ty Church; and its
wealthy Corporation; Long Island, or Brooklyn, with its delightful
cemetery, &c., &c. Suffice it to say that New York has a population of
about 400,000; and that it has for that population, without an
Established Church, 215 places of worship. Brooklyn has also a
population of 60,000, and 30 places of worship.

LETTER XXXVI.

The May Meetings--Dr. Bushnell's Striking Sermon--Two Anti-Slavery
Meetings--A Black Demosthenes--Foreign Evangelical Society--A New Thing
in the New World--The Home-Missionary Society--Progress and Prospects
of the West--Church of Rome--Departure from New York--What the Author
thinks of the Americans.

The American May Meetings held in New York do not last a month as in
England,--a week suffices. That week is the second in the month. On the
Sabbath preceding, sermons on behalf of many of the societies are
preached in various churches. On the morning of the Sabbath in question
we went to the Tabernacle, not knowing whom we should hear. To our
surprise and pleasure, my friend Dr. Baird was the preacher. His text
was, "Let thy kingdom come;" and the object for which he had to plead
was the Foreign Evangelical Society, of which he was the Secretary. His
sermon was exceedingly simple, and the delivery quite in an off-hand
conversational style. There was no reading.

In the evening we heard Dr. Bushnell preach, on behalf of the American
Home-Missionary Society, at the "Church of the Pilgrims" in Brooklyn.
This is a fine costly building, named in honour of the Pilgrim Fathers,
and having a fragment of the Plymouth Rock imbedded in the wall. The
sermon was a very ingenious one on Judges xvii. 13: "Then said Micah,
Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my
priest." The preacher observed that Micah lived in the time of the
Judges--what might be called the "emigrant age" of Israel,--that he was
introduced on the stage of history as a thief,--that he afterwards
became in his own way a saint, and must have a priest. First, he
consecrates his own son; but his son not being a Levite, it was
difficult for so pious a man to be satisfied. Fortunately a young
Levite--a strolling mendicant probably--comes that way; and he promptly
engages the youth to remain and act the _padre_ for him, saying, "Dwell
with me, and be a _father_ unto me." Having thus got up a religion, the
thief is content, and his mental troubles are quieted. Becoming a
Romanist before Rome