Lanterna Rally

Author: William W. Patton

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-01-10

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 9780428734442

Excerpt from The Last Century of Congregationalism, or the Influence on Church and State of the Faith and Polity of the Pilgrim Fathers The present year is fruitful in historical studies and it ibecomes those who to-day represent the Pilgrim faith and polity, to estimate afresh their value, as the traces of their 'power shall be found in the events of the century just closed. At the birth of our nation, in 1776 - a little over a century and a half from the landing of the Pilgrims - it is supposed that the Congregational Churches numbered about seven hundred, with not quite so large a number of ministers. No statistics exist of the communicants, but they could scarcely have averaged over one hundred to a church, making seventy thousand in all. It is a simple thing to turn to the carefully prepared statistical tables of the Congregational Quarterly, and ascertain our present strength, which is as follows: Churches, ministers, 3, 300; membership, 338, 313. This indicates an increase of not quite five fold. The increase is moderate, at best, while it falls far behind that of other denominations which have been running the race at our side. It will do us good to study a little into this phenomenon. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.