tion; but as the Protestant inhabitants of the colony, of all communions without exception, and especially the ministers of religion, have been much opposed to it, separate appropriations of public money have been made by the Legislative Council for the support of schoolmasters for particular communions: the appropriation for the Presbyterians, (the first that has ever been made for that communion,) for the year 1837, being £240, on condition of an equal amount being contributed by the people. Whether it would be expedient, however, to take advantage of this principle, and to push it from year to year till a sufficient salary should be obtained for a schoolmaster in connexion with every Presbyterian Church in the colony, which, the undersigned is happy to state, there is not the slightest doubt of obtaining very shortly, or to fall in with the Government measure at once, by adopting the Irish system, which would afford still greater facilities in certain respects, is, at present, a matter of question. The undersigned has, hitherto, stood out very strongly for the separate system, but he is not entirely satisfied of the propriety of continuing to do so under existing circumstances. In either case, however, a considerable number of schoolmasters will be required for the Colonial Presbyterian Church, for whom sufficient salaries will be guaranteed.

Of the future extension of the Presbyterian Church in the Australian Colonies, some idea may be formed from the following circumstance: -The funds arising from the sale of Crown land in New South Wales, are, in future, to be appropriated in conveying out to that colony virtuous and industrious families and individuals from the mother country, of the class of agricultural labourers, shepherds, mechanics, &c. for all of whom the prospect is at present highly favourable; the sum of £30 being allowed as a bounty for the passage of each family, besides £5. for each child above one year of age,-a sum which will nearly cover the whole expense of their emigration. And as Scotch and North of Ireland families of the industrious classes are generally preferred before all others in New South Wales, small detachments of such families, consisting partly of farm labourers, and partly of mechanics, shoemakers, tailors, &c., (each consisting of from twenty to sixty families,) selected and accompanied by a Presbyterian minister, could from time to time be sent out for numerous localities in the colony, in which both the ministers and the people would be equally acceptable, but in which the Presbyterian population is at present insufficient to form a separate parish or establishment for a minister. The land fund of New South Wales for the first six months of the present year: having amounted to upwards of £58,000, there will, in future, be a revenue, from that source, sufficient to carry out upwards of three thousand families every year; and the gradual

dispersion of these families, together with ministers and schoolmasters, wherever they are required, over a territory in which there are ample means of employment and subsistence for them all, and of which the climate is unequalled for its salubrity, would soon transform New South Wales into "a land which the Lord had blessed," and render the Presbyterian Church the joy and the praise of the Southern Hemisphere. As an instance of the manner in which this admirable arrangement is already beginning to operate for the moral and spiritual welfare of the colony of New South Wales, the undersigned has been commissioned by his brother, Mr. Andrew Lang, of Dunmore, Hunter's River, to select not fewer than 100 virtuous and industrious families of the class of farm labourers, mechanics, &c., to be settled chiefly on his own estate; for whose passage out, the Government bounty has been secured. Sixty of these families are to be Presbyterians from the South of France, accus'tomed to the culture of the vine, the olive, and the mulberry, and accompanied by an Evangelical Presbyterian Minister, of the Protestant Church of France, for whom the same advantages will, of course, be procured from the Colonial Government, under the new arrangement, as from a minister from the Church of Scotland or the Synod of Ulster. Several hun. dred families have also been sent for by other Colonial Proprietors, from Scotland and the North of Ireland.

From having been long absent from the mother country, and from being consequently unacquainted with the great majority of the present licentiates of the Presbyterian Church, the undersigned feels himself totally unqualified to select ministers of that communion for the Australian Colonies; and from having repeatedly been peculiarly unfortunate in his selection on former occasions, he is altogether unwilling to undertake so heavy a responsibility for the future. The Colonial Government will require, that whatever Presbyterian ministers shall proceed to the colonies, with a view to their settlement in that capacity, shall be furnished with proper credentials from the highest ecclesiastical authorities of the Church of Scotland and the Synod of Ulster; and it is proposed, that with this view Local Committees of Ministers shall be formed, both in Scotland and the North of Ireland, to select and recommend to their respective bodies of supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction, suitable young men for the office of the holy ministry in the Australian Colonies, not only to supply the present demand, but for the future. The vast importance of directing the stream of emigration to these colonies, principally from the Presbyterian portions of the empire, will render it expedient that such Committees should be formed in localities at a considerable distance from each other; as ministers and people from the same district

of country will thus be enabled to emigrate together, while the number and the attachment of the people to such ministers, will secure a comfortable settlement for the ministers, and promote the welfare of both.

On the character and conduct of the Presbyterian ministers who may be sent forth to supply the present demand in the Australian colonies, and thereby to form the nucleus of a Christian Church, in one of the most important centres of moral and religious influence which the round globe presents at this moment to the eye of Christian philanthropy, will depend, in a far greater degree than can possibly be conceived, at present, either in Scotland or Ireland, the welfare of a large portion of the future inhabitants of the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres. From its vast extent and boundless resources, from its rapidly increasing wealth and population,* and_especially from its geographical position, the Colony of New South Wales will not only take the lead among the Austra lian settlements, and insure general predominance in that continent to whatever communion shall eventually occupy the foreground in its territory, but prove a source of moral influence, besides, either for good or for evil, to millions and millions more of the human race. For, in addition to a continent nearly equal in extent to all Europe, and presenting, moreover, eight thousand miles of sea-coast, numerous harbours of first-rate character and importance, and an unknown extent of available land, the moral influence of the Christian Church of New South Wales will extend, eventually, to the neighbouring islands of New Zealand, containing a native population of half a million of souls, and comprising an extent of territory almost equal to that of the British islands; to the western Islands of the Pacific, numberless and teeming with inhabitants; to the Indian Archipelago, that great nursery of uations; to China itself. That the Romish Propaganda has already directed her vulture-eye to this vast field of moral influence, and strewn it in imagination with the carcases of the slain, is unquestionable. Spanish monks and friars have within the last few years been sent from the recently formed republics of South America to the eastern islands of the Pacific. Other groupes, still more distant from the American continent, have recently been surveyed and taken possession of by Romish missionaries, direct from France: and the Roman Catholic Bishop of New South Wales is already taking his measures for co-operating with these missionaries, from

*The population of New South Wales amounts, at present, to 80,000 souls, having been doubled during the last ten years. During that pe riod the Colonial Revenue has been quadrupled in amount; and during the last three years the principal and most valuable export of the colony, fine wool, has been more than doubled.

the westward, by transforming the sons of Irish convicts in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land into missionary priests, and dispersing them over the length and breadth of the vast Pacific. In such circumstances, every thing will depend on the character and conduct of the Presbyterian ministers who may be sent forth to the Australian colonies, during the next eight or ten years: for, after that period, the Australian college will, in all likelihood, afford a sufficient supply of native-born ministers to meet the annual demand. It is, therefore, most earnestly to be desired, that the Local Committees who may be appointed to recommend Presbyterian ministers for the Australian colonies, will make couscience of their important trust, and send forth, in every instance, men of piety, of energy, of zeal, and of ability; and especially, that they will in no case send forth, as has sometimes, most unfortunately for the Church of Christ in the Australian colonies, been done heretofore, "the lame, and the halt, and the blind." The men who are to go forth on the forlorn hope of the great Christian army, and to win whole provinces from the enemy, must possess somewhat of the spirit, and the zeal, and the energy, and the purity of those genuine successors of the Apostles, who built the wall of our Presbyterian Zion in troublous times, and who held their instruments of labour in the one hand, and their weapons of war in the other.

It is in bitterness of spirit that the undersigned alludes to the subject of the qualifications of ministers at all. During the short period that elapsed from his last arrival in New South Wales, on the 17th of November, 1834, till his leaving that colony for England again on the 29th of July, 1836, he was unfortunately called on to take a prominent part in removing two Presbyterian ministers from their numerous and respectable congregations in the Australian colonies, and to prefer charges, which he is truly sorry to say were but too well founded, against other two. A second calamity of equal extent and severity would suffice to ruin the Presbyterian Church in these colonies for ever; for it was only by adopting vigorous measures, in spite of every degree of opposition, and reproach, and by shewing the Christian people that this maxim would be rigidly enforced on the office-bearers of their Church,

Ense recidendum ;

Immedicabile vulnus

that their confidence, in the soundness of its system, could possibly be retained. During the pressure of so calamitous a visitation, the enemies of our Apostolic Church were encouraged openly to express their belief that it was irrecoverably ruined in the Australian colonies. But, "when the

Lord causes his own house to be swept," as it was observed in reply," it is doubtless that it may speedily be inhabited by right-hearted and Christiana min be sent forth fan opposite spirit should again be sent forth to these colonies, it will, doubtless, be a small matter for those who shall have been directly instrumental in sending them forth, to have caused the undersigned, after a life of hardship, and privation, and sacrifices, to go down in sorrow to the grave. They will have to bear the additional burden of having blasted the hopes of the Presbyterian Church at the ends of the earth, and perhaps contributed to the ruin of myriads in the Southern and Eastern Hemispheres to all eternity!

It was immediately after the deeply humiliating and calamitous visitation above referred to had befallen the Presbyterian Church in the Australian colonies, that the undersigned deemed it absolutely necessary, for the preservation and welfare of that infant Church, to embark for Europe for the fourth time,-determined, in the first instance, to visit Scotland once more, in the hope of procuring a sufficient supply of ministers of the right stamp from the Mother Church; and if unsuccessful there, to make a similar attempt within the bounds of the Synod of Ulster; confident, that in that quarter he should not be disappointed. And it was not until after he had made the necessary preparations for again crossing the Pacific, and doubling Cape Horn, that the new arrangement above-mentioned,-by which the Presbyterian Church is, for the first time in the history of British Colonization, placed on the same footing with the Church of England,-was announced to the public by the present Governor of New South Wales. It was thus, at a most important crisis in the history of the Presbyterian Church in the Australian colonies, that a consummation, which the undersigned had anxiously wished for, for thirteen years and upwards, but which he had never expected to behold realized, was at once secured for the children of his people. "It was the Lord's doing, and it ought therefore to be marvellous in our eyes." "With my staff crossed I this Jordan" fourteen years ago; and already has the Lord made us many bands, and enabled us the good of Jerusalem," and to look forward to the erection of many houses for his worship, in a new and far distant world, after the pattern of "that glorious and beautiful house in which our fathers worshipped" on the hills of Caledonia.*

to see

*The feeling of desolation which the melancholy aspect of the Presbyterian Church in the Australian Colonies was calculated to awaken in the breasts of all who loved the peace, and prayed for the prosperity of our Zion in these Colonies, even till so late a period as the month of May last, contrasted with the joyful feelings which the animating prospect so unexpectedly opened up to them immediately thereafter, naturally excited, especially after years of struggling and disappointment, is beau