As the result of the laborious and valuable inquiries instituted by the Nonconformist three years ago, Dr. Mullens gives us the following facts:

"1. The total expenditure of 114 Non-established Churches (including several of the principal congregations among the Congregationalists, Baptists, and Presbyterians), in 1864, for all religious purposes, amounted to £113,722. "2. This expenditure was at the rate of £3 13s. 8d. for each member.

“3. The expenditure for worship and the support of the ministry amounted to £69,292, or 60 9 per cent. of the whole.

"4. The expenditure on Home Agencies, Charities, Schools, and the like, amounted to £33,720, or 29.6 per cent.

"5. The contributions to Foreign and Colonial Missions amounted to £10,710, or 9.4 per cent of the whole.

"6. Deducting the expenses of worship and of the ministry, the contributions for benevolent purposes amounted to £44,430. Of these contributions, less than one-fourth were devoted to Foreign Missions. The Home Missions received three-fourths of the money, and the voluntary service of 4,467 Christian teachers besides.

"7. By the members of these 114 congregations the sum of £319,000 was spent in chapel building, in the fourteen years between 1851 and 1865; that is, at the rate of £22,786 a year, or more than double the contributions to Foreign Missions; besides the home agency and personal service above described."

With a view still further to exhibit the extent to which various forms of religious effort are supported in the present day, Dr. Mullens has secured returns from nearly eighty of the leading Congregational Churches in England, both in London and in the country, relating to the past year. Without naming these Churches, he has tabulated these returns, and in his tables he makes the following obser

vations:

"1. In twenty-six London Churches here described, out of the 10,260 members, 3,379, or one-third of the whole, are active workers.

"2. The £50,039 contributed are at the rate of nearly £5 for each member.

"3. The item for Foreign Missions is the smallest of all, and amounts to ·less than seven per cent. of the entire sum contributed.

"4. Deducting the expense of worship and of the ministry, these London Churches gave to religious and benevolent objects the sum of £33,308, and the unpaid service of 3,380 Christian workers.

“5. Of these gifts the home schemes of numerous kinds, in schools, charities, building, and the like, received £29,817, or 89.5 per cent., and all the voluntary service.

"6. The Foreign Missions received only £3,491, or ten and a half per cent. In other words, out of every £100 given to the aggressive work of the Church, £89 10s. were devoted to Mission work in London, and £10 10s. to Mission work in the heathen world.

"7. The London Churches in these Tables appear stronger in members, in resources, and in work than an equal number in the country. The fifty country Churches have 14,007 members, of whom 4,081, or more than a fourth, are active workers.

"8. The contributions amount to £4 11s. each member.

"9. The item of Foreign Missions, though not the smallest of all, is not quite 10-2 per cent. of the whole. In one of the Scottish Churches mentioned in Table III., it reaches £1,023.

"10. Of the funds devoted to religious purposes the home schemes carry off 83.7 per cent.; the Foreign Missions take 16.3 per cent.

various objects of benevolent effort are devoted £78,679. HOME OBJECTS receive £67,042, or 854 per cent. FOREIGN MISSIONS receive £11,637, or 148 per cent. In simple words, in helping forward missionary schemes, the 27,000 members of these Churches, out of EVERY HUNDRED POUNDS they contribute for that great end, expend EIGHTY-FIVE pounds in England, and send only FIFTEEN POUNDS to the heathen abroad."

What now becomes of the Bishop's assertion, and its inference that England is sacrificed to India? Let our readers study and ponder the facts which Dr. Mullens lays before them. Eighty Churches, a fair sample of the two thousand of which Congregationalists boast, after providing for their own worship and instruction, expend £78,679 on external benevolence and missions. Out of every hundred pounds of this

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disproportioned." We must have no diminution of home work; we must only have an increase of foreign work. We have only to add that Dr. Mullens' book is not the dry book which our quotations might lead our readers to suppose. Its chapters on heathenism, and the results of foreign labour are deeply interesting; and we wish to echo his appeal with all earnestness:-" To the large heart of Christ's Church, to the zeal and earnestness of young men, this spiritual need of perishing millions appeals with a force which no words can convey. 'Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?' 'How shall they hear

without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent?' The world, once unknown, is now laid before us. The doors, once closed, are all open now. Where once small islands were our sphere of labour, God has given mighty empires full of people. All India is before the Church, and never so truly as now did its people cry, Come over and help us.' China, with its countless cities, towns, and tribes, is waiting for that Divine light and tender love which shall unveil the future world. The heart of Africa sighs for the mercy, for the justice, for the compassion which man has never till now extended to its unhappy races. Large islands in Polynesia are still unevangelised. What a vast field of labour is yet untouched. Our missionary work, in truth, is but begun. Great is the power of error still; deep rooted are the beliefs, the moral errors, the hourly evil thoughts and doings of the heathen life of these overpowering multitudes. They are captives to sin, and the rulers of darkness' will not let them go without many a fierce struggle. But God calls us to aid Him. He is mighty to save; He might tread the winepress alone; but when he rides forth He summons His army to His side. All we have done has but trained that little army to the work that yet remains. If we have prepared our weapons; if we have acquired wisdom, counsel, strength, it is only that the warfare of the future may be more true, more courageous. more victorious. We know what the end shall be: 'He must reign till He have put all enemies under His feet.' But now, as in the old days, the command and the call still bind us: Come to the help of the Lord; to the help of the Lord against the mighty.""

of the pleasure-seeking and of the vicious. His labours on this and subsequent occasions, being attended with extra

ordinary success, it was determined, in 1741, to erect " a temporary wooden edifice, to shelter the auditory from cold and rain; this was called a tabernacle, as it was intended to be made use of for a few months only." It was, however, thus used for twelve years.

In 1751, the Countess of Huntingdon, suggested the erection of a permanent building, which proposal had the approval of the Rev. James Hervey, Dr. Doddridge, and others. In 1752, Mr. Whitfield began to collect for the object, receiving £50 at a Lord's-day morning service at seven o'clock, and £126 in the evening.

In a letter to the Rev. C. Wesley, he states:-"On Tuesday morning, the 1st of March, 1753, the first brick was laid, with awful solemnity. I preached from Exodus xx. 24. Afterwards we sung and prayed for God's blessing in all places where His glorious name is recorded. The wall is now about a yard high. The building is to be eighty feet square. It is on the old spot. As this edifice is intended to be much larger than the previous one, it is constructed round the other, in order that the congregation may be accommodated with a place of meeting during its erection."

This Tabernacle was opened June 10, 1753. Mr. Whitfield preached on the occasion to overflowing congregations; in the morning from 1 Kings viii. 11, and in the evening from 1 Chronicles xxix. 9.

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For rather more than 115 years it has been a "birthplace" of souls, and "banqueting house" of thousands: a sphere for the efforts of many "workmen that need not be ashamed:" and a centre of gospel truth from which has sounded out the word of the Lord." During this period it has had five pastors-Revs. G. Whitfield, Torial Joss, Matthew Wilks, John Campbell, and Wm. Grigsby; four co-pastors-Revs. A. J. Knight, John Hyatt, J. W. Richardson, and John Corbin many effective supplies, such as Revs. J. Berridge, A. Toplady,

The Tabernacle was reared on leasehold property, which, at Christmas, 1867, reverted to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners." But they have sold to Mr. Grigsby and his friends, a freehold site, being part only of the present premises, comprising the area in front of the Tabernacle and about half of that on which it now stands. Upon this they hope, with the aid of the London Chapel Building Society to re-erect, within twelve months, a house for God, and schools for their young people, and children of the neighbourhood.

The closing services were commenced on Sabbath evening, the 7th of June, by the Rev. Newman Hall preaching a sermon upon The dying thief," to an attentive congregation of nearly 3,000 people on Wednesday evening, the 17th of June, the Rev. R. Roberts, Wesleyan minister, delivered a discourse on "Which things the angels desire to look into." On Sabbath, the 12th of July, the pastor preached in the morning from Numbers xxiii. 23. In the afternoon a special service was held for the young people of the schools, when addresses were delivered by Messrs. Death, Wardell, and E. Grigsby In the evening the pastor preached to a very large congregation from Rev. xxii. 17, taking the last gospel invitation in the Book, as the text for the last sermon in the House where Gospel invitations had been so long and successfully proclaimed. The Lord's Supper was then administered to more than 400 communicants, some of whom were formerly members but had removed from the locality; others were from neighbouring Churches, uniting with the Church in its last exhibition of the "communion of saints" in their honoured house. They were addressed from 1 John ii. 18, "It

THE SOUL OF MAN A DEPENDENT PLANT.

There are some plants which grow right up erect in their own self-sufficiency; and there are some feeble ones which take hold with their hands, and clasp and climb. The soul of man is like these last. Even in his best estate he was not meant to grow insulated and stand alone. He is not strong enough for that. He has not within himself resources sufficient to fill himself. He is not fit to be his own all-in-all. The make of his mind is an out-going, exploring, petitionary make. The soul of man is a clasping, clinging soul, seeking to something over which it can spread itself, and by means of which it can support itself. And, just as in a neglected garden, you may see the poor creepers making shift to sustain themselves as best they can; one convolvolus twisting round another, and both draggling on the ground; a clematis, leaning on the door, which will by-and-bye open and let the whole mass fall down; a vine or a passion flower wreathing round a prop which all the while chafes and cuts it; so in this fallen world, it is mournful to see the efforts which human souls are making to get some sufficient object to lean upon and twine round. But it answers little in the end. The make of man's soul is upward, and one climber cannot lift another off the ground; and the growth of man's soul is luxuriant, and that growth must be stifled, checked, and scanty, if he have no larger space over which to diffuse his aspirations, his affections, and his efforts, than the surface of a fellow creature's soul. But weedy as this world-garden is, the Tree of Life still grows in the midst of it, erect in His own omnipotent selfsufficiency, and inviting every weary, straggling soul, to lay hold of His ever

lasting strength, and expatiate upwards along the infinite ramifications of His endless excellence and all-inviting love.James Hamilton, D.D.

PAUL AND A CHURCH-SLEEPER.

Men did sleep even under the thunders of the apostle's eloquence. Let modern sleepers beware, however, about comforting themselves in regard to their own habits by this fact; for that sleeper's slumber nearly cost him his life. He fell from an upper window and was taken up for dead. About as significant a hint this about the danger of sleeping in church as could well be given in this world.

But if Paul's preaching could not break the young man's slumbers, his Own terrible fall did break the thread of Paul's discourse. He had to stop preaching, and look after the waking of one who was well nigh in his last sleep. "His life is in him," said the compassionate preacher, after he had examined the case. It was a marvel and a mercy that it was. It cost men something in those days to sleep in church.

That church-sleeper had an apostle at hand to heal his wounds. That is more than modern church-sleepers can count upon. It is a mercy to have some friend, some wakeful friend nigh, to look out for them when they sink down into a deep sleep. The young man Eutychus found that friend in the preacher, under whose preaching he fell asleep. Can modern church-sleepers count on as warm-hearted and effective pity in the preacher, as they compose themselves to sleep, in case of any sad casuality?

SMALL TEMPTATIONS.

Satan will seldom come to a Christian with a gross temptation; a green log and a candle may be safely left together, but bring a few shavings, then some small sticks, and then larger, and you may soon reduce the green log to ashes.-John Newton.