the schools that are connected with our parishes and congregations. It renders them indirect aid, but its great object is, to establish and keep up Sunday schools in neighbourhoods and districts of country where they have not the preaching of the gospel. Its mode of operation is as follows:-Our committee employs, every year, pious persons, laymen and clergymen, just as they can find them (and of every denomination), and commissions them to go out and labour, for a longer or shorter period of time, in those neighbourhoods of which I have spoken. These missionaries (we call them Sunday school missionaries) go into the given district assigned them, visit from house to house-usually log cabins; they talk with the people about Sunday schools, perhaps call a meeting, get the inhabitants interested in the objects they have in view, and at length organize a school, using the best materials at their command in the way of teachers, and thus a little seminary for christian training is commenced. When this work is done in one neighbourhood, they go to another, and thus, during the whole time for which they are engaged, do they employ themselves. Now a word as to the results of this kind of christian effort. I cannot, of course, go into a detailed account of the matter; but, that you may have a tolerably distinct idea of it, I will state one or two particulars. For instance, all our new country-all our western states-are divided into districtsmissionary fields; an individual is appointed to each as superintendent missionary, and he is authorized to employ other persons to assist him in organizing Sunday schools in different parts of the locality. In one of those districts—which is a fair representation of the wholee-our committee in Philadelphia appropriated the sum of £190 in your currency, about a year ago. The missionary who was engaged to carry out their plans there, employed some six or seven agents, who, with him, were occupied during part of the spring and summer, and they organized, in that single district, no less than 643 Sunday schools, and they engaged 4,236 persons to act as teachers. The number of children in those schools is 26,786, and the number of books in their libraries 104,000 volumes-bound volumes-which cost £2,344, and towards which the poor children themselves and their teachers raised the sum of £1,891. Thus you will see that our system ever contemplates inducing the people to help themselves; indeed this is one great principle of American life. And now I will take another and very limited field. Last spring, in the month of May, our committee were importuned to send missionaries into a certain district in the state of Kentucky, where there was no preaching at all. They sent a young man, who laboured for the period of three months, the entire cost of which to the society was £17 11s. During that time he organized twentysix schools, containing 1,100 scholars. These two facts will, I think, illustrate the mode and success of our operations. I would remark that during the year that has just closed the American Sunday School Union has received, for benevolent purposes, the sum of £11,261, and this has been received by the contributions of Sunday school teachers of all denominations in all parts of the country. The society has also received, from the sale of books, Sunday school libraries, &c., £33,781. Now, I desire to call attention to one fact, the same to which I alluded yesterday, at the meeting of the Bible Society. We, in America, are taxed beyond our strength in one particular, and I would that I had a voice on the present occasion to lay this matter, in all its length and breadth before this christian audience. I allude to the immense emigration which is taking place into that country. During last year, in the port of New York alone, 300,000 persons entered, the great majority of whom were British subjects. During the four daysSunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday-before I sailed from New York, more than 12,000 persons arrived there, nine-tenths of whom were from Ireland. Now, this population is pouring in upon us with a deep and broad tide, and I am compelled to say, in all truth, that it is an exceedingly destitute population. Still there is hope in all this. If I were a friend of a certain system of religion which you know something about here, I would whisper in the ear of a certain individual, who resides in Rome, that the very worst thing he could do for the interests of his church would be to encourage his followers from Ireland to go to America. For of all the people that come to our shores, there are none that so soon assimilate themselves to us as the Irish; there are none who are so soon imbued with our spirit, and get the knack of using our language, which is, that we never will bow our necks to the yoke of spiritual tyranny. These emigrants, as they reach our shores, are sent off as fast as possible through the country; there they get scattered among our people, and, as I said before, they quickly assimilate to what they find around them. The children of these emigrants and who ever saw an Irish family that did not abound with children?-the children of these emigrants will go to the Sunday school-they will go; and, as all who are acquainted with the Irish character will believe, they go with their eyes and their ears wide open. What they see and what they hear they will talk about; and in this way it comes to pass, that while Rome is now and then gathering a single individual, here and there, from the fold of Protestantism, we are gaining from Rome by hundreds and thousands, and this is admitted by their own authorities. I state it not upon my own knowledge merely, but upon their own statistics, they are losing their members by hundreds of thousands. And now, christian friends, we want your help; we want the sympathy, the cordial sympathy, of British Christians in this work. You are carrying on your missions in Ireland; the Irish are leaving their country by hundreds every month, and they are going over to us; we receive them, and will endeavour to evangelize them; but we want books-we want everything that will enable us to establish, where the minister cannot go, the simple sabbath school. And you are to bear in mind that some 3,000 sabbath schools, established by our union during the past year, have been in neighbourhoods and districts where the people, from one year's end to another, do not hear the gospel from the lips of a christian minister. Therefore it is that we sent these missionaries out, and established these schools, for we find that in many cases where this is done an interest is awakened, and it leads to something better, viz., the organization of christian societies. But it is a great work to do all this for the teeming thousands and millions of our population over our immense domain. Oh! that I could lift this audience to some lofty height, from which they could survey the great valley of the Mississippi! The sun never shone upon another such country as that. There it is that these people are going—there they make their homes, and there is growing up a generation which, in future years, will out-number the population of any kingdom or state on the face of the whole earth. Oh! let us christianize them. We only ask that we may have your sympathies and your cordial support. I am happy to say that in this great work, Christians of every name, Christians everywhere in our country, are rallying round us, and they feel that so important are the efforts of the Sunday School Union, that they would rather give up everything else than that. Yes, I have heard ministers of all denominations declare that if they must give up any society, and every other society, they would even give up the American Bible Society before they would the American Sunday School Union. And why? Because while the Bible Society sends out the word of God, the Sunday School Union makes that Bible an open Bible to the people. Mr. Chairman, my will prompts me to say more, but my voice will not allow it. The resolution having been put and carried unanimously, a collection was made, after which the audience joined in singing |