THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
S4S
and Moravia, Belgium and Switzerland. The earlier settlers of New York, Ohio, and Illinois, were generally Protestant in their sympathies, but unable at once, with a new country to settle and homes to be built, to provide for themselves the institutions of worship. To the help of these hopeful but destitute settlers came the organized missionary societies of the East. Their missionaries were hurried forward to every needy point, not only in the wilds of New York and Ohio, but to the remoter sections of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. They even found their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and they crossed the northern borders into Canada. A specially promising field of effort was the section of Ohio bordering on Lake Erie, which had been settled chiefly by families from Connecticut, and for that reason commonly known as New Connecticut. At the beginning of the century this tract contained about 1,400 inhabitants. In 1804 it had 400 families. One year later the 400 had grown to 1,100, one-half of them from New England. In less than thirty years from the beginning of organized home missions ninety churches had been planted in this section, all of them by missionaries sent out and supported by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. To sum up in a sentence, the Missionary Society of Connecticut, at the end of thirty years of work, had employed 200 missionaries, by whom 400 churches had been established in the new settlements of the nation. With what wear and tear of body, with what sacrifice of comforts in the wilderness, with what patience of hope and courage of faith and labors of love no words could fully portray. Not a mile of railway had been built. The river and canal, the stage-coach, the emigrant wagon, and the saddle were the only conveniences of travel, and to these the missionary often added foot-sore and weary tramps from settlement to settlement. No Franciscan, Dominican, or Jesuit missionary of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, toiling over the same ground on missionary errands, accomplished a grander service or endured hardships more cheerfully.
All the earlier efforts above described were
marked by a commendable absence of sectarian
rivalry. The vastness of the problem
7. The forbade all such trifling. Prompt, American united action was demanded. Denom-
Home inational supremacy was buried under Missionary the all-absorbing issue whether New Society. America should be a heathen or a Christian nation. Between Presbyterians and Congregationalists, at that time the strongest church bodies in the land, the spirit of union was particularly active. For the long period of fifty years, between 1801 and 1851, these two churches carried on their missionary work in the new settlements under a " Plan of Union " so called, mutually agreed to, by which the churches of either order, wherever formed, might worship in the same house, elect and listen to the same pastor, and profess the same creed, while each body was left free to govern itself by the church polity it loved and preferred. In 1826 Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed, and Associate Reformed churches
still further illustrated their unsectarian spirit by uniting in the organization of a national society known as the American Home Missionary Society. The growth and needs of the home missionary movement made this step a necessity. Hitherto State societies had been doing national work, each in its own way. But these organizations, operating independently, had resulted in an unequal distribution of both men and money. Some regions were oversupplied, while others were left entirely destitute. Moreover, the laborers themselves inevitably came into conflict with each other. Obviously the time had arrived for federation and coordination under one national society; and that society, as above stated, was organized May 26, 1826, with headquarters in New York, the various state societies making themselves auxiliaries to the national organization. Perhaps nothing more potential in the progress of the home missionary movement, up to this date, belongs to its history than this act. For years the churches forming this alliance labored together in fraternal unity, contributing to a common treasury, and governed by a single board of directors. Receipts rapidly increased, the missionary force doubled and trebled in number, and instead of being an itinerant preacher, the home missionary became a settled pastor, bearing the commission of a national society, dwelling continually among his people, and building them up in unity and strength. It was only when these cooperating church bodies had grown strong that they amicably withdrew from this federation to organize separate societies of their own, leaving the Congregationalists to inherit the name and good-will of this honored society. In fact, it was not until many years later that " American " was dropped from its charter name and " Congregational," which had become more truly descriptive of its nature, was substituted.
Meanwhile the Methodist Church, growing in strength and burning to have a part in national evangelization, organized its mission- 8. Denom- ary society in 1819, which covered both inational home and foreign work; the Episcopal Societies. Church, its Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society in 1821, also national; the Baptists, their American Baptist Home Missionary Society in 1832; the Lutherans, their Home Missionary Society of the General Synod in 1845; and the Disciples, their American Christian Missionary Society in 1849. The Southern Presbyterians. Southern Baptists, and Southern Methodists also have their homeland organizations,, doing an invaluable work in the Southern States. Other church bodies, Evangelical in character, will be found enumerated in the table given below, which have taken their part also, and are still intensely concerned, in this great home missionary movement. Thus, by a steady, natural evolution of national need and evangelistic interest two societies have grown to be more than thirty; all the leading church bodies of America have gradually become organized for home evangelization, and a movement which began in New England in 1798 for the Christian enlightenment of a few kindred or neighbors moving westward has developed into a system as