august gift have upon them? Let us see. Among these divines, numerous as they were, the Church of England found not one able apologist-scarcely one teacher or preacher whom history brings down to us as capable of swaying the heart or convincing the judgment-very few men of literary or theological culture. The only works of high merit, as we are told, that sprang from a rural parish in those days, were the Vindication of the Church of England, and the Apostolical Harmony, of the Rev. George Bull, written and published by him, when at the livings of Suddington St. Mary and Suddington St. Peter near Cirencester. But this eminent divine, afterwards better known as Bishop of St. David's, resolutely severed himself from the Non-jurors in principle as well as polity. Always a man of refined culture, as well as of wide charity, his individual sympathies and literary tastes gave him the advantages of personal intercourse with the most eminent theological minds of his age.

There was another class, forming in main the metropolitan and university clergy, who were beset with far different influences from those which so greatly narrowed the minds, and contracted the influences, of the class just described. Let us look, however, at the associations by which this last class was surrounded. Eminent in their counsels, and active in carrying on with them the missionary work, were laymen whom even Barrow, Sherlock, Beveridge, and Tennison could condescend to call brethren and friends. First came Robert Boyle, the earliest advocate of a scheme of missionary extensiona scholar of high Christian attainments, a lay-preacher of eminence, with the pen if not the tongue, and a skillful and efficient defender of natural and revealed religion. There was Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, who received the public thanks of Cambridge for his defense of the leading Christian tenets against the attacks of Whiston. There was William Melmoth, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, whose work on "The Great Importance of a Religious Life" anticipated Wilberforce's "Practical View." There was Francis, second Lord Guilford, and John Hook, a leading barrister, and William Harvey, the discov erer of the circulation of the blood, and Sir Richard Black

more, a distinguished physician, and Colonel Maynard Colchester, all of whom were active in the organization of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, which in its infancy was almost entirely under lay management. To them was soon added Robert Nelson, author of the well-known treatise on "Fasts and Festivals," who, even while adhering to the Non-juring cause, continued intimate with Tillotson, and who, after the death of Lloyd of Norwich, finally acquiesced in the revolutionary ecclesiastical establishment.

Now here was a body of laymen of signal ability and high position, having in their number men noble in birth and distinguished in every department of science and in each learned profession. These men exercise the highest functions below the ministry. They write practical devotional treatises. They publish exhortations. They issue commentaries on the Services of the Church. They defend her polity and her doctrines. They voluntarily, with but one clergyman in their number, (the Rev. Dr. Bray,) take upon themselves the formation of a society which assumes the work, not only of issuing tracts, but of sending out missionaries.

Now what was the effect of this on the clergy? I answer, that there never was a brighter constellation collected in the English Church than that which fostered and was fostered by these laymen. Never did a body of clergy rank higher for their eloquence, for learning, for liberal culture, for grave and earnest devotion to their great cause, for the honor and rever ence paid to them by a community not the least distinguished in whom were these same "preaching" laymen. It would be an error to ascribe this to any phase of theological belief. These ministers embraced all shades. Tillotson, gentle and wise, gifted with a most perspicuous style and persuasive eloquence; Berkeley, acute, subtle, and zealous, and endowed "with all the virtues;" Burnet, whose ardent love of souls and indefatigable industry are too apt now to be lost sight of behind the political turmoils in which his position threw him; Butler, the most philosophical and profound of apologists; Lowth, the most classical and poetic of commentators; Beveridge, the tenderest of homilists; Stillingfleet, the keenest of VOL. VI.-20

controversialists; Cudworth, and Henry More, still lingering at Cambridge, and South, Jane, and Alrich at Oxford;-these men, eminent for their learning, their talents, their character, and their piety, were no less eminent for the respect and honor paid to them both by the State and the community. How far their high intellectual endowments were developed and strengthened by the generous conflict of mind in which they bore so varied a part, it is not necessary to inquire. It is enough to say that we have two juxtapositions worthy of our notice at this period of English ecclesiastical history. On one side, we see the laity ready ever to persecute an unordained preacher, and yet the clergy illiterate, inactive, and socially dependent. On the other side, we see laymen active, spiritual, and zealous, and the clergy refined, pious, and capable, the objects of public reverence and love. It is not necessary to pause here, to consider why this was. It is sufficient to say that the existence of a missionary laity is shown by history to be in no wise prejudicial to clerical eminence and dignity.

In the remarks which have been just submitted, the following propositions may be considered as established:

I. A vast population, likely to exercise a decisive influence on the future, is now collecting in the Missouri Valley.

II. This population can not, as an aggregate, be reached by the methods of evangelization now adopted in our communion.

III. For the preliminary purpose of leading the careless in such a population, towards the Church and the ministry, layscripture-reading and preaching form an agency which is the most practical, and the most consistent with the means and prosperity of the Church.

IV. This agency is in accordance with the usages of the Church at the Apostolic era, and at the periods when her missionary labors were most blessed.

IV. Its active exercise is at least not inconsistent with the maintenance of a high degree of clerical independence, spirituality, and dignity.

Such being the case, there are practical questions coming to each of us which we may do well to consider. And first, as to the clergy.

Here is an agency ready to do a great work; a work that you yourselves, from the very superiority of your position, can hardly do. It is to go beforehand, as did the men of Cyprus and Cyrene before St. Paul. What are you to say to it? There are many apostolic injunctions that give the reply. Take one: "Salute the beloved Persis." Observe the commentary of the present Archbishop of Canterbury on this passage. "This," he says, "is one of the many cases in which the language of Scripture is not in agreement with the general opinion. There are many who, if they uttered the language of the heart, would write in a different strain. 'Warn the beloved Persis that she meddle not with spiritual things, things too high for her;' that she trench not on the duties of others: it belongs to us apostles, alone, to discourse concerning the soul and the way of salvation." Now what was the work of Persis, whom the Apostle commanded the church to salute? "Persis," answers Archbishop Sumner, "like others whom the Apostle mentions as having labored with him in the Gospel, had become a teacher, that is, was able to declare to others. what the Lord had done for her soul; and to lay those first principles of the doctrines of Christ which the simplest believer may communicate to his ignorant and simple neighbor. Perhaps the person visited might reply to the words of comfort offered: But what warrant have I to believe that he is my Saviour, that I am a partaker of his redemption?' Must the visitor stop here, and say, 'To answer you on such points is beyond my province; that must be left to the appointed minister.' Doubtless, the minister should be informed of every ignorant and hopeful inquirer; and it is one chief benefit of local visitation, that it conveys to him such information; but meanwhile what should withhold the Christian from imparting his own conviction, and assuring his afflicted neighbors that there is one to whom the weary and heavy-laden are invited, and that those who come to Him He will in no wise cast out? Are we wiser, or are we more jealous than the Apostle, who has enjoined Christians generally, 'Be able to give an answer to any one that asketh the reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear."" Perhaps, as is the case

with the great Western territory which is the immediate subject of these remarks, the minister may be in almost every instance out of reach. Are souls on this account to perishsouls whom a plain knowledge of the word, conveyed by one near at hand, might have saved?

If in such a territory, with a population which in all human judgment a regular ordained ministry can not at present pervade, a lay Scripture-reading and Gospel-teaching agency can be thus efficient as a preliminary missionary mechanism, may we not look to those to whom primarily belongs the forming the opinions of the Church, to give their aid in invoking laborers for such an object?"

The responsibility of schism is in rejecting, not in promoting, such a work. In those prairies, as elsewhere, the heart of man craves religion. Religious comfort, in some way or other, it must have. In its spiritual orphanage, none the less awful from the boundless sky-like plains at its feet, bearing in their solemn unison an antiphonal confession with the heavens above, to the glory of God the Father, the soul in these solitudes is oppressed with an even more than usual sense of its own alienation from the All-loving. It sobs and pants for a Divine, reconciling love, for ONE to mediate between sin and the Father. Who hears this cry? Not the Church. She is too far off. Perhaps, if the commercial theory be correct which would suppress the agency of which I have been speaking, she is so apparelled that she can not fly to the spot in time. Perhaps, if this same theory be true, her stately utterances in their full symmetry, could scarcely form a medium by which the passionate heart of rude, hard, but sin-stricken and conscience-shocked men would first speak. But if the Church comes not, others come and answer this cry. Strange and fanatical sects loom and swell up on this far Western horizon, all the more strange from the refraction, which makes even ordinary objects appear grotesque and exaggerated. Superstition and imposture in their wildest shapes sweep their trains across the plains. Even orthodoxy here takes its hardest phases, and grace itself is exhibited sometimes with limitations so stern and appalling, sometimes with an eloquence so charged with