When a man is born in a church, it is not simply like going into a hotel; it is like the planting of a tree in a garden, where its roots strike deep, and where its branches spread wide; and it is no small thing for him to go out of that church and seek religious associations elsewhere. You cannot transplant an oak that is a hundred years old and have it live and thrive. I believe that young people can sometimes safely change their faith; but I do not believe that old people ever can. Changing one's faith is so hazardous that I would not advise persons of one faith to abandon it for another. I would never try to convert a veteran Roman Catholic from his faith to the Protestant belief. My effort would be, rather, to make him a better Christian where he was. I would not do anything to lead him to change his church associations.

If a man says, "My father, and mother, and brothers, and sisters were baptized by immersion, and I should prefer to be baptized in that way, but I am willing to be baptized by sprinkling; I say "Don't; be baptized by the mode which will be most in accordance with your feelings. Baptism is nothing, in and of itself, whether it be immersion or sprinkling; but if you have been all your life in association with ideas which lead you to prefer to be immersed, then be immersed.”

And if it is argued, "Why does not this man or that man go out of the Episcopal Church ?" my answer is, that a man cannot transplant himself from one church to another with perfect ease. And it is a burning shame to any church, or bishop, or bishopric, when a truly holy and godly man is willing to seek the welfare of those who are under his charge, if that church or bishop or pisnopric is not tolerant enough to let him work on, although there are special and minute differences between his belief and theirs. It is a disgrace where in a church there is so arrogant, so hard, so cold, so unelastic a spirit that a true man cannot breathe unless he goes out of it. It is a slander on Christianity. And I say to men in the Episcopal church, who work toward the lower side, stand where you are. Do not be cast out of your father's house. You have a right to the heritage of all the

honored names which belong to the history of that church, and to all its sacraments and revered associations, which are as sweet to you as they are to your mitred bishop. You have a right to preach baptism; and you have a right to say "Baptism" instead of "Regeneration." Stand for your liberties, for your God, and for the spirit of Christianity which is at stake in the conduct of the church!

If there is a principle on one side which should send a man out, there is a squadron of principles on the other side which should make a man stay in, under such circumstances.

The same question may be argued on doctrinal grounds. Just at the present time the trial of Prof. David Swing, at Chicago, by the Presbyterian church, is exciting great interest; and though I detest puns, yet I will say that when this trial is over, his name should be changed to David Sling. May he take other smooth stones from the brook Kidron, and smite another Goliath-the Goliath of religious despotismbetween the eyes, and overthrow him, and leave him lying dead upon the ground.

It is said, "He does not believe in the doctrines of that church." I honor him if he does not. I can conceive that a man, in this age, with a sweet and tender heart and disposition, may believe in the Presbyterian confession of faith; I know it is possible, because I was once in that church, and I am acquainted with the experience of others who have been in it; but I do not think that one in ten of the men who go into the Presbyterian church ever propounds to himself the fullness of the doctrinal statements which are contained in that confession of faith, or believes them, as they were originally understood by the men who framed them.

This trial of Prof. Swing takes me back to the time when I began my ministry, in 1834; when I went from Cincinnati, to study theology under my father, in Lane Seminary. Dr. Wilson, then setttled over the church in which now preaches my nephew, whose ordination sermon I delivered, set the battle in array against Lyman Beecher. My father was tried for heresy in not believing in the doctrines of the confession of faith of the Presbyterian church in the United States; and I think that trial exhibited as

magnificent an instance as ever was on record, of the ingenuity of an honest man making it appear that he believed in things which he not only did not believe in, but revolted against, from the hair on top of his head to the soles of his feet!

Do you ask, "How do you explain it consistently with honesty ?" I do it in this way: These statements are susceptible of what may be called a High interpretation, and a Low interpretation. From the earliest history of the Presbyterian Church, it was understood that in bringing together its conflicting elements there should be a certain elasticity of interpretation, so that men should not be molested in that church any more than they were in the Church of England, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, who shaped its policy in such a way as to bring the extreme and the moderate Protestants together, and give the one a chance to take a little pap from the old mother without being interfered with by the other.

The discordant elements of the Presbyterian Church being thus brought together, the framework of doctrine was not so rigorous but that men might accept it for substance, and yet not accept it in all its parts.

Now, when the Westminster confession of faith and catechism came over from England, and went through the minds of New England divines, such as Hopkins, and Bellamy, and the elder Jonathan Edwards, and the younger, and Dwight, and when the Calvinism of New England had undergone an essential modification, it was called Low Calvinism, as distinguished from that in England and Scotland, where perhaps men were more sturdy, and better able to deal with such terrible doctrines as those of the system of Calvinism. In the Presbyterian Church were men who held the New Enland view, and interpreted theology accordingly; and they constituted the New School. There were also, in that church, men who represented the Scotch and English element, which prevailed in the Middle and Western States; and they constituted the Old School.

These two Schools were pitted against each other; and it should be recognized that from the beginning there was an

agreement that the one should hold the lax and the other the rigorous view. But in connection with slavery these differences split the church asunder, the Old School going by itself, and the New School by itself. After the war, however, the two sections came together again; and I hoped that the understanding that on the one side the Low Calvinistic party should hold the Low Calvinistic doctrine, and that on the other side the High Calvinistic party should hold the High Calvinistic doctrine, would continue, and that each would be judged by the good that it did; but, no; almost in the early years of that understanding Prof. Swing is called before the Presbytery of Chicago for taking the ground assumed by the New School.

Professor Patton is an honorable man, no doubt; but he is a man who believes in machine theology; who insists on doctrine of just such a kind; who wants the crank to turn just so, and grind out regularly creeds and dogmas of just such a pattern. He thinks he is doing his duty. His conscience is up. He feels bound to bring these matters to the test. I hope Professor Swing will be acquitted.

But the point of special interest to me is this: Great efforts are being made to bring together the Presbyterian churches of every name. the Old and New Schools, the Dutch Reformed, the Associate Reformed, and other smaller bodies, South as well as North: but are the various elements of this vast Presbyterian system coming together on the ground that there is to be no elasticity of belief; that there is to be no liberty of instruction; that the men who hold the hardest doctrines in the hardest way are to be permitted to take the knout and flog everybody who holds other doctrines in other ways? We are interested in the future career and usefulness of so august and noble a body as the Presbyterian Church of the United States. My love for her will never die. She was my foster-mother. Under the cope of that church I began my labor in the ministry. I never loved and never shall love brethren as I loved those men in the wilderness with whom I wrought in desolate places, going from log-cabin to log-cabin, preaching in the forest, and holding camp-meetings. They were men doing God's work

together; and as good a body of men as ever had heart-beats under human ribs were they. The associations of that church are very dear to me; I love it; I honor it; I never shall forget its usefulness; and it is a matter of moment to me which spirit is going to pervade it-the spirit of monarchy, which is despotism; or the spirit of Christ, which is liberty.

Therefore, I want you to join me not alone in sympathy, but in prayers that God would overrule these first efforts which are being made to persecute a man who exercises his right of thought and expression in that venerable church, for liberty of thinking, for liberty of teaching, and for liberty of administration.

Although I have talked longer than I ought to have done on this subject, I must add one single word to what I have said; and it is this: Far be it from you, and far be it from me, to look upon these dissensions in the different churches with ill-concealed gladness. I am sorry for their divisions. I would do the things that make for peace, if peace could only be made with liberty of conscience and liberty of administration. I am sorry for their turbulence. I would not put a straw's impediment in their way.

I do not rejoice to see these conflicts in the Presbyterian Church. I never could go into that church again; I do not believe that in some respects it maintains the spirit or the letter of Christianity; nevertheless the great body of its teaching is good, and its effect in the community is, beyond all controversy, beneficial. It is an admirable and noble church, built when blows had to be struck thick and fast, in dangerous places, for the liberty of man's consciences, and for the liberty of the church itself. I honor this old church; and having been so many years in her bosom I sympathize with everything that is for her prosperity, and regret everything that is against her welfare. I desire her peace; and therefore I pray that her ministers may not be bound in thought, but may feel that they have a right to preach and administer "to profit withal;" and that the spirit of her pulpit may be this: "How shall we present the truth of Christ Jesus so that selfishness shall be slain, so that pride shall be humbled, or that purity shall be estab