entious scruples against joining it disappear. Especially is this the case where the father was a non-conformist from principle, but the children have grown up subject to the social influences around them. In England, too, it is "respectable" to belong to and to attend Church, especially the Established Church. Thus with more open and brutal vice than can perhaps be found in any country on the continent, there is in England more vital piety than in any continental land, and a high moral and religious sentiment exists and must be bowed to in all public movements.

The influence of England in its restless, meddling foreign policy has been as often, perhaps more so, in favor of wrong and oppression as for humanity and liberty. In speaking of the internal politics, one has to use quite different terms, or the same terms with quite different meaning from those we give them when speaking of the continent. The radicals, represented by John Bright and Richard Cobden, hold essentially or practically the ground of the constitutional monarchists on the continent. The present whig government is called liberal. But in the elections for Parliament last year it was impossible to tell wherein they were more liberal in principle than the tories. The tories charged the government with weakness, time-serving, and double-dealing in its foreign policy, and seemed very anxious to get into power. But on all practical questions of reforms, and progress in civil liberty, and of the diminution of the enormous privileges, there was as much unanimity as there was lately with us, between the Republicans and Democrats, in "supporting President Johnson." Not having suffered the temporary (but merely temporary) horrors of a revolution since the days of Cromwell, this England, which three quarters of a century ago was in the advance guard, a pioneer among the nations of Europe in civil liberty, has already been overtaken by most, surpassed by many, continental states. In the contest of aristocracy and rank in society against practical democracy, she has fallen behind most states; and there is every prospect that she will be left far in the background by her bolder neighbors.

ART. VII.-THE TWO METHODISMS, NORTH AND SOUTH.

THE General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is to meet during the spring at New Orleans, and many changes it is expected will there be made in the ecclesiastical organization. On which we may note,

1. Most of the changes are grounded upon the assumption that the Methodist Episcopal Church is hostile, refuses all union or recognition, and menaces destruction to the Church South. That Church makes no offer of fraternity; its press, especially the "great official" at New York, puts forth only hostile utterances; and apparently nine in ten of the northern membership ignore all claims of the Church South to the Christian name; and the whole northern Church is straining its energies to prosecute a system of "aggression" aiming at the disintegration of the Church South.

2. To prevent this consummation, it is proposed to change the name of their Church, dropping the affix "South," and announcing their Church as a candidate for practical universality. The name most prominently popular is "The Episcopal Methodist Church." Dropping their sectional name seems to our sanguine Southern friends removing the great obstacle to their over-spreading our hemisphere. We shall soon have the newnamed Church overshadowing us as the big bird Roc did Sinbad the Sailor, covering us with sudden night.

3. In order to prevent all fusion, they propose to make changes for the purpose of differentiation. If the two Churches remain similar, they will, so it is argued, assimilate, and like kindred drops be mingled into one. To prevent our swallowing and assimilating them, they will transform themselves into something utterly indigestible. They will remove all restriction upon the appointing power as to the length of pastorates. They will adopt Lay-delega tion. They will inaugurate a more staid, settled ministry, competent to keep as well as to make converts.

4. Their special antagonistic doctrinal platform is to be the utter banishment of politics from the Church; and, if we mistake not, all political topics from the pulpit. Hereby they are at issue with the Church North, which by its political action (on the slavery question) has demoralized itself. They can then deny that they are a proslavery Church just as they are not an antislavery Church; for slavery being a political topic the Church takes no sides. Individually, indeed, every man the Church might be a slaveholder

both in principle and practice, but the Church is neither pro nor anti. We note per contra,

1. While it may be that the tone of our Northern press has been unsympathizing and square toward the Southern Church, that fact may have arisen from its being supposed that the Southern Church was still truly disloyal, and utterly flouted any proposition of reunion or recognition. The more exact truth has been slowly appearing; but the impatient South seems to be now making up her mind for permanent hostility. Thus a perpetual fend is the result of misunderstanding. Did but the South stand firm and self-possessed, truth and a better feeling might come with time.

2. The arguments for the organic changes appear contradictory. If the Northern Church is so menacing, what danger is there of assimilation? Hostility is a sure enough separator, and if it be not effective, then the assimilation is a peaceful and happy one. If the Church South fully fuses into the Methodist Episcopal Church, it becomes the Methodist Episcopal Church, and possesses all its prestige of wealth, power, greatness, and universality. If a lake fuses into the ocean it becomes the ocean; and when the ocean says I, the drops that formed the lake are included and may say I, as being so much ocean. Our Southern friends make us think of the old aboriginal New York Dutch race, with whom, as with the South, "damnedyankee" was "agglutinated" into a single word. They hated the incursions of the Yankees as they hated pestilence. But the Yankees would come in multitudinous swarms, bringing industry, opulence, morality, schools and churches; and the acres and square inches of soil beneath the Dutchmen's feet grew golden, and the Dutchmen became, in spite of themselves, princely Knickerbockers and millionaires!

3. Changes made for the very purpose of Churchly division, and to prevent Christian assimilation, are immoral and irreligious. They are in the worst degree schismatic. The blessing of the great head of the Church cannot rest upon them. And they are to the Church South at the present time, in our view, most deeply dangerous and destructive. We have entertained no great respect for the pet notion of "disintegration;" but for the first time we detect its omen in these profound radical changes. Great numbers of Southern Methodists, attached to their old institutions, will come to find them in our Church. Others, if they must have staid pulpit performance, will seek it in other Churches. Others, if there

is to be diocesan episcopacy, will prefer the regular old article. Meantime their rural sections will fall into the hands of our elastic FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVIII.-18

itinerancy; and as for the permanent stations of large towns, our ministry, thanks to our colleges and institutes, have a far better training for settled conservative purposes. By every change made it will be found that they incur a disadvantage.

4. But that non-political platform, forsooth, is to work wonders in opening to them an incursion into the North! Let them come. We have already, in a former Quarterly, maintained the right of each Church to cover the whole nation, if it can. It is no "aggression." Let then "The Episcopal Methodist Church" come and convert our Copperheads, or anybody else, into the best sort of Christians they can. But, coming with any prestige of copperheadism and rebeldom, Southern Methodism, under whatever name, is not likely for the present generation to find a very alluring prospect in the North. Throughout our North the nonpolitical platform will be held as cowardly, false, and treasonsmelling; cowardly because it is evidently framed to avoid the maintenance of ethical right which is often involved in political questions; false, because the pulpits, periodicals, and books of that same non-political Church are often the most political extant; treason-smelling because it was in disunion and rebellion that that platform will be thought to have come into existence.

The Church South needs none of these differentiating efforts; whether the change of organism or the adoption of a special platform. Could she but stand firm, unchanging, calm, and hopeful in her tracks, a few short years would, as the nation blends into one, bring mutual understanding and ultimate union. And how benign our influence might be to restore that national oneness! It must take time, and forgetfulness of many a past irritation; it would require an effort of faith, and love, and prayer. That the two Churches should divide was necessary while slavery lasted. That they should not affiliate and ultimately become harmonious, can be the result of only some great wickedness.

Literal slavery is indeed a past question. The humane dealing with the negro, (upon which the favorable action of Southern Conferences has been very explicit,) is a question of degrees and shadings. There is at the present hour no wider practical difference between our two great American Methodisms than between the English and American Methodisms. And if the latter admits the heartiest interchange of churchly courtesy, why should the former wholly exclude it?

Our own Church does not know (as the fact has been somewhat overlooked by our Northern press) that repeated propositions have

been made from high sources in the Southern Methodist papers, for some steps looking toward conciliation. We have not preserved them and cannot precisely restate them. One made by the ex-editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, Dr. Summers, was, as we recollect, something more decisive than the following: Let the northern board of bishops select three bishops, three elders, and three laymen, and offer to consult with an equal commission of the Church South. Let them hold an interview, and discuss with prayerful solemnity and sincerity this question: What can be done to harmonize the two great Methodist Churches in feeling and ac tion? Let them then publish to the two Churches, either conjointly or separately, by report or address, the conclusions at which they have arrived. While these proceedings are in process, we would ourselves add, Let the prayers of both Churches be offered to Almighty God, in which, with full repentance for all that is wrong in his sight, individual and organic, we may implore the divine guidance to all that is holy and right, especially to such measures as will purify and unite us in love to a common Saviour, and make our harmony a rich blessing to our common country. And as we are, in the providence of God, destined to be citizens of one great nation, so let both Churches unitedly pray that all separating and disuniting causes may be removed; that the spirit of repentance for all past sin, of love and concord with each other, and of justice and equity to all men, may fill our hearts, that we may rejoice together in the greatness and glory of our one united nation, and cherish loyalty to its government as founded upon the principles of truth, righteousness, and freedom. Such a measure could make no near approach to reunion; it could exert no organic, only a moral, power. But would it not be a most Christian procedure, and produce a most salutary moral influence? Would it not be a spectacle on which the nation and its Churches, and the great Head of the Church himself, would look with approving interest? Might it not prevent years of heart-burning and mutual hostilities? Might it not save thousands of souls lost by our ecclesiastical wars and discords? Might it not do much toward restoring our country, purified by fire and blood from its greatest organic sin, to a unity of heart? Might it not hasten the renunciation of the spirit and doctrine of slavery from the hearts of Southern Methodists, and incline them to harmonize with the best Christianity of the age? And we believe that precisely as prayer shall prevail throughout our Church in the spirit of the Saviour's prayer that all might be one, so will such measures come into existence and move toward a blessed success.