other organizations, a system of machinery that will keep it in motion after it is spiritually dead. And when a Congregational minister or church turns aside from the propagation of active piety to ride some hobby, or to exalt some new philanthropy, or falls into formalism and indifference, the error affects them more deeply than it would under any other system of church polity.

Unless our observation has misled us, it is not amiss to say that even the teaching of sound doctrine is not enough, if it practically rests satisfied with the maintenance of a mere routine of religious services. We believe that generally the doctrine taught in our pulpits is sound, and that the people also acquire a great amount of correct theological knowledge in our Sabbath schools. Our congregations are generally intelligent on these subjects. But the inquiry is an important one whether we are not now too much inclined to stop with these general elementary doctrines. Imagine a congregation well instructed in the main arguments upon which these doctrines rest, and fully convinced of their truth; and a minister rising in the pulpit and announcing that the subject of his discourse is to be the proof of one of these doctrines, which the people all believe and understand, together with the valid arguments by which it is supported. Very few people have the ability to keep the attention fixed upon such a discourse that furnishes no new thoughts. If it is not useless, it is next to useless; and such discourses are the cause of a vast amount of inattention. Not that doctrines which are well established and understood are to be neglected, but it is safe to take it for granted that some truths are believed and understood already by an intelligent congregation. There is another set of doctrines that are too often left in the shade. They are those which Paul arrives at in the twelfth chapter of Romans and the third chapter of Colossians, and which are beautifully stated in Philippians iii. 8. They are the doctrines which lead to a higher and better exhibition of Christian principle before the world than the exhibitions that are too often made; and we think we do not err in saying that too little prominence is given to them.

If a man of sound religious principles and of real piety has not learned to treat his wife and children and neighbors and the

people he meets in the transactions of business with Christian courtesy, kindness and charity; if he has not learned to put off the small practices which spring from covetousness; if he has not learned to bestow charity without rudeness; if he has not learned to know the value of kind words and that they are often worth more than medicines; if he has not learned to exercise sympathy, not merely with the afflicted, but with the wayward and the weak and the erring, but on the contrary is sternly ascetic; if he does not know that hospitality and the social virtues are to be cultivated as Christian virtues, and belong to our faith, he has yet a great deal to learn, and needs to be instructed. And is not this the part of Christian life in which we are most deficient? Do not multitudes who are truly spiritually minded need more or less of admonition on these points?

There are probably not many offenders against common morality in the church, and we doubt not that most members have true faith in Christ; but has sufficient importance been attached to the Christian graces of character, the things that are honorable, lovely and of good report? Is the instruction given on this subject as full, particular and earnest as it should be? Are these topics discussed as they should be in social prayer meetings? In painting or sculpture or oratory the hand of the master is seen in little things that escape the notice of common artists. In the most beautiful flowers that God has made, the highest beauty is in the most delicate tints. The most perfect grace is displayed in things almost or quite microscopic. So the perfection of those Christian graces which are most lovely is in little things. And in these little particulars quite as much as in any thing else, Christians need line upon line and precept upon precept. It is here that they are apt to exhibit to the world deformities instead of graces, and in these points their light is most apt to become darkness before the world.

But a minister can not instruct his people in these things unless he is a good pastor; for the practical matters to which they relate are not to be found in books so much as in social life. He who has gone into the ministry without pastoral talent, and without an intention to cultivate it, intends to remain ignorant in respect to one half of his professional duty. He may be a a good scholar, and be very faithful in his study, even to dys

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