conceding spiritual liberty to the Church and prescribing its limits, it was for the Church to formulate and assert its own liberty and prescribe the limits within which it claimed freedom from external interference; (2) that instead of disputing over the terms establishment and disestablishment an attempt should be made to put the Church in a relation with the State not in- consistent with the historical ideals of either church. With the coming of the war, active negotiations were suspended, but the years of strife brought the two churches very closely together in many practical ways, e.g. in the temporary amalgamation of the divinity colleges, and in local parochial and congregational arrangements. With the advent of peace, the lines of the Memo- randum having been already generally approved in both churches, a new step was taken by the formulation of a series of Draft Articles declaring the constitution and liberties of the Church. The United Free Church held that it was for the Church of Scotland alone to straighten this matter out with the State, and though it approved the Draft Articles as formulated it would not join in any approach to Parliament with a view to legislation. The Government was well disposed and in 1921 introduced and carried through a bill to give effect to the Draft Articles. The bill did not, of course, unite the two churches, but it was a step towards union. Opposition to it came from both sides. There were those in the Church of Scotland who said that it meant vir- tual disestablishment, and changed the whole nature of the Church's position in the State. On the other hand there was a body of opinion in the United Free Church, which saw in the bill rather the reestablishment of the Church of Scotland, the retention of all its exclusive privileges, e.g. as to royal and Indian chaplaincies and university divinity chairs. Nor did this bill touch the teinds or tithe endowments. It must be remarked here that the United Presbyterian Church had been strongly volun- tary, and that the Free Church, though it had not disrupted on this point, had also by the time of the Union in 1900 come to be a staunch supporter of the cause of disestablishment and dis- endowment. The bill of 1921 was to be followed by legislation dealing with the teinds and until this question of the patrimony of the Church of Scotland was settled there could be no technical negotiations for union.
The question of the teinds had come up in another connexion. Stipends of parish ministers in Scotland were regulated according to " fiars," i.e. the prices of grain legally struck or fixed at an annual court in each shire. During the war these prices rose enormously. The ministers found the result as agreeable as the heritors found it irksome, and considerable discussion (culminat- ing in a Parliamentary bill introduced and withdrawn in the autumn of 1920) took place on attempts at compromise.
At both the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church Assemblies in May 1921 the Lambeth proposals were submitted in person by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Peterborough. These prelates were very heartily received and sympathetic replies were given by representative leaders. The official response of organized Presbyterianism was given at the Pan-Presbyterian Council, meeting in Pittsburg, U.S.A., in Sept. 1921. A joint conference of Anglicans and Presbyterians, meeting in Montreal during the spring of 1921, unanimously agreed on forms of service by which "extension of commission" might be given to and by the respective parties, but this agree- ment was personal rather than official.
In the matter of social problems and social service both churches have been active. The Church of Scotland appointed a com- mission on the war, and the result of its inquiries was a valuable survey entitled Social Evils and Problems, prefaced by a state- ment on " The Ethical Mission of the Church " by the Rev. Prof. W. P. Paterson. That the same church was alive to the needs of the hour was evidenced by the appointment in 1920 of a committee to inquire into the recrudescence of spiritualism. In the temperance campaign which preceded the first series of elections on the Local Option issue, the United Free Church was, as might be expected, more unanimous and energetic than the Established, though some powerful champions were found in the ranks of the latter. One particularly interesting scheme in which
both churches were uniting in 1921 was a memorial to Scottish soldiers who fell in Palestine. This was to take the shape of an Archaeological Research school in Jerusalem with a Scots kirk attached. The two churches also cooperated in the endeavour to rebuild the broken life of their coreligionists in central and south-eastern Europe and to reestablish mission work in Pales- tine and Syria, where the new conditions had entirely altered and complicated the situation. The churches gave of their best during the war in combatant and non-combatant and remedial services. The noteworthy volume entitled The Army and Re- ligion owed much of its value to the editorial skill of Dr. D. S. Cairns of the Aberdeen U.F. College. The Scottish churches, like others, had not up to 1921 been receiving the recruits for the ministry that were expected on the cessation of war, and the position seemed likely to become acute in a few years' time. Even if the projected Union was accomplished, the experience of the United Free Church since 1900 showed that it would be a matter of some difficulty to get local congregations to unite even in places where all could be well accommodated in one building. Among the smaller Presbyterian churches, the Free Church remained vocal, but made little progress and found it increasingly difficult to get ministers. Its chief strength was in the Highland and Western Islands. The Free Presbyterian Church, the Re- formed Presbyterian Church and the Synod of United Original Seceders remained stationary.
The following figures give some idea of relative strength in Scotland :
Ministers
and
Evangel-
ists.
Churches and Halls.
Church Members.
Sunday Scholars.
Church of Scot- land . United Free Church Free Church Episcopal Church Congregationalists Baptists
1809
1707 88 35
183 117
1704
1534 165 410
183 149
728,239 528,084
56,000 36,615
21,537
192,496 201,014
26,909
18,462
Further particulars, also those relating to the smaller Presbyterians and to the Wesleyans and Primitive Methodist Churches, will be found in the respective year books and in the Scottish Church and University Almanac. (A. J. G.)
V. CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES The most accurate statistics for the religious bodies of the United States in 1920 were undoubtedly those published by the Federal Council of the Churches in the Year Book of the Churches, the figures being so far as possible those reported by the church bodies themselves. Unfortunately, the progress made during the decade 1910-20 cannot be measured precisely, for trustworthy statistics are not available for 1910; the nearest approach are those of the U.S. religious census for 1906 pub- lished in 1909. Using these two sources, the number of local Christian church organizations of all forms in the United States is seen to have grown during 1906-20 from 208,678 to 234,370; the number of ministers and priests from 164,830 to 186,018; the membership from 32,447,741 to 44,322,215; the number of Sunday schools from 189,291 to 199,274; the Sunday-school enrolment from 16,238,083 to 20,892,327.
For Roman Catholic churches the increase during the same period was as follows, the figures for 1906 being taken from the U.S. census and those for 1920 from the Official Catholic Directory:
1906 1920
Church
Organizations
12,482
16,580
Cardinals Priests R. C. Pop.
i 15,177 14,210,755
3 21,643 17,885,646
The growth of Protestant churches, as given by the census and the Year Book already cited, has been as follows:
Church Sunday Sunday-school
Organizations Ministers Members Schools Enrolment
1906 194,980 146,437 20,201,885 !64,577 13,002,241
1920 215,698 163,951 26,058,513 183,991 19,004,638
