[259] Religious Aspects of the Age. Preface, p. 3.
[260] Bellows, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 109-111.
[261] Mayo, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 68, 69.
[262] Bellows, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 102, 103.
[263] Frothingham, Ibid. pp. 121-126.
[264] Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 131-132.
[265] American Unitarianism is numerically decreasing. The most favorable estimate of its membership (Schem, Ecclesiastical Year-Book, p. 78), is thirty thousand. From Dr. Sprague's Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, pp. xx.-xxi., we derive the following statistical account of its present strength:
There are in the United States about 263 Societies, of which Massachusetts has 164, and the city of Boston 21; Maine has 16, New Hampshire 15, Vermont 3, Rhode Island 3, Connecticut 2, New York 13, New Jersey 1, Pennsylvania 5, Maryland 2, Ohio 5, Illinois 11, Wisconsin 2, and Missouri, Kentucky, Minnesota, South Carolina, Louisiana, California, and the District of Columbia, each one. There are about 345 ministers. There are two theological schools, one at Cambridge, founded 1816; the other at Meadville, Pa.; first opened in 1844, and incorporated in 1846. The Periodicals are, The Christian Examiner, tri-monthly, Boston; The Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal, Boston; The Sunday School Gazette, semi-monthly, Boston; The Christian Register, weekly, Boston; and the Christian Inquirer, weekly, New York. The missionary and charitable societies are, the American Unitarian Association, founded in 1825, and incorporated in 1847; the Unitarian Association of the State of New York; Annual Conference of Western Unitarian Churches; the Sunday School Society, instituted in 1827, and reorganized in 1854; the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity, incorporated in 1805; the Massachusetts Evangelical Missionary Society, instituted in 1807; the Society for Promoting Theological Education, organized in 1816, and incorporated in 1831; the Society for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Clergymen, formed in 1848, and incorporated in 1850; the Ministerial Conference; the Association of Ministers at large in New England, formed in 1850; the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches of Boston, organized in 1834, and incorporated in 1839; the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute, Boston, 1849; the Young Men's Christian Union, Boston, organized in 1851, and incorporated in 1852; the Boston Port Society, incorporated in 1829; and the Seamen's Aid Society of Boston, formed in 1832.
[266] Williamson, Exposition and Defense of Universalism, pp. 11-13.
[267] Skinner, Universalism Illustrated and Defended, pp. 51-56.