suicidal compact the guileless
Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign
missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of
the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future
of the church, and determined the type of Episcopalianism that was to be
planted in the West.[333:1] Entering thus late into the work, and that
with stinted resources, the Episcopal Church wholly missed the
apostolic glory of not building on other men's foundations. Coming with
the highest pretensions to exclusive authority, its work was very
largely a work of proselyting from other Christian sects. But this work
was prosperously carried on; and although not in itself a work of the
highest dignity, and although the methods of it often bore a painfully
schismatic character, there is little room for doubt that the results of
it have enriched and strengthened the common Christianity of America.
Its specialties in the planting work have been the setting of a worthy
example of dignity and simplicity in the conduct of divine worship, and
in general of efficiency in the administration of a parish, and, above
all, the successful handling of the immensely difficult duties imposed
upon Christian congregations in great cities, where the Episcopal Church
has its chief strength and its most effective work.

One must needs ascend to a certain altitude above the common level in
order to discern a substantial resultant unity of movement in the
strenuous rivalries and even antagonisms of the many sects of the one
church of Christ in America in that critical quarter-century from the
year 1835 to the outbreak of the Civil War, in which the work of the
church was suddenly expanded by the addition of a whole empire of
territory on the west, and the bringing in of a whole empire of alien
population from the east, and when no one of the Christian forces of the
nation could be spared from the field. The unity is very real, and is
visible enough, doubtless, from "the circle of the heavens." The sharers
in the toil and conflict and the near spectators are not well placed to
observe it. It will be for historians in some later century to study it
in a truer perspective.

* * * * *

It is not only as falling within this period of immigration, but as
being largely dependent on its accessions from foreign lands, that the
growth of Mormonism is entitled to mention in this chapter