PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH SOUTH IN THE UNITED STATES.
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had, owing to the prevalence of lati tudinarian views in theology and ecclesiastical polity, been divided, in 1838, into the Old School, and the New School Churches. The New School Church suffered another divison in r857, the Southern department, which refused to regard slaveholding as a sin, establishing the Synod of the South.
(1) Organization. The Old School retained its integrity and conservative tone till 1861. But in that year the Assembly, sitting at Philadelphia, was overcome by the prevailing secular and war spirit. It subordinated the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ to political ends, and thus violated the constitution of the Church and usurped the prerogatives of the Divine Master. It adopted the Spring Resolutions, wherein it attempted, as Dr. Charles Hodge and his fifty-seven fellow protestants said, "to decide the political question, to what government the allegiance of Presby terianism was due," and "to make that decision a condition of membership in the Church." In consequence of this course, forty-seven Pres byteries in the then Confederate States of America, each for itself, dissolved connection with the As sembly during the summer of 1861. On Decem ber 4, 1861, their representatives met in Augusta, Ga., and formed the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church South.
(2) Constitution. This constituting Assembly adopted the constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America as its own constitution ; hut sloughed off the un-Presby terian machinery with which the old church con ducted its missionary and other operations. For the cumbrous and irresponsible boards of the mother church it substituted the Church itself. God's appointed instrumentality for evangelizing the world, and established the necessary executive committees to carry out the will of the church— small bodies immediately responsible to the Gen eral Assembly.
(3) General Address. In a letter "to all the churches of Jesus Christ throughout the earth," this Assembly asserted that the consequences of the proceedings on the part of the recent Phila delphia Assembly—its opening "the door for the worst passions of human nature in the delibera tion of church courts"—had justified separation, as had also the de facto existence of the Confed erate States of America within whose bounds they were. This Assembly also claimed as dis
tinguishing features of its Church, "Witnessing for the non-secular character of the Church and its headship of Christ, or, in other words, for a strict adherence to the constitution," and "the complete organization of the Church, obviating the necessity of boards and societies." (4) Growth. The numerical growth of the Church has been very rapid. Its seven hundred ministers have become one thousand four hun dred and seventy-one, and its seventy thousand communicants two hundred and twenty-one thou sand and twenty-two as reported (1901).
Its contributions to home and foreign missions are more than four times as large; and it has kept pace in developing other branches of enter prise. This advance has been made, too, in spite of the exodus of about ten thousand colored com municants, who went, for the most part, to the Northern Presbyterian Church.
This growth is explained by: (1) The Church having taken into organic union with itself many smaller bodies of sound Presbyterians. Thus it took in "the Independent Presbyterian Church (1863), the United Synod of the South (1864), the Presbytery of Patopsco (1867), the Alabama Presbytery of the Associated Reformed Church about the same time, the Synod of Kentucky (1869), the Associated Reformed Presbytery of Kentucky (187o), and the Synod of Missouri (1874). The union with these churches brought in about two hundred and eighty-two ministers, four hundred and eighty churches, and thirty-five thousand six hundred communicants. (2) The en ergetic use of the evangelistic arm of the Church's service. Particularly, since 1866, presbyterial evan gelists have been, in increasing numbers, preach ing to the weak and destitute.