Just as certainly as old England is slowly careening to the Pope, just so certainly is New England going to materialism and atheistic infidelity. The philosophy of M. Auguste Comté is her inevitable goal. She has excelled, still excells, and will excell in a material civilization, in machinery, in handicraft, in mechanical thrift, in labor-saving control over physical nature. But New England never did esteem and appreciate highly enough the higher mental and social civilization-the personal civilization of taste, of the sensibilities, of the emotions, and of the heart. The necessary end of such a civilization as that of New England, humanly speaking, is materialism; fanaticism is hastening her to this necessary goal, to the race which she runs.

There are apt to be some people in every religious congregation who think that the preacher is casting dishonor upon religion itself, when he speaks of the reigning follies and corruptions of the times. So there are apt to be some readers of every periodical, who think the writers are playing into the hands of the infidels, when they speak of corrupting societies and falling churches. But God will have a people-Christ will have satisfaction for the travail of his soul, there will be a true church, a precious saving gospel, an ark of salvation on earth, though the churches of old England and of new England corrupt into dust and ashes; just as there is a gospel now, though the Greek and the Roman Churches are corrupted to the core. The infidel and the sweet conservative man of mum, are both welcome to all the capital they can make of the great truth that all earthly things tend to corruption, and that the salt of the earth is to be derived from the power of God, sovereignly given, but connected with the use of all the means of watch and ward and warning.

We believe there are more barks abroad on the ocean, which are not sea-worthy than these two of old and new England. The Wesleyan bodies with all their excellencies as pioneers in the wilderness, are manifestly not capable of riding out the tempests of fierce reckless American free-thinking mammon-worship. Dropping the figure, these people are not thoughtful enough; they are too deeply committed to needless and indecorous excitements; we wish God's blessing upon them, for all their warm and heart stirring zeal, for spiritual religion, notwithstanding their unscriptural Arminianism, and wish that they may stand as long as they can stand, which there is reason to fear may not be very long.

There is danger to other barks, when but one ship sinks at sea. Our Presbyterian ship of Zion is the best-built, and most tight and trim of them all; she will ride out the working of the sea, if the crew abide, and are true men. But we must get rid of the doctrine of mum; we must not yield to hush, as an eleventh commandment. We cannot afford to hold the doctrine that the swain, who may live in rural, remote, rustic regions, must either hold his peace, or be counted as an enemy. If the General Assembly is the parent of the Boards, then we must prepare the Assembly to judge of the Boards,

by constant discussion and examination; if the Boards are to plead the sanction annually of the General Assembly, then of course it follows as obviously as a sequence can be needed to an ingenuous mind, that inquiry, discussion, examination, are just as proper as the perusal of the papers in the case, is to a Court of Chancery before rendering a decree. We confess we are prone to return the suspicion of not wishing our Zion well, which they cast upon such as we, upon the advocates of the hush policy. We have a vindicated sound theology, a homogenous clergy, a loyal people, a noble eldership, and capable of being much more than it is, the potent second power of the church. Our present danger, if danger we are in-and when is it ever safe to say, that of danger there is none-is an ecclesiastical and not a theological danger. There never was a time, there never will be, never can be a time, this side of perfect, confirmed, celestial millennium, when the mute policy, the policy of non-inquiry, will be The lines of Burns will steal to memory:

a safe one.

We say we could not but think of them, we do not say we were so irreverent as to apply them a few years ago, when it was impliedly announced to be treason to criticise our Hymn Book, which though most excellent, has many more marks of nodding than the Iliad; which might have been corrected, had the way been left open for discussion; and when more recently, influential organs warn us off from the catalogue of the Board of Publication, as a subject on which criticism is hostility, we think of Burns, we say.

The politicians quote from Jefferson the pithy saying, that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Jefferson uttered such sayings as this, because, in spite of his infidelity, his knowledge of man compelled him to think as a christian thinks. Man rarely ever gave such an involuntary testimony to doctrines he did not believe, as the earthly sage gave in this maxim, to the truth of God's word; we just have to paraphrase it a little: "the price of purity is eternal vigilance." Now is the time of all others, for the Presbyterian church to adopt that maxim; not because she is in a bad state, but because in the main, she is in a good state. She ought to lock the stable door before the steed is stolen, and not afterwards; she ought to take the ounce of preventive, to avoid the convulsions attending the pound of cure.

We believe that the main danger of the times lies in corporations, firms, leagues, bands-exerting power in the church, but not really, though they may be formally under effective church control. The whole subject of ecclesiastical imperia in imperio has to be thoroughly looked into, and the aversion exhibited in some quarters, to a thorough canvass of principles, must be blown to the winds.

Among the "wheels within a wheel" in the church, to be tho

roughly looked into, is the printing press. In the subject of the newspaper press, its immunities and its responsibilities, its prerogatives and its limitations-its relations to Church and to State--lie some of the gravest issues of the age. It seems to be time that men were set to thinking on that chaotic subject; though it is an unexplored subject to a great degree, yet we can see far enough into it to see that it is a tremendous one. Giant powers of evil lurk in the shadows, and walk in the wakes of giant powers of good; and the landmarks which separate liberty from license, though almost wholly unknown on this subject, are yet obviously as necessary to be fixed here as elsewhere, and a great deal more necessary to be well ascertained here than on other subjects on which a great outcry is made; and those landmarks are more completely in a fog on this subject than almost any other. In the cases of almost all the modern forces of progress in society, there has to be a sixteenth century-a period of struggle, away from and out of civil and spiritual chains. Then there has to be a seventeenth century, an age of struggles to advance beyond the half reform, and stinted liberty, and leaden via media, which tyrants concede, when they can do no better, and which prelates delight in an age struggling valiantly after the higher perfectness, which a conscience, half fed with good and noble institutions, the more loudly demands-a puritan age. Then there comes an eighteenth century, first of deadness, when the powers of evil adopt the cant of moderation in good things; when the savor dies out of the purest salt of the earth, and the edge rusts off the sharpest weapons of holy warfare; and great upheavings come; and error developes itself in the seeded crest of atheism; and men learn the necessity of distinguishing things which differ, though they may resemble each

And then, on the wheel of the destinies, there comes a sifting age--an age of scales to weigh, and measures to mete out, and crucibles to try, the true and the false; to cast off from liberty the reproaches which belong to license-from religion those which belong to superstition-and from a true free press those which belong to the saturnalia of the types. It is the age of the rider on the black horse with the pair of balances in his hands. "Then shall they return and discern between the righteous and the wicked." We trust it We trust it may be called a nineteenth century. Voices from Heaven-audible not in the welkin, but in the occurrences of social life, call men to the judgment between abolition and benevolence; between red republicanism and true republicanism; between the personal liberty of Jefferson and the gregarious phalanx of Fourier; between personal independence and the envious levelling of French rabbles; between anti-rent and rightful resistance to real oppression; between the truth and a thousand base shadows and imitations, and parhelions of the truth.

The liberties of the printing press need to be sifted in the siftings of such a time as much as any other phenomena of the ecclesiastical world. A pastor sits in presbytery as a pastor; and is responsible by solemn contract for pastoral diligence and fidelity in his charge.

By his side sits an editor. The pastor preaches from the pulpit to five hundred people every week. The editor preaches through the columns of his journal to from one to ten thousand people every week. The pastor has the right to expound Scripture-so has the editor. The pastor deals professionally in practical divinity, and the moulding of views, feelings, and principles for time and eternity. So does the editor. The pastor has access to the more tender feelings of a community of people. The editor has the same access to the more tender departments of feeling of a whole segment of people in a whole nation. How does it happen that a pastor is responsible for his work to the ecclesiastical courts; but an editor is not responsible to the ecclesiastical courts? Whereabouts in Scripture do we find the editorial episcopate, the editorial patriarchate, the editorial popedom, provided for, as an unelected and irresponsible set-fast in the church, with the tremendous power of saying, not what men's opinion shall be, exactly, but of affording or withholding from whom they will, the very foundation-stones of facts, on which every opinion worth any thing must be founded? Where else but in the Roman censor, (who, however, was very solemnly elected,) do we find the power vested in one man, or in a small commission, to make reputations, to decide how every man shall stand, to deal out honors and stigmas to each one severally as he will? It may be said the editors have their own checks, and that discontinuance and disapprobation in case of their doing wrong, are sufficient restraints on them not to do so. Why then is not the preacher, in like manner, left to the disapprobation of the people? Why does a Presbytery preside over the contract? Is it said that it is because it gives a great power to blind the judgment of the hearers and warp it to the preacher's side, to permit him to have the ear of the people from Sabbath to Sabbath. And is not the same thing true, only much more abundantly, and on a much wider and more perilous scale with an editor? Was not a very great proportion of the wicked schism of 1837 produced by a few newspaper presses who were untrue? But ministers went astray at that time also. So they did-and under just and full responsibilities. On what food does an editor feed, that he is totally irresponsible to the courts of Jesus Christ upon earth for influential utterances for a life long, by which he obtains a livelihood, which are so directly esteemed by himself to be a service of the Savior, that his conscience permits him to give himself wholly to these weekly utterances in a newspaper?

We give these questions, and scores of others which they will suggest to the thought of the church, and of this generation. The days cannot be far away when they will be questions of deep practical moment.

THE POSTURE AND LIFE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: CONSIDERED IN HER RELATIONS TO THE SUBJECT OF MINISTERIAL EDUCATION.

THERE are in the bounds of the Presbyterian Church six Theological Seminaries at present in actual operation. Of these, three are under the care of the General Assembly, namely: Princeton, Allegheny, and Danville. They extend in a line from east to west, across that portion of the continent which lies east of the Mississippi river; occupying pretty nearly the same parallel of latitude; pretty nearly equi-distant from each other; the two extreme institutions resting, one on the great ocean, and the other on the great river of the continent; and the line which passes through all three of them, passing very nearly through the centre of the population of the nation; the two first located on the non-slave holding side of this line, and the third one, on the slave holding side of it. They were established in the order in which they are named; with about equal intervals of time between them. They contain, between them, at present, about 200, out of the 270 (or thereabouts) theological students, who are attending such institutions in our church, to wit: Princeton, over a hundred; Allegheny, about fifty; Danville, about forty. Princeton is about 42 years old; Danville about 2 years old; Allegheny between them, but nearer to her older sister. All these statements are fruitful. The reader will gather what he may from them, as it is not the object of this article to discuss any of them.

Of the other three Seminaries, not under the care of the General Assembly, two are in the south, and one in the north, according to one classification; and according to another, the two southern are also eastern, and the one northern is western; and the two southern and eastern are nearly in a north and south line from Princeton, about equi-distant from each other; and the one northern and western is nearly west from Princeton and Allegheny, and nearly north from Danville. Two of them, to wit: the southern, are in slave States; the other, on the south margin of the free States. The one at Prince Edward, Va., is under the care of two Synods, which embrace all the State of Virginia, except so much of its northern side as is in the Presbytery of Winchester, and one of the Presbyteries, we suppose, of Western Pennsylvania, and all the State of North Carolina. The one at Columbia, S. C., is under the care of two Synods, which embrace the entire States of South Carolina and Georgia. And the one at New Albany, Indiana, may be said, we suppose, to be under the care of three Synods, which embrace the State of Indiana, and the south-western portion of the State of Ohio, about one-third part, perhaps, of that State; although from the peculiar history and present position of this Seminary, we are likely enough to be inaccurate in details concerning it. These three Seminaries contain, we suppose, about seventy students of Theology, at this time, and were all three founded a number of years ago, the latest of them