not a few instances, just
in consequence of our religious differences. Are there millions of
the people sinking into brutality and ignorance, and do our rulers
originate a scheme of education in their behalf?--our religious
differences straightway step in to arrest and cripple the design.
Are there whole districts of country subjected to famine, and are we
roused, both as Britons and as Christians, to contribute of our
substance for their relief?--our religious differences immediately
interfere; and a Church greatly more identified by membership with
the sufferers than any other, has to fight a hard battle ere she
can be permitted to co-operate in the general cause. Is there a
ragged-school scheme originated in the capital, to rescue the
neglected perishing young among us from out the very jaws of
destruction?--forthwith rival institutions start up, on the ground
of religious differences, to dwarf one another into inefficiency,
like starveling shrubs in a nursery run wild; and projected
exertions in the cause of degraded and suffering humanity degenerate
into an attack on a benevolent Presbyterian minister, who refuses to
accept, from conscientious motives, of a directorship in a Popish
institution. This is surely a sad state of things,--a state grown
very general, and which threatens to become more so; and in a due
sense of the weakness for all good which it creates, and of the
palpable state of disorganization and decomposition favourable to
the growth of every species of evil, physical and moral, which it
induces, we recognise at least one of the causes of the general
desire for union. To no one circumstance has Rome owed more of its
success than to the divisions of the Protestant Church; and great as
that success has been in our own country, where, as 'at the
equinoxia,' day and night are fast 'growing to equality,' it is but
slight compared with what she has experienced in America and the
colonies. It is a serious consideration in an age like the present,
in which the country looks to emigration for relief from the
pressure of a superabundant population, that religion has suffered
more in the colonies from its sectarian divisions, than from every
other cause put together.

The way in which the mischief comes to be done is easily conceivable.
The Protestant emigrants of the country quit it always, with regard to
their churchmanship, as a mere undisciplined rabble. The Episcopalian
sets sail in the same vessel, and