adhesion to this
particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the
discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In most other communions
liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best
fitted to the end sought.

CHAPTER XVII.

A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS.

During the period from 1835 to 1845 the spirit of schism seemed to be in
the air. In this period no one of the larger organizations of churches
was free from agitating controversies, and some of the most important of
them were rent asunder by explosion.

At the time when the Presbyterian Church suffered its great schism, in
1837, it was the most influential religious body in the United States.
In 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries,
including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants.
But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It
represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races
on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish
immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition
derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally
educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional social standing
and control over men of intellectual strength and leadership. In the
four years beginning with 1831 the additions to its roll of communicants
"on examination" had numbered nearly one hundred thousand. But this
spiritual growth was chilled and stunted by the dissensions that arose.
The revivals ceased and the membership actually dwindled.

The contention had grown (a fact not without parallel in church
history) out of measures devised in the interest of cooeperation and
union. In 1801, in the days of its comparative feebleness, the General
Assembly had proposed to the General Association of Connecticut a "Plan
of Union" according to which the communities of New England Christians
then beginning to move westward between the parallels that bound "the
New England zone," and bringing with them their accustomed
Congregational polity, might cooeperate on terms of mutual concession
with Presbyterian churches in their neighborhood. The proposals had been
fraternally received and accepted, and under the terms of this compact
great accessions had been made to the strength of the Presbyterian
Church, of pastors and congregations marked with the intellectual
activity and religi