Scotland and England, M'Lean, Braidwood, Inglis, Peddie, &c.* Far be it! It is a duty we owe, under Christ, to render honour to whom honour is due to esteem and respect those whom he has distinguished by high intellectual and moral endowments, and made the honoured instruments of good to our race. It is a religious duty to honour all God's benefactors to our fellow-men. Jealousy and envy are the characteristics of a little and contracted mind, and every way at variance with the suggestions of the Holy Spirit. Much more is the spirit of detraction at fault when it robs either God or man of the honour due.

I have not, by a quarter of a century, as much experience as you; and yet I have long since had too much to doubt, even in many good men, the existence of that vainglorious spirit of affected originality, which withholds the meed of praise and grateful acknowledgment to others, for the sake of pluming and adorning oneself with the labours, researches, and discoveries of predecessors and contemporaries. Along with this we have had to lament the appearance of a haughty superciliousness and disregard for the talents and labours of others on the part of some Christians, who either were, or imagined themselves to have been, more highly-gifted with better powers of perception and reflection than their fellows. These are certain parts and parcels of the old man which ought to be nailed to the cross, and against which all Christians should wage a war of extermination.

That there has been evinced, even among those who have had courage to break with the world and its hierarchies, for conscience sake, something of the leaven of envy, jealousy, and the love of originality-and a disposition to plagiarize, to borrow without the wish to pay, or even to acknowledge the debt, is another proof that man in his beșt estate is altogether frail.

How much the Reformation for which we plead is indebted to the labours of those revered fathers of the

I regret that my friend Campbell should have attributed to me expressions which I did not use. I have nowhere spoken of the persons alluded to, as great and good and eminent. It is his language-not mine; and should not have been marked as quoted.-W. J.

Scotch Baptist churches, I am not able to say. For my own part, I am greatly indebted to all the reformers, from, Martin Luther down to John Wesley. I could not enumerate or particularize the individuals, living and dead, who have assisted in forming my mind. I am some way indebted to some person or other for every idea I have on every subject. When I begin to think of my debts of thought, I see an immense crowd of claimants-Dilworth and M'Crae, with their spelling-books, stand far back in the group. They, as well as Euclid, and Locke, and Bacon, and Newton, and ten thousand others, cast an eye upon me. If all the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Persian, French, English, Irish, Scotch, and American teachers and authors, &c. were to demand their own from me, I do not know that I should have two mites to buy incense to offer upon the altar to my genius of originality for the honours vouchsafed me.

How many may have, in the way of moral causation, excited my mind to this train of reasoning, or to the examination of this fact or that incident, I am now, and shall be while life lasts, wholly unable to say. But that many individuals of whom I now know nothing, and of whom I never knew anything, have directly or indirectly set my mind abroach on things divine and human, and led me by a way which I knew not to very important results, I cannot doubt. I was early taught to take nothing upon trust -to think for myself: but who taught him that thus taught me, I cannot tell.

I may, therefore, indirectly be indebted to Archibald M'Lean, for example, much more than I am aware. A few years after my immersion, I read one volume of his tracts, and I do not know that I ever have read but his 'Review of Wardlaw's Lectures'-his 'Reply to Fuller'-a 'Defence of Believers' Baptism, the 'Substance of Two Discourses preached on Faith, at Kingston-upon-Hull'-and a Treatise on the Commission.' Some time after my separation from the Presbyterian connexion and my immersion into the ancient faith, a Mr. John Boyle, of Ireland, with whom I formed a slight acquaintance in Scotland, once an Episcopalian parson, but then converted by John Walker, of

Dublin, to Separatism, made me a visit, and presented to me a volume of the above tracts, and thus introduced me to a knowledge of the name of M'Lean.

A few years ago, I purchased four volumes of the works of Archibald M'Lean from a Scotch family, the contents of which I have never examined to this moment. I have, just since writing the last period, taken them down from my shelves, and read the tables of contents. I find in them some pieces that I could wish to read, had I leisure; but, with various other good works, I have laid them up for a more convenient season. I know nothing of the works of Messrs. Braidwood, Inglis, and their associates.

But while on the subject of originality and the acknowledgment of literary and moral debts of thought, I soon found that our worthy friend M'Lean and the Edinburgh school had drawn largely and liberally from the writings and labours of Robert Ferriar, James Smith,* John Glas, &c., that school which began its operations in 1728, about forty years before the date of the Scotch Baptist churches.

The testimony of the King of Martyrs, rejected by the Synod of Angus and Mearns, 1728, I regard as the foundation of the Edinburgh reform school; and with all the developments and prominent incidents in the history of that controversy I made myself fully acquainted before I commenced my career in the work of reformation.

I paid the same attention to the Whitefield and Wesleyan school, which began its operations about the same time: and, indeed, to all the debates and controversies, from the days of Luther, Calvin, Knox, Owen, Glas, Sandeman, Bellamy, &c., down to the year of grace 1810; at which time I began to distrust everything, and take the Bible alone. I had talked about the Bible alone for some few years before, but all the while used it as a text book; but at this time I began to take and use the Bible alone as the only and infallible source of the true light. And most unhesitatingly can I say, that all my previous reading and

*Robert Ferriar and James Smith. The former wrote a bloated Preface to Mr. Glas's Testimony of the King of Martyrs,' and I believe it was the only production of his pen. Of the latter's authorship I never yet have either heard or seen a trace!!-W. J.

study of theology greatly disqualified me from understanding the book, although I had no doubt derived an immense revenue of ideas, critical and theological, from the labours of all the reformers. But not one of them ever gave a hint, and, from the best of my recollections, there is not to be found in all these reformers a hint upon the true and rational reading of the Book of God. I think I may hazard the assertion, and, certainly, from all my recollections, I do assert that the information found in my prefaces to the historical and epistolary books of the New Testament, and my hints to readers on the proper method of perusing the oracles, are not to be met with in all the writings of the school of 1728, or of the Edinburgh school of 1768, nor in the Wesleyan school of from 1721 to 1775.

This egotistic narrative is due to my Scotch and English brethren. I would have them know that we are not ignorant of what has been done in Britain and Ireland; and we are in possession of all their knowledge, and frankly acknowledge our debts to the great and wise and good men who have gone before us. I thank my heavenly Father that I was born at the proper time, and on the best spot on the earth, and surrounded with the best set of circumstances to afford me the best religious education which the ninteenth century could afford. Ireland gave me a good physical constitution and the elements of a general education; Scotland lent me her aids and her facilities so late as to the autumn of the year 1809. And in America I feel peculiarly happy in having its very best and most intelligent and most ardent sons my coadjutors.*

Brother Jones, tell Scotland that one of her sons, Walter Scott, of Edinburgh, has been my associate for more than twelve years, and now edits the 'Evangelist,' in Carthage, Ohio. He came to America a Presbyterian, was immersed by one of the Haldanean school, and was the first of our evangelists to republish viva voce, with effect, the Jerusalem Gospel in the forests of Ohio, reclaimed from the Indians

* Dr. Staughton imparted nothing to me. passage alluded to in the Christian Baptist.' from any American Rabbi.

You have mistaken the
I never took a lesson

some forty-five years ago. Tell England that one of her sons, Dr. John Thomas, of London, now edits the 'Apostolic Advocate,' Richmond, Virginia, and preaches with all zeal the faith first promulgated in Judea.* Tell them, moreover, that we have several American brethren controlling the press, and issuing their monthly periodicals devoted to original Christianity. There is brethren Johnston and Hall, of Georgetown, Kentucky, editors of the 'Gospel Advocate;' brother Stone of Jacksonville, Illinois, editor of the Christian Messenger.' New York and Massachussetts have also commenced two periodicals the present year.

6

You see, then, that England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, are united as they ought to be (of one blood, of one language, of one faith, of one Lord, of one baptism) in the glorious work of restoring the Christian Institution to its primitive simplicity, power, and glory.

Let me add, that some of the sons of Martin Luther also have come under the flag of the original Gospel. Two influential and intelligent German Lutheran preachers have recently come heart and hand into the ranks of reformation. Some of the French, also, and their descendants in America, the sons of those who fled to this asylum after the revocation of the edict of Nantz, are in the ranks of reformation; and, true to the principles of their persecuted fathers, lift up their voice for the precious liberty which Messiah bestows upon his people. The inhabitants of the Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, are stretching out their hands across the North American lakes, and saying to our citizens, "Come over and help us!" Even from Mexico a whisper is heard, saying to us, "Remember that God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth." And last, though not least of all, some of the remains of the good Old Britons, the Welsh, go heart and soul into the cause we plead, and say, "We will go

* Tell them not, however, of these little inaccuracies of the Genevese branch of the Apostacy: impute it to a LAPSUS PENNÆ, and to the ardour of his zeal for the original Gospel and order of things. He is a chosen vessel.