CONGREGATIONALISTS. 



115 



Skip- Bunding of the United Statet. 





i tin- Bureau of Statistics we obtain the 

 following tables, giving the number of Ameri- 

 can and British vessels, with their tonnage and 

 , which entered and cleared from the 

 I'nited States in trade with the British North 

 an Provinces on the Atlantic, during 

 the year ending June 30, 1870, and for three 

 years previous : 



American Vessels. 



British Vessels. 



COXGREGATIONALIST8. On the 2d of 

 March a convention was held in the chapel of. 

 the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, to de- 

 liberate on an appropriate celebration, by the 

 Congregational churches, of the two hundred 

 and fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the 

 Pilgrims. In April, a Pilgrim Memorial Con- 

 vention, largely attended from all parts of the 

 country, was held in Chicago. A resolu- 

 tion was adopted providing for a committee to 

 set forth a condensed statement of the char- 

 acteristic ideas to which the pilgrims gave 

 power by their self-denying devotion, and to 

 whose continued advocacy and application the 

 Congregationalists stand pledged before God 

 and man. Prof. Bartlett and Drs. Chapin, Ba- 

 con, Post, and Dexter, were appointed as such 

 committee. Resolutions were also adopted, 

 declaring that, as the Pilgrims recognized an 

 educated and pious ministry as the right arm 

 of the power of the church, there can be no 

 more fitting memorial in their honor than the 

 raising, during this anniversary year, of not 

 less than throe million dollars to aid the rec- 

 ognized theological seminaries of the Congre- 

 gational churches in establishing these institu- 

 tions upon the broadest and most permanent 

 basis ; recognizing in the erection of the con- 

 templated Congregational House at Boston, for 

 tho valuable library of the denomination, and 



as a permanent house of all the denominational 

 benevolent societies, an enterprise worthy of 

 liberal aid by CongrcgationaliHtB in all parts of 

 our land; and thanking God for the triumph 

 of the principles of the Pilgrims in the late- 

 war for the emancipation of the blacks and 

 for tho adoption of the fifteenth amendment. 

 Another resolution recommended tho 

 lishment of a National Congregational Conven- 

 tion. Nearly all tho State Associations and 

 Conferences declared at the annual meetings 

 in favor of this plan. In December a conven- 

 tion was held in Boston, at which a committee 

 was charged with drafting a definite plan. 



The long-continued cooperation of the Con- 

 gregationalists -with a large section of the 

 Presbyterian body in tho prosecution of the 

 foreign missionary work was terminated in the 

 case of many missionaries and some mission 

 churches by tho reunion of the Old and New 

 School Presbyterians. The American Board 

 of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, hereto- 

 fore the common missionary society of Con- 

 gregationalists and New-School Presbyterians, 

 transferred, in 1870, the missions to the Seneca 

 and Ojibway Indians, to Syria and the Gaboon, 

 to the care of the Presbyterian Board of Mis- 

 sions ; and most of the missionaries to Persia, 

 it was supposed, would also be transferred in 

 the course of the coming year. The American 

 Board will henceforth be an essentially Congre- 

 gational Society. Including the missions which 

 were transferred to the Presbyterian Board, 

 the whole number of native laborers in con- 

 nection with the different missions the past 

 year was 1,095, an increase of over a hundred 

 upon the previous year. Of these, 119 are 

 pastors and 827 preachers; the remainder 

 teachers, colporteurs, and Bible-readers, but all 

 educated in the various schools and semina- 

 ries, and, in point of education and character, 

 holding about the same relative position to the 

 people among whom they labor that similar 

 classes do at home. Forty-five pupils of the 

 missionary schools completed, in 1870, their 

 theological studies seven at Wailuku in the 

 Hawaiian Islands, nine in the Madura mission, 

 seven in Ceylon, and twenty-two at Harfoot. 

 The number in mission training-schools and 

 seminaries studying theology was about equal 

 to the number of deaths in the Congregational 

 seminaries in the United States. The mission 

 churches, 238 in number, received during the 

 year 1,580 new members, and, at the close of 

 the year for which the missionaries reported, 

 numbered 24,142 members. The number of 

 native pastors increased from 106 to 119. 

 The fifty-eight Hawaiian churches support 

 their own ministry, build their own houses 

 of worship, sustain mission labor among the 

 Chinese immigrants, and contribute liberally 

 for the missionary work in Micronesia and 

 the Marquesas Islands. The entire amount 

 contributed by the native Christian communi- 

 ties for the missionary funds was about sixty 

 thousand dollars in gold, or one-sixth of tho 



