r Sabbath services were never broken by the cry of
battle. The dreadful hurricane raged without, but never for a single
hour disturbed the peace of our beloved island-home. No revolution
from within destroyed our institutions, and no power from without
prevented us from improving them. The builders of our spiritual
temples did not require to hold the sword. Our victories, with their
days of national thanksgiving, and our anxieties, with their days of
national fasting, tended to deepen a sense of religion in every heart.
Men of God, in rapid succession, rose in all the Churches. A pious
laity began to take the lead in advancing the cause of evangelism. In
Parliament there was one man, who, by the purity of his private
life, the noble consistency, uncompromising honesty, and unwearied
philanthropy of his public career, along with his faithful published
testimony for the truth as it is in Christ, did more, directly
and indirectly, than any other of his day for the revival of true
religion, especially among the influential classes of our land: that
man was William Wilberforce.

But without dwelling upon the fact of the great revival which has
occurred in the Protestant Church during the present century, let
us notice one of its more prominent results. We mean the increased
activity manifested by all its branches in advancing the Redeemer's
kingdom.

At the commencement of this century, the whole Protestant missionary
staff throughout the world amounted to ten societies only. Of these,
however, two only had really entered the mission-field with any degree
of vigour--viz., the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts; and, above all, the Society of the Moravian Brethren.
The Wesleyan, Baptist, London, and Church Missionary Societies, though
nominally in existence, had hardly commenced their operations. There
were, besides the above, two small societies on the Continent; two in
Scotland; and not one in all America! How stands the case now? The
Protestant Church, instead of ten, has fifty-one societies; the great
majority of which have each more labourers, and a greater income, than
all the societies together of the Protestant Church previous to 1800!

If the last sixty years be divided into three equal periods, nine
societies belong to the first, fifteen to the second, and twenty-four
to the third.

The following facts, collected from statistics of the great missionary
societies up to 1861, will afford--