become Congregationalists. This has given great umbrage to the
Presbyterians. Congregationalism is rapidly gaining ground in the
Western World, and seems destined there, as in England since Cromwell's
time, to swallow up Presbyterianism. I make no invidious comparison
between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to
me that Congregationalism--so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so
catholic--is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It _has_ absorbed all
that was orthodox in the old Presbyterian Churches of England; and it
_is_ absorbing the Calvinistic Methodists and the churches named after
the Countess of Huntingdon. It has all along exerted a powerful
influence on the Presbyterianism of America. The Congregational element
diffused among those churches occasioned the division of the
Presbyterian Church into Old School and New School.

Mr. Boynton is what a friend of mine called "intensely American." He
has lately published, under the title of "Our Country the Herald of a
New Era," a lecture delivered before the "Young Men's Mercantile
Library Association." To show the magnificent ideas the Americans
entertain of themselves and their country, I will transcribe a few
passages.

"This nation is an enigma, whose import no man as yet may fully know.
She is a germ of boundless things. The unfolded bud excites the hope of
one-half the human race, while it stirs the remainder with both anger
and alarm. Who shall now paint the beauty and attraction of the
expanded flower? Our Eagle is scarcely fledged; but one wing stretches
over Massachusetts Bay, and the other touches the mouth of the
Columbia. Who shall say, then, what lands shall be overshadowed by the
full-grown pinion? Who shall point to any spot of the northern
continent, and say, with certainty, Here the starry banner shall never