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and glorious now, was thus established. It was adopted by the smaller States on each side of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, the Carolinas and Georgia, and in 1789 was incorporated into the Federal Constitution."

The following extract is from the report of Professor Henry B. Smith to the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance at Amsterdam: —

"Outside of New England, where Congregationalism has the ground, the Presbyterian churches extend, in various subdivisions, throughout the country. The main branch of the church was divided, in 1838, on divers questions of doctrine and polity. The two main divisions are popularly, not ecclesiastically, known as Old School and New School. The Old School, 1867, reports 35 synods, 176 presbyteries, 2,622 churches, 2,302 ministers, 246,350 communicants, and contributions to the amount of $3,731,164. In its foreign missions it has 40 churches, 330 ministers and teachers, and 1,200 members. The New School, 1867, reports 23 synods, 109 presbyteries, 1,870 ministers, 161,539 communicants, 163,242 Sunday-school scholars, and contributions of $3,106,870 for all its objects. Its increase last year was 10,938 members, and nearly $1,000,000 in contributions." Measures are in progress for uniting these two departments of the church; which it is earnestly hoped may succeed.

In all the great departments of education, literature, and missionary effort, the Presbyterians are among the most enlightened, self-sacrificing, and energetic of our Christian citizens. The Old School publish 11 weekly periodicals, 4 i monthlies, and 2 quarterlies, of the highest grade; the New School, 11 weeklies, 10 monthlies, 1 semi-monthly, and 1 quarterly, of high literary merit. The Presbyterians support numerous colleges and seminaries, generally not ostensibly denominational; and, while they labor earnestly to circulate their own literature, they give their most devoted energies to the American Bible Society, and all the other great American institutions.

THE METHODIST-EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

"As surely as the sun makes the day, religion has made this Republic. In the building of our free institutions, the churches have been the great formative agencies. Each has had its own work, and left its peculiar impress. Although the youngest of the great Christian organizations, we claim, that, in forming the character and determining the place of this nation in history, the Methodist-Episcopal Church has been among the most influential.

"The itinerant system of ministerial labor was precisely adapted to the wants of a new and growing country.

"The older churches had local strength; but they lacked the instrumentalities whereby the gospel could be made to keep pace with the advancing lines of settlement and the spread of population. Myriads of immigrants were leaving the shores of the Old World to seek a home in the New. Multitudes of our own people were annually migrating from the seaboard, and the abodes of civilization, to explore the wilds that lay westward. The older Christian bodies saw the people passing away from churches and ministers, but had no aggressive force, no arm of sufficient length, no agency sufficiently mobile, to follow the rapid march.

"The Methodist itinerancy supplied the lacking means. It rendered it possible to maintain regular religious service in any little neighborhood where there was a single family willing to open their house for divine worship, and entertain the minister for a day. The class-meeting bound the converts together in the bonds of tender Christian love, and, in the hour of spiritual peril, brought to the help of each the strength of Christian friendship. The quarterly meeting, with its generous hospitality and social enjoyments, its three or four stirring sermons, its love-feast, with its rich experiences and thrilling songs, was a holy festival, worth all the saints' days in the calendar. The annual conferences were * From an able paper by Rev. J. T. CRANE, D.D.

councils of war, where Christian soldiers told of their victories with tears of joy, and where they laid their plans for bolder campaigns and more extended conquests.

"Methodism not only sought out the people, but won them. From the very beginning, the great Head of the Church crowned its labors with wonderful success. Organizing its feeble scattered societies in 1784, with only 83 preachers and 15,000 members, it numbered, seven years thereafter, 259 preachers and 63,269 members. In 1816, fifty years from the date of Philip Embury's first sermon, there were 695 preachers and 214,235 members. In 1866, at the close of a hundred years of evangelical labor, the Methodist-Episcopal Church numbered a mighty host of 7,576 ministers and 1,032,184 members.

"Meanwhile, the Church, broad and elevated in her plans, and active and strong to execute them, has entered into every department of legitimate labor, and gathered with an unwearied hand all the elements of evangelical power and efficiency. Our sabbath schools reported last year (1866) 153,039 officers and teachers, and 914,587 scholars, with 2,542,000 volumes in the libraries; while the children's paper (The Sunday-school Advocate') circulated 300,000 copies, and the expenses of the schools amounted to $285,000 for the year. Statistics for 1867 show that we have 1,145,184 communicants, 30,571 preachers, and more than 1,000,000 Sunday-school scholars. In the department of religious publication, we have the book concern, with 7 depositories in our principal cities, with an aggregate capital of $1,213,000, and sales amounting, in 1866, to $1,245,000. The church also publishes 9 papers, with a weekly circulation of 147,000 copies, besides an able and successful 'Quarterly Review. For the general education of the people, we have 23 colleges, 3 theological schools, and 84 seminaries or academies; in all, 110 institutions of learning, with 770 instructors and 22,305 students. In the year named, the church expended $275,000 for foreign, and $254,000 for

domestic missions; contributed $107,000 for the gratuitous circulation of the Scriptures; collected $23,349 for the Tract cause; gave $19,850 for the Sunday-school Union, and $50,000 to aid weak societies in the erection of houses of worship; and at the same time has made, chiefly for purposes of education and church extension, a grand Memorial Centenary Collection, amounting to $7,000,000. This exhibit of numbers and results belongs to the original family of Methodism on this continent, the Methodist - Episcopal Church. Eight other organizations, numbering more than 1,000,000, identical in doctrine, and differing little in usage, have arisen from the parent stock.

"It will thus be seen, that, by a fair estimate, the Methodists mould the principles and influence the actions of about one-third of our entire population.

"The Methodist-Episcopal Church has not gained its great numerical strength by any indirection. We have not courted the suffrages of the frivolous, the worldly, or the wicked, by flattering them with the promise of an easy way to heaven. For the whole hundred years of our history, we have borne a steady testimony against wrong, urged the necessity of inward and outward holiness, the reality of spiritual religion, and the value of high attainments in the divine life.

"The simple, just, and generous theology of Methodism has been the means, in the Divine Hand, of saving the nation from fatal religious error, and of breathing a new life into the older religious organizations.

"A century ago, the religious state of the country was very far from being satisfactory to the pious and the thoughtful. "The prospect was dark. Without virtue as well as intelligence among the people, free institutions are impossible. New-born liberty was in danger of perishing in its infancy. A new spirit on the part of the churches was needed. Some more efficient instrument of aggressive warfare, some new agency strong enough and bold enough to cope with the evils of the age, was required. God was not limited, indeed,

to any one mode of accomplishing his great purposes; yet none will dispute the fact that he chose Methodism as the chief agency for doing the work. He called to this ministry Dr. Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, and their fellowlaborers; men of deep piety and fervent zeal, men of mighty faith and courage and energy. They did not appear with a novel system of theology. The great doctrines of the Triune God, of human depravity, a general atonement and universal grace, and man's consequent just accountability, were the theme and the life of sermon, song, and prayer. The people heard and felt. The heart of the nation was reached, and its conscience was roused. A new church organization, fresh, vigorous, laborious, shot up into sudden strength, and began its career of evangelical power. The older churches caught the inspiration; and a new era of religious faith and hope, and bold aggressive movement against the enemy, was inaugurated. Thus the tide of spiritual death which threatened to overwhelm the nation was arrested; and large numbers of the people were deeply imbued with the feeling of personal liberty against despotism on the one hand, and licentiousness on the other. All this immense moral power has wrought against every species of bondage, and in favor of the true republican liberty which is triumphant in the United States to-day.

"Methodism, at the very beginning, joined battle with the sins that threatened national ruin. There is a gigantic crime which has haunted the footsteps of civilization through all human history. As soon as a people emerge from barbarism, and begin to realize their superiority over the savages around them, they are tempted to take advantage of their strength to enslave the weak and the helpless. And slavery is sure to curse the oppressor. The plagues which smote the Egyptians are but the symbols of the multiform evils which this crime against humanity brings in its train. Sooner or later, it rolls a Red Sea of slaughter and woe upon those who deny justice and mercy. The early Methodists spoke out boldly against the wrong.

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