The Church, the School, and the Law

Although the Church has no connexion with the State, it must ever be a most important element in any Christian community. I therefore furnish a table of the various denominations, so as to enable the reader, at a glance, to get the particular information he may desire. Some of the denominations given in this table are, of course, again divided into other sects, such as “Reformed Methodists,” “Episcopal Methodists,” “Wesleyan Methodists,” “Six Principle Baptists,” “Seventh-Day Baptists,” “Anti-mission Baptists,” &c.

Denominations. Number of Aggregate Total Value
Churches. Accommodation. of
Church Property.
L
Baptists 8791 3,130,878 2,295,
Christian 812 296,050 177,
Congregational 1674 795,177 1,674,
Dutch Reformed 324 181,986 860,
Episcopal 1422 625,213 2,365,
Free 361 108,605 52,
Friends 714 282,823 359,
German Reformed 327 156,932 29,
Jewish 31 16,575 78,
Lutheran 1203 531,100 602,
Mennonite 110 29,900 19,
Methodist 12,467 4,209,333 3,073,
Moravian 331 112,185 93,
Presbyterian 4584 2,040,316 3,017,
Roman Catholic 1112 620,950 1,884,
Swedenborgian 15 5,070 22,
Tunker 52 35,075 9,
Union 619 213,552 144,
Unitarian 243 137,367 686,
Universalist 494 205,462 371,
Minor Sects 325 115,347 155,815

Total 36,011 13,849,896 L17,973,523

If the foregoing table may be taken as indicative of the whole population, it will be seen that one person out of every three is a Methodist, and only one in every twenty-two is a Romanist; but what is more worthy of remark is, the provision which, under the voluntary system, has been made for public worship.

We here see accommodation provided for 14,000,000 in a population of 23,000,000 of which 3,000,000 are slaves. At the same time, it must also be observed, that all these churches are not necessarily supplied with ministers. Their support being dependent upon their congregation, it will occasionally happen that a minister gets starved out, and some time may elapse before a successor is appointed; the inconvenience of which contingency occurring is obvious. More than one such case came under my own observation when travelling through the country.

With regard to the distribution of the churches, the only peculiarity I observe is, that the Unitarian community appear to be nearly all gathered into one spot, and that spot the Land of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the State that is considered foremost in education. Out of 243 churches, 163 are situated in Massachusetts. I have never heard any reason given for this curious fact; doubtless the great talents of Channing tended to swell their numbers, but could hardly account for the extraordinary proportion established in this State.

In proportion to its numbers, it will be seen that the Episcopal is the wealthiest of all Churches; and yet we find complaint made of the insufficiency of the support for their ministers. Bishop Eastburn, of Massachusetts, in a pastoral letter, states that in his diocese “respectable parents will not bring up their children to the clerical profession, because the salaries hardly keep people from starving.” How far this is true generally, or whether confined to his own neighbourhood, I cannot say. The Episcopal Church in America is free from the violent factions that have distracted and thrown obloquy upon the sister church in this country. The puerile struggle about surplices, and candles, and steps up to altars, and Brussels lace offerings, appear to have attracted little attention among those in America, whose theological views assimilate with the extreme high party in England: and I never heard, during my residence in the States, any of that violent and uncharitable language with which discussions on religious topics too frequently abound in this country; nor is the Episcopal community by any means so divided as it is here. The Bishop of New Zealand is far nearer their type than the controversial prelate of Exeter.

The Book of Common Prayer, as arranged by Convention in 1790, is well worthy of notice, and, in many points, of imitation. These pages are not the proper place for a theological discussion, and my only reason for touching upon the subject at all is, that the public voice is constantly calling for some modification of the great length of our present Sunday services, and I therefore conclude that the following observations may be interesting to some of my readers.

The leading points of retrenchment are removing all repetitions, such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Collect for the day; a portion of the close of the Litany is omitted at the discretion of the minister. The Communion Service is not read every Sunday. I suppose the Church authorizes this omission at the discretion of the minister, as I have attended service on more than one occasion when the Communion was not read; when read, Our Lord’s commandment, Matthew xxi-40, follows the Commandments of the Old Testament, and a short Collect, followed by the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the day, finish that portion of the service. Independent of the regular Psalms, for the day, there are ten separate short collections, any one of which the minister may substitute for the proper Psalms, and the Gloria Patri is only said after the last Psalm.

The leading features of difference from our own “Common Prayer” are as follow: They appoint proper Second Lessons for the Sunday, instead of leaving them, to the chance of the Calendar they place the Nicene and Apostles’ Creed side by side, and leave the minister to select which he prefers, and to use, if he think proper, the word “Hades” instead of Hell. They remove the Athanasian Creed entirely from the Prayer Book, leaving to the minister to explain the mysteries which that creed so summarily disposes of. When it is considered how many Episcopalians are opposed to its damnatory clauses, and how much more nearly the other creeds resemble that model of simplicity, the Lord’s Prayer, they appear to have exercised a sound discretion in this excision. Few deep-thinking people, I imagine, can have heard the children of the parish school reading the responses of that creed after the minister, without pain.

Lest the passing opinion of a traveller upon the subject be deemed hasty or irreverent, I beg to quote Bishop Tomline’s opinion. He says “Great objections have been made to the clauses which denounce eternal damnation against those who do not believe the faith as here stated; and it certainly is to be lamented that assertions of so peremptory a nature, unexplained and unqualified, should have been used in any human composition.... Though I firmly believe that the doctrines of this creed are all founded on Scripture, I cannot but conceive it to be both unnecessary and presumptuous to say that, “except every one do keep them whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” Mr. Wheatley also, when writing on the Creed, says, that the third and fourth verses constitute the creed, and that what follows “requires our assent no more than a sermon does, which is made to prove or illustrate a text.” To resume.

They have proper prayers and thanksgivings for individuals who desire their use, instead of, as with us, introducing a few words into the ordinary service. They have provided a liberal collection of psalms and hymns for singing in church, and no others are allowed to be used. Each psalm and hymn has the Gloria Patri suited to it marked at the beginning. The inconvenience of the total want of such a provision in our Church is most palpable. Not long before I went to America, I was attending a parish church in the country, where a great proportion of the psalms and hymns used were the minister’s own composition, and if I recollect right, the book cost half-a-crown. I came up to town, and I found my parish church there had a selection under the sanction of the Bishop of London. Since my return from America, I have gone to the same London church, under the same Bishop, and I have found a totally different book in use. The foregoing are the principal alterations in the Sunday services.

The alterations in the other services are chiefly the following: In the full Communion Service, the word “condemnation” is substituted for “damnation,” in the notice of intimation. The whole of the damnatory clause in the exhortation, from the word “unworthily” to “sundry kinds of death,” is expunged. The first prayer in our Church after the reception, is modified by them into an oblation and invocation, and precedes the reception. The remainder of the service is nearly the same as our own.

They have removed the objectionable opening of the Marriage Service; but, not content with that, they have also removed the whole of the service which follows the minister’s blessing after the marriage is pronounced, and thus reduced it to a five minutes’ ceremony. While on this subject, I may as well observe that, from inquiries I made, I believe but few of those marriages take place by which husband and wife are prevented from kneeling at the same altar, by which their highest interests can never be a subject of mutual discussion, and by which children are either brought up without any fixed religious ideas at all, or else a compromise is entered into, and the girls are educated in one church and the boys in another. In short, I believe the Romanists in America marry but rarely out of the pale of their own church. I cannot say what the law of divorce is, but it appears to offer far greater facilities than would be approved of in England. A gentleman mentioned two cases to me, in one of which the divorce was obtained by the wife without the husband being aware of it, although living in the same State; in the other, the wife returned to the State from which her husband had taken her, and there obtained a divorce without his knowledge. To return from this digression. In the Visitation of the Sick they have removed that individual absolution of the minister, the wording of which is so objectionable that, if I am rightly informed, it is rarely used by ministers in England. In the Burial of the Dead, they have changed the two concluding prayers in those sentences which refer to the deceased. The Commination they have entirely expunged. They have added a full service for Visitation of Prisoners, and a Harvest Thanksgiving; and they have provided a form of morning and evening prayer for families.

The foregoing constitute the leading points of difference. Of course there are many minor ones which are merely verbal, such, for instance, as their expunging the scriptural quotation of “King of kings, Lord of lords,” from the prayer for the President, probably out of deference to the prejudices of the Republicans, for which omission they have partially atoned by the substitution of the grander expression of “only Ruler of the Universe,” in lieu of the more limited term “only Ruler of Princes.” To enter into all these verbal changes would be alike tedious and useless. Enough, I trust, has been written to convey a general idea of the most striking and interesting points of difference.

Other churches transplanted to this hemisphere seem to differ from the parent stock most essentially. Thus I find in the almanack for 1853, “Methodist Episcopal Church (North) 3984 ministers, and 662,315 communicants,” and below them “Methodist Episcopal Church (South)” without any return of statistics. I regret not being able to give the reader any history of this occidental hierarchy. I do not even know the Episcopacizing process they go through, whether it is entirely lay or entirely clerical, or whether it is a fusion of the two. At first I imagined it was a Wesleyan offshoot, but I can find no indication of that fact; and, moreover, the Wesleyan is a very small body, numbering 600 ministers and 20,000 communicants. I only allude to it because it appears to me a totally novel feature in Dissenting bodies as understood in England. Another curious change produced by this Western climate is, that it turns all my Presbyterian friends instrumentally musical. I do not remember entering any of their churches without finding an organ, and in many instances a very good choir. Although I approve highly of the euphonious improvement, I feel sure that many of my countrymen in the extreme north would rather see a picture representing Satan in Abraham’s bosom inside their kirk than any musical instrument. Such is the force of habit and prejudice.

The extent to which the churches in America have increased is doubtless most creditable to the community, when it is remembered that all the various denominations are supported voluntarily. Nor is their number the only point worthy of notice: the buildings themselves have all, some ecclesiastical appearance, and many of them are fine specimens of architecture. Besides which, they are always kept clean and in good order; you will never find those unsightly barns, and still less the dilapidation which is often met with in the mother land. I have myself been in a church at home where the flooring was all worn away, and gravel from the outside substituted, and where the seats were so rickety that a fall might be anticipated at any moment. The parishioners were poor Highlanders, it is true, but the owner of the soil was a man of considerable wealth.

I have, since my return to England, been into a beautiful old parish church in one of the midland counties; the building was in a most deplorable state of dilapidation, and the communion-rail formed a music-stand, while inside were placed an orchestra of two fiddles and a bass-viol. The minister received, for the first three years he officiated, the exorbitant remuneration of thirty pounds a year; since which time he has taken the duties of parish schoolmaster, the salary of which, increased by a small sum from Queen Anne’s Bounty, enables him to keep body and soul together. But of course the school engrossed all his time, except what was necessary to prepare his discourses, and his parishioners were unavoidably and totally neglected, till dissenting ministers came to the rescue. As a natural consequence, they soon followed the ministers who made them the objects of their care, and when I attended this beautiful old parish church, the congregation, independent of the orchestra and the parish school, consisted of eleven souls, three of whom came from the minister’s own house. You might seek in vain to parallel such a case throughout the whole Republic.

I now propose to make a few observations about disbelief in the United States. On this point I have no statistics to refer to, nor do I believe such exist. I therefore can form no idea of its extent; but the open way in which some parties not only express their doubts of the authenticity of Scripture, but dispute every doctrine which it contains, and openly proclaim it the enemy of man, is worthy of some notice. An Ismite Convention was held for many days at Hartford, in one of the New England States (Connecticut) where, I suppose, education may be considered as universal as in any other State in the Union.

The meeting was considered of sufficient importance to occupy daily several columns of one of the New York leading journals, and to employ a special reporter. It is thus headed MEETING OF PHILOSOPHERS, THEOLOGIANS, THINKERS, STRONG-MINDED WOMEN, SPIRITUAL RAPPERS, ATHEISTS, AND NEGROES. Details of this Convention would be too tedious; I propose only giving a few of their resolutions. Resolved That the Bible, in some parts of the Old and New Testament, sanctions injustice, concubinage, prostitution, oppression, war, plunder, and wholesale murder, and, therefore, that the Bible as a whole, originated, is false, and injurious to the social and spiritual growth of man.” After which the chairman goes on to prove (?) it is purely human, &c. Another resolution reiterates the former, and adds that “the time has come to declare its untruthfulness, and to unmask those who are guilty of its imposture.” Then follows a resolution for the especial consideration of slave-owners: “Resolved That it is the climax of audacity and impiety for this nation to receive the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and then to make it a penal offence to give it to any of the millions who are held as chattel slaves on its soil, thus conspiring to make them miserable here and hereafter.” Then follows a charitable resolution, declaring their belief that all the clergy “would readily burn the Bible to-morrow if public sentiment demanded it.” One of the orators brings the Bible to the bar of geology, and there condemns it, and recommends “that the Hindoos should establish a mission to enlighten Christians of this and other countries. He believed that the priesthood and the Bible were opposed to all liberty and progress, and the deadliest enemies of mankind.”

Another member of this blasphemous band becomes highly indignant because the orthodox clergymen who probably remembered that “evil communications corrupt good manners” would not meet them on their infidel platform, and he presents a resolution declaring that “by their absence, they had openly declared their infidelity to their professions of theological faith, and had thus confessed the weakness and folly of their arrogant assumptions, and proved that they loved popular favour more than common good; and they are therefore moral cowards, pharisees of this nineteenth century, seeking to enslave more and more the mind of man,” &c. Another orator then proposes a resolution, to the effect that the spirit and genius of Bible religion is not a system of salvation from sin and its effects, but a system of damnation into sin and its effects; that it is the friend of moral and spiritual slavery, and therefore “the foe of human mental and spiritual liberty.” Subsequently a strong-minded woman, called Mrs. Rose, appeared on the platform amid considerable uproar, followed by extinguishing the gas and singing songs. After a severe struggle, the lady managed to express her sentiments in these mild and Christian terms: “The Church is upon your neck. Do you want to be free? Then trample the Church, the priest, and the Bible under your feet.” The last day’s proceeding closed by a row in the gallery, owing to a fight, in which a dirk had been drawn; and then the Convention adjourned till the following year.

The reader must not imagine that I state this as an indication of the tone of religious feeling in the New England States, far from it; but it appears to me a fact worth noticing, that a Convention of such a nature and magnitude, and considered of sufficient importance to employ the special reporter of a leading journal of New York, should by any possibility assemble for days and days together, and give vent to such blasphemous sentiments among a people so liberally educated and so amply supplied with means of religious instruction. I only hope that the infidelity of the whole Republic was gathered into that one assembly, and that having met in so uncongenial an atmosphere, they all returned to their homes impregnated with some of the purer atmosphere of the great majority of the people.

The subject of Education naturally follows the Church; but, on this point, any attempt at accuracy is hopeless. Whether it be from the variety of school systems in the different States, or from some innate defect in the measures taken to obtain information, I cannot pretend to say; but the discrepancies between the statements made are so great, that I can only pretend to give a moderate approximation to the truth, which is the more to be regretted, as the means provided for education throughout the length and breadth of the Republic constitute one of its noblest features. In rough numbers, they may be thus stated:

Schools. Number. Instructors. Pupils.

Public                 81,000       92,000          4,000,000
Colleges                  220         1500             20,000
Academies, & others     6,000       12,000            261,000

Of the above colleges, theology claims 44, medicine 37, law 16.

Among the expenses of the various colleges, which I can refer to, I find University College, Virginia the terms of which occupy 44 weeks is the most expensive. The annual charges for a student are the following: College expenses, 40l.; board, 22l.; washing, fuel, and lights, 4l. in all, 70l. It is obvious that no provision is here made for champagne suppers, hunters, tandems, and other “necessaries,” of our University students, including a few “auxiliaries,” in the shape of I O U’s, for red coats, top-boots, Hudson’s regalías, and mysterious jewellery bills for articles that men don’t wear. Doubtless some papas would prefer the Virginian bill of fare; but then, they must remember that the republican lads go to college to learn something, whereas many papas send their first-born hopes to Oxford and Cambridge to save themselves trouble, and to keep the youths out of mischief during the awkward period of life yclept “hobbledehoyhood.” How they succeed is pretty well known to themselves, and probably their bankers have some idea also; yet, with all these drawbacks, who will deny that those seats of learning turn out annually some of the most manly and high-minded, and some of the best educated and most industrious, young men in the country?

Having entered into some of the details of education at various places during my travels, I shall not trespass on the reader’s patience by dwelling further on the subject, except to call attention to the following important regulation with regard to children in factories; and I most sincerely hope it may reach the eye of Lord Shaftesbury, or some other of his coadjutors in the noble work of the protection and education of helpless youth. The regulation exists in some shape or other in many States. I subjoin the wording of it from that of Massachusetts:

"No child under the age of fifteen years shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment, unless such child shall have attended some public or private day-school, where instruction is given by a teacher qualified according to law to teach orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, arithmetic, and good behaviour, at least one term of eleven weeks of the twelve months next preceding the time of such employment, and for the same period during any and every twelve months in which such child shall be so employed."

Although my salt-fish friends are probably very familiar with sea-lawyers, the general reader may be astonished to see any allusion to law made by a sea-captain. I therefore beg to inform him, that the following observations on a most interesting point are furnished me by a friend who is legitimately at home in that complicated business, and who devoted much attention to the study of the method by which land is conveyed in the United States with so much ease and so little expense:

“In America all conveyances of land, whether absolute or by way of mortgage only, are, with the exception of some chattel interests, required to be registered within a fixed or a reasonable time after their execution. Registration is constructive notice to all the world; if not registered, a deed is only valid against the parties to it and the heirs and devisees of the grantor. Generally, however, notice obtained by a purchaser previous to his purchase, will, if clearly proved, prevent his taking the advantage, though he may have been beforehand in registering his own title.

“By the old laws of Massachusetts, all deeds of conveyance were required to be recorded, ’that neither creditors might be defrauded, nor courts troubled with vexatious suits and endless contentions.’ In consequence of the number of registers established in each county and the excellence of their arrangements, no inconvenience results from the accumulation of deeds, notwithstanding the early period to which they go back. In register for Suffolk county, Massachusetts, are to be seen copies of deeds from 1640 down to the present time. They are bound up in 640 volumes, and do not as yet take up much space. They have lately multiplied in an increasing ratio, the volumes having risen from 250 to their present number in the last 25 years.

“The register for Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, contains within a moderate compass deeds from 1683 downwards. They are referred to by indices on the following plan: All deeds made within a certain time, and in which the name of the grantor commences with the same letter of the alphabet, are bound up in one volume; thus, a volume marked “H 1820-1847,” contains all deeds executed between those years by grantors whose names begin with H. One index volume contains the names of all grantors between those years in alphabetical order, another that of all grantees, and both refer to volume and page of the books of deeds. A third index gives the names of grantors and grantees, arranged chronologically, according to the year in which the deed they were parties to was executed.

“The original deed remain in the possession of the proprietors, but are of secondary importance. They are written in a plain, legible hand on paper, parchment being seldom used. The signatures of the parties are of course requisite; but the seal, which is essential to a deed in England, is in many States dispensed with. The custom of registering obviates the necessity for those long recitals that so swell out an English conveyance, and the shortest possible forms of covenants are preferred. The American conveyance only witnesses that the grantor conveys the property therein described, which, or part of which, was conveyed to him by such a one by a deed of such a date, and a marginal note states the volume and page where the deed thus mentioned is to be seen.

The advantages of registration are, greater security of title, and brevity and economy in conveyances. The example of the United States shows that there is nothing in the Anglo-Saxon laws of real property to render such a system impracticable. Several of the most eminent lawyers in Boston declared, that their registration was found to work easily and safely; the only change desired was by a few, who expressed a wish that more registers should be established, as, one for every district, instead of for every county. They all expressed their astonishment that a similar plan had not long ago been adopted in England. They admitted that dealings with property were more simple in America, where strict settlements are either not allowed, or not generally in use, but maintained that the real obstacles to a registration in this country lie not so much in the difficulty of carrying it out, as in the prejudices of landowners, the self-interest of lawyers, and the superstitious dread entertained by John Bull generally of anything to which he is unaccustomed."

I am no lawyer, as I observed before, and therefore I do not pretend to pass an opinion on the details of the foregoing remarks; but of the results produced by their system, I certainly can speak, for I have seen property transferred without the slightest trouble, and for a few shillings, which, owing to the amount involved, and the complications connected with it, would, if transferred in this country, have kept the firm of Screw, Skinflint, and Stickem hard at work for mouths, and when finished, would have required a week to make up the bill of costs, &c.