furniture which the manufactories of the Missouri Valley will produce. If this view be correct, the scene alone of these prairie sea-ports of the West will not be unlike that at one of our ocean ports in the East. At the docks of the great cities which will then spring up on this shore of civilization, will arrive fleet after fleet of the future ships of the desert, each dashing over its iron track to the destined port. There, on the levee at which these waves of sand will terminate, will be strewn the boxes containing not only the gold of the Sacramento and of the San Joaquin, and the quicksilver of New-Almaden, but the wines which are even now beginning to be drawn from the vineyards of Los Angelos, and the cotton and sugar from the south of Sierra Nevada. There will be found, in an abundance which New-England herself can but rival, the dried and salted fish of the Columbia and the Willamette, and the furs which the Oregon hunting-grounds produce in such rare abundance. There will be seen warehouses and shops like those which, in New-York and Philadelphia, collect for Western inspection the products of Europe and of New-England. It will be cheaper for the Pacific merchant to come here and purchase than it would be to visit the cities of the Atlantic. Manufacturers on the Kansas River, on the Blue River, and on the Osage, can sell heavy goods at least twenty per cent cheaper than manufacturers in Connecticut or Pennsylvania. Freight, amounting to five dollars on the hundred. weight, will be a sufficient protection to force the manufactories of the Missouri Valley at once into energetic action. The time will come when the Western merchant, who leaves California by the cars to buy his stock in the East, will find in Omaha, in Nebraska City, in Lawrence, warehouses which will unite the products of the Atlantic States and of Europe with the goods which the abundance of breadstuffs, the proximity of the raw material, and the relief from the burden of freight, which bears so heavily on transportation across the Alleghanies, will enable the factories of Kansas and of Nebraska to present on the spot, to the exclusion of Eastern competitors."

Now, how are these several classes of population to be

reached? Active, potent, numerous, they undoubtedly are; capable, from their position and character, of acting on and determining the future destiny of the great valley they occupy. How, then—is the practical question-are we of the East to discharge the duty we owe of planting the Gospel in this empire valley?

Now, I apprehend that the ordinary agencies will be insufficient for this purpose. Take church-building. How, when sites are still unsettled, do we know where to build churches? This year a town may be in a fair way of prosperity-next year, it will be deserted. Two or three years ago we were all greatly interested in building a church and school house at Topeka. Now Topeka has pretty much dried up; and though it may hereafter revive and fructify, yet the metropolitan standard we once assigned to it is gone. Or, can we build churches on the rivers or ferries, or on those prairie sweeps in which, from their very vastness, a congregation of fifty would be a large one? Supposing that we answer the last question in the affirmative, is it expedient to make the attempt? To create even a superficial net-work of church edifices over this immense territory would cost millions. No funds that we can hope to raise can do more than supply an hundredth, or a thousandth part of the surface. Then, even were this done, comes the important inquiry, Whether a church edifice, erected by missionary funds from without, ever sinks its foundation into the popular heart to any thing like the depth of those built by the energies of worshippers themselves. The experience of the Church Missionary Society is greatly against the building of any but temporary mission churches. So it is when the same experiment has been tried among ourselves. The "Mission" Church is looked on but coldly until the time comes when through an energetic local ministry, accompanied by a necessity for repairs and extension, the building becomes associated with the personal enterprise and industry of the community.

But the ministry? Here, undoubtedly, is the first great want. I apprehend, however, that it is an itineracy, one that can preach in the steamboat, on the levee, in the school house,

that we need. But look how little prospect there is of an adequate ministry being collected. There are half a million of souls now in the Missouri Valley, reckoning the population on both sides of the bank. They are scattered over so wide an expanse of territory-they are many of them so desultory and nomadic in their habits, that it would be difficult to collect among them congregations averaging over one hundred. To enable us to discharge our duties to this class alone, would require a body of clergymen four times exceeding in number our entire clergy list. Such a proportion of ordained clergymen, or any thing approaching such a proportion, we can not expect to see. It is best, indeed, that we should not, with our present resources. The usage of the Church, and the opinion of society at large, require that the minister should be dependent on his missionary or parochial stipend for his support. It is not meet that he should mix his sacred calling with a secular profession. By such a separation of offices, in fact, we preserve, if not the spirituality, at least the professional learning and tone which enable the clergy to be the instructors of instructors. But this very fact prevents us from proceeding to such a desecularization of the more active and reliable Christian energies as the ordination of so immense a proportion of the community would require. Medieval history proves to us that so great an extension of the ecclesiastical orders is good neither for the Church nor for the State.

But, after all, these questions are made nugatory by the real state of facts. The truth is, that it is not church accommodations we want, but influences to induce the people to avail themselves of those accommodations that really exist. Mr. Horace Mann's Report of the famous Sunday Census, undertaken a few years since under the direction of the English Home Secretary, gives us some pregnant admonitions in this respect. In England there were on that Sunday five millions of persons who might have attended divine service, at least once, who neglected to do so. These persons, who, according to the Report, "every Sunday neglect religious ordinances, do so of their own free choice, and are not compelled to be absent on account of

a deficiency of sittings." Of the entire population, 58 per cent falls under this category.

And how is it in our own land? I fear the testimony of those who have visited our churches, whether in the West or the East, will be to the same effect. It is very rare that we find a full congregation. There are, it is true, exceptions—as where the room occupied is very small, or where there is an Episcopal visitation, or where there is a strong religious feeling at the time prevalent in the community at large. But as a general thing the hotel is full, but not the church. Small as these churches are, and thick as is the current of population eddying round them, we rarely find their seats more than two thirds occupied. Under such circumstances, it is for us to take home to our own hearts the impressive words of the English Report: "The considerable number of available sittings which are every Sunday totally unoccupied might be adduced as proofs so manifest of unconcern for spiritual matters on the part of a great portion of the people that, until they are im pressed with more solicitude for their religious culture, it is useless to erect more churches."

Now, I do not concur in the ancillary conclusion, that “it is useless to erect more churches," though I do in the main proposition, that our duty is to awaken, by a preliminary agency, "more solicitude for their religious culture" in the great multitudes by whom these accommodations are now neglected. Let this solicitude be aroused, and churches, far more valued, far more effective, though perhaps ruder and plainer, will become its natural product. But how is this great and primary feeling-that, in fact, of the soul, conscious of its ruin, and seeking reconciliation and communion with its God-how is this feeling to be aroused? And I suppose that there is but one answer, and that is, under God's grace, and in subordination to the motions of His spirit in the heart, by the "preaching," either through the tongue or the press, of His glad tidings.

This, however, it may be said, does not bring us a step nearer the solution. It is not a question of general, but of specific means; not a question of motive energy, but of

mechanism. I admit this; but let us, before going further, proceed to consider what indications there are, in this particular field, of the character of the agency by which the want can be most effectively reached. And I can not but look at the whole Mississippi and Missouri Valleys as in this respect impressed with a remarkable significance. It would seem, as if, in preparation for the coming of the Son of Man, that a high-way had been cut leading to every section of those vast and splendid regions. It is a high-way through which error can travel quickly, but truth more quickly still. Are we, when the road is open, when we see the light vehicles of skepticism gayly traversing it from east to west and north to south,―shall we hold back, lest we mix with what is common or unclean? Are we to hold to the old family-carriage, circumscribed though its motive energies be, and refuse the car, because the latter is open to all?

I can not, if it be permitted to us to avail ourselves of an agency whose only fault is its openness, but look upon the educational apparatus of the far West as a means of peculiar moment in preaching an awakening Gospel. The country is divided into sections and quarter-sections. Through the wise policy which controlled the formation of the Territorial bills, a proportion of the public land was set apart to enable each section and quarter-section to have its school house. These schoolhouses are open for religious uses on Sunday, and, if it be required, on week-day evenings. For these no hire is asked. But one qualification I have ever known observed, though that is general it is the exclusion of Universalists, Unitarians, and skeptics generally. Roman Catholics exclude themselves. I can not but pause a moment here, to bear witness to the noble efforts of Methodist itinerants in those very buildings. I believe that there is a great debt due to these true-hearted and self-denying men, representatives of whom I met on the extreme borders of Kansas and Nebraska. It is a debt, I hold, not of religion alone. The country owes much to them, not only for moral teaching, but for intellectual culture. Rude and illiterate as some of them may be, they carry their little libraries with them, the contents of which they dispose of from