MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY.-The abstract of the Eleventh Annual Report was read at the meeting on Thursday, June 1, by Rev. Mr. Bullard, the Secretary. 41 new publications had been issued the last year, of which 28 were bound volumes. The whole number of this Society's publications is 515, among which are nearly 100,000 copies of the Westminster Assembly's Catechism. "The schools under its care are extensively engaged in furnishing books for the West, and have already furnished more than sixty Sunday school libraries." The formation of adult classes is becoming common. "There are now connected with the schools about 25,000 persons above the age of 18 years. One school has 105 married persons in it."-Addresses were made by Rev. Mr. Paine of Holden, Charles T. Russell, Esq. of Boston, Rev. Mr. Winslow of Boston, aud Rev. Dr. Bullard of St. Louis. Mr. Winslow "proposed a resolution of congratulation upon the growing interest of our children in the Shorter Catechism;" upon which, as also upon the New England Primer, he pronounced an elaborate and fervent panegyric.

AMERICAN BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS.-A meeting on behalf of this Board was held on Thursday evening, June 1, and in consequence of the aspect of their affairs-with the great encouragement from abroad, and the inadequate support at home-was intended to be a meeting for supplication, rather than for addresses. Rev. Dr. Humphrey presided and made some remarks. Rev. Dr. Anderson read a statement of the pecuniary position of the Board. "It was estimated that $350,000 would be needed to carry on their missionary operations successfully the present year, but the prospect was that $255,000 only would be realized." The disbursements of the Board were already $35,000 in advance of the receipts. Addresses were made by Rev. Mr. Hoisington, of the Ceylon Mission, Rev. Mr. Pomeroy of Bangor, Rev. Dr. Scudder from Ceylon, and Rev. Dr. Beecher of Cincinnati. Prayer was offered by Rev. Dr. Humphrey, Rev. Mr. Pomeroy, and Rev. Mr. Caruthers.

PRAYER MEETING.-A prayer meeting was held in Park Street church on Friday morning, June 2. Rev. Mr. Kirk presided. Prayers were offered by Rev. Dr. Beecher, and Rev. Dr. Scudder, and remarks were made by Rev. Mr. Kirk, Dr. Jenks, and Mr. Dwight of Boston, Mr. Mann of Plymouth, Mr. Eastman, Dr. L. Beecher, Mr. Graves, Dr. E. Beecher, Dr. Dana, and Mr. Bullard.

MEETING FOR WESTERN COLLEGES.-After the prayer meeting on Friday a meeting was held in the Park Street Vestry, "with reference to some systematic course of action for the support of Western Colleges and Theological Seminaries." Remarks were offered by Rev. Dr. Beecher of Cincinnati, who stated that "the plan which had been discussed and agreed upon in New York and Philadelphia was, to have a Society formed, for the purpose of aiding Evangelical Institutions in the West." Rev. E. Beecher, and Rev. Dr. Lindsley also explained the condition of the Western Institutions. Rev. Dr. Anderson, and Rev. N. Adams, spoke in favor of a movement in New England for their assistance; and a Committee, consisting of Rev. Messrs. Adams and Aiken and Mr. Eustis, was appointed to call another meeting.

MASSACHUSETTS ABOLITION SOCIETY.-The fourth annual meeting of this Society was held the present year, at the Tremont Chapel. The attendance is said to have been small. The Treasurer reported the receipts of the year as $11,928, and the expenditures as $11,990. The greater part of both receipts and expenditures was on account of the Emancipator, which journal, with a large list of subscribers, had yet been a source of expense rather than of income. Hon. William Jackson, of Newton, was chosen President; Rev. Joshua Leavitt, Corresponding Secretary; James W. Alden, Treasurer; thirteen Vice Presidents were elected; and ten others, a Board of Managers.

AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY.-We have seen no mention of this new Association, except in the Boston Recorder from which we copy the following notice of its commencement.

"An Association with the above designation was formed in this city a few months since. It consists at present of about 35 gentlemen, including our most eminent Oriental scholars, intelligent gentlemen connected with eastern commerce, some of our foreign missionaries in Asia, etc. Its object is the promotion of the study of the Oriental languages, the collection of a library, manuscripts, coins, etc., pertaining to the East, and the publication of translations from the Eastern tongues. Hon. JOHN PICKERING is President, Prof. STUART and DRS. JENKS and ROBINSON, Vice Presidents. A beginning has been made for a library, with about 130 valuable works, all pertaining to the Chinese languages.-On Tuesday evening, [May 30,] Mr. Pickering delivered an Address in the Masonic Temple, before the members of the Society, and a very intelligent audience. It was about an hour and a half in length, and was listened to with the deepest attention. It was a comprehensive survey of the most interesting objects in Egypt, China, India, etc., which will claim the attention of the Society. High commendation was bestowed by Mr. Pickering upon the learning and labors of American missionaries. The Address is to be published in a few weeks."

THE first of July of this year, (or July 13, new style,) is the two hundredth anniversary of an important religious movement, to wit, the Meeting of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. No conclave or synod or council in the Christian Church, at least in the Protestant portion of it, has had a more continued or a more extensive influence than has followed the proceedings of that Assembly. Its influence still abides in the fairest portions of the world and operates largely upon them. It was an Assembly without law or authority, with no penalties to sustain its decisions; yet laws, authority and penalties of the most weighty and burdensome character have proceeded upon its decisions. Its members were without inspiration, but their decrees have shared the faith and the reverence which belong to the Scriptures of inspired Apostles.

The Assembly of Divines at Westminster-what solemn awe, what profound and deep veneration, what implicit confidence have been associated with the doings of those Christian councillors! The modest, and by no means partial historian of the Assembly thus closes his account of it, with a reference to the opinion which posterity would form of it :-" When posterity shall impartially review the labors of this Assembly of Divines, and consider the times in which they sat, they will have a just veneration for their

memory; for though their sentiments in divinity were in many instances too narrow and contracted, yet with all their faults, amongst which their persecuting zeal for religion was not the least, they were certainly men of real piety and virtue, who meant well, and had the interest of religion at heart, and most of them possessed as much learning as any of their contemporaries." (Neal, II. 505.) So the historian predicted, and the lapse of two hundred years has fulfilled, not falsified his prediction. It is proper, even should the work not deeply interest us, that we should call back the aspect, the meditations and labors of that grave Puritanical Assembly met in the solemn church of Westminster, and in the magnificent chapel of Henry VII., and then pursuing their deliberations in the famous Jerusalem chamber where Henry IV. had died. They all rest in graves known and honored, and their work on earth abides, mingled, as is all man's work, of good and evil. It is by these their labors that they are remembered.

Are there not among our readers some whose youthful associations, or it may be, whose mature convictions connect themselves with the Westminster Confession of Faith, or with the Assembly's Larger or Shorter Catechism? These are things which the major part of our readers have escaped, whether to their loss or to their gain is yet to be proved. But some of them may have living remembrances of those famous Protestant creeds. Indeed, if the reader knew what is written in the books, he would stand amazed at the thought that here in New England, the land of the Puritans, any thing should be said, even to refresh the memories of professed Christians, to show the importance of that ancient Assembly. If the spirit of Cotton Mather hovers over the land among whose Protestant Popes he was eminent, how profound must be his amazement, if so be he recognise one who has reached the state of manhood in this land, and knows not of the Westminster Assembly, or of its Catechisms. The ancient churches of New England adopted in their first Synod the theological formularies of the Assembly. It would be difficult to exaggerate in stating the importance and the veneration once attached to them here. Many of the churches of this land now receive, honor, cherish, and assent to them. The whole Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and of the United States, rear their ecclesiastical and doctrinal fabrics upon them. The

Calvinistic Churches and Theological Schools require assent to them. There has indeed come in a fashion of subscribing them for what is called "substance of doctrine," which we are perhaps to regard in charity as a kind of respectful compromise between conscience and a creed. According to the favorite explanation of Dr. Beecher, the progress of the philosophy of the human mind has made it necessary to state old doctrines in new language. This receiving a rigidly expressed formulary for "substance of doctrine" is a convenient liberty, with whose mild conditions all professed Christians would be willing to comply, if it might be honestly understood that this "substance" is the portion of truth which the formulary contains, while its errors, few or many, are poor shadows. Still there are millions of Christians who receive those formularies in a way which satisfies themselves. Thousands of copies have within two or three years been printed for the use of children in Sunday schools. Thus the minds of new generations are to be disciplined with the absurdities of high Calvinism-with the perplexities of a dark and stern divinity-the unintelligible definitions of the Divine decrees, of free grace, of election, of reprobation, of adoption, and justification.

The Assembly was an illegal convocation, an unauthorised council, an informal synod. It did not have the entire sanction of any one religious sect. But the important consequences just hinted at, as following after it, have given it an influence which makes it deserving of especial notice.

It met in a time of civil war and of religious discord. A century had passed away since the old barriers had been overleaped and pierced and broken down. The Roman hierarchy, the imposition of an authority superadded to Scripture, had been cast aside. Common minds exercised their privilege about common truthstheir freedom in faith, in worship, in the study of the Bible, in ask. ing the reason of things, the obligation of institutions, injunctions, and requisitions. A wild confusion was fermenting its elements, in part secretly, in part visibly to all eyes. Kingly power, consti tutional liberty, political and civil interests of course felt the influ. ence of the light which was shining upon man's highest relations. Thus a century passed preparing two great revolutions-civil and religious-in those questions of common concern which were freely