It is not very natural-nor can I with my present views feel that it is very desirable-for frequent transfers to be made from one section or pale of the Christian community to another, for any other reason than the imperative demands of conscience. Then it is suitable, and if credited, will not in any case be dishonourable, nor injurious to the general interests of religion, except in peculiar circumstances.

The transfer of lay members of Christian societies from one to another, is comparatively of less importance, though not without influence. But when ministers change their relation, their conspicuous standing before the public makes an impression. The public is in some measure and for a moment startled. It is undoubtedly a responsible step, and ought to have good and strong reasons to support it.

I frankly confess, that, had not my pastoral relation been providentially broken up, and motives led me abroad, it is very likely I should not have been shaken or disturbed on this question. It is true, indeed, that the same events in the United States, which were the immediate occasion of challenging my attention to this subject, would necessarily have come before me. But I could not have viewed them in the same light; I could not have been surprised by them; it is possible, that in company with scores and hundreds of my ministerial brethren, I might have fallen into the same current, and sympathized with those transactions and occurrences, which are now rather painful, than agreeable to contemplate.

But at the very moment when these events were in the incipient stage of their career, or before their proper character had been developed, I was removed to a distant position to London. Before I had been there nine months, I became the expounder and advocate of Amercan revivals of religion before the British public-a very presumptuous office, as some perhaps might think. But I was led into it, first, by yielding to special and earnest solicitations to preach on the subject; and next, by complying with similar requests to give the substance

of those lectures to the public. But it was revivals of the original type, which I advocated; revivals, in the midst of which, when a child, my own heart had been touched with the power, and kindled with the affections of religion; revivals, where the pastors were the sober guides of inquiring minds, praying with and for them; where reason and judgment were never shocked, but enlightened and left upon the seat of their influence, while conscience was probed and challenged to the performance of its appropriate office; revivals, of a character to be remembered with respect, but now, I fear, seldom witnessed, by reason of a spurious and unhappy leaven, so widely diffused over the land, which, in all religious excitements, prompts and too often succeeds in introducing extravagant and disastrous measures. My faith in revivals was strong; for I had grown up, and laboured as a minister, in the midst of them; and without anticipating the unhappy results of the application of new and extreme measures to public religious excitements, I of course ventured upon ground, which in present light I should have trodden with more reserve and caution.

When I returned to this country in the spring of 1835, I had not been here long before I discovered that America was another world than that which I had left behind me in 1831. Of course I mean principally in a religious point of view; I might add in some others-in part gratifying, in part painful. But at present I have only to do with the religious features and aspects of the country.

When I had concluded to go abroad in 1831, being one day in conversation with a ministerial brother on the advantages and disadvantages of foreign travel, he intimated, as a common impression, "that it is prejudicial to the piety and Christian character of our ministers to visit England and the Continent. Indeed," said he, "it sometimes spoils them." I confess I was a little mortified at the expression of an opinion, which seemed to me so much the offspring of a narrow and weak mind. As if God and his grace are not the same everywhere;

as if the increase of knowledge could be purchased only at the expense of virtue; and therefore ignorance is the safest! I had been home but a few days before I heard a reverend gentleman confess to the presiding officer of one of our Anniversaries at New York, in his speech on the platform, “Sir, I have been guilty of the sin of going abroad!" The admonition served upon me four years previous was very naturally suggested by this confession.

Be this as it may, a righteous imputation or an unworthy prejudice-and if a prejudice, not very honourable to our country-it is doubtless true, that foreign travel enlarges the scope of one's vision, and gives him new views of men and things. Whatever may be the general fact, it can be owing only to a defect of virtue in him, if it does not fit him for a better and more useful sphere at home, whenever he shall return to it. If he is a statesinan, he ought to be a wiser and better statesman; and if he is a patriot, there is little doubt that he will be so. If he is a literary and scientific man, it ought to inspire him to greater diligence in his pursuits; and it can scarcely fail to have such an influence. If he is an artist, let who will laud the inspirations and sufficiency of a self-taught genius, a visit to the princi pal capitals of Europe is indispensable to his highest possible attainments. If he is à Christian, or a Christian minister, I see no necessary reason in experience, or within the range of my observation, why, with the world before him, with his Bible in his portmanteau, with the ocean or the land, town or country, as his place of prayer, his Christian graces should not be improved and invigorated, with the increased advantages of that enlargedness of mind, which a knowledge of the world, seeing it as it is, affords him. He ought to have a higher and a stronger character, and be better qualified for influence and doing good, wherever he may be.

If, however, it be assumed that the model of Christian and ministerial character, intellectual and moral, which is the unavoidable doom of the narrowest possible sphere of action and observation, is of course and always the

best; and that a proportionate deterioration of character is the necessary consequence of every degree of extension given to that sphere, other things being equal, why then there is no more to be said, inasmuch as an admitted axiom cannot be contested.

With regard to myself, I confess, that one of two things must have been true on my return to my native land-either that the very civil and courteous augury of my friend and brother had come to pass in my own person, viz. that "going abroad had spoiled me," or else my country was spoiled. I do not mean, however, that my country was spoiled in everything, nor wholly spoiled in that particular to which I allude. But I do mean, that the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations of Christians, to which I had ever been attached, and in which I felt the deepest interest, seemed to me, to a very great extent, lying under the blighting desolation of the new and extravagant measures, by which religious excitements had been attempted and managed on the one hand, and of endless and bitter theological controversy on the other. I will not say, that I was shocked, because it came before me gradually; I was partly prepared for it by what I had heard; yet I had not conceived the extent of the evil.

It was impossible I should not pause over this melancholy picture, as I approached it, and was about to come in contact with it. I had been providentially and for a time eradicated from American society, and had returned to plant myself again in its bosom. And it was the Christian ministry, in which I wished and felt it my duty to be engaged. But almost the entire mass of the body of Christians to which I belonged, was pervaded with one or the other of two great evils, and their cognate ramifications-to me evils-from which my taste, my habits, my feelings, my whole soul revolted: extravagance and controversy. It seemed as if I was indeed "spoiled" for enjoyment or usefulness in that connexion. For the first time in my life, driven by the considerations of these great and afflicting results staring me in the face, I began to question the expediency and adequacy

of that system of church organization, which had not kept out these evils, and apparently could neither remedy nor abate them.

It is singular, and singularly true, how inconveniences, difficulties, and embarrassments, inherent in a system, and necessarily growing out of it, may be borne for years, perhaps through life, and the cause not be apparent to those who suffer these disadvantages. They are set down as evils of the human condition-the lot of manof which all must have their portion in some shape.

So had I always been accustomed to view the evils of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism-for it cannot be denied that there are some, and not a few, of a grave character, in each of these systems. The moment that my attention was challenged to the defects of these systems, as separate wholes, in view of the present state and prospects of religion in our country, it was natural and unavoidable for the mind to recur to past experience. All that I had observed, enjoyed, suffered, as a member of the Presbyterian community, and in the experience of a Presbyterian clergyman for many years, came under review in each particular item for a purpose to me entirely new it was to prove the system-and so far as I was able, to do it in the light of comparison. It is true, I had experience on one side, and little else on the other but theory and observation. So far, indeed, as the forms of public worship are concerned, I had become quite used to them in England; my prejudices against them, so far as I had any, and which were never strong, had been principally subdued. To these forms I could easily be reconciled; nay, I had discovered in them many comparative advantages; had enjoyed much satisfaction in the use of them; had even attained to no inconsiderable degree of complacency in them; and in this particular, was nearly "spoiled."

The abuses and enormities of the English church establishment my eyes were open to: I had seen and felt them; had sympathized with those who are oppressed by them; but my own good sense, what little I have, as I think will be the case with every sober man, had distin