see of St. Asaph has 119 livings, of the annual aggregate value of £32,654 8s. 1d. There are 43 livings belonging to the see of Bath and Wells of the aggregate value of £9,402. There are 23 attached to the see of Carlisle, within the diocese, ranging from £80 to £550 a-year, and 11 out of it ranging from £50 to £1,100 a-year. In the diocese of Chester there are 24 livings belonging to the bishop, of the value of £4,406 a-year, and 16 alternately with the Crown, of the value of £2,390 a-year; out of the diocese there are 20 livings belonging to the bishop, of the value of £3,949. The Bishop of Chichester possesses 30 livings within his own diocese, of the annual value of £9,760, and none out. The Bishop of St. David's has 131 livings within his own diocese, valued at £15,980 a-year, besides the right of alternate presentation to 3 of £470 value; he also has 1 living in another see, valued at £330 ayear. There are 33 livings, of the annual value of £15,955, attached to the see of Ely and within the see, but none out. There are 65 livings, valued at £13,991, belonging to the bishop within the see of Gloucester and Bristol, but none out. The Bishop of Lichfield has 52 livings within his diocese, of the value of £10,597, in addition to the alternate patronage of 27 of the value of £4,180, and 11 out of the diocese valued at £2,542. There are 65 livings, ranging from £48 to £705 ayear, belonging to the Bishop of Lincoln within his own diocese, and 2 out, valued at £103 and £273 respectively. The Bishop of Llandaff has the absolute patronage of 9 and the alternate patronage of 5 livings within his own diocese, valued respectively at £999 and £690, and 2 out of the diocese valued at £695. The Bishop of London has 80 livings within his diocese valued at £34,206 a-year, and 18 out of it valued at £5,482. The Bishop of Manchester enjoys, alternately with the Crown, the patronage of 33 livings, all of them valued at £150 or £130 a-year, besides the alternate patronage with the Bishop of Ripon of 15 livings situated in other dioceses, ranging from £46 to £200 a-year. After the present chapter of Southwell is extinguished, the bishop will have 21 other livings added to his list; but at present he enjoys the absolute presentation to only 3 livings. The Bishop of Norwich has 87 livings, of the value of £23,240, of which only 3 are situated in other dioceses. The Bishop of Oxford has within his own diocese 53 livings valued at £12,303, besides 3 alternate livings valued at £210, and 9 in other dioceses valued at £3,299. The Bishop of Ripon has 12 livings valued at £1,869, 23 alternate livings valued at £3.758, and 17 in other dioceses valued at £3.666. The Bishop of Rochester has 47 valued at £15,749, with the alternate patronage of 5 valued at £1,328, and 1 in another diocese valued at £300. The Bishop of Salisbury has 51 valued at £17,260. Bishop of Winchester has 58 valued at £23,777, besides the alternate patronage of 3 valued at £333, and 14 absolute and 5 alternate livings in other dioceses valued respectively at £6,591 and £650; and, lastly, the Bishop of Worcester has 48 livings valued at £18,341 a-year, besides 7 alternate valued at £1,182, and 26 out of the see valued at £8,359.

The

ECCLESIASTICAL STATISTICS OF

PRUSSIA.

IN the prospect of the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Berlin, it is interesting to look at the religious aspect of the kingdom. While true evangelism is but feeble, the Protestant principle is powerful. The official statistical department of Berlin has just published some very curious details on Prussia. In a religious point of view, the following particulars, which are not without importance in reference to the con. dition of the kingdom of God in the first Protestant state of the continent, are deserving of notice. Of a population of 17,202,831 persons, there are 10,534,750 Protestants; 6,418,312 Catholics; 1,380 Greek Catholics; 14,139 Baptists (Old Baptists); 234,241 Jews. The Protestants amount to sixty-one per cent. of the population, and the Catholics to thirty-seven per cent. The Jews are principally resident in ancient Poland; the Duchy of Posen alone contains 72,000 of them; and there are some small towns in which they form the third, and even the half, of the population.

Amongst the Dissenting communions are the Old Lutherans, who are the most numerous. They comprise 31,400 members, 59 pastors, and 137 places of worship. It is known that these Dissenting Lutherans, notwithstanding their exclusive sectarian spirit, are, for the most part, serious Christians, who have known what it is to suffer for their faith. It is quite otherwise with the free communities (the remnants of 1847), and with the congregations of German Catholics, who date from Rongé. Although the first proceed from Protestantism, and the last from Catholicism, all have gone over to complete infidelity. As to their worship, what they call edification (preaching) consists far more in the expressions of their hatred of Christianity. These two sects, taken together, are as numerous as the Old Lutherans. The Baptists have in Prussia 3,333 members, 16 ministers, and 50 chapels or places of worship. The Moravian Brethren also reckon about 3,000 members. Even the sect to which Irving has given his name, is represented in Prussia by 1,200 or 1,300 members, 21 pastors, and 27 churches. There are besides at Elberfeld, a numerous Dissenting Church, which adheres to the type of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands, and a small Free Church, holding evangelical principles.

STATISTICS OF BELGIAN CONVENTS.

ACCORDING to the official statistics, Belgium had, at the close of 1856, 962 convents, with a population of 14,853 monks and nuns. 150 of them were male convents with 2,523 monks, and 812 female convents with 12,330 nuns. In 1846 the number of monks and nuns amounted to 11,968, which shows an increase, since ten years, of 2,885. In Brussels, the number of convents has risen, since 1850, from 18 to 30, which are inhabited by 639 persons. Belgium shares with France the glory of being the most fertile ground for monastic institutions. It is no marvel if Belgium is rapidly being overrun with pauper

ism.

Do you ask me why I dare to say this? Do you ask me especially why I dare to say this when so many voices are ready to curse me for saying it, and when, from the supreme tribunal of our laws, it has just been announced that slavery is a national institution, guarded and sanctioned by the great charter of our national government? My answer is, I dare to say this, because God says it, as surely as this chapter in Isaiah is the word of God. I dare to say it, because slavery is wrong a wrong first, indeed, and chiefly to every slave, but affecting in its reach and its reaction all the interests of the commonwealth-a gross and outright violation of that justice for which alone society exists. Slavery is wrong-essentially and only wrong; and no statute, no custom or tradition, no decree, no compromise, no constitution, can make it otherwise than wrong. There needs no other reason why slavery should be abolished and forbidden by the sovereign power of the people everywhere.

Do you ask me how I know it to be wrong? Then hear me. I know it to be wrong just in the same way in which you know it to be wrong. It violates every instinctive sentiment of justice. You can give no true statement of what it is-true to the facts as you know them-true to the theory of the laws by which it is ordained and guarded-without making the hideous wrong palpable to your own moral sense. Would you like to be seized by the law and sold into slavery? Would that be just? You have property, the accumulation of your intelligent and laborious industry. Would it be just if the law should make you incapable of owning even the garments that cover your nakedness, in any other sense than that in which a horse may own a blanket? You have a wife. Would it be anything else than a most atrocious wrong, if the law should make your wife the absolute property of another man? You have a daughter in her young bloom and joyousness. What judgment would your moral sense pronounce upon the law, if it

should tear her from your parental love, and make her the helpless prey of whatever rich man would pay the most for the ownership of her beauty? There sits at the corner of your table a little boy, a paragon in your partial judgment, bright, playful, brave, and gentle; whose presence is added sunshine in your home; whose merry laugh is the joy of the whole household; whose growing intelligence is your pride and your hope for the coming years when you shall begin to be old; and whose death, if he should die, would pierce your heart with wounds which time could never heal. What words could you find to express your horror at the injustice of a law by which that child of yours could be taken from you and your home, and made a slave? And if all this, in your case, or in the case of your wife, or of your daughter, or of your little child, would be nothing less than a hideous wrong-a wrong that might well move heaven to wrath and hell itself to pity -would the injustice be any less atrocious-the wrong any less horrible-if another man instead of you, and his wife, and daughter, and little child, instead of yours, were the immediate sufferers? Do you say that the enslaved classes in this country are trained to bear these things, and do not suffer under them as you would suffer? But what of that? Think what of that! Just make that case your own. If you had been subjected from your birth to a training which had extinguished your human sensibilities, and had brutalized your nature for the very sake of owning you and treating you as a brute incapable of human rights, would not that have been the most fiendish injustice of all, a far greater crime in reality than if you had been murdered in your infancy, as Herod murdered the little ones of Bethlehem?

SLAVERY ACCORDING TO SOUTHERN STATUTE LAWS. THE law of South Carolina defines it thus: "Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, and reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels

personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatever."

The law of Louisiana defines:

A slave is one who is in the power of his master, to whom he belongs; the master may sell him-dispose of his industry and his labour; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master."

This is slavery as seen in the law which regulates the system. What it is as seen in its practical results, will be best understood by the following description from the pen of Dr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky:

DR. BRECKINRIDGE ON SLAVERY.

"What then is slavery? for the question relates to the action of certain principles on it, and to its probable and proper results;-what is slavery as it exists among us? We reply, it is that condition, enforced by the laws of one-half of the states of this confederacy, in which one portion of the community, called masters, is allowed such power over another portion called slaves-as,

"1. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labour, except only so much as is necessary to continue labour itself, by continuing healthful existence, thus committing CLEAR ROBBERY.

"2. To reduce them to the necessity of UNIVERSAL CONCUBINAGE, by denying to them the civil rights of marriagethus breaking up the dearest relations of life, and encouraging UNIVERSAL PROSTITUTION.

"3. To deprive them of the means and opportunities of moral and intellectual culture, in many states making it a high penal offence to teach them to read; thus perpetuating whatever of evil there is that proceeds from ignorance.

"4. To set up between parents and their

children an authority higher than the impulse of nature and the law of God; which breaks up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and at pleasure separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child; thus abrogating the clearest laws of nature; thus outraging all decency and justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of human beings, created like themselves in the image of the most high God! This is slavery as it is daily exhibited in every slave state."

ANTI-SLAVERY.

THE strong opposition to slavery that exists in the hearts of the ministers of Massachusetts was manifested in various ways, though always in the regular course of business. For instance, a resolve was passed unanimously in approval of the anti-slavery position of the American Home Missionary Society, and another introduced from the Business Committee, commending the Tract Society for its recent action in relation to the same subject. Contrasting the present with the past, one can scarcely help exclaiming, "What hath God wrought!" The subject, which was once excluded from the meetings, or tolerated with undisguised dislike, now mingles with everything, and meets with almost universal favour. The ministry is set free from the embarrassments which prevented them, in former years, from giving full expression to the scriptural doctrine against oppression; but a great work has still to be done, in training up a generation who will carry out the spirit of the Gospel towards those who are in bonds, and those who in poverty and ignorance seek a home on our shores, and toward the miserable outcasts of society. These are tokens for good. There is, beyond doubt, among the American churches, no lack of either truth or righteousness.

We

are to refer to influences which come into operation rather amidst ease than peril, flattery than reproach-influences which powerfully tend to selfdeception, and which in many professors well nigh choke the word and render it unfruitful. We speak of Christian profession as it exists in circumstances like our own. There will he special dangers belonging to other

classes of society, and to persons who have more or fewer advantages than ours; and when we name modern Christian profession, we do not mean to say that the dangers to be particularized are all of recent origination. It is not to-day that for the first time the kingdom of God has had to struggle against "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." But though we have the same treasure to guard, and the same adversaries to resist, as our forefathers, it may not be on the same side or beneath the same guise that the foe may attack us.

We cannot, of course, pretend to say all that such a subject might suggest. Spiritual perils that appear only too palpable to one person will be entirely overlooked by another. Better, however, that we should leave unnoticed some of these dangers than perform the part of alarmists, or give way to a censorious spirit. Very easy is it, and not uncommon, to make the heart of God's people sad, whom he has not made sad. Indeed, the most obvious fault of some professors consists in having an eye only for what they deem to be degeneracy and unfaithfulness. They are ever commending the past at the expense of the present. They look on the professing church, not with the charity that "thinketh no evil," but with the distrust which cannot recognize anything good.

One other prefatory observation. This is not a subject to be treated ambitiously. The watchman who sounds an alarm is not to be concerned about the musical character of his notes. Novelty of idea and ornaments of style are of little importance here. We should aim at diminishing the dangers we have to particularize; and if this effort be successful, the result will be an increase of watchfulness and prayer.

I. There is danger from the manner in which a religious profession is too often taken up. We fear it is taken up hastily, and even lightly. In the biographies of eminent Christians we read much of deep humiliation, of terror approaching despair, of a real agonizing to enter in at the strait gate, of frequent searchings of heart, of trembling joy rising at length to rapture, of hope, faint as the dawn at first, growing afterwards into strong assur ance. Such persons really felt their need of a hiding-place. They were ready to stop the common wayfarer with the question, "What must we do?" There was a sense of the justice which threatened; a fear of the power that could consume. One word -"lost"-could alone describe their conscious state; and each of them, if not lost eternally, was willing to be regarded as a brand which sovereign grace had plucked out of the fire. Have you not sometimes looked around and asked, Who has such feelings now? Have you not contrasted this kind of experience with those transient and superficial emotions

which are very commonly treated as forming the process of conversion? We do not deny that where there has been a religious education, and a life decorous and moral, the work of conversion may be very gradual. There may be more of hope than terror. There may be a bowing to what is right, rather than a fleeing from what is terrible. It may be as the gentle yielding of love to love, rather than the convulsive struggle of fear to get within the refuge. Let these indications be followed by the steady consistency which often marks persons religiously educated, and we are content. So, again, we acknowledge that there is often a superstitious idea of the responsibility attached to communicating at the Lord's table, as if the doing of this "unworthily never forgiven. Nor do we forget that some conscientious persons, because of the absence of those deep convictions of which we have spoken, refuse the comfort of the Gospel, although there is good evidence of their being alive unto God. They think it not enough to be in the hiding-place, unless they have entered it with all the agitation of the man-slayer, closely pursued by the Avenger of blood.

were

But still we fear that cases may be found where persons become persuaded of their safety, not on the ground of the present exercise of faith, but on the ground of some very moderate concern they once felt about eternal things. That concern barely led to some few acts of secret prayer. It was attended with some few tears, or some faint joys under the word; and when they have told you of these superficial indications, they have given all the reason they can for "the hope that is in them." Yea, it sometimes appears as if the commencement of a profession were very largely an imitative thing. The immediate impulse is some excited human sympathy, well enough if it be overruled for good, but poor indeed if it stand for the chief element of our religion. Who can look around and not see a kind of spiritual verdure, which suggests the fear that there is "no depth of earth," and the foreboding of a sad result when the sun shall have "risen with a burning heat? A religious profession is in this and various other ways taken up lightly. Hence many are not long before they ask, What good shall this