which it would be hard to escape and harder to bear," signed "30 students," but there was no name to it, and it was regarded as an irresponsible billet from some one who wished to frighten him. Mr. Burns and his friends did not leave for three or four days, and though their subsequent conduct was very provoking and refractory, there was no violence offered to one of them. On the contrary, they were treated with a great deal of kindness and fraternal confidence by many of their fellow-students from the South.

The next day the students met en masse, and passed resolutions commending "freedom of thought, of speech, of the press, and the right of individual interpretation upon all matters pertaining either to religion or politics, at the proper time and place," but condemning the course of Mr. Burns, (a foreigner,) in taking advantage of the sacred desk, and in the capacity of a minister of the gospel, to proclaim sentiments calculated to disturb the peace and quiet of the Institution, "and whilst acknowledging the right of any one to leave a religious assembly, when sentiments are uttered insulting to his feelings, yet heartily condemning all further disapprobation, by some of the students, especially as it was on Sunday evening, and about the house of God, and as mobocracy is, in its very element, inconsistent with liberty and morality:" further they say, "We most heartily condemn all discussions of said question, (slavery,) either for or against, believing that the agitation of said question will prove disadvantageous to the vital interests of Bethany College, and do, therefore, enter our most solemn protest against the delivery of any speech by any student, either from the North or South, upon the question of slavery;" closing with a recommendation to the students to disperse quietly and without any demonstrations of unkind feelings, and to abide faithfully by the spirit of the resolutions thus adopted.

Many of the Northern students, not being satisfied with these resolutions, held special meetings of their own, and dictated to the Faculty the following terms on which they "would remain:"

That the past be fully rectified; that those who were connected with the mob be arraigned before the Faculty, and publicly reprimanded or expelled from College. "And especially demanding the right to discuss, in public debate or in the pulpit, the merits of American slavery."

While such resolutions as these were being passed, these Northern students (about 20 in number) absented themselves from their classes, and set the authority and laws of the Institution, which they had pledged themselves to obey, at open defiance. Notwithstanding this, the Faculty were inclined to deal very gently with them, and it was not till all reasonable efforts had proved more than abortive, that they

resolved to put an end to the excitement and insubordination by dis missing the ringleaders in the whole affair. This, after two or three days of most earnest and respectful, but fruitless counsel and admo. nition, was announced to them. They were told that the Faculty were determined to maintain order on all sides; that they would punish disorder and violence promptly, no matter by whom perpetrated, so soon as the guilty could be identified; but that, whilst all due allowance should be made for excited feelings and the rash judgment of youths, in matters that they were not qualified impartially to weigh or fully comprehend, that forbearance could extend no farther, and that they must return to their duty. The past we overlooked, and demanded only that they would resume their duties and abandon their efforts of faction and disturbance. This was all, but this was absolutely necessary.

Some continued obstinate, and the result was the formal dismissal of five. Five others left with them. So that in all, ten were carried off by this spirit of anarchy and discord, and, since then, all has been quiet and harmonious as before. Two-thirds of the students from Northern-i. e., free States-are still in attendance, and the College was never in a more healthy or prosperous condition than now. The best feelings seem to prevail among the students generally, and we have been often pleased to see that the highest honors which they can confer upon one another, are shared, if any thing, in a more than equal ratio by the Northern students, and that, too, where the preponderance of suffrage is three or four to one on the side of the South. Since this unfortunate affair has happened, we have noticed that two of the three existing Societies have been presided over, by the election of their members, by Northern students; and in the entire history of the College, there has ever been the same liberal and unsectional feeling of fraternity in these respects, by both North and South, towards one another. We have yet a few words farther on this subject; but so recently returned from our tour in Eastern Virginia, we can add nothing more at present.

We specially request the Editors, religious and political, who have taken any notice of this affair, to give to their readers this connected statement of the whole matter. A. C.

CLUBS.

SOME of our friends send us clubs without the money. We respectfully call their attention to the terms, which require the cash. This rule is necessary. Friends who have incomplete lists on hand, can send the names they have, with the money. Additional names can be forwarded as procured. It is never too late to make up a club on this method. A. C.

OUR Correspondent is quite right. We wrote causal, and were not aware, till his communication came to hand, that a word so treacherous to our meaning as casual, had crept into its place.

We did not design to endorse Clarke, but simply to state his opinion for what it was worth.

The term means, as applied to the Eternal Word, the Second Person in the adorable Trinity, as he existed in the bosom of the Father before the world was, has not one characteristic of the sense which we ordinarily attach to it. The Scriptures authorize no such use of the word means; certainly not in those passages which speak of God's creating the world by his Word, or by Jesus Christ, or in which the Son is spoken of, "laying the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of his hands." Heb. i. 10. The Word in this sense is personal, and was the supreme efficiency, working without intermediate agencies. Of the Son as Creator, it is said, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever." Heb. i. 8. The doings of Christ in his manhood-his suffering, death, and resurrection-are quite another subject from his doings before the world was, and we are surprised that A. C. should use the one as an illustration of the other. Christ's doings, as a man, or God manifest in the flesh, are within the reach of our observation, the same as those of other men, and we can speak of them as the means to an end. But as an Eternal Son of an Eternal Father, existing prior to the production of any created thing, it is quite different. The two cases are heaven-wide apart, and we are not competent to say that He was then a means or instrument, in the sense that his sufferings in the flesh were the means of our salvation. In the one case there was no created agency concerned, as the SERIES IV.-VOL. VI.

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supposition is, that the first creative act had yet to be exerted; but, in the other case, a creature, a man is concerned, and, of course, all the ideas of means and instrumentalities are appropriate. We are not so much questioning our correspondent's ideas, as his use of a term of creatures and time, as applicable to the Creator and eternity, before time began. In his former article, he used both alike, as evidence that God does nothing without means; which, we say, is no evidence of any such thing, as we are not competent to say that the Eternal Word had the characteristics to which we apply the term means; and Moses has given us no "key to open this mystery" of the primary acts of creation, to justify such a use of the term. He has not told us that God's Word was a means, but only that God said, "Light be, and light was," merely to show that the universe came, not from the local divinities worshiped in his day, but from the will or fiat of Jehovah. It is torturing language to mark, by the same words, two things so totally different as those which we usually call means, and the fiat of the Creator, by which the universe was called into being; and we submit whether A. C., by such a use of words, adds any thing to his argument in proving that "God works by means since the world began." The antecedents of those events in time which are miraculous, also, cannot be regarded in the sense of ordinary instrumentalities. Was Moses' rod, in dividing the Red Sea, a means of doing it, in the same sense that a causeway made by the Israelites would have been? Did the clay, by which Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, have any of the characteristics of a surgical operation in removing a cataract? Was the voice of Jesus in calling Lazarus out of his grave, the means of giving him life, the same as the medical treatment by which a drowned man is restored? The common sense of mankind makes a difference in these cases, which all the reasoning in the world would fail to obviate, so as to render them the same.

It would appear from this, that A. C. does not use the word "regeneration" for a work of the heart, but for the "state" into which a man is brought by the washing of baptism. The only question between us, in this aspect of the subject, is, first, whether such is a true use of the word, and, second, whether men are to be brought into this state by baptizing them before or after the heart-work is effected. The heart-work seems to us so much above all other facts in the case, and, especially, above any thing water can do as applied to the body, that, if the word "regeneration" were shown to apply only to the latter, the theological point gained would hardly be worth a thirty years' controversy. Though our correspondent were to get the better of the argument about the use of the word regenerate, no change would be effected in the theological views of the Christian world. It would be merely settling the scriptural use of the word. To be reborn, regenerated, was understood by Nicodemus to be so wonderful a thing, that we must believe-our correspondent's views of a true Scripture terminology to the contrary notwithstanding-something more extraordinary is meant than dipping the body in water. The Holy Spirit would not select words expressive of so wonderful an idea, without something more wonderful in the subject, than such an outward act under circumstances in which it might take place.

Our concern is not as to how much an applicant for baptism knows

of "recondite dogmata," but whether he has the love of God in his heart, and has been created in Christ unto good works."

We hope the day is distant when the Baptists will cease to require a Christian experience as a prerequisite to baptism. Without such an experience, a man can derive no more advantage from baptism than the dead can from food till they have come to life.

If "a living faith must precede" baptism, as our correspondent here teaches, then he holds to what we call a Christian experience as a prerequisite to that ordinance, and where is the difference between us after all? And if there is no difference between us, why this endless controversy, as if we were not one? A reform which confines its efforts to the department of words, when the meaning is the same, ought not to have produced so great a schism. We do not compre, hend how this acknowledged identity with Baptist views can consist with A. C.'s history for the past thirty years. Still, we rejoice in the identity of Christians, yea, and will rejoice.

RESPONSE.

We have read, with much care, the preceding remarks on our former article on the means of regeneration. We are pleased to see that our highly estimable friend, the much esteemed Editor of the Chronicle, has contracted his critique on "the means of regeneration," into still narrower limits. We shall, therefore, in our present essay, follow his remarks with corresponding brevity. He says, "The term means, as applied to the Eternal Word, in the adorable Trinity, as he existed in the bosom of the Father," "has not one characteristic of the sense which we ordinarily attach to it." But who affirms, that "as he existed in the bosom of the Father, before the world was," the term means has "one characteristic of the sense which we ordinarily attach to it"? This, in our schools, would be called an ad captandum argument. But I have a much higher opinion of the Editor of the Chronicle, than to think that he designed such a sophism. But, nevertheless, it is just such an illegal use of language as is thus sometimes denominated. We never so expressed ourself, in word or writing! All the remarks, therefore, under this gratuitous presumption, or spurious reading, or interpolation, (as any one may think of it,) are alien to the subject, and command no farther notice. We do not teach that the Divine, or Eternal WORD, was a means, or a mere instrument of creation. We use the word of the WORD. Whether the Father or the Son crea

ted, the word was the means.

In the next period he says, As Creator, "the WORD is personal, and was the supreme efficiency working without intermediate agencies."

We agree. But "intermediate agencies" is not my language. We keep to the text, and not to the commentary! We teach that whoever or whatever personality created the universe, used means.

God said,