Catholic colony, it dwindled into feebleness, and became eventually Protestant. It sent out no other colonies to the great West; it did nothing to plant these peculiar institutions there. Meantime, Protestant colonies sprung up all around it, on the north and south. The Pilgrims, the Quakers, the Huguenots, the Scotch, the Germans, spread all over the land and filled it with Protestant institutions. From Plymouth an influence went out that spread all over New England, New York, and the long tiers of States that now spread out in the West. From St. Mary's, in Maryland, no Roman Catholic influence ever went out beyond the bounds of the colony as assigned to George Calvert.

Again, time was, when, so far as human foresight could see, it was not in itself altogether improbable that the Roman Catholic would take possession of this land, as he intended to. A wiser scheme, as appeared to human view, was never laid. They had all Mexico, all Central America, and South America. Protestants had a few scattered and feeble colonies on the shores of the Atlantic. In these circumstances, the gigantic project was formed of encircling this land on the west; of anticipating the spread of the population there; of securing what was foreseen would be the richest portion of the land, and what would ultimately control it, by establishing a cordon of posts of religious influence, that should stretch from Quebec to New Orleans. With such an energy as the world never saw before since the days of the Apostles, Roman Catholic missionaries plunged into the forest, encountered innumerable hardships, found out the father of rivers, sailed down this mighty stream, and all along this vast circuit established themselves in what were regarded as the places which would be centres of influence and power. At Quebec, Montreal, Detroit, Fort Pitt, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Dubuque, St. Louis, and all along the western waters, there were establishments of Roman Catholics, designed to anticipate the time when the floods of emigration should roll over the mountains. And what was the result? Did the land become theirs? The waves of a Protestant population rolled on, and, long before they reached these posts, all these western lands

were under the control of a Protestant country, and then all were embraced in the great charter which made us free by the war of the Revolution. In which of these places has the Catholic religion now the ascendency? Where can it be now regained? The attention of the observant traveller at the West is arrested by the vision in numerous places of old and dilapidated towns -strange anomalies in a new country-such as Cahokia, Kaskaskia,- -a place older than Philadelphia, once containing 7000 inhabitants, now perhaps 1000,-Gallipolis, St. Genevieve, and not a few other towns, mostly bearing French names; towns now without thrift or neatness or prosperity, standing in strange contrast with the smiling villages and flourishing cities that have sprung up in more eligible situations, such as Cincinnati, and Chicago, and Milwaukie, and Louisville, and Madison, and Alton. He asks, with surprise, What towns are these? How came they here? How were they transplanted, as they seem to have been, from the Old World? What has made the difference between them and others? He is told that they are old Jesuit towns; places founded by French Catholics; posts where, a century ago or more, they located themselves, as if in anticipation of what this land would be, and that they might take possession of it. He hastens to the conclusion, for he cannot help it, that they are instances of a gross want of judgment on the part of the people; memorials and monuments of mistaken calculations and disappointed hopes in reference to this land. They are not the centres of influence, and the Jesuit has abandoned them to attempt an enterprise equally hopeless, in securing to himself now the towns and cities and real centres of power, which Protestant enterprise has planted.

Amidst our numberless causes of thanksgiving there is one suggested by this subject which it is proper for us to indulge, that this is a land where the Protestant religion, accompanied by its numberless blessings, prevails; that it is not now such a land as Mexico, or Peru, or Chili, or Brazil, as it would have been had it been colonized in the same manner. With no feelings of unkindness towards our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens; with no desire to abridge any of their liberties; with no wish

to exclude any foreigner from our shores who may choose to come here, and to become a peaceful and virtuous citizen, yet we are not forbidden to regard the Reformation, under Luther, as much more than a name, and to consider it as identified with great and noble principles of civil and religious liberty; nor are we forbidden to look upon this land as contrasted with the southern portion of this continent, and to say that this general intelligence; these colleges and schools; this bold spirit of enterprise; these villages and towns that spring up everywhere; these churches, that fill the land, and that are full of intelligent worshippers; this broad spirit and feeling of freedom;—all are to be traced to the influence of the Protestant religion; all are to be ascribed to that wonderful Providence of God which directed Columbus, and Cortez, and Pizarro, to another portion of our continent rather than this; which made England rest from the work of colonization for more than a hundred years after the Cabots coasted along our shores, and which overruled the establishment of the only Roman Catholic colony in our country, so that its influences harmoniously blended with those which secured the toleration of religious opinion every where else, and which ultimately made us independent of the rest of the world.

Nor is it less appropriate that all should recognize the overruling Providence of God in moulding all the original colonists, and all who have since come to our shores, however heterogeneous, so that they blend together in one common sentiment in favor of civil and religious liberty. There was the Puritan on the north, strongly antagonistic to the Church of Rome, to the high church Episcopalian of England, and to the Quaker; the follower of Roger Williams, deeming himself aggrieved and wronged, and driven out by the colonies of Plymouth and Salem; the Quaker, smarting with the remembrance of what he regarded as wrongs received alike from Episcopalians and Puritans in England, and from the Puritans in New England; the colonists of Jamestown, at antipodes with those who came over in the Mayflower, and with the Baptists, and the Quakers; the followers of George Calvert, of a denomination everywhere

else believed to be antagonistic to religious liberty; and the Huguenots, crushed and sad in view of the remembered horrors of St. Bartholomew's day; and the stern disciples of John Knox-last, but by no means least,—yet all meeting here in one common sentiment in favor of liberty; of the rights of man; of freedom of conscience; and all ready in defence of these rights to pledge to each other their "lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." What an illustration of the wonderful ways of Providence of the means which Infinite Wisdom can employ to carry out its sublime and glorious purposes!

Nor is it less appropriate to say, in conclusion, that these are good principles; that they are all that are necessary, with the Divine blessing, to secure the perpetuity of the Republic. The foundations were well, were rightly laid. There entered into our institutions essentially all that we want,-intelligence, virtue, love of country, toleration, the right of conscience, the privilege to worship God as we please. This was a good basis for a great people. We may improve and perfect it, perhaps, but the foundation was good, and it is our duty to adhere to these things, and to transmit them to future times. They are the inheritance which we have received to guard, to defend, and to pass on to coming generations. This discussion will not be in vain if it contributes to strengthen our attachment and the attachment of our children to these great principles, which were laid at the foundation of the Republic, and to aid us in performing our duty in defending them, and in transmitting them onward to coming ages.

ARTICLE III.

THE OFFICE OF DEACON.

INEFFICIENCY is oftentimes affirmed to be a characteristic of the ministry in the present day.

There are not wanting men who, with the bitterness of an asp's poison under their lips, await every opportunity to emit some slanderous effusion into the character of those who, in the providence of God, are called to be preachers of His word and pastors of His flock. With no appreciation of the onerous nature of ministerial duties, and with hearts full of enmity against every form and demand of religion, they are ever ready, like a bird of prey which fastens itself upon forms of living innocence as well as upon corrupted masses, to seize indiscriminately upon that in the ministry which is good as well as evil, and to pounce upon the whole as worthy only of destruction. "The boar out of the wood doth waste [ministerial character], the wild beast of the field doth devour it." To say that we have no sympathy with such infidel ravings would be saying little. We despise, in men professing more than ordinary intelligence, that ignorance, much more that lack of moral appreciation, which leads them to denounce an institution that has confessedly accomplished so much towards civilization and general morality.

Withdrawing ourselves from the unbelieving world, we meet even in Christian society, a large number of persons who seem to view the ministry with suspicion. Exorbitant in their demands. upon both ministerial piety and pastoral labor, naturally faultfinding in their dispositions, possessing an eagle-eye for the detection of defects that lie beyond themselves, they are ever ready to catch at any delinquency in the ministry whether imaginary or real, and to brand the whole body with its blame. In their estimation, the ministry should be treated to a stricter oversight than are men of other professions: there should be on the part of the Church, a more rigid enforcement of minis