great scene of their labors. But their Church is not confined to the Western States and Territories of the American Union-it reaches into California. The General Assembly has under its superintendence seventeen synods, forty-eight presbyteries, about one thousand churches, three hundred ministers, four hundred and eighty licentiates and candidates, and one hundred thousand communicants. Several religious newspapers are published under its auspices. For the education of its youth, it has a flourishing college at Princeton, in Kentucky, one in Tennessee, one in the State of Ohio, and one or two others in other States. Among its preachers there are several men of highly respectable talents and acquirements.

CHAPTER X.

SMALLER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES: REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH.

WE have elsewhere stated that the country embracing what are now the States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, was at one time claimed by the Dutch in right of discovery. A trading post was established by them in 1614, at the spot now occupied by the city of New York, but it was not until 1624 that any families from Holland settled there. A few years after, the Rev. Everardus Bogardus was sent over to preach to the colonists, and was the first Dutch pastor that settled in America.* He was succeeded by John and Samuel Megapolensis, the latter of whom was one of the commissioners appointed by General Stuyvesant to settle the terms on which the colony was surrendered to the English in 1664.

The colony having been planted and maintained by the Dutch West India Company, to it the colonists applied from time to time for ministers, as new churches were formed or the older ones became vacant; and the seat of the company being at Amsterdam, the directors naturally applied to the Classis of that city to choose and ordain the persons that were to be sent out. Hence that Classis and the Synod of North Holland, with which it was connected, came by the tacit consent of the other classes and synods of the Dutch National Church, as well as by the submission of the churches in the colonies, to have an influence over the latter, which, in the course of time, proved a source of no little trouble to the parties concerned.t

* This excellent man left the colony to return to Holland in 1647, and is supposed to have been lost at sea in the same vessel with Governor Kieft.

+ The Classis of Amsterdam and the Synod of North Holland retain to this day the

To such an extent was it carried that the colonial churches were not thought entitled to take a single step toward the regulation of their own affairs.

How far the West India Company aided the congregations that were gradually formed in its American colonies is not now known, but it is supposed to have done something for their support.* Some of its governors were decided friends and members of the church, and certain it is that those congregations in New Netherlands were considered as branches of the Established Church of Holland.

The English took possession of the colony in 1664, and guarantied to the inhabitants all their religious rights. Nothing of any consequence to the churches took place for about thirty years, for there being but few English in the colony, the Dutch churches were attended by nearly the whole population. But in 1693, Colonel Samuel Fletcher becoming governor, succeeded, as we have elsewhere noticed, by artifice and perseverance, in having the Episcopal Church established in the City of New York and four of the principal counties of the Province; so that from that time all classes were taxed for the support of Episcopacy, though its partisans formed but a small minority of the colonists.

But the inconvenience of having no ecclesiastical authority in America higher than a Consistory, could not fail to be felt by the Reformed Dutch Church, and accordingly, in 1738, some of its ministers proposed having an association of the clergy, called a coetus, but which was to have no power either to ordain pastors or to determine ecclesiastical disputes. Innocent as well as inadequate as was this measure, the concurrence of the Classis of Amsterdam could not be obtained till 1746 or 1747. But it was soon found that nothing short of having a regular classis of their own could meet the wants of the churches. Not only was there the heavy expense and delay attending the getting of ministers from Holland, or sending young men thither to be educated, but, worse than all, the churches had no power of choosing ministers likely to suit them. Urged by such considerations, the cœtus resolved in 1753 to propose a change of its constitution to that of a regular classis, and a plan to that effect was transmitted to the congregations for their approval. But the project

charge of the churches in the colonies in the East Indies, and other parts of the world, belonging to the kingdom of the Netherlands.

*It would seem that it was a considerable time before any church edifice of respectable appearance was erected in New Amsterdam, as New York was then called; for De Vries, in the account of his voyage to New Netherlands, relates that he remarked to Governor Kieft in 1641, "that it was a shame that the English should pass there, and see only a mean barn in which we performed our worship."

was opposed by a powerful party, mainly formed of those who had been sent over from Holland, and called the Conferentie. Amid the distraction and confusion caused by this opposition of parties, religion made little progress, and many influential families left the Dutch Church, and joined the Episcopal.

All difficulties were at length adjusted through the prudent mediation of the late Rev. John H. Livingston, D.D.,* then a young man. Having gone to Holland for the prosecution of his studies, in 1766, the Synod of Holland and Classis of Amsterdam were led by his representations to devise a plan, which, after Mr. Livingston's return to America in 1770, was submitted to a meeting held in New York in October, 1771, and attended by nearly all the ministers, and by lay delegates from nearly all the congregations. After a full discussion, having been unanimously adopted, it was carried into effect the following year. The whole Church was divided into five classes, three in the Province of New Jersey, and two in that of New York; and a delegation of two ministers and two elders from each classis constituted the General Synod, which was to meet once a year.

The prosperity of the Dutch Church, particularly in the City of New York, was retarded by another cause, namely, the long-continued opposition to preaching in English. The Dutch tongue having been gradually disappearing ever since the conquest of the colony in 1664, many of the youth had grown up almost in utter ignorance of it, and had gone off to the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, especially the former, for the latter had as yet but a merely tolerated and feeble existence. At length the Rev. Dr. Laidlie, a Scotch minister, was invited from Holland, and commenced preaching in English in 1764, from which time Dutch fell still more rapidly into disuse. The last Dutch sermon was preached in the collegiate churches in the City of New York in 1804, though in some of the churches in the country it was used some years longer. But it is now quite abandoned in the pulpit throughout the United States, except in some churches in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc., formed within a few years among the emigrants whom persecution has driven from Holland.

The Revolutionary War, also, proved disastrous to the Dutch

*Few men have ever lived in America who have been more useful or respected than Dr. John H. Livingston. For many years he was a pastor in New York city; but the latter part of his life was spent in New Brunswick, in the State of New Jersey, where he was professor of theology in the seminary of the Reformed Dutch Church. He died in the year 1825, revered by all, of every denomination, who knew him. He has left an abiding impression of his character upon the Church of which he was so distinguished an ornament.

Church, particularly in the City of New York. One of the churchedifices there was used as a hospital, another as a cavalry ridingschool, during the occupation of the place by a British force from 1776 to 1783. But with the return of peace, prosperity returned to this as well as other evangelical communions, and it has been steadily advancing ever since. In all the States it had only eighty-two congregations and thirty ministers in 1784; but the former have now risen to three hundred and seventy-eight, and the latter to three hundred and eighty, and fifty candidates and licentiates. The communicants were thirty-six thousand two hundred and ninety-seven, in 1855.*

A college was founded by the Reformed Dutch Church at New Brunswick, in New Jersey, in 1770, which, after various vicissitudes, has now been open for many years, and is firmly established and flourishing. It is called Rutgers' College. Connected with it there is a theological seminary, with four able professors, and between thirty and forty students.

The Dutch Church is doing much for Sunday-schools, Home Missions, and the education of young men for the ministry. It has a society, also, for Foreign Missions, auxiliary to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and now maintaining some six or eight missionaries with their wives at two or three stations in Borneo and China.

The Church is at present organized in a General Synod, two Particular Synods, and twenty-eight classes. Its standards are those of the Reformed Church of Holland, viz., the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, etc. Its doctrines are in all respects purely Calvinistic. From the first it has been favored with an able, learned, and godly ministry. In its earlier days the labors of such men as the Rev. Theodore J. Frelinghuysen, Drs. Laidlie and Westerlo, and others of like character, were greatly blessed. In our own times many of its ministers stand in the first rank among our distinguished American divines, and many of its congregations have enjoyed very precious religious revivals. For the edification of the people, one of the most instructive religious papers, called the "Christian Intelligencer," is published weekly in the City of New York.

* The number of families reported as belonging to this denomination in 1843 was twenty-one thousand five hundred and sixty-nine; and the number of individuals under its instruction was ninety-six thousand three hundred and two. It has now more than one hundred and fifty thousand.

CHAPTER XI.

SMALLER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES: THE ASSOCIATE CHURCH-THE ASSOCIATE REFORMED CHURCH-AND THE REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

THESE are often called the "Scottish Secession Churches." They were originally established by emigrants from Scotland and Ireland, and are mainly composed, to this day, of Scotch and Irish people and their children. The first and last of the three were, in their origin, branches of similar Churches in Scotland, and out of an unsuccessful attempt made in America to unite them sprang the second.

In the year 1733, as is well known, the Rev. Messrs. Ebenezer Erskine, Alexander Moncrief, William Wilson, and James Fisher, by a protest addressed to the Commission of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, seceded from the prevailing party in the judicatories of that Church. The ground of this separation was not a disagreement with the doctrines, order, or discipline of that Church, but dissatisfaction with what the dissenters considered to be an inadequate maintenance of those doctrines, and enforcement of that order and discipline. These seceders, joined afterward by many others, organized the Associate* Presbytery, and soon became a numerous and important branch of the kingdom of Christ in Scotland.

Seventeen years after this secession, a number of persons, chiefly Scotch emigrants, sent a petition from Pennsylvania to the Associate (Antiburgherf) Synod in Scotland, praying that ministers might be sent from that body to break unto them the bread of life. Two ministers were accordingly sent over in 1753 or 1754, with power to form churches, ordain elders, and constitute a presbytery. The labors of these brethren were crowned with success; several congregations were soon organized, and a presbytery formed in the eastern part of Pennsylvania; and as other ministers were sent over from Scotland from time to time, there were about eight or ten in all before the breaking out of the Revolution. But in 1782, the presbytery was reduced to the original number of two ministers, in consequence of one or two being deposed, and others joining several ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, or Covenanters, in forming the Associate Reformed Church.

* They took this name from the circumstance of their congregations not lying near each other, and therefore forming an association of churches rather than a territorial presbytery.

The Secession became divided into Burghers and Antiburghers, by a controversy on the lawfulness of what was called the Burgess' oath.