made, of severing the Mohammedan or Pagan from the teaching and religion of his parents, and of letting loose on earth whole nations of Africans, or Turks, or Hindoos, without the conception of a God or of a future life."-pp. 14, 15.

In copying the following paragraph, we omit a few phrases which are not essential to the argument, and which are not suited to commend the doctrine to non-Episcopalian readers.

"As it is then the duty of the parent to hold his own religion infallible, until he shall have seen convincing proof of its fallaciousness, so is it equally the obligation of the child to hold as inviolable the religion of his parent; his best friend under heaven; one who would not for bread give him a stone, nor for an egg a scorpion'-until he shall, at the maturity of reason, have encountered overwhelming demonstration, or at least satisfactory proof, of some fatal flaw or falsehood in the system. And when Christians shall be again of one mind and of one heart; and shall with one mouth' confess 'one faith; that faith shall be perpetuated, as once it was, from sire to son, through the happy and unbroken ages of millenial blessedness, to which we are taught to look exultingly forward. And although this instinctive and inviolable rule of entailing a particular faith, may work inconveniently, and often disastrously, in these days, yet it is not to be set aside, except for the most serious and weighty reasons, to be cautiously considered in each particular case; for from the beginning it was not so;' and, in happier days to come, the working of this very rule shall bring it to pass, that all thy children shall be taught of God,' and an unsullied faith and worship shall be entailed from generation to generation. Thus it is, that the laws of nature, grace, and instinct, have all been intended to cover vast circles of time, and to accomplish a vast preponderance of good, and are not to be suspended on account of any local and short-lived inconveniences that may result. As the wind must breathe, and the sun go on, the lightning play, and the volcano continue to blaze, the rains descend, and the rivers flow, and the ocean roll, and all nature keep in motion, to accomplish vast beneficent results, regardless of the partial evils that here and there may incidentally occur; so, without the necessity of tracing out the parallel, must the laws ordained for our religious nature, whether they come from revelation or from instinct, be implicitly obeyed.”—pp. 15, 16.

Our author proceeds to another position. Not only is the religion of tradition "the only religion of which childhood is capable," but it is also, "almost to an equal extent, the only religion that we receive in manhood." As the pious child is incapable of demonstrating that Christ is both God and man; so "older Christians for the most part are incapable of settling the canon of Scripture, or of establishing the fact that the Scriptures have been faithfully preserved in their original tongues, or have been duly rendered translations," but are compelled to take these things on trust, as delivered to them by others, or as currently received in the community in which they have been born and educated. Nor is this all. The greater part of our knowledge on nearly all subjects, is traditionary. A thousand results of inquiries and observations not our own are coutinually received as they are delivered to us by others. "The child at school is the passive recipient of traditions. He believes, not only in innumerable facts and histories beyond his sphere of observation; but he believes in facts which his own observation would go far to contradict-that the earth is

a sphere, although he sees it as a plane-and that the sun does not rise and set, although his eyes assure him that it does." Such is the dependence of every man on other men for knowledge. "He who would receive nothing on tradition must be without ideas, except as he acquires them in common with the brutes: carry the principle into religion, and he is an infidel and atheist."

All this is unquestionably sound so far as it goes. The principle thus stated and illustrated is of great importance in religion. All churches and sects, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, act upon it. But is tradition the only or the highest source of knowledge? Are all traditions to be received simply because they are handed down to us? The child receives his first knowledge of the addition table only by tradition, and retains it only by the strength of memory. Does the man therefore know that four and five are nine, only because he remembers that his teacher told him so? As tradition floats along upon the stream of time, is there no danger of its becoming a dead form of knowledge, and no danger of a gradual admixture of error with the original truth? Is there no possibility of discovering and correcting the errors of tradition, or of adding to the traditionary store of knowledge, by ascending to the original sources? In respect to religion, has tradition always been infallible even within the pale of what our author recognizes as the church? Was there not once a time when the traditions accepted in the church of England needed a reformation? And were they not actually reformed-dogmas, usages, vestments, ceremonies, sacraments-if not by an appeal to the Scriptures, at least by an appeal to the tradition of ages assumed to be purer in proportion to their antiquity? Such questions as these open views which our seeker ought to have considered with the most careful deliberation, but to which he seems to have given no distinct and serious attention. No, we are wrong; he did see, most distinctly and painfully, that the traditions which he had received from his father and mother, the traditions of the church in which he was born, and the tra ditions of the conservative seminary in which he was educated— a seminary which glories in nothing so much as in the immutability of its dogmas and the impregnable strength of its safeguards against fluctuations of opinion and of practice-were full of error, and were constantly becoming more erroneous.

What should he do then? Should he fall back from these traditions upon something better than any tradition can be? Should he resort to the prime sources of Christian knowledge in the records which universal Christendom recognizes as authentic and infallible? Should he draw water for himself and his children, pure and fresh, from the wells of salvation? Should he, as a consecrated minister of the word of Christ, lift up his voice to

testify against the erroneous character and tendency of the Presbyterian traditions? Should he, as a brother, earnestly invite his brethren of the Presbyterian ministry, to reconsider the dogmas which they had received by tradition from their fathers and teachers, and to purify and invigorate their theology by bringing it into a nearer conformity with more ancient and Catholic standards, and by infusing into it more of the simple and historical gospel? Had he pursued such a course in meekness and patience, steadily performing his work in the church in which he was born and nurtured, and thus making demonstration of "a more excellent way," he might not indeed have achieved any great celebrity as a controversial theologian; but might he not have exerted, all his life long, a gentle yet powerful and permanent influence in behalf of pure Christianity as distinguished from what was to him a floating and variable tradition? Instead of pursuing such a course, and going to work, hopefully and manfully, to counteract the evil tendencies around him, his own statement seems to imply that almost from the beginning of his ministry, he utterly despaired of Presbyterianism. Such was his disgust with the traditions of Presbyterianism, and such his dread of what he thought their certain tendency, that he could not endure the thought of leaving his children to live and die in the communion of the church in which he himself had been born and nurtured, and in which he was a minister. Seven years before he went over in person to the prelatists, and at a time when he had no expectation whatever of changing his ecclesiastical relations, he caused his children to be baptized by "clergymen of the church of England"-not because, in the foreign country in which he was then perform→ ing his ministry, it happened to be convenient and proper to do so, but distinctly because he hoped that thus "they might thereafter the more readily glide into a church" which he then regarded as "more than any other, and after ample trial, the conservator of the faith once delivered to the saints." This he did, not openly and with a mauful avowal of the views on which he was acting in a transaction so serious, but in his own phrase, "secretly for fear of the' synagogue and elders." At the same time, he would have us think, there was in him the very spirit of martyrdom, for he tells us, "It was my determination, regardless of the inconveniences to myself from such a course, to recommend to them in due time afterward, the religion in which, by true-hearted clergymen of the church of England, I had caused them to be baptized."

Strange as it may seem, the hero and author of the work before us, after having made up his mind thus decisively, was willing to accept the pastoral charge of a Presbyterian congregation. Strange as it may seem, seven long years of "progress" by "painful stages," were necessary before he had manliness enough to detach himself from a church in which he was not willing his children should

be nurtured, even under his own parental influence. He could not endure that his children should be Presbyterians, he loved them far too well for that; but he was very willing to do—or at least to promise and pretend to do-what he could to make other men's children Presbyterians. One would think that from this position an ingenuous man might advance to a profession of Episcopalianism in less than seven years, and without any very "painful stages" of progress. To us the difficult question is not how he became an Episcopalian, but how with such convictions upon his mind, he was able with the least particle of self-respect to remain for seven years afterward a minister in the Presbyterian church, sworn to uphold the Presbyterian doctrine and government.

The fifth chapter of the book is entitled, "Abuses and disuse of baptism." In several points of view, it is worthy of more attention than we can bestow upon it. Respecting the disuse of infant baptism, it makes an exhibition of facts which we commend to the considerate regard of Presbyterian divines and of New England pastors. On the authority of published statistics of the Presbyterian church under the care of the Old School General Assembly, he shows that in May, 1848, while there were in that ecclesiastical connection 192,022 communicants, the number of infant baptisms during the year then reported was only 9,837, or one infant to between nineteen and twenty communicants. In the seven Presbyteries of Albany, New York, New Brunswick, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Charleston, containing in the aggregate 19,505 communicants, the proportion of infants baptized to the number of communicants varies from the ratio of one to thirty-three to that of one to twenty-one; and the average is one infant to twenty-five communicants. These statistics seem to indicate a wide neglect of infant baptism in that entire branch of the Presbyterian church. We apprehend that the published statistics of the rival assembly, and of the New England Congregational bodies, will show even a smaller proportion of infant baptisms. How does this happen? We commend the inquiry to the earnest attention of all whom it concerns, and especially of pastors and of the teachers in theological seminaries. Is it a fact that infant baptism exists in our churches chiefly as a traditionary practice not easily explained or enforced by the commonly received views concerning the nature of religious experience, the process by which men become Christians, and the methods by which the Holy Spirit works in regeneration? Is it true that the views on these subjects which have been gaining authority in our churches for more than a century, are essentially antipedobaptist in their tendency; and that their tendency is revealing itself in a growing disuse of infant baptism? The question of the fact, and the question how to explain the fact ought to be fairly and frankly considered. Our Baptist brethren on the one

hand, and the believers in baptismal regeneration on the other, are continually telling us that the baptism of unconscious infants is incongruous with our theory of religion. Is it so in fact? When students in preparation for the ministry, after having discussed almost every other topic in theology, come at last to this topic of baptism, are they in danger of feeling that the practice of infant baptism, instead of resting firmly upon a foundation of great and weighty doctrines, is held as a kind of denominational tradition, and is made to hang, as it were, upon a single strand of Scriptural authority twisted from a few indirect and perhaps equivocal proof-texts? Is it true that a man may come forth from the theological seminary with the best testimonials to his proficiency, and perfectly familiar with all the angles, salient and reëntering, of Calvinism with its latest improvements, and yet be unable to give any satisfactory explanation of the meaning or the use of baptism applied to an infant? Is it true that in proportion as our "New England theology" makes progress in the direction which it has pursued ever since the elder Edwards first gave it a distinctive character and tendency, the difficulty of putting the theory of infant baptism on any satisfactory basis is continually increasing? We are by no means prepared to affirm that these things are so, but we do commend these inquiries to the attention of all whom they concern. If there is in fact such an incongruity between our traditional practice of infant baptisin and our accepted theory of the process by which men become Christians, the incongruity will sooner or later work itself out in some unquestionable manifestation. Either the practice, conformed to the principles alike of the Old Testament and of the New, will gradually correct the theory; or the theory, embodying and harmonizing the Scriptural doctrine concerning the means and processes of grace, will overcome and expel the practice.

So much for the alleged "disuse of baptism" among Presbyterians. If now we look at what our author represents as his present view and the view and usage of the Episcopal church, we see a full length picture of the "abuses of baptism." For our own part the "abuse" of infant baptism as practiced by this seeker, seems to us even worse than the "disuse" which he charges upon those with whom he was formerly associated. His great complaint against the Presbyterians is that with them, as with the Congregationalists, none but communicants are allowed. to offer their children to God in baptism. To him it seems cruel beyond expression, that parents who give no evidence of such a character as is requisite to their partaking of the table of the Lord, can not have their children baptized by Presbyterian pastors. He says, "I venture to term it an oppression that the church in no age, and in no instance, ever dared to impose-nay a cruelty that Rome, in the days of her worst tyranny, would have shuddered