when discovered by Columbus. It is near to all the world and all the world is accessible to it. Regarded as the home of hope and freedom, furnishing ample room in which stifled millions may breathe and live, immigration has set in like the tides of the sea. The immigrant, finding his most sanguine hopes surpassed, has reported to those behind what he has seen and accomplished. Millions on the Rhine have heard of it. France and Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland, Italy and Hungary, Poland and Sweden, have all experienced that electric sympathy which has re-acted from the log-cabins which their emigrant population have reared in the new settlements of the New World. Not by diplomacy, not by fleets and armies has America been aiding in the struggles for civil and religious liberty in the Old World; but it is by the light of her success, and by the living sympathies of her immigrant population. These last are not beyond talking distance with their old homes. St. Louis is within ear-shot of Hamburg. The wires touch between New-York and Berlin. The Hungarian chief, exiled in disappointed hope to the prairies of Iowa, will not cease to act for his native land. Deep will answer unto deep, and the thrones of despotism will tremble yet at the noise of God's waterspouts. Behold here another illustration of the principle alluded to in the earlier portions of this article. We cannot judge of events by their first appearance. Look at the Puritans of England, when suffering under the Fivemile Act of King Charles, and you might esteem them the objects of Divine displeasure. But the world was not to come to an end until God had most gloriously vindicated his justice in the ultimate honor and prosperity of those who, for a time, were called to the endurance of suffering and hardship. These institutions which are now stretching away to the setting sun; these blessings which brighten and enlarge around us, are but a part of those results which Providence has connected with the fortitude and fidelity of the noble men who, ages ago, willingly suffered in testimony of truth. The extent of our territory, and the growth of our institutions, can surprise none more than ourselves. We do not wonder that the custom-house officers at Leghorn were so sorely embarrassed a short time since, when the master of an American vessel presented his ship-papers, made out at Cincinnati, a port some two thousand miles up the Mississippi, and on one of its branches. The incident astonishes ourselves. One cannot but be amused in reading a book on America, by an English, French, or German traveller, even though he aims at great

accuracy; for before he can get home and pass his volume through the press, his statistics are all obsolete. A single jar changes the whole kaleidoscope. The second census of the United States was taken in 1800, and shows a population of 5,305,482. The present population is 22,000,000. The number of States then existing was sixteen,-Tennessee, the sixteenth, having been admitted to the Union in the year 1796. The number of the family is nearly reduplicated since then. Ohio became a State in 1802. From that time how rapidly have these sister communities been falling into their places,Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, Texas, California, with such a long perspective of others as falsifies the last year's geography. When an adventurer fifty years ago removed or travelled to the West, he was understood to refer to the Valley of the Mohawk, that little stream which meanders through our home garden. The axe had but just begun its work, where now stand the populous cities of Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, and Cincinnati. The Indian was the sole denizen of our more western territory. Already the feet of our children are on the shores of the Pacific! A nation has been born in a day; a populous State, inhabited by the young, the enterprising, the bold and energetic, looks out from the "Golden Gate" upon the astonished East; and this from a territory which four years ago was known by name to very few in the Republic, itself the abode of semi-civilized

vagrants.

But the greatest of changes have been moral. The moral condition of the country, at the beginning of the century, was alarming. The effect of the Revolutionary War had been most disastrous on the morals of the country. The young soldier had learned in the camp to scoff at religion. Church edifices in city and country had been converted into barracks. Voltaire had said long before, "Put together all the vices of ages, and they will not come up to the mischiefs and enormities of a single campaign." Added to these common effects of war, French infidelity had been imported and the virus had spread universally. Most of the leading men of the country, politicians, editors, lawyers, were imbued with infidelity. The deistical writings of Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine hád acquired an immense popularity, all the greater from the memory of Ticonderoga, with which the former, and the political treatise of "Common Sense," with which the name of the latter was associated. Consult the Theology of President Dwight, and you are struck with the evidence of the fact

that, throughout his whole system, that able divine was battling against an educated infidelity, at that time in possession of the prominent places of influence in our country. The scale is now turned. The sentiment of the nation is decidedly in favor of Christianity. The secular press, to a great extent, recognizes and honors it. The old falsehood that infidelity is necessarily associated with freedom and progress is here abjured. That notion was imported from the French metropolis, from resistance to the Papal Church, that enemy of freedom; it does not apply here in the presence of a Protestant Church, which every day proves herself more and more the patron and ally of true liberty; so it has died out. Christianity has her ablest advocates in all departments of intellectual and physical science, her firmest believers among the intelligent friends of popular progress. Statesmen and merchants, men of thought and men of action, have gradually been working their way to the conviction that the Christian religion is the best aid and promoter of secular improvement, and whatever is done to give to its institutions a broader basis is a sure pledge of all national prosperity. By means of systematic efforts, the religious character of the several new States, as they have emerged into existence, has been decided in the right direction. It has been decided for Western New-York, for Ohio, for Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and we believe it will be for all that shall follow.

Facilities for education have increased with our population. It describes the character of the first settlers of the country, that at so early a period they were careful to establish schools and colleges. The prominent men in each band of colonists had themselves been educated at the Universities of the Old World, and knew the value of scholarship. Harvard University, William and Mary in Virginia, and Yale College, were founded in the seventeenth century. Nassau Hall, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Dickinson, Charleston, University of Georgia, Vermont University, Chapel Hill, Williams, Bowdoin, Greenville, and Union, were established in the order now mentioned, during the progress of the eighteenth cetnury. The census of 1840 reports one hundred and seventy-three colleges; but as this includes professional schools, and many other institutions improperly called colleges, the number should be very much abridged. This is not the place to discuss the question whether colleges may not be multiplied to an excess, and whether it is not better that we should enlarge the endowments of a few central

Universities, to be really what they import, rather than augment institutions with the mere name of colleges, without the necessary apparatus and arrangements for instruction. The older institutions are the most frequented. Colleges, so called, have sometimes been established from very unworthy motives to advance a land speculation, to foster an ecclesiastical prejudice or promote a private ambition. With all these abatements, the zeal which has been displayed in multiplying the means of education, is a happy omen for the future. The protection and the ornaments of a Republic are intelligent minds and virtuous hearts.

The history of theological education in this country presents a topic too copious and too important to receive full justice at the close of an article. Happily for all concerned, it has been decided that the clergy of every denomination of our land should be thoroughly educated. The Theological Seminary at Andover was endowed in 1808. Immense has been the influence of that one institution in the education of the Christian ministry. The number of similar seminaries has rapidly increased; and the demands made of those who are trained as preachers have risen in proportion. It is no more regarded as an adequate qualification for ordination to have read this or that system of theology made up at second hand. A thorough knowledge of the original languages must be considered as indispensable. Theology is a science. Hermeneutics, Ecclesiastical History, Mental and Moral Philosophy, are each advancing their claims in the proper education of a Protestant theologian. The handsome compliment paid by Dr. Arnold in a letter to Archbishop Whately to the scholarly accomplishments of American missionaries, is testimony of a high order concerning the standard of theological training adopted in this country. The idea of theological education, after the curriculum of the academy and college, as represented in the best Theological Seminaries of the United States, finds no counterpart in the Established or Dissenting Church of England.

But we forbear. All the agencies for good which have been mentioned are yet in their infancy. Their power will be reduplicated in time to come. Progress for the future, under these organized and providential instrumentalities, must be vastly accelerated. It is the certainty of yet greater advancement which gives to our times the brightest aspect. What recoils and reactions may be thrown into intermediate history, we cannot predict. That such things should occur in our career accords with the general course of Divine 3

VOL. XVII.-NO. LXIII.

procedure. It may be that by some unlooked-for shock and jolt, God will convince us and the world of the vast evil of slavery. This is a mystery which our short-sighted vision cannot penetrate. But episodes stop not the drama, nor eddies the current of the stream. The course of the world and of the church is onward and onward still. It will be for our children and our children's children to see the accomplishment of God's wonders in the earth, surpassing our most sanguine hopes. The boy, whose eye glances over these pages, who, fifty years hence, shall review the events. of the whole century, will rehearse greater things than have now passed under our notice. On the 12th of October, 1755, John Adams, writing to a friend, records the remarkable prediction-remarkable the whole letter must be called, as proceeding from a young man not yet quite twenty-that "our people, according to the exactest computations, will in another century become more numerous than England itself.” Five years from this-the time assigned-the prediction will be realized. Fifty years from this, the city of New-York will contain a population of two millions of souls. A hundred millions of people will occupy the soil of our extended territory. Remote deserts unknown to us in the solitudes of the West will ⚫ be smiling under the culture of happy freemen. Flocks of sheep and herds of cattle will supplant the elk and the buffalo. Natural obstacles to intercourse will be removed; the Rocky Mountains will be tunnelled, and the two oceans will meet together. The banks of our rivers and the shores of our lakes will shine with opulent cities; commerce will whiten our waters; agriculture cover a continent with wheat and corn, and places now unknown to civilized man will resound with all the hum and stir of busy life. The school-house and the church, those engines and hopes of freemen, will be reared fast as the forest drops before the march of enterprise. The churches which we are now planting on our frontier, will then be strong and able to reproduce and return the benefits they have received farther and farther onward, and the missionary labors commenced in this generation, in the heart of Paganism, will develop we know not what results.

Our thoughts run forward to greet the men who shall stand in our pulpits to preach the gospel of Christ on the first Sabbath of the next century. We welcome them ere yet they may be born to the unspeakable privilege of living in such an epoch of time. We who write and read, now in adult life, will take no part on the earth in the worship of