ones, and added seventy-eight to the number; instituted a volume series which, in the English and other languages, reached, during his administration, sixtyfour volumes; travelled extensively, visiting conferences, delivering addresses, assisting in organizing auxiliaries, taking collections, and in various ways stirring up public interest, and directing the actions of the societies. The movement met with a most hearty and enthusiastic response from the Methodist people. The contributions and subscriptions were unexpectedly large. Thirtysix conferences organized auxiliaries-thirteen appointed special agents-some eighty-seven colporteurs were sent out, and the distribution of books and tracts received an impulse of greater influence and power than its most sanguine friends had anticipated.”—Annual Report of 1855, page 23. As the action of the conferences was needful to complete the new organization, the first annual report was not published till December, 1853, and even then it included only the fraction of a year, during which the society may be said to have been in operation. The report, nevertheless, was exceedingly cheering to the most sanguine friends of the enterprise. We append a part of the figures given : Conference Auxiliaries........... 36 87 ......... 68 6,891,240 101,730 $12,300 $16,407 Pages of Tracts sold, (one-third in German).. Books of General Catalogue sold, value................ As might have been anticipated, the extended operations of the new society, and the important interests involved, soon demanded the entire services of a superintendent, one who could apply both hands to the work, and not, like the builders of Nehemiah, hold the weapon of this warfare in one hand, while with the other he was toiling hard at another enterprise, sufficient of itself for any one man. At the meeting of the Book Committee in February, 1854, Brother Stevens resigned his position in the tract department. His energetic labours have told upon our Church and the cause, and the favourable auspices under which the new enterprise began its career are attributable in no small degree to his vigour and skill. Dr. Jesse T. Peck was elected to the charge of the tract interests, and from his abilities and zeal the Church will expect much. The second anniversary of the society was held at Portland, Maine, in February last. Those whose privilege it was to attend that three days' festival, with its sermons, addresses, and meetings for telling colporteur experience, must have enjoyed a feast of fat things. In looking over the numerical items of the report presented on that interesting occasion, we cannot but be painfully struck with the difficulty of obtaining full, reliable statistics, in whose preparation many hands must be employed. To render this report complete, correct replies to twenty regular questions must be had from each of forty auxiliaries. Consequently the totals must be made up from eight hundred separate sums, each of which is an aggregation of items, and the accuracy of the whole depends upon the accuracy and promptness of some two hundred and fifty persons. To train such a regiment to exactness and despatch is of itself no small task, and as in the present case, the most of them are new recruits, no one need be surprised at the imperfections of the returns, and that there are twice as many blanks as there are entries. The figures given foot up as follows: Colporteurs employed during the year..... Pages of Tracts distributed....... Donations collected by ten agents. Aggregate receipts of the Society...... Families visited in fourteen auxiliaries... Conversions reported in nine auxiliaries. Volumes sold or donated in eight auxiliaries...... 153 11,784,627 $19,567 $61,053 91,751 624 80,613 This, as far as it goes, is exceedingly gratifying; but as a report, it is to us very unsatisfactory. We want the full returns, and we trust that with a little more experience on the part of agents and colporteurs, we shall hereafter have statistics which will not only satisfy curious minds, but prove reliable as a basis for reasoning in regard to the whole system. The Methodists have been blessed with such prompt success in their undertakings hitherto, that they are, of all men, prone to expect immediate fruit of their labours. Like the backwoodsman at the battle of New-Orleans, who, every time he discharged his rifle, leaped upon the breastwork to see what execution he had done, they want to be sure that every shot hits. They wish to know, and they have a right to know, what is effected by the various benevolent operations for which they furnish the sinews. Still, we do not make these remarks by way of censure, but merely to express our strong desire to have full and accurate statistics, and call the attention of the two hundred and fifty persons aforesaid, to the importance of keeping correct accounts in the affairs of the Church. Enough is given to cheer our hopes and satisfy our reason, in regard to the success of the society. The blessing of God has descended upon it, and the influences of the Holy Spirit have sped with its messages of truth and peace. Light has come into many darkened habitations; angels in heaven have joyed over repentant sinners, and gladness has sprung up in many a sad heart. The faithful labourer, with his package of books, has found favour in the eyes of the people, the Churches have contributed liberally of their substance, and as it has been happily expressed, the youngest child of the Church seems to be her favourite. With these general remarks on the origin of the society, and its present condition, we turn to those considerations which prompted the enterprise, and have given it the shape it wears. The field in which it proposes to labour is immense. According to the estimates based on the last census, the United States have at this moment about twenty-seven millions of inhabitants. Four millions, or thereabouts, of these are foreigners, gathered out of "every kindred, and nation, and tongue, under the whole heaven.” England sends us her quota of immigrants, generally informed in regard to evangelical truth, and many of them substantial Christians. Ireland pours in a multitude of the followers of the Pope, and, also, some few Protestants, who are generally valuable accessions to the American Churches. Germany is in motion, and her dreamy sons are coming in crowds to till the soil of our fertile plains, and retail lager bier in the cities and towns. Europe is rolling upon our shores the tide of its teeming population, multitudes of whom know not God, even in the scriptural theory. Here, then, is an opening for any amount of Christian effort, and we will be doing no small share of the work of the general Church, if we provide the means of preaching the Gospel to all who come to us. Our Wesleyan brethren, in contrasting their missionary collections with ours, do not always do us full justice. Their home territory has all been surveyed, their circuits established, their chapels built, and their home work, compared with ours, may be said to be done. The American Methodists, on the contrary, are extending the sphere of their labours in every direction. We probably expend in building and refitting churches and parsonages, and in paying Church debts, a million of dollars annually-perhaps more. We are establishing schools, endowing colleges, and driving on scores of projects at the same time. And every year, almost, some new corner of the territory is found full of special promise, some new enterprise for God and souls is set on foot, and fresh demands are made upon the sympathies, the purses, and the active labours of Christians. We do not believe that any part of universal Zion is working harder, contributing more money, and showing higher hope, more chivalrous enterprise in doing good, than American Methodism. And we would add, with all deliberation, that Christians in other lands would have little cause to reproach Americans with a lack of missionary zeal, if we should abandon the foreign field to them, and devote all our energies to the evangelizing of the crowds of immigrants who are pouring into our country. Is it a Christian virtue to preach Christ to the idolatrous Chinese? Thousands of the natives of the Celestial Empire are to be found in California, where they have erected a pagoda, the first temple of overt idolatry in the States. Is it well for us to tell the story of the cross to the sceptical German? There are a million of Germans already within our borders, and the exodus from the fatherland bids fair to continue. Is it our duty to tell the way of faith to the blinded followers of priests, and the superstitious adorers of wafers? They exist in our midst in hundreds of thousands. It may be granted that the proposal to erect a mission church, or establish a Sabbath-school, three streets from our own door, does not rouse a poetic imagination so strongly, or afford so much material for impassioned eloquence, as does the idea of setting up the standard of the cross side by side with the crescent, or building the church hard by the pagoda, or the car of Juggernaut. Yet the missionary efforts put forth to reach and save the destitute on our own soil, have cost fewer lives, and less money proportionably, and have produced more good results, than has any foreign mission undertaken by Americans, not even excepting the Gospel conquest of the Sandwich Islands. Let no one construe these remarks into censure, or even indifference in regard to efforts to teach the heathen of other lands. In that field we are doing, not too much, but far too little. Still let us not cultivate a philanthropy of such telescopic vision that we become able to see none but distant objects. The deaf mute described by Charlotte Elizabeth, having been patted on the head divers times by his master, in token of commendation, took to patting his head with his own hand whenever he fancied that he had done anything particularly nice or bright. Thus that sapient personage yclept Brother Jonathan, is somewhat fond of patting his own head, and assuring himself that he is the best looking, the most intelligent and virtuous individual visible on the globe, and that he can run faster, fight harder, and make more money than any one else in that extensive precinct known as "all creation." It may cool his vanity, and do him good otherwise, to study carefully a few known facts. Of the eleven millions of our free people, twenty years old and over, one million can neither read nor write. The colporteurs of three of the American societies named at the head of this article, found, in one year, thirty-eight thousand families destitute of the Bible, and this in less than one-fifth of the three millions six hundred thousand families which compose the free part of our nation. If those not called upon were no better supplied, we must have had, at that time, two hundred thousand families living without the Scriptures in their dwellings. The colporteurs of the American Tract Society, during the same period, visited ninety-two thousand five hundred and thirty-one families who heard no evangelical preaching. In 1850, an army of twenty-six thousand six hundred and seventy-nine persons were convicted of crime in the various courts of our nation, while the paupers numbered the mightier host of one hundred and thirty-five thousand; more than half of whom were foreigners. Here is an appalling amount of ignorance, crime and misery, in our very midst. It was one of John Randolph's best sayings, that he uttered in reply to a collector of funds for foreign operations:"Madam, the heathen are at your own doors." Foreign immigration is a subject which should attract the earnest attention of the Christian as well as the patriot. For the last five years immigrants have been arriving at the rate of about three hundred and fifty thousand annually, the vast majority coming from papal Ireland and sceptical Germany. Persevering efforts are made to keep them what they are, and yet they are far more accessible to truth here than at home. Infidel papers in his mother tongue, playing artfully upon the innate love of home and home ideas and customs, so peculiarly strong in the German, teach him low pleasures and low morals. In regard to the Catholics in this country, the grand device of the priests, and of papal workers of every description, is to teach their dupes to hate and despise Protestants, to regard them as their bitter enemies, and consider even acts of kindness from them, as designed only to delude and betray. Still, in spite of all efforts to keep the eyes of "the faithful" closed, many will now and then steal a glance at things about them. The truth falls upon them from every quarter, and with alarming facility they learn to think for themselves. Romish functionaries are evidently sore troubled by the independence and intractability of their once abject, obedient followers. Hence one of the dignitaries of the Church declares that Catholics who are not compelled to emigrate, ought to remain at home, and not come to this dangerous land, where their children, if not themselves, will be sure to stray from the papal fold. A priest, in reply to the question whether professed Catholics in this country are as good Catholics, as obedient to the priests, and as faithful to Church observances, as in the lands from which they come, declared with great emphasis: "The very atmosphere of this country is full of insubordination." According to their own confessions their craft is in danger. Popery is not only compelled to forego its prerogative of coercion when it embarks on the Atlantic, but is even compelled to leave behind some of its most effective machinery for moving the ignorant and the credulous. In |