The Puritan fathers of New-England had a foreshadowing of this state of things, a foreshadowing, as we hope, of a reality to come. In our opinion, "they builded better than they knew." We believe they were led here by the providence of God, and guided by a higher power than their own. So far as their work was merely human and defective, it was temporary and must pass away. So far as it was divine, it was lasting and must stand forever. They have founded noble institutions of learning and general education. They have transmitted a Christian tradition, which has entered into the very roots and fibres of intellectual and social life so strongly as to be ineradicable. However the plant may languish, the root is still vital. Even those who have wandered far beyond the region of Unitarianism into speculations so vague and misty that they are almost atheistic, show in their language, habits of thought, and entire mental structure, that they have come from a Christian stock. The question of questions is always, what is the religion of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and death upon the earth? We hope, therefore, that the work commenced by these sternly earnest men may be completed. In our view of the matter, it was necessary for divine Providence to interfere, after a long lapse of time, to carry out its own far-seeing purposes, into which this first and human plan was to be made to blend and lose itself. The first refugees from the spiritual tyranny of the British crown sought only an asylum for themselves and their progeny, where they might realize their own peculiar ideal of a Christian state and church, in a condition of colonial dependence on the mother country. As in the political order, the results of the colonization of America have taken an unforeseen form and magnitude, so in the spiritual. Roger Williams led out a new band of _Puritanissimi_ from among the Puritans, which made one division among them. The Church of England stretched her roots also over to the virgin soil of New-England, and her vigorous offshoot, Methodism, followed. Rationalism, too, has run its course, as we all know, from the starting point of Channing, to the most advanced position of Emerson. Finally, another race, distinct from the English race by a difference of origin running back to the deluge, whose origin as a people dates from the period of the grandfather of Moses, and as a Christian people from the period of the Fathers of the Church, has transplanted that form of Christianity which it has kept unaltered for fourteen centuries, to the same soil, where it grows and flourishes "like a green bay-tree." It is our opinion, that the Providence of God will bring something out of this far grander and more perfect than the ideal church of our ancestors. We think that the blending of races will produce a more perfect type of manhood and a stronger people. We think, also, that the religion of this people will contain all the positive qualities of the