PRESBYTERIANS. 



PROT. EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 775 



the number of congregations was 556, and 

 that 168,497 had been raised daring the year 

 for church purposes. The Sunday-School Com- 

 mittee returned the number of Sunday-schools 

 as 1,051, with 9,587 teachers and 78,490 pu- 

 pils. The total income of the Sustentation 

 fund had been 25,108, and the supplemental 

 dividend to ministers had been raised to 16. 

 The income tor foreign missions was 12,032, 

 of whicti nearly 2,500 had been subscribed in 

 India. 



Regarding the use of instrumental music in 

 worship, the Assembly recommended that the 

 advocates of "liberty" make an effort to per- 

 suade those who have instruments to cease using 

 them ; that the advocates of " purity of wor- 

 ship " be urged to dissolve their associations ; 

 and that the question be not raised again for 

 three years. In respect to the state of the coun- 

 try, the Assembly reaffirmed the decisions it 

 had made at a special meeting previously held, 

 which declared the need of a satisfactory set- 

 tlement of the land question ; expressed a de- 

 sire for the removal of all grievances in the 

 government of the country ; deprecated the 

 violence and outrages which had taken place, 

 and all abusive language and sectarian strife ; 

 and protested against such legislation as was 

 set forth in the Home-Rule Bill, which had 

 been defeated in Parliament. After the ad- 

 journment of the Assembly, its Committee on 

 the State of the Country decided to send the 

 Assembly's resolutions to the different con- 

 gregations, accompanied by the recommenda- 

 tion that members of the Presbyterian Church 

 'give their support at the ensuing election to 

 candidates who pledge themselves to oppose- 

 any legislation tending to imperil the legisla- 

 tive union between Great Britain and Ireland, 

 or to interfere with the unity and supremacy 

 of the Imperial Parliament." 



The sittings of the Genera! Assembly were 

 resumed October 5, when the proposed amend- 

 ments to the code of discipline were considered, 

 and professors were elected to fill the vacant 

 chairs in the Assembly's college at Belfast, and 

 in Magee College at Derry. 



X. Presbyterian Church in England. The sta- 

 tistical reports of this Church, presented to the 

 Synod in April, showed that it numbered 286 

 congregations, with 61,021 communicants, 

 against 59,690 communicants returned in the 

 previous year. The number of Sunday-school 

 pupils was 75,295. The entire income of the 

 Church had been 216,106, or 755 per con- 

 gregation. The income for missions was re- 

 turned at 17,800. The society had more than 

 twenty medical and other missionaries in the 

 field (in China), together with several woman- 

 missionaries and native pastors and evangelists, 

 and nearly 6,000 church-members. 



The Synod of the Presbyterian Church in 

 England met in London, April 26. The Rev. 

 Dr. David MaoEwan was chosen moderator. 

 A declaratory statement, which had already 

 been approved by the presbyteries, was rati- 



fied, as expressing the sense in which the 

 Church receives and understands the W.est- 

 minster Confession of Faith. The committee 

 which had had charge of this subject was 

 directed to continue the preparation of a Com- 

 pendium of Doctrine a u working creed " 

 which will contain about twenty articles. A 

 committee was appointed, tor the revision of 

 the ''Westminster Directory for Public Wor- 

 ship," and the preparation of forms of service 

 adapted to special occasions, the drafts of 

 which may be laid before the next Synod. A 

 committee on the Synod's relations with the 

 Congregational Union reported that it had 

 tried to assure Congregational brethren that 

 there existed no desire in the Presbyterian 

 Church to reclaim or recover old chapel prop- 

 erties which had long been in the use of an- 

 other denomination. 



Conference of Presbyterian Chnrches. A con- 

 ference of representatives of the various Pres- 

 byterian Churches of the United Kingdom, 

 called under the auspices of the General Pres- 

 byterian Alliance, was held in Edinburgh, Oc- 

 tober 6. Its purpose was to consider various 

 questions connected with union and co-opera- 

 tion in foreign missions, which were suggested 

 in the "deliverance" of the Council of the Al- 

 liance, at Belfast, in June, 1884. Mr. Hugh M. 

 Matheson, of London, presided. The following 

 resolutions were agreed to : 



1. That it is desirable that mission churches should 

 be encouraged to become independent of the home 

 churches i. e., self- supporting and self-governing 

 self-government naturally following upon self-sup- 

 port. 2. That it is desirable that churches organized 

 under Presbyterian order, and holding the reformed 

 faith, should be placed under a presbytery within ter- 

 ritorial boundaries suitable for eifective government, 

 and that such presbytery, wherever constituted, 

 should, so far as practicable, include all the Presbyte- 

 rian Churches within the bounds of whatever branches 

 of the European or American churches existed. 3. 

 In the incipient stages of the native church it is most 

 desirable that the foreign missionaries should be as- 

 sociated with the presbytery, either as advisers only 

 or as assessory members with votes. 4. It is unde- 

 sirable that presbyteries of native churches should 

 be represented in supreme courts at home, the devel- 

 opment and full organization of independent native 

 churches being what is to be aimed at. whether these 

 are founded by a single foreign church or by two or 

 more such churches. 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE 

 UNITED STATES. This Church, which is the 

 legitimate successor of the Church of England 

 in America during colonial times, acknowl- 

 edges, in the preface to the Prayer-Book, its 

 indebtedness to the parent Church, and is in 

 communion with the Anglican Church through- 

 out the British Empire and elsewhere. Its 

 position and growth, during the century just 

 past, warrant the conviction that, as it pre- 

 sents the fundamental truths always held in 

 the Christian Church from the beginning and 

 set forth in the ancient creeds and liturgies, so 

 it is well adapted to the needs of the Ameri- 

 can people in a free republic, and has before it 

 a vast field of usefulness in the second century 



