As to the city of Philadelphia, the case is different. That city is not the Synod of Philadelphia; and Baltimore and Washington are not its suburbs; and the Presbyterian church has no imaginable interest in helping that city to domineer over surrounding cities and even States. On the contrary, it is the clear duty of the church, and one of the highest points of its permanent policy, to prevent the accumulation of undue power and influence, even in the most competent, generous and wise heads-far less in such as, to say the least, are no whit superior to the fair average of their brethren all over the church. We doubt if any proposition concerning the administration of the affairs of the Presbyterian church is more absolutely proved by experience, than that every thing has prospered during the past twenty years, precisely in proportion as the principle of general as opposed to local aggrandizement has been steadily pursued. And we are thoroughly convinced, that so far is Philadelphia from having any right to complain of the General Assembly for erecting a new Synod independent of it; that if the Assembly would go at least two steps farther, and remove two out of the three Boards accumulated there, the same sort of benefit would immediately and permanently result, as has resulted from refusing to put the Board of Foreign Missions there, and taking the General Assembly itself away. We say this upon general and unalterable principles, and would say as much if the leading ministers of Philadelphia, had forty times as much administrative capacity as the very greatest of their predecessors ever had. The organs of opinion in Philadelphia are greatly mistaken in their fancy, that any one thinks it worth while to conspire against them; but they are equally mistaken when they suppose that the permanent interests of the church are to be regulated by the probable bearing which any measure may have upon any interest of theirs-whether personal or local.

This periodical has heretofore alluded to certain acts connected with the attempt to destroy the Synod of Baltimore, which seem to implicate the Board of Domestic Missions, through the proceedings of persons intimately connected with it. At present we have only to say, that the Board of Missions and all its officers of every kind, would assuredly have kept clear of the conduct complained of, but for their connection with the city of Philadelphia; and that this affords a very clear illustration of one aspect of innumerable evils resulting from the practical outworking of the principle so long pursued in our church, of localising power in that city. And in this aspect of the case it is worth all the trouble it has cost, by showing not only the evil of that absurd principle, but by showing that it is already so weakened in its practical bearing, that it may be successfully resisted, upon a case made, even when it puts forth what it might be supposed to be irresistible force. The mere fact of the continued existence of the Synod of Baltimore, is one of those great test facts, which mark the progress of principles in their fundamental changes. And we venture, upon the basis of many such facts, to predict, that there must be a speedy change of the administrative policy of the church with regard to these matters; or the church must make up her mind to be content with results bearing no proportion to her capacity, her interest, or her duty. In the meantime, how deplorable is it, to use no stronger term, that the great organization contrived by the church for the very purpose of strengthening and extendits own organization throughout this great country, should justly expose itself to the charge of forgetting its great mission to gratify a local fanaticism, and should appear arrayed against a great movement whose immedi

ate object and permanent effort were to promote the very cause it was itself constituted to advance!

The State of Maryland, in which Presbyterianism was first planted in this country-is the basis of the Synod of Baltimore; a nationality, worthy, one would suppose, of a distinct preservation in our ecclesiastical organization. Baltimore, the third city of the nation, and Washington, the capitol of the confederacy-two of the most important centres of influence on this continent, are seeking, by this means, to become a new and powerful spiritual centre for us; a prospect sufficient we should imagine, to justify some effort on the part of the church to organise an influence likely to be so immense. Four Presbyteries-unitedly covering a very large territory, and embracing a great Presbyterian force, ask to be organized around these great cities and if this be granted-each of the two Synods from which they are taken, will remain greater than the new one-greater than the average of our Synods-greater than their own convenience demands. And one of these, (the Synod of Virginia,) cordially, though sorrowfully, agrees to part with her share, for so good an object; though in doing so, a great breach is made upon the hitherto united territory of the ancient commonwealth covered entirely by that Synod. It is only the city of Philadelphia, the Synod of Philadelphia, and the Board of Missions, located in Philadelphia, that make any outside opposition!-Is it worth while to argue a case, whose bare statement presents it in such an aspect?-Disrespect to the Synod of Philadelphia!-That must indeed be a heinous sin, to justify its punishment at so great a cost. And the General Assembly must be composed of heinous sinners, to perpetrate such a sin, deliberately in two successive annual meetings; without having any higher temptation than the desire to promote the glory of God, by the clear exercise of its high and plain powers, upon a case palpably obvious, made at its bar!-In good truth, can any one who has had occasion to be made aware of what has taken place at the Assemblies of 1854 and 1855, and between the two, fail to see, that these Assemblies instead of doing too much, have really done the very least that was possible, under the circumstances; and that what may be called the incidental revelations of the case show conclusively that a good deal more will have to be done, before the great interests of the church concentrated at Philadelphia, are placed on a footing safe from all perversion to improper local objects, and commensurate with the real design of the church in locating them there. Philadelphia has made it a necessity of the church to reduce her organised influence over the affairs of the church, still further. And the only question any longer remaining to be decided is, whether the really enlightened men in our church, there, will take care that this shall be done gracefully and with the consent of those who long held too much power, or whether it shall be done, by successive struggles, every one terminating in the defeat of pretensions, unreasonable and unequal in themselves, and incompatible with the prosperity of the church. We utter these things, not as threats, much less as ebullitions of ill humor; but simply as final truths, long working out in many minds, needful to be distinctly stated, and perfectly certain to become practical. If, as it has been rather publicly and ostentatiously intimated, the real ground of all such ideas as we have now uttered, were only the restlessness if not envy of an ordinary mind, under the inevitable control which God ordains to follow unusual endowments; our brethren could only more palpably exhibit their great superiority, when they shall have laid aside some

portion of the enormous power and patronage, which now raise them as far above the lot of ordinary ministers,-as the skill and knowledge claimed for them, elevate them above the common level of their brethren. [To be continued in the next number.]

CHRISTIANITY, ITS ESSENCE AND EVIDENCE: OR AN ANALYSIS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT INTO HISTORICAL FACTS, DOCTRINES, OPINIONS AND PHRASEOLOGY. BY GEORGE W. BURNAP, D. D.

THE author of this work tells us, in the preface, that he offers it "to the Christian public as the fruit of the toil and thought of thirty years;" and thus unintentionally reminds us, that he resembles the famous author of the "Analogy," in one important particular beside that of having a name which begins with B. Nay more, he not only resembles that great master of thought, but has the advantage of him by the space of ten years; the "Analogy," if our memory serves us, having been the fruit of the toil and thinking of only twenty years, while "Christianity, its Essence and Evidence," has undergone the process of gestation and been struggling to the birth, for thirty. We are inclined to the opinion, however, an opinion which it becomes us to express with great modesty, since the Unitarians have a monopoly of all the intellect current in the world,-that the mental calibre of the old Bishop of Durham more than makes up for the loss of the additional ten years; and if his venerable shade could confront the author of "Christianity, &c.," he might accommodate the celebrated sarcasm of Demosthenes, addressed to his great rival, and say, "Indeed, the things which you and I do, in the course of twenty years, are very different." Justly and truly spoken. The fastings and vigils, the agony of the mind and the wasting of the body may have been the same, but the thinking, we may say, by a very expressive meiosis, is "different." There is a smoothness of style here, which any diligent student of Blair might hope to acquire, but beyond that, there is nothing which ought not to move our compassion. O quanta species est, ast cerebrum non habet!

The great Apostle of the Gentiles, for whom Dr. Burnap and all others, of genuine Unitarian culture, have no great admiration, speaks of some men who are "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" and here we have four hundred mortal pages, written or dictated, and sent to the press, as the fruit of the toil and thought of thirty years, which are a sheer and wretched compound of ignorance, inanity and fatal error, in regard to the most momentous concern which can engage the attention of dying men. We have no words to express our abhorrence and contempt for a vanity of authorship, which can be gratified by such a publication; a pub

lication, in which all that is true may be found in the commonest elementary work on Christianity, and the most that is false, beside being old, is deadly poison to the soul: a book on the "Essence," in which the essence is denied: a book on the "Evidence," in which the laws and principles of evidence are totally disregarded: an "Analysis," the last result of which is a caput mortuum of Christianity without Christ; "the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out." Such will be the verdict of every man who has the slightest respect for the Scriptures as the word of God.

That the author of this book has no such respect for the writings of the old and new Testaments, is palpable on almost every page; and whoever has read those letters of Thomas Jefferson to John Adams and Thomas Cooper, contained in his published correspondence, in which he lauds the morality of Jesus, ridicules the doctrinal expositions of Paul, and congratulates his friends upon the prospect of Unitarianism being one day, the prevailing, if not the only religion of this country, will be able to understand the following passage in the preface to the work before us, in which the author appears to give us the primum mobile of his speculations. And we may add, the speculations, according to the established law, have been in the direction of the original force. His words are these:-"About that time, (twenty years ago,) he fell in with a book of a very interesting and extraordinary character, written by the famous Jeremy Bentham, and entitled, "not Paul, but Jesus." In this work, that distinguished man attempted to show that Paul had corrupted Christianity, and that the Christianity of the Church had been any thing but Christian since his time. The works of Jefferson were published almost contemporaneously, and they were found to contain nearly the same sentiments." Again" In this state of things, it occurred to the author that the time had come for a new analysis of the contents of the new Testament. On the old hypothesis of making it a homogeneous book, all doctrine, all equally essential, it must encounter such serious objections as to over-task, the faith of an enlightened age. On this hypothesis, the main objection of Gibbon never has been, and never can be, answered."

Now we beg our readers to consider, that the "old hypothesis," of which this man speaks so contemptuously, is simply the hypothesis of the whole Christian Church from the beginning, that the Bible is the Word of God, and a homogenous book in the sense of having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, though written in different ages, in different countries, and by different individuals; that it has but one purpose and but one plan, and in every part is clothed with the authority of God, to regulate the faith and command the obedience of mankind; and further let them consider, that this charter of their hopes, upon the supposition that it is such a charter, is pronounced to be utterly indefensible against the assaults of the most maglignant infidel, who ever attempted to overthrow the Christian religion by a sneer, an infidel of whom Porson said, "that his hu

manity never slumbered except when Christians were persecuted or women ravished ;" and then finally consider, that the man who introduces the atheist and infidel to our acquaintance in this fashion, or rather thrusts them into our faces, and tells us virtually, that the Bible, as a standard of faith, is good for nothing as against them, is, we blush to record it, a minister of Christ. Tell it not in Gath!* It is a capital deficiency in Dr. Burnap's plan, that no place is assigned for the discussion of the question, as to the nature and extent of the rule of fait. He gives us, in the title-page, "doctrines" as well as "opinions" as to the result of his analysis of the new Testament; but how are we to determine what belongs to the one class and what to the other? Shall we say that the discourses of Christ are the repositories of doctrine, and the writings of the Apostles the repositories of opinion? Is the dictum of the atheist, Bentham, "not Paul, but Jesus," the standard by which we are to judge? Or is it the intuitional consciousness, the spiritual sensibility in man, in all the stages of its development, from its extreme dormancy in the Fejee Islander, to its full manifestation in the man who has discovered that "most of the issues which have been raised in the Christian Church are false and irrelevant?" Does not the author know that the Christian Church, and many of the common people in his own little sect, hold the whole Bible as the authoritative rule of faith? Why then does he not, in a manly way, assert his standard to be a different one, and tell us what it is? Of how large a portion of the new Testament does he allow himself to speak as he does of the epistle to the Hebrews? Let him come out like a man and say what, in his opinion, the word of God is, if indeed, he recognizes any such thing at all. We can understand the infidelity of the lecture room, the club room and the coffee house, but we cannot understand the infidelity of the pulpit. A celebrated Unitarian writer is reported to have assigned as a reason for abandoning the profession of the Christian ministry, that "it was a very poor business." In this we agree with him. Upon Unitarian principles, it is poor indeed.

*The question is often asked, why Unitarianism does not flourish in the Southern States, the churches of that denomination being few, and those few composed, for the most part, of New England people. The true answer, we imagine, is, that in the South, an infidel is an infidel, and is not ashamed to proclaim his principles on the house top. In New England, such is the tone which was given to society by the early settlers of the country, a religion of some sort, a church to go to, seems essential to respectability; and the problem to be solved is, how can a man be an infidel and a Christian at the same time. Unitarianism is the solution.

In the 23d discourse on the Priesthood of Christ, after professing to give an outline of the argument of the writer of this epistle, he adds: "It is scarcely necessary to say, that all this comparison of Judaism with Christianity, considered as logical reasoning, has no validity. Nothing whatever is proved by it." "The second argument to show the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, by proving the superiority of Jesus to Moses, is exceedingly ingenious; but logically considered, must be confessed to have but little force." He puts his own construction upon the Apostle's middle term, and then charges him with inconclusive reasoning. He never seems to dream that his own presumption has any thing to do with the halting of the syllogism. The gist of his objection is, that upon the Unitarian view of the Son-ship of Jesus, the argument of the epistle is inconclusive. An assertion we are not inclined to dispute.