certainly as the most favored and the most gifted of the Episcopal clergy; men, too, who, as ministers of the Saviour, will occupy as elevated a position before the throne of the Redeemer as they themselves will. They, by their doctrine of exclusiveness, are holding up before the world all other ministers of the Gospel, however learned, successful, or devoted to the cause of their master, as intruders into an office to which they have no claim; as deceivers-asserting a right to which they are in no way entitled; as injuring true believers by administering ordinances which have no validity; as Korahs and Dathans ministering strange fire before the Lord; as exposing both themselves and their flocks to the vengeance of heaven by unhallowed and unauthorized ministrations. Thus, by a fair construction of his public acts, every Episcopal minister in the land must be held to regard the ministers of all other denominations; thus he expresses a public wish that they should be regarded by their own flocks and by the world at large. There is a large class of ministers in the Episcopal Church who, we trust, cannot in their hearts so judge of the ministers of other churches; and we find it difficult to account for the fact that good men, such as they are, can consent to occupy a position which makes proper, if not inevitable, such a construction in regard to the views which they entertain of the ministers of the Lord Jesus in other denominations. They are "low-churchmen." They profess to regard substance more than forms; to consider the doctrines of the church as of more importance than any modes of devotion; to believe that there is one "Catholic Church," and that the members of that church are all who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God, and who have true faith in the Redeemer. Some of them go even farther than this. They would recognize the ministers of other denominations if their "canons' did not forbid it. But how is it that they can consent to live and minister under such canons; that by their own acts they proclaim every day that those canons are right, and that the ministers of all other denominations are intruders!

(5.) We have one other consideration to suggest to the ministers and members of the exclusive Episcopal Church. They are troubled that their church is not "popular" with the masses; that it does not commend itself to the public mind. They have,

we understand, appointed a committee to inquire into the cause of this, and to ascertain how the "church" may be made more "popular," or may commend itself anew to the community at large. There was occasion for the appointment of such a committee. The apprehensions of the Episcopal Church are wellfounded on this subject. Episcopacy, out of the cities, is not popular, and does not commend itself to the masses of the community. We can suggest to our Episcopal friends in their trouble one reason why this is so, and why it must be so. It is found in this spirit of exclusiveness. It is because they stand aloof from all the rest of the Christian world; and because it is not in accordance with the spirit and genius of the American people, that one small denomination shall thus proclaim by their acts that all the authorized ministrations of religion are with them, and that all others are left to the "uncovenanted mercies of God." Let that committee begin where it should begin, and seek to bring back the Episcopal Church to what it was when Bucer and Ecolampadius-when Calvin and Knox-were regarded as true ministers of religion-to the views of Cranmer, or even Hooker and Stillingfleet, and one reason why the "church" is not adapted to the masses, would cease forever. Till that is done; till the Episcopal Church ceases by its public acts to pour contempt on all other ministers and churches in the land, it will occupy the position which it does now-respectable; but among the least of the tribes of Israel.

And for similar reasons we claim and demand of the Baptist Churches that they shall recognize the members of other churches, as members of the Church of Christ. We do not ask this as a boon, we claim it as a right. We do not come and present a humble petition that this may be so; we insist that, in all good faith, it shall be so. We claim it on the ground that all the members of the redeemed church are equal before God, and are equal in their rights on the earth; on the ground that other Christians are not inferior in the evidence of piety, in zeal, in learning, in usefulness, and in the proofs of the Master's favor; on the ground that Baptists have no claim from their origin or their history to pre-eminence or exclusivism; on the ground that they can never so demonstrate from the Bible that immersion is the only mode of baptism that will

be acceptable to God, as to be a satisfactory argument to any candid and reasonable man outside of their own communion; on the ground that they can never demonstrate from Scripture. that Christians have a right to give to any ordinance of religion. —any mere rite or ceremony-and especially any mode of performing a rite or ceremony-such a prominence as to override all other distinctions, and to constitute the peculiar rule of judging of other men; on the ground that they can never demonstrate that the question about the qualification for membership in the Christian Church depends on the quantity of water that shall be used in baptism. We care not how much water any body of Christians may use, though they should insist that for themselves they prefer to be laved in the Atlantic ocean to being immersed in the Jordan; or prefer being immersed in the Jordan to being washed in "Onion river;" or should prefer being washed in Onion river to being immersed in a baptistry in Sansom street or in Spruce street. Let them enjoy this privilege, if they deem it a privilege; but let them not exalt this to a position to which Christ has not exalted it, or make that a test of character and of a title to heaven, when Christ has made repentance and faith in himself the only ground of being recognized as his followers all over the world.

And our Scotch brethren! Followers of John Knox, of Andrew Marvel, and of Richard Cameron! Descendants of the men who prayed, and toiled, and fought, and bled for Christian freedom-for the great principles of the Protestant Reformation for the rights of conscience-for the privilege of worshipping God freely! How often have their earnest prayers for Christian freedom and for the enjoyment of the rights of conscience, been heard on the hills and in the glens of Scotland; among its wild barren rocks and mountainsthemselves pursued by fire and sword because they demanded liberty of conscience. How often have they stood up boldly and bravely before the world-defying Kings, and Popes, and

*The celebrated Lemuel Haines was riding with a Baptist brother, when they came to a certain river. "See," said the Baptist brother, "brother Haines, here is water. What doth hinder you from going down into the Jordan?" Brother,” replied Mr. Haines, "that is not the Jordan, it is Onion river."

Councils-that they might be recognized as true Christians! And why should the sons of such men come to these shoresthe land where all enjoy that for which their fathers prayed, and struggled, and bled, to set up now an exclusive claim to membership in the Church of Christ; excluding from all recognition as church members, thousands-millions-who hold the same faith, and who maintain substantially the same form of worship, and who would lay down their lives in attestation of their love for the same truth? We cannot but honor them. We regard them as, in most important senses, models of Christian men in their love of truth, and in the defence of the cause of liberty and humanity. But why, O why, should they shut out the great body of the Protestant Christian world, as in their view, so far as Christian communion is concerned, on the same level with the Mother of harlots; why should they stand before the world practically proclaiming that Presbyterians of other names, and Methodists, and Baptists, and Episcopalians—all— all, whatever may be their character, their zeal, or their success in saving souls-are to be held up to the gaze of mankind as having no right to sit down at the table which commemorates the dying love of a Saviour?

ARTICLE II.

THOUGHTS ON ATTIC TRAGEDY.

THE language of Hellas is the same now that it was three thousand years ago. The analogy of Latin and Italian is utterly false, as applied to Greek, ancient and modern. In the former case the spirit of the language has changed. Not only have foreign words entered, but foreign systems of grammar and syntax have usurped dominion, while the changes of this sort in Greek are exceptional. The Italian is a rude plaster copy of an antique, but the modern Greek is the glorious old statue, bruised and mutilated, it is true, but for all

that, the identical contemporary of Solon and Pericles. People now-a-days indulge in a foolish habit of decrying the language and the people of modern Greece; they sentimentally quote Byron's "Greece, but living Greece no more," sigh over Marathon and Salamis, and having thus paid due respect to antiquity, turn to belaboring the modern inhabitants with Aristophanic epithets. These superficial Jeremiahs forget that historic distances are apt to hide defects, and that their idea of Greek character, and the common language of the age of Pericles, may be entirely too exalted; while, conversely, their hurried observation of modern Greek valets de place and swindling hucksters, may be a weak foundation for a judgment of the present nation.

The Greek now shows the same strange mingling of delicacy and cruelty, of valor and treachery, of generosity and jealousy, and the same surprising activity of mind, which characterized him during the Peloponnesian war. And his language is the same sweet, flexible and expressive utterance which formed such fitting material for poesy and oratory in the lips of Sophocles and Demosthenes-injured but not ruined by time and adversity. The vulgar notion of barbaric substitutions, as in Italy, has no historic basis, and is totally belied by the present appearances. Italy had a mongrel population in its best estate, but the Hellenic people exhibited a oneness of race which was ever their boast. Italy, under Augustus, was a congeries of races, bound to one government; but Greece, in the time of Pericles, was one race under many governments. While Italy was thus ready for its northern impregnation, Greece was naturally prepared to resist the incorporation of foreign elements into its homogeneous mass. This is the secret. of the preservation of the Greek language, and this preservation is proof of the continuity of the Greek race. Italy became Gothic, but Greece, so far from changing, stamped the Byzantine Rome with her Hellenic name, language and ideas. The Church itself which radiated from Rome could not include Greece within its pale, as it did Germanic and Celtic nations; the impenetrability of Greece resisted the Roman ecclesiastical infusion, and formed an independent centre of Church organization. All these glaring historic facts, and the duration of