister and party purposes. And behold the result. A large, prosperous, and efficient church has been rent asunder, and now lies bleeding and dismembered; and the enemy has ground of triumph in this unnatural war of brother with brother, and to raise the shout of fiendish exultation over the shattered fragments of this broken band of "the sacramental host of God's elect."

Such have been the sad results of this unhappy contest,-one which in its origin has not been really a contest of the church, but of individuals. Few comparatively have had any real and personal interest in it. It has been originated, and kept up, and all the mischief has been done by the direct and active exertion of a very few, while the great mass have been merely the passive instruments, who have been alarmed by, clamor,, excited by an appeal to personal interests, or dragooned into service, and drawn up to the breach, through fear of losing caste.. Put although thus limited in its origin, the evil results of the contest have not been confined to the particular seat of the war;, but owing to our present mode of organization, have extended themselves throughout the length and breadth of the church. One part of the church must split, merely because the other has; and the rent begun, at one end, niust thus be regularly and on system, in a cold-blooded manner, run through the whole. Brethren in the same region, and in the same Presbytery or church, who have been bound to each other by the closest ties, both of church fellowship and of family relationship or personal attachment, without any ground of individual difference or private feud whatever, have to fight over again between themselves other men's battles, and separate, and be alienated from each other, at least in church connection, for no other reason than merely that others at a distance, and with whom they have had no immediate connection or acquaintance, have quarrelled and gone apart. And such results will ever and anon be continually recurring, as long as men have minds of different mould, education, or intelligence; and no more charity, forbearance, and liberality, than they now have. And is the fancy scheme of a mere formal and nominal church unity, and the carrying out, for the mere sake of symmetry, of our system of ascending church courts, rising step above step, like the successive ranges of a pyramid, to one single final topstone in a General Assembly, a worthy object for which to run the risk of such evils.

We are pleased to see that the New School Assembly has acted the

wise and prudent part of him that "forseeth the evil and hideth him-self," having at their late meeting, sent down such a plan to their Presbyteries for their sanction.. And although the Old School body seem to be as yet asleep upon the subject; there stiil remain causes, and probably will remain, as long as human nature continues to be what it is, by which their slumbers will be continually exposed to be broken, and their dreams of fancied security and peace disturbed, while locked with each other in such close embrace, and they be taught the absolute necessity of a less close connection. In more absolute forms of church government, men may get along over such a wide extent of territory without disruption, in such a close organization; but not so in our republican form, when thought, and speech, and action are so free..

The policy of such an organization as would strip the Assembly of all judicial and appellate jurisdiction, is especially suggested, as remarked in our last No. on account of the all-absorbing, all-agitating subject of slavery.. It is desirable on all hands; both to the South and the North. It is desirable to the South, that they may be relieved from the perpetual agitation of that vexed and vexing question in ju- * dicatories where they have a seat, and to which they are amenable.. It is desirable to the North, that they may be relieved from any responsibility on the subject which any of them may be disposed to feel, while there is any common court, this side of the court of Heaven, into which they have it in their power to throw it for adjudication.. From the experience of the past, then, let us learn wisdom for the future: and if we have found one of the causes of difficulty and distraction, let us remove it; if, as we think we have sufficiently shown, it is not essential to our system. And brethren can love one another, and feel towards each other in all respects as brethren, as well, nay a great deal better, and have as much, and far more real church unity, than if they had a common tribunal into which they could throw their sectional and minor differences, and when they might meet, as they have done too much, as on an arena of contest.

We cannot close without barely noticing how beautifully the plan of organization which we have been proposing, tallies with the General plan of Christian Union, recently proposed by Rev. Dr.. Schmucker of the German Lutheran Church; and for the promotion of which a Society has been formed as reported in our last number from the N. Y, Observer. Our plan corresponds and falls in, in general principle, for the Presbyterian Church, with that, for the whole church; and would form one of the minor arrangements under the great general arrangement which we are disposed to believe, is to constitute