when we lose sight of this our chief historical distinction. Cheap chapels, thrown up among the neglected suburban population, should be the rule not the exception with us.

Second, "free sittings" should be our rule, pews the exception. Both are necessary, but we forfeit our providential designation when the latter become the rule rather than the exception, as it has already in most of the Eastern States.

We have not here space for the emphatic remarks which we would fain utter on these two suggestions. One of the most grateful facts of our history is the elevating effect of Methodism on the social position of its multitudinous people; it has given them tastes and means for better religious accommodations than they at first had, but let us bear in mind that the moral wants of the neglected masses are now actually greater, especially in this country, than they ever have been, and that our original mission to them must be a permanent one. Not only is this the case in our dense cities, but along our whole frontier, and indeed throughout the whole continent. As to the Atlantic cities, when did they more need our old modes of labor and cheap church accommodations? And as to the interior and the great West, who can doubt that for indefinite generations they will need the old extemporary but energetic expedients of Methodism? Who can glance over this whole New World without seeing that our original mission is but begun, and our primitive instrumentalities are yet, and for generations, indispensable? The increase and dispersion of our population create here a moral exigency such as the human race has seldom witnessed. It is sublime, we were about to say, appalling-this amazing growth of a nation-this exodus of the European peoples into our mighty wildernesses. We could once estimate somewhat its ratios, but now it almost defies our calculations. A few years ago it was ascertained that our western frontier line moved forward at the rate of about thirteen miles a year; and this march of a nation-extending from the Northern Lakes to the Mexican Gulf-bearing with it all the ensigns of civilization and liberty-felling the forest, dispelling at every step aboriginal barbarism, planting fields, building cities, erecting temples and schools, constructing canals and roads of ironwas considered one of the sublimest spectacles in the history of man; but now the line of march is broken into detached columns which have taken the extreme points of the field, and the evercoming accessions observe no rules of progression. What practicable Christian agencies can meet the wants of these foreign hosts? Can we think for a moment of abandoning in this vast region any of the effective apparatus of Methodism, under such circumstances? The

thoughtful man, who reminds himself of the ignorance and moral corruption of the European hordes arriving among us, can hardly suppose that the better moral characteristics of the nation, already sadly degenerating, can survive the contagion of such overwhelming vice, or the better institutions of the republic withstand such a flood of semi-barbarism. One thing we must be sure of, namely, that every moral resource at our command will be needed to maintain, in its present relative status, the moral and intellectual position of the country.

It is to the West, we say, that this overwhelming flood sweeps, and thither moves with it the power of the nation-the political forces which will take their moral character from these multitudes, and impart it to us all. The center of representative population is continually tending westward. In 1790 it was twenty-two miles east of Washington; it has never been east of the national metropolis since, and never can be again. At the census of 1800 it had been transferred to thirty miles west of Washington; in 1820 it was seventy-one miles west of that city; in 1830 one hundred and eight miles. Its westward movement from 1830 to 1840 was no less than fifty-two miles-more than five miles a year. During about fifty years it has kept nearly the same parallel of latitude, having deviated only about ten miles south, while it has advanced about two hundred miles west. Thus move the political destinies of the country into what is also becoming the arena of its moral and religious conflicts. With our territorial enlargement and increased accessions of European population, the national population, indigenous and foreign, is destined to swell into aggregate magnitudes truly amazing-magnitudes which it would seem must hopelesssly transcend any moral provision we can make for them. If the ratios of our increase hitherto can be relied on, the population of the United States will be in 1900 more than one hundred millions -exceeding the whole present population of England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark. A step further in the calculation presents a prospect still more surprising: by 1930-only seventy years hence-this mighty mass of commingled races will have swollen to the stupendous aggregate of two hundred and forty-six millions, equaling the present population of all Europe. According to the statistics of life, there are hundreds of thousands of our present population-one twenty-ninth at leastwho will witness this result. It is hardly possible to restrain the pen from uttering the spontaneous and overwhelming reflections which these statistics suggest; but we leave them in their own naked yet startling significance. Such, then, according to the mathematics of the argument, is the domestic field of evangelic

labor opening before us. These calculations have no episodal irrelevancy here. We have chosen to present them as far more relavant than general remarks. They sustain with startling force our position, that the energetic methods of early Methodism are still needed, that there is a larger field for them now in our ov'n country than there ever has been. The facts are clear, then, and now the direct question is, shall Methodism retain its primeval glory by maintaining its original mission to the "lower classes"-those classes which, like the primary geologic granite, form the lowest foundations of the moral world, but lift highest to the heavens their mountain peaks, catching the first light of coming eras, and reflecting the last glories of declining nations? If so, our cheap chapels and free sittings must still prevail-must be the rule, not the exception.

But, third, we have admitted that a guarded church improvement is desirable. In all our older communities we need it. Methodism

is as good for the rich and cultivated as for the poor, and it should not exclude the former by ignoring those conveniences, or even elegancies, which legitimate taste creates. Christ refused not Nicodemus, and glorified the tomb of the "rich" Joseph of Arimathea by his resurrection. He uttered no word against the solemn splendor of the Temple, and mourned over its coming desolation. In all our great cities we should erect churches which shall extort the admiration of the best taste of truly cultivated men-not pretentious with extravagance, but genuinely beautiful, grand even, and prominently placed. They mistake blindly who think beauty is incompatible with utility. Beauty itself is often the highest utility. Whenever genuine, it includes a moral element which elevates it above most other utilities. Newton's Principia is great in its severe practical utility; but who shall say that Milton and Shakspeare have not advanced the intellectual status of the Anglican world equally with Newton? Strike these two last names from the roll of English literature, and you change the relative position of the Anglican race in modern civilization. God has decked all the universe with beauty. All nature is effluent with it, and her severer utilities are covered, and almost hidden under its superabundant attractions. Quakerism, with its many inestimable virtues, is dying, because it has sacrilegiously ignored nature and genuine taste. True Christianity does not ignore them; she humbles sinful man, and requires him to walk before God with penitence and self-denial; but she bids him thus walk with nature's effulgent stars over his head, and its mighty sublimities and infinite beauties all around him. While inculcating personal meekness and lowliness, she proscribes not the dignities of magistracies, the imposing forms of public life, the elegancies of art, or the refine

ments of literature. She would not thus impose comparative barbarism on evangelized nations. States, great cities, and all great bodies, civil and religious, should ennoble their corporate life, and elevate the popular mind by befitting edifices and monuments. We admit the repetitious commonplaces usually uttered as qualifications to such remarks; but demand that they shall not, as usual, qualify utterly away the just view of the question. Happy should we be, were we able to say to-day, that the noblest, not the most extravagant, church edifice in each of our chief cities, from Bangor to San Francisco, was a Methodist one-noblest, we say, in every sense of genuine architectural style, location, and practical accommodation. It is befitting our relative position among American religious bodies that it should be so. And every such church should, as soon as possible, be a "free-seated" one-the head-quarters of all our great public occasions, the resort of our traveling people, and our contribution to the taste and adornment of the public life. The practical problem to be solved on this subject, is whether we can provide the necessary church improvements for our advancing people, and still maintain our characteristic mission to the unimproved masses? It would be contrary to both nature and Christianity to suppose that we could not. The papal Church, while amassing around it all the glories of art, holds on more tenaciously to the common people than to the higher classes; beggars and princes bow, side by side, in her great, unpewed, European churches. Her corruptions do not affect the argument. They are not owing to the freedom of her temples, or her patronage of genuine taste and art; they are in spite of these. Methodism itself has already made the grateful discovery that its improved church building affords it improved means of prosecuting its humbler work. Its advanced families are saved to it; and its growing wealth (one of the inevitable results of its salutary influence on the common people) is more at its command for church extension, missions, and other denominational purposes. Our later history affords many striking examples of the fact. Let us, then, in respect to this subject, thank God, and take courage; but let us devoutly understand ourselves, and as we now enter our hundredth year, with auspicies such as we never had before, let us bear in mind that the personal regeneration of souls, the reclamation of decayed religious communities, and the preaching of the Gospel to the demoralized millions, here and everywhere, is our providentially designated work.

There are other and more important suggestions relating to our more spiritual interests remaining to be discussed, but we must postpone them to our next number.

ART. X.-RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.