been content with
nothing less. Editors so conscientious are not easily to be found; and
it is to the honor of Little, Brown & Company that they habitually
secure such services, and thus make their reprints almost as creditable
to our literature as if they were original works.

_History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United
States of America._ By ABEL STEVENS, LL. D., Author of "The
History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century
called Methodism," etc. Volumes I. and II. New York:
Carleton & Porter.

The history of a religions denomination is in itself a matter of no
small importance. Taken in connection with other ecclesiastical bodies
as a portion of the data in estimating the national development, it is
still more valuable. In the churches inhere almost exclusively the
sources of influence available for the moral culture of the people. The
pulpit, the pastorate, and the various other ecclesiastical appliances
are potent in effects which cannot be produced by other causes. The
higher educational institutions are under the direction of the religious
bodies; while our common schools, though properly excluding sectarian
influence, are yet indirectly and not improperly affected by the
religious character of the community. Not only does the man who
undertakes to write history, while ignoring the religious element, give
us an incompetent and false representation, but no one can become a
respectable student of history who does not carefully consider the
religious development of society as proceeding under the guidance of the
several denominational bodies.

Up to about the period of the Revolution the principal religious
establishments in this country were the Puritans, occupying practically
the whole field in New England, the Presbyterians preponderating in the
Middle Colonies, and the Episcopalians in the South. There were other
elements, as the Quakers and the Baptists. The former, though not
without a considerable influence in shaping the national character, were
less marked in their effect. The latter, though already an important
body and destined to become still more so, and though in fervor and
aggressiveness subsequently approximating the Methodists, were as yet so
little distinct from the Puritans that we may regard them as
substantially one with the latter.

Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism were then, as they have been ever
since, conservative in their charac