The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-05-21
AN IMPORTANT MEETING
To be Hold in This City soon-The Co
 gregational Church Building Society,


 . AN IMPORTANT MEETING
 To be Held in This City soon--The Con- gregational Church Building Society. One of the four societies which will meet in New Haven June 2-4 is the Congregational Church Building socie- ty. It was born in an emergency. The wild west was fairly beginning to | open. Christian work had begun in spots. Settlers cabins were rude, Everything was crude except the re- gently imported New England faith. The genuine Christion New Englander was not going west to lapse into heath enism. He must organize himself at once into a section of the old home church he had left in the east. He had been brought up to know and love Con- gregationalism.
 | He could be a first-class Presbyteri- an if necessary; but thousands of the best New Englanders who went west forty years ago carried their piety and | their polity with them.
 | Ohio, then 8 long way west, began | Congregational work at Marietta in | 1796; Pennsylvania at Ebensburg in I 1797 These two states seemed to have | formed sort of Congregational break | water for thirty-five years. We find no record of Congregational church now | in existence till Michigan began Con- gregational work in Pontiac. and Illi- nois at Princeton, in 1881. Indiana ran up a Congregational flag at Terre l Haute in 1884; Wisconsin at Beloit in | 1885: Iowa at Burlington and Denmark in 1885, and Minnesota at Minneapolis l (St Anthony in 1851.
 l The battle of our western wilds was | fairly on. New settlements were mul- l tiplying The kings business must organize and build or be left hopelessly | in the rear in the rushing march of western emigration.
 With farms to open, crops to wait for, houses to furnish, the essential ma chinery of civilized society to construct and set running, there was a real and inevitable emergency on every line of home missionary work. The east must not only send the missionary, but in part at least, feed, clothe and house him. Eastern churches have multi piled themselves. some thirty, some six ty, some hundred fold, in their gifts of members and money to the western work.
 The Congregational mustard seed planted in Chicago, Milwaukee, St.
 Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, St. Louis, | and farther on, has grown into goodly trees. No figures can fully set forth the debt the west owes-the world owes
 ito dear old New England
 In 1851 children of eastern percentage were marvelously multiplying. They were dotting the prairfes and lining the waterways, Letters poured into the east for help to meet pressing spiritual needs. The platforms of May anniver- saries rang with appeals for men and money to evangelize the west. There was no system either at the eastern or western end of the line
 l Wise men called a convention at AL | bany,N. Y. It was held October 5-s, | 1852. One of the topics discussed was, l "The Building of Church Edifices at the West" The needs as then and there set forth were urgent and took on the proportions of plan for raising fifty | thousand dollars for aiding in the erec- tion of church edifices at the vest The proposed sum went up to s62o41, and was promptly put into 232 houses of
 worship in Connecticut. Illinois, Indi-
 ana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachu-
 setts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio. Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin. It paved the way in 1852 for the perma- nent organization of the American Con- l gregational Union, now the Congrega- l tional Church Building society.
 The Unions receipts for the first year
 were $1 766; the second year, $1.796; the | third year. s560. Up and down it's re- l ceipts go till 1S65-6, when they reached ! S123,21s The very next year they fell to s32,530, and the next year to s30, ,101; | 187S-9 touched bottom at $23509 Only once since 1882 have receipts gone be- l low s100,000, and that after special ap- peals for the $25, 1000 needed for par 1 sonage loan fund.
 Once there was an inf1exible rule not to vote more than $500 to aid any church in building house of worship 1 The disbursing committee of the Alba- | ny fund voted that "no sum exceeding $500 shall be given for the erection of l any one house or .WOrSnlp. Tn one year thirty-nine churches asked $1,000 ormore, twenty asked S1, 800 or more; fif-
 teen asked s2,OO0 or more; fourteen asked $2,500 or more; ten asked S3,000 or more: five asked $3,500 or more; and three asked s4,o0O, $5,ooo. s8Ooo each
 and little earlier two asked $8750 each The average amount asked is | s717. JAMES H. ROSS,
 A Circuit St, Roxbury, Mass.