drawn scattered deserters from the Church South. They have thus won only the contempt (expressed in copious phrases and strong terms by the writer) both of the Editor and the entire South. Of such wickedness they ought to "repent." He does not object to any body's voluntarily joining our Church, if they will only pay their own way; but so long as our Church pours her funds into the South to organize a mission Church, (he is willing to have us give our funds to the Church South to distribute,) no offer of fraternization will be accepted. This is, we think, explicit and decisive. Both Editors present impassible barriers between the two Churches.

Now, to all this we need not now repeat the reply made by us in a former article, that the very offer of reunion is the offer to right, as well as to forget, all wrongs, given or received; that what our Bishops would probably propose would, in effect, be a placing the Southern section under the jurisdiction of Southern Conferences, so that all we have there built up would inure, co-ordinately, to what is now the Church South. To that offer the Southern press makes no intelligent response, but goes on rehearsing the past, and refusing to hear of a righting of wrongs--because wrongs have been committed!

At the close of the rebellion, in reading the Southern Methodist papers, which started into sight like sudden stars in the dark firmament, we recognized-before the Southern politicians had done their fatal work-what appeared to us a spirit of humble penitence and of conciliation, so hopeful of a better future that we announced it to the North by several pages of extracts in our Quarterly. In our Quarterly, in our Conference, and in the Preachers' Meeting we earnestly, and at the risk of forfeiting our standing with our friends and the Church, fought with all our power against the doctrine and policy of "disintegration and absorption" as both unchristian and impracticable. "What!" it was replied, "offer terms of communion with the guilty Church, South! Look at her crimes. Two centuries of slavery blacken her skirts. She has sustained the human auction block. She has blotted out from her discipline all protest against what John Wesley called 'American slavery, the vilest system that ever saw the sun.' She has fiercely interdicted the liberty of speech; she has murderously denounced all opponents of slavery. To this she has added treason. There is scarce

a man in her ranks not liable to a traitor's doom. And has she repented?" And now there is a much diminished number who say, "The Church South to this hour co-operates with all the wickedness of the secular South, in holding on to every remnant of oppression

as long as possible. She deals out to the negro, as the negro himself testifies, every species of lying and treachery. Not until she is forced by Northern pressure does she grant one additional prerogative of manhood to her oppressed colored people-and she does not repent." Dr. Myers will at once see that if it goes to drawing up lists of criminations, the North has quite the longest and largest in preparation. Rehearsal of grievances is generally an unsuccessful route to conciliation, and a very decisive indication that no conciliation is intended. To the whole our own reply has been, that guilty, awfully guilty, as the South has been, and still is, the North has been also guilty; that it is the frankly-given fraternal hand that most easily leads to repentance; and that the true way is to drop our charges against each other and both kneel down in repentance, side by side, leaving God to decide how great our respective sins and how possible our pardon. To this point the large body of our Church, we believe, have really come. But the leaders of the Church South are still counting up their charges: "You have done this and you have done that; and you must do this and you must do that, or we will not even fraternize with you." Heaven bless your dear souls, gentlemen of the Church South, we do not propose reunion because we need you. The Methodist Episcopal Church, in her clear, bright, well-read history before the acknowledging world, well knows that in offering to overlook your fearful history of sin, to cover your guilt with her comparative clearness, to sustain your weakness with her strength, and to lead you out from your outcast isolation into universal recognition, she is performing an act of high Christian magnanimity. The chief benefit would result to the Church South, to the general cause of Christ, to the peace of our common country, and, least of all, to us as a Church. She meant what you little deserve in hearty good faith. But when you put on airs, and bring charges, and prescribe conditions, as if you were the purists and the conquerors, you are simply giving evidence to the world that harmony is not your purpose.

In regard to our pushing upon the Church South, we early opposed our invading her in the spirit of "an ambitious ecclesiasticism." We advocated an earnest co-operation of both Methodisms, in a perfectly fraternal spirit, on the basis of the abandonment of all purposes of oppression, in the work of elevating the downtrodden, in binding up all wounds, and in restoring harmony, and, as far as possible, oneness to the two Churches. The disintegration" theory defeated our counsels in the North. But they would have been just as completely defeated by the cruel and bitter

remnants of the old pro-slavery spirit in the South. Thus in our view, even since the war, there are an abundance of unchristian things, and things to be forgiven, on both sides. But, as a whole, our Church was called of God into the South in behalf of the oppressed. The Southern Church had no intention to lead her Southern blacks up into Christian manhood. She was not only false to her duty, but she meant that nobody else should perform it. Not until Grant's election did the South resign all hope of restoring slavery. What vexes Dr. Myers's soul is, that the Methodist Episcopal Church has, in spite of the Church South, carried education, freedom, manhood to the Southern Methodist negro. Dr. M. and his compeers "alone understood the negro ;" and they purposed to train him, if not to slavery, yet to serfdom. Thus far our faithful Southern Preachers, our Conferences, our Bishops, our schools and high schools, have defeated their unholy aim and compelled them to higher grounds. But when the Church South gets rich, Dr. Myers assures us, she will take the negro out of our hands. Very well, Dr. Myers. When you outbid us in offers of franchise and elevation to the negro you are entitled to him. Your gaining of the negro will be the defeat of your own inhumanity; and you will have done the right not by the original promptings of your own Christian principle, but compelled by the Northern missionary and the Northern moneys against which you utter your rabies. Very possibly, but not very probably, our negro mission in the South will then have been completely, as it certainly will have been, on the whole, nobly performed. But, as we affirmed in our last article, until that time fraternization with the Church South is altogether subordinate to doing right for the negro South.

In the very act of disclaiming, the Editor unconsciously affirms, that there is a certain somebody, called "the South," who is to decide what man may reside in certain parts of our common country. The American Constitution declares that citizens of each State have all the rights of citizens in every other State. Of that article the old Slave States stood in permanent violation; and when Massachusetts sent Mr. Hoar to Charleston to test the matter by fair legal process, a Southern mob drove him from the city. The spirit of that mob still lives in that imperious "we," which, in the Southern Advocate, assumes to say who is "welcome" in the Southern part of our nation. The North has no such "we' deciding who may enter her limits. Of that old spirit the leaders of the Church South has, we fear, fully determined to make her the living embodiment. They are bent on cultivating the most in

tense sectional temper. Loyalty, nationality of sentiment, patriotism, are repudiated as "politics." Their last General Conference was in the most fraternal spirit invited to pray with us for restored unity in heart of Church and nation; they returned a form of acceptance with nation omitted. They claim that this was a slip of the pen; but, alas! the slip has never been repaired. It was a typical omission forever unfilled. Study the columns of their papers, and you will look in vain for one spark of patriotism, one throb of exultation over the power and greatness of our reunited country among the nations of the earth. They are in heart and soul Southerners, but scarce Americans. The South is their sole country. Among the people these stubborn remnants of the old spirit will fast die away as fraternal fusion and commercial intercourse increase; among the leaders it will die when they die.

We know not what the Union Commission appointed by our last General Conference contemplates doing in view of the meeting, next spring, of the Southern General Conference, nor have we any advice to offer.* Our belief is, that it will be the desire of that body that its session should pass unnoticed by the Commission, and that it will take any proposition as inviting another glorious rebuff. Its real wishes, we think, will be two-that disunion may be permanent, and that the responsibility of disunion may be avoided.

Pamphlets.

The Constitution of Man and his Final Destiny. By JOHN K. FINLEY. Pp. 84. New York: Office of the Herald of Life. 1869.

The Judgment. Its Judicial and Executive Character, the Time and Manner of it. By GEORGE STORES. Pp. 23. New York: Office of the Herald of Life.

God is Love. A Sermon by GEORGE STORRS. Pp. 23. New York: Office of the Herald of Life.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ-What is it? Pp. 96. New York.

The first of these pamphlets advocates, upon scriptural and other grounds, the doctrine of materialism, and the possibility of a future state only through a resurrection of the body. The second maintains that God's analytic judgment of men is in this world, but the executive judgment at the resurrection. By the former the wicked are condemned to bodily death without future

* Since the above was in type, we learn that Bishop Janes and Dr. M'Clintock will represent the Commission at that General Conference. They will doubtless be received with all formal courtesy; but, unless the spirit changes, there will be a pride taken in carrying out the smartness of their episcopal reply.

existence; by the latter the righteous are exalted to glory. The third maintains there is no hell, the only penalty of sin being non-existence by a resurrectionless death. The fourth maintains that the penalty of sin being bodily death, so the atonement was by Christ's bodily death through his shed blood.

Sunday-School Publications.

THE BEREAN LESSONS FOR 1870.-We chronicle with pleasure the widening and deepening interest in the Sunday-school branch of our Church work. We welcome especially the movements among modern and youthful Sunday-school men, which look to the study of the Holy Scriptures as the main object of this institution. We well remember the time when the committing of Scripture to memory was about the only thing contemplated by the Sunday-school, and have sometimes asked ourselves whether, with all the improved mechanical appliances of the age, the Sundayschools of the present are really better than those of an earlier day.

The Sunday-School Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church, through its Normal Department, is making a vigorous effort in the direction above indicated, and in the Berean Series of Lessons for 1870, published under its auspices, we see how thorough, radical, and practical the reform promises to be. Taking the Berean Synagogue (Acts xvi, 11) as a model, the system under consideration proposes to put the entire Church, old and young, in the family, pulpit, and school, at the daily study of the Word of God. The Berean Series is certainly very complete. Its lessons are chosen from both the Old and New Testaments. The first twelve are selected from the life of our Lord, the next twelve from the life of Elijah. A quarter's lessons with Peter, and another with David, complete the year's course of study. The following features of the system deserve especial notice and commendation:

1. THE LESSON MANUAL contains Scripture lessons for the year with appropriate topics and texts, which contain the central truths to be taught. Each lesson is accompanied by a hymn which embodies its central truth. "Home Reading Lessons" are indicated for every day in the week. These are selected with reference to the topic of study for the ensuing Sabbath. By this arrangement the morning readings at family prayer are made tributary to the lesson of the Sunday-school. The "Lesson