The applicants, in the same time, had been two hundred and eighty.

The receipts of the institution, in the last year, were 57,818 dollars, being an increase on the year 1833 of 11,000 dollars. The expenditure has been 56,363 dollars. The beneficiaries have refunded, in the same period, 1,947 dollars.

About six hundred of its beneficiaries have completed their course of education, and are now actively employed in the ministration of the word of life. Forty are missionaries in foreign parts; and between two and three hundred are employed wholly, or in part, by the Home Mission Society. About twenty are engaged as editors of literary and religious publications; and the remainder are settled as pastors, or are looking to such settlement. One-sixth of all the ordinations and installations in the past year, throughout the States, were under the patronage of this society. During the last eight years, eleven thousand dollars have been repaid: and about one hundred thousand dollars have been earned by teaching schools, manual labour, and other services.

Besides this society, there is the Presbyterian Education Society, which, in the last year, had 436 beneficiaries, and had received 12,277 dollars; so that these societies, which embrace only the Congregational and Presbyterian bodies, have not less than fourteen hundred young men in training for the Christian ministry!

The Tract Society requires to be named here, for the extent and importance of its operations. It was formed only in 1825; but it has on its lists 737 works, which it has published. Of the tracts, it has printed 36,303,250 copies; and of the volumes, 33,669,918 copies. The receipts on the past year were 66,485 dollars; and the whole amount had been disbursed. No less than 20,000 dollars had been applied to foreign distribution; and a resolution is adopted to use 30,000 dollars in the present year for the same purpose!

Apart from many smaller societies, that at Boston deserves notice, as it is the parent of the one I have reported, and as its principle of action is equally general and comprehensive. It has upwards of seven hundred auxiliaries; its receipts, in 1832, were 12,606 dollars; and it issued 14,500,740 pages.

This society is conducted with much vigour, and equal prudence; its noble efforts in behalf of foreign objects deserve especial commendation.

The Sunday-School Union is an important tributary in the great work of benevolence. It is catholic in its spirit, and is second to none in the ability and zeal with which it is conducted. This society was formed in 1824. Its committee is composed of religious men of different denominations; and no book is to be adopted until it has the sanction of each member. In the year 1832, the eighth of its existence, it had 790 auxiliaries ; 9,187 schools were in connexion; having 542,420 scholars, and 80,913 teachers. As many as 26,913 teachers and scholars are reported to have become pious in the same period. The expenditure for that year was 117,703 dollars; for the last year it was 136,855.

The more vigorous efforts of this Society have been directed, most wisely, to the valley of the Mississippi. In 1830, it was resolved unanimously, "That, in reliance upon Divine aid, they would, within two years, endeavour to establish a Sunday school in every destitute place, where it is practicable, throughout the Valley of the Mississippi;" that is, over a country which is 1,200 miles wide, and 2,400 in length! If this great work is not perfected, much has been done, and much is doing. There are thirty-six agents wholly employed in this service; and during the past year, they established five hundred schools, and revived a thousand.

I must not omit in this notice, The Temperance Society. It was instituted in 1826, and has wrought an astonishing renovation amongst this people. From the circumstance that ardent spirits were to be had at about a shilling a gallon, the temptation became exceedingly great. As the demand for them rose, extensive orchards were planted, and fruits and grain were grown for the purpose of extracting spirit; till at length it threatened to become the beverage of the country. The serious attention of the benevolent was called to it. The subject was discussed and urged in all its importance on public notice. At last the principle of total abstinence from spirits as a drink, was adopted as the basis of the Society. It had, of course, to contend every where with unreined ap petite and pampered vice; but every where it fought to conquer.

In the short space of its existence, upwards of seven thousand Temperance Societies have been formed; embracing more than one million two hundred and fifty thousand mem

bers. More than three thousand distilleries have been stopped; and more than seven thousand persons who dealt in spirits have declined the trade. Upwards of one thousand vessels have abandoned their use; and, most marvellous of all it is said that above ten thousand drunkards have been reclaimed from intoxication.

I really know of no one circumstance in the history of this people, or of any people, so exhilarating as this! It discovers that power of self-government, which is the leading element of all national greatness, in an unexampled degree.

POPULAR PREACHING.

THERE is an ambition so natural to our fallen nature, of winning followers, and having praise of men, that it follows us into our most sacred actions, and besets us the more at the very time we are thinking of doing all for God. The young minister mounts his pulpit, after having his name placarded in high places, as the eloquent advocate of some fashionable charity; and with secret satisfaction, with a flutter, which he is scarcely conscious springs from vanity he sees, as he ascends to his arduous eminence, crowded pews and thronged aisles-oh! what delicious appliances float around him, as all eyes are directed to where he stands. Who will say there is not danger here, and that deadly? which must be prayed against and wrestled with, with all supplication and self-abasement, lest the young subject of popularity may be preaching for self more than for Christ.

But what is worse than all-the very popularity of the youthful favourite may not only make him a self-seeker, but a selfindulger, and an idler. He becomes wonderfully in demand. He has procured a large collection, and has preached the Gospel to perishing sinners; and how can he refuse, when on all sides solicited to do the same thing again? but this is not all his fame grows he must lecture here, and expound there--he must take the lead in prayer meetings; and in school-rooms, announce the sweet and bright views with which he is imbued; then in the mornings his time is so occupied in committees, and no public meetings can go on without finding him on the platform; thus runs on a life of religious dissipation-injurious to his health-injurious to his mind-injurious to his character, as a scholar a divine-a preacher. How can the victim of such excitement pre

pare himself properly for any of the numerous undertakings he has on hand? And now his sermons-the very things that made his character, and belonged to his character, are growing weaker and weaker every day; formerly there was care taken in the composition-study and practice were not neglected, and art was brought to bear, even though it was employed "celare artem;" but now there is no time for all this the man begins to draw upon his old funds-to repeat himself to fit old sermons to new texts or to act the improvisatore, when he formerly was a well prepared extempore preacher. Like a river expanded over too many channels, its shallowness is known by its bubbling. But it is in vain for any length of time to deceive the public; and smart sayingsstartling paradoxes, or bitter burning denunciations, will cease to satisfy, when it is found that there is nothing new-nothing instructive-nothing good that a person can profitably carry away from such an "enfant gaté" such a spoiled child of religious popularity. Ja

The man who desires to be lastingly useful in his preaching, must never forego the duty of arduous preparation→→ humbling prayer, and serious meditation, together with careful comparison of Scripture with Scripture, and consulting on the subject in hand, the pious and prudent and learned of other times; and then he may come before his audience as one well appointed and well prepared, bringing out of his treasures things old and new.

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SPIRIT OF PRAYER.

1 རྟ་་

PRAYER is not a smooth expression, or a well contrived form of words; not the product of a ready memory, or of a rich in vention exerting itself in the performance. These may draw a neat picture of it, but still the life is wanting. The motion of the heart God-wards, holy and divine affection, makes prayer real and lively, and acceptable to the living God, to whom it is presented; the pouring out of thy heart to him who made it, and therefore hears it, and understands what it speaks, and how it is moved and affected on calling on him. It is not the gilded paper and good writing of a petition, that prevails with a king, but the moving sense of it. And to that King who discerns the heart, heart-sense is the sense of all, and that which only he regards. He listens to hear what that speaks, and takes all as nothing where that is silent. All other excellence in prayer is but the outside and fashion of it; this is the life of it.-Leighton.

GOSPEL TRUTH THE LIFE OF TRUE RELIGION.

THE great importance of knowledge and receiving gospel truth is manifest from the undoubted fact, that whenever the fundamental and peculiar doctrines of the Gospel have been either withheld or opposed, the interests of vital piety and holy living have always, in a corresponding degree, declined. Not only does the Bible represent all departures from the faith, as evil, and, if they be essential, as destructive of Christian character and hope; but all ecclesiastical history serves at once to illustrate and confirm the melancholy representation. When we open the apostolical epistle to the churches of Corinth, Galatia, and the Hebrews, we shall find, by carefully attending to the strain of address, that many of the members of those churches had listened to the persuasions of false teachers, and had materially departed from " the faitli once delivered to the saints;" and that they had no less de-· generated in zeal and practical godliness. Some of the errors which they had embraced, are specifically stated; and the pictures given of their practical influence, are indeed melancholy! In the second and third centuries, when the ministers of religion began to swerve from the simple and genuine. doctrines of the gospel, the benign influence of their ministry, and all the most precious interests of vital piety, and of holy living began, in the very same proportion, to decline. When Augustine arose, toward the close of the fourth century, the doctrines of the gospel had been very imperfectly preached for nearly two hundred years. Of course, he found both orthodoxy and piety, at a very low ebb. He and his pious coadjutors, grieved at the degeneracy of the Church, consecrated their whole strength to the great cause of Gospel truth. They opposed, with unwearied zeal, the Pelagian and Semi-pelagian errors of the day; and did more to refute heresy, and to extend and establish sound doctrine, than had been done by any since the apostolic age. The consequence of this revival of orthodoxy, was the immediate revival of vital piety, and of gospel purity; the blessings of which, on a large part of the church, were precious and lasting. In several subsequent periods, whenever there was a revival of the knowledge and preaching of sound doctrine, good moral and practical godliness never failed to be revived in a corresponding degree. In the days of Godeschal; of Claudius of Turin; of the Waldenses; of Wickliffe; and of Huss and Jerome, it