THE ARENA.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC POPULATION-STUDIES IN SADLIER'S CATHOLIC DIRECTORY FOR 1890.

THIS is the fifty-eighth annual publication. It is a small octavo, in paper, containing, with advertisements, nine hundred and twenty-five pages.

This issue has full official reports of all dioceses, vicariates, prefectures, etc., in the United States, Canada, British West Indies, Ireland, England, and Scotland, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Australia.

However valuable and interesting the statistics of the Catholic Church of Rome may be as to other countries, this article will confine itself to the facts concerning the Catholic Church in the United States. They are as follows: Population 8,277,039. [This is presumably an estimate by Sadlier, and of this sum 1,476,375 are given by him as “conjectural.” Concerning these "conjectural" cases, the editor appends the following foot-note: "The figures with asterisk (*) are conjectural, and certainly low. The Catholic population must exceed ten millions."] Priests, 8,332; 7,523 churches and 3,302 chapels-of both 10,825. Thirty-five theological seminaries, with 2,182 students; 102 colleges, 635 academies, 553 charitable institutions, 3,194 parochial schools, with 633,288 pupils; 13 archbishops, 73 bishops, 13 archdioceses, 66 dioceses, 5 vicariates apostolic, and one prefecture apostolic.

Crane's Universal Atlas, 1889, says: "The Roman Catholics claim to have 6,370,588 adherents of that faith in the United States (Roman Catholic Directory of 1882), but church membership is not reported." This statement is an admission of inexactness in his own figures as to the Catholic population, and if not so of all of them certainly of those which are marked "conjectural." If he had had the exact figures as to population, and had given them, then the Catholic population in his directory must have "exceeded ten millions." Not having these he estimated them. and of these estimated figures he indicates nearly 1,500,000 adduced by him as "conjectural."

All the foregoing figures from Sadlier, except those giving the Catholic population (not members, observe), seem to be counts of statistical figures taken from authentic sources, as church records, or school registers, or from reliable minutes of charitable or other institutions. Taking all the figures as exact, except those as to Catholic population, the estimate of the Catholic population seems large and quite out of proportion to the other facts cited. Take a few detailed examples as furnished by Sadlier: The archdiocese of Cincinnati has a quoted Catholic population of 189,500. The churches and chapels are given as 231; priests, 226; average audiences for each church, 820; average parishioners for each priest, 838.

Diocese of Cleveland, O.: Catholic population (" conjectural "), 209,325; churches and chapels, 323; priests, 208; average congregations for each church, 648; average parishioners for each priest 1,006.

Diocese of Detroit: Catholic population, 125,000; churches and chapels, 209; priests, 145; average congregations to each church, 598; average of parishioners to each priest, 869.

Diocese of Syracuse, N. Y.: Average of audiences to each church, 704; average of parishioners to each priest, 1,333.

Archdiocese of New York city: Catholic population, 800,000; priests, 500; churches and chapels, 408. Average of audiences to each church, 1,600; average of parishioners to each priest, 2,000.

In these five examples, the average audience to each church is 874, and of parishioners to each priest is 1,409.

Taking the aggregate Catholic statistics, estimated and exact, each church would have an average seating capacity of 764, and each priest would have on an average the care of 993 parishioners.

Assigning to the 16,000 Methodist Episcopal ministers as many parishioners, relatively, as the Catholics assign to their priests, the Methodist Episcopal parishioners would number 15,888,000.

Assigning to the 22, 106 Methodist Episcopal churches an average seating capacity equal to that of the Catholic churches, the congregations of the Methodist Episcopal Church would aggregate 16,890,000.

Let us take another form of comparison. The ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church number 16,300. The Catholic priests number 8,332, or only about half as many of the latter as of the former. Yet the Methodist Episcopal Church, with almost twice as many ministers as the Catholics have, has by count 2,265,201 members, less than one third the number of members the Roman Catholic Church has; and an actual average of 150 parishioners to each minister, as compared with the 993 parishioners to each priest of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Methodist Episcopal Church has 22,106 churches, almost twice as many as those of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet an average seating capacity of 103 in each Methodist church would seat all her 2,250,000 of members.

Two things would modify this comparison:

1. The congregations of Protestant and Catholic Churches, alike, contain many who are not members of any Church.

2. The Roman Catholics, it is alleged, count all their children as members. The Methodists count as members only those who are enrolled as such upon their personal application and upon the profession of their faith.

Deducting, therefore, from the 8,277,039 of the estimated Catholic population three fifths for the children, the adult membership of that church would be 3,310,824. Deducting one tenth of this alleged estimate for attenders who are not members, the actual adult membership of that Church would be 2,979,742; add three fifths for Catholic children, and you have as the probable and proximate adult and infant membership of the Catholic Church in the United States, 4,766,386.

From all this it is concluded that Sadlier's estimate of the Catholic population is excessive. T. H. PEARNE.

Springfield, O.

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OUR INDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

There is only one Methodist Theological Seminary among the 250,000,000 of souls in India. It was founded in 1872 by the gift from Rev. D. W. Thomas, of the North India Conference, of $20,000. It has so far turned out 165 native missionaries, and 44 Christian teachers. The importance of this seminary to mission-work in India cannot be overestimated. Bishop Foster, on looking over the work, pronounced it the most important enterprise in the Indian field. Bishop Thoburn said, in his address to the Central Conference: "Our theological seminary at Bareilly has become more than ever a necessity to our work, especially in North India. The present demand for more anointed preachers of the word in India is more imperative than it has ever been before. We need a hundred men at once to enter the doors

now open before us." Such is the demand. Ultimate victory depends on native evangelists and pastors. This seminary should be made a real West Point for the missionary war in India. Foreign missionaries can initiate the campaign, but a native ministry must carry it to completion. Too much importance cannot be attached to the training of the men. If ministers in America, notwithstanding the aid derived from Christian civilization, from the Church, and the Christian home, need the training of the theological seminary, much more by far do our candidates brought in from paganism and Islam. The call for native pastors and evangelists is great. Conyerts are numbered by the thousands annually. They are scattered in at least a thousand towns and villages. They must be organized into circuits under pastors. This work is rapidly spreading, and pastors and evangelists must be multiplied. Calls constantly come to the school for preachers. The demand is already far beyond the capacity of the school. The present year 60 are enrolled in the theological seminary, and 24 as normal students. Some 45 women, the wives of the students, are also pursuing a course of training for mission-work, thus making an attendance of 129. For this important institution and its pressing need a paltry endowment of only some $50,000 has been got together, with buildings valued at about $12,500. All this is much below the demands of the case, and is not worthy of the great Methodist Episcopal Church and its missionary enterprise. We have been pressing this subject on the attention of Secretaries and Board and Church, with patient persistence -faint, at times, over the delay in raising this institution to a plane of efficiency and usefulness equal to the opening. Not ignorant of the fact that Methodism has many men of wealth, who could with small effort and but little of self-denial lift us at once to a place of far greater power as a missionary institution, we sometimes sigh out the query, O Lord. how long? For want of money our disabilities are great. The staff of teachers is not what it should be. Here we have all the demands of a theological seminary in any land. The principal is able to give his entire time to the work, but only half the time of another foreign missionary can be secured, with the partial time of two native teachers for

the seminary. The institution should now have money enough to command the full service of at least two foreign missionaries, with the required native assistants, in the course of theology. We should have ample funds to supply liberally teachers of the classic languages of the East-Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. These are so connected with Oriental learning that it becomes very desirable that some of our men, who show aptitude in this direction, take these up. We are not able to give the attention to Greek and Hebrew demanded, simply for want of a larger faculty still something is done in these languages, with encouraging results. The theory of religious instruction requires that religious teachers teach from the original text of their sacred books. It is the taunt of the Moslem, flung in the face of our native preachers, that they know only translations. The Moslem, indeed, generally imagines that the original is lost. We must have more teachers to supply this want. Besides all this, an ample endowment would help us to many appliances now wanting, as maps, charts, books, furniture, etc. Precious time and strength, that are more than gold in teaching, are spent in correspondence, calculations, planning, economizing, begging, etc., trying to build up a deficient endowment, and fit it to a demand far beyond the fund in hand. We have faith to believe that if the ear of Methodism can be gained this state of things will not last. T. J. SCOTT.

Bareilly, India.

TIONS.

THE SOUTH-SOME SUGGESTIONS.

From a study of these questions for years I am convinced that two steps toward pacification could be taken which would involve no sacrifice of principle and might do much good.

1. All of the denominations involved might make one concession. The names of Conferences are often a source of needless irritation. For instance, in the State of Arkansas the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, has three Conferences-the Arkansas, the Little Rock, and the White River. When we re-entered the field, we called our work the Arkansas; and when, by separation, that became a white Conference, the colored brethren took the name of Little Rock. With the great increase of colored population in that State, our Little Rock Conference may become as large a body as is the white Conference of the Methodist Episcopal, South, which took the name long before our own Church used it; and the confusion, now irritating, will become worse. These two Churches could at least agree so to change the nomenclature of their Annual Conferences as to avoid such irritation, and no one be hurt an atom.

2. The second suggestion is entirely different, and has to do with the two great Methodist Episcopal Churches in the South. In each Church are ministers who are broad and true. Often these men are, by reason of health or environment, hardly at ease in their present section of country. Suppose that twenty good men were practically transferred from each Church to the other. What would result? An amelioration of environ

ment, possibly, for the change should not be made without a probability of this outcome. Each man would make a center of influence. If he were true, that influence would be salutary, modifying. We predict that within five years the score would become a round hundred, and a better sentiment prevail. There are many Southern preachers who would be most welcome in our pulpits, and possibly the reverse is true. Anita, Iowa.

ALFRED NOON.

RACIAL SUPREMACY.

The fact has abundant historical proof that a spirit of pride, vanity, and self-exaltation has characterized all the leading families or nations of the earth. It is now claimed that the Anglo-Saxons are the imperial race, destined to overshadow and subdue, with their language and civilization, the world of mankind. And we of the States of America boast our free government, our enlightened institutions, our broad domain, and our brilliant future as a great commonwealth. Without any adequate preparation for the supreme crisis, we even dare to claim that our country shall be Christianity's decisive battle-ground, and the hottest fight in the Mississippi valley!

May it not be possible that we have underrated the virtues and the ability of other races? If the quality of a people is in some manner attested by its age, what shall we say of the Methuselah among the nations who to-day occupies that ancient seat of empire on the eastern slopes of Asia? The mental power of the Japanese, according to intelligent European observers, is simply marvelous, "especially in the deeper problems of philosophy and metaphysics." In the great imperial University of Tokio, eight thousand students are daily plodding their way into the wider realms of knowledge. No class of mind has evinced a keener perception of many of the fundamental principles of learning than the sages of India and China. Western enterprise is developing the physical forces of nature, and in military prowess has given the Occident ascendency over the Orient; but, if "knowledge is power," and if the keen, subtle, unwearied intellect of the East should develop unlooked-for and unlimited capacity of acquiring what we know, and of pushing investigation into other fields of research, who can foretell the result?

And what if the Asiatics should take into their political, social, and commercial life a genuine faith in Christianity, with a spirit of sincere obedience to divine law and practical conformity to all the conditions of true national greatness! Might not the star of empire hasten on its western course, until it shall once more shine, but with new and added luster, over the cradle of the human race?

Fort Atkinson, Wis.

L. N. WHEELER.