whether of truth or of practical harmony, until the Established Church, as such, is separated from the State.”  His estimate of “a large class of English Christians” is not very flattering.  “They are good men, but not thinking men.  Their piety gurgles in a warm flood through their heart, but it has not yet mounted to their head. * * * In the ordinary, i.e. in their preaching and piety, they show a style of goodishness fitly represented by Henry’s Commentary; in the extraordinary, they rise into sublimity by inflation and the swell of the occasion.”  Towards slavery and slaveholders he manifests a tenderness of feeling at which we are surprised and pained.  The proposed exclusion of slaveholders from the Alliance he characterizes as “absurd and fanatical,” speaking of the subject as having been “so unhandsomely forced upon” the American brethren in London.  Again, “There is too much good sense among the Christians of this country (America) to think of constituting an Alliance on the basis which denies Christian character to all slaveholders.  At a future time, when slavery has been discussed long enough, we shall do so.  We cannot do it now,—­least of all can we do it at the dictation of brethren beyond the sea, who do not understand the question,” &c.

And yet in the same article the Doctor proposes that the Christians of England and America should unite their efforts for the promotion of religious liberty in Italy, and says, “If we lift our testimony against all church dungeons and tortures, and against all suppression of argument by penalties, as cruel, absurd, anti-christian, and impious, there is no prince or priesthood in Italy or anywhere else that can long venture to perpetrate such enormities.”  Will they yield, Doctor, to the “dictation of brethren beyond the sea?” But this subject of American slavery is always represented by our Transatlantic friends as a thing so profound that none but themselves can understand it; and yet it is evident that they understand it least of all.  Hear the Doctor:—­

“We do not propose, however, in this movement for religious liberty, to invite the efforts of our English brethren here against slavery.  We have too little confidence in their knowledge of our condition, and the correctness of their opinions generally on the subject of American slavery.  They must consent to let us manage the question in our own way,” &c.  How strikingly is it here seen that this slavery is the weak point and the wicked point in the American character!  We liked Dr. Bushnell’s company, his hospitality, his wife, his children, his domestic discipline, his church, his other writings,—­everything better than the article in question, though even it contained much that we admired.