and wider return of advantage, if devoted to the less imposing object of leavening our current literature more and more with the sentiments and principles of genuine Christianity. And now we are brought face to face with the Religious Tract Society and its very powerful claims upon our sympathy and support. It has been in existence upwards of seventy years, and is one of those vigorous institutions which struck their earliest roots into the Christian mind of England when our fathers were terrified by the storms of the French Revolution. Those institutions were not the seedlings of a fanatical panic; rather did they arise as healthy offshoots from God’s Tree of Life, to be planted by the hands of disinterested charity and cheerful hope. It was a movement of Christian philanthropy, taking a specific form, but instinct with large-hearted and manifold zeal; for out of the early conferences of its friends sprung the idea of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and it was in the committee-room of the Tract Society that the memorable words were uttered, “Bibles for Wales”—“Why not for the world?” The Tract Society may be regarded, if not as the mother, yet as the nurse of the Bible Society. The elder breathes the unsectarian temper, the Catholic spirit so pre-eminently manifested by the younger; and, like it, it aims only at bringing souls into the all-comprehensive flock of the one all-sufficient Redeemer. It eschews controversy on controversial questions, and throws its energies into a great crusade against infidelity, falsehood, sin. “Controversy at times,” it was remarked in the report for 1869, “may arise, or local circumstances may exist which tend to divide sections of Christians one from another; but should not this tendency be resisted in presence of the weightier controversies which the whole Church in all parts is called to wage against ignorance and error—against superstition and unbelief—against the practical godlessness of the pleasure-seekers and mammon-lovers amongst all classes?” This last is the only controversy in which the Tract Society engages; and it may be expected, therefore, to rally to itself all those who deem the spread of the truth of higher importance than similarity of opinion on the politico-ecclesiastical questions which are disturbing European society. And this the Committee have no doubt that it will do. The Society’s motto is—“Christ Jesus, and Him crucified,”—the only Saviour of the lost, the only and the all-sufficient Prophet, Priest, and King of his Church. To bring every thought of both young and old, rich and poor, scholar and teacher, into subjection to Him, is its one object. And it therefore claims the prayers and the support of all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and in truth.