a faculty of feeling; this brings us to the same result as before, the heart is the grand qualification for sustaining obligation.

It is evident that the great design of this capacity is that minds may enjoy happiness, and that they should feel obligation to seek their own and promote the happiness of others. There can be no doubt that this heart is capable of increasing degrees of happiness or misery. We believe it will be eternally expanding its capacity for enjoyment, if in this life it shall be prepared to enjoy the development of eternal scenes; or if not prepared to delight in those scenes, its capacity for misery will be for ever increasing. The everlasting increase of knowledge will bring along with it an everlasting increase of pleasure or pain. It is not at all wonderful, therefore, that so much importance should be attached to the heart in the scriptures of truth; that God should look upon the heart to ascertain the character; should demand the heart as the primary faculty of obedience, and predicate obligation and ultimate responsibility principally of its character and operations. How elevated, with this capacity fitted for the enjoyment of God, may man become? Bound to the throne of God for ever, by a heart fitted for deriving enjoyment immediately from the perfections, glory and government of the only true God-to know whom is eternal life! But how debased and forlorn in wretchedness, with this capacity unfitted for the enjoyment of God, may man become? Bound to existence by the hand of God, and to his dominion who made him, by an obligation which he perpetually violates, who can estimate the misery of his eternal curse! These thoughts arise from the capability of man's heart to feel, without entering into an estimate of his moral character and relations, any further than the principles of his being necessarily imply them. VOL. IX. Ch. Adv.

We close this article with a single remark, obviously suggested by the foregoing examination. It is this, a correct knowledge of the heart, as a faculty of the mind, is of vast importance in understanding and applying the holy scriptures. Every man who errs in his view of this faculty, will be at fault in the interpretation of many parts of the Bible. If the heart mean a distinct, permanent faculty, consisting of different propensities or aptitudes, then we shall understand and apply the Bible descriptions of its change and influence agreeably to their philological import; but if we understand it to mean exercises only, we must have a new rule of interpretation of many passages, and shall often find difficulty in their application. Illustrations of several principles and facts now suggested, will be given hereafter.

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

No. II.

Agreeably to an intimation in our last number, we are now to endeavour to show how the majority in the last Assembly came to be what it was. On this point, we have no hesitation in saying, generally, that it was the result of preconcerted plan and effort. This has been freely admitted by some who helped to form the majority. It was, indeed, openly avowed by a member, on the floor of the house, that he had come to the Assembly for the express purpose of using his influence, with others, for effecting, if possible, two things.One was, to vindicate Mr. Barnes; and the other, to change the Board of Missions, and put out of office the Corresponding Secretary and General Agent of that Board. His errand, without doubt, was the same with that of many others; and we think, that without any constrained

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or unnatural inference, it might afford a solution of the problem before us-even if there were not known facts, as there certainly are, whose indication is precisely the

same.

In the winter previous to the meeting of the General Assembly, extra copies of the Philadelphian, to the amount of a good many hundreds, containing a favourable statement of the case of Mr. Barnes, and his own explanations and defence of the sermon which had led to the proceedings against him in the Presbytery of Philadelphia, had been sent gratuitously into almost every section of the Presbyterian church. Shortly after this occurrence, the Corresponding Secretary and General Agent of the Home Missionary Society, issued a series of letters, published at Cincinnati, assailing the character of the Corresponding Secretary and General Agent of the Assembly's Board of Missions, and through him, implicating deeply the proceedings and the published report of the Board itself. Strong excitement was doubtless produced and cherished by these means, in the minds of those friendly to the person, principles, and cause of Mr. Barnes, and to the measures, operations, and plans, of the Home Missionary Society; and hostile to the decisions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and to all who favoured those decisions; and likewise to the Board of Missions of the General Assembly, and especially to its Corresponding Secretary and General Agent. Thus, if we combine friendship to Mr. Barnes, love of the new theology, partiality to the Home Missionary Society, hostility to the Board of Missions, and special resentment against its faithful and efficient secretary, and consider all these active principles as put under a strong excitementwe shall be at no loss to account for the exertions which were made to secure that kind of a majority

which appeared in the last General Assembly; and we shall cease to wonder, if those who were elected were more generally and punctually present in the Assembly, and at its very opening, than those who felt little else than the ordinary motives to attend.

There were, however, some other circumstances relative to the election of members to the last Assembly, peculiarly favourable to the ensuring of the majority which was actually obtained. In some sections of the church, the flagrantly unconstitutional practice, heretofore noticed, had become considerably extensive-the practice of sending forward to the Assembly men commissioned as ruling elders, who had never been either ordained or elected as elders. These, to a man, it is believed, were found in the majority; their previous feelings, principles and views, having fully disposed them to place themselves on that side of the house, on every important question. What their number was is unknown, but it doubtless formed an item of some importance. Another considerable item was formed by the missionaries and agents of the Home Missionary Society. Having no stated charges to leave, their attendance on the Assembly was less inconvenient than would have been that of settled pastors; and their readiness to co-operate in putting down a rival Board,-a chief object in view, as the declaration to which we have adverted demonstrates-could not be questioned. In Presbyteries, therefore, in which their known sentiments were approved, they were commissioned to the Assembly, in far greater numbers, it is believed, than on any former occasion; their attendance also was general and punctual, and they voted in mass with the majority.

The gentleman who became the Moderator of the Assembly, and the Corresponding Secretary and General Agent of the Home Mis

sionary Society, there is good reason to believe, had the chief agency in marshalling the measures and the men, that gave character to the Assembly. The former individual had spent a part of the preceding autumn, and the whole of the win. ter, on a visit to the south; had travelled considerably, and had, if we are rightly informed, attended several judicatures of the church in that section of our country: and that he there used all his influence to insure the result which was witnessed when the Assembly convened, and that the Secretary and agent of the Home Missionary Society did the same in the north and east, where his influence and operations were most extensive, none we suppose will deny or doubt. That the candidate for the Moderator's chair, to whom every vote was to be given, had also been agreed on, was, if there were no other evidence, so strongly indicated when the vote came to be taken, that we believe the fact was questioned by

no one.

The preconcerted operations and arrangements which have now been noticed, were conducted with wonderful secrecy and address; for widely extensive as they necessarily were, those whom they were to affect unfavourably, did not, we know, even suspect their existence. They had themselves made some exertions to secure a return of such members to the Assembly as they believed would favour their cause; and they did not doubt that their opponents had done the same. But that such an extended, active, and systematick combination had been entered into against them, was as perfectly unknown and unapprehended by them, till it began to develope itself in the choice of a Moderator, as if the thing had been in itself an impossibility. In military phrase, they had been completely outgeneralled, and were taken perfectly by surprise. Had the facts which became manifest during the

sessions of the Assembly been generally known or suspected before the meeting, we are confident there would not have been so many absences of the old school Presbyterians, as was notoriously the case. Some absences there doubtless were on both sides, but they are believed to have been threefold as numerous on the side of the old school, as on that of the new.

We should feel ourselves inexcusable for devoting to the foregoing statement, so much space as it occupies, if it did not serve, and if indeed it were not necessary, to show what is the present state of the Presbyterian church; and if a better and more general knowledge of this state, were not, as we firmly believe, essential to its safety, perhaps to its existence. Well do we remember the time-and we have a melancholy pleasure in recollecting it-when there was no planning or electioneering for commissioners to the Assembly: when, in some Presbyteries going to the supreme judicatory of our church was a privilege or a duty-and regarded more as the latter than the formerwhich was taken in rotation by the members: when there was no preconcert whatever, on the subject: when all the inquiry was, who could go with the greatest convenience, or who were the ablest men that the Presbytery could send: when the coming together in the Assembly, was a universal meeting of brother with brother, and the social intercourse at such meetings was of the most free and delightful kind: when the theological views of the members, if not perfectly harmonious, were so little at variance as to produce no discord: when the constitution of the church both as to doctrine and government, was cordially approved, and made, in practice as well as in name, the standard by which every thing was fairly tried; and when, of course, the first manifestation of heresy, was nipped in the bud.

Secretary and general Agent of the A. H. M. S. to amalgamate the Board of Missions of the General Assembly with that Society. It is readily admitted that that society has done much to supply with the word of life and the ordinances of the gospel, the destitute portions of our land: and it was among the first acts of the Assembly's Board of Missions, after its new organization, to invite it to a friendly correspondence and co-operation. Nothing less, however, than a formal connexion of the Board with the society, and associating it with some seven or eight religious bodies, most of them congregational, and without any formulary of faith or government, would satisfy the advocate of amalgamation. The palpable inexpediency, impropriety, and even unlawfulness, of the proposed connexion, has been distinctly and fully shown-but shown and urged in vain. In vain has it been said, and often repeated-"Pursue your own course, and suffer us to pursue ours. In this way more funds will be raised for missionary purposes, and more relief will be sent to the destitute. Your principles of association and organization we cannot adopt. But we will rejoice in all the good you do; and if you will consent to act fraternally, we will not interfere with you, nor hinder you, more than unavoidably happens in the case of all the numerous benevolent institutions of the day, which seek, as many of them do, their supplies and patronage from the same sources The missionary field is wide enough for us and for you, and if you will be neighbourly, and leave us unmo

the pressing together of parties already alienated, would not increase, instead of allaying, their irritation and jealousy. Discord thus promoted in the church at large, has thence been transferred to the General Assembly. There, an equal voice with the friends of the Assembly's Board is possessed by the members of the A. H. M. S. in disposing of all the affairs of an institution which they regard as a rival; while they manage their own concerns without any objection or hindrance whatsoever, from those whom, in the Assembly, they harass and seek to overrule. The palpable inequality and impropriety of such a state of things, requires no argument or explanation to expose it. Much longer it cannot, and ought not to continue. In what way it is to be remedied we know not; but in stating the immediate exciting causes of the lamentable divisions, controversies, and alienations which mark the present distressing state of the Presbyterian church, we should not do justice to the subject, if we did not set down as the most effective of all, the plans, and measures, and demands of the A. H. M. S., and the interference of its members, both in the General Assembly and out of it, with the Board of Missions, formed and sustained by that judicatory, and directly responsible to it for all its transactions.

In our next number, the course pursued by the last Moderator of the General Assembly will come under consideration.

ORIGINAL LETTER OF THE REV.

ROBERT HALL.

The following copy of a letter from the late Mr. Robert Hall to a friend of his, was some time since found among some papers of a deceased relative. It has never ap