The London Pulpit

by J. Ewing Ritchie

Lutherans.
German Protestant Reformers.
Reformed Church of the Netherlands.
French Protestants.

other christian churches.

Roman Catholics.
Greek Church.
German Catholics.
Italian Reformers.
Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons.

JEWS.

In all, 35; of these 27 are native, and 8 foreign. These are all, or nearly all, the bodies which have assumed any formal organization. There are, in addition, many isolated congregations of religious worshippers, adopting various appellations, but none of them sufficiently numerous to deserve the name of a sect.

Of course, the chief of these various denominations is the Church of England. In the Handbook to Places of Worship, published in 1851, by Low, there is a list of 371 churches and chapels in connexion with the Establishment. Some of them have very small congregations, and every one confesses it is a perfect farce to keep them open. In some of the city churches, thirty persons form an unusually large audience. But most of them are well attended. To these churches and chapels belong, in round numbers, 700 clergymen. The appointments of ministers to the parish churches are, in most cases, under the control of the vicars or rectors of their respective parishes. In the case of private chapels, the party to whom the property belongs has, of course, nominally the right of appointing the minister; but, eventually, that appointment rests with the congregation, for to

thrust in an unpopular preacher against their wishes would be to destroy his own property. For the parish churches, again, the right of appointing the clergymen is vested in various hands according to circumstances, which it would require too much time and space to explain at sufficient length to make them understood. The patronage is, in a great many cases, invested in the Crown; but the Bishop of London is also a large holder of metropolitan patronage. The Archbishop of Canterbury is patron in several cases, and, in some instances, holds his patronage conjointly with the Crown. In such cases, the right of appointment is exercised alternately. The Lord Chancellor is sole patron of four or five livings in London, and in six or seven other cases exercises the right of patronage alternately with the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Bishop of London, with private individuals, and with the parishioners. The parishioners possess the sole right of patronage in only three or four instances; and, in one or two cases in the City, particular corporations possess the right of appointing the clergy. The doctrines of the Church of England are embodied in her Articles and Liturgy. Her orders consist of bishops,

priests, and deacons. Besides, there are dignitaries—archbishops, deans and chapters, attached to cathedrals, and supposed to form the council of the bishops, archdeacons, and rural deans. The average income of a beneficed clergyman is £300 a year; of a curate, £81. The number of church-sittings in London and the surrounding districts, according to Mr. Mann, is 409,834.

Next in order are the Independents or Congregationalists, who differ from the Church of England more in discipline than doctrine. They maintain the independence of each congregation—that a church is simply an assembly of believers. Only two descriptions of church officers are regarded by them as warranted by Scriptural authority—bishops or pastors, and deacons; and the latter office with them is merely secular. Amongst them the deacon merely attends to the temporal affairs of the church. In the Episcopalian Church, the deaconship is the first step to the priesthood. In London and its neighbourhood the Independents have about 140 places of worship. Mr. Mann’s return does not give them so many, but he states the number of sittings to be 100,436.

The Baptists have much in common with the Independents. Like them, they believe in the unscriptural character of state churches; and, like them, believe each church or assembly of faithful men to be able to manage its own affairs; but they differ from nearly every other Christian denomination on two points—the proper subjects and the proper mode of baptism. According to them, adults are the proper subjects of baptism, and immersion, not sprinkling, is the proper mode of administering that rite. As an organized community, we find them in England in 1608, about thirty years after Robert Brown had begun to preach the principles of Independency. The Baptists have many subdivisions. The Particular Baptists preponderate: they are Calvinistic. A remarkable unanimity of sentiment has always existed among them, except on one particular point—the propriety of sitting down at the communion table with those who reject adult baptism. Mr. Horace Mann gives the general body 130 chapels; Mr. Low, 109. The Census returns give them accommodation for 54,234.