Virginia and North Carolina." They wrote, accordingly, to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, asking for ministers to preach in these colonies, and for assistance in establishing a seminary for the education of suitable young men for the ministry. A letter was also addressed to the deputies of the Synods of North and South Holland, in which they expressed their willingness to unite with the Calvinistic Dutch churches in promoting the common interests of religion.

tours, at no small personal hazard from the dangers of war. Measures were taken in 1788 for forming the General Assembly, which was organized in 1789, and at its very first meeting much attention was paid to the subject of missions.

In the year 1800, the Rev. Mr. Chapman was appointed a missionary in the western part of the State of New-York, and to his labours we must so far ascribe the great diffusion of Presbyterianism in that important section of the country. In 1802, the General Assembly appointed a "standing committee," to attend to the greatly-increased interests of the missionary causea measure which led to a farther extension of the work. A correspondence was commenced with all the known missionary societies of Europe. The committee gave much of its attention to the coloured popu

"It is believed," says one of the most distinguished living ministers of the Presbyterian Church, "that at this time (1789) there was not in the United States another religious denomination, besides the Presbyterian, that prosecuted any domestic misAt the first meeting of the Synod of New-sionary enterprise, except that then, as York in 1745, the circumstances of the since, the Methodists sent forth their cirpeople of Virginia were brought before cuit-preachers in all directions."* them, and the opinion unanimously expressed that Mr. Robinson* was the proper person to visit that colony. He visited it accordingly, and on that, as well as on a former visit, was the instrument of doing much good. He was followed by the Rev. Samuel Davies, formerly mentioned. In 1758, the two synods were merged in the one Synod of New-York and Philadelphia, and from that time domestic missions began to receive considerable attention, and collections for that object were ordered to be made in the churches. In 1767, or 1768, the synod had an overture, or proposal, sent from the Presbytery oflation, a class among whom the late John New-York," that there should be an annual collection in every congregation; that every presbytery should appoint a treasurer to receive and transmit the funds thus obtained; that the synod should appoint a general treasurer, to whom all these pres- In 1816, the General Assembly enlarged byterial collections should be sent; and the powers of the standing committee, and that every year a full account of the re- gave it the title of "the Board of Missions, ceipts and disbursements should be printed acting under the authority of the General and sent down to the churches." This Assembly." Many missionaries went forth was the germe of the present Board of Mis-under its auspices, to labour among the sions. In the same year petitions for "supplies" were received from twenty-one places in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Collections were thenceforward made in the churches. In 1772, it was ordered that a part of these moneys should be appropriated to the purchase and distribution of useful religious books, and to the promotion of the Gospel among the Indians. Two years afterward, it was seriously contemplated to send missionaries to Africa; but on the war of the Revolution breaking out in the following year, the project fell to the ground. Even during the war there was a considerable demand for ministers from destitute congregations, and to meet this many faithful ministers made missionary

* This Mr. Robinson was a remarkable man. His manners were plain, his eloquence simple, animated, and attractive. He had but one eye, and was from that circumstance called "one-eyed Robinson." The Rev. Dr. Alexander, professor in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New-Jersey, says, that it was no uncommon thing for people to go twenty, thirty, and even forty miles, to hear him preach a single

sermon.

Holt Rice, D.D., one of the most distinguished ministers that the Presbyterian Church in the United States has ever possessed, laboured as a missionary during seven years.

destitute Presbyterian congregations that were continually forming in the Southern and Western States. Meanwhile, many local societies, under the direction of synods, presbyteries, and other bodies, had sprung up, and were separately prosecuting the same objects to a considerable extent.

The General Assembly again took up the subject of missions in 1828, and farther enlarged the powers of the Board, fully authorizing it to establish missions, not only in destitute parts of the United States, but among the heathen abroad. Such, however, was the demand for labourers at home, especially in the Western States and Territories, that nothing of importance could be done for foreign lands. It was found, besides, that home and foreign missions could not well be united under one

board, so that in the course of a few years the latter were committed to the charge of another board, appointed for that purpose by the Assembly. Of its operations we shall have occasion to speak elsewhere.

"History of the Missions of the Presbyterian Church," by the Rev. Ashbel Green, D.D.

From this it will be seen that this society has not laboured in vain, but that it, likewise, is an instrument by which churches that have long been favoured with the Gospel, and highly prize it, are enabled to assist others, until they, too, have grown up into a vigorous independence of foreign aid. Freely ye have received; freely give;" this admonition and command should never be forgotten. It is the true HOME MISSIONS OF THE EPISCOPAL, BAPTIST, basis of the whole Voluntary System.

A SOCIETY was formed in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, for the promotion of Home and Foreign Missions, in the year 1822. During the The American Baptist Home Missionary first thirteen years of its existence, that is, Society was instituted in 1832, and has up to 1835, it had employed fifty-nine la- been eminently useful since in building up bourers in its home missions, occupying churches of that denomination, both in the stations in various parts of the Union, but West and in many of the Atlantic States, chiefly in the West. The society was re- where the assistance of such an instituorganized in 1835, and, as now constituted, tion was required, as well as in establishis under the direction of a Board of thirty ing Sunday-schools and Bible-classes. Its members, appointed by the General Con- great field of labour, however, like that of vention of the Church. The bishops, to- all the other Societies and Boards for dogether with such persons as had become mestic missions, has been the "Valley of patrons of the society previously to the the Mississippi." It has numerous branchmeeting of the Convention in 1829, arees and auxiliaries in all parts of the United

States; and during the year ending in May, Ordinarily, as often as once in the fort1843, had ninety-three agents and mis-night, a circuit-preacher conducts a regusionaries in its own immediate service, and lar service at each of these preaching pla275 in that of its auxiliaries, making a total ces, whether it be a church, schoolroom, of 368, all of whom were ministers of the or a dwelling-house. In the largest towns Gospel, and believed to be faithful and ca- and villages such services are held on the pable labourers. They preached statedly Sabbath, and on a week-day or evening at 762 stations, and had travelled 175.035 in other places, and thus the Gospel is miles! They reported 4920 conversions carried into thousands of remote spots, in and baptisms, the organization of fifty which it never would be preached upon churches, and the ordination of twenty- the plan of having a permanent clergy, three ministers. By their instrumentality planted in particular districts and parishes. 6520 persons had been induced to join the It was a remark, I believe, of the celetemperance societies; 11,742 young per- brated Dr. Witherspoon, that "he needed sons had been gathered into Sunday-schools no other evidence that the Rev. John Wesand Bible-classes, taught by about 1500 ley was a great man, than what the system teachers. The receipts of the parent soci- of itinerating preaching presented to his ety and its auxiliaries amounted to $40,583. mind, and of which that wonderful man In addition to what the regular Baptists was the author." The observation was a are doing for home missions, it ought to just one. It is a system of vast importance be stated that the Free-Will Baptists have in every point of view; but that from which a Home Missionary Society, which em- we are at present to contemplate it is, its ploys some six or eight men. filling up a void which must else remain empty. Of its other advantages we shall have to speak in another place.

The General Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church has a Board of Domestic Missions, which is now prosecuting, with But, capable as the system is of being zeal and wisdom, the work of gathering made to send its ramifications into almost together new congregations, and fostering every corner of the country, and to carry them during their infancy, wherever it can the glad tidings of salvation into the most find openings for so doing. For several remote and secluded settlements, as well years past it has been extending its oper- as to the more accessible and populous ations, and during that ending in June, towns and neighbourhoods, many places 1843, it aided forty-seven new or feeble were found, particularly in the South and churches and two stations. Five of these West, so situated as to be beyond the were in the Western States, and in these reach of adequate supply from itinerant lafive missionaries were occupied in preach-bourers; a fact which led to the formation ing the Gospel. The receipts for that period amounted to $5127.

If the truth is to be carried into every hamlet and neighbourhood of the United States, it can only be by all denominations of evangelical Christians taking part in the enterprise; and it is delightful to trace the proofs of this conviction being widely and deeply felt. All are actually engaged in the good work, and send forth and support missionaries in some portion or other of the country.

of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1819.

This society, like that of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was formed for the double object of promoting missions at home and abroad. Reserving the latter for future notice, I turn at present to the former. According to the twenty-fourth annual report, being that for 1843, I find that it employed 210 missionaries within the limits of the United States, exclusive of those labouring among the Indians, whether within or immediately beyond those limits. The churches enjoying the services of these missionaries comprised above 30,000 members, and many of them HOME MISSIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL had flourishing Bible-classes and Sunday

CHAPTER X.

CHURCH.

schools. The report also states, that among the members of the Society's missionary churches, there were not fewer than 13,320 coloured people.

IT has been said, with truth, that the Methodist Church is in its very structure emphatically missionary, and it is an inexpressible blessing that it is so, as the Perhaps of all the fields cultivated by United States strikingly prove. The whole this society, the two most interesting, and, country is embraced by one General Con- in some respects, most important, are ference; it is again subdivided into thirty-those presented by the slaves in the extwo Annual Conferences, each including treme Southern States, and by the German a large extent of country, and divided into emigrants found in great numbers in our districts. Each district comprehends sev-chief cities. The missions among the foreral circuits, and within each circuit there mer were commenced in 1828,* and origiare from five or six to above twenty preaching places. K

* I speak here of missions technically so called, for, in their ordinary labours, the Methodists, from

amounted to 109,452 dollars, and its expenditure, including both its foreign and domestic missions, was 145,035.

nated in a proposal made by the Hon. It has a mission, also, at St. Louis, on the Charles C. Pinckney, a distinguished Chris- Upper Mississippi. The churches gathered tian layman of the Episcopal Church in by the Society's missionaries from among South Carolina, and which has been car-the Germans in those places had no fewer ried into effect with much success, the than 1366 members in 1843, and of these slaveholders themselves, in many places, more than 200 had been Roman Catholics. if not all, being pleased to have the mis- Yet this work had commenced only a few sionaries preach the Gospel to their people. years before. Twenty missionaries were The following paragraph from the report engaged in it, and several of these were of 1841 will give the reader some idea of men of considerable talent and learning, as the hazardous nature of this work: "In well as zeal. One of them, the Rev. Mr. the Southern and Southwestern Conferen- Nast, at Cincinnati, conducts a religious ces, it will be seen, under the head of do- paper with a circulation of above 1500 mestic missions, that, with commendable copies, and which seems to be doing good. zeal and devotion, our missionaries are The Society has a mission, likewise, still labouring in the service of the slaves among the Germans, reckoned at 30,000 upon the rice-fields, sugar and cotton plant- at least, in the city of New-York. The ations, multitudes of whom, though des-income of this excellent and efficient socitined to toil and bondage during their earth-ety, for the year ending April 20th, 1843, ly pilgrimage, have by their instrumentality been brought to enjoy the liberty of the Gospel, and are happily rejoicing in the blessings of God's salvation. In no portion of our work are our missionaries called to endure greater privations, or make greater sacrifices of health and life, than in these missions among the slaves, many of which are located in sections of the Southern country which are proverbially sickly, and under the fatal influence of a climate which few white men are capable of enduring, even for a single year. And yet, notwithstanding so many valuable missionaries have fallen martyrs to their toils in these missions, year after year there are found others to take their places, who fall | likewise in their work, ' ceasing at once to work and to live.' Nor have our superintendents any difficulty in finding missionaries ready to fill up the ranks which death has thinned in these sections of the work, for the love of Christ, and the love of the souls of these poor Africans in bonds, constrain our brethren in the itinerant work of the Southern conferences to exclaim, 'Here are we, send us!' The Lord be praised for the zeal and success of our brethren in this self-denying and self-sacrificing work."

Here I close these brief notices of the home missions of the chief evangelical churches in the United States. They will give the reader some idea of the mode in which new and feeble congregations are aided by the oider and stronger until able to maintain the institutions of religion themselves. The societies which we have passed under review in these four chapters supported, in all, nearly 1900 ministers of the Gospel, in the year 1843, in new, and, as yet, feeble churches and flocks. Year after year many of these cease to require assistance, and then others are taken up in their turn. Be it remembered, that the work has been systematically prosecuted for no long course of time. Twenty years ago, in fact, the most powerful and extensive of these societies did not exist; others were but commencing their operations. It is an enterprise with respect to which the churches have as yet but partially developed their energies and resources; still, they have accomplished enough to demonstrate how much may be done by the voluntary principle towards the calling into existence of churches and congregations in the settlements rapidly forming, whether in the new or the old states.

Not less interesting are the Society's missions among the Germans resident in the chief towns and cities of the Valley of the Mississippi. Beginning at Pittsburgh and Alleghany Town, on the right bank of the Alleghany, opposite Pittsburgh, it has missionaries among these foreigners in many of the chief towns on the Ohio, such THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE DEVELOPED.—IN

as Wheeling, Marietta, Portsmouth, Maysville, Cincinnati, Lawrenceburg, New Albany, &c., as well as in towns remote from the river, such as Dayton and Chillicothe.

the first, have had much to do with the slaves in the South, as well as with the free negroes of the North. In fact, no other body of Christians, perhaps, has done so much good to the unfortunate children of Africa in the United States as the followers of John Wesley.

CHAPTER XI.

FLUENCE OF THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE ON
EDUCATION.-OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

We have seen how the voluntary principle operates in America in relation to the building of churches, and also the support of ministers of the Gospel in the new settlements forming every year, more or less, in all quarters. We now come to consider its influence on education. Hundreds of ministers, it will be perceived, are

required to meet the demands of the rap-being taught, in every school district, by a idly-augmenting population. Where are master for the older youth during winter, these to come from? Besides, in a coun- and by a mistress for the little children try where the right of suffrage is almost during summer. Wherever we find the universal, and where so much of the order, descendants of the Puritans in America, peace, and happiness, that are the true ob- we find a people who value education as jects of all good government, depend on the first of all earthly blessings; and when officers chosen in the directest manner a colony from New-England plants itself, from among themselves, these must be in- whether amid the forests of Ohio, or on structed before they can become intelli- the prairies of Illinois, two things are ever gent, virtuous, and capable citizens. Igno- considered as indispensable alike to their rance is incompatible with the acquisition temporal and to their spiritual and their or preservation of any freedom worth pos- eternal welfare-a church and a schoolsessing; and, above all, such a republic as house. that of the United States must depend for its very existence on the wide diffusion of sound knowledge and religious principles among all classes of the people. Let us, therefore, trace the bearings of the voluntary principle upon education, in all its forms, among the various ranks of society in the United States. We shall begin with primary schools.

It may well be imagined that emigrants to the New World, who fled from the Old with the hope of enjoying that religious freedom which they so much desired, would not be indifferent to the education of their children. Especially might we expect to find that the Protestant colonists, who had forsaken all for this boon, would not fail to make early provision for the instruction of their children, in order that they might be able to read that Book which is the "religion of Protestants." And such we find to have been the fact. Scarcely had the Puritans been settled half a dozen years in the colony of Massachusetts before they began to make provision for public primary schools, to be supported by a tax assessed upon all the inhabitants.* And such provision was actually made, not only in Massachusetts, but in every NewEngland colony. And such provision exists to this day in all the six New-England States. Schools are maintained in every school district, during the whole or part of every year, by law.

With the exception of the State of Connecticut, where all the public schools are maintained upon the interest of a large school fund, primary instruction is provided for by an annual assessment—a school

* The small colony of Plymouth, as soon as it was in some measure settled, set about providing schools for the children, and this was several years before the colony of Massachusetts Bay was planted.

But if the New-England Puritans were zealous in the cause of education and learning, the Virginia colonists seem not to have had any such spirit, for one of their governors, Sir William Berkeley, in 1670, in replying to the inquiries addressed to him by the Lords of Plantations, says, "I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!"-Hening's Laws of Virginia, Appendix.

Nor was this thirst for education confined to the New-England Puritans; it prevailed to no small degree among the Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, the Huguenots, the early German emigrants; among all, in fact, who had fled from Europe for the sake of their religion. It is owing to this that primary education has been diffused so widely throughout the United States, and that no less effective legal provision has been made at length for the support of common schools in New-York, Pennsylvania, and in Ohio, than in the NewEngland States, and to a considerable extent, also, in New-Jersey and Delaware, while in all the others it has led to the adoption of measures for the education of the children of the poor, and to the creation of school funds, which, taken together with other means, promise one day to be available for the education of all classes.

The white population of the United States amounted in 1840 to 14,189,218, of which number it was ascertained that 549,693 persons, above twenty years of age, could neither read nor write. A large proportion of these must have been foreignersIrish, Germans, Swiss, and French-as is evident from 13,041 of them being found in the six New-England States, where education is nearly as universal as can well be imagined. That a native of either sex, in short, above the age of twenty, may be found in Connecticut or Massachusetts who cannot read, is not denied; but that there should be 526 such persons in the former of these states, and 4448 in the latter, cannot be believed by any one who knows the condition of the people there. The greater number were not native Americans, and of those that remained the majority were idiots.

By the census of 1840, it appears that the number of primary or common schools amounted to 47,209, attended by 1,845,245 scholars; of whom 468,264 were taught at the public charge, the remainder at that of their parents and friends. From this it will be seen that education in America de pends very much on the Voluntary Principle. But though primary schools were in all parts of the country originated and sustained at first, as in most of the states it