r ministry from the rank and file of the church, without
excluding any by arbitrarily imposed conditions. The Presbyterians were
heavily cumbered for advance work by traditions and rules which they
were rigidly reluctant to yield or bend, even when the reason for the
rule was superseded by higher reasons. The argument for a learned
ministry is doubtless a weighty one; but it does not suffice to prove
that when college-bred men are not to be had it is better that the
people have no minister at all. There is virtue in the rule of
ministerial parity; but it should not be allowed to hinder the church
from employing in humbler spiritual functions men who fall below the
prescribed standard. This the church, in course of time, discovered, and
instituted a "minor order" of ministers, under the title of colporteurs.
But it was timidly and tardily done, and therefore ineffectively. The
Presbyterians lost their place in the skirmish-line; but that which had
been their hindrance in the advance work gave them great advantage in
settled communities, in which for many years they took precedence in
the building up of strong and intelligent congregations.

To the Congregationalists belongs an honor in the past which, in recent
generations, they have not been jealous to retain. Beyond any sect,
except the Moravians, they have cherished that charity which seeketh not
her own. The earliest leaders in the organization of schemes of national
beneficence in cooeperation with others, they have sustained them with
unselfish liberality, without regard to returns of sectarian advantage.
The results of their labor are largely to be traced in the upbuilding of
other sects. Their specialty in evangelization has been that of the
religious educators of the nation. They have been preeminently the
builders of colleges and theological seminaries. To them, also, belongs
the leadership in religious journalism. Not only the journals of their
own sect and the undenominational journals, but also to a notable extent
the religious journals of other denominations, have depended for their
efficiency on men bred in the discipline of Congregationalism.

It is no just reproach to the Episcopalians that they were tardy in
entering the field of home missions. When we remember that it is only
since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find
their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements
to be a highly honorable one. By a