II. Correspondence.

I. LETTER FROM THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND,

TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES, N. S.

DEAR CHRISTIAN BRETHREN: We take advantage of the meeting of our General Assembly, at present convened, to greet you cordially in the name of the Lord. We feel constrained to do so in consequence of the singularly momentous character of recent events in your country, and of their mighty influence on your respective churches. It may be premature to say much, as the echoes of war have scarce yet died away, and the future may be, in other ways, as eventful as these four years of conflict; but, without anticipating Providence, we have a plain Christian duty to discharge, in consequence of what falls already within the province of history.

God has assuredly been speaking to your country by terrible things in righteousness. The ploughshare of war has gone deep into the soul of your people. You have been long familiar with scenes of bloodshed, such as the world never saw before, and we pray God, if consistent with His holy will, it may never witness again. But, even in this respect, good has come out of evil; for the agony and ruin of war have opened up to you many new fields of Christian philanthropy. We refer in particular to the work of your "Christian Commission," with its rich provision for the temporal and spiritual wants of your soldiers and sailors; and we hope that all churches shall profit by this noble exhibition of Christian love in a singularly arduous and self-sacrificing sphere of labor.

We have special pleasure in referring to the sympathy lately awakened on behalf of America among all classes in Britain, by the assassination of your great and good President, and we adore the Most High, who has thus turned one of the blackest crimes of our age into a means of softening down asperities of feeling, of correcting grave misunderstandings, of fusing the hearts of nations in love, above all, of calling forth in full measure the prayers of Christ's people on this side of the Atlantic on behalf of your sorely stricken land. We rejoice that your country is to have rest from war, and that the restoration of peace is to be followed by the abolition of Slavery. No words could better express our views than those of your lamented President, written in April, 1864: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein

new causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God." The divergence of sentiment and action formerly existing between you and us as to this question thus ceases, and we give the glory to Him, who is righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works. As there is really nothing now to prevent a complete and cordial understanding between the British and the American Churches, we take the earliest possible opportu nity of giving utterance to this conviction and desire of our hearts. Our prayers shall rise with yours to the throne of grace, in asking, for your rulers and your people, all heavenly wisdom in dealing with one of the weightiest social problems ever presented to any country for solution. We shall watch with the liveliest interest the future history of the negro race within your borders; and you have our best wishes for the success of every scheme bearing on their temporal or spiritual welfare. We are by no means forgetful of our former share of National guilt as to negro Slavery, and it would ill become us to judge you harshly or unadvisedly. But, it is right and proper that we should encourage you by our British experience-for the abolition of Slavery in our West-India Islands removed a great stumbling-block out of our path-it led to a marked quickening of the public conscience-it gave our country a far higher Christian place among the nations, and it enabled all the churches to proclaim with fullness and sincerity the gospel of salvation through Ilim who came to undo the heavy burdens and to break every yoke. We have no doubt that your churches will be ready to follow where Providence now points the way.

As the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, we have every cause to reciprocate sentiments of brotherly kindness and charity toward members of the same Presbyterian family with ourselves. We must all feel the necessity for closer fellowship between churches that have a common language, a common ancestry, a common faith. Presbyterianism would thereby become vastly more influential for good. It would bulk more largely in the eye of Christendom, and every section of our ecclesiastical commonwealth would get enlargement of heart, by partaking of the heritage of truth and grace common to all. We beg to add that the greatest advantage would follow from the occasional visits of accredited deputies from your churches to us, and from us to you. We have much to learn from your varied schemes of Christian usefulness in dealing with a state of society so different from ours; and we know from the testimony of Dr. Duff and many others, that in the field of heathenism there are no missionaries of more truly Apostolic spirit than those sent forth by the churches of America. You on your part might also find it not unprofitable to study the working of Presbyterianism in Scotland, fragrant as our beloved country is with the memories of the martyrs, and earnestly contending, as it still does, for the faith once delivered to the saints. must not forget, however, that there are other churches beyond the circle of Presbyterianism, with which we desire to cultivate a spirit of concord, and from the field of whose experience we seek to gather like precious fruit. Let us provoke one another to love and to good works. Let us strive, as in the fire, to prevent at any subsequent time the possibility of estrangement between our respective nations. Let us pray that the same blessed Spirit, poured down so largely on your land during the period of your revival, may become the living bond of unity and peace between us. And let us ever realize the solemn fact that, humanly speaking, the Christian interests of the world hang mainly on the efforts put forth by Christ's people in Great Britain and America,

We

And now, dear brethren, we beseech the God of all grace to overrule these shakings of the nations for the upbuilding of that kingdom which cannot be moved; and we affectionately commend you to Him who will

give strength to His people, and who will bless His people with peace For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things-to whom be glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

Signed in name and by authority of the Free Church of Scotland, at Edinburgh, the 30th day of May, in the year 1865, by

JAMES BEGG, D.D.,

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

II. THE REPORTS OF DELEGATES.

I. TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THAT MET AT PITTSBURGH, PA., MAY, 1865.

Edwin F. Hatfield, D.D., S. C., Gen. Assembly, Pres. Church:

REV. AND DEAR BROTHER: Agreeably to my appointment by the General Assembly, and in company with my esteemed friend and fellow townsman, Horace Stillman, Esq., of Buffalo, the lay Delegate, I attended the meeting of the General Assembly which convened at Pittsburgh in 1865. We were interested to observe that, notwithstanding the defection of the rebellious South, this vigorous branch of our great Presbyterian family gave scarcely any observable signs of weakness or depletion.

Upon the very face of the Assembly, inspired by that high predestinarian faith which they hold in common with us, there seemed to rest the calm of that sturdy energy which has endured, sometimes so bravely, sometimes so stolidly, which has done, sometimes so righteously, and sometimes so recklessly. Their numbers were but slightly diminished, while the revival among them of that true prophetic temper, the old spirit of witness-bearing against wrong or crime, either in church or state, was as if God had given them, for all they had lost by the guilty defection of their brethren, 'beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

This fresh awakening among them of the noble spirit of the confessors was a grateful token to us of the renewal of that supreme baptism of “the Holy Ghost and of fire," with which God has so often visited the Church of our fathers, and which has made it so mighty and honored in the earth.

On all these great questions, in respect to which the glory of Christ and the honor of his truth demand, at this day and in this land, clear and faithful testimony, these our brethren, though perhaps less prompt than some in reaching their position, occupy ground not a whit less decided, just, and honorable, than that of any other communion among us.

In declarations of unfaltering, patriotic, and Christian devotion to the Government and institutions of the country, they are now perhaps surpassed by none. In firm adherence to a righteous and consistent policy of ecclesiastical reconstruction their utterances are none the less clear, and are worthy of all priase.

May God defend them against that treasonable and reäctionary spirit, some indications of which began to appear even in the sessions upon which we attended, which would recall these noble and righteous deliverances, turn to shame the glory which God has given to the standards which they blessed with their prayers, dishonor the patriot graves of more than a hundred battle-fields to which they sent their sons with earnest benedictions and in the name of God, and which seeks to sanctify a vanquished and atrocious treason by dragging its offensive corpse to the altars of re

ligion, thereby enacting a crime which to the heart of patriotism is doubly execrable, and to that of piety little less than sacrilege.

The long silence of their highest judicatory as to the crime of American slavery has at last been broken.

"The voice of the Lord is powerful: the voice of the Lord is full of majesty." And in the terrors and thunders of this tremendous war that voice has wakened every ear.

We could not but give thanks to God for that religious earnestness, I which seemed determined in its present devotion to the welfare of the freedman, to redress in some measure, the wrong of past indifference and neglect toward the slave.

As to our present and prospective relations as separate ecclesiastical organizations, though bearing the common name of a great and wide-spread communion, your Delegates believed, that the distinctive and now at least somewhat permanent and fixed characteristics of these two bodies could not be denied, and ought not to be ignored. And, while these need not, and ought not, to prevent the most cordial, courteous, and fraternal correspondence, that yet, that correspondence would be all the more sincere, helpful, and Christian, the more clearly and promptly our independent existence was recognized, and the permanency of those theological idiosyncracies which had separated us. A basis being thus laid for an honorable and Christian correspondence, we believe that such a measure will lead to mutual charity and consideration, helpfulness and coöperation in the work of sustaining the institutions of the Gospel in the thinly settled portions of our land, both bodies refusing to plant or uphold weak and rival local churches in the same community, but urging in the charity of the Gospel, and for the wider and more rapid extension of Christ's Kingdom in the land, that such feeble churches shall unite in one congregation. Such a policy as this does not, however, require nor presume as desirable the organic union of these two great ecclesiastical bodies. Believing that the agitation even of this question of organic union between these two bodies is only mistaken and mischievous, and that continually; and instructed by the significant silence of the body from which we were sent, we did not feel called upon to vex the peace of either communion by its introduction. In this spirit we bore to them your most sincere and Christian salutations, and accepted on your behalf their fraternal welcome. All of which is respectfully submitted,

Auburn, May 19th, 1866.

G. W. HEACOCK.

II. TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, MEETING AT THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ST. LOUIS, MO., MAY, 1866.

I HAVE the honor and pleasure to report, that I have presented to the General Assembly sitting at the Second Church, the commission with which I was honored by our General Assembly of last year, to convey to that body the fraternal salutations of our own.

I was received by the Moderator of that body, Rev. Dr. Stanton, with a degree of fraternal kindness quite remarkable. Both personally and officially, I was abundantly satisfied by the reception accorded to me; and I am sure, that the published report of Dr. Stanton's address will abundantly satisfy all my constituents.

I need not speak of the delightful meeting of the two Assemblies on a

subsequent evening, to the members of this Assembly, who were present; but may be permitted most thankfully to say that it seemed to me that the clock of Presbyterian history then struck, ringing in a new era of peace and love. H. A. NELSON.

Most respectfully,

Saint Louis, Mo., May 22d, 1865.

III. TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

I HAD the honor of being commissioned by the Assembly of 1864 as their Delegate to attend the sessions of the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, meeting at Evansville, Ind., May, 1865.

In now making my report of the attention given to this honorable trust, I regret to have occasion to say that, being compelled by the exigency of impaired health to leave home and go abroad about the time of that Assembly, I was unable to attend in person. The Rev. Professor George E. Day, my Alternate in the same commission, was also called, in the interests of the Theological Seminary, which he was then serving, to leave for Europe before their meeting.

Under these circumstances I addressed their Moderator a letter advising him of the appointment of Delegates and inclosing our commission. I informed him of the inability of both of us to attend, and conveyed through him, to the body over which he was called to preside, the courteous salutations and the fraternal assurances of that branch of the great Presbyterian family which it was my privilege to represent.

I respectfully submit this statement to your venerable body,
JOHN G. ATTERBURY.

New-Albany, Ind., May 15th, 1866.

IV. TO THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF MAINE.

ACCORDING to the appointment of the last General Assembly, the undersigned attended the Annual Meeting of the General Conference of Congregational churches of Maine, held at Portland, June 27th, 1866.

He sought to represent the spirit and aims of our Church at large; and the cordiality with which he was received clearly indicated the undiminished interest cherished by the members of that body in our branch of the Church.

The spiritual interest of the occasions, especially of prayer, upon which the body met in informal session, was much heightened by the fact that we met in the building made sacredly historic by the memory of the sainted Payson.

The main concern resting on the hearts and hands of the Eastern brethren seemed to be, the extraordinary need developed in the present exigency of Providence concerning the evangelization of our now redeemed land; and the energy and intelligence with which they addressed themselves to the task of providing, in their proportion, both men and means for the work, gave delightful promise of success, and were really worthy of the truest admiration and sympathy.

The response of the presiding officer to the greetings offered in the name