to possess such missions as shall be worthy of the Protestant Church, without a revival of spiritual religion throughout the parishes, families, theological halls, and congregations of Europe and America?  Is it too much to expect, for example, that Christian parents, who would now rejoice if their sons received “an excellent civil appointment in India,” or “a commission without purchase,” or “a partnership in a first-rate house,” shall also rejoice in the prospect of one of their children becoming a missionary of the Cross?  Is it too much to expect that those licensed to preach the gospel shall love the work for the work’s sake, and that some years at least of health and strength may be given to the foreign field?  What is needed more than a revival among our preachers, before we can look with hope for a revival in our missions?

And, finally, is not a revival much required to banish the estrangement, coldness, envy, which exist between the clergy of different Churches? There are delightful exceptions, where genuine Christian goodwill and love exist.  But, alas! we sadly miss the want of that manly, truthful maintenance of what appears to us to warrant our own church organisation, with that just appreciation of the sense, principle, and judgment of those who have no sympathy with our views.  Surely every great branch of the Church has at this time of day proved to every honest and fair man, that enough can be said in its favour to justify a man in belonging to it without his belying his Christian profession, or being either a fool or a hypocrite.  Yet, what an inward chuckling is often manifested at each other’s blunders, failures, or even sins,—­what a straining for the masteries between the rival sects,—­what an utter absence, in innumerable cases, of the slightest sign or symptom of that Christian love and forbearance which is the very proof of being children of God—­nay, how little of the good breeding and kindness which are universal among gentlemen!  And all this evil, and more than we have described, is often glossed over with such an evangelical phraseology, that what is of the earth earthy is made to appear as if it were heavenly; and the coarsest product of the coarsest and most vulgar vanity, self-seeking, and pride is so painted and misrepresented as to look like love of principle or love of truth.  What will put an end to the proud antagonism, the Popery, the Church idolatry of Protestantism?  Can it ever be that we shall carry one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ, and so love the Church and its Head as to love ourselves and our sections of the Church less,—­that we shall so love our brethren of every name, that their sins shall be our grief, and their well being our blessing,—­that we shall be willing to decrease, if Christ only increases, by whatever means He may in His sovereign wisdom select?  In one word, can it be that Christian ministers and people of every church shall, in any town or district,