something better, than stand by the plate, and vote in Presbytery and General Assembly. He visited the sick, his post was often at the bed of death, he counselled the erring, he went forth to the wilderness and brought the wanderer back to the fold, and was at once a father and a friend, a counsellor and a comfort to the families of his charge; he was known to all of them, and all of them were known to him; his name was a household word, and he could tell the name of every man, woman, and child, within his bounds; and frequently discharging offices both of temporal and spiritual kindness, he thus acquired, within his small and manageable locality, a moral influence that was omnipotent for good. By the smallness of the district the duties of the office were within the compass of men in active business, and as they could be done, they were done, and they were well done; while, as matters stand at present in many parishes, it is true, in respect both of ministers and elders, that their duties cannot be any thing like well done, and therefore they are in all cases imperfectly done, and in some not done at all. The beast lies down under its burden, and so does the man. I defy any minister holding a city charge in Edinburgh to do one-half, one-third his work, as it should be done; you may as well set a solitary man to reap the broad acres of a whole farm; and in such circumstances, there is felt a strong temptation to yield to despair, and to do little or nothing at all.

"Our present undertaking is intended to remedy these evils. We wish from its ruins to rebuild the ancient economy, and to restore what is not to be found now-a-days in any burgh in all broad Scotland-a manageable parish, split up into districts, each containing ten or twenty families, with the Gospel of its parish church as free as the water of its parish well, with a school where the children of the poorest may receive at least a Bible education, and with its minister, its elders, and its deacons, each in the active discharge of the duties of his own department. Such is the machinery that, before many weeks are gone, we trust to see in beautiful and blessed operation in the parish of St. John's. And what good, it may be asked, do we expect to follow? No good at all, unless God give the blessing. Besides the machinery we must have the moving power; but if He smile upon our labors, we enter the field confident of victory. What this system has done in former days it can do again; and we have no fear, though the eyes of enemies should look on, for we are trying no novel, never-beforetried experiment. Our fathers tried it, and they triumphed in the trial; and with the same seed, the same sun, and the same soil, should not the same cultivation produce as abundant a harvest? The very fields that are now, alas! run rank with

weeds, blossomed, and bore their fruit, like a garden of the Lord. From the cavils of some, and the fears of others, we take our appeal to history; what is chronicled in its pages, of our country, when the parochial economy was in full and blessed operation? Kirkton tells us that you might have travelled many a mile and never heard an oath; that there was hardly a household to be found without its household altar; and that the only party who complained were the taverners, and their complaint was, that their trade was broken-men were turned so sober. The testimony of De Foe is to the same effect, and not less remarkable. He tells us, that a blind beggar on his way to Scotland could know when he crossed the border by the total absence of oaths and profanity in the language of the people; and down in these lanes, which are now the haunts of misery and crime, there are still vestiges to be found of the prevailing religion of other days; above many of their doorways one can still decipher a text of Scripture; and now, in those houses where it stands carved in stone by the piety of our ancestors, you may ascend, as I have often done, from the cellar to the garret, and, amid all the families that crowd the tenement, you will hardly find one Bible, one communicant, one solitary person that frequents the house of God. When we think of those who once inhabited these dwellings, and how the prayer and the psalm were once heard where debauchery now holds her riot, and where, on the very Sabbath-day, I have been compelled to cease my prayer, because, from a neighboring apartment, the sound of blows, the curses of men, and the screams of women, and the cries of murder have drowned my voice;-when we think of this melancholy contrast, who can help exclaiming, 'How is the gold become dim, the most fine gold, how is it perished!' I know there are men who have said that such cases are hopeless, who would thwart us if they could, and having laughed in ungodly scorn at the idea of building churches for these unhappy victims of their country's neglect, would hand them over to the tender' mercies of the policeman and the jailer. Hopeless! I deny that the case is hopeless, or the disease beyond the remedy. 'Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?' 'Behold,' says God, in answer to these unbelieving and paralyzing fears, 'behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither is his ear heavy that it canot hear.' From what difficulties should they shrink who have such promises as these to fall back and rest on: 'What art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;' 'Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith the Lord; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and

the winds shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them! and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, thou shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel?" You may take a man to yon infirmary, and they may send him from their wards as incurable; you may take a man to a lunatic asylum, and they may give him over as a hopeless madman; the disease of the body and the delirium of the head may baffle the skill of man; but that man never walked this world whom God's gospel, with God's blessing, could not cure and convert; and we say, what an open church, and an open school, and a manageable parish, with its minister and multiplied elders, have, with God's blessing, done before, with the same blessing they can do again.”

APPENDIX.

ON THE USE OF THE TITLE BISHOP.

The word bishop, we have seen, is employed in the New Testament synonymously with the term presbyter, as the special title or designation of that officer in the church whose duty it is to oversee, superintend, preside, preach, and administer the sacraments and discipline of the church. Other terms are employed for the same purpose, such as pastor, minister, angel, ambassador, and steward, but these two, viz., presbyter and bishop, are more frequently employed, and especially when the qualifications and duties of the office are distinctly pointed out. When the apostles went about settling and completely organizing the churches, they ordained presbyters in every city. (Acts 14: 23.) When Paul took his final leave of the Ephesian Christians he called together their presbyters, whom he also denominates bishops, and whose office he clearly identifies with that of the preacher. (Acts 20: 17, &c.) When Paul writes to the church at Philippi, A. D. 62 or 63, he addresses himself only to the bishops and deacons. (Phil. 1: 1.) When Peter addresses all the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, he exhorts only the presbyters that are among them. (1 Peter 5: 1, 2.) And in all the passages in which full and explicit delineations are given of the nature and qualifications of the ministry, the word bishop is employed (See 1 Tim. 3: 1-8, Titus 1: 5-9, & 1 Peter 5: 1-5.) In the second of these passages, (Titus 1: 5-9,) the term presbyter and the term bishop are both employed, and the officer denoted by them is clearly identified as an instructor in the faith.

Both these terms, though very similar in meaning, are used to designate the ministry, because the one-PRESBYTER—was familiar to the Jews, and not known among the other nations, and because the other-BISHOP-was familiar among the other nations, and not common among the Jews. And as most of the first Christian churches were composed of both converted Jews and Gentiles, it was important to use both titles for their teachers.

In the Septuagint or Greek translation of the Old Testament, the term bishop is very frequently employed to designate the office of overseer in a sense analogous to that in which it is employed in the New Testament. (Neh. 2: 9, 14: 22; Numb. 4: 16; 2 Kings 34: 12, 17.) The corresponding term "shepherds" is the common title given in the Old Testament to the doctors of the people and to the prophets. (Zech. 2: 8, &c.)

And it is expressly declared that the officers of the church, in the New Testament church, should be known by this title, (Isa. 60: 17,) "I will make thy officers (in the Greek episcopi, or bishops) peace." (See also Psalms 69: 25, compared with Acts 1: 20.) This very passage Clemens, in his Epistle to the Corinthian church, quotes in confirmation of his view of the officers of the church. We will only add, as has been already fully shown, that in the Jewish synagogue the title of bishop or its cognate terms, chazan, angel, &c., were given exclusively to the minister who presided, and who had the charge of preaching also.

And while it is thus manifest that both these titles were adopted by the apostolic churches, it is beyond controversy that they came to be the established names by which ministers were known in the period succeeding the apostolic age. No other words, except when they speak figuratively in order to vary their language, are found in THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS, nor are these titles used by them in any other than their original synonymous application to those who occupied the pastoral office. This I have fully proved elsewhere, and in part also in this volume. Neither can any man tell when, or why, the title of bishop came to be exclusively appropriated to an order of ministers higher than presbyters, and having supreme authority over them. That the terms presbyter and bishop are the same, and applied only to one and the same office in Scripture, all prelatists have been constrained to admit. And that there was a gradual change in the use of these words, until at length the term BISHOP was limited to the order of prelates, they also admit; but when or why this change was introduced they cannot, because they will not, tell. The truth is, as has been seen, that one of the presbyters or bishops being necesarily appointed as is the case now among all Presbyterians-president or moderator of the body of presbyters, who watched over the interests of a whole neighborhood, and who, from the necessity of the case, then lived together, it became necessary to call him by some distinctive name. The apostles called this officer "the presiding presbyter," (1 Tim. 5: 17,) but as there were two principal titles for the ministry, it came afterwards to be the custom to call this "presiding presbyter," by way of brevity, "THE BISHOP," and the others "THE PRESBYTERS." And as many things then conspired to throw power and influence into the hands of this president, who was chosen for life, the application to him of the term "the bishop," came to be fixed, until at length it was regarded as indicating those prerogatives of authority and power which circumstances had attributed to his office. Thus was the higher order of prelatical bishops gradually introduced, with all the pride, ambi