Four other ministers, in these later years, have been pastors of this church, viz: Rev. Wolcott Calkins, D.D., Rev. George H. Gould, D.D., Rev. Elias H. Richardson, and Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D. All these are now living except Rev. Mr. Richardson, who ably and faithfully served the church for nearly seven years, though struggling with infirmities which finally cut short his days, at the age of fifty-five. Dr. Walker says, "He was the first of the ministers of this church to die elsewhere than in Hartford, or to be buried elsewhere than in Hartford soil."

In taking leave of this volume we have to say that the liv ing public, as well as future generations, owe a debt to one who incorporates a piece of history of this kind as faithfully and laboriously as this is done. The history of the smallest and humblest church, for two hundred and fifty years, involves a mass of details, intensely interesting, and instructive. It addresses itself alike to the intellect and the heart.

But the church whose story is here embodied has a historical standing of a very high order. You may measure it against almost any other organization of the kind in New Eng land, in respect to the number of eminent and cultivated persons that have been enrolled in its membership, or by refer ence to the whole amount of wealth which it has poured into the various streams of public beneficence, or in various other ways, and it will not suffer in the comparison. Its history was never written out and published before except in sectional and fragmentary ways. Here it is minute and continuous, and the work shows a careful exactness at almost every point.

On page sixteen we notice a slight confusion of historical dates. After speaking of the arrival of the Salem company in the summer of 1629, we read, that on the 30th day of May of this same year 1629, sailed out of Plymouth in England another vessel, bringing many godly families, among them some men to be afterward known in the annals of Connecticut, etc.

It was on the 20th of March that this ship, the "Mary and John" sailed out of Plymouth. It was in March, 1630, that it sailed. It is true in the old way of reckoning the year the time of sailing was in the very last days of the year 1629, and might be stated 1629-30. But we commonly say of the

departure from England of that Dorchester (afterwards Windsor) church, that it was March 20, 1630.

May 30th was the day of its landing on these New England shores, if the way it came on shore can be called a landing. Captain Squeb, the commander of the "Mary and John," whose very name suggests that he would be equal to such an act of meanness, set the whole company of the passengers ashore at Nantucket, with their goods and their cattle, and left them to shift for themselves.

The only church in New England entitled to keep the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its organization, during this year 1884, is the First Church of Ipswich, Mass. Then, in the next year will follow Newbury, Hingham, and Weymouth, all in Massachusetts, and afterwards, from year to year, these occasions will occur at still more frequent intervals. It is well for the people of our own times, thus to live over the experiences of the early New England generations, and learn the valuable lessons which such a review is fitted to impart.

ARTICLE VI.-THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN USE OF THE BIBLE IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

IN the March number of the New Englander for 1884 we called attention to "Moral Defects in Sunday School Teaching." The response of satisfaction which has come to the writer from a large number of Christian readers indicates a revolt of sentiment from the teaching which is given to our children in the Old Testament, far wider than, in the absence of any other public protest, we had supposed to exist. We find in the Old Testament lessons for the Sunday school in 1884 the same objectionable, and, as it seems to us, positively mischievous teaching, as that which we criticised in the lessons for 1883. Even from those, who do not feel prepared to say as much as will be said in this Article, come strong symptoms of dissatisfaction. The Rev. Dr. Meredith, the leader of the Boston organization of Sunday school teachers for Bible study, gave notice, at the meeting of the Massachusetts General Association last June, that there must be a change, or there would be a break. He is reported by The Congregationalist to have said, that he "would not teach boys and girls lessons from the Old Testament at all in the Sunday school, but would teach them about Christ, and then would teach the Old Testament later."

Until Christian people learn how to use the Old Testament in its proper subordination to the New, it will be safest not to attempt to teach what they do not understand. But when the rags of heathenish superstition which are found, not wholly stripped away from men of God in the tenth century before Christ, are exhibited to our Sunday schools as belonging to that seamless robe of Divine Truth, which was worn by our Lord Jesus Christ, it is time to interrupt the teacher: "Understandest thou what thou readest?" We speak strongly, but under a profound conviction of the damage which is being done by this ignorant building of wormy timber into the hull of the ship which is destined to the perilous voyage of life.

The Sunday school teaching of to-day assumes the truth of a doctrine of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, which was first put into creed-form by Swiss theologians in the Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675. That Formula was put forth as a protest against the liberal theology taught in the famous school of Saumur in France, especially upon the three points of Biblical Inspiration, Predestination, and the Imputation of Adam's sin. Dr. Schaff, in his History of Creeds, says of it: "It gradually lost its hold upon the Swiss churches, and was allowed to die, and to be buried without mourners. Nevertheless, the theology which it represents continues to be advocated by a respectable school of strict Calvinists in Europe, and especially in America."

With respect to Biblical Inspiration, the Swiss theologians teach, that not only all the thoughts but all the words of the Scripture, its very consonants, and even its vowels (which last, according to Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar, were not fully developed, as at present, till the seventh century of the Christian era), are all divinely inspired and free from error.

While no scholar to-day entertains this extravagant claim, a great many people entertain its fundamental error, and upon this the present Sunday school teaching is based, with the vicious results which we criticise.

This fundamental error is in confounding Inspiration with inerrancy, which, as Dr. Briggs has shown in his Biblical Studies, is not a Protestant doctrine. The great work of modern criticism is to put an end to this confusion, which, so long as it exists, hinders the inspiration of the Scriptures from being recognized for what it is. Scholars have been forced to admit that diplomatic accuracy in statements of facts cannot be honestly claimed for the Bible, at least in some particulars of chronology, history, and science. But on the other hand, it has been demonstrated, that there was a work of God in Israel which could only have proceeded from a word of God in Israel, as in no other nation;-a unique and wonderful progress, in Israel alone, from dim and rude to clear and glorious ideals of God's character and government, from moral weakness to moral power, from a political church to a spiritual, from the hope of a national and external to the hope of a world-wide

and heart-purifying salvation. What the inspiration of the Old Testament is, is thus made manifest, as the Divine Cause commensurate and congruous with the Divine effect,—the moral power proceeding from the Spirit of God, which wrought this progressive illumination and redemption in the pupils of the Spirit. We can concede that these pupils made blunders, without disparagement to the Teaching Spirit, while it is so clear that they made the progress, which is apparent in a contrast of Samuel and Gad with their successors, Isaiah and Jeremiah. It is the progress, which learners make from low to high attainments, which shows what their teaching is.

It cannot be too much deplored, that the Sunday school teaching, laying a foundation either for the faith or the skepticism of riper years, still holds to the literal and mechanical notion of the inspiration of the Scriptures, still fails to grasp the moral and spiritual reality of it, still perpetuates the absurdity of representing the occasional mistakes of ancient men of God as of equal authority with the Divine Teaching which ultimately corrected them, still puts child-faith into the old brick forts in face of rifled guns, instead of the Gibraltarrock of the authority of Christ as the supreme Critic of whatever claims to be a word of God.

Even though it should seem to a hopeful mind that the old brick forts can be held against the rifled guns, yet, in view of the changes in Christian thought which have taken place since inspiration was claimed for the Hebrew vowel points, it is no longer premature to consider the alternative,-if they should be knocked about our ears, what then? A wise teaching will at least forecast such a possibility, and show the Gibraltar-rock, which in any case is impregnable.

And yet, there are many who affirm, that if we permit ourselves to question any statement that any ancient prophet made as a word of God, or the historical accuracy of any fact reported as such in the Bible, it destroys all faith, and leaves us no sure word of God at all.

This must be plainly characterized as mere nonsense. Take the Beatitudes, take the Sermon on the Mount. Is it not the height of absurdity, to maintain that one must believe that Balaam's ass spoke with a human voice, or that Samuel order