* * * There is no homogeneousness, and no possibility of sustaining the ministry of a particular order in the midst of prejudice or carelessness. Thousands and tens of thousands of families are thus circumstanced; and so long as millions of acres of cheap governmentlands tempt the hardy pioneer to a western home, such must be the condition of multitudes of our fellow countrymen.

But shall these scattered families be left to grow up in ignorance of the great salvation, or degenerate into barbarism, because the favorite method of Gospel instruction cannot convey its blessings to them?"-Page 7, Am. Col. Sys.

On page 12 of the pamphlet already referred to, after a soulstirring recital of the religious destitution of some portions of our country, among which is the fact, "that a district of country one hundred miles in breadth and five hundred miles in length, containing half a million of souls, has not a single educated preacher so far as is known; and that half of this population seldom if ever hear a sermon of any kind, and enjoy almost no other religious privileges," we find this inquiry: "Is there not a vast neglected field to be occupied for a season by the Colporteur, with his oral and printed messages, if occupied at all?"

In each of the passages here extracted, it is plain that the results of the system, if it produce any, must be independent of the labors of the stated ministry; for the destitution of the stated ministry, is urged, not as an argument for raising up and sustaining ministers, but for helping forward Colportage to take their place and do their work. Equally evident is it, that the results of this system are anticipated independently of the means of education.

"In this view the accumulation of means of instruction in a few favored states, to the neglect of the million, is sheer folly and madness; and the effects of this policy have led an ultra royalist historian of England, and an ultra democratic reviewer in America, to sneer at the idea of a people attempting to govern themselves, and to pronounce our government in this respect a failure. That such must be the issue with such a mass of ignorance as is indicated by our last census, (700,000 white persons over the age of twenty who cannot read,) and with the accumulation of foreign immigrants, and the increasing power of Rome, we have reason to fear, unless speedy and well adapted means are employed to carry light to the hitherto neglected classes. Primary schools must be every where established; colleges, academies, and seminaries of learning, must pour out knowledge; ministers must be multiplied; but all these require time-too much time, we fear, to be seasonable; and even if they were in operation, it would by no means supersede the necessity and desirableness of an agency that is truly republican-going as the Colporteur does,

to all the people, and first of all to those to whom no one else goes, with the means of light and salvation. If we would ignite a mass of anthracite, we must place the kindling at the bottom: if we would kindle the fire of knowledge and piety, we must commence at the lowest point of social being."-Page 8, Am. Col. Sys.

True, if you would ignite a mass of anthracite, you must place the kindling at the bottom. But does it hence follow, that if you would elevate and enlighten "700,000 white persons over the age of twenty who cannot read," you must begin by selling them books? So it seems; and that because it will take too much time to establish schools and teach them to read: you must therefore take a shorter road, send them an agent to sell them good books, and if they cannot or will not buy, why let him give them gratuitously.

Now we feel constrained to say, that this reasoning is to our minds utterly fallacious, and the expectations of happy results founded upon it, quite unreasonable and extravagant. What is this "emergency" for which we are called to provide? It is that of a mighty confederacy of nations rising up with a rapidity. unparalleled in all the former history of colonization, composed of all the heterogeneous elements which can be drawn together from both hemispheres by the dread of despotism and the love of freedom, by the fear of starvation and the reasonable prospect of plenty and even affluence. From almost every portion of Christendom you here find the agriculturist in search of rich and cheap land-the mechanic, of high wages and plenty of work-the capitalist, of high interest or a profitable speculation -the lawyer, of clients-the physician, of patients—and the political aspirant, of rapid advancement to place and power. Here are the ministers of every religious creed in Christendom, not only seeking but actually finding disciples, and anticipating a harvest each for his own favorite system, as abundant as our virgin soil yields to the labors of the husbandman. Society of course we have none, but only the fermenting, effervescing materials of which it is to be composed. Those firm and compact masses of human beings, which we call societies, are not formed by the mere juxtaposition of individuals: whoever analyzes them will always find them crystalline in their structure, and that they are the result of the mutual action of heterogeneous elements. Such an experiment in moral chemistry is now going on in the newly settled portions of our country, on a scale the most magnificent ever witnessed by man. Incipient

religious organizations we have without number; but they are all intimately mingled in the effervescing mass, and it would defy the keenest sagacity to discover, in reference to each or any one of them, whether it is to be the nucleus of crystallization, or itself to yield, refractory as it may be, to the power of the solvent in which it is immersed, and to contribute its elements to those new and possibly better forms of society, which perchance are yet to be. Convictions of the importance of education we have; but systems of education we either have none at all, or else, for the want of homogeneity of prejudice or sentiment, those which we have are left, like many an architectural structure which meets the eye of the traveller, to decay in the weather without roof or clapboards. We have public funds amply sufficient to provide for the education of the whole people, at a trifling cost to the individual; and yet, for the want of wisdom and unity in our plans and efforts, those funds are producing little benefit to any, and children are growing up by tens of thousands without being able to read or write their mother tongue. And yet, to such a people is committed the sacred trust of republican liberty-the solemn legacy bequeathed to us by our fathers of the Revolution! On such a people is thrown the solemn responsibility of self-government. By the hardy pioneers of society in these critical and trying circumstances, are to be erected those social structures, beneath which a people, more numerous than the present swarming millions of Europe, are, at no distant day, to have their birth and exert their influence on the destiny of the great human family, and pass their own probation for eternity.

Such then is a mere glance at the emergency, especially as it presents itself in the new States of the West. And how is such an emergency to be met? First let us say that as we approach this question we seem to hear a voice saying to us, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy." There is something majestic and awful in these stately footsteps of Divine Providence. Here are grand movements of God, mighty moral causes, which, like the great laws of nature, man may yield to and obey, and by obeying find them subservient to his own moral and spiritual welfare; but which he cannot resist or control. And as in the natural so in the moral world; would we co-operate with God we must diligently and solemnly study the laws of action which he has prescribed. This is no time and no place for superficial views

of society-patent medicines for its diseases-the day dreams of perpetual motion to accomplish its moral results, or a bustling activity unguided by any wise discernment of the work we have to accomplish. Of these we have had enough, and more than enough, in the past history of benevolent effort for the West. Let the scattered fragments and bleaching skeletons of abortive schemes and abandoned enterprises of benevolence, admonish us to proceed with caution, and patiently examine the bearing of all those great moral causes which, originating in the providence of God, are beyond mortal control, and are yet bearing forward American, and especially Western society, toward some point which is perhaps distinctly laid down on the chart of no moral geographer. Let us so study the laws of moral climate, that we may not commit the folly of sowing in harvest with the vain hope of reaping at the dead of winter. Such laws there are great designs which God has in view in the mighty movements of his providence, in reference to our country: we must approach them with reverence, and study them with candor and prayer.

What then is the system of effort which will meet such an emergency as we have described, and such as every intelligent man knows exists at the West? Can we flatter ourselves that Colportage can meet it, without deceiving ourselves and our readers? Western society is without religious organization. Can Colportage organize it, or be a substitute for such organization? It is deplorably destitute of an enlightened Christian ministry. Can Colportage provide such a ministry, or supply its place in its absence? It is destitute of schools and colleges. Can Colportage establish those schools and found those colleges, or produce a desirable state of society without them? Can the great emergency be in any sense met, while we are still deplorably destitute of all these great foundation-stones and main pillars of the social fabric? Is it right then in any sense to represent Colportage as peculiarly adapted to meet the present emergency ? Is it not obvious that in no sense can it meet it? It can only be of any value as an humble auxiliary in the hands of a much more efficient agency. That agency is the organized Church with the regular ministry.

But we prefer to take a still broader view of the subject. Is it not obvious that no amount of the mere circulation of books, or the itinerant labors of men who form no part of the framework of society itself, can materially modify the character and

destiny of such a people as we have been describing? First, look at the probable influence of the books themselves. Seven hundred thousand white adults cannot read them. But this is but a small part of the difficulty. Of all those who, when asked if they can read, will answer in the affirmative, how few do read; or, if they read at all, read any thing more than a village newspaper? Probably there is not on the face of the earth, a people so intelligent as those of the Western States who read so little. If any one doubts this assertion, let him ask the booksellers of any of the Western cities, the state of the trade, and he will obtain an answer which will dissipate his doubts. The active, busy, migratory habits of Western people, the fewness and badness of their schools, and the universal prevalence of public speaking, or what may be called stump-oratory, as the chief means of affecting public opinion on all questions, whether secular or religious, are causes which have conspired to place Western character mainly under other influences than those of books. A Western audience will not listen to you while you read to them your own thoughts, much less will they be at the trouble of reading them themselves.

Nor is the scarcity of books the chief reason why Western people read so little. On the contrary, the fact that they read so little is the reason why they have so few books. You may find Lowell domestics, Havana coffee, and New Orleans sugar, in almost every cabin in the West; and if we were a reading people, we should find it equally easy for us to gratify our taste for books. Does then this feature of Western society point out the circulation of books as the readiest and most available mode of reaching Western mind, and forming Western religious character? We think not: we are sure that any expectations which may be entertained of a general movement in such a community, effected mainly by books, will prove utterly fallacious.

He who should infer from the views just presented that the population of our Western States are a stupid people, without ideas and without mental activity, would greatly err in his conclusions. The mental activity of the West is intense. In no part of our country are questions of trade, politics, and religion, more universally discussed, or with a more intense mental activity than at the West. Nowhere is eloquence more highly appreciated, or more sure to attract crowds of eager listeners. The popular declaimer on the currency or the tariff, on the