parts of America which hitherto they had only visited. Their earliest efforts proved abortive, and no settlement was permanently established previous to the reign of James I.

On the 26th of April, 1607, two years before the settlement of Canada by the French, seven years before the founding of New York by the Dutch, and thirteen years before the landing of the Puritans at Plymouth, a small band of colonists disembarked on that coast denominated, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, Virginia. They brought with them the refined habits of the higher orders of English society; they were members of the Church established in the mother country, and they were accompanied in their adventurous enterprise by an exemplary clergyman (the Rev. Mr. Hunt), whom they venerated as a father, and loved as a friend. Religious considerations had conduced to their voluntary expatriation. They had been required by their sovereign to provide for the preaching of the gospel among themselves and the neighbouring Indians, and they had been taught to regard their undertaking as a work which, by the providence of God, might tend “to the glory of his Divine majesty," and "the propagating of the Christian religion." The piety of the emigrants, stimulated by the exhortations of their pastor, led to the almost immediate erection of an humble

building, dedicated to the service of the Almighty. On the 14th of May, within three weeks after their arrival, the colonists partook of the Lord's Supper; and Virginia commenced her career of civilization with the most impressive solemnity of the Christian Church. Upon a peninsula which projects from the northern shore of James river, may still be seen the ruins of the first Episcopal place of worship in North America; and this, with its surrounding burial-ground, is now almost the only memorial of Jamestown.

Such were the fathers of the Church in the newly-discovered continent; and it may be fairly presumed that, if all succeeding emigrants had possessed a kindred spirit, the form of religion which they introduced would have continued to prevail in the United States until the present day. But various causes soon contributed to multiply a very different class of settlers. In the year 1614, New York was colonized by the Dutch, who brought with them their own confession of faith, and their Presbyterian form of ecclesiastical government. In 1620, the Puritans succeeded in colonizing New England, and in establishing throughout that region their peculiar doctrines and discipline. The Swedes and Finns introduced Lutheranism into Delaware and New Jersey in 1627; Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics in 1634, and Pennsylvania by the

Society of Friends in 1681. Long before the termination of the seventeenth century, the members of the Church of England in the colonies were greatly exceeded in number by those of other persuasions. Nor was this all. From one denomination they soon experienced a violent and long-continued opposition. At a very early period a few persons withdrew from communion with the Puritans and assembled separately to worship God according to the liturgy of the Church. This was too much to be patiently endured by the dominant majority. The leaders of the party, two brothers, named Brown, were expelled from the colony of Massachusetts and sent home to England. monument has been erected to their memory in St. Peter's Church, at Salem, which describes these worthy Episcopalians as the first champions of religious liberty in America. Heavy fines were inflicted on those who took part in the ceremonies of the Church; severe laws were enacted against "the observance of any such day as Christmas or the like," and (to use the words of an eminent New England jurist) "an Inquisition existed in substance, with a full share of its terrors and its violence."

A

As the country increased in population, the Church slowly advanced. Even in New England a few churches were at length established, and, under