Louis church are from their congregations. The intercourse between St. Louis and that Synod is as direct and easy, as between St. Louis and the 2d Synod. The churches of this latter Synod had just before given largely to the erection of the church in Cincinnati, and to the erection of their Seminary building, and to the procurement of a Theological library, after having fully borne their part in the endowment and support of the Seminary now in the 1st Synod. And the 1st Synod has at least twice the population and wealth of the 2d Synod. But all they need is a call. They have already given something where that call has been made. The people of St. Louis contemplate sending an agent some time this summer or the ensuing fall, to visit their churches; and it is confidently expected, that his applications will meet with a cordial and liberal response.

St. Louis is an important link between the churches in Southern Illinois, and those on the Upper Mississippi, and on the Illinois river. The access from all those churches is easy, the river navigation bringing the most remote of them within two or three days travel. It is apparent how a large and flourishing church at St. Louis will facilitate intercourse between all those churches, and bind them together. How it may become a religious depot for all of them, and a centre of influence, and the means of awakening them all to concerted and vigorous cooperation in great measures to sustain and advance the Redeemer's cause in that entire vast region. The importance of St. Louis is more apparent in view of the importance, the strength, and the peculiar location of these congregations. I visited the churches in South Illinois, all except one. In the counties of Washington, Randolph, and Perry are three congregations settled, averaging each 60 families, one vacancy able to take half a minister's time, and several other vacancies recently organized. All these are from forty to fifty miles from St. Louis. In the same region, and mingled with our people, are three congregations of the New School Covenanters, with two settled ministers and one laboring as a stated supply, and three Old School Covenanter congregations all settled. Some of these are large. Perhaps nowhere in our Western States is there so large a settlement of people, maintaining the principles of the Scottish Reformation;---a Calvinistic creed, the Presbyterian government, and a scriptural worship. Let them lay aside their little sectarian jealousies, and, if they cannot be ecclesiastically one, let them still cordially and vigorously cooperate in educational and other measures to advance their common principles, and who can calculate the good which may be done? It is for some high purpose, that they are placed together there in the midst of surrounding Popery, error, ungodliness, and irreligion. They are capable of training up a ministerial agency, which with the Divine blessing, would tell with mighty power on the great interests of Protestantism and of truth.

The churches above I did not visit, though earnestly desirous to do it. But from all I could gather, we should have, in addition to those already in that region, at least two ministers settled, and four or five constant itinerants. And what we do should be done quickly or the country will be preoccupied, our stations swept away from us, and the doors now open to our operations closed. We should also bave in Southern Illinois one more settled minister, and one itinerant

The provision hitherto made for the Mississippi region, has been wholly inadequate.

Of three things I have become more fully than ever convinced. 1st. The growth of our wants, as a Church, in the West, outstrips the growth of our ministerial agency. Young men need not be deterred from the study of theology by the fear, that there will be no demand for their labors. The demand outgrows the supply. 2d. This demand will be supplied only by the West itself training up a ministry for the West. Young men from our new Western states are more willing, and perhaps better qualified, to encounter the difficulties and hardships of the Western field---to "take it rough and -smooth," as ministers in the West have to do. We would be glad to see our young brethren from the Eastern part of our General Synod settling in our Western vacancies, but they don't do it. Some have' come and labored for a time, and have labored well; and the worthy brethren, under whose ministry chiefly the church of St. Louis has grown up, have been from the First Synod; but of the eighteen or twenty young men settled in the bounds of the Second Synod within twelve years, all, except one or two, were raised in her own bounds. Hence the importance and necessity of our pastors and sessions, especially in all our new Western States, seeking out and leading forward pious and promising young men in obtaining an education, of establishing grammar schools where practicable, & where that is impracticable, of pastors teaching the youth so disposed in their respective congregations, till they get them ready for college. In most cases this would be a positive advantage to the pastors themselves, as it would revive and improve their classical and scientific, attainments, make their preaching all the better, and give them a higher standing in society. And for the same reasons, it is important, that in the West we have a Seminary of our own, which will have the double advantage of inciting our Western youth to prepare for the ministry, and of training them up with their predilections in fa-. vor of a Western field of labor. 3d. The necessity of an able, wellfurnished, studious, and eminently devoted ministry, and a ministry armed at all points, to win the esteem and confidence of our new and forming congregations, to mould into one the elements of which they are composed, to command the respect of surrounding community, and to meet successfully the multifarious errors prevalent in the West. J. C.

From the NY Christian Intelligencer.

THE RIOTS IN PHILADELPHIA.

"The mournful outrages which have recently filled the city of Philadelphia with dismay, and exhibited all the most desolating scenes of civil warfare, involve considerations too momentous to escape the regard of the Christian Observer. If the melancholy commotion had been merely the sudden outbreak of the moment, originating without

any previous ostensible cause, and terminating as soon as the volcanic heaving had exploded; however deeply to be regretted, the events might have been left to oblivion, with the record only of a paragraph among the fleeting occurrences of the week. Lamentably, this is not the case---the strife and the destruction were not the result of a sudden excitement, however condemnable, but were produced by the unholy conspiracy, first formed in New York, to exclude the Bible from our public schools. It is the genuine offspring of the ungodly alliance between religion-or the pretence of religion-and secular affairs, which ever have been, and ever necessarily must be, the character and practice of Popery.

These consequences of the augmenting influence and spread of Romanism were first proclaimed in 1830, in the New York Protestant; and the alarm was sounded for years in vain. Protestants would not hear or attend, or believe the warning. In the fancied security of their civic immunities, and in the boasted splendor of the wide spread intelligence among the citizens, the stealthy, deleterious progress of Romanism was disregarded and despised, until the Arch Chief supposed that he might cast off the disguise and devices of an angel of Light, and like the roaring lion, openly devour his prey.

The secure mode instigated by the wily Adversary was adoptedthe obliteration of the Bible, and the rendering of all elementary education inefficient and useless. This end could be obtained only under the pretence and vociferation of liberty---when the annals of the world for 1200 years past evince, that between Popery and civil and religious freedom, "there is a great gulf fixed;" and that it is as utterly impossible for a Romanist to be a freeman, in the evangelical meaning, and according to the principles of our American Bills of Rights, as it is for Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and Dives in hellflames, to hold fraternal communion.

The object, therefore, was, first to mar and then to nullify the system of public education, and by excluding all knowledge of the sacred Scriptures from youth, to divest them of all acquaintance with gospel morality and the Christian religion. By the cooperation of his confederates in the Legislature, the Jesuit Prelate of New York partly accomplished his unrighteous machination. The mutilation of the books used in the public schools, is almost too ridiculous for argument, or even for contempt. We merely quote some specimens:

1. There was a book entitled, "Lessons for Schools, taken from the Holy Scriptures in the words of the text, without Note or Comment." The Vicar General, Varela, demanded that the words "without note or comment," should be expunged; because the Roman priests do not permit the Scriptures to be read, unless with their priestly comment. 2. Robertson's character of Martin Luther is effaced.

3. Part of Lord Chatham's famous speech on the American War is blotted out.

4. Part of Goldsmith's delightful poem, "The Traveller," is bedaubed with Roman black, so that it should not be read.

5. The dialogue between Cortez and Penn is defaced by the omission of Penn's dignified morality.

6. Hume's portraiture of Lady Jane Grey is spoiled.

7. Lyttleton's dialogue between Bayle and Locke, is partly trans

formed into nonsense.

All which expurgations, with the other similar alterations, are made, as is manifest, to nullify the Scriptures, and to extinguish the most important historical remembrances.

The fatal measure was accomplished by legislative enactment; and thus religious principles were commingled with political partizanship; and an entirely novel element has been cast into our social and, political agitations. From the unexpected success of the Romanists in New York, the Philadelphia Papists took courage, and commenced a similar turmoil. In the Northern liberties of Philadelphia, there is a large body of Irish Protestants, who preserve all their aversion to Popery, as they witnessed its curse and ravages in Ireland---and ever since the attempt to adopt the New York mischief of excluding the Holy Scriptures from the public schools, the Papists and the Protestants have been at irreconcilable variance. The pertinacity with which the two Jesuit Prelates of New York and Philadelphia have pursued their anti-American scheme, has produced, at length, a party resolutely determined to put down that Romanist ungodliness. The Papists, instigated by their priests, have secretly purposed to carry their measures by fraud or force; and the recent riots in Philadelphia, it is to be feared, are but the commencement of the frightful scenes which these same priests and people so long have worked out in the South and West of Ireland; for they are the very identical agitators, rioters, and assassins, who already have filled those Hibernian provinces with desolation and murder.

The New York Freemen's Journal of May 11, proves that all the fury of the Papists is authorized by the Papist priests. That paper is published under the direct supervision of John Hughes and his Vicar General---and it calls upon the Irish Papists to arm in self-defence; and is full of audacity, menance, and a direct appeal to force, to sustain the anti-Christian project for the exterpation of the Bible from popular use, and the cramping of public education, so as to destroy its value and utility.

It is also worthy of especial remembrance, that with the exception of the Irish Papists and their confederates, no persons attempt to disturb the orderly assemblage of citizens for public business---and that they almost always do it, when any thing adverse to the priestly domination is discussed. The ravages committed in Philadelphia, doubtless are not the work of the sober citizens, but of those lawless desperadoes who infest society, and who, amid popular commotions, invariably take advantage of the impunity which it allows, to gratify their revenge, and to engage in plunder. The attempt to withdraw the use of the New Testament from the schools in Kensington, was the true source of all the dreadful scenes connected with the late riots; and deeply condemnable as are the parties who set fire to the buildings destroyed, and made the assaults upon private dwellings, with the injury to their property; exclusive of the alarm, the danger and the skirmishes, it seems evident, from the unusual quantity of fire-arms in the possession of the Papists, that their design was premeditated; and, as the lower order of Romanists do nothing without the direction and sanction of their confessors, that they were secretly encouraged by their priests. ANTI-PAPIST.

EDITORIAL NOTICES:

'We neglected to say in our last No. that the reason why no statis tical tables were published with the minutes of Synod was because but a few of the Presbyteries had furnished tables.

'The third letter on Psalmody has been mislaid, but we hope to recover it in time for the next No.

We have been requested to say that the congregation of St. Louis are progressing with their building and will be thankful for the prompt attention of those who have promised them aid, or may hereafter be willing to aid them. The building is expensive; and yet we are told by one who has visited the spot that it is not more magnificent than a congregation which expects to support a character in the city of St. Louis, ought to have. Christians should guard against the reproach that while they are willing to incur expense that they may appear something like their neighbors in dress, equipage &c. cannot find it in their hearts to be at much expense that the house in which they worship their Maker should have a decent & respectable appearance,

The Methodist General Conference.---An ecclesiastical assembly may meet time after time and employ much care and deliberation in de vising measures to advance the kingdom of Christ, and the great public scarcely hear of it: but let some exciting question arise, which promises to yield a harvest of disputation and strife, immediately all the Journals in the Country, secular and reilgious are filled with reports and notices of its doings. The General Conference of the Methodist Church has heretofore been permitted to pursue the even tenor of its way without getting extensively into the papers, but the last Conference has obtained much of that notoriety which was enjoyed by the Presbyterian General Assembly a few years since. The natter which drew general attention was this---Bishop Andrews is a Slave-holder. Anti-slavery feelings and principles have found their way among the people and to some extent among the clergy of the Methodist Church in the North, despite of the prudence of the Episcopacy and of the licensed Methodist press. A resolution was brought forward, and after an earnest and protracted discussion, adopted, calling upon the Bishop to resign because being connected with slavery he could not fulfil his duties to the whole church. The delegates from the slave-holding portion of the church followed this' up with threats of disunion.