PERILS. — ROMANISM. 87 



population has been since 1800, that of the Roman 

 Church in this country has been still more rapid. Dr. 

 Dorchester in his valuable and inspiring work, "Problem 

 of Religious Progress,'' easily shows thut the actual gains 

 of Protestantism in the United States, during the 

 century, have been much larger than those of Romanism, 

 and seems disposed, in consequence, to dismiss all 

 anxiety as to the issue of the race between them. But it 

 is relative rather than actual gains w^hich are prophetic. 

 We find that for the first eighty years of the century 

 the rate of growth of the Roman Catholic Church was 

 greater than that of any one Protestant church or of all 

 Protestant churches combined. From 1800 to 1880 the 

 population increased nine-fold, the membership of all 

 evangelical churches twenty-seven-fold, and the Roman- 

 ist population sixty- three-f old. ^ Not much importance, 

 however, should be attached to this comparison, as the 

 Roman Catholic population was insignificant in 1800, and 

 a small addition sufficed to increase it several-fold. But 

 in 1850 that population was nearly one-half as large as 

 the membership of all evangelical churches. Let us, 

 then, look at their relative progress since that time. 

 From 1850 to 1880 the population increased 116 per cent., 

 the communicants of evangelical churches 185 per cent. , 

 and the Romanist population 294 per cent. During the 

 same period the number of evangelical churches in- 

 creased 125 per cent., and the number of evangelical 

 ministers 173 per cent., while Roman Catholic churches 

 increased 447 per cent, and priests 391 per cent. 



In 1800 priests were 1.9 per cent, of the number of 

 evangelical ministers; in 1850, 5.0 per cent. ; in 1870, 8.3 

 per cent.; and in 1880, 9.1 per cent. In 1850, Roman 

 Catholic churches were 2. 8 per cent, of the number of 

 evangelical churches; in 1870, 5.4 per cent. ; and in 1880, 



1 Some criticism has been offered ou the writer's comparison of the Roman 

 Catholic population with the evangelical church membership instead of 

 evangelical population. But the comparison is of rates of increase, not of 

 actual numbers, and if made with the evangelical population instead of 

 membership, the result would have been identical. 



