of the judgment before their eyes; they do only what they believe to be right, and when that conviction is supported by intelligence and the other safeguards named, its decisions amount to as nearly a certainty as is possible in this fallible world. Every court of the Methodist Episcopal Church is supposed to be composed of such men: men of integrity and of profound convictions of duty and responsibility; men who have the vows of God upon them, and act as in his sight; who in their daily lives are in constant association with things good and pure; many of them engaged in the most holy of all callings-the Christian ministry. If there are pure, honest, Godfearing, good, and true men, these men ought to be, and, with rare exceptions, are. There can be only two grounds of danger that the verdicts of such men may not be just and right, and these have respect to their virtues and not their vices. The first of these arises from the unsuspectingness which belongs to unfamiliarity with crime. The difficulty which such persons have of conceiving how men can be as vile as they sometimes are, arises from the fact, that "to the pure all things are pure." "Charity thinketh no evil;" and because it does not, such persons will be slow to believe evil. They must see it before they can or will condemn it. We may, therefore, be sure that there will not be, with them, a readiness to convict without the strongest evidence of guilt. The second ground of danger arises from the spirit of sympathy with the sorrowing and troubled, which, belonging to Christ, is the spirit of Christians. But these are only seeming dangers. They are fully balanced by intelligence and sincerity, and by that sense of responsibility and of accountability to God which will not permit, however painful, sympathy to override justice or crime when clearly seen to go unpunished. Indeed, these elements of supposed weakness are really elements of strength, rendering the decisions, when made, all the more reliable; because they show us that sympathy prevents injustice being done to the accused, while the sense of responsibility prevents sympathy from overriding justice.

Take, then, in conclusion, these great facts and points which I have been discussing in this article and put them together. 1. The fact that there is both natural and divine authority in the Church to exclude the unworthy, and that he whom

the Church selects to exercise this authority is acting, when exercising it, under the double sanction of both human and divine authorization; and is, therefore, not only the Church's agent, but God's minister to do this very thing, surrounded with a dignity and clothed with a power the highest earth can know.

2. The fact that the Church by its law points out the limits of the jurisdiction it delegates to him, and the powers it confers upon him, defining his duty in each several case clearly and explicitly.

3. The point that he should, as far as possible, be possessed of the spirit of wisdom, prudence, valor, and justice, already pointed out, having, as a crown over all human endowments, "the wisdom that cometh from above."

4. The point that the case to be tried, after being carefully prepared and exact in all its points, be inquired into according to the principles of investigation already discussed, and by such committees as our Book of Discipline designates, and nothing can compare with such administration in dignity, wisdom, purity, and certainty of righteous result. It ought to, and would, command the respect, approval, and admiration of the world.

There can no good reason be given why such results may not be reached in our administration, and the Methodist Episcopal Church become "a terror to evil-doers," as well as a "praise to them that do well." A government which permits its laws to be violated with impunity, becomes contemptible in the eyes of its own citizens, and loses the respect of the governments of the world. If the Methodist Episcopal Church is to retain the respect of its own members, and command the respect of other Churches, it must show that it has value as a system, and the power and the will to preserve its own purity by administering discipline, intelligently, kindly, and yet with a firm hand upon the violators of its laws within its own pale, and around its own altars.

ART. VI-THE PROBLEM OF OUR AFRICAN POPU

LATION.

In our July number we discussed some "remarkable problems" of the population of the United States as presented by M. Simonin, in the "Bulletin" of the Geographical Society of Paris; facts which he pronounces "the most noteworthy, in geographical, economic, and moral phenomena" ever brought out by the statistics of nations. The results of this discussion were, summarily, the following: (1) That the "center of population" moves westward at the rate of fifty miles per decade (2) That, while the center has thus advanced at the rate of about five miles a year, the vanguard and flanks of the movement—in a line 1,200 miles long, as the bird flies, from the Lakes to the Gulf-advanced at the mean rate of seventeen miles a year, until the gold discoveries on the Pacific coast broke up the comparative regularity of the movement and dispersed it over the whole west of the continent. It had been, as Sir Charles Lyell said, "a continuous, a grand and solemn march" of humanity over the New World; felling the forests, planting the prairies, and founding the institutions of civilization. (3) That our population doubles in periods of from twenty-five to twenty-eight years. (4) That in about seventy years, that is to say, within the life-time of some thousands of our children, it will equal the whole present population of Europe, on a territory more than equal to that of Europe-a fact which must have most important effects on the commercial, social, political, and military relations of the two great sections, that is to say, on the whole civilized world. It will be equivalent to what would be the case were a single European State, say Germany, to have sway over all Europe, its "flag waving from the North Cape to Malta, from Lisbon to Moscow, over a population homogeneous in all vital respects, all freemen, and all speaking the same language. The fact of such a result is, in itself, startling; the fact of its proximity renders it doubly startling." In about eighty years the population of the United States will be more than seventy millions greater than the present population of Europe, according to M. Simonin's formula, and some of our children will see that time.

(5) The movement of the "center of population" will be completed, according to M. Simonin, and "all the surface of the immense country be filled with inhabitants," in about three hundred years at most three hundred and twenty-a period which, though apparently distant to us fast Americans, seems near to him; it is as to-morrow in the history of nations. (6) Before this consummation, and as early as the year 2050, our population will be 800,000,000. "This," remarks M. Simonin, "is more than double all the population of Europe, including Russia; it is the figure which was given, at the beginning of this century, for the population of the whole earth.” (7) But the result he reaches at the completion of the center movement-within three hundred and twenty years-is still more startling, not to say absolutely incredible; namely, that our population will then amount to 1,600,000,000; that is to say, a hundred millions more than the whole present population of the planet!—a hundred and sixty-six millions more, according to the latest and best German estimate of the population of the globe. The requisite period is not farther from us in the future than the conquest of Mexico, by Cortez, is in the past. It is but about fifty-seven years more than have elapsed since the arrival of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth. (8) But, what is more relevant to our present purpose, M. Simonin, in common with other European thinkers, points to two other very interesting and very grave facts in our national statistics, namely, that though the Negro population has no aid from immigration, yet its rate of increase is greater than that of the whites, which has such immense accessions from abroad; and, secondly, the startling fact that, in about eighty-one years, it will be larger than our whole population at the last census.

Such is a rapid summary of the calculations presented in our former article; they are assuredly of surpassing interest, and justify the attention given them by M. Simonin's European confreres, and the questions they have propounded to him respecting the probability of a future reflex emigration from the New to the Old World; the possibility of new fields for emigration, especially in the great terra incognita of Africa; and, finally, the fate of the world itself with a prospect of such a repleted population.

When we proposed to return to the subject, it was not with.

the hope of saying anything much more satisfactory than we have already said on its problems, but of emphasizing some of its practical corollaries. For personal reasons we must, at present, resist the temptation to do so; but we must be allowed briefly to refer again to the future of our African population, a problem which is so proximate, so startling, and, as some writers think, so menacing. As to the problem of the general population of the globe, as affected by the immense American growth, we may leave that to the Malthusians and their opponents; it is so distant, and subject to so many contingencies which have thus far historically affected it—wars, famines, pestilences, etc.—that few of us would contemplate it with much solicitude. It is a relief to us, also, to learn from the statisticians that, if our own population should be as dense, per square mile, as that of some of the agricultural districts of India, we are able, alone, to accommodate about three times the present population of the globe.

Our colored population is now found to be a great element of the working force of the nation, and is constantly becoming a better one; it deserves well of the republic for worthy conduct generally, and especially in critical times of our history. We have given it, theoretically, at least, liberty and political equality; but it has not social equality, for the latter does not depend entirely on political equality, though it may be profoundly affected by it. Our African population is still a social easte, and seems destined to continue such. The mark of that caste is on its very brows, as we have admitted in our former article; and, though only "skin deep," yet it is believed, by many of our own thinkers, at least, to be irremediable. Professor Gilliam, in treating elaborately the subject, (in the "Popular Science Monthly," February, 1883,) pronounces Amalgamation impossible, inconceivable. Professor Freeman, (the English historian,) who has studied it in his travels among us, points to the problem as one of the gravest perils of our future. The Parisian geographers look upon it as a "surprising" and formidable question. Are these well-deserving fellow-citizens to be forever a social caste among us? They are to be, as we have seen, within the life-time of some of our children, numerically equal to our whole present population-fifty millions and more; Professor Gilliam shows that, in 1980, they will be