that in eight counties west of the Great Ridge, containing 48,587 inhabitants, there are about 1000 people connected with the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists; leaving more than 47,000 not connected with any religious societies; and four entire counties without any religious institutions whatever. In another district, he says, there are 53,000 people in the same dreadful state; in another, 20,000 in the same state, except that there are a very few Methodists and Baptists. In another district of fine country, compact, rich, and populous, there are near 60,000 people who are connected with no religious deno

mination whatever!

This letter represents one tract of country larger than the whole of New England (excepting Maine) in which the writer says, "there are but three educated ministers. There are but a handful of Methodists and Baptists, who deserve a great deal of credit for their zeal and exertions. But here are 180,000 people, who are absolutely without religious teachers of any sort!"

Concerning the western parts of Pennsylvania, a gentleman of unquestionable credibility says, "there are extensive districts in which there is not, and never was a school. More than half the adults probably can neither read nor write; and there are thousands who never saw the Bible, nor any other book, nor ever heard a sermon; and this among a people who have extensive farms, in fine order, with large orchards, brick houses, and stone barns. One district has 40,000 people, with but one fixed pastor."

Another gentleman, a respectable missionary, describes a tract of country, in Pennsylvania, of one hundred miles extent, in which there is but one settled minister.

The committee of an education society, just formed in the western district of New York, say in their address to the public, that in 200 organized congregations of that State, ministers might soon be settled, if they could be obtained. In one county of that State, adjoining Connecticut, there are 10,000 people, and but one regularly qualified minister. In New York city, it is estimated that there are 78,000 people without the means of religious instruction, and 14,000 families attached to no denomination of Christians.

If we come to New England, where christian privileges are enjoyed in a higher degree than in any other region of the country, there is much to excite the solicitude of good men. The population of New England is about 1,500,000. The number of ministers qualified to preach the gospel, among all denominations, cannot be estimated at more than 1000, leaving a deficiency of 500.

In the two oldest counties of New Hampshire, which contain 77 towns, there were in 1813, (and the case cannot be essentially altered since that time) 45 towns destitute. In 24 of these

towns, containing 20,000 inhabitants, there were but 161 church members; and in nine of the 24 towns there was not one; seven had always been destitute of preaching. One church had no communion for five years;-another none for twenty years. Two churches had become extinct, and in another, which formerly contained forty members, there remained but two, and these females.

This is a gloomy picture; but there is one view in which it is still more gloomy. If the people of the United States are now in this condition, what is to become of their posterity? When we call to mind that seventy years ago, New England was supplied with one collegially educated minister for every 628 souls, and that now, in the United States, there is not one such minister to 6000 souls; when we remember that this rapid degeneracy has been regular in its progress, that the great causes which produced it are every year becoming more powerful and extensive in their operations; and when we add to all this, that the great mass of the community are not awake to the danger;-with what apprehensions must we look toward the generations that are to come!

Statements, founded upon our college catalogues, prove, that in respect to the number of our educated ministers, we are far behind our fathers! But when we carry the result of these statements forward, and calculate the effect of continued degeneracy upon future times, an awful prospect opens before us. From these catalogues it appears, that for a hundred years after the settlement of this country, viz. from 1620 to 1720, more than half of all the graduates of our colleges were ministers. During the next period of 50 years, that is from 1720 to 1770, only one out of three engaged in the ministry; and during the period of forty years next following, that is, from 1770 to 1810, only one out of five engaged in the ministry. From 1800 to 1810, only one out of six. Let it here be observed, that the number of graduates has not increased so fast in proportion as the population of the country, so that the decrease of collegially educated ministers, compared with the population of the United States, has been even greater than in the proportion of the numbers one-half, one-third, one-fifth.

From these statements taken together, the following conclusions seem to be established::

1. That to furnish an adequate supply for the United States, would require more than 11,000 well qualified ministers.

2. That we actually have less than one-fourth part of this supply.

3. That the ratio of supply has, for a long time, been regularly and rapidly on the decline.

4. That the number of pious young men, who are able to defray the expense of their own education for the ministry, is

not sufficient to provide a remedy for this alarming state of things. Whether this fact can be explained or not, it is in vain to doubt it.

Now, then, we turn to the accounts which are given of the religious condition of America, so lately as 1827, that is, five years ago. The facts are taken from the different reports of the societies in America, as to the want of Bibles. The want of Bibles in various parts of America is very great, and generally where the Bible is not possessed, individuals do not prize it enough to take pains to procure it for themselves. If, then, this national society is not so patronized as to be able very greatly to increase its gratuitous appropriations, a fearfully large portion of our fellowcountrymen will remain destitute of that Word of Truth which sanctifies the heart. In one county, in the State of New York, 1000 families are destitute of a copy of the Bible; in another county, 800 families; and in other counties, 400 or 500 remain unsupplied with this sacred volume. In one county in Delaware, 500 families have no Bible, and no county is better supplied. In North Carolina, 10,000 families are living and training up their households without the Bible. In four contiguous congregations, in South Carolina, not more than two-thirds of the families connected with the visible church are furnished with the Bible. In one-fourth part of a county in Georgia, more than 200 families have no Bibles. Other portions of those States, and, generally, much of the southern and western parts of our country, are in the same unhappy state of destitution.

In surveying the destitute settlements, which are without the regular ministrations of the gospel, the remote northern parts of the State of New York, the States of Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Georgia, and Kentucky, present themselves in mournful array before us. For although in all these there

are

some regular, faithful ministers of Christ, there is an immense territory lying waste, without labourers to cultivate it. Now and then a travelling missionary scatters the seed of the kingdom. But having none to succeed him, the fruit of his toil is blasted for want of efficient cultivation. Of this we have painful evidence in the fact that, within the limits of a single presbytery in the synod of Indiana, five churches have become extinct during the last year, from this cause. The present destitute condition of those extensive western regions, and the rapidly increasing population, which far surpasses the increase of ministers, furnish pressing motives to exertion on the part of the churches.

The following is an authentic statement of the vacancies in regular churches, and does not include that part of our population, estimated to be nearly one-half, which is not collected into churches and congregations. The General Assembly of the

Presbyterian church in the United States numbers nearly 2000 regular churches, and about 800 of these are destitute of settled pastors; the Reformed Dutch Synod embraces 181 churches, 53 of which are vacant; the Baptists have more than 1000 destitute churches; the Congregationalists, a great number, and the Episcopalians more than 100. But leaving out of the calculation these and all other destitute churches, which are hungering for the bread of life; besides these, not much less than half the population of the United States is, at this day, to an alarming degree, destitute of the regular administration of gospel ordinances; and this destitution is increasing with every wave of emigration that beats back the western wilderness. It endangers alike the political security and the spiritual salvation of millions that shall come after us. Our population, says a correspondent from Indiana, at present is rated at between 2 and 300,000, and we have only twelve resident Presbyterian ministers in the State. The presbytery to which I belong, embraces a range of territory nearly 200 miles in length, and 80 in breadth; in which we have only four members with charges, though we number 19 congregations. I am stationed in the centre of a large body of population, yet my nearest clerical neighbour lives at the distance of 50 or 60 miles. I was this year obliged to travel 140 miles to attend a meeting of the presbytery.

It is not often that in any part of the United States we can find Presbyterian churches gone into decay. But this peninsula, Lewes, Maryland, has the melancholy distinction of seeing whole congregations dispersed, so that not a remnant of them is now left. There are edifices, once occupied by some of the most useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, that have sunk into almost irrecoverable ruin. Let a few instances suffice. A church once stood in Drummond Town, on the eastern shore of Virginia, in which it is probable that no less a man than Francis M'Kamie used to officiate. But it has totally disappeared. In Vienna, on the banks of the Nanticoke, there was formerly a building for the use of Presbyterians, but not a single vestige of it can be found. Eight miles from the village of Snow Hill, within the last fifteen years, there was a church filled by a large and flourishing congregation. But the flock is entirely scattered. It is probable that in the town of Cambridge a church of the same order once stood, but Ichabod may be written amidst its ruins. Instances of other churches might be adduced; but as the writer is not personally acquainted with their location, he leaves you to infer the number from the extent of our peninsula. There are congregations, the protracted existence of which is exceedingly doubtful. They have been struggling for a series of years with innumerable difficulties. When a minister is to be supported, several of these congregations are formed into a circle for the purpose. Thus some part

of a preacher's charge must always be exposed to the incursion of every dangerous delusion.

In all the states west of the Alleghany mountains, together with Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, occupying more than half the territory of all the States in the Union; embracing in 1810, more than 1,000,000 of inhabitants; in 1820, 2,200,000, and now not very far from 4,000,000-into all those States, tracts only to the value of 7000 dollars have yet been sent, since the formation of the society; which is but little more than onehalf the amount circulated by the ladies of New York and Brooklyn, or by the tract society in the single village of Utica; yet a large portion of that population have not the Bible, nor any places of public worship, nor any stated preaching of the gospel, and are in a great measure destitute of the other means of grace.-Vide Missionary Herald of America, 1827.

We again observe, that these facts are supplied by the Americans themselves, and taken from the Reports of their religious Societies. What those will say to them, who bid us observe the prosperity of the voluntary principle in America, we know not; but they speak for themselves, and strongly prove the necessity of a church establishment. We give them as preliminary to the following article.

ART. XI.-1. A Scriptural Vindication of Church Establishments, with a Review of the principal Objections of Non-conformists. By the Rev. GEO. HOLDEN, M. A. London: Rivington. 1836. 2. The Duty of a Christian State to support a National Church Establishment, in Connexion with the Scriptural Character and peculiar Claims of the Church of England: Five Sermons, preached in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Leeds, in April, 1834. By the Rev. JOSEPH HOLMES, M. A., Curate of Trinity Church, and Head Master of the Free Grammar School, Leeds, late Fellow and Tutor of Queen's College, Cambridge. London: Longman and Co. 1834.

IT is no small proof of the sad influence which political opinions of the levelling and democratic class exert over religious belief and practice in our day, that the scriptural authority of the church of England,-which, if the authenticity and inspiration of the New Testament be admitted, must be considered as having the self-evidence of an axiom,-and that its proper connexion with the State, which follows from the same premises, should be impugned, and not merely impugned but unblushingly denied, by men, who support not their effrontery and assertions by any plea approximated to an argument. And that perversity, not conviction, that the prostration of religion to a subserviency to political purposes, not a desire of truth, are the actuating prin