suddenly sprung into existence on the Pacific shore. Attracted by the prospect of gold, men have gone thither in crowds; and going in such numbers, they have been able to introduce the influence of a preached gospel, while laying the very foundation of society. With every returning Sabbath, the voices of many Christian ambassadors, speaking in the name of their divine Lord, and in his stead beseeching men to be reconciled to God, are already heard amid the mighty mass, which every incoming tide of the Pacific is increasing. Truth is on the ground as soon as error; and we speak not unadvisedly when we add that her advocates are earnest and able. There, infidelity can not have it all her own way during a period of years. There, the Romish cathedral will not rear its towers to the sky, ere the simple spire of the Protestant sanctuary is seen pointing the thoughts of every beholder heavenward. The various evangelical branches of the Christian church have taken possession of the field in the Master's name, and for the Master's glory. And we believe they will hold it.

The delay of evangelical influences in cases of ordinary emigration, often causes in the emigrant a loss of his early attachment to religious institutions. Be he an experimental Christian or not, when he first leaves an eastern home and finds himself in some western wilderness miles from a sanctuary, he feels that to lack the institutions of the gospel is to lack what is essential almost to the very existence of society. But if during a succession of years, he lives without them, he will gradually learn to feel their absence less, until perhaps when the time for their establishment comes, he will be well nigh indifferent in respect to the matter. No such difficulty is encountered in California. There the emigrants are almost all fresh from a land of sanctuaries. The most thoughtless of all New England's sons there, would scarcely feel that he could afford to dispense with what is so closely connected with the scenes and experiences of his childhood, as are the house of God and the preaching of the everlasting gospel. Though he should never enter that house, he would at least behold its comely form; and though he should never hear the preacher's voice, he would know that he stands in his place, and utters his message. The period for the establishment of the gospel arrives simultaneously with the landing of the emigrant, and he has no time in which to lose his interest in the institutions with which he has been familiar from childhood.

When emigration takes place in conformity with its natural laws, educational interests suffer; and where these suffer the cause of religion suffers. The welfare of the Redeemer's kingdom requires that with the very beginnings of a community these interests be cared for, and by those who will establish them on an evangelical basis. In some of the newer portions of our coun

try, they have been either neglected, or controlled by the representatives and teachers of a false religion. But in that newest portion which is so soon to be added to the number of our states, we believe it will be otherwise. Whoever will read the ninth article of the constitution of California, will find evidence enough that its framers have seen and know the value of school houses and colleges. Several schools, under the direction of well educated and devoted teachers, are already in successful operation there, and measures have been taken and are still in progress, for the establishment of a college on gospel principles. With these indications of the disposition of the people, we can not doubt that the thousands who have gone there from a land of schools, will see to it that in the home of their adoption the means of general education are provided.

Lest we be charged with giving only the bright side of a picture that has also a dark one, we will allude here very briefly to one or two facts whose bearing may be thought to be in an opposite direction from that of those we have just stated. It is said that the greater portion of those who have forsaken all and gone to the land of gold have no thought of making a permanent home there, and will therefore have little inclination to make sacrifices in behalf of religion. To this our answer is, that were one half and many more than one half of all who now tread Californian soil to return within less than a single year to the homes and friends they have left, the number of those who would still remain as actual settlers would be such as to warrant the positions we have taken.

It is said that the object for which they have gone there is so all-absorbing and all-controlling that it is a matter of exceeding difficulty to obtain for the truth, and the claims of Christian enterprise, a thoughtful hearing. Admitting the truth of this declaration, we still believe there are among them many truly earnest Christian men; and we set off the peculiar energy of character which has borne them to that distant field against the peculiar difficulties with which they have to contend in promoting there the kingdom of Christ. Moreover, we believe that when the excitement consequent upon recent discovery shall have passed away, the business of working the mines will come to be regarded in much the same light as any other branch of productive industry; and that the minds of those engaged in it, will not be more engrossed with the acquisition of wealth, than are the minds of others. On the whole then, we are persuaded that the standard of the cross has been set up on the Pacific coast under auspices peculiarly favorable.

Since California has commenced her career (thanks again to the discovery of the gold mines) in circumstances so singularly adapted to the right establishment and efficient influence of the means

of grace, we may hope that grace will win such victories within her borders that hers will be an efficient instrumentality in ultimately securing the planting of the gospel, and the supremacy of the gospel, among the millions whose dwellings, at no distant day, will be stretched along the whole extent of our Pacific border. Thus will she perform a noble and glorious part in making this whole land Immanuel's.

If such a result shall be realized, it will involve the realization of results yet greater and more glorious. This land as it is, but more emphatically, this land as it will be, when the church-going bell shall be as familiar west of the Rocky Mountains, as it now is east of the Alleghanies, will bear a more prominent part than any other in the world's conversion. As they approached the Plymouth Rock on that cold December day more than two centuries ago, our fathers little understood the magnitude of the mission on which God had sent them to this then unbroken wilderness. It was not merely that they might be free to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and might secure the like privilege to their children. It was that here they might lay the foundations of a nation whose territory should be bounded on the east by the Atlantic, on the west by the Pacific, and on the north and south by limits yet undetermined-a nation of Christian men, from whose every shore should be borne the gospel of Christ, until the hour of its final triumph. And inasmuch as the finding of the goiden placers of the "farthest west" tends to hasten the successful planting of Christian institutions, and the establishment of Christian communities along that western slope, and is thus connected with the triumph of the truth in our entire land, it may be deemed a step, and an important step, toward the realization of this glorious destiny. We, of this generation, may live to see Christian missionaries embark at San Francisco as frequently as they now sail from Boston or New York; and among those missionaries may be some of the very persons, who, coming from within the walled empire of the Chinese in search of gold, are now numbered among the inhabitants of that anomalous city. May the day not be distant, when from one side of the land and from the other, messengers shall go forth in constantly increasing numbers, bearing the glad tidings announced in song by angelic voices over the field of Bethlehem. Thus may God's kingdom come and his will be done in earth as in heaven!

It is doubtless true that many, if not most, of those who have gone to the gold mines have gone only to meet with disappointment. The discovery of a golden land will occasion much of suffering and sorrow among the adventurers who have thronged, and are thronging, thither, and in the homes and among the friends they have left behind. Nevertheless, when regarded in

connection with its bearings on the political and religious interests of our country and the world, we think it gives occasion for grateful acknowledgment of the far-reaching wisdom of an overruling Providence. There may be seen in it confirmation of the truth that under God's sovereignty all things are working together for the accomplishment of his designs. It affirms anew the truth that GOD IS IN HISTORY.

ART. VI. AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN HISTORY. The Life of Ashbel Green, begun to be written by himself in his eighty-second year, and continued to his eighty-fourth. Prepared for the press at the author's request, by JOSEPH H. JONES, Pastor of the 6th Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. New York: Carter and Brothers. pp. 628.

The Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. By CHARLES HODGE. Parts I. and II. Philadelphia: William S. Martien. pp. 772.

THE autobiography of Dr. Green is to us proof positive that he does not belong to the class in which we are accustomed to rank Augustin, Calvin, and Knox. Yet this is not any abatement from his well earned fame. He had gifts suited to his age and the sphere in which he was destined to move, and he used his gifts well. We have heard Dr. Green spoken of slightingly, but we freely express our belief that a man of ordinary parts and attainments could not have endured the same searching and protracted tests which were applied to him. He must have been discovered and reprobated as an usurper. Nor in this do we express an unqualified approval of his course, as it is described in his own words. There are some things in his life which we find it hard to approve; but this is not the place, nor is it our intention, to point out these things.

The guileless simplicity of this autobiography is seen in a paragraph which we quote as a curiosity, and for the eyes of some readers who may not purchase the book. It presents our friend, Rev. Robert J. Breckenridge, in a more pious attitude than he commonly assumes when waging religious wars, and if he made the prayer mentioned, we could wish we had been there to hear it. When the General Assembly of 1837 came together, there was the most painful anxiety about the strength of parties. But let Dr. Green speak for himself.

"It was very doubtful when the Assembly was formed, whether the Old or the New School party would have the majority. It was generally thought that VOL. VIII.

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the parties were nearly equal; and great anxiety existed on both sides when the test votes in the choice of a Moderator and the Clerks were about to be taken. In the choice of a Moderator, it appeared that the Old School party had a majority of thirty-one votes. For the Clerks also, the votes were decisive for the Old School candidates. The stated Clerk, chosen for the last year, remained in office of course. After the Assembly adjourned in the afternoon, when the officers of the house had been chosen, the Convention (Old School) immediately met; and their first act, on the motion of Mr. Robert J. Breckenridge, was to return thanks to God for the auspicious order of his providence in giving to the friends of reform the decisive majority of the Assembly, which had just been manifested by the votes in the organization of the body.-Life of Dr. Green, p. 473.

Perhaps it would be hardly generous to say that this reminds us of certain Te Deums at Rome after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, and so we will not say it; still the piety of these Old School revolutionists is worthy of conspicuous record. It can hardly be agreeable to Congregationalists, to hear this venerable father in the Presbyterian church, congratulating himself on the great reform which he had effected," and the deliverance of our beloved church from the evils which for many years have afflicted and corrupted it." If we mistake not, among those terrible corruptions were the "plan of union," voluntary missionary societies, and the gradual increase of the Independent element in that church.

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Our space will not permit even a synopsis of this work. A man living during the Revolution, on intimate terms with such men as Witherspoon, Smith and White, and frequently meeting Washington, John and Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Hancock, and many other noted men of that period; for eight years chaplain of Congress, and for fifty years mingling in all the movements pertaining to the reorganization and growth of one of the strongest branches of the American church, ought to write a book of reminiscences worth reading. There will be various opinions concerning this book, but we unhesitatingly approve its publication in its present form. And our reason for this is not its perfection as a memoir or life, for it has many blemishes, but because it presents a true record of testimony on important points from an honest witness. We can pardon its self-recorded compliments, its egotism, and its easy decision of mooted questions, for the honest statements it contains concerning things which the author himself saw. Justice to the memory of this eminent man constrains us to add, that it seems to us to be the bounden duty of Dr. Jones, or some other capable friend, to write a Life of Dr. Green, which shall be lively, condensed, and complete; such an one as no person, however deserving, would dare to give of himself. We need a glowing picture of Green, in the assembly which gave the Presbyterian Church its constitution, as chaplain at a time when Congress had in it some of the greatest men our nation has produced, as the most popular preacher in a great city,