To provide for the spiritual wants of our penal colonies would be, under the most favourable circumstances, no easy matter; and in the actual condition of affairs, it is a most difficult and discouraging task. For not only are the ordinary obstacles arising from man's fallen nature to be surmounted, but the effect of unusually evil influence and bad example is to be counteracted in a convict population. And far from opposing this mischievous spirit by "endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," professing believers are nowhere more at variance than in Australia; so that the work of turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the Just is perpetually being disturbed by strife and jealousies among those who ought to be one, even as Christ and the Father are One. There, as it has been well observed, "the Church stands upon her own merits, her own divine right; there all the attested grievances of the Dissenters, secular and political, are removed; no tithes, no church-rates, no exclusive state support." And yet there, it may be added, the fierce contentious spirit which rages in England is unchanged in character, and the way of the Church is just as evil spoken of in New South Wales as in the mother country. The only grievance the dissenters can complain of now in Australia is that assistance is afforded to the Church to a larger amount than they would like. But this is grievance enough for them to raise an outcry about. And hence arise fresh hindrances to the progress of true religion in these settlements. There are other spirits besides the unclean spirits of infidelity and iniquity which the Church has here to contend against.