the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

The world has its heroes, whose names will never die-great and good men, who by singleness of purpose, self-denial, courage, earnestness and perseverance, have accomplished what to men of smaller mould seemed impossibilities. Thanks be to God! the Church has a hero, before whose transcendent brightness these lesser lights fade away; a man whose words are graven upon a rock with the pen of iron, and neither time nor eternity can efface them; or, as Luther said, "they are not dead words, they are living creatures with hands and feet," "touching in a thousand hearts, at this very hour, the same chord of feeling which vibrated at their first utterance;" a Christian hero, who by a life consecrated to the best and noblest of all ends, by self-denial, decision, courage, earnestness and perseverance, stands by himself a model for every Christian, and every Christian Minister, because bearing so faithful a resemblance to the character of our Divine Master.

DR. MCGILL'S ADDRESS BEFORE THE GENERAL
ASSOCIATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

We gave in the last number of the Magazine Dr. Rice's Address before the Evangelical Association of Rhode Island. Resolutions were offered in the General Association of Massachusetts, somewhat similar in character to those passed by the Rhode Island brethren; but they were finally referred to the District Associations. Dr. McGill's Address commanded marked attention. We copy it from the New York Observer.

REV. DR. M'GILL'S ADDRESS.

Rev. A. T. McGill, D.D., delegate from the Old School Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, being invited to address the Association, said:

MODERATOR! It is a good and pleasant thing for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is good to exchange the salutations of love and friendship anywhere. But there is special felicity in it, in places, where memory is fragrant with traditions of faith and courage, on the part of those who have gone before us, and entered into their rest. Nowhere, on this broad continent, is fraternal greeting more replete with meaning and emotion, than here on the shores of New England, and especially in this ancient Commonwealth and this General Association; where, most of all, we are to recognize the lineal and representative descendants of the Puritan Fathers. On behalf of the body I have the honour to represent, one that sat, a month ago, in the metropolis of our country with a representation of nearly three hundred members, gathered from Maine to Texas, and from New Jersey to California, I offer and pledge to you love and respect, and fervent wishes for God's blessing on you and your children, while walking in the truth, as we have received commandment from a

common Father, and in the exercise of "like precious faith" as we have received it from a common Redeemer. "Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied to you."

It is the peculiar achievement of Christian love to bind us together, alike in our weakness and our strength. When Presbytery and Independence were both feeble at the first of their plantation on these American shores and wilderness, and, indeed, when they wandered in exile and proscription in the Old World, they were fain to mingle their forms together, and confederate their activities in promulgating the Gospel of Christ, and founding its cherished institutions. And now, when each is strong enough to stand and work alone, and define its own features, as sharply and distinctly as we please, this love is deeper, purer, stronger, than ever. We love sincerity and zeal in others, just in proportion as we are truly sincere and zealous ourselves, however divergent from ourselves, provided the divergence be not away from the truth as it is in Jesus. We respect the earnest and enlightened convictions of others, just in proportion as we are earnest and enlightened ourselves, not only agreeing to differ, but really loving each other the more, as we are honest, hearty, and consistent in following up our differences. The world may not understand this, and we ourselves may be slow to understand it, and unable to explain it; but we feel it, and act on it, and hang it out to all men, as another of those antithesis, which only a Divine religion could establish and perpetuate. Beware, how you trample such a divine paradox beneath your feet. Instead of finding fault with you for the rise of 'your denominational spirit, I bid God speed to that spirit. It is our own. We are not ashamed of it. It works beautifully and well with us. [The speaker then gave a comprehensive view of the statistics, increase, and operations of the Presbyterian Church, and continued substantially as follows:]

Time will not allow me to dwell on other topics, which are usually included in reports to you, such as Sabbath schools and temperance reformation; nor upon two subjects, that are comparatively new in the action of our Assembly-systematic benevolence, and the establishment of means for supporting disabled and worn-out ministers. But there is one subject on which I must speak, seeing so intense an interest is manifested on it by this body, the cause of human freedom. We have done something we think, a good deal, in this great cause-not in the way of platform resolutions, but in the way of practical working, visible, and tangible results. We have carried the Gospel to the slave and his master together, the freedom, wherewith the Son makes free. We are making progress in the religious instruction of the slaves. The largest personal contributions to the support of the Gospel are made by Southern slaveholders. The loudest Macedonian cry for help in the Gospel comes from Southern plantations. They will support, liberally, any man who will go with the simple story of the cross to the negroes. Even Presbyterian slaveholders give their money, by hundreds, to support Baptist or Methodist ministers, because the slaves prefer them. Their bondsmen are nearly as free to choose the spiritual teacher, as Presbyterians are in the Free Church of Scotland. When I listened to the sad account of the delegate from New Hampshire, that the good ministers of the Granite State are compelled to emigrate, for want of a competent support at home, and the intolerance of many parishioners, on account of their political opinions, I

would like to have told him, that if "New Hampshire is a very good State to emigrate from," Alabama is a very good State to emigrate tofor any one who will go "determined to know nothing but the cross and him crucified." Let the young brethren around me here, who show a burning zeal for the enslaved, go and preach the gospel to them, as the panacea for all social evils, and I can assure them, they will be well supported, and never be called in question for their suffrages at the polls.

I regret that the subject of slavery is allowed again to disturb our friendly relations, especially at this time, when it is the great political question which distracts the country. I had thought, that if there be one maxim in American Pastoral Theology well settled among evangelical ministers, it is, that they abstain from politics; except to moderate and assuage the passions of men, in order that the principles of the glorious Gospel might have their proper force in impressing the people and their rulers. Instead of justifying your extraordinary excitement at this time, to say that it is the great question of agitation in the country, this is the strongest of reasons why the ministers of Christ, at the present moment, should be pre-eminently calm, cautious, and conservative. It is greatly to be regretted, that the indignation of New England, at what is considered an outrage on liberty and order, in the western territory, perpetuated mainly by sons of New England herself-one in the Senate, and another in the Presidential chair, should be allowed to become a root of bitterness in her relations to the Presbyterian Church. Bad as slavery may be, it is too bad to make it responsible for the ambition of Northern demagogues, in throwing down upon the lap of the South a boon she had not asked at their hands, the surrender of what had been compromised in the agony of the nation's heart, and indorsed in the full engagement of

the nation's faith.

However this may be, the Presbyterian Church is not agitated by the question of slavery. A dissolution of the Union itself would not dissolve the unity of our visible Zion. The ships of Salem, the iron rail, the Potomac, the Ohio, the Mississippi, do not more peremptorily refuse to separate the North and the South, than do the bonds of brotherhood in the Old School Presbyterian Church. Eleven years ago, we met the question of slavery fairly and fully; and came to a deliverance on the subject, which has delivered us from the anguish of this agitation ever since. Every time we listen to the lectures of your excellent delegates to us, we have higher appreciation than ever of the wisdom and value of that decision. Every time the nation trembles with the violence of unprincipled and turbulent men, we look to the rock where a merciful heaven has planted our feet, and then look up to thank Him and take courage. The surges lash us in vain. And long as we are allowed to keep that position unmoved, long as there is one broad national church remaining to pour oil on these troubled waters, we humbly believe the Union is safe; and no longer.

The rock on which we stand is Christ and his Apostles. We treat slavery as they did. We certainly see no manifestations in it of atrocity, worse than what they saw, in their day. And like them, instead of turning aside to fight the State about it, we follow our own appropriate work; we send Onesimus back to Philemon, and tell the master to treat him as a brother; we busy ourselves in promulgating those eternal principles of love to God and love to man, which, if left to their own native tenden

cies, to work unforced, and unperverted, will achieve the overthrow of every despotism, whether petty or grand, on the face of the earth. But to attempt minute legislation in advance; to battle with particular forms of social wrong, before we have disseminated the great principles of all right, is to carp at the topmost branches of a pestilential tree, before an axe is laid to the root.

Certain men would not abide the action I referred to; and left us to form another, and what they call a Free Presbyterian Church. I do not know all the brethren who seceded for this cause. I know some of them are good and worthy men. But I know that one of the foremost and hottest in repudiating our church for that action, has already repudiated all religious organization, renounced the Saviour, cursed the Bible, and gone to the world a virulent infidel and miscreant reviler of all that is sacred in the usages of Christian civilization. I know, that another, esteemed one of the most eloquent leaders, has turned the pulpit to a political stump, and makes every text a motto for the vilification of all that is dominant in Church or State. If we had no other reason to commend the soundness of that settlement with which we have put the question to rest within our Church, this raving and ruin of men, who have renounced our fellowship, in the violence of a contrary course, would be enough to create a presumption in its favour.

But we have far more and better reasons. It has carried the Gospel to the slave. It has laid the hand of church discipline, on the relations of master and servant. It has brought the master to repentance, for exacting more than was just and equal, in treating his slave; and the slave, to thank his Father in heaven, that the glorious liberty of the sons of God is found in the midst of American slavery. You have, yourselves, tested the benefits of our pacification; and sat with refreshing under the shadow of that canopy, which our peculiar faith and polity have indissolubly intertwined. Why have your Delegates to us been able to utter expostu lations against this evil, in every place, where we meet them, in Richmond, in Charleston, in Nashville, without molestation, or one groan of impatience, at their reproaches; which have been, at times, sufficiently irritating? Try any other platform, at the South, for the utterance of such messages, as you send to us, on the subject-any other platform, civil, social, educational, or moral, either in the statehouse, or courthouse, or church, or street, or even the deck of your own vessel; and see, if the hand of violence would not arrest your words, before they can half of them have fallen on the listening ear. Why is the shield of inviolable security thrown around your freedom of speech on the floor of our Assembly, and nowhere else? Ponder this question, my beloved Brethren, and say whether you will now proceed to dash from you, the last plank on which you can sail into the bosom of American slavery, with your sincere protestations.

I shall not say here, what I would say elsewhere; in giving my full answer, to the question I have propounded, accounting for the marvellous fact, that the most able and influential pro-slavery men in the country have listened kindly and patiently to your remonstrances against them, in our open Assembly. Else I would go into elaborate eulogy of the Presbyterian system. I would sketch its incomparable beauty and force, evincing how it can afford to be patient, magnanimous, and forbearing, in its consciousness of unity and strength. But this would be indecorous

infringement on the fundamental principles of this correspondence. It is not a polemical conference, designed to constrain uniformity; but a symbol of unity with variety, in the body of Christ. It is because we are unlike, that we do correspond; because one is an eye, the other an ear; one a hand, the other a foot. But say, at this point, why do you not send your Delegates, to urge on other points of variance between us! Why not remonstrate against the evils which you see in our form of Church government? Why not expostulate every year, against our determination to keep our assemblies authoritative courts, instead of advisory councils like yours, as well as expostulate against our determination to regulate the relation between master and slave, instead of going at once to dissolve it? It is a question of discipline which we manage, in our own way; and I must frankly and kindly insist, that you as much mistake our correspondence, in pressing the one point as the other.

But all the answer, I give, at this time, is, that our settlement of the slavery question has been so judicious, and blessed of God, that all fanaticism has been repressed among us, alike, at the North and the South. The Northern fanatic might as well dip his torch in the Hudson, as attempt to kindle a fire in our bosom, on the subject of slavery. The Southern fanatic might as well attempt to repress a breeze from the ocean, in midsummer, as to repress the freedom of speech in the deliberations of Presbytery.

Rest assured, that we shall never be found extenuating the evils, you charge upon slavery. Fraud and turbulence in Kansas, spite and brutality in Washington, will never find refuge or apology, in the Presbyterian Church. We abhor what is evil-but we would also cleave to that which is good. We would have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil, in these things. We cannot consign the piety and the cruelty at the South, to one indiscriminate curse. We cannot throw off the system, in the way of exasperating its evil tendencies, or leaving it to itself to work out its own problem, in the lowest depths of servile degradation, or the scenes of servile bloodshed and insurrection. We take it by the hand; and lead it to the family altar, and to the church of God; we tell the master, what he must do for the slave, and the slave what he must do for the master; and in all this we have an ample directory in the Book of books which you and I read and preach.

We deny that the slave is a chattel. We deny that the master owns either his body or his soul. We deny that he has any other right to him than to his reasonable service for the term of his natural life; and the right to transfer that labour to another, for a price. And, though we could wish, that this term of service were for a term of years, as it is in apprenticeship at the North, instead of lifetime, and the lifetime of one's children, we bow to the will of the state, and make our best of it; submitting to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake; that by the gradual emancipation of souls, which religion, and not moral reform, will effectuate, we may fit master and slave, and the state also, for universal emancipation.

Yours is a faster way. But there is such a thing as being too fast; too much in haste to make good speed. American slavery is not yet 500 years old; not the half of it. Yet you know, it took full 500 years, for primitive Christianity, by constant contact, to wear out this evil, in the ancient world. And if you have a patent, for quicker work without such contact, be content to use it yourselves. Do not force it upon us. Let