In proportion to its numbers, it will be seen that the Episcopal is the wealthiest of all Churches; and yet we find complaint made of the insufficiency of the support for their ministers.  Bishop Eastburn, of Massachusetts, in a pastoral letter, states that in his diocese “respectable parents will not bring up their children to the clerical profession, because the salaries hardly keep people from starving.”  How far this is true generally, or whether confined to his own neighbourhood, I cannot say.  The Episcopal Church in America is free from the violent factions that have distracted and thrown obloquy upon the sister church in this country.  The puerile struggle about surplices, and candles, and steps up to altars, and Brussels lace offerings, appear to have attracted little attention among those in America, whose theological views assimilate with the extreme high party in England:  and I never heard, during my residence in the States, any of that violent and uncharitable language with which discussions on religious topics too frequently abound in this country; nor is the Episcopal community by any means so divided as it is here.  The Bishop of New Zealand is far nearer their type than the controversial prelate of Exeter.

The Book of Common Prayer, as arranged by Convention in 1790, is well worthy of notice, and, in many points, of imitation.  These pages are not the proper place for a theological discussion, and my only reason for touching upon the subject at all is, that the public voice is constantly calling for some modification of the great length of our present Sunday services, and I therefore conclude that the following observations may be interesting to some of my readers.

The leading points of retrenchment are—­removing all repetitions, such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Collect for the day; a portion of the close of the Litany is omitted at the discretion of the minister.  The Communion Service is not read every Sunday.  I suppose the Church authorizes this omission at the discretion of the minister, as I have attended service on more than one occasion when the Communion was not read; when read, Our Lord’s commandment, Matthew xxii. 37-40, follows the Commandments of the Old Testament, and a short Collect, followed by the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day, finish that portion of the service.  Independent of the regular Psalms, for the day, there are ten separate short collections, any one of which the minister may substitute for the proper Psalms, and the Gloria Patri is only said after the last Psalm.

The leading features of difference from our own “Common Prayer” are as follow:—­They appoint proper Second Lessons for the Sunday, instead of leaving them, to the chance of the Calendar—­they place the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed side by side, and leave the minister to select which he prefers, and to use, if he think proper, the word “Hades” instead of Hell.  They remove the Athanasian Creed