where, with the spreading
population, substantial edifices for public worship were erected and
competent provision made for the maintenance of all the decencies and
proprieties of Christian religion. The influence of these
institutions, and of the faith which they embodied, was most benign
and salutary. They gave to the age of the Revolution its noble
character and its deep-seated principles, the force and momentum of
which have come down, with gradually decreasing power, to our own day.
But with these institutions and with their proper effect and influence
was mingled the fatal leaven of secularity.

* * * * *

All the leading denominations are represented in Loudoun by churches
and congregations to the extent shown by the following table of
statistics, representing conditions as they existed at the close of
the calendar year 1906, and based upon the returns of individual
church organizations so far as received by the Census Office, through
which Bureau they were obtained for initial publication in this work.

=========================================+==============+============
| Total |Communicants
| number of | or members.
Denomination. |organizations.|------------
| |Total number
| |reported.
-----------------------------------------+--------------+------------
All denominations | 97 | 7,606
_Baptist bodies_: | |
Baptists-- | |
Southern Baptist Convention | 11 | 1,199
National Baptist Convention | |
(colored) | 15 | 1,235
Free Baptists | 2 | 55
Primitive Baptists | 6 | 171
_Friends_: | |
Society of Friends (Orthodox) | 2 | 122
Religious Society of Friends | |
(Hicksite) | 3 | 278
_Lutheran bodies_: | |
General Synod of the Evangelical | |
Lutheran Church in the United |