shall no longer be a scattered flock, but one, one flock for There is a family, which, though its head is personally absent, and its members are dispersed in many local habitations until his return, is still one household, and shall soon be one forever in the mansions of its Father. There is a host, "the sacramental host of God's elect," which, though divided into armies, under various chiefs and banners, is but one at last, is one at present, notwithstanding all appearances of discord, and shall be distinctly recognized as one hereafter. This unity, existing here, and perfected hereafter, is not only the duty, but the glory of the church. Our Saviour, in that solemn sacerdotal prayer, recorded in the seventeenth of John, having prayed for his disciples, and thanked God in their behalf, adds, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one." The most learned interpreters are much divided on the question, what the glory was which Christ had thus bestowed. It could not be his own essential glory; for of that they had surely not been made partakers. The glory of the heavenly state was still in prospect. And although the gospel, which had been bestowed upon them, was a glorious gift, and is elsewhere expressly called "the glorious gospel," it would hardly be described absolutely as "the glory" which the Saviour had received from God and given to his people. But what forbids the natural and obvious construction of the whole verse in connexion, and the supposition, that the glory which the Saviour had bestowed upon believers, was the glory of indissoluble union with himself, through him with God, and in him with each other? The unity of Christians, as a church, is, in idea and in fact, inseparable from their unity with Christ, as the members are united to their head. The one cannot be realized without the other. Hence the perfect unity, to which all members of the church may now look forward, is a glorious one. The Son himself was glorified by the uniting of his manhood to his deity; and he will glorify his people by uniting them to himself, and in himself to one another. Let us learn then to look forward to the great reunion of believers, and the fusion of all sects into the church of the first-born, as a glorious consummation. And amidst all real and apparent alienations, let us still remember and rejoice to know, that even here the church is one. This will correct that tendeney to selfish and sectarian feeling, (which too often becomes

* John xvii. 22.

visible,) without destroying the attachment which we ought to cherish towards our own communion. And at last, it may be soon, the Christian, weary of contention, shall no more have occasion to exclaim, "How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?" For human standards shall then cease to wave, and the only trumpet shall be that of the archangel, calling God's army, not to battle, but to triumph. And then, as they lay down the weapons of their warfare at the feet of the Captain of Salva tion, names and forms shall be forgotten; they shall all see eye to eye; emulation and suspicion shall be lost forever in a perfect unity of spirit and affection; and the Saviour shall at length receive a plenary answer to the prayer which he offered, not only in behalf of his immediate followers, but of those who should believe upon him through their name→→ ἵνα πάντες ἐν ὥσTHAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE.

ART. II.-The Life and Times of Alexander Henderson, giving a History of the Second Reformation of the Church of Scotland, and of the Covenanters, during the reign of Charles I. By John Aiton, D. D., Minister of Dolphinton. Edinburgh: 1836. 8vo. pp. xx.

674.

THE name of Alexander Henderson is not so familiar to the ears of American Presbyterians as it ought to be, and as it was with our Scottish ancestors, and still is, we trust, among the old-school men of the modern Kirk. After Calvin, Knox, and Melville, place must be given to Henderson, as it regards the reform of our church polity. For it was he who proposed and par.y framed the Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Directory or Platform of Church Government and Worship," besides, forwarding the venerable translation of the Psalms still used in the Scotch churches. The period in which he livedfrom 1583 to 1646-is crowded with great events of our church-history, and of the fortunes of civil and religious liberty. To the whigs of Scotland, Hume has traced the † John xvii. 21.

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* Jer. iv. 21.
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liberal principles of English politics, and he has admitted only what it would be effrontery to deny. We do not canonize the Covenanters; but we would not willingly let the moss grow over the inscriptions on their grave-stones.

Henderson was chief actor in a great drama, and he has left others to record his acts. Burnet complains that his writings are flat and heavy. They are so, compared with the light and effervescent gossip of the excellent prelate; but then who would compare the acts of the one with those of the other? Laud very naturally stigmatized him as a most violent and passionate man, and a moderator without moderation. Maxwell called him the Scottish pope. Clarendon described him as one who meddled more in civil matters than all the bishops. Hume and Laing allude to him as the Apostle of the North; and while they record his blind assurance, bigotted prejudices, ridiculous cant, provincial accent, barbarism and ignorance, they leave us to guess how he contrived to move the whole nation. Pemberton uses a term, in describing him, which will be understood by Americans: he was the Franklin of the Scottish commotions. In the General Assembly of 1647, by which the Confession was adopted, Baillie expressed the wish that Henderson's memory might be fragrant among them "as long as free and pure Assemblies remain in this land; which," says he, "I hope will be till the coming of our Lord. You know," adds Baillie, "he spent his strength, wore out his days, and that he did breathe out his life, in the service of God and of this Church. This binds it on us and our posterity to account him the fairest ornament, after Mr. John Knox, of incomparable memory, that ever the Church of Scotland did enjoy." He was equally respected, as we learn from the same great authority, "by his most serene Majesty and the Parliaments of both kingdoms." "A more modest, humble spirit, and of so great parts and deserved authority with all the greatest of the Isles, lives not this day. in the reformed churches." Again, he says, Henderson was for some years, THE MOST EYED MAN OF THE THREE KINGDOMS. Here is enough, surely, to make us unwilling to be wholly ignorant of his personal history.

The volume before us, is graced with an engraving from an original portrait by Vandyck, belonging to the Hendersons of Fordel. The existence of no less than six admirable original portraits of Henderson shows the esteem in which he was held by the noble families and universities in

whose collections these pictures are extant. According to the best accounts, Henderson was rather below the ordinary size, of a slender frame, and of a gentle carriage of body. In the portraits by Vandyck and Jamieson, the sedate and softening features predominate. His countenance bespeaks mild determination, indicative, in the earlier stage of public life, of anxiety, but in after years of melancholy and even disease. His forehead does not seem to have been remarkably high or prominent, but it is deeply furrowed with the wrinkles of care, even in those paintings which represent him in perfect health. All the artists have given him an eye expressive of benignity and passive courage. His jet black hair, his short beard on the chin and upper lip, his black gown over a dark coloured cassock, and the sombre hue of his complexion, give the whole canvass the cast of a saint in deep mourning. In the very furnace of controversy, in which he was so much occupied, the serene and amiable qualities of the Christian, and the native courtesy of the gentleman, never gave way. Baillie, indeed, admits that "the man had by nature a little choler not yet quite extinguished." Knox, Melville and Henderson, says Dr. Aiton, were all conspicuous for the fortiter in re, but Henderson alone combined with it the suaviter in modo. His ruling passion was the love of Presbytery. To this he devoted his wisdom and his eloquence, if indeed he did not sacrifice his life in the cause.*

The personal biography of Henderson is meager, and we must look for his history in that of the Church and the State, during the earlier years of the great Civil War. He was born, as we said, in 1583, so that he was nearly coeval with the erection of presbyteries in Scotland. The parish of Creich in Fife was his birth-place. The Hendersons of Fordel claim him as a cadet of their family. Sir John Henderson of Fordel, of that day, was a leading Covenanter, and one of the three Fife lairds who brought the strength of that country to fight Montrose at Kilsyth.

We hear of him first at the University of St. Andrews, whither he went during the same year in which Cromwell, his great rival in after life, was born. He was matriculated in the college of St. Salvator, on the 19th of December, 1599; being about sixteen years old. He passed the first

We often make free use of Dr. Aiton's language, without the marks of quotation.

course of four years' study in the languages, rhetoric, and parts of the Aristotelian logic and physics, under the superintendence of James Martin, a noted teacher. The name was at that time written Henryson, which is that of one of the earliest and best of the Scottish poets, who came of the same family. He took his master's degree in 1603-" Alexander Henrisonus." It is unknown at what time he became a student in divinity, but before he was twenty-seven years old he had acquired a name for learning and philosophy. In 1600, he was a Professor, and also a Questor of the Faculty of Arts. In the year 1611, he subscribed the accounts of the said faculty," Mr. Alexander Henrysone."

Being then an Episcopalian, he was in favour with men in power, and, at the laureation of his class, made choice of Archbishop Gladstanes for his patron, and wrote him a flattering dedication, The primate soon after presented Henderson to the church of Leuchars, in the Presbytery of St. Andrews: the induction must have taken place at some time between the end of the year 1611, and the 26th of January 1614, Whatever celebrity Henderson had acquired with the members of the university, says Dr. Aiton, was lost on his parishioners. As Fife was truly said by Gladstanes to be the most seditious province in the kingdom, Leuchars was situated in the very hotbed of opposition to Prelacy. The presentee of an archbishop, whoever he might be, could not look for a cordial reception on the part of the stanch Presbyterians of that county. Gladstanes was odious in the estimation of the whole peasantry of the district. Part of the odium directed against the patron fell deservedly on his protegee. Henderson's own sentiments on matters of religion had often been expressed, so that the Presbyterians already looked on him as the rising Goliath of the Philistines. On the day of his induction the parishioners rose in a body to arrest the strong arm of power in the execution of the law. Awed by the terrors of the High Court of Commission, they durst make no actual assault on the clergymen present, but means had been previously taken to secure the church doors inside, so that no entrance could be effected by them. In spite of public opinion thus strongly manifested, Henderson and his friends got into the church by a window, and went quietly through the solemnities of the occasion.

For a time he was regarded as a stranger, and he seems to have had very little sense of his ministerial responsibility;