intrusted with her apostolic ministry, are not deficient in the desire, and, I trust, not in the effort to extend her hallowed influence, to carry her doctrine, her ministry and services to her destitute sons in the new regions of our country, and to those who, having heard of her praise, are ready to give her a cordial welcome. But what can her spiritual guardians and pastors do, brethren of the laity, without your co-operation-not only in your counsels, in your personal influence and labours, but, above all, in your pecuniary means? Pecuniary means are wanted to perfect and establish the institution which the wisdom of the church has devised for educating a learned, orthodox, and pious ministry to enable those ministers, as missionaries, to establish our church in the new settlements of our country-to furnish those who are destitute of them with the sacred Volume and with the Book of Common Prayer-to disperse books and tracts calculated to unfold and inculcate the evidences and the doctrines, the precepts and the institutions of the Gospel, as professed by our church.

From whence are those means to come? I hope you will not say From the wealth of Trinity Church. I would hope that this very unfounded suggestion had ceased to chill the rising sentiment of benevolence, to close the opening hand of liberality. That wealth, brethren, was once amply dispensed, and its memorials are found in many of the edifices for worship that adorn our city and some of our villages, and in other useful establishments for religion and learning: but her profusion involved Trinity Church in serious embarrassments, and since the period in which he who addresses

you has had the charge of this diocese, that wealth has ceased to be distributed; all her resources have not been more than adequate to provide for the heavy expenses of her own establishment, for the payment of the interest of her debt, and for the essential measure of its gradual extinguishment. And if those resources were in full and unembarrassed operation, how many are the claims upon them, urged by the new congregations which are rising up in this city, which is extending beyond all anticipation! Would it be possible for that wealth, were it double what it can ever be, to answer these demands, and to extend at the same time the requisite aid to the various districts of this immense state?

It is for these your destitute and suffering brethren in the new settlements of the diocese that we ask your liberality. Believe me-I speak from personal observation-your bounty is not unnecessarily bestowed; it is not wasted on those who are able, but unwilling, to help themselves. During the period in which my personal observation has extended through the diocese, the number of clergy and congregations of our church has nearly trebled; and in every case of the erection of an edifice for worship, and of the support of the clergyman, the contributions have been liberal to an extent in many cases constituting a large proportion of the actual wealth of the individual. It is refreshing, it is in the highest degree gratifying to me thus to behold the evidences of the liberal zeal of the members and friends of our church throughout the diocese: but, alas! the pleasure has been alloyed by numerous calls for aid which I could not say would be answered, and by the sad reflection that

numerous opportunities of establishing our church were irretrievably lost.

It is honourable to our church, and the information must be gratifying to you, that whenever she can gain a dispassionate hearing, her claims to pre-eminent excellence are acknowledged, and she is gradually extending through the new settlements of the state. I have seen edifices erected that would not disgrace our city, in new settlements of the state: I have seen the neat spire or the Gothic tower shooting up amidst surrounding forests: I have heard the strains of our holy service chanted forth by a devout, and in some cases, numerous congregation, in edifices neat and commodious, and sometimes elegant, where I once traversed a silent wilderness: and this has been often done by Episcopalians, not entirely of education, but of choice and conviction; I have received the evidences that this choice and conviction were serious and final, in their presenting themselves with reverence and devotion for the apostolic rite of confirmation. In cases not a few, nearly all those who have thus publicly united themselves to our church, belonged originally to other denominations of Christians. And to what human means, under God, is this gratifying increase of our church to be ascribed? Very principally to our missionary and religious tract institutions, and to the Bible and Common Prayer Book Societies. But for these institutions, this interesting scene could not be exhibited to you; the distant members of our church would have implored in vain for her hallowed ministrations; confined would have been the borders, and few the sons of our Zion. We must in justice acknowledge that these institutions VOL. II.

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have been nurtured by your bounty; but the same sense of justice leads us to lament that a more liberal bounty has not extended our means of doing good, and that the benefactions of the Episcopalians of the city are not commensurate with the urgent calls upon their pious benevolence, nor, it is to be feared, in all cases equal to those by which other denominations of Christians laudably seek to promote their respective systems of religious truth.

The cause of this limited benevolence ought not to be ascribed to a destitution of the principle; no; the Episcopalians of this city are as generous on ordinary occasions as they are wealthy, yielding to none in liberal beneficence. But perhaps they are too indiscriminate in their beneficence, too regardless of that obvious policy which would lead them to concentrate all their efforts and all their contributions for the advancement of religion to the institutions of their own church, which, in her rational and evangelical doctrines, her admirable liturgy and services, her apostolic and well constituted ministry and government, exhibits the Gospel in its primitive lustre, in its purest and most attractive form.

The institutions, then, which design to support and extend this church, so worthy of your admiration, confidence, and affection, are those which you should patronize by your influence and your wealth; these should be the almoners of that bounty by which you discharge the duty of doing spiritual good to all men, and especially unto those who are of the household of faith.

One of these institutions, the Auxiliary Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, now solicits

your contributions. Its object is to dispense Bibles and Common Prayer Books. The circumstances that have encroached upon its funds and involved it in debt, are detailed to you in the report which has been laid before you. One of them is, the necessity of correcting, by a standard copy, their plates of the Bible; and they are now enabled to present a singularly correct edition of the sacred volume. Another merit of this society consists in its having, at an early period, supplied the church, by means of stereotype plates, with a cheap edition of the Book of Common Prayer, and with an extensive gratuitous distribution of it. This gratuitous distribution is essential to the progress of our church. Every person belonging to that church should possess a Prayer Book. In our new settlements, the pecuniary resources of the people necessarily are almost entirely applied to providing the means of subsistence, and to extricating themselves from the debt which they have incurred in the purchase of their farms. The expense of providing every member of a family with a Prayer Book would fall too heavy upon them; and in many cases, the present of a Prayer Book to a person who, though able, may not be disposed to purchase one, by affording him an opportunity of becoming acquainted with her service, has a favourable effect in removing his prejudices against our church, or in confirming and establishing at rising attachment to her.

The individuals who have the management of this institution have long been known, and long valued, as laborious and active agents in this and the other societies of our church. They have not been sparing of their pecuniary means-they