be removed from Calcutta, and it will probably be years before they again see a Wesleyan minister. I shall try to do what I can to keep up some connexion with the regiment, in the way of an occasional letter, but I can do little more. to the incoming troops, there seems some degree of uncertainty as to what regiment will be stationed here; whether the 14th, from Malta, or one from England direct.

As

It will be a great step in the right direction when Malta is occupied by one of cur ministers, and I am glad to see that there is some prospect of it.

I cannot write very often, but if at any time any thing special should arise in connexion with our soldiers in this part of the world, I will try to give you information on the subject.

1. CREWE. From Rev. James Kent.August 24th, 1868.-I am thankful to report the continued and real progress of the Mission here. We have for some time past been favoured with a gracious work of the spirit upon old and young, intelligent and illiterate. Some of the young men whose hearts have been changed, give promise of usefulness. Our church is an evident blessing to the neighbourhood.

One incident is perhaps worthy of note. One of our members is a youth sixteen or seventeen years old. On a recent Saturday evening, he mustered courage to ask his father, then unconverted, to allow him to conduct family worship. The request was granted. As the father ascended the stairs for bed, he was overheard to say, "God bless my lad!" The following day he came to our chapel; in the prayer-meeting at night was a seeker of mercy; and now is one of our happy, consistent members.

We have at present more than hundred members in our Mission church. At our leaders'-meeting, last week, arrangements were made for the formation of a sixth class. Yesterday afternoon, thirteen of our scholars remained with a few of the teachers for prayer. Scarcely a week passes but some are gathered into the church.

Open-air services have been held weekly during the summer, and our tract society, recently formed, is a success. The testimonies of the distributers are encouraging. They do their work unto the Lord; hence they do it successfully.

After mouths of hard struggling we have the prospect of seeing our new chapel in an easy financial condition. As soon as practicable, we intend to lay the first stone of a new Sunday and day school. We have an average afternoon attendance of more than two hundred children, meeting in a room very insufficient in its accommodation. Our people are determined to go forward, looking for the promised blessing of God upon their work.

2. CARLISLE. From the Journal of the Rev. J. F. Reynolds.-July 13th, 1868.The races here, as elsewhere, do much harm among the people. We took the children of our Mission-school on excursions on each day of the races, to keep them from witnessing the gross immorality usual on such occasions. We thus spent the time pleasantly, and I trust profitably, both to the children and to ourselves. We are doing our utmost to consolidate all things connected with the Caldewgate Mission.

are

July 20th.-The poverty and wretchedness of many in this district shocking; and I am often distressed that my resources will not enable me to give the requisite relief. Those who have means should show practical sympathy with the minister in this part of his duty.

August 24th. We have had open-ai services, on Sunday afternoons, for severa weeks. The attendance has been good, and many have been induced to come to our Mission-services in the chapel.

September 22d.-Some zealous persons have recently conducted "revival services" in a building close to our chapel. This is not the right mode of operation, while other districts more destitute require attention. It is a dissipating interference with the labours of others, and a striving to reap harvests which these persons have not sown. We have gone steadily on with our work, and our people have held well together. Our congregations continue to increase, and we are making reliable

progress.

3. PORTESSIE.-From the Rev. George Reid-October 1st, 1868.-I am happy to say that all our fishermen have returned to their homes, after a long absence, in health, and blessed with the bounties of providence in connexion with their arduous labour. Though some have been discouraged because of the difficulties in the way of their worshipping God, yet all of

respective Governments as to the "social evil" in their several cities, and that these official and Governmental returns demonstrate beyond doubt or question the untruthfulness of this strange assump

tion.

The last returns for the metropolitan district, that is, for a radius of fifteen miles round Charing Cross, give the proportion of unhappy women to the population as one in every 579 persons; the last returns for Dublin, as one in every 301 persons; and the last returns for Paris are the worst of all. I have now before me the returns of the police of that city for forty-two years; and, taking the last four that have been published, and striking an average, they give one in every 245 persons! Or, to place this matter in another form, there are in each ten thousand of the populations of these three cities,-In Roman-Catholic Paris, 40 unhappy women; in Roman-Catholic Dublin, 33; in Protestant London, 17.

Are not these figures eloquent as showing the fruits of the confessional? They demonstrate that the "social evil" in Dublin is nearly double, and in Paris more than double, that of London. While, at the same time, the illegitimacy of Paris is eight times as great as that of London.So much for this argument.

As to his statistics, it may perhaps be a warning to himself never again to accept second-hand information, when the originals are within the reach of every one. And certainly it may be a caution to every man never to depend on any figures under the manipulation of the theological school of "The Church and the World." He states that the metropolitan police, in their report for 1864, return the "social evil" at the figure of 28,000; whereas, on looking at their report for that year, it was only 5,619! (Page 2, table 6.) We may well stare at such a discrepancy as this; but the solution is simple enough, for he has only mistaken one figure for another. He has seen the figure indicating the "social evil" of not only London, but Liverpool, and Manchester, and Birmingham, and Sheffield, and Leeds, and Bristol, and Plymouth, and Brighton, &c., and has mistaken it for the figure referring to the metropolis alone! It is at least an easy way of taking away the moral character of London to heap on her the vice of all the other cities of England beside her own; and yet he does this while at the foot of page 8, table 2, in the official returus for that year, 1864, it is thus given,—" Total

for England and Wales, 28,094." And yet this is not one half, not one tithe, of the blunders for charity forbids my applying a stronger term of this writer. He proceeds to detail the number of houses connected with the social evil. He states that in 1864 there were in Liverpool, 1,578-the official return is 906; in Birmingham, 966-the official return is 183; in Manchester, 1,111-the official return is 410; in Leeds, 313-the official return is 63; in Sheffield, 433-the official return is 84. These five towns are all he particularizes, and he has made the evils about three times as great as the official returns.

But there is something less excusable than blundering. There is such a thing as an inventive imagination when the exigencies of an argument require it. He states that the illegitimate births of England and Wales are six per cent., that those of Scotland are ten per cent., and that those of Ireland are only three per cent.; and he argues triumphantly that it is owing to the holy influence of the confessional that Ireland is more pure than England, or Scotland, or Wales. Now the writer of all this is "learned in the law," and knows that there is an Act of Parliament requiring a return of the illegitimate births of England and Wales, and also that there is another Act of Parliament requiring similar returns from Scotland. But he also knows, being "learned in the law," that there is no Act of Parliament requiring a similar return from Ireland. The Romish priests, for their own objects, and I do not pretend to divine their motives, have always and successfully resisted every law requiring a return of the number of illegitimate births in Ireland. Accordingly we have official and Governmental returns from England, and from Wales, and from Scotland, but there are no official and Governmental returns from Ireland. But the argument of our author required them, and therefore he makes them. Here is something worse than blundering.

But afterwards he casts aside everything that could pretend to official and Governmental authority, and gives us the sensational exaggerations of anonymous per

sons.

He tells of some one who thinks there are twenty thousand of these wretched characters in the metropolis, and of some one else who believes there are sixty thousand, and then states his own opinion that there are forty thousand. On this announcement he proceeds to argue the terrible depravity of London, arising from the absence of the confessional. he has been very careful to keep back

But

from view the similar statements that are made as to the condition of Paris, where the confessional is in all its glory. It was only last year that there was a public meeting in Paris on this very subject of the "social evil;" and it was then stated by an ecclesiastic that the number in that city was fifty thousand. And if such loose statements are to be accepted as against London, they must also be accepted as against Paris. And recollecting the difference in the populations of the two cities, these statements would give to London about thirteen thonsand to each million, and to Paris thirty-three thousand to each million of the population. This process of argument certainly will not commend the confessional.

But the most saddening and painful part of my task is to exhibit the manipulation of figures which characterizes almost every part of this remarkable article; and

I have undertaken it that it may be a warning to every one who loves truth and fairness never to trust the statements of men of the theological school from which this article has emanated.

This writer professes to compare the amount of crime in France with that in England. Writing in 1867, he selects the year 1864 for England. And then he selects, not the same year, but goes so far back as 1842 for France. Instead of comparing the crime of the two countries in one and the same year, which would be only fair and equal, he selects 1864, the highest ever known in England; and, as if running his eye down the returns for twenty-five years, he selects 1842, the lowest known in France for the last quarter of a century!

But let us see how he treats them. I. As to England he says:-"In England and Wales in 1864, when the popu lation was in round numbers 20,100,000, the indictable offences amounted to 51,058, the summary convictions to 440,913; together 491,971. So that on the whole 1 person in every 392 was a first-class criminal, and 1 in every 45 a criminal offender in a minor degree." He omits, however, to state that these figures include all cases of suspicion only, all of mere accidents, all cases dismissed as frivolous, all persons who were discharged, and all who were acquitted, as well as all who were convicted. He has collected all these together to make this enormous number,

mixing the innocent and the guilty together, and pronouncing them all to be convicted criminals. He has neither the Christian nor manly candour to add, that 144,935 were acquitted of all crime, nor that no less than 100,067 were mere charges of being drunk,-a charge so lightly thought of by the French tribunals, that it is excluded from their calendar as not being a crime at all. The actual result is, that the number of convictions, of all and every sort, merely excluding those for being drunk, was only 246,576, about one-half the number of convicted criminals as stated by this writer! He states the number to be 491,971.-So far for the caudour and fairness of this writer.

II. And now as to France. I have already stated that, instead of selecting the same year for France as he selected for England, as would be only fair, and just, and equal, he seems to have scanned the French returns for a quarter of a century,

they are now before me, and then selected the year with the lowest returns for the whole period. He carefully avoided the same year, 1864. And he had good reasons for avoiding it; for the official figures would have annihilated his whole argument. The official returns of that year give no less than 653,954 convic tions; and in this figure there is not a single case of suspicion only, or mere accident, or discharge, or acquittal, or even being drunk, but solely the number of absolute convictions. There were 653,951 convicted criminals in France in 1864.

The result is, that the convictions of France are 653,954, and of England, 246,576: that is, there is one convicted criminal in every 56 persons in France, and only one in every 85 persons in England, always excepting from both countries the cases of being drunk. Such cases have no place before the French tribunals, although they extend so fearfully among their manufacturing districts, that last year there were 491 deaths from intoxication in France, while there were 373 ia England.

I conclude, therefore, with the hope that this letter may lead all who read it to be very guarded before accepting the statistics of that school from which "The Church and the World" has proceeded.

A SABBATH IN WARSAW.-After searching in vain, says the Rev. Dr. Prime, in the "New-York Observer," to find the English service, which was said to be performed in an evangelical chapel by a clergyman of the Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from an open square, is a promineut object in the city. The building itself is a rotunda and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of carriages, waggons, droskeys, and carts, with horses of various grades, by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic waggons, and being covered with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and long, and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is rare to see such a show of teams about a city church. It was all the more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.

I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive galleries rising above each other. Following the winding staircase in the vestibule, we reached the first, and unable to get admission there, we mounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly-imposing spectacle was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it. The pews on the ground-floor were occupied by a class of persons, by their dress and manner, more elevated in rank than the others. The pew-doors were kept locked until the sermon was to be com Lenced, when they were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permited to take those not occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded

the whole assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated, and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the Lutheran church was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still lingered in it. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and saug-the whole assembly, men and women, with the organ, singing with a mighty noise. The sermon followed.........The clear, rich tones of the preacher's voice fell upon attentive ears; and the earnestness of his manner spoke well for him, though I could not understand a word. At the door, as I came out, there was a row of mendicants, not asking alms, but willing and expecting to receive the charities of those who passed; and they were remembered by

many.

The principal streets of the city had as many people in them, going to and from church, as you would see in New York; and so widely do the fashions of Paris prevail in the west, and east, and north, that the fashionable people of Warsaw, riding or walking, looked to be the same sort of people that one meets in cities with which he is more familiar.

I walked into the Jewish quarter of the town. Their Sabbath was yesterday, but to-day is one of their feast-days, and they were all out of doors. The men wore long frock-coats reaching to the ground; their dwellings were mostly mean and low; but we saw women going in and out of them dressed in rich silks with splendid velvet mantillas; and they were doubtless as well off for this world, as their people seem to be in all countries where they have an opportunity to live and trade. They have the best hospital in Warsaw. They retain their nationality;