While, therefore, we cannot consent to any policy of silence, or subjection to their rule, we can as little consent to any anathemas offering them up as "sacred to perdition." And as to the organization of the Church South, our best conjecture is that so far from seeking to destroy it, we should find that at the end of fifteen ensuing years the highest net gain for religion and for Methodism throughout our land would accrue from sacredly respecting and conserving the Southern Church in its full strength. It is easy to destroy; and a very little destroying can prove very completely and finally destructive. Offer, without any airs of our own superiority, to that Church, disburdened of all need of apologizing for slavery, the hand of recognition and fellowship. Steadfastly avoid all interference with her equitable rights. Afford her all the means in our power to further her spiritual and secular interests. And, while it would doubtless be our bounden duty to accept all Churches and bodies of membership who positively desired admission into our Church, and promptly to fill every blank spot open for our occupancy, let us concede reciprocally the same right, and let us avoid seeking to weaken her where she has a just possession. In a few years the leaders of the past, with all their virtues, misfortunes, or faults, will have gone, leaving a pensive memory behind them. Our heart feels little but tenderness toward them. God is their and our judge. But soon not

*The consistency, at any rate, of this position with our antecedent views may appear from the following passage: "We see in a certain age and section a vast body of the Christian Church engaged in the practice and defense of slaveholding; we wonder to find that in other respects they exhibit the fruits of the Spirit in rich abundance, and we ask if such men are to be peremptorily unchristianized here, and utterly damned hereafter Certainly not. It belongs indeed to the general Christian Church, as testimony against their great sin, to place them under the ban of exclusion from Christian fellowship, and leave them to God's wise judgment. So long as their light in other respects is not darkness, so long as their religion is in its place immensely better than none at all, we admit their true Christianity, burdened indeed by a sin that dwarfs its stature, and trims it of half its reward in glory."- Whedon on the Will, p. 352.

"Another important duty which rests upon denominations recognizing each other as Christian Churches, is that of non-interference. When one Church has planted itself in a field which it is abundantly able to cultivate, it is a breach of the principles of unity for another denomination to contend for joint-occupation. This is a great evil, and one of constant occurrence. It often happens that one denomination organizes a Church in a village the population of which is barely sufficient for one Church, when another starts a rival Church, which can succeed only by drawing support from the other. When the field is the world, and so much land remains unoccupied, it is a great wrong thus to embarrass the operations of our fellow-Christians, and to burden the people with the support of two, three, or more Churches, where one would do more good than many."-Princeton Review, April, p. 287.

only will they have departed, but the passions and the inducements to defend oppression will have also passed away. Then may there be a natural, a spontaneous, an equal, and a genuine reunion. May God speed that day! But in order to it let us avoid creating any new grounds of unnecessary offense.

We are unable to re-echo the complaint that our authorities have been too slow in the inauguration of a policy of Southern invasion. Precisely what our Episcopacy has done we do not know. If our bishops have taken proper measures to survey the ground, and occupy those posts that fairly open to our entrance, their duty seems to us fully performed. They have certainly no power to pledge the Northern Church to a reunion. That can be organically consummated only by the General Conference, and practically by the three-fourth vote of the Annual Conferences changing the ratio of representation. And we may here, by the way, note that when Lay Representation is adopted, and the proposed reunion is completed, it will be a rare few in the ministry in whose biographies it is to be recorded that they were once members of a General Conference. We have now fifty-nine Conferences, and with a reunion more than a hundred; with an unknown additional number if both colors are united. Is a single General Conference a practicable legislative body for so immense a Church? Will not two or three General Conferences, united by some federal bond, be ultimately necessary? If so, is there not a clear numerical argument for still leaving the Northern, Southern, and colored Churches in three separate organizations? Could not such a federal connection be established as to render interchange of ministers easy, and the conferring of pecuniary aid, especially upon the Afric-American organization, regular and normal?

We do not take share in the zeal for an immediate inauguration of a Church without regard to distinction of races, as races at present stand related. Much of the "wicked prejudice," to which so much objection is raised, lies not so much against color as against the present associations belonging to that color, arising from the degradation of the race, and against the present fitness of the colored race for association on equal terms with the whites. Hence we do not co-operate with the fast philanthropy that is eager to push a negro into position because he is a negro. We doubt not that there are negro gentlemen with whom we should feel honored to converse; negro preachers under whose ministry we could sit just as willingly as if their faces were white; negro bishops whom we would prefer to see in our chairs rather by far than Bishop Andrew. But we do not think it at present advisable that such organic arrangements should be made as

that such a ministry or such an episcopacy should take place. The true order of things, in order that the public mind may in due time be brought right, we think, is successively, emancipation, enfranchisement, education, and finally the political, ecclesiastical, and social treatment of every man according to his qualifications, and social intercourse precisely according to our individual tastes.

Whether the two races blend or not into a single Church, it is clearly our duty to stand in such protective and nurturing relations to all colored Methodism as shall make it an object of liberal benefaction, advocacy, and education. It is our duty to assert unceasingly and unanimously the right of the negro to citizenship and suffrage. This of negro suffrage is no question which the Southern States alone have a right to discuss. The Southern vote, to a great degree, rules Northern destiny; and, we have a right to ask, who and what is the voter ? Congressmen elected by Southern votes, Presidents whose election the Southern vote influences, and perhaps decides, have their share in ruling North as well as South; and has the North no right to ask who elects them to rule her? We trample on the doctrine, even though President Andrew Johnson should affirm it, that negro suffrage is exclusively a Southern question. Besides, as Methodists we assert the right of hundreds of thousands of colored Methodists, and demand of the President, of Congress, of the Southern States, yes, and of some of our Northern States too, that they be enfranchised. The vote of a good and true man is to the entire country a priceless value, a property, and a protection. Every good citizen has a right to the vote of every other good citizen as his safeguard and benefit. We demand, then, as our own right, both as citizens and as Methodists, that every loyal colored man, and every loyal colored Methodist, both North and South, shall be enabled to vote for our security and wellbeing. Their right, and their right exercise of that right, is our right; and we are in their disfranchisement disfranchised, injured, and endangered. It is a question not of mere sectional interest, but of loyalty, republicanism, and humanity. But education is also the right of the colored American. As a Church it is our duty to aid them in the erection of higher institutions of learning, both for their laity and ministry. Our own institutions should be freely open to them. But especially should they be enabled to raise institutions, with a faculty of their own race, to train a ministry which shall moralize and elevate their laity. To this work the liberality of our laymen should be invited. And we most earnestly wish that at least one of the Biblical Institutes contemplated in our centenary effort could be one of this character.

Discourse Delivered on the Day of the Funeral of President Lincoln, Wednesday, April 19, 1865, in St. Paul's M. E. Church, New York. By JOHN M'CLINTOCK, D.D., LL.D. Reported by J. T. Butts. New York: J. M. Bradstreet. 1865.

A Memorial Discourse on the Character and Career of Abraham Lincoln. Delivered in the North Russell-street Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston, Sunday, April 23, 1865. By GILBERT HAVEN. Boston: James P. Magee. 1865.

Since our last editorial converse with our readers the nation has been startled by one of the most extraordinary events in her history: the assassination of a President. The living Abraham Lincoln has, in the view of our nation, become ideal. We gaze upon his pensive features in picture as those of a consecrated being. They seem to plead for our pity, and stir the depths of our feelings with a sacred interest. The orations, sermons, and periodical essays upon his life, death, and character amount to a literature.

The sermons under notice are among the best of the class. Dr. M'Clintock's discourse deals in touches of pathos, thrilling incidents, and sketches of character, done in a style of great purity and beauty. Mr. Haven abounds with pathetic passages, with profound discussions, and broad contemplations of our national affairs and humanitarian interests, expressed in his graphic style.

Carlton & Porter have the following in press :

Reminiscences, Historical aud Biographical, of Sixty-four Years in the Ministry. By Rev. HENRY BOEHM. Edited by Rev. J. B. WAKELEY. Methodism Within the Bounds of the Erie Annual Conference of the M. E. Church. By Rev. SAMUEL GREGG.

Old Testament Characters. By the late JAMES FLOY, D.D.

Sabbath Psalter. A Selection of Psalms for Public and Family Worship. Compiled by Rev. HENRY J. Fox, A. M.

Edith Vernon's Life - Work.

Lilian. A Story of the Days of Martyrdom in England Three Hundred Years Ago.

Exiles in Babylon; or, The Children of Light. By A. L. O. E.

Notices of Loomis's Astronomy, and Phrasis, a Treatise on Languages, postponed for lack of room.

THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1865.

ART. I.-GUIZOT ON THE RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

Meditations sur l'Essence de la Religion Chretienne. Par M. GUIZOT. Paris: 1864.

Meditations on the Essence of Christianity, and on the Religious Questions of the Day. By M. GUIZOT. Translated from the French, under the superintendence of the Author. London: John Murray. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1865.

"THEY shall still bring forth fruit in old age," says the royal Hebrew author. Guizot is now about seventy-eight years old; his present work shows not a single symptom of intellectual declension; on the contrary, it is one of the best examples of his terse, strenuous style, of his manly good sense, and of that peculiar logical faculty for generalization which has been the characteristic power of his writings. He seems to belong to that limited class of great men, first-rate or encyclopedic minds, whose physical vigor, the occult basis perhaps of their mental force, not only allows of a large range of knowledge and labor, but of unabated power in extreme old age. In his youth he was a fertile writer, and on difficult subjects, as his "New Dictionary of French Synonyms" and many other productions show. At about twenty-seven he joined to his never intermitted literary labors the cares of political life, as "Secretary General of the Interior;" and later, in the Department of FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVII.-31