under our care to perform this duty, and to be ever ready to make all necessary sacrifices in order to effect a consummation so much to be desired." In 1850, the General Assembly, in its meeting at Detroit, made the following Declaration: "The holding of our fellow-men in the condition of slavery, except in those cases where it is unavoidable, by the laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, or the demands of humanity, is an offense in the proper import of that term, as used in the Book of Discipline, Chap. 1, Sec. 3, and should be regarded and treated in the same manner as other offenses." Respecting this action, Rev. Albert Barnes, who is now the Chairman of the Church Extension Committee, says, in his book on "The Church and Slavery:" "The great body of those who sustain the relation of slaveholders in the church are, according to the resolutions of the Assembly at Detroit, in such a condition as to make them liable to the charge of being guilty of an offense in the proper import of this term; that is, in such a condition as to make them liable to discipline in the same way as in the case of any other 'offense' known to the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church." "In the New School Presbyterian Church it is now a settled principle-so far as the acts of the Assembly go to establish that principle-that 'slaveholding' should be treated as an 'offense,' in the proper and technical sense of the term, that is, as a relation subjecting a man to the discipline of the church,-unless he can show that in his case it is rendered necessary by the laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, and (or) the demands of humanity." Or, as he says elsewhere, "A slaveholder is not prima facie in good standing in the Presbyterian church. It is a case for him to make out; not for him to assume to be true." These rules of the General Assembly, which are law to the Extension Committee, the Assembly's Agent, are as high toned and stringent against slavery as the rule of the Home Missionary Society. What necessity, then, for the action, or the existence, of the Extension Committee in order to give aid to the slaveholding churches of Missouri, when, on the principles of the General Assembly, they cannot aid those churches any more, or on any other terms, than the

Home Missionary Society can? What will the Extension Committee do? They are in this dilemma. They must either ascertain, directly or indirectly, that the slaveholding, in the churches to be aided, is "rendered necessary by the laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, or the demands of humanity," which is all the Home Missionary Society does; or they must give the aid without examining whether the slaveholding be of the exceptional or of the sinful kind-in which case they will violate the rules of the General Assembly, and make a practical and shocking renunciation of the anti-slavery principles and character of the New School Presbyterian Church; which may God forbid! Especially may God forbid that ALBERT BARNES should act as Chairman of a Committee to do this thing, after all that he has published to the world so justly, ably and bravely, as to the responsibility of the Church for the existence and continuance of slavery, and as to the high and firm anti-slavery ground which the Church, and all voluntary societies for the promotion of religion, should take and hold!

But we must close. We have transcended the limits we had assigned for this Article, for we have found the subject growing upon us as we advanced, and requiring attention at many points.

In conclusion, we would strenuously urge generous and Christian coöperation between these kindred denominations in the work of Home Missions. It is from an ardent desire for this that we have written. We lament that the close alliance and generous sympathy which has always existed between them, and which was increased by common trials in the days of the Old School persecution and consequent ecclesiastical division, should be impaired, as in some degree it unquestionably has been. We entreat our Presbyterian brethren, for their sakes as well as for the sake of Christian charity, not to persist in making and increasing the impression, which has been made by the Church Extension plan and measures, on Congregationalists emigrating to the West, that the New School Presbyterian Church is not what it once was in its sympathy with New England Congregationalists, and now instead

of being an inviting home for them has become hostile to them and their principles. We earnestly invite our Presbyterian brethren to come back to the principles of fair coöperation. We can answer for the Congregationalists that they will act on those principles earnestly and zealously. Upon those principles they will strenuously support the Home Missionary Society. And they will not consent that that noble Society shall die, and have its estate divided, as was suggested by the General Assembly's delegate to the General Association of Massachusetts. It has no estate to be divided except legacies, not a cent of permanent funds. And its legacies would be forfeited by its death or division. They like the nature of the organization. It is such as their independent but affiliated churches require-churches which cannot have an Ecclesiastical Board, or a Church Extension Committee. They will adhere to this Society; and insist on its continuance, as it is, and in the present tenor of its way, catholic, honorable and noble as that way is. They love its mode of operation on the Home Missionary field. And we earnestly invite our Presbyterian brethren to join their purposes and efforts with ours to avoid all schismatic operations on that field-to avoid the shameful waste of home missionary funds, and the disgrace to our common Christianity, which must result from a miserable sectarian scramble between these two denominations in every little town and neighborhood in the West. If the Presbyterians will coöperate fairly through the agency of the Society, the Congregationalists will not ask who gives or receives most of the money, even though they should give far the most and receive far the least. But they will not tolerate, in the use of their funds, sectarian unfairness toward their Congregational brethren in the West. They will insist that, neither directly nor indirectly, neither by keeping a rule in form and breaking it in spirit, nor in any other way, shall their own money be employed at the West to counteract and harass and defeat, in the support of their chosen church polity, those whom they have sent out from their homes, but still retain in their hearts.

ARTICLE IX.-AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

THE cultivation of the soil is the great occupation of the American people. Our agriculture employs more labor and more capital than all other departments of industry combined. Under these circumstances it is a remarkable, and at first sight an unaccountable fact, that there is among us an almost total deficiency of agricultural education. Our condition in this respect presents a contrast to that of other countries, which have reached the same grade of civilization as ourselves. France has its agricultural school in every department, Germany in almost every province, and England a source of the most enlightened practice in the careful study which every large landholder gives to the cultivation of the soil. Our own country, with all its enterprise in practical art, and its preëminence in general education, is in this respect of agricultural science behind them all.

It would seem at first sight that such a state of things must have its origin either in the lack of knowledge to be communicated on agricultural subjects, or in its already accomplished diffusion, or in some especial difficulties incidental to the dissemination of such knowledge among those engaged in agricultural pursuits.

In view of the obvious relations of the Natural Sciences to agriculture, and the rapid strides which they have made in advance during the last score of years, the first of these suppositions is extremely improbable. It can hardly be that accumulations of knowledge have not been realized in Chemistry, Geology, and Vegetable and Animal Physiology, of the most important bearing on the culture of the soil. So obvi ously must this be the fact in the case of chemical science, that the mind can scarcely fail to be satisfied of the truth without descending to those particulars which are at hand, for complete demonstration. Agriculture is, in fact, chemistry on a large scale-the transformation of earth, and air, and

water, into bread, and meat, and the material of clothing; and it is scarcely possible that the results of the careful study of the laws of transformation on a small scale, which has been made in our laboratories, will not throw some light on the chemical work on a large scale, which is taking place in the great laboratory of the soil.

It is certain that they have already done so, and that there are principles of chemical science already established, which, if universally diffused and applied, would suffice to increase, in an immense degree, the agricultural wealth of the world. As far, then, as the natural sciences are concerned, in their relation to agriculture, it may be confidently asserted that the deficiency of instruction among us is not a consequence of lack of knowledge to be communicated.

Neither is this the case with those special sciences which have grown up within the field of agriculture itself, as a direct consequence of its practices and its necessities. On the principles involved in the breeding and rearing of animals, in the propagation of plants, in the production and perpetuation of varieties, on the diseases of plants and animals, on manuring and drainage, and irrigation, there are vast stores of information which await the more thorough and systematic diffusion which the press, with all its power and efficiency, has not as yet accomplished.

And so, with reference to the care of crops and the feeding of animals; the management of the dairy and a thousand other details of farm practice which have not as yet taken the form of science, there is an amount of knowledge existent in the minds of the best cultivators, the dissemination of which would be of immense value to the country.

It is not, then, for lack of existent knowledge, either of science applied to agriculture, or of special agricultural science, or of superiority on the part of individuals in the details of farming, that there is nothing like a system of agricultural education among us.

The second supposition of an already accomplished diffusion of the knowledge which exists on these subjects, it is scarcely worth while to consider. Once fertile farms all over our State