What means this Decrease in the Church ?
By Editor
WE shall not attempt to show, why, in many Churches in the land, there is always a loud lament over the decrease of membership. But that it is so, is lamentably true. We find the following, quoted from a religious newspaper. If the statements are correct, and we have not much reason to doubt on the subject, then the time has come for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, and for the exercise of these duties with rather more sincerity than marks the action and lives of the present race of professing Christians. But to the extract: 'In Philadelphia and Boston, it is believed at least three-fourths of the people habitually absent themselves from Church, and the same may be said of New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell and Worcester. The religious denominations, too, have greatly decreased within ten years. The membership in the Baptist Churches in New York city has decreased three hundred and sixty-two since 1845, although the population has increased 261,966. The Presbyterians in ten years, from 1843 to 1853, had decreased in numbers six hundred and sixty. The Methodists in the same time had lost four hundred and sixty-one, and there has been but one self-supporting Reformed Dutch Church planted in New York during fifteen years. Such are some of the statistics of spiritual declension, while, as a contrast to this picture, we have six thousand grog shops, and twenty-five hundred brothels!'