that his salary was inadequate to the support of a family. The conference thereby had to be made up mainly of bachelors, young and old. We have heard, through oral tradition we believe, that Asbury made one of his terse apothegms in these words, namely, "I wish the devil and the women would let my preachers alone." He was thrice married in the course of his life, and in each case was wise in his choice and happy in his marriage relations. He was, in his maturer years, very clearly a man of courteous manners and of warm and mellow affections. His letters, written to his wife during the trying days when his marriage with her would seem to be the cause of his trials, are rich with the most assuring expressions of love.

Mr. Smith discusses the dealing of the General Conference of 1844, in the main, with excellent temper. We could wish to approach that question at this time with the same calm fairness with which we would treat an occurrence of two centuries ago. There are two or three points, however, in which we think his views historically incorrect. We think he fully shows that Bishop Andrew had no desire for the episcopal office; that he accepted it with sincere reluctance, from a sense of duty; and that he would gladly have resigned it in 1844 to secure the unity of the Church. He had no anticipation at the time of his marriage that any serious difficulty would arise from his marital connection with slavery. His demeanor during the discussions was becoming, and we do not think it right to affirm that "he divided the Church." But the point of issue we must here take with our author is this: His connection, even by marriage, with slavery was in contrariety to the understanding which had always existed between the two sections of the Church, that the episcopal office should not be held by a slave-holder. It is of no use for our biographer to tell us how men who were slave-holders were appointed to office and honors, such as Capers and Olin; neither of those men could have been elected to the episcopate for this sole reason. The reason was this, that to admit slavery into the episcopate was to surrender the last remnant of our historic protest against slavery, and to admit the supremacy of the slave-power. Hence it was not "a few extremists," but old stereotype conservatives like Nathan Bangs of New York, and John Collins of Baltimore, with almost their entire delegations that took firm position for the old understanding. They did this, not in sympathy with so-called "modern abolitionism," but, as Dr. Bangs expressed it, from "the old antislavery feeling;" that is, on the basis of the

old protest against the supremacy and even the existence of slavery, inherited from Wesley, Coke, Asbury, and the Methodist fathers, fragmentary traces of which stood still unerased upon the pages of our Discipline. According to Dr. Smith's own statement Mr. Andrew was aware that he was elected because he was a non-slaveholder. His self-depreciatory statement at the time of his election was that he was chosen on account of his "poverty;" that is, he was elected because he was a non-slaveholder, and he was a non-slaveholder, not from conscience, but because he was too poor to buy a slave. He understood, therefore, that as Bishop he stood upon a non-slaveholding platform. Why? Because, as the Northern delegates ever claimed, it was hitherto understood by both sides that the Episcopacy was to be clear from slavery. Bishop Andrew, therefore, appears to have stood in the Episcopate in violation of the known understanding upon which he was elected. Mr. Smith says, and we fully believe his statement, that Bishop Andrew "wished to resign." Tradition says that during the early days of the General Conference he wore a very despondent air. But a movement among the Southern delegations took place that changed the situation, and also seems to have changed his demeanor. They, in solid body, required him to stand firm.. We think their position was, in the circumstances, about right. It was truly, as Mr. Seward said, "an irrepressible conflict," and the proper time for the issue had come. Slavery and freedom must meet face to face. Behind either party in this General Conference there were irresistible forces requiring each to firmly meet the inevitable contest. Disintegration and ruin threatened the party that shrunk. The best result in the case possible took place. The Southern section withdrew, and formed a new organization, and the two Churches, each, maintained their own entirety. This is not saying that both sides were right; or that they were both equally right or wrong. The relative rightness depends upon the previous question whether slavery is right. If slavery is right, then the effort to force it into our Episcopacy, and over the Church and nation, was right. If slavery is a great moral wrong, the enemy of human advancement, then the North was right and the South fearfully wrong. On that question there now is in every part of Christendom, except our South, a terrible unanimity. The great national organic sin itself, in which each party had its share, was, in its permanence and power, of too large a magnitude for that Conference to undertake to manage. Taking things as

they were, their only problem was, What shall be done for the nonce? And that problem they solved with singular courtesy of discussion and wisdom of result.

There is another point in Mr. Smith's history of these transactions which of itself qualifies our commendation of his work to our readers South and North. It is the injurious attempt to perpetuate the historical untruth that the General Conference, actually or "virtually" deposed Bishop Andrew from the Episcopate. The Conference neither intended nor did any such thing. A motion was made asking him to resign, and the Conference voted it down. That of itself proves that there was no purpose that he should vacate the Episcopal office. They wished him, not to vacate the Episcopate, but to vacate his connection with slavery. They found him involved in an impediment to the performance of his Episcopal duties, and they simply said to him, Unload and go on. They ordered his name to be continued as Bishop in the Discipline. They continued his salary. There were Northern laymen standing ready to indemnify him for the loss of the slaves, thus making it perfectly easy for him to leave the Conference a perfectly unembarrassed, perfectly respected, Bishop of the undivided Methodist Episcopal Church. All the obstruction against this result was interposed by himself and his friends. Then we say to all the world, that for him and his friends first to interpose a voluntary obstacle, and then turn around and charge that he was "deposed," is a historical untruth not justified by that equivocal "virtual." And the worst of it is that in the conversational and even editorial version of the story in the South, circulated by "extreme men to fire the Southern heart, this nice little word "virtual" drops out, and the pocket edition of the legend is, "they deposed Bishop Andrew." In giving permanence to this untruth, qualified or unqualified, Mr. Smith wrongs his own people much more than he does us.

Again we have (p. 378) the following unnecessary misstatement in regard to the organization of the new Church at Louisville: "So was the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, organized without revolution or schism or secession under consent given by the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church." Now the "General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church" never gave any such "consent." It persistently and positively withheld all sanction or permission; and nearly the entire Northern delegation, we believe, held that it had no power to

con

sent." It threw all the responsibility for the withdrawal itself upon the withdrawing body. There is a wide difference between saying: "Yes, I 'consent,' you may go;" and saying, "You say you must go you go, then, on your own responsibility; but we shall not fight you for it, or chase after you and contend; we will, for peace' sake, keep within a particular limit, and let you alone after you have performed the unauthorized departure." Permission to go is one thing; provision for the unpermitted going, should it persistently and willfully take place, is another thing. We believe that the Southern Methodists did the best possible thing when they organized the new Church. We believe, and have never scen it denied by any authority in our own Church, that that new Church was from the beginning a legitimate Church of Christ. We think it was organized by a justifiable secession and revolution; and we rejoice that the property of the old Church was divided to the new organization. Her origin and existence need no misconstructions of past facts and documents for their vindication. She has done and is still doing a work that none else can do; and in that work our prayers are, and ever have been, all for her peace, prosperity, and power.

The manifesto from Louisville announcing the severance of the Church was duly followed by the gun of Fort Sumter announcing the severance of the nation. Bishop Andrew had been an old Whig, and he disapproved the opening this war upon the national existence, but sustained his section when it assumed to his eye the form of an invasion of land and home. As chief pastor he labored with heroic persistence for the integrity of the flock. He hailed the return of peace with impulses for reunion which it was unfortunate that the South did not obey. It was a singular and perhaps a providential thing that the man who is credited with severing the South from the North was a man of Puritan blood, of New England descent, and approaching most nearly, perhaps, of any of his compeers, to being "a Southern man with Northern principles."

To the saintliness of his character there is abundant testimony. He lived in and breathed an atmosphere of prayer. He was a patron of the poor, especially of the colored race. Yet though bearing a life of consecration he shrunk from formal profession. His third wife made the unique remark, "I know I am by the blood of Christ cleansed from sin, and yet I know that he is better than I am, and he will not say he is." And of this wife we have an account of singular pathos and beauty. She is de

scribed as a woman of rare character, yet, in mature years, she was mentally incapacitated by softening of the brain. Yet amid the mental ruin her religious powers towered aloft. "She spoke of Jesus as sweetly and prayed to him as beautifully as she had ever done." But our learned physiologists can explain all that. With "victory, victory," on his lips, and leaving a sacred radiance on his dead face, the holy Bishop departed to his reward. He was entombed among his people at Oxford, Ga., close by Emory College, of which he had long been a trustee. Ilis face on the frontispiece of the volume is marked and manly, with a tinge of sadness as if of sorrowful recollections, and eyes heavy as if their brows were burdened with the weight of many Blessed be the memory of the just.

cares.

The Prophets of Israel, and their Place in History at the Close of the Eighth Century B. C. Eight Lectures. By W. ROBERTSON SMITH, LL.D. 12mo, pp. 444. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1882.

We are here furnished by Robertson Smith with the new scheme of biblicism according to Evolution. It is the programme of the origin, growth, and completion of our religion by natural derivation. We are directed to the seminal point where it took origin, to its early germination in the ovum, its gradual development into maturity and completion. It brings religious evolution into accordance with nebular and animal unfolding, so that the theory of the universe-planetary, racial, and spiritual-is made to keep step to one harmonious music. Science and relig ion are thus triumphantly reconciled, and Darwin fairly is seated in Moses' chair.

In the era of the Hebrew Judges, we are here told, the little Shemitic nations of Syria, including Israel as one, worshiped each his own god with profound devotion. Each nation admitted without doubt the reality of the gods of its neighbor nations, but valorously maintained that its own god was strongest, and could whip any one if not all of his rivals. Of Israel the god was Jehovah, worshiped, not with prayer, but with spontaneous and irregular sacrifices and ceremonies. Gradually, however, with this worship of Jehovah some moral ideas became associated. As in theistic physical evolution a divine force comes in contact with the subject, and directs its peculiar development, so Jehovah came into personal relation with the Israelite clan, and modified its unfolding and history. Israel was at first one of those hovering hordes that hung on the north-eastern margin of Egypt,