more public occasions? Paul, as we have seen, recognizes the saintly services of women, of " deaconesses" and "prophetesses." And even if he advised their non-interference in the "ecclesia," yet he did not institute the interdiction as perpetual. It was evidently a matter of conventional decorum, a concession to the peculiar oriental or pagan manners of the age, in countries in which women were extremely restricted. It was prudence in the Church not to outrage in such things the long-established customs of the East. Primitive Christianity was eminently prudent, though in all essential matters heroic. Certainly the Oriental conventionalism regarding women, requiring them, in some sections, to be always vailed when abroad, (as to-day in the Levant generally,) to sit apart and behind screens in religious congregations even among the Jews, were not matters of divine morality, but merely of local custom. Christianity in such cases, as in the more important one of slavery, did not declare direct war, but chose rather to put in operation general principles of moral training, which should, sooner or later, uproot the evil.. Assuredly Paul's concession to his times, on female decorum in the Christian assembly, has been essentially modified by our different civilization. Methodism, then, we think, is right in the freedom it accords the sex in its Church-life. It has found, with Quakerism, that a degree of feminine activity in religious life, which would have been entirely inadmissible in the ancient East, is perfectly compatible with the decorum of social, and even public, worship, and can give a gentle and hallowed dignity to the offices of the sanctuary. Good order, directed by good sense, must control this matter in the Churches; but nothing can ever invalidate the claim of woman, as a member of the Christian communion, to the right of the common "priesthood of the people."

Thirdly. May we not infer from this review of the subject that there is still much of popery to be purged away from our Protestantism? Do not its "fag ends" cling to nearly the whole apparel of the Church? The two principal characteristics of popery are its hierarchical distinctions and its abject subjection to authority. Thence have come its chief corruptions and its imperious uncharitableness, and thence also its present calamities and decadence. We have seen how simple

and democratic was original Christianity. We look in vain in the New Testament for the official distinctions and powers of the medieval Church; but do we not find traces of them today in nearly all our Church polities? If they stifled the religious life of the laity in that Church, do they not shackle it, at least, in most of our Protestant communions? And can our faith ever have its free and full activity in the world till we break off and throw from us these fetters? Does not also "authority" still dominate over us, giving undue importance to secondary matters, restricting the free action of the Christian conscience, or forcing it to break away into eccentric and perilous liberties, into sectarian divisions, and then again binding it with fetters of opinionativeness and bigotry within the sects? Have we ever pondered well the grand facts that the primitive Church was without an authoritatively defined Creed for three hundred years, and still longer without an authoritatively determined Canon, and that these were the years of its saintliest purity, of its most glorious army of martyrs, and of its sublimest territorial triumphs? In this ante-Nicene period it marched victoriously over most of the known world. In the purity and freedom of its spirit it recognized the apostolic writings, though it read innumerable apocryphal books; it held faithfully the essential doctrinal truth, forming it by gradual accretions into what was called the Apostles' Creed, (not as written by the apostles, but as expressing their fundamental teachings,) though the symbol differed in form in different lands. It preserved its spiritual life not by its "orthodoxy," but its orthodoxy by its spiritual life. The later Church has reversed the process. Functional distinctions are good, creeds are good; as matters of expediency they may be necessary in some cases; but as obligative instead of indicative, as authoritative rather than convenient, they are destructive of the liberty wherewith Christ makes us free. They have converted Christianity into hierarchism and dogmatism. Designed for the preservation of orthodoxy, they have become provocatives of heresy. Aiming at the unity of the Church, they have rent it into universal factions. But, most fatal of all their effects, by impairing its catholicity and charity they have impaired its spiritual life, and to a great extent paralyzed its beneficent working power.

Finally, from the vantage ground which we have reached in this discussion, we think we may catch some glimpses of "the Church of the future"-that ideal so eagerly sought in our day. The Methodists, with their growing hosts, the Baptists, with their zeal and their missionary expansion, the "Liberalists," with their "free thought," dream of that glory as their own. We dare not share their illusions. We see a better fate coming for the Church and the world-an era in which good men will look back to our weaknesses and petty and petulant sectarianisms with something of the wonder with which we contemplate the follies of the medieval Church. God will purify us as by fire, fusing and blending us, and bringing us forth a transformed "Church of the future." One thing only are we sure of, that the Church which attains the most individual purity of life, the most charity, and the most working energy, will have the best prestige for the future. Ever still, as of old, is the sublime declaration true that "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

ART. III. PETER CARTWRIGHT, AND PREACHING IN THE WEST. [SECOND ARTICLE.]

IN 1856, after a ministry of fifty-three years, Cartwright, yielding to long-continued importunities, decided to publish his autobiography. In his earlier ministry Cartwright kept a journal of his travels, that he might thus record the progress of Methodism; but finding that several of his co-laborers were doing the same, he concluded there was too much writing on the same subject, and abandoned his manuscript to mice and maggots, not troubling himself to make another note.

We cannot too much deplore this decision, and his preface expresses his own regret at it, since it has prevented his giving just order and precision to the existing work. Cartwright's journal would have been far preferable to the book we now have. It would have shown us the preacher in his every-day life, brought us to the scene of his labors, his joys, and sorrows, and would at the same time have presented a picture, taken on FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.—5

the spot, of the material and moral life of the West at the opening of the century. But now, as Cartwright takes up the pen in later life, he is rather intent upon giving us an edifying book than upon recounting the details of his own life. He, indeed, puts these as much as possible out of view, purposing only to glorify his God and his Church. He loves with a true filial affection this Methodist Church, which awakened in his youthful heart the desire for salvation, and which has made a poor pioneer the instrument of so many conversions. He rejoices in all its successes, and laments all the dissensions which embarrass or the defections which weaken it. He gives us a register of the yearly accessions to the Lord's flock, and furnishes a minute account of the labors of the Conferences and of their discussions, to which he listens as if the fate of the universe depended on the movements which agitate a sect of the American Church. With the intent of moral edification, his pen abounds in anecdotes. He makes record of obdurate sinners suddenly converted, of saints backslidden and recovered, of wicked men stricken by the judgments of God, hypocrites unmasked, heretics or atheists confounded.

Every sect has its store of pious narratives where Satan and the rival sects are well abused, and it is specially a book of this order that Cartwright has given us to glorify American Methodism. But here, as might well be expected in a narrative of his own life, while making war against the demon, the Baptists, Unitarians, and Universalists, he cannot avoid sometimes putting himself upon the scene; and so amid the monotony, more moral than amusing, of the narrative, his own powerful and original personality stands forth presented in vivid and piquant traits.

Peter Cartwright was born September 1, 1785, on the banks of the River James, in Virginia. His parents were poor; and his father, who had borne arms during the war of Independence, resolved when peace was made to emigrate to Kentucky with all his family. Having remained some time in Lincoln County, he pushed further on and established himself permanently in Logan County, quite at the outer limits of European settlements, and close upon the present borders of Tennessee. Peter Cartwright therefore knew no other life than that of the pioneers; he grew up in the midst of the woods, and for his

primary education learned only to read, write, and cipher a little. He was ardently devoted to all the amusements of the country, and his father made him the happiest of boys by presenting him with a race-horse and a pack of cards. His mother sorrowed over the dissipated tastes of her son. She was a woman of strict piety; she had been converted to Methodism in Virginia, and she kept herself constantly in cordial relation with the Methodist preachers who visited from time to time this remote corner of Kentucky.

His mother's remonstrances finally awakened conviction in the soul of young Cartwright, and he had been for months in great distress of mind, when a camp-meeting was held some three miles from his father's house. He went thither with the crowd who were attracted by the reputation of the celebrated preacher John Page, and here under the preaching he found relief. He was taken into the Methodist Church at sixteen years of age. His natural ardor soon displayed itself in the direction of religion. At the assemblies which he thenceforth regularly attended he felt irresistibly impelled to speak; he would mount a bench, pray aloud, or make an address, the fervor and emotional tone of which deeply moved his auditors. So some months afterward, at a quarterly meeting in the spring of 1802, the preacher in charge came to him, and, to his great surprise, bestowed upon him a regular exhorter's license. He vainly essayed to decline; the preacher was convinced of Cartwright's call, and made it a case of conscience for him to pursue the ministry. In the autumn of this same year Cartwright's father, in a process of speculation usual with the pioneers, sold his existing establishment and passed beyond the River Cumberland into a region quite new, where cultivation was but just begun. Although his residence was now at least thirty leagues from the route of any preacher, Cartwright did not fail to seek out John Page in order to obtain a certificate of membership for himself and several of his family. Page immediately granted Cartwright a license, which authorized him to travel over the region whither he had emigrated, to convoke meetings, form classes, and, in a word, to organize a circuit, while account of these labors was to be rendered at the quarterly meeting of the following autumn. This was to invest Cartwright, who had yet hardly passed his eighteenth