Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-10-15
IN GOD THEY TRUST.
rAe RELIGIOUS PROSPERITY OF THE
 UNITED STATES.

ov.rTwenty Million Church Members-City p.ople More Religious Than Country Folk. Most Church Members In Proportion In r.w Remarkable Incresse.
 large quarto volume, containing tba statistics of churches in the United States. has just been added to the pub 1;shed reports of the census of 1890. It ,;ves the returns Of 143 distinct de- examinations and 15e independent or oanizations, with total of 20,612, ,8O6 oommunicants, or members. Only one ral;eious body is omitted in the ennmera- tiop No list of the number of worship CTS at the Chinese temples was obtain able. for nope is kept, the assumption be- ;np that every Chinaman who has not aetually departed from his ancestral re- licion is included among them. Great as are the number and variety of denominations, all except about per cant of the total of members belonged in 1890 to 26 denominations only. In Ave of the denominational families alone were over 17,000, 900. communi- cants out of the whole number of 20,- 900. .000 and over. They are thus enu- merated:
 Catholic. 257 ,S7l Presbyterian. ,27s, ,Sss Methodist 4,589. 28l Lutheran .... ]. .28l 073 Baptist .......aI IlS.4oo
 l It appears, therefore, that of the total church membership about seven -tenths were Catholics. Methodists and Baptists 4 combined and about three-tenths Cath q plies alone About four-seyenths of the $ Protestant membership were Methodists a and Baptists alone, or, in round fig # ures 1000, 900 out of 14,000, 000 In the number sGf their organizations, or "a churches and congregations, both the # Methodists and Baptists far exceeded the Roman Catholics, the explanation being that the Catholic parishes are much greater on the average. some of them containing as many as IA, 900 comnunicants.
 Nd About one-half of the Roman Catho- # lies were in the 124 cities of popula- # tion of %, 900 and upward, where the proportionate representation of the two others is comparatively small. Even the M Episcopalians, of whom there were only $40, ,509 in the whole Union, exceeded the Baptists in their urban membership and came not far short of the Metho- dists, nearly one half of their communi. # cants also being in the cities. More than E three quarters of the Jews and of the M German Evang elical Protestants were in the cities, and nearly one-half of the [# Unitarians
 Proportionately to the population the # number of religious oommunicants was z greater in the cities than in the country In the l24 cities containing an aggre- gate population of 13, ,989, 568 there were F 5,302, ,018 communicants, or 1 in every. 2.64 inhabitants; in the country there was only to 304. The greatest num- Der was i'll New York, 556, 954. This city takes the lead also in the value of its church property, nearly $55, 000, ,000. but Philadelphia has the first place in the number of church edifices, 664, or lS0 more than New York. Philadelphia therefore rather than Brooklyn is en- titled to be called the City of Churches. It has church edifice for every 1,577 population to Brooklyn's 1 to 2,105.
 
 New York fourth, to 2,S38. Propor- tionately to the population the number Of communicants was somewhat mora in the smaller cities than the greater. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn have nearly one-third of tho population of the PA cities, but consid- crably less than athird of the communi- cants
 In the Union, New Mexico, which is strongly Roman Catholic, had the great est number of communicants proportion- stely to the population, or 6S 85 per cent. Next came Utah, the seat of Mormon lsm, with 61. 62 per cent; then Arizona, srgely Catholic. with 45.24 per cent. Among the states South Carolina, a Daptlst stronghold, had most communi- an1s proportionately, or 44.l7 per cent. thode Island came next, with 42.84,
 na then followed North Carolina, an-
 .ner Baptist stronghold, 42. 35; Massa-
 nusests, AZ. II, and Connecticut, Al. 45. Ane percentage for the other states and
 s,fltorles ranged from 32. 64 for Penn
 ylvania down to 793 for Oklahoma.
 New York it was 36 2l.
 1ne returns of the Protestant de-
 'unlnations show the very remarkable
 1ersase since 1880 of 3,895, 12s, or
 s.oo per cent, though meantime the
 uaease Ill population was only 24. S6
 s' cent. Comparative statistics as to
 s, ', Noman Catholics were not obtain
 Sas put presumably their rate of in-
 s.s vase must have exceeded greatly that
 'a sne general population.
 run .a the great mass of the.statistics
 ue report many figures can be select.
 lw interesting discussion hereafter.
 New York Sun.
 Valuable Otter.
 :, a .. show white otter has been seen sev-
 " uMeS lately in tha vicinity nf Otter