The benefit of carefully revisiting our districts, has been lately again exemplified; when on our collectors going to nearly all the families of a small circuit, about one hundred, most of which had already provided themselves with bibles from our institution, they obtained sixty-four new free subscribers, (many indeed of but one half-penny per month,) and twenty-three for bibles and testaments. This was after the interest of the people had been excited by an address from the zealous agent of the Norwich Auxiliary Society, delivered at Overstrand, in the church of the long tried friend and unwavering advocate of our cause, the Rev. John Cubitt. One poor woman said, that after hearing the gentleman, she went home, and poured out her soul to God for the heathen, and on offering her half-penny, she said, “she gave it to the Lord, and wished she could make it more.” Her husband, and a daughter, have also subscribed a penny per month, free. When a district becomes fairly stocked with bibles, we cannot expect to find so many anecdotes, furnished by the contrast between the condition of destitute villages, and that of those supplied with the holy scriptures, but we think we may say that within the last ten years, owing, as we believe, to this society, combined with the extension of education, and other causes, there is, amongst the people of this neighbourhood, a perceptible advance in their acquaintance with the word of God. This is, we think, apparent, if only in the increased readiness with which the people turn to the chapters and verses referred to by ministers in their sermons, or on other occasions, when the scriptures are read and explained to them. We hope, and we cannot but believe, that acquaintance with the letter of scripture must produce its corresponding fruits. Of these, however, it is not our province to speak rashly, but we may observe that the contrast is very striking between the moral state, and intellectual powers of the labouring classes of those countries where the scriptures are in general use, and those where they have no access to the written rule of life. The operations of the Bible Society, and the need that exists for its redoubled exertions are fully set forth in the annual reports, and in the monthly extracts. You may not, however, be displeased to have a few facts bearing on these points, which came under the notice of two of your own associates, during excursions on the continent, in the summers of 1836 and 1838. In the little intercourse that they managed to get with the people, they had reason to feel the contrast above alluded to; they felt the want of an acknowledged rule of common reference in conversing with individuals of those countries from which the bible is very much excluded. If, for instance, they gave a tract on the keeping of the sabbath, they found the people had no sense of the sabbath, as a day of religious observance, because they had no understanding of its being enforced as such in the