" Where limped streams with silvery song Sure skill of elf or fay ne'er wrought 'Aye, gentle sir, 'twere sooth you say, As, pausing mid the paddle-stroke He leaned upon his oar. Now, mark," quoth he, "while I would tell, Of what in yonder glade befell, Hard by upon the shore." Fairly within a sheltering bay Our breasting bark had borne its way, RIME OF THE VOYAGEUR. 'Tis midnight over land and lake, The clouds are drifting wild abreast, And far, with swollen sail, The dun clouds from the bleak nor'west, Sped by the rushing gale. 'Tis morn: the blast maintains its wrath, And mounting high on glittering path, Throw wide the door! let in the sun! To bar the beams that waste and run, "It is enough to bear the pang, "Let in the light! let in the light! A sail can ride through storm and night, The hutman said, and feebly leant And watched the waves that sped and spent, And heard their hoarse alarm. The winter cold, unpityingly, Its icy armor girt the sea, Alone upon that island rude, Long months of weary tide, Had dwelt and loved, through ill and good, Ill fared they in the fruitless waste, Then famine came !-Stranger pray God, The pains that gnaw-consume-corrode- Inured to want, her threatening lot And day by day the hours rolled on, A gaunt and ghastly Skeleton There lay the grieved hutman. "Speak wife; what hope doth morning bring?Say'st thou a sail !—a sail!” "It must be so!-Cease. cease my heart, "Farewell!-it was their parting word, "My father! did thy soul fore-fear "Sister! a dimness palls my brow, God bless thee, gentle child. "Say, hang the ripe fruits, Ellie, mine, Upon the garden tree? The purple clusters on the vine ?-- And are they not for me? "But now my weary head needs rest: "A sail! a sail! ho, Carl, awake! "Arouse! arouse !"-aye when the blast Then shall the sleeper wake at last Christ shield him-Carl is dead! * "How say'st thou, stranger ?"-urge thine oar, To-night my dreams shall thither roam To-morrow guide our bark for home! Pittsburg, February, 1850. R. P. N. THE REFORMED CHURCH. [The following article forms the Introduction to an unpublished work, entitled "The History of the German Reformed Church in its origin and Progress," by the late Rev. Dr. LEWIS MAYER. It is generally known that this distinguished and excellent man had devoted himself, particularly after his retirement from the place so long honorably occcupied by him in the Theological Seminary of the G. R. Church, to the task of preparing such a work, with reference especially to the rise and progress and present state of the Reformed division of the German Church in America. The feeble character of his health, added to the difficulties of the undertaking itself, led to much interruption and delay in its execution; and we are sorry to find now, since his decease, that the work as a whole is too incomplete altogether to be given to the world in a printed form. A part of it however, it is believed may yet appear in this way; being of sufficient interest and importance to justify its publication in such separate form, as well as in a state of proper preparation for the press under the author's own hand.] The title Reformed Church, in its most comprehensive sense, designates all those professing Christians, who, embracing the general system of doctrine which was taught by the Reformers, have rejected Luther's theory of a corporeal presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord's supper, and hold, in this particular, the belief of Zwingli, or that of Calvin. These christians constitute several distinct communities, each of which has its particular bond of union and differs from every other in some peculiarities which are sometimes of no little importance. They agree in few things about which they differ from Luther and his followers, except in their view of the Lord's supper. These communities are therefore so many distinct churches, and instead of calling them the Reformed Church, we must call them the Reformed Churches. The title Reformed, was first assumed, in France, by those who separated from the Romish communion, and was adopted from them by their brethren in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, &c. In England it is used to denote all the churches which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and thus includes the Lutheran. On the continent it is the distinctive title of those Protestant communities which are not Lutheran, exclusive of Socinians and Anabaptists. The French Protestants, were by their adversaries called Huguenots The derivation of this term is somewhat uncertain. It is, however, very probable that it originated in a corrupt French pronunciation of the German word Eidgenoss, softened into Eidgenott, and then corrupted into Huguenot. The word Eidgenoss, in its plural Eidgenossen signifying confederates, or rather partakers of the oath, was originally the designation of the thirty-three Swiss confederates, who, in the night of the seventh of November 1307, bound themselves by a solemn oath to defend the liberties of their country against the Emperor ALBERT I. It became subsequently the distinctive title of the confederated Cantons which were parties to a perpetual league for the common defence and safety, and, in common parlance, was used to denote the people of those Cantons individually. In Germany the Reformed were denominated, by their opponents Zwinglians and Calvinists, and in derision Sacrementarians. English writers speak of the two principal Protestant denominations on the continent as the Lutheran church and the Calvinistic church. This, however, is an erroneous distinction. The Reformed churches on the continent are not all Calvinistic. In some parts of Germany they never received Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation; and the writer is not aware that it is, at this time, made a term of communion any where in the Reformed church of that country. This doctrine, |