little account can be given either of the system left or the system adopted.

There is a sad want among us of systematic religious instruction. Even where there is ability to instruct, and a desire to receive instruction, it is not attempted systematically or thoroughly. No order is observed in the manuals used and books studied, no connected plans are formed and adhered to, no inquiry is made by parents, or concern expressed, but everything left to chance, as to the teacher and the thing taught. The consequence is, that when you put to a class of children the simplest questions, as to the foundation of religion, the being of God, the nature of revelation, the history of the Bible, or the character of its different writers and different books, indeed, questions as to the first elements of moral obligation, you will be very fortunate if one half the class, or one quarter, can answer your questions readily or intelligently. This we call ignorance. It is Unitarian ignorance. If there were less of it, there would be more Unitarians, and more firm, assured, engaged, pious, happy believers. What the duty is, and where the responsibility, every one must see.

H.

BISHOP MEADE'S VIRGINIA.*

THE venerable Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia promised to furnish two articles of personal reminiscences to the Episcopal Quarterly Review.

* Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia. By BISHOP MEADE. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1857. 2 vols.

The articles grew under his hands to these two large octavo volumes. In their preparation he has visited mouldering graveyards, copied ancient vestry records, turned a delighted ear to anecdotes of the olden times, and obtained important documents "from the archives of Parliament, and of Lambeth and Fulham Palaces." With a most reverential and affectionate spirit he has thus walked around his diocesan Zion, marked well her bulwarks, and counted the towers thereof, and certified the result in these volumes.

And pleasant and gossipy books they are. They have given us satisfaction in a leisure hour or two, and a few things we have gathered from them we propose to report to our readers.

The first English settlers of Virginia being Churchmen, that Commonwealth had from its infancy the blessings of a ministry that could trace a true apostolic descent. While our fathers in Massachusetts were perpetually in trouble about the Baptists and Quakers, about Mrs. Hutchinson and the witches, about a covenant of grace and a covenant of works, no similar strifes disturbed the peace of the Southern settlement. But this had another trial of its own. The old English race of "fox-hunting parsons sent out an offshoot in Virginia. Not that large numbers of ministers came over from England. Men of the stamp here referred to are not remarkable for the self-denials which missionary labor in a new colony requires. Accordingly, as late as 1655, when there were fifty-five Episcopal parishes in Virginia, there were only ten ministers for their supply. Nor was the increase very rapid. At the commencement of the Revolution there were only one hundred and sixty-four churches and chapels, served by ninety-one clergymen ; while at the close of the Revolution, owing in part to the attachment of the clergymen to the cause of the King, only

twenty-eight ministers were found laboring "in the less desolate parishes of the State." The character of a large part of these early ministers is described with most commendable candor. The Bishop says, that the spiritual condition of the Church "was ever tolerably good, faithful history forbids us to believe." "It is a well-established fact, that some who were discarded from the English Church yet obtained livings in Virginia." "It is a melancholy fact, that many of them had been addicted to the race-field, the cardtable, the ball-room, the theatre, nay, more, to the drunken revel. One of them, about the very period of which I am speaking, was, and had been for years, the president of a jockey club. Another, after abandoning the ministry, fought a duel in sight of the very church in which he had performed the solemn offices of religion. Another preached (or went into an old country church, professing to do it) four times a year against the four sins of atheism, gambling, horse-racing, and swearing, receiving one hundred dollars a legacy of some pious person to the minister of the parish for so doing, while he practised all of the vices himself. When he died, in the midst of his ravings he was heard hallooing the hounds to the chase." (Vol. I. pp. 16-18.) We must not refer to such cases as these without presenting the apology for recording them in the Bishop's own words, in which the reader will observe the quiet hint that God might have done "better":

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'Gladly would I be spared the painful reference to them and others, could it be done without unfaithfulness to the task undertaken. In consenting to engage in it, which I have done with reluctance, it became my duty to present an honest exhibition of the subject, and not misrepresent by a suppression of the truth. God has set us the example of true fidelity in the biographical and historical notices which pervade the sacred Scriptures. The greatest

failings of his best saints, as well as the abominations of the wicked, are there faithfully recorded as warnings to all ages; though there are those who think it had been better to have passed over some unhappy passages. I have gone as far as conscience and judgment would allow in the way of omission even of things which have passed under my own eyes."

A few pages following the extract here given, we find a curious picture of the writer's ordination as a priest. The event took place Sunday, February 24, 1811, in Williamsburg, the seat of the College of William and Mary. After an account of the "very brief" examination made by Bishop Madison, we read as follows:

"On our way to the old church, the Bishop and myself met a number of students with guns on their shoulders and dogs at their sides, attracted by the frosty morning, which was favorable to the chase; and at the same time one of the citizens was filling his ice-house. On arriving at the church we found it in a wretched condition, with broken windows and a gloomy, comfortless aspect. The congregation which assembled consisted of two ladies and about fifteen gentlemen, nearly all of whom were relatives or acquaintances. The morning service being over, the ordination and communion were administered, and then I was put into the pulpit to preach, there being no ordination sermon. The religious condition of the College and of the place may easily and justly be inferred from the above. I was informed that not long before this two questions were discussed in a literary society of the College: - First, Whether there be a God? Secondly, Whether the Christian religion had been injurious or beneficial to mankind? Infidelity, indeed, was then rife in the State, and the College of William and Mary was regarded as the hot-bed of French politics and religion. I can truly say that then, and for some years after, in every educated young man of Virginia whom I met, I expected to find a sceptic, if not an avowed unbeliever. I left Williamsburg, as may well be imagined, with sad feelings of discouragement. My next Sabbath was spent in Richmond, where the condition of things was a little

better. Although there was a church in the older part of the town, it was never used but on communion-days. The place of worship was an apartment in the Capitol, which held a few hundred persons at most, and as the Presbyterians had no church at all in Richmond at that time, the use of the room was divided between them and the Episcopalians, each having service every other Sabbath morning, and no oftener. Even two years after this, being in Richmond on a communion Sunday, I assisted the rector, Doctor Buchanan, in the old church, when only two gentlemen and a few ladies communed. One of these gentlemen, the elder son of Judge Marshall, was resident in the upper country. One of the old clergy who was present did approach to the chancel with a view of partaking; but his habits were so bad and so notorious, that he was motioned by the rector not to come. Indeed, it was believed that he was not in a sober state at the time.” — Vol.I. p. 29.

While we fail to see evidences of superior advantages which Episcopacy secured to the colony of Virginia, but which were denied to the benighted dissenters of Massachusetts, there is another subject plainly alluded to in these pages which still further shows the misfortune of our Southern neighbors. We refer to slavery. Here, also, Bishop Meade is explicit and candid. He says that for fifty years he has travelled through the length and breadth of that State, he has conversed freely with farmers, politicians, ministers of the Gospel, and other Christians, and he knows well what opinions on this subject are held by the great body of the citizens. That opinion is, that slavery has injured the religious, political, and agricultural interests of Virginia. He refers to her deserted fields, impoverished estates, and emigrating population as proofs, and to the fact that "sister States, with far less advantages of soil, climate, and navigation, have outstripped us in numbers, wealth, and political power." "The effect of slavery upon our religious institutions has been a matter of remark and lamentation by