seductive blandishments that assail him, and relapse into his former idolatry, and thus all the labour bestowed upon him be lost? It tells him that nothing can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; once gained they are gained forever, the charter of their title to heaven having this seal: "The Lord knoweth them that are his." Thus when the love of many waxes cold, and the brightness of their example is dimmed or eclipsed, the perseverance of the saints becomes to a desponding missionary or a desponding church the sheet-anchor of hope.

Are labourers cut down just as they enter the field, or in the midst of usefulness? It assures him that this is not a mere casualty, but designed by God to hasten on the desired consummation; by strengthening the faith, increasing the dependence and humility, or quickening the exertions of those that remain.

Does he fear lest by the inroads of vice, superstition and infidelity, together with the beleaguering hosts of the beast and the false prophet, the pure and evangelical church of God may perish? It tells him that whatever may happen the church is safe. It has been destined from eternity to ultimate triumph, has been purchased by the priceless blood of the only-begotten, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. It is a vine of the Lord's right hand planting, and had it been destructible, it would long ere this have perished. It was planted in an hour of deadly strife with a mightier foe than human arm ever grappled; it was watered with a richer blood than was ever poured out on on a field of glory; it has been rocked by the storms and tempests of centuries; the moss and hoar of ages have covered the scars of its wounds; the sword of the Jew and the battle-axe of the Roman lie shivered at its root; and a thousand creeping parasites of error and superstition have grown from its soil, spreading their rank and noxious foliage over it, and threatening to smother it with their baleful shade; in fine, all has been done to uproot and destroy it, that could be done by earth or hell, yet it stands, and shall stand forever, "for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

Leaving the a priori investigation, let us for an instant turn to the evidence of facts, and inquire, whether the conclusions to which we have arrived in the foregoing reasonings, are sustained to any extent by facts, to that extent at

least that practice usually sustains principle. Has it been the practical effect of this system, to cultivate the traits of character to which we have alluded?

If we have not mistaken the voice of history, it will be found to testify, that the men who have been most zealous and most willing to sacrifice and suffer for the truth, are men who were distinguished by their adhesion to these doctrines. Without entering into any extended specification of names, we appeal to the attentive reader of the history of the church, whether the most eminent witnesses of the truth in the dark ages, the men who laboured and suffered most for their opinions, were not to a man, the disciples of Augustine; whether the "few noble," into whom was concentrated the missionary spirit of the church, were not men moulded by these doctrines. Those within the Romish church, in whom we recognise most of the type of genuine Catholicism in religion, such as the Port-Royal Jansenists, and those without her, who contended most manfully and successfully against her corruptions, were men who held and prized these doctrines. The Calvinists of Holland flung down the gauntlet at the feet of Spain, and sealed their devotion to the truth with their blood. The Calvinistic Hugonots of France, and Puritans of England were the men who most freely watered with their tears and blood, the seed-thoughts of civil and sacred truths in the old world and in the new. The Calvinists of Scotland possess the noble pre-eminence of being the champions of Christ's crown, of pouring out more blood and treasure for this glorious truth than any other division of the army of God. We are willing that any Calvinistic community be selected at random, in which these doctrines in their purity have been held, and compared with any other community, similarly situated other wise, in reference to all those traits of character that are available for any department of Christian effort, and we are content to abide the result of a candid comparison.

But leaving these general examples, if we come down to particular instances, we shall find our former conclusions completely verified. We pass by Paul and Peter as illustrations not because we think them beside our purpose, for we recognise them as furnishing the most perfect examples of the legitimate influence of these doctrines, but because it is unnecessary here to contend for disputed ground. What

must be the legitimate influence of doctrines that kindled the light of the great Augustine, that glorious star in the church's bright galaxy, whose broad disc, catching the sinking light of the apostolic days, flung it forward through a thousand years of darkness, whose bright orb never set during the darkest hour of that long and cheerless night of the church's hope, but was a polar star to the faithful witnesses of every age? What is the tendency of a system on which the character of Martin Luther was formed, that man of mighty faith, who coming forth, a lonely monk, from his solitary cell, with the word of God in his hand and the love of God in his heart, raised a voice that all the thunders of the Vatican could not drown, a voice whose very echoes are the household words of religious freedom? It is idle to talk of that system as enfeebling that moulded the iron man of Geneva, the strong and high-hearted Calvin; who turning away in his own sunny France from as bright a path of glory as ever glittered before a youthful eye, went to a land of strangers, a lonely, friendless and persecuted exile, to toil and suffer for an ungrateful people, and though bowed down with labour, disease and penury, outliving all that his heart held dear, left alone in the world and taunted with this very bereavement as the blasting mark of Divine displeasure, yet self-poised or rather God-stayed in his great and magnanimous spirit, moving onward solitary and unaided in his high and stern career, trampling alike on the seductions of wealth and menace of power, until he had planted the standard of Reformation on that munition of rocks against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. And look at the Puritan the very child of Calvinism, and whether you see him raising a voice in the Halls of Westminster which shook England's throne to the centre; girding on a sword before which the haughtiest powers of Europe quailed; or when vanquished retiring with his unconquered heart to the fastnesses in the rocks, and making the mountain glen and midnight air to ring, with the hymns of his lofty cheer; or braving the perils of a wintry ocean, a cheerless coast, and a savage wilderness, only that he might kneel on the naked granite and offer a free prayer to the God of his fathers, wherever you see him you find him the same stern, lofty, unflinching man of adamant. Can the system that produced such men be unfavourable to any department of effort? Has it been so in fact upon missions? Who first of the Reformers went forth to tell

the heathen of the unsearchable riches of Christ? A band of Genevan Calvinists. Who were the most instrumental in God's hand, by their personal toils, and privations in awaking the modern spirit of missions in the church? Brainard, Eliot, Edwards-Calvinists. And who were the first to give an embodied impulse to that spirit? The records of missionary organization will answer, British and American Calvinists. By them it was begun, in a great measure carried on, and many of its brightest trophies under God obtained. These facts we think are sufficient to prove, that the actual influence of Calvinism has, to a degree at least sufficient for the argument, been favourable to the missionary enterprise.

The length to which our remarks have been protracted rather than a conviction of having completed the discussion, warns us to come to a close. It remains for each one who holds the system we have investigated, to see that he furnishes another illustration of its influence, and not a new instance of its abuse. As yet, with all that we can adduce historically in favour of the point discussed, there is barely enough to save the argument, not to illustrate it; enough to show the tendency but not to exhibit the influence of these doctrines. Let us see to it, that whilst holding and contending for the truth we do not neglect to send it to the perishing; and that it be not said to us after all our vociferous applause and contention for our pure and noble system, "thou wicked and slothful servant, out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee."

ART. III.-The History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, comprising the civil History of the Province of Ulster, from the accession of James the First, with a preliminary sketch of the progress of the Reformed Religion in Ireland during the sixteenth century, and an appendix consisting of original papers: By James Seaton Reid, D. D., minister of the Presbyterian Church, Carrickfergus. Waugh and Innes, Edinburgh, 1834. Two volumes. 8vo.

These volumes, though they have been for some years before the public, in Europe, have not, till lately, reached our hands. And our design in noticing them now is not to

write a critique on the history which they contain, but to extract from them information respecting a branch of the church, with which Presbyterians in these United States have a more intimate connexion than with any other body of Presbyterians. It is common to represent our church as having derived its origin from the Church of Scotland; and remotely this was the fact; but its immediate origin was from the Presbyterian church of Ireland, whence came most of the fathers who laid the foundation of that system which has now became so extensive as to include more than a hundred presbyteries; and this notwithstanding the separation of nearly a moiety of the body, within a few years past. But when we speak of our church as deriving its origin from any ecclesiastical body in Europe, we would not be understood to mean that our first presbyteries were erected by any order or by any authority of any foreign Presbyterian body, for this was not the fact. But several ordained ministers having emigrated from the north of Ireland, settled in the middle colonies; particularly in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, united together in presbytery, which under existing circumstances, they had a right to do, and were joined from the first by some ministers from New England, who were willing to adopt the Presbyterian system. We do not utter it as a matter of complaint, but merely to make known the historical fact, that until very recently our church has never been noticed or recognised by any foreign Presbyterian church. We are, therefore, free from any special obligations to any foreign church; but this does not release us from the obligation to fraternize with all true members of Christ's church, wherever they may dwell; and to aid them by our prayers; and this obligation we especially feel in regard to those who have the same form of doctrine, the same system of church government, and the same rules of discipline which we have adopted. Not only did our first ministers come to us from Ireland, but the people who composed the first Presbyterian congregations were from the same country. Indeed, it may be truly said, that the emigration of many Presbyterian people was the inducement for enterprising Presbyterian ministers to cross the ocean and take up their residence in a new country. Little did the fathers of the Presbyterian church know the importance of their own labours, and the extent to which the tender vine which they planted would in one century spread its branches.