In America He Does Do So, But Throws Over The Doctrine Of The Trinity.

The Protestant Episcopalians muster strong in all the great cities, and I fancy that they would be regarded as taking the lead of the other religious denominations in New York.

Their tendency is to high-church doctrines. I wish they had not found it necessary to alter the forms of our prayer-book in so many little matters, as to which there was no national expediency for such changes. But it was probably thought necessary that a new people should show their independence in all things. The Roman Catholics have a very strong party - as a matter of course - seeing how great has been the emigration from Ireland; but here, as in Ireland - and as indeed is the case all the world over - the Roman Catholics are the hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Germans, who have latterly flocked into the States in such swarms that they have almost Germanized certain States, have, of course, their own churches. In every town there are places of worship for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, and every denomination of Christianity; and the meeting-houses prepared for these sects are not, as with us, hideous buildings, contrived to inspire disgust by the enormity of their ugliness, nor are they called Salem, Ebenezer, and Sion, nor do the ministers within them look in any way like the Deputy-Shepherd. The churches belonging to those sects are often handsome. This is especially the case in New York, and the pastors are not unfrequently among the best educated and most agreeable men whom the traveler will meet. They are for the most part well paid, and are enabled by their outward position to hold that place in the world's ranks which should always belong to a clergyman. I have not been able to obtain information from which I can state with anything like correctness what may be the average income of ministers of the Gospel in the Northern States; but that it is much higher than the average income of our parish clergymen, admits, I think, of no doubt. The stipends of clergymen in the American towns are higher than those paid in the country. The opposite to this, I think, as a rule, is the case with us.

I have said that religion in the States is rowdy. By that I mean to imply that it seems to me to be divested of that reverential order and strictness of rule which, according to our ideas, should be attached to matters of religion. One hardly knows where the affairs of this world end, or where those of the next begin. When the holy men were had in at the lecture, were they doing stage-work or church-work? On hearing sermons, one is often driven to ask one's self whether the discourse from the pulpit be in its nature political or religious. I heard an Episcopalian Protestant clergyman talk of the scoffing nations of Europe, because at that moment he was angry with England and France about Slidell and Mason.

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