with great care from the year-books of all the evangelical churches, will be seen to be conclusive. In the year 1800, there were in the evangelical churches in the United States 3030 gregations, 2651 ordained ministers, and 364,872 communicants In the year 1850, there were 43,072 churches, 25,555 ministers, and 3,529,988 communicants. In the year 1870, 70,148 churches 47,609 ministers, and 6,673,396 communicants. In 1880, 97.090 churches, 69,870 ministers, and 10,065,963 communicants. The ratio of the communicants of our evangelical churches to the entire population of the United States at these different dates was, in 1800, one to every 14.50 inhabitants; in 1850, one to every 6.57 inhabitants; in 1870, one to every 5.78; and in 1880 one to every 5 inhabitants. This last, of course, is one comma nicant to every 2.5 or 3 non-Roman Catholic adult men and women. From 1800 to 1880 the population of the nation increased 9.46-fold; while, in the same time, the evangeli communicants increased 27.52-fold. From 1850 to 1880 th population increased 116 per cent., and the evangelical comme nicants increased 184 per cent.

The above leaves out of view the 6,367,330 Roman Catholies who do not report communicants as distinct from the general mass of their adherents. If these are all counted as since believers in the truths of historical Christianity, it increases the superior ratio of the increase of those who make a personal acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity over that of the general population 100 per cent. The Catholic population hu increased more than four hundred per cent. in the last thirty years.

On the other hand, the liberal churches, which have in some degree followed the advice to put less stress upon the distin guishing doctrines of a pretended supernatural revelation, have been relatively retrograding. The number of parishes claime by the Unitarians in 1850 was 246, and they had only 335 i 1880, or an increase of 35 per cent. in thirty years as compare with the 250 per cent. increase made by the evangelical church in the same time. The Universalist churches in 1850 were 100% and only 956 in 1880, an actual loss of 113 in thirty years. T Christian Church (Unitarian Baptist) has also retrograded fr 1500 parishes in 1840 to 1200 in 1880.

That these statistics represent a real faith is shown by th evidence our year-books present of the amazing missionary fri

fulness of these professing Christians. The work of foreign missions is a characteristic enterprise of the present century. Professor Christlieb has estimated that in 1800 the total sum annually contributed in all Christendom to Protestant missions amounted to $250,000. In 1850 the income of the mission boards in England and America was $2,959,541. In 1872 the amount was $7,874,155. The reports from all the missions cannot be obtained, so that, from the nature of the case, our carefully collected reports fall below and can never equal the real facts of the case. Protestant mission societies in Europe and America reported in A. D. 1830 missions 122, ordained missionaries 656, lay helpers 1236, communicants 70,289, scholars 80,656. In A. D. 1850: missions 178, ordained missionaries 1672, lay helpers 4056, communicants 210,957, scholars 147,939. In A. D. 1880: missions 504, ordained missionaries 6696, lay helpers 33,852, communicants 857,332 (148 missions not reporting), scholars 447,602, with hearers and adherents, estimated from the actual reports of the missions, amounting to 2,000,000.

In the meantime, the aggregate funds collected by the evangelical churches in the United States for home missions amounted, from A. D. 1820 to A. D. 1829, to $233,826; from A. D. 1860 to A. D. 1869 they amounted to $21,015,719, and from A. D. 1870 to 1880 they amounted to $31,272,154. Sunday-schools were instituted only one hundred years ago. Fifty years afterward, in A. D. 1830, it is estimated that there were less than 2,000,000 teachers and scholars in the world. In A. D. 1880 there were 14,000,000 teachers and scholars in the world, or 6,000,000 in Europe and 8,000,000 in America.

Young Men's Christian Associations date back only about thirty years and, more than any other religious movement, prove the intense vitality of Christian life in the bosoms of intelligent laymen of the present and coming generation. The "International Convention of Young Men's Christian Associations," held at Milwaukee, Wis., May 16-20, 1883, report in their year-book a total of 2428 associations for the whole world, including 840 for North America; 388 for Great Britain and Ireland; 64 for France; 400 for Germany; 335 for Holland, etc. These labor for the religious welfare of young men, providing for them libraries, lectures, prayer-meetings, Bible classes, and introducing strangers to the churches. Separate departments work in the special fields of "City and Town Associations," "Railroad

Branches and Associations," and "College Associations," and the reports of the latter are especially significant in this inquiry. They enumerate 170 Young Men's Christian Associations in as many colleges in the United States. These embrace 9250 members, out of 33,000 students in these colleges, and these are the working, as distinct from the professing, Christians. One thousand five hundred students in these colleges professed conversion during the past year. Dr. Ashbel Green said, in A. D. 1813, that there were only two or three students in Princeton College who professed to be religious men. When Dr. Dwight became president of Yale College, in A. D. 1795, only four or five students were members of the church. The reports of 1883 give: in Princeton, 270 professing Christians, who include the great majority of the higher scholars, out of a total of 578 students; and in Yale, 290, out of a total of 611; in Williams, 147, out of 248; and in Amherst, 233, out of 352. In many other colleges the proportions are still more favorable to the prospects of Christianity. It certainly appears as if our "cultured" friends gave too much credit to "the intelligent common sense of the mass of mankind."

Third. The third point asserted without proof is, that morality is entirely independent of religious opinion, and will survive without impairment when all positive opinion on religious questions is abandoned. It is obvious that such a question cannot be debated in the limits afforded for this discussion. It will be sufficient if the following points are noted in rebuttal of the absolutely unsupported assertion of our respondent:

(1.) The contention, as determined by our respondent himself, relates to the independence of morals (not only its idea, but its practical realization in the mass of a civilized community) of all the postulates of natural as well as of revealed religion.

(2.) We on our side, instead of denying, affirm that man is essentially a moral being. That "the law written on his heart" and "the light of nature" render him a moral agent, capable of doing right in many relations and responsible in all known relations, irrespective of any supernatural revelation whatsoever.

(3.) The burden of proof rests upon our respondents, and they labor against the presumption created by the whole unqualified mass of human experience in the past. Morality, as predicable of any community of mankind, never has been separated from religious dogmas and practices. The Buddhists of Siam, Burmah, and China have a low form of religion to which

the morality of those communities corresponds. The princes of heathen morals, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch (A. D. 50-125), all based their morality upon their theology. The latter states the sum of human experience, ancient and modern, when he says: "There has never been a state of atheists. You may travel over the world, and you may find cities without walls, without king, without mint, without theater or gymnasium, but you will never find a city without God, without prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. Sooner may a city stand without foundations than a state without belief in the gods. This is the bond of all society, the pillar of all legislation." We do not deny the existence, in this day, of exceptionably lovely characters who are skeptical—often most sadly so as to all religious truth, natural and revealed. We deny, however, that these prove that morality is independent of religion. Morality in them, as in all others, has its root in theology, and their cases are easily explainable on the scientific principles of heredity, education, and environment. The examples of prominent emancipated moralists, male and female,- as John Stuart Mill and George Eliot, etc., do not re-assure us. The experiments made by communities of atheists in the Reign of Terror and in the Commune in Paris, and the proclaimed principles of the "International Society" of Communists, who declare at once the abolition of God, of marriage, and of property, do not re-assure us. The "cultured" must give us proof, not assertion, for their contention that morality is independent of religion.

(4.) Morality is, as to its essence, authoritative. It is the categorical imperative. It is ultimate, incapable of analysis. There has been no success in the attempt to confound it with utility, nor in the more recent and more pretentious attempts to trace its genesis out of associated sensations or animal impulses. It is sovereign over all these and dominates them from above. It necessarily presupposes personality, moral intuitions, and rational and responsible spontaneity. It has existed, as an ultimate fact, just as we find it, throughout all stages of human history. Hence, it is as spiritual and transcendental as religion itself. The same paralysis of faith which tends to render ineffectual the abundant evidences of religion, natural and revealed, would necessarily tend equally to render obscure and ineffectual genuine moral distinctions and obligations.

(5.) Even natural religion, much more the facts and doctrines of the Christian revelation, beyond all controversy