baptism, one God and Father of all,-one, because we are exposed to the same or similar persecutions,-one, because we are engaged in the prosecution of the same great and infinitely important object, the advancement of the glory of God in the diffusion of the truth as it is in Jesus. Your appearance in the midst of us has made that union visible. We are one, not only in that merely external union which is the boast of the Romish Church,—that union which is the result of persecution, or ignorance, or fear,-but in that blessed union of which our Saviour spoke, when he prayed for believers in every age, that they might be one, even as he and the Father

are one.

We rejoice in the success which has accompanied your efforts for the dissemination of gospel truth in the countries from which you come, particularly in the harmony and mutual co-operation subsisting between the two sister societies, the French and Geneva Evangelical Societies. Particularly, it does cheer our hearts to learn that not only have these societies succeeded in procuring the necessary funds for the work in which they are engaged, but there are manifest tokens of the blessing of God on your labours,-tokens amounting, in some instances, to what may justly be regarded as a revival of spiritual religion. May there be showers of Divine grace to refresh your thirsty soil! May thousands be called, through your instrumentality, from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God!

Dr Merle D'Aubigné, I address myself more particularly to you. You were well known to the inhabitants of this country before your arrival, as the historian of the Reformation. Your work has been read by us with delight; indeed, I do not believe that any book,—at least, any book on theology or church history in our day,-has been read with such acceptance,-I ought rather to say, with such admiration. I might say much more in praise of your excellent work; but I will not in your presence. I would rather do that which I know will be far more acceptable to you,— I would give thanks to God that he has raised you up, and given you grace to prepare and publish a work, than which none is better fitted to revive men's attachment to the doctrines and spirit of the Reformation. May you have an abundant reward!

But I am not sure that you do not stand before us in a still more interesting character. Geneva,-the city of Farel and Calvin,--had cast off its first love, and had sunk into Arianism and infidelity. You, and my beloved brother Dr Gaussen, have been two of the honoured instruments of reviving in it evangelical, I trust I may add, spiritual religion. Persecution drove you and your faithful colleagues from the Established Church of Geneva; you instituted the Evangelical Society, with its church, in which the gospel of Christ is purely, faithfully, and affectionately preached, its schemes of foreign, and internal or foreign, evangelization, and, above all, its theological seminary, in which you prepare young men, by a suitable education, for the work of the ministry in France and Italy, and even in America. I regard the formation of your society as one of the most interesting events in modern times, -one which, it is to be hoped, will issue in unspeakable blessings, not to Geneva and Switzerland only, but to all the Continent of Europe.

Be assured, dear brethren, that, so far as it is in our power, we shall give our support to the Evangelical Societies which you represent, and shall encourage the Christian people of this land to increased liberality with reference to these objects. We respond to the call which you have addressed to us to unite with you in the struggle in which the whole Protestant world will soon have to engage against Popery. The cause is common. If one member suffer, the other members ought to suffer with it. The Churches of France, of Switzerland, of Prussia, are all so many parts or members of the universal, the truly catholic Church. Let us advance together to the contest, putting our trust in the Lord of hosts, who will fight our battles: and assuredly in the end we shall obtain the victory.

In conclusion, I would express the earnest desire, that your visit to this country, and to our General Assembly, may be followed by great and important results. I hope that the ministers and people of our Church will not think it enough that you have addressed this large assemblage in a manner which has awakened the most lively interest in all who heard it, and have been addressed, in return, by the mode

rator of the Assembly; but that they will open their hearts and hands wide on behalf of the gospel in the countries to which you belong. We have reason to fear that all our efforts will not prevail to prevent the ascendancy of Popery before its fall. But it is our duty and our privilege, meanwhile, to hold up the standard of truth in the face of the world, till the Lord shall come and consume the Man of sin by the breath of his mouth, and destroy him by the brightness of his coming.

After engaging in devotional exercises, the Assembly adjourned about twelve o'clock.

THURSDAY, MAY 29.

Devotional Exercises-Minutes read-Committee on Continental Churches appointed-Committee on Popery authorised to represent the Church in Conference on Christian Union-The English Deputation introduced and heard-Report of Home Mission Committee-Case of Translation of Mr Kennedy from Rosehall to Inverary Translation refused-Case of Translation of Mr W. McKenzie from Tongue to Kenmore-delayed-Report of Sustentation Committee-Speeches of Hon. F. Maule, Mr Campbell (Monzie), Mr Speirs, Mr Dunlop-Report approved of-Thanks to Dr Chalmers, late Convener, and Deputation appointed to communicate the same-Mr Tweedie appointed in his stead -Report of Colonial Committee-Speech of Mr King-Report approved of--Case of reference from Synod of Merse and Teviotdale as to resignation of a Deacon given in to Deacon's Court-Reference as to Presbyterial Visitations.

The Assembly met at eleven o'clock, and after devotional exercises, the minutes of previous sederunt were read and approved of.

Dr CANDLISH, in reference to the proceedings of the previous evening, moved a vote of thanks to Mr Lorimer of Glasgow, for his interesting report on the Continental Churches. He remarked, that the convener of this committee had felt himself so hampered, that he had not issued an appeal to the congregations of the Church in respect to raising funds at any special time during the past year. On the recent occasion of sermons on the advances of Popery, advantage was taken of that opportunity to make collections for the scheme; but that was all that had been done. Now, without involving the Church in any additional collection, or any new scheme, he thought it might be desirable to fix some particular week, and to recommend or enjoin that on that week, either on the Lord's day, or some convenient day during the week, the attention of each congregation should be called to the alarming progress which Popery was making in foreign churches, as well as in our own land, and the claims which the societies for its suppression on the Continent had on the Free Church, and collections made in behalf of the funds of the Committee. He had also a suggestion to make in connection with the appeal made last night with regard to Christian union, as he was anxious that their brother from Geneva, who addressed them on that occasion, and in reference to that subject, should have the impression that the Free Church was not in any degree indifferent to the plan of Christian union which he had brought under the consideration of evangelical Christendom. He was aware of the practical difficulties which had been mentioned by D'Aubigné in reference to any such plan, and he was still more alive to the consideration which he had thrown out, that the chief real difficulty was a want of vitality among evangelical churches; but at the same time he could not help thinking, that in many of the churches and societies at least some beginning might be made in this direction. He would propose, therefore, that the Committee appointed in reference to Popery, and which was already authorised to represent the Free Church in any conference bearing on that subject, should also be authorised to represent that Church in any conference bearing on the subject of Christian union, giving them, however, no power beyond that of appearing among the representatives of other bodies, for the purpose of consultation on this great topic.

It was then agreed that the thanks of the Assembly be given to Mr Lorimer, and through him to the Committee on Foreign Churches, for the ability and zeal with which they have discharged their duties. The Committee was re-appointed, to be called the Committee on Continental Churches-Mr Lorimer convener-with instructions to continue their important labours in promoting the cause of truth in connection with the evangelical ministers of foreign churches. Farther, on a Sab

bath to be appointed for the exposing of the errors of Popery, the attention of the people be directed to its progress in foreign countries, as well as in our own land, and that a collection be made at some one of the diets of public worship on that day, or on some suitable occasion about that time, in aid of the funds of the Committee. Farther, the Assembly having had their attention directed, in the course of the addresses yesterday evening, as also by overtures on the subject, to Christian union, authorised the Standing Committee to be appointed on Popery, to represent this Church, as deputies of the Assembly, on any conference which may be held on the subject.

DEPUTATION FROM THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

Dr Wilson, late of Bombay, one of the deputation sent last year to the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in England, then introduced to the house the deputation from that body, consisting of Mr Campbell of Manchester, Moderator of the Synod, Mr Chalmers, formerly minister of Dailly, and Mr Monro.

rest.

The Rev. HUGH CAMPBELL came forward and said,-Moderator, it affords me very great pleasure to appear in this Assembly as a representative of the Presbyterian Church in England. There are very many reasons why you and we ought to love and support one another. Our Churches are not of yesterday, nor is our alliance the fruit of a random compact. You look upon yourselves, and justly, as the heirs and representatives of Knox, and Melville, and Henderson, and Rutherford, (hear, hear,)—while, as I said in the Assembly of 1842-the last free and constitutional Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland-we as truly and as justly regard ourselves as the heirs and representatives of the Cartwrights, and Reynolds, and Calamys, and Baxters, and the English Puritan worthies of other days. (Hear, hear.) From the Reformation downwards, our Churches were closely allied. When Elizabeth persecuted our ancestors, your fathers memorialised and remonstrated with her; and when your ancestors suffered in the fire of Popish persecution, and from the rapacity and fanaticism of a foreign mercenary soldiery under Mary of Guise and her infatuated daughter, our fathers in the council and camp of Elizabeth came to your assistance, and enabled you to establish your Church on the Scriptural and apostolic basis on which, by the blessing of God, it still continues to The alliance thus originating in an identity of faith and a community of interests, continued unshaken throughout the stormy periods that succeeded, until, in the Westminster Assembly, our fathers met and embraced, if not as members of the same National Establishment, yet as brethren in the Lord-members of sister Churches,-bound by the same covenant engagements, prosecuting the same common objects-linked together in a league offensive and defensive-and pledged by their sacramental alliance to have the same enemies and friends, and stand or fall together. And stand and fall together they did, and rose again, and are destined to rise still higher than even their fathers did. (Hear, hear.) You will have noticed, Moderator, I desire to be recognised in this House distinctively as an English Presbyterian-a descendant and representative of the English Puritan divines. Scotchman though I be by what has been termed the accident of birth-attached though I am to my native land with all the enthusiastic affection of a Scottish Highlander, yet, as an ecclesiastic, I am in heart and soul, with all the warmth and devotion of my nature, a member of the English Presbyterian Church. And whether I look at the past, or the present, or the future, I see enough to warrant my preference, and intensate my predilections. (Hear, hear.) I belong to a Church which, in its palmy days, was as rich in all the graces of God's Spirit,-as endowed with all the moral and intellectual gifts of his providence, as prolific of saints and martyrs, and as rife in the beauties of holiness, as any Church on which the Sun of Righteousness has ever shone in his circuit over the Churches of this earth. And though she fell, and for a season forgot her first love, where is the Church that has not? Assuredly not the Church of Scotland. God has not forsaken her; our God has not forgotten her. Our fathers' prayers have not been unheard; their tears and blood have not sunk in the earth unnoticed and unknown. And what though she now be small amid the thousands of Judah,-what though many of her tabernacles are now in the hands of

L

the aliens who deny her faith and blaspheme her God,-yet there are hallowed associations that breathe around her walls,-there is a heart conscious of great purposes that throbs in her bosom,-there is a hope, prophetic of glorious destinies, that animates her every act,-and a remembrance of ancestral greatness that stimulates her to exertions, while it sustains her under trials. (Cheers.) Moderator, I will be excused for dwelling, for thus lingering with fondest affection over the history of the past. Nations and families,-yes, and churches as well as individuals,—are indulged in lingering over the past greatness of their race. Nor is this feeling of ancestral self-respect necessarily a weakness, or a proper subject of ridicule; it becomes contemptible only when it is unaccompanied with any personal excellence, or when it is substituted for individual endowments. On the other hand, it becomes worthy of all praise, when it prompts to emulate those virtues which raised our ancestors to fame; and the English Presbyterian Church, I take the liberty of saying, does not rest its claims to regard merely on its ancestral glories. We are at present engaged in a course of exertions, of which, perhaps, some of my brethren may speak more in detail, but which I at present content myself with saying, that should God bless and prosper them, the results cannot but be momentous. We are increasing our churches in a ratio which, I believe, no Church in the world at present parallels; and we want only men at this moment to plant Presbyterian churches throughout the length and breadth of England. You will forgive me, Moderator, and my fathers and brethren in this Assembly will also forgive me, if (for it lies very near my heart, and engages my thoughts and my prayers by night and by day), I press this matter upon your more serious consideration. (Hear, hear.) You are aware that several of our ministers left us to fill up the vacancies your removal had occasioned in the parishes of the Establishment, (although, since I have alluded to the subject, I must add, for it has been exaggerated and distorted to our prejudice,-that the proportion of those who thus left us was not greater than that of your own evangelical friends of other days, whom you left behind you.) We have found the very utmost difficulty in filling up the vacancies that have thus occurred; and if our Irish sister, to whom we never can adequately repay the tenderness, had not stepped in to our assistance, many of our churches and our congregations must have been inevitably and irretrievably lost to us. (Hear, hear.) You, too, have given us a few, a very few ministers, but they would have been an ornament to any Church in existence. Two of them are at present beside me, and I must not, therefore, speak in their praise. But there are two of them of whom I must speak, Mr Anderson of Morpeth, formerly of St Fergus,-who has devoted his sound judgment, matured experience, and Christian zeal to the advancement of our cause in the north of England, with an assiduity and success which will hand down his name in the annals of that part of the kingdom to the hallowed gratitude of posterity; and my own tried and trusty friend, my bosom companion, the confidant of my inmost thoughts, Donald Fergusson, formerly of Dunnichen, now of Liverpool, who, with the self-devotion of his ardent heart, has abounded above measure in all the enterprises in which our Church is engaged, and who, though he has not forgotten-for which of her sons can ever forget the Scottish Church ?-yet now that, like myself, he feels that he is an English Presbyterian, is thoroughly resolved to spend and be spent in the service of a Church whose name he has assumed, whose name he has adopted, and with whose interests he is identified. But, moreover, the very excellency of these men whom you have given us, only increases our desire to have more of them. Our people cannot comprehend, and I must confess I am very much in the same condition myself, why you should have turned so deaf an ear to our piercing cries for help. We do not at all overlook your necessities at home. We estimate them at the full amount of their urgency. But we cannot conceive how a Church, which, in the mortal throes of her strugglings into existence, not only entertained, but to a great extent, accomplished the magnificent conception of sending her ministers to the most remote districts of Scotland, of scattering her missionaries throughout India and Europe, and circumnavigating the globe with her deputations, should refuse to send half-a-dozen ministers into the crowded cities of England, where Scotchmen and Englishmen, ready to welcome them, are perishing in millions for lack

of the bread of life,-I say half-a-dozen ministers, because, since the Disruption, you have given us just five; while we, in return, have given you two others, leaving in your favour a balance of three; and that is just all the ministers you have given us. Why, even the Scottish Establishment has sent as many to her miserable fragments of congregations in the south. I am perfectly aware I tread upon delicate ground, and that perhaps I may not be able to carry the sympathies of this house with me. But I am so perfectly convinced that I plead not only for the English Presbyterian Church, but also for the Church of Christ, yea, even for the interests of the Free Church herself, that I cannot but press this matter upon your most serious attention. (Hear, hear.) If you desire a sphere of labour, we offer you the finest field on which the sun ever shone-a field ripe indeed with the harvest, but in which the labourers are miserably too few. If you want a base of operations-a fulcrum on which to rest a lever which can move the whole earth-we offer you the vantage-ground of England, with all its incalculable riches, all its unbounded liberality, all its enormous political power, England, the home of all the generous emotions,-England, the native soil of all the social affections,-England, the asylum of liberty, justice, and truth. (Hear, hear.) If you ever desire to advance the cause of the Free Church, I am persuaded that a few of your leading ministers stationed in our large towns will do more to promote your interest than were they kept at home. Presbyterianism has been too much regarded as a mere Scottish or Irish institution; and while so regarded, it never can command the respect of the empire. To assume a proper position, it must be strongly represented in England. If the Church of Scotland had but done her duty to her English sister, she would not to-day have been torn asunder. And even as matters were, we command more votes in your favour in the House of Commons than you sent from all Scotland yourselves. But the battle has only commenced,-the battle of spiritual truth and liberty,—a battle, withal, that must be fought in England; and if, taught by past experience, you would pre-occupy the strong positions of the field of conflict, then, again, I say, send some men to England. Let your ministers, in the sight of God, consider whether it be not their duty to join us; and let not your Presbyteries throw obstacles in the way of translations. (Hear, hear.) Moderator, I hope this house will bear with me. I am conscious I plead your cause as well as our own. I believe the one of us cannot suffer without injury to the other. I trust you will be animated by the spirit that characterised your ancestors of glorious memory. When, two centuries ago, your fathers and ours, suffering a common calamity, entered into a solemn league and covenant to live or die,-to conquer or perish together, they set us an example which I only wish we had the wisdom to imitate. Let us, too, enter into a solemn league and covenant. Our mutual safety demands it. The interests of truth, threatened now, as of old, by the same parties, demand it; and who can tell but the God who smiled upon our fathers' efforts will now also bless ours. (Cheers.)

Mr CHALMERS of London said-Moderator, I shall occupy the attention of the house for as brief a space as possible, and without indulging in many general remarks, I shall speak mainly to two or three points of a practical kind. My friend and brother, Mr Campbell, has addressed you on the position and claims of the Presbyterian Church in England, in the spirit, and with the tone of one who has never known any other than his present ecclesiastical relation,-in such a way as might have been expected from one of her genuine and proper, not one of her adopted sons. My circumstances differ widely from his. And hence, if I shall say less than he of the independent position, and separate jurisdiction, and ancestral glories of the English Presbyterian Church, it will not necessarily follow that I am indifferent to her prosperity, or less prepared than he to spend and be spent in her service. There will be apology enough for me in the simple fact, that I have been so recently severed from the parent stock, that my wound, if not bleeding, still is green, and that sufficient time has not elapsed for my affections to strike their roots so deeply into the soil to which I have been transferred. And especially in revisiting these walls, with their solemn and stirring recollections-walls which, till the other day, I had not entered since the memorable day of the Disruption-I shall be pardoned for betraying some unwillingness to forego the proud satisfaction