Christian ministry. In all this we acknowledge a share in the grief of those who are most deeply grieved; and we unite our prayers with theirs, that God would overrule this dishonor of his name, and this exultation of his enemies, for the further ance of his own glory.

But there is another view of the case. The degree of dishonor brought upon religion in any instance of this kind, does not depend merely upon its notoriety, or upon the sectarian eminence of the individual, but rather upon the relations which the offender sustains to that which the prevalent belief and the conscience of the people recognizes as religion. When a Roman Catholic priest is charged with using the confessional as an auxiliary to the most brutal crime; is it the common American feeling that religion is dishonored? When a Universalist preacher carries his principles to their legitimate result by committing suicide, who feels that religion is to bear the scandal of that horror? Suppose the offender in the present case had been the Roman Catholic instead of the Anglican Catholic Bishop of New York-we have too high an opinion of Dr. Hughes' selfrespect to imagine him guilty of conduct so contemptible-we only say, suppose that Dr. Onderdonk's episcopal throne had been at the Cathedral of St. Patrick, instead of the Cathedral of Trinity, who would have felt that religion was dishonored? The fact is, that the kind of religiousness which consists in forms and phylacteries, in tithing mint, anise and cumin, in magnifying the traditions of the elders, in crossings and genuflections, in rubrics and manipulations, in the pompous observance of lent, ember-week and saints' days, and in all the carnal ordinances of that judaized and heathenized Christianity against which the Reformation was a protest -is not what the understanding and moral sensibilities of the American

people recognize as religion. Men of the Oxford way of thinking, say that there is no religion in New England. This is true enoughand long may it be true, in their sense of the word religion; and on the other hand, in the American sense of the word, there is no religion in them. We say then, that religion is not dishonored in the fall of Bishop Onderdonk, as it would have been, had he been understood to be a professor of religion. Evangelical religion, the system which preaches justification, by faith in Christ the Redeemer and not by specific works of outward righteousness-the system which insists on regeneration by the Spirit and not by the priest-the system which demands of all who hope in it, some evidence of an inward spiritual conversion and of an immediate intercourse with God,-is what the common parlance of the American people regards as religion; and the man whose fall is now in question is identified, in the view of all who know any thing about him, not with this system, but with the opposition to it.

All this may be put in a still clearer light by a supposition of another kind. Suppose some similar offense were proved-we will not say, upon some conspicuous Presbyterian, or Congregational minis ter, but upon some other minister of the Episcopal church. Suppose it proved-pardon the violence of the supposition-upon some such minister as Dr. Milnor or Dr. Stone, or upon such a dignitary as Bishop McIlvaine. How much more painful would be the shock upon the religious sensibilities of the publichow much more keen, in every quarter, the sense of the dishonor done to the Gospel of Christ-how much more jubilant the exultation, and the feeling of diminished restraint, on the part of the ribald enemies of godliness. Why? Not because such men are more conspicuous than this man, or would be

more talked about than he has been, but because they are identified, as he is not, with what the people of this country think of as religion.

We can not doubt that a very considerable portion of the members and ministers of the Episcopal church will be found perfectly ready to acknowledge the correctness of this view. We believe that they are in the habit of regarding one party in their church as the friends, and another party as the opposers of spiritual religion. How else are we to understand that phrase, the pious members of our church,' which is sometimes used in their publications to denote those who are most opposed to Bishop Onderdonk's way of thinking.

Nor is the state of things which this significant fact discloses, new in that communion. The Anglican church, ever since that reformation which was commenced by Henry VIII, and which was petrified by Elizabeth, has been like her of old to whom it was said, "Two nations are in thy womb ;" and the children have "struggled together within her." From that time to this, whether in the British isles, or on this side of the Atlantic, Esau has regarded Jacob as a supplanter predestined to oust him of his birthright; and Jacob has had occasion to tremble before the violence of Esau. Occa. sionally there is an appearance of reconciliation and amity between them; but this rarely happens unless Jacob, overawed, bows himself to the ground seven times, until he comes near to his brother.' At such a manifestation of submission, Esau, full of fraternal feeling, เ runs to meet him, and falls on his neck and kisses him ;' and the bystanders, not to say the parties, are very likely to be imposed upon with an idea that the old family quarrel is made up forever. But, not to pursue the allegory any farther, the Anglican church is a preposterous attempt to join together what God and the na

ture of things will not permit to be united. Popery and Protestantismthe Christianity of tradition, and the Christianity of the Bible-the piety of forms and servitude, and the piety of the Spirit of adoption-the Gospel of justification by ceremonious observances under the direction and manipulations of the priest, and the Gospel of justification by faith in Christ alone are antagonist princi. ples; and the Anglican church, in attempting to bring them together, and to hit the point of indifference between them, dooms itself to a bootless toil that never can be finished. The only legitimate point of indifference between these opposite principles, is the infidelity that cares for neither. The Anglican church, by attempting to amalgamate them, brings within herself the elements of perpetual conflict. She exists as the attempted union of two parties, each of which, if consistent with itself, must regard the other as the enemy of true religion.

We throw out these remarks the more freely, because we expect that this article will be read by some Episcopalians whose views in regard to Bishop Onderdonk and what he calls religion are the same with ours, and who feel that his fall dishonors religion only as it dishonors the church of which he is a minister. We put it to them, not by any means in the way of taunting them with an obvious defect in their church, nor with the idea of bringing them over from their way of thinking about church order to ours, but only for the sake of calling their attention distinctly to a point which every conscientious Episcopalian ought to consider-is it consistent with the genius of Christianity that one and the same ecclesiastical organization should bind together in external unity, parties that can not regard each other as holding the same religion? Do not the interests of truth and godliness require the abandonment of an attempt which for three hun

dred years has wrought so much confusion? Is that unity which consists in subscribing the same articles in opposite senses, in wearing the same vestments with opposite feelings, and in using the same devotional forms with opposite theories of the way of justification before God, worth keeping? Would it be schism, would it be in any sense a division of the body of Christ, if elements so essentially hostile were at last separated the one from the other?

We have alluded to the dishonor which the misconduct of Bishop Onderdonk has brought upon the Protestant Episcopal church. Has that dishonor been removed by the result of the trial? This is a reasonable question, which the people are asking and answering on all sides-a question, which we ought not to pass by without some expression of our views. To this question we answer, reluctantly and sadly, No.

But some will ask us, Why not? Has he not been found guilty by a large majority of the court? Yes.

'Has not the sentence of suspension been pronounced upon him? Yes. But after all, he still holds up his head in unblushing impudence as Bishop of the diocese of New York. Had the verdict of guilty been followed by a corresponding sentence, had the court with one accord declared that such a man was entirely and forever unfit for such an office, that would have been a vindication of the honor of the church. the discrepancy between the finding and the sentence, augments, instead of removing the stain.

But

Will it be said that the sentence in this case was a sort of necessary compromise between those who voted for the acquittal of the offender and were determined to stand by him, and those whose view of the case and of what would vindicate the honor of the church was substantially the same with ours? But this consideration does not mend the matter. The question whether a

man guilty of such acts should be continued in an office which all Episcopalians regard as an apostleshipan office identical with that of Paul and Peter and John-is a question on which compromise was if possible more disgraceful to the church than defeat. Those bishops who voted three times in succession to remove the offender from his office, did their part well towards removing the stain which he had brought upon their order, and upon the community in which he and they are chief pastors. Those who having solemnly declared him guilty, voted the first time, or the second time, or the third time, or every time, for his suspension-not with a design of affording him an opportunity to give evidence of repentance (for nothing of that kind seems to have been thought of,) but simply because deposition seemed to them too severe a penalty seem to us to have betrayed an extraordinary stupidity; and well do they deserve the stripes which they get from Laicus, and the Churchman, and other defenders of their suspended brother, as the reward of their long-eared tenderheartedness. Those who solemnly declared the respondent not guilty, and who, still insisting on his innocence, voted first for "the lightest admonition," and afterwards for a suspension, which if the sentence is not decided to be void from the beginning, is absolute and irretrievable— have shown themselves wise in their generation. Doubtless there is somewhere to be found, if not in the writings of the fathers, at least in the tomes of Escobar and Sanchez—a easuistry by which they could conscientiously give their voices to admonish or even to suspend the man whom in their consciences they believed to be so far from the desert of censure, that he ought rather to be honored as eminently pure, pious, and self-denying. But the glory of their achievement in this case is, that by voting at last for suspension,

they brought the court to a sentence the meaning and effect of which is a question upon which lawyers may grow rich-a sentence which, if it means any thing, leaves their friend still quartered upon the rich revenues of Trinity church, and in a condition to sell his resignation at such price as he may choose to ask. Surely such a sentence, so procured, against a bishop found guilty of such misconduct, is not enough to vindicate the honor of the Protestant Episcopal church.

In this connection, it will not be deemed impertinent for us to remark that, in another respect, the result of the trial brings an additional stain upon that church which it ought to have vindicated. It discloses the fact,that nearly one third of the bishops of that church are ready to stand by a brother bishop of their party in the face of the most explicit testimony given by four independent and unimpeachable witnesses. This is not the least important of the developments brought about by the trial. Six bishops, out of the seventeen constituting the court, are steadfast and immovable in the belief that their brother Onderdonk is an innocent and injured man. They take their position upon the precept given by Paul to Timothy. "Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before (or under, as in the margin) two or three witnesses." And when four ladies come into court and testify, each one for herself, that the accusation is true in her experience of the respondent's hands thrust into her bosom, or placed upon her person still more offensively-these scrupulous prelates reply that the accusation of impurity is not sustained by "two or three witnesses." In one of the instances, the husband of the lady was in the same carriage, with his back toward the seat on which the lady and the bishop were riding. He testifies, "I first noticed the Bishop's arm about my wife's waist; I saw him

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draw her towards him in a manner that I thought indelicate; I saw her gently remove his hand from behind from off her waist. A second time I saw his arm about her waist, again I saw that he was sitting without his arm about her waist. Looking again, I saw it again about her waist. My attention was then turned to the front part of the carriage." [He was sitting by the driver.] Looking around again, I saw my wife slightly raised, carrying the Bishop's hand around to his knee. Then I heard her say that that hand was a sacred thing to her; it had been laid upon the heads of many of her friends in confirmation, and was to be laid upon my head tomorrow. Nothing occurred after this until my wife touched me upon the shoulder. She said she could not sit there, that she must come over with me. As she came over and sat in my lap, I asked her what had happened. She whispered to "She was very much agitated and told me she would tell me at the next stopping-place more fully." Some readers may be simple enough to think that the testimony of this lady and her husband is something very much like the testimony of two witnesses. No, says Bishop Ives of North Carolina," the only witness to that part of the allegation which could possibly imply immorality and impurity, is the lady." Because the lady's sense of feeling was cognizant of something which her husband did not see, and something much worse than all that he did see, therefore, all that he saw goes for nothing; and there is only one unsupported witness. How convenient a rule would this be in the administration of church discipline, or of civil justice. Almost every conceivable offense against chastity and purity, on the part of an ecclesiastic, would become, by the operation of Bishop Ives' logic, incapable of proof. And the logic of the six is all alike. No matter how strong

may be the proof of all the circumstances leading to or resulting from the precise act in which the offense reaches its highest pitch-no matter for the agitation and the tears in which the insulted female made known the indignity at the earliest practicable moment to her husband, or to some female friend-no matter how many women come to tell the same story of the insults which they have severally experienced nothing is proved, for there is only one witness. Really we think it a sad dishonor to the Episcopal church, that it has six bishops who are capable of reasoning in this way without a blush. Admitting that the letter of the rule given by Paul to Timothy is applicable to the proceedings of an ecclesiastical court in the trial of a charge which has been regularly presented by "two or three" responsible accusers, the construction which Bishop Ives and the other five bishops put upon that rule is an outrage upon common sense. Since the publication of this trial, an incident has come to our knowledge, as testified by a single unsupported witness. The fact-we will not repeat it-involves the character of a clergyman of high rank in the Onderdonk party, the head of a not unpretending establishment for female education. A young lady, then some sixteen years old, was the subject upon whom, if there is no mistake about her story, he practiced an indignity which, if the story is indeed true, ought to break up his establishment and turn him out upon the world with an ineffaceable brand upon his brow. The young lady, frightened and confounded, never revealed the indignity, as we understand, till, after her marriage, she revealed it to her husband. From her husband, since these recent events have produced so much inquiry, the story came to us. Now in this instance we are willing to admit the applicability of the rule given by Paul to Timothy. Should

this presbyter be presented in due form to an ecclesiastical court for trial, and should it appear at first sight that the charge rests upon the unsupported testimony which this one witness gives after the lapse of years the court might well dismiss the charge as unproved. But sup pose it should appear that other wit nesses saw all but the crowning act of insult. Suppose it should appear that the young lady after making her escape, rushed instantly to the apart ment of a confidential friend, and in all the agitation and distress of the moment told the story as she tells it

now.

And then suppose that, in stead of this one witness to one incident, there are half a dozen witnesses to as many different acts of the same kind at different times-all supported in the same way—who will tell us that in the judgment of the Holy Ghost and of the apostle Paul, the man against whom such things are testified by more than two or three witnesses, is fit to sustain the sacred and confidential relations involved in the office of a Christian pastor? Who! Why Bishop Ives, and Bishop Doane, and Bishop Kemper, and Bishop Gadsden, and Bishop Whittingham, and Bishop De Lancey-not to say, in a word, all those bishops who did not vote at last for deposing the respondent in the trial now under review.

There is something farther to be noticed respecting the six bishops who uphold the innocence of the respondent. Some of them distinctly, and others implicitly, maintain that a bishop may handle the ladies of his diocese as he pleases, in a free paternal" way-may put his hands upon them here and there so freely and paternally, and in so fondling a style, that they shall be ready to swear to all that these ladies swore to, in the case before us— and yet be an excellent bishop, not at all disqualified for the function of communicating the Holy Ghost. They alledge that their brother On