unitedly, and untiringly, and resolutely, labor and plan, and give and pray, to build up faster our own Church.

I shall close by deducing a few practical inferences.

1. In the working of any Church organization, some disasters are to be anticipated. No man could allow himself to expect that his Church will be in all things, and at all times, prosperous. The man, who faints, desponds, and perhaps bitterly complains, at every check and hinderance of the church, is poorly qualified for any responsible post in the great enterprise. He cannot be so prepared to work for God in a world of general depravity and constant temptation. If the Church were perfect in all parts, then would her work be always correctly done, and her way always successful. But no church will always be what it should, nor do what it should. Everything human will have its imperfections, and the Church of God will be composed of fallible men, and sometimes swayed by injudicious or wicked counsels. Violent measures and unkind feelings occur, and wrong conduct in one part is met in a wrong spirit by another part. The members will not all be new born; the deacons may not always be "grave;" the elders may not all "rule well;" the bishops may not all be "blameless;" ecclesiastical judicatories may not always be impartial, or wise, or prompt and decided; and the highest church action and influence may sometimes get perverse and onesided. Such imperfections or sins will necessarily induce evils and disasters. Moses' hands will sometimes hang down; Aaron and Hur will not always patiently hold up; Joshua and the army will not always keep up their courage and zeal; and thus will come occasions when Israel will lose and Amalek will gain ground.

Knowing what human nature is, such things should be anticipated. We must calculate upon it, and stand prepared for it. "It must needs be that offences come;" and we are not to grow impatient nor desponding on account of it. It is no part of our Christian work to fret and complain, much less to rail and recriminate, but while we faithfully rebuke the wrong-doer, it must be in such a spirit and manner as shall best redress the wrong and repair the evil. Let it be fairly apprehended that our Church has yet a long time to be militant, before she shall

be completely triumphant; and that she has yet very great, and very difficult labors to perform, both within her own pale, and without upon unbelievers, and abroad upon pagan nations, before she can have any right to feel that her great mission has been accomplished. Voluntary association and ecclesiastical action, that now induce discordant counsels, and tend toward colliding measures, must somewhere find their centralizing and harmonizing principle; Church Extension and Ministerial Education must find how they may prosecute and effect their ends for the particular church organization, with no violation of denominational claims and courtesies; and slavery is yet to be so defined, and its system and working so clearly apprehended, that the great body of the Church shall come to know what forms of servitude are righteous and may be permitted, and what are essentially unrighteous, and must be purged out at any sacrifice, that no old leaven may be allowed to spoil the new loaf. Our Church is among the surest and safest, and furthest on the way to this desired and destined consummation; but while this great work is being done, let every man understand that human imperfections will mingle in with it, and that many at least partial disasters will year by year accompany it, and severely try our faith and patience.

2. The point of failure must bear the responsibility. Whoever may be in fault, others will be injured by it. The evil consequences spread beyond the sinner, and often permeate the whole organism. One Achan in the camp brings the discomfiture of a whole army. One sin in the progenitor has spread its consequences through our entire humanity.

But, while from the law of social connections there is this liability of the many to be injured by one, still the higher law of immutable morality fixes the responsibility only upon the guilty. The very point where the sin originates, is that to which God will trace back the consequences, and hold to answer at the last account. A man's or an angel's sin will spread its evils beyond the sinner, but God will for that sin hold that sinner alone responsible. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

So in the Church, whenever and wherever wrong action comes in, it spreads its destructive virus far and wide, and makes the whole body suffer. The ministry may have its imperfections

and perversions; the church sessions and higher judicatories may have sins of omission and of commission; some portions of the membership may be heretical in doctrine, or scandalous in practice, negligent in discipline or oppressive in measures; the Church may be thus greatly annoyed, hindered, weakened, and religion greatly dishonored; but to the very wrong-doers, we say most earnestly-"be sure your sin will find you out." That which you originated, or which you adopt and practice, is yours inalienably, and however widely it may have gone abroad, scattering its curses, it must at last come home to its own, bringing its merited condemnation. The hand of retribution will take hold on the very point of dereliction.

3. The most disastrous point of failure is in that of our spiritual dependence.

It is a very dangerous, and a very common perversion of the doctrine of divine dependence to so hold it as to excuse and encourage inaction. But the danger is not all on that side. Indeed, I believe the most imminent danger to the Church and to the world, now is, on the side of forgetting or discarding our dependence on God. We too much overlook the spiritual and boast ourselves in the sensual. It is a day of action and outside observation; planning measures, inventing instrumentalities, organizing associations, putting the church in training through various boards and committees; all needed; all indispensable, it may be; and yet, all tending to absorb our attention and interest, and divert our minds from God. The ardor of marshaling the host, and arranging the army on the battlefield, and admiring the courage and promptness and intrepidity of Joshua, or some other Captain, are altogether most congenial to the present spirit of the Church. We look too much to our means, and carnal preparations, and comparative competitions with other organizations, and are not interested and attentive enough to what should be going on upon the top of the hill. We are too little earnest that the Rod of God be steadily pointed toward heaven, and that Aaron and Hur should be never out of place.

And yet, brethren, here is all our strength. A failure here is fatal. No matter what our army or its leaders, if God do not go forth before us, most surely Amalek will triumph over Our greatest danger is about this uplifted rod.

us.

4. The Grand Cause shall finally triumph. Sometimes all without and all within the Church, may seem forbidding and discouraging. "Iniquity may abound, and the love of many become cold." Wickedness may be in high places and the enemies of truth may be many, and strong, and proud. Zion herself may have her internal jealousies and jarring interests, and party strife, and threatened disunion and disruption; but the divine injunction is ever important, and never more loud than now: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; and in him only is it safe to trust. He has his own steadfast purpose to accomplish, and he knoweth the end from the beginning. He has established his Church as his ordained means for accomplishing it, and put the symbols of supernatural power within it. It is other and higher than any human organization. He will not permit that his rod shall want a hand to hold it. If that hand grows weary, he will not permit that patient and persevering men shall be wanting to sustain it. He has not prepared all his instrumentalities, that they shall be taken by the enemy and become at last only the boasted spoils of the devil. Church erection and church extension will progress, redress of crying enormities will be prosecuted, until Zion shall become a joy and praise throughout all the earth.

The years will rapidly roll by, and in them shall the sacramental host grow more numerous, and more united, and more holy. Every enemy shall ultimately be subdued. Raging infidelity shall one day have utterly fallen; caviling skepticism shall at some time be convinced, and thoroughly conquered; the licentious, and the ambitious, and the cruel oppressors, shall one day have had their last; and all irreligion and all false religion shall have no more place. "All shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest." The Church shall one day fill and enclose all the earth. The days of conflict and struggle shall be over, and universal possession, and universal peace and joy shall come. Let us, brethren, go to our work, as appointed for us in the successive days of this session of Assembly, in faith, and hope, and prayer; assured that the blessing of Jesus Christ upon us, will make it to hasten on this day of promised deliverance and final triumph. Amen. VOL. VI.-13

ARTICLE II.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF REV. ISAAC ANDERSON, D. D.

ONE hundred years ago, the region of country now embraced within the limits of East Tennessee, was an unbroken wilderness. The earliest traders and hunters who explored the country found neither wigwam, nor village, nor any sign that ever human foot had pressed the virgin soil, save indeed, that here and there were the occasional camping-places of the Indian hunter, and through the midst of it, running north and south, was the Great War Trace, or Path, along which the tribes passed on their expeditions. Ten years later, and the tide of emigration from Virginia and North Carolina, setting in strongly, continued to flow on westwardly till the Indians were forced to retreat before it and seek an asylum and a home, in the dark forests along the beautiful streams, in the lovely valleys of the land which they had before claimed and used as their own hunting grounds. A few years later still, and the hardy pioneers built their houses, forted and stockaded, on the banks of the Watauga. Forced again to retreat before the encroachments of the whites, the Red Man could not yield without a struggle. The curling smoke from the white man's cabin, as he looked from some eminence down into the valley below, only stirred within him the dark, sullen, relentless spirit of revenge. And revenge he had, cruel, merciless, devilish. But still onward advanced the march of civilization, and before it the Indian retreated still, until at length the germ was safely planted of a great and glorious State. By and by, came the man of God, seeking the sheep in the wilderness, preaching the Gospel of peace, building the school-house and the church, and taking an active part in the establishment of a new Commonwealth. Tidence Lane, Charles Cummings, and Samuel Doak, were the pioneer preachers of Tennessee-the first named, a Baptist; the last two, Presbyterians.

In 1788, sixty-nine years ago, when Gideon Blackburn came to East Tennessee, there were but three Presbyterian ministers