There can be no greater benefit to a community, nothing to contribute more to its general well-being, than an adequately supported and efficient church establishment. It is the foundation of everything really good and great, useful and advantageous, honourable and praiseworthy. It is the grand means of promoting religion and morality, peace and good order, charity and good-will, kindness and sympathy between the different ranks in society, diligence and industry, subordination and allegiance to the powers that be: in a word, everything that can make a nation happy and prosperous in itself, and respected by neighbouring countries. The duty, therefore, of making strenuous efforts for the accomplishment of so desirable a purpose must be apparent to all who feel the paramount necessity of religion, and to all such, perhaps, it may be apparent; but the difficulties of every infant colony are urged in bar against it. These difficulties are fully admitted, and due allowance made for them; neither is it the intention of the writer to say one unkind or unreasonable word on the subject; his design is rather to encourage for the future than to condemn for the past, feeling, as he does, very forcibly, the circumstances of trial and privation with which the settlers of new colonies are for the most part surrounded. Bodily support—food and raiment—must necessarily be had in the first place; but, except to this, I should be disposed to say, that to no other could a provision for religion be second; for not more necessary is food and raiment to the body than the offices of religion to the soul: indeed, the supply of these wants is equally necessary, and where they are not simultaneously provided for, but where the former is over and exclusively cared for, it is more than likely that the latter will be neglected for years to come. Under the difficulties, however, in which emigrants to a newly formed colony find themselves, it seems, in the first place, the plain duty of every state to provide for the support of religion in their infant settlements, or, where this is withheld, it clearly becomes the duty of private Christians, possessed of wealth and competency, either individually or incorporated into societies, to afford, as far as may be, the aid required.