The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-10-05
A Notable Religious Convention.


The General Convention Of the Epis-
copal Church which meets at Boston
to-day is representative of body Of
religious communicates which is rela-
lively small among the denominations
of Christian believers In this country,
yet no other Church gathering commands
more respectful attention than it win
receive.
OF all the Churches except the Roman
Catholic, the Episcopal has made the
most notable growth during the last
quarter of a century 1t is not merely
that numerically its communicate men,
bership has doubled during that time,
but its form OF worship has gained far
more greatly in the affection and venera-
ton of American Professionals. Churches
which before had resented all liturgical
and ritualistic services as of "Papist
faint have enriched their barer forms
of worship in more or less close imitation
of those of the Episcopal Church. At
the same time the Episcopal Church
itself has gone much further in rituals
tic direction, and now some OF the most
crowded and most prosperous OF its
churches carry ritualism to an extreme
which makes the forms used in many
Roman Catholic churches seem rela-
lively simple. AS this country grows
older the tendency to Journalism increases
in both secular and religious life.
Moreover, the number of commune
cants in the Episcopal Church represents
only a small part of the great body of
people in regular attendance on its houses
of worship. These people, too, are made
up, TO large extent, of the element OF
society in which there is special social
cultivation. This General Convention at
Boston, consequently, is distinguished
by the high social standing of very
large part of its lay delegates.
The attribution of such fashionable
distinction, however, is reasonably re-
sented by many Episcopalians as re-
Election on their Church, for no other
body of Christians has labored more
earnestly and more methodically and, in
many communities, more successfully,
for the spread of religion among the
poor In New York the membership Of
the Episcopal Church is by far the largest
among the Protestant denominations
and the attendance upon the Episcopal
churches the greatest. In Boston where
the General Convention meets to-day the
once powerful Unitarianism has sue
cumbed to the Episcopal incursion.
h. 90 mt
public which will come before this con-
vention for discussion, if not decision,
is the question Of marriage and divorce.
The frequency of divorces in the fashion
able society which so generally affects
the Episcopal services has sorely troubled
and greatly outraged the devout clergy
Of that Church. This feeling has created
demand for the strengthening Of the
existing canon touching marriage and
divorce. A now large party of the clergy
and of the laity also would even go so
far as positively to define matrimony as
sacrament and consequently dis
soluble only by death, and it is the party
in the Church which Of recent years has
grown more than any other. Unques-
tionably, too, if divorce can be prevented
by Church at all, the most effectual
way is to prohibit divorce for any cause
whatever.
The discussions of the subject in past
conventions, however, afford little reason
for supposing that at this time any such
innovation as sacramento matrimony
can be introduced into the Episcopal
Church, for it would SAVIOR of a religious
revolution A wide and even passionate
demand for the removal of Episcopalian-
ism from all nominal connection with
Professionalism has risen, but, after all,
the Protestant spirit seems yet to be
dominant.