by the Government agents. There can be a column for every species of information we desire. The only document that throws light on the subject of education is the report of the volunteer missionaries in the shape of our Sabbath school teachers. In the report last published, 21st April, 1863, we find they have under their charge 27,993 males, and 32,309 females-in all, 60,302. As to age, 49,591 are under 15 years, and 10,711 above 15 years. Out of the total number, 60,302, there are 1710 who are above 10 years, unable to read the New Testament. A question in proportion now occurs. If there be 1710 above ten years, who cannot read the New Testament, out of 60,302, how many will there be in 175,000, which is the number at present in the city between 5 and 20 years. In 1861, the number between 5 and 20 was 165,615. In our schools there are children as young as 4 years, and adults as old as 25; we therefore have said-how many in 175,000 between 5 and 20 years. But it is not a question in simple proportion, for this reason-the lowest and most ignorant class of children do not, to any considerable extent, attend our Sabbath schools. For instance, few Roman Catholic children are allowed to come, and they are the most neglected as regards education. This arises partly from the subjection of the parents to priestly domination on the one hand, and poverty on the other. There are in Glasgow 40,000 Irish young persons, between 5 and 20 years; and we are sorry to say we know some of them at 20 years of age who could not for the world read the alphabet. With sorrow we see these buy penny periodicals, and then get a little child, not Irish nor Roman Catholic, to read the stories to them. It has been this painful sight that has caused us to speak of the uneducated as blind. We can point to aged Irish women, above 60 years, who do not know A from B, though they have been thirty years in Glasgow. The great bulk of young culprits sent to our Reformatory School and Houses of Refuge are entirely without education. Of 120 children admitted into the Industrial and Reformatory School in 1862, 5 could read tolerably well, 20 could read imperfectly, Of the 312 boys in the House of Refuge on 31st December, 1862, there were, when admitted, 85 who could read well, 97 who could read tolerably, 130 who could read none. We confess it is only a conjectural approximation we can make, and yet we have carefully weighed all the reports we could procure-we think we are not guilty of exaggeration when we say there are in Glasgow at the present hour not less than 12,000 young persons above 10 years of age, who cannot read a chapter in the New Testament, though they can read some few monosyllables, and who, if not laid hold on by the Missionary Volunteers, will, when they become men and women, be quite unable to read the Bible, or any other book, and thus be for ever deprived of the greatest and most correct source of human knowledge. Some of our congregations have already commenced to this-shall we not call it holy work-of gathering into evening classes those who are approaching manhood and womanhood, and patiently, gratuitously instructing them in the first elements of education-the girls by young ladies, and the lads by male teachers. We charge the Ruin Investment with putting out the eyes of 3000 of these unfortunate children, and this, many will count far too low an estimate. The Governor of the House of Refuge for boys, in giving us a copy of the annual printed report, stated, that from many years' inquiries, he knew that the drunkenness of parents was the cause of three-fourths of the boys being in that institution. And a more horrible thing than being the occasion of sending their offspring there at first, is being the means of ruining them a second time, after they come out of the Refuge. We quote from the report for 1862: "The parents of many are addicted to drink. Some have sold the clothes got by the boys from the Institution, for drink; others have gone to their employers, and drunk the hard-earned wages of their children. The boys thus deprived of their food, lose their situations; and who will wonder if they relapse into crime?" 17th. RELIGIOUS IGNORANCE.-In Glasgow, as elsewhere, it is of two kinds-head ignorance and heart ignorance: the head unacquainted with sound doctrine, the heart a stranger to self-knowledge and gracious experience. It is only of head ignorance that we have now to speak. It might be supposed that in a city which everywhere displays its motto, "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word," and which is at least as well furnished with evangelistic machinery as any other in the three kingdoms-none, with the exception of Roman Catholics, could be ignorant of the saving truths of Christianity. Still there are thousands in the city, who are not professed Roman Catholics, that require to be told of the "principles of the doctrine of Christ." Hundreds die every year, whose sole dependence is on their comparatively harmless life, their good disposition, their fair moral character; and hundreds more annually pass away like the beasts that perish, without a ray from the other world to alleviate bodily suffering, to dispel departing gloom, to lighten the path, and tell the soul its final destiny. If we were to take a converted and intelligent Hindoo or New Zealander through say one hundred of our neglected homes and the homes of the wealthy are, as regards religion, as much neglected as those of the poor-and let him listen to our conversation with the inmates, on the recent or approaching death of their relatives, and of their own prospects, what would his opinion be of British Christianity? As he heard one widow say, as she said to us a few days ago, "She had no fears of her husband, for he had been a good man to her, and had died innocent;" another betraying complete ignorance of the way of salvation through Christ; a third trusting God would "overlook her failings," a fourth reposing in the consolation "that the minister had been in and prayed for him;" a fifth clinging to "having been baptized, and been a member of the church," &c.—would he not in astonishment ask us why we sent missionaries twelve or fifteen thousand miles, to nations not related to us, when so many of our own brethren were heathens at our very door? Why is there so much religious ignorance in Glasgow and other great cities? Because the people worship idols, instead of the one living and true God; because so long as we are a community of idolaters, the Holy Ghost will be withheld ;-there may be drops here and there, but there shall not be a plenteous rain of regenerating grace. The three principal idols which provoke Jehovah to judgment are Mammon, Belial, and Bacchus, the last of which is the Church's greatest enemy. Our statistics prove that God fulfils his threatening, Lev. xxvi. 30, “I will cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you." It is not for want of churches that there is so much religious ignorance. We have upwards of 170; but though we had 17,000, they could not prevail against our 1700 public houses. One public house is more than a match for ten churches. "Wherever God erects a house of prayer, Not only has the devil's chapel the greatest attendance, and preaching every day-for sixteen hours a day, but the physical sermon takes effect upon every hearer, and operates with the certainty and irresistibility of a material law. A whisky shop is worse than a brothel. A brothel never sends out its victims deprived of their reason, so helpless as to be unable to walk home, or prepared for theft, assault, bloodshed, and murder. It is worse than a slave ship. A man whose fetters are of iron, may be free in heart, and an heir of heaven; the slave of the whisky shop is both soul and body an everlasting castaway. Twenty-three years ago, this is no sketch, but a true storythere were in Glasgow two brothers, in the same firm, and both were elders. They had been brought into close contact with Dr Chalmers the greater part of the time he was in the city, and by him had been enlisted in home mission work. As was to be expected, their servants shared in their evangelistic labours. These labours are thus referred to, in a foot note, by Rev. Dr` Burns of Paisley, in a lecture he delivered to the young men of Glasgow, in 1840, "On the reciprocal duties of employers and employed": "Several years ago, application was made to a number of manufacturers of Glasgow for admission to the labours of the city missionaries within their premises. One of these meetings I held for a year before licence. I visited Messrs every Saturday evening. In the course of it, Dr B- and Dr F exhorted alternately. The hour of six to seven was a grant to the people, with an understanding that if any did not choose the exhortation, they might work the usual time. This brought Roman Catholics, and all descriptions of persons, to the number of 130. One of the partners acted as precentor, and the clerks were present." What was the result of missionaries, divinity students such as James Halley, and ministers addressing the workpeople, the distribution of Bibles, and starting a workman's library for the benefit of the workers? We should know that work well, and we affirm we never heard of a single soul that was saved. Now what could the whisky shops effect upon the very same audience? We know that some of the men invited some of the women in to drink, and after enough had been taken, one of the men went out with the girl, while the others remained drinking until he came back to tell whether or not he had succeeded in his infernal. purpose. These two elders let a shop in their property to a publican, and a whisky shop it is to this day; and we know that that shop has done more injury to the workers, neighbours, and public, than a thousand ministers could remove. Let us not be deceived so long as we worship in the whisky shop, with our money and our heart, Jehovah scorns our lip service. If a man stand up to exhort and pray this hour, and the next, for lucre's sake, for a higher rent, let his property for a drunkery, that it may resist the Holy Ghost, and drag men down to hell-will God listen to that prayer? Let us be consistent. If we wish to continue the worship of Bacchus, let us altogether abandon our hypocritical homage to Jesus Christ. Every Christian denomination, every religious society, is crying out for funds to scatter the gospel over the earth, and lead the nations to God; but the cry is a sham-not one church, as a whole, is in earnest. If a church was really in earnest, would the office-bearers set up the worship of Bacchus in their own dwellings and in public assemblies, and thus encourage both professing Christians and those who never enter a church to drink on, to contribute to the Ruin Investment, to give their money to the devil rather than to Jesus Christ? Before God, we wish to be liberal, and to judge charitably of all men; but again we say, that if a congregation give one thousand pounds for missionary purposes, and ten thousand pounds for intoxicating drinks-though it were to pray with groans and tears for the ingathering of the heathen, we would not believe the prayer was real; for we know a real prayer leads to real, entire soul devotion and action. Casting, with the left hand, a mite into the treasury of Jesus Christ; and, with the right, a handful into that of the devil, does not betoken heart devotion to the cause of Christ. We would not write in this strong strain if the office-bearers of the Church (including deacons, elders, and ministers) were ignorant of the evils that flow from our drinking customs, if they did not know that alcohol is not food, and that it is the greatest of all known causes in producing disease, want, and crime—the mightiest obstacle to the progress of the Christian Church. Our foreign evangelistic efforts have hitherto been only a little rill, a tiny stream, proceeding from one-tenth part of our population, instead of from them all. Will the members of the Church now cast their idols away, that God may give them power to gather in the lost, the heathen at our door? If they would do so, soon the little rill would become a mighty river, soon earth's moral wilderness would "rejoice, and blossom like the rose." But if they will not give up their idols, and unite as one mass to shut the public houses, let them not contribute to the erection of mission churches to the poor, for the increase of the Holy Ghost shall be awanting, for the whisky shall prove more potent than the voice of any living preacher. 18th. LOSS OF WAGES THROUGH DRUNKENNESS.There are some items which we hesitate to bring in, and this is one of them. There can be no doubt that when a man gets only five days, instead of a week's wages, in consequence of being on the spree for a day, that he has lost a day's wages; also, that when from the same cause he has lost his situation, and goes about idle for three months, that he has lost three months' wages. But though he has done nothing for three months, his work has been done by some one else; the town has been quite able to execute all its orders; and if he had been employed, some other one might have been idle. The regular attendance of workers does not create orders. Thus, if the operatives in a factory which is on half time were to remain in the mill full time, their waiting on would neither reduce the price of cotton nor increase trade. Looking at the subject on this side, we were in doubt as to the propriety of asserting that the city lost in consequence of men staying away from their employment; but looking at it on the other side, that labour in a well-regulated state should not be allowed to stand idle, since it is capital, we deemed it necessary to make an allowance. And we are aware that the mere wages is a trifling consideration with those em |