An unpublished journal of Rev. George Whitefield, detailing his life from October 17th, 1744, to some time in the spring of 1745, has been in the Princeton Theological Seminary Library since June, 1816. It bears an inscription showing that it was given to the seminary by Dr. John R. B. Rodgers, the famous pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York. Probably it was a part of the papers which Dr. Rodgers is said to have guarded and carried about in a trunk during the Revolutionary War.

The Plan of Union adopted in 1801 by the General Association of Connecticut and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church was a memorable expression of the spirit of Christian unity in the face of a great missionary task. But its particular provisions for the working together of the Congregational and Presbyterian polities were little utilized. The “Accommodation Plan” adopted in 1808 was the main instrument of organization in the spirit of the Plan of Union. According to this a Congregational church, remaining such internally, might join a presbytery and be represented in the presbytery by its minister and a lay delegate. Such churches received the nickname “Presbygational”, or were called “Plan of Union churches.”

The sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire saw the appointment to high ecclesiastical offices of several laymen chosen from the upper ranks of the army and the civil service. Apollinaris, patriarch of Alexandria from 551 to 570, had been before his appointment a high military officer, and his successor John had likewise passed the whole of his previous career in the army. It was evidently their marked executive ability which was responsible for the sudden translation of such men from the government service to the church, and in their new careers their energy and their mastery of administrative detail no doubt outweighed any previous lack of training in theological affairs.

On the east bank of the St. John River, sixty miles above the city of St. John and eighteen miles below Fredericton, is an attractive white church building of the New England type. Its graceful spire cannot fail to catch the eye and call forth expressions of admiration as travelers pass by motor or river steamer. This houses the oldest Protestant church organization in what is now the Province of New Brunswick, though this building is not the original one. It was a “society” of the Congregational order, now an integral part of The United Church of Canada, and known as Sheffield.