PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF CONGREGATIONALISM.

THAT the germ of Congregationalism is found in the New Test ament, can be believed, without supposing that this particular system of church polity, or any other, was fully developed in all its parts during the life-time of the apostles; without even supposing that this, or any other, was intended to be made a distinct subject of divine legislation. It should be sufficient authority for any ecclesiastical usage, if the principles of the gospel, carried into consistent practice amid all the circumstances which Providence has arranged, shall naturally and necessarily bring in that usage. Hence the manner in which Congregationalism took its rise in New England, renders it sufficiently divine.

Its beginnings are thus set forth by Dr. Cotton Mather in his historical notes on the Cambridge Platform. "The churches of New England, enjoying so much rest and growth as they had now seen for some sevens of years, it was, upon many accounts, necessary for them to make such a declaration of the church order, wherein the good hand of God had moulded them, as might convey and secure the like order unto the following generations. Next unto the Bible, which was the professed, perpetual and only directory of these churches, they had no platform of church government more exact than their famous John Cotton's well known book of 'The Keyes.'"

This language is intelligible; and the idea, beautiful. A company of conscientious Christians, - fleeing from an oppressive hierarchy because it hinders the development of pure Christianity, making the wilderness their home because it affords them

"freedom to worship God," selecting their own religious teachers by popular vote, and these teachers taking the Bible as their 66 professed, perpetual and only directory" in the administration of their affairs, commence their career in this secluded spot, far from all other restraint than that which Christ, their acknowledged Sovereign, imposes. In these untrammelled circumstances, each body of believers assumes its own independent form; -a form, which, owing to a similarity of sentiment and condition, will be very likely to have a sameness in its essential features, with considerable variety in its minor details. At length, in 1648,. they come together, not to enact a code of ecclesiastical laws, not even to construct an original system of church polity; but simply to compare notes and usages, and commit to writing that system which had already sprung into use among them, and thus make "a declaration of the church order wherein the good hand of God had moulded them."

The declaration thus made was the Cambridge Platform, which has ever since been regarded as the ground-plan of New England Congregationalism. And when it is considered that this system of ecclesiastical polity was not concocted by any one man, nor body of men, but is simply a transcript of the usages, "a declaration of the church order," which sprung up spontaneously among an intelligent, devout, and conscientious fraternity of churches, who had as yet no denominational preferences to consult, who went to the Scriptures for all their rules, even in the minutest affairs of life, it will be seen in what high sense it claims to be divinely authorized, and on what strong grounds it rests that claim. Coming up in this way, it gives incomparably better evidence of its being from God, than if it had been devised and decreed by the wisest council of bishops that Christendom ever saw.

The whole number of churches in Massachusetts at the time this Synod met at Cambridge, in 16-18, was thirty-nine. If to these be added four others gathered in Connecticut, three in New Hampshire, and one Baptist church in Rhode Island, we have the entire ecclesiastical map of New England, twenty-seven years af ter the landing at Plymouth, and seventeen after the settlement of Boston. It exhibits forty-six Congregational churches, gath ered from a population of something less than thirty thousand, or one distinct church organization and place of worship for every six hundred and fifty souls. Were we estimating their supply of

religious instruction as well as their progress in church extension, it would be important to observe that most of these churches were supplied with two ministers each; a custom which gradually went out of use; till, in our day, the support of only one is deemed too burdensome by many a parish which would have ranked among the ablest in those Puritan times.

But it is only the rise and progress of the churches, which we propose to consider in this article. And here, at the outset of our inquiries, we encounter a fact, as deplorable as it is embarrassing. Many of the churches, founded by the Pilgrim Fathers, and which stood forth for a long time, (some of them for more than a century and a half,) the champions and defenders of the Pilgrim faith, while they still adhere to their original system of ecclesiastical polity, have renounced that faith. Thirteen out of the thirty-nine whose pastors and delegates framed the Cambridge Platform, belong to this class; to which five more must be added, if we adopt the decision of our civil courts, and consider the identity of the church as inhering in the parish. Their names are expunged from the present list of evangelical churches. But they cannot be blotted from the past. They still have a "record on high." And yet this feature in the history of New England Congregationalism imposes the necessity of applying the rule of subtraction, as well as addition, in following the progress of our denomination through the past to the present.

We have endeavored to form a list of the Congregational churches of Massachusetts, both Trinitarian and Unitarian, arranged in the chronological order of their organization, -- a labor which cannot be performed in a day, or even a year, inasmuch as the materials from which to construct such a list are to be sought for, not so much in books, as in the unpublished records of the churches. And what makes the subject still more perplexing is, that these records are oftentimes defective. However, by keeping the inquiry alive through a series of years, and embracing all favorable opportunities for getting the facts, we have been able to assign a date to the origin of each, with a reasonable degree of accuracy. From an inspection of this list, the following results are derived.

The whole number of Congregational churches which have been gathered in the State, from the beginning to the present time, is six hundred and thirty-three. Of these, thirty have either become

extinct, removed from the State, or been amalgamated with others of the same denomination; leaving the number now on the ground, six hundred and three. Of these, four hundred and thirty-nine are Evangelical, and one hundred and sixty-four Unitarian.

Commencing with 1647, the year before the Cambridge Platform was completed, when the number of organized churches in Massachusetts was thirty-nine; and dividing the two centuries which have since elapsed into eight periods of twenty-five years each, the additions for each of these periods have been as follow: For the first period, twenty churches; for the second, seventeen; for the third, sixty-one; for the fourth one hundred; for the fifth, sixty-three; for the sixth, forty-nine; for the seventh, sixty-two; for the eighth and last period, two hundred and twenty-two.*

In accounting for the small number of churches gathered during the first period subsequent to 1647, it should be remembered that during Oliver Cromwell's administration, the tide of emigration set back from New England to Old. The smallness of the increase during the sixth period, viz: from 1773 to 1797, indicates plainly enough the effect of the revolutionary war on the multiplication of the churches; as does the large increase during the last period, show the influence of revivals, and the fruit of Home Missions. About half the Orthodox Congregational churches, which have been gathered during the last twenty-five years in this State, were either cherished into life or preserved from death, by the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society.

Ninety of the Unitarian churches in Massachusetts were originally Orthodox; while at least twenty-five more obtained their present meeting-houses and parish funds by the legalized spolia

*For greater convenience, we give these statistics in tabular form. Before

First period of 25 years, ending in

1647, 1672,

39 churches.

tion of Evangelical churches, which, in their organized capacity, had seceded from the parishes with which they had been connected. In all such cases, our courts of law persist in declaring the residuum to be the original church, a declaration which our common sense persists in denying. As we view the matter, a church is a voluntary association, recognized in law under a general statute of incorporation. Now it is a plain principle of common law, that every voluntary association may prescribe its own terms of membership, and can only have a permanent existence by a succession of members duly admitted according to rule. The records of the church alone can tell of whom it is composed. Properly speaking, these twenty-five cases are parishes turned Unitarian; and usually, though not always, associated with a Unitarian church constituted in place of the original church which had withdrawn. In these cases we have given to the seceding church the original date, and assumed that the parochial church had no existence previous to the secession. This we hold to be the only truthful view of the subject.

If, now, from the one hundred and sixty-four Unitarian churches in this State, we subtract the ninety that were once Trinitarian, there will remain but seventy-four that were originally founded on that faith. If we accept the decision of the judges, and concede what Unitarians claim respecting those twenty-five others, there will be but forty-nine churches in all the State, planted by Unitarian enterprise; and five hundred and fifty-four, or more than eleven out of twelve, gathered originally by the zeal of the Orthodox.

But in order to obtain a just, or even an impartial, view of the progress of Congregationalism, it is needful, not only to compute its absolute growth through successive periods, but also to compare it with the growth of other denominations during the same time. By omitting to do this, almost any denomination of Christians, in this growing country, can find evidence that it is destined to out-number and over-top every other. And yet, through lack of reliable statistics, it is extremely difficult to trace this compara tive progress. Along the misty track of the past, there are but a few points, where sufficient light can be found, to admit of a comparison between the different denominations, even in Massachusetts.

The following facts, however, have been verified. Up to 1664 there was no church organization in the State, except the Congregational; unless we make a distinction which the fathers of that VOL. I. 29*