But
repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia,
were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up
year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the
position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the
denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary
meeting-place of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the
accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and
useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing
student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness
with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through
a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and
illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space
of a year, as one suspended from the ministry.

The earliest leaders in national organization for the propagation of
Christianity at home and abroad were the Congregationalists of New
England and men like-minded with them. But the societies thus originated
were organized on broad and catholic principles, and invited the
cooeperation of all Christians. They naturally became the organs of much
of the active beneficence of Presbyterian congregations, and the
Presbyterian clergy and laity were largely represented in the direction
of them. They were recognized and commended by the representative bodies
of the Presbyterian Church. As a point of high-church theory it was held
by the rigidly Presbyterian party that the work of the gospel in all its
departments and in all lands is the proper function of "the church as
such"--meaning practically that each sect ought to have its separate
propaganda. There was logical strength in this position as reached from
their premisses, and there were arguments of practical convenience to be
urged in favor of it. But the demand to sunder at once the bonds of
fellowship which united Christians of different names in the beneficent
work of the great national societies was not acceptable even to the
whole of the Old-School party. To the New Englanders it was intolerable.

There were other and less important grounds of difference that were
discussed between the parties. And in the background, behind them all,
was the slavery question. It seems to have been willingly _kept_ in the
background by the leaders of debate on both sides; but it was there. The
New-School sy