151 stir among men, and provoke enthusiasm for it as well as resistance against it; that it may win reputation, and reach some great issues, may all be very true; but it remains equally true that one of the surest means of guidance, one of the strongest assurances of permanent success, is not there, or not there in its strength; the needle quivers, the deflection returns, and the compass can no more be depended on as invariable.

But this, it may be as it has been said, was all Bishop Doane's independence. He was too strong to bear the restraint of details; too straight-forward to impede his march with questionings on this side or on that; in short, too self-reliant to be hampered by the judicial faculty. There, we venture to think, is a great mistake; the judgment and self-reliance are not in conflict; he who first balances and then decides, is, if other things are equal, the really independent man, neither the sport of circumstances nor the consulter of other men's opinions beyond the bounds of a reasonable sympathy. Bishop Doane, as we have seen and understood him, was but too much influenced by what was, or might be, thought or said of him; if he had no fears of the opponent, he could not spare the champion; if he was to bear up against censure, it was, or it appeared to be grateful to him, to have more than mere approval, and we must use the same word in his case which we should use in other cases, and call it flattery. He lacked what his brother of Oxford praises, as the "courage which must act in quietness, out of the sight and apart from the praise of men." He was ambitious, and ambitious of earthly distinctions. He was vain, and vain of intellectual or temporal, as well as of spiritual honors. To this want of moral independence, we should be disposed to ascribe much that has been referred to other causes by those who do not regard the want as having existed in him.

On this part of our duty, however, we have no wish to linger. None who love his memory need or ought to deny his errors, but there can be no satisfaction in exposing them-none, even to those who do not love his memory. He was ready, for himself, to acknowledge "imprudences of word and act, which, though done with the purest intentions, he now feels were unbecoming in him as a Bishop in the Church of God, and deeply

deplores." With still deeper humbleness, he said on his deathbed, "I have no merits, no man has, but my trust is in the mercy of Jesus." Let his sins rest where he thus left them.

There is one other subject fit for a reviewer to speak of, but we shall pass it by. It is not in our heart to re-open the lists in which Bishop Doane and his adversaries contended for themselves as much, we dare to say in charity, as for the principles which they professed. Whoever would take his seat to behold the conflict, must turn to the Memoir, where he will find sufficient opportunity to indulge his curiosity, or to revive his resentment. "My father," says the biographer, "was a man of war from his youth." It was, unhappily, too true, and as he was surrounded by others of the same temper, he had no difficulty in indulging his prowess. There is some light, however, on the angry scenes of his life, and that, we are bound to say, comes from him rather than from his antagonists. He gives them more credit than they are willing to give him; if he is full of wrath one day, he softens on the next; he allows their "purity of motives," at the very moment that they were most unwilling to spare him; he so bears himself, in short, in warfare as in peace, that one who knew him through "twenty-six years of closest intimacy," can say, "before God," that he "never knew a man who spoke less evil, or delighted more to speak well of others."

We speak what seem to us the words of truth and soberness, in saying that the memory of Bishop Doane is one which will be cherished. As generation succeeds generation, looking back to ours, as to a period of momentous issues for the American Church, they will behold him among her most earnest prelates, her most devoted sons; they will take into account, not so much what he did to throw discredit upon himself, as what he did to throw credit upon her, to maintain her principles, extend her influence, to quicken, strengthen, and ennoble her life. Whether he is portrayed in his own words, or in those of his biographer; whether such of his contemporaries as supported him, or such as opposed him, transmit the portrait, it will be handed down, and they who gaze into its open features will trace beneath every varying expression, a heart that will win, and we rejoice to believe, deserve their love.

ART. VII.—THE AMERICAN QUARTERLY CHURCH REVIEW, AND OUR NATIONAL CRISIS.

SINCE the making up of our last Number of this Review, the storm which for years has been gathering, has broken upon the Country, and our once glorious Union has been dissolved. In times of Revolution men cannot, if they would, hesitate to declare themselves; and we here put on record our interpretation of the events of these troublous times, and of the duties which they impose. And first of all, we are grateful to be able to say, that, in looking back over our own thirteen years of Editorial labor, we have not only done nothing to precipitate such a calamity, but that we have done everything which seemed to us to lie in our power to avert it. We make no apology for quoting here from two among many letters lately received. The first is from one high in position in the Church at the South, and than whom no one is stronger in the confidence of Churchmen, both North and South. His statement of Southern sentiment and Southern affairs should be widely read.

"Sad days are these, and full of terror. I am glad that the Church Review, like the Church, has been faithful to the Truth. We have looked and longed for some olive-branch from the North. Northerners do not understand the matter. What we want is quiet. We cannot, we dare not go on as in the last few years. Justice to the negro forbids it; for agitation brings discontent and rebellion; and, on these, follow restraint and discipline. Our American servitude used to have its own mild and friendly character. The Abolitionists are doing all in their power to change it into the hateful type of Cuban slavery. I fear it is too late now for remedy, and can only pray, that to the many sins of brethren against brethren, blood-guiltiness may not be added."

A Clergyman of mature age and standing, at the West, writes:

"Suppose every house-holder had carefully imbued his own mind and those of his family with the principles of that Article in the Review, on "Loyalty to the Constitution," think you our political hori

zon would at this time have been so overcast as at present with such portentous and ominous clouds, foreshadowing such a tornado of evils as may engulf us in one wide ruin?" * * I like the conservatism, the high and exalted tone of the work on all subjects treated in the American Quarterly Church Review."

The subject of Slavery has presented itself to us, as Reviewers, in its two fold character and relations, Morally and Socially. In the first aspect, even supposing it to be really as great an evil and wrong as its most violent opposers represent it—and we do not argue that question here-yet it surely is one which is aggravated, and only aggravated, by the measures which these men propose as a remedy. Besides, and chiefly, the source of all true Moral Reform is from above, not from beneath; and it works healthily from within, not from without; in a word, it is in diffusing through the heart of the Church and of Society, the reforming and germinating principle of the Love of God, as manifested in the Plan of His Grace. Such in theory, and such in practice, are the relations to each other, of the Fall of Man, and the Gospel of Christ; of the World, and the Church. The world is full of Moral Evils, social and political-of corruption, and fraud, and falsehood, and extortion, and licentiousness, and gambling, and robbery, and murder,—all springing from one alone Source, the Fall of Man,—all having one alone adequate Remedy, the Gospel of Christ. This was the Theory and the only Theory of Reform which was sanctioned by our Saviour and His Apostles; it is the only one on which the Church and the State can ever exist together, and work, each in their separate spheres, in mutual harmony. This is the Theory of Reform which we have maintained uniformly and earnestly in the pages of this Review. Whether Servitude is, or is not, the normal condition of the Negro Race; whether Slavery is, or is not, recognized by the Old and New Testaments, and by the Moral Law, are points, which, as we have said, we do not, and need not here discuss. They are vastly important in the application of our principle; they do not touch the principle itself.

As a Social Institution, aside from those deeper and stronger considerations which appeal to the Political Christian Economist, we are met at the outset by the stern logic of facts.

Slavery was originally introduced and planted on American soil, mainly by British agency and capital. After the Revolution, the Slave-trade was extended down to the year 1808, by the vote of all the delegates from the New England States to the Convention that formed the Constitution. Of the vessels in the African Slave-trade, from January 1, 1804, to December 31, 1807, sixty-one were owned in Charleston, S. C., and fifty-seven in Rhode Island. It should be remembered, too, that at the adoption of the Constitution, Slavery existed in every one of the Thirteen States, (except two,) and that, in and by that Constitution, certain mutual compromises were sacredly agreed upon, and certain rights to the slave-holding States were solemnly and by oath guaranteed. The "delivering" up of fugitive slaves was one of those rights, pledged by the oath of every man who becomes a citizen of the United States. Without these compromises and guarantees the Union could never have been formed. In that Union, and under that Constitution, the country has reached a degree of national prosperity such as has no parallel in the history of the world. Our popular Christianity, too, under its various forms and names, has more than kept pace with our material growth; and while Error and Crime have assumed hideous proportions, yet Religion in its diffusive energy and power has made achievements which have no equal record since the early Missionary days of the Church.

And yet within the last score of years, elements of mischief have been rapidly developing and rallying their forces. An Infidelity, which has lost none of its old hatred to Christ, which denies the Christian Theory and Plan of Reform in all their fundamental verities, is assuming in our days a new attitude, not only in respect to Slavery, but to every thing which it denominates Moral and Social Evils; and it places Government of all sorts, the unequal division of Property, the Marriage Relation, &c., &c., in this category. Not many years since, in one of its own Conventions, its leaders announced to its followers this change of programme in its policy of propagandism. Putting on the garb of an angel of light, it has become in our days a professed Moral Reformer, and like the Robespierres and the Jacobirs of the French Revolution, it