The Religious World.

RESULTS OF MINISTERIAL LABOUR.

WE have had the curiosity to look into the Minutes of the General Assembly, with a view to arriving at the comparative results of ministerial labour in the different sections of the Church during the past year. Taking the whole number of ministers, the average result of their labours during the year, was an addition to the churches of about five and a third members on profession of their faith to each minister. If we take the North and the South, or the Free and Slave States, as the basis of the comparison, we find that in the North each minister added an average of about five and a half members, and in the South each added not quite five members. In former years the comparison was in favour of the South. The average in the Western Synods was, to each minister in Kentucky, five; in Cincinnati, five and three-fourths; in Nashville, three and a third; in Indiana, five and a half; in Missouri, six and a half; in Iowa, three and a half; in Mississippi, four; in Illinois, five; in Memphis, three and three-fourths; and in Wisconsin, two and one-eighth. The uniformity of the results, in regions differing so widely from each other, will strike every mind. It shows that God is no respecter of sections any more than he is of persons, and that his Gospel is adapted to prevail and win its trophies in all states of society, and amid all sorts of social institutions. If any kind of civil institutions were an effectual barrier to the spread of the Gospel, and the conversion of sinners, as modern reformers tell us, how did primitive Christianity spread with such rapidity, where the greatest despotisms prevailed? Nero sat upon the throne of the Caesars, the very prince of tyrants, and the Roman Empire was full of slavery of the very worst form when Paul preached and laboured there, and yet, in that Empire, the Gospel, as preached by him, achieved its greatest triumphs. He did not refuse to preach at Rome and make the attempt to plant a church there, because Nero was on the throne, and some of the people were held in slavery, as some of his modern would-be successors, now do. Wherever there were souls to be saved, he pressed his way to them and delivered his message, and God crowned his labours with success. The Presbyterian Church, in these United States, is endeavouring to follow his example, and God is crowning her labours with success, in every part of the land, as he did Paul's. She has to bear obloquy from some of her sister Churches for doing so, but if the Great Head of the Church smiles upon her attempts to give the Gospel to the whole country, it matters little who may frown upon and deride her. Presbyterian Herald.

NEW VERSION OF THE PSALMS.

A MEETING has been held of the joint Committees, appointed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church and the Associate Reformed

Synod of the South, upon the subject of Psalmody. The Due West Telescope says: "The meeting was not a full one: only three were present of the Associate Reformed Committee, and Rev. E. Cater, Chairman of the General Assembly Committee, assisted (by general consent) by Rev. J. C. Williams and R. H. Wardlaw, Esq., of the Committee on Psalmody,' of the Synod of South Carolina. Several ministers of both bodies were present, and were invited to take part in the deliberations of the Committees. Rev. Dr. E. E. Pressly was called to the Chair, and Rev. R. C. Grier, D.D., was appointed Secretary. After prayer by the Chairman, and a friendly discussion, the following resolutions were submitted to the meeting and unanimously adopted:

"Resolved, 1. That the Committees of the General Assembly and the Associate Reformed Synod of the South, now met, do consider themselves authorized by the bodies that appointed them, to prepare a version of the 'Book of Psalms,' to be submitted to the consideration of their, respective judicatories.

Resolved, 2. That we proceed immediately to prepare said version. "Resolved, 3. That this version shall consist of the Scotch version now in use, with verbal amendments, together with a new version of most or all of the Psalms in a variety of metres."

"To the Associate Reformed Committee were assigned the first twenty Psalms, and to the General Assembly Committee, the succeeding thirty Psalms.

"The Committee are to meet in Columbia, South Carolina, about the last of November, and report progress."

STATISTICS OF SABBATH-SCHOOLS OF

PHILADELPHIA.

THERE are in Philadelphia the following Sunday-schools:

These are reliable statistics, and the present amount would be greater than when these were taken, which is more than a year ago. To have 44,387 scholars in Sabbath-schools, under the care of 4816 teachers, shows the self-denial of pious citizens in the community who are desirous of doing good. It is encouraging to think of the great good effected.

ULTRAMONTANE TESTIMONY TO THE PROGRESS OF PROTESTANTISM.

A RECENT number of the Univers contains the following remarks on this head: "In all the Catholic cities, the statistical returns make it apparent that the number of Protestant is increasing in a fearful manner. Dusseldorf, which was almost entirely Catholic, already reckons 7000 Protestants; and there is a certain parish in Cologne which numbers only a few Catholics." On this statement, the Avenir observes, in commenting on its value: "We are sometimes told that our efforts are vain, that we have nothing to hope from the attempts of a minority so weak as our evangelical Protestantism, in the presence of an immense and compact mass like Roman Catholicism. But Catholicism, which ought to know itself, does not thus judge. This unity, of which it boasts, is, we know, alike from faith, from reason, and from experience, a sheer pretence. As well might one speak of the unity of sight amongst the blind, or of hearing amongst the deaf. . . . The principal obstacle which the Gospel encounters from the majority of Catholics, is their religious indifference.

Let Protestants, then, not be discouraged, but redouble their faith and their activity. The Univers gives a testimony to the result of our labours. Its five or six lines are worth as much-nay, more-than many pages of the reports of our societies. . . . Let us pray, and God will act."

...

October Musings.

OCTOBER TWILIGHT.

BY EDITH MAY.

Оn, mute among the months, October, thou,
Like a hot reaper when the sun goes down,
Reposing in the twilight of the year!

Is yon the silver glitter of thy scythe,

Drawn threadlike on the west? September comes
Humming those waifs of song June's choral days
Left in the forest, but thy tuneless lips
Breathe only a pervading haze, that seems
Visible silence, and thy sabbath face

Scares swart November-from yon northern hills
Foreboding like a raven; yellow ferns

Make thee a couch; thou sittest listless there,
Plucking red leaves for idleness; full streams
Coil to thy feet, where fawns that come at noon
Drink with upglancing eyes.

Upon this knoll,
Studded with long-stemmed maples, ever first
To take the breeze, I have lain summer hours

Seeing the blue sky only, and the light
Shifting from leaf to leaf. Tree-top and trunk
Now lift so steadily, the airiest spray
Seems painted on the azure; evening comes
Up from the valleys; overlapping hills
Tipped by the sunset, burn like funeral lamps
For the dead day; no pomp of tinsel clouds
Breaks the pure hyaline the mountains gird-
A gem without a flaw-but sharply drawn
On its transparent edge, a single tree
That has cast down its drapery of leaves

Stands like an athlete, with broad arms outstretched,
As if to keep November's winds at bay;
Below, on poised wings, a hovering mist

Follows the course of streams; the air grows thick
Over the dells. Mark how the wind, like one
That gathers simples, flits from herb to herb
Through the damp valley, muttering the while
Low incantations! From the wooded lanes
Loiters a bell's dull tinkle, keeping time
To the slow tread of kine, and I can see,
By the rude trough the waters overbrim,
The unyoked oxen gathered; some, athirst,
Stoop drinking steadily, and some have linked
Their horns in playful war. Roads climb the hills,
Divide the forests, and break off abrupt

At the horizon; hither, from below,

There comes a noise of lumbering, jarring wheels;
The sound just struggles up the steep ascent,
Then drones off in the distance; nearer still,
A rifle's rattling charge starts up the echoes,
That flutter like scared birds, and pause awhile,
As on suspended wings, ere sinking slow
To their low nests. I can distinguish now
The labourer returning from his toil,

With shouldered spade and weary, laggard foot;
The cattle straying down the dusty road;
The sportsman balancing his idle gun,

Whistling a light refrain, while close beside,

His hound, with trailing ears and muzzle dropped,
Follows some winding scent. From the gray east,
Twilight, upglancing with dim, fearful eyes,
Warns me away.

The dusk sits like a bird

Up in the tree-tops, and swart, elvish shadows
Dart from the wooded pathways. Wraith of day!
Through thy transparent robes the stars are plain!
Along those swelling mounds that look like graves,
Where flowers grow thick in June, thy step falls soft
As the dropped leaves! Amid the faded brakes
The wind, retreating, hides, and cowering there,
Whines at thy coming like a hound afraid!

AUTUMN.

BY LONGFELLOW.

OH, with what glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring-those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times-enjoy
Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the Autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,

A

pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing; and in the vales
The gentle wind-a sweet and passionate wooer-
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside aweary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds—
A winter bird-comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel; whilst aloud,
From cottage-roof the warbling bluebird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

Oh, what a glory doth this world put on
For him who with a fervent heart goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!

For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,

Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings;

He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death

Has lifted up for all, that he shall go

To his long resting-place without a tear.

THE DANCE OF THE AUTUMNAL LEAVES.

BORNE by the restless winds along

Where the sorrowful woodland grieves,

Hither and thither, a fitful throng,

Merrily dance the autumn leaves.

Upward they mount to the murky sky,

Downward they plunge to the earth below;

Now in a giddy whirl they fly,

Now in a madcap chase they go.