New-York tribune., 1868-06-01
PRRSBYTERIAN UNION.
remote.

Tic General Assemblies of the two distinct
religious bodies hitherto known as the Old
School" and " New School" Presbyterian
churches have substantially agreed on a basis
of union which will result in their fusion into
single organization, to be known as the Pres
byterian Church in the United States. There
is a respectable minority of the "Old School,
and n smaller fraction of the New School
who hold out against the union decreed by the
majority of either body but we presume q few
months will suffice to perfect that union, so
that there will be but one denomination known
as Presbyterian throughout our country. We
hope the impulse thus given will not be ar
rested until most Of the several minor sects,
known as. Seceders," Cameronians," "Burgh-
"ers," &C., &c, will be brought into the COM
mon fold; so. that all adhercuts Of the Presby-
terian polity, from the Bay Of Fundy to
Puget's Sound. shall constitute a single and
thoroughly united Church.
We say this without protesting any special
interest in this church, and without feeling the
smallest desire TO adjudge, or even discuss. the
points whereon Presbyterans have hitherto
been divided. We feel that in union is strength,
and that the multiplicity Of seCts, separated
only by minute and often abstruse questions of
doctrine or petty points of discipline, is at once
the weakness and the reprOach of Protestant
Christianity. There are hundreds of townships,
scattered through most Of our States, wherein
the cost of maintaining religious instruction
and public religious worship bears oppressively
on the people, because the two or three humid
red Protestant families residing In each are
adherents of six or eight different denomina-
tions and undertake to maintain Presbyterian,
Congregational, Baptist, q Methodist,
Protestant Episcopal, a Covenanter, Free
Will Baptist, Reformed Dutch, and perhaps
Primitive Methodist Church, which is beyond
their proper strength. These people are still
clearing lands, building houses and barns,
erecting school houses, &C., &C., and the cost
of erecting six or eight meeting houses, and
supporting as many pastors, taxes them too
heavily. The meeting houses arc small, bare,
and shabby; the pastors are miserably paid,
and unable TO devote their time to study and
meditation, because of the pressure of pecuniary
necessities; the congregations are thin and
struggling, (and no man can speak as forcibly
to sixty or eighty persons as to six or eight
hundred0 and good many make an
excuse of the cost of supporting
these feeble churches for withdrawing
from their ministrations altogether. Were
all the denominations distinguished as Evan
"gelicap-that is all the Protestants who re-
cOgnize each other as 0rthodox-united in q
single organization, they would be immensely
more efficient for good, while the cost of sup
porting adequately their public worship would
be far less and their clergy more generously
subsisted than now. II is within the truth to
estimate that such fusion would save Ten
Millions of Dollars per annum to the commu-
nifty, after allowing Ten Millions per annum
more than now to be devoted to the support of
Domestic and Foreign Missions.
If it shall be found impossible at present to
fuse the Orthodox denominations, we suggest
that a great economy might be secured by the
settlement of townships with reference to the
ecclesiastical anlnties Of their. inhabitants.
Thus II, IN our newer States aud districts. the