A Presbyterian Clergyman Looking for the Church

Voyage now over-Land! land!-Terrific conflict-Reasons for delay-Flesh and
blood-Mother, departed in faith-Go first and bury thy father-That father's
consent-Acknowledgment of Presbyterian Orders by some nominal Church-
men-Gewgaws of a ritual worship-Subjected to a roasting-Hoped he would
not be a High Churchman-Cease to be a Puritan-Small hopes of preferment.
Salary-Magna est veritas-Resignation of pastoral charge-The gates of
death-Final resolve-Letter to the Moderator of the Presbytery-Committee
appointed-Interview-Name stricken from the roll of the Presbytery--More
fortunate than others-Kindly received by the Bishop and Clergy-Ordained
Deacon-No regrets-The joyful Eureka and the adoring Alleluia. Pp.
572-580.

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A PRESBYTERIAN CLERGYMAN

LOOKING FOR THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER 1.

THE

CONFLICT.

THE writer of this narrative was once a Presbyterian; I may add, that my numerous relatives, near and remote, with a single exception, are Presbyterians still. And that which I had been by birth and education, and without my consent or fault, I afterward became from conviction, and unhappily that species of conviction which is always absolute-satisfied with the potent reasoning, which even to a Nathanael, may sometimes seem conclusive-" Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" The question was unfortunately one, which modest worth has always found it difficult to answer; and I had never met with a Philip of Bethsaida to say, "Come and see."

Of the Episcopalians, whose friendship I had enjoyed from childhood up, not one, so far as my recollections serve me,

ever made the slightest attempt to proselyte me to his faith; and even after it came to be suspected that my mind was dis turbed upon the claims of Episcopacy-when an expression of sympathy, or an exchange of views, or a friendly consultation upon personal and local difficulties, that never find their solution in books and authors, would have been unspeakably refreshing to my mind, then grappling in its own solitude with its new perceptions of truth and duty-still, if the fact be creditable to Episcopalians, I may record it to their praise, that I never met with either layman or priest among them, who seemed so much as to care, whether a wanderer should come into his fold or not; but I felt many a time perplexed by the indifference with which they appeared to entertain a subject, on which my own mind was expending its most restless and intense anxieties. Whether those on the higher rounds of the ladder, reaching by God's ordinance from earth to heaven, were so far above me, as not to understand the pressure of an atmosphere that they had never breathed, or had not the skill to reach the helping hand so low; and that those lower down upon the same perceived so little difference between my elevation and their own, as to wonder that I should have suffered inconvenience or should have desired a change; or whether both high and low had forgotten that that ladder, with its facilities for climbing to the skies, was for me as much as for them; it would be irrelevant, and perhaps unbecoming, at present to inquire. It is enough to say, that I was excluded from the sympathies of Churchmen, both high and low; and, in looking at the past, I often feel like one who has made his way across some desert, where the foot-prints of the wanderers, in a thousand different directions, seemed rather to bewilder than to guide, and who therefore must ascribe his preservation and his better fortune to the grace that kept his eye upon the guiding star.

I may not be able to tell the precise moment, up to which I

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