AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

THE American Home Missionary Society was formed in New York City, May 10, 1826, by representatives of four evangelical denominations, Congregation alists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and Associate Reformed. One after another, three of these bodies of their own accord ceased to act through the Society, the Presbyterians last, in 1860. Since then it has looked almost exclusively to Congregationalists for support, has organized only Congregational churches, and has commissioned ministers of that faith and polity.

The first year, with $18,000 of receipts, it aided in the support of one hundred and sixty-nine missionaries in fifteen States, and one in Canada. Of these, one hundred and twenty labored in the State of New York, most of them having been previously employed by local societies (specially the United Domestic Missionary Society), that were merged in the American Home Missionary Society at its organization.

In the fifty-seven years, ending in May, 1883, the total cash receipts were $9,742,396; besides which there were sent to missionary households more than $1,000,000 in family supplies. The additions to the aided churches in those years were 310,251. In the year then closed (the Society's fifty-seventh) the National Institution and its auxiliaries employed 1,150 men, in forty-one States and Territories, from Maine to Washington Territory, and from Dakota to Florida and Texas. Of these three hundred and twenty-six labored in the Eastern States, sixty-eight in the Middle, nine in the Southern, fifty-two in the Southwestern, and in the Western States and Territories, 695. Besides a large number of preaching stations visited irregularly, they statedly supplied 2,659 congregations. Not far from 106,638 children and youth were regularly taught in Sunday schools and Bible classes. -Years of labor performed, eight hundred and seventeen. The additions to the churches were 6,527, — of which 3,558 joined on confession of faith, and 2,969 by letter from other churches. The year's receipts were $370,981.56. These figures show a gain over the previous (fifty-sixth) year of more than $30,000 in receipts; of eighty in the number of missionaries; of eighteen in the years of labor performed; and of 2,330 in the number of Sunday-school

66

66

-

to com

scholars. The gain over the Society's fifty-fifth year, plete the statement for the three years since the former National Council, is in receipts, $80,027; in missionaries, one hundred and eighteen; in years of labor, thirty-four; in Sunday-school scholars, 4,410; in additions to the churches, six hundred and five. Since the National Council of 1880, the Society has organized several new departures." One is in the matter of its annual meetings. An anniversary for mutual counsel upon home missions the legal annual meeting for business having been held in New York, as was then required by the charter-convened in Chicago, June 7-9, 1881. It resulted so favorably that steps were taken for amending the constitution, and in June (5–7), 1883, the regular business meeting of the Society was held at Saratoga Springs. It was large, enthusiastic, and in every way most helpful to the work. A new constitution was adopted, and steps were taken towards a great enlargement of operations, particularly on the Western and Northwestern frontiers, in the Southwestern States and Territories, and in Florida. To meet the large outlay for carrying on this new and costly work an Emergency Fund" of $100,000 in addition to the regular receipts was proposed and heartily adopted at Saratoga. About $13,000 were pledged on the spot. To reach the children, "Dime Share Certificates" in this fund have been issued. The fund is steadily growing, and there is fair prospect that the $100,000 will be realized., In this expectation, pickets, in the persons of several additional superintendents and general missionaries, have already been sent out to learn and report the need and promise of fields heretofore unoccupied by the Society. They send back tidings of open doors, not only in every new Western and Northwestern State and Territory, rapidly filling with our own people and new-comers from all the world, but in many Southern fields, years ago partly cared for by the Society, but from which its attention has long been, for various reasons, largely turned away. In some parts of these Southern fields, as well as in Territories where Jesuitism and Mormonism have long held the people in ignorance, it is found that Christian schools are an absolutely necessary ally to more strictly spiritual church activity. Partly for securing the money and teachers for carrying on this educational work, which specially appeals to the hearts of Christian women and their children, a Woman's Department has been organized, with a central office and a qualified secretary at the Bible House. Auxiliaries to

this department are forming in many churches, towns, cities, and States.

The Society is turning its attention more actively than ever before to the foreign-born element in our population, already a potent, and, unless Christianized, soon to be a most dangerous factor in the nation's civil, social, and religious life. A superintendent of this branch of Home Missions for the Interior and the East has already been appointed. Another will shortly be commissioned for the States farther west; and a vigorous effort will be made to bring the Germans and others of foreign birth, habits and preferences more fully under the influence of American ideas, political and religious.

The Society's organ of communication with its constituents is The Home Missionary (monthly magazine), now in its fifty-sixth year. It has lately been enlarged from twenty-four pages to forty; is printed on clear paper, from new, large type, and is. otherwise greatly improved in appearance. An attempt to improve its matter, also, while still holding the magazine to its one purpose, has been thought by some to be fairly successful. Friends of the cause can greatly help it by securing readers of the magazine, and of the series of home-missionary tracts and leaflets that the Society is issuing at frequent intervals. Pastors may use with profit the homemissionary Wall Map for lecture-rooms and churches, seven and one half by twelve feet. Price $12. All devout souls can help the

HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.

Read before the National Congregational Council in Concord, N. H.

BY REV. M. E. STRIEBy, d. d.

THE South ought to have consideration by this Council. The history of Congregationalism in the Southern States is a brief, but a very curious one. A Northern Congregationalist, who has not examined into the facts, will, I think, be greatly surprised, and in some of its aspects, not a little disappointed. It were of little use to present a history merely to awaken surprise and disappointment, but its lessons for the future are well worthy of careful study. If we take the nearly two hundred and fifty years that elapsed from

the first settlement of Virginia in the early part of the seventeenth century to the meeting of the Congregational Council held in Albany in the middle of the nineteenth century, we find the following remarkable things to be true:

1. There were Puritans in Virginia before there were any in Massachusetts, the first ships sailing up the Hampton Roads having them among their passengers, and others soon following; so that prayer and praise from Puritan lips must have been heard on the banks of James River nearly fourteen years before the "Mayflower" landed her Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock.

2. And yet there was scarcely a score of Congregational churches formed in all the Southern States in those two and a half centuries; and if the "fellowship of the churches" be insisted on as an essential element of Congregationalism as distinguished from Independency, then there were no Congregational churches in the South in all that long period except for the brief space of twenty-one years, during which time a few of them were gathered into a Congregational Association.

3. All these churches except two, whether Congregational or Independent, were first planted in South Carolina; the Congregational Association referred to was located in South Carolina; and the only church of the whole number that survives is in South Carolina, that State that was from the first the focus of slavery and the slave power; that was the hot-bed of secession; and that fired the first gun in the Rebellion!

But passing from these general statements, let me come to the history of these churches during the two and a half centuries named; some of the churches having had careers so striking, and usefulness so remarkable, as to deserve most honorable remembrance and grateful mention.

THE NANSEMOND CHURCH.

The first Puritan church in the South was formed in Virginia. The condition of Congregationalism in that State for the first thirty-six years was nebulous, but in 1642 the evolution of a Congregational church took place, or, at least, one then became distinctly visible on the horizon of history. It was developed out of vital molecules of the Puritan sort found in the locality, though there was a creative touch from New England. The process was on this wise: In the year named (1642), Mr. Philip Bennet, a

worthy citizen of Nansemond County, Va., near the Hampton Roads, came to Boston, asking for three ministers for as many parishes in Virginia that were ready to receive pastors from New England. The application was deemed important in Boston, as was attested by the usual method of a day of fasting and prayer, and as the result, Mr. Knowles of Watertown, Mr. Thompson of Braintree, and Mr. James of New Haven were sent thither. Their welcome

was warm by those who sent for them, but very frigid by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of the colony; nay, their coming led to the enactment of a colonial law, banishing all non-conformists to the Church of England. They were forbidden to preach in the parishes, and could only be heard in private houses, and finally after a stay of five or six months were driven from the colony. They returned to New England, but the people who had called them, and who had been greatly edified and aroused by their preaching, proceeded in that same year to organize the Congregational Church of Nansemond. Its light was clear, but it was soon enveloped in clouds of persecution, and in six years was expelled from the State. The law of 1642 was rigidly enforced, and the devoted people chose rather to give up their loved homes and valuable farms than to abandon their principles, and with their departure the light of Congregationalism vanished from Virginia till the American Missionary Association began its work in the same vicinity, at Hampton.

But let us follow our banished friends. They chose the adjacent province of Maryland as their place of refuge, applying for permission to its governor, William Stone, in the colony, and also to its proprietary, Lord Baltimore, in England. From the governor they received at once most satisfactory terms as to land, civil liberty, and religious toleration. They immediately removed (in 1649) and established themselves at a place which they gratefully named Providence, near where Annapolis now stands. But they soon learned that Lord Baltimore made severer terms than the governor, exacting oaths of fealty, which they could by no means take, and they accordingly held themselves aloof from the colonial government.

Soon after their arrival in Maryland, the Puritan Parliament and Cromwell coming into power in England, Gov. Stone was removed, and the government of the colony placed in the hands of the Protestants, the seat of government being at Pautuxant, and the Con