EDITOR'S TABLE. 



631 



there were less than 1,950 with a pop- 

 ulation of 3,500,000, showing a church 

 for every 1,700 souls. There are now 

 more than 72,000, which, with a popula- 

 tion of 38,000,000, would show a church 

 for every 529. " In other words, while 

 the population has multiplied eleven- 

 fold, the churches have multiplied near- 

 ly tbirty-seven-fold." The most signal 

 religious fact which the past century 

 presents is stated to be the growth of 

 Methodism. When their first confer- 

 ence met at Baltimore they collected 

 but sixty preachers, and it was reckoned 

 that in the whole country they could 

 muster but twenty more, " By the cen- 

 sus of 1870 they were credited with 

 more than 25,000 parish organizations, 

 and a church property of $70,000,000." 

 Notice is taken of the tendency to ap- 

 preciate a more educated clergy, and 

 of a growing ambition in the matter of 

 churcli architecture. The general move- 

 ment, it is said, has led not so much 

 toward the multiplication of sects as 

 toward the formation of compact and 

 powerful religious organizations. But 

 there has been little reciprocal influence 

 among ecclesiastical bodies, and no ten- 

 dency to theological unity. The general 

 conclusion of the writer is that "a re- 

 view of our past history should incline 

 US to place a modest estimate on our 

 success;" aiid "at the close of a century 

 we seem to have made no advance 

 Avhatever in harmonizing the relations 

 of religious sects among themselves, or 

 in defining their common relation to the 

 civil power. . . . Thefunction of Amer- 

 ican Christianity has been discharged 

 in a moral and practical, rather than 

 in a scientific, and theological develop- 

 ment." 



Prof. Sumner's sketch of American 

 politics for a hundred years is highly 

 instructive and readable, but on the 

 whole any thing but flattering to the 

 national vanity. The " Ring " and the 

 "Boss " seem to be its latest outcome, 

 and of the latter character it is said, " he 

 is the last and perfect flower of the long 

 development at which hundreds of skill- 



ful and crafty men bave labored, and 

 into which the American people have 

 put by far the greatest part of their po- 

 litical energy." Whether in politics 

 the course of the nation has been on 

 the whole upward or downward, the 

 writer considers an open question, but 

 comforts us with his individual opinion 

 that we are not degenerating. 



Prof. Newcomb, in reviewing the 

 abstract science of the century, dis- 

 cusses with much ability the condi- 

 tions on which the cultivation of pure 

 science depends, and finds that they 

 are greatly wanting in this country. 

 There is a lack of intimate intercourse 

 among scientific men; of government 

 appreciation of the aid they require 

 in devoting themselves to original re- 

 search. There is, besides, a kind of 

 national one-sidedness not merely an 

 absorption in material interests a kind 

 of faith in practical sagacity and the 

 sufficiency of plain common-sense for 

 all emergencies, which excludes the 

 need of more exact methods of thought, 

 and is inappreciative of the value of 

 refined and remote inquiries that yield 

 no palpable or directly useful results. 

 It is therefore natural " that the devel- 

 opment of the higher branches of sci- 

 ence in our country should be marked 

 by the same backwardness which char- 

 acterizes the higher forms of thought 

 in other directions." Prof. Newcomb. 

 brings out, in an admirable passage, the' 

 complete antagonism between the ideas 

 "which animate the so-called 'practi- 

 cal man' of our country and those 

 which animate the investigator in any 

 field which deserves the name of sci- 

 ence or philosophy ; " from which it 

 appears that the most potent hindrance 

 to science with us is that adverse state 

 of the general mind which prevents our 

 people from taking interest in it, and 

 of encouraging those who devote them- 

 selves to it. lie says : " It is strikingly 

 illustrative of the absence of every 

 thing like an effective national pride in 

 science that two generations should 

 have passed without America having 



