protracted. First, as to the church-membership of the children of Christians. On this subject Old school Presbyterians are coming more and more into the fullest sympathy with their standards, however they may have, owing to various causes in the present century, lost sight of their precious significance, in placing children on the same footing in the visible church with their parents. The mind of our church is deeply moved on this subject, and is unresting in its efforts to bring her children to the closest intimacy and oneness with herself. She resists with a holy jealousy every effort to loosen this bond, in the utmost stringency of it, as set forth in our Book of Discipline. A striking evidence of this has appeared in connection with the attempt to revise and amend this book, which has for some years been in progress in our body. The committee appointed by the General Assembly to prepare the needed amendments, recommended that a clause be inserted in the article which declares baptized children subject to the "government and discipline" of the church, asserting that, before making a profession of religion, they were "not subject to judicial prosecution." This amendment chiefly prevented the acceptance of the amended Book of Discipline by the assembly of 1860. It has been expurgated from the subsequent revisions of the book, in obedience to the almost unanimous voice of the church, because it was feared that it would weaken the bond of union between the church and its baptized members. This growing recognition of the churchmembership of the children of Christians, and the consequent treatment of them as persons who are recreant to their position, if they do not think and feel and live and act as becomes the children of God, is producing the happiest results. Much lost ground yet remains to be recovered in this regard. But enough has already been regained to give the highest promise for the future.

Next in regard to the sacraments, we will barely add, that Old school Presbyterians, repudiate the opposite extremes of attributing to them, on the one hand, an intrinsic

opus operatum efficacy, and, on the other, a mere emblematic and didactic character. We hold that they are not mere "signs," intended to illustrate the nature of Christ's salvation, but that they are "seals" also, designed to ratify the promises and covenants which, through faith, convey that salvation to the soul (Rom. iv. 11). This stipulatory character of the sacraments we deem of great moment. They are like the seal on a deed, designed to be solemn attestations of the sincerity of the promiser, and of the reality of the benefits stipulated by him. In regard to the efficacy of this, it is to be observed: 1. That, according to the constitution of our nature, such a visible and conspicuous attestation of solemn earnestness in making a promise has a power, beyond the mere word, to assure our faith, so apt to stagger, our hope, so apt to droop. It is analogous to the "oath for confirmation..... wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath" (Heb. vi. 16, 17). The word of promise is indeed sure in itself. But the seal of the promise makes it "more abundantly" sure to us. 2. Not only in their own nature, but as divine ordinances, the sacraments are channels of a peculiar grace to all who receive them aright. If we cannot tell why he has done it, it is enough that God has instituted them, and has been pleased to connect special gracious benefits with their appropriate use. 3. They are not efficacious of themselves, but only as they are received by faith. As Calvin says, we get only so much from them as we take by faith. 4. We admit and insist on the real presence of Christ in the sacraments, as we do in his word and ordinances generally, by his Spirit operating in and through them as the instruments or media of his agency. Any other real presence of Christ's person or body in the bread and wine, whether by transubstantiation, consubstantiation, or otherwise, we deny. 5. We reject that theory of the person of Christ now advanced in some Protestant communions, according to which Christ is denied to be truly God and truly man, and is

asserted to have a theanthropic nature, produced by confounding and identifying the two natures in a tertium quid, which is neither God nor man, nor God and man, but a divine-human intermediate between the two, whose divinehuman life is deposited in the church, and dispensed, through the sacraments, to men for their salvation. This scheme really gives the sacraments an opus operatum efficacy, and is a kind of modern transcendental sacramentarianism and ritualism which we discard.

CONCLUSION.

Here we pause. Our exposition of the polemical attitude of our church has been prepared under the pressure of extraneous labors and hinderances, brought upon us in divine providence, and wholly unlooked for, when we engaged to furnish it. Such as it is, however, it must speak for itself. While it has been our endeavor to set forth the controverted doctrines of Old school Presbyterians, as we understand them, it has been no less our endeavor to avoid charging the doctrines we oppose upon any specified communion or school of Christians. Thus we have hoped to consult the interests of truth and charity; with what success our readers must judge. What we insist on for ourselves and others is simply the grand old maxim: In necessariis unitas; in non necessariis libertas; in omnibus caritas.

ARTICLE IV.

CHARLES WESLEY AND METHODIST HYMNS.1

BY REV. FREDERIC M. BIRD, PHILADELPHIA.

Ir is a singular circumstance that the most prolific and powerful of Christian lyric poets should be comparatively unknown. Positively unknown he is not; his praise is in all the churches; no Christian denomination has entirely refused to accept his valuable help in the common work of worship; in every modern English and American hymn book he is represented by some of the noblest of spiritual songs. But relatively to his genius and his works, the world knows little of him. Perhaps one tenth of his poetry is yet in print. The Methodists cherish his memory, and their various collections contain some eight hundred hymns bearing his honored name. Other hymnals have a sprinkling of the Wesleyan style and spirit, more or less, according to the views, the prejudices, the knowledge of their editors: if

1 The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. By Thomas Jackson. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1841.

Hymns and Sacred Poems. By John and Charles Wesley. 2 vols. 1749. Hymns and Sacred Poems. By Charles Wesley. 3 vols. 1739, 1740, 1742. Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures. By Charles Wesley. 2 vols. 1762, 1794.

Hymns on the Lord's Supper. 1745, 1825.

Hymns on God's Everlasting Love. 1756.

Funeral Hymns. 2 vols. 1753, 1759.

Hymns for Children and others of Riper Years. 1766, 1842.

Hymns for the Use of Families and on Various Occasions. 1767, 1825.
Hymns on the Trinity.
The Wesleyan Psalter.

And divers others.

1767.

Nashville, Tenn. 1855.

1848.

Methodist Hymnology. By David Creamer. 12mo. New York.
Wesleyan Hymnology. By the Rev. W. P. Burgess. London. 1846.

A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists. By the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. London.

Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church. New York.
Hymns of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Nashville, Tenn.

the compiler have an unusually liberal spirit, and a rare acquaintance with his subject, the number of Wesleyan hymns may approach one hundred. But we have yet to see an American non-Methodist selection which does fair justice to the greatest of hymn writers.

Beyond what is contained in the standard denominational hymn books, the Wesleyan poetry is inaccessible to ordinary readers, and can be reached by the most zealous bookworm (in America at least) only at some expense of time, trouble, and labor. It is scattered through over thirty separate publications, the dates of which range from 1738 to 1785. Most of these were never reprinted; and all, except three which have been republished by the British Methodists within the century, have been out of print for many years. So much for the published poems (between four and five thousand) of Charles Wesley; but there are rearly as many, says his biographer, which he left in manuscript at his death, and which have never seen the light. Such is the enterprise and spirit of the English Wesleyan Conference, to which they belong.

It is difficult properly to handle a subject of such magnitude, and one which has been so little studied and appreciated. "The glorious reproach of Methodism" is scarcely yet extinct; the name of Wesley still arouses many oldtime prejudices: Calvinists have not quite lost their suspicion of the Arminian teacher, nor churchmen forgotten to look coldly upon the great schismatic. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Charles Wesley was the "bard of Methodism"; and most people, without knowing very tho roughly what Methodism is, judge it to be something quite different from other forms of Christianity, and therefore conclude that its poet can hardly be the poet of the church at large. Mr. Creamer, in his "Methodist Hymnology," hazards the opinion, that the man is not born who should fully appreciate the genius of the Methodist poct. Certainly the day will come when the grateful praises of his own people shall be echoed by the thanks of the whole