Bible in their dwellings, with the sabbath school and the Bible class, and with a constant demand for standard religious volumes. Where there is no ministry in a pastoral connection with organized congregations, there the success of all other forms of Christian effort-the success of the itinerant preacher-the success of the Tract Society's bookvender-the success of the sabbath school-the success of the Bible Society's distribution of the Scriptures -is to be measured by the progress of the people towards the permanent organization of churches with a studious and teaching ministry.

No department of the great work of establishing a truly Christian organization of society throughout our country, is more important than that which seeks to establish colleges and other similar institutions under evangelical influence. The college, including the theological seminary, is essential to such a state of society as is described when we speak of Christian churches with a learned and studious ministry. What would the churches of New England be-what the clergy of these churches-without the colleges of New England? And New England can never be reproduced upon the mighty rivers of the west, without reproducing there the entire New England system of education, popular and professional. The Romanist movement at the west, concentrates itself upon a few prominent points. Here and there in some large town the idol cross stands as the symbol, not of the Gospel that makes free, but of the superstition that debases and enslaves. Here and there in some great emporium, arises a magnificent cathedral, with its appendages perhaps of college and convent. The traveler, passing hastily from one such point to another, and taking no notice of what lies between, may be ready to conclude that America has already become one of the most Catholic of countries. But the strength of Pro

testant Christianity, instead of being thus concentrated, is diffused. Protestantism builds no cathedrals, and therefore perhaps it shows less than Romanism, to the eye of a stranger, at St. Louis or at Cincinnati. The strength of Protestantism in the west is not at St. Louis, nor at Cincinnati, nor at Chicago, nor at Cleveland or Detroit, but at a thousand localities where the lords of the soil, cultivating their own possessions, dwelling as yet perhaps in no better tenement than a log cabin, come together eve ry sabbath day with their households to worship the God of the Bible. The gathering of five thousand Pa pists in a cathedral, with all the pomp of Romish worship, is a great affair no doubt. But the gathering of fifty thousand Protestants in five hundred different places at the same hour, to pray and to read and hear the Gos pel in their own language, is a greater affair. Were the Romanists, with their present numbers dispers ed as widely as the Protestants are, they would be lost. Undoubtedly the policy which they are pursuing is for them the true one. They are strengthening themselves at points which are hereafter to become centers of Roman Catholic influence. Our policy on the other hand, which builds no cathedrals, requires us to cheer and strengthen and bind together by vital sympathies, the multiplied dispersed and feeble congre gations whose worship is performed in rude and temporary structures or under the shadow of the ancient trees. Such aid we are giving con. tinually through the channel of home missions. Such aid we are giving also with equal if not greater effi ciency by coöperating in the estab lishment of colleges that shall be centers of sound and thorough evan. gelical education. What the cathe dral is to the Roman Catholic system, that, and much more than that, the college and theological seminary is to the Protestant evangelical system.

The attempt which Romanism is making to acquire influence over the American people by institutions of education, is the most striking illustration which we have yet seen of the earnestness with which she enters upon her enterprise in the United States. If Protestants would but leave the field of liberal education at the west to be occupied by Romish colleges and convents, how easy a thing would it be for the Jesuits to go on rejoicingly with their great work of Romanizing our country. If the Protestants will waste their strength upon a host of ill-concerted, ill-managed, starveling institutions under the name of colleges, and will allow the Jesuits to build up a few substantial colleges, with ample apparatus, with great libraries, and with a reputation for sound scholarship, the Jesuits will be almost as well pleased as if they had the whole field to themselves. But if a reasonable number of well organized colleges and theological seminaries can be planted at the west, and can be sustained and provided with books, and all necessary aids of study and instruction, till they have struck their roots deep into the soil, and till the communities around them have been pervaded by their influence; the Jesuit may pack up his relics and pictures, and go back to Rome.

We have one more topic which we must touch upon in answer to the inquiry before us. There should be a more extensive intercourse and correspondence among Protestant Christians throughout the world, and a more combined and vigorous effort to carry the Gospel into Roman Catholic countries, even into those which have been deemed impregnable.

All the developments of the controversy with formalism are forcing evangelical Protestants to think less of the points that divide them, and to fix their attention more upon that truly catholic Christianity, which they hold in common. We say

then that the signs of the times are imperatively calling them to consult together for their common welfare and edification, and for aggression and defense against a common enemy. We do not say that the Presbyterian and the Methodist, the Baptist and the Congregationalist, must at once abandon their several peculiarities of order and of doctrine, and must unite in one great undivided ecclesiastical organization, with one confession of faith, one form of government, one system of arrangements for the propagation of the Gospel. In this place, we only sug gest the question whether there may not be among evangelical Christians of various names and connections, more of correspondence and mutual consultation, a more explicit recognition of the obligation to mutual communion, and a clearer holding forth of their actual unity in faith and hope; and whether, as the result of this, there may not be more of coöperation in the advancement of the common cause; and a new impulse given to the reformation and revival of Christianity, throughout Christendom. Why might there not be, on some fit occasion in New York, such a thing as a full conference of evangelical ministers of various denominations, from various parts of the United States, at least for prayer and mutual edification, if not for consultation and inquiry respecting the advancement of religion? Nay, why might there not be, ere long, some general conference in which the various evangelical bodies of this country and of Great Britain, and of the continent of Europe, should be in some way represented, and in which the great cause of reformed and spiritual Christianity throughout the world, should be made the subject of detailed and deliberate consideration, with prayer and praise? That would be an "ecumenical council," such as never yet assembled since the Apostles parted from each other at

Jerusalem, a council not for legisla tion and division, but for union and communion, and for the extension of the saving knowledge of Christ. Suppose such a convention, met at London, or Edinburgh, or Geneva; suppose that the facts respecting the state of evangelical and experimental piety, are reported from one country and another in succession, and brought under the deliberate consideration of the assembly there, and then after having been digested and discussed are carried back by the various representatives to all the regions and churches from which they came. Suppose the resources of the various evangelical churches throughout Christendom are reported, their institutions of education, their arrangements and opportunities for the diffusion of religious intelligence, their means of self-defense and self-extension, their methods of aggression on the world around them, and their plans and enterpris es for the propagation of the Gospel among the nations. Suppose all this knowledge summed up and discussed in connection with the inquiry, what more can we do, and how can we best sustain and help each other? Suppose that upon that assembly the Spirit of God is poured out, as the spirit of grace and supplication, the spirit of love and faith and zeal. What would be the effect of all this upon the churches and upon the world? How easily may the reader nominate in his own thoughts a delegation from the Congregationalists, from each of the two great Presbyterian bodies, from the Baptists, and from the Methodists, whose presence in such a convention to report with one accord the facts respecting religion in America, and the progress of living Christianity in connection with the voluntary principle, would electrify the Protestant world. We make this supposition, not as expect ing to see it completely realized at present, but rather because the mere conception warms our hearts, and

can not but warm the heart of every Christian reader.

The time has come when Protestantism must not merely defend it self, and try to maintain its own ground in America and Europe against the industrious machinations of the Jesuits, but must begin to act aggressively upon countries that have heretofore been deemed ex clusively, if not hopelessly, Papal. The Reformation is reviving, under better auspices; upon its ancient seats; and now it must be pushed into regions from which it has been, in other ages, too successfully ex cluded. Our Foreign Evangelical Society, and some kindred institu tions, are operating with encourag ing success to aid in restoring and quickening the decayed Protestantism of France and Switzerland. Thus Geneva, with its new theolo gical school, and its enterprising evangelism, has become the center of a spreading religious revival for all that part of Europe. But such efforts as these are not enough. The war with formalism, the inqui ry after primitive and spiritual Christianity, must be carried into coun. tries where formalism has held for ages an undisputed empire. Who, of the millions that have read the story of George Borrow's adventures in Spain, need doubt that the time has come when the question, What is the Christianity of the New Testament?-What is the way to be saved from sin, and to be at peace with God?-may be made to awaken thought and discussion in that proud but degraded land of chivalry and superstition? The mind of Spain is at this moment in at atti tude in which it may easily be mo ved to demand freedom of thought, freedom to read the Bible, and freedom to worship without a priest. It is not Lutheranism or Calvinism, by those names, that can be carried into Spain and propagated there; it is not as Episcopalianism, or as Presbyterianism, or as Methodism,

ABOUT three and forty years ago, four obscure young men met by accident in the room of one of their number, in the ninth story of a house in Buccleugh Place, city of Edinburgh. Their conversation, as was natural in those stirring times, turned upon politics. Those were the days of political marvels-when old things were passing away-when old landmarks were thrown down, and constitutions were become more perishable than the paper on which they were written. They were the closing days of the French revolution, when the fierce spirit of democracy had been condensed by the iron pressure of one man into a spirit of military dominion-the days of Hohenlinden and Marengo. The years 1800 and 1801, were years of special interest to the British politician, for it was the era of complete tory ascendency through out the empire. Lord Castlereagh had succeeded by dint of his cool courage and wariness, in leading the Irish nation into an union, against which they are now struggling with all their national ardor, although, thus far, happily without blood. William Pitt, with an obsequious parliament at his bidding, had finally committed the nation to a war, compared with which all modern wars have been but holiday pastimesa war, for which every Englishman still pays, by taxes upon the bread he eats and upon the clothes he wears. At the right hand of William Pitt, stood a man who wielded over the minds of the Scotch, an influence such as his master then held over the minds of the English,

* Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By Henry Lord Brougham. 2 vols. Carey & Hart, Philad. 1842.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By T. Babington Macauley. Complete in 4 vols. Carey & Hart, Philad. 1843.

and Daniel O'Connell now holds over the minds of Irishmen. All favor, all preferment, all patronage, flowed from him in a plenteous and a ceaseless stream. He was himself the prototype of Scotch char acter, of Scotch energy, Scotch hon esty, Scotch wariness, and narrow Scotch prejudices. Up to him they all looked. Far above them all he stood, with outstretched hand, the dispenser of public favor; just as he now stands overlooking his native city from the summit of her proud. est monument.

To resist this absolute dominion of Dundas-to denounce the wasteful extravagance of the continental war-to effect the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts, and the

removal of various other minor abuses which we shall name hereafter, were the leading objects of the whigs of Scotland. In conversing upon these exciting topics, one of the young men suggested that as periodical literature was then coming into vogue, they might aid the liberal cause by establishing a Review. This was acceded to with acclamation. The first editor, who was appointed on the spot from their own number, in speaking of the event, says, "I remained long enough in the city to edit the first number of the Review. The motto I proposed for it was,

'Tenui musam meditamur avena,' We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal.

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line and so began what has since turned out to be a very able and important journal." Such was the origin of the Edinburgh Review. The four