feel often more inclined to consider it as arising from the hard hand of man in opposition to the evident pointing of the finger of God to the extension of his kingdom, and as proving sadly that the Church is not sufficiently impressed with the obligation which lies on her in this department of her work. We fear the Church is not fully awake to the magnitude and importance of any of her great schemes; but we do think that the Colonial Scheme suffers more than some others from this prevalent indifference. And yet we know not any scheme in which, for the means expended, there is a greater amount of needful and important work done, or in which the means expended secures the adoption of so vast an increase of contribution to the general evangelisation of the world. Take it even in point of money. In most of our efforts to do good we look for no return in money; we think the money spent to the highest good when any spiritual good is the result of its outlay. And so it is-but in this field, money so laid out produces large additions for the same purpose. For every £5000 which is thus applied, not less than £20,000 will be poured into the Christian treasury in one shape or other. One colonial congregation that under the charge of the Rev. John M'Kail, Calcutta-has itself raised, for all purposes, since 1845, £28,000, almost as much as the whole income of the Colonial Scheme during that period; and several others in similar proportions, though not to so great an extent. Take it in direct fruits. In other missions we are thankful to count our fruits by ones and twos.' In this scheme we ordinarily count our fruits by whole churches added to the number of those who profess the faith of Christ, and seek the extension of his kingdom-which churches, as in the case of Canada and Australia, may, by the blessing of God, quadruple themselves in the course of a very few years. Take it in influence. Let our colonists be left in ignorance and darkness, and in every one of them will the heathen find an argument against the faith which he professes, and the teaching which the Christian missionary would address to him. But let our colonists be Christians, and every one of them will be himself a living missionary, and a strength and support of unspeakable value to the Christian missionary; and the gospel would thus be sounded out from the whole line of British colonies which gird the world, and everywhere come into contact with the deepest masses of darkened heathenism. Finally, take it in its final prospects. We are yet in the infancy of colonization. These lands which now reckon their units only, will soon reckon their hundreds; the cities which now reckon their hundreds, will, like others, speedily count their crowding thousands; and the scattered thousands of Britain, for whom we now plead, will soon spring up into independent nations. It is the infancy of their being that God hath given to us, and if we bring them up in the way in which they should go, they will surely be less likely to depart from it. Oh! if it is felt to be so important to train individuals, how much more to train whole nations! If so much is justly spent on the education of individual families, what should we be willing to lay out on those who are the future heirs of the world, the fathers and mothers of future nations! In a word, if we are to be bound as a Christian church, by what binds us as Christian men-if we are to be guided in laying out our talents, not by the abstract greatness of treasure to be sought, but by the probable prospect of our getting possession of it-if a Christian church is bound to lay out its talents where there is the greatest prospect of a return in the extension of the kingdom--then has the colonial field very peculiar claims on all who take an interest in the evangelisation of the world-claims which, if rightly responded to, will do more to procure the means, and produce the influence, by which the world is to be converted, than anything else can do.

"We know well that many things are suggested to take off the edge of such considerations. We know that, for instance, it is said that the colonists go willingly from ordinances, and, like Lot, prefer the pleasant valleys of this world to the sterner plains where Abraham is content to stay and worship God. But this is not true of multitudes whom nothing but stern necessity has forced from their beloved homes. Even of those of whom it is true, it is just the way in providence that the will of God is fulfilled, and the earth is replenished; and we ought to be thankful, that when they are thus fulfilling the will of God, and filling the earth, they may also become the instruments of spreading wider, and preserving later, the glorious gospel which would otherwise have been unknown. It is also said, that the colonists are better able to do for themselves than we are to assist them. Certainly they are not so at first; and yet it is at first that they take their religious place and direction. Certainly they are not so even after the means of subsistence is secured, for they are, even then, so far scattered, that they cannot conveniently gather a number of one mind, to make a congregation able to support a minister. Finally, it is said, that the colonists should do more for themselves, and that our help tends to cherish that leaning on the mother country which is the great evil of all

colonies, both in temporal and spiritual matters. Now we allow at once, that the colonists might do more for themselves; but then we think we are taking the very best way to make them do for themselves, when we are keeping them in remembrance of Divine things, amidst the first struggles of their colonial existence. Nay, more,-we think we have in a marvellously short time helped many of them to do wonderful things for themselves. Let any one look to the map of Canada, given in the Record let him see there a country studded with churches and with stations. Let him remember that in the year 1844 there were but twenty-three such in the whole region. Let him examine the returns of these congregations, and find most of them collecting for three or four missionary objects, besides supporting ordinances among themselves. Let him glance a little into the accounts, and find one church of eighty members, raising in one year, nearly £1000; another, of two hundred and twenty members, raising upwards of £400; another, £700, &c. Let it be remembered, that these churches are yet in their infancy, and struggling with many difficulties, and then say if the colonies are not doing something for themselves; nay, whether, if we had spent our whole Colonial fund on Canada, would we not have had a noble return for it all?

"And if at all times the colonies had claims upon us which such objections should not for a moment turn our thoughts from, surely these claims are stronger at the stage to which we have come in this world's history than they ever were before. The ends of the earth are now brought together, and the sea is more and more a subdued highway for the nations of the earth. Even before this last year, and betwixt that and 1825, nearly three millions of our people had left these shores for other lands. The average number every year, for the same time, has amounted to 107,408, and has risen from 14,800, which it was in 1825, to 333,979, which was the number last year. This year that number is greatly increased; whole districts of Ireland are melting away, so that it is more like an exodus than an emigration. A similar spirit begins to discover itself in the distant parts of our own Highlands, and in the Western Islands. The ordinary number of emigrants cannot be much less than doubled this year. Every port has ships for the colonies, and every ship is full, while thousands more than can be taken, offer themselves to government for emigration. In such a state of things, doubtless, the number of emigrants will rapidly increase. Here, we are crowded, and hungry, and hard bestead-there, there is enough and to spare. On every square mile of arable surface in Britain, there are crowded four hundred human beings; on every square mile of Australia there are as yet not three, in Southern Africa not two, and in Canada not above six. There has been during many years from seven to eight millions annually spent on supporting paupers in the United Kingdom. A quarter of this money would take them to any colony, and then, at the expense of another year's maintenance, they would become producers, instead of mere consumers. These things must, sooner or later, lead to the opening of new facilities for the removal of multitudes to countries which seem waiting to receive them, and reserved, in the providence of God, for their nourishment, when those ancient and worn lands should have become too strait for them.

Surely, then, this is not the time to slacken from our work in the colonial field. Surely sin will be at our door if, through neglect, those our brethren go not only into heathen lands, but sink into heathen darkness. Surely posterity will rise up and frown on us, if we, having the gospel, seek not to send it with them to their new abodes. Surely distant lands and future nations will arise and bless us, if we, faithful to their best and most enduring interests, seek to send with our children the best blessing which either they or we can have the pure Word of God, and the glorious gospel of salvation. Nay, surely such blessings will return again into our own bosoms; for the administration of this service not only supplieth the wants of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God. We would not give an undue place to anything and, doubtless, many causes have combined to produce that comparatively low state of religion which we deplore; but we submit, whether one of these causes may not well be considered to be our great care for ourselves and our small care of others, and whether it would not be a hopeful and healthful symptom for this Church to be more deeply impressed with the spiritual wants of her dispersed children, and more deeply anxious to share with them in what blessings the Lord hath bestowed on us. 'If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon-day. Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall

build the old waste places. and thou shalt be called, The in.'"

Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations;
Repairer of the breach, and The Restorer of paths to dwell

Mr IRVING of Falkirk added his testimony, as a member of the deputation to the Evangelical Church of France, to the amount of work in which that Church was engaged. Their whole proceedings almost were of a missionary character, every congregation serving as a nucleus to send forth labourers, lay and clerical, to the surrounding territory. It was painful to hear that all that had been contributed to their funds by the Free Church did not amount to £400, while, since the last meeting of the French Synod in 1850, the United Presbyterian body gave them £1000. (Hear, hear.) He could only assure their brethren that this arose from no want of interest on the part of the Free Church, but from the multifarious demands on their means. He trusted, however, that this year an effort would be made for the promotion of the work of God on the Continent, and especially for the aid of the Evangelical Church of France. Switzerland, Sardinia, Belgium, and France, were still open to evangelical efforts, though how long this might continue, God only knew. At present public worship was free in France, but its continuance depended on the caprice of a despot, under influence totally opposed to the truth of God. Mr Irving concluded by urging the necessity of looking with deep interest on evangelical efforts in France, and moved the adoption of the report.

With

Mr NIXON of Montrose seconded the adoption of the report. regard to the colonies, he was afraid they were not realizing sufficiently the importance of occupying the colonies with their ministers. (Hear.) No one could look abroad without seeing that they were on the eve of having the whole world closed against them except their own colonies, and that they were likely to have no other means of spreading the gospel everywhere than through the colonies. And, were there no other reason than this, it must be evident to all men that there was a pressing importance of doing more than they had been doing of late in the colonies. One object of this Scheme was to countenance and encourage those congregations in the colonies that became self-sustaining, so as to want nothing from the mother Church but council and advice, which was, nevertheless, often of the utmost importance to enable them to constitute themselves into congregations, and assume from the outset a healthful character. The next class was those congregations formed by the encouragement and fostering of an existing nucleus, which in a few years gathered sufficient adherents to become self-sustaining. There were others that must depend for a longer period on foreign assistance; but the two former classes, if well encouraged, would speedily not only prove sufficient to sustain themselves, but give the necessary support to the class to which he had referred; so that, by comparatively little help on the part of this Church, the time might not be far distant when they would find their churches, as a whole, sustaining themselves, and even extending their efforts beyond their own bounds. One thing was clear, if the Church did not occupy these fields, Antichrist would occupy them. (Hear, hear.)

Mr LEWIS of Leith said, he rose to bear his testimony to the beneficial operations of the Colonial Scheme, having personally witnessed these in some of its foreign fields of labour. He entirely responded to the sentiments of the Convener, that there had been a growing tendency in the Church to undervalue the Colonial Scheme, and assign to it a subordinate place, from the impression that our thriving and prosperous children in the colonies were more able to maintain religious ordinances for themselves than the bulk of

our congregations at home were to aid them by pecuniary contributions. (Hear.) Why send corn to Canada, or gold to Australia? He allowed there was truth in these questions, that our colonies were advancing in prosperity, that under British industry and energy their resources were developing with unparalleled rapidity; that in Canada, the colony he had visited, the forests were disappearing before the axe of the settlers, the single loghut growing into the prosperous village, and the village expanding into the wealthy, and prosperous city. He was ready to allow that no comparison could be made between the material comforts and abundance of the means of life possessed by the families who had been settled for a time in Canada, and the poverty-stricken state of a large class of our countrymen in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland; and in proof of this he could say, that he had never found any of our countrymen willing to return and settle again amidst the barrenness and poverty of their Highland homes. But there was a fallacy in supposing that because the older settlers were able to maintain religious ordinances for themselves, our efforts in behalf of the colonies might be dispensed with. There was a constant rushing tide of new settlers, who, for the first three or four years, had a stern struggle to maintain with the difficulties of their position. And he would crave the attention of the Assembly to the fact, that during these their first years was the crisis of their religious character. (Hear, hear.) If let alone when their hearts were yet warm with the religious associations and impressions they had brought from home, they sank into a state of religious apathy from which it was difficult afterwards to arouse them; but if their spiritual life was kept alive,—if we helped them through the crisis,-they would help themselves so soon as they emerged from their first stern struggles for subsistence, and devote a portion of the gains of their industry to maintain the ordinances of which they felt the need. The churches aided in the colonies were on a wholly different position from the generality of our aid-receiving churches at home, respecting which there was no reasonable hope they would ever attain to a selfsupporting position. In the colonies we had but to light the lamp, which the colonists themselves would feed with oil and keep burning. (Hear.) The colonial was a rapid, and by far the most successful, of our church extension schemes, planting its church, not indeed on the soil of Scotland, yet planting them for Scotchmem, not on our native valleys or mountains, yet for our native-born sons. He thought the Assembly should look also to the indirect results of the Colonial Scheme, as he regarded it to be indirectly our great anti-Popish and missionary enterprise. If we but looked to Lower Canada, we should find eight hundred thousand of our fellow-subjects the blind devotees of Rome, her most abject slaves. Indeed, he had never witnessed in any part of the Continent of Europe, not even in central Italy, a peasantry more thoroughly priest-ridden than in Lower Canada. Every church planted in Lower Canada is a fort in the camp of the enemy, -a citadel for the assault of Antichrist. And, looking abroad to Australia, New Zealand, and our other colonies, where there were still large bodies of native idolaters, what more certain, though indirect means for their evangelization, than encompassing them on all sides with our Christian congregations, until the light should break through and scatter the darkness. Viewing, then, the Colonial Scheme as but fulfilling the obligation of this Church as a debtor to Scotchmen,-viewing it as by far our greatest and least expensive church extension scheme,-viewing it in its indirect results as a great missionary and antiPopish enterprise, -as combining in itself and really discharging all these functions, he could not but feel that this noble scheme was worthy of a foremost place in the regards of this Church, and in the charities of her members. (Applause.)

Mr HAWKINS suggested that it be an instruction to the Colonial Committee to watch the subject of the Colonial marriage law, and to bring it if ne cessary before the Commission in August next.

The Assembly approve of the report, record their thanks to Mr Bonar, and through him to the Committee, for the faithful and unwearied discharge of the duties entrusted to them-re-appoint the Committee, Mr Bonar, Convener, and to reserve their further deliverance on matters connected with this report till to-morrow.

CHURCH EXTENSION IN GLASGOW.

Mr GRAY, Convener of the Committee on Church Extension in Glasgow, said, The General Assembly will not expect to hear, in this the SubCommittee's first report, that great things, or that many things, have been done. It was in the summer of 1844 that Dr Chalmers began his noble work in the West Port; it was not till the spring of 1847 that he reached the stage of opening the West Port Territorial Church; and it took six years to produce a membership of 300 in the West Port congregation. We suddenly found ourselves appointed by last Assembly to a task that was new to us, and that involved immense responsibility; principles and methods of procedure had to be considered; for the first eight months of the year we were without any funds, and it would not have been warrantable to incur expense before we had the means of meeting it. And while it may have been expedient on general grounds that the Sub-Committee should have a convener who did not belong to Glasgow, there could be no doubt that initial difficulties must be less speedily mastered with a convener residing at a distance, who was able to bring to his office but a slight' knowledge of men, and circumstances, and localities, in the field of operations. We applied ourselves, in the first instance, to the duty of maturing some general rules, and of laying down a plan which might be acceptable to the Church, and suitable to the evangelistic undertaking entrusted to us. In this the aid of not a few distinguished and experienced ministers was sought and obtained. The plan has been promulgated, and it is enough to say concerning it that, in its main and essential features, it has been received with favour everywhere. (Applause.) We also met and conferred with the Presbytery of Glasgow, and established the necessary relations with that reverend body. A standing Committee on Glasgow Evangelisation was appointed by the Presbytery; and, in concert with that Committee, four districts have been chosen, in which the work will be carried on. One of these districts is in the east of Glasgow; another is in the wynds; a third is in Anderston; a fourth is in Gorbals; and the united population of the four is about 32,000. Nine of the Glasgow congregations are in charge of the districts. St John's has the eastern district; the Tron and Stockwell have the wynds; St Mark's, St Matthew's, and Anderston, have the Anderston district; and Kingston, Hutchesontown, and Union, have the district of Gorbals. In three of the districts much progress has already been made. First, as to the eastern district. The congregation of St John's has established a mission station, where there is divine service, forenoon and afternoon, every Lord's-day, conducted by a licentiate of the Church, and where there is an average attendance of 150 persons, nearly the whole of whom went previously to no place of worship. There are also 25 Sabbath schools, on the local principle, attended altogether by about 1100 scholars; and this spirited and zealous congregation, with its energetic and liberal-minded pastor and eldership, has lately erected a