Protestant Dissenters of England raising by similar means, for the same end, no less a sum than £216,406 11s. 9d.? This sum was raised last year in the following proportions: the Moravians, £11,117 9s. 3d.; the Baptists, £22,727; the Independents, with slight aid from other classes of Christians, £80,874 Os. 2d.; and the Methodists, £101,688 2s. 4d. This princely revenue was collected from a surface as widely extended as that which was traversed by the Church Missionary Society. The mere Sunday-school children of the Independents and Methodists raised £6,439 10s. 2d.! But to the Missionary contributions of England must be added about £22,827 5s. 7d. for the Established Church of Scotland, together with two large and respectable communities of Dissenters in that country, the one denominated the Secession Church, and the other the Relief Church. We have here a revenue of no less than THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS per annum for the prosecution of Missionary undertakings!"

This

The spirit of Missionary enterprise is not confined to England; Christians in America are also deeply impressed by a sense of the duty and importance of the work. We may take their contributions towards its prosecution as amounting at the least to £150,000 per annum. brings us up to £480,000 a-year. To this, however, must be added for other - smaller communities, whom we have not specified, and as free contributions in divers countries for Bible Societies-a main element in the enterprise-a further sum of at least £60,000. Adding to all these, various miscellaneous contributions in different shapes, we may conclude with perfect safety that the entire revenue for this enterprise is considerably upwards of FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS per annum! Let men of the world look at this torrent of gold flowing in the channel of Christian charity.

But this is only a superficial view of the subject. This revenue is the result of the contributions of millions; and its collection is more marvellous than even its amount. It has been mainly raised by the labouring portion of mankind, and by the poor; all that rank and fortune have contributed might be returned to them with little diminution of the sum total. The amount of labour connected with the gathering of this half-million of money is incalculable, incredible. Who can tell us how much time has been consumed, and how many hundreds of thousands of miles

have been travelled by the collectors? Who can compute the years composed by the hours spent by the myriads of committees which conduct this prodigious amount of business? Who can estimate the amount of printing, and of written correspondence, connected with it? To these things no man is equal; but this one thing let all men know, this incalculable, this inconceivable mass of human effort has been all gratuitous. What can infidel philosophy, what can worldly philanthropy offer as a parallel? Is it not superlatively, incomparably grand?

Wonders multiply as we proceed. For whom are these imperial revenues raised ? For whom are these boundless spaces trodden? For whom are these priceless portions of time sacrificed? For men of strange speech and distant climes; men from whom those countless multitudes have received no favour, and to whom they look for no compensation! They are discharging no debt, whether personal or relative; neither the past nor the future, with respect to this life, makes any element in the considerations which prompt the enterprise. What then has aroused one portion of mankind to perform achievements so prodigious in behalf of the other? Is it mere benevolence? was there ever such benevolence? Is it piety towards God? was there ever such piety? Was there ever such benevolence and such piety apart from Christianity? Is not this confederacy of nations to diffuse light and truth, civilization and happiness, throughout the whole earth, a thing at once sublime and glorious? Beyond all other grandeur, is not this grand?

Still the marvels multiply. The composite character of those evangelizing millions deserves special notice. Their difference of views and feelings upon all other points is equalled only by their unanimity upon this point. Among them are men of all existing and all possible sorts and shades of civil as well as ecclesiastical politics, and men of no politics at all of either kind; men of all degrees of talent and attainment, of every rank and order. In spite of these their endless and boundless diversities, they are wholly of one mind as to the duty, the necessity, and the importance of spreading the knowledge of God in Christ. In the great elements of human character, also, the bulk of them closely resemble each other. They are, as a whole, greatly superior to all others in point of intelligence, virtue, piety, patriotism, and loyalty. They are at once the friends of God and the friends

of man.

Among them the best order of literature has both its source and its market. Among them, too, science numbers the great mass of her principal ornaments, freedom her supporters, popular education her promoters, general philanthropy her votaries, and philosophy her disciples and apostles. From the character of those masses result their moral union and the stability of their enterprise. They are so many countless atoms gravitating towards a centre. They exhibit a measure of mutual confidence never before felt amongst myriads of human beings. The several divisions of those immense multitudes, scattered over the vast surface already described, as with one consent repose implicit confidence in the judgment and integrity of little bands of Christian men in the capital of England. But this confidence pervades all the gradations of the mighty host: everywhere the contributors are seen trusting the collectors, the collectors the local committees, the committees the treasurers, and all, the parent society! How beautiful! How unlike the course of this distrustful and treacherous world! This strange trust is the effect of general integrity. No bands can keep bad men long together. Trust and treachery can form no lasting alliance. With what difficulty large bodies of irreligious men are formed and combined even to promote their own real or imaginary interests! When they have received such organization as they are susceptible of, they soon explode, through the force of their own unholy passion, or fall to pieces from the weight of their own corruption. Nor is this matter of regret to good men, but of rejoicing. Were the wicked capable of such organizations as those we have described, the government of the world would soon be at an end. From the character and principles of these Missionary unions results a pledge that they will be as lasting as the cause which called them into existence. Notwithstanding the comparative antiquity of most of them, they present no symptoms whatever of decay; but, on the contrary, every hour their force augments, and their position is improving. They find a friend in every friend of man. They count no enemies but those who are enemies to God. Every true and intelligent disciple of Christ is, while life continues, an inflexible adherent, and a permanent supporter of Missions. Vitality, also, is secured to such associations by the corporate character of their constituencies. Individuals

die, but churches survive. The moral warfare now waging will continue from generation to generation, and will know no end other than the universal victory of truth over error, of light over darkness, of purity over corruption. Who can describe the excellence of such an undertaking? All the wise and good on earth unite with the hosts of heaven to pronounce it-grand!

The subject of Missions is not simply a question of morals. The genius of discovery views with delight the advance of this mighty enterprise, and exults in the formation of bodies which bid fair to lay open every portion of the habitable globe. The genius of science, too, has at length discovered that she has much to hope with respect to an enterprise from which, at first, she expected nothing. Those men whom she was wont to treat with scorn are already surpassing the most adventurous of her sons, and pouring at her feet stores of the choicest facts from every part of the world. The genius of literature, also, gazes with rapture on the happy omen. She clearly sees that in the Missionary brotherhood she has found the men who are to extend her empire to the ends of the earth, and give her throne a stability that will be lasting as the sun. She beholds them subduing language after language, reducing them to the laws of grammar, and fixing them in the columns of the lexicon. She sees, with grateful wonder, the school-house rising in the desert, and hears, in the depth of its solitude, the creative crash of the printingpress, as it pours forth its intellectual bounties. The genius of commerce next advances, with selfish look and courtly step, to do homage to the heralds of salvation. She discovers in them the successful pioneers of the merchant. The genius of legislation closes the approving procession. She has at length reached the conclusion that in every clime the Protestant Missionary is the unchangeable friend of freedom and justice, of law and order; that it is his province, and alone in his power, to meeten the savage for the enjoyment of the most perfect liberty, and teach him how to use, without abusing it. Yes, the nations themselves who dwell in darkness, and who are groaning under the burden of their affliction, are, at length, convinced that the Missionary is at once their only light and their only friend. Him, of all white men, they can and do trust, and only him. Oh! how great are those persons who humble themselves that they may exalt their species! How

honourable the Missionary institution, which, at incalculable expense, and by incredible labour, seeks only the good of all countries, and asks nothing in return! Is not this to resemble Deity? Is not this transcendently grand?

The Mission-houses of those Societies are spots of extraordinary interest. They sustain a twofold relation. On the one hand, they are the depository of the aggregated treasure and of the combined confidence of millions; on the other, they are centres whence the light shines forth to the ends of the world. At home, we have seen them moving a stupendous and complicated system of moral mechanism, which they manage and control with incredible facility; abroad, we shall see them operating in both hemispheres, and on every continent, and almost in every isle. Vain philosophy and purblind politians may pass by such houses with contempt; but the historians of future times, and of far distant lands, will speak of them with a reverence approaching adoration, when the halls of science, the theatres of legislation, the residences of royalty, and the mausoleums of departed glory, will be utterly forgotten. Yes, in the ages to come, poets will sing, and chroniclers will tell of the era in which those institutions were established, and from that will they date the period when "the day-spring from on high" first visited their fathers' land, terminating the long night of death, and delivering them from the horrors of idolatry! England will then be to all lands what Jerusalem is now to England. It is the tongue of Englishmen that is now, in every clime, calling upon man to awake from his slumber, and to arise from the dead, that Christ may give him light. It is English type that is creating a literature among every people. It is in the English capital that the councils of light are held. It is to the English capital that the facts of the history of the great moral warfare now carried on in every land are being hourly transmitted. It is in the English capital that those great annual conventions of the supporters of Missions take place, when the home conductors of the enterprise give an account of their own stewardship, and report upon the state and progress of the work in foreign lands. What seasons are those when multitudes meet from day to day, and for many weeks in succession, solely to advance the work of God's mercy among mankind! Compared with these assemblies and their object, how grovelling, how carnal, how secular, and how

selfish are all other assemblies known to Britons! No matter of whom such other assemblies may be composed, or where convened, or by whom graced, they are insignificant and pitiful as compared with these magnificent convocations of Protestant piety and English humanity! In all that belongs to art, to science, to police, to government, and to legislation, England has rivals in Europe; but the stupendous and all-glorious mechanism of modern Missions-that is England's own!

It is in vain that we look to the capitals of Europe for even one Missionary assemblage such as often meets in the very committee-rooms of Exeter Hall. All the repositaries of the arts in Europe united, cannot supply so much to gratify the eye of Christian philanthropy as the museum of the London Missionary Society, presenting, as it does, from every clime, the famished gods of the heathen, the most insignificant of which is of far greater worth than Stockholm's boast, the statue of Endymion. Copenhagen can show Charlottenburg, with its wonders of art, with its sister sanctuaries, Rosenburg and Amalienburg, spots where genius loves to linger; but it can exhibit no trophies of the power of the gospel in heathen countries. The hoarded marvels of human cunning there treasured up are in no respect associated with the advancement of the glory of Christ and the salvation of man. Then there is St. Petersburgh, rich in its architectural glories, and refulgent with its barbaric splendours ; but there the stranger meets with nothing to remind him of the wretchedness and redemption of Pagan nations! The farfamed collection of its Hermitage, and the perpetual spring which reigns in the Gardens of Calypso, serve well enough to regale the fancy, but they neither bespeak compassion for the sufferings of an afflicted world, nor excite any sympathy with the work of the Son of God, who, when he appeared on earth, thus announced his mission: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to comfort all that mourn; to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

Of Warsaw, the lasting monument of the infamy of kings, we may not speak; we shall, therefore, pass on to the land of Luther, the birth-place of the printing

press. In that country the spirit of Missions has appeared, for it has supplied not a few of the best Missionaries of our times. Holland and Belgium merit no notice; but among the many moral wonders and laudable institutions of Berlin, which, in some respects, connected with great draw-backs, form at once an example and a reproach to all the other nations of Europe, we find a Bible Society, a Society for the advancement of Christianity among the Jews, and a Society for Missions, to promote the conversion of Africa; but these are names rather than things. In Paris there is little to interest, but much to discourage the friend of the heathen world: even there, however, there is a small band of faithful and enlightened adherents to the enterprise. Madrid resembles the dismal regions it adorns; even science, art, and commerce have there no home, and of true Christian civilization there is not a single element. At Lisbon the light of letters just suffices to make the darkness visible. In those lands Protestant Missions are known only by name, and mentioned only for execration! The conclusion of the whole is, that whatever be the glory of the Missionary enterprise, it is, in Europe, exclusively the property of England. What Christian Englishman does not exult in the position and vocation of his country? What real friend of mankind is not ever ready to cry out, Let England LivE FOR EVER?

When the renovation of our globe shall have been complete; when letters, science, religion, and liberty shall have filled and gladdened the world, England will be a name engraven upon the hearts of all nations. Rome gave the world Virgil; Greece, Homer; but England, the Bible, and the Missionary to interpret it. Homer and Virgil have nourished taste, and inflamed the spirit of war; but they never awakened a conscience, or reformed a character; never effected in a human being a change of which a wise man could truly say, That is grand. London, the great repository of the Book of God, the seat and home of Christian Missions, happen what may, in after times, to the trade and power of the country, willli ve through all ages and in all lands in the enjoyment of a deathless celebrity!

Let the Nonconformists of England, then, awake to the true glory of their country, and the great vocation of their times. Let the Congregational body rally round the London Missionary Society. With a catholic constitution, it has at

13

length unavoidably acquired a denominational essence. With all its excellence, usefulness, and honour, it is theirs! Who supply the management, the men, the means? They! The other bodies have all drawn off, and left this glorious institution in their sole possession. Let every church, family, and man among them inscribe their name on its banner!

METHODS OF PROMOTING THE TEMPORAL WELFARE OF CHURCHES.

BEFORE us are the celebrated Report of the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, presented in 1817; the Reports of 1825 and 1827, respecting Friendly Societies; and the Return relating to Friendly Societies enrolled in the several counties of England and Wales, presented to the House of Commons last year, and by its order printed. These documents supply a great body of facts illustrative of the workings of society among the labouring classes of Great Britain; and furnish a mass of valuable materials for the operations of philosophic philanthropy. There they have lain, however, in these "blue books," up to the present time, without a single effort in any quarter to turn them to the public good. He who shall thoroughly analyze and digest the whole, and thus bring the voice of experience to bear practically upon the welfare of the people, will prove a superior benefactor to his country and to mankind. earnestly commend this undertaking to such of our readers as have the due competency and the needful leisure. It is truly affecting to see how the urgent necessities of men, as set forth in these documents, have led them, to the number of between one and two millions, to associate together for mutual help in the hour of calamity. With all the imperfections -and they are both numerous and serious -which attend many of their organizations, there is still much in them on which the eye of Christian philanthropy can rest not merely with approbation, but delight.

We

To those who have investigated the subject, it must be matter of astonishment that the principle of Friendly Societies, properly modified, has not been more extensively applied to Christian churches. This simple means, rightly managed, would conduce to the mitigation of misery and the promotion of comfort among the followers of the Lamb, to an extent not easily to be calculated. Were every Christian church in England and Wales

to form itself into such a society, each fellowship would constitute an impregnable fortress, into which most of the distress which, in some measure, always exists and reigns among them, could not possibly enter. Those churches, indeed, even now, to some extent, do actually form and constitute such societies. Their contributions at the Lord's table, not to mention frequent special subscriptions and endless benefactions, are for the poor of the flock, who are always the minority, and generally but a small number as compared with those who regularly give, but never receive nor expect nor desire to receive the slightest benefit from the funds. Here then are the elements of a Friendly Society of the most exalted character. We have only to build upon this basis to a sufficient elevation, in order to construct a secure and comfortable asylum for sickness, age, and widowhood, and to create an unfailing resource for the destitution caused by calamity, affliction, and death.

The monies contributed at the Lord's table amount generally to about one fourth of the sum necessary for this great object. Not only, however, are larger funds wanted, but funds wholly distinct from the contributions at the Supper; funds not eleemosynary, but prudential; that shall bear, not the character of external charity, but of personal property arising from mutual assurance; funds for the relief of the operative classes of our people generally, who, while in health, obtain a respectable livelihood by their labour, but who, in cases of personal affliction, long continued, are often reduced to sore straits, and driven to seek relief at the hand of public compassion. To the same class of persons, of both sexes, a provision for old age is also exceedingly desirable; nor ought the expenses attendant on death to be forgotten-expenses, alas! which, in cases innumerable of widows and large families, involve the now bereaved and already impoverished survivors in difficulties from which whole years of the utmost exertion, the most painful selfdenial, and much virtuous privation, are often not sufficient to extricate them. There are few sights with which the deacons and pastors of churches are more painfully familiar than the distress and affliction which,, under these circumstances, result from the lack of such provision; and yet the means of averting these calamities, as far as they can be averted by human prudence, are wholly in the hands of the churches.

A society consisting of church members, as opposed to a society of a mixed, conventional, and general character, possesses, likewise, most important advantages. Such an institution, incorporated with a Christian church, and worked through the instrumentality of its own members, will be protected from the disastrous consequences of deceptive calculations, bad management, and gross fraud, which have wrought so much mischief in mixed societies. A vast majority of such societies, through these causes, throughout the entire nation, have become insolvent. The loss and disappointment thus produced to the elder members are frequently very great, and the distress is sorely aggravated by the fact, that the calamity comes upon them at a time when their vigour is for ever gone! Their little light is extinguished, after their sun has gone down to rise no more! We have known a godly man in three such clubs successively, and thus paying into them most of his life, and the last of them to fail just a few weeks before he became dependent on its assistance. Congregational societies are fully guarded against the possibility of results

so ruinous.

Congregational societies will also conduce not only to perfect safety, but to an amount of economy which will at once promote stability and efficiency. The number of societies, as shown by the Government Return before us, held in public houses throughout England and Wales, is absolutely incredible. More than twenty years ago it was carefully calculated that a full quarter of a million of money was thrown away in those places in what is called " spending money for "the good of the house!" Where, in the history of folly, shall we look for a parallel? Was there ever such an amount of madness grafted upon such a stock of prudence? But the mischief to morals has been still more serious than that which relates to the cruel waste of hard-earned money. Such societies have, to an awful extent, proved institutions for the encouragement of intemperance. They have been the ruin of multitudes of men once sober and temperate. An inevitable consequence of such a system is the exclusion from the benefits of such institutions of multitudes of the excellent of the earth, who are repelled not less by a feeling of disgust than by a sense of danger. How can Christian men participate in such orgies? The utmost earthly advantage cannot induce them to become members of such fraternities. It is surprising that these