their rightful ascendancy, or successfully pursuing the end of their organization. Discoveries were made during this meeting of the Assembly, of hostility to the ancient and venerable church and standards; fixed designs and determinations, with all practicable speed, to overturn the whole ecclesiastical fabric: of usurping absolute dominion over it; perverting its principles, embezzling its funds, remodelling its institutions and ordinances, and transforming its whole organization into a structure of a different kind. These indications produced effects the most startling and rousing to the true-hearted few found in the minority. A weighty responsibility was felt pressing upon them; and before them, lay a profound difficulty in deciding their course. For, although they believed that the conspiracy was confined to a few master spirits, yet full evidence was afforded, by the unanimity which marked their measures, that the leaders had acquired the confidence of their adherents, who stood ready to follow wherever they pointed the way.

The New School sympathies displayed by the leaders in this defection from the Presbyterian Church and standard, in the house and in the streets, in the most confidential interviews on matters of highest moment, destroyed all confidence in their fidelity to the church. Considering many of the excellent laymen involved in this difficulty, sound and discreet men if left to themselves, but deceived and misled by their infatuated dictators, the condition of the church was very critical and interesting, and under the most favourable aspect, called loudly for immediate and energetic remedial action.

As evidence of the existence, and an illustration of the nature of the conspiracy in progress, let us look at the features of it, as progressively developed, which were prominent and could not be hidden. Dr. Beecher, the Magnus Apollo, was placed at Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, to instruct, arrange, and dispose of their agents to the best advantage. Every New School operator in the land, and especially in the West, was looking with intense anxiety, to the arch-leader in this formidable combination, for directions; watching his movements, receiving his mandates, executing his will, from St. Louis to Boston. In their action, there was, of course, great order, concert, and efficiency, considering how expanded and comprehensive the plan was they were pursuing, the number of agents employed, the variety in their capacities and qualifications, from education, sectional interests and feelings, physical and moral powers and sympathies. With some, the enlargement and successful management of the Presbyterian Education Society, was a prime motive and aim; with others, the American Board of Missions, the Home Missionary Society, &c. Some were busily engaged in selecting young men for

training to their purpose, building up academies, colleges, and seminaries; collecting funds from Presbyterian congregations to aid their Eastern institutions and operations; superintending the press, conducting correspondence, attending conventions and ecclesiastical judicatories,. to forward their schemes. All was life and activity, and untiring zeal among them, and the whole enterprize was marked by features of hostility to the Presbyterian Church, as the unique object. Any attempt, however constitutional, discreet, and absolutely necessary to correct or restrict these flagrant and growing evils, would be immediately denounced and branded with the offensive charges of "intolerance, tyranny, oppression, persecution, ultraism," or some such odious epithet. But the hour of decision appeared to be' unquestionably approaching.

The cool, temporising, and conciliatory course which some good men advocated as a general resort, the minority believed would have speedily consummated the threatened catastrophe in our church, which her subtle foes had banded together to realize. This Fabian policy was what they courted and expected, and were secretly resolving to make available for their ignoble purpose. Moderates, as to their reliableness, are generally very doubtful. They cannot be counted on as certain in the season of storm and peril. The same elements of organic or integral formation, which made them moderates at first, are still embodied in their constitutions, and ready for action, if at all, only according to their own peculiar genius and temperament, and extremely difficult to be enlisted and relied upon in a critical cause, where decisive and energetical action are imperiously demanded.

In this emergency, we had all sorts of tempers mixed up in the small and anxious group. The crisis was novel-the interest involved momentous-everlasting results seemed to hang upon the developments of every hour. On surveying the little company, we saw in the midst of us some sweet and amiable Melancthons, with all his listlessness and inefficiency; there was, also here and there a timid, vacillating, and unreliable Erasmus; but there was need of more than one Calvin, with his French penetration and fire, quick insight, and indomitable candour and ardour, and above all a Luther of immoveable courage and constancy, whom nothing could elude, nothing intimidate, nothing resist, to head the comparatively small and trembling phalanx of vanquished but determined defenders of the faith, and of the church of Christ. By a wise and merciful Providence, he was furnished for the occasion, in full panoply, and fulfilled the task demanded with triumphant power. We knew that chieftain had enemies, whether from envy of his talents or achievements, we would not decide. But we fully believed, that posterity would do justice in spite of envy or of

hate, to the minds that conceived, and to the pen that executed, the immortal Act and Testimony, and that even the present indifferent and opposed ecclesiastics of our denomination, if there should be such to any considerable amount, would soon see cause to change their minds and retrace their steps.

CHAPTER XI.

Act and Testimony flew rapidly-New School opposed to it-Princeton Repertory dissented-Explanations of the views of its supperters-Statement of its origin-Character drawn by the Repertory, October, 1834.

THIS imperishable bill of Presbyterian wrongs and rights, grievances and protestations, dangers and reliefs, was ushered forth about the close of the Assembly. The document flew with telegraphic despatch, and was received with enthusiastic approbation by those who saw the sufferings of the church, and felt the ardent impulse for deliverance and reform. That the New School, at whose counsels and machinations it aimed a fatal blow, should sympathize with such a manifesto, and at such a crisis, it would have been more than folly to anticipate. It poured denunciations like repeated peals of thunder, upon their plans and efforts to divide, impair, and overthrow that very church which they had bound themselves, by the most sacred vows, to cherish and protect. Alarmed at this sudden and decided, though brief and earnest, exposure of their perfidious and distracting plans and measures, they summoned all their instrumentalities through the land, to pervert the Act and Testimony, to weaken its force by creating opposition, to cover its framers and advocates with opprobrium, to magnify every, symptom of popular dissatisfaction they could discover; with boldness and effrontery to add to the crime of their heresies, the guilt of denying them; throughout the whole church, in their assemblies, tribunals, and journals, with indefatigable cries, complaints, and importunities, to rouse their co-workers to come forth and sustain the work, which they had, as they thought, and there was too much reason to apprehend, already hopefully begun.

As the course pursued by the minority, under these trying circumstances, was criticised by some timid, wavering souls in and out of the Assembly, then and afterwards, and their solemn annunciation to the churches unsparingly condemned by the Repertory, a journal of high standing at Princeton, which united with

the New School in inflicting heavy censures upon the minority, it is deemed necessary and expedient, to present, in addition to what were published at the time, some remarks explanatory of the views and motives by which this minority were governed in their acts. In the first place, it cannot be denied that the minority in the Assembly of 1834, were pressed by peculiar responsibilities. The General Assembly, by the constitution of the church, being a representative body, charged with the interests of the whole church, must in her aggregate capacity, be profoundly obligated to superintend and guard those interests. Whenever the Assembly, organized under constitutional rules, transcends her legitimate powers, or declines to perform most obvious duties for the protection of the church, or takes measures to create a policy, the necessary operations of which would be, if persisted in, to undermine and overturn the whole ecclesiastical system-a vast responsibility must, of course, devolve upon the minority, if there be such, in the house. This has been decided to be the fact, in all similar and co-ordinate institutions among civilized men. They, the minority in such cases, became then the only true representatives and guardians of the Presbyterian Church; duties of vast importance devolved upon them; they owed a service of surpassing magnitude, proportioned to the clearness of their perceptions and the strength of their convictions, to their constituents; a crisis occurred which they did not, could not, anticipate-neither could they receive any instructions how to meet it. It would not suffice as an excuse for inaction, to themselves, to the church, or to the world, to say, let all alone; this majority, through the constituted channels, and at the ordinary time, will give an account of themselves to the church, which can take effective measures to correct abuses or neglects; because the majority, in such cases, according to all experience, never will fully report their transactions, their secret and deceptive conclaves, and their artful mutilation of the subjects and the rule of action in the house, and the uncandid spirit which in many instances pervades their records, with intention to mislead; they never gather up and spread out before the public eye, the mischievous and 'pernicious operations of their agents, in all their numbers and gradations, the circulation of false doctrines and promotion of disorderly measures in the church. Men who stay at home and do nothing, depending upon Congregationalists, either through the church, or in her advisory councils, to give them information of the evils they are propagating in various ways, with great zeal and perseverance, through the land, may take for granted, that they are never to know the truth, till it is too late to redeem the church. Cases in which insidious workers in society expose their own misdeeds to public view, are extremely rare, and not in accordance with the

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ruling passions of human nature. Hence it was that the minority felt bound to issue an alarm to the churches. But, in addition, the minority, consisting of about forty individuals, realized that they had rights, as well as obligations, personal and peculiar to themselves. Laying aside their representative character and responsibility, it was competent for them to speak out, in solemn accents, to their brethren in the Lord, both ministers and laymen, and implore immediate aid in this period of calamity and peril. They had individually great interests at stake. In their persons, and in their official capacities, they wielded power, if faithful, but invited rebuke and dishonour, if idle or neglectful. It could not be banished from their minds, that hundreds of thousands of sound and anxious Presbyterians, either then did, or soon would, look imploringly to them, under God, for relief in this tremendous emergency, and that a far greater number, including the youth and rising generations, would be exposed to fatal infection from the corrupt miasma, with which the church and the whole land were threatened, from the success of New School principles and

measures.

The minority felt persuaded that their public announcement was sanctioned by parliamentary precedent in all countries; by frequent appeals to the public in the House of Congress; by similar resorts in our legislative assemblies and judicial tribunals; and that no harm could possibly result from their testimony, unless by abuse of its spirit or perversion of its terms. That the crisis for such a process had truly arrived, no living and candid man could doubt, after fairly estimating the facts of the case now on record. The church had actually passed over to the possession of her enemy, in whose hands skillful efforts had been employed to erect munitions of art and power, almost defying approach on every side. In this condition of jeopardy and alarm, paramount motives sprang up from the sympathies, especially for the theological seminary at Princeton. It must be saved, and this is the most direct and effectual method, was the language of every heart and tongue. Her libraries, her professors, her edifices, her stones, and her dust, were dear to the minority, many of whom had lent their feeble aid in laying the corner stones and in carrying up the walls of that noble religious light house for God; in placing the professors in those consecrated chairs for the edification of Zion. These were all, in the estimation of the minority, if not permanently already, in a fair way to be fully at the disposal of the invaders. They had already cast lots, if not for their garments, at least for their chairs and their honours.

These professors were viewed as the protegees of the church. The minority felt, that to them, in all their delicate relations and vicissitudes, the Presbyterian branch of the Church of Christ, now