near each other at the centre of motion, but more remote at the circumference. As Christians approach Christ, the source and centre of their life and action, they approach one another; and it is sometimes best that they be more removed where they touch the world-their influence is more broad. The ocean is a grand unity, and yet how it adapts itself to its condition, yielding to the jutting promontory, sweeping up into bays, and rising into creeks. How it roars around the Orkneys, as with true Presbyterian thunder; foams and grows fervid in the Caribbean, as if it were an emblem of a hot Methodist camp-meeting; and plays gently along the Pacific shore, with all the order and repose of an Establish

ment!

Why cannot all Presbyterians unite, in this day of ritualism and semiinfidelity, in some grand plan of Christian work? Let the venerable Dr Duff and our excellent Dr Thomson select a grand field for us, to summon the Presbyterians of Scotland, and Ireland, and England, of France, and Geneva, and America, to the work; and let our treasure, and zeal, and prayers, and labours be so applied, that we may save some continent from darkness and death. Sir, I repeat my feelings of deep satisfaction in this hour. I shall carry through life the memory of it. God bless the Free Church of Scotland!

Rev. Dr FIELD was next introduced, and spoke as follows:

Moderator, fathers and brethren, it is pleasant to be the bearer of good tidings-to cross the sea with a message not of war but of peaceto carry kind greetings from land to land. It is pleasant, in stepping on a foreign shore, to hear a voice of welcome, and to grasp the outstretched hand of a brother. That welcome we find given to us, coming here as the representatives of a people and a Church kindred to your own. It is the first time that delegates from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America have appeared in an Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. It seems strange, now that we are becoming better acquainted, that we have stood apart so long, and that this should be the first interchange of Christian courtesies between two branches of the great Presbyterian family on opposite sides of the ocean. May it prove the beginning of an intercourse that shall grow more intimate with years, thus binding in closer union the scattered members, not only of the Presbyterian household, but of that great family which is named in heaven!

Coming to Scotland, an American does not feel himself a stranger. It is a part of that kingdom from which we derive our ancestry. If he cannot say, "My foot is on my native heath," he does feel that he is among not unfamiliar scenes. In the very aspect of the country there is much to remind us of our own. That portion of the American Union lying to the north, bordering on Canada, is a broken country of hills and valleys, where rugged peaks shoot upwards to the clouds, their sides covered with dark pine forests; and torrents leap down the rocky gorges, and sweep onwards to the vales below-scenes that often remind the wandering Scot of

"The land of the mountain and the flood."

Parts of it are as wild and desolate as any portion of your own Highlands -so bleak, indeed, that it is sometimes said that "nothing will grow there but men!" But men grow, like trees out of the cleft of the rock, showing the tenacity, the hardihood, and the strength of that wintry.

clime. And that country, so wild and bleak, is, like your own Grampian Hills, the very eagle nest of liberty. Other portions of New England are of less rugged aspect; more fertile soil, and denser population. The scenery changes much as with you, where your Highlands sink into the Lowlands. So there, where the bold northern peaks sink into gentler slopes, you may see a goodly land with every sign of abundance; the cattle upon a thousand hills; hundreds of peaceful villages, with the church spires gleaming among the trees, and the school-house hard by. Among those hills and valleys dwells a people not unlike your own. If you were to enter those homes, you would find the same domestic scenes described in Burns' "Cotter's Saturday Night"-the same tender love and household piety.

And not only is the scenery of Scotland familiar, but its history and its literature. Its history-from the days of Wallace and Bruce-we know it all by heart. And your great writers-we have all wept over the "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life;" we have felt the charm given to your annals by the genius of your great novelist; and the songs of Scotland are sung by the hearthstones of America. I do not think it an over-refinement, or forced comparison, to say that there is a great resemblance between the Scotch and American mind-especially the New England mind. In both there is a fondness for metaphysical discussion, strangely united with a practical shrewdness and sagacity. Hence the Scotch writers on mental philosopohy are as much read in America as at home. They furnish the text-books for our colleges. We acknowledge our obligations to the thinkers, the philosophers, and the theologians of Scotland-to your Reids, and Browns, and Dugald Stewarts, and Sir William Hamiltons-as well as to your Chalmers, and to the giants of the latter time. But these obligations are not all on one side. You too are under obligations to us. More than a century ago, in the little village where I was born, lived a humble missionary to the Indians. There, in the stillness of that quiet village, under the shadow of those hills, he wrote theological and philosophical treatises, which led Robert Hall to pronounce Jonathan Edwards, as a master of reasoning, "the greatest of the sons of men," and caused his works to be quoted as the highest authority by Chalmers himself in this city of Edinburgh. These great thinkers and writers the masters of thought and of song-have established a tie between us that draws Americans to Scotland more than to almost any other country in Europe, even than to England itself. And it is a happy reflection that, in the late wonderful triumph of human genius and skill which brings the Old World and the New into instantaneous communication, it was an eminent professor in the University of Glasgow-Sir William Thomson-that furnished the science for that marvellous achievement; and a Scotch commander, Sir James Anderson, one of the noblest sons of Scotland, that led the "Great Eastern" safely across the deep.

But we appear before you, not merely as Americans, but as Presbyterians; and it is as such that we feel the ties drawn still closer which bind us to Scotland. We are of the same faith and order, and our Presbyterian polity is derived from yours. Scotch ministers first planted Presbyterianism on the other side of the Atlantic. In the excellent "History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America," by my friend Rev. Dr. Gillett, of New York, you may trace the full history of that emigrant Presbyterianism which has flowed from Scotland to America

for a hundred years. Your country has furnished a large number of the ministers in our pulpits, and of the elders in our churches. Dr John Witherspoon, a distinguished Presbyterian minister, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards President of the College of New Jersey-thus serving his country alike in war and in peace. So the Scotch have been always among the most patriotic as well as the most religious part of our population. In the late war, Highland regiments fought in our battles. Standing here to-day, I thank the land that, in a great struggle for liberty, mingled its heroic dead with ours.

I have said, we who are Presbyterians claim a nearer kindred with Scotland by reason of our church order and faith. And yet we in America are not Scotch Presbyterians-for the best of all reasons, that we are not Scotchmen. We are Americans, and our ecclesiastical as well as our political institutions derive their complexion from certain peculiarities of our country and of our national life. We are not children of Scotland alone, nor of England, but of Germany and other portions of the Continent. We owe much to your bold reformer John Knox, but still more to his teacher and ours, that great man who taught him on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, John Calvin. Thus our Protestantism, and our Presbyterianism also, is derived from Switzerland as well as from Scotland. We are the spiritual descendants, not only of the Scotch Covenanters, but of the Swiss Calvinists, and of the French Huguenots, and of the Reformed Churches of Holland and Germany. This diverse origin has given us somewhat of a composite character. Besides, some of our people are vain enough to think that our religious as well as political institutions derive a peculiar stamp from the vastness of our country itself; that as our rivers are longer, and our lakes broader, than those of other countries, so there is a corresponding largeness in the ideas of the people :

"No pent up Utica contracts our powers,

But the whole boundless continent is ours."

This is a very pretty fancy to tickle the vanity of our people, who are given to boasting. But this we may say, in all simplicity, that in a country of such vast extent, where the work to be done is so great, and where population comes pouring in from all parts of the world, we should be wanting in even ordinary sagacity, as well as nobleness, if we did not learn some degree of charity and liberality; if we did not forget the petty rivalries of sect in the magnitude of the interests committed to our care. In this view, the greatness of our country may conduce somewhat to a true Christian magnanimity.

The Church which I have the honour to represent is not the only Church in America, nor even the only Presbyterian Church, but it is a large and influential Christian body. It comprises about 1700 churches and an equal number of ministers, 120,000 church members, and in its congregations not less than half a million of souls. It is not the church of New England (though a large part of both its ministers and its members come from New England), nor does it extend much into the Southern States. Its field is chiefly in the great middle States of New York and Pennsylvania, and so on to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Thus it stretches in one broad belt or zone half way across the continent from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. In this wide field it comprises an amount of piety, learning, and general intelligence-as shown not only by its churches, but its schools, and colleges, and seminaries, and all the meann

of influence over the national mind and heart-not inferior to that pos sessed by any other in the republic.

You are aware that the Presbyterian Church in the United States is divided into two bodies. The division took place nearly thirty years ago, in 1838. There were many causes for this-some theological differences, but not sufficient to produce separation without some more active and personal influences. Such were found in certain differences of organisation-the question of Church boards as against Voluntary Societies, and a question of abrogating a plan of union which had existed for a generation between the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches in the new States of the West. But that which has been the great troubler of our Church, as of our nation, has been the question of slavery. The New School, as they were called, were thought to be radical and extreme in their opposition to slavery. Their bold and repeated testimonies gave great offence to the churches of the South, which, in the division, adhered almost in a body to the Old School. This ground of separation could not be removed so long as slavery continued to exist. But how to remove it has been the great problem which has exercised all the political wisdom and all the practical Christianity of our country for many years. It might not have been solved in a generation except by war. The knot has been cut by the sword. God has led us through a Red Sea of blood, and the last vestige of slavery is swept away for ever.

Thus the causes of separation being removed in the course of divine providence, it is natural that the question should return of reunion between the two branches of the Presbyterian Church in America. Within the last two or three years there has been a growing tendency towards union. We have fought so long against secession in the state, that the very name of disunion has become hateful to patriotic ears. Last year the General Assemblies of the two bodies appointed committees of conference to consider terms of union. These committees met in New York two or three months since, and continued in session several days, holding frequent conferences with each other. The impression was one of mutual satisfaction. Doubts and suspicions and distrust, wherever they lingered in any minds, were swept away, and they felt that they were indeed one in Christ Jesus. But the practical difficulties of union were not so easily removed, and required longer deliberation, so that after a full and free statement of all points in difference, they adjourned to meet again in New York on the 1st of May. That conference, as I learn since arriving in Edinburgh, have reported a basis of union. That report will be presented to the General Assemblies now in session, and the precise attitude of both bodies will be learned by your delegates now in America. I can only say in general that the result is doubtful, and it is even a question whether the union is desirable. Each body is very large: the two together might be unwieldy. Then there are many practical difficulties, apart from any theological difference. There is even a very troublesome question of property held in institutions of learning and theological seminaries. All this may delay union for years, or even postpone it altogether. But this much, at least, is secured-the alienation and strife of former years is passed away. Ephraim shall no more vex Judah, nor Judah Ephraim. There is peace upon Israel.

But you can hardly expect an American to appear in an Assembly like this without some allusion to the state of his country. Out of the heart

the mouth speaketh, and if there be any subject of which every true American heart is full, it is his country. Especially when far away, his beart turns to it as that of the ancient Jew turned to Jerusalem. Within the last few years we have had a new experience. Other countries have had their civil wars. Rome had its civil wars. France has been torn by factions; England by the wars of rival houses lasting for generations. But that New World beyond the sea seemed a virgin continent consecrated to liberty and to peace. Yet we have been plunged into the most terrible civil war known in history. That war lasted four years; it raged over half a continent, and brought into the field not less than a million and a half of men. The result has been endless bloodshed and suffering. The whole land was in mourning. At a time it seemed as if there was not a house in which there was not one dead. Yet the nation faltered not. The merits of that controversy were little understood abroad, and hence we found coldness where we expected sympathy. Men said we fought for empire, that we were possessed with a mad ambition and insatiable lust for power, and many declared aloud their joy to see a nation so proud and overbearing thus early broken down. But, sir, we fought for national existence against what must have ended in universal anarchy, or governments like those of Mexico and South America. We fought for liberty against the attempt to found an empire upon slavery. That was a religious war. Men consecrated themselves to it as to a divine service. Churches were broken up by the number of young men that entered the army; Sunday schools were stripped of their teachers. When the battle went sore against us, men fled for refuge to the horns of the altar, and went back from the communion table to the bloody field.

The effect of such a war upon the national character must be very great. We have matured rapidly. It has been common to speak of America as a young nation. That epithet can no longer be applied to us. "We have been young, but now are old." The change has been almost as rapid as with those "whose hairs grow white in a single night." In four years we have lived a century. From having a sort of remote colonial existence, away in the backwoods of America, beyond the limits of civilization, our country has, at a single bound, stepped into the front rank of the nations of the earth. The effect of all this, I confess, is dangerous. Our country has learned the secret of its own power. It has got a taste of war. Fearing nothing from external enemies, our only danger is from within; hence our only hope for our country is in the universal prevalence of education and religion.

I am often asked if we are not disposed to oppress the people of the South. On the contrary, I contend that there is not an example in history of a war so terrible in its character and so tremendous in its proportions, yet ending with less of vengeance. Not a single individual has suffered for treason. One wretched man-a jailer, convicted of having murdered hundreds of prisoners by cruelty and starvation-(thank God, he was not an American)-has suffered the just penalty of his crimes upon the scaffold and the assassins of Mr Lincoln were tried and executed for murder. But for treason no man has suffered death. Only a few days ago, Jefferson Davis, the very head and front of the rebellion, was suffered to go free. Our Government, that had his life in its hands, did not touch a hair of his head. Pardon me if I recall this unexampled