search our own heart and compare our character with the perfect law revealed in conscience and the Bible. Judged by that standard, we do not find ourselves bereft of all natural affection, or of all generous impulses, but we do discern alienation from God, a wrong purpose, a living for self in the present, rather than for Christ and eternity; and our best endeavors to reform prove futile, until we cry with the Apostle, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" SIN is not, according to our apprehension, an external act, but an inward state; a breach of that first commandment, to love the Lord our God with all the heart, and under the conviction of personal degeneracy and of personal transgression, we learn to appreciate the promises of Scripture, to believe in Jesus Christ, and to pray for the Holy Ghost. The enormity of iniquity has been manifested by every new display of the divine goodness, and by its certain results upon our spiritual being in discord and degradation. We learn from conscious ill desert and helplessness to understand the necessity of a divine propitiation as our only chance of salvation, and of divine grace as our only hope of sanctification. We are instructed by the Bible that all mankind are in a similar condition, and so far as our investigations extend, we find on close inquiry that the human heart responds to this verdict, and when brought clearly to discern itself in the light of the divine law, confesses its utter defection from supreme love and service to the rightful Sovereign. Had we undertaken a search after the character of man; we should not have imagined when a gentleman gave us a polite reply to our civil address that he was to be canonized, nor when an innkeeper did not cheat us so badly as we anticipated, that he was necessarily a sincere Christian; but we should have watched to ascertain whether faith in God and reverence for His law were the ruling principles of action. With our idea of duty we should never have inferred that "to esteem the noble rather than the saint," "to regard this world and not the better," were venial errors, which can be atoned for by the amenities of the parlor; or by the subscription to a hospital. We should never have thought martyrdom a proof of the predominance of right feeling, or devised this ingenious plea, by which a very natural query is thought to be answered:

"Yet some may exclaim, Martyrdom a glorious thing for mankind! Why then is it that the martyr cannot live! Wherefore has he expired in agony, but that his fellow men were set in malignant, unappeasable wickedness against him? Ah! that is because at the time, as the great Martyr said, they know not what they do.' Afterwards they adopt him, whom they hated and slew, into their highest honor and love. Yes, not a martyr was ever lost. The

heart of man reclaims all the holy suffering confessors of God, and by its reclamation and admiring affection, demonstrates its own capacity for self-sacrifice." p. 307.

We cannot forget another affirmation of Him who is here styled the great Martyr. "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" The exposition of this passage in contrast with the previous quotations, will exhibit the diverse views of human nature which result from different conceptions of sin and of its deserts.

Our doctrine may appear irrational to the author of this volume, but it will evince our disagreement with his publication, and may indicate the reason why we do not recognize him as an expounder of the Gospel: for that which he denies, viz, the universal and entire alienation of man from God, so that without Divine interposition and Divine renewal we should all perish, is our explanation of the Gospel, our commission to preach the Gospel, and the constraining occasion of our love to Him who first loved us, and gave his Son to die for our sins, according to the Scriptures.

ART. VIII.-OHIO CONGREGATIONALISM.

WHAT shall be the forms assumed, what the spirit manifested, and what the doctrines held by the religious bodies at the West, are questions of great interest to Christians, both East and West. In what reputation we shall be held by our brethren, whom we have left at home, is a question in which we at the

West feel much solicitude. We left the land of our birth, as we trusted, by call of Providence and the Spirit of God; some of us to lay the foundations of many generations, some to be tossed hither and thither by the winds and currents, which always occur in a period of transition. And now as we anticipate revisiting the scenes of our childhood, we want to know whether we shall receive a brother's warm embrace, or be looked at over the left shoulder and elbowed out of good company as men who have forsaken the old paths. In other words, whether, because in accordance with the advice of our brethren we retain our Congregational name and privileges, and have not become Presbyterian, we are to be regarded as a daughter who had wandered from home and raised up a family without change of name, and our churches as her children?

Especially is this true in respect to us in Ohio, where stands Oberlin College, and into whose ranks are admitted many of her students, where also we are told that all the New England Congregationalism is in Presbytery, and that we of the State Conference can pretend to no such thing. We wish, then, to tell our brethren, what has been our past condition, what we have done, what we are doing, what is our hope for the future, and the grounds for that hope.

The Western Reserve was settled about the year 1800, by emigrants from New England, mingled especially along the southern and eastern borders with emigrants from Pennsylvania. The first ministers were principally Presbyterian, who organized strictly Presbyterian churches, some of which, after the formation of Grand River Presbytery, changed to Congregational connected with Presbytery. The Congregational ministers, who came soon after, organized Congregational churches, and it is believed a consociation, after the manner of Connecticut.

In 1814, Grand River Presbytery was formed upon a plan of union, differing somewhat from that between the General Assembly and the General Association of Connecticut, by which Congregational churches were admitted to presbytery as component parts thereof, as truly as the presbyterian. The Congregational churches were also accommodated with a standing committee, which, in some instances, did the business of the church like a session, so that they became Presbyterian in fact, except that the decisions of presbytery were to be regarded as advice, and the Congregational churches had the privilege of making use of a council, instead of the presbytery.

This organization was designed by its originators to be permanent, but by the churches generally was understood to be

temporary; whence they derived their understanding we are not aware. It is not strange that in looking for the Congregational portions of the plan, they were not to be found. The churches, therefore, soon abolished the standing committees, or limited their powers and transacted their business congregationally. The plan was adopted to enable Congregational and Presbyterian ministers to act together; but in the character of the population there was, over wide regions, no more reason for a presbytery than in Massachusetts or Connecticut. The population was all, or nearly all, Congregational, and several of the presbyteries had not for a long season any Presbyterian church; some never had any, and another only one. Ecclesiasticism must have a wide and imposing organization, and something to make it of. Upon the necessity or wisdom of the plan we pass no judgment. That it was formed by good men, in the integrity of their hearts, we have no doubt.

At an early day some of the churches began to think it time that the season of pupilage was past, and that they ought to assume the forms which their name indicated, and be divorced from presbytery. But the thing was to get away. It was understood that the assent of presbyteries was requisite, and they acted the part of an importunate host, and said stay a little longer, and negotiated by letters and committees for the continuance, and it was a tedious process to get away. And when the church had withdrawn, the minister remained, and this was another subject of agitation by which some churches were divided. In our case, the church withdrew from presbytery and the minister united with it at the same session.

Soon after this movement began, Oberlin College was founded. Most of its founders were ministers of the Presbyterian church, having some peculiar views of theology, but earnest, religious men, seeking a higher spiritual life. One was an Armenian, another held a philosophy among whose dogmas was the simplicity of moral acts, and they developed, what is believed to be an unscriptural theory of perfectionism. The object aimed at in the foundation of Oberlin College, was to found an institution of learning, in which all the influences should be as favorable as possible to piety. For this purpose they sought to plant around the college a community of devoted Christians, and to make a society which should be a pattern for others; and to make it and the college as entirely one as the nature of the case would admit. For this, among other reasons, a large part of the ancient classics were excluded from the course of study. An attempt was made to unite it with the then recently founded college at Hudson, which failed.

The men connected with Oberlin were abolitionists, and had other theories of reform, usually denominated ultra. There doubtless was among them a leaven of asceticism manifest in their abstinence from meat and other things. Hudson took the ground of orthodoxy, of conservatism, of the plan of union; Oberlin of perfectionism, of reform, and of Congregationalism. This complicated matters still more; for while on the one hand there was, in many individuals, and in many churches, a strong inclination towards congregationalism, they were held back by fear of Oberlinism. "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingeus, cui lumen ademptum."

This was held up in terrorem to keep them from moving; and it availed to frighten the timid and the conservative, and to make the most judicious and zealous for sound doctrine hesitate. Still the movement went on, slowly, but continually gathering force. The disruption of the General Assembly in 1837, and the controversies which led to it, helped it much. Various unsuccessful attempts were made at organization, some of them failed because they embraced ministers and churches connected with presbytery, and therefore the Congregational organization was made subordinate and left to die.

Ministers all united with presbytery, or if they did not, the fact was the occasion of suspicion; but such a union was a certificate of orthodoxy. It was natural that ministers should desire their churches to go with them, and use an influence, very quietly indeed, to bring them to do so. It came to pass, therefore, that those wishing to withdraw from presbytery could obtain little counsel and little sympathy from any ministers, unless they were in sympathy with Oberlin, and the fact that churches, sound in the faith as any other, did withdraw notwithstanding that terror, shows how strong was the congregational element, and the opposition to slavery, which every where united with it.

But what should they do when they were out? Isolated, suspicious, suspected, without a ministry of reputed orthodoxy, except in presbytery, when some were exanimo Presbyterian and others such by constraint of circumstances, some of whom would of necessity be building up a Presbyterian, and others a Congregational party in the same church? It is no marvel that such churches should in the struggle be weakened, distracted, divided, and that this fact should be used to retain others. And as all such movements necessarily do, this, along with those who acted from principle, deep seated and well understood, gathered the fearless, the restless, the factious and the discontented from whatever cause, but it also embraced a large