riods of this argument will furnish a fair sample of the way in which the author sometimes runs into the style of prophecy and then recovers himself from it, and at the same time a favourable specimen of his more impassioned and excited manner.

"The Oxford Jesuits will make overtures to the O'Connell Jesuits. The former, in behalf of the high church party, will buy in the latter, acting for the Pope and Catholicism and the continental sovereigus. The court and the aristocracy, a minority of them at least, will become Catholic; the law of the Protestant succession be repealed or trampled under foot; and thus Romanism become the established religion of Britain; the Irish will rise at home and all over Britain, and tender their services to the converted court. Care will have been taken to have commanders of the fortresses and fleets at home, and as far as may be abroad, in the semi-Catholic interest. An act will be passed settling the affairs of religion, containing a section to promote uniformity; this act will be enforced at the cannon's mouth, and thus will be lighted up the flames of another Smithfield, and the dead bodies of God's witnesses will be piled up in the great street of the city. Such, or something like it, will probably be the extinction of the glorious lights of Protestant Christianity in the British. Isles. Painful thought! How distressing to the heart that looks forward to the triumphs of religion under the auspices of British Christians! Yet from this thought we cannot escape. Yes! land of my fathers' sepulchres, thou art to be again. drenched with the blood of God's holy martyrs! Yes! glorious England, thy high towers shall be prostrated ;-thy defences, almost omnipotent, shall fall into the hands of thy real foes. The wild ferocity of the gigantic tornado will sweep over the cliffs of Albion,-the hills of Caledonia, the green fields of Erin; and pour down in all their maddened rage upon the wide Atlantic."

In the twenty-second lecture, we are told that the grand confederacy of all the aristocratical interests in Europe, after crushing the Protestant cause there, will attack America. The probability of this is augured from the vast increase of Roman Catholics among us, by immigration and the influence of their hospitals and schools; from their total subjection to the priesthood; from the efforts of the Leopold Foundation; from the unwise liberality of our policy towards foreigners; from the influence of Jesuits in our national

politics; from the very freedom of our government and the separation of church and state, laying us open to the wiles of papists; from our contiguity to Canada, Mexico and the West Indies; and from the general and invincible apathy of Protestant America. The winding up we give in Dr. Junkin's own language.

"Thus far, in general, we see the steady shining of prophetic light. But when we descend to particulars, it becomes us to speak with reserve and to suggest probabilities. It is probable, that the combined forces of aristocratic Europe in their effort to establish rule in this land, by establishing the Catholic religion, will be foiled. The exotic will grow in our soil only in a forced and sickly manner, Its nourishment must be brought from Austria, Italy, or some sister country. It must be bedewed with holy water from the font at Rome, and the heat which nurtures it must be the fires of the auto-da-fé: and notwithstanding all, the plant will sicken and die. Nay, rather it will be hewn down by the two-edged sword of a free press and a free pulpit. We shall have a struggle short and transient; but fierce and most destructive to our invaders. The approach of it will unite all sects of religion and all parties in politics, and these States United, and fighting in defence of the religion of the Son of God and the liberty wherewith He has made us free, can never be conquered. Back from our shores they will be hurled with a tremendous overthrow. Nor is it to be believed that we will not follow them. Is it probable that having been forced by them to depart from our wonted policy, to enter into alliances with the whole Protestant world, for the common defence, we will draw off as soon as they shall have retired with the shattered remains of their invincible armada? If not, then and by that time, the grand Protestant alliance, at the head of which will stand in unassuming dignity, the Republic, will have matured their plans and concentrated their forces, which will pour in from the North and the East, but chiefly from the West, to intercept and pursue the retreating fleet of the enemy. Those parts of the British navy, which shall have remained faithful, and shall have taken refuge in the East, and in our seas and harbours, the American navy and a thousand privateers shall hang upon their rear. Meanwhile, the Irish, Scottish, and English Protestants shall be active, though secretly, and the moment in which the combined fleet strikes the British

strand, they will spring to their feet, and hail their deliverers. Then will follow the concussion; the court and leaders of the Catholic aristocracy will be forced to fly to the continent, and leave England in possession of the friends of the witnesses. Thus will fall the tenth part of the city, as above described. It is probable, that there will be organized in the British Isles, a government much nearer the true principles of equal rights, than they have hitherto known. The hereditary nobility, the mitred and mammon aristocracy, and the national debt, will all perish together. This terrible earthquake will not leave a wreck behind. It is probable, that henceforth the ocean will be all and forever Protestant, and the English language, be its mother tongue. This perfect supremacy of the sea, will give the recently revived witnesses full leisure to perfect their plans of government, and enable the dynasty of the people, to acquire by experience and practice, facility in the management of public affairs.

"In view of such probabilities, or if they are barely possibilities, what ought to be our course of policy? First. We should cherish the pure principles of the Christian religion. These will be pre-eminently the battles of the Lord: and he is manifestly preparing American seamen to fight them. The victory that day, will not be to the strong, physically, nor to the multitude: but the Lord of hosts will fight for us. Second. We must keep a vigilant eye upon Popery in our precincts. And, in regard to it, let us always distinguish between Popery and the people deluded by it. We should treat the people with kindness, and endeavour to enlighten them in the knowledge of the gospel, and so break the yoke from off their neck. But the priests and nuns and their horrible impurities, particularly the Jesuits, we should watch narrowly. These are Popery. By that day this party must have put in a president, some more of our national judges and congressmen, and in our legislatures may baffle strong majorities exceedingly, even in a constitutional way, and by delay, do much to aid the enemy. Third. We should attend to our national defences. The true God is our defence, but he makes use of means. us look to our wooden walls,-rather let us make floating walls of iron, and use all due diligence for our own safety, that we may not have occasion to reproach ourselves for the high and honourable service to which our Gɔd may call us."

Let

This last suggestion will illustrate what we have already mentioned as a characteristic of the work, its strong patriotic and American spirit, by means of which our secular affairs are clothed with a religious interest, and brought within the confines of a subject, from which nothing has been commonly regarded as more foreign than our popular elections and national marine. If we have done injustice to that portion of the work which we proposed to analyse, or rather to abridge, it has been wholly unintentional. The rest of the volume we must leave to the perusal of our readers, simply adding in conclusion, that the doctrines of Miller, and some current forms of Millennarianism, are not only rejected but refuted by the author with a good deal of severity.

ART. V.-Presbyterian Government, not a Hierarchy, but a Commonwealth: and, Presbyterian Ordination, not a Charm, but an act of Government. The substance of two arguments delivered before the Synod of Philadelphia met in Baltimore, October, 1843. By Robert J. Breckinridge.

It is truly mortifying that the Presbyterian Church, at this period of her history, instead of "leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ and going on unto perfection," should be employed in the juvenile task of laying again the foundation of the "doctrine of laying on of hands." We are utter disbelievers in the vaunted efficacy of a perpetual recurrence in the spirit of sceptical inquiry, to the first principles of our organization. The distinctive features of the Presbyterian form of church government have been known and settled for ages; and yet there are some who would persuade us that all who have hitherto embraced this system have used it, as common people do their watches, without comprehending at all the true principles of its construction; and who seek therefore to divert the energy of the church from reaching forward unto those things that are before, and waste it in the re-examination of foundations that were long since well and securely laid.

It is a great evil, when a church, instead of acting with the genial vigour of a well settled faith in the established principles of her organization, is agitated with a perpetual inquiry as to what her principles really are. If the Presbyterian Church of this country after a century of welldefined practice under a written constitution, needs to be instructed in such elementary matters, as who ought to perform the work of ordination to the ministry, and what constitutes a quorum of her ecclesiastical courts, we see no reason to hope for any progress in all time to come. If these matters have not been already settled beyond a reasonable doubt, we see not how they can now be settled so as to prevent them from becoming the means of future agitation.

It forms a part of the mortifying character of the present agitation of our church, that it should touch upon questions that are in themselves of such little moment. How many members shall be required to constitute a quorum of a Presbytery, and whether among the designated number there shall be one or more ruling elders are questions, that involving no principle of abstract truth or necessary order, can be determined only by general considerations of expediency. We know not what incessant and powerful appeals to some of the worst principles of human nature. may effect in the end, but we are sure that no calm and considerate argument will ever succeed in convincing the sober judgment of the ministers and elders of the Presbyterian church, that our fathers in establishing the quorum clause in our constitution, or their successors in their uniform practice under it, had any intention to encroach upon the rights of the elders, or diminish in any degree their importance. The notion that the intent or the effect of the rule, or of the practice under it, is to establish a hierarchy, or to take the initial step towards so monstrous a conclusion, is simply farcical; or at least it would be so if no other means than dispassionate argument were employed in support of it. Nor do we suppose that an attempt to show that our fathers or ourselves in maintaining that ordination to the office of preaching the word, and administering the sacraments should be performed by those who have themselves been authorized to discharge these functions, did really disclose an implicit belief that ordination was a mystical charm, would be deemed worthy a serious thought were this attempt made in the simple sincerity of