the Presbyterian Church in the United States has ever possessed, labored as a missionary during seven years.

In 1816, the General Assembly enlarged the powers of the standing committee, and gave it the title of "the Board of Missions, acting under the authority of the General Assembly." Many missionaries went forth under its auspices, to labor among the destitute Presbyterian congregations that were continually forming in the Southern and Western States. Meanwhile, many local societies, under the direction of synods, presbyteries, and other bodies, had sprung up, and were separately prosecuting the same objects to a considerable extent.

The General Assembly again took up the subject of missions in 1828, and further enlarged the powers of the Board, fully authorizing it to establish missions, not only in destitute parts of the United States, but among the heathen abroad. Such, however, was the demand for laborers at home, especially in the Western States and Territories, that nothing of importance could be done for foreign lands. It was found, besides, that home and foreign missions could not well be united under one board, so that in the course of a few years the latter were committed to the charge of another board, appointed for that purpose by the Assembly. Of its operations we shall have occasion to speak elsewhere.

The cause of domestic missions in the Presbyterian Church now went on with fresh vigor, and the synodical and presbyterial societies becoming either merged in the Assembly's Board, or affiliated with it, the whole assumed a more consolidated form and greater consistency. From 1828 to 1855, the missionaries increased from thirty-one to five hundred and twenty-five. The Report for the latter year presents a summary of five hundred and twenty-five missionaries employed; three hundred and five Sunday-schools, attended by fourteen thousand five hundred and forty-eight scholars, connected with the churches under their care; three thousand three hundred and forty-six members added to the churches, of whom one thousand seven hundred and seventyeight were received upon examination of their faith, and one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight upon letters of recommendation from other churches; the receipts were $71,834, and the expenditures $78,944. The average expense of each missionary is about $150. The Board pursues the wise course of simply helping congregations that as yet are unable to maintain pastors, by granting them so much on their undertaking to make up the deficiency.*

Since 1844 this Board has been charged with the work of "Church Extension," or assisting in building of church edifices, where help is needed. This branch of their labors is wholly distinct from that which is missionary, and of which we have

Such is a brief notice of the operations of the Home Missions of the General Assembly of that branch of the Presbyterian Church commonly called the Old School, to distinguish it from another branch called the New School. The Board has been instrumental, under God, in giving a permanent existence to hundreds of churches. The Divine blessing has been remarkably vouchsafed to its efforts. Its affairs are managed with great wisdom and energy, and the Church is much indebted to the late Ashbel Green, D.D., for the deep interest which, during a long life, he felt in this cause, and for the devotedness with which he labored to promote it. Nor could it fail to be a great consolation to him, in his declining days, to see his love and zeal for this enterprise crowned with abundant success.

In this connection, we may say that the Associate Presbyterian Church had, in 1855, forty-one missionaries in the home fields, and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church sixty-five.

CHAPTER IX.

HOME MISSIONS OF THE EPISCOPAL, BAPTIST, AND REFORMED DUTCH CHURCHES, AND AMERICAN AND FOREIGN CHRISTIAN UNION.

A SOCIETY was formed in the year 1822, in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, for the promotion of Home and Foreign Missions. During the first thirteen years of its existence, that is, up to 1835, it had employed fifty-nine laborers in its home missions, occupying stations in various parts of the Union, but chiefly in the West. This society was re-organized in 1835, and, as now constituted, is under the direction of a Board of thirty members, appointed by the General Convention of that Church. The bishops, together with such persons as had become patrons of the society previously to the meeting of the Convention in 1829, are members of the Board, and to it is committed the whole subject of missions. But the better to expedite the business intrusted to it, the Home and Foreign departments are directed, respectively, by two committees, cach consisting of four clergymen and four laymen, under the presidency of the bishop of the diocese in which the committee resides, and the members of both committees are ex officio members of the Board. spoken of above. The receipts for the "Church Extension" Fund from 1844 to 1855 were $68,544; from which fund aid was extended, during that period, to three hundred and eighty-two churches. In the year ending April 1, 1855, forty-nine church edifices were completed, to whose construction aid was given.

It is only since 1835 that the home missions of the society have been prosecuted with much vigor, but every year now bears witness to the increasing interest felt by the Episcopal churches of the United States in the work of building up churches in the new settlements, and other places where no congregation of that communion had before existed.

During the year ending June, 1855, the Board had employed ninety-eight missionaries; and that they did not labor without effecting much good, is apparent even from the imperfect statements of the Report. The income for the home missions was $42,107. From 1822 to 1841, one hundred and eighty-six stations were adopted as fields of special, permanent, and, as far as practicable, regular labor. During the same period eighty church edifices had been erected in those stations, and the number of these once aided, but no longer requiring assistance, was forty-four.

From this it will be seen that this society, like those already mentioned, is an instrument by which churches that have long been favored with the Gospel, and that highly prize it, are enabled to assist others, until they, too, have grown up into a vigorous independence of foreign aid. "Freely ye have received; freely give;" this admonition and command should never be forgotten. It is the true basis of the whole Voluntary System.

We shall only add, that the missionaries employed by the Board of the Episcopal Church are chiefly stationed in the Western States and Territories, California, and Oregon.

The American Baptist Home Missionary Society was instituted in 1832, and has been eminently useful in building up churches of that denomination, both in the West and in many of the Atlantic States, where the assistance of such an institution was required; as well as in establishing Sunday-schools and Bible-classes. Its great field of labor, however, like that of all the other Societies and Boards for domestic missions, has been in the Valley of the Mississippi. Within a few years, it has extended its operations to California and Oregon, in which countries it has several missionaries. It has numerous branches and auxiliaries in all parts of the United States. During the year ending in May, 1855, it had one hundred and seventy-nine agents and missionaries in its own immediate service, while its auxiliaries employed many more, all of whom were ministers of the Gospel, and believed to be faithful and capable laborers. The receipts of the society amounted to $60,043. The Southern Baptist Convention had eighty-eight missionaries.

In addition to what the regular Baptists are doing for home missions, it ought to be stated that the Free-Will Baptists have a

Home Missionary Society, which employs some fifteen or twenty laborers.

The General Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church has a Board of Domestic Missions, which is now prosecuting, with zeal and wisdom, the work of gathering together new congregations, and fostering them during their infancy, wherever it can find openings for so doing. For several years past it has been extending its operations, and during the year ending in June, 1855, it had fifty missionaries.

The American and Foreign Christian Union, composed of good men of nearly all the Evangelical churches, had, in 1855, sixty-two missionaries in the home field.

If the truth is to be carried into every hamlet and neighborhood of the United States, it can only be by the energetic efforts of all denominations of evangelical Christians; and it is delightful to trace the proofs that this conviction is wide and deep. All those denominations are actually engaged in the good work, and send forth and support missionaries in some portion or other of the country.

CHAPTER X.

HOME MISSIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH,

Ir has been said, with truth, that the Methodist Church is in its very structure emphatically a missionary Church; and how inestimable its office in this respect, the religious history of the United States will strikingly prove. The General Conferences are divided into Annual Conferences, each including a large extent of country, and divided into districts. Each district comprehends several circuits, and within each circuit there are from five to twenty preaching places or more. Ordinarily as often as once in the fortnight a circuit-preacher conducts a regular service at each of these preaching places, whether it be a church, school-room, or a dwelling-house. In the largest towns and villages such services are held on the Sabbath, and on a week-day or evening in other places, and thus the Gospel is carried into thousands of remote spots in which it never would be preached upon the plan of having a permanent clergy, planted in particular districts and parishes. It was a remark, I believe, of the celebrated Dr. Witherspoon, that "he needed no other evidence that the Rev. John Wesley was a great man, than the system of itinerating preaching of which that wonderful man was the author." The observation was a just one.

It is a system of vast importance in every point of view; but that from which we are at present to contemplate it is its filling up a void which must else remain empty. Of its other advantages we shall have to speak hereafaer.

Yet, capable as the system is of being made to send its ramifications into almost every corner of the country, and to carry the glad tidings of salvation into the most remote and secluded settlements, as well as to the more accessible and populous towns and neighborhoods, many places were found, particularly in the South and West, so situated as to be beyond the reach of adequate supply from itinerant laborers: a fact which led to the formation of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816.

This society, like that of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was formed for the double object of promoting missions at home and abroad. In 1843, twenty-four years after its formation, this society employed two hundred and ten missionaries within the limits of the United States, exclusive of those laboring among the Indians, whether within or immediately beyond those limits. The churches enjoying the services of these missionaries comprised above thirty thousand members, and many of them had flourishing Bible-classes and Sunday-schools. The report also stated, that among the members of the Society's missionary churches, there were not fewer than thirteen thousand three hundred and twenty colored people.

In the year 1855 the various branches of the Methodist family of churches employed nearly twelve hundred missionaries in the home field.

Perhaps of all the fields cultivated by this society, the two most interesting, and, in some respects, most important, are those presented by the slaves in the extreme Southern States, and by the German emigrants found in great numbers in our chief cities. The missions among the former were commenced in 1828,* and originated in a proposal made by the Hon. Charles C. Pinckney, a distinguished Christian layman of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, and which has been carried into effect with much success: the slaveholders themselves, in many places, if not in all, being pleased to have the missionaries preach the Gospel to their people.

The following paragraph from a report, will give the reader some idea of the hazardous nature of this work. "In the Southern and

I speak here of missions technically so called, for, in their ordinary labors, the Methodists, from the first, have had much to do with the slaves in the South, as well as with the free negroes of the North. In fact, no other body of Christians, perhaps, has done so much good to the unfortunate children of Africa in the United States as the followers of John Wesley.