peptic results; but his warm-hearted Methodist brother by his side, who has but a slight acquaintance with books, will yet draw his people away. He will at least be likely by a cold or stilted manner to repel and scatter the young people, the lambs of his flock. Christ's way of teaching was not always by formal discourses, but by kind and familiar conversation in social circles. The apostles did not so often deliver formal discourses, with logical accuracy and literary finish, as teach informally from house to house. Their ways were also winning and not repulsive. Is this thought of sufficiently?

Space will only permit us briefly to indicate another topic. The field of labor which seems to be specially assigned to our Congregational churches is usually coëxtensive with the town in which the church exists. In all the towns there are highways and hedges that need attention. In most places there is a scattered population that is connected with no religious society whatever. It would be an interesting inquiry to what extent these people have been repelled from our places of worship by our own fault. They are not poor or ignorant, as a general rule; but they have property, are trained up in our common schools, often exercise much influence, and have much excellence. But in various ways they have become detached from our congregations; and the churches are languishing for just the kind of labor which is needed to bring them back. It is well that we send the gospel to India and China, but it is not well to neglect this population in our own neighborhood. If these people could be brought into our churches it would do more to elevate the religious and moral and intellectual character of New England than any other enterprise that can be named. There is no labor by which the churches could do more good than by this; not by a spasmodic effort, nor by the labor of a year, but by a system of labor, judiciously arranged as to its details, and carried on perseveringly by every member of the church, as an established department of Christian duty and occupation.

This is a department of labor in the Master's business that the minister can do but little of. He can be the leading mind in it, but a great part of the detail must be performed by others. All the members of the church, male and female, can work

efficiently in it, and whether one is old or young, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, strong minded or weak minded, there is some part of it which he or she can do. It ought to be regarded as business, and as requiring skill; and it should be taken for granted that skill can only be acquired by practice and thought. It needs, like secular business, consultation, contrivance, and adaptation of means to ends. God gave us the faculty of acquiring skill for such purposes quite as much as for doing secular business; and the fact that the children of the world are in their generation wiser than the children of light, is not creditable to the churches, nor favorable to their prosperity. Perhaps they need strengthening in this point more than in any other so as to enable them to do the work that is actually at hand and that most needs to be done. The impression needs to be deepened that they ought not to content themselves with routine, or with speeches full of excellent argument and exhortation, but evaporating in generalities and bringing nothing practical to pass, but that they ought to occupy this field of labor which lies at their own doors, but which is substantially new and unoccupied.

Not long since a Western member of Congress who sympathises with the rebels, delivered himself of a tirade against New England, in the course of which he admitted that his animosity was not against the territory nor the whole people, but against the Puritans and their principles; and he expressed the belief and hope that these principles were dying out, and that other and better systems were taking their place. His best expectations were from foreign emigration. We have no sympathy with his principles, his expectations or his hopes; but from the church at Plymouth Rock to the most distant that has adopted its faith and polity, we think that a system of self-examination needs to be instituted in regard to the topics we have discussed; and we think the ministers and churches will all be led to the conclusion, that if such a calamity should come upon us as a decline from our own pure and scriptural system to systems that belong to by-gone ages, and to aristocratic and monarchical or despotic forms of civil government, and to the revival of shows and formulas and saints' days, a principal share of the blame will rest on them.

ARTICLE III.

THE RISE OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY.

Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1864.

NOTHING is more characteristic of the wisdom of our political forefathers, than the comprehensiveness with which they viewed the dangers that encompassed them, and the activity with which they provided against them. Surprised by the motherland into a sudden revolt; trammelled by the recent restrictions of a rigid government, uncertain of the zeal and unanimity of those for whom they were to organize resistance; forced by events to embark on a hazardous expedient, before they could take preparative measures either for foreign aid or domestic coöperation; they had to exercise those attributes of statesmanship without which statesmanship is vain- celerity of action, and prudence of resolve. They had, in a moment of peril which would have paralyzed meaner souls, but which awed them into greatness, to provide for exigencies near and remote, to embrace deliberations for the future in their anxieties for the present, to lay the silent groundwork of prosperous peace, while marshalling a meagre host against the discipline and experience of centuries. They had to harmonize communities different in interest, habit, education, and hereditary feeling, to bring them not only to a union for war, but to a union which should last when war should give way to a chaos, which if unprepared for, would be worse than subjugation.

They recognized therefore, in the very inception of revolution, the importance, especially to a young nation, which was to be derived from a complete and cordial understanding with the established powers of the earth. It is our purpose in the present paper, to give a necessarily brief sketch of the first steps which were taken by our early statesmen to organize amicable and useful intercourse with foreign nations, and which led to the present system of diplomacy between America and

Europe; which all must recognize as a powerful engine of our advancement to a position of the highest rank among empires. The remoteness of this country from the old world may be regarded as lessening in some degree the importance of diplomatic relations between the continents. One thing is certain, we are relieved by isolation from the constant apprehension of foreign war, of the undue preponderance of rivals, and from the necessity of interference in the quarrels of others; and may therefore dispense with many of the diplomatic discussions which are the perpetual annoyance of our fellow men over the water. But without such intercourse, how isolated indeed our position! To pass over the amenities of mutual courtesies, the advantages to our literary and social interest, the respect in which we are held abroad, and the protection of our countrymen whose business or taste lead them to seek the old world; how stunted would be our commerce, how detrimental to our influence as a free community on European opinion, how confined in fact in every direction our enterprise and active effort, had not a systematic diplomacy, well nurtured in its youth, strengthening itself and invigorated by our very progress in its riper stage, and now the medium by which we demand and are not denied encouragement in prosperity, and sympathy in trouble, been planted and watched over at the very crisis when the fact of independence had no existence, and was hardly hinted at yet by the boldest revolutionists.

For, nearly a year before the charter of Independence was published and hardly a year after the first Congress was convened, an active movement for opening communication with European powers was made. War had been declared against the home government, and a British force was landed on the colonial soil. From a population of three millions an army was to be drawn, which should defy the first military power of the world. In every colonial capital resided a British governor; in every port lay British vessels. British merchants controlled commerce, British subordinates compelled obedience to higher orders; sympathy with the king stood out boldly among the best gentry throughout the continent. The insurgent army was to be enlisted among the peaceful habits of husbandry and trade, and, with hardly leisure to drop the implements of peace for

those of war, was called on to face the best drilled troops which experience and constant practice could produce. Arms, and ammunition and food and clothing were to be secured from a supply well nigh exhausted by the drafts of the prevailing government. Commerce was under the control of the enemy. Whichever way the patriot's anxious eyes were turned, some obstacle, dreaded or unforeseen, seemed to check his ardor, and dampen hope.

So gloomy were their prospects, when the first legislators set about their great work; and the hope of receiving immediate aid from abroad was not more their design, than to lay the foundations of a permanent system, when on the 29th of November, 1775, a Committee was formed for diplomatic purposes. This Committee was to correspond with persons friendly to the cause, not only with disinterested nations, but also in Great Britain and Ireland; and they were instructed to take means for procuring such information of the state of feeling as might be practicable, and also supplies which would alleviate the present desperate exigencies of the revolution.

The importance which Congress justly attached to the establishment of such a Committee, may be understood by observing the persons whom they entrusted with the performance of its duties. Five men of established zeal, ability and prudence, were designated for a service certain to call for every quality of statesmanship. Benjamin Harrison of Virginia was nominated chairman; and the others were Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Johnson, Jr., of Maryland, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and John Jay of New York. If the discretion which prompted these appointments had not been justified by previous record, subsequent tests confirmed its confidence. For not only did these men lay well and wisely the ground-work of a permanent and successful diplomacy, but each one afterward attained an illustrious place in history, and occupied the highest trusts with exalted credit; Franklin, especially, representing independent America at the Court of France under the very system of which he was one of the originators, in times, when the future looked vastly like enslaved America. Benjamin Harrison was of a wealthy Virginia family; had been early distinguished for ability at the bar; was elected a deputy to the