Excerpt from History of the Churches of Boston, Giving a Full Account, in Denominational Divisions, of All the Church Organizations of the City: From Their Formation to the Present Time, With Dates and Complete Statistics; Division One; Baptist and Presbyterian In a practical age, in which actual results are made the test of success, it is necessary, it should seem, to say but very little in introducing to a public, which is, at least nominally, Christian, this book whose purpose is to present in perma nent form, the actual result and condition of church work in the denominations represented. Every kind and branch of secular industry and effort has had, and, still has, its own special Historian, or even several of them, by whom are placed on record full annals of its work. But, hitherto, no chronicler of the status of Christian work in its regular, normal, trunk line of action has appeared. This gap these books are intended to fill. The division into denominational parts has been considered to be the best, and will be adhered to as nearly as possible. Sometimes, as in this division, a denomination has not enough churches in a city to form a division by itself, when it is placed with another. No order of priority has been recognized, either in the selection of a denomination for earlier Or later place, or in that of the single his tories in the individual book. In this regard, readinesss for the press, or some such minor circumstance, has been the only guide. In important respects, all Christian churches are held to be equal, and their records prepared with com plete impartiality. The relative fulness and perfectness of the various accounts have been, as a matter of course, affected by the quality of the records, their accessibility, their fragmentary or complete character, and other incidents due to time and change. But, in every case, without exception, the very best possible has been done, and. Often with no little difficulty. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.