Friends are stationary, if not positively declining, in point of numbers. The too frequent neglect of the religious education of their children, together with the rejection of the outward administration of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, must ever prevent them from enjoying great or continued prosperity as a Church.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SUMMARY.

We have now completed our notices of the various Evangelical Churches or Denominations in the United States, and to assist the reader in taking a general view of the whole, we proceed to place the results before his eye in a tabular form, pursuing still the order of time in which each Group or Family of Churches began to appear in the country:

In this statement are included all the Evangelical Churches or Communions, excepting the Orthodox Friends, whose "Meetings" may be three hundred and fifty, but of whose membership we have no means of forming a reliable estimate.

By uniting the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, which, as they are in many important respects the same, is entirely proper, we reduce the evangelical denominations in the United States to five

*The number of church-edifices and of congregations worshiping in them, belonging to the Methodists, may be put down for at least fourteen thousand. It was twelve thousand four hundred and eighty-four in 1850. But the number of Methodist congregations in the United States, when estimated by the places in which they meet, viz.: "meeting-houses," private houses, school-houses, etc., is probably not less than thirty-five thousand, if not forty thousand.

+ Local preachers.

great families; and thus arranged, they present the following sum

Such an arrangement might be called a doctrinal one. On the question of Church government, the Lutheran Church may be ranked with the Presbyterian; and though not Calvinistic in doctrine, it may be said to sympathize considerably with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Withal, it maintains an intercourse with the Presbyterian Churches generally that is not only fraternal but in many cases intimate. Ranging the Lutheran Churches with the Presbyterian, we have but four great families of evangelical Churches in the United States, viz.:

This synopsis suggests a few observations:

1. It is impossible to state the number of churches or congregations, properly so called. Those of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, taken together, amount to twenty-seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine. But those belonging to the different Methodist communions it is impossible to ascertain, no return of them having been made. There can be no doubt that they have at least fourteeen thousand church-edifices properly so called. This, then, would make the entire number of the churches of the evangelical denominations to have been in 1855 forty-one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine; and supposing these to contain upon an average five hundred people each, they would accommodate more than twenty million seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand five hundred of the twenty-six million five hundred thousand, the population of the country for that year. But if we take in all the places, whether churches or not, at which the Gospel is preached, in most cases once a week at least, and others once a fortnight, seldom less often, these will be found to amount to sixty-two thousand three hundred and fifty-nine or at the outside sixty-seven thousand three hundred and fifty-nine.* * Including three hundred and fifty "meeting-houses" of the Orthodox Friends.

2. The summary gives twenty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty as the number of ministers who devote themselves entirely to the work. Adding the twelve thousand six hundred and eighteen Methodist local preachers, we have forty-two thousand and fortyeight as the number of actual preachers of the Gospel. Even this is exclusive of the licentiates in the Baptist and Presbyterian churches, who were in 1855 estimated at more than one thousand four hundred, and who may fairly be set against the deduction to be made on account of ordained ministers employed as professors and missionaries. But taking, all things considered, the above-stated twenty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty as the number of ministers that are evangelical on all the saving doctrines of the Gospel: and dividing the population of the United States, which, in the beginning of the year 1855 could not have been more than twenty-six million five hundred thousand, by this number, the result will be one such minister for about nine hundred souls. Now, although figures can not express moral influences, such calculations are nevertheless not without their use. A country which has an evangelical preacher on an average for every nine hundred souls, may be considered as pretty well supplied, if they be well distributed and faithful. A perfect distribution is, indeed, altogether inpossible with a population rapidly diffusing itself over immense, half-cultivated regions, yet much is done to obviate the disadvantages of such a state of things. The aid rendered by the Methodist local preachers must be regarded as an important auxiliary to the more regular ministry.. The general faithfulness of this minis try has already been fully discussed.

3. The members in full communion with the churches enumerated were, in 1855, four million one hundred and seventy-six thousand four hundred and thirty-one in number. Now, although it be very certain that all these do not live up to their profession, yet as they belong for the most part to churches that endeavor to maintain discipline, we may fairly presume that they comprehend at least as large a proportion of consistent Christians as any equal number of professors in other parts of Christendom.

4. The last column of the summary assumes seventeen million seven hundred and sixty-two thousand of the whole population as more or less under the influence of the evangelical denominations. Accuracy in such a calculation is hardly to be expected, but I have taken the best data I could find, and doubt not that the estimate I have made is not much wide of the truth. Including all the evangelical "Friends," this estimate would fall but little short of eighteen million.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NUMBER OF EVANGELICAL SECTS.

MUCH has been said in Europe about the multiplicity of sects in the United States, and many seem of opinion that the religious liberty enjoyed there has led to the almost indefinite creation of different religious communions. This requires a little examination.

No doubt absolute religious liberty will ever be attended with a considerable subdivision of the religious world into "branches" or sects. Men will ever differ in their views respecting doctrine and church order, and it is to be expected that such differences will result in the formation of distinct ecclestiastical communions. In the absence of religious liberty, matters may be much otherwise, but how far for the better a little consideration will show. People in that case may be constrained to acquiesce, ostensibly at least, in a certain ecclesiastical organization, and in certain modes of faith and worship sanctioned and established by law. But such acquiescence, it is well known, instead of being real and cordial, is often merely external and constrained; and if so, its worthlessness is certain and palpable.

But as respects the evangelical communions in the United States, it must have struck the reader that this multiplicity has mainly arisen, not so much from the abuse of religious liberty by the indulgence of a capricious and sectarian spirit, as from the various quarters from which the country has been colonized. Coming in large numbers, and sometimes in compact bodies, from different parts of the Old World, nothing was more natural than the desire of establishing for themselves and their posterity the same religious formularies and modes of worship, church government, and discipline which they had cherished in the lands that had given them birth, and persecution for their adherence to which had led, in many instances, to their having emigrated. Hence we find, in the United States, counterparts not only to the Episcopalian, Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist Churches of England, and to the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and Ireland, but likewise to the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, the German Lutheran Church, the Moravians, Mennonists, etc. Indeed, there is scarcely an evangelical communion in America which is not the mere extension by emigration of a similar body in Europe. The exceptions hardly can be reckoned such, for they consist for the most part of separations from the larger bodies, not because of differences with regard to essential doctrines and forms of

church government, but on points of such inferior consequence that they can scarcely be regarded as new sects at all.

In fact, if we take all the evangelical communions that have fallen under review, and contemplate the confessedly fundamental doctrines maintained by each, it is surprising to observe how nearly they are agreed. It may, we believe, be demonstrated that among the evangelical communions in the United States, numerous as they are, there is as much real harmony of doctrine, if not of church economy, as could be found in the evangelical churches of the first three centuries.

Indeed, as we before remarked, by grouping the former in families, according to their great distinctive features, we at once reduce them to four, or at most five. Thus the Presbyterians, commonly so called, of the Old and New Schools, the Congregationalists, the Dutch and German Reformed, the Scotch Secession churches,* and, we may add, the Lutherans and Cumberland Presbyterians, form but one great Presbyterian family, composed of elder and younger members, all of them essentially Presbyterian in church polity, and very nearly coinciding, at bottom, in their doctrinal views. Between several of these communions there subsists a most intimate fraternal intercourse, and the ministers of one find no difficulty in entering the service of another without being re-ordained.

Again, between the different evangelical Baptist sects there is no really essential or important difference; and the same may be said of the Methodists. Indeed, the evangelical Christians of the United States exhibit a most remarkable coincidence of views on all important points. On all doctrines necessary to sa vation-the sum of which is "repentance toward God," and "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”—there is really no diversity of opinion at all. Of this I may now give a most decisive proof.

I have already spoken of the American Sunday-school Union. Among the laymen who compose its Board of Directors, are to be found members of all the main branches of the evangelical Protestant Church-Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Dutch and German Reformed, Methodists, Quakers, and Moravians. It publishes a great many books for Sunday-school libraries every year, none, of course, being admitted the contents of which are likely to give offence to any member of the Board, or repugnant to the peculiarities of any of the religious bodies represented in it. In the summer of 1841 the Rev. Dr. Hodge, a Professor in the Prince

* An effort is now making to unite all the Scottish Secession Churches in one body. This coalescence of Churches holding similar doctrines and maintaining similar organizations may be expected to occur from time to time.