nclude more than seventeen and one half
millions.[415:1]

The pondering of these possibilities is pertinent to this closing
chapter on account of the fact that, as we near the end of the
nineteenth century, one of the most distinctly visible tendencies is the
tendency toward the abatement of sectarian division in the church. It is
not for us simply to note the converging lines of tendency, without some
attempt to compute the point toward which they converge. There is grave
reason to doubt whether this line of the consolidation or confederation
of sects, followed never so far, would reach the desired result.

If the one hundred and forty-three sects enumerated in the eleventh
census of the United States[415:2] should by successful negotiation be
reduced to four, distinguished each from the others by strongly marked
diversities of organization and of theological statement, and united to
each other only by community of the one faith in Jesus Christ, doubtless
it would involve some important gains. It would make it possible to be
rid of the friction and sometimes the clash of much useless and
expensive machinery, and to extinguish many local schisms that had been
engendered by the zeal of some central sectarian propaganda. Would it
tend to mitigate the intensity of sectarian competition, or would it
tend rather to aggravate it? Is one's pride in his sect, his zeal for
the propagation of it, his jealousy of any influence that tends to
impair its greatness or hinder its progress, likely to be reduced, or is
it rather likely to be exalted, by the consciousness that the sect is a
very great sect, standing alone for important principles? Whatever
there is at present of asperity in the emulous labors of the competing
denominations, would it not be manifold exasperated if the competition
were restricted to four great corporations or confederations? If the
intestine conflict of the church of Christ in America should even be
narrowed down (as many have devoutly wished) to two contestants,--the
Catholic Church with its diversity of orders and rites, on the one hand,
and Protestantism with its various denominations solidly confederated,
on the other,--should we be nearer to the longed-for achievement of
Christian union? or should we find sectarian animosities thereby raised
to the highest power, and the church, discovering that it was on the
wrong track for the desired terminus, compelled to reverse and back in
order to be switched u