that kind of ingenious, special, discriminative, and, in candor, I must add, forced treatment which it receives from us, Liberals, can make the book teach anything but Orthodoxy. The Evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right in maintaining that their view of Scripture and of its doctrines draws a deep and wide division of creed between them and ourselves."

Unitarianism has rendered to Orthodoxy valuable service by turning it from side issues in religion to the defence and proclamation of essential truths, by driving it out from behind the untenable fortresses of old Calvinism, by leading it to a truer sense of the fatherhood of God, and by persuading it to a greater appreciation of the dignity of human nature.

Unitarianism, so far as growth in numbers is concerned, is a complete disappointment to its advocates. Dr. Ellis says that when the controversy opened Unitarians were confident that, before fifty years should be passed, "Orthodoxy would have become a thing of the past, while Unitarianism would be the prevailing type of religion."

Twenty-five years after the controversy broke out in 1815 there were in Massachusetts about 130 Unitarian churches of which the parishes of 96 had been originally orthodox, while about 30 had been organized by parishes from which orthodox churches had removed. There were at that time 414Trinitarian Congregational churches in the State, 197 of which had been organized since 1815. The growth of the Baptist and Methodist denominations had also been constant and rapid. According to the United States census for 1890 there were in this country 421 Unitarian churches with 67,749 members, more than half of whom are

in Massachusetts. The number of Congregational churches in 1890 was 4868, with 512,771 members.

It is impossible to represent accurately the doctrinal belief of Unitarians, since they differ as widely among themselves as the denomination differs from Trinitarian denominations. The right wing of the body almost touches Orthodoxy. The left wing, as abundant utterances of prominent Unitarians testify, hardly touches Christianity at all. Dr. Bellows said, in 1876, of the right of anyone to be a Unitarian: "He may be a pantheist, or an atheist, and if he calls himself a Christian, and is not immoral in life, he may join the Unitarian Conference, and claim as good ecclesiastical standing as the most conservative believer." In 1886 the Western Unitarian Conference refused to adopt the name "Christian." M. J. Savage, pastor of Unity Church, Boston, has recently said: "We are gradually drifting away from the idea that the Bible has any special significance or authority. We have no reliance on any historic person like Christ." This was precisely what was predicted in the time of the conflict.

The causes also of the failure of Unitarianism have been most forcibly explained by those most closely identified with it. To no man did it owe so much for its temporary success as to Dr. W. E. Channing. In 1839, near the close of his forty years' labors as a Unitarian minister, he wrote: "I would that I could look to Unitarianism with more hope. But this system was, at its recent revival, a protest of the understanding against absurd dogmas, rather than the work of deep religious principle, and was early paralyzed by the mixture of material philosophy, and fell too much into the hands of scholars and political reformers, and

the consequence is a want of vitality and force which gives us little hope of its accomplishing much under its present auspices or in its present form."

Dr. Edward Everett Hale, in a recent address, said that Dr. Palfrey, one of the founders of the Unitarian Association, once remarked to him of the period be tween 1810 and 1830: "We governed Boston, and we governed Massachusetts; and they let us do it because we did it so well." Dr. Hale asks why the Unitarians do not do it now; and answers: "Because the aristocracy of Massachusetts tried to preach the gospel to the people of America; but for the lack of a miracle of Pentecost, they could not speak the language."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DISASTROUS PLAN OF UNION.

WHILE the Unitarian controversy was withdrawing from the churches of Massachusetts a portion of their strength, the Congregationalists of Connecticut were entering into a compact with the Presbyterian Church which resulted in crippling and almost destroying the growth of Congregationalism in the Middle and Western States for half a century.

Congregational churches, which have disappeared or have become Presbyterian, were formed in Eastern New York in the seventeenth century, and many more in the eighteenth, a few of which still survive. In the list of churches of the New York State Association, including Long Island, twenty are named which were formed previous to 1800, five of them before the close of the Revolutionary War.

Massachusetts and Connecticut claimed that the patents which had been issued to them as colonies. covered a large part of the State of New York. In 1786 commissioners granted to Massachusetts in settlement of these claims the right to purchase from the Indians a large tract, amounting to millions of acres, known as Western New York. The land was purchased and advertised for sale in exchange for cultivated farms in New England. In 1790 Congress gave to Connecticut, in lieu of its claim on New York

lands, the title to more than three million acres south of Lake Erie, which came to be known as the Western Reserve, or New Connecticut. The tide of immigrants from New England soon poured rapidly into both these sections. But these immigrants were mostly poor and had to overcome the difficulties which beset settlers in the wilderness. Their brethren in New England promptly recognized their need of aid to maintain religious institutions. As early as 1784 Connecticut ministers went on short mission tours to the "Western Country." In 1788 the General Association of Connecticut recommended all the local associations to send out pastors on brief missions. In 1792 eight pastors were named by the General Association to go to the new fields for four months each. Their compensation was to be $4.50 per week, with $4 a week additional to supply their pulpits. In 1798 the General Association organized itself as the Connecticut Missionary Society. In 1800 the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine was begun, to spread tidings of missionary work, and its profits were turned into the treasury of the Missionary Society.

During all this time, and indeed before the war of the Revolution, Connecticut Congregationalists were being drawn into closer sympathy with the Presbyterians of the Middle States. The fear of the inroads of Episcopacy led to a joint convention in 1766 of representatives of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and of the General Association of Connecticut, on the proposal of the Presbyterian body; and this convention continued to meet annually till war began in 1775. After the war the development of Unitarian tendencies in Massachusetts confirmed the Connecticut churches in their