man Reformed Synod protested against it, as was done in Baltimore in the fall of 1852. The language of that protest may have been rather unguarded at some points; but the provocation was very great, and the notice thus taken of it was felt to be in substance not any too strong for the occasion. Several of the Classes subsequently confirmed it by their separate action; and no doubt a wide disposition was created in the Church, to have a summary stop put to the whole correspondence which had been so outrageously diverted from its original design, in the service of a barefaced conspiracy against the unity and peace of the German Reformed Church itself. Happily, however, any action which it might have been proposed to take in this form was anticipated by the Synod of the Dutch Church at its last meeting in Philadelphia. In these circumstances, the satisfaction of doing wrong has fallen wholly to the one side, while the merit of suffering it with calm dignity and patience belongs exclusively to the other. Let us hope that this latter privilege will be steadily maintained by the German Reformed Church, in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

The Dutch Church, we say, has done wrong in this whole business. Her delegates did wrong in the first place; and her Synod rendered the matter a great deal worse, when it made itself responsible for their fault, and, pretending to put on the airs of an injured party, proceeded at once to break correspondence with the German Reformed Church, on the alleged ground of its being involved in false and heretical tendencies, which the orthodoxy of the Dutch Church felt itself too pure to tolerate even by such exceedingly remote contact. Never was there a more monstrously gross abuse of a simply outward and, at best, merely diplomatic relation. Who will pretend that the correspondence established as a matter of courtesy only between sister denominations, each equally independent, can ever fairly give one the right of virtually summoning the other before its self-constituted tribunal in this overbearing way, and the right of formally passing sentence of condemnation against it, on its own loose, indefinite indictment, without any examination, or the least opportunity allowed for defence

or reply? For nothing less than this was designed to be the effect, in fact, of the action taken by the Synod of the Low Dutch Church. It was part of a conspiracy formed, as all may easily see, to produce agitation and division in the German Reformed Church, for the purpose of giving a paltry minority in it the power of turning its affairs according to their own factious wish and will. The plan was fair and plausible. Advantage was to be taken of the anti-popery spirit, which is so rampant on all sides, and the blinding power of which might seem to be almost without bounds. The religious papers were to echo one another, in the way of continual alarm. Noise was to be made of defections, and threatened defections, from the German Church. Sister denominations, it was hoped, might be engaged to separate themselves from its communion, so as to get up a panic among its uninformed membership, and to open the way thus for all sorts of reformatory confusion. The Dutch Synod agreed to take the lead in this movement; and it did so for the acknowledged purpose of strengthening the hands of the revolutionary faction in the German Reformed Church, and stirring up a crusade on the part of the laity, to be led on by the ministers of this faction, against the order and peace of the Church as a whole. It was Kossuthian intervention with a vengeance. Who gave the Dutch Church a right to interfere with the affairs of the German Reformed Church, in this dogmatical and high-blown style? If it had been wished to drop the correspondence, it might easily have been done in a quiet and corteous way by mutual consent. The just subject of complaint is, that advantage should have been taken of a mere relation of courtesy to give the suspension on the side of the Dutch Church a quasi-judicial character before the world, that it might be clothed in this way with a factitious importance which did not belong to it in fact; and that the professed object of all this was to sow the seeds of dissension and anarchy, as far as possible, in the German Reformed Church. For this there can be no excuse.

The excuse pretended is thin and poor in the extreme. The German Reformed Church, it is said, has endorsed all the

views of the Mercersburg Professors, and these views are seri- . ously wrong. But what precisely were the views in question, the Dutch Synod never pretended to say or know in distinct terms; much less was it considered necessary to subject them to any theological investigation. It was counted sufficient to take them at second hand, and to gather them up into the convenient category of "Romanizing tendencies." Then, again, it had no proof before it whatever that the Synod of the German Reformed Church had ever intended to endorse all the teachings of its Professors even rightly understood. To approve of the general system of teaching pursued by a Professor, and to be satisfied with his services on the whole, and not to listen to complaints against him which nobody is prepared to reduce to shape or form, is one thing; to subscribe to all his particular notions and declarations, is quite another thing. The German Reformed Synod has done the first of these two things, without the most distant thought of anything so foolish as the second. It belongs to the genius of the Church to allow here a certain degree of liberty, which, in some way, the mind of the Dutch Church would seem not able exactly to comprehend. Following the voice of her delegates accordingly, she has insisted on holding the German Reformed Church responsible for whatever it has suited her imagination to ascribe to the so-called Mercersburg system; and on such flimsy plea, she pretends now to justify the outrage by which she has been endeavoring, for some time past, to drive the ploughshare of desolation through the borders of this sister communion. For the aggression has not been limited to the action of her Synod in Philadelphia. That was but the signal rather for farther hostilities, the object of which has been nothing less than the dragooning of the whole German Reformed Church into the system of thinking graciously proffered for her use in the columns of the New York" Christian Intelligencer". This paper, the organ of the Dutch Church, has shown, during the past summer, as is generally known, a perfectly rabid spirit towards the German Reformed Church, hardly surpassed in scurrility and misrepresentation by the "Lutheran Observer" it

self in its palmiest days. It seemed to look upon itself as the natural guardian of the interests of orthodoxy among the Germans, and has shrunk from no indelicacy in order to carry this fancied commission into effect. It has granted the free use of its columns to any disaffected minister, or layman, of the German Reformed Church, who could be induced to make them the channel of his spleen or pride; besides encouraging every scribbler at home to write what trash he pleased in the same vein and for the same general purpose. It even undertook to regulate the election of a President for Franklin and Marshall College; and by the help of its few friends in the German Reformed Church, it has had the impudence to seek a forcible entry for itself among our pastors and congregations, under the insolent pretence that the "German Reformed Messenger," the paper of our own Church, was in a plot to keep the people in the dark, and that we needed the light of the "Christian Intelligencer" among us to know how to take care of ourselves and to do our own work. Never was there such impudent interference before in the history of our American religious denominations; and never was there a more sorry plea presented in justification of any such aggression.

Only suppose the Dutch Church claiming the right to interfere in this style with the affairs of the Presbyterian Church ; who can doubt for a moment how the intervention would be received? It would be treated as an impertinence of the first order. The only reason for its being thought of towards the German Reformed Church is, that we are a comparatively small body, and that the reigning anti-popery feeling was expected to come in as a cover to the wrong which it has been presumed to perpetrate at our expense. But it is remarkable, that even this feeling has not proved strong enough to secure for our Dutch neighbors the favor they hoped to find with other denominations in this crusade against the German Reformed Church. The pedantry of the thing has been too characteristic to go down favorably in any quarter. It was expected and planned to draw the O. S. Presbyterian Assembly into the conspiracy; but that body refused to lend itself to any such in

glorious service. The religious papers, too, (the "Lutheran Observer" always excepted in any such case,) have preserved, generally, an ominous silence on the subject, at most noticing the action of the Dutch Church simply as an item of intelligence, with no mark of sympathy or approbation, and taking no reference whatever to the later agitational efforts of the "Christian Intelligencer." This, in the circumstances, is very significant, and amounts to a full reprobation of the course pursued by the Dutch Church, as having been at least silly, if not positively wrong. That Church has gained no laurels by what she has done. The whole relation, it is not to be questioned, is bringing more credit at this hour to the German Reformed Church, than it has brought yet, or ever will bring to the Low Dutch.

Still less has the crusade served to accomplish what it was expected to bring to pass, in the German Reformed Church itself. It is wonderful, indeed, how little it has had power to do here in the way of harm, and how signally it has been turned already to the confusion of those who allowed themselves to be carried away by its blustering parade. We have had, indeed, some internal commotion, for which the Dutch intervention would seem to have been at this time the only cause. After more than a whole year's rest, and with no new point of provocation in the Church whatever, (unless any might choose to construe as such, the action taken in regard to the Presidency of Franklin and Marshall College,) a few persons were led to start suddenly into a fit of reformation, which it was hoped would bring about in some way, a new order of things for the Church at large. In what way precisely, no one seemed able to tell. Enough, that the time appeared to be favorable for agitation, and that there was a promise of some distinction for those who could contrive to ride upon its foremost wave. We doubt if ever there has been a movement of the sort, pretending to cut so much of a figure, which was less able to give any satisfactory reason for its appearance, or to return any intelligent answer to the question: Pray what is it you want, and what exactly do you propose to secure? Such as it