ambassador of God, he will be true to his mission, and declare to the utmost letter the whole of God's terms of reconciliation with men. With his treasures and hopes in heaven, he will be proof alike against the frowns of power and the seductions of flattery.

Such a minister will never perjure his soul by forging lying apologies for crimes like slavery and drunkenness. He will sooner perish at the stake in the fiercest fires of persecution, than throw the mantle of his religion around the criminals that traffic in intoxicating poisons or in the bodies and souls of men. Such a minister will never fawn on the great or despise the lowly. His voice will be raised in stern rebuke of the titled profligate, and in words of consolation to the suffering and the dumb.

A ministry of this character will command the respect of the world, however much it may be opposed and hated. It will draw to it the gifted and the pure, and embrace the best mind and deepest piety of the Church. It will possess elements of irresistible attraction to the strong-minded and the pure-hearted, and will, by the force and operation of this principle of moral attraction, inevitably perpetuate itself.

Is this the character of the American clergy as a class at the present time? Every intelligent man knows it is not. As a class they are the most dangerous foes to freedom and the strongest body-guard to oppression. They fawn on the vicious great and refuse to plead for the poor and the dumb. They are the conservators of many of the errors of the past, and the enemies of practical reform. They are the friends of education only so far as it consists in the induction of the youthful mind into the cast-iron thoughts and systems of former generations. They have expunged from their creed the idea of progress, and ignored living themes in the discussions of the pulpit. They shrink from grappling manfully with the great social and moral questions of the day, and content themselves with teaching the forms of a faith from which the life and spirit have departed.

What is the consequence of all this? The ministry of the present day, as a class, have lost the respect of the world. The wicked have not respect enough to oppose them, and the good are not attracted to their support and sympathy. These facts, if we are not greatly mistaken, account, in part at least, for the decrease in the number of the candidates for the ministry. The gifted and the good among the youth find the attractions to other pursuits stronger than the profession of

the clergy. They find in other departments freer scope for the development of their mental energies, and a wider field for the exercise of Christian benevolence. Through the many reform societies, organized to do the work of the Church, the very existence of which is a burning reproach to the ministry, they devote themselves to the good of their race. To the investigation of weighty questions of science, morals and religion they devote their energies. They are thus throwing a flood of light over the laws and relations of mind and matter, revealing the wondrous wisdom and power of God in all his works, and thus showing forth his glory. They are thus preparing the materials and facilities for the construction of the glorious temple of the Redeemer's worship; and these works, so full of promise to the race, are often pursued under the ban of the clerical profession. Not strange is it, therefore, that the respectability and the numbers of the ministry are decreasing together. The discussion of the remedy for this state of things, we must reserve for another article.

TROUBLE IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

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A man of decided note, in his way, is Bishop Doane, of New Jersey. He is a leader, and one of the most ultra members of the High Church, Divine right, Puseyite party in the Episcopal Church. He delights to be known by the sounding title "His Holiness Lord George, Bishop of New Jersey? Various rumors and charges against the moral character of Mr. Doane have for some time been afloat. He is charged openly with such slight peccadilloes as "obtaining money under false pretenses, defrauding his hired men," etc. "Wine bills, to the amount of $1,000," contracted by the Bishop and unpaid for, are also talked of. These rumors have become so notorious that the bishops of Maine, Virginia and Ohio have thought it their duty to interfere. On the representation of four laymen of New Jersey, these bishops have written a letter to Bishop Doane, in which they declare that "such and so many are the charges against him, that they do not feel at liberty to let the matter pass without an investigation. They wish the Bishop to request an investigation, and declare that if he declines doing so, they will feel bound to have the matter inquired into. "His Holiness Lord George" responds wrathfully and indignantly to the letter of

the three Bishops. He and his party are firm believers in the doctrine of an "official sanctity" pertaining to an ordained minister, entirely distinct from his personal character. Accordingly Bishop Doane, like his illustrious prototype, a bishop of the Church of England who, when reproved for swearing, answered that he "swore as a man, not as a bishop," holds that he cheated his workmen and obtained money fraudulently as a man, not as a bishop. He opens his protest in the following grandiloquent style:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. The undersigned, George Washington Doane, D. D., L. L. D., by Divine permission Bishop of the Diocese of New Jersey, humbly ministering before God, in the twentieth year of his Episcopate, in the name of His crucified Son, and in the power of his sanctifying spirit; and not without tokens of the Heavenly blessing on his unfaithful and unworthy ministration; makes now, as in the immediate presence of the Holy Trinity, adorable and ever to be blessed, his solemn protest, as aggrieved by the Right Reverend Wm. Meade, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia; the Right Reverend George Burgess, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Maine; and the Right Reverend Charles Pettit McIlvaine, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio, by their uncanonical, unchristian and inhuman procedure in regard to him, as heretofore set forth in the document bearing their signatures."

To our poor comprehension there seems to be a decided spice of blasphemy in this language; but not being versed in the mysteries of "Apostolic succession," "official sanctity,' etc., we would not venture to speak with much confidence. Not content with this protest, Bishop Doane proceeds to call a special convention, not to sit in judgment on his own con duct, but on that of his brother bishops. As this convention will be mainly composed of the partizans and creatures of Bishop Doane, it is pretty certain that they will clear him and condemn his accusers; and as Bishop D. is a leader in the High Church party (low enough is this high churchism, one would think), it will be very hard to convict him. The affair may bring to a crisis the elements of antagonism that have long been at work in the Episcopal Church. Ultimate disunion of the two opposite principles and parties may be the issue. We note these things as items of news, and also as affording a rather poor commentary on the boasted "unity in diversity" of the Episcopal churches. The facts are also interesting in another view. Bishop Doane is one of the

lower law, pro-slavery, fugitive slave law advocates. He venerates Daniel Webster, as is natural. That he who advocates the stealing of women and children should obtain money under false pretenses, and cheat his hired laborers, is not at all strange. Bishop Doane and his party are pointed illustrations of the description of the American clergy, as a class, in the previous article. His case is another indication of a degree of corruption in the popular religion of this country which can be purified by nothing but a moral revolution.

As a literary curiosity, we insert the close of the Bishop's reply to the charges of the accusing bishops:

"And these are the four persons, and such the charges, upon whose authority three bishops in the Church of God, without acquaintance with the men or inquiry as to their allegations, have relied, as the ground of criminal proceedings against their peer. Fearful, indeed, the reckoning they will have to meet. For the inroad which has thus been made upon the sacred sorrows of a desolated hearth; for the interruption of the daily duties of an office which adds to the care of a Diocese, the care of a parish, and the care of two institutions, in which two hundred of the sons and daughters of the church are nurtured; for the storm which now must burst upon the peace and quiet of the church for this aggression on the Diocese of New Jersey-for this invasion of the rights of its convention; for this injustice, indignity, and cruelty toward its bishop; for the whole amount, and all the shapes, and every incident and consequence of this enormous wrong the undersigned holds as responsible the Bishops of Maine, Virginia and Ohio; accuses them before Christendom, and summons them in all solemnity and sorrow, before the judgment seat of God."

CATHOLICISM AND CIVIL LIBERTY.

Dr. O'Connor, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Pittsburg, recently delivered a lecture on this subject. This address is published at length in the columns of the Pittsburg Catholic. It contains many queer things. The Bishop labors hard to prove that all of freedom embodied in the political institutions of this country, is owing to the Roman Catholic Church. The attempted proof of this is quite novel. He tries to show that the common law of England, which is the basis of our

free institutions, is of Catholic origin, because it grew up in Catholic times! The same logic would prove the Reformation of Luther, and the astronomical discoveries of Gallileo to be due to that church, which was the relentless persecutor of both. The common law of England originated in the civil institutions of Alfred, before the papacy assumed the control of the temporal kingdoms of the earth.

But it is not our purpose to review this remarkable production, but simply to present a sample or two of its style and matter. The two following paragraphs afford a rare instance of the coolness with which Roman Catholic ecclesiastics can distort the facts of history:

"Every one will admit the importance of religion for the government of society, since all know if it were withdrawn, the mainspring of the vast machine would be broken. Constitutions would be but as chaff before the wind. Laws will be swept away wherever a sense of duty and the force of moral obligation are not embedded deeply in the bosom of society. This truth will explain the origin of those convulsions which we have lately witnessed. Men have succeeded in plucking from the hearts of the multitude a love of religion -in many cases even a religious belief was banished. But man is not a mere machine. Unless his actions are governed by the laws of God, his institutions will be like buildings erected on the sand, which will be swept away by the torrent. We have seen this effected, within the last few months in France by the hand of one man, and such will be the fate of all governments in the heart of whose people religion is not firmly implanted.

"The religious training necessary for this is imparted with peculiar efficacy by the Catholic Church. She does not merely announce her doctrines and her precepts. She embodies them, as I have already stated, in institutions which bring them home to all ages, all classes; makes them sink deeply into our very nature, and thus, at trying moments as well as in days of prosperity, they exercise a powerful influence on the mind and on the heart."

France contains a population of about 36,000,000. About 30,000,000, or five-sixths of the whole population are Roman Catholics. From the days of Pepin and Charlemagne down to the present time, France has been one of the firmest supports of the Roman Hierarchy. In no country have Protestants been more ruthlessly persecuted than in France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the slaughter of St.