trast with the church of South Carolina, which, rooted in its own soil, was quite able to stand alone when government aid was withdrawn. In Virginia the church in which George Washington was reared had so nearly vanished by the year 1830 that Chief Justice Marshall said it was folly to dream of reviving so dead a thing. Nevertheless, under the noble ministration of its great bishop, William Meade, the Episcopal church in Virginia, no longer relying upon state aid, but trusting in the divine persuasive power of spiritual truth, was even then entering upon a new life and beginning to exercise a most wholesome influence. The separation of the English church in America from the English crown was the occasion of a curious difficulty with regard to the ordination of bishops. Until after the Revolution there were no bishops of that church in America, and between 1783 and 1785 it was not clear how candidates for holy orders could receive the necessary consecration. In 1784 a young divinity student from Virginia, named Mason Weems, who had been studying for some time in England, applied to the Bishop of London for admission to Seabury holy orders, but was rudely refused. Weems then had recourse to Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, author of the famous reply to Gibbon. Watson treated him kindly and advised Mason and Samuel him to get a letter of recommendation from the governor of Maryland, but after this had been obtained he referred him to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that nothing could be done without the consent of Parliament. As the law stood, no one could be admitted into the ranks of the English clergy without taking the oath of allegiance and acknowledging the king of England as the head of the church. Weems then wrote to John Adams at the Hague, and to Franklin at Paris, to see if there were any Protestant bishops on the Continent from whom he could obtain consecration. A rather amusing diplomatic correspondence ensued, and finally the king of Denmark, after taking theological advice, kindly offered. the services of a Danish bishop, who was to perform the ceremony in Latin. Weems does not seem to have availed himself of this permission, probably because the question soon reached a more satisfactory solution.1 About the same 1 It was this same Mason Weems that was afterward known in Virginia as Parson Weems, of Pohick parish, near Mount Vernon. See Magazine of American History, iii. 465-472; v. 85-90. At first an eccentric preacher, Parson Weems became an itinerant violin-player and book-peddler, and author of that edifying work, The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to his Young Countrymen. On the title-page the author describes himself as " formerly rector of Mount Vernon Parish,” — which Bishop Meade calls preposterous. The book time the Episcopal church in Connecticut sent one of its ministers, Samuel Seabury of New London, to England, to be ordained as bishop. The oaths of allegiance and supremacy stood as much in the way of the learned and famous minister as in that of the young and obscure student. Seabury accordingly appealed to the non-juring Jacobite bishops of the Episcopal church of Scotland, and at length was November 14, 1784 duly ordained at Aberdeen as bishop of the diocese of Connecticut. While Seabury was in England, the churches in the various states chose delegates to a general convention, which framed a constitution for the "Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America." Advowsons were abolished, some parts of the liturgy were dropped, and the tenure of ministers, even of bishops, was to be during good behaviour. At the same time a friendly letter was sent to the bishops of England, urging them to secure, if possible, an act of Parliament whereby American clergymen might be ordained without taking the oaths is a farrago of absurdities, reminding one, alike in its text and its illustrations, of an overgrown English chap-book of the olden time. It has had an enormous sale, and has very likely contributed more than any other single book toward forming the popular notion of Washington. It seems to have been this fiddling parson that first gave currency to the everlasting story of the cherry-tree and the little hatchet. of allegiance and supremacy. Such an act was obtained without much difficulty, and three American bishops were accordingly consecrated in due form. The peculiar ordination of Seabury was also recognized as valid by the general convention, and thus the Episcopal church in America was fairly started on its independ ent career. This foundation of a separate episcopacy west of the Atlantic was accompanied by the further separation of the Methodists as a distinct religious society. Although John Wesley regarded the notion of an apostolical succession as superstitious, he had made no attempt to separate his followers from the national church. He translated the titles of "bishop" and "priest ". from Greek into Latin and English, calling them "superintendent" and "elder," but he did not deny the king's headship. Meanwhile during the long period of his preaching there had begun to grow up a Methodist church in America. George Whitefield had come over and preached in Georgia in 1737, and in Massachusetts in 1744, where he encountered much opposition on the part of the Puritan clergy. But the first Methodist church in America was founded in the city of New York in 1766. In 1772 Wesley sent over Francis Asbury, a man of shrewd sense and deep religious feeling, to act as his assistant and representative in this Francis Asbury and the Metho dists country. At that time there were not more than a thousand Methodists, with six preachers, and all these were in the middle and southern colonies; but within five years, largely owing to the zeal and eloquence of Asbury, these numbers had increased sevenfold. At the end of the war, seeing the American Methodists cut loose from the Engish establishment, Wesley in his own house at Bristol, with the aid of two presbyters, proceeded to ordain ministers enough to make a presbytery, and thereupon set apart Thomas Coke to be "superintendent superintendent" or bishop for America. On the same day of November, 1784, on which Seabury was consecrated by the nonJurors at Aberdeen, Coke began preaching and baptizing in Maryland, in rude chapels built of logs or under the shade of forest trees. On Christmas Eve a conference assembled at Baltimore, at which Asbury was chosen bishop by some sixty ministers present, and ordained by Coke, and the constitution of the Methodist church in America was organized. Among the poor white people of the southern states, and among the negroes, the new church rapidly obtained great sway; and at a somewhat later date it began to assume considerable proportions in the north. Four years after this the Presbyterians, who were most numerous in the middle states, or |