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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20160-8.txt b/20160-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4318bad --- /dev/null +++ b/20160-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15096 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A History of American Christianity, by +Leonard Woolsey Bacon + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A History of American Christianity + + +Author: Leonard Woolsey Bacon + + + +Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20160] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF AMERICAN +CHRISTIANITY*** + + +E-text prepared by Dave Morgan, Daniel J. Mount, Lisa Reigel, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net/c/) from digital material generously made available +by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (http://www.ccel.org/) + + + +Note: The digital material used for the preparation of this file, + including images of the original pages, are available through + the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. See + http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bacon_lw/history.html + + +Transcriber's notes: + + Greek words in this text have been transliterated and placed + between +marks+. + + Words in italics are surrounded with underscores. + + A list of corrections made is at the end of the text. + + + + + +The American Church History Series + +Consisting of a Series of Denominational Histories Published Under the +Auspices of the American Society of Church History + +General Editors + +REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., LL. D. +RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D. D., LL. D. +REV GEO. P. FISHER, D. D., LL. D. +BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL. D. +REV. E. J. WOLF, D. D. +HENRY C. VEDDER, M. A. +REV. SAMUEL M. JACKSON, D. D., LL. D. + +Volume XIII + +American Church History + + +A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY + +by + +LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON + + + + + + + +New York +The Christian Literature Co. +MDCCCXCVII +Copyright, 1897, by +The Christian Literature Co. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE +CHAP. I.--PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATION FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 1-5 + + Purpose of the long concealment of America, 1. A medieval + church in America, 2. Revival of the Catholic Church, 3, + especially in Spain, 4, 5. + + +CHAP. II.--SPANISH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 6-15 + + Vastness and swiftness of the Spanish conquests, 6. Conversion + by the sword, 7. Rapid success and sudden downfall of missions + in Florida, 9. The like story in New Mexico, 12, and in + California, 14. + + +CHAP. III.--FRENCH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 16-29 + + Magnificence of the French scheme of western empire, 16. + Superior dignity of the French missions, 19. Swift expansion + of them, 20. Collision with the English colonies, and triumph + of France, 21. Sudden and complete failure of the French + church, 23. Causes of failure: (1) Dependence on royal + patronage, 24. (2) Implication in Indian feuds, 25. (3) + Instability of Jesuit efforts, 26. (4) Scantiness of French + population, 27. Political aspect of French missions, 28. + Recent French Catholic immigration, 29. + + +CHAP. IV.--ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION 30-37 + + Controversies and parties in Europe, 31, and especially in + England, 32. Disintegration of Christendom, 34. New experiment + of church life, 35. Persecutions promote emigration, 36, 37. + + +CHAP. V.--PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA 38-53 + + The Rev. Robert Hunt, chaplain to the Virginia colony, 38. + Base quality of the emigration, 39. Assiduity in religious + duties, 41. Rev. Richard Buck, chaplain, 42. Strict Puritan + régime of Sir T. Dale and Rev. A. Whitaker, 43. Brightening + prospects extinguished by massacre, 48. Dissolution of the + Puritan "Virginia Company" by the king, 48. Puritan ministers + silenced by the royal governor, Berkeley, 49. The governor's + chaplain, Harrison, is converted to Puritan principles, 49. + Visit of the Rev. Patrick Copland, 50. Degradation of church + and clergy, 51. Commissary Blair attempts reform, 52. + Huguenots and Scotch-Irish, 53. + + +CHAP. VI.--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS 54-67 + + George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 54; secures grant of Maryland, + 55. The second Lord Baltimore organizes a colony on the basis + of religious liberty, 56. Success of the two Jesuit priests, + 57. Baltimore restrains the Jesuits, 58, and encourages the + Puritans, 59. Attempt at an Anglican establishment, 61. + Commissary Bray, 61. Tardy settlement of the Carolinas, 62. A + mixed population, 63. Success of Quakerism, 65. American + origin of English missionary societies, 66. + + +CHAP. VII.--DUTCH CALVINISTS AND SWEDISH LUTHERANS 68-81 + + Faint traces of religious life in the Dutch settlements, 69. + Pastors Michaelius, Bogardus, and Megapolensis, 70. Religious + liberty, diversity, and bigotry, 72. The Quakers persecuted, + 73. Low vitality of the Dutch colony, 75. Swedish colony on + the Delaware, 76; subjugated by the Dutch, 77. The Dutch + evicted by England, 78. The Dutch church languishes, 79. + Attempts to establish Anglicanism, 79. The S. P. G., 80. + + +CHAP. VIII.--THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND 82-108 + + Puritan and Separatist, 82. The Separatists of Scrooby, 83. + Mutual animosity of the two parties, 84. Spirit of John + Robinson, 85. The "social compact" of the Pilgrims, in state, + 87; and in church, 88. Feebleness of the Plymouth colony, 89. + The Puritan colony at Salem, 90. Purpose of the colonists, 91. + Their right to pick their own company, 92. Fellowship with the + Pilgrims, 93. Constituting the Salem church, and ordination of + its ministers, 95. Expulsion of schismatics, 97. Coming of the + great Massachusetts colony bringing the charter, 98. The New + England church polity, 99. Nationalism of the Puritans, 100. + Dealings with Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, and the + Quakers, 101. Diversities among the colonies, 102. Divergences + of opinion and practice in the churches, 103. Variety of sects + in Rhode Island, 106, with mutual good will, 107. Lapse of the + Puritan church-state, 108. + + +CHAP. IX.--THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA 109-126 + + Dutch, Puritan, Scotch, and Quaker settlers in New Jersey, + 109. Quaker corporation and government, 110. Quaker reaction + from Puritanism, 113. Extravagance and discipline, 114. + Quakerism in continental Europe, 115. Penn's "Holy + Experiment," 116. Philadelphia founded, 117. German sects, + 118. Keith's schism, and the mission of the "S. P. G.," 119. + Lutheran and Reformed Germans, 120. Scotch-Irish, 121. + Georgia, 122. Oglethorpe's charitable scheme, 123. The + Salzburgers, the Moravians, and the Wesleys, 124. George + Whitefield, 126. + + +CHAP. X.--THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING 127-154 + + Fall of the New England theocracy, 128. Dissent from the + "Standing Order": Baptist, 130; Episcopalian, 131. In New + York: the Dutch church, 134; the English, 135; the + Presbyterian, 136. New Englanders moving west, 137. Quakers, + Huguenots, and Palatines, 139. New Jersey: Frelinghuysen and + the Tennents, 141. Pennsylvania: successes and failures of + Quakerism, 143. The southern colonies: their established + churches, 148; the mission of the Quakers, 149. The gospel + among the Indians, 150. The church and slavery, 151. + + +CHAP. XI.--THE GREAT AWAKENING 155-180 + + Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, 156. An Awakening, 157. + Edwards's "Narrative" in America and England, 159. Revivals in + New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 160. Apostolate of Whitefield, + 163. Schism of the Presbyterian Church, 166. Whitefield in New + England, 168. Faults and excesses of the evangelists, 169. + Good fruits of the revival, 173. Diffusion of Baptist + principles, 173. National religious unity, 175. Attitude of + the Episcopal Church, 177. Zeal for missions, 179. + + +CHAP. XII.--CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA 181-207 + + Growth of the New England theology, 181. Watts's Psalms, 182. + Warlike agitations, 184. The Scotch-Irish immigration, 186. + The German immigration, 187. Spiritual destitution, 188. + Zinzendorf, 189. Attempt at union among the Germans, 190. + Alarm of the sects, 191. Mühlenberg and the Lutherans, 191. + Zinzendorf and the Moravians, 192. Schlatter and the Reformed, + 195. Schism made permanent, 197. Wesleyan Methodism, 198. + Francis Asbury, 200. Methodism gravitates southward and grows + apace, 201. Opposition of the church to slavery, 203; and to + intemperance, 205. Project to introduce bishops from England, + resisted in the interest of liberty, 206. + + +CHAP. XIII.--RECONSTRUCTION 208-229 + + Distraction and depression after the War of Independence, 208. + Forlorn condition of the Episcopalians, 210. Their republican + constitution, 211. Episcopal consecration secured in Scotland + and in England, 212. Feebleness of American Catholicism, 214. + Bishop Carroll, 215. "Trusteeism," 216. Methodism becomes a + church, 217. Westward movement of Christianity, 219. Severance + of church from state, 221. Doctrinal divisions; Calvinist and + Arminian, 222. Unitarianism, 224. Universalism, 225. Some + minor sects, 228. + + +CHAP. XIV.--THE SECOND AWAKENING 230-245 + + Ebb-tide of spiritual life, 230. Depravity and revival at the + West, 232. The first camp-meetings, 233. Good fruits, 237. + Nervous epidemics, 239. The Cumberland Presbyterians, 241. The + antisectarian sect of The Disciples, 242. Revival at the East, + 242. President Dwight, 243. + + +CHAP. XV.--ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE 246-260 + + Missionary spirit of the revival, 246. Religious earnestness + in the colleges, 247. Mills and his friends at Williamstown, + 248; and at Andover, 249. The Unitarian schism in + Massachusetts, 249. New era of theological seminaries, 251. + Founding of the A. B. C. F. M., 252; of the Baptist Missionary + Convention, 253. Other missionary boards, 255. The American + Bible Society, 256. Mills, and his work for the West and for + Africa, 256. Other societies, 258. Glowing hopes of the + church, 259. + + +CHAP. XVI.--CONFLICTS WITH PUBLIC WRONGS 261-291 + + Working of the voluntary system of church support, 261. + Dueling, 263. Crime of the State of Georgia against the + Cherokee nation, implicating the federal government, 264. + Jeremiah Evarts and Theodore Frelinghuysen, 267. Unanimity of + the church, North and South, against slavery, 268. The + Missouri Compromise, 270. Antislavery activity of the church, + at the East, 271; at the West, 273; at the South, 274. + Difficulty of antislavery church discipline, 275. The southern + apostasy, 277. Causes of the sudden revolution of sentiment, + 279. Defections at the North, and rise of a pro-slavery party, + 282. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill; solemn and unanimous protest of + the clergy of New England and New York, 284. Primeval + temperance legislation, 285. Prevalence of drunkenness, 286. + Temperance reformation a religious movement, 286. Development + of "the saloon," 288. The Washingtonian movement and its + drawbacks, 289. The Prohibition period, 290. + + +CHAP. XVII.--A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS 292-314 + + Dissensions in the Presbyterian Church, 292. Growing strength + of the New England element, 293. Impeachments of heresy, 294. + Benevolent societies, 295. Sudden excommunication of nearly + one half of the church by the other half, 296. Heresy and + schism among Unitarians: Emerson, 298; and Parker, 300. + Disruption, on the slavery question, of the Methodists, 301; + and of the Baptists, 303. Resuscitation of the Episcopal + Church, 304. Bishop Hobart and a High-church party, 306. Rapid + growth of this church, 308. Controversies in the Roman + Catholic Church, 310. Contention against Protestant + fanaticism, 312. + + +CHAP. XVIII.--THE GREAT IMMIGRATION 315-339 + + Expansion of territory and increase of population in the early + part of the nineteenth century, 315. Great volume of + immigration from 1840 on, 316. How drawn and how driven, 316. + At first principally Irish, then German, then Scandinavian, + 318. The Catholic clergy overtasked, 320. Losses of the + Catholic Church, 321. Liberalized tone of American + Catholicism, 323. Planting the church in the West, 327. + Sectarian competitions, 328. Protestant sects and Catholic + orders, 329. Mormonism, 335. Millerism, 336. Spiritualism, + 337. + + +CHAP. XIX.--THE CIVIL WAR 340-350 + + Material prosperity, 340. The Kansas Crusade, 341. The revival + of 1857, 342. Deepening of the slavery conflict, 345. Threats + of war, 347. Religious sincerity of both sides, 348. The + church in war-time, 349. + + +CHAP. XX.--AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 351-373 + + Reconstructions, 351. The Catholic Church, 352. The Episcopal + Church, 352. Persistent divisions among Methodists, Baptists, + and Presbyterians, 353. Healing of Presbyterian schisms, 355. + Missions at the South, 355. Vast expansion of church + activities, 357. Great religious and educational endowments, + 359. The enlisting of personal service: The Sunday-school, + 362. Chautauqua, 363. Y. M. C. A., 364. Y. W. C. A., 366. W. + C. T. U., 367. Women's missionary boards, 367. Nursing orders + and schools, 368. Y. P. S. C. E., and like associations, 368. + "The Institutional Church," 369. The Salvation Army, 370. Loss + of "the American Sabbath," 371. + + +CHAP. XXI.--THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE 374-397 + + Unfolding of the Edwardean theology, 374. Horace Bushnell, + 375. The Mercersburg theology, 377. "Bodies of divinity," 378. + Biblical science, 378. Princeton's new dogma, 380. Church + history, 381. The American pulpit, 382. "Applied + Christianity," 385. Liturgics, 386. Hymns, 387. Other + liturgical studies, 388. Church music, 391. The Moravian + liturgies, 394. Meager productiveness of the Catholic Church, + 394. The Americanizing of the Roman Church, 396. + + +CHAP. XXII.--TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF UNITY 398-420 + + Growth of the nation and national union, 398. Parallel growth + of the church, 399; and ecclesiastical division, 400. No + predominant sect, 401. Schism acceptable to politicians, 402; + and to some Christians, 403. Compensations of schism, 404. + _Nisus_ toward manifest union, 405. Early efforts at + fellowship among sects, 406. High-church protests against + union, 407. The Evangelical Alliance, 408. Fellowship in + non-sectarian associations, 409. Cooperation of leading sects + in Maine, 410. Various unpromising projects of union: I. Union + on sectarian basis, 411. II. Ecumenical sects, 412. III. + Consolidation of sects, 413. The hope of manifested unity, + 416. Conclusion, 419. + + + + +A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA--SPIRITUAL +REVIVAL THROUGHOUT CHRISTENDOM, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE CHURCH OF SPAIN. + + +The heroic discovery of America, at the close of the fifteenth century +after Christ, has compelled the generous and just admiration of the +world; but the grandeur of human enterprise and achievement in the +discovery of the western hemisphere has a less claim on our admiration +than that divine wisdom and controlling providence which, for reasons +now manifested, kept the secret hidden through so many millenniums, in +spite of continual chances of disclosure, until the fullness of time. + +How near, to "speak as a fool," the plans of God came to being defeated +by human enterprise is illustrated by unquestioned facts. The fact of +medieval exploration, colonization, and even evangelization in North +America seems now to have emerged from the region of fanciful conjecture +into that of history. That for four centuries, ending with the +fifteenth, the church of Iceland maintained its bishops and other +missionaries and built its churches and monasteries on the frozen coast +of Greenland is abundantly proved by documents and monuments. Dim but +seemingly unmistakable traces are now discovered of enterprises, not +only of exploration and trade, but also of evangelization, reaching +along the mainland southward to the shores of New England. There are +vague indications that these beginnings of Christian civilization were +extinguished, as in so many later instances, by savage massacre. With +impressive coincidence, the latest vestige of this primeval American +Christianity fades out in the very year of the discovery of America by +Columbus.[2:1] + +By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages had been kept +from premature disclosure during the centuries in which, without knowing +it, the Old World was actually in communication with the New. That was +high strategy in the warfare for the advancement of the kingdom of God +in the earth. What possibilities, even yet only beginning to be +accomplished, were thus saved to both hemispheres! If the discovery of +America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century +earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted to the western world would +have been that of the church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence. +The period closing with the fifteenth century was that of the dense +darkness that goes before the dawn. It was a period in which the +lingering life of the church was chiefly manifested in feverish +complaints of the widespread corruption and outcries for "reformation of +the church in head and members." The degeneracy of the clergy was +nowhere more manifest than in the monastic orders, that had been +originally established for the express purpose of reviving and purifying +the church. That ancient word was fulfilled, "Like people, like priest." +But it was especially in the person of the foremost official +representative of the religion of Jesus Christ that that religion was +most dishonored. The fifteenth century was the era of the infamous +popes. By another coincidence which arrests the attention of the reader +of history, that same year of the discovery by Columbus witnessed the +accession of the most infamous of the series, the Borgia, Alexander VI., +to his short and shameful pontificate. + +Let it not be thought, as some of us might be prone to think, that the +timeliness of the discovery of the western hemisphere, in its relation +to church history, is summed up in this, that it coincided with the +Protestant Reformation, so that the New World might be planted with a +Protestant Christianity. For a hundred years the colonization and +evangelization of America were, in the narrowest sense of that large +word, Catholic, not Protestant. But the Catholicism brought hither was +that of the sixteenth century, not of the fifteenth. It is a most +one-sided reading of the history of that illustrious age which fails to +recognize that the great Reformation was a reformation _of_ the church +as well as a reformation _from_ the church. It was in Spain itself, in +which the corruption of the church had been foulest, but from which all +symptoms of "heretical pravity" were purged away with the fiercest zeal +as fast as they appeared,--in Spain under the reign of Ferdinand and +Isabella the Catholic,--that the demand for a Catholic reformation made +itself earliest and most effectually felt. The highest ecclesiastical +dignitary of the realm, Ximenes, confessor to the queen, Archbishop of +Toledo, and cardinal, was himself the leader of reform. No changes in +the rest of Christendom were destined for many years to have so great +an influence on the course of evangelization in North America as those +which affected the church of Spain; and of these by far the most +important in their bearing on the early course of Christianity in +America were, first, the purifying and quickening of the miserably +decayed and corrupted mendicant orders,--ever the most effective arm in +the missionary service of the Latin Church,--and, a little later, the +founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and +for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure, +by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony, +nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual +duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative +boards, and especially of the _Congregatio de Propaganda Fide_, or board +of missions, dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The revived +interest in theological study incident to the general spiritual +quickening gave the church, as the result of the labors of the Council +of Trent, a well-defined body of doctrine, which nevertheless was not so +narrowly defined as to preclude differences and debates among the +diverse sects of the clergy, by whose competitions and antagonisms the +progress of missions both in Christian and in heathen lands was destined +to be so seriously affected. + +An incident of the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth +century--inevitable incident, doubtless, in that age, but none the less +deplorable--was the engendering or intensifying of that cruel and +ferocious form of fanaticism which is defined as the combination of +religious emotion with the malignant passions. The tendency to +fanaticism is one of the perils attendant on the deep stirring of +religious feeling at any time; it was especially attendant on the +religious agitations of that period; but most of all it was in Spain, +where, of all the Catholic nations, corruption had gone deepest and +spiritual revival was most earnest and sincere, that the manifestations +of fanaticism were most shocking. Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic +were distinguished alike by their piety and their part in the promotion +of civilization, and by the horrors of bloody cruelty perpetrated by +their authority and that of the church, at the instigation of the +sincere and devout reformer Ximenes. In the memorable year 1492 was +inaugurated the fiercest work of the Spanish Inquisition, concerning +which, speaking of her own part in it, the pious Isabella was able +afterward to say, "For the love of Christ and of his virgin mother I +have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, +provinces and kingdoms." + +The earlier pages of American church history will not be intelligently +read unless it is well understood that the Christianity first to be +transplanted to the soil of the New World was the Christianity of +Spain--the Spain of Isabella and Ximenes, of Loyola and Francis Xavier +and St. Theresa, the Spain also of Torquemada and St. Peter Arbues and +the zealous and orthodox Duke of Alva. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2:1] See the account of the Greenland church and its missions in +Professor O'Gorman's "History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United +States" (vol. ix. of the American Church History Series), pp. 3-12. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +SPANISH CONQUEST--THE PROPAGATION, DECAY, AND DOWNFALL OF SPANISH +CHRISTIANITY. + + +It is a striking fact that the earliest monuments of colonial and +ecclesiastical antiquity within the present domain of the United States, +after the early Spanish remains in Florida, are to be found in those +remotely interior and inaccessible highlands of New Mexico, which have +only now begun to be reached in the westward progress of migration. +Before the beginnings of permanent English colonization at Plymouth and +at Jamestown, before the French beginnings on the St. Lawrence, before +the close of the sixteenth century, there had been laid by Spanish +soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries, in those far recesses of the +continent, the foundations of Christian towns and churches, the stately +walls and towers of which still invite the admiration of the traveler. + +The fact is not more impressive than it is instructive. It illustrates +the prodigious impetuosity of that tide of conquest which within so few +years from the discovery of the American continents not only swept over +the regions of South and Central America and the great plateau of +Mexico, but actually occupied with military posts, with extensive and +successful missions, and with a colonization which seemed to show every +sign of stability and future expansion, by far the greater part of the +present domain of the United States exclusive of Alaska--an +ecclesiastico-military empire stretching its vast diameter from the +southernmost cape of Florida across twenty-five parallels of latitude +and forty-five meridians of longitude to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The +lessons taught by this amazingly swift extension of the empire and the +church, and its arrest and almost extinction, are legible on the surface +of the history. It is a strange, but not unparalleled, story of +attempted coöperation in the common service of God and Mammon and +Moloch--of endeavors after concord between Christ and Belial. + +There is no reason to question the sincerity with which the rulers of +Spain believed themselves to be actuated by the highest motives of +Christian charity in their terrible and fatal American policy. "The +conversion of the Indians is the principal foundation of the +conquest--that which ought principally to be attended to." So wrote the +king in a correspondence in which a most cold-blooded authorization is +given for the enslaving of the Indians.[7:1] After the very first voyage +of Columbus every expedition of discovery or invasion was equipped with +its contingent of clergy--secular priests as chaplains to the Spaniards, +and friars of the regular orders for mission work among the Indians--at +cost of the royal treasury or as a charge upon the new conquests. + +This subsidizing of the church was the least serious of the injuries +inflicted on the cause of the gospel by the piety of the Spanish +government. That such subsidizing is in the long run an injury is a +lesson illustrated not only in this case, but in many parallel cases in +the course of this history. A far more dreadful wrong was the +identifying of the religion of Jesus Christ with a system of war and +slavery, well-nigh the most atrocious in recorded history. For such a +policy the Spanish nation had just received a peculiar training. It is +one of the commonplaces of history to remark that the barbarian invaders +of the Roman empire were themselves vanquished by their own victims, +being converted by them to the Christian faith. In like manner the +Spanish nation, triumphing over its Moslem subjects in the expulsion of +the Moors, seemed in its American conquests to have been converted to +the worst of the tenets of Islam. The propagation of the gospel in the +western hemisphere, under the Spanish rule, illustrated in its public +and official aspects far more the principles of Mohammed than those of +Jesus. The triple alternative offered by the Saracen or the +Turk--conversion or tribute or the sword--was renewed with aggravations +by the Christian conquerors of America. In a form deliberately drawn up +and prescribed by the civil and ecclesiastical counselors at Madrid, the +invader of a new province was to summon the rulers and people to +acknowledge the church and the pope and the king of Spain; and in case +of refusal or delay to comply with this summons, the invader was to +notify them of the consequences in these terms: "If you refuse, by the +help of God we shall enter with force into your land, and shall make war +against you in all ways and manners that we can, and subject you to the +yoke and obedience of the church and of their Highnesses; we shall take +you and your wives and your children and make slaves of them, and sell +and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take +away your goods, and do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as +to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord; and we +protest that the deaths and losses that shall accrue from this are your +own fault."[8:1] + +While the church was thus implicated in crimes against humanity which +history shudders to record, it is a grateful duty to remember that it +was from the church also and in the name of Christ that bold protests +and strenuous efforts were put forth in behalf of the oppressed and +wronged. Such names as Las Casas and Montesinos shine with a beautiful +luster in the darkness of that age; and the Dominican order, identified +on the other side of the sea with the fiercest cruelties of the Spanish +Inquisition, is honorable in American church history for its fearless +championship of liberty and justice. + +The first entrance of Spanish Christianity upon the soil of the United +States was wholly characteristic. In quest of the Fountain of Youth, +Ponce de Leon sailed for the coast of Florida equipped with forces both +for the carnal and for the spiritual warfare. Besides his colonists and +his men-at-arms, he brought his secular priests as chaplains and his +monks as missionaries; and his instructions from the crown required him +to summon the natives, as in the famous "Requerimiento," to submit +themselves to the Catholic faith and to the king of Spain, under threat +of the sword and slavery. The invaders found a different temper in the +natives from what was encountered in Mexico and Peru, where the +populations were miserably subjugated, or in the islands, where they +were first enslaved and presently completely exterminated. The insolent +invasion was met, as it deserved, by effective volleys of arrows, and +its chivalrous leader was driven back to Cuba, to die there of his +wounds. + +It is needless to recount the successive failures of Spanish +civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain now +included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the +attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez +effect a permanent establishment on the coast of Florida. In September, +1565, the foundations of the oldest city in the United States, St. +Augustine, were laid with solemn religious rites by the toil of the +first negro slaves; and the event was signalized by one of the most +horrible massacres in recorded history, the cold-blooded and perfidious +extermination, almost to the last man, woman, and child, of a colony of +French Protestants that had been planted a few months before at the +mouth of the St. John's River. + +The colony thus inaugurated seemed to give every promise of permanent +success as a center of religious influence. The spiritual work was +naturally and wisely divided into the pastoral care of the Spanish +garrisons and settlements, which was taken in charge by "secular" +priests, and the mission work among the Indians, committed to friars of +those "regular" orders whose solid organization and independence of the +episcopal hierarchy, and whose keen emulation in enterprises of +self-denial, toil, and peril, have been so large an element of strength, +and sometimes of weakness, in the Roman system. In turn, the mission +field of the Floridas was occupied by the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and +the Franciscans. Before the end of seventy years from the founding of +St. Augustine the number of Christian Indians was reckoned at +twenty-five or thirty thousand, distributed among forty-four missions, +under the direction of thirty-five Franciscan missionaries, while the +city of St. Augustine was fully equipped with religious institutions and +organizations. Grave complaints are on record, which indicate that the +great number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their +meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these +indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable +proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of +instruction in the barbarous languages of the peninsula. + +For one hundred and fifteen years Spain and the Spanish missionaries had +exclusive possession in Florida, and it was during this period that +these imposing results were achieved. In 1680 a settlement of Scotch +Presbyterians at Port Royal in South Carolina seemed like a menace to +the Spanish domination. It was wholly characteristic of the Spanish +colony to seize the sword at once and destroy its nearest Christian +neighbor. It took the sword, and perished by the sword. The war of races +and sects thus inaugurated went on, with intervals of quiet, until the +Treaty of Paris, in 1763, transferred Florida to the British crown. No +longer sustained by the terror of the Spanish arms and by subsidies from +the Spanish treasury, the whole fabric of Spanish civilization and +Christianization, at the end of a history of almost two centuries, +tumbled at once to complete ruin and extinction. + +The story of the planting of Christian institutions in New Mexico runs +parallel with the early history of Florida. Omitting from this brief +summary the first discovery of these regions by fugitives from one of +the disastrous early attempts to effect a settlement on the Florida +coast, omitting (what we would fain narrate) the stories of heroic +adventure and apostolic zeal and martyrdom which antedate the permanent +occupation of the country, we note the arrival, in 1598, of a strong, +numerous, and splendidly equipped colony, and the founding of a +Christian city in the heart of the American continent. As usual in such +Spanish enterprises, the missionary work was undertaken by a body of +Franciscan friars. After the first months of hardship and +discouragement, the work of the Christian colony, and especially the +work of evangelization among the Indians, went forward at a marvelous +rate. Reinforcements both of priests and of soldiers were received from +Mexico; by the end of ten years baptisms were reported to the number of +eight thousand; the entire population of the province was reckoned as +being within the pale of the church; not less than sixty Franciscan +friars at once were engaged in the double service of pastors and +missionaries. The triumph of the gospel and of Spanish arms seemed +complete and permanent. + +Fourscore years after the founding of the colony and mission the sudden +explosion of a conspiracy, which for a long time had been secretly +preparing, revealed the true value of the allegiance of the Indians to +the Spanish government and of their conversion to Christ. Confounding in +a common hatred the missionaries and the tyrannous conquerors, who had +been associated in a common policy, the Christian Indians turned upon +their rulers and their pastors alike with undiscriminating warfare. "In +a few weeks no Spaniard was in New Mexico north of El Paso. Christianity +and civilization were swept away at one blow." The successful rebels +bettered the instruction that they had received from their rejected +pastors. The measures of compulsion that had been used to stamp out +every vestige of the old religion were put into use against the new. + +The cause of Catholic Christianity in New Mexico never recovered from +this stunning blow. After twenty years the Spanish power, taking +advantage of the anarchy and depopulation of the province, had +reoccupied its former posts by military force, the missionaries were +brought back under armed protection, the practice of the ancient +religion was suppressed by the strong hand, and efforts, too often +unsuccessful, were made to win back the apostate tribes to something +more than a sullen submission to the government and the religion of +their conquerors. The later history of Spanish Christianity in New +Mexico is a history of decline and decay, enlivened by the usual +contentions between the "regular" clergy and the episcopal government. +The white population increased, the Indian population dwindled. Religion +as set forth by an exotic clergy became an object of indifference when +it was not an object of hatred. In 1845 the Bishop of Durango, visiting +the province, found an Indian population of twenty thousand in a total +of eighty thousand. The clergy numbered only seventeen priests. Three +years later the province became part of the United States. + +To complete the story of the planting of Spanish Christianity within the +present boundaries of the United States, it is necessary to depart from +the merely chronological order of American church history; for, although +the immense adventurousness of Spanish explorers by sea and land had, +early in the sixteenth century, made known to Christendom the coasts and +harbors of the Californias, the beginnings of settlement and missions on +that Pacific coast date from so late as 1769. At this period the method +of such work had become settled into a system. The organization was +threefold, including (1) the garrison town, (2) the Spanish settlement, +and (3) the mission, at which the Indian neophytes were gathered under +the tutelage and strict government of the convent of Franciscan friars. +The whole system was sustained by the authority and the lavish +subventions of the Spanish government, and herein lay its strength and, +as the event speedily proved, its fatal weakness. The inert and feeble +character of the Indians of that region offered little excuse for the +atrocious cruelties that had elsewhere marked the Spanish occupation; +but the paternal kindness of the stronger race was hardly less hurtful. +The natives were easily persuaded to become by thousands the dependents +and servants of the missions. Conversion went on apace. At the end of +sixty-five years from the founding of the missions their twenty-one +stations numbered a Christian native population of more than thirty +thousand, and were possessed of magnificent wealth, agricultural and +commercial. In that very year (1834) the long-intended purpose of the +government to release the Indians from their almost slavery under the +missions, and to distribute the vast property in severalty, was put in +force. In eight years the more than thirty thousand Catholic Indians had +dwindled to less than five thousand; the enormous estates of the +missions were dissipated; the converts lapsed into savagery and +paganism. + +Meanwhile the Spanish population had gone on slowly increasing. In the +year 1840, seventy years from the Spanish occupancy, it had risen to +nearly six thousand; but it was a population the spiritual character of +which gave little occasion of boasting to the Spanish church. Tardy and +feeble efforts had been instituted to provide it with an organized +parish ministry, when the supreme and exclusive control of that country +ceased from the hands that so long had held it. "The vineyard was taken +away, and given to other husbandmen." In the year 1848 California was +annexed to the United States. + +This condensed story of Spanish Christianity within the present +boundaries of the United States is absurdly brief compared with the vast +extent of space, the three centuries of time, and what seemed at one +time the grandeur of results involved in it. But in truth it has +strangely little connection with the extant Christianity of our country. +It is almost as completely severed from historical relation with the +church of the present day as the missions of the Greenlanders in the +centuries before Columbus. If we distinguish justly between the +Christian work and its unchristian and almost satanic admixtures, we can +join without reserve both in the eulogy and in the lament with which the +Catholic historian sums up his review: "It was a glorious work, and the +recital of it impresses us by the vastness and success of the toil. Yet, +as we look around to-day, we can find nothing of it that remains. Names +of saints in melodious Spanish stand out from maps in all that section +where the Spanish monk trod, toiled, and died. A few thousand Christian +Indians, descendants of those they converted and civilized, still +survive in New Mexico and Arizona, and that is all."[15:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7:1] Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 234, American +edition. + +[8:1] Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 235; also p. +355, where the grotesquely horrible document is given in full. + +In the practical prosecution of this scheme of evangelization, it was +found necessary to the due training of the Indians in the holy faith +that they should be enslaved, whether or no. It was on this religious +consideration, clearly laid down in a report of the king's chaplains, +that the atrocious system of _encomiendas_ was founded. + +[15:1] "The Roman Catholic Church in the United States," by Professor +Thomas O'Gorman (vol. ix., American Church History Series), p. 112. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE PROJECT OF FRENCH EMPIRE AND EVANGELIZATION--ITS WIDE AND RAPID +SUCCESS--ITS SUDDEN EXTINCTION. + + +For a full century, from the discovery of the New World until the first +effective effort at occupation by any other European people, the Spanish +church and nation had held exclusive occupancy of the North American +continent. The Spanish enterprises of conquest and colonization had been +carried forward with enormous and unscrupulous energy, and alongside of +them and involved with them had been borne the Spanish chaplaincies and +missions, sustained from the same treasury, in some honorable instances +bravely protesting against the atrocities they were compelled to +witness, in other instances implicated in them and sharing the bloody +profits of them. But, unquestionable as was the martial prowess of the +Spanish soldier and adventurer, and the fearless devotion of the Spanish +missionary, there appears nothing like systematic planning in all these +immense operations. The tide of conquest flowed in capricious courses, +according as it was invited by hopes of gold or of a passage to China, +or of some phantom of a Fountain of Youth or a city of Quivira or a +Gilded Man; and it seemed in general to the missionary that he could not +do else than follow in the course of conquest. + +It is wholly characteristic of the French people that its entering at +last upon enterprises of colonization and missions should be with large +forecasting of the future and with the methods of a grand strategy. + +We can easily believe that the famous "Bull of Partition" of Pope +Alexander VI. was not one of the hindrances that so long delayed the +beginnings of a New France in the West. Incessant dynastic wars with +near neighbors, the final throes of the long struggle between the crown +and the great vassals, and finally the religious wars that culminated in +the awful slaughter of St. Bartholomew's, and ended at the close of the +century with the politic conversion and the coronation of Henry +IV.--these were among the causes that had held back the great nation +from distant undertakings. But thoughts of great things to be achieved +in the New World had never for long at a time been absent from the minds +of Frenchmen. The annual visits of the Breton fishing-fleets to the +banks of Newfoundland kept in mind such rights of discovery as were +alleged by France, and kept attention fixed in the direction of the +great gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Long before the middle of the +sixteenth century Jacques Cartier had explored the St. Lawrence beyond +the commanding position which he named Montreal, and a royal commission +had issued, under which he was to undertake an enterprise of "discovery, +settlement, and the conversion of the Indians." But it was not till the +year 1608 that the first permanent French settlement was effected. With +the _coup d'oeil_ of a general or the foresight of a prophet, +Champlain, the illustrious first founder of French empire in America, in +1608 fixed the starting-point of it at the natural fortress of Quebec. +How early the great project had begun to take shape in the leading minds +of the nation it may not be easy to determine. It was only after the +adventurous explorations of the French pioneers, traders, and +friars--men of like boundless enthusiasm and courage--had been crowned +by the achievement of La Salle, who first of men traversed the two great +waterways of the continent from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of +Mexico, that the amazing possibilities of it were fully revealed. But, +whosesoever scheme it was, a more magnificent project of empire, secular +and spiritual, has never entered into the heart of man. It seems to have +been native to the American soil, springing up in the hearts of the +French pioneer explorers themselves;[18:1] but by its grandeur, and at +the same time its unity, it was of a sort to delight the souls of Sully +and Richelieu and of their masters. Under thin and dubious claims by +right of discovery, through the immense energy and daring of her +explorers, the heroic zeal of her missionaries, and not so much by the +prowess of her soldiers as by her craft in diplomacy with savage tribes, +France was to assert and make good her title to the basin of the St. +Lawrence and the lakes, and the basin of the Mississippi and the Gulf of +Mexico. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the +Mississippi, through the core of the continent, was to be drawn a cordon +of posts, military, commercial, and religious, with other outlying +stations at strategic points both eastward and westward. The only +external interference with this scheme that could be apprehended at its +inception was from the Spanish colonies, already decaying and shrinking +within their boundaries to the west and to the southeast, and from a +puny little English settlement started only a year before, with a +doubtful hold on life, on the bank of the James River. A dozen years +later a pitiably feeble company of Pilgrims shall make their landing at +Plymouth to try the not hopeful experiment of living in the wilderness, +and a settlement of Swedes in Delaware and of Hollanders on the Hudson +shall be added to the incongruous, unconcerted, mutually jealous +plantations that begin to take root along the Atlantic seaboard. Not +only grandeur and sagacity of conception, but success in achievement, is +illustrated by the comparative area occupied by the three great European +powers on the continent of North America at the end of a century and a +half from the founding of Quebec in 1608. Dividing the continent into +twenty-five equal parts, the French claimed and seemed to hold firmly in +possession twenty parts, the Spanish four parts, and the English one +part.[19:1] + +The comparison between the Spanish and the French methods of +colonization and missions in America is at almost every point honorable +to the French. Instead of a greedy scramble after other men's property +in gold and silver, the business basis of the French enterprises was to +consist in a widely organized and laboriously prosecuted traffic in +furs. Instead of a series of desultory and savage campaigns of conquest, +the ferocity of which was aggravated by the show of zeal for the kingdom +of righteousness and peace, was a large-minded and far-sighted scheme of +empire, under which remote and hostile tribes were to be combined by +ties of mutual interest and common advantage. And the missions, instead +of following servilely in the track of bloody conquest to assume the +tutelage of subjugated and enslaved races, were to share with the +soldier and the trader the perilous adventures of exploration, and not +so much to be supported and defended as to be themselves the support and +protection of the settlements, through the influence of Christian love +and self-sacrifice over the savage heart. Such elements of moral +dignity, as well as of imperial grandeur, marked the plans for the +French occupation of North America. + +To a wonderful extent those charged with this enterprise were worthy of +the task. Among the military and civil leaders of it, from Champlain to +Montcalm, were men that would have honored the best days of French +chivalry. The energy and daring of the French explorers, whether traders +or missionaries, have not been equaled in the pioneer work of other +races. And the annals of Christian martyrdom may be searched in vain for +more heroic examples of devotion to the work of the gospel than those +which adorn the history of the French missions in North America. What +magnificent results might not be expected from such an enterprise, in +the hands of such men, sustained by the resources of the most powerful +nation and national church in Christendom! + +From the founding of Quebec, in 1608, the expansion of the French +enterprise was swift and vast. By the end of fifty years Quebec had been +equipped with hospital, nunnery, seminary for the education of priests, +all affluently endowed from the wealth of zealous courtiers, and served +in a noble spirit of self-devotion by the choicest men and women that +the French church could furnish; besides these institutions, the +admirable plan of a training colony, at which converted Indians should +be trained to civilized life, was realized at Sillery, in the +neighborhood. The sacred city of Montreal had been established as a base +for missions to the remoter west. Long in advance of the settlement at +Plymouth, French Christianity was actively and beneficently busy among +the savages of eastern Maine, among the so-called "neutral nations" by +the Niagara, among the fiercely hostile Iroquois of northern New York, +by Lake Huron and Lake Nipissing, and, with wonderful tokens of success, +by the Falls of St. Mary. "Thus did the religious zeal of the French +bear the cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake +Superior, and look wistfully toward the homes of the Sioux in the valley +of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Eliot had +addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston +harbor."[21:1] + +Thirty years more passed, bringing the story down to the memorable year +1688. The French posts, military, commercial, and religious, had been +pushed westward to the head of Lake Superior. The Mississippi had been +discovered and explored, and the colonies planted from Canada along its +banks and the banks of its tributaries had been met by the expeditions +proceeding direct from France through the Gulf of Mexico. The claims of +France in America included not only the vast domain of Canada, but a +half of Maine, a half of Vermont, more than a half of New York, the +entire valley of the Mississippi, and Texas as far as the Rio Bravo del +Norte.[21:2] And these claims were asserted by actual and almost +undisputed occupancy. + +The seventy years that followed were years of "storm and stress" for the +French colonies and missions. The widening areas occupied by the French +and by the English settlers brought the rival establishments into nearer +neighborhood, into sharper competition, and into bloody collision. +Successive European wars--King William's War, Queen Anne's War (of the +Spanish succession), King George's War (of the Austrian +succession)--involved the dependencies of France and those of England in +the conflicts of their sovereigns. These were the years of terror along +the exposed northern frontier of English settlements in New England and +New York, when massacre and burning by bands of savages, under French +instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield +and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, in desperate +campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought +to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from +which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of +peace between England and France confirmed and reconfirmed the French +claims to the main part of her American domain. The advances of French +missions and settlements continued southward and westward, in spite of +jealousy in European cabinets as the imposing magnitude of the plans of +French empire became more distinctly disclosed, and in spite of the +struggles of the English colonies both North and South. When, on the 4th +of July, 1754, Colonel George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity, +near the fork of the Ohio, to the French, "in the whole valley of the +Mississippi, to its headsprings in the Alleghanies, no standard floated +but that of France."[22:1] + +There seemed little reason to doubt that the French empire in America, +which for a century and a half had gone on expanding and strengthening, +would continue to expand and strengthen for centuries to come. Sudden as +lightning, in August, 1756, the Seven Years' War broke out on the other +side of the globe. The treaty with which it ended, in February, 1763, +transferred to Great Britain, together with the Spanish territory of +Florida, all the French possessions in America, from the Arctic Ocean to +the Gulf of Mexico. "As a dream when one awaketh," the magnificent +vision of empire, spiritual and secular, which for so many generations +had occupied the imagination of French statesmen and churchmen, was +rudely and forever dispelled. Of the princely wealth, the brilliant +talents, the unsurpassed audacity of adventure, the unequaled heroism of +toil and martyrdom expended on the great project, how strangely meager +and evanescent the results! In the districts of Lower Canada there +remain, indeed, the institutions of a French Catholic population; and +the aspect of those districts, in which the pledge of full liberty to +the dominant church has been scrupulously fulfilled by the British +government, may reasonably be regarded as an indication of what France +would have done for the continent in general. But within the present +domain of the United States the entire results of a century and a half +of French Catholic colonization and evangelization may be summed up as +follows: In Maine, a thousand Catholic Indians still remain, to remind +one of the time when, as it is boldly claimed, the whole Indian +population of that province were either converted or under Jesuit +training.[23:1] In like manner, a scanty score of thousands of Catholic +Indians on various reservations in the remote West represent the time +when, at the end of the French domination, "all the North American +Indians were more or less extensively converted" to Catholic +Christianity, "all had the gospel preached to them."[23:2] The splendid +fruits of the missions among the Iroquois, from soil watered by the +blood of martyrs, were wasted to nothing in savage intertribal wars. +Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws of the South and Southwest, among whom +the gospel was by and by to win some of its fairest trophies, the French +missionaries achieved no great success.[23:3] The French colonies from +Canada, planted so prosperously along the Western rivers, dispersed, +leaving behind them some straggling families. The abundant later growth +of the Catholic Church in that region was to be from other seed and +stock. The region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be +included within the boundaries of the great republic, retained +organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as +they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it +would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The +work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless +it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of +a better age survived to aid the work of those who by and by should +enter in to rebuild the waste places.[24:1] + +There are not a few of us, wise after the event, who recognize a final +cause of this surprising and almost dramatic failure, in the manifest +intent of divine Providence that the field of the next great empire in +the world's history should not become the exclusive domain of an +old-world monarchy and hierarchy; but the immediate efficient causes of +it are not so obvious. This, however, may justly be said: some of the +seeming elements of strength in the French colonization proved to be +fatal elements of weakness. + +1. The French colonies had the advantage of royal patronage, +endowment,[24:2] and protection, and of unity of counsel and direction. +They were all parts of one system, under one control. And their centers +of vitality, head and heart, were on the other side of the sea. +Subsisting upon the strength of the great monarchy, they must needs +share its fortunes, evil as well as good. When, after the reverses of +France in the Seven Years' War, it became necessary to accept hard terms +of peace, the superb framework of empire in the West fell to the +disposal of the victors. "America," said Pitt, "was conquered in +Germany." + +2. The business basis of the French colonies, being that of trade with +the Indians rather than a self-supporting agriculture, favored the swift +expansion of these colonies and their wide influence among the Indians. +Scattered companies of fur-traders would be found here and there, +wherever were favorable points for traffic, penetrating deeply into the +wilderness and establishing friendly business relations with the +savages. It has been observed that the Romanic races show an alacrity +for intermarriage with barbarous tribes that is not to be found in the +Teutonic. The result of such relations is ordinarily less the elevating +of the lower race than the dragging down of the higher; but it tends for +the time to give great advantage in maintaining a powerful political +influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in +number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their +formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and +defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril. +Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It +was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly +relations with their Huron neighbors embattled against them the +fiercest, bravest, and ablest of the Indian tribes, the confederacy of +the Six Nations, which held, with full appreciation of its strategic +importance, the command of the exits southward from the valley of the +St. Lawrence. The fierce jealousy of the Iroquois toward the allies of +their hereditary antagonists, rather than any good will toward white +settlers of other races, made them an effectual check upon French +encroachments upon the slender line of English, Dutch, and Swedish +settlements that stretched southward from Maine along the Atlantic +coast. + +3. In one aspect it was doubtless an advantage to the French missions in +America that the sharp sectarian competitions between the different +clerical orders resulted finally in the missions coming almost +exclusively under the control of the Jesuit society. This result insured +to the missions the highest ability in administration and direction, +ample resources of various sorts, and a force of missionaries whose +personal virtues have won for them unstinted eulogy even from unfriendly +sources--men the ardor of whose zeal was rigorously controlled by a more +than martial severity of religious discipline. But it would be uncandid +in us to refuse attention to those grave charges against the society +brought by Catholic authorities and Catholic orders, and so enforced as, +after long and acrimonious controversy, to result in the expulsion of +the society from almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being +stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, +contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being +suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to +Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense +animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic orders in which +the charges against the society were engendered and unrelentingly +prosecuted; but after all deductions it is not credible that the almost +universal odium in which it was held was provoked solely by its virtues. +Among the accusations against the society which seem most clearly +substantiated these two are likely to be concerned in that "brand of +ultimate failure which has invariably been stamped on all its most +promising schemes and efforts":[26:1] first, a disposition to compromise +the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to +heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified +by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and +outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political +intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in +the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements +within the present boundaries of the United States. + +4. The conditions which favored the swift and magnificent expansion of +the French occupation were unfavorable to the healthy natural growth of +permanent settlements. A post of soldiers, a group of cabins of trappers +and fur-traders, and a mission of nuns and celibate priests, all +together give small promise of rapid increase of population. It is +rather to the fact that the French settlements, except at the seaboard, +were constituted so largely of these elements, than to any alleged +sterility of the French stock, that the fatal weakness of the French +occupation is to be ascribed. The lack of French America was men. The +population of Canada in 1759, according to census, was about eighty-two +thousand;[27:2] that of New England in 1754 is estimated at four hundred +and twenty-five thousand. "The white population of five, or perhaps even +of six, of the American provinces was greater singly than that of all +Canada, and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada +fourteenfold."[27:3] The same sign of weakness is recognized at the +other extremity of the cordon of French settlements. The vast region of +Louisiana is estimated, at fifty years from its colonization, at one +tenth of the strength of the coeval province of Pennsylvania.[27:4] + +Under these hopeless conditions the French colonies had not even the +alternative of keeping the peace. The state of war was forced by the +mother countries. There was no recourse for Canada except to her savage +allies, won for her through the influence of the missionaries. + +It is justly claimed that in the mind of such early leaders as Champlain +the dominant motive of the French colonization was religious; but in the +cruel position into which the colony was forced it was almost inevitable +that the missions should become political. It was boasted in their +behalf that they had taught the Indians "to mingle Jesus Christ and +France together in their affections."[28:1] The cross and the lilies +were blazoned together as the sign of French dominion. The missionary +became frequently, and sometimes quite undisguisedly, a political agent. +It was from the missions that the horrible murderous forays upon +defenseless villages proceeded, which so often marked the frontier line +of New England and New York with fire and blood. It is one of the most +unhappy of the results of that savage warfare that in the minds of the +communities that suffered from it the Jesuit missionary came to be +looked upon as accessory to these abhorrent crimes. Deeply is it to be +lamented that men with such eminent claims on our admiration and +reverence should not be triumphantly clear of all suspicion of such +complicity. We gladly concede the claim[28:2] that the proof of the +complicity is not complete; we could welcome some clear evidence in +disproof of it--some sign of a bold and indignant protest against these +crimes; we could wish that the Jesuit historian had not boasted of these +atrocities as proceeding from the fine work of his brethren,[29:1] and +that the antecedents of the Jesuits as a body, and their declared +principles of "moral theology," were such as raise no presumption +against them even in unfriendly minds. But we must be content with +thankfully acknowledging that divine change which has made it impossible +longer to boast of or even justify such deeds, and which leaves no +ground among neighbor Christians of the present day for harboring mutual +suspicions which, to the Christian ministers of French and English +America of two hundred years ago and less, it was impossible to repress. + +I have spoken of the complete extinction within the present domain of +the United States of the magnificent beginnings of the projected French +Catholic Church and empire. It is only in the most recent years, since +the Civil War, that the results of the work inaugurated in America by +Champlain begin to reappear in the field of the ecclesiastical history +of the United States. The immigration of Canadian French Catholics into +the northern tier of States has already grown to considerable volume, +and is still growing in numbers and in stability and strength, and adds +a new and interesting element to the many factors that go to make up the +American church. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[18:1] So Parkman. + +[19:1] Bancroft's "United States," vol. iv., p. 267. + +[21:1] Bancroft's "United States," vol. iii., p. 131. + +[21:2] _Ibid._, p. 175. + +[22:1] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 121. + +[23:1] Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholic Church in the United +States," p. 136. + +[23:2] _Ibid._, pp. 191-193. + +[23:3] _Ibid._, p. 211. + +[24:1] See O'Gorman, chaps. ix.-xiv., xx. + +[24:2] Mr. Bancroft, describing the "sad condition" of La Salle's colony +at Matagorda after the wreck of his richly laden store-ship, adds that +"even now this colony possessed, from the bounty of Louis XIV., more +than was contributed by all the English monarchs together for the twelve +English colonies on the Atlantic. Its number still exceeded that of the +colony of Smith in Virginia, or of those who embarked in the +'Mayflower'" (vol. iii., p. 171). + +[26:1] Dr. R. F. Littledale, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xiii., +pp. 649-652. + +[27:1] Both these charges are solemnly affirmed by the pope in the bull +of suppression of the society (Dr. R. F. Littledale, in "Encyclopædia +Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 655). + +[27:2] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 320. + +[27:3] _Ibid._, pp. 128, 129. + +[27:4] The contrast is vigorously emphasized by Mr. Bancroft: "Such was +Louisiana more than a half-century after the first attempt at +colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been five thousand +whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV. had fostered it with +pride and liberal expenditures; an opulent merchant, famed for his +successful enterprise, assumed its direction; the Company of the +Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit, had made it the +foundation of their hopes; and, again, Fleury and Louis XV. had sought +to advance its fortunes. Priests and friars, dispersed through nations +from Biloxi to the Dahcotas, propitiated the favor of the savages; but +still the valley of the Mississippi was nearly a wilderness. All its +patrons--though among them it counted kings and ministers of state--had +not accomplished for it in half a century a tithe of the prosperity +which within the same period sprang naturally from the benevolence of +William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware" (vol. iii., p. +369). + +[28:1] "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 654. + +[28:2] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 137-142. + +[29:1] Bancroft, vol. iii., pp. 187, 188. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION--THE DISINTEGRATION OF +CHRISTENDOM--CONTROVERSIES--PERSECUTIONS. + + +We have briefly reviewed the history of two magnificent schemes of +secular and spiritual empire, which, conceived in the minds of great +statesmen and churchmen, sustained by the resources of the mightiest +kingdoms of that age, inaugurated by soldiers of admirable prowess, +explorers of unsurpassed boldness and persistence, and missionaries +whose heroic faith has canonized them in the veneration of Christendom, +have nevertheless come to naught. + +We turn now to observe the beginnings, coinciding in time with those of +the French enterprise, of a series of disconnected plantations along the +Atlantic seaboard, established as if at haphazard, without plan or +mutual preconcert, of different languages and widely diverse Christian +creeds, depending on scanty private resources, unsustained by +governmental arms or treasuries, but destined, in a course of events +which no human foresight could have calculated, to come under the +plastic influence of a single European power, to be molded according to +the general type of English polity, and to become heir to English +traditions, literature, and language. These mutually alien and even +antagonistic communities were to be constrained, by forces superior to +human control, first into confederation and then into union, and to +occupy the breadth of the new continent as a solid and independent +nation. The history reads like a fulfillment of the apocalyptic imagery +of a rock hewn from the mountain without hands, moving on to fill the +earth. + +Looking back after the event, we find it easy to trace the providential +preparations for this great result. There were few important events in +the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that did not +have to do with it; but the most obvious of these antecedents are to be +found in _controversies_ and _persecutions_. + +The protest of northern Europe against the abuses and corruptions +prevailing in the Roman Church was articulated in the Augsburg +Confession. Over against it were framed the decrees of the Council of +Trent. Thus the lines were distinctly drawn and the warfare between +contending principles was joined. Those who fondly dreamed of a +permanently united and solid Protestantism to withstand its powerful +antagonist were destined to speedy and inevitable disappointment. There +have been many to deplore that so soon after the protest of Augsburg was +set forth as embodying the common belief of Protestants new parties +should have arisen protesting against the protest. The ordinance of the +Lord's Supper, instituted as a sacrament of universal Christian +fellowship, became (as so often before and since) the center of +contention and the badge of mutual alienation. It was on this point that +Zwingli and the Swiss parted from Luther and the Lutherans; on the same +point, in the next generation of Reformers, John Calvin, attempting to +mediate between the two contending parties, became the founder of still +a third party, strong not only in the lucid and logical doctrinal +statements in which it delighted, but also in the possession of a +definite scheme of republican church government which became as +distinctive of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" churches as their doctrine +of the Supper. It was at a later epoch still that those insoluble +questions which press most inexorably for consideration when theological +thought and study are most serious and earnest--the questions that +concern the divine sovereignty in its relation to human freedom and +responsibility--arose in the Catholic Church to divide Jesuit from +Dominican and Franciscan, and in the Reformed churches to divide the +Arminians from the disciples of Gomar and Turretin. All these divisions +among the European Christians of the seventeenth century were to have +their important bearing on the planting of the Christian church in +America. + +In view of the destined predominance of English influence in the +seaboard colonies of America, the history of the divisions of the +Christian people of England is of preëminent importance to the +beginnings of the American church. The curiously diverse elements that +entered into the English Reformation, and the violent vicissitudes that +marked the course of it, were all represented in the parties existing +among English Christians at the period of the planting of the colonies. + +The political and dynastic character of the movements that detached the +English hierarchy from the Roman see had for one inevitable result to +leaven the English church as a lump with the leaven of Herod. That +considerable part of the clergy and people that moved to and fro, +without so much as the resistance of any very formidable _vis inertiæ_, +with the change of the monarch or of the monarch's caprice, might leave +the student of the history of those times in doubt as to whether they +belonged to the kingdom of heaven or to the kingdom of this world. But, +however severe the judgment that any may pass upon the character and +motives of Henry VIII. and of the councilors of Edward, there will +hardly be any seriously to question that the movements directed by these +men soon came to be infused with more serious and spiritual influences. +The Lollardy of Wycliffe and his fellows in the fourteenth century had +been severely repressed and driven into "occult conventicles," but had +not been extinguished; the Bible in English, many times retouched after +Wycliffe's days, and perfected by the refugees at Geneva from the Marian +persecutions, had become a common household book; and those exiles +themselves, returning from the various centers of fervid religious +thought and feeling in Holland and Germany and Switzerland, had brought +with them an augmented spiritual faith, as well as intensified and +sharply defined convictions on the questions of theology and church +order that were debated by the scholars of the Continent. It was +impossible that the diverse and antagonist elements thus assembled +should not work on one another with violent reactions. By the beginning +of the seventeenth century not less than four categories would suffice +to classify the people of England according to their religious +differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to +the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from +expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of +England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it; +this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen, +religious, irreligious, and non-religious. Thirdly, there were those +who, not refusing their adhesion to the national church as by law +established, nevertheless earnestly desired to see it more completely +purified from doctrinal errors and practical corruptions, and who +qualified their conformity to it accordingly. Fourthly, there were the +few who distinctly repudiated the national church as a false church, +coming out from her as from Babylon, determined upon "reformation +without tarrying for any." Finally, following upon these, more radical, +not to say more logical, than the rest, came a fifth party, the +followers of George Fox. Not one of these five parties but has valid +claims, both in its principles and in its membership, on the respect of +history; not one but can point to its saints and martyrs; not one but +was destined to play a quite separate and distinct and highly important +part in the planting of the church of Christ in America. They are +designated, for convenience' sake, as the Catholics, the Conformists, +the Puritans or Reformists, the Separatists (of whom were the Pilgrims), +and the Quakers. + +Such a Christendom was it, so disorganized, divided, and subdivided into +parties and sects, which was to furnish the materials for the peopling +of the new continent with a Christian population. It would seem that the +same "somewhat not ourselves," which had defeated in succession the +plans of two mighty nations to subject the New World to a single +hierarchy, had also provided that no one form or organization of +Christianity should be exclusive or even dominant in the occupation of +the American soil. From one point of view the American colonies will +present a sorry aspect. Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism, +competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks +"that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has +demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come." +No widely extended organization of church discipline in exclusive +occupation of any country has ever long avoided the intolerable +mischiefs attendant on spiritual despotism. It was a shock to the hopes +and the generous sentiments of those who had looked to see one undivided +body of a reformed church erected over against the medieval church, +from the corruptions of which they had revolted, when they saw +Protestantism go asunder into the several churches of the Lutheran and +the Reformed confessions; there are many even now to deplore it as a +disastrous set-back to the progress of the kingdom of Christ. But in the +calmness of our long retrospect it is easy for us to recognize that +whatever jurisdiction should have been established over an undivided +Protestant church would inevitably have proved itself, in no long time, +just such a yoke as neither the men of that time nor their fathers had +been able to bear. Fifteen centuries of church history have not been +wasted if thereby the Christian people have learned that the pursuit of +Christian unity through administrative or corporate or diplomatic union +is following the wrong road, and that the one Holy Catholic Church is +not the corporation of saints, but their communion. + +The new experiment of church life that was initiated in the colonization +of America is still in progress. The new States were to be planted not +only with diverse companies from the Old World, but with all the +definitely organized sects by which the map of Christendom was at that +time variegated, to which should be added others of native origin. +Notwithstanding successive "booms" now of one and then of another, it +was soon to become obvious to all that no one of these mutually jealous +sects was to have any exclusive predominance, even over narrow precincts +of territory. The old-world state churches, which under the rule, _cujus +regio ejus religio_, had been supreme and exclusive each in its +jurisdiction, were to find themselves side by side and mingled through +the community on equal terms with those over whom in the old country +they had domineered as dissenters, or whom perhaps they had even +persecuted as heretics or as Antichrist. Thus placed, they were to be +trained by the discipline of divine Providence and by the grace of the +Holy Spirit from persecution to toleration, from toleration to mutual +respect, and to coöperation in matters of common concern in the +advancement of the kingdom of Christ. What further remains to be tried +is the question whether, if not the sects, then the Christian hearts in +each sect, can be brought to take the final step from mutual respect to +mutual love, "that we henceforth, speaking truth in love, may grow up in +all things into him, which is the head, even Christ; from whom all the +body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint +supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, +shall make the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in +love." Unless we must submit to those philosophers who forbid us to find +in history the evidences of final cause and providential design, we may +surely look upon this as a worthy possible solution of the mystery of +Providence in the planting of the church in America in almost its +ultimate stage of schism--that it is the purpose of its Head, out of the +mutual attrition of the sects, their disintegration and comminution, to +bring forth such a demonstration of the unity and liberty of the +children of God as the past ages of church history have failed to show. + +That mutual intolerance of differences in religious belief which, in the +seventeenth century, was, throughout Christendom, coextensive with +religious earnestness had its important part to play in the colonization +of America. Of the persecutions and oppressions which gave direct +impulse to the earliest colonization of America, the most notable are +the following: (1) the persecution of the English Puritans in the reigns +of James I. and Charles I., ending with the outbreak of the civil war in +1642; (2) the persecution of the English Roman Catholics during the same +period; (3) the persecution of the English Quakers during the +twenty-five years of Charles II. (1660-85); (4) the persecution of the +French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); (5) +the disabilities suffered by the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland +after the English Revolution (1688); (6) the ferocious ravaging of the +region of the Rhenish Palatinate by the armies of Louis XIV. in the +early years of the seventeenth century; (7) the cruel expulsion of the +Protestants of the archiepiscopal duchy of Salzburg (1731). + +Beyond dispute, the best and most potent elements in the settlement of +the seaboard colonies were the companies of earnestly religious people +who from time to time, under severe compulsion for conscience' sake, +came forth from the Old World as involuntary emigrants. Cruel wars and +persecutions accomplished a result in the advancement of the kingdom of +Christ which the authors of them never intended. But not these agencies +alone promoted the great work. Peace, prosperity, wealth, and the hope +of wealth had their part in it. The earliest successful enterprises of +colonization were indeed marked with the badge of Christianity, and +among their promoters were men whose language and deeds nobly evince the +Christian spirit; but the enterprises were impelled and directed by +commercial or patriotic considerations. The immense advantages that were +to accrue from them to the world through the wider propagation of the +gospel of Christ were not lost sight of in the projecting and organizing +of the expeditions, nor were provisions for church and ministry omitted; +but these were incidental, not primary. + +This story of the divine preparations carried forward through +unconscious human agencies in different lands and ages for the founding +of the American church is a necessary preamble to our history. The scene +of the story is now to be shifted to the other side of the sea. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA--ITS DECLINE ALMOST TO +EXTINCTION. + + +There is sufficient evidence that the three little vessels which on the +13th of May, 1607, were moored to the trees on the bank of the James +River brought to the soil of America the germ of a Christian church. We +may feel constrained to accept only at a large discount the pious +official professions of King James I., and critically to scrutinize many +of the statements of that brilliant and fascinating adventurer, Captain +John Smith, whether concerning his friends or concerning his enemies or +concerning himself. But the beauty and dignity of the Christian +character shine unmistakable in the life of the chaplain to the +expedition, the Rev. Robert Hunt, and all the more radiantly for the +dark and discouraging surroundings in which his ministry was to be +exercised. + +For the company which Captain Smith and that famous mariner, Captain +Bartholomew Gosnold, had by many months of labor and "many a forgotten +pound" of expense succeeded in recruiting for the enterprise was made up +of most unhopeful material for the founding of a Christian colony. Those +were the years of ignoble peace with which the reign of James began; and +the glittering hopes of gold might well attract some of the brave men +who had served by sea or land in the wars of Elizabeth. But the last +thirty years had furnished no instance of success, and many of +disastrous and sometimes tragical failure, in like attempts--the +enterprises of Humphrey Gilbert, of Raleigh, of John White, of Gosnold +himself, and of Popham and Gorges. Even brave men might hesitate to +volunteer for the forlorn hope of another experiment at colonizing. + +The little squadron had hardly set sail when the unfitness of the +emigrants for their work began to discover itself. Lying weather-bound +within sight of home, "some few, little better than atheists, of the +greatest rank among them," were busying themselves with scandalous +imputations upon the chaplain, then lying dangerously ill in his berth. +All through the four months' passage by way of the Canaries and the West +India Islands discontents and dissensions prevailed. Wingfield, who had +been named president of the colony, had Smith in irons, and at the +island of Nevis had the gallows set up for his execution on a charge of +conspiracy, when milder counsels prevailed, and he was brought to +Virginia, where he was tried and acquitted and his adversary mulcted in +damages. + +Arrived at the place of settlement, the colonists set about the work of +building their houses, but found that their total number of one hundred +and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight +"gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came +repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and +unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the +Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, +1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition arrived +with reinforcements and supplies, only thirty-eight were surviving out +of the one hundred and five, and of these the strongest were conspiring +to seize the pinnace and desert the settlement. + +The newcomers were no better than the first. They were chiefly +"gentlemen" again, and goldsmiths, whose duty was to discover and refine +the quantities of gold that the stockholders in the enterprise were +resolved should be found in Virginia, whether it was there or not. The +ship took back on her return trip a full cargo of worthless dirt. + +Reinforcements continued to arrive every few months, the quality of +which it might be unfair to judge simply from the disgusted complaints +of Captain Smith. He begs the Company to send but thirty honest laborers +and artisans, "rather than a thousand such as we have," and reports the +next ship-load as "fitter to breed a riot than to found a colony." The +wretched settlement became an object of derision to the wits of London, +and of sympathetic interest to serious minds. The Company, reorganized +under a new charter, was strengthened by the accession of some of the +foremost men in England, including four bishops, the Earl of +Southampton, and Sir Francis Bacon. Appeals were made to the Christian +public in behalf of an enterprise so full of promise of the furtherance +of the gospel. A fleet of nine ships was fitted out, carrying more than +five hundred emigrants, with ample supplies. Captain Smith, representing +what there was of civil authority in the colony, had a brief struggle +with their turbulence, and recognized them as of the same sort with the +former companies, for the most part "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, +serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a +commonwealth than either begin one or help to maintain one." When only +part of this expedition had arrived, Captain Smith departed for England, +disabled by an accidental wound, leaving a settlement of nearly five +hundred men, abundantly provisioned. "It was not the will of God that +the new state should be formed of these materials."[41:1] In six months +the number of the colonists was reduced to sixty, and when relief +arrived it was reckoned that in ten days' longer delay they would have +perished to the last man. With one accord the wretched remnant of the +colony, together with the latest comers, deserted, without a tear of +regret, the scene of their misery. But their retreating vessels were met +and turned back from the mouth of the river by the approaching ships of +Lord de la Warr with emigrants and supplies. Such were the first three +unhappy and unhonored years of the first Christian colony on the soil of +the United States. + +One almost shrinks from being assured that this worthless crew, through +all these years of suicidal crime and folly, had been assiduous in +religious duties. First under an awning made of an old sail, seated upon +logs, with a rail nailed to two trees for a pulpit, afterward in a poor +shanty of a church, "that could neither well defend wind nor rain," they +"had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, +and every three months the holy communion, till their minister died"; +and after that "prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, two or three +years, till more preachers came." The sturdy and terrible resolution of +Captain Smith, who in his marches through the wilderness was wont to +begin the day with prayer and psalm, and was not unequal to the duty, +when it was laid on him, of giving Christian exhortation as well as +righteous punishment, and the gentle Christian influence of the Rev. +Robert Hunt, were the salt that saved the colony from utterly perishing +of its vices. It was not many months before the frail body of the +chaplain sank under the hardships of pioneer life; he is commemorated by +his comrade, the captain, as "an honest, religious, and courageous +divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, our wants and +greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of +what we endured after his memorable death." When, in 1609, in a nobler +spirit than that of mere commercial enterprise, the reorganized Company, +under the new charter, was preparing the great reinforcement of five +hundred to go out under Lord de la Warr as governor of the colony, +counsel was taken with Abbot, the Puritan Bishop of London, himself a +member of the Virginia Company, and Richard Buck was selected as a +worthy successor to Robert Hunt in the office of chaplain. Such he +proved himself. Sailing in advance of the governor, in the ship with Sir +Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, and wrecked with them off the +Bermudas, he did not forget his duty in the "plenty, peace, and ease" of +that paradise. The ship's bell was rescued from the wreck to ring for +morning and evening prayer, and for the two sermons every Sunday. There +were births and funerals and a marriage in the shipwrecked company, and +at length, when their makeshift vessel was ready, they embarked for +their desired haven, there to find only the starving threescore +survivors of the colony. They gathered together, a pitiable remnant, in +the church, where Master Buck "made a zealous and sorrowful prayer"; and +at once, without losing a day, they embarked for a last departure from +Virginia, but were met at the mouth of the river by the tardy ships of +Lord de la Warr. The next morning, Sunday, June 10, 1610, Lord de la +Warr landed at the fort, where Gates had drawn up his forlorn platoon of +starving men to receive him. The governor fell on his knees in prayer, +then led the way to the church, and, after service and a sermon from +the chaplain, made an address, assuming command of the colony. + +Armed, under the new charter, with adequate authority, the new governor +was not slow in putting on the state of a viceroy. Among his first cares +was to provide for the external dignity of worship. The church, a +building sixty feet by twenty-four, built long enough before to be now +in need of repairs, was put into good condition, and a brave sight it +was on Sundays to see the Governor, with the Privy Council and the +Lieutenant-General and the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral and the Master +of the Horse, together with the body-guard of fifty halberdiers in fair +red cloaks, commanded by Captain Edward Brewster, assembled for worship, +the governor seated in the choir in a green velvet chair, with a velvet +cushion on a table before him. Few things could have been better adapted +to convince the peculiar public of Jamestown that divine worship was +indeed a serious matter. There was something more than the parade of +government manifested by his lordship in the few months of his reign; +but the inauguration of strong and effective control over the lazy, +disorderly, and seditious crowd to be dealt with at Jamestown was +reserved for his successor, Sir Thomas Dale, who arrived in May, 1611, +in company with the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the "apostle of Virginia." + +It will not be possible for any to understand the relations of this +colony to the state of parties in England without distinctly recognizing +that the Puritans were not a party _against_ the Church of England, but +a party _in_ the Church of England. The Puritan party was the party of +reform, and was strong in a deep fervor of religious conviction widely +diffused among people and clergy, and extending to the highest places of +the nobility and the episcopate. The anti-Puritan party was the +conservative or reactionary party, strong in the _vis inertiæ_, and in +the king's pig-headed prejudices and his monstrous conceit of +theological ability and supremacy in the church; strong also in a +considerable adhesion and zealous coöperation from among his nominees, +the bishops. The religious division was also a political one, the +Puritans being known as the party of the people, their antagonists as +the court party. The struggle of the Puritans (as distinguished from the +inconsiderable number of the Separatists) was for the maintenance of +their rights within the church; the effort of their adversaries, with +the aid of the king's prerogative, was to drive or harry them out of the +church. It is not to be understood that the two parties were as yet +organized as such and distinctly bounded; but the two tendencies were +plainly recognized, and the sympathies of leading men in church or state +were no secret. + +The Virginia Company was a Puritan corporation.[44:1] As such, its +meetings and debates were the object of popular interest and of the +royal jealousy. Among its corporators were the brothers Sandys, sons of +the Puritan Archbishop of York, one of whom held the manor of Scrooby. +Others of the corporation were William Brewster, of Scrooby, and his son +Edward. In the fleet of Sir Thomas Gates, May, 1609, were noted +Puritans, one of whom, Stephen Hopkins, "who had much knowledge in the +Scriptures and could reason well therein," was clerk to that "painful +preacher," but not strict conformist, Master Richard Buck. The intimate +and sometimes official relations of the Virginia Company not only with +leading representatives of the Puritan party, but with the Pilgrims of +Leyden, whom they would gladly have received into their own colony, are +matter of history and of record. It admits of proof that there was a +steady purpose in the Company, so far as it was not thwarted by the king +and the bishops of the court party, to hold their unruly and +ill-assorted colony under Puritan influences both of church and +government.[45:1] The fact throws light on the remoter as well as the +nearer history of Virginia. Especially it throws light on the memorable +administration of Sir Thomas Dale, which followed hard upon the +departure of Lord de la Warr and his body-guard in red cloaks. + +The Company had picked their man with care--"a man of good conscience +and knowledge in divinity," and a soldier and disciplinarian proved in +the wars of the Low Countries--a very prototype of the great Cromwell. +He understood what manner of task he had undertaken, and executed it +without flinching. As a matter of course--it was the way in that +colony--there was a conspiracy against his authority. There was no +second conspiracy under him. Punishment was inflicted on the ringleaders +so swift, so terrible, as to paralyze all future sedition. He put in +force, in the name of the Company, a code of "Laws, Divine, Moral, and +Martial," to which no parallel can be found in the severest legislation +of New England. An invaluable service to the colony was the abolition of +that demoralizing socialism that had been enforced on the colonists, by +which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out +land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own +industry and thrift, or suffered the consequences of his laziness. The +culture of tobacco gave the colony a currency and a staple of export. + +With Dale was associated as chaplain Alexander Whitaker, son of the +author of the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles, and brother of a Separatist +preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties +is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, +written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that +nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question +would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What +manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of +faithful work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this +statesmanlike and soldierly governor founded his new city of Henrico up +the river, and laid out across the stream the suburb of Hope-in-Faith, +defended by Fort Charity and Fort Patience, he built there in sight from +his official residence the parsonage of the "apostle of Virginia." The +course of Whitaker's ministry is described by himself in a letter to a +friend: "Every Sabbath day we preach in the forenoon and catechise in +the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's +house." But he and his fellow-clergymen did not labor without aid, even +in word and doctrine. When Mr. John Rolfe was perplexed with questions +of duty touching his love for Pocahontas, it was to the old soldier, +Dale, that he brought his burden, seeking spiritual counsel. And it was +this "religious and valiant governor," as Whitaker calls him, this "man +of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things," +that "labored long to ground the faith of Jesus Christ" in the Indian +maiden, and wrote concerning her, "Were it but for the gaining of this +one soul, I will think my time, toils, and present stay well spent." + +The progress of the gospel in reclaiming the unhappy colony to +Christian civilization varies with the varying fortunes of contending +parties in England. Energetic efforts were made by the Company under +Sandys, the friend of Brewster, to send out worthy colonists; and the +delicate task of finding young women of good character to be shipped as +wives to the settlers was undertaken conscientiously and successfully. +Generous gifts of money and land were contributed (although little came +from them) for the endowment of schools and a college for the promotion +of Christ's work among the white people and the red. But the course of +events on both sides of the sea may be best illustrated by a narrative +of personal incidents. + +In the year 1621, an East India Company's chaplain, the Rev. Patrick +Copland, who perhaps deserves the title of the first English missionary +in India, on his way back from India met, probably at the Canaries, with +ships bound for Virginia with emigrants. Learning from these something +of the needs of the plantation, he stirred up his fellow-passengers on +the "Royal James," and raised the sum of seventy pounds, which was paid +to the treasurer of the Virginia Company; and, being increased by other +gifts to one hundred and twenty-five pounds, was, in consultation with +Mr. Copland, appropriated for a free school to be called the "East India +School." + +The affairs of the colony were most promising. It was growing in +population and in wealth and in the institutions of a Christian +commonwealth. The territory was divided into parishes for the work of +church and clergy. The stupid obstinacy of the king, against the +remonstrances of the Company, perpetrated the crime of sending out a +hundred convicts into the young community, extorting from Captain Smith +the protest that this act "hath laid one of the finest countries of +America under the just scandal of being a mere hell upon earth." The +sweepings of the London and Bristol streets were exported for servants. +Of darker portent, though men perceived it not, was the landing of the +first cargo of negro slaves. But so grateful was the Company for the +general prosperity of the colony that it appointed a thanksgiving sermon +to be preached at Bow Church, April 17, 1622, by Mr. Copland, which was +printed under the title, "Virginia's God Be Thanked." In July, 1622, the +Company, proceeding to the execution of a long-cherished plan, chose Mr. +Copland rector of the college to be built at Henrico from the endowments +already provided, when news arrived of the massacre which, in March of +that year, swept away one half of the four thousand colonists. All such +enterprises were at once arrested. + +In 1624 the long contest of the king and the court party against the +Virginia Company was ended by a violent exercise of the prerogative +dissolving the Company, but not until it had established free +representative government in the colony. The revocation of the charter +was one of the last acts of James's ignoble reign. In 1625 he died, and +Charles I. became king. In 1628 "the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of +prelates," William Laud, became Bishop of London, and in 1633 Archbishop +of Canterbury. But the Puritan principles of duty and liberty already +planted in Virginia were not destined to be eradicated. + +From the year 1619, a settlement at Nansemond, near Norfolk, had +prospered, and had been in relations of trade with New England. In 1642 +Philip Bennett, of Nansemond, visiting Boston in his coasting vessel, +bore with him a letter to the Boston church, signed by seventy-four +names, stating the needs of their great county, now without a pastor, +and offering a maintenance to three good ministers if they could be +found. A little later William Durand, of the same county, wrote for +himself and his neighbors to John Davenport, of New Haven, to whom some +of them had listened gladly in London (perhaps it was when he preached +the first annual sermon before the Virginia Company in 1621), speaking +of "a revival of piety" among them, and urging the request that had been +sent to the church in Boston. As result of this correspondence, three +eminently learned and faithful ministers of New England came to +Virginia, bringing letters of commendation from Governor Winthrop. But +they found that Virginia, now become a royal colony, had no welcome for +them. The newly arrived royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, a man +after Laud's own heart, forbade their preaching; but the Catholic +governor of Maryland sent them a free invitation, and one of them, +removing to Annapolis with some of the Virginia Puritans, so labored in +the gospel as to draw forth the public thanks of the legislative +assembly. + +The sequel of this story is a strange one. There must have been somewhat +in the character and bearing of these silenced and banished ministers +that touched the heart of Thomas Harrison, the governor's chaplain. He +made a confession of his insincere dealings toward them: that while he +had been showing them "a fair face" he had privately used his influence +to have them silenced. He himself began to preach in that earnest way of +righteousness, temperance, and judgment, which is fitted to make +governors tremble, until Berkeley cast him out as a Puritan, saying that +he did not wish so grave a chaplain; whereupon Harrison crossed the +river to Nansemond, became pastor of the church, and mightily built up +the cause which he had sought to destroy. + +A few months later the Nansemond people had the opportunity of giving +succor and hospitality to a shipwrecked company of nine people, who had +been cast away, with loss of all their goods, in sailing from the +Bermudas to found a new settlement on one of the Bahamas. Among the +party was an aged and venerable man, that same Patrick Copland who +twenty-five years before had interested himself in the passing party of +emigrants. This was indeed entertaining an angel. Mr. Copland had long +been a nonconformist minister at the Bermudas, and he listened to the +complaints that were made to him of the persecution to which the people +were subjected by the malignant Berkeley. A free invitation was given to +the Nansemond church to go with their guests to the new settlement of +Eleuthera, in which freedom of conscience and non-interference of the +magistrate with the church were secured by charter.[50:1] Mr. Harrison +proceeded to Boston to take counsel of the churches over this +proposition. The people were advised by their Boston brethren to remain +in their lot until their case should become intolerable. Mr. Harrison +went on to London, where a number of things had happened since +Berkeley's appointment. The king had ceased to be; but an order from the +Council of State was sent to Berkeley, sharply reprimanding him for his +course, and directing him to restore Mr. Harrison to his parish. But Mr. +Harrison did not return. He fulfilled an honorable career as incumbent +of a London parish, as chaplain to Henry Cromwell, viceroy of Ireland, +and as a hunted and persecuted preacher in the evil days after the +Restoration. But the "poetic justice" with which this curious dramatic +episode should conclude is not reached until Berkeley is compelled to +surrender his jurisdiction to the Commonwealth, and Richard Bennett, one +of the banished Puritans of Nansemond, is chosen by the Assembly of +Burgesses to be governor in his stead.[51:1] + +Of course this is a brief triumph. With the restoration of the Stuarts, +Berkeley comes back into power as royal governor, and for many years +afflicts the colony with his malignant Toryism. The last state is worse +than the first; for during the days of the Commonwealth old soldiers of +the king's army had come to Virginia in such numbers as to form an +appreciable and not wholly admirable element in the population. +Surrounded by such society, the governor was encouraged to indulge his +natural disposition to bigotry and tyranny. Under such a nursing father +the interests of the kingdom of Christ fared as might have been +expected. Rigorous measures were instituted for the suppression of +nonconformity, Quaker preachers were severely dealt with, and clergymen, +such as they were, were imposed upon the more or less reluctant +parishes. But though the governor held the right of presentation, the +vestry of each parish asserted and maintained the right of induction or +of refusing to induct. Without the consent of these representatives of +the people the candidate could secure for himself no more than the +people should from year to year consent to allow him. It was the only +protection of the people from absolute spiritual despotism. The power +might be used to repel a too faithful pastor, but if there was sometimes +a temptation to this, the occasion was far more frequent for putting the +people's reprobation upon the unfaithful and unfit. The colony, growing +in wealth and population, soon became infested with a rabble of +worthless and scandalous priests. In a report which has been often +quoted, Governor Berkeley, after giving account of the material +prosperity of the colony, sums up, under date of 1671, the results of +his fostering care over its spiritual interests in these words: "There +are forty-eight parishes, and the ministers well paid. The clergy by my +consent would be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But +of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us. But I thank +God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not +have, these hundred years." + +The scandal of the Virginia clergy went on from bad to worse. Whatever +could be done by the courage and earnestness of one man was done by Dr. +Blair, who arrived in 1689 with limited powers as commissary of the +Bishop of London, and for more than fifty years struggled against +adverse influences to recover the church from its degradation. He +succeeded in getting a charter for William and Mary College, but the +generous endowments of the institution were wasted, and the college +languished in doing the work of a grammar school. Something was +accomplished in the way of discipline, though the cane of Governor +Nicholson over the back of an insolent priest was doubtless more +effective than the commissary's admonitions. But discipline, while it +may do something toward abating scandals, cannot create life from the +dead; and the church established in Virginia had hardly more than a name +to live. Its best estate is described by Spotswood, the best of the +royal governors, when, looking on the outward appearance, he reported: +"This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due +obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the +Church of England." The poor man was soon to find how uncertain is the +peace and tranquillity that is founded on "a gentlemanly conformity." +The most honorable page in his record is the story of his effort for +the education of Indian children. His honest attempt at reformation in +the church brought him into collision not only with the worthless among +the clergy, but also on the one hand with the parish vestries, and on +the other hand with Commissary Blair. But all along the "gentlemanly +conformity" was undisturbed. A parish of French Huguenots was early +established in Henrico County, and in 1713 a parish of German exiles on +the Rappahannock, and these were expressly excepted from the Act of +Uniformity. Aside from these, the chief departures from the enforced +uniformity of worship throughout the colony in the early years of the +eighteenth century were found in a few meetings of persecuted and +vilified Quakers and Baptists. The government and clergy had little +notion of the significance of a slender stream of Scotch-Irish +emigration which, as early as 1720, began to flow into the valley of the +Shenandoah. So cheap a defense against the perils that threatened from +the western frontier it would have been folly to discourage by odious +religious proscription. The reasonable anxiety of the clergy as to what +might come of this invasion of a sturdy and uncompromising Puritanism +struggled without permanent success against the obvious interest of the +commonwealth. The addition of this new and potent element to the +Christian population of the seaboard colonies was part of the +unrecognized preparation for the Great Awakening. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[41:1] Bancroft, vol. i., p. 138. + +[44:1] See the interesting demonstration of this point in articles by E. +D. Neill in "Hours at Home," vol. vi., pp. 22, 201. + +Mr. Neill's various publications on the colonial history of Virginia and +Maryland are of the highest value and authority. They include: "The +English Colonization of America During the Seventeenth Century"; +"History of the Virginia Company"; "Virginia Vetusta"; "Virginia +Carolorum"; "Terra Mariæ; or, Threads of Maryland Colonial History"; +"The Founders of Maryland"; "Life of Patrick Copland." + +[45:1] It was customary for the Company, when a candidate was proposed +for a chaplaincy in the colony, to select a text for him and appoint a +Sunday and a church for a "trial sermon" from which they might judge of +his qualifications. + +[50:1] The project of Eleuthera is entitled to honorable mention in the +history of religious liberty. + +[51:1] For fuller details concerning the Puritan character of the +Virginia Company and of the early ministers of Virginia, see the +articles of E. D. Neill, above referred to, in "Hours at Home," vol. vi. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE NEIGHBOR COLONIES TO VIRGINIA--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS. + + +The chronological order would require us at this point to turn to the +Dutch settlements on the Hudson River; but the close relations of +Virginia with its neighbor colonies of Maryland and the Carolinas are a +reason for taking up the brief history of these settlements in advance +of their turn. + +The occupation of Maryland dates from the year 1634. The period of bold +and half-desperate adventure in making plantations along the coast was +past. To men of sanguine temper and sufficient fortune and influence at +court, it was now a matter of very promising and not too risky +speculation. To George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, one of the most +interesting characters at the court of James I., the business had +peculiar fascination. He was in both the New England Company and the +Virginia Company, and after the charter of the latter was revoked he was +one of the Provisional Council for the government of Virginia. Nothing +daunted by the ill luck of these companies, he tried colonizing on his +account in 1620, in what was represented to him as the genial soil and +climate of Newfoundland. Sending good money after bad, he was glad to +get out of this venture at the end of nine years with a loss of thirty +thousand pounds. In 1629 he sent home his children, and with a lady and +servants and forty of his surviving colonists sailed for Jamestown, +where his reception at the hands of the council and of his old Oxford +fellow-student, Governor Pott, was not cordial. He could hardly have +expected that it would be. He was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic +Church, with a convert's zeal for proselyting, and he was of the court +party. Thus he was in antagonism to the Puritan colony both in politics +and in religion. A formidable disturbing element he and his company +would have been in the already unquiet community. The authorities of the +colony were equal to the emergency. In answer to his lordship's +announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome +to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him +the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman +principles. Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he +was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much +latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his +lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his +intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was +not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman. + +Returned to London, he at once set in motion the powerful influences at +his command to secure a charter for a tract of land south of the James +River, and when this was defeated by the energetic opposition of the +friends of Virginia, he succeeded in securing a grant of land north and +east of the Potomac, with a charter bestowing on him and his heirs "the +most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of +England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the +former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity +with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not +belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of +giving the same thing twice over to different parties. + +The first Lord Baltimore died three months before the charter of +Maryland received the great seal, but his son Cecilius took up the +business with energy and great liberality of investment. The cost of +fitting out the first emigration was estimated at not less than forty +thousand pounds. The company consisted of "three hundred laboring men, +well provided in all things," headed by Leonard and George Calvert, +brothers of the lord proprietor, "with very near twenty other gentlemen +of very good fashion." Two earnest Jesuit priests were quietly added to +the expedition as it passed the Isle of Wight, but in general it was a +Protestant emigration under Catholic patronage. It was stipulated in the +charter that all liege subjects of the English king might freely +transport themselves and their families to Maryland. To discriminate +against any religious body in England would have been for the proprietor +to limit his hope of rapid colonization and revenue and to embroil +himself with political enemies at home. His own and his father's +intimate acquaintance with failure in the planting of Virginia and of +Newfoundland had taught him what not to do in such enterprises. If the +proprietor meant to succeed (and he _did_ mean to) he was shut up +without alternative to the policy of impartial non-interference with +religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual +forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound +political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious +liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and +he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land +speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in +the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere +with business. Nothing would have brought speedier ruin to his +enterprise than to have it suspected, as his enemies were always ready +to allege, that it was governed in the interest of the Roman Catholic +Church. Such a suspicion he took the most effective means of averting. +He kept his promises to his colonists in this matter in good faith, and +had his reward in the notable prosperity of his colony.[57:1] + +The two priests of the first Maryland company began their work with +characteristic earnestness and diligence. Finding no immediate access to +the Indians, they gave the more constant attention to their own +countrymen, both Catholic and Protestant, and were soon able to give +thanks that by God's blessing on their labors almost all the Protestants +of that year's arrival had been converted, besides many others. In 1640 +the first-fruits of their mission work among the savages were gathered +in; the chief of an Indian village on the Potomac nearly opposite Mount +Vernon, and his wife and child, were baptized with solemn pomp, in +which the governor and secretary of the colony took part. + +The first start of the Maryland colony was of a sort to give promise of +feuds and border strifes with the neighbor colony of Virginia, and the +promise was abundantly fulfilled. The conflict over boundary questions +came to bloody collisions by land and sea. It is needless to say that +religious differences were at once drawn into the dispute. The vigorous +proselytism of the Jesuit fathers, the only Christian ministers in the +colony, under the patronage of the lord proprietor was of course +reported to London by the Virginians; and in December, 1641, the House +of Commons, then on the brink of open rupture with the king, presented a +remonstrance to Charles at Hampton Court, complaining that he had +permitted "another state, molded within this state, independent in +government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the +ignorant or negligent professors of religion, and clearly uniting +themselves against such." Lord Baltimore, perceiving that his property +rights were coming into jeopardy, wrote to the too zealous priests, +warning them that they were under English law and were not to expect +from him "any more or other privileges, exemptions, or immunities for +their lands, persons, or goods than is allowed by his Majesty or +officers to like persons in England." He annulled the grants of land +made to the missionaries by certain Indian chiefs, which they affected +to hold as the property of their order, and confirmed for his colony the +law of mortmain. In his not unreasonable anxiety for the tenure of his +estate, he went further still; he had the Jesuits removed from the +charge of the missions, to be replaced by seculars, and only receded +from this severe measure when the Jesuit order acceded to his terms. The +pious and venerable Father White records in his journal that "occasion +of suffering has not been wanting from those from whom rather it was +proper to expect aid and protection, who, too intent upon their own +affairs, have not feared to violate the immunities of the church."[59:1] +But the zeal of the Calverts for religious liberty and equality was +manifested not only by curbing the Jesuits, but by encouraging their +most strenuous opponents. It was in the year 1643, when the strength of +Puritanism both in England and in New England was proved, that the +Calverts made overtures, although in vain, to secure an immigration from +Massachusetts. A few years later the opportunity occurred of +strengthening their own colony with an accession of Puritans, and at the +same time of weakening Virginia. The sturdy and prosperous Puritan +colony on the Nansemond River were driven by the churlish behavior of +Governor Berkeley to seek a more congenial residence, and were induced +to settle on the Severn at a place which they called Providence, but +which was destined, under the name of Annapolis, to become the capital +of the future State. It was manifestly not merely a coincidence that +Lord Baltimore appointed a Protestant governor, William Stone, and +commended to the Maryland Assembly, in 1649, the enacting of "an Act +concerning Religion," drawn upon the lines of the Ordinance of +Toleration adopted by the Puritan House of Commons at the height of its +authority, in 1647.[59:2] How potent was the influence of this +transplanted Nansemond church is largely shown in the eventful civil +history of the colony. When, in 1655, the lord proprietor's governor was +so imprudent as to set an armed force in the field, under the colors of +Lord Baltimore, in opposition to the parliamentary commissioners, it +was the planters of the Severn who marched under the flag of the +commonwealth of England, and put them to rout, and executed some of +their leaders for treason. When at last articles of agreement were +signed between the commissioners and Lord Baltimore, one of the +conditions exacted from his lordship was a pledge that he would never +consent to the repeal of the Act of Toleration adopted in 1649 under the +influence of the Puritan colony and its pastor, Thomas Harrison. + +In the turbulence of the colony during and after the civil wars of +England, there becomes more and more manifest a growing spirit of +fanaticism, especially in the form of antipopery crusading. While +Jacobite intrigues or wars with France were in progress it was easy for +demagogues to cast upon the Catholics the suspicion of disloyalty and of +complicity with the public enemy. The numerical unimportance of the +Catholics of Maryland was insufficient to guard them from such +suspicions; for it had soon become obvious that the colony of the +Catholic lord was to be anything but a Catholic colony. The Jesuit +mission had languished; the progress of settlement, and what there had +been of religious life and teaching, had brought no strength to the +Catholic cause. In 1676 a Church of England minister, John Yeo, writes +to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the craving lack of ministers, +excepting among the Catholics and the Quakers, "not doubting but his +Grace may so prevail with Lord Baltimore that a maintenance for a +Protestant ministry may be established." The Bishop of London, echoing +this complaint, speaks of the "total want of ministers and divine +worship, except among those of the Romish belief, who, 'tis conjectured, +does not amount to one of a hundred of the people." To which his +lordship replies that all sects are tolerated and protected, but that +it would be impossible to induce the Assembly to consent to a law that +shall oblige any sect to maintain other ministers than its own. The +bishop's figures were doubtless at fault; but Lord Baltimore himself +writes that the nonconformists outnumber the Catholics and those of the +Church of England together about three to one, and that the churchmen +are much more numerous than the Catholics. + +After the Revolution of 1688 it is not strange that a like movement was +set on foot in Maryland. The "beneficent despotism" of the Calverts, +notwithstanding every concession on their part, was ended for the time +by the efforts of an "Association for the Defense of the Protestant +Religion," and Maryland became a royal colony. Under the new régime it +was easier to inflict annoyances and disabilities on the petty minority +of the Roman Catholics than to confer the privileges of an established +church on the hardly more considerable minority of Episcopalians. The +Church of England became in name the official church of the colony, but +two parties so remotely unlike as the Catholics and the Quakers combined +successfully to defeat more serious encroachments on religious liberty. +The attempt to maintain the church of a small minority by taxes extorted +by a foreign government from the whole people had the same effect in +Maryland as in Ireland: it tended to make both church and government +odious. The efforts of Dr. Thomas Bray, commissary of the Bishop of +London, a man of true apostolic fervor, accomplished little in +withstanding the downward tendency of the provincial establishment. The +demoralized and undisciplined clergy resisted the attempt of the +provincial government to abate the scandal of their lives, and the +people resisted the attempt to introduce a bishop. The body thus set +before the people as the official representative of the religion of +Christ "was perhaps as contemptible an ecclesiastical organization as +history can show," having "all the vices of the Virginian church, +without one of its safeguards or redeeming qualities."[62:1] The most +hopeful sign in the morning sky of the eighteenth century was to be +found in the growth of the Society of Friends and the swelling of the +current of the Scotch-Irish immigration. And yet we shall have proof +that the life-work of Commissary Bray, although he went back discouraged +from his labors in Maryland and although this colony took little direct +benefit from his efforts in England, was destined to have great results +in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in America; for he was the +founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign +Parts. + +The Carolinas, North and South, had been the scene of the earliest +attempts at Protestant colonization in America. The Huguenot enterprise +at Beaufort, on Port Royal harbor, was planted in 1562 under the +auspices of Coligny, and came to a speedy and unhappy end. The costly +and disastrous experiment of Sir Walter Raleigh was begun in 1584 on +Roanoke Island, and lasted not many months. But the actual occupation of +the region was late and slow. When, after the Restoration, Charles II. +took up the idea of paying his political debts with free and easy +cessions of American lands, Clarendon, Albemarle, and Shaftesbury were +among the first and luckiest in the scramble. When the representatives +of themselves and their partners arrived in Carolina in 1670, bringing +with them that pompous and preposterous anachronism, the "Fundamental +Constitutions," contrived by the combined wisdom of Shaftesbury and John +Locke to impose a feudal government upon an immense domain of +wilderness, they found the ground already occupied with a scanty and +curiously mixed population, which had taken on a simple form of polity +and was growing into a state. The region adjoining Virginia was peopled +by Puritans from the Nansemond country, vexed with the paltry +persecutions of Governor Berkeley, and later by fugitives from the +bloody revenge which he delighted to inflict on those who had been +involved in the righteous rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon. These had +been joined by insolvent debtors not a few. Adventurers from New England +settled on the Cape Fear River for a lumber trade, and kept the various +plantations in communication with the rest of the world by their +coasting craft plying to Boston. Dissatisfied companies from Barbadoes +seeking a less torrid climate next arrived. Thus the region was settled +in the first instance at second hand from older colonies. To these came +settlers direct from England, such emigrants as the proprietors could +persuade to the undertaking, and such as were impelled by the evil state +of England in the last days of the Stuarts, or drawn by the promise of +religious liberty. + +South Carolina, on the other hand, was settled direct from Europe, first +by cargoes of emigrants shipped on speculation by the great real-estate +"operators" who had at heart not only the creation of a gorgeous +aristocracy in the West, but also the realization of fat dividends on +their heavy ventures. Members of the dominant politico-religious party +in England were attracted to a country in which they were still to be +regarded before the law as of the "only true and orthodox" church; and +religious dissenters gladly accepted the offer of toleration and +freedom, even without the assurance of equality. One of the most notable +contributions to the new colony was a company of dissenters from +Somersetshire, led by Joseph Blake, brother to Cromwell's illustrious +admiral. Among these were some of the earliest American Baptists; and +there is clear evidence of connection between their arrival and the +coming, in 1684, of a Baptist church from the Massachusetts Colony, +under the pastorate of William Screven. This planting was destined to +have an important influence both on the religious and on the civil +history of the colony. Very early there came two ship-loads of Dutch +Calvinists from New York, dissatisfied with the domineering of their +English victors. But more important than the rest was that sudden +outflow of French Huguenots, representing not only religious fidelity +and devotion, but all those personal and social virtues that most +strengthen the foundations of a state, which set westward upon the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. This, with the later influx +of the Scotch-Irish, profoundly marked the character of South Carolina. +The great names in her history are generally either French or Scotch. + +It ought to have been plain to the proprietors, in their monstrous +conceit of political wisdom, that communities so constituted should have +been the last on which to impose the uniformity of an established +church. John Locke did see this, but was overruled. The Church of +England was established in name, but for long years had only this shadow +of existence. We need not, however, infer from the absence of organized +church and official clergy among the rude and turbulent pioneers of +North Carolina that the kingdom of God was not among them, even from the +beginning. But not until the year 1672 do we find manifestation of it +such as history can recognize. In that year came William Edmundson, "the +voice of one crying in the wilderness," bringing his testimony of the +light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The honest +man, who had not thought it reasonable in the Christians of +Massachusetts to be offended at one's sitting in the steeple-house with +his hat on, found it an evidence that "they had little or no religion" +when the rough woodsmen of Carolina beguiled the silent moments of the +Friends' devotions by smoking their pipes; and yet he declares that he +found them "a tender people." Converts were won to the society, and a +quarterly meeting was established. Within a few months followed George +Fox, uttering his deep convictions in a voice of singular persuasiveness +and power, that reached the hearts of both high and low. And he too +declared that he had found the people "generally tender and open," and +rejoiced to have made among them "a little entrance for truth." The +church of Christ had been begun. As yet there had been neither baptism +nor sacramental supper; these outward and visible signs were absent; but +inward and spiritual grace was there, and the thing signified is greater +than the sign. The influence diffused itself like leaven. Within a +decade the society was extended through both the Carolinas and became +the principal form of organized Christianity. It was reckoned in 1710 to +include one seventh of the population of North Carolina.[65:1] + +The attempt of a foreign proprietary government to establish by law the +church of an inconsiderable and not preëminently respectable minority +had little effect except to exasperate and alienate the settlers. Down +to the end of the seventeenth century the official church in North +Carolina gave no sign of life. In South Carolina almost twenty years +passed before it was represented by a single clergyman. The first +manifestation of church life seems to have been in the meetings on the +banks of the Cooper and the Santee, in which the French refugees +worshiped their fathers' God with the psalms of Marot and Beza. + +But with the eighteenth century begins a better era for the English +church in the Carolinas. The story of the founding and the work of the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, taken in +connection with its antecedents and its results, belongs to this +history, not only as showing the influence of European Christianity upon +America, but also as indicating the reaction of America upon Europe. + +In an important sense the organization of religious societies which is +characteristic of modern Christendom is of American origin. The labors +of John Eliot among the Indians of New England stirred so deep an +interest in the hearts of English Christians that in 1649 an ordinance +was passed by the Long Parliament creating a corporation to be called +"The President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New +England"; and a general collection made under Cromwell's direction +produced nearly twelve thousand pounds, from the income of which +missionaries were maintained among some of the Northern tribes of +Indians. With the downfall of the Commonwealth the corporation became +defunct; but through the influence of the saintly Richard Baxter, whose +tender interest in the work of Eliot is witnessed by a touching passage +in his writings, the charter was revived in 1662, with Robert Boyle for +president and patron. It was largely through his generosity that Eliot +was enabled to publish his Indian Bible. This society, "The New England +Company," as it is called, is still extant--the oldest of Protestant +missionary societies.[66:1] + +It is to that Dr. Thomas Bray who returned in 1700 to England from his +thankless and discouraging work as commissary in Maryland of the Bishop +of London, that the Church of England owes a large debt of gratitude for +having taken away the reproach of her barrenness. Already his zeal had +laid the foundations on which was reared the Society for the Promotion +of Christian Knowledge. In 1701 he had the satisfaction of attending the +first meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in +Foreign Parts, which for nearly three quarters of a century, sometimes +in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more +excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American +colonies. Its missionaries, men of a far different character from the +miserable incumbents of parishes in Maryland and Virginia, were among +the first preachers of the gospel in the Carolinas. Within the years +1702-40 there served under the commission of this society in North +Carolina nine missionaries, in South Carolina thirty-five.[67:1] + +But the zeal of these good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of +Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign +proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part +of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing +disabilities on other sects--these were among the chief occasions of the +continual collision between the people and the colonial governments, +which culminated in the struggle for independence. By the time that +struggle began the established church in the Carolinas was ready to +vanish away. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[55:1] W. H. Browne, "Maryland" (in American Commonwealths), p. 18. + +[57:1] This seems to be the whole explanation of the curious paradox +that the first experiment of religious liberty and equality before the +law among all Christian sects should have been made apparently under the +auspices of that denomination which alone at the present day continues +to maintain in theory that it is the duty of civil government to enforce +sound doctrine by pains and penalties. We would not grudge the amplest +recognition of Lord Baltimore's faith or magnanimity or political +wisdom; but we have failed to find evidence of his rising above the +plane of the smart real-estate speculator, willing to be all things to +all men, if so he might realize on his investments. Happily, he was +clear-sighted enough to perceive that his own interest was involved in +the liberty, contentment, and prosperity of his colonists. + +Mr. E. D. Neill, who has excelled other writers in patient and exact +study of the original sources of this part of colonial history, +characterizes Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, as "one whose whole life +was passed in self-aggrandizement, first deserting Father White, then +Charles I., and making friends of Puritans and republicans to secure the +rentals of the province of Maryland, and never contributing a penny for +a church or school-house" ("English Colonization of America," p. 258). + +[59:1] Browne, pp. 54-57; Neill, _op. cit._, pp. 270-274. + +[59:2] The act of Parliament provided full religious liberty for +dissenters from the established order, save only "so as nothing be done +by them to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom." + +[62:1] H. C. Lodge, "British Colonies in America," pp. 119-124, with +authorities cited. The severe characterization seems to be sustained by +the evidence. + +[65:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 237. + +[66:1] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 2, 3; "Encyclopædia +Britannica," vol. xvi., p. 514. + +[67:1] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 849, 850. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE DUTCH CALVINIST COLONY ON THE HUDSON AND THE SWEDISH LUTHERAN COLONY +ON THE DELAWARE--THEY BOTH FALL UNDER THE SHADOW OF GREAT BRITAIN. + + +When the Englishman Henry Hudson, in the Dutch East India Company's +ship, the "Half-moon," in September, 1609, sailed up "the River of +Mountains" as far as the site of Albany, looking for the northwest +passage to China, the English settlement at Jamestown was in the third +year of its half-perishing existence. More than thirteen years were yet +to pass before the Pilgrims from England by way of Holland should make +their landing on Plymouth Rock. + +But we are not at liberty to assign so early a date to the Dutch +settlement of New York, and still less to the church. There was a prompt +reaching out, on the part of the immensely enterprising Dutch merchants, +after the lucrative trade in peltries; there was a plying to and fro of +trading-vessels, and there were trading-posts established on Manhattan +Island and at the head of navigation on the Hudson, or North River, and +on the South River, or Delaware. Not until the great Dutch West India +Company had secured its monopoly of trade and perfected its +organization, in 1623, was there a beginning of colonization. In that +year a company of Walloons, or French-speaking Hollanders, was planted +near Albany, and later arrivals were settled on the Delaware, on Long +Island, and on Manhattan. At length, in 1626, came Peter Minuit with an +ample commission from the all-powerful Company, who organized something +like a system of civil government comprehending all the settlements. +Evidences of prosperity and growing wealth began to multiply. But one is +impressed with the merely secular and commercial character of the +enterprise and with the tardy and feeble signs of religious life in the +colony. In 1626, when the settlement of Manhattan had grown to a village +of thirty houses and two hundred souls, there arrived two official +"sick-visitors," who undertook some of the public duties of a pastor. On +Sundays, in the loft over the horse-mill, they would read from the +Scriptures and the creeds. And two years later, in 1628, the village, +numbering now about two hundred and seventy souls, gave a grateful +welcome to Jonas Michaelius, minister of the gospel. He rejoiced to +gather no less than fifty communicants at the first celebration of the +Lord's Supper, and to organize them into a church according to the +Reformed discipline. The two elders were the governor and the Company's +storekeeper, men of honest report who had served in like functions in +churches of the fatherland. The records of this period are scanty; the +very fact of this beginning of a church and the presence of a minister +in the colony had faded out of history until restored by the recent +discovery of a letter of the forgotten Michaelius.[69:1] + +The sagacious men in control of the Dutch West India Company were quick +to recognize that weakness in their enterprise which in the splendid +colonial attempt of the French proved ultimately to be fatal. Their +settlements were almost exclusively devoted to the lucrative trade with +the Indians and were not taking root in the soil. With all its +advantages, the Dutch colony could not compete with New England.[70:1] +To meet this difficulty an expedient was adopted which was not long in +beginning to plague the inventors. A vast tract of territory, with +feudal rights and privileges, was offered to any man settling a colony +of fifty persons. The disputes which soon arose between these powerful +vassals and the sovereign Company had for one effect the recall of Peter +Minuit from his position of governor. Never again was the unlucky colony +to have so competent and worthy a head as this discarded elder of the +church. Nevertheless the scheme was not altogether a failure. + +In 1633 arrived a new pastor, Everard Bogardus, in the same ship with a +schoolmaster--the first in the colony--and the new governor, Van +Twiller. The governor was incompetent and corrupt, and the minister was +faithful and plain-spoken; what could result but conflict? During Van +Twiller's five years of mismanagement, nevertheless, the church emerged +from the mill-loft and was installed in a barn-like meeting-house of +wood. During the equally wretched administration of Kieft, the governor, +listening to the reproaches of a guest, who quoted the example of New +England, where the people were wont to build a fine church as soon as +they had houses for themselves, was incited to build a stone church +within the fort. There seems to have been little else that he did for +the kingdom of heaven. Pastor Bogardus is entitled to the respect of +later ages for the chronic quarrel that he kept up with the worthless +representatives of the Company. At length his righteous rebuke of an +atrociously wicked massacre of neighboring Indians perpetrated by Kieft +brought matters to a head. The two antagonists sailed in the same ship, +in 1647, to lay their dispute before the authorities in Holland, the +Company and the classis. The case went to a higher court. The ship was +cast away and both the parties were drowned. + +Meanwhile the patroon Van Rensselaer, on his great manor near Albany, +showed some sense of his duty to the souls of the people whom he had +brought out into the wilderness. He built a church and put into the +pastoral charge over his subjects one who, under his travestied name of +Megapolensis, has obtained a good report as a faithful minister of Jesus +Christ. It was he who saved Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, from +imminent torture and death among the Mohawks, and befriended him, and +saw him safely off for Europe. This is one honorable instance, out of +not a few, of personal respect and kindness shown to members of the +Roman clergy and the Jesuit society by men who held these organizations +in the severest reprobation. To his Jesuit brother he was drawn by a +peculiarly strong bond of fellowship, for the two were fellow-laborers +in the gospel to the red men. For Domine Megapolensis is claimed[71:1] +the high honor of being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians. + +In 1647, to the joy of all the colonists, arrived a new governor, Peter +Stuyvesant, not too late to save from utter ruin the colony that had +suffered everything short of ruin from the incompetency and wickedness +of Kieft. About the time that immigration into New England ceased with +the triumph of the Puritan party in England, there began to be a +distinct current of population setting toward the Hudson River colony. +The West India Company had been among the first of the speculators in +American lands to discover that a system of narrow monopoly is not the +best nurse for a colony; too late to save itself from ultimate +bankruptcy, it removed some of the barriers of trade, and at once +population began to flow in from other colonies, Virginia and New +England. Besides those who were attracted by the great business +advantages of the Dutch colony, there came some from Massachusetts, +driven thence by the policy of exclusiveness in religious opinion +deliberately adopted there. Ordinances were set forth assuring to +several such companies "liberty of conscience, according to the custom +and manner of Holland." Growing prosperously in numbers, the colony grew +in that cosmopolitan diversity of sects and races which went on +increasing with its years. As early as 1644 Father Jogues was told by +the governor that there were persons of eighteen different languages at +Manhattan, including Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, +Anabaptists (here called Mennonists), etc. No jealousy seems to have +arisen over this multiplication of sects until, in 1652, the Dutch +Lutherans, who had been attendants at the Dutch Reformed Church, +presented a respectful petition that they might be permitted to have +their own pastor and church. Denied by Governor Stuyvesant, the request +was presented to the Company and to the States-General. The two Reformed +pastors used the most strenuous endeavors through the classis of +Amsterdam to defeat the petition, under the fear that the concession of +this privilege would tend to the diminution of their congregation. This +resistance was successfully maintained until at last the petitioners +were able to obtain from the Roman Catholic Duke of York the religious +freedom which Dutch Calvinism had failed to give them. + +Started thus in the wrong direction, it was easy for the colonial +government to go from bad to worse. At a time when the entire force of +Dutch clergy in the colony numbered only four, they were most +unapostolically zealous to prevent any good from being done by +"unauthorized conventicles and the preaching of unqualified persons," +and procured the passing of an ordinance forbidding these under penalty +of fine and imprisonment. The mild remonstrances of the Company, which +was eager to get settlers without nice inquiries as to their religious +opinions, had little effect to restrain the enterprising orthodoxy of +Peter Stuyvesant. The activity of the Quakers among the Long Island +towns stirred him to new energy. Not only visiting missionaries, but +quiet dwellers at home, were subjected to severe and ignominious +punishments. The persecution was kept up until one of the banished +Friends, John Bowne, reached Amsterdam and laid the case before the +Company. This enlightened body promptly shortened the days of +tribulation by a letter to the superserviceable Stuyvesant, conceived in +a most commercial spirit. It suggested to him that it was doubtful +whether further persecution was expedient, unless it was desired to +check the growth of population, which at that stage of the enterprise +ought rather to be encouraged. No man, they said, ought to be molested +so long as he disturbed neither his neighbors nor the government. "This +maxim has always been the guide of the magistrates of this city, and the +consequence has been that from every land people have flocked to this +asylum. Tread thus in their steps, and we doubt not you will be +blessed." + +The stewardship of the interests of the kingdom of Christ in the New +Netherlands was about to be taken away from the Dutch West India +Company and the classis of Amsterdam. It will hardly be claimed by any +that the account of their stewardship was a glorious one. The supply of +ministers of the gospel had been tardy, inconstant, and scanty. At the +time when the Dutch ministers were most active in hindering the work of +others, there were only four of themselves in a vast territory with a +rapidly increasing population. The clearest sign of spiritual life in +the first generation of the colony is to be found in the righteous +quarrel of Domine Bogardus with the malignant Kieft, and the large +Christian brotherly kindness, the laborious mission work among the +Indians, and the long-sustained pastoral faithfulness of Domine +Megapolensis. + +Doubtless there is a record in heaven of faithful living and serving of +many true disciples among this people, whose names are unknown on earth; +but in writing history it is only with earthly memorials that we have to +do. The records of the Dutch régime present few indications of such +religious activity on the part of the colonists as would show that they +regarded religion otherwise than as something to be imported from +Holland at the expense of the Company. + +A studious and elegant writer, Mr. Douglas Campbell, has presented in +two ample and interesting volumes[74:1] the evidence in favor of his +thesis that the characteristic institutions established by the Puritans +in New England were derived, directly or indirectly, not from England, +but from Holland. One of the gravest answers to an argument which +contains so much to command respect is found in the history of the New +Netherlands. In the early records of no one of the American colonies is +there less manifestation of the Puritan characteristics than in the +records of the colony that was absolutely and exclusively under Dutch +control and made up chiefly of Dutch settlers. Nineteen years from the +beginning of the colony there was only one church in the whole extent of +it; at the end of thirty years there were only two churches. After ten +years of settlement the first schoolmaster arrived; and after thirty-six +years a Latin school was begun, for want of which up to that time young +men seeking a classical education had had to go to Boston for it. In no +colony does there appear less of local self-government or of central +representative government, less of civil liberty, or even of the +aspiration for it. The contrast between the character of this colony and +the heroic antecedents of the Dutch in Holland is astonishing and +inexplicable. The sordid government of a trading corporation doubtless +tended to depress the moral tone of the community, but this was an evil +common to many of the colonies. Ordinances, frequently renewed, for the +prevention of disorder and brawling on Sunday and for restricting the +sale of strong drinks, show how prevalent and obstinate were these +evils. In 1648 it is boldly asserted in the preamble to a new law that +one fourth of the houses in New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of +strong drink. Not a hopeful beginning for a young commonwealth. + + * * * * * + +Before bidding a willing good-bye to the Dutch régime of the New +Netherlands, it remains to tell the story of another colony, begun under +happy auspices, but so short-lived that its rise and fall are a mere +episode in the history of the Dutch colony. + +As early as 1630, under the feudal concessions of the Dutch West India +Company, extensive tracts had been taken on the South River, or +Delaware, and, after purchase from the Indians, settled by a colony +under the conduct of the best of all the Dutch leaders, De Vries. +Quarrels with the Indians arose, and at the end of a twelvemonth the +colony was extinguished in blood. The land seemed to be left free for +other occupants. + +Years before, the great Gustavus Adolphus had pondered and decided on an +enterprise of colonization in America.[76:1] The exigencies of the +Thirty Years' War delayed the execution of his plan, but after the fatal +day of Lützen the project resumed by the fit successor of Gustavus in +the government of Sweden, the Chancellor Oxenstiern. Peter Minuit, who +had been rejected from his place as the first governor of New Amsterdam, +tendered to the Swedes the aid of his experience and approved wisdom; +and in the end of the year 1637, against the protest of Governor Kieft, +the strong foundations of a Swedish Lutheran colony were laid on the +banks of the Delaware. A new purchase was made of the Indians (who had +as little scruple as the Stuart kings about disposing of the same land +twice over to different parties), including the lands from the mouth of +the bay to the falls near Trenton. A fort was built where now stands the +city of Wilmington, and under the protection of its walls Christian +worship was begun by the first pastor, Torkillus. Strong reinforcements +arrived in 1643, with the energetic Governor Printz and that man of +"unwearied zeal in always propagating the love of God," the Rev. John +Campanius, who through faith has obtained a good report by his brief +most laborious ministry both to his fellow-countrymen and to the +Delaware Indians. + +The governor fixed his residence at Tinicum, now almost included within +the vast circumference of Philadelphia, and there, forty years before +the arrival of William Penn, Campanius preached the gospel of peace in +two languages, to the red men and to the white. + +The question of the Swedish title, raised at the outset by the protest +of the Dutch governor, could not long be postponed. It was suddenly +precipitated on the arrival of Governor Rising, in 1654, by his capture +of Fort Casimir, which the Dutch had built for the practical assertion +of their claim. It seems a somewhat grotesque act of piety on the part +of the Swedes, when, having celebrated the festival of Trinity Sunday by +whipping their fellow-Christians out of the fort, they commemorated the +good work by naming it the Fort of the Holy Trinity. It was a fatal +victory. The next year came Governor Stuyvesant with an overpowering +force and demanded and received the surrender of the colony to the +Dutch. Honorable terms of surrender were conceded; among them, against +the protest, alas! of good Domine Megapolensis, was the stipulation of +religious liberty for the Lutherans. + +It was the end of the Swedish colony, but not at once of the church. The +Swedish community of some seven hundred souls, cut off from +reinforcement and support from the fatherland, cherished its language +and traditions and the mold of doctrine in which it had been shaped; +after more than forty years the reviving interest of the mother church +was manifested by the sending out of missionaries to seek and succor the +daughter long absent and neglected in the wilderness. Two venerable +buildings, the Gloria Dei Church in the southern part of Philadelphia, +and the Old Swedes' Church at Wilmington, remain as monuments of the +honorable story. The Swedish language ceased to be spoken; the people +became undistinguishably absorbed in the swiftly multiplying population +about them. + + * * * * * + +It was a short-lived triumph in which the Dutch colony reduced the +Swedish under its jurisdiction. It only prepared a larger domain for it +to surrender, in its turn, to superior force. With perfidy worthy of +the House of Stuart, the newly restored king of England, having granted +to his brother, the Duke of York, territory already plighted to others +and territory already occupied by a friendly power, stretching in all +from the Connecticut to the Delaware, covered his designs with friendly +demonstrations, and in a time of profound peace surprised the quiet town +of New Amsterdam with a hostile fleet and land force and a peremptory +demand for surrender. The only hindrance interposed was a few hours of +vain and angry bluster from Stuyvesant. The indifference of the Dutch +republic, which had from the beginning refused its colony any promise of +protection, and the sordid despotism of the Company, and the arrogant +contempt of popular rights manifested by its governors, seem to have +left no spark of patriotic loyalty alive in the population. With inert +indifference, if not even with satisfaction, the colony transferred its +allegiance to the British crown, henceforth sovereign from Maine to the +Carolinas. The rights of person and property, religious liberty, and +freedom of trade were stipulated in the capitulation. + +The British government was happy in the character of Colonel Nicolls, +who came as commandant of the invading expedition and remained as +governor. Not only faithful to the terms of the surrender, but +considerate of the feelings and interests of the conquered province, he +gave the people small reason to regret the change of government. The +established Dutch church not only was not molested, but was continued in +full possession of its exceptional privileges. And it continued to +languish. At the time of the surrender the province contained "three +cities, thirty villages, and ten thousand inhabitants,"[78:1] and for +all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled away to +three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. +This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous +church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power +and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put +the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later +English governors showed no scruple in violating the spirit of the terms +of surrender and using their official power and influence to force the +establishment of the English church against the almost unanimous will of +the people. Property was unjustly taken and legal rights infringed to +this end, but the end was not attained. Colonel Morris, an earnest +Anglican, warned his friends against the folly of taking by force the +salaries of ministers chosen by the people and paying them over to "the +ministers of the church." "It may be a means of subsisting those +ministers, but they won't make many converts among a people who think +themselves very much injured." The pious efforts of Governor Fletcher, +the most zealous of these official propagandists, are even more severely +characterized in a dispatch of his successor, the Earl of Bellomont: +"The late governor, ... under the notion of a Church of England to be +put in opposition to the Dutch and French churches established here, +supported a few rascally English, who are a scandal to their nation and +the Protestant religion."[79:1] Evidently such support would have for +its main effect to make the pretended establishment odious to the +people. Colonel Morris sharply points out the impolicy as well as the +injustice of the course adopted, claiming that his church would have +been in a much better position without this political aid, and citing +the case of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, where nothing of the kind had +been attempted, and where, nevertheless, "there are four times the +number of churchmen that there are in this province of New York; and +they are so, most of them, upon principle, whereas nine parts in ten of +ours will add no great credit to whatever church they are of."[80:1] + +It need not be denied that government patronage, even when dispensed by +the dirty hands of such scurvy nursing fathers as Fletcher and Lord +Cornbury, may give strength of a certain sort to a religious +organization. Whatever could be done in the way of endowment or of +social preferment in behalf of the English church was done eagerly. But +happily this church had a better resource than royal governors in the +well-equipped and sustained, and generally well-chosen, army of +missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Not fewer +than fifty-eight of them were placed by the society in this single +province. And if among them there were those who seemed to "preach +Christ of envy and strife," as if the great aim of the preacher of the +gospel were to get a man out of one Christian sect into another, there +were others who showed a more Pauline and more Christian conception of +their work, taking their full share of the task of bringing the +knowledge of Christ to the unevangelized, whether white, red, or +black.[80:2] + +The diversity of organization which was destined to characterize the +church in the province of New York was increased by the inflow of +population from New England. The settlement of Long Island was from the +beginning Puritan English. The Hudson Valley began early to be occupied +by New Englanders bringing with them their pastors. In 1696 Domine +Selyns, the only Dutch pastor in New York City, in his annual report +congratulates himself, "Our number is now full," meaning that there are +four Dutch ministers in the whole province of New York, and adds: "In +the country places here there are many English preachers, mostly from +New England. They were ordained there, having been in a large measure +supplied by the University of Cambridge [Mass.]." The same letter gives +the names of the three eminent French pastors ministering to the +communities of Huguenot refugees at New Rochelle and New York and +elsewhere in the neighborhood. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, more +important to the history of the opening century than any of the rest, +were yet to enter. + +The spectacle of the ancient Dutch church thus dwindling, and seemingly +content to dwindle, to one of the least of the tribes, is not a cheerful +one, nor one easy to understand. But out of this little and dilapidated +Bethlehem was to come forth a leader. Domine Frelinghuysen, arriving in +America in 1720, was to begin a work of training for the ministry, which +would result, in 1784, in the establishment of the first American +professorship of theology;[81:1] and by the fervor of his preaching he +was to win the signal glory of bringing in the Great Awakening. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[69:1] Dr. E. T. Corwin, "History of the Reformed (Dutch) Church in +America" (in the American Church History Series), pp. 28-32. + +[70:1] "The province, under the long years of Dutch supremacy, had +gathered only some seven thousand inhabitants, against the hundred and +twenty thousand of their New England neighbors" (Lodge, "English +Colonies," p. 297). + +[71:1] See Corwin, p. 37; but compare the claim made in behalf of the +Puritan Whitaker, "apostle to the Indians" thirty years earlier +(Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 18); compare also the work +of the Lutheran Campanius in New Sweden (Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. +83). + +[74:1] "The Puritans in Holland, England, and America" (New York, 1892). + +[76:1] The king's noble conceptions of what such a colony should be and +should accomplish are quoted in Bancroft, vol. ii., pp. 284, 285. + +[78:1] Corwin, p. 54. + +[79:1] Corwin, pp. 105, 121. + +[80:1] Corwin, p. 105. + +[80:2] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 57-79. That the sectarian +proselyting zeal manifested in some of the missionaries' reports made an +unfavorable impression on the society is indicated by the peremptory +terms of a resolution adopted in 1710: "That a stop be put to the +sending any more missionaries among Christians, except to such places +whose ministers are, or shall be, dead or removed" (_ibid._, p. 69). A +good resolution, but not well kept. + +[81:1] Corwin, p. 207. Undue stress should not be laid upon this formal +fact. The early New England colleges were primarily and mainly +theological seminaries and training-schools for the ministry. Their +professors were all theological professors. It is stated in Dwight's +"Life of Edwards" that James Pierpont, of New Haven, Edwards's +father-in-law, who died in 1714, lectured to the students of Yale +College, as professor of moral philosophy. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND--PILGRIM AND PURITAN. + + +The attitude of the Church of England Puritans toward the Separatists +from that church was the attitude of the earnest, patient, hopeful +reformer toiling for the removal of public abuses, toward the restless +"come-outer" who quits the conflict in despair of succeeding, and, +"without tarrying for any," sets up his little model of good order +outside. Such defection seemed to them not only of the nature of a +military desertion and a weakening of the right side, but also an +implied assertion of superior righteousness which provoked invidious +comparison and mutual irritation of feeling. The comparison must not be +pressed too far if we cite in illustration the feeling of the great mass +of earnest, practical antislavery men in the American conflict with +slavery toward the faction of "come-outer" abolitionists, who, +despairing of success within the church and the state, seceded from +both, thenceforth predicting failure for every practical enterprise of +reform on the part of their former workfellows, and at every defeat +chuckling, "I told you so." + +If we should compare the English Separatist of the seventeenth century +with this American Separatist of the nineteenth, we should be in still +greater danger of misleading. Certainly there were those among the +Separatists from the Church of England who, in the violence of their +alienation and the bitterness of their sufferings, did not refrain from +sour and acrid censoriousness toward the men who were nearest them in +religious conviction and pursuing like ends by another course. One does +not read far in the history of New England without encountering +reformers of this extreme type. But not such were the company of true +worshipers who, at peril of liberty and life, were wont to assemble each +Lord's day in a room of the old manor-house of Scrooby, of which William +Brewster was lessee, for Christian fellowship and worship, and for +instruction in Christian truth and duty from the saintly lips of John +Robinson. The extreme radicals of their day, they seem to have been +divinely preserved from the besetting sins of radicalism--its +narrowness, its self-righteousness, its censoriousness and intolerance. +Those who read the copious records of the early New England colonization +are again and again surprised at finding that the impoverished little +company of Separatists at Leyden and Plymouth, who were so sharply +reprobated by their Puritan brethren of the Church of England for their +schismatic attitude, their over-righteousness and exclusiveness, do +really excel, in liberality and patient tolerance and catholic and +comprehensive love toward all good men, those who sat in judgment on +them. Something of this is due to the native nobleness of the men +themselves, of whom the world was not worthy; something of it to their +long discipline in the passive virtues under bitter persecution in their +native land and in exile in Holland and in the wilderness; much of it +certainly to the incomparably wise and Christ-like teaching of Robinson +both at Scrooby and at Leyden, and afterward through the tender and +faithful epistles with which he followed them across the sea; and all of +it to the grace of God working in their hearts and glorified in their +living and their dying. + +It would be incompatible with the limits of this volume to recite in +detail the story of the Pilgrims; it has been told more amply and with +fuller repetition than almost any other chapter of human history, and is +never to be told or heard without awakening that thrill with which the +heartstrings respond to the sufferings and triumphs of Christ's blessed +martyrs and confessors. But, more dispassionately studied with reference +to its position and relations in ecclesiastical history, it cannot be +understood unless the sharp and sometimes exasperated antagonism is kept +in view that existed between the inconsiderable faction, as it was +esteemed, of the Separatists, and the great and growing Puritan party at +that time in disfavor with king and court and hierarchy, but soon to +become the dominant party not only in the Church of England, but in the +nation. It is not strange that the antagonism between the two parties +should be lost sight of. The two are identified in their theological +convictions, in their spiritual sympathies, and, for the most part, in +their judgment on questions concerning the externals of the church; and +presently their respective colonies, planted side by side, not without +mutual doubts and suspicions, are to grow together, leaving no visible +seam of juncture, + + Like kindred drops commingling into one.[84:1] + +To the Puritan reformer within the Church of England, the act of the +Pilgrims at Scrooby in separating themselves from the general mass of +English Christians, mingled though that mass might be with a multitude +of unworthy was nothing less than the sin of schism. One effect of the +act was to reflect odium upon the whole party of Puritans, and involve +them in the suspicion of that sedition which was so unjustly, but with +such fatal success, imputed to the Separatists. It was a hard and +doubtful warfare that the Puritans were waging against spiritual +wickedness in high places; the defection of the Separatists doubly +weakened them in the conflict. It is not strange, however it may seem +so, that the animosity of Puritan toward Separatist was sometimes +acrimonious, nor that the public reproaches hurled at the unpopular +little party should have provoked recriminations upon the assailants as +being involved in the defilements and the plagues of Babylon, and should +have driven the Separatists into a narrower exclusiveness of separation, +cutting themselves off not only from communion with abuses and +corruptions in the Church of England, but even from fellowship with good +and holy men in the national church who did not find it a duty to +secede. + +Nothing of this bitterness and narrowness is found in Robinson. +Strenuously as he maintained the right and duty of separation from the +Establishment, he was, especially in his later years, no less earnest in +condemning the "Separatists who carried their separation too far and had +gone beyond the true landmarks in matters of Christian doctrine or of +Christian fellowship."[85:1] His latest work, "found in his studie after +his decease," was "A Treatise of the Lawfulness of Hearing of the +Ministers in the Church of England." + +The moderateness of Robinson's position, and the brotherly kindness of +his temper, could not save him and his people from the prevailing odium +that rested upon the Separatist. Many and grave were the sorrows through +which the Pilgrim church had to pass in its way from the little hamlet +of Scrooby to the bleak hill of Plymouth. They were in peril from the +persecutor at home and in peril in the attempt to escape; in peril from +greedy speculators and malignant politicians; in peril from the sea and +from cold and from starvation; in peril from the savages and from false +brethren privily sent among them to spy out their liberties; but an +added bitterness to all their tribulations lay in this, that, for the +course which they were constrained in conscience to pursue, they were +subject to the reprobation of those whom they most highly honored as +their brethren in the faith of Christ. Some of the most heartbreaking of +their trials arose directly from the unwillingness of English Puritans +to sustain, or even countenance, the Pilgrim colony. + +In the year 1607, when the ships of the Virginia Company were about +landing their freight of emigrants and supplies at Jamestown, the first +and unsuccessful attempt of the Pilgrims was made to escape from their +native land to Holland. Before the end of 1608 the greater part of them, +in scattering parties, had effected the passage of the North Sea, and +the church was reunited in a land of religious freedom. With what a +blameless, diligent, and peaceful life they adorned the name of disciple +through all the twelve years of their sojourn, how honored and beloved +they were among the churches and in the University of Leyden, there are +abundant testimonies. The twelve years of seclusion in an alien land +among a people of strange language was not too long a discipline of +preparation for that work for which the Head of the church had set them +apart. This was the period of Robinson's activity as author. In erudite +studies, in grave debate with gainsayers at home and with fellow-exiles +in Holland, he was maturing in his own mind, and in the minds of the +church, those large and liberal yet definite views of church +organization and duty which were destined for coming ages so profoundly +to influence the American church in all its orders and divisions. "He +became a reformer of the Separation."[87:1] + +We pass by the heroic and pathetic story of the consultations and +correspondences, the negotiations and disappointments, the embarkation +and voyage, and come to that memorable date, November 11 (= 21), 1620, +when, arrived off the shore of Cape Cod, the little company, without +charter or warrant of any kind from any government on earth, about to +land on a savage continent in quest of a home, gathered in the cabin of +the "Mayflower," and after a method quite in analogy with that in which, +sixteen years before, they had constituted the church at Scrooby, +entered into formal and solemn compact "in the presence of God and one +of another, covenanting and combining themselves together into a civil +body politic." + +It is difficult, in reading the instrument then subscribed, to avoid the +conviction that the theory of the origin of the powers of civil +government in a social compact, which had long floated in literature +before it came to be distinctly articulated in the "Contrat Social" of +Jean Jacques Rousseau, was familiar to the minds of those by whom the +paper was drawn. Thoughtful men at the present day universally recognize +the fallacy of this plausible hypothesis, which once had such wide +currency and so serious an influence on the course of political history +in America. But whether or not they were affected by the theory, the +practical good sense of the men and their deference to the teachings of +the Bible secured them from the vicious and absurd consequences +deducible from it. Not all the names of the colonists were subscribed to +the compact,--a clear indication of the freedom of individual judgment +in that company,--but it was never for a moment held that the +dissentients were any the less bound by it. When worthless John +Billington, who had somehow got "shuffled into their company," was +sentenced for disrespect and disobedience to Captain Myles Standish "to +have his neck and heels tied together," it does not seem to have +occurred to him to plead that he had never entered into the social +compact; nor yet when the same wretched man, ten years later, was by a +jury convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death and executed. +Logically, under the social-compact theory, it would have been competent +for those dissenting from this compact to enter into another, and set up +a competing civil government on the same ground; but what would have +been the practical value of this line of argument might have been +learned from Mr. Thomas Morton, of Furnivall's Inn, after he had been +haled out of his disorderly house at Merry Mount by Captain Standish, +and convented before the authorities at Plymouth. + +The social-compact theory as applied to the church, implying that the +mutual duties of Christian disciples in society are derived solely from +mutual stipulations, is quite as transparently fallacious as when it is +applied to civil polity, and the consequences deducible from it are not +less absurd. But it cannot be claimed for the Plymouth men, and still +less for their spiritual successors, that they have wholly escaped the +evil consequences of their theory in its practical applications. The +notion that a church of Christ is a club, having no authority or +limitations but what it derives from club rules agreed on among the +members, would have been scouted by the Pilgrims; among those who now +claim to sit in their seats there are some who would hesitate to admit +it, and many who would frankly avow it with all its mischievous +implications. Planted in the soil of Plymouth, it spread at once through +New England, and has become widely rooted in distant and diverse +regions of the American church.[89:1] + +The church of Plymouth, though deprived of its pastor, continued to be +rich in faith and in all spiritual gifts, and most of all in the +excellent gift of charity. The history of it year after year is a +beautiful illustration of brotherly kindness and mutual self-sacrifice +among themselves and of forgiving patience toward enemies. But the +colony, beginning in extreme feebleness and penury, never became either +strong or rich. One hundred and two souls embarked in the "Mayflower," +of whom nearly one half were dead before the end of four months. At the +end of four years the number had increased to one hundred and eighty. At +the end of ten years the settlement numbered three hundred persons. + +It could not have been with joy wholly unalloyed with misgivings that +this feeble folk learned of a powerful movement for planting a Puritan +colony close in the neighborhood. The movement had begun in the heart of +the national church, and represented everything that was best in that +institution. The Rev. John White, rector of Dorchester, followed across +the sea with pastoral solicitude the young men of his parish, who, in +the business of the fisheries, were wont to make long stay on the New +England coast, far from home and church. His thought was to establish a +settlement that should be a sort of depot of supplies for the fishing +fleets, and a temporary home attended with the comforts and safeguards +of Christian influence. The project was a costly failure; but it was +like the corn of wheat falling into the ground to die, and bringing +forth much fruit. A gentleman of energy and dignity, John Endicott, +pledged his personal service as leader of a new colony. In September, +1628, he landed with a pioneering party at Naumkeag, and having happily +composed some differences that arose with the earlier comers, they named +the place _Salem_, which is, by interpretation, "Peace." Already, with +the newcomers and the old, the well-provided settlement numbered more +than fifty persons, busy in preparation for further arrivals. Meanwhile +vigorous work was doing in England. The organization to sustain the +colony represented adequate capital and the highest quality of character +and influence. A royal charter, drawn with sagacious care to secure +every privilege the Puritan Company desired, was secured from the +fatuity of the reigning Stuart, erecting in the wilderness such a free +commonwealth as his poor little soul abhorred; and preparation was made +for sending out, in the spring of 1629, a noble fleet of six vessels, +carrying three hundred men and a hundred women and children, with +ample equipment of provisions, tools and arms, and live stock. The +Company had taken care that there should be "plentiful provision +of godly ministers." Three approved clergymen of the Church of +England--Higginson, Skelton, and Bright--had been chosen by the Company +to attend the expedition, besides whom one Ralph Smith, a Separatist +minister, had been permitted to take passage before the Company +"understood of his difference in judgment in some things" from the other +ministers. He was permitted to continue his journey, yet not without a +caution to the governor that unless he were found "conformable to the +government" he was not to be suffered to remain within the limits of its +jurisdiction. An incident of this departure rests on the sole authority +of Cotton Mather, and is best told in his own words: + + "When they came to the Land's End, Mr. Higginson, calling up + his children and other passengers unto the stern of the ship + to take their last sight of England, said, 'We will not say, + as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of + England, Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome! but we will say, + Farewell, dear England! farewell, the church of God in + England, and all the Christian friends there! We do not go to + New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though + we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go + to practice the positive part of church reformation and + propagate the gospel in America.'" + +The story ought to be true, for the intrinsic likeliness of it; and it +is all the likelier for the fact that among the passengers, kindly and +even fraternally treated, and yet the object of grave misgivings, was +the honest Separatist minister, Ralph Smith.[91:1] The ideal of the new +colony could hardly have been better expressed than in these possibly +apocryphal words ascribed to Mr. Higginson. These were not fugitives +seeking asylum from persecution. Still less were they planning an asylum +for others. They were intent on the planting of a new commonwealth, in +which the church of Christ, not according to the imperfect and perverted +pattern of the English Establishment, but according to a fairer pattern, +that had been showed them in their mounts of vision, should be both free +and dominant. If this purpose of theirs was wrong; if they had no right +to deny themselves the comforts and delights of their native land, and +at vast cost of treasure to seclude themselves within a defined tract of +wilderness, for the accomplishment of an enterprise which they conceived +to be of the highest beneficence to mankind--then doubtless many of the +measures which they took in pursuance of this purpose must fall under +the same condemnation with the purpose itself. If there are minds so +constituted as to perceive no moral difference between banishing a man +from his native home, for opinion's sake, and declining, on account of +difference of opinion, to admit a man to partnership in a difficult and +hazardous enterprise organized on a distinctly exclusive basis, such +minds will be constrained to condemn the Puritan colonists from the +start and all along. Minds otherwise constituted will be able to +discriminate between the righteous following of a justifiable policy and +the lapses of the colonial governments from high and Christian motives +and righteous courses. Whether the policy of rigorous exclusiveness, +building up communities of picked material, homogeneous in race, +language, and religion, is on the whole less wise for the founders of a +new commonwealth than a sweepingly comprehensive policy, gathering in +people mutually alien in speech and creed and habits, is a fairly open +question for historical students. Much light might be thrown upon it by +the comparative history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, of New +England and Pennsylvania. It is not a question that is answered at once +by the mere statement of it. + +We do not need to be told that to the little Separatist settlement at +Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the +founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on +ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a +momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions +emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of +answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by the spirit of +Christian love. + +That great spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general +exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the +spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a +divine fulfillment. Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in +favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their +pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached +against them would practice as they did if they were in a place where +they might have liberty and live conformably." One of the most +affectionate of his disciples, Edward Winslow, wrote down some of the +precious and memorable words which the pastor, who was to see their face +no more, uttered through his tears as they were about to leave him. +"'There will be no difference,' he said, 'between the unconformable +ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out +of the kingdom.' And so he advised us to close with the godly party of +the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz., +how near we might possibly without sin close with them, rather than in +the least measure to affect division or separation from them." + +The solitude of the little starving hamlet by the sea was favorable to +the springing and fructifying of this seed in the good and honest hearts +into which it had been cast. Before the great fleet of colonists, with +its three unconformable Church of England clergymen, had reached the +port of Salem the good seed had been planted anew in other hearts not +less honest and good. It fell on this wise. The pioneer party at Salem +who came with Endicott, "arriving there in an uncultivated desert, many +of them, for want of wholesome diet and convenient lodgings, were seized +with the scurvy and other distempers, which shortened many of their +days, and prevented many of the rest from performing any great matter of +labor that year for advancing the work of the plantation." Whereupon the +governor, hearing that at Plymouth lived a physician "that had some +skill that way," wrote thither for help, and at once the beloved +physician and deacon of the Plymouth church, Dr. Samuel Fuller, +hastened to their relief. On what themes the discourse revolved between +the Puritan governor just from England and the Separatist deacon already +for so many years an exile, and whither it tended, is manifested in a +letter written soon after by Governor Endicott, of Salem, to Governor +Bradford, of Plymouth, under date May 11 (= 21), 1629. The letter marks +an epoch in the history of American Christianity: + + "_To the worshipful and my right worthy friend, William + Bradford, Esq., Governor of New Plymouth, these:_ + + "RIGHT WORTHY SIR: It is a thing not usual that servants to + one Master and of the same household should be strangers. I + assure you I desire it not; nay, to speak more plainly, I + cannot be so to you. God's people are marked with one and the + same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, + for the main, one and the same heart, guided by one and the + same Spirit of truth; and where this is there can be no + discord--nay, here must needs be sweet harmony. The same + request with you I make unto the Lord, that we may as + Christian brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love, + bending all our hearts and forces in furthering a work beyond + our strength, with reverence and fear fastening our eyes + always on him that only is able to direct and prosper all our + ways. + + "I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and + care in sending Mr. Fuller among us, and I rejoice much that I + am by him satisfied touching your judgments of the outward + form of God's worship.[94:1] It is, as far as I can yet + gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, + and the same which I have professed and maintained ever since + the Lord in mercy revealed himself to me, being very far + different from the common report that hath been spread of you + touching that particular. But God's children must not look for + less here below, and it is the great mercy of God that he + strengthens them to go through with it. + + "I shall not need at this time to be tedious unto you, for, + God willing, I purpose to see your face shortly. In the + meantime I humbly take my leave of you, committing you to the + Lord's blessed protection, and rest + + "Your assured loving friend and servant, + + "JOHN ENDICOTT." + +"The positive part of church reformation," which Higginson and his +companions had come into the wilderness to practice, appeared in a new +light when studied under the new conditions. The question of separation +from the general fellowship of English Christians, which had lain +heavily on their consciences, was no longer a question; instead of it +arose the question of separation from their beloved and honored +fellow-Christians at Plymouth. The Act of Uniformity and the tyrannous +processes by which it was enforced no longer existed for them. They were +free to build the house of God simply according to the teaching of the +divine Word. What form will the structure take? + +One of the first practical questions to emerge was the question by what +authority their ministry was to be exercised. On one point they seem to +have been quite clear. The episcopal ordination, which each of them had +received in England, whatever validity it may have had in English law, +gave them no authority in the church of God in Salem. Further, their +appointment from the Company in London, although it was a regular +commission from the constituted civil government of the colony, could +confer no office in the spiritual house. A day of solemn fasting was +held, by the governor's appointment, for the choice of pastor and +teacher, and after prayer the two recognized candidates for the two +offices, Skelton and Higginson, were called upon to give their views as +to a divine call to the ministry. "They acknowledged there was a twofold +calling: the one, an inward calling, when the Lord moved the heart of a +man to take that calling upon him, and fitted him with gifts for the +same; the second (the outward calling) was from the people, when a +company of believers are joined together in covenant to walk together in +all the ways of God." Thereupon the assembly proceeded to a written +ballot, and its choice fell upon Mr. Skelton and Mr. Higginson. It +remained for the ministers elect to be solemnly inducted into office, +which was done with prayer and the laying on of hands in benediction. + +But presently there were searchings of heart over the anterior question +as to the constituency of the church. Were all the population of Salem +to be reckoned as of the church of Salem? and if not, who should +"discern between the righteous and the wicked"? The result of study of +this question, in the light of the New Testament, was this--that it was +"necessary for those who intended to be of the church solemnly to enter +into a covenant engagement one with another, in the presence of God, to +walk together before him according to his Word." Thirty persons were +chosen to be the first members of the church, who in a set form of words +made public vows of faithfulness to each other and to Christ. By the +church thus constituted the pastor and teacher, already installed in +office in the parish, were instituted as ministers of the church.[96:1] + +Before the solemnities of that notable day were concluded, a belated +vessel that had been eagerly awaited landed on the beach at Salem the +"messengers of the church at Plymouth." They came into the assembly, +Governor Bradford at the head, and in the name of the Pilgrim church +declared their "approbation and concurrence," and greeted the new +church, the first-born in America, with "the right hand of fellowship." +A thoughtful and devoted student declares this day's proceedings to be +"the beginning of a distinctively American church history."[97:1] + +The immediate sequel of this transaction is characteristic and +instructive. Two brothers, John and Samuel Browne, members of the +council of the colony, took grave offense at this departure from the +ways of the Church of England, and, joining to themselves others +like-minded, set up separate worship according to the Book of Common +Prayer. Being called to account before the governor for their schismatic +procedure, they took an aggressive tone and declared that the ministers, +"were Separatists, and would be Anabaptists." The two brothers were +illogical. The ministers had not departed from the Nationalist and +anti-Separatist principles enunciated by Higginson from the quarter-deck +of the "Talbot." What they had just done was to lay the foundations of a +national church for the commonwealth that was in building. And the two +brothers, trying to draw off a part of the people into their +schism-shop, were Separatists, although they were doubtless surprised to +discover it. There was not the slightest hesitation on the governor's +part as to the proper course to be pursued. "Finding those two brothers +to be of high spirits, and their speeches and practices tending to +mutiny and faction, the governor told them that New England was no place +for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back for England at +the return of the ships the same year."[98:1] Neither then nor +afterward was there any trace of doubt in the minds of the New England +settlers, in going three thousand miles away into the seclusion of the +wilderness, of their indefeasible moral right to pick their own company. +There was abundant opportunity for mistake and temptation to wrong-doing +in the exercise of this right, but the right itself is so nearly +self-evident as to need no argument. + +While the civil and ecclesiastical foundations of the Salem community +are thus being laid, there is preparing on the other side of the sea +that great _coup d'état_ which is to create, almost in a day, a +practically independent American republic. Until this is accomplished +the colonial organization is according to a common pattern, a settlement +on a distant shore, equipped, sustained, and governed with authority all +but sovereign by a commercial company at the metropolis, within the +reach, and thus under the control, of the supreme power. Suppose, now, +that the shareholders in the commercial company take their charter +conferring all but sovereign authority, and transport themselves and it +across the sea to the heart of the settlement, there to admit other +planters, at their discretion, to the franchise of the Company, what +then? This was the question pondered and decided in those dark days of +English liberty, when the triumph of despotism, civil and spiritual, +over the rights of Englishmen seemed almost achieved. The old officers +of the Company resigned; their places were filled by Winthrop and Dudley +and others, who had undertaken to emigrate; and that memorable season of +1630 not less than seventeen ships, carrying about one thousand +passengers, sailed from English ports for Massachusetts Bay. It was the +beginning of the great Puritan exodus. Attempts were made by the king +and the archbishop to stay the flow of emigration, but with only +transient success. "At the end of ten years from Winthrop's arrival +about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or four thousand families, +including the few hundreds who were here before him, had come over in +three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred thousand pounds +sterling."[99:1] What could not be done by despotism was accomplished by +the triumph of the people over the court. The meeting of the Long +Parliament in 1640 made it safe for Puritans to stay in England; and the +Puritans stayed. The current of migration was not only checked, but +turned backward. It is reckoned that within four generations from that +time more persons went to old England than originally came thence. The +beginnings of this return were of high importance. Among the home-going +companies were men who were destined to render eminent service in the +reconstruction of English society, both in the state and in the army, +and especially in the church. The example of the New England churches, +voluminously set forth in response to written inquiries from England, +had great influence in saving the mother country from suffering the +imposition of a Presbyterian hierarchy that threatened to be as +intolerant and as intolerable as the tyranny of Laud. + +For the order of the New England churches crystallized rapidly into a +systematic and definite church polity, far removed from mere Separatism +even in the temperate form in which this had been illustrated by +Robinson and the Pilgrim church. The successive companies of emigrants +as they arrived, ship-load after ship-load, each with its minister or +college of ministers, followed with almost monotonous exactness the +method adopted in the organization of the church in Salem. A small +company of the best Christians entered into mutual covenant as a church +of Christ, and this number, growing by well-considered accessions, added +to itself from time to time other believers on the evidence and +confession of their faith in Christ. The ministers, all or nearly all of +whom had been clergymen in the orders of the Church of England, were of +one mind in declining to consider their episcopal ordination in England +as conferring on them any spiritual authority in a church newly gathered +in America. They found rather in the free choice of the brotherhood the +sign of a divine call to spiritual functions in the church, and were +inducted into office by the primitive form of the laying on of hands. + +In many ways, but especially in the systematized relations of the +churches with one another and in their common relations with the civil +government, the settled Nationalism of the great Puritan migration was +illustrated. With the least possible constraint on the individual or on +the church, they were clear in their purpose that their young state +should have its established church. + +Through what rude experiences the system and the men were tested has +been abundantly told and retold.[100:1] Roger Williams, learned, +eloquent, sincere, generous, a man after their own heart, was a very +malignant among Separatists, separating himself not only from the +English church, but from all who would not separate from it, and from +all who would not separate from these, and so on, until he could no +longer, for conscience' sake, hold fellowship with his wife in family +prayers. After long patience the colonial government deemed it necessary +to signify to him that if his conscience would not suffer him to keep +quiet, and refrain from stirring up sedition, and embroiling the colony +with the English government, he would have to seek freedom for that +sort of conscience outside of their jurisdiction; and they put him out +accordingly, to the great advantage of both parties and without loss of +mutual respect and love. A little later, a clever woman, Mrs. Ann +Hutchinson, with a vast conceit of her superior holiness and with the +ugly censoriousness which is a usual accompaniment of that grace, +demonstrated her genius for mixing a theological controversy with +personal jealousies and public anxieties, and involved the whole colony +of the Bay in an acrimonious quarrel, such as to give an unpleasant tone +of partisanship and ill temper to the proceedings in her case, whether +ecclesiastical or civil. She seems clearly to have been a willful and +persistent nuisance in the little community, and there were good reasons +for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the +wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers +came among them,--not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to +which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early +type,--instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses +against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of +court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly as Quakers, thus +putting themselves in the wrong and conceding to their adversaries that +crown of martyrdom for which their souls were hankering and to which +they were not fully entitled. + +Of course, in maintaining the principle of Nationalism, the New England +Puritans did not decline the implications and corollaries of that +principle. It was only to a prophetic genius like the Separatist Roger +Williams that it was revealed that civil government had no concern to +enforce "the laws of the first table." But the historical student might +be puzzled to name any other church establishment under which less of +molestation was suffered by dissenters, or more of actual encouragement +given to rival sects, than under the New England theocracies. The +Nationalist principle was exclusive; the men who held it in New England +(subject though they were to the temptations of sectarian emulation and +fanatic zeal) were large-minded and generous men. + +The general uniformity of church organization among the Puritan +plantations is the more remarkable in view of the notable independence +and originality of the leading men, who represented tendencies of +opinion as widely diverging as the quasi-Presbyterianism of John Eliot +and the doctrinaire democracy of John Wise. These variations of +ecclesiastico-political theory had much to do with the speedy diffusion +of the immigrant population. For larger freedom in building his ideal +New Jerusalem, the statesmanlike pastor, Thomas Hooker, led forth his +flock a second time into the great and terrible wilderness, and with his +associates devised what has been declared to be "the first example in +history of a written constitution--a distinct organic law constituting a +government and defining its powers."[102:1] The like motive determined +the choice company under John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton to refuse +all inducements and importunities to remain in Massachusetts, choosing +rather to build on no other man's foundations at New Haven.[102:2] At +the end of a hundred years from the settlement of Boston the shores and +river valleys of Massachusetts and Connecticut were planted with towns, +each self-governing as a pure democracy, each with its church and +educated minister and its system of common schools. The two colleges at +Cambridge and New Haven were busy with their appointed work of training +young men to the service of God "in church or civil state." And this +great and prosperous and intelligent population was, with inconsiderable +exceptions, the unmingled progeny of the four thousand English families +who, under stress of the tyranny of Charles Stuart and the persecution +of William Laud, had crossed the sea in the twelve years from 1628 to +1640. + +The traditions of the fathers of New England had been piously cherished +down to this third and fourth generation. The model of an ideal state +that had been set up had, meanwhile, been more or less deformed, +especially in Massachusetts, by the interference of England; the +dominance of the established churches had been slightly infringed by the +growth here and there of dissenting churches, Baptist, Episcopalian, and +Quaker; but the framework both of church and of state was wonderfully +little decayed or impaired. The same simplicity in the outward order of +worship was maintained; the same form of high Calvinistic theology +continued to be cherished as a norm of sound preaching and as a vehicle +of instruction to children. All things continued as they had been; and +yet it would have been a most superficial observer who had failed to +detect signs of approaching change. The disproportions of the +Calvinistic system, exaggerated in the popular acceptation, as in the +favorite "Day of Doom" of Michael Wigglesworth, forced the effort after +practical readjustments. The magnifying of divine sovereignty in the +saving of men, to the obscuring of human responsibility, inevitably +mitigated the church's reprobation of respectable people who could +testify of no experience of conversion, and yet did not wish to +relinquish for themselves or their families their relation to the +church. Out of the conflict between two aspects of theological truth, +and the conflict between the Nationalist and the Separatist conceptions +of the church, and especially out of the mistaken policy of restricting +the civil franchise to church-members, came forth that device of the +"Half-way Covenant" which provided for a hereditary quasi-membership in +the church for worthy people whose lives were without scandal, and who, +not having been subjects of an experience of conscious conversion, were +felt to be not altogether to blame for the fact. From the same causes +came forth, and widely prevailed, the tenet of "Stoddardeanism," so +called as originating in the pastoral work, and, it is said, in the +personal experience, of Solomon Stoddard, the saintly minister of +Northampton from 1669 till 1729, when he was succeeded by his colleague +and grandson, Jonathan Edwards. It is the view that the Lord's Supper is +instituted as a means of regeneration as well as of sanctification, and +that those who are consciously "in a natural condition" ought not to be +repelled, but rather encouraged to come to it. From the same causes, by +natural sequence, came that so-called Arminianism[104:1] which, instead +of urging the immediate necessity and duty of conversion, was content +with commending a "diligent use of means," which might be the hopeful +antecedent of that divine grace. + +These divergences from the straight lines of the primeval New England +Calvinism had already begun to be manifest during the lifetime of some +of the founders. Of not less grave import was the deflection from the +lofty moral standard of the fathers. A great New Englander, Horace +Bushnell, maintaining his thesis that great migrations are followed by a +tendency to barbarism, has cited in proof this part of New England +history.[105:1] As early as the second generation, the evil tendency +seemed so formidable as to lead to the calling, by the General Court of +Massachusetts, of the "Reforming Synod" of 1679. No one can say that the +heroic age of New England was past. History has no nobler record to +show, of courage and fortitude in both men and women, than that of New +England in the Indian wars. But the terrors of those days of +tribulation, the breaking up of communities, the decimation of the +population, the long absences of the young men on the bloody business of +the soldier, were not favorable for maturing the fruits of the Spirit. +Withal, the intrigues of British politicians, the threatened or actual +molestations of the civil governments of the colonies, and the +corrupting influences proceeding from every center of viceregal +authority, abetted the tendency to demoralization. By the end of the +first third of the eighteenth century, New England, politically, +ecclesiastically, theologically, and morally, had come into a state of +unstable equilibrium. An overturn is impending. + + * * * * * + +The set and sturdy resolution of the founders of the four colonies of +the New England confederacy that the first planting of their territory +should be on rigorously exclusive principles, with a homogeneous and +mutually congenial population, under a firm discipline both civil and +ecclesiastical, finds an experimental justification in the history of +the neighbor colony of Rhode Island. No commonwealth can boast a nobler +and purer name for its founder than the name of Roger Williams. Rhode +Island, founded in generous reaction from the exclusiveness of +Massachusetts, embodied the principle of "soul-liberty" in its earliest +acts. The announcement that under its jurisdiction no man was to be +molested by the civil power for his religious belief was a broad +invitation to all who were uncomfortable under the neighboring +theocracies.[106:1] And the invitation was freely accepted. The +companions of Williams were reinforced by the friends of Mrs. +Hutchinson, some of them men of substance and weight of character. The +increasing number of persons inclined to Baptist views found in Rhode +Island a free and congenial atmosphere. Williams himself was not long in +coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found +Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. +More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered +themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its +side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams +before his death that the declaration of individual rights and +independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The +heterogeneous population failed to settle into any stable polity. After +two generations the tyranny of Andros, so odious elsewhere in New +England, was actually welcome as putting an end to the liberty that had +been hardly better than anarchy. + +The results of the manner of the first planting on the growth of the +church in Rhode Island were of a like sort. There is no room for +question that the material of a true church was there, in the person of +faithful and consecrated disciples of Christ, and therefore there must +have been gathering together in common worship and mutual edification. +But the sense of individual rights and responsibilities seems to have +overshadowed the love for the whole brotherhood of disciples. The +condition of the church illustrated the Separatism of Williams reduced +to the absurd. There was feeble organization of Christians in knots and +coteries. But sixty years passed before the building of the first house +of worship in Providence, and at the end of almost a century "there had +not existed in the whole colony more than eight or ten churches of any +denomination, and these were mostly in a very feeble and precarious +state."[107:1] + +Meanwhile the inadequate compensations of a state of schism began to +show themselves. In the absence of any organized fellowship of the whole +there grew up, more than elsewhere, a mutual tolerance and even love +among the petty sects, the lesson of which was learned where it was most +needed. The churches of "the standing order" in Massachusetts not only +admired but imitated "the peace and love which societies of different +modes of worship entertained toward each other in Rhode Island." In +1718, not forty years from the time when Baptist churches ceased to be +_religio illicita_ in Massachusetts, three foremost pastors of Boston +assisted in the ordination of a minister to the Baptist church, at which +Cotton Mather preached the sermon, entitled "Good Men United." It +contained a frank confession of repentance for the persecutions of which +the Boston churches had been guilty.[107:2] + +There is a double lesson to be learned from the history of these +neighbor colonies: first, that a rigorously exclusive selection of men +like-minded is the best seed for the first planting of a commonwealth in +the wilderness; secondly, that the exclusiveness that is justified in +the infancy of such a community cannot wisely, nor even righteously, nor +even possibly, be maintained in its adolescence and maturity. The +church-state of Massachusetts and New Haven was overthrown at the end of +the first generation by external interference. If it had continued a few +years longer it must have fallen of itself; but it lasted long enough to +be the mold in which the civilization of the young States should set and +harden. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[84:1] The mutual opposition of Puritan and Pilgrim is brought out with +emphasis in "The Genesis of the New England Churches," by L. Bacon, +especially chaps. v., vii., xviii. + +[85:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis of New England Churches," p. 245. + +[87:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 245. + +[89:1] The writer takes leave to refer to two essays of his own, in +"Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., 1895), for a +fuller statement of this point. + +[91:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 467. + +[94:1] The phrase is used in a large sense, as comprehending the whole +subject of the nature and organization of the visible church (L. Bacon, +"Genesis," p. 456, note). + +[96:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 475. + +[97:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 477. + +[98:1] Morton's Memorial, in Palfrey, vol. i., p. 298. + +[99:1] Palfrey, vol. i., p. 584. + +[100:1] As, for example, with great amplitude by Palfrey; and in more +condensed form by Dr. Williston Walker, "Congregationalists" (in +American Church History Series). + +[102:1] L. Bacon, "Early Constitutional History of Connecticut." + +[102:2] L. Bacon, "Thirteen Historical Discourses." The two mutually +independent republics at Hartford and New Haven represented opposite +tendencies. That at New Haven was after the highest type of theocracy; +the Connecticut colony inclined to the less rigorous model of Plymouth, +not exacting church-membership as a condition of voting. How important +this condition appeared to the mind of Davenport may be judged from his +exclamation when it ceased, at the union of New Haven with Connecticut. +He wrote to a friend, "In N. H. C. Christ's interest is miserably lost;" +and prepared to turn his back forever on the colony of which he was the +father. + +[104:1] The name, applied at first as a stigma to the liberalizing +school of New England theology, may easily mislead if taken either in +its earlier historic sense or in the sense which it was about to acquire +in the Wesleyan revival. The surprise of the eighteenth century New +England theologians at finding the word associated with intense fervor +of preaching and of religious experience is expressed in the saying, +"There is all the difference between a cold Arminian and a hot Arminian +that there is between a cold potato and a hot potato." For a lucid +account of the subject, see W. Walker, "History of the Congregational +Churches," chap. viii. + +[105:1] Sermon on "Barbarism the First Danger." + +[106:1] And yet, even in the Rhode Island communities, the arbitrary +right of exclusion, in the exercise of which Roger Williams had been +shut out from Massachusetts, was asserted and adopted. It was forbidden +to sell land to a newcomer, except by consent of prior settlers. + +[107:1] Dr. J. G. Vose, "Congregationalism in Rhode Island," pp. 16, 53, +63. + +[107:2] _Ibid._, pp. 56, 57. "Good men, alas! have done such ill things +as these. New England also has in former times done something of this +aspect which would not now be so well approved; in which, if the +brethren in whose house we are now convened met with anything too +unbrotherly, they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike +of everything which looked like persecution in the days that have passed +over us." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE MIDDLE COLONIES: THE JERSEYS, DELAWARE, AND PENNSYLVANIA--THE QUAKER +COLONIZATION--GEORGIA. + + +The bargainings and conveyancings, the confirmations and reclamations, +the setting up and overturning, which, after the conquest of the New +Netherlands, had the effect to detach the peninsula of New Jersey from +the jurisdiction of New York, and to divide it for a time into two +governments, belong to political history; but they had, of course, an +important influence on the planting of the church in that territory. One +result of them was a wide diversity of materials in the early growth of +the church. + +Toward the end of the Dutch occupation, one lonely congregation had been +planted in that region which, at a later time, when the Dutch church in +America had awaked from its lethargy, was to become known as "the garden +of the Dutch church."[109:1] + +After the extinction of the high theocracy of the New Haven Colony by +the merger of it in Connecticut, a whole church and town, headed by the +pastor, having secured such guaranty of their political liberty as the +unstable government of New Jersey was able to give, left the homes +endeared to them by thirty years of toil and thrift, and lifting the ark +of the covenant by the staves, set themselves down beside the Passaic, +calling their plantation the New-Ark, and reinstituted their fundamental +principle of restricting the franchise to members of the church. Thus +"with one heart they resolved to carry on their spiritual and town +affairs according to godly government." The Puritan migration, of which +this was the nucleus, had an influence on the legislation and the later +history of New Jersey out of all proportion to its numbers. + +Twenty years later the ferocious persecution of the Scottish +Covenanters, which was incited by the fears or the bloody vindictiveness +of James II. after the futile insurrection of Monmouth, furnished a +motive for emigration to the best people in North Britain, which was +quickly seized and exploited by the operators in Jersey lands. +Assurances of religious liberty were freely given; men of influence were +encouraged to bring over large companies; and in 1686 the brother of the +martyred Duke of Argyle was made governor of East Jersey. The +considerable settlements of Scotchmen found congenial neighbors in the +New Englanders of Newark. A system of free schools, early established by +a law of the commonwealth, is naturally referred to their common +influence. + +Meanwhile a series of events of the highest consequence to the future of +the American church had been in progress in the western half of the +province. Passing from hand to hand, the ownership and lordship of West +Jersey had become vested in a land company dominated by Quakers. For the +first time in the brief history of that sect, it was charged with the +responsibility of the organization and conduct of government. Hitherto +it had been publicly known by the fierce and defiant and often +outrageous protests of its representatives against existing governments +and dignities both in state and in church, such as exposed them to the +natural and reasonable suspicion of being wild and mischievous +anarchists. The opportunities and temptations that come to those in +power would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial +by the cart-tail and the gibbet. + +The Quakers bore the test nobly. Never did a commercial company show +itself so little mercenary; never was a sovereign more magnanimous and +unselfish. With the opening of the province to settlement, the +proprietors set forth a statement of their purposes: "We lay a +foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and +Christians, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own +consent; for we put the power in the people." This was followed by a +code of "Concessions and Agreements" in forty-four articles, which were +at once a constitution of government and a binding compact with such as +should enter themselves as colonists on these terms. They left little to +be desired in securities for personal, political, and religious +liberty.[111:1] + +At once population began to flow amain. In 1677 two hundred and thirty +Quakers came in one ship and founded the town of Burlington. By 1681 +there had come fourteen hundred. Weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings +were established; houses of worship were built; and in August, 1681, the +Quaker hierarchy (if it may so be called without offense) was completed +by the establishment of the Burlington Yearly Meeting. The same year the +corporation, encouraged by its rapid success, increased its numbers and +its capital, bought out the proprietors of East Jersey, and appointed as +governor over the whole province the eminent Quaker theologian, Robert +Barclay. The Quaker régime continued, not always smoothly, till 1688, +when it was extinguished by James II. at the end of his perfidious +campaigns against American liberties. + + * * * * * + +This enterprise of the Quaker purchase and settlement of New Jersey +brings upon the stage of American history the great apostle of Christian +colonization, William Penn. He came into relation to the New Jersey +business as arbiter of some differences that arose between the two +Friends who had bought West Jersey in partnership. He continued in +connection with it when the Quaker combination had extended itself by +purchase over the whole Jersey peninsula, and he was a trusted counselor +of the corporation, and the representative of its interests at court. +Thus there grew more and more distinct before his peculiarly adventurous +and enterprising mind the vision of the immense possibilities, +political, religious, and commercial, of American colonization. With +admirable business shrewdness combined with courtly tact, he canceled an +otherwise hopeless debt from the crown in consideration of the +concession to him of a domain of imperial wealth and dimensions, with +practically unlimited rights of jurisdiction. At once he put into +exercise the advantages and opportunities which were united in him so as +never before in the promoter of a like enterprise, and achieved a +success speedy and splendid beyond all precedent. + +The providential preparations for this great enterprise--"the Holy +Experiment," as Penn delighted to call it--had been visibly in progress +in England for not more than the third part of a century. It was not the +less divine for being wholly logical and natural, that, just when the +Puritan Reformation culminated in the victory of the Commonwealth, the +Quaker Reformation should suddenly break forth. Puritanism was the last +expression of that appeal from the church to the Scriptures, from +existing traditions of Christianity to its authentic original documents, +which is the essence of Protestantism. In Puritanism, reverence for the +Scriptures is exaggerated to the point of superstition. The doctrine +that God of old had spoken by holy men was supplemented by the +pretension that God had long ago ceased so to speak and never would so +speak again. The claim that the Scriptures contain a sufficient guide to +moral duty and religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the +last details of church organization and worship, and the minute +direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the +Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of +the Puritans.[113:1] In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, +perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited +exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. +The Bible was used to contradict the moral sense. It was high time for +the Quaker protest, and it was inevitable that this protest should be +extravagant and violent. + +In their bold reassertion of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, that his +light "lighteth every man who cometh into the world," it is not strange +that the first Quakers should sometimes have lost sight of those +principles the enunciation of which gives such a character of sober +sanity to the apostolic teachings on this subject--that a divine +influence on the mind does not discharge one from the duty of +self-control, but that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the +prophets"; that the divine inworking does not suspend nor supersede +man's volition and activity, but that it behooves man to "work, because +God worketh in him to will and to work." The lapse from these +characteristically Christian principles into the enthusiastic, fanatic, +or heathen conception of inspiration has been a perpetually recurring +incident in the history of the church in all ages, and especially in +times of deep and earnest spiritual feeling. But in the case of the +Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil +consequences. Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and +hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the +Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some +peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with +sincere and conscientious reformers, adding to the unpopularity of the +new opinions the odium justly due to their own misdemeanors. But the +prophet whose life and preaching had begun the Quaker Reformation was +not found wanting in the gifts which the case required. Like other great +religious founders, George Fox combined with profound religious +conviction a high degree of tact and common sense and the faculty of +organization. While the gospel of "the Light that lighteth every man" +was speeding with wonderful swiftness to the ends of the earth, there +was growing in the hands of the founder the framework of a discipline by +which the elements of disorder should be controlled.[114:1] The result +was a firmly articulated organization compacted by common faith and zeal +and mutual love, and by the external pressure of fierce persecution +extending throughout the British empire on both sides of the ocean. + +Entering into continental Europe, the Quaker Reformation found itself +anticipated in the progress of religious history. The protests of the +Anabaptists against what they deemed the shortcomings of the Lutheran +Reformation had been attended with far wilder extravagances than those +of the early Quakers, and had been repressed with ruthless severity. But +the political and militant Anabaptists were succeeded by communities of +mild and inoffensive non-resistants, governing themselves by a narrow +and rigorous discipline, and differing from the order of Quakers mainly +at this point, that whereas the Quakers rejected all sacraments, these +insisted strenuously on their own views of Baptism and the Supper, and +added to them the ordinance of the Washing of Feet. These communities +were to be found throughout Protestant Europe, from the Alps to the +North Sea, but were best known in Holland and Lower Germany, where they +were called Mennonites, from the priest, Menno Simons, who, a hundred +years before George Fox, had enunciated the same principles of duty +founded on the strict interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. + +The combination of circumstances to promote the "Holy Experiment" of +William Penn is something prodigious. How he could be a petted favorite +at the shameful court of the last two Stuarts, while his brethren +throughout the realm were languishing under persecution, is a fact not +in itself honorable, but capable of being honorably explained; and both +the persecution and the court favor helped on his enterprise. The time +was opportune; the period of tragical uncertainty in colonization was +past; emigration had come to be a richly promising enterprise. For +leader of the enterprise what endowment was lacking in the elegantly +accomplished young courtier, holding as his own the richest domain that +could be carved out of a continent, who was at the same time brother, in +unaffected humility and unbounded generosity, in a great fraternity +bound together by principles of ascetic self-denial and devotion to the +kingdom of God? + +Penn's address inviting colonists to his new domain announced the +outlines of his scheme. His great powers of jurisdiction were held by +him only to be transferred to the future inhabitants in a free and +righteous government. "I purpose," said he, conscious of the magnanimity +of the intention, "for the matters of liberty, I purpose that which is +extraordinary--to leave myself and successors no power of doing +mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole +country;" and added, in language which might have fallen from his +intimate friend, Algernon Sidney, but was fully expressive of his own +views, "It is the great end of government to support power in reverence +with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for +liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is +slavery."[116:1] With assurances of universal civil and religious +liberty in conformity with these principles, he offered land at forty +shillings for a hundred acres, subject to a small quit-rent. + +Through the correspondence of the Friends' meetings, these proposals +could be brought to the attention of many thousands of people, sifted +and culled by persecution, the best stuff for a colony in all the United +Kingdom. The response was immediate. Within a year three ship-loads of +emigrants went out. The next year Penn himself went with a company of a +hundred, and stayed long enough to see the government organized by the +free act of the colonists on the principles which he had set forth, and +in that brief sojourn of two years to witness the beginnings of a +splendid prosperity. His city of Philadelphia consisted in August, 1683, +of three or four little cottages. Two years afterward it contained about +six hundred houses, and the schoolmaster and the printing-press had +begun their work.[117:1] The growth went on accelerating. In one year +seven thousand settlers are said to have arrived; before the end of the +century the colonists numbered more than twenty thousand, and +Philadelphia had become a thriving town.[117:2] + +But Great Britain, although the chief source of population, was not the +only source. It had been part of the providential equipment of Penn for +his great work to endow him with the gift of tongues and bring him into +intimate relations with the many congregations of the broken and +persecuted sects kindred to his own on the continent of Europe. The +summer and autumn of 1678, four years before his coming to Pennsylvania, +had been spent by him, in company with George Fox, Robert Barclay, and +other eminent Friends, in a mission tour through Holland (where he +preached in his mother's own language) and Germany. The fruit of this +preaching and of previous missions appeared in an unexpected form. One +of the first important accessions to the colony was the company of +Mennonites led by Pastorius, the "Pennsylvania Pilgrim," who founded +Germantown, now a beautiful suburb of Philadelphia. Group after group of +picturesque devotees that had been driven into seclusion and +eccentricity by long and cruel persecution--the Tunkers, the +Schwenkfelders, the Amish--kept coming and bringing with them their +traditions, their customs, their sacred books, their timid and pathetic +disposition to hide by themselves, sometimes in quasi-monastic +communities like that at Ephrata, sometimes in actual hermitage, as in +the ravines of the Wissahickon. But the most important contribution of +this kind came from the suffering villages of the Rhenish Palatinate +ravaged with fire and sword by the French armies in 1688. So numerous +were the fugitives from the Palatinate that the name of Palatine came to +be applied in general to German refugees, from whatever region. This +migration of the German sects (to be distinguished from the later +migration from the established Lutheran and Reformed churches) furnished +the material for that curious "Pennsylvania Dutch" population which for +more than two centuries has lain encysted, so to speak, in the body +politic and ecclesiastic of Pennsylvania, speaking a barbarous jargon of +its own, and refusing to assimilate with the surrounding people. + +It was the rough estimate of Dr. Franklin that colonial Pennsylvania was +made up of one third Quakers, one third Germans, and one third +miscellaneous. The largest item under this last head was the Welsh, most +of them Quakers, who had been invited by Penn with the promise of a +separate tract of forty thousand acres in which to maintain their own +language, government, and institutions. Happily, the natural and +patriotic longing of these immigrants for a New Wales on this side the +sea was not to be realized. The "Welsh Barony" became soon a mere +geographical tradition, and the whole strength of this fervid and +religious people enriched the commonwealth.[118:1] + +Several notable beginnings of church history belong to the later part of +the period under consideration. + +An interesting line of divergence from the current teachings of the +Friends was led, toward the end of the seventeenth century, by George +Keith, for thirty years a recognized preacher of the Society. One is +impressed, in a superficial glance at the story, with the reasonableness +and wisdom of some of Keith's positions, and with the intellectual vigor +of the man. But the discussion grew into an acrimonious controversy, and +the controversy deepened into a schism, which culminated in the +disowning of Keith by the Friends in America, and afterward by the +London Yearly Meeting, to which he had appealed. Dropped thus by his old +friends, he was taken up by the English Episcopalians and ordained by +the Bishop of London, and in 1702 returned to America as the first +missionary of the newly organized Society for the Propagation of the +Gospel in Foreign Parts. An active missionary campaign was begun and +sustained by the large resources of the Venerable Society until the +outbreak of the War of Independence. The movement had great advantages +for success. It was next of kin to the expiring Swedish Lutheran Church +in the three counties that became afterward the State of Delaware, and +heir to its venerable edifices and its good will; it was the official +and court church of the royal governors, and after the degenerate sons +of William Penn abandoned the simple worship, as well as the clean +living, in which their father delighted, it was the church promoted by +the proprietary interest; withal it proved itself, both then and +afterward, to hold a deposit of truth and of usages of worship +peculiarly adapted to supplement the defects of the Quaker system. It is +not easy to explain the ill success of the enterprise. In Philadelphia +it took strong root, and the building, in 1727, of Christ Church, which +survives to this day, a monument of architectural beauty as well as +historical interest, marks an important epoch in the progress of +Christianity in America. But in the rural districts the work languished. +Parishes, seemingly well equipped, fell into a "deplorable condition"; +churches were closed and parishes dwindled away. About the year 1724 +Governor Keith reported to the Bishop of London that outside the city +there were "twelve or thirteen little edifices, at times supplied by one +or other of the poor missionaries sent from the society." Nearly all +that had been gained by the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, where the +"Venerable Society" had maintained at times forty-seven missionaries and +twenty-four central stations, was wiped out by the Revolutionary +War.[120:1] + +Another great beginning that comes within the field of vision in the +first four decades of the eighteenth century is the planting of the +great national churches of Germany. We have observed the migration of +the minor sects of Germany--so complete, in some cases, that the entire +sect was transplanted, leaving no representative in the fatherland. In +the mixed multitude of refugees from the Palatinate and other ravaged +provinces were many belonging both to the Lutheran and to the Reformed +churches, as well as some Catholics. But they were scattered as sheep +having no shepherd. The German Lutheran and Reformed immigration was +destined to attain by and by to enormous proportions; but so late was +the considerable expansion of it, and so tardy and inefficient the +attention given to this diaspora by the mother churches, that the +classical organization of the Reformed Church dates only from 1747, and +that of the Lutheran Church from 1760.[121:1] The beautiful career of +the Moravians began in Pennsylvania so late as 1734. In general it may +be said that the German-American church was affected only indirectly by +the Great Awakening. + +But the greatest in its consequences, both religious and political, of +the great beginnings in the early part of the eighteenth century, was +the first flow of the swelling tide of the Scotch-Irish immigration. +Already, in 1669, an English Presbyterian, Matthew Hill, persuaded to +the work by Richard Baxter, was ministering to "many of the Reformed +religion" in Maryland; and in 1683 an appeal from them to the Irish +presbytery of Laggan had brought over to their aid that sturdy and +fearless man of God, Francis Makemie, whose successful defense in 1707, +when unlawfully imprisoned in New York by that unsavory defender of the +Anglican faith, Lord Cornbury, gave assurance of religious liberty to +his communion throughout the colonies. In 1705 he was moderator of the +first presbytery in America, numbering six ministers. At the end of +twelve years the number of ministers, including accessions from New +England, had grown to seventeen. But it was not until 1718 that this +migration began in earnest. As early as 1725 James Logan, the +Scotch-Irish-Quaker governor of Pennsylvania, speaking in the spirit of +prophecy, declares that "it looks as if Ireland were to send all her +inhabitants hither; if they continue to come they will make themselves +proprietors of the province." It was a broad-spread, rich alluvium +superimposed upon earlier strata of immigration, out of which was to +spring the sturdy growth of American Presbyterianism, as well as of +other Christian organizations. But by 1730 it was only the turbid and +feculent flood that was visible to most observers; the healthful and +fruitful growth was yet to come.[122:1] + +The colony of Georgia makes its appearance among the thirteen British +colonies in America, in 1733, as one born out of due time. But no colony +of all the thirteen had a more distinctly Christian origin than this. +The foundations of other American commonwealths had been laid in faith +and hope, but the ruling motive of the founding of Georgia was charity, +and that is the greatest of these three. The spirit which dominated in +the measures taken for the beginning of the enterprise was embodied in +one of the most interesting personages of the dreary eighteenth +century--General James Oglethorpe. His eventful life covered the greater +part of the eighteenth century, but in some of the leading traits of his +character and incidents of his career he was rather a man of the +nineteenth. At the age of twenty-one he was already a veteran of the +army of Prince Eugene, having served with honorable distinction on the +staff of that great commander. Returning to England, in 1722 he entered +Parliament, and soon attained what in that age was the almost solitary +distinction of a social reformer. He procured the appointment of a +special committee to investigate the condition of the debtors' prisons; +and the shocking revelations that ensued led to a beginning of +reformation of the cruel and barbarous laws of England concerning +imprisonment for debt. But being of the higher type of reformers, he was +not content with such negative work. He cherished and elaborated a +scheme that should open a new career for those whose ill success in life +had subjected them to the pains and the ignominy due to criminals. It +was primarily for such as these that he projected the colony of Georgia. +But to a mind like his the victims of injustice in every land were +objects of practical sympathy. His colony should be an asylum for +sufferers from religious persecution from whatever quarter. The +enterprise was organized avowedly as a work of charity. The territory +was vested in trustees, who should receive no pay or emolument for their +services. Oglethorpe himself gave his unpaid labor as military and civil +head of the colony, declining to receive in return so much as a +settler's allotment of land. An appropriation of ten thousand pounds was +made by Parliament for the promotion of the work--the only government +subsidy ever granted to an American colony. With eager and unselfish +hopes of a noble service to be rendered to humanity, the generous +soldier embarked with a picked company of one hundred and twenty +emigrants, and on the 12th of February, 1733, landed at the foot of the +bluff on which now stands the city of Savannah. The attractions of the +genial climate and fertile soil, the liberal terms of invitation, and +the splendid schemes of profitable industry were diligently advertised, +and came to the knowledge of that noble young enthusiast, Zinzendorf, +count and Moravian bishop, whose estate of Herrnhut in Lusatia had +become an asylum for persecuted Christians; and missionary colonists of +that Moravian church of which every member was a missionary, and +companies of the exiled Salzburgers, the cruelty of whose sufferings +aroused the universal indignation of Protestant Europe, were mingled +with the unfortunates from English prisons in successive ship-loads of +emigrants. One such ship's company, among the earliest to be added to +the new colony, included some mighty factors in the future church +history of America and of the world. In February, 1736, a company of +three hundred colonists, with Oglethorpe at their head, landed at +Savannah. Among them was a reinforcement of twenty colonists for the +Moravian settlement, with Bishop David Nitschmann, and young Charles +Wesley, secretary to the governor, and his elder brother, John, now +thirty-three years old, eager for the work of evangelizing the heathen +Indians--an intensely narrow, ascetic, High-church ritualist and +sacramentarian. The voyage was a memorable one in history. Amid the +terrors of a perilous storm, Wesley, so liable to be lifted up with the +pride that apes humility, was humbled as he contrasted the agitations of +his own people with the cheerful faith and composure of his German +shipmates; and soon after the landing he was touched with the primitive +simplicity and beauty of the ordination service with which a pastor was +set over the Moravian settlement by Bishop Nitschmann. During the +twenty-two months of his service in Georgia, through the ascetic toils +and privations which he inflicted on himself and tried to inflict on +others, he seems as one whom the law has taken severely in hand to lead +him to Christ. It was after his return from America, among the +Moravians, first at London and afterward on a visit to Herrnhut, that he +was "taught the way of the Lord more perfectly."[125:1] + +The three shipmates, the Wesleys and Bishop Nitschmann, did not remain +long together. Nitschmann soon returned to Germany to lead a new colony +of his brethren to Pennsylvania; Charles Wesley remained for four months +at Frederica, and then recrossed the ocean, weary of the hardness of the +people's hearts; and, except for the painful and humiliating discipline +which was preparing him to "take the whole world to be his parish," it +had been well for John Wesley if he had returned with his brother. Never +did a really great and good man act more like a fool than he did in his +Georgia mission. The priestly arrogance with which he attempted to +enforce his crotchets of churchmanship on a mixed community in the edge +of the wilderness culminated at last in his hurling the thunderbolts of +excommunication at a girl who had jilted him, followed by his slipping +away from the colony between two days, with an indictment for defamation +on record against him, and his returning to London to resign to the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel his commission as missionary. +Just as he was landing, the ship was setting sail which bore to his +deserted field his old Oxford friend and associate in "the Methodist +Club," George Whitefield, then just beginning the career of meteoric +splendor which for thirty-two years dazzled the observers of both +hemispheres. He landed in Savannah in May, 1738. This was the first of +Whitefield's work in America. But it was not the beginning of the Great +Awakening. For many years there had been waiting and longing as of them +that watch for the morning. At Raritan and New Brunswick, in New Jersey, +and elsewhere, there had been prelusive gleams of dawn. And at +Northampton, in December, 1734, Jonathan Edwards had seen the sudden +daybreak and rejoiced with exceeding great joy. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[109:1] Corwin, pp. 58, 128. + +[111:1] It is notable that the concessions offered already by Carteret +and Berkeley in 1664 contained an unlimited pledge of religious liberty, +"any law, statute, usage, or custom of the realm of England to the +contrary notwithstanding" (Mulford, "History of New Jersey," p. 134). A +half-century of experience in colonization had satisfied some minds that +the principle adopted by the Quakers for conscience' sake was also a +sound business principle. + +[113:1] See the vindication of the act of the New Haven colonists in +adopting the laws of Moses as the statute-book of the colony, in the +"Thirteen Historical Discourses of L. Bacon," pp. 29-32. "The greatest +and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal jurisprudence by +any one act since the dark ages was that which was made by our fathers +when they determined 'that the judicial laws of God, as they were +delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, being +neither typical nor ceremonial nor having any reference to Canaan, shall +be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders and be a +rule to all the courts.'" + +[114:1] For the dealing of Fox with the case of John Perrot, who had a +divine call to wear his hat in meeting, see the "History of the Society +of Friends," by the Messrs. Thomas, pp. 197-199 (American Church History +Series, vol. xii.). + +[116:1] Quoted in Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 366. + +[117:1] Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 392. + +[117:2] H. C. Lodge, p. 213. + +[118:1] For a fuller account of the sources of the population of +Pennsylvania, see "The Making of Pennsylvania," by Sydney George Fisher +(Philadelphia, 1896). + +[120:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 210-212, 220. In a +few instances the work suffered from the unfit character of the +missionaries. A more common fault was the vulgar proselyting spirit +which appears in the missionaries' reports ("Digest of S. P. G. +Records," pp. 12-79). A certain _naïf_ insularity sometimes betrays +itself in their incapacity to adapt themselves to their new-world +surroundings. Brave and zealous Mr. Barton in Cumberland County recites +a formidable list of sects into which the people are divided, and with +unconscious humor recounts his efforts to introduce one sect more +(_ibid._, p. 37). They could hardly understand that in crossing the +ocean they did not bring with them the prerogatives of a national +establishment, but were in a position of dissent from the existing +establishments. "It grieved them that Church of England men should be +stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of dissenters" ("The Making +of Pennsylvania," p. 192). One of the most pathetically amusing +instances of the misfit of the Englishman in America is that of the Rev. +Mr. Poyer at Jamaica, L. I. The meeting-house and glebe-lands that had +been provided by the people of that parish for the use of themselves and +their pastor were gotten, neither honorably nor lawfully, into the +possession of the missionary of the "S. P. G." and his scanty following, +and held by him in spite of law and justice for twenty-five years. At +last the owners of the property succeeded in evicting him by process of +law. The victim of this persecution reported plaintively to the society +his "great and almost continual contentions with the Independents in his +parish." The litigation had been over the salary settled for the +minister of that parish, and also over the glebe-lands. But "by a late +Tryal at Law he has lost them and the Church itself, of which his +congregation has had the possession for twenty-five years." The +grievance went to the heart of his congregation, who bewail "the +emperious behaviour of these our enemies, who stick not to call +themselves the Established Church and us Dissenters" ("Digest of S. P. +G. Records," p. 61; Corwin, "Dutch Church," pp. 104, 105, 126, 127). + +[121:1] Dubbs, "Reformed Church," p. 281; Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. +260. + +[122:1] R. E. Thompson, "The Presbyterian Churches," pp. 22-29; S. S. +Green, "The Scotch-Irish in America," paper before the American +Antiquarian Society, April, 1895. "The great bulk of the emigrants came +to this country at two distinct periods of time: the first from 1718 to +the middle of the century, the second from 1771 to 1773.... In +consequence of the famine of 1740 and 1741, it is stated that for +several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the +American plantations; while from 1771 to 1773 the whole emigration from +Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 are weavers" (Green, p. +7). The companies that came to New England in 1718 were mainly absorbed +by the Congregationalism of that region (Thompson, p. 15). The church +founded in Boston by the Irish Presbyterians came in course of time to +have for its pastor the eminent William Ellery Channing (Green, p. 11). +Since the organization of the annual Scotch-Irish Congress in 1889, the +literature of this subject has become copious. (See "Bibliographical +Note" at the end of Mr. Green's pamphlet.) + +[125:1] The beautiful story of the processional progress of the Salzburg +exiles across the continent of Europe is well told by Dr. Jacobs, +"History of the Lutherans," pp. 153-159, with a copious extract from +Bancroft, vol. iii., which shows that that learned author did not +distinguish the Salzburgers from the Moravians. The account of the +ship's company in the storm, in Dr. Jacobs's tenth chapter, is full of +interest. There is a pathetic probability in his suggestion that in the +hymn "Jesus, lover of my soul," we have Charles Wesley's reminiscence of +those scenes of peril and terror. For this episode in the church history +of Georgia as seen from different points of view, see American Church +History Series, vols, iv., v., vii., viii. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +THE AMERICAN CHURCH ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING--A GENERAL VIEW. + + +By the end of one hundred years from the settlement of Massachusetts +important changes had come upon the chain of colonies along the Atlantic +seaboard in America. In the older colonies the people had been born on +the soil at two or three generations' remove from the original +colonists, or belonged to a later stratum of migration superimposed upon +the first. The exhausting toil and privations of the pioneer had been +succeeded by a good measure of thrift and comfort. There were yet bloody +campaigns to be fought out against the ferocity and craft of savage +enemies wielded by the strategy of Christian neighbors; but the severest +stress of the Indian wars was passed. In different degrees and according +to curiously diverse types, the institutions of a Christian civilization +were becoming settled. + +In the course of this hundred years the political organization of these +various colonies had been drawn into an approach to uniformity. In every +one of them, excepting Connecticut and Rhode Island, the royal or +proprietary government was represented by a governor and his staff, +appointed from England, and furnishing a point of contact which was in +every case and all the time a point of friction and irritation between +the colony and the mother country. The reckless laxity of the early +Stuart charters, which permitted the creation of practically independent +democratic republics with churches free from the English hierarchy, was +succeeded, under the House of Orange, by something that looked like a +statesmanlike care for the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges +of the English church. Throughout the colonies, at every viceregal +residence, it was understood that this church, even where it was not +established by law, was the favored official and court church. But +inasmuch as the royal governors were officially odious to the people, +and at the same time in many cases men of despicable personal character, +their influence did little more than create a little "sect of the +Herodians" within the range of their patronage. But though it gave no +real advantage to the preferred church, it was effective (as in +Massachusetts) in breaking down the exclusive pretensions of other +organizations. + +The Massachusetts theocracy, so called, fell with the revocation of the +charter by James II. It had stood for nearly fifty years--long enough to +accomplish the main end of that Nationalist principle which the +Puritans, notwithstanding their fraternizing with the Pilgrim +Separatists, had never let go. The organization of the church throughout +New England, excepting Rhode Island, had gone forward in even step with +the advance of population. Two rules had with these colonists the force +of axioms: first, that it was the duty of every town, as a Christian +community, to sustain the town church; secondly, that it was the duty of +every citizen of the town to contribute to this end according to his +ability. The breaking up of the town church by schisms and the shirking +of individual duty on the ground of dissent were alike discountenanced, +sometimes by severely intolerant measures. The ultimate collision of +these principles with the sturdy individualism that had been accepted +from the Separatists of Plymouth was inevitable. It came when the +"standing order" encountered the Baptist and the Quaker conscience. It +came again when the missionaries of the English established church, with +singular unconsciousness of the humor of the situation, pleaded the +sacred right of dissenting and the essential injustice of compelling +dissenters to support the parish church.[129:1] The protest may have +been illogical, but it was made effective by "arguments of weight," +backed by all the force of the British government. The exclusiveness of +the New England theocracies, already relaxed in its application to other +sects, was thenceforth at an end. The severity of church establishment +in New England was so far mitigated as at last to put an actual premium +on dissent. Holding still that every citizen is bound to aid in +maintaining the institutions of public worship, it relieved any one of +his assessment for the support of the parish church upon his filing a +certificate that he was contributing to the support of another +congregation, thus providing that any disaffection to the church of the +town must be organized and active. It was the very euthanasia of +establishment. But the state-church and church-state did not cease to be +until they had accomplished that for New England which has never been +accomplished elsewhere in America--the dividing of the settled regions +into definite parishes, each with its church and its learned minister. +The democratic autonomy of each church was jealously guarded, and yet +they were all knit together by terms of loose confederation into a vital +system. The impracticable notion of a threefold ministry in each church, +consisting of pastor, teacher, and ruling elder, failed long before the +first generation had passed; but, with this exception, it may justly be +said that the noble ideal of the Puritan fathers of New England of a +Christian state in the New World, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," was, +at the end of a hundred years from their planting, realized with a +completeness not common to such prophetic dreams. + +So solid and vital, at the point of time which we have assumed (1730), +seemed the cohesion of the "standing order" in New England, that only +two inconsiderable defections are visible to the historian. + +The tendency toward Baptist principles early disclosed itself among the +colonists. The example of Roger Williams was followed by less notable +instances; the shameful intolerance with which some of these were +treated shows how formidable this tendency seemed to those in authority. +But a more startling defection appeared about the year 1650, when +President Dunster of Harvard College, a man most honorable and lovable, +signified his adoption of the Baptist tenets. The treatment of him was +ungenerous, and for a time the petty persecutions that followed served +rather to discredit the clergy than really to hinder the spread of +Baptist principles. In the year 1718 the Baptist church of Boston +received fraternal recognition from the foremost representatives of the +Congregational clergy of Boston, with a public confession of the wrong +that they had done.[130:1] It is surprising to find, after all this +agitation and sowing of "the seed of the church," that in all New +England outside of Rhode Island there are in 1730 only six Baptist +churches, including (an honorable item) two Indian churches on the +islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.[131:1] + +The other departure from the "standing order" was at this date hardly +more extensive. The early planting of Episcopalian churches in Maine and +New Hampshire, with generous patronage and endowment, had languished and +died. In 1679 there was no Episcopal minister in all New England. In +1702 were begun the energetic and richly supported missions of the "S. +P. G." At the end of twenty-eight years there were in Rhode Island four +Episcopalian churches; in Massachusetts, three, two of them in the city +of Boston; in Connecticut, three.[131:2] But in the last-named colony an +incident had occurred, having apparently no intimate connection with the +"Venerable Society's" missions, but charged with weighty, and on the +whole beneficent, consequences for the future of the kingdom of Christ +in America. + +The incident was strikingly parallel to that of seventy years before, +when the president of Harvard College announced his acceptance of +Baptist principles. The day after the Yale commencement in September, +1722, a modest and respectful paper was presented to the trustees of the +college, signed by Rector Timothy Cutler and Tutor Brown (who +constituted the entire faculty of the college) and by five pastors of +good standing in the Connecticut churches. Two other pastors of note +were named as assenting to the paper, although not subscribing it. It +seemed a formidable proportion of the Connecticut clergy. The purport of +the paper was to signify that the signers were doubtful of the +validity, or persuaded of the invalidity, of presbyterial as +distinguished from episcopal ordination. The matter was considered with +the gravity which it merited, and a month later, at the time of the +meeting of the colonial legislature, was made the subject of a public +discussion, presided over with great dignity and amenity by Governor +Gurdon Saltonstall, formerly pastor of the church in New London. The +result was that, of the seven pastors assenting to the paper of the two +college men, only two adhered to them; but one of these two was that +able and excellent Samuel Johnson, whose later career as president of +King's College in New York, as well as the career of his no less +distinguished son, is an ornament to American history both of church and +state. + +This secession, small in number, but weighty in character, was of course +a painful shock to the hitherto unbroken unity of the church and clergy +of Connecticut. But it was not quite like a thunderbolt from a clear +sky. It had been immediately preceded by not a little conference and +correspondence with Connecticut pastors on the one hand, and on the +other hand with representatives of the powerful and wealthy Propagation +Society, on the question of support to be received from England for +those who should secede. Its prior antecedents reached farther back into +history. The Baptist convictions of the president of Harvard in 1650 +were not more clearly in line with the individualism of the Plymouth +Separatists than the scruples of the rector of Yale in 1722 were in line +with the Nationalism of Higginson and Winthrop. This sentiment, +especially strong in Connecticut, had given rise to much study as to the +best form of a colonial church constitution; and the results of this had +recently been embodied (in 1708) in the mildly classical system of the +Saybrook Platform. The filial love of the Puritan colonists toward the +mother church of England was by no means extinct in the third +generation. Alongside of the inevitable repugnance felt and manifested +toward the arrogance, insolence, and violence with which the claims of +the Episcopal Church were commended by royal governors and their +attachés and by some of the imported missionaries, there is ample +evidence of kindly and fraternal feeling, far beyond what might have +been expected, on the part of the New England clergy toward the +representatives of the Church of England. The first missionaries of the +"Venerable Society," Keith and Talbot, arriving in New England in 1702, +met with welcome from some of the ministers, who "both hospitably +entertained us in their houses and requested us to preach in their +congregations, which accordingly we did, and received great thanks both +from the ministers and people."[133:1] One of these hospitable pastors +was the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, who twenty years later, +as governor of the colony, presided at the debate which followed upon +the demission of Rector Cutler. + +The immediate results of what had been expected to lead off a large +defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but +very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere +and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among +men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted +with self-seeking or servility or with an unpatriotic shame for their +colonial home and sympathy with its political enemies. Elsewhere in New +England, and largely in Connecticut also, the Episcopal Church in its +beginnings was handicapped with a dead-weight of supercilious and odious +Toryism. The example of a man like Johnson showed that one might become +an Episcopalian without ceasing to be a patriotic American and without +holding himself aloof from the fellowship of good men. The conference +in Yale College library, September 13, 1722, rather than the planting of +a system of exotic missions, marks the true epoch from which to date the +progress of a genuinely American Episcopal Church.[134:1] + +Crossing the recently settled boundary line into New York, not yet risen +to rank with the foremost colonies, we find in 1730 a deepening of the +early character, which had marked that colony, of wide diversity among +the Christian people in point of race, language, doctrinal opinion, and +ecclesiastical connection. + +The ancient Dutch church, rallying from its almost asphyxia, had begun +not only to receive new life, but, under the fervid spiritual influence +of Domine Frelinghuysen, to "have it more abundantly" and to become a +means of quickening to other communions. It was bearing fruit, but its +fruit had not seed within itself after its kind. It continued to suffer, +in common with some other imported church systems, from depending on a +transatlantic hierarchy for the succession of its ministry. The supply +of imported ministers continued to be miserably inadequate to the need. +In the first four decades of the century the number of its congregations +more than doubled, rising to a total of sixty-five in New York and New +Jersey; and for these sixty-five congregations there were nineteen +ministers, almost all of them from Europe. This body of churches, so +inadequately manned, was still further limited in its activities by the +continually contracting barrier of the Dutch language. + +The English church, enjoying "the prestige of royal favor and princely +munificence," suffered also the drawbacks incidental to these +advantages--the odium attending the unjust and despotic measures +resorted to for its advancement, the vile character of royal officials, +who condoned their private vices by a more ostentatious zeal for their +official church, and the well-founded popular suspicion of its pervading +disloyalty to the interests and the liberties of the colonies in their +antagonism to the encroachments of the British government. It was +represented by one congregation in the city of New York, and perhaps a +dozen others throughout the colony.[135:1] It is to the honor of the +ministers of this church that it succeeded in so good a measure in +triumphing over its "advantages." The early pastors of Trinity Church +adorned their doctrine and their confession, and one such example as +that of the Rev. Thoroughgood Moor did much to redeem the character of +the church from the disgrace cast upon it by the lives of its patrons. +This faithful missionary had the signal honor of being imprisoned by the +dirty but zealous Lord Cornbury (own cousin to her Majesty the Queen, +and afterward Earl of Clarendon), of whom he had said, what everybody +knew, that he "deserved to be excommunicated"; and he had further +offended by refusing the communion to the lieutenant-governor, "upon the +account of some debauch and abominable swearing."[135:2] There was +surely some vigorous spiritual vitality in a religious body which could +survive the patronizing of a succession of such creatures as Cornbury +and his crew of extortioners and profligates. + +A third element in the early Christianity of New York was the +Presbyterians. These were represented, at the opening of the eighteenth +century, by that forerunner of the Scotch-Irish immigration, Francis +Makemie. The arrest and imprisonment of Makemie in 1706, under the +authority of Lord Cornbury, for the offense of preaching the gospel +without a license from the government, his sturdy defense and his +acquittal, make an epoch in the history of religious liberty in America, +and a perceptible step in the direction of American political liberty +and independence. + +The immense volume and strength of the Scotch-Irish immigration had +hardly begun to be perceptible in New York as early as 1730. The total +strength of the Presbyterian Church in 1705 was organized in +Philadelphia into a solitary presbytery containing six ministers. In +1717, the number having grown to seventeen, the one presbytery was +divided into four, which constituted a synod; and one of the four was +the presbytery of New York and New Jersey. But it was observed, at least +it might have been observed, that the growing Presbyterianism of this +northernmost region was recruited mainly from old England and from New +England--a fact on which were to depend important consequences in later +ecclesiastical history. + +The chief increment of the presbytery of New York and New Jersey was in +three parts, each of them planted from New England. The churches founded +from New Haven Colony in the neighborhood of Newark and Elizabethtown, +and the churches founded by Connecticut settlers on Long Island when +this was included in the jurisdiction of Connecticut, easily and without +serious objection conformed their organization to the Presbyterian +order. The first wave of the perennial westward migration of the New +Englanders, as it flowed over the hills from the valley of the +Housatonic into the valley of the Hudson, was observed by Domine +Selyns, away back in 1696, to be attended by many preachers educated at +Harvard College.[137:1] But the churches which they founded grew into +the type, not of Cambridge nor of Saybrook, but of Westminster. + +The facility with which the New England Christians, moving westward or +southwestward from their cold northeastern corner of the country, have +commonly consented to forego their cherished usages and traditions of +church order and accept those in use in their new homes, and especially +their readiness in conforming to the Presbyterian polity, has been a +subject of undue lamentation and regret to many who have lacked the +faculty of recognizing in it one of the highest honors of the New +England church. But whether approved or condemned, a fact so unusual in +church history, and especially in the history of the American church, is +entitled to some study. 1. It is to be explained in part, but not +altogether, by the high motive of a willingness to sacrifice personal +preferences, habits, and convictions of judgment, on matters not of +primary importance, to the greater general good of the community. 2. The +Presbyterian polity is the logical expression of that Nationalist +principle which was cherished by many of the Puritan fathers, which +contended at the birth of New England with the mere Independency of the +Pilgrims, and which found an imperfect embodiment in the platforms of +Cambridge and Saybrook. The New England fathers in general, before their +views suffered a sea-change in the course of their migrations, were +Episcopalians and Presbyterians rather than Congregationalists; and if, +in the course of this history, we shall find many in their later +generations conforming to a mitigated form of the Westminster polity, or +to a liberalized and Americanized Episcopal Church, instead of finding +this to be a degeneration, we shall do well to ask whether it is not +rather a reversion to type. 3. Those who grow up in a solidly united +Christian community are in a fair way to be trained in the simplicity of +the gospel, and not in any specialties of controversy with contending or +competing sects. Members of the parish churches of New England going +west had an advantage above most others, in that they could go simply as +representatives of the church of Christ, and not of a sect of the +church, or of one side of some controversy in which they had never had +occasion to interest themselves. 4. The principle of congregational +independency, not so much inculcated as acted on in New England, carries +with it the corollary that a congregation may be Presbyterian or +Episcopalian or Methodist, if it judges best, without thereby giving the +individual Christian any justification for secession or schism. 5. The +change, in the westward movement of Christian civilization, from the +congregational order to the classical, coincides with the change in the +frame of civil polity from town government to county government. In the +beginning the civil state in New England was framed after the model of +the church.[138:1] It is in accordance with the common course of church +history that when the people were transported from the midst of pure +democracies to the midst of representative republics their church +institutions should take on the character of the environment. + +The other factors of the religious life of New York require only brief +mention. + +There were considerable Quaker communities, especially on western Long +Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the +fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this +Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and +suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that +"middle age of Quakerism"[139:1] in which it made itself felt in the +life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective, +protests against popular wrongs. + +Inconsiderable in number, but of the noblest quality, was the +immigration of French Huguenots, which just before and just after the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought to New York and its +neighborhood a half-dozen congregations, accompanied by pastors whose +learning, piety, and devotion to the work of Christ were worthy of that +school of martyrdom in which they had been trained. They were not +numerous enough, nor compactly enough settled, to maintain their own +language in use, and soon became merged, some in the Dutch church and +some in the English. Some of their leading pastors accepted salaries +from the Propagation Society, tendered to them on condition of their +accepting the ordination and conforming to the ritual of the English +church. The French Reformed Church does not appear organically in the +later history of the colony, but the history of the State and of the +nation is never largely written without commemorating, by the record of +family names made illustrious in every department of honorable activity, +the rich contribution made to the American church and nation by the +cruel bigotry and the political fatuity of Louis XIV.[139:2] + +The German element in the religious life of New York, at the period +under consideration, was of even less historical importance. The +political philanthropy of Queen Anne's government, with a distinct +understanding between the right hand and the left, took active measure +to promote the migration of Protestant refugees from all parts of +Germany to the English colonies in America. In the year 1709 a great +company of these unhappy exiles, commonly called "poor Palatines" from +the desolated region whence many of them had been driven out, were +dropped, helpless and friendless, in the wilderness of Schoharie County, +and found themselves there practically in a state of slavery through +their ignorance of the country and its language. There were few to care +for their souls. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was +promptly in the field, with its diligent missionaries and its ignoble +policy of doing the work of Christ and humanity with a shrewd eye to the +main chance of making proselytes to its party.[140:1] With a tardiness +which it is difficult not to speak of as characteristic, after the lapse +of twenty-one years the classis of Amsterdam recognized its +responsibility for this multitude of wandering sheep; and at last, in +1793, the German Reformed Church had so far emancipated itself from its +bondage to the old-country hierarchy as to assume, almost a century too +late, the cure of these poor souls. But this migration added little to +the religious life of the New York Colony, except a new element of +diversity to a people already sufficiently heterogeneous. The greater +part of these few thousands gladly found their way to the more +hospitable colony of Pennsylvania, leaving traces of themselves in +family names scattered here and there, and in certain local names, like +that of Palatine Bridge. + +The general impression left on the mind by this survey of the Christian +people of New York in 1730 is of a mass of almost hopelessly +incongruous materials, out of which the brooding Spirit of God shall by +and by bring forth the unity of a new creation. + + * * * * * + +The population of the two Jerseys continued to bear the character +impressed on it by the original colonization. West Jersey was +predominantly Quaker; East Jersey showed in its institutions of church +and school the marks made upon it by the mingling of Scotch and Yankee. +But there was one point at which influences had centered which were to +make New Jersey the seed-plot of a new growth of church life for the +continent. + +The intolerable tyranny of Lord Cornbury in New York, at the beginning +of the century, had driven many of the Dutch Christians of that colony +across the Hudson. The languishing vine throve by transplanting. In the +congenial neighborhood of the Calvinists of Scotland and New England the +cluster of churches in the region of New Brunswick came to be known as +"the garden of the Dutch church." To this region, bearing a name +destined to great honor in American church history, came from Holland, +in 1720, Domine Theodore J. Frelinghuysen. The fervor and earnestness of +his preaching, unwonted in that age, wakened a religious feeling in his +own congregation, which overflowed the limits of a single parish and +became as one of the streams that make glad the city of God. + +In the year 1718 there arrived at the port of Philadelphia an Irishman, +William Tennent, with his four sons, the eldest a boy of fifteen. He was +not a Scotch-Irishman, but an English-Irishman--a clergyman of the +established Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland. He lost no time in +connecting himself with the Presbyterian synod of Philadelphia, and +after a few years of pastoral service in the colony of New York became +pastor of the Presbyterian church at Neshaminy, in Pennsylvania, twenty +miles north of Philadelphia. Here his zeal for Christian education moved +him to begin a school, which, called from the humble building in which +it was held, became famous in American Presbyterian history as the Log +College. Here were educated many men who became eminent in the ministry +of the gospel, and among them the four boys who had come with their +father from Ireland. Gilbert, the eldest and most distinguished of them, +came in 1727, from his temporary position as tutor in the Log College, +to be pastor to the Presbyterian church in New Brunswick, where +Frelinghuysen, in the face of opposition from his own brethren in the +ministry, had for seven years pursued his deeply spiritual and fruitful +work as pastor to the Dutch church. Whatever debate there may be over +the question of an official and tactual succession in the church, the +existence of a vital and spiritual succession, binding "the generations +each to each," need not be disputed by any. Sometimes, as here, the +succession is distinctly traceable. Gilbert Tennent was own son in the +ministry to Theodore Frelinghuysen as truly as Timothy to Paul, but he +became spiritual father to a great multitude. + + * * * * * + +In the year 1730 the total population of Pennsylvania was estimated by +Governor Gordon at forty-nine thousand. In the less than fifty years +since the colony was settled it had outstripped all the older colonies, +and Philadelphia, its chief town, continued to be by far the most +important port for the landing of immigrants. The original Quaker +influence was still dominant in the colony, but the very large majority +of the population was German; and presently the Quakers were to find +their political supremacy departing, and were to acquiesce in the change +by abdicating political preferment.[143:1] The religious influence of +the Society of Friends continued to be potent and in many respects most +salutary. But the exceptional growth and prosperity of the colony was +attended with a vast "unearned increment" of wealth to the first +settlers, and the maxim, "Religio peperit divitias, et mater devorata +est a prole,"[143:2] received one of the most striking illustrations in +all history. So speedily the Society had entered on its Middle +Age;[143:3] the most violent of protests against formalism had begun to +congeal into a precise and sometimes frivolous system of formalities. +But the lasting impress made on the legislation of the colony by Penn +and his contemporaries is a monument of their wise and Christian +statesmanship. Up to their time the most humane penal codes in +Christendom were those of New England, founded on the Mosaic law. But +even in these, and still more in the application of them, there were +traces of that widely prevalent feeling that punishment is society's +bitter and malignant revenge on the criminal. The penal code and the +prison discipline of Pennsylvania became an object of admiring study for +social reformers the world over, and marked a long stage in the +advancement of the kingdom of God. The city of Philadelphia early took +the lead of American towns, not only in size, but in its public +charities and its cultivation of humane arts. + +Notwithstanding these eminent honors, there is much in the later history +of the great commonwealth in which Quakerism held dominion for the +greater part of a century to reflect doubt on the fitness of that form +of Christianity for conducting the affairs, either civil or religious, +of a great community. + +There is nothing in the personal duty of non-resistance of evil, as +inculcated in the New Testament, that conflicts with the functions of +the civil governor--even the function of bearing the sword as God's +minister. Rather, each of these is the complement and counterpart of the +other. Among the early colonial governors no man wielded the sword of +the ruler more effectively than the Quaker Archdale in the Carolinas. It +is when this law of personal duty is assumed as the principle of public +government that the order of society is inverted, and the function of +the magistrate is inevitably taken up by the individual, and the old +wilderness law of blood-revenge is reinstituted. The legislation of +William Penn involved no abdication of the power of the sword by the +civil governor. The enactment, however sparing, of capital laws conceded +by implication every point that is claimed by Christian moralists in +justification of war. But it is hardly to be doubted that the tendency +of Quaker politics so to conduct civil government as that it shall +"resist not evil" is responsible for some of the strange paradoxes in +the later history of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth was founded in good +faith on principles of mutual good will with the Indians and tender +regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional +amity, and of a permanent peace policy. Its history has been +characterized, beyond that of other States, by foul play toward the +Indians and protracted Indian wars, by acrimonious and sometimes bloody +sectarian conflicts, by obstinate insurrections against public +order,[144:1] and by cruel and exterminating war upon honest settlers, +founded on a mere open question of title to territory.[144:2] + +The failure of Quakerism is even more conspicuous considered as a +church discipline. There is a charm as of apostolic simplicity and +beauty in its unassuming hierarchy of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and +yearly meetings, corresponding by epistles and by the visits of +traveling evangelists, which realizes the type of the primitive church +presented in "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." But it was never +able to outgrow, in the large and free field to which it was +transplanted, the defects incident to its origin in a protest and a +schism. It never learned to commend itself to men as a church for all +Christians, and never ceased to be, even in its own consciousness, a +coterie of specialists. Penn, to be sure, in his youthful overzeal, had +claimed exclusive and universal rights for Quakerism as "the alone good +way of life and salvation," all religions, faiths, and worships besides +being "in the darkness of apostasy."[145:1] But after the abatement of +that wonderful first fervor which within a lifetime carried "its line +into all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world," it was +impossible to hold it to this pitch. Claiming no divine right to all +men's allegiance, it felt no duty of opening the door to all men's +access. It was free to exclude from the meeting on arbitrary and even on +frivolous grounds. As zeal decayed, the energies of the Society were +mainly shown in protesting and excluding and expelling. God's husbandry +does not prosper when his servants are over-earnest in rooting up tares. +The course of the Society of Friends in the eighteenth century was +suicidal. It held a noble opportunity of acting as pastor to a great +commonwealth. It missed this great opportunity, for which it was perhaps +constitutionally disqualified, and devoted itself to edifying its own +members and guarding its own purity. So it was that, saving its soul, it +lost it. The vineyard must be taken away from it. + +And there were no other husbandmen to take the vineyard. The petty +German sects, representing so large a part of the population, were +isolated by their language and habits. The Lutherans and the Reformed, +trained in established churches to the methods and responsibilities of +parish work, were not yet represented by any organization. The +Scotch-Irish Presbyterian immigration was pouring in at Philadelphia +like a flood, sometimes whole parishes at once, each bringing its own +pastor; and it left large traces of itself in the eastern counties of +Pennsylvania, while it rushed to the western frontier and poured itself +like a freshet southwesterly through the valleys of the Blue Ridge and +the Alleghanies. But the Presbyterian churches of eastern Pennsylvania, +even as reinforced from England and New England, were neither many nor +strong; the Baptists were feebler yet, although both these bodies were +giving signs of the strength they were both about to develop.[147:1] +The Episcopalians had one strong and rapidly growing church in +Philadelphia, and a few languishing missions in country towns sustained +by gifts from England. There were as yet no Methodists. + + * * * * * + +Crossing the boundary line from Pennsylvania into Maryland--the line +destined to become famous in political history as Mason and Dixon's--we +come to the four Southern colonies, Maryland, Virginia, and the two +Carolinas. Georgia in 1730 has not yet begun to be. All these have +strongly marked characteristics in common, which determine in advance +the character of their religious history. They are not peculiar in being +slave colonies; there is no colony North or South in which slaves are +not held under sanction of law. Georgia, in its early years, is to have +the solitary honor of being an antislavery and prohibitionist colony. +But the four earlier Southern colonies are unlike their Northern +neighbors in this, that the institution of slavery dominates their whole +social life. The unit of the social organism is not the town, for there +are no towns; it is the plantation. In a population thus dispersed over +vast tracts of territory, schools and churches are maintained with +difficulty, or not maintained at all. Systems of primary and secondary +schools are impracticable, and, for want of these, institutions of +higher education either languish or are never begun. A consequent +tendency, which, happily, there were many influences to resist, was for +this townless population to settle down into the condition of those who, +in distinction from the early Christians, came to be called _pagani_, or +"men of the hamlets," and _Heiden_, or "men of the heath." + +Another common characteristic of the four Southern colonies is that +upon them all was imposed by foreign power a church establishment not +acceptable to the people. In the Carolinas the attempted establishment +of the English church was an absolute failure. It was a church (with +slight exceptions) without parishes, without services, without clergy, +without people, but with certain pretensions in law which were +hindrances in the way of other Christian work, and which tended to make +itself generally odious. In the two older colonies the Established +Church was worse than a failure. It had endowments, parsonages, glebes, +salaries raised by public tax, and therefore it had a clergy--and _such_ +a clergy! Transferring to America the most shameful faults of the +English Establishment, it gave the sacred offices of the Christian +ministry by "patronage" into the hands of debauched and corrupt +adventurers, whose character in general was below the not very lofty +standard of the people whom they pretended to serve in the name of Jesus +Christ. Both in Virginia and in Maryland the infliction of this rabble +of simonists as a burden upon the public treasury was a nuisance under +which the people grew more and more restive from year to year. There was +no spiritual discipline to which this _prêtraille_ was amenable.[148:1] +It was the constant effort of good citizens, in the legislature and in +the vestries, if not to starve out the vermin, at least to hold them in +some sort of subjection to the power of the purse. The struggle was one +of the antecedents of the War of Independence, and the vestries of the +Virginia parishes, with their combined ecclesiastical and civil +functions, became a training-school for some of the statesmen of the +Revolution. + +In the general dereliction of churchly care for the people of the +Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main +responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal +hindrances, by earnest Christians of various names, whom the established +clergy vainly affected to despise. The Baptists and the Presbyterians, +soon to be so powerfully prevalent throughout the South, were +represented by a few scattered congregations. But the church of the +people of the South at this period seems to have been the Quaker +meeting, and the ministry the occasional missionary who, bearing +credentials from some yearly meeting, followed in the pioneer footsteps +of George Fox, and went from one circle of Friends to another, through +those vast expanses of thinly settled territory, to revive and confirm +and edify. The early fervors of the Society were soon spent. Its work +was strangely unstable. The proved defects of it as a working system +were grave. The criticism of George Keith seems justified by the +event--its candle needed a candlestick. But no man can truly write the +history of the church of Christ in the United States without giving +honor to the body which for so long a time and over so vast an area bore +the name and testimony of Jesus almost alone; and no man can read the +journeys and labors of John Woolman, mystic and ascetic saint, without +recognizing that he and others like-minded were nothing less than true +apostles of the Lord Jesus. + + * * * * * + +One impression made by this general survey of the colonies is that of +the absence of any sign of unity among the various Christian bodies in +occupation. One corner of the great domain, New England, was thickly +planted with homogeneous churches in mutual fellowship. One order of +Christians, the Quakers, had at least a framework of organization +conterminous with the country. In general there were only scattered +members of a Christian community, awaiting the inbreathing of some +quickening spiritual influence that should bring bone to its bone and +erect the whole into a living church. + +Another and very gratifying impression from the story thus far is the +general fidelity of the Christian colonists in the work of the gospel +among the heathen Indians. There was none of the colonies that did not +make profession of a zealous purpose for the Christianizing of the +savages; and it is only just to say, in the face of much unjust and evil +talk, that there was none that did not give proof of its sincerity. In +Virginia, the Puritans Whitaker and Thomas Dale; in Maryland, the +earliest companies of Jesuit missionaries; Campanius among the Swedish +Lutherans; Megapolensis among the Dutchmen, and the Jesuit martyr Jogues +in the forests of New York; in New England, not only John Eliot and +Roger Williams and the Mayhews, but many a village pastor like Fitch of +Norwich and Pierson of Branford, were distinguished in the first +generation by their devotion to this duty.[150:1] The succession of +faithful missionaries has never failed from that day to this. The large +expectations of the churches are indicated by the erection of one of the +earliest buildings at Harvard College for the use of Indian students. At +William and Mary College not less than seventy Indian students at one +time are said to have been gathered for an advanced education. It was no +fault of the colonial churches that these earnest and persistent efforts +yielded small results. "We discover a strange uniformity of feature in +the successive failures.... Always, just when the project seemed most +hopeful, an indiscriminate massacre of missionaries and converts +together swept the enterprise out of existence. The experience of all +was the same."[151:1] + + * * * * * + +It will be a matter of growing interest, as we proceed, to trace the +relation of the American church to negro slavery. + +It is a curious fact, not without some later analogies, that the +introduction into the New World of this "direful spring of woes +unnumbered" was promoted, in the first instance, by the good Las Casas, +as the hopeful preventive of a worse evil. Touched by the spectacle of +whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel +servitude imposed upon them by the Spanish, it seemed to him a less +wrong to transfer the infliction of this injustice to shoulders more +able to bear it. But "man's inhumanity to man" needed no pretext of +philanthropy. From the landing of the Dutch ship at Jamestown in 1619, +with her small invoice of fourteen negroes, the dismal trade went on +increasing, in spite of humane protest and attempted prohibition. The +legislature of Massachusetts, which was the representative of the +church, set forth what it conceived to be the biblical ethics on the +subject. Recognizing that "lawful captives taken in just wars" may be +held in bondage, it declared among its earliest public acts, in 1641, +that, with this exception, no involuntary bond-slavery, villeinage, or +captivity should ever be in the colony; and in 1646 it took measures for +returning to Africa negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver. It is +not strange that reflection on the golden rule should soon raise doubts +whether the precedents of the Book of Joshua had equal authority with +the law of Christ. In 1675 John Eliot, from the midst of his work among +the Indians, warned the governor against the sale of Indians taken in +war, on the ground that "the selling of souls is dangerous merchandise," +and "with a bleeding and burning passion" remonstrated against "the +abject condition of the enslaved Africans." In 1700 that typical +Puritan, Judge Samuel Sewall, published his pamphlet on "The Selling of +Joseph," claiming for the negroes the rights of brethren, and predicting +that there would be "no progress in gospeling" until slavery should be +abolished. Those were serious days of antislavery agitation, when +Cotton Mather, in his "Essays to Do Good," spoke of the injustice of +slavery in terms such that his little book had to be expurgated by the +American Tract Society to accommodate it to the degenerate conscience of +a later day, and when the town of Boston in 1701 took measures "to put a +period to negroes being slaves." Such endeavors after universal justice +and freedom, on the part of the Christians of New England, thwarted by +the insatiable greed of British traders and politicians, were not to +cease until, with the first enlargement of independence, they should +bring forth judgment to victory. + +The voice of New England was echoed from Pennsylvania. The Mennonites of +Germantown, in 1688, framed in quaint and touching language their +petition for the abolition of slavery, and the Quaker yearly meetings +responded one to another with unanimous protest. But the mischief grew +and grew. In the Northern colonies the growth was stunted by the +climate. Elsewhere the institution, beginning with the domestic service +of a few bondmen attached to their masters' families, took on a new type +of malignity as it expanded. In proportion as the servile population +increases to such numbers as to be formidable, laws of increasing +severity are directed to restraining or repressing it. The first +symptoms of insurrection are followed by horrors of bloody vengeance, +and "from that time forth the slave laws have but one quality--that of +ferocity engendered by fear."[153:1] It was not from the willful +inhumanity of the Southern colonies, but from their terrors, that those +slave codes came forth which for nearly two centuries were the shame of +America and the scandal of Christendom. It is a comfort to the heart of +humanity to reflect that the people were better than their laws; it was +only at the recurring periods of fear of insurrection that they were +worse. In ordinary times human sympathy and Christian principle softened +the rigors of the situation. The first practical fruits of the revival +of religion in the Southern colonies were seen in efforts of Christian +kindness toward the souls and bodies of the slaves. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[129:1] One is touched by the plaintive grief of the Rev. Mr. Muirson, +who has come from the established church of England to make proselytes +from the established churches of Connecticut. He writes to the "S. P. +G.," without a thought of casting any reflections upon his patrons: "It +would require more time than you would willingly bestow on these Lines, +to express how rigidly and severely they treat our People, by taking +their Estate by distress when they do not willingly pay to support their +Ministers" ("Digest of S. P. G. Records," p. 43). The pathos of the +situation is intensified when we bear in mind the relation of this +tender-hearted gentleman's own emoluments to the taxes extorted from the +Congregationalists in his New York parish. + +[130:1] See above, p. 107. + +[131:1] Newman, "Baptist Churches in the United States," pp. 197, 198, +231. + +[131:2] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," chaps, iv., v.; C. F. +Adams, "Three Episodes in Massachusetts History," pp. 342, 621. + +[133:1] "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 42. + +[134:1] Tiffany, chap. v. For a full account of these beginnings in +Connecticut in their historical relations, see L. Bacon on "The +Episcopal Church in Connecticut" ("New Englander," vol. xxv., pp. +283-329). + +[135:1] There were on duty in New York in 1730, besides the minister of +Trinity Church, ten missionaries of the "S. P. G.," including several +employed specially among the Indians and the negroes. Fifteen years +later there were reported to the "Venerable Society" in New York and New +Jersey twenty-two churches ("Digest of S. P. G.," pp. 855, 856; Tiffany, +p. 178). + +[135:2] "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 68 and note. + +[137:1] Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," p. 115. + +[138:1] "Mr. Hooker did often quote a saying out of Mr. Cartwright, that +no man fashioneth his house to his hangings, but his hangings to his +house. It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting +forth of God's house, which is his church, than to accommodate the +church frame to the civil state" (John Cotton, quoted by L. Bacon, +"Historical Discourses," p. 18). + +[139:1] Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 239. + +[139:2] Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," pp. 77, 78, 173. + +[140:1] Illustrations of the sordid sectarianism of the "Venerable +Society's" operations are painfully frequent in the pages of the "digest +of the S. P. G." See especially on this particular case the action +respecting Messrs. Kocherthal, Ehlig, and Beyse (p. 61). + +[143:1] S. G. Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 125; Thomas, "The +Society of Friends," p. 235. + +[143:2] "Religion gave birth to wealth, and was devoured by her own +offspring." The aphorism is ascribed to Lord Falkland. + +[143:3] Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 236. + +[144:1] Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," pp. 166-169, 174. + +[144:2] It is not easy to define the peculiarity of Penn's Indian +policy. It is vulgarly referred to as if it consisted in just dealing, +especially in not taking their land except by fair purchase; and the +"Shackamaxon Treaty," of which nothing is known except by vague report +and tradition, is spoken of as some thing quite unprecedented in this +respect. The fact is that this measure of virtue was common to the +English colonists generally, and eminently to the New England colonists. +A good example of the ordinary cant of historical writers on this +subject is found in "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 238. The writer +says of the Connecticut Puritans: "They occupied the land by squatter +sovereignty.... It seemed like a pleasant place; they wanted it. They +were the saints, and the saints, as we all know, shall inherit the +earth.... Having originally acquired their land simply by taking it, ... +they naturally grew up with rather liberal views as to their right to +any additional territory that pleased their fancy." No purchase by Penn +was made with more scrupulous regard to the rights of the Indians than +the purchases by which the settlers of Connecticut acquired title to +their lands; but I know of no New England precedent for the somewhat +Punic piece of sharp practice by which the metes and bounds of one of +the Pennsylvania purchases were laid down. + +The long exemption of Pennsylvania from trouble with the Indians seems +to be due to the fact that an exceptionally mild, considerate, and +conscientious body of settlers was confronted with a tribe of savages +thoroughly subdued and cowed in recent conflicts with enemies both red +and white. It seems clear, also, that the exceptional ferocity of the +forty years of uninterrupted war with the Indians that ensued was due in +part to the long dereliction by the Quaker government of its duty of +protecting its citizens and punishing murder, robbery, and arson when +committed by its copper-colored subjects. + +[145:1] Penn's "Truth Exalted" (quoted in "Encyclopædia Britannica," +vol. xviii., p. 493). + +[147:1] In 1741, after a decade of great activity and growth, the entire +clerical strength of the American Presbyterian Church, in its four +presbyteries, was forty-seven ministers (Thompson, "Presbyterian +Churches," p. 33). + +[148:1] It is a subject of unceasing lament on the part of historians of +the American Episcopal Church that the mother church, all through the +colonial days, should have obstinately refused to the daughter the gift +of the episcopate. There is no denying the grave disadvantages thus +inflicted. But it admits of doubt whether such bishops, with such +conditions, as would have been conceded by the English church of the +eighteenth century, would, after all, have been so very precious a boon. +We shrink from the imputation upon the colonial church of Maryland and +Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it would have been +considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity of the English +church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, culminating in +Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far Americanized the +Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome minister was ever to +be forced from outside on one of its parishes. After the Revolution it +became possible to set up the episcopate also on American principles. +Those who are burdened with regret over the long delay of the American +Protestant episcopate may find no small consolation in pondering the +question, what kind of an outfit of bishops, with canons attached, might +have been hoped for from Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Bute? On the whole, +at this point the American Episcopal Church is in the habit of pitying +itself too much. It has something to be thankful for. + +[150:1] It is a curious exception, if it is indeed an exception, that +the one Christian colony that shows no record of early Indian missions +should be that of William Penn. Could this be due to the Quaker faith in +the sufficiency of "the Light that lighteneth every man that cometh into +the world"? + +The type of theology and method of instruction used by some of the +earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of +adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of +Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man +for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of +Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an +illustration both of his good intentions and of his methods, which were +not so good, in "_Some Helps for the Indians: Shewing them how to +Improve their Natural Reason, to Know the True God and the Christian +Religion_." This catechism is printed in the Indian language with an +English version interlined. + +"_Q._ How do you prove that there is but one true God? + +"_An._ Because the reason why singular things of the same kind are +multiplied is not to be found in the nature of God; for the reason why +such like things are multiplied is from the fruitfulness of their +causes: but God hath no cause of his being, but is of himself. Therefore +he is one." (And so on through _secondly_ and _thirdly_.) + +_Per contra_, a sermon to the Stockbridge Indians by the most ponderous +of the metaphysical preachers of New England, Samuel Hopkins, is +beautifully simple and childlike. It is given in full in Park's "Life of +Hopkins," pp. 46-49. + +[151:1] McConnell, "History of the American Episcopal Church," p. 7. The +statement calls for qualification in detail, but the general fact is +unmistakable. + +[153:1] H. C. Lodge, "English Colonies," p. 67 _et seq._ + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +THE GREAT AWAKENING + + +It was not wholly dark in American Christendom before the dawn of the +Great Awakening. The censoriousness which was the besetting sin of the +evangelists in that great religious movement, the rhetorical temptation +to glorify the revival by intensifying the contrast with the antecedent +condition, and the exaggerated _revivalism_ ever since so prevalent in +the American church,--the tendency to consider religion as consisting +mainly in scenes and periods of special fervor, and the intervals +between as so much void space and waste time,--all these have combined +to deepen the dark tints in which the former state is set before us in +history. + +The power of godliness was manifest in the earlier days by many +infallible signs, not excluding those "times of refreshing" in which the +simultaneous earnestness of many souls compels the general attention. +Even in Northampton, where the doctrine of the venerable Stoddard as to +the conditions of communion has been thought to be the low-water mark of +church vitality, not less than five such "harvest seasons" were within +recent memory. It was to this parish in a country town on the frontier +of civilization, but the most important in Massachusetts outside of +Boston, that there came, in the year 1727, to serve as colleague to his +aged grandfather, Pastor Stoddard, a young man whose wonderful +intellectual and spiritual gifts had from his childhood awakened the +pious hopes of all who had known him, and who was destined in his future +career to be recognized as the most illustrious of the saints and +doctors of the American church. The authentic facts of the boyhood of +Jonathan Edwards read like the myths that adorn the legendary Lives of +the Saints. As an undergraduate of Yale College, before the age of +seventeen, his reflections on the mysteries of God, and the universe, +and the human mind, were such as even yet command the attention and +respect of students of philosophy. He remained at New Haven two years +after graduation, for the further study of theology, and then spent +eight months in charge of the newly organized Presbyterian church in New +York.[156:1] After this he spent two years as tutor at Yale,--"one of +the pillar tutors, and the glory of the college,"--at the critical +period after the defection of Rector Cutler to the Church of +England.[156:2] From this position he was called in 1726, at the age of +twenty-three, to the church at Northampton. There he was ordained +February 15, 1727, and thither a few months later he brought his +"espousèd saint," Sarah Pierpont, consummate flower of Puritan +womanhood, thenceforth the companion not only of his pastoral cares and +sorrows, but of his seraphic contemplations of divine things. + +The intensely earnest sermons, the holy life, and the loving prayers of +one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church were not long +in bearing abundant fruit. In a time of spiritual and moral depression, +when the world, the flesh, and the devil seemed to be gaining against +the gospel, sometime in the year 1733 signs began to be visible of +yielding to the power of God's Word. The frivolous or wanton frolics of +the youth began to be exchanged for meetings for religious conference. +The pastor was encouraged to renewed tenderness and solemnity in his +preaching. His themes were justification by faith, the awfulness of +God's justice, the excellency of Christ, the duty of pressing into the +kingdom of God. Presently a young woman, a leader in the village +gayeties, became "serious, giving evidence," even to the severe judgment +of Edwards, "of a heart truly broken and sanctified." A general +seriousness began to spread over the whole town. Hardly a single person, +old or young, but felt concerned about eternal things. According to +Edwards's "Narrative": + + "The work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true + saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the + town, so that in the spring and summer, anno 1735, the town + seemed to be full of the presence of God. It was never so full + of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress, as + it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in + almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on the + account of salvation's being brought unto them; parents + rejoicing over their children as being new-born, and husbands + over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of + God were then seen in his sanctuary. God's day was a delight, + and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were + then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, + every one intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to + drink in the words of the minister as they came from his + mouth; the assembly in general were from time to time in tears + while the Word was preached, some weeping with sorrow and + distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and + concern for the souls of their neighbors. Our public praises + were then greatly enlivened; God was then served in our + psalmody in some measure in the beauty of holiness." + +The crucial test of the divineness of the work was given when the people +presented themselves before the Lord with a solemn act of thanksgiving +for his great goodness and his gracious presence in the town of +Northampton, with publicly recorded vows to renounce their evil ways and +put away their abominations from before his eyes. They solemnly promise +thenceforth, in all dealings with their neighbor, to be governed by the +rules of honesty, justice, and uprightness; not to overreach or defraud +him, nor anywise to injure him, whether willfully or through want of +care; to regard not only their own interest, but his; particularly, to +be faithful in the payment of just debts; in the case of past wrongs +against any, never to rest till they have made full reparation; to +refrain from evil speaking, and from everything that feeds a spirit of +bitterness; to do nothing in a spirit of revenge; not to be led by +private or partisan interest into any course hurtful to the interests of +Christ's kingdom; particularly, in public affairs, not to allow ambition +or partisanship to lead them counter to the interest of true religion. +Those who are young promise to allow themselves in no diversions that +would hinder a devout spirit, and to avoid everything that tends to +lasciviousness, and which will not be approved by the infinitely pure +and holy eye of God. Finally, they consecrate themselves watchfully to +perform the relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, +brothers and sisters, masters, mistresses, and servants. + +So great a work as this could not be hid. The whole region of the +Connecticut Valley, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and neighboring +regions felt the influence of it. The fame of it went abroad. A letter +of Edwards's in reply to inquiries from his friend, Dr. Colman, of +Boston, was forwarded to Dr. Watts and Dr. Guise, of London, and by them +published under the title of "Narrative of Surprising Conversions." A +copy of the little book was carried in his pocket for wayside reading on +a walk from London to Oxford by John Wesley, in the year 1738. Not yet +in the course of his work had he "seen it on this fashion," and he +writes in his journal: "Surely this is the Lord's doing, and it is +marvelous in our eyes." + +Both in this narrative and in a later work on "The Distinguishing Marks +of a Work of the Spirit of God," one cannot but admire the divine gift +of a calm wisdom with which Edwards had been endowed as if for this +exigency. He is never dazzled by the incidents of the work, nor +distracted by them from the essence of it. His argument for the +divineness of the work is not founded on the unusual or extraordinary +character of it, nor on the impressive bodily effects sometimes +attending it, such as tears, groans, outcries, convulsions, or +faintings, nor on visions or ecstasies or "impressions." What he claims +is that the work may be divine, _notwithstanding_ the presence of these +incidents.[159:1] It was doubtless owing to the firm and judicious +guidance of such a pastor that the intense religious fervor of this +first awakening at Northampton was marked by so much of sobriety and +order. In later years, in other regions, and under the influence of +preachers not of greater earnestness, but of less wisdom and discretion, +there were habitual scenes of extravagant and senseless enthusiasm, +which make the closing pages of this chapter of church history painfully +instructive. + +It is not difficult to understand how one of the first places at a +distance to feel the kindling example of Northampton should be the +neighborhood of Newark. To this region, planted, as we have seen, with +so strong a stock from New England, from old England, and from Scotland, +came, in 1708, a youth of twenty years, Jonathan Dickinson, a native of +the historic little town of Hatfield, next neighbor to Northampton. He +was pastor at Elizabeth, but his influence and activity extended through +all that part of New Jersey, and he became easily the leader of the +rapidly growing communion of Presbyterian churches in that province, and +the opponent, in the interest of Christian liberty and sincerity, of +rigid terms of subscription, demanded by men of little faith. There is a +great career before him; but that which concerns the present topic is +his account of what took place "sometime in August, 1739 (the summer +before Mr. Whitefield came first into these parts), when there was a +remarkable revival at Newark.... This revival of religion was chiefly +observable among the younger people, till the following March, when the +whole town in general was brought under an uncommon concern about their +eternal interests, and the congregation appeared universally affected +under some sermons that were then preached to them." + +Like scenes of spiritual quickening were witnessed that same season in +other parts of New Jersey; but special interest attaches to the report +from New Londonderry, Penn., where a Scotch-Irish community received as +its pastor, in the spring of 1740, Samuel Blair, a native of Ireland, +trained in the Log College of William Tennent. He describes the people, +at his first knowledge of them, as sunk in a religious torpor, +ignorance, and indifference. The first sign of vitality was observed in +March, 1740, during the pastor's absence, when, under an alarming sermon +from a neighbor minister: + + "There was a visible appearance of much soul-concern among + the hearers; so that some burst out with an audible noise into + bitter crying, a thing not known in these parts before.... The + first sermon I preached after my return to them was from + Matthew vi. 33: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his + righteousness.' After opening up and explaining the parts of + the text, when in the improvement I came to press the + injunction in the text upon the unconverted and ungodly, and + offered this as one reason among others why they should now + first of all seek the kingdom and righteousness of God, viz., + that they had neglected too long to do so already, this + consideration seemed to come and cut like a sword upon several + in the congregation; so that while I was speaking upon it they + could no longer contain, but burst out in the most bitter + mourning. I desired them as much as possible to restrain + themselves from making any noise that would hinder themselves + or others from hearing what was spoken; and often afterward I + had occasion to repeat the same counsel. I still advised + people to endeavor to moderate and bound their passions, but + not so as to resist and stifle their convictions. The number + of the awakened increased very fast. Frequently under sermons + there were some newly convicted and brought into deep distress + of soul about their perishing estate. Our Sabbath assemblies + soon became vastly large, many people from almost all parts + around inclining very much to come where there was such + appearance of the divine power and presence. I think there was + scarcely a sermon or lecture preached here through that whole + summer but there were manifest evidences of impressions on the + hearers, and many times the impressions were very great and + general. Several would be overcome and fainting; others deeply + sobbing, hardly able to contain; others crying in a most + dolorous manner; many others more silently weeping, and a + solemn concern appearing in the countenances of many others. + And sometimes the soul-exercises of some (though comparatively + but very few) would so far affect their bodies as to occasion + some strange, unusual bodily motions. I had opportunities of + speaking particularly with a great many of those who afforded + such outward tokens of inward soul-concern in the time of + public worship and hearing of the Word. Indeed, many came to + me of themselves, in their distress, for private instruction + and counsel; and I found, so far as I can remember, that with + by far the greater part their apparent concern in public was + not just a transient qualm of conscience or merely a floating + commotion of the affections, but a rational, fixed conviction + of their dangerous, perishing estate.... + + "In some time many of the convinced and distressed afforded + very hopeful, satisfying evidence that the Lord had brought + them to true closure with Jesus Christ, and that their + distresses and fears had been in a great measure removed in a + right gospel way, by believing in the Son of God. Several of + them had very remarkable and sweet deliverances this way. It + was very agreeable to hear their accounts how that when they + were in the deepest perplexity and darkness, distress and + difficulty, seeking God as poor, condemned, hell-deserving + sinners, the scene of recovering grace through a Redeemer has + been opened to their understandings with a surprising beauty + and glory, so that they were enabled to believe in Christ with + joy unspeakable and full of glory."[162:1] + +The experience of Gilbert Tennent at New Brunswick had no connection +with the first awakening at Northampton, but had important relations +with later events. He was the eldest of the four sons whom William +Tennent, the Episcopalian minister from Ireland, had brought with him to +America and educated at his Log College. In 1727 he became pastor of a +church at New Brunswick, where he was much impressed with what he saw of +the results of the work of the Rev. Theodore Frelinghuysen, who for +seven years had been pastor of a neighboring Dutch church. The example +and fraternal counsel of this good man made him sensible of the +fruitlessness of his own work, and moved him to more earnest prayers and +labors. Having been brought low with sickness, he prayed to God to grant +him one half-year more in which to "endeavor to promote his kingdom with +all my might at all adventures." Being raised up from sickness, he +devoted himself to earnest personal labors with individuals and to +renewed faithfulness in the pulpit, "which method was sealed by the Holy +Spirit in the conviction and conversion of a considerable number of +persons, at various times and in different places, in that part of the +country, as appeared by their acquaintance with experimental religion +and good conversation." This bit of pastoral history, in which is +nothing startling or prodigious, was at least five years previous to the +"Surprising Conversions" at Northampton. There must have been generally +throughout the country a preparedness for the Great Awakening. + + * * * * * + +It was in that year (1735) in which the town of Northampton was all +ablaze with the glory of its first revival under Edwards that George +Whitefield, first among the members of Wesley's "Holy Club" at Oxford, +attained to that "sense of the divine love" from which he was wont to +date his conversion. In May, 1738, when the last reflections from the +Northampton revival had faded out from all around the horizon, the young +clergyman, whose first efforts as a preacher in pulpits of the Church of +England had astonished all hearers by the power of his eloquence, +arrived at Savannah, urged by the importunity of the Wesleys to take up +the work in Georgia in which they had so conspicuously failed. He +entered eagerly into the sanguine schemes for the advantage of the +young colony, and especially into the scheme for building and endowing +an orphan-house in just that corner of the earth where there was less +need of such an institution than anywhere else. After three months' stay +he started on his return to England to seek priest's orders for himself, +and funds for the orphans that might be expected sometime in Georgia. He +was successful in both his errands. He was ordained; he collected more +than one thousand pounds for the orphan-house; and being detained in the +kingdom by an embargo, he began that course of evangelistic preaching +which continued on either side of the ocean until his death, and which +is without a parallel in church history. His incomparable eloquence +thronged the parish churches, until the churches were closed against +him, and the Bishop of London warned the people against him in a +pastoral letter. Then he went out into the open fields, in the service, +as he said, of him "who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens +for his sounding-board, and who, when his gospel was refused by the +Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges." Multitudes of +every rank thronged him; but especially the heathenized and embruted +colliers near Bristol listened to the unknown gospel, and their awakened +feelings were revealed to the preacher by his observing the white +gutters made by the tears that ran down their grimy faces. At last the +embargo was raised, and committing his work to Wesley, whom he had drawn +into field-preaching, he sailed in August, 1739, for Philadelphia, on +his way to Georgia. His fame had gone before him, and the desire to hear +him was universal. The churches would not contain the throngs. It was +long remembered how, on those summer evenings, he would take his stand +in the balcony of the old court-house in Market Street, and how every +syllable from his wonderful voice would be heard aboard the river-craft +moored at the foot of the street, four hundred feet away. + +At New York the Episcopal church was closed against him, but the pastor +of the Presbyterian church, Mr. Pemberton, from Boston, made him +welcome, and the fields were free to him and his hearers. On the way to +New York and back, the tireless man preached at every town. At New +Brunswick he saw and heard with profound admiration Gilbert Tennent, +thenceforth his friend and yokefellow. + +Seeing the solemn eagerness of the people everywhere to hear him, he +determined to make the journey to Savannah by land, and again he turned +the long journey into a campaign of preaching. Arriving at Savannah in +January, 1740, he laid the foundation of his orphan-house, "Bethesda," +and in March was again on his way northward on a tour of preaching and +solicitation of funds. Touching at Charleston, where the bishop's +commissary, Dr. Garden, was at open controversy with him, he preached +five times and received seventy pounds for his charitable work. Landing +at New Castle on a Sunday morning, he preached morning and evening. +Monday morning he preached at Wilmington to a vast assemblage. Tuesday +evening he preached on Society Hill, in Philadelphia, "to about eight +thousand," and at the same place Wednesday morning and evening. Then +once more he made the tour to New York and back, preaching at every +halting-place. A contemporary newspaper contains the following item: + + "New Castle, May 15th. This evening Mr. Whitefield went on + board his sloop here in order to sail for Georgia. On Sunday + he preached twice in Philadelphia, and in the evening, when he + preached his farewell sermon, it is supposed he had twenty + thousand hearers. On Monday he preached at Darby and Chester; + on Tuesday at Wilmington and Whiteclay Creek; on Wednesday, + twice at Nottingham; on Thursday at Fog's Manor and New + Castle. The congregations were much increased since his being + here last. The presence of God was much seen in the + assemblies, especially at Nottingham and Fog's Manor, where + the people were under such deep soul-distress that their cries + almost drowned his voice. He has collected in this and the + neighboring provinces about four hundred and fifty pounds + sterling for his orphans in Georgia." + +Into the feeble but rapidly growing presbyteries and the one synod of +the American Presbyterian Church the revival had brought, not peace, but +a sword. The collision was inevitable between the fervor and +unrestrained zeal of the evangelists and the sense of order and decorum, +and of the importance of organization and method, into which men are +trained in the ministry of an established church. No man, even at this +day, can read the "standards" of the Presbyterian Church without seeing +that they have had to be strained to admit those "revival methods" which +ever since the days of Whitefield have prevailed in that body. The +conflict that arose was not unlike that which from the beginning of New +England history had subsisted between Separatist and Nationalist. In the +Presbyterian conflict, as so often in religious controversies, +disciplinary and doctrinal questions were complicated with a difference +of race. The "Old Side" was the Scotch and Irish party; the "New Side" +was the New England party, to which many of the old-country ministers +adhered. For successive years the mutual opposition had shown itself in +the synod; and in 1740, at the synod meeting at Philadelphia, soon after +the departure of Whitefield, the real gravamen of the controversy +appeared, in the implied and even express impeachment of the spiritual +character of the Old Side ministers. The impeachment had been implied in +the coming of the evangelists uninvited into other men's parishes, as +if these were mission ground. And now it was expressed in papers read +before the synod by Blair and Gilbert Tennent. The action of the synod +went so far toward sustaining the men of the New Side as to repeal the +rule restraining ministers from preaching outside of their own parishes, +and as to put on record a thanksgiving for the work of God in the land. +Through all the days of the synod's meeting, daily throngs on Society +Hill were addressed by the Tennents and other "hot gospelers" of the +revival, and churches and private houses were resounding with revival +hymns and exhortations. Already the preaching and printing of Gilbert +Tennent's "Nottingham Sermon" had made further fellowship between the +two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated +the worst characteristic of the revivalists--their censoriousness. It +was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," +which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one +of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer +to it came in a form that might have been expected. At the opening of +the synod of 1741 a solemn protestation was presented containing an +indictment in seven grave counts against the men of the New Side, and +declaring them to "have at present no right to sit and vote as members +of this synod, and that if they should sit and vote, the doings of the +synod would be of no force or obligation." The protestation was adopted +by the synod by a bare majority of a small attendance. The presbytery of +New Brunswick found itself exscinded by this short and easy process of +discipline; the presbytery of New York joined with it in organizing a +new synod, and the schism was complete. + +It is needless further to follow in detail the amazing career of +Whitefield, "posting o'er land and ocean without rest," and attended at +every movement by such storms of religious agitation as have been +already described. In August, 1740, he made his first visit to New +England. He met with a cordial welcome. At Boston all pulpits were +opened to him, and churches were thronged with eager and excited +hearers.[168:1] He preached on the common in the open air, and the +crowds were doubled. All the surrounding towns, and the coast eastward +to Maine, and the interior as far as Northampton, and the Connecticut +towns along the road to New York, were wonderfully aroused by the +preaching, which, according to the testimony of two nations and all +grades of society, must have been of unequaled power over the feelings. +Not only the clergy, including the few Church of England missionaries, +but the colleges and the magistrates delighted to honor him. Belcher, +the royal governor at Boston, fairly slobbered over him, with tears and +embraces and kisses; and the devout Governor Talcott, at New Haven, gave +God thanks, after listening to the great preacher, "for such refreshings +on the way to our rest." So he was sped on his way back to the South. + +Relieved thus of the glamor of his presence, the New England people +began, some of them, to recognize in what an earthen vessel their +treasure had been borne. Already, in his earlier youth, when his vast +powers had been suddenly revealed to him and to the world, he had had +wise counsel from such men as Watts and Doddridge against some of his +perils. Watts warned him against his superstition of trusting to +"impressions" assumed to be divine; and Doddridge pronounced him "an +honest man, but weak, and a little intoxicated with popularity."[169:1] +But no human strength could stand against the adulation that everywhere +attended him. His vain conceit was continually betraying him into +indiscretions, which he was ever quick to expiate by humble +acknowledgment. At Northampton he was deeply impressed with the beauty +of holiness in Edwards and his wife; and he listened with deference to +the cautions of that wise counselor against his faith in "impressions" +and against his censorious judgments of other men as "unconverted"; but +it seemed to the pastor that his guest "liked him not so well for +opposing these things." + +The faults of Whitefield were intensified to a hateful degree in some of +his associates and followers. Leaving Boston, he sent, to succeed to his +work, Gilbert Tennent, then glowing with the heat of his noted +Nottingham sermon on "An Unconverted Ministry." At once men's minds +began to be divided. On the one hand, so wise and sober a critic as +Thomas Prince, listening with severe attention, gave his strong and +unreserved approval to the preaching and demeanor of Tennent.[169:2] At +the other extreme, we have such testimony as this from Dr. Timothy +Cutler, the former rector of Yale College, now the Episcopalian minister +of Boston: + + "It would be an endless attempt to describe that scene of + confusion and disturbance occasioned by him [Whitefield]: the + division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, the + contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of + children and servants, the quarrels among teachers, the + disorders of the night, the intermission of labor and + business, the neglect of husbandry and of gathering the + harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous + there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and + several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest + crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this + revel maintained in some places many days and nights together + without intermission; and then there were the blessed + outpourings of the Spirit!... After him came one Tennent, a + monster! impudent and noisy, and told them they were all + damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed them, and in the most + dreadful winter I ever saw people wallowed in the snow night + and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings, and many + ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried + more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful + for."[170:1] + +This is in a tone of bitter sectarian railing. But, after all, the main +allegations in it are sustained by the ample evidence produced by Dr. +Charles Chauncy, pastor of the First Church in Boston, in his serious +and weighty volume of "Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in +New England," published in 1743, as he sincerely says, "to serve the +interests of Christ's kingdom," and "faithfully pointing out the things +of a bad and dangerous tendency in the late and present religious +appearance in the land." Dr. Chauncy was doubtless included in the +sweeping denunciation of the Christian ministry in general as +"unconverted," "Pharisees," "hypocrites." And yet it does not appear in +historical evidence that Chauncy was not every whit as good a Christian +as Tennent or Whitefield. + +The excesses of the revival went on from bad to worse. They culminated, +at last, in the frenzy of poor James Davenport, great-grandson of the +venerable founder of New Haven, who, under the control of "impressions" +and "impulses" and texts of Scripture "borne in upon his mind," +abandoned his Long Island parish, a true _allotrio-episcopos_, to thrust +himself uninvited into the parishes of other ministers, denouncing the +pastor as "unconverted" and adjuring the people to desert both pastor +and church. Like some other self-appointed itinerants and exhorters of +the time, he seemed bent upon schism, as if this were the great end of +preaching. Being invited to New London to assist in organizing a +Separatist church, he "published the messages which he said he received +from the Spirit in dreams and otherwise, importing the great necessity +of mortification and contempt of the world; and made them believe that +they must put away from them everything that they delighted in, to avoid +the heinous sin of idolatry--that wigs, cloaks and breeches, hoods, +gowns, rings, jewels, and necklaces, must be all brought together into +one heap into his chamber, that they might by his solemn decree be +committed to the flames." On the Sabbath afternoon the pile was publicly +burned amid songs and shouts. In the pile were many favorite books of +devotion, including works of Flavel, Beveridge, Henry, and like +venerated names, and the sentence was announced with a loud voice, "that +the smoke of the torments of such of the authors of the above-said books +as died in the same belief as when they set them out was now ascending +in hell, in like manner as they saw the smoke of these books +arise."[171:1] The public fever and delirium was passing its crisis. A +little more than a year from this time, Davenport, who had been treated +by his brethren with much forbearance and had twice been released from +public process as _non compos mentis_, recovered his reason at the same +time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and +affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done under the +influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit +of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned +to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained +of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept over New England, except +a few languishing schisms in country towns of Connecticut. + +As in the middle colonies, the revival had brought division in New +England. But, after the New England fashion, it was division merely into +ways of thinking, not into sects. Central in the agitated scene is the +calm figure of Edwards, uniting the faith and zeal of an apostle with +the acuteness of a philosopher, and applying the exquisite powers of his +intellect to discriminate between a divine work and its human or Satanic +admixtures, and between true and spurious religious affections. He won +the blessing of the peacemaker. When half a generation had passed there +had not ceased, indeed, to be differences of opinion, but there was none +left to defend the wild extravagances which the very authors of them +lamented, and there was none to deny, in face of the rich and enduring +fruits of the revival, that the power of God had been present in it. In +the twenty years ending in 1760 the number of the New England churches +had been increased by one hundred and fifty.[172:1] + +In the middle colonies there had been like progress. The Presbyterian +ministry had increased from forty-five to more than a hundred; and the +increase had been wholly on the "New Side." An early move of the +conservative party, to require a degree from a British or a New England +college as a condition of license to preach, was promptly recognized as +intended to exclude the fervid students from the Log College. It was met +by the organization of Princeton College, whose influence, more New +Englandish than New England, directed by a succession of illustrious +Yale graduates in full sympathy with the advanced theology of the +revival, was counted on to withstand the more cautious orthodoxy of +Yale. In this and other ways the Presbyterian schism fell out to the +furtherance of the gospel. + +In Virginia the quickening was as when the wind breathed in the valley +of dry bones. The story of Samuel Morris and his unconscious mission, +although authentic fact, belongs with the very romance of +evangelism.[173:1] Whitefield and "One-eyed Robinson," and at last +Samuel Davies, came to his aid. The deadly exclusiveness of the inert +Virginia establishment was broken up, and the gospel had free course. +The Presbyterian Church, which had at first been looked on as an exotic +sect that might be tolerated out on the western frontier, after a brief +struggle with the Act of Uniformity maintained its right to live and +struck vigorous root in the soil. The effect of the Awakening was felt +in the establishment itself. Devereux Jarratt, a convert of the revival, +went to England for ordination, and returned to labor for the +resuscitation of the Episcopal Church in his native State. "To him, and +such as he, the first workings of the renewed energy of the church in +Virginia are to be traced."[173:2] + +An even more important result of the Awakening was the swift and wide +extension of Baptist principles and churches. This was altogether +logical. The revival had come, not so much in the spirit and power of +Elijah, turning to each other the hearts of fathers and of children, as +in the spirit of Ezekiel, the preacher of individual responsibility and +duty. The temper of the revival was wholly congenial with the strong +individualism of the Baptist churches. The Separatist churches formed in +New England by the withdrawal of revival enthusiasts from the parish +churches in many instances became Baptist. Cases of individual +conversion to Baptist views were frequent, and the earnestness with +which the new opinion was held approved itself not only by debating and +proselyting, but by strenuous and useful evangelizing. Especially at the +South, from Virginia to Georgia, the new preachers, entering into the +labors of the annoyed and persecuted pioneers of their communion, won +multitudes of converts to the Christian faith, from the neglected +populations, both black and white, and gave to the Baptist churches a +lasting preëminence in numbers among the churches of the South. + +Throughout the country the effect of this vigorous propagation of rival +sects openly, in the face of whatever there was of church establishment, +settled this point: that the law of American States, by whomsoever +administered, must sooner or later be the law of liberty and equality +among the various religious communions. In the southern colonies, the +empty shell of a church establishment had crumbled on contact with the +serious earnestness of the young congregations gathered by the +Presbyterian and Baptist evangelists. In New England, where +establishment was in the form of an attempt by the people of the +commonwealth to confirm the people of each town in the maintenance of +common worship according to their conscience and judgment, the "standing +order" had solid strength; but when it was attempted by public authority +to curb the liberty of a considerable minority conscientiously intent on +secession, the reins were ready to break. It soon came to be recognized +that the only preëminence the parish churches could permanently hold was +that of being "servants of all." + +With equal and unlimited liberty, was to follow, as a prevailing +characteristic of American Christianity, a large diversity of +organization. Not only that men disagreeing in their convictions of +truth would be enrolled in different bodies, but that men holding the +same views, in the same statement of them, would feel free to go apart +from one another, and stay apart. There was not even to be any one +generally predominating organization from which minor ones should be +reckoned as dissenting. One after another the organizations which should +be tempted by some period of exceptional growth and prosperity to +pretend to a hegemony among the churches--Catholic, Episcopalian, +Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist--would meet with some set-back as +inexorable as "the law of nature that prevents the trees from growing up +into the sky." + +By a curious paradox, the same spiritual agitation which deepened the +divisions of the American church aroused in the colonies the +consciousness of a national religious unity. We have already seen that +in the period before the Awakening the sole organ of fellowship reaching +through the whole chain of the British colonies was the correspondence +of the Quaker meetings and missionaries. In the glow of the revival the +continent awoke to the consciousness of a common spiritual life. Ranging +the continent literally from Georgia to Maine, with all his weaknesses +and indiscretions, and with his incomparable eloquence, welcomed by +every sect, yet refusing an exclusive allegiance to any, Whitefield +exercised a true apostolate, bearing daily the care of all the churches, +and becoming a messenger of mutual fellowship not only between the ends +of the continent, but between the Christians of two hemispheres. Remote +churches exchanged offices of service. Tennent came from New Jersey to +labor in New England; Dickinson and Burr and Edwards were the gift of +the northern colonies to the college at Princeton. The quickened sense +of a common religious life and duty and destiny was no small part of the +preparation for the birth of the future nation. + +Whether for good or for evil, the few years from 1740 to 1750 were +destined to impress upon the American church in its various orders, for +a hundred years to come, the character of _Methodism_.[176:1] + +In New England, the idea, into which the first pastors had been trained +by their experience as parish ministers in the English established +church, of the parochial church holding correlative rights and duties +toward the community in all its families, succumbed at last, after a +hundred years of more or less conscious antagonism, to the incompatible +principle, adopted from the Separatists of Plymouth, of the church +formed according to elective affinity by the "social compact" of persons +of the age of discretion who could give account to themselves and to one +another of the conscious act and experience of conversion. This view, +subject to important mitigations or aggravations in actual +administration, held almost unquestioned dominance in the New England +churches until boldly challenged by Horace Bushnell, in his +"epoch-making" volume on "Christian Nurture" (1846), as a departure from +the orthodoxy of the fathers. + +In the Presbyterian Church, revivalism as a principle of church life had +to contend with rules distinctly articulated in its constitutional +documents. So exclusively does the Westminster institute contemplate the +church as an established parish that its "Directory for Worship" +contains no provision for so abnormal an incident as the baptism of an +adult, and all baptized children growing up and not being of scandalous +life are to be welcomed to the Lord's Supper. It proves the immense +power of the Awakening, that this rigid and powerful organization, of a +people tenacious of its traditions to the point of obstinacy, should +have swung so completely free at this point, not only of its +long-settled usages, but of the distinct letter of its standards. + +The Episcopal Church of the colonies was almost forced into an attitude +of opposition to the revival. The unspeakable folly of the English +bishops in denouncing and silencing the most effective preachers in the +national church had betrayed Whitefield into his most easily besetting +sin, that of censorious judgment, and his sweeping counter-denunciations +of the Episcopalian clergy in general as unconverted closed to him many +hearts and pulpits that at first had been hospitably open to him. Being +human, they came into open antagonism to him and to the revival. From +the protest against extravagance and disorder, it was a short and +perilously easy step to the rejection of religious fervor and +earnestness. The influence of the mother church of that dreary period +and the influence of the official rings around every royal governor were +all too potent in the same direction. The Propagation Society's +missionaries boasted, with reason, of large accessions of proselytes +alienated from other churches by their distaste for the methods of the +revival. The effect on the Episcopal Church itself was in some respects +unhappy. It "lowered a spiritual temperature already too low,"[177:1] +and weakened the moral influence of the church, and the value of its +testimony to important principles which there were few besides +efficiently to represent--the duty of the church not to disown or shut +out those of little faith, and the church's duty toward its children. +Never in the history of the church have the Lord's husbandmen shown a +fiercer zeal for rooting up tares, regardless of damage to the wheat, +than was shown by the preachers of the Awakening. Never was there a +wider application of the reproach against those who, instead of +preaching to men that they should be converted and become as little +children, preach to children that they must be converted and become like +grown folks.[178:1] The attitude of the Episcopal Church at that period +was not altogether admirable; but it is nothing to its dishonor that it +bore the reproach of being a friend of publicans and sinners, and +offered itself as a _refugium peccatorum_, thus holding many in some +sort of relation to the kingdom of Christ who would otherwise have +lapsed into sheer infidelity. + +In all this the Episcopal Church was affected by the Awakening only by +way of reaction. But it owes a debt to the direct influence of the +Awakening which it has not always been careful to acknowledge. We have +already seen that the requickening of the asphyxiated church of Virginia +was part of the great revival, and this character remains impressed on +that church to this day. The best of those traits by which the American +Episcopal Church is distinguished from the Church of England, as, for +instance, the greater purity of the ministry and of the membership, are +family traits of the revival churches; the most venerated of its early +bishops, White and Griswold, bore the same family likeness; and the +"Evangelical party," for a time so influential in its counsels, was a +tardy and mild afterglow from the setting of the Great Awakening.[179:1] + +An incident of the revival, failing which it would have lacked an +essential token of the presence of the Spirit of Christ, was the +kindling of zeal for communicating the gospel to the ignorant, the +neglected, and the heathen. Among the first-fruits of Whitefield's +preaching at the South was a practical movement among the planters for +the instruction of their slaves--devotees, most of them, of the most +abject fetich-worship of their native continent. Of the evangelists and +pastors most active in the revival, there were few, either North or +South, whose letters or journals do not report the drawing into the +churches of large numbers of negroes and Indians, whose daily lives +witnessed to the sincerity of their profession of repentance and +Christian faith. The Indian population of the southeastern corner of +Connecticut with such accord received the gospel at the hands of the +evangelists that heathenism seemed extinct among them.[179:2] + +Among the first trophies of the revival at Norwich was a Mohegan boy +named Samson Occum. Wheelock, pastor at Lebanon, one of the most ardent +of the revival preachers, took him into his family as a student. This +was the beginning of that school for the training of Indian preachers +which, endowed in part with funds gathered by Occum in England, grew at +last into Dartmouth College. The choicest spiritual gifts at the +disposal of the church were freely spent on the missions. Whitefield +visited the school and the field, and sped Kirkland on his way to the +Oneidas. Edwards, leaving Northampton in sorrow of heart, gave his +incomparable powers to the work of the gospel among the Stockbridge +Indians until summoned thence to the presidency of Princeton College. +When Brainerd fainted under his burden, it was William Tennent who went +out into the wilderness to carry on the work of harvest. But the great +gift of the American church to the cause of missions was the gift of +David Brainerd himself. His life was the typical missionary's life--the +scattering of precious seed with tears, the heart-sickness of hope +deferred, at last the rejoicing of the harvest-home. His early death +enrolled him in the canon of the saints of modern Christendom. The story +of his life and death, written by Jonathan Edwards out of that fatherly +love with which he had tended the young man's latest days and hours, may +not have been an unmixed blessing to the church. The long-protracted +introspections, the cherished forebodings and misgivings, as if doubt +was to be cultivated as a Christian virtue, may not have been an +altogether wholesome example for general imitation. But think what the +story of that short life has wrought! To how many hearts it has been an +inspiration to self-sacrifice and devotion to the service of God in the +service of man, we cannot know. Along one line its influence can be +partly traced. The "Life of David Brainerd" made Henry Martyn a +missionary to the heathen. As spiritual father to Henry Martyn, Brainerd +may be reckoned, in no unimportant sense, to be the father of modern +missions to the heathen. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[156:1] Of how little relative importance was this charge may be judged +from the fact that a quarter-century later, when the famous Joseph +Bellamy was invited to it from his tiny parish of Bethlem, Conn., the +council called to advise in the case judged that the interests of +Bethlem were too important to be sacrificed to the demands of New York. + +[156:2] See the altogether admirable monograph of Professor A. V. G. +Allen on "Jonathan Edwards," p. 23. + +[159:1] Allen, "Jonathan Edwards," pp. 164-174. + +[162:1] Joseph Tracy, "The Great Awakening," chap. ii. This work, of +acknowledged value and authority, is on the list of the Congregational +Board of Publication. It is much to be regretted that the Board does not +publish it as well as announce it. A new edition of it, under the hand +of a competent editor, with a good index, would be a useful service to +history. + +[168:1] The critical historian has the unusual satisfaction, at this +point, of finding a gauge by which to discount the large round numbers +given in Whitefield's journal. He speaks of preaching in the Old South +Church to six thousand persons. The now venerable building had at that +time a seating capacity of about twelve hundred. Making the largest +allowance for standing-room, we may estimate his actual audience at two +thousand. Whitefield was an honest man, but sixty-six per cent. is not +too large a discount to make from his figures; his estimates of +spiritual effect from his labor are liable to a similar deduction. + +[169:1] Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 51. + +[169:2] _Ibid._, pp. 114-120. + +[170:1] Letter of September 24, 1743, quoted in McConnell, "American +Episcopal Church," p. 142, note. + +[171:1] Chauncy, "Seasonable Thoughts," pp. 220-223. + +[172:1] Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 389. + +[173:1] See the autobiographical narrative in Tracy, p. 377. + +[173:2] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 45. + +[176:1] "The Great Awakening ... terminated the Puritan and inaugurated +the Pietist or Methodist age of American church history" (Thompson, +"Presbyterian Churches in the United States," p. 34). It is not +unnecessary to remark that the word "Methodist" is not used in the +narrow sense of "Wesleyan." + +[177:1] Unpublished lectures of the Rev. W. G. Andrews on "The +Evangelical Revival of 1740 and American Episcopalians." It is much to +be hoped that these valuable studies of the critical period of American +church history may not long remain unpublished. + +[178:1] This sharp antithesis is quoted at second hand from Charles +Kingsley. The stories of little children frightened into screaming, and +then dragged (at four years of age, says Jonathan Edwards) through the +agitating vicissitudes of a "revival experience," occupy some of the +most pathetic, not to say tragical, pages of the history of the +Awakening. + +[179:1] McConnell, pp. 144-146; W. G. Andrews, Lecture III. + +[179:2] Tracy, pp. 187-192. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA--THE GERMAN CHURCHES--THE BEGINNINGS OF THE +METHODIST CHURCH. + + +The quickening of religious feeling, the deepening of religious +conviction, the clearing and defining of theological opinions, that were +incidental to the Great Awakening, were a preparation for more than +thirty years of intense political and warlike agitation. The churches +suffered from the long distraction of the public mind, and at the end of +it were faint and exhausted. But for the infusion of a "more abundant +life" which they had received, it would seem that they could hardly have +survived the stress of that stormy and revolutionary period. + +The religious life of this period was manifested in part in the growth +of the New England theology. The great leader of this school of +theological inquiry, the elder Edwards, was born at the opening of the +eighteenth century. The oldest and most eminent of his disciples and +successors, Bellamy and Hopkins, were born respectively in 1719 and +1721, and entered into the work of the Awakening in the flush of their +earliest manhood. A long dynasty of acute and strenuous argumentators +has continued, through successive generations to the present day, this +distinctly American school of theological thought. This is not the +place for tracing the intricate history of their discussions,[182:1] +but the story of the Awakening could not be told without some mention of +this its attendant and sequel. + +Not less notable than the new theology of the revival was the new +psalmody. In general it may be said that every flood-tide of spiritual +emotion in the church leaves its high-water mark in the form of "new +songs to the Lord" that remain after the tide of feeling has assuaged. +In this instance the new songs were not produced by the revival, but +only adopted by it. It is not easy for us at this day to conceive the +effect that must have been produced in the Christian communities of +America by the advent of Isaac Watts's marvelous poetic work, "The +Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament." +Important religious results have more than once followed in the church +on the publication of religious poems--notably, in our own century, on +the publication of "The Christian Year." But no other instance of the +kind is comparable with the publication in America of Watts's Psalms. +When we remember how scanty were the resources of religious poetry in +American homes in the early eighteenth century, and especially how rude +and even grotesque the rhymes that served in the various churches as a +vehicle of worship, it seems that the coming of those melodious stanzas, +in which the meaning of one poet is largely interpreted by the +sympathetic insight of another poet, and the fervid devotion of the Old +Testament is informed with the life and transfigured in the language of +the New, must have been like a glow of sunlight breaking in upon a gray +and cloudy day. Few pages of biography can be found more vividly +illustrative of the times and the men than the page in which Samuel +Hopkins recites the story of the sufferings of his own somber and +ponderous mind under the rebuke of his college friend David Brainerd. He +walked his solitary room in tears, and (he says) "took up Watts's +version of the Psalms, and opened it at the Fifty-first Psalm, and read +the first, second, and third parts in long meter with strong affections, +and made it all my own language, and thought it was the language of my +heart to God." There was more than the experience of a great and simple +soul, there was the germ of a future system of theology, in the +penitential confession which the young student "made his own language," +and in the exquisite lines which, under the figure of a frightened bird, +became the utterance of his first tremulous and faltering faith: + + Lord, should thy judgment grow severe, + I am condemned, but thou art clear. + + Should sudden vengeance seize my breath, + I must pronounce thee just in death; + And if my soul were sent to hell, + Thy righteous law approves it well. + + Yet save a trembling sinner, Lord, + Whose hope, still hovering round thy word, + Would light on some sweet promise there, + Some sure support against despair. + +The introduction of the new psalmody was not accomplished all at once, +nor without a struggle. But we gravely mistake if we look upon the +controversy that resulted in the adoption of Watts's Psalms as a mere +conflict between enlightened good taste and stubborn conservatism. The +action proposed was revolutionary. It involved the surrender of a +long-settled principle of Puritanism. At the present day the objection +to the use of "human composures" in public worship is unintelligible, +except to Scotchmen. In the later Puritan age such use was reckoned an +infringement on the entire and exclusive authority and sufficiency of +the Scriptures, and a constructive violation of the second commandment. +By the adoption of the new psalmody the Puritan and Presbyterian +churches, perhaps not consciously, but none the less actually, yielded +the major premiss of the only argument by which liturgical worship was +condemned on principle. Thereafter the question of the use of liturgical +forms became a mere question of expediency. It is remarkable that the +logical consequences of this important step have been so tardy and +hesitating. + + * * * * * + +It was not in the common course of church history that the period under +consideration should be a period of vigorous internal activity and +development in the old settled churches of America. The deep, often +excessive, excitements of the Awakening had not only ceased, but had +been succeeded by intense agitations of another sort. Two successive +"French and Indian" wars kept the long frontier, at a time when there +was little besides frontier to the British colonies, in continual peril +of fire and scalping-knife.[184:1] The astonishingly sudden and complete +extinction of the French politico-religious empire in Canada and the +West made possible, and at no remote time inevitable, the separation of +the British colonies from the mother country and the contentions and +debates that led into the Revolutionary War began at once. + +Another consequence of the prostrating of the French power in America +has been less noticed by historians, but the course of this narrative +will not be followed far without its becoming manifest as not less +momentous in its bearing on the future history of the church. The +extinction of the French-Catholic power in America made possible the +later plantation and large and free development of the Catholic Church +in the territory of the United States. After that event the Catholic +resident or citizen was no longer subject to the suspicion of being a +sympathizer with a hostile neighboring power, and the Jesuit missionary +was no longer liable to be regarded as a political intriguer and a +conspirator with savage assassins against the lives of innocent settlers +and their families. If there are those who, reading the earlier pages of +this volume, have mourned over the disappointment and annihilation of +two magnificent schemes of Catholic domination on the North American +continent as being among the painful mysteries of divine providence, +they may find compensation for these catastrophes in later advances of +Catholicism, which without these antecedents would seem to have been +hardly possible. + +Although the spiritual development of the awakened American churches, +after the Awakening until the independence of the States was established +and acknowledged, was limited by these great hindrances, this period was +one of momentous influences from abroad upon American Christianity. + + * * * * * + +The Scotch-Irish immigration kept gathering volume and force. The great +stream of immigrants entering at the port of Philadelphia and flowing +westward and southwestward was joined by a tributary stream entering at +Charleston. Not only the numbers of this people, occupying in force the +hill-country from Pennsylvania to Georgia, but still more its +extraordinary qualities and the discipline of its history, made it a +factor of prime importance in the events of the times just before and +just after the achievement of the national independence. For generations +it had been schooled to the apprehension and acceptance of an +elaborately articulated system of theology and church order as of divine +authority. Its prejudices and animosities were quite as potent as its +principles. Its fixed hereditary aversion to the English government and +the English church was the natural fruit of long memories and traditions +of outrages inflicted by both these; its influence was now about to be +powerfully manifested in the overthrow of the English power and its +feeble church establishments in the colonies. At the opening of the War +of Independence the Presbyterian Church, reunited since the schism of +1741, numbered one hundred and seventy ministers in seventeen +presbyteries; but its weight of influence was out of all proportion to +its numbers, and this entire force, not altogether at unity with itself +on ecclesiastical questions, was united as one man in the maintenance of +American rights. + +The great German immigration begins to flow in earnest in this period. +Three successive tides of migration have set from Germany to America. +The first was the movement of the petty sects under the invitation and +patronage of William Penn, quartering themselves in the eastern parts of +Pennsylvania. The second was the transportation of "the Palatines," +expatriated by stress of persecution and war, not from the Rhenish +Palatinate only, but from the archduchy of Salzburg and from other parts +of Germany and Switzerland, gathered up and removed to America, some of +them directly, some by way of England, as an act of political charity by +Queen Anne's government, with the idea of strengthening the colonies by +planting Protestant settlers for a safeguard against Spanish or French +aggressions. The third tide continues flowing, with variable volume, to +this day. It is the voluntary flow of companies of individual emigrants +seeking to better the fortunes of themselves or their families. But this +voluntary migration has been unhealthily and sometimes dishonestly +stimulated, from the beginning of it, by the selfish interests of those +concerned in the business of transportation or in the sale of land. It +seems to have been mainly the greed of shipping merchants, at first, +that spread abroad in the German states florid announcements of the +charms and riches of America, decoying multitudes of ignorant persons to +risk everything on these representations, and to mortgage themselves +into a term of slavery until they should have paid the cost of their +passage by their labor. This class of bondmen, called "redemptioners," +made no inconsiderable part of the population of the middle colonies; +and it seems to have been a worthy part. The trade of "trepanning" the +unfortunates and transporting them and selling their term of service was +not by several degrees as bad as the African slave-trade; but it was of +the same sort, and the deadly horrors of its "middle passage" were +hardly less. + +In one way and another the German immigration had grown by the middle of +the eighteenth century to great dimensions. In the year 1749 twelve +thousand Germans landed at the port of Philadelphia. In general they +were as sheep having no shepherd. Their deplorable religious condition +was owing less to poverty than to diversity of sects.[188:1] In many +places the number of sects rendered concerted action impossible, and the +people remained destitute of religious instruction. + +The famine of the word was sorely felt. In 1733 three great Lutheran +congregations in Pennsylvania, numbering five hundred families each, +sent messengers with an imploring petition to their coreligionists at +London and Halle, representing their "state of the greatest +destitution." "Our own means" (they say) "are utterly insufficient to +effect the necessary relief, unless God in his mercy may send us help +from abroad. It is truly lamentable to think of the large numbers of the +rising generation who know not their right hand from their left; and, +unless help be promptly afforded, the danger is great that, in +consequence of the great lack of churches and schools, the most of them +will be led into the ways of destructive error." + +This urgent appeal bore fruit like the apples of Sodom. It resulted in a +painful and pitiable correspondence with the chiefs of the mother +church, these haggling for months and years over stipulations of salary, +and refusing to send a minister until the salary should be pledged in +cash; and their correspondents pleading their poverty and need.[188:2] +The few and feeble churches of the Reformed confession were equally +needy and ill befriended. + +It seems to us, as we read the story after the lapse of a hundred and +fifty years, as if the man expressly designed and equipped by the +providence of God for this exigency in the progress of his kingdom had +arrived when Zinzendorf, the Moravian, made his appearance at +Philadelphia, December 10, 1741. The American church, in all its +history, can point to no fairer representative of the charity that +"seeketh not her own" than this Saxon nobleman, who, for the true love +that he bore to Christ and all Christ's brethren, was willing to give up +his home, his ancestral estates, his fortune, his title of nobility, his +patrician family name, his office of bishop in the ancient Moravian +church, and even (last infirmity of zealous spirits) his interest in +promoting specially that order of consecrated men and women in the +church catholic which he had done and sacrificed so much to save from +extinction, and to which his "cares and toils were given." He hastened +first up the Lehigh Valley to spend Christmas at Bethlehem, where the +foundations had already been laid on which have been built up the +half-monastic institutions of charity and education and missions which +have done and are still doing so much to bless the world in both its +hemispheres. It was in commemoration of this Christmas visit of Bishop +Zinzendorf that the mother house of the Moravian communities in America +received its name of Bethlehem. Returning to Philadelphia, he took this +city as the base of his unselfish and unpartisan labors in behalf of the +great and multiplying population from his fatherland, which through its +sectarian divisions had become so helpless and spiritually needy. +Already for twenty years there had been a few scattering churches of +the Reformed confession, and for half that time a few Lutheran +congregations had been gathered or had gathered themselves. But both the +sects had been overcome by the paralysis resulting from habitual +dependence on paternal governments, and the two were borne asunder, +while every right motive was urging to coöperation and fellowship, by +the almost spent momentum of old controversies. In Philadelphia two +starveling congregations representing the two competing sects occupied +the same rude meeting-place each by itself on alternate Sundays. The +Lutherans made shift without a pastor, for the only Lutheran minister in +Pennsylvania lived at Lancaster, sixty miles away. + +To the scattered, distracted, and demoralized flocks of his German +fellow-Christians in the middle colonies came Zinzendorf, knowing Jesus +Christ crucified, knowing no man according to the flesh; and at once +"the neglected congregations were made to feel the thrill of a strong +religious life." "Aglow with zeal for Christ, throwing all emphasis in +his teaching upon the one doctrine of redemption through the blood shed +on Calvary, all the social advantages and influence and wealth which his +position gave him were made subservient to the work of preaching Christ, +and him crucified, to the rich and the poor, the learned and the +ignorant."[190:1] The Lutherans of Philadelphia heard him gladly and +entreated him to preach to them regularly; to which he consented, but +not until he had assured himself that this would be acceptable to the +pastor of the Reformed congregation. But his mission was to the sheep +scattered abroad, of whom he reckoned (an extravagant overestimate) not +less than one hundred thousand of the Lutheran party in Pennsylvania +alone. Others, as he soon found, had been feeling, like himself, the +hurt of the daughter of Zion. A series of conferences was held from +month to month, in which men of the various German sects took counsel +together over the dissensions of their people, and over the question how +the ruinous effects of these dissensions could be avoided. The plan was, +not to attempt a merger of the sects, nor to alienate men from their +habitual affiliations, but to draw together in coöperation and common +worship the German Christians, of whatever sect, in a fellowship to be +called, in imitation of a Pauline phrase (Eph. ii. 22), "the +Congregation of God in the Spirit." The plan seemed so right and +reasonable and promising of beneficent results as to win general +approval. It was in a fair way to draw together the whole miserably +divided German population.[191:1] + +At once the "drum ecclesiastic" beat to arms. In view of the impending +danger that their scattered fellow-countrymen might come into mutual +fellowship on the basis of their common faith in Christ, the Lutheran +leaders at Halle, who for years had been dawdling and haggling over the +imploring entreaties of the shepherdless Lutheran populations in +America, promptly reconsidered their _non possumus_, and found and sent +a man admirably qualified for the desired work, Henry Melchior +Mühlenberg, a man of eminent ability and judgment, of faith, devotion, +and untiring diligence, not illiberal, but a conscientious sectarian. An +earnest preacher of the gospel, he was also earnest that the gospel +should be preached according to the Lutheran formularies, to +congregations organized according to the Lutheran discipline. The easier +and less worthy part of the appointed task was soon achieved. The danger +that the religious factions that had divided Germany might be laid +aside in the New World was effectually dispelled. Six years later the +governor of Pennsylvania was still able to write, "The Germans imported +with them all the religious whimsies of their country, and, I believe, +have subdivided since their arrival here;" and he estimates their number +at three fifths of the population of the province. The more arduous and +noble work of organizing and compacting the Lutherans into their +separate congregations, and combining these by synodical assemblies, was +prosecuted with wisdom and energy, and at last, in spite of hindrances +and discouragements, with beneficent success. The American Lutheran +Church of to-day is the monument of the labors of Mühlenberg. + +The brief remainder of Zinzendorf's work in America may be briefly told. +There is no doubt that, like many another eager and hopeful reformer, he +overestimated the strength and solidity of the support that was given to +his generous and beneficent plans. At the time of Mühlenberg's arrival +Zinzendorf was the elected and installed pastor of the Lutheran +congregation in Philadelphia. The conflict could not be a long one +between the man who claimed everything for his commission and his sect +and the man who was resolved to insist on nothing for himself. +Notwithstanding the strong love for him among the people, Zinzendorf was +easily displaced from his official station. When dispute arose about the +use of the empty carpenter's shop that stood them instead of a church, +he waived his own claims and at his own cost built a new house of +worship. But it was no part of his work to stay and persist in +maintaining a division. He retired from the field, leaving it in charge +of Mühlenberg, "being satisfied if only Christ were preached," and +returned to Europe, having achieved a truly honorable and most Christian +failure, more to be esteemed in the sight of God than many a splendid +success. + +But his brief sojourn in America was not without visible fruit. He left +behind him the Moravian church fully organized under the episcopate of +Bishop David Nitschmann, with communities or congregations begun at nine +different centers, and schools established in four places. An extensive +itinerancy had been set in operation under careful supervision, and, +most characteristic of all, a great beginning had been made of those +missions to the heathen Indians, in which the devoted and successful +labors of this little society of Christians have put to shame the whole +American church besides. Not all of this is to be ascribed to the +activity of Zinzendorf; but in all of it he was a sharer, and his share +was a heroic one. The two years' visit of Count Zinzendorf to America +forms a beautiful and quite singular episode in our church history. +Returning to his ancestral estates splendidly impoverished by his +free-handed beneficence, he passed many of the later years of his life +at Herrnhut, that radiating center from which the light of the gospel +was borne by the multitude of humble missionaries to every continent +under the whole heaven. The news that came to him from the "economies" +that he had planted in the forests of Pennsylvania was such as to fill +his generous soul with joy. In the communities of Nazareth and Bethlehem +was renewed the pentecostal consecration when no man called anything his +own. The prosperous farms and varied industries, in which no towns in +Pennsylvania could equal them, were carried on, not for private +interest, but for the church. After three years the community work was +not only self-supporting, but sustained about fifty missionaries in the +field, and was preparing to send aid to the missions of the mother +church in Germany. The Moravian settlements multiplied at distant +points, north and south. The educational establishments grew strong and +famous. But especially the Indian missions spread far and wide. The +story of these missions is one of the fairest and most radiant pages in +the history of the American church, and one of the bloodiest. +Zinzendorf, dying at London in May, 1756, was spared, we may hope, the +heartbreaking news of the massacre at Gnadenhütten the year before. But +from that time on, through the French wars, the Revolutionary War, the +War of 1812, and down to the infamy of Georgia and the United States in +1837, the innocent and Christlike Moravian missions have been exposed +from every side to the malignity of savage men both white and red. No +order of missionaries or missionary converts can show a nobler roll of +martyrs than the Moravians.[194:1] + +The work of Mühlenberg for the Lutherans stimulated the Reformed +churches in Europe to a like work for their own scattered and pastorless +sheep. In both cases the fear that the work of the gospel might not be +done seemed a less effective incitement to activity than the fear that +it might be done by others. It was the Reformed Church of Holland, +rather than those of Germany, miserably broken down and discouraged by +ravaging wars, that assumed the main responsibility for this task. As +early as 1728 the Dutch synods had earnestly responded to the appeal of +their impoverished brethren on the Rhine in behalf of the sheep +scattered abroad. And in 1743, acting through the classis of Amsterdam, +they had made such progress toward beginning the preliminary +arrangements of the work as to send to the Presbyterian synod of +Philadelphia a proposal to combine into one the Presbyterian, or Scotch +Reformed, the Dutch Reformed, and the German Reformed churches in +America. It had already been proved impossible to draw together in +common activity and worship the different sects of the same German race +and language; the effort to unite in one organization peoples of +different language, but of substantially the same doctrine and polity, +was equally futile. It seemed as if minute sectarian division and +subdivision was to be forced upon American Christianity as a law of its +church life. + +Diplomacies ended, the synods of Holland took up their work with real +munificence. Large funds were raised, sufficient to make every German +Reformed missionary in America a stipendiary of the classis of +Amsterdam; and if these subsidies were encumbered with severe conditions +of subordination to a foreign directory, and if they begot an enfeebling +sense of dependence, these were necessary incidents of the difficult +situation--_res dura et novitas regni_. The most important service which +the synods of Holland rendered to their American beneficiaries was to +find a man who should do for them just the work which Mühlenberg was +already doing with great energy for the Lutherans. The man was Michael +Schlatter. If in any respect he was inferior to Mühlenberg, it was not +in respect to diligent devotion to the business on which he had been +sent. It is much to the credit of both of them that, in organizing and +promoting their two sharply competing sects, they never failed of +fraternal personal relations. They worked together with one heart to +keep their people apart from each other. The Christian instinct, in a +community of German Christians, to gather in one congregation for common +worship was solemnly discouraged by the two apostles and the synods +which they organized. How could the two parties walk together when one +prayed _Vater unser_, and the other _unser Vater_? But the beauty of +Christian unity was illustrated in such incidents as this: Mr. Schlatter +and some of the Reformed Christians, being present at a Lutheran church +on a communion Sunday, listened to the preaching of the Lutheran +pastor, after which the Reformed minister made a communion address, and +then the congregation was dismissed, and the Reformed went off to a +school-house to receive the Lord's Supper.[196:1] Truly it was fragrant +like the ointment on the beard of Aaron! + +Such was the diligence of Schlatter that the synod or coetus of the +Reformed Church was instituted in 1747, a year from his arrival. The +Lutheran synod dates from 1748, although Mühlenberg was on the ground +four years earlier than Schlatter. Thus the great work of dividing the +German population of America into two major sects was conscientiously +and effectually performed. Seventy years later, with large expenditure +of persuasion, authority, and money, it was found possible to heal in +some measure in the old country the very schism which good men had been +at such pains to perpetuate in the new. + +High honor is due to the prophetic wisdom of these two leaders of +German-American Christianity, in that they clearly recognized in advance +that the English was destined to be the dominant language of North +America. Their strenuous though unsuccessful effort to promote a system +of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill +judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon +by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude. +It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may +have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their +fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The +combination of the mass of the German population in one solid church +organization would have been a formidable support to such aspirations. +The splitting of this mass in half, necessitating petty local schisms +with all their debilitating and demoralizing consequences, may have +helped secure the country from a serious political and social danger. + +So, then, the German church in America at the close of the colonial era +exists, outside of the petty primeval sects, in three main divisions: +the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Moravian. There is free opportunity +for Christians of this language to sort themselves according to their +elective affinities. That American ideal of edifying harmony is well +attained, according to which men of partial or one-sided views of truth +shall be associated exclusively in church relations with others of like +precious defects. Mühlenberg seems to have been sensible of the nature +of the division he was making in the body of Christ, when, after +severing successfully between the strict Lutherans in a certain +congregation and those of Moravian sympathies, he finds it "hard to +decide on which side of the controversy the greater justice lay. The +greater part of those on the Lutheran side, he feared, was composed of +unconverted men," while the Moravian party seemed open to the reproach +of enthusiasm. So he concluded that each sort of Christians would be +better off without the other. Time proved his diagnosis to be better +than his treatment. In the course of a generation the Lutheran body, +carefully weeded of pietistic admixtures, sank perilously deep in cold +rationalism, and the Moravian church was quite carried away for a time +on a flood of sentimentalism. What might have been the course of this +part of church history if Mühlenberg and Schlatter had shared more +deeply with Zinzendorf in the spirit of apostolic and catholic +Christianity, and if all three had conspired to draw together into one +the various temperaments and tendencies of the German Americans in the +unity of the Spirit with the bond of peace, may seem like an idle +historical conjecture, but the question is not without practical +interest to-day. Perhaps the Moravians would have been the better for +being ballasted with the weighty theologies and the conservative temper +of the state churches; it is very certain that these would have gained +by the infusion of something of that warmth of Christian love and zeal +that pervaded to a wonderful degree the whole Moravian fellowship. But +the hand and the foot were quite agreed that they had no need of each +other or of the heart.[198:1] + + * * * * * + +By far the most momentous event of American church history in the +closing period of the colonial era was the planting of the Methodist +Episcopal Church. The Wesleyan revival was strangely tardy in reaching +this country, with which it had so many points of connection. It was in +America, in 1737, that John Wesley passed through the discipline of a +humiliating experience, by which his mind had been opened, and that he +had been brought into acquaintance with the Moravians, by whom he was to +be taught the way of the Lord more perfectly. It was John Wesley who +sent Whitefield to America, from whom, on his first return to England, +in 1738, he learned the practice of field-preaching. It was from America +that Edwards's "Narrative of Surprising Conversions" had come to Wesley, +which, being read by him on the walk from London to Oxford, opened to +his mind unknown possibilities of the swift advancement of the kingdom +of God. The beginning of the Wesleyan societies in England followed in +close connection upon the first Awakening in America. It went on with +growing momentum in England and Ireland for quarter of a century, until, +in 1765, it numbered thirty-nine circuits served by ninety-two +itinerant preachers; and its work was mainly among the classes from +which the emigration to the colonies was drawn. It is not easy to +explain how it came to pass that through all these twenty-five years +Wesleyan Methodism gave no sound or sign of life on that continent on +which it was destined (if one may speak of predestination in this +connection) to grow to its most magnificent proportions. + +At last, in 1766, in a little group of Methodist families that had found +one another out among the recent comers in New York, Philip Embury, who +in his native Ireland long before had been a recognized local preacher, +was induced by the persuasions and reproaches of a pious woman to take +his not inconsiderable talent from the napkin in which he had kept it +hidden for six years, and preach in his own house to as many as could be +brought in to listen to him. The few that were there formed themselves +into a "class" and promised to attend at future meetings. + +A more untoward time for the setting on foot of a religious enterprise +could hardly have been chosen. It was a time of prevailing languor in +the churches, in the reaction from the Great Awakening; it was also a +time of intense political agitation. The year before the Stamp Act had +been passed, and the whole chain of colonies, from New Hampshire to +Georgia, had been stirred up to resist the execution of it. This year +the Stamp Act had been repealed, but in such terms as to imply a new +menace and redouble the agitation. From this time forward to the +outbreak of war in 1775, and from that year on till the conclusion of +peace in 1783, the land was never at rest from turmoil. Through it all +the Methodist societies grew and multiplied. In 1767 Embury's house had +overflowed, and a sail-loft was hired for the growing congregation. In +1768 a lot on John Street was secured and a meeting-house was built. The +work had spread to Philadelphia, and, self-planted in Maryland under the +preaching of Robert Strawbridge, was propagating itself rapidly in that +peculiarly congenial soil. In 1769, in response to earnest entreaties +from America, two of Wesley's itinerant preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor, +arrived with his commission to organize an American itinerancy; and two +years later, in 1771, arrived Francis Asbury, who, by virtue of his +preëminent qualifications for organization, administration, and command, +soon became practically the director of the American work, a function to +which, in 1772, he was officially appointed by commission from Wesley. + +Very great is the debt that American Christianity owes to Francis +Asbury. It may reasonably be doubted whether any one man, from the +founding of the church in America until now, has achieved so much in the +visible and traceable results of his work. It is very certain that +Wesley himself, with his despotic temper and his High-church and Tory +principles, could not have carried the Methodist movement in the New +World onward through the perils of its infancy on the way to so eminent +a success as that which was prepared by his vicegerent. Fully possessed +of the principles of that autocratic discipline ordained by Wesley, he +knew how to use it as not abusing it, being aware that such a discipline +can continue to subsist, in the long run, only by studying the temper of +the subjects of it, and making sure of obedience to orders by making +sure that the orders are agreeable, on the whole, to the subjects. More +than one polity theoretically aristocratic or monarchic in the +atmosphere of our republic has grown into a practically popular +government, simply through tact and good judgment in the administration +of it, without changing a syllable of its constitution. Very early in +the history of the Methodist Church it is easy to recognize the +aptitude with which Asbury naturalizes himself in the new climate. +Nominally he holds an absolute autocracy over the young organization. +Whatever the subject at issue, "on hearing every preacher for and +against, the right of determination was to rest with him."[201:1] +Questions of the utmost difficulty and of vital importance arose in the +first years of the American itinerancy. They could not have been decided +so wisely for the country and the universal church if Asbury, seeming to +govern the ministry and membership of the Society, had not studied to be +governed by them. In spite of the sturdy dictum of Wesley, "We are not +republicans, and do not intend to be," the salutary and necessary change +had already begun which was to accommodate his institutes in practice, +and eventually in form, to the habits and requirements of a free people. + +The center of gravity of the Methodist Society, beginning at New York, +moved rapidly southward. Boston had been the metropolis of the +Congregationalist churches; New York, of the Episcopalians; +Philadelphia, of the Quakers and the Presbyterians; and Baltimore, +latest and southernmost of the large colonial cities, became, for a +time, the headquarters of Methodism. Accessions to the Society in that +region were more in number and stronger in wealth and social influence +than in more northern communities. It was at Baltimore that Asbury fixed +his residence--so far as a Methodist bishop, ranging the country with +incessant and untiring diligence, could be said to have a fixed +residence. + +The record of the successive annual conferences of the Methodists gives +a gauge of their increase. At the first, in 1773, at Philadelphia, there +were reported 1160 members and 10 preachers, not one of these a native +of America. + +At the second annual conference, in Philadelphia, there were reported +2073 members and 17 preachers. + +The third annual conference sat at Philadelphia in 1775, simultaneously +with the Continental Congress. It was the beginning of the war. There +were reported 3148 members. Some of the foremost preachers had gone back +to England, unable to carry on their work without being compelled to +compromise their royalist principles. The preachers reporting were 19. +Of the membership nearly 2500 were south of Philadelphia--about eighty +per cent. + +At the fourth annual conference, at Baltimore, in 1776, were reported +4921 members and 24 preachers. + +At the fifth annual conference, in Harford County, Maryland, were +reported 6968 members and 36 preachers. This was in the thick of the +war. More of the leading preachers, sympathizing with the royal cause, +were going home to England. The Methodists as a body were subject to not +unreasonable suspicion of being disaffected to the cause of +independence. Their preachers were principally Englishmen with British +sympathies. The whole order was dominated and its property controlled by +an offensively outspoken Tory of the Dr. Johnson type.[202:1] It was +natural enough that in their public work they should be liable to +annoyance, mob violence, and military arrest. Even Asbury, a man of +proved American sympathies, found it necessary to retire for a time from +public activity. + +In these circumstances, it is no wonder that at the conference of 1778, +at Leesburg, Va., at which five circuits in the most disturbed regions +were unrepresented, there was a decline in numbers. The members were +fewer by 873; the preachers fewer by 7. + +But it is really wonderful that the next year (1779) were reported +extensive revivals in all parts not directly affected by the war, and an +increase of 2482 members and 49 preachers. The distribution of the +membership was very remarkable. At this time, and for many years after, +there was no organized Methodism in New England. New York, being +occupied by the invading army, sent no report. Of the total reported +membership of 8577, 140 are credited to New Jersey, 179 to Pennsylvania, +795 to Delaware, and 900 to Maryland. Nearly all the remainder, about +eighty per cent. of the whole, was included in Virginia and North +Carolina. With the exception of 319 persons, the entire reported +membership of the Methodist societies lived south of Mason and Dixon's +line. The fact throws an honorable light on some incidents of the early +history of this great order of preachers. + +In the sixteen years from the meeting in Philip Embury's house to the +end of the War of Independence the membership of the Methodist societies +grew to about 12,000, served by about 70 itinerant preachers. It was a +very vital and active membership, including a large number of "local +preachers" and exhorters. The societies and classes were effectively +organized and officered for aggressive work; and they were planted, for +the most part, in the regions most destitute of Christian institutions. + + * * * * * + +Parallel with the course of the gospel, we trace in every period the +course of those antichristian influences with which the gospel is in +conflict. The system of slavery must continue, through many sorrowful +years, to be in view from the line of our studies. We shall know it by +the unceasing protest made against it in the name of the Lord. The +arguments of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were sustained by the +yearly meetings of the Friends. At Newport, the chief center of the +African slave-trade, the two Congregational pastors, Samuel Hopkins, +the theologian, and the erudite Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale +College, mutually opposed in theology and contrasted at every point of +natural character, were at one in boldly opposing the business by which +their parishioners had been enriched.[204:1] The deepening of the +conflict for political liberty pointed the application of the golden +rule in the case of the slaves. The antislavery literature of the period +includes a printed sermon that had been preached by the distinguished +Dr. Levi Hart "to the corporation of freemen" of his native town of +Farmington, Conn., at their autumnal town-meeting in 1774; and the poem +on "Slavery," published in 1775 by that fine character, Aaron +Cleveland,[204:2] of Norwich, hatter, poet, legislator, and minister of +the gospel. Among the Presbyterians of New Jersey, the father of Dr. +Ashbel Green took the extreme ground which was taken by Dr. Hopkins's +church in 1784, that no person holding a slave should be permitted to +remain in the communion of the church.[204:3] In 1774 the first society +in the world for the abolition of slavery was organized among the +Friends in Pennsylvania, to be followed by others, making a continuous +series of abolition societies from New England to Maryland and Virginia. +But the great antislavery society of the period in question was the +Methodist Society. Laboring through the War of Independence mainly in +the Southern States, it publicly declared, in the conference of 1780, +"that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and +hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure +religion, and doing that which we would not that others should do to us +and ours." The discipline of the body of itinerants was conducted +rigorously in accordance with this declaration. + +It must not be supposed that the instances here cited represent +exceptions to the general course of opinion in the church of those +times. They are simply expressions of the universal judgment of those +whose attention had been seriously fixed upon the subject. There appears +no evidence of the existence of a contrary sentiment. The first +beginnings of a party in the church in opposition to the common judgment +of the Christian conscience on the subject of slavery are to be referred +to a comparatively very recent date. + +Another of the great conflicts of the modern church was impending. But +it was only to prophetic minds in the middle of the eighteenth century +that it was visible in the greatness of its proportions. The vice of +drunkenness, which Isaiah had denounced in Samaria and Paul had +denounced at Ephesus, was growing insensibly, since the introduction of +distilled liquors as a common beverage, to a fatal prevalence. The +trustees of the charitable colony of Georgia, consciously laying the +foundations of many generations, endeavored to provide for the welfare +of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro +slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon +nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the +Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of +entire abstinence from intoxicating liquids as a beverage."[206:1] But, +as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of +leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference +of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous +liquors, sell and drink them in drams," as "wrong in its nature and +consequences." To this course they were committed long in advance by the +"General Rules" set forth by the two Wesleys in May, 1743, for the +guidance of the "United Societies."[206:2] + +An incident of the times immediately preceding the War of Independence +requires to be noted in this place, not as being of great importance in +itself, but as characteristic of the condition of the country and +prophetic of changes that were about to take place. During the decade +from 1760 to 1775 the national body of the Presbyterians--the now +reunited synod of New York and Philadelphia--and the General Association +of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut met together by their +representatives in annual convention to take counsel over a grave peril +that seemed to be impending. A petition had been urgently pressed, in +behalf of the American Episcopalians, for the establishment of bishops +in the colonies under the authority of the Church of England. The +reasons for this measure were obvious and weighty; and the protestations +of those who promoted it, that they sought no advantage before the law +over their fellow-Christians, were doubtless sincere. Nevertheless, the +fear that the bringing in of Church of England bishops would involve the +bringing in of many of those mischiefs of the English church +establishment which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear +was a perfectly reasonable fear both to the Puritans of New England and +to the Presbyterians from Ireland. It was difficult for these, and it +would have been even more difficult for the new dignitaries, in colonial +days, to understand how bishops could be anything but lord bishops. The +fear of such results was not confined to ecclesiastics. The movement was +felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British +encroachments on colonial rights. The Massachusetts Assembly instructed +its agent in London strenuously to oppose it. In Virginia, the +Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the +petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was +in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they +received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.[207:1] + +The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the +Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little +colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one. And so it was +indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger +and stronger body of the two. By and by the disproportion was inverted, +and the alliance continued, with notable results. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[182:1] See G. P. Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp. 394-418; +also E. A. Park in the "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. iii., pp. +1634-38. The New England theology is not so called as being confined to +New England. Its leading "improvements on Calvinism" were accepted by +Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall among the English Baptists, and by +Chalmers of the Presbyterians of Scotland. + +[184:1] Of what sort was the life of a church and its pastor in those +days is illustrated in extracts from the journal of Samuel Hopkins, the +theologian, pastor at Great Barrington, given in the Memoir by Professor +Park, pp. 40-43. The Sabbath worship was disturbed by the arrival of +warlike news. The pastor and the families of his flock were driven from +their homes to take refuge in blockhouses crowded with fugitives. He was +gone nearly three months of fall and winter with a scouting party of a +hundred whites and nineteen Indians in the woods. He sent off the +fighting men of his town with sermon and benediction on an expedition to +Canada. During the second war he writes to his friend Bellamy (1754) of +a dreadful rumor that "good Mr. Edwards" had perished in a massacre at +Stockbridge. This rumor was false, but he adds: "On the Lord's day P.M., +as I was reading the psalm, news came that Stockbridge was beset by an +army of Indians, and on fire, which broke up the assembly in an instant. +All were put into the utmost consternation--men, women, and children +crying, 'What shall we do?' Not a gun to defend us, not a fort to flee +to, and few guns and little ammunition in the place. Some ran one way +and some another; but the general course was to the southward, +especially for women and children. Women, children, and squaws presently +flocked in upon us from Stockbridge, half naked and frighted almost to +death; and fresh news came that the enemy were on the plains this side +Stockbridge, shooting and killing and scalping people as they fled. Some +presently came along bloody, with news that they saw persons killed and +scalped, which raised a consternation, tumult, and distress +inexpressible." + +[188:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 191, 234; Dubbs, "German Reformed +Church," p. 271. + +[188:2] See extracts from the correspondence given by Dr. Jacobs, pp. +193-195. Dr. Jacobs's suggestion that three congregations of five +hundred families each might among them have raised the few hundreds a +year required seems reasonable, unless a large number of these were +families of redemptioners, that is, for the time, slaves. + +[190:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 196. The story of Zinzendorf, as +seen from different points of view, may be studied in the volumes of +Drs. Jacobs, Dubbs, and Hamilton (American Church History Series). + +[191:1] Acrelius, quoted by Jacobs, p. 218, note. + +[194:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 215-218; Hamilton, "The Moravians," +chaps, iii.-viii., xi. + +[196:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 289. + +[198:1] Jacobs, pp. 227, 309, sqq.; Hamilton, p. 457. No account of the +German-American churches is adequate which does not go back to the work +of Spener, the influence of which was felt through them all. The author +is compelled to content himself with inadequate work on many topics. + +[201:1] Dr. J. M. Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 181. + +[202:1] The attitude of Wesley toward the American cause is set forth +with judicial fairness by Dr. Buckley, pp. 158-168. + +[204:1] A full account of Hopkins's long-sustained activity against both +slavery and the slave-trade is given in Park's "Memoir of Hopkins," pp. +114-157. His sermons on the subject began in 1770. His monumental +"Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, with an Address to +Slave-holders," was published in 1776. For additional information as to +the antislavery attitude of the church at this period, and especially +that of Stiles, see review of "The Minister's Wooing," by L. Bacon ("New +Englander," vol. xviii., p. 145). + +[204:2] I have not been able to find a copy of this poem, the character +of which, however, is well known. The son of Aaron Cleveland, William, +was a silversmith at Norwich, among whose grandsons may be named +President Grover Cleveland, and Aaron Cleveland Cox, later known as +Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe. + +[204:3] Dr. A. Green's Life of his father, in "Monthly Christian +Advocate." + +[206:1] Park, "Memoir of Hopkins," p. 112. + +[206:2] Buckley, "The Methodists," Appendix, pp. 688, 689. + +[207:1] See Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 267-278, where +the subject is treated fully and with characteristic fairness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +RECONSTRUCTION. + + +Seven years of war left the American people exhausted, impoverished, +disorganized, conscious of having come into possession of a national +existence, and stirred with anxious searchings of heart over the +question what new institutions should succeed to those overthrown in the +struggle for independence. + +Like questions pervaded the commonwealth of American Christians through +all its divisions. The interconfessional divisions of the body +ecclesiastic were about to prove themselves a more effectual bar to +union than the political and territorial divisions of the body politic. +The religious divisions were nearly equal in number to the political. +Naming them in the order in which they had settled themselves on the +soil of the new nation, they were as follows: 1. The Protestant +Episcopalians; 2. The Reformed Dutch; 3. The Congregationalists; 4. The +Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians; +8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this +time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the +German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The +Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists +and the Baptists, were of so simple and elastic a polity, so +self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to +adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the Presbyterians, had +already organized themselves as independent of foreign spiritual +jurisdiction. Others still, as the German Reformed, the Moravians, and +the Quakers, were content to remain for years to come in a relation of +subordination to foreign centers of organization. But there were three +communions, of great prospective importance, which found it necessary to +address themselves to the task of reorganization to suit the changed +political conditions. These were the Episcopalians, the Catholics, and +the Methodists. + +In one respect all the various orders of churches were alike. They had +all suffered from the waste and damage of war. Pastors and missionaries +had been driven from their cures, congregations had been scattered, +houses of worship had been desecrated or destroyed. The Episcopalian and +Methodist ministers were generally Tories, and their churches, and in +some instances their persons, were not spared by the patriots. The +Friends and the Moravians, principled against taking active part in +warfare, were exposed to aggressions from both sides. All other sects +were safely presumed to be in earnest sympathy with the cause of +independence, which many of their pastors actively served as chaplains +or as combatants, or in other ways; wherever the British troops held the +ground, their churches were the object of spite. Nor were these the +chief losses by the war. More grievous still were the death of the +strong men and the young men of the churches, the demoralization of camp +life, and, as the war advanced, the infection of the current fashions of +unbelief from the officers both of the French and of the British armies. +The prevalent diathesis of the American church in all its sects was one +of spiritual torpor, from which, however, it soon began to be aroused +as the grave exigencies of the situation disclosed themselves. + +Perhaps no one of the Christian organizations of America came out of the +war in a more forlorn condition than the Episcopalians. This condition +was thus described by Bishop White, in an official charge to his clergy +at Philadelphia in 1832: + + "The congregations of our communion throughout the United + States were approaching annihilation. Although within this + city three Episcopal clergymen were resident and officiating, + the churches over the rest of the State had become deprived of + their clergy during the war, either by death or by departure + for England. In the Eastern States, with two or three + exceptions, there was a cessation of the exercises of the + pulpit, owing to the necessary disuse of the prayers for the + former civil rulers. In Maryland and Virginia, where the + church had enjoyed civil establishments, on the ceasing of + these, the incumbents of the parishes, almost without + exception, ceased to officiate. Farther south the condition of + the church was not better, to say the least."[210:1] + +This extreme feebleness of Episcopalianism in the several States +conspired with the tendencies of the time in civil affairs to induce +upon the new organization a character not at all conformed to the ideal +of episcopal government. Instead of establishing as the unit of +organization the bishop in every principal town, governing his diocese +at the head of his clergy with some measure of authority, it was almost +a necessity of the time to constitute dioceses as big as kingdoms, and +then to take security against excess of power in the diocesan by +overslaughing his authority through exorbitant powers conferred upon a +periodical mixed synod, legislating for a whole continent, even in +matters confessedly variable and unessential. In the later evolution of +the system, this superior limitation of the bishop's powers is +supplemented from below by magnifying the authority of representative +bodies, diocesan and parochial, until the work of the bishop is reduced +as nearly as possible to the merely "ministerial" performance of certain +assigned functions according to prescribed directions. Concerning this +frame of government it is to be remarked: 1. That it was quite +consciously and confessedly devised for the government of a sect, with +the full and fraternal understanding that other "religious denominations +of Christians" (to use the favorite American euphemism) "were left at +full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective churches" +to suit themselves.[211:1] 2. That, judged according to its professed +purpose, it has proved itself a practically good and effective +government. 3. That it is in no proper sense of the word an episcopal +government, but rather a classical and synodical government, according +to the common type of the American church constitutions of the +period.[211:2] + +The objections which only a few years before had withstood the +importation into the colonies of lord bishops, with the English common +and canon law at their backs, vanished entirely before the proposal for +the harmless functionaries provided for in the new constitution. John +Adams himself, a leader of the former opposition, now, as American +minister in London, did his best to secure for Bishops-elect White and +Provoost the coveted consecration from English bishops. The only +hindrance now to this long-desired boon was in the supercilious +dilatoriness of the English prelates and of the civil authorities to +whom they were subordinate. They were evidently in a sulky temper over +the overwhelming defeat of the British arms. If it had been in their +power to blockade effectively the channels of sacramental grace, there +is no sign that they would have consented to the American petition. +Happily there were other courses open. 1. There was the recourse to +presbyterial ordination, an expedient sanctioned, when necessary, by the +authority of "the judicious Hooker," and actually recommended, if the +case should require, by the Rev. William White, soon to be consecrated +as one of the first American bishops. 2. Already for more than a +half-century the Moravian episcopate had been present and most +apostolically active in America. 3. The Lutheran Episcopal churches of +Denmark and Sweden were fully competent and known to be not unwilling to +confer the episcopal succession on the American candidates. 4. There +were the Scotch nonjuring bishops, outlawed for political reasons from +communion with the English church, who were tending their "persecuted +remnant" of a flock in Scotland. Theirs was a not less valid succession +than those of their better-provided English brethren, and fully as +honorable a history. It was due to the separate initiative of the +Episcopalian ministers of Connecticut, and to the persistence of their +bishop-elect, Samuel Seabury, that the deadlock imposed by the +Englishmen was broken. Inheriting the Puritan spirit, which sought a +_jus divinum_ in all church questions, they were men of deeper +convictions and "higher" principles than their more southern brethren. +In advance of the plans for national organization, without conferring +with flesh and blood, they had met and acted, and their candidate for +consecration was in London urging his claims, before the ministers in +the Middle States had any knowledge of what was doing. After a year of +costly and vexatious delay in London, finding no progress made and no +hope of any, he proceeded to Aberdeen and was consecrated bishop +November 14, 1784. It was more than two years longer before the English +bishops succeeded in finding a way to do what their unrecognized Scotch +brethren had done with small demur. But they did find it. So long as the +Americans seemed dependent on English consecration they could not get +it. When at last it was made quite plain that they could and would do +without it if necessary, they were more than welcome to it. Dr. White +for Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provoost for New York, were consecrated by the +Archbishop of Canterbury at the chapel of Lambeth Palace, February 4, +1787. Dr. Griffith, elected for Virginia, failed to be present; in all +that great diocese there was not interest enough felt in the matter to +raise the money to pay his passage to England and back. + +The American Episcopal Church was at last in a condition to live. Some +formidable dangers of division arising from the double derivation of the +episcopate were happily averted by the tact and statesmanship of Bishop +White, and liturgical changes incidental to the reconstitution of the +church were made, on the whole with cautious judgment and good taste, +and successfully introduced. But for many years the church lived only a +languishing life. Bishop Provoost of New York, after fourteen years of +service, demitted his functions in 1801, discouraged about the +continuance of the church. He "thought it would die out with the old +colonial families."[213:1] The large prosperity of this church dates +only from the second decade of this century. It is the more notable for +the brief time in which so much has been accomplished. + + * * * * * + +The difficulties in the way of the organization of the Catholic Church +for the United States were not less serious, and were overcome with +equal success, but not without a prolonged struggle against opposition +from within. It is not easy for us, in view either of the antecedent or +of the subsequent history, to realize the extreme feebleness of American +Catholicism at the birth of our nation. According to an official +"Relation on the State of Religion in the United States," presented by +the prefect apostolic in 1785, the total number of Catholics in the +entire Union was 18,200, exclusive of an unascertainable number, +destitute of priests, in the Mississippi Valley. The entire number of +the clergy was twenty-four, most of them former members of the Society +of Jesuits, that had been suppressed in 1773 by the famous bull, +_Dominus ac Redemptor_, of Clement XIV. Sorely against their will, these +missionaries, hitherto subject only to the discipline of their own +society, were transformed into secular priests, under the jurisdiction +of the Vicar Apostolic of London. After the establishment of +independence, with the intense jealousy felt regarding British +influence, and by none more deeply and more reasonably felt than by the +Catholics, this jurisdiction was impracticable. The providentially fit +man for the emergency was found in the Rev. John Carroll, of an old +Maryland family distinguished alike for patriotism and for faithfulness +to Catholic principles. In June, 1784, he was made prefect apostolic +over the Catholic Church in the United States, and the dependence on +British jurisdiction was terminated. + +When, however, it was proposed that this provisional arrangement should +be superseded by the appointment of a bishop, objections not unexpected +were encountered from among the clergy. Already we have had occasion to +note the jealousy of episcopal authority that is felt by the clergy of +the regular orders. The lately disbanded Jesuits, with characteristic +flexibility of self-adaptation to circumstances, had at once +reincorporated themselves under another name, thus to hold the not +inconsiderable estates of their order in the State of Maryland. But the +plans of these energetic men either to control the bishop or to prevent +his appointment were unsuccessful. In December, 1790, Bishop Carroll, +having been consecrated in England, arrived and entered upon his see of +Baltimore. + +Difficulties, through which there were not many precedents to guide him, +thickened about the path of the new prelate. It was well both for the +church and for the republic that he was a man not only versed in the +theology and polity of his church, but imbued with American principles +and feelings. The first conflict that vexed the church under his +administration, and which for fifty years continued to vex his +associates and successors, was a collision between the American +sentiment for local and individual liberty and self-government, and the +absolutist spiritual government of Rome. The Catholics of New York, +including those of the Spanish and French legations, had built a church +in Barclay Street, then on the northern outskirt of the city; and they +had the very natural and just feeling that they had a right to do what +they would with their own and with the building erected at their +charges. They proceeded accordingly to put in charge of it priests of +their own selection. But they had lost sight of the countervailing +principle that if they had a right to do as they would with their +building, the bishop, as representing the supreme authority in the +church, had a like right to do as he would with his clergy. The building +was theirs; but it was for the bishop to say what services should be +held in it, or whether there should be any services in it at all, in the +Roman Catholic communion. It is surprising how often this issue was +made, and how repeatedly and obstinately it was fought out in various +places, when the final result was so inevitable. The hierarchical power +prevailed, of course, but after much irritation between priesthood and +people, and "great loss of souls to the church."[216:1] American ideas +and methods were destined profoundly and beneficially to affect the +Roman Church in the United States, but not by the revolutionary process +of establishing "trusteeism," or the lay control of parishes. The +damaging results of such disputes to both parties and to their common +interest in the church put the two parties under heavy bonds to deal by +each other with mutual consideration. The tendency, as in some parallel +cases, is toward an absolute government administered on republican +principles, the authoritative command being given with cautious +consideration of the disposition of the subject. The rights of the laity +are sufficiently secured, first, by their holding the purse, and, +secondly, in a community in which the Roman is only one of many churches +held in like esteem and making like claims to divine authority, by their +holding in reserve the right of withdrawal. + +Other and unwonted difficulties for the young church lay in the Babel +confusion of races and languages among its disciples, and in the lack of +public resources, which could be supplied no otherwise than by free +gift. Yet another difficulty was the scant supply of clergy; but events +which about this time began to spread desolation among the institutions +of Catholic Europe proved to be of inestimable benefit to the +ill-provided Catholics of America. Rome might almost have been content +to see the wasting and destruction in her ancient strongholds, for the +opportune reinforcement which it brought, at a critical time, to the +renascent church in the New World. More important than the priests of +various orders and divers languages, who came all equipped for mission +work among immigrants of different nationalities, was the arrival of the +Sulpitians of Paris, fleeing from the persecutions of the French +Revolution, ready for their special work of training for the parish +priesthood. The founding of their seminary in Baltimore in 1791, for the +training of a native clergy, was the best security that had yet been +given for the permanence of the Catholic revival. The American Catholic +Church was a small affair as yet, and for twenty years to come was to +continue so; but the framework was preparing of an organization +sufficient for the days of great things that were before it. + + * * * * * + +The most revolutionary change suffered by any religious body in America, +in adjusting itself to the changed conditions after the War of +Independence, was that suffered by the latest arrived and most rapidly +growing of them all. We have seen the order of the Wesleyan preachers +coming so tardily across the ocean, and propagated with constantly +increasing momentum southward from the border of Maryland. Its +congregations were not a church; its preachers were not a clergy. +Instituted in England by a narrow, High-church clergyman of the +established church, its preachers were simply a company of lay +missionaries under the command of John Wesley; its adherents were +members of the Church of England, bound to special fidelity to their +duties as such in their several parish churches, but united in clubs and +classes for the mutual promotion of holy living in an unholy age; and +its chapels and other property, fruits of the self-denial of many poor, +were held under iron-bound title-deeds, subject to the control of John +Wesley and of the close corporation of preachers to whom he should demit +them. + +It seems hardly worthy of the immense practical sagacity of Wesley that +he should have thought to transplant this system unchanged into the +midst of circumstances so widely different as those which must surround +it in America. And yet even here, where the best work of his preachers +was to be done among populations not only churchless, but out of reach +of church or ministry of whatever name, in those Southern States in +which nine tenths of his penitents and converts were gained, his +preachers were warned against the sacrilege of ministering to the +craving converts the Christian ordinances of baptism and the holy +supper, and bidden to send them to their own churches--when they had +none. The wretched incumbents of the State parishes at the first sounds +of war had scampered from the field like hirelings whose own the sheep +are not, and the demand that the preachers of the word should also +minister the comfort of the Christian ordinances became too strong to be +resisted. The call of duty and necessity seemed to the preachers +gathered at a conference at Fluvanna in 1779 to be a call from God; and, +contrary to the strong objections of Wesley and Asbury, they chose from +the older of their own number a committee who "ordained themselves, and +proceeded to ordain and set apart other ministers for the same +purpose--that they might minister the holy ordinances to the church of +Christ."[218:1] The step was a bold one, and although it seemed to be +attended by happy spiritual results, it threatened to precipitate a +division of "the Society" into two factions. The progress of events, the +establishment and acknowledgment of American independence, and the +constant expansion of the Methodist work, brought its own solution of +the divisive questions. + +It was an important day in the history of the American church, that +second day of September, 1784, when John Wesley, assisted by other +presbyters of the Church of England, laid his hands in benediction upon +the head of Dr. Thomas Coke, and committed to him the superintendency of +the Methodist work in America, as colleague with Francis Asbury. On the +arrival of Coke in America, the preachers were hastily summoned together +in conference at Baltimore, and there, in Christmas week of the same +year, Asbury was ordained successively as deacon, as elder, and as +superintendent. By the two bishops thus constituted were ordained elders +and deacons, and Methodism became a living church. + + * * * * * + +The two decades from the close of the War of Independence include the +period of the lowest ebb-tide of vitality in the history of American +Christianity. The spirit of half-belief or unbelief that prevailed on +the other side of the sea, both in the church and out of it, was +manifest also here. Happily the tide of foreign immigration at this time +was stayed, and the church had opportunity to gather strength for the +immense task that was presently to be devolved upon it. But the westward +movement of our own population was now beginning to pour down the +western slope of the Alleghanies into the great Mississippi basin. It +was observed by the Methodist preachers that the members of their +societies who had, through fear, necessity, or choice, moved into the +back settlements and into new parts of the country, as soon as peace was +settled and the way was open solicited the preachers to come among them, +and so the work followed them to the west.[219:1] In the years +1791-1810 occurred the great movement of population from Virginia to +Kentucky and from Carolina to Tennessee. It was reckoned that one fourth +of the Baptists of Virginia had removed to Kentucky, and yet they hardly +leavened the lump of early frontier barbarism. The Presbyterian Church, +working in its favorite methods, devised campaigns of home missionary +enterprise in its presbyteries and synods, detailing pastors from their +parishes for temporary mission service in following the movement of the +Scotch-Irish migration into the hill-country in which it seemed to find +its congenial habitat, and from which its powerful influences were to +flow in all directions. The Congregationalists of New England in like +manner followed with Christian teaching and pastoral care their sons +moving westward to occupy the rich lands of western New York and of +Ohio. The General Association of the pastors of Connecticut, solicitous +that the work of missions to the frontier should be carried forward +without loss of power through division of forces, entered, in 1801, into +the compact with the General Assembly of the Presbyterians known as the +"Plan of Union," by which Christians of both polities might coöperate in +the founding of churches and in maintaining the work of the gospel. + +In the year 1803 the most important political event since the adoption +of the Constitution, the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson, +opened to the American church a new and immense field for missionary +activity. This vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi westward +to the summits of the Rocky Mountains and nearly doubling the domain of +the United States, was the last remainder of the great projected French +Catholic empire that had fallen in 1763. Passed back and forth with the +vicissitudes of European politics between French and Spanish masters, it +had made small progress in either civilization or Christianity. But the +immense possibilities of it to the kingdoms of this world and to the +kingdom of heaven were obvious to every intelligent mind. Not many years +were to pass before it was to become an arena in which all the various +forces of American Christianity were to be found contending against all +the powers of darkness, not without dealing some mutual blows in the +melley. + + * * * * * + +The review of this period must not close without adverting to two +important advances in public practical Christianity, in which (as often +in like cases) the earnest endeavors of some among the Christians have +been beholden for success to uncongenial reinforcements. As it is +written, "The earth helped the woman." + +In the establishment of the American principle of the non-interference +of the state with religion, and the equality of all religious communions +before the law, much was due, no doubt, to the mutual jealousies of the +sects, no one or two of which were strong enough to maintain exceptional +pretensions over the rest combined. Much also is to be imputed to the +indifferentism and sometimes the anti-religious sentiment of an +important and numerous class of doctrinaire politicians of which +Jefferson may be taken as a type. So far as this work was a work of +intelligent conviction and religious faith, the chief honor of it must +be given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Presbyterians, had +been energetic and efficient in demanding their own liberties; the +Friends and the Baptists agreed in demanding liberty of conscience and +worship, and equality before the law, for all alike. But the active +labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. It is to their +consistency and constancy in the warfare against the privileges of the +powerful "Standing Order" of New England, and of the moribund +establishments of the South, that we are chiefly indebted for the final +triumph, in this country, of that principle of the separation of church +from state which is one of the largest contributions of the New World to +civilization and to the church universal. + +It is not surprising that a people so earnest as the Baptists showed +themselves in the promotion of religious liberty should be forward in +the condemnation of American slavery. We have already seen the vigor +with which the Methodists, having all their strength at the South, +levied a spiritual warfare against this great wrong. It was at the South +that the Baptists, in 1789, "_Resolved_, That slavery is a violent +deprivation of the rights of nature, and inconsistent with a republican +government, and we therefore recommend it to our brethren to make use of +every legal measure to extirpate this horrid evil from the land."[222:1] +At the North, Jonathan Edwards the Younger is conspicuous in the +unbroken succession of antislavery churchmen. His sermon on the +"Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave-trade," preached in 1791 before the +Connecticut Abolition Society, of which President Ezra Stiles was the +head, long continued to be reprinted and circulated, both at the North +and at the South, as the most effective argument not only against the +slave-trade, but against the whole system of slavery. + + * * * * * + +It will not be intruding needlessly upon the difficult field of dogmatic +history if we note here the widely important diversities of Christian +teaching that belong to this which we may call the sub-Revolutionary +period. + +It is in contradiction to our modern association of ideas to read that +the prevailing type of doctrine among the early Baptists of New England +was Arminian.[222:2] The pronounced individualism of the Baptist +churches, and the emphasis which they place upon human responsibility, +might naturally have created a tendency in this direction; but a cause +not less obvious was their antagonism to the established +Congregationalism, with its sharply defined Calvinistic statements. The +public challenging of these statements made a favorite issue on which to +appeal to the people from their constituted teachers. But when the South +and Southwest opened itself as the field of a wonderfully rapid +expansion before the feet of the Baptist evangelists, the antagonism was +quite of another sort. Their collaborators and sharp competitors in the +great and noble work of planting the gospel and the church in old and +neglected fields at the South, and carrying them westward to the +continually advancing frontier of population, were to be found in the +multiplying army of the Methodist itinerants and local exhorters, whose +theology, enjoined upon them by their commission, was the Arminianism of +John Wesley. No explanation is apparent for the revulsion of the great +body of American Baptists into a Calvinism exaggerated to the point of +caricature, except the reaction of controversy with the Methodists. The +tendency of the two parties to opposite poles of dogma was all the +stronger for the fact that on both sides teachers and taught were alike +lacking in liberalizing education. The fact that two by far the most +numerous denominations of Christians in the United States were picketed +thus over against each other in the same regions, as widely differing +from each other in doctrine and organization as the Dominican order from +the Jesuit, and differing somewhat in the same way, is a fact that +invites our regret and disapproval, but at the same time compels us to +remember its compensating advantages. + + * * * * * + +It is to this period that we trace the head-waters of several important +existing denominations. + +At the close of the war the congregation of the "King's Chapel," the +oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been thinned and had lost +its rector in the general migration of leading Tory families to Nova +Scotia. At the restoration of peace it was served in the capacity of lay +reader by Mr. James Freeman, a young graduate of Harvard, who came soon +to be esteemed very highly in love both for his work's sake and for his +own. Being chosen pastor of the church, he was not many months in +finding that many things in the English Prayer-book were irreconcilable +with doubts and convictions concerning the Trinity and related +doctrines, which about this time were widely prevalent among theologians +both in the Church of England and outside of it. In June, 1785, it was +voted in the congregation, by a very large majority, to amend the order +of worship in accordance with these scruples. The changes were in a +direction in which not a few Episcopalians were disposed to move,[224:1] +and the congregation did not hesitate to apply for ordination for their +pastor, first to Bishop Seabury, and afterward, with better hope of +success, to Bishop Provoost. Failing here also, the congregation +proceeded to induct their elect pastor into his office without waiting +further upon bishops; and thus "the first Episcopal church in New +England became the first Unitarian church in America." It was not the +beginning of Unitarianism in America, for this had long been "in the +air." But it was the first distinct organization of it. How rapidly and +powerfully it spread within narrow geographical limits, and how widely +it has affected the course of religious history, must appear in later +chapters. + + * * * * * + +Close as might seem to be the kindred between Unitarianism and +Universalism, coeval as they are in their origin as organized sects, +they are curiously diverse in their origin. Each of them, at the present +day, holds the characteristic tenet of the other; in general, Unitarians +are Universalists, and Universalists are Unitarians.[225:1] But in the +beginning Unitarianism was a bold reactionary protest against leading +doctrines of the prevailing Calvinism of New England, notably against +the doctrines of the Trinity, of expiatory atonement, and of human +depravity; and it was still more a protest against the intolerant and +intolerable dogmatism of the sanhedrim of Jonathan Edwards's successors, +in their cock-sure expositions of the methods of the divine government +and the psychology of conversion. Universalism, on the other hand, in +its first setting forth in America, planted itself on the leading +"evangelical" doctrines, which its leaders had earnestly preached, and +made them the major premisses of its argument. Justification and +salvation, said John Murray, one of Whitefield's Calvinistic Methodist +preachers, are the lot of those for whom Christ died. But Christ died +for the elect, said his Calvinistic brethren. Nay, verily, said Murray +(in this following one of his colleagues, James Relly); what saith the +Scripture? "Christ died for _all_." It was the pinch of this argument +which brought New England theologians, beginning with Smalley and the +second Edwards, to the acceptance of the rectoral theory of the +atonement, and so prepared the way for much disputation among the +doctors of the next century.[225:2] + +Mr. Murray arrived in America in 1770, and after much going to and fro +organized, in 1779, at Gloucester, Mass., the first congregation in +America on distinctly Universalist principles. But other men, along +other lines of thought, had been working their way to somewhat similar +conclusions. In 1785 Elhanan Winchester, a thoroughly Calvinistic +Baptist minister in Philadelphia, led forth his excommunicated brethren, +one hundred strong, and organized them into a "Society of Universal +Baptists," holding to the universal _restoration_ of mankind to holiness +and happiness. The two differing schools fraternized in a convention of +Universalist churches at Philadelphia in 1794, at which articles of +belief and a plan of organization were set forth, understood to be from +the pen of Dr. Benjamin Rush; and a resolution was adopted declaring the +holding of slaves to be "inconsistent with the union of the human race +in a common Saviour, and the obligations to mutual and universal love +which flow from that union." + +It was along still another line of argument, proceeding from the assumed +"rectitude of human nature," that the Unitarians came, tardily and +hesitatingly, to the Universalist position. The long persistence of +definite boundary lines between two bodies so nearly alike in their +tenets is a subject worthy of study. The lines seem to be rather +historical and social than theological. The distinction between them has +been thus epigrammatically stated: that the Universalist holds that God +is too good to damn a man; the Unitarian holds that men are too good to +be damned. + +No controversy in the history of the American church has been more +deeply marked by a sincere and serious earnestness, over and above the +competitive zeal and invidious acrimony that are an inevitable admixture +in such debates, than the controversy that was at once waged against the +two new sects claiming the title "Liberal." It was sincerely felt by +their antagonists that, while the one abandoned the foundation of the +Christian faith, the other destroyed the foundation of Christian +morality. In the early propaganda of each of them was much to deepen +this mistrust. When the standard of dissent is set up in any community, +and men are invited to it in the name of liberality, nothing can hinder +its becoming a rallying-point for all sorts of disaffected souls, not +only the liberal, but the loose. The story of the controversy belongs to +later chapters of this book. It is safe to say at this point that the +early orthodox fears have at least not been fully confirmed by the +sequel up to this date. It was one of the most strenuous of the early +disputants against the "liberal" opinions[227:1] who remarked in his +later years, concerning the Unitarian saints, that it seemed as if their +exclusive contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the +example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional beauty and +Christlikeness of living. As for the Universalists, the record of their +fidelity, as a body, to the various interests of social morality is not +surpassed by that of any denomination. But in the earlier days the +conflict against the two sects called "liberal" was waged ruthlessly, +not as against defective or erroneous schemes of doctrine, but as +against distinctly antichristian heresies. + +There is instruction to be gotten from studying, in comparison, the +course of these opinions in the established churches of Great Britain +and among the unestablished churches of America. Under the enforced +comprehensiveness or tolerance of a national church, it is easier for +strange doctrines to spread within the pale. Under the American plan of +the organization of Christianity by voluntary mutual association +according to elective affinity, with freedom to receive or exclude, the +flock within the fold may perhaps be kept safer from contamination; as +when the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1792, and again in 1794, +decided that Universalists be not admitted to the sealing ordinances of +the gospel;[228:1] but by this course the excluded opinion is compelled +to intrench itself both for defense and for attack in a sectarian +organization. It is a practically interesting question, the answer to +which is by no means self-evident, whether Universalist opinions would +have been less prevalent to-day in England and Scotland if they had been +excluded from the national churches and erected into a sect with its +partisan pulpits, presses, and propagandists; or whether they would have +more diffused in America if, instead of being dealt with by process of +excommunication or deposition, they had been dealt with simply by +argument. This is one of the many questions which history raises, but +which (happily for him) it does not fall within the function of the +historian to answer. + + * * * * * + +To this period is to be referred the origin of some of the minor +American sects. + +The "United Brethren in Christ" grew into a distinct organization about +the year 1800. It arose incidentally to the Methodist evangelism, in an +effort on the part of Philip William Otterbein, of the German Reformed +Church, and Martin Boehm, of the Mennonites, to provide for the +shepherdless German-speaking people by an adaptation of the Wesleyan +methods. Presently, in the natural progress of language, the English +work outgrew the German. It is now doing an extensive and useful work by +pulpit and press, chiefly in Pennsylvania and the States of that +latitude. The reasons for its continued existence separate from the +Methodist Church, which it closely resembles both in doctrine and in +polity, are more apparent to those within the organization than to +superficial observers from outside. + +The organization just described arose from the unwillingness of the +German Reformed Church to meet the craving needs of the German people by +using the Wesleyan methods. From the unwillingness of the Methodist +Church to use the German language arose another organization, "the +Evangelical Association," sometimes known, from the name of its founder, +by the somewhat grotesque title of "the Albrights." This also is both +Methodist and Episcopal, a reduced copy of the great Wesleyan +institution, mainly devoted to labors among the Germans. + +In 1792 was planted at Baltimore the first American congregation of that +organization of disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg which had been begun in +London nine years before and called by the appropriately fanciful name +of "the Church of the New Jerusalem." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[210:1] Quoted in Tiffany, p. 289, note. The extreme depression of the +Protestant Episcopal and (as will soon appear) of the Roman Catholic +Church, at this point of time, emphasizes all the more the great +advances made by both these communions from this time forward. + +[211:1] Preface to the American "Book of Common Prayer," 1789. + +[211:2] See the critical observations of Dr. McConnell, "History of the +American Episcopal Church," pp. 264-276. The polity of this church seems +to have suffered for want of a States' Rights and Strict Construction +party. The centrifugal force has been overbalanced by the centripetal. + +[213:1] Tiffany, pp. 385-399. + +[216:1] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 269-323, 367, 399. + +[218:1] Buckley, "The Methodists," pp. 182, 183. + +[219:1] Jesse Lee, quoted by Dr. Buckley, p. 195. + +[222:1] Newman, "The Baptists," p. 305. + +[222:2] _Ibid._, p. 243. + +[224:1] Tiffany, p. 347; McConnell, p. 249. + +[225:1] Dr. Richard Eddy, "The Universalists," p. 429. + +[225:2] _Ibid._, pp. 392-397. The sermons of Smalley were preached at +Wallingford, Conn., "by particular request, with special reference to +the Murrayan controversy." + +[227:1] Leonard Bacon, of New Haven, in conversation. + +[228:1] Eddy, p. 387. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE SECOND AWAKENING. + + +The closing years of the eighteenth century show the lowest low-water +mark of the lowest ebb-tide of spiritual life in the history of the +American church. The demoralization of army life, the fury of political +factions, the catchpenny materialist morality of Franklin, the +philosophic deism of men like Jefferson, and the popular ribaldry of Tom +Paine, had wrought, together with other untoward influences, to bring +about a condition of things which to the eye of little faith seemed +almost desperate. + +From the beginning of the reaction from the stormy excitements of the +Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches +from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled +those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a +gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition of +Yale College at the accession of President Dwight in 1795, as described +in the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher, then a sophomore. + + "Before he came, college was in a most ungodly state. The + college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were + skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were + kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and + licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped.... + That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. + Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom + Paine and believed him; I read and fought him all the way. + Never had any propensity to infidelity. But most of the class + before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire, + Rousseau, D'Alembert, etc."[231:1] + +In the Middle States the aspect was not more promising. Princeton +College had been closed for three years of the Revolutionary War. In +1782 there were only two among the students who professed themselves +Christians. The Presbyterian General Assembly, representing the +strongest religious force in that region, in 1798 described the then +existing condition of the country in these terms: + + "Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten + destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and + bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have + convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with + similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful + apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and + practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing + impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of + religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances + tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the + public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to + our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, + injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of + debauchery and loose indulgence greatly abound." + +From the point of view of the Episcopalian of that day the prospect was +even more disheartening. It was at this time that Bishop Provoost of New +York laid down his functions, not expecting the church to continue much +longer; and Bishop Madison of Virginia shared the despairing conviction +of Chief-Justice Marshall that the church was too far gone ever to be +revived.[232:1] Over all this period the historian of the Lutheran +Church writes up the title "Deterioration."[232:2] Proposals were set on +foot looking toward the merger of these two languishing denominations. + +Even the Methodists, the fervor of whose zeal and vitality of whose +organization had withstood what seemed severer tests, felt the benumbing +influence of this unhappy age. For three years ending in 1796 the total +membership diminished at the rate of about four thousand a year. + +Many witnesses agree in describing the moral and religious condition of +the border States of Kentucky and Tennessee as peculiarly deplorable. +The autobiography of that famous pioneer preacher, Peter Cartwright, +gives a lively picture of Kentucky society in 1793 as he remembered it +in his old age: + + "Logan County, when my father moved into it, was called + 'Rogues' Harbor.' Here many refugees from all parts of the + Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for although there + was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate + state of society. Murderers, horse-thieves, highway robbers, + and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and + actually formed a majority. Those who favored a better state + of morals were called 'Regulators.' But they encountered + fierce opposition from the 'Rogues,' and a battle was fought + with guns, pistols, dirks, knives, and clubs, in which the + 'Regulators' were defeated."[233:1] + +The people that walked in this gross darkness beheld a great light. In +1796 a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, who for more than ten +years had done useful service in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, +assumed charge of several Presbyterian churches in that very Logan +County which we know through the reminiscences of Peter Cartwright. As +he went the round of his scattered congregations his preaching was felt +to have peculiar power "to arouse false professors, to awaken a dead +church, and warn sinners and lead them to seek the new spiritual life +which he himself had found." Three years later two brothers, William and +John McGee, one a Presbyterian minister and the other a Methodist, came +through the beautiful Cumberland country in Kentucky and Tennessee, +speaking, as if in the spirit and power of John the Baptist, to +multitudes that gathered from great distances to hear them. On one +occasion, in the woods of Logan County, in July, 1800, the gathered +families, many of whom came from far, tethered their teams and encamped +for several days for the unaccustomed privilege of common worship and +Christian preaching. This is believed to have been the first American +camp-meeting--an era worth remembering in our history. Not without +abundant New Testament antecedents, it naturalized itself at once on our +soil as a natural expedient for scattered frontier populations +unprovided with settled institutions. By a natural process of evolution, +adapting itself to other environments and uses, the backwoods +camp-meeting has grown into the "Chautauqua" assembly, which at so many +places besides the original center at Chautauqua Lake has grown into an +important and most characteristic institution of American civilization. + +We are happy in having an account of some of these meetings from one who +was personally and sympathetically interested in them. For in the spring +of the next year Barton Warren Stone, a Presbyterian minister serving +his two congregations of Concord and Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, and +oppressed with a sense of the religious apathy prevailing about him, +made the long journey across the State of Kentucky to see for himself +the wonderful things of which he had heard, and afterward wrote his +reminiscences. + + "There, on the edge of a prairie in Logan County, Kentucky, + the multitudes came together and continued a number of days + and nights encamped on the ground, during which time worship + was carried on in some part of the encampment. The scene was + new to me and passing strange. It baffled description. Many, + very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for + hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless + state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting + symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a + prayer for mercy fervently uttered. After lying there for + hours they obtained deliverance. The gloomy cloud that had + covered their faces seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, + and hope, in smiles, brightened into joy. They would rise, + shouting deliverance, and then would address the surrounding + multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive. With + astonishment did I hear men, women, and children declaring the + wonderful works of God and the glorious mysteries of the + gospel. Their appeals were solemn, heart-penetrating, bold, + and free. Under such circumstances many others would fall down + into the same state from which the speakers had just been + delivered. + + "Two or three of my particular acquaintances from a distance + were struck down. I sat patiently by one of them, whom I knew + to be a careless sinner, for hours, and observed with critical + attention everything that passed, from the beginning to the + end. I noticed the momentary revivings as from death, the + humble confession of sins, the fervent prayer, and the + ultimate deliverance; then the solemn thanks and praise to + God, and affectionate exhortation to companions and to the + people around to repent and come to Jesus. I was astonished at + the knowledge of gospel truth displayed in the address. The + effect was that several sank down into the same appearance of + death. After attending to many such cases, my conviction was + complete that it was a good work--the work of God; nor has my + mind wavered since on the subject. Much did I see then, and + much have I seen since, that I consider to be fanaticism; but + this should not condemn the work. The devil has always tried + to ape the works of God, to bring them into disrepute; but + that cannot be a Satanic work which brings men to humble + confession, to forsaking of sin, to prayer, fervent praise and + thanksgiving, and a sincere and affectionate exhortation to + sinners to repent and come to Jesus the Saviour." + +Profoundly impressed by what he had seen and heard, Pastor Stone +returned to his double parish in Bourbon County and rehearsed the story +of it. "The congregation was affected with awful solemnity, and many +returned home weeping." This was in the early spring. Not many months +afterward there was a notable springing up of this seed. + + "A memorable meeting was held at Cane Ridge in August, 1801. + The roads were crowded with wagons, carriages, horses, and + footmen moving to the solemn camp. It was judged by military + men on the ground that between twenty and thirty thousand + persons were assembled. Four or five preachers spoke at the + same time in different parts of the encampment without + confusion. The Methodist and Baptist preachers aided in the + work, and all appeared cordially united in it. They were of + one mind and soul: the salvation of sinners was the one + object. We all engaged in singing the same songs, all united + in prayer, all preached the same things.... The numbers + converted will be known only in eternity. Many things + transpired in the meeting which were so much like miracles + that they had the same effect as miracles on unbelievers. By + them many were convinced that Jesus was the Christ and were + persuaded to submit to him. This meeting continued six or + seven days and nights, and would have continued longer, but + food for the sustenance of such a multitude failed. + + "To this meeting many had come from Ohio and other distant + parts. These returned home and diffused the same spirit in + their respective neighborhoods. Similar results followed. So + low had religion sunk, and such carelessness had universally + prevailed, that I have thought that nothing common could have + arrested and held the attention of the people."[236:1] + +The sober and cautious tone of this narrative will already have +impressed the reader. These are not the words of a heated enthusiast, or +a man weakly credulous. We may hesitate to accept his judgment, but may +safely accept his testimony, amply corroborated as it is, to facts which +he has seen and heard. + +But the crucial test of the work, the test prescribed by the Lord of the +church, is that it shall be known by its fruits. And this test it seems +to bear well. Dr. Archibald Alexander, had in high reverence in the +Presbyterian Church as a wise counselor in spiritual matters, made +scrupulous inquiry into the results of this revival, and received from +one of his correspondents, Dr. George A. Baxter, who made an early visit +to the scenes of the revival, the following testimony: + + "On my way I was informed by settlers on the road that the + character of Kentucky travelers was entirely changed, and that + they were as remarkable for sobriety as they had formerly been + for dissoluteness and immorality. And indeed I found Kentucky + to appearances the most moral place I had ever seen. A profane + expression was hardly ever heard. A religious awe seemed to + pervade the country. Upon the whole, I think the revival in + Kentucky the most extraordinary that has ever visited the + church of Christ; and, all things considered, it was + peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of the country into + which it came. Infidelity was triumphant and religion was on + the point of expiring. Something extraordinary seemed + necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people who were + ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable and futurity a + delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded + infidelity and brought numbers beyond calculation under + serious impressions." + +A sermon preached in 1803 to the Presbyterian synod of Kentucky, by the +Rev. David Rice, has the value of testimony given in the presence of +other competent witnesses, and liable thus to be questioned or +contradicted. In it he says: + + "Neighborhoods noted for their vicious and profligate manners + are now as much noted for their piety and good order. + Drunkards, profane swearers, liars, quarrelsome persons, etc., + are remarkably reformed.... A number of families who had lived + apparently without the fear of God, in folly and in vice, + without any religious instruction or any proper government, + are now reduced to order and are daily joining in the worship + of God, reading his word, singing his praises, and offering up + their supplications to a throne of grace. Parents who seemed + formerly to have little or no regard for the salvation of + their children are now anxiously concerned for their + salvation, are pleading for them, and endeavoring to lead them + to Christ and train them up in the way of piety and virtue." + +That same year the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in its +annual review of the state of religion, adverted with emphasis to the +work in the Cumberland country, and cited remarkable instances of +conversion--malignant opposers of vital piety convinced and reconciled, +learned, active, and conspicuous infidels becoming signal monuments of +that grace which they once despised; and in conclusion declared with joy +that "the state and prospects of vital religion in our country are more +favorable and encouraging than at any period within the last forty +years."[238:1] + +In order successfully to study the phenomena of this remarkable passage +in the history of the church, it is necessary to bear in mind the social +conditions that prevailed. A population _perfervido ingenio_, of a +temper peculiarly susceptible of intense excitement, transplanted into a +wild country, under little control either of conventionality or law, +deeply ingrained from many generations with the religious sentiment, but +broken loose from the control of it and living consciously in reckless +disregard of the law of God, is suddenly aroused to a sense of its +apostasy and wickedness. The people do not hear the word of God from +Sabbath to Sabbath, or even from evening to evening, and take it home +with them and ponder it amid the avocations of daily business; by the +conditions, they are sequestered for days together in the wilderness for +the exclusive contemplation of momentous truths pressed upon the mind +with incessant and impassioned iteration; and they remain together, an +agitated throng, not of men only, but of women and children. The student +of psychology recognizes at once that here are present in an unusual +combination the conditions not merely of the ready propagation of +influence by example and persuasion, but of those nervous, mental, or +spiritual infections which make so important a figure in the world's +history, civil, military, or religious. It is wholly in accord with +human nature that the physical manifestations attendant on religious +excitement in these circumstances should be of an intense and +extravagant sort. + +And such indeed they were. Sudden outcries, hysteric weeping and +laughter, faintings, catalepsies, trances, were customary concomitants +of the revival preaching. Multitudes fell prostrate on the ground, +"spiritually slain," as it was said. Lest the helpless bodies should be +trampled on by the surging crowd, they were taken up and laid in rows on +the floor of the neighboring meeting-house. "Some lay quiet, unable to +move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with +their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a +live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours +at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then +plunged, shouting 'Lost! Lost!' into the forest." + +As the revival went on and the camp-meeting grew to be a custom and an +institution, this nervous epidemic took on certain recognizable forms, +one of which was known as "the jerks." This malady "began in the head +and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to +side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made +to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over +hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to +bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of +eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his +own observation on the subject: + + "I have passed a meeting-house where I observed the + undergrowth had been cut for a camp-meeting, and from fifty to + a hundred saplings were left breast-high on purpose for + persons who were 'jerked' to hold on to. I observed where they + had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping + flies.... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who + wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who + are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is + subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but + the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have + sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while + jerking."[240:1] + +There is nothing improbable in the claim that phenomena like these, +strange, weird, startling, "were so much like miracles that they had the +same effect as miracles on unbelievers." They helped break up the +apathetic torpor of the church and summon the multitudes into the +wilderness to hear the preaching of repentance and the remission of +sins. But they had some lamentable results. Those who, like many among +the Methodists,[241:1] found in them the direct work of the Holy Spirit, +were thereby started along the perilous incline toward enthusiasm and +fanaticism. Those, on the other hand, repelled by the grotesqueness and +extravagance of these manifestations, who were led to distrust or +condemn the good work with which they were associated, fell into a +graver error. This was the error into which, to its cost, the +Presbyterian Church was by and by drawn in dealing with questions that +emerged from these agitations. The revival gave rise to two new sects, +both of them marked by the fervor of spirit that characterized the time, +and both of them finding their principal habitat in the same western +region. The Cumberland Presbyterians, now grown to large numbers and +deserved influence and dignity in the fellowship of American sects, +separated themselves from the main body of Presbyterians by refusing to +accept, in face of the craving needs of the pastorless population all +about them, the arbitrary rule shutting the door of access to the +Presbyterian ministry to all candidates, how great soever their other +qualifications, who lacked a classical education. Separating on this +issue, they took the opportunity to amend the generally accepted +doctrinal statements of the Presbyterian churches by mitigating those +utterances which seemed to them, as they have seemed to many others, to +err in the direction of fatalism. + +About the same time there was manifested in various quarters a generous +revolt against the existence and multiplication of mutually exclusive +sects in the Christian family, each limited by humanly devised +doctrinal articles and branded with partisan names. How these various +protesting elements came together on the sole basis of a common faith in +Christ and a common acceptance of the divine authority of the Bible; +how, not intending it, they came to be themselves a new sect; and how, +struggling in vain against the inexorable laws of language, they came to +be distinguished by names, as _Campbellite Baptist_, _Christ-ian_ (with +a long _i_), and (+kat' exochên+) Disciples, are points on which +interesting and instructive light is shed in the history by Dr. B. B. +Tyler.[242:1] + + * * * * * + +The great revival of the West and Southwest was not the only revival, +and not even the earliest revival, of that time of crisis. As early as +1792 the long inertia of the eastern churches began to be broken here +and there by signs of growing earnestness and attentiveness to spiritual +things. There was little of excited agitation. There was no preaching of +famous evangelists. There were no imposing convocations. Only in many +and many of those country towns in which, at that time, the main +strength of the population lay, the labors of faithful pastors began to +be rewarded with large ingatherings of penitent believers. The +languishing churches grew strong and hopeful, and the insolent +infidelity of the times was abashed. With such sober simplicity was the +work of the gospel carried forward, in the opening years of this +century, among the churches and pastors that had learned wisdom from the +mistakes made in the Great Awakening, that there are few striking +incidents for the historian. Hardly any man is to be pointed out as a +preëminent leader of the church at this period. If to any one, this +place of honor belongs to Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, +whose accession to the presidency of Yale College at the darkest hour +in its history marked the turning-point. We have already learned from +the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher how low the college had sunk in point +of religious character, when most of the class above him were openly +boastful of being infidels.[243:1] How the new president dealt with them +is well described by the same witness: + + "They thought the faculty were afraid of free discussion. But + when they handed Dr. Dwight a list of subjects for class + disputation, to their surprise, he selected this: 'Is the + Bible the word of God?' and told them to do their best. He + heard all they had to say, answered them, and there was an + end. He preached incessantly for six months on the subject, + and all infidelity skulked and hid its head. He elaborated his + theological system in a series of forenoon sermons in the + chapel; the afternoon discourses were practical. The original + design of Yale College was to found a divinity school. To a + mind appreciative, like mine, his preaching was a continual + course of education and a continual feast. He was copious and + polished in style, though disciplined and logical. There was a + pith and power of doctrine there that has not been since + surpassed, if equaled."[243:2] + +It may be doubted whether to any man of his generation it was given to +exercise a wider and more beneficent influence over the American church +than that of President Dwight. His system of "Theology Explained and +Defended in a Series of Sermons," a theology meant to be preached and +made effective in convincing men and converting them to the service of +God, was so constructed as to be completed within the four years of the +college curriculum, so that every graduate should have heard the whole +of it. The influence of it has not been limited by the boundaries of our +country, nor has it expired with the century just completed since +President Dwight's accession. + +At the East also, as well as at the West, the quickening of religious +thought and feeling had the common effect of alienating and disrupting. +Diverging tendencies, which had begun to disclose themselves in the +discussions between Edwards and Chauncy in their respective volumes of +"Thoughts" on the Great Awakening, became emphasized in the revival of +1800. That liberalism which had begun as a protest against a too +peremptory style of dogmatism was rapidly advancing toward a dogmatic +denial of points deemed by the opposite party to be essential. Dogmatic +differences were aggravated by differences of taste and temperament, and +everything was working toward the schism by which some sincere and +zealous souls should seek to do God service. + +In one most important particular the revival of 1800 was happily +distinguished from the Great Awakening of 1740. It was not done and over +with at the end of a few years, and then followed by a long period of +reaction. It was the beginning of a long period of vigorous and +"abundant life," moving forward, not, indeed, with even and unvarying +flow, yet with continuous current, marked with those alternations of +exaltation and subsidence which seem, whether for evil or for good, to +have become a fixed characteristic of American church history. + +The widespread revivals of the first decade of the nineteenth century +saved the church of Christ in America from its low estate and girded it +for stupendous tasks that were about to be devolved on it. In the glow +of this renewed fervor, the churches of New England successfully made +the difficult transition from establishment to self-support and to the +costly enterprises of aggressive evangelization into which, in company +with other churches to the South and West, they were about to enter. The +Christianity of the country was prepared and equipped to attend with +equal pace the prodigious rush of population across the breadth of the +Great Valley, and to give welcome to the invading host of immigrants +which before the end of a half century was to effect its entrance into +our territory at the rate of a thousand a day. It was to accommodate +itself to changing social conditions, as the once agricultural +population began to concentrate itself in factory villages and +commercial towns. It was to carry on systematic campaigns of warfare +against instituted social wrong, such as the drinking usages of society, +the savage code of dueling, the public sanction of slavery. And it was +to enter the "effectual door" which from the beginning of the century +opened wider and wider to admit the gospel and the church to every +nation under heaven. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[231:1] "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., p. 43. The same +charming volume contains abundant evidence that the spirit of true +religion was cherished in the homes of the people, while there were so +many public signs of apostasy. + +[232:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 388, 394, 395. + +[232:2] Dr. Jacobs, chap. xix. + +[233:1] "Autobiography of Peter Cartwright," quoted by Dorchester, +"Christianity in the United States," p. 348. + +[236:1] See B. B. Tyler, "History of the Disciples," pp. 11-17; R. V. +Foster, "The Cumberland Presbyterians," pp. 260-263 (American Church +History Series, vols. xi., xii.). + +[238:1] Tyler, "The Disciples"; Foster, "The Cumberland Presbyterians," +_ubi supra_. + +[240:1] Let me add an illustrative instance related to me by the +distinguished Methodist, Dr. David P. Durbin. Standing near the platform +from which he was to preach at a camp-meeting, he observed a powerfully +built young backwoodsman who was manifestly there with no better intent +than to disturb and break up the meeting. Presently it became evident +that the young man was conscious of some influence taking hold of him to +which he was resolved not to yield; he clutched with both hands a +hickory sapling next which he was standing, to hold himself steady, but +was whirled round and round, until the bark of the sapling peeled off +under his grasp. But, as in the cases referred to by Dow, the attack was +attended by no religious sentiment whatever. + +On the manifestations in the Cumberland country, see McMasters, "United +States," vol. ii., pp. 581, 582, and the sources there cited. For some +judicious remarks on the general subject, see Buckley, "Methodism," pp. +217-224. + +[241:1] So Dr. Buckley, "Methodism," p. 217. + +[242:1] American Church History Series, vol. xii. + +[243:1] See above, pp. 230, 231. + +[243:2] "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 43, 44. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE. + + +When the Presbyterian General Assembly, in 1803, made a studious review +of the revivals which for several years had been in progress, especially +at the South and West, it included in its "Narrative" the following +observations: + + "The Assembly observe with great pleasure that the desire for + spreading the gospel among the blacks and among the savage + tribes on our borders has been rapidly increasing during the + last year. The Assembly take notice of this circumstance with + the more satisfaction, as it not only affords a pleasing + presage of the spread of the gospel, but also furnishes + agreeable evidence of the genuineness and the benign tendency + of that spirit which God has been pleased to pour out upon his + people." + +In New England the like result had already, several years before, +followed upon the like antecedent. In the year 1798 the "Missionary +Society of Connecticut" was constituted, having for its object "to +Christianize the heathen in North America, and to support and promote +Christian knowledge in the new settlements within the United States"; +and in August, 1800, its first missionary, David Bacon, engaged at a +salary of "one hundred and ten cents per day," set out for the +wilderness south and west of Lake Erie, "afoot and alone, with no more +luggage than he could carry on his person," to visit the wild tribes of +that region, "to explore their situation, and learn their feelings with +respect to Christianity, and, so far as he had opportunity, to teach +them its doctrines and duties." The name forms a link in the bright +succession from John Eliot to this day. But it must needs be that some +suffer as victims of the inexperience of those who are first to take +direction of an untried enterprise. The abandonment of its first +missionary by one of the first missionary societies, leaving him +helpless in the wilderness, was a brief lesson in the economy of +missions opportunely given at the outset of the American mission work, +and happily had no need to be repeated.[247:1] + +David Bacon, like Henry Martyn, who at that same time, in far different +surroundings, was intent upon his plans of mission work in India, was +own son in the faith to David Brainerd. But they were elder sons in a +great family. The pathetic story of that heroic youth, as told by +Jonathan Edwards, was a classic at that time in almost every country +parsonage; but its influence was especially felt in the colleges, now no +longer, as a few years earlier, the seats of the scornful, but the homes +of serious and religious learning which they were meant to be by their +founders. + +Of the advancement of Christian civilization in the first +quarter-century from the achievement of independence there is no more +distinguished monument than the increase, through those troubled and +impoverished years, of the institutions of secular and sacred learning. +The really successful and effective colleges that had survived from the +colonial period were hardly a half-dozen. Up to 1810 these had been +reinforced by as many more. By far the greater number of them were +founded by the New England Congregationalists, to whom this has ever +been a favorite field of activity. But special honor must be paid to the +wise and courageous and nobly successful enterprise of large-minded and +large-hearted men among the Baptists, who as early as 1764, boldly +breasting a current of unworthy prejudice in their own denomination, +began the work of Brown University at Providence, which, carried forward +by a notable succession of great educators, has been set in the front +rank of existing American institutions of learning. After the revivals +of 1800 these Christian colleges were not only attended by students +coming from zealous and fervid churches; they themselves became the foci +from which high and noble spiritual influences were radiated through the +land. It was in communities like these that the example of such lives as +that of Brainerd stirred up generous young minds to a chivalrous and +even ascetic delight in attempting great labors and enduring great +sacrifices as soldiers under the Captain of salvation. + +It was at Williams College, then just planted in the Berkshire hills, +that a little coterie of students was formed which, for the grandeur of +the consequences that flowed from it, is worthy to be named in history +beside the Holy Club of Oxford in 1730, and the friends at Oriel College +in 1830. Samuel J. Mills came to Williams College in 1806 from the +parsonage of "Father Mills" of Torringford, concerning whom quaint +traditions and even memories still linger in the neighboring parishes of +Litchfield County, Connecticut. Around this young student gathered a +circle of men like-minded. The shade of a lonely haystack was their +oratory; the pledges by which they bound themselves to a life-work for +the kingdom of heaven remind one of the mutual vows of the earliest +friends of Loyola. Some of the youths went soon to the theological +seminary, and at once leavened that community with their own spirit. + +The seminary--there was only one in all Protestant America. As early as +1791 the Sulpitian fathers had organized their seminary at Baltimore. +But it was not until 1808 that any institution for theological studies +was open to candidates for the Protestant ministry. Up to that time such +studies were made in the regular college curriculum, which was +distinctly theological in character; and it was common for the graduate +to spend an additional year at the college for special study under the +president or the one professor of divinity. But many country parsonages +that were tenanted by men of fame as writers and teachers were greatly +frequented by young men preparing themselves for the work of preaching. + +The change to the modern method of education for the ministry was a +sudden one. It was precipitated by an event which has not even yet +ceased to be looked on by the losing party with honest lamentation and +with an unnecessary amount of sectarian acrimony. The divinity +professorship in Harvard College, founded in 1722[249:1] by Thomas +Hollis, of London, a Baptist friend of New England, was filled, after a +long struggle and an impassioned protest, by the election of Henry Ware, +an avowed and representative Unitarian. It was a distinct announcement +that the government of the college had taken sides in the impending +conflict, in opposition to the system of religious doctrine to the +maintenance of which the college had from its foundation been devoted. +The significance of the fact was not mistaken by either party. It meant +that the two tendencies which had been recognizable from long before +the Great Awakening were drawing asunder, and that thenceforth it must +be expected that the vast influence of the venerable college, in the +clergy and in society, would be given to the Liberal side. The dismay of +one party and the exultation of the other were alike well grounded. The +cry of the Orthodox was "To your tents, O Israel!" Lines of +ecclesiastical non-intercourse were drawn. Church was divided from +church, and family from family. When the forces and the losses on each +side came to be reckoned up, there was a double wonder: First, at the +narrow boundaries by which the Unitarian defection was circumscribed: "A +radius of thirty-five miles from Boston as a center would sweep almost +the whole field of its history and influence;"[250:1] and then at the +sweeping completeness of it within these bounds; as Mrs. H. B. Stowe +summed up the situation at Boston, "All the literary men of +Massachusetts were Unitarian; all the trustees and professors of Harvard +College were Unitarian; all the _élite_ of wealth and fashion crowded +Unitarian churches; the judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving +decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization so +carefully ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers had been nullified and all the +power had passed into the hands of the congregation."[250:2] + +The schism, with its acrimonies and heartburnings, was doubtless in some +sense necessary. And it was attended with some beneficent consequences. +It gave rise to instructive and illuminating debate. And on the part of +the Orthodox it occasioned an outburst of earnest zeal which in a +wonderfully short time had more than repaired their loss in numbers, and +had started them on a career of wide beneficence, with a momentum that +has been increasing to this day. But it is not altogether useless to +put the question how much was lost to both parties and to the common +cause by the separation. It is not difficult to conceive that such +dogged polemics as Nathanael Emmons and Jedidiah Morse might have been +none the worse for being held in some sort of fellowship, rather than in +exasperated controversy, with such types of Christian sainthood as the +younger Ware and the younger Buckminster; and it is easy to imagine the +extreme culture and cool intellectual and spiritual temper of the +Unitarian pulpit in general as finding its advantage in not being cut +off from direct radiations from the fiery zeal of Lyman Beecher and +Edward Dorr Griffin. Is it quite sure that New England Congregationalism +would have been in all respects worse off if Channing and his friends +had continued to be recognized as the Liberal wing of its clergy? or +that the Unitarian ministers would not have been a great deal better off +if they had remained in connection with a strong and conservative right +wing, which might counterbalance the exorbitant leftward flights of +their more impatient and erratic spirits? + +The seating of a pronounced Unitarian in the Hollis chair of theology at +Harvard took place in 1805. Three years later, in 1808, the doors of +Andover Seminary were opened to students. Thirty-six were present, and +the number went on increasing. The example was quickly followed. In 1810 +the Dutch seminary was begun at New Brunswick, and in 1812 the +Presbyterian at Princeton. In 1816 Bangor Seminary (Congregationalist) +and Hartwick Seminary (Lutheran) were opened. In 1819 the Episcopalian +"General Seminary" followed, and the Baptist "Hamilton Seminary" in +1820. In 1821 Presbyterian seminaries were begun at Auburn, N. Y., and +Marysville, Tenn. In 1822 the Yale Divinity College was founded +(Congregationalist); in 1823 the Virginia (Episcopalian) seminary at +Alexandria; in 1824 the Union (Presbyterian) Seminary, also in Virginia, +and the Unitarian seminary at Cambridge; in 1825 the Baptist seminary at +Newton, Mass., and the German Reformed at York, Pa.; in 1826 the +Lutheran at Gettysburg; in 1827 the Baptist at Rock Spring, Ill. Thus, +within a period of twenty years, seventeen theological schools had come +into existence where none had been known before. It was a swift and +beneficent revolution, and the revolution has never gone backward. In +1880 were enumerated in the United States no less than one hundred and +forty-two seminaries, representing all sects, orders, and schools of +theological opinion, employing five hundred and twenty-nine resident +professors.[252:1] + +To Andover, in the very first years of its great history, came Mills and +others of the little Williams College circle; and at once their +infectious enthusiasm for the advancement of the kingdom of God was felt +throughout the institution. The eager zeal of these young men brooked no +delay. In June, 1810, the General Association of Massachusetts met at +the neighboring town of Bradford; there four of the students, Judson, +Nott, Newell, and Hall, presented themselves and their cause; and at +that meeting was constituted the American Board of Commissioners for +Foreign Missions. The little faith of the churches shrank from the +responsibility of sustaining missionaries in the field, and Judson was +sent to England to solicit the coöperation of the London Missionary +Society. This effort happily failing, the burden came back upon the +American churches and was not refused. At last, in February, 1812, the +first American missionaries to a foreign country, Messrs. Judson, Rice, +Newell, Nott, and Hall, with their wives, sailed, in two parties, for +Calcutta. + +And now befell an incident perplexing, embarrassing, and disheartening +to the supporters of the mission, but attended with results for the +promotion of the gospel to which their best wisdom never could have +attained. Adoniram Judson, a graduate of Brown University, having spent +the long months at sea in the diligent and devout study of the +Scriptures, arrived at Calcutta fully persuaded of the truth of Baptist +principles. His friend, Luther Rice, arriving by the other vessel, came +by and by to the same conclusion; and the two, with their wives, were +baptized by immersion in the Baptist church at Calcutta. The +announcement of this news in America was an irresistible appeal to the +already powerful and rapidly growing Baptist denomination to assume the +support of the two missionaries who now offered themselves to the +service of the Baptist churches. Rice returned to urge the appeal on +their immediate attention, while Judson remained to enter on that noble +apostolate for which his praise is in all the churches. + +To the widespread Baptist fellowship this sudden, unmistakable, and +imperative providential summons to engage in the work of foreign +missions was (it is hardly too much to say) like life from the dead. The +sect had doubled its numbers in the decade just passed, and was +estimated to include two hundred thousand communicants, all "baptized +believers." But this multitude was without common organization, and, +while abundantly endowed with sectarian animosities, was singularly +lacking in a consciousness of common spiritual life. It was pervaded by +a deadly fatalism, which, under the guise of reverence for the will of +God, was openly pleaded as a reason for abstaining from effort and +self-denial in the promotion of the gospel. Withal it was widely +characterized not only by a lack of education in its ministry, but by a +violent and brutal opposition to a learned clergy, which was +particularly strange in a party the moiety of whose principles depends +on a point in Greek lexicology. It was to a party--we may not say a +body--deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine +call was to be presented and urged. The messenger was well fitted for +his work. To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a +missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of +its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and +a personal persuasiveness. Of course his first address was to pastors +and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever +name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; and here his task was easy +and brief, for they were already of his mind. But the great mass of +ignorance and prejudice had also to be reckoned with. By a work in which +the influence of the divine Spirit was quite as manifest as in the +convulsive agitations of a camp-meeting, it was dealt with successfully. +Church history moved swiftly in those days. The news of the accession of +Judson and Rice was received in January, 1813. In May, 1814, the General +Missionary Convention of the Baptists was organized at Philadelphia, +thirty-three delegates being present, from eleven different States. The +Convention, which was to meet triennially, entered at once upon its +work. It became a vital center to the Baptist denomination. From it, at +its second meeting, proceeded effective measures for the promotion of +education in the ministry, and, under the conviction that "western as +well as eastern regions are given to the Son of God as an inheritance," +large plans for home missions at the West. + +Thus the great debt which the English Congregationalists had owed to the +Baptists for heroic leadership in the work of foreign missions was +repaid with generous usury by the Congregationalists to the Baptists of +America. From this time forward the American Baptists came more and more +to be felt as a salutary force in the religious life of the nation and +the world. But against what bitter and furious opposition on the part of +the ancient ignorance the new light had to struggle cannot easily be +conceived by those who have only heard of the "Hard-Shell Baptist" as a +curious fossil of a prehistoric period.[255:1] + +The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions continued for +twenty-seven years to be the common organ of foreign missionary +operations for the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Dutch +and German Reformed churches. In the year 1837 an official Presbyterian +Board of Missions was erected by the Old-School fragment of the +disrupted Presbyterian Church; and to this, when the two fragments were +reunited, in 1869, the contributions of the New-School side began to be +transferred. In 1858 the Dutch church, and in 1879 the German church, +instituted their separate mission operations. Thus the initiative of the +Andover students in 1810 resulted in the erection, not of one mission +board, timidly venturing to set five missionaries in the foreign field, +but of five boards, whose total annual resources are counted by millions +of dollars, whose evangelists, men and women, American and foreign-born, +are a great army, and whose churches, schools, colleges, theological +seminaries, hospitals, printing-presses, with the other equipments of a +Christian civilization, and the myriads of whose faithful Christian +converts, in every country under the whole heaven, have done more for +the true honor of our nation than all that it has achieved in diplomacy +and war.[255:2] + +The Episcopalians entered on foreign mission work in 1819, and the +Methodists, tardily but at last with signal efficiency and success, in +1832. No considerable sect of American Christians at the present day is +unrepresented in the foreign field. + +In order to complete the history of this organizing era in the church, +we must return to the humble but memorable figure of Samuel J. Mills. It +was his characteristic word to one of his fellows, as they stood ready +to leave the seclusion of the seminary for active service, "You and I, +brother, are little men, but before we die, our influence must be felt +on the other side of the world." No one claimed that he was other than a +"little man," except as he was filled and possessed with a great +thought, and that the thought that filled the mind of Christ--the +thought of the Coming Age and of the Reign of God on earth.[256:1] While +his five companions were sailing for the remotest East, Mills plunged +into the depth of the western wilderness, and between 1812 and 1815, in +two toilsome journeys, traversed the Great Valley as far as New Orleans, +deeply impressed everywhere with the famine of the word, and laboring, +in coöperation with local societies at the East, to provide for the +universal want by the sale or gift of Bibles and the organization of +Bible societies. After his second return he proposed the organization of +the American Bible Society, which was accomplished in 1816. + +But already this nobly enterprising mind was intent on a new plan, of +most far-reaching importance, not original with himself, but, on the +contrary, long familiar to those who studied the extension of the church +and pondered the indications of God's providential purposes. The +earliest attempt in America toward the propagation of the gospel in +foreign lands would seem to have been the circular letter sent out by +the neighbor pastors, Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, in the year 1773, +from Newport, chief seat of the slave-trade, asking contributions for +the education of two colored men as missionaries to their native +continent of Africa. To many generous minds at once, in this era of +great Christian enterprises, the thought recurred of vast blessings to +be wrought for the Dark Continent by the agency of colored men +Christianized, civilized, and educated in America. Good men reverently +hoped to see in this triumphant solution of the mystery of divine +providence in permitting the curse of African slavery, through the cruel +greed of men, to be inflicted on the American republic. In 1816 Mills +successfully pressed upon the Presbyterian "Synod of New York and New +Jersey" a plan for educating Christian men of color for the work of the +gospel in their fatherland. That same year, in coöperation with an +earnest philanthropist, Dr. Robert Finley, of New Jersey, he aided in +the instituting of the American Colonization Society. In 1817 he sailed, +in company with a colleague, the Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, to explore the +coast of Africa in search of the best site for a colony. On the return +voyage he died, and his body was committed to the sea: a "little man," +to whom were granted only five years of what men call "active life"; but +he had fulfilled his vow, and the ends of the earth had felt his +influence for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. +The enterprise of African colonization, already dear to Christian hearts +for the hopes that it involved of the redemption of a lost continent, +of the elevation of an oppressed race in America, of the emancipation of +slaves and the abolition of slavery, received a new consecration as the +object of the dying labors and prayers of Mills. It was associated, in +the minds of good men, not only with plans for the conversion of the +heathen, and with the tide of antislavery sentiment now spreading and +deepening both at the South and at the North, but also with "Clarkson +societies" and other local organizations, in many different places, for +the moral and physical elevation of the free colored people from the +pitiable degradation in which they were commonly living in the larger +towns. Altogether the watchmen on the walls of Zion saw no fairer sign +of dawn, in that second decade of the nineteenth century, than the +hopeful lifting of the cloud from Africa, the brightening prospects of +the free negroes of the United States, and the growing hope of the +abolition of American slavery.[258:1] + +Other societies, national in their scope and constituency, the origin of +which belongs in this organizing period, are the American Education +Society (1815), the American Sunday-school Union (1824), the American +Tract Society (1825), the Seamen's Friend Society (1826), and the +American Home Missionary Society (1826), in which last the +Congregationalists of New England coöperated with the Presbyterians on +the basis of a Plan of Union entered into between the General Assembly +and the General Association of Connecticut, the tendency of which was to +reinforce the Presbyterian Church with the numbers and the vigor of the +New England westward migration. Of course the establishment of these and +other societies for beneficent work outside of sectarian lines did not +hinder, but rather stimulated, sectarian organizations for the like +objects. The whole American church, in all its orders, was girding +itself for a work, at home and abroad, the immense grandeur of which no +man of that generation could possibly have foreseen. + +The grandeur of this work was to consist not only in the results of it, +but in the resources of it. As never before, the sympathies, prayers, +and personal coöperation of all Christians, even the feeblest, were to +be combined and utilized for enterprises coextensive with the continent +and the world and taking hold on eternity. The possibilities of the new +era were dazzling to the prophetic imagination. A young minister then +standing on the threshold of a long career exulted in the peculiar and +excelling glory of the dawning day: + + "Surely, if it is the noblest attribute of our nature that + spreads out the circle of our sympathies to include the whole + family of man, and sends forth our affections to embrace the + ages of a distant futurity, it must be regarded as a privilege + no less exalted that our means of _doing_ good are limited by + no remoteness of country or distance of duration, but we may + operate, if we will, to assuage the miseries of another + hemisphere, or to prevent the necessities of an unborn + generation. The time has been when a man might weep over the + wrongs of Africa, and he might look forward to weep over the + hopelessness of her degradation, till his heart should bleed; + and yet his tears would be all that he could give her. He + might relieve the beggar at his door, but he could do nothing + for a dying continent. He might provide for his children, but + he could do nothing for the nations that were yet to be born + to an inheritance of utter wretchedness. Then the privilege of + engaging in schemes of magnificent benevolence belonged only + to princes and to men of princely possessions; but now the + progress of improvement has brought down this privilege to the + reach of every individual. The institutions of our age are a + republic of benevolence, and all may share in the unrestrained + and equal democracy. This privilege is ours. We may stretch + forth our hand, if we will, to enlighten the Hindu or to tame + the savage of the wilderness. It is ours, if we will, to put + forth our contributions and thus to operate not ineffectually + for the relief and renovation of a continent over which one + tide of misery has swept without ebb and without restraint for + unremembered centuries. It is ours, if we will, to do + something that shall tell on all the coming ages of a race + which has been persecuted and enslaved, trodden down and + despised, for a thousand generations. Our Father has made us + the almoners of his love. He has raised us to partake, as it + were, in the ubiquity of his own beneficence. Shall we be + unworthy of the trust? God forbid!"[260:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[247:1] "Life of David Bacon," by his son (Boston, 1876). + +[249:1] Compare the claim of priority for the Dutch church, p. 81, +_note_. + +[250:1] J. H. Allen, "The Unitarians," p. 194. + +[250:2] "Autobiography of L. Beecher," p. 110. + +[252:1] "Herzog-Schaff Encyclopedia," pp. 2328-2331. + +[255:1] "The Baptists," by Dr. A. H. Newman, pp. 379-442. + +[255:2] I have omitted from this list of results in the direct line from +the inception at Andover, in 1810, the American Missionary Association. +It owed its origin, in 1846, to the dissatisfaction felt by a +considerable number of the supporters of the American Board with the +attitude of that institution on some of the questions arising +incidentally to the antislavery discussion. Its foreign missions, never +extensive, were transferred to other hands, at the close of the Civil +War, that it might devote itself wholly to its great and successful work +among "the oppressed races" at home. + +[256:1] It may be worth considering how far the course of religious and +theological thought would have been modified if the English New +Testament had used these phrases instead of _World to Come_ and _Kingdom +of God_. + +[258:1] The colored Baptists of Richmond entered eagerly into the +Colonization project, and in 1822 their "African Missionary Society" +sent out its mission to the young colony of Liberia. One of their +missionaries was the Rev. Lott Cary, the dignity of whose character and +career was an encouragement of his people in their highest aspirations, +and a confirmation of the hopes of their friends (Newman, "The +Baptists," p. 402; Gurley, "Life of Ashmun," pp. 147-160). + +[260:1] Leonard Bacon, "A Plea for Africa," in the Park Street Church, +Boston, July 4, 1824. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +CONFLICTS OF THE CHURCH WITH PUBLIC WRONGS. + + +The transition from establishment to the voluntary system for the +support of churches was made not without some difficulty, but with +surprisingly little. In the South the established churches were +practically dead before the laws establishing them were repealed and the +endowments disposed of. In New York the Episcopalian churches were +indeed depressed and discouraged by the ceasing of State support and +official patronage; and inasmuch as these, with the subsidies of the "S. +P. G.," had been their main reliance, it was inevitable that they should +pass through a period of prostration until the appreciation of their +large endowments, and the progress of immigration and of conversion from +other sects, and especially the awakening of religious earnestness and +of sectarian ambition. + +In New England the transition to the voluntary system was more gradual. +Not till 1818 in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts not till 1834, was +the last strand of connection severed between the churches of the +standing order and the state, and the churches left solely to their own +resources. The exaltation and divine inspiration that had come to these +churches with the revivals which from the end of the eighteenth century +were never for a long time intermitted, and the example of the +dissenting congregations, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodist, +successfully self-supported among them, made it easy for them, +notwithstanding the misgivings of many good men, not only to assume the +entire burden of their own expenses, but with this to undertake and +carry forward great and costly enterprises of charity reaching to the +bounds of the country and of the inhabited earth. It is idle to claim +that the American system is at no disadvantage in comparison with that +which elsewhere prevails almost throughout Christendom; but it may be +safely asserted that the danger that has been most emphasized as a +warning against the voluntary system has not attended this system in +America. The fear that a clergy supported by the free gifts of the +people would prove subservient and truckling to the hand by which it is +fed has been proved groundless. Of course there have been time-servers +in the American ministry, as in every other; but flagrant instances of +the abasement of a whole body of clergy before the power that holds the +purse and controls promotion are to be sought in the old countries +rather than the new. Even selfish motives would operate against this +temptation, since it has often been demonstrated that the people will +not sustain a ministry which it suspects of the vice of subserviency. +The annals of no established church can show such unsparing fidelity of +the ministry in rebuking the sins of people and of rulers in the name of +the Lord, as that which has been, on the whole, characteristic of the +Christian ministers of the United States. + +Among the conflicts of the American church with public wrongs strongly +intrenched in law or social usage, two are of such magnitude and +protracted through so long a period as to demand special +consideration--the conflict with drunkenness and the conflict with +slavery. Some less conspicuous illustrations of the fidelity of the +church in the case of public and popular sins may be more briefly +referred to. + +The death of Alexander Hamilton, in July, 1804, in a duel with Aaron +Burr, occasioned a wide and violent outburst of indignation against the +murderer, now a fugitive and outcast, for the dastardly malignity of the +details of his crime, and for the dignity and generosity as well as the +public worth of his victim. This was the sort of explosion of excited +public feeling which often loses itself in the air. It was a different +matter when the churches and ministers of Christ took up the affair in +the light of the law of God, and, dealing not with the circumstances but +with the essence of it, pressed it inexorably on the conscience of the +people. Some of the most memorable words in American literature were +uttered on this occasion, notwithstanding that there were few +congregations in which there were not sore consciences to be irritated +or political anxieties to be set quaking by them. The names of Eliphalet +Nott and John M. Mason were honorably conspicuous in this work. But one +unknown young man of thirty, in a corner of Long Island, uttered words +in his little country meeting-house that pricked the conscience of the +nation. The words of Lyman Beecher on this theme may well be quoted as +being a part of history, for the consequences that followed them. + + "Dueling is a great national sin. With the exception of a + small section of the Union, the whole land is defiled with + blood. From the lakes of the North to the plains of Georgia is + heard the voice of lamentation and woe--the cries of the widow + and fatherless. This work of desolation is performed often by + men in office, by the appointed guardians of life and liberty. + On the floor of Congress challenges have been threatened, if + not given, and thus powder and ball have been introduced as + the auxiliaries of deliberation and argument.... We are + murderers--a nation of murderers--while we tolerate and reward + the perpetrators of the crime." + +Words such as these resounding from pulpit after pulpit, multiplied and +disseminated by means of the press, acted on by representative bodies of +churches, becoming embodied in anti-dueling societies, exorcised the +foul spirit from the land. The criminal folly of dueling did not, +indeed, at once and altogether cease. Instances of it continue to be +heard of to this day. But the conscience of the nation was instructed, +and a warning was served upon political parties to beware of proposing +for national honors men whose hands were defiled with blood.[264:1] + +Another instance of the fidelity of the church in resistance to public +wrong was its action in the matter of the dealing of the State of +Georgia and the national government toward the Georgia Indians. This is +no place for the details of the shameful story of perfidy and +oppression. It is well told by Helen Hunt Jackson in the melancholy +pages of "A Century of Dishonor." The wrongs inflicted on the Cherokee +nation were deepened by every conceivable aggravation. + + "In the whole history of our government's dealings with the + Indian tribes there is no record so black as the record of its + perfidy to this nation. There will come a time in the remote + future when to the student of American history it will seem + well-nigh incredible. From the beginning of the century they + had been steadily advancing in civilization. As far back as + 1800 they had begun the manufacture of cotton cloth, and in + 1820 there was scarcely a family in that part of the nation + living east of the Mississippi but what understood the use of + the card and spinning-wheel. Every family had its farm under + cultivation. The territory was laid off into districts, with a + council-house, a judge, and a marshal in each district. A + national committee and council were the supreme authority in + the nation. Schools were flourishing in all the villages. + Printing-presses were at work.... They were enthusiastic in + their efforts to establish and perfect their own system of + jurisprudence. Missions of several sects were established in + their country, and a large number of them had professed + Christianity and were leading exemplary lives. There is no + instance in all history of a race of people passing in so + short a space of time from the barbarous stage to the + agricultural and civilized."[265:1] + +We do well to give authentic details of the condition of the Cherokee +nation in the early part of the century, for the advanced happy and +peaceful civilization of this people was one of the fairest fruits of +American Christianity working upon exceptionally noble race-qualities in +the recipients of it. An agent of the War Department in 1825 made +official report to the Department on the rare beauty of the Cherokee +country, secured to them by the most sacred pledges with which it was +possible for the national government to bind itself, and covered by the +inhabitants, through their industry and thrift, with flocks and herds, +with farms and villages; and goes on to speak of the Indians themselves: + + "The natives carry on considerable trade with the adjoining + States; some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee + to the Mississippi, and down that river to New Orleans. Apple + and peach orchards are quite common, and gardens are + cultivated and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese + are seen on Cherokee tables. There are many public roads in + the nation, and houses of entertainment kept by natives. + Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of + the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured; + blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee + hands, are very common. Almost every family in the nation + grows cotton for its own consumption. Industry and commercial + enterprise are extending themselves in every part. Nearly all + the merchants in the nation are native Cherokees. Agricultural + pursuits engage the chief attention of the people. Different + branches in mechanics are pursued. The population is rapidly + increasing.... The Christian religion is the religion of the + nation. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Moravians are + the most numerous sects. Some of the most influential + characters are members of the church and live consistently + with their professions. The whole nation is penetrated with + gratitude for the aid it has received from the United States + government and from different religious societies. Schools are + increasing every year; learning is encouraged and rewarded; + the young class acquire the English and those of mature age + the Cherokee system of learning."[266:1] + +This country, enriched by the toil and thrift of its owners, the State +of Georgia resolved not merely to subjugate to its jurisdiction, but to +steal from its rightful and lawful owners, driving them away as outlaws. +As a sure expedient for securing popular consent to the intended infamy, +the farms of the Cherokees were parceled out to be drawn for in a +lottery, and the lottery tickets distributed among the white voters. +Thus fortified, the brave State of Georgia went to all lengths of +outrage. "Missionaries were arrested and sent to prison for preaching to +Cherokees; Cherokees were sentenced to death by Georgia courts and hung +by Georgia executioners." But the great crime could not be achieved +without the connivance, and at last the active consent, of the national +government. Should this consent be given? Never in American history has +the issue been more squarely drawn between the kingdom of Satan and the +kingdom of Christ. American Christianity was most conspicuously +represented in this conflict by an eminent layman, Jeremiah Evarts, +whose fame for this public service, and not for this alone, will in the +lapse of time outshine even that of his illustrious son. In a series of +articles in the "National Intelligencer," under the signature of +"William Penn," he cited the sixteen treaties in which the nation had +pledged its faith to defend the Cherokees in the possession of their +lands, and set the whole case before the people as well as the +government. But his voice was not solitary. From press and pulpit and +from the platforms of public meetings all over the country came +petitions, remonstrances, and indignant protests, reinforcing the +pathetic entreaties of the Cherokees themselves to be protected from the +cruelty that threatened to tear them from their homes. In Congress the +honor of leadership among many faithful and able advocates of right and +justice was conceded to Theodore Frelinghuysen, then in the prime of a +great career of Christian service. By the majority of one vote the bill +for the removal of the Cherokees passed the United States Senate. The +gates of hell triumphed for a time with a fatal exultation. The authors +and abettors of the great crime were confirmed in their delusion that +threats of disunion and rebellion could be relied on to carry any +desired point. But the mills of God went on grinding. Thirty years +later, when in the battle of Missionary Ridge the chivalry of Georgia +went down before the army that represented justice and freedom and the +authority of national law, the vanquished and retreating soldiers of a +lost cause could not be accused of superstition if they remembered that +the scene of their humiliating defeat had received its name from the +martyrdom of Christian missionaries at the hands of their fathers. + + * * * * * + +In earlier pages we have already traced the succession of bold protests +and organized labors on the part of church and clergy against the +institution of slavery.[268:1] If protest and argument against it seem +to be less frequent in the early years of the new century, it is only +because debate must needs languish when there is no antagonist. Slavery +had at that time no defenders in the church. No body of men in 1818 more +unmistakably represented the Christian citizenship of the whole country, +North, South, and West, outside of New England, than the General +Assembly of the then undivided Presbyterian Church. In that year the +Assembly set forth a full and unanimous expression of its sentiments on +the subject of slavery, addressed "to the churches and people under its +care." This monumental document is too long to be cited here in full. +The opening paragraphs of it exhibit the universally accepted sentiment +of American Christians of that time: + + "We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human + race by another as a gross violation of the most precious and + sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with + the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as + ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and + principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin that 'all + things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye + even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral + system. It exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings + in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of + moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of + others whether they shall receive religious instruction; + whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they + shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall + perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and + wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether + they shall preserve their chastity and purity or regard the + dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the + consequences of slavery--consequences not imaginary, but which + connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which + the slave is _always_ exposed often take place in fact, and in + their worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take + place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through + the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on + the minds of masters, they do not, still the slave is deprived + of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed + to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may + inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which + inhumanity and avarice may suggest. + + "From this view of the consequences resulting from the + practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently + fallen of enslaving a portion of their _brethren_ of + mankind,--for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men + to dwell on the face of the earth,'--it is manifestly the duty + of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when + the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of + humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally + seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and + unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and + as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy + religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery + throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world." + +It was not strange that while sentiments like these prevailed without +contradiction in all parts of the country, while in State after State +emancipations were taking place and acts of abolition were passing, and +even in the States most deeply involved in slavery "a great, and the +most virtuous, part of the community abhorred slavery and wished its +extermination,"[270:1] there should seem to be little call for debate. +But that the antislavery spirit in the churches was not dead was +demonstrated with the first occasion. + +In the spring of 1820, at the close of two years of agitating +discussion, the new State of Missouri was admitted to the Union as a +slave State, although with the stipulation that the remaining territory +of the United States north of the parallel of latitude bounding Missouri +on the south should be consecrated forever to freedom. The opposition to +this extension of slavery was taken up by American Christianity as its +own cause. It was the impending danger of such an extension that +prompted that powerful and unanimous declaration of the Presbyterian +General Assembly in 1818. The arguments against the Missouri bill, +whether in the debates of Congress or in countless memorials and +resolutions from public meetings both secular and religious, were +arguments from justice and duty and the law of Christ. These were met by +constitutional objections and considerations of expediency and +convenience, and by threats of disunion and civil war. The defense of +slavery on principle had not yet begun to be heard, even among +politicians. + +The successful extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi River was +disheartening to the friends of justice and humanity, but only for the +moment. Already, before the two years' conflict had been decided by "the +Missouri Compromise," a powerful series of articles by that great +religious leader, Jeremiah Evarts, in the "Panoplist" (Boston, 1820), +rallied the forces of the church to renew the battle. The decade that +opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained +antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of +the nation in all quarters.[271:1] In New England the focus of +antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover. +There the leading question among the students in their "Society of +Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and +especially what _they_ could do, for the uplifting of the colored +population of the country, both the enslaved and the free. Measures were +concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were +to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with +other men";[271:2] and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these +young men when from year to year they came into places of effective +influence. With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an +antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover +their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses +on that day. Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual +antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united +churches of that city, continued for the rest of that decade at least +to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of +the oppressed. Neither was the work of the young men circumscribed by +narrow local boundaries. The report of their committee, in the year +1823, on "The Condition of the Black Population of the United States," +could hardly be characterized as timid in its utterances on the moral +character of American slavery. A few lines will indicate the tone of it +in this respect: + + "Excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, + we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or + modern, pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its + character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its + anticipated results, as the slavery which exists in these + United States.... When we use the strong language which we + feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject, + we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense + moral and political evil.... In regard to its influence on the + white population the most lamentable proof of its + deteriorating effects may be found in the fact that, excepting + the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of + reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds + have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things, + none can be found to lift their voices against a system so + utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated + humanity--a system which permits all the atrocities of the + domestic slave trade--which permits the father to sell his + children as he would his cattle--a system which consigns one + half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and + which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the + same ruin on the master and the slave."[272:1] + +The historical value of the paper from which these brief extracts are +given, as illustrating the attitude of the church at the time, is +enhanced by the use that was made of it. Published in the form of a +review article in a magazine of national circulation, the recognized +organ of the orthodox Congregationalists, it was republished in a +pamphlet for gratuitous distribution and extensively circulated in New +England by the agency of the Andover students. It was also republished +at Richmond, Va. Other laborers at the East in the same cause were +Joshua Leavitt, Bela B. Edwards, and Eli Smith, afterward illustrious as +a missionary,[273:1] and Ralph Randolph Gurley, secretary of the +Colonization Society, whose edition of the powerful and uncompromising +sermon of the younger Edwards on "The Injustice and Impolicy of the +Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans" was published at Boston +for circulation at the South, in hopes of promoting the universal +abolition of slavery. The list might be indefinitely extended to include +the foremost names in the church in that period. There was no adverse +party. + +At the West an audacious movement of the slavery extension politicians, +flushed with their success in Missouri, to introduce slavery into +Illinois, Indiana, and even Ohio, was defeated largely by the aid of the +Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of whom had been southern men and had +experienced the evils of the system.[273:2] In Kentucky and Tennessee +the abolition movement was led more distinctively by the Presbyterians +and the Quakers. It was a bold effort to procure the manumission of +slaves and the repeal of the slave code in those States by the agreement +of the citizens. The character of the movement is indicated in the +constitution of the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West +Tennessee," which declares that slavery "exceeds any other crime in +magnitude" and is "the greatest act of practical infidelity," and that +"the gospel of Christ, if believed, would remove personal slavery at +once by destroying the will in the tyrant to enslave."[274:1] A like +movement in North Carolina and in Maryland, at the same time, attained +to formidable dimensions. The state of sentiment in Virginia may be +judged from the fact that so late as December, 1831, in the memorable +debate in the legislature on a proposal for the abolition of slavery, a +leading speaker, denouncing slavery as "the most pernicious of all the +evils with which the body politic can be afflicted," could say, +undisputed, "_By none is this position denied_, if we except the erratic +John Randolph."[274:2] The conflict in Virginia at that critical time +was between Christian principle and wise statesmanship on the one hand, +and on the other hand selfish interest and ambition, and the prevailing +terror resulting from a recent servile insurrection. Up to this time +there appears no sign of any division in the church on this subject. +Neither was there any sectional division; the opponents of slavery, +whether at the North or at the South, were acting in the interest of the +common country, and particularly in the interest of the States that were +still afflicted with slavery. But a swift change was just impending. + +We have already recognized the Methodist organization as the effective +pioneer of systematic abolitionism in America.[275:1] The Baptists, also +having their main strength in the southern States, were early and +emphatic in condemning the institutions by which they were +surrounded.[275:2] But all the sects found themselves embarrassed by +serious difficulties when it came to the practical application of the +principles and rules which they enunciated. The exacting of "immediate +emancipation" as a condition of fellowship in the ministry or communion +in the church, and the popular cries of "No fellowship with +slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were +found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn +facts. The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by +no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute +authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them +suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.[275:3] In dealing +with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1) +To execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the +principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat. +This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian +sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living at a +distance and not well acquainted with details of fact. (2) To attempt to +provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses. This +course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without success. (3) +Discouraged by the difficulties, to let go all discipline. This was the +point reached at last by most of the southern churches. (4) Clinging to +the formulas, "Immediate emancipation," "No communion with +slave-holders," so to "palter in a double sense" with the words as to +evade the meaning of them. According to this method, slave-holding did +not consist in the holding of slaves, but in holding them with evil +purpose and wrong treatment; a slave who was held for his own advantage, +receiving from his master "that which is just and equal," was said, in +this dialect, to be "morally emancipated." This was the usual expedient +of a large and respectable party of antislavery Christians at the North, +when their principle of "no communion with slave-holders" brought them +to the seeming necessity of excommunicating an unquestionably Christian +brother for doing an undeniable duty. (5) To lay down, broadly and +explicitly, the principles of Christian morality governing the subject, +leaving the application of them in individual cases to the individual +church or church-member. This was the course exemplified with admirable +wisdom and fidelity in the Presbyterian "deliverance" of 1818. (6) To +meet the postulate, laid down with so much assurance, as if an axiom, +that "slave-holding is always and everywhere a sin, to be immediately +repented of and forsaken," with a flat and square contradiction, as +being irreconcilable with facts and with the judgment of the Christian +Scriptures; and thus to condemn and oppose to the utmost the system of +slavery, without imputing the guilt of it to persons involved in it by +no fault of their own. This course commended itself to many lucid and +logical minds and honest consciences, including some of the most +consistent and effective opponents of slavery. (7) Still another course +must be mentioned, which, absurd as it seems, was actually pursued by a +few headlong reformers, who showed in various ways a singular alacrity +at playing into the hands of their adversaries. It consisted in +enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most +offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and +every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to +turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this +sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man +holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason +justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is +not strange that men in the southern churches, being offered such an +argument ready made to their hand, should promptly accept both the +premiss and the conclusion, and that so at last there should begin to be +a pro-slavery party in the American church. + +The disastrous epoch of the beginning of what has been called "the +southern apostasy" from the universal moral sentiment of Christendom on +the subject of slavery may be dated at about the year 1833. A year +earlier began to be heard those vindications on political grounds of +what had just been declared in the legislature of Virginia to be by +common consent the most pernicious of political evils--vindications +which continued for thirty years to invite the wonder of the civilized +world. When (about 1833) a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, the +Rev. James Smylie, made the "discovery," which "surprised himself," that +the system of American slavery was sanctioned and approved by the +Scriptures as good and righteous, he found that his brethren in the +Presbyterian ministry at the extreme South were not only surprised, but +shocked and offended, at the proposition.[278:1] And yet such was the +swift progress of this innovation that in surprisingly few years, we +might almost say months, it had become not only prevalent, but violently +and exclusively dominant in the church of the southern States, with the +partial exception of Kentucky and Tennessee. It would be difficult to +find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of +sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology. Dissent from the +novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor. It was +less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to +hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been +commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great +religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading +statesmen. It became one of the accepted evidences of Christianity at +the South that infidelity failed to offer any justification for American +slavery equal to that derived from the Christian Scriptures. That +eminent leader among the Lutheran clergy, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, of +Charleston, referred "that unexampled unanimity of sentiment that now +exists in the whole South on the subject of slavery" to the confidence +felt by the religious public in the Bible defense of slavery as set +forth by clergymen and laymen in sermons and pamphlets and speeches in +Congress.[278:2] + +The historian may not excuse himself from the task of inquiring into the +cause of this sudden and immense moral revolution. The explanation +offered by Dr. Bachman is the very thing that needs to be explained. +How came the Christian public throughout the slave-holding States, which +so short a time before had been unanimous in finding in the Bible the +condemnation of their slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the +divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent +institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about +the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent +on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on +the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small +but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift +current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this +sudden change of religious opinion--one of the most remarkable in the +history of the church--was panic terror. In August, 1831, a servile +insurrection in Virginia, led by a crazy negro, Nat Turner by name, was +followed (as always in such cases) by bloody vengeance on the part of +the whites. + + "The Southampton insurrection, occurring at a time when the + price of slaves was depressed in consequence of a depression + in the price of cotton, gave occasion to a sudden development + of opposition to slavery in the legislature of Virginia. A + measure for the prospective abolition of the institution in + that ancient commonwealth was proposed, earnestly debated, + eloquently urged, and at last defeated, with a minority + ominously large in its favor. Warned by so great a peril, and + strengthened soon afterward by an increase in the market value + of cotton and of slaves, the slave-holding interest in all the + South was stimulated to new activity. Defenses of slavery more + audacious than had been heard before began to be uttered by + southern politicians at home and by southern representatives + and senators in Congress. A panic seized upon the planters in + some districts of the Southwest. Conspiracies and plans of + insurrection were discovered. Negroes were tortured or + terrified into confessions. Obnoxious white men were put to + death without any legal trial and in defiance of those rules + of evidence which are insisted on by southern laws. Thus a + sudden and convincing terror was spread through the South. + Every man was made to know that if he should become obnoxious + to the guardians of the great southern 'institution' he was + liable to be denounced and murdered. It was distinctly and + imperatively demanded that nobody should be allowed to say + anything anywhere against slavery. The movement of the + societies which had then been recently formed at Boston and + New York, with 'Immediate abolition' for their motto, was made + use of to stimulate the terror and the fury of the South.... + The position of political parties and of candidates for the + Presidency, just at that juncture, gave special advantage to + the agitators--an advantage that was not neglected. Everything + was done that practiced demagogues could contrive to stimulate + the South into a frenzy and to put down at once and forever + all opposition to slavery. The clergy and the religious bodies + were summoned to the patriotic duty of committing themselves + on the side of 'southern institutions.' Just then it was, if + we mistake not, that their apostasy began. They dared not say + that slavery as an institution in the State is essentially an + organized injustice, and that, though the Scriptures rightly + and wisely enjoin justice and the recognition of the slaves' + brotherhood upon masters, and conscientious meekness upon + slaves, the organized injustice of the institution ought to be + abolished by the shortest process consistent with the public + safety and the welfare of the enslaved. They dared not even + keep silence under the plea that the institution is political + and therefore not to be meddled with by religious bodies or + religious persons. They yielded to the demand. They were + carried along in the current of the popular frenzy; they + joined in the clamor, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians;' they + denounced the fanaticism of abolition and permitted + themselves to be understood as certifying, in the name of + religion and of Christ, that the entire institution of slavery + 'as it exists' is chargeable with no injustice and is + warranted by the word of God."[281:1] + +There is no good reason to question the genuineness and sincerity of the +fears expressed by the slave-holding population as a justification of +their violent measures for the suppression of free speech in relation to +slavery; nor of their belief that the papers and prints actively +disseminated from the antislavery press in Boston were fitted, if not +distinctly intended, to kindle bloody insurrections. These terrors were +powerfully pleaded in the great debate in the Virginia legislature as an +argument for the abolition of slavery.[281:2] This failing, they became +throughout the South a constraining power for the suppression of free +speech, not only on the part of outsiders, but among the southern people +themselves. The régime thus introduced was, in the strictest sense of +the phrase, "a reign of terror." The universal lockjaw which thenceforth +forbade the utterance of what had so recently and suddenly ceased to be +the unanimous religious conviction of the southern church soon produced +an "unexampled unanimity" on the other side, broken only when some fiery +and indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the +Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives +against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had +been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every +correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God," +and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly! The man who cannot see that +involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the +principle of taking by force that which is another's has simply no +moral sense.... Hereditary slavery is without pretense, except in avowed +rapacity."[282:1] Of course the antislavery societies which, under +various names, had existed in the South by hundreds were suddenly +extinguished, and manumissions, which had been going on at the rate of +thousands in a year, almost entirely ceased. + +The strange and swiftly spreading moral epidemic did not stop at State +boundary lines. At the North the main cause of defection was not, +indeed, directly operative. There was no danger there of servile +insurrection. But there was true sympathy for those who lived under the +shadow of such impending horrors, threatening alike the guilty and the +innocent. There was a deep passion of honest patriotism, now becoming +alarmed lest the threats of disunion proceeding from the terrified South +should prove a serious peril to the nation in whose prosperity the hopes +of the world seemed to be involved. There was a worthy solicitude lest +the bonds of intercourse between the churches of North and South should +be ruptured and so the integrity of the nation be the more imperiled. +Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust +at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their +headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility, +scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the +unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law +and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept +their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves +exclusively the name of abolitionist, made that name, so long a title of +honor, to be universally odious.[282:2] + +These various factors of public opinion were actively manipulated. +Political parties competed for the southern vote. Commercial houses +competed for southern business. Religious sects, parties, and societies +were emulous in conciliating southern adhesions or contributions and +averting schisms. The condition of success in any of these cases was +well understood to be concession, or at least silence, on the subject of +slavery. The pressure of motives, some of which were honorable and +generous, was everywhere, like the pressure of the atmosphere. It was +not strange that there should be defections from righteousness. Even the +enormous effrontery of the slave power in demanding for its own security +that the rule of tyrannous law and mob violence by which freedom of +speech and of the press had been extinguished at the South should be +extended over the so-called free States did not fail of finding citizens +of reputable standing so base as to give the demand their countenance, +their public advocacy, and even their personal assistance. As the +subject emerged from time to time in the religious community, the +questions arising were often confused and embarrassed by false issues +and illogical statements, and the state of opinion was continually +misrepresented through the incurable habit of the over-zealous in +denouncing as "pro-slavery" those who dissented from their favorite +formulas. But after all deductions, the historian who shall by and by +review this period with the advantage of a longer perspective will be +compelled to record not a few lamentable defections, both individual and +corporate, from the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity. And, +nevertheless, that later record will also show that while the southern +church had been terrified into "an unexampled unanimity" in renouncing +the principles which it had unanimously held, and while like causes had +wrought potently upon northern sentiment, it was the steadfast fidelity +of the Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of +thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to +slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for +the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, +by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever +consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was +presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of +New England was prompt, spontaneous, emphatic, and practically +unanimous. Their memorial, with three thousand and fifty signatures, +protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his +presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently +injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all +confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the +peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to +the just judgments of the Almighty." In like manner the memorial of one +hundred and fifty-one clergymen of various denominations in New York +City and vicinity protested in like terms, "in the name of religion and +humanity," against the guilt of the extension of slavery. Perhaps there +has been no occasion on which the consenting voice of the entire church +has been so solemnly uttered on a question of public morality, and this +in the very region in which church and clergy had been most stormily +denounced by the little handful of abolitionists who gloried in the +name of infidel[285:1] as recreant to justice and humanity. + +The protest of the church was of no avail to defeat the machination of +demagogues. The iniquitous measure was carried through. But this was not +the end; it was only the beginning of the end. Yet ten years, and +American slavery, through the mad folly of its advocates and the +steadfast fidelity of the great body of the earnestly religious people +of the land, was swept away by the tide of war. + + * * * * * + +The long struggle of the American church against drunkenness as a social +and public evil begins at an early date. One of the thirteen colonies, +Georgia, had the prohibition of slavery and of the importation of +spirituous liquors incorporated by Oglethorpe in its early and +short-lived constitution. It would be interesting to discover, if we +could, to what extent the rigor of John Wesley's discipline against both +these mischiefs was due to his association with Oglethorpe in the +founding of that latest of the colonies. Both the imperious nature of +Wesley and the peculiar character of his fraternity as being originally +not a church, but a voluntary society within the church, predisposed to +a policy of arbitrary exclusiveness by hard and fast lines drawn +according to formula, which might not have been ventured on by one who +was consciously drawing up the conditions of communion in the church. In +the Puritan colonies the public morals in respect to temperance were +from the beginning guarded by salutary license laws devised to suppress +all dram-shops and tippling-houses, and to prevent, as far as law could +wisely undertake to prevent, all abusive and mischievous sales of +liquor. But these indications of a sound public sentiment did not +prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of +the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of +the nineteenth century. Two circumstances had combined to aggravate the +national vice. Seven years of army life, with its exhaustion and +exposure and military social usage, had initiated into dangerous +drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders of society, +and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks. Besides this, +the increased importation and manufacture of distilled spirits had made +it easy and common to substitute these for the mild fermented liquors +which had been the ordinary drink of the people. Gradually and +unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of +which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception. +The words of Isaiah concerning the drunkards of Ephraim seem not too +strong to apply to the condition of American society, that "all tables +were full of vomit and filthiness." In the prevalence of intemperate +drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection. "The +priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." Individual +words of warning, among the earliest of which was the classical essay of +Dr. Benjamin Rush (1785), failed to arouse general attention. The new +century was well advanced before the stirring appeals of Ebenezer +Porter, Lyman Beecher, Heman Humphrey, and Jeremiah Evarts had awakened +in the church any effectual conviction of sin in the matter. The +appointment of a strong committee, in 1811, by the Presbyterian General +Assembly was promptly followed by like action by the clergy of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, leading to the formation of State +societies. But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with +the evil to be overcome must be dated from the organization of the +"American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first +aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering +social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary +social intercourse. The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift +and complete. A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the +same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was +able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of +those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or +exaggeration: + + "The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed + in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use + of ardent spirits--the new phenomenon of an intelligent people + rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without + any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of + public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a + great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down + among his subjects by any system of efforts--has excited + admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister + country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental + Europe."[287:1] + +It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it, +that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the +temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social +drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively +religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the +efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits. The +attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal" +abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the +ban, dates from as late as 1836. + +But it soon appeared that the immense gain of banishing ardent spirits +from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the +haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some +corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic +and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of +obscure tippling-shops--a nuisance, at least in New England, till then +unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had +interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to +his transient guests, not to the people of the town. With the +suppression of social drinking there was effected, in spite of salutary +law to the contrary, a woeful change. The American "saloon" was, in an +important sense, the offspring of the American temperance reformation. +The fact justified the reformer in turning his attention to the law. +From that time onward the history of the temperance reformation has +included the history of multitudinous experiments in legislation, none +of which has been so conclusive as to satisfy all students of the +subject that any later law is, on the whole, more usefully effective +than the original statutes of the Puritan colonies.[288:1] + +In 1840 the temperance reformation received a sudden forward impulse +from an unexpected source. One evening a group of six notoriously hard +drinkers, coming together greatly impressed from a sermon of that noted +evangelist, Elder Jacob Knapp, pledged themselves by mutual vows to +total abstinence; and from this beginning went forward that +extraordinary agitation known as "the Washingtonian movement." Up to +this time the aim of the reformers had been mainly directed to the +prevention of drunkenness by a change in social customs and personal +habits. Now there was suddenly opened a door of hope to the almost +despair of the drunkard himself. The lately reformed drunkards of +Baltimore set themselves to the reforming of other drunkards, and these +took up the work in their turn, and reformation was extended in a +geometrical progression till it covered the country. Everywhere meetings +were held, to be addressed by reformed drunkards, and new recruits from +the gutter were pushed forward to tell their experience to the admiring +public, and sent out on speaking tours. The people were stirred up as +never before on the subject of temperance. There was something very +Christian-like in the method of this propagation, and hopeful souls +looked forward to a temperance millennium as at hand. But fatal faults +in the work soon discovered themselves. Among the new evangelists were +not a few men of true penitence and humility, like John Hawkins, and one +man at least of incomparable eloquence as well as Christian earnestness, +John B. Gough. But the public were not long in finding that merely to +have wallowed in vice and to be able to tell ludicrous or pathetic +stories from one's experience was not of itself sufficient qualification +for the work of a public instructor in morals. The temperance platform +became infested with swaggering autobiographers, whose glory was in +their shame, and whose general influence was distinctly demoralizing. +The sudden influx of the tide of enthusiasm was followed by a disastrous +ebb. It was the estimate of Mr. Gough that out of six hundred thousand +reformed drunkards not less than four hundred and fifty thousand had +relapsed into vice. The same observer, the splendor of whose eloquence +was well mated with an unusual sobriety of judgment, is credited with +the statement that he knew of no case of stable reformation from +drunkenness that was not connected with a thorough spiritual renovation +and conversion. + +Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the +"Washingtonian" excitement. But the evil that it did lived after it. +Already at the time of its breaking forth the temperance reformation had +entered upon that period of decadence in which its main interest was to +be concentrated upon law and politics. And here the vicious ethics of +the reformed-drunkard school became manifest. The drunkard, according to +his own account of himself (unless he was not only reformed, but +repentant), had been a victim of circumstances. Drunkenness, instead of +a base and beastly sin, was an infirmity incident to a high-strung and +generous temperament. The blame of it was to be laid, not upon the +drunkard, whose exquisitely susceptible organization was quite unable to +resist temptation coming in his way, but on those who put intoxicating +liquor where he could get at it, or on the State, whose duty it was to +put the article out of the reach of its citizens. The guilt of +drunkenness must rest, not on the unfortunate drunkard who happened to +be attacked by that disease, but on the sober and well-behaving citizen, +and especially the Christian citizen, who did not vote the correct +ticket. + +What may be called the Prohibition period of the temperance reformation +begins about 1850 and still continues. It is characterized by the +pursuit of a type of legislation of variable efficacy or inefficacy, the +essence of which is that the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be a +monopoly of the government.[290:1] Indications begin to appear that the +disproportionate devotion to measures of legislation and politics is +abating. Some of the most effective recent labor for the promotion of +temperance has been wrought independently of such resort. If the cycle +shall be completed, and the church come back to the methods by which its +first triumphs in this field were won, it will come back the wiser and +the stronger for its vicissitudes of experience through these threescore +years and ten. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[264:1] "An impression was made that never ceased. It started a series +of efforts that have affected the whole northern mind at least; and in +Jackson's time the matter came up in Congress, and a law was passed +disfranchising a duelist. And that was not the last of it; for when +Henry Clay was up for the Presidency the Democrats printed an edition of +forty thousand of that sermon and scattered them all over the North" +("Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 153, 154; with foot-note +from Dr. L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the +politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of +brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling +of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of Henry Clay"). + +[265:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 270, 271. + +[266:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 275, 276. + +[268:1] See above, pp. 203-205, 222. + +[270:1] Deliverance of General Assembly, 1818. + +[271:1] The persistent attempt to represent this period as one of +prevailing apathy and inertia on the subject of slavery is a very +flagrant falsification of history. And yet by dint of sturdy reiteration +it has been forced into such currency as to impose itself even on so +careful a writer as Mr. Schouler, in his "History of the United States." +It is impossible to read this part of American church history +intelligently, unless the mind is disabused of this misrepresentation. + +[271:2] "Christian Spectator" (monthly), New Haven, 1828, p. 4. + +[272:1] "Christian Spectator," 1823, pp. 493, 494, 341; "The Earlier +Antislavery Days," by L. Bacon, in the "Christian Union," December 9 and +16, 1874, January 6 and 13, 1875. It is one of the "Curiosities of +Literature," though hardly one of its "Amenities," that certain phrases +carefully dissected from this paper (which was written by Mr. Bacon at +the age of twenty-one) should be pertinaciously used, in the face of +repeated exposures, to prove the author of it to be an apologist for +slavery! + +[273:1] "Christian Spectator," 1825-1828. + +[273:2] Wilson, "Slave Power in America," vol. i., p. 164; "James G. +Birney and his Times," pp. 64, 65. This last-named book is an +interesting and valuable contribution of materials for history, +especially by its refutation of certain industriously propagated +misrepresentations. + +[274:1] "Birney and his Times," chap. xii., on "Abolition in the South +before 1828." Much is to be learned on this neglected topic in American +history from the reports of the National Convention for the Abolition of +Slavery, meeting biennially, with some intermissions, at Philadelphia, +Baltimore, and Washington down to 1829. An incomplete file of these +reports is at the library of Brown University. + +[274:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., chap. xiv. + +[275:1] See above, pp. 204, 205. + +[275:2] Newman, "The Baptists," pp. 288, 305. Let me make general +reference to the volumes of the American Church History Series by their +several indexes, s. v. Slavery. + +[275:3] One instance for illustration is as good as ten thousand. It is +from the "Life of James G. Birney," a man of the highest integrity of +conscience: "Michael, the husband and father of the family legally owned +by Mr. Birney, and who had been brought up with him from boyhood, had +been unable to conquer his appetite for strong liquors, and needed the +constant watchful care of his master and friend. For some years the +probability was that if free he would become a confirmed drunkard and +beggar his family. The children were nearly grown, but had little mental +capacity. For years Michael had understood that his freedom would be +restored to him as soon as he could control his love of ardent spirits" +(pp. 108, 109). + +[277:1] "If human beings could be justly held in bondage for one hour, +they could be for days and weeks and years, and so on indefinitely from +generation to generation" ("Life of W. L. Garrison," vol. i., p. 140). + +[278:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, p. 639, article on "The +Southern Apostasy." + +[278:2] _Ibid._, pp. 642-644. + +[281:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, pp. 660, 661. + +[281:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., pp. 190-207. + +[282:1] "Biblical Repertory," Princeton, July, 1833, pp. 294, 295, 303. + +[282:2] The true story of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and his little +party has yet to be written faithfully and fully. As told by his family +and friends and by himself, it is a monstrous falsification of history. +One of the best sources of authentic material for this chapter of +history is "James G. Birney and his Times," by General William Birney, +pp. 269-331. I may also refer to my volume, "Irenics and Polemics" (New +York, the Christian Literature Co.), pp. 145-202. The sum of the story +is given thus, in the words of Charles Sumner: "An omnibus-load of +Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the antislavery cause than +all its enemies" ("Birney," p. 331). + +[285:1] Birney, p. 321. + +[287:1] Sermon of L. Bacon (MS.), New Haven, July 4, 1830. + +[288:1] "Eastern and Western States of America," by J. S. Buckingham, M. +P., vol. i., pp. 408-413. + +[290:1] By a curious anomaly in church polity, adhesion to this +particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the +discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In most other communions +liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best +fitted to the end sought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS. + + +During the period from 1835 to 1845 the spirit of schism seemed to be in +the air. In this period no one of the larger organizations of churches +was free from agitating controversies, and some of the most important of +them were rent asunder by explosion. + +At the time when the Presbyterian Church suffered its great schism, in +1837, it was the most influential religious body in the United States. +In 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries, +including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants. +But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It +represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races +on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish +immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition +derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally +educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional social standing +and control over men of intellectual strength and leadership. In the +four years beginning with 1831 the additions to its roll of communicants +"on examination" had numbered nearly one hundred thousand. But this +spiritual growth was chilled and stunted by the dissensions that arose. +The revivals ceased and the membership actually dwindled. + +The contention had grown (a fact not without parallel in church +history) out of measures devised in the interest of coöperation and +union. In 1801, in the days of its comparative feebleness, the General +Assembly had proposed to the General Association of Connecticut a "Plan +of Union" according to which the communities of New England Christians +then beginning to move westward between the parallels that bound "the +New England zone," and bringing with them their accustomed +Congregational polity, might coöperate on terms of mutual concession +with Presbyterian churches in their neighborhood. The proposals had been +fraternally received and accepted, and under the terms of this compact +great accessions had been made to the strength of the Presbyterian +Church, of pastors and congregations marked with the intellectual +activity and religious enterprise of the New England churches, who, +while cordially conforming to the new methods of organization and +discipline, were not in the least penetrated with the traditionary +Scotch veneration for the Westminster standards. For nearly thirty years +the great reinforcements from New England and from men of the New +England way of thinking had been ungrudgingly bestowed and heartily +welcomed. But the great accessions which in the first four years of the +fourth decade of this century had increased the roll of the communicants +of the Presbyterian Church by more than fifty per cent. had come in +undue proportion from the New Englandized regions of western New York +and Ohio. It was inevitable that the jealousy of hereditary +Presbyterians, "whose were the fathers," should be aroused by the +perfectly reasonable fear lest the traditional ways of the church which +they felt to be in a peculiar sense _their_ church might be affected by +so large an element from without. + +The grounds of explicit complaint against the party called "New School" +were principally twofold--doctrine and organization. + +In the Presbyterian Church at this time were three pretty distinct types +of theological thought. First, there was the unmitigated Scotch +Calvinism; secondly, there was the modification of this system, which +became naturalized in the church after the Great Awakening, when +Jonathan Dickinson and Jonathan Edwards, from neighbor towns in +Massachusetts, came to be looked upon as the great Presbyterian +theologians; thirdly, there was the "consistent Calvinism," that had +been still further evolved by the patient labor of students in direct +succession from Edwards, and that was known under the name of +"Hopkinsianism." Just now the latest and not the least eminent in this +school, Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, was enunciating to large +and enthusiastic classes in Yale Divinity School new definitions and +forms of statement giving rise to much earnest debate. The alarm of +those to whom the very phrase "improvement in theology" was an +abomination expressed itself in futile indictments for heresy brought +against some of the most eminently godly and useful ministers in all the +church. Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, Edward Beecher, J. M. +Sturtevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, and George Duffield, +of the presbytery of Carlisle, Pa., were annoyed by impeachments for +heresy, which all failed before reaching the court of last resort. But +repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, +were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up +year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the +position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the +denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary +meeting-place of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the +accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and +useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing +student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness +with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through +a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and +illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space +of a year, as one suspended from the ministry. + +The earliest leaders in national organization for the propagation of +Christianity at home and abroad were the Congregationalists of New +England and men like-minded with them. But the societies thus originated +were organized on broad and catholic principles, and invited the +coöperation of all Christians. They naturally became the organs of much +of the active beneficence of Presbyterian congregations, and the +Presbyterian clergy and laity were largely represented in the direction +of them. They were recognized and commended by the representative bodies +of the Presbyterian Church. As a point of high-church theory it was held +by the rigidly Presbyterian party that the work of the gospel in all its +departments and in all lands is the proper function of "the church as +such"--meaning practically that each sect ought to have its separate +propaganda. There was logical strength in this position as reached from +their premisses, and there were arguments of practical convenience to be +urged in favor of it. But the demand to sunder at once the bonds of +fellowship which united Christians of different names in the beneficent +work of the great national societies was not acceptable even to the +whole of the Old-School party. To the New Englanders it was intolerable. + +There were other and less important grounds of difference that were +discussed between the parties. And in the background, behind them all, +was the slavery question. It seems to have been willingly _kept_ in the +background by the leaders of debate on both sides; but it was there. The +New-School synods and presbyteries of the North were firm in their +adherence to the antislavery principles of the church. On the other +hand, the Old-School party relied, in the _coup d'église_ that was in +preparation, on the support of "an almost solid South."[296:1] + +It was an unpardonable offense of the New-School party that it had grown +to such formidable strength, intellectually, spiritually, and +numerically. The probability that the church might, with the continued +growth and influence of this party, become Americanized and so lose the +purity of its thoroughgoing Scotch traditions was very real, and to some +minds very dreadful. To these the very ark of God seemed in danger. +Arraignments for heresy in presbytery and synod resulted in failure; and +when these and other cases involving questions of orthodoxy or of the +policy of the church were brought into the supreme judicature of the +church, the solemn but unmistakable fact disclosed itself that even the +General Assembly could not be relied on for the support of measures +introduced by the Old-School leaders. In fact, every Assembly from 1831 +to 1836, with a single exception, had shown a clear New-School majority. +The foundations were destroyed, and what should the righteous do? + +History was about to repeat itself with unwonted preciseness of detail. +On the gathering of the Assembly of 1837 a careful count of noses +revealed what had been known only once before in seven years, and what +might never be again--a clear Old-School majority in the house. To the +pious mind the neglecting of such an opportunity would have been to +tempt Providence. Without notice, without complaint or charges or +specifications, without opportunity of defense, 4 synods, including 533 +churches and more than 100,000 communicants, were excommunicated by a +majority vote. The victory of pure doctrine and strict church order, +though perhaps not exactly glorious, was triumphant and irreversible. +There was no more danger to the church from a possible New-School +majority. + +When the four exscinded synods, three in western New York and one in +Ohio, together with a great following of sympathizing congregations in +all parts of the country, came together to reconstruct their shattered +polity, they were found to number about four ninths of the late +Presbyterian Church. For thirty years the American church was to present +to Christendom the strange spectacle of two great ecclesiastical bodies +claiming identically the same name, holding the same doctrinal +standards, observing the same ritual and governed by the same +discipline, and occupying the same great territory, and yet completely +dissevered from each other and at times in relations of sharp mutual +antagonism.[297:1] + +The theological debate which had split the Presbyterian Church from end +to end was quite as earnest and copious in New England. But owing to the +freer habit of theological inquiry and the looser texture of +organization among the Congregationalist churches, it made no organic +schism beyond the setting up of a new theological seminary in +Connecticut to offset what were deemed the "dangerous tendencies" of the +New Haven theology. After a few years the party lines had faded out and +the two seminaries were good neighbors. + +The unlikeliest place in all American Christendom for a partisan +controversy and a schism would have seemed to be the Unitarian +denomination in and about Boston. Beginning with the refusal not only of +any imposed standard of belief, but of any statement of common opinions, +and with unlimited freedom of opinion in every direction, unless, +perhaps, in the direction of orthodoxy, it was not easy to see how a +splitting wedge could be started in it. But the infection of the time +was not to be resisted. Even Unitarianism must have its heresies and +heresiarchs to deal with. No sooner did the pressure of outside attack +abate than antagonisms began pretty sharply to declare themselves. In +1832 Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, pastor of the Second Church in Boston, +proposed to the church to abandon or radically change the observance of +the Lord's Supper. When the church demurred at this extraordinary demand +he resigned his office, firing off an elaborate argument against the +usage of the church by way of a parting salute. Without any formal +demission of the ministry, he retired to his literary seclusion at +Concord, from which he brought forth in books and lectures the oracular +utterances which caught more and more the ear of a wide public, and in +which, in casual-seeming parentheses and _obiter dicta_, Christianity +and all practical religion were condemned by sly innuendo and +half-respectful allusion by which he might "without sneering teach the +rest to sneer." In 1838 he was still so far recognized in the ministry +as to be invited to address the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity +School. The blank pantheism which he then enunciated called forth from +Professor Henry Ware, Jr., a sermon in the college chapel on the +personality of God, which he sent with a friendly note to Mr. Emerson. +The gay and Skimpolesque reply of the sage is an illustration of that +flippancy with which he chose to toy in a literary way with momentous +questions, and which was so exasperating to the earnest men of positive +religious convictions with whom he had been associated in the Christian +ministry. + + "It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge + should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have + always been, from my incapacity of methodical writing, 'a + chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, lucky + when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near + enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the + notice of masters of literature and religion.... I could not + possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you so cruelly hint + at on which any doctrine of mine stands, for I do not know + what arguments mean in reference to any expression of thought. + I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I + dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal + men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits + of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my + affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance + of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed + duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis + against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing." + +The issue was joined and the controversy began. Professor Andrews Norton +in a pamphlet denounced "the latest form of infidelity," and the Rev. +George Ripley replied in a volume, to which Professor Norton issued a +rejoinder. But there was not substance enough of religious dogma and +sentiment in the transcendentalist philosophers to give them any +permanent standing in the church. They went into various walks of +secular literature, and have powerfully influenced the course of +opinions; but they came to be no longer recognizable as a religious or +theological party. + +Among the minor combatants in the conflict between the Unitarians and +the pantheists was a young man whose name was destined to become +conspicuous, not within the Unitarian fellowship, but on the outskirts +of it. Theodore Parker was a man of a different type from the men about +him of either party. The son of a mechanic, he fought his way through +difficulties to a liberal education, and was thirty years old before his +very great abilities attracted general attention. A greedy gormandizer +of books in many languages, he had little of the dainty scholarship so +much prized at the neighboring university. But the results of his vast +reading were stored in a quick and tenacious memory as ready rhetorical +material wherewith to convince or astonish. Paradox was a passion with +him, that was stimulated by complaints, and even by deprecations, to the +point of irreverence. He liked to "make people's flesh crawl." Even in +his advocacy of social and public reforms, which was strenuous and +sincere, he delighted so to urge his cause as to inflame prejudice and +opposition against it. With this temper it is not strange that when he +came to enunciate his departure from some of the accepted tenets of his +brethren, who were habitually reverent in their discipleship toward +Jesus Christ, he should do this in a way to offend and shock. The +immediate reaction of the Unitarian clergy from the statements of his +sermon, in 1841, on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," +in which the supernatural was boldly discarded from his belief, was so +general and so earnest as to give occasion to Channing's exclamation, +"Now we have a Unitarian orthodoxy!" Channing did not live to see the +characteristic tenets of the heresiarch to whom he hesitated to give the +name of Christian not only widely accepted in the Unitarian churches, +but some of them freely discussed as open questions among some orthodox +scholars. + + * * * * * + +Two very great events in this period of schism may be dispatched with a +brevity out of all proportion to their importance, on account of the +simplicity of motive and action by which they are characterized. + +In the year 1844 the slavery agitation in the Methodist Episcopal Church +culminated, not in the rupture of the church, but in the +well-considered, deliberate division of it between North and South. The +history of the slavery question among the Methodists was a typical one. +From the beginning the Methodist Society had been committed by its +founder and his early successors to the strictest (not the strongest) +position on this question. Not only was the system of slavery denounced +as iniquitous, but the attempt was made to enforce the rigid rule that +persons involved under this system in the relation of master to slave +should be excluded from the ministry, if not from the communion. But the +enforcement of this rule was found to be not only difficult, but wrong, +and difficult simply because it was wrong. Then followed that illogical +confusion of ideas studiously fostered by zealots at either extreme: If +the slave-holder may be in some circumstances a faithful Christian +disciple, fulfilling in righteousness and love a Christian duty, then +slavery is right; if slavery is wrong, then every slave-holder is a +manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any +further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put +forth for the darkening of counsel. But each extreme was eager to +sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of +its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, +they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The +attempts made from 1836 to 1840, by stretching to the utmost the +authority of the General Conference and the bishops, for the suppression +of "modern abolitionism" in the church (without saying what they meant +by the phrase) had their natural effect: the antislavery sentiment in +the church organized and uttered itself more vigorously and more +extravagantly than ever on the basis, "All slave-holding is sin; no +fellowship with slave-holders." In 1843 an antislavery secession took +place, which drew after it a following of six thousand, increased in a +few months to fifteen thousand. The paradoxical result of this movement +is not without many parallels in church history: After the drawing off +of fifteen thousand of the most zealous antislavery men in the church, +the antislavery party in the church was vastly stronger, even in +numbers, than it had been before. The General Conference of 1836 had +pronounced itself, without a dissenting vote, to be "decidedly opposed +to modern abolitionism." The General Conference of 1844, on the first +test vote on the question of excluding from the ministry one who had +become a slave-holder through marriage, revealed a majority of one +hundred and seventeen to fifty-six in favor of the most rigorous +antislavery discipline. The graver question upon the case of Bishop +Andrew, who was in the like condemnation, could not be decided +otherwise. The form of the Conference's action in this case was +studiously inoffensive. It imputed no wrong and proposed no censure, +but, simply on the ground that the circumstances would embarrass him in +the exercise of his office, declared it as "the sense of this General +Conference that he desist from the exercise of this office so long as +this impediment remains." The issue could not have been simpler and +clearer. The Conference was warned that the passage of the resolution +would be followed by the secession of the South. The debate was long, +earnest, and tender. At the end of it the resolution was passed, one +hundred and eleven to sixty-nine. At once notice was given of the +intended secession. Commissioners were appointed from both parties to +adjust the conditions of it, and in the next year (1845) was organized +the "Methodist Episcopal Church, South." + +Under the fierce tyranny then dominant at the South the southern +Baptists might not fall behind their Methodist neighbors in zeal for +slavery. This time it was the South that forced the issue. The Alabama +Baptist Convention, without waiting for a concrete case, demanded of the +national missionary boards "the distinct, explicit avowal that +slave-holders are eligible and entitled equally with non-slave-holders +to all the privileges and immunities of their several unions." The +answer of the Foreign Mission Board was perfectly kind, but, on the main +point, perfectly unequivocal: "We can never be a party to any +arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery." The result had +been foreseen. The great denomination was divided between North and +South. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in May, 1845, and +began its home and foreign missionary work without delay. + +This dark chapter of our story is not without its brighter aspects. (1) +Amid the inevitable asperities attendant on such debate and division +there were many and beautiful manifestations of brotherly love between +the separated parties. (2) These strifes fell out to the furtherance of +the gospel. Emulations, indeed, are not among the works of the Spirit. +In the strenuous labors of the two divided denominations, greatly +exceeding what had gone before, it is plain that sometimes Christ was +preached of envy and strife. Nevertheless Christ was preached, with +great and salutary results; and therein do we rejoice, yea, and will +rejoice. + + * * * * * + +Two important orders in the American church, which for a time had almost +faded out from our field of vision, come back, from about this epoch of +debate and division, into continually growing conspicuousness and +strength. Neither of them was implicated in that great debate involving +the fundamental principles of the kingdom of heaven,--the principles of +righteousness and love to men,--by which other parts of the church had +been agitated and sometimes divided. Whether to their discredit or to +their honor, it is part of history that neither the Protestant Episcopal +Church nor the Roman Catholic Church took any important part, either +corporately or through its representative men, in the agonizing struggle +of the American church to maintain justice and humanity in public law +and policy. But standing thus aloof from the great ethical questions +that agitated the conscience of the nation, they were both of them +disturbed by controversies internal or external, which demand mention at +least in this chapter. + +The beginning of the resuscitation of the Protestant Episcopal Church +from the dead-and-alive condition in which it had so long been +languishing is dated from the year 1811.[304:1] This year was marked by +the accession to the episcopate of two eminent men, representing two +strongly divergent parties in that church--Bishop Griswold, of +Massachusetts, Evangelical, and Bishop Hobart, of New York, +High-churchman. A quorum of three bishops having been gotten together, +not without great difficulty, the two were consecrated in Trinity +Church, New York, May 29, 1811. + +The time was opportune and the conjuncture of circumstances singularly +favorable. The stigma of Toryism, which had marked the church from long +before the War of Independence, was now more than erased. In New England +the Episcopal Church was of necessity committed to that political party +which favored the abolition of the privileges of the standing order; and +this was the anti-English party, which, under the lead of Jefferson, was +fast forcing the country into war with England. The Episcopalians were +now in a position to retort the charge of disloyalty under which they +had not unjustly suffered. At the same time their church lost nothing of +the social prestige incidental to its relation to the established Church +of England. Politicians of the Democratic party, including some men of +well-deserved credit and influence, naturally attached themselves to a +religious party having many points of congeniality.[305:1] + +In another sense, also, the time was opportune for an advance of the +Episcopal Church. In the person of Bishop Hobart it had now a bold, +energetic, and able representative of principles hitherto not much in +favor in America--the thoroughgoing High-church principles of Archbishop +Laud. Before this time the Episcopal Church had had very little to +contribute by way of enriching the diversity of the American sects. It +was simply the feeblest of the communions bearing the common family +traits of the Great Awakening, with the not unimportant _differentia_ of +its settled ritual of worship and its traditions of order and decorum. +But when Bishop Hobart put the trumpet to his lips and prepared himself +to sound, the public heard a very different note, and no uncertain one. +The church (meaning his own fragment of the church) the one channel of +saving grace; the vehicles of that grace, the sacraments, valid only +when ministered by a priesthood with the right pedigree of ordination; +submission to the constituted authorities of the church absolutely +unlimited, except by clear divine requirements; abstinence from +prayer-meetings; firm opposition to revivals of religion; refusal of all +coöperation with Christians outside of his own sect in endeavors for the +general advancement of religion--such were some of the principles and +duties inculcated by this bishop of the new era as of binding +force.[306:1] The courage of this attitude was splendid and captivating. +It requires, even at the present time, not a little force of conviction +to sustain one in publicly enunciating such views; but at the time of +the accession of Hobart, when the Episcopal Church was just beginning to +lift up its head out of the dust of despair, it needed the heroism of a +martyr. It was not only the vast multitude of American Christians +outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the +evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the +American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with +indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were +disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater +indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which +its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other +orders in the church confirms this principle: that steady persistence +and iteration in assuring any body of believers that they are in some +special sense the favorites of Heaven, and in assuring any body of +clergy that they are endued from on high with some special and +exceptional powers, will by and by make an impression on the mind. The +flattering assurance may be coyly waived aside; it may even be +indignantly repelled; but in the long run there will be a growing number +of the brethren who become convinced that there is something in it. It +was in harmony with human nature that the party of high pretensions to +distinguished privileges for the church and prerogatives for the +"priesthood" should in a few years become a formidable contestant for +the control of the denomination. The controversy between the two parties +rose to its height of exacerbation during the prevalence of that strange +epidemic of controversy which ran simultaneously through so many of the +great religious organizations of the country at once. No denomination +had it in a more malignant form than the Episcopalians. The war of +pamphlets and newspapers was fiercely waged, and the election of bishops +sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents +of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the +publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing +episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of +the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the +morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The +highest febrile temperature was reached when, at an ordination in 1843, +two of the leading presbyters in the diocese of New York rose in their +places, and, reading each one his solemn protest against the ordaining +of one of the candidates on the ground of his Romanizing opinions, left +the church. + +The result of the long conflict was not immediately apparent. It was not +only that "high" opinions, even the highest of the Tractarian school, +were to be tolerated within the church, but that the High-church party +was to be the dominant party. The Episcopal Church was to stand before +the public as representing, not that which it held in common with the +other churches of the country, but that which was most distinctive. From +this time forth the "Evangelical" party continued relatively to decline, +down to the time, thirty years later, when it was represented in the +inconsiderable secession of the "Reformed Episcopal Church." The +combination of circumstances and influences by which this party +supremacy was brought about is an interesting study, for which, however, +there is no room in this brief compendium of history. + +A more important fact is this: that in spite of these agitating internal +strifes, and even by reason of them, the growth of the denomination was +wonderfully rapid and strong. No fact in the external history of the +American church at this period is more imposing than this growth of the +Episcopal Church from nothing to a really commanding stature. It is easy +to enumerate minor influences tending to this result, some of which are +not of high spiritual dignity; but these must not be overestimated. The +nature of this growth, as well as the numerical amount of it, requires +to be considered. This strongly distinguished order in the American +church has been aggrandized, not, to any great degree, by immigration, +nor by conquest from the ranks of the irreligious, but by a continual +stream of accessions both to its laity and to its clergy from other +sects of the church. These accessions have of course been variable in +quality, but they have included many such as no denomination could +afford to lose, and such as any would be proud to receive. Without +judging of individual cases, it is natural and reasonable to explain so +considerable a current setting so steadily for two generations toward +the Episcopal Church as being attracted by the distinctive +characteristics of that church. Foremost among these we may reckon the +study of the dignity and beauty of public worship, and the tradition and +use of forms of devotion of singular excellence and value. A tendency to +revert to the ancient Calvinist doctrine of the sacraments has +prepossessed some in favor of that sect in which the old Calvinism is +still cherished. Some have rejoiced to find a door of access to the +communion of the church not beset with revivalist exactions of +examination and scrutiny of the sacred interior experiences of the soul. +Some have reacted from an excessive or inquisitive or arbitrary church +discipline, toward a default of discipline. Some, worthily weary of +sectarian division and of the "evangelical" doctrine that schism is the +normal condition of the church of Christ, have found real comfort in +taking refuge in a sect in which, closing their eyes, they can say, +"There are no schisms in the church; the church is one and undivided, +and we are it." These and other like considerations, mingled in varying +proportions, have been honorable motives impelling toward the Episcopal +denomination; and few that have felt the force of them have felt +constrained stubbornly to resist the gentle assurances offered by the +"apostolic succession" theory of a superior authority and prerogative +with which they had become invested. The numerous accessions to the +Episcopal Church from other communions have, of course, been in large +part reinforcements to the already dominant party. + +In the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, during this stormy +period, there was by no means a perfect calm. The ineradicable feeling +of the American citizen--however recent his naturalization--that he has +a right to do what he will with his own, had kept asserting itself in +that plausible but untenable claim of the laity to manage the church +property acquired by their own contributions, which is known to Catholic +writers as "trusteeism." Through the whole breadth of the country, from +Buffalo to New Orleans, sharp conflicts over this question between +clergy and laity had continued to vex the peace of the church, and the +victory of the clergy had not been unvarying and complete. When, in +1837, Bishop John Hughes took the reins of spiritual power in New York, +he resolved to try conclusions with the trustees who attempted to +overrule his authority in his own cathedral. Sharply threatening to put +the church under interdict, if necessary, he brought the recalcitrants +to terms at last by a less formidable process. He appealed to the +congregation to withhold all further contributions from the trustees. +The appeal, for conscience' sake, to refrain from giving has always a +double hope of success. And the bishop succeeded in ousting the +trustees, at the serious risk of teaching the people a trick which has +since been found equally effective when applied on the opposite side of +a dispute between clergyman and congregation. In Philadelphia the long +struggle was not ended without the actual interdicting of the cathedral +of St. Mary's, April, 1831. In Buffalo, so late as 1847, even this +extreme measure, applied to the largest congregation in the newly +erected diocese, did not at once enforce submission. + +The conflict with trusteeism was only one out of many conflicts which +gave abundant exercise to the administrative abilities of the American +bishops. The mutual jealousies of the various nationalities and races +among the laity, and of the various sects of the regular clergy, +menaced, and have not wholly ceased to menace, the harmony of the +church, if not its unity. + +One disturbing element by which the Roman Catholic Church in some +European countries has been sorely vexed makes no considerable figure in +the corresponding history in America. There has never been here any +"Liberal Catholic" party. The fact stands in analogy with many like +facts. Visitors to America from the established churches of England or +Scotland or Germany have often been surprised to find the temper of the +old-country church so much broader and less rigid than that of the +daughter church in the new and free republic. The reason is less +recondite than might be supposed. In the old countries there are +retained in connection with the state-church, by constraint of law or of +powerful social or family influences, many whose adhesion to its +distinctive tenets and rules is slight and superficial. It is out of +such material that the liberal church party grows. In the migration it +is not that the liberal churchman becomes more strict, but that, being +released from outside pressure, he becomes less of a churchman. He +easily draws off from his hereditary communion and joins himself to some +other, or to none at all. This process of evaporation leaves behind it a +strong residuum in which all characteristic elements are held as in a +saturated solution. + +A further security of the American Catholic Church against the growth of +any "Liberal Catholic" party like those of continental Europe is the +absolutist organization of the hierarchy under the personal government +of the pope. In these last few centuries great progress has been made by +the Roman see in extinguishing the ancient traditions of local or +national independence in the election of bishops. Nevertheless in +Catholic Europe important relics of this independence give an effective +check to the absolute power of Rome. In America no trace of this +historic independence has ever existed. The power of appointing and +removing bishops is held absolutely and exclusively by the pope and +exercised through the Congregation of the Propaganda. The power of +ordaining and assigning priests is held by the bishop, who also holds or +controls the title to the church property in his diocese. The security +against partisan division within the church is as complete as it can be +made without gravely increasing the risks of alienating additional +multitudes from the fellowship of the church.[312:1] + + * * * * * + +During the whole of this dreary decade there were "fightings without" as +well as within for the Catholic Church in the United States. Its great +and sudden growth solely by immigration had made it distinctively a +church of foreigners, and chiefly of Irishmen. The conditions were +favorable for the development of a race prejudice aggravated by a +religious antipathy. It was a good time for the impostor, the fanatic, +and the demagogue to get in their work. In Boston, in 1834, the report +that a woman was detained against her will in the Ursuline convent at +Charlestown, near Boston, led to the burning of the building by a +drunken mob. The Titus Oates of the American no-popery panic, in 1836, +was an infamous woman named Maria Monk, whose monstrous stories of +secret horrors perpetrated in a convent in Montreal, in which she +claimed to have lived as a nun, were published by a respectable house +and had immense currency. A New York pastor of good standing, Dr. +Brownlee, made himself sponsor for her character and her stories; and +when these had been thoroughly exposed, by Protestant ministers and +laymen, for the shameless frauds that they were, there were plenty of +zealots to sustain her still. A "Protestant Society" was organized in +New York, and solicited the contributions of the benevolent and pious to +promote the dissemination of raw-head-and-bloody-bones literature on the +horrors of popery. The enterprise met with reprobation from sober-minded +Protestants, but it was not without its influence for mischief. The +presence of a great foreign vote, easily manipulated and cast in block, +was proving a copious source of political corruption. Large concessions +of privilege or of public property to Catholic institutions were +reasonably suspected to have been made in consideration of clerical +services in partisan politics.[313:1] The conditions provoked, we might +say necessitated, a political reform movement, which took the name and +character of "Native American." In Philadelphia, a city notorious at +that time for misgovernment and turbulence, an orderly "American" +meeting was attacked and broken up by an Irish mob. One act of violence +led to another, the excitement increasing from day to day; deadly shots +were exchanged in the streets, houses from which balls had been fired +into the crowd were set in flames, which spread to other houses, +churches were burned, and the whole city dominated by mobs that were +finally suppressed by the State militia. It was an appropriate climax +to the ten years of ecclesiastical and social turmoil.[314:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[296:1] Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," p. 359. + +[297:1] For the close historical parallel to the exscinding acts of 1837 +see page 167, above. A later parallel, it is claimed, is found in the +"virtually exscinding act" of the General Assembly of 1861, which was +the occasion of the secession of the Southern Presbyterians. The +historian of the Southern Presbyterians, who remarks with entire +complacency that the "victory" of 1837 was won "only by virtue of an +almost solid South," seems quite unconscious that this kind of victory +could have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The +Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, +that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle +instead of from the breech. + +[304:1] Tiffany, chap. xv. + +[305:1] The intense antagonism of the New England Congregationalists to +Jefferson and his party as representing French infidelity and Jacobinism +admits of many striking illustrations. The sermon of Nathanael Emmons on +"Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" is characterized by +Professor Park as "a curiosity in politico-homiletical literature." At +this distance it is not difficult to see that the course of this clergy +was far more honorable to its boldness and independence than to its +discretion and sense of fitness. Both its virtues and its faults had a +tendency to strengthen an opposing party. + +[306:1] Hobart's sermon at the consecration of Right Rev. H. U. +Onderdonk, Philadelphia, 1827. + +[312:1] For a fuller account of the dissensions in the Catholic Church, +consult, by index, Bishop O'Gorman's "History." On the modern +organization of the episcopate in complete dependence on the Holy See, +consult the learned article on "Episcopal Elections," by Dr. Peries, of +the Catholic University at Washington, in the "American Catholic +Quarterly Review" for January, 1896; also the remarks of Archbishop +Kenrick, of St. Louis, in his "_Concio in Concilio Vaticano Habenda at +non Habita_," in "An Inside View of the Vatican Council," by L. W. +Bacon, pp. 61, 121. + +[313:1] A satirical view of these concessions, in the vast dimensions +which they had reached twenty-five years later in the city and county of +New York, was published in two articles, "Our Established Church," and +"The Unestablished Church," in "Putnam's Magazine" for July and +December, 1869. The articles were reissued in a pamphlet, "with an +explanatory and exculpatory preface, and sundry notices of the +contemporary press." + +[314:1] A studiously careful account of the Philadelphia riots of 1844 +is given in the "New Englander," vol. ii. (1844), pp. 470, 624. + +This account of the schisms of the period is of course not complete. The +American Missionary Association, since distinguished for successful +labors chiefly among the freedmen, grew out of dissatisfaction felt by +men of advanced antislavery views with the position of the "American +Board" and the American Home Missionary Society on the slavery question. +The organization of it was matured in 1846. A very fruitful schism in +its results was that which, in 1835, planted a cutting from Lane +Seminary at Cincinnati, in the virgin soil at Oberlin, Ohio. The +beginning thus made with a class in theology has grown into a noble and +widely beneficent institution, the influence of which has extended to +the ends of the land and of the world. + +The division of the Society of Friends into the two societies known as +Hicksite and Orthodox is of earlier date--1827-28. + +No attempt is made in this volume to chronicle the interminable +splittings and reunitings of the Presbyterian sects of Scottish +extraction. A curious diagram, on page 146 of volume xi. of the present +series, illustrates the sort of task which such a chronicle involves. + +An illustration of the way in which the extreme defenders of slavery and +the extreme abolitionists sustained each other in illogical statements +(see above, pp. 301, 302) is found in Dr. Thornwell's claim (identical +with Mr. Garrison's) that if slavery is wrong, then all slave-holders +ought to be excommunicated (vol. vi., p. 157, note). Dr. Thornwell may +not have been the "mental and moral giant" that he appears to his +admirers (see Professor Johnson in vol. xi., p. 355), but he was an +intelligent and able man, quite too clear-headed to be imposed upon by a +palpable "ambiguous middle," except for his excitement in the heat of a +desperate controversy with the moral sense of all Christendom. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE GREAT IMMIGRATION. + + +At the taking of the first census of the United States, in 1790, the +country contained a population of about four millions in its territory +of less than one million of square miles. + +Sixty years later, at the census of 1850, it contained a population of +more than twenty-three millions in its territory of about three millions +of square miles. + +The vast expansion of territory to more than threefold the great +original domain of the United States had been made by honorable purchase +or less honorable conquest. It had not added largely to the population +of the nation; the new acquisitions were mainly of unoccupied land. The +increase of the population, down to about 1845, was chiefly the natural +increase of a hardy and prolific stock under conditions in the highest +degree favorable to such increase. Up to the year 1820 the recent +immigration had been inconsiderable. In the ten years 1820-29 the annual +arrival of immigrants was nine thousand. In the next decade, 1830-39, +the annual arrival was nearly thirty-five thousand, or a hundred a day. +For forty years the total immigration from all quarters was much less +than a half-million. In the course of the next three decades, from 1840 +to 1869, there arrived in the United States from the various countries +of Europe five and a half millions of people. It was more than the +entire population of the country at the time of the first census;-- + + A multitude like which the populous North + Poured never from her frozen loins to pass + Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons + Came like a deluge on the South and spread + Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. + +Under the pressure of a less copious flood of incursion the greatest +empire in all history, strongest in arts and polity as well as arms, had +perished utterly. If Rome, with her population of one hundred and twenty +millions, her genius for war and government, and her long-compacted +civilization, succumbed under a less sudden rush of invasion, what hope +was there for the young American Republic, with its scanty population +and its new and untried institutions?[316:1] + +An impressive providential combination of causes determined this great +historic movement of population at this time. It was effected by +attractions in front of the emigrant, reinforced by impulses from +behind. The conclusion of the peace of 1815 was followed by the +beginning of an era of great public works, one of the first of which was +the digging of the Erie Canal. This sort of enterprise makes an +immediate demand for large forces of unskilled laborers; and in both +hemispheres it has been observed to occasion movements of population out +of Catholic countries into Protestant countries. The westward current +of the indigenous population created a vacuum in the seaboard States, +and a demand for labor that was soon felt in the labor-markets of the +Old World. A liberal homestead policy on the part of the national +government, and naturalization laws that were more than liberal, +agencies for the encouragement of settlers organized by individual +States and by railroad corporations and other great landed proprietors, +and the eager competition of steamship companies drumming for steerage +passengers in all parts of Europe--all these coöperated with the growing +facility and cheapness of steam transportation to swell the current of +migration. The discovery of gold in California quickened the flow of it. + +As if it had been the divine purpose not only to draw forth, but to +drive forth, the populations of the Old World to make their homes in the +New, there was added to all these causes conducive to migration the +Irish famine of 1846-47, and the futile revolutions of 1848, with the +tyrannical reactions which followed them. But the great stimulus to +migration was the success and prosperity that attended it. It was +"success that succeeded." The great emigration agent was the letter +written to his old home by the new settler, in multitudes of cases +inclosing funds to pay the passage of friends whom he had left behind +him. + +The great immigration that began about 1845 is distinguished from some +of the early colonizations in that it was in no sense a religious +movement. Very grave religious results were to issue from it; but they +were to be achieved through the unconscious coöperation of a multitude +of individuals each intent with singleness of vision on his own +individual ends. It is by such unconscious coöperation that the +directing mind and the overruling hand of God in history are most +signally illustrated. + +In the first rush of this increased immigration by far the greatest +contributor of new population was Ireland. It not only surpassed any +other country in the number of its immigrants, but in the height of the +Irish exodus, in the decade 1840-50, it nearly equaled all other +countries of the world together. The incoming Irish millions were almost +solidly Roman Catholic. The measures taken by the British government for +many generations to attach the Irish people to the crown and convert +them to the English standard of Protestantism had had the result of +discharging upon our shores a people distinguished above all Christendom +besides for its ardent and unreserved devotion to the Roman Church, and +hardly less distinguished for its hatred to England. + +After the first flood-tide the relative number of the Irish immigrants +began to decrease, and has kept on decreasing until now. Since the Civil +War the chief source of immigration has been Germany; and its +contributions to our population have greatly aggrandized the Lutheran +denomination, once so inconsiderable in numbers, until in many western +cities it is the foremost of the Protestant communions, and in Chicago +outnumbers the communicants of the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, and +the Methodist churches combined.[318:1] The German immigration has +contributed its share, and probably more than its share, to our +non-religious and churchless population. Withal, in a proportion which +it is not easy to ascertain with precision, it added multitudinous +thousands to the sudden and enormous growth of the Roman Catholic +Church. But there is an instructive contrast between the German +immigrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, and the Irish immigration. +The Catholicism of the Irish, held from generation to generation in the +face of partisan and sometimes cruelly persecuting laws, was held with +the ardor, if not of personal conviction, at least of strong hereditary +animosity. To the Germans, their religious sect, whether Catholic, +Lutheran, or Reformed, is determined for them by political arrangement, +under the principle _cujus regio, ejus religio_. It is matter of course +that tenets thus acquired should be held by a tenure so far removed from +fanaticism as to seem to more zealous souls much like lukewarmness. +Accustomed to have the cost of religious institutions provided for in +the budget of public expenses, the wards of the Old World state-churches +find themselves here in strange surroundings, untrained in habits of +self-denial for religious objects. The danger is a grave and real one +that before they become acclimated to the new conditions a large +percentage will be lost, not only from their hereditary communion, but +from all Christian fellowship, and lapse into simple indifferentism and +godlessness. They have much to learn and something to teach. The +indigenous American churches are not likely to be docile learners at the +feet of alien teachers; but it would seem like the slighting of a +providential opportunity if the older sects should fail to recognize +that one of the greatest and by far the most rapidly growing of the +Protestant churches of America, the Lutheran, growing now with new +increments not only from the German, but also from the Scandinavian +nations, is among us in such force to teach us somewhat by its example +of the equable, systematic, and methodical ways of a state-church, as +well as to learn something from the irregular fervor of that revivalism +which its neighbors on every hand have inherited from the Great +Awakening. It would be the very extravagance of national self-conceit if +the older American churches should become possessed of the idea that +four millions of German Christians and one million of Scandinavians, +arriving here from 1860 to 1890, with their characteristic methods in +theology and usages of worship and habits of church organization and +administration, were here, in the providence of God, only to be +assimilated and not at all to assimilate. + + * * * * * + +The vast growth of the Roman Catholic Church in America could not but +fill its clergy and adherents with wonder and honest pride. But it was +an occasion of immense labors and not a little anxiety. One effect of +the enormous immigration was inevitably to impose upon this church, +according to the popular apprehension, the character of a foreign +association, and, in the earlier periods of the influx, of an Irish +association. It was in like manner inevitable, from the fact that the +immigrant class are preponderantly poor and of low social rank, that it +should for two or three generations be looked upon as a church for the +illiterate and unskilled laboring class. An incident of the excessive +torrent rush of the immigration was that the Catholic Church became to a +disproportionate extent an urban institution, making no adequate +provision for the dispersed in agricultural regions. + +Against these and other like disadvantages the hierarchy of the Catholic +Church have struggled heroically, with some measure of success. The +steadily rising character of the imported population in its successive +generations has aided them. If in the first generations the churches +were congregations of immigrants served by an imported clergy, the most +strenuous exertions were made for the founding of institutions that +should secure to future congregations born upon the soil the services of +an American-trained priesthood. One serious hindrance to the noble +advances that have nevertheless been made in this direction has been the +fanatical opposition levied against even the most beneficent enterprises +of the church by a bigoted Native-Americanism. It is not a hopeful +method of conciliating and naturalizing a foreign element in the +community to treat them with suspicion and hostility as alien enemies. +The shameful persecution which the mob was for a brief time permitted to +inflict on Catholic churches and schools and convents had for its chief +effect to confirm the foreigner in his adherence to his church and his +antipathy to Protestantism, and to provoke a twofold ferocity in return. +At a time when there was reason to apprehend a Know-nothing riot in New +York, in 1844, a plan was concerted and organized by "a large Irish +society with divisions throughout the city," by which, "in case a single +church was attacked, buildings should be fired in all quarters and the +great city should be involved in a general conflagration."[321:1] + +The utmost that could have been hoped for by the devoted but inadequate +body of the Roman Catholic clergy in America, overwhelmed by an influx +of their people coming in upon them in increasing volume, numbering +millions per annum, was that they might be able to hold their own. But +this hope was very far from being attained. How great have been the +losses to the Roman communion through the transplantation of its members +across the sea is a question to which the most widely varying answers +have been given, and on which statistical exactness seems unattainable. +The various estimates, agreeing in nothing else, agree in representing +them as enormously great.[321:2] All good men will also agree that in +so far as these losses represent mere lapses into unbelief and +irreligion they are to be deplored. Happily there is good evidence of a +large salvage, gathered into other churches, from what so easily becomes +a shipwreck of faith with total loss. + +It might seem surprising, in view of the many and diverse resources of +attractive influence which the Roman Church has at its command, that its +losses have not been to some larger extent compensated by conversions +from other sects. Instances of such conversion are by no means wanting; +but so far as a popular current toward Catholicism is concerned, the +attractions in that direction are outweighed by the disadvantages +already referred to. It has not been altogether a detriment to the +Catholic Church in America that the social status and personal +composition of its congregations, in its earlier years, have been such +that the transition into it from any of the Protestant churches could be +made only at the cost of a painful self-denial. The number of accessions +to it has been thereby lessened, but (leaving out the case of the +transition of politicians from considerations of expediency) the quality +of them has been severely sifted. Incomparably the most valuable +acquisition which the American Catholic Church has received has been the +company of devoted and gifted young men, deeply imbued with the +principles and sentiments of the High-church party in the Episcopal +Church, who have felt constrained in conscience and in logic to take the +step, which seems so short, from the highest level in the Anglican +Church into the Roman, and who, organized into the Order of the Paulist +Fathers, have exemplified in the Roman Church so many of the highest +qualities of Protestant preaching. + +He is a bold man who will undertake to predict in detail the future of +the Roman Church in America. To say that it will be modified by its +surroundings is only to say what is true of it in all countries. To say +that it will be modified for the better is to say what is true of it in +all Protestant countries. Nowhere is the Roman Church so pure from +scandal and so effective for good as where it is closely surrounded and +jealously scrutinized by bodies of its fellow-Christians whom it is +permitted to recognize only as heretics. But when the influence of +surrounding heresy is seen to be an indispensable blessing to the +church, the heretic himself comes to be looked upon with a mitigated +horror. Not with the sacrifice of any principle, but through the +application of some of those provisions by which the Latin theology is +able to meet exigencies like this,--the allowance in favor of +"invincible ignorance" and prejudice, the distinction between the body +and "the soul of the church,"--the Roman Catholic, recognizing the +spirit of Christ in his Protestant fellow-Christian, is able to hold him +in spiritual if not formal communion, so that the Catholic Church may +prove itself not dissevered from the Church Catholic. In the common +duties of citizenship and of humanity, in the promotion of the interests +of morality, even in those religious matters that are of common concern +to all honest disciples of Jesus Christ, he is at one with his heretic +brethren. Without the change of a single item either of doctrine or of +discipline, the attitude and temper of the church, as compared with the +church of Spain or Italy or Mexico, is revolutionized. The change must +needs draw with it other changes, which may not come without some jar +and conflict between progressive and conservative, but which +nevertheless needs must come. Out of many indications of the spirit of +fellowship with all Christians now exemplified among American Catholics, +I quote one of the most recent and authoritative from an address of +Archbishop Ryan at the Catholic Congress in Chicago in 1893. Speaking on +Christian union, he said: + + "If there is any one thing more than another upon which people + agree, it is respect and reverence for the person and the + character of the Founder of Christianity. How the Protestant + loves his Saviour! How the Protestant eye will sometimes grow + dim when speaking of our Lord! In this great center of union + is found the hope of human society, the only means of + preserving Christian civilization, the only point upon which + Catholic and Protestant may meet. As if foreseeing that this + should be, Christ himself gave his example of fraternal + charity, not to the orthodox Jew, but to the heretical + Samaritan, showing that charity and love, while faith remains + intact, can never be true unless no distinction is made + between God's creatures."[325:1] + +Herein is fellowship higher than that of symbols and sacraments. By so +far as it receives this spirit of love the American Catholic Church +enters into its place in that greater Catholic Church of which we all +make mention in the Apostles' Creed--"the Holy Universal Church, which +is the fellowship of holy souls." + + * * * * * + +The effect of the Great Immigration on the body of the immigrant +population is not more interesting or more important than the effect of +it on the religious bodies already in occupation of the soil. The +impression made on them by what seemed an irruption of barbarians of +strange language or dialect, for the most part rude, unskilled, and +illiterate, shunning as profane the Christian churches of the land, and +bowing in unknown rites as devotees of a system known, and by no means +favorably known, only through polemic literature and history, and +through the gruesome traditions of Puritan and Presbyterian and +Huguenot, was an impression not far removed from horror; and this +impression was deepened as the enormous proportions of this invasion +disclosed themselves from year to year. The serious and not unreasonable +fear that these armies of aliens, handled as they manifestly were by a +generalship that was quick to seize and fortify in a conspicuous way the +strategic points of influence, especially in the new States, might +imperil or ruin the institutions and liberties of the young Republic, +was stimulated and exploited in the interest of enterprises of +evangelization that might counter-work the operations of the invading +church. The appeals of the Bible and tract societies, and of the +various home mission agencies of the different denominations, as well as +of the distinctively antipopery societies, were pointed with the alarm +lest "the great West" should fall under the domination of the papal +hierarchy. Naturally the delineations of the Roman system and of its +public and social results that were presented to the public for these +purposes were of no flattering character. Not history only, but +contemporary geography gave warnings of peril. Canada on one hand, and +Mexico and the rest of Spanish America on the other, were cited as +living examples of the fate which might befall the free United States. +The apocalyptic prophecies were copiously drawn upon for material of +war. By processes of exegesis which critical scholarship regards with a +smile or a shudder, the helpless pope was made to figure as the +Antichrist, the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, the Scarlet Woman on +the Seven Hills, the Little Horn Speaking Blasphemies, the Beast, and +the Great Red Dragon. That moiety of Christendom which, sorely as its +history has been deformed by corruption and persecution, violently as it +seems to be contrasted with the simplicity of the primeval church, is +nevertheless the spiritual home of multitudes of Christ's well-approved +servants and disciples, was held up to gaze as being nothing but the +enemy of Christ and his cause. The appetite of the Protestant public for +scandals at the expense of their fellow-Christians was stimulated to a +morbid greediness and then overfed with willful and wicked fabrications. +The effect of this fanaticism on some honest but illogical minds was +what might have been looked for. Brought by and by into personal +acquaintance with Catholic ministers and institutions, and discovering +the fraud and injustice that had been perpetrated, they sprang by a +generous reaction into an attitude of sympathy for the Roman Catholic +system. A more favorable preparation of the way of conversion to Rome +could not be desired by the skillful propagandist. One recognizes a +retributive justice in the fact, when notable gains to the Catholic +Church are distinctly traced to the reaction of honest men from these +fraudulent polemics.[327:1] + +The danger to the Republic, which was thus malignantly or ignorantly +exaggerated and distorted, was nevertheless real and grave. No sincerely +earnest and religious Protestant, nor even any well-informed patriotic +citizen, with the example of French and Spanish America before his eyes, +could look with tolerance upon the prospect of a possible Catholicizing +of the new States at the West; and the sight of the incessant tide of +immigration setting westward, the reports of large funds sent hither +from abroad to aid the propagation of the Roman Church, and the accounts +of costly and imposing ecclesiastical buildings rising at the most +important centers of population, roused the Christian patriotism of the +older States to the noblest enterprises of evangelization. There was no +wasting of energy in futile disputation. In all the Protestant +communions it was felt that the work called for was a simple, peaceful, +and positive one--to plant the soil of the West, at the first occupation +of it by settlers, with Christian institutions and influences. The +immensity of the task stimulated rather than dismayed the zeal of the +various churches. The work undertaken and accomplished in the twenty +years from 1840 to 1860 in providing the newly settled regions with +churches, pastors, colleges, and theological seminaries, with +Sunday-schools, and with Bibles and other religious books, was of a +magnitude which will never be defined by statistical figures. How great +it was, and at what cost it was effected in gifts of treasure and of +heroic lives of toil and self-denial, can only be a matter of vague +wonder and thanksgiving. + +The work of planting the church in the West exhibits the voluntary +system at its best--and at its worst. A task so vast and so momentous +has never been imposed on the resources of any state establishment. It +is safe to say that no established church has ever existed, however +imperially endowed, that would have been equal to the undertaking of it. +With no imposing combination of forces, and no strategic concert of +action, the work was begun spontaneously and simultaneously, like some +of the operations of nature, by a multitude of different agencies, and +went forward uninterrupted to something as nearly like completeness as +could be in a work the exigencies of which continually widened beyond +all achievements. The planting of the church in the West is one of the +wonders of church history. + +But this noble act of religious devotion was by no means a sacrifice +without blemish. The sacred zeal for advancing God's reign and +righteousness was mingled with many very human motives in the progress +of it. Conspicuous among these was the spirit of sectarian competition. +The worthy and apostolic love for kindred according to the flesh +separated from home and exposed to the privations and temptations of the +frontier, the honest anxiety to forestall the domination of a +dangerously powerful religious corporation propagating perverted views +of truth, even the desire to advance principles and forms of belief +deemed to be important, were infused with a spirit of partisanship as +little spiritual as the enthusiasm which animates the struggles and the +shouters at a foot-ball game. The devoted pioneer of the gospel on the +frontier, seeing his work endangered by that of a rival denomination, +writes to the central office of his sect; the board of missions makes +its appeal to the contributing churches; the churches respond with +subsidies; and the local rivalry in the mission field is pressed, +sometimes to a good result, on the principle that "competition is the +life of business." Thus the fragrance of the precious ointment of loving +sacrifice is perceptibly tainted, according to the warning of +Ecclesiastes or the Preacher. And yet it is not easy for good men, being +men, sternly to rebuke the spirit that seems to be effective in +promoting the good cause that they have at heart. + +If the effect of these emulations on the contributing churches was +rather carnal than spiritual, the effect in the mission field was worse. +The effect was seen in the squandering of money and of priceless service +of good men and women, in the debilitating and demoralizing division and +subdivision of the Christian people, not of cities and large towns, but +of villages and hamlets and of thinly settled farming districts. By the +building of churches and other edifices for sectarian uses, schism was +established for coming time as a vested interest. The gifts and service +bestowed in this cause with a truly magnificent liberality would have +sufficed to establish the Christian faith and fellowship throughout the +new settlements in strength and dignity, in churches which, instead of +lingering as puny and dependent nurslings, would have grown apace to be +strong and healthy nursing mothers to newer churches yet. + +There is an instructive contrast, not only between the working of the +voluntary system and that of the Old World establishments, but between +the methods of the Catholic Church and the Protestant no-method. Under +the control of a strong coördinating authority the competitions of the +various Catholic orders, however sharp, could never be allowed to run +into wasteful extravagance through cross-purposes. It is believed that +the Catholics have not erected many monuments of their own unthrift in +the shape of costly buildings begun, but left unfinished and abandoned. +A more common incident of their work has been the buying up of these +expensive failures, at a large reduction from their cost, and turning +them to useful service. And yet the principle of sectarian competition +is both recognized and utilized in the Roman system. The various +clerical sects, with their characteristic names, costumes, methods, and +doctrinal differences, have their recognized aptitudes for various sorts +of work, with which their names are strongly associated: the Dominican +for pulpit eloquence, the Capuchin for rough-and-ready street-preaching, +the Benedictine for literary work, the Sulpitian for the training of +priests, and the ubiquitous Jesuit for shifty general utility with a +specialty of school-keeping. These and a multitude of other orders, male +and female, have been effectively and usefully employed in the arduous +labor _Romanam condere gentem_. But it would seem that the superior +stability of the present enterprise of planting Catholicism in the +domain of the United States, as compared with former expensive failures, +was due in some part to the larger employment of a diocesan parish +clergy instead of a disproportionate reliance on the "regulars." + +On the whole, notwithstanding its immense armies of immigrants and the +devoted labors of its priests, and notwithstanding its great expansion, +visible everywhere in conspicuous monuments of architecture, the +Catholic advance in America has not been, comparatively speaking, +successful. For one thing, the campaign was carried on too far from its +base of supplies. The subsidies from Lyons and Vienna, liberal as they +were, were no match for the home missionary zeal of the seaboard States +in following their own sons westward with church and gospel and pastor. +Even the conditions which made possible the superior management and +economy of resources, both material and personal, among the Catholics, +were attended with compensating drawbacks. With these advantages they +could not have the immense advantage of the popular initiative. In +Protestantism the people were the church, and the minister was chief +among the people only by virtue of being servant of all; the people were +incited to take up the work for their own and carry it on at their best +discretion; and they were free to make wasteful and disastrous blunders +and learn therefrom by experience. With far greater expenditure of +funds, they make no comparison with their brethren of the Roman +obedience in stately and sumptuous buildings at great centers of +commerce and travel. But they have covered the face of the land with +country meeting-houses, twice as many as there was any worthy use for, +in which faithful service is rendered to subdivided congregations by +underpaid ministers, enough in number, if they were wisely distributed, +for the evangelization of the whole continent; and each country +meeting-house is a mission station, and its congregation, men, women, +and children, are missionaries. Thus it has come about, in the language +of the earnest Catholic from the once Catholic city of New Orleans, that +"the nation, the government, the whole people, remain solidly +Protestant."[331:1] Great territories originally discovered by Catholic +explorers and planted in the name of the church by Catholic missionaries +and colonists, and more lately occupied by Catholic immigrants in what +seemed overwhelming numbers, are now the seat of free and powerful +commonwealths in which the Catholic Church is only one of the most +powerful and beneficent of the Christian sects, while the institutions +and influences which characterize their society are predominantly +Protestant. + +In the westward propagation of Protestantism, as well as of Catholicism, +the distinctive attributes of the several sects or orders is strikingly +illustrated. + +Foremost in the pioneer work of the church are easily to be recognized +the Methodists and the Baptists, one the most solidly organized of the +Protestant sects, the other the most uncompact and individualist; the +first by virtue of the supple military organization of its great corps +of itinerants, the other by the simplicity and popular apprehensibleness +of its distinctive tenets and arguments and the aggressive ardor with +which it inspires all its converts, and both by their facility in +recruiting their ministry from the rank and file of the church, without +excluding any by arbitrarily imposed conditions. The Presbyterians were +heavily cumbered for advance work by traditions and rules which they +were rigidly reluctant to yield or bend, even when the reason for the +rule was superseded by higher reasons. The argument for a learned +ministry is doubtless a weighty one; but it does not suffice to prove +that when college-bred men are not to be had it is better that the +people have no minister at all. There is virtue in the rule of +ministerial parity; but it should not be allowed to hinder the church +from employing in humbler spiritual functions men who fall below the +prescribed standard. This the church, in course of time, discovered, and +instituted a "minor order" of ministers, under the title of colporteurs. +But it was timidly and tardily done, and therefore ineffectively. The +Presbyterians lost their place in the skirmish-line; but that which had +been their hindrance in the advance work gave them great advantage in +settled communities, in which for many years they took precedence in +the building up of strong and intelligent congregations. + +To the Congregationalists belongs an honor in the past which, in recent +generations, they have not been jealous to retain. Beyond any sect, +except the Moravians, they have cherished that charity which seeketh not +her own. The earliest leaders in the organization of schemes of national +beneficence in coöperation with others, they have sustained them with +unselfish liberality, without regard to returns of sectarian advantage. +The results of their labor are largely to be traced in the upbuilding of +other sects. Their specialty in evangelization has been that of the +religious educators of the nation. They have been preëminently the +builders of colleges and theological seminaries. To them, also, belongs +the leadership in religious journalism. Not only the journals of their +own sect and the undenominational journals, but also to a notable extent +the religious journals of other denominations, have depended for their +efficiency on men bred in the discipline of Congregationalism. + +It is no just reproach to the Episcopalians that they were tardy in +entering the field of home missions. When we remember that it is only +since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find +their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements +to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless +Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign +missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of +the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future +of the church, and determined the type of Episcopalianism that was to be +planted in the West.[333:1] Entering thus late into the work, and that +with stinted resources, the Episcopal Church wholly missed the +apostolic glory of not building on other men's foundations. Coming with +the highest pretensions to exclusive authority, its work was very +largely a work of proselyting from other Christian sects. But this work +was prosperously carried on; and although not in itself a work of the +highest dignity, and although the methods of it often bore a painfully +schismatic character, there is little room for doubt that the results of +it have enriched and strengthened the common Christianity of America. +Its specialties in the planting work have been the setting of a worthy +example of dignity and simplicity in the conduct of divine worship, and +in general of efficiency in the administration of a parish, and, above +all, the successful handling of the immensely difficult duties imposed +upon Christian congregations in great cities, where the Episcopal Church +has its chief strength and its most effective work. + +One must needs ascend to a certain altitude above the common level in +order to discern a substantial resultant unity of movement in the +strenuous rivalries and even antagonisms of the many sects of the one +church of Christ in America in that critical quarter-century from the +year 1835 to the outbreak of the Civil War, in which the work of the +church was suddenly expanded by the addition of a whole empire of +territory on the west, and the bringing in of a whole empire of alien +population from the east, and when no one of the Christian forces of the +nation could be spared from the field. The unity is very real, and is +visible enough, doubtless, from "the circle of the heavens." The sharers +in the toil and conflict and the near spectators are not well placed to +observe it. It will be for historians in some later century to study it +in a truer perspective. + + * * * * * + +It is not only as falling within this period of immigration, but as +being largely dependent on its accessions from foreign lands, that the +growth of Mormonism is entitled to mention in this chapter. In its +origin Mormonism is distinctly American--a system of gross, palpable +imposture contrived by a disreputable adventurer, Joe Smith, with the +aid of three confederates, who afterward confessed the fraud and perjury +of which they had been guilty. It is a shame to human nature that the +silly lies put forth by this precious gang should have found believers. +But the solemn pretensions to divine revelation, mixed with elements +borrowed from the prevalent revivalism, and from the immediate adventism +which so easily captivates excitable imaginations, drew a number of +honest dupes into the train of the knavish leaders, and made possible +the pitiable history which followed. The chief recruiting-grounds for +the new religion were not in America, but in the manufacturing and +mining regions of Great Britain, and in some of the countries, +especially the Scandinavian countries, of continental Europe. The able +handling of an emigration fund, and the dexterous combination of appeals +to many passions and interests at once, have availed to draw together in +the State of Utah and neighboring regions a body of fanatics formidable +to the Republic, not by their number, for they count only about one +hundred and fifty thousand, but by the solidity with which they are +compacted into a political, economical, religious, and, at need, +military community, handled at will by unscrupulous chiefs. It is only +incidentally that the strange story of the Mormons, a story singularly +dramatic and sometimes tragic, is connected with the history of American +Christianity.[335:1] + +To this same period belongs the beginning of the immigration of the +Chinese, which, like that of the Mormons, becomes by and by important to +our subject as furnishing occasion for active and fruitful missionary +labors. + +In the year 1843 culminated the panic agitation of Millerism. From the +year 1831 an honest Vermont farmer named William Miller had been urging +upon the public, in pamphlets and lectures, his views of the approaching +advent of Christ to judgment and the destruction of the world. He had +figured it out on the basis of prophecies in Daniel and the Revelation, +and the great event was set down for April 23, 1843. As the date drew +near the excitement of many became intense. Great meetings were held, in +the open air or in tents, of those who wished to be found waiting for +the Lord. Some nobly proved their sincerity by the surrender of their +property for the support of their poorer brethren until the end should +come. The awful day was awaited with glowing rapture of hope, or by some +with terror. When it dawned there was eager gazing upon the clouds of +heaven to descry the sign of the Son of man. And when the day had passed +without event there were various revulsions of feeling. The prophets set +themselves to going over their figures and fixing new dates; earnest +believers, sobered by the failure of their pious expectations, held +firmly to the substance of their faith and hope, while no longer +attempting to "know times and seasons, which the Father hath put within +his own power"; weak minds made shipwreck of faith; and scoffers cried +in derision, "Where is the promise of his coming?" A monument of this +honest delusion still exists in the not very considerable sect of +Adventists, with its subdivisions; but sympathizers with their general +scheme of prophetical interpretation are to be found among the most +earnest and faithful members of other churches. + +Such has been the progress of Scriptural knowledge since the days when +Farmer Miller went to work with his arithmetic and slate upon the +strange symbols and enigmatic figures of the Old and New Testament +Apocalypses, that plain Christians everywhere have now the means of +knowing that the lines of calculation along which good people were led +into delusion a half-century ago started from utterly fallacious +premises. It is to the fidelity of critical scholars that we owe it that +hereafter, except among the ignorant and unintelligent, these two books, +now clearly understood, will not again be used to minister to the panic +of a Millerite craze, nor to furnish vituperative epithets for +antipopery agitators. + +To this period also must be referred the rise of that system of +necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other +countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to +constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what +in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by +the name of witchcraft, we find the beginning of so-called +"spiritualism" in the "Rochester rappings," produced, to the wonder of +many witnesses, by "the Fox girls" in 1849. How the rappings and other +sensible phenomena were produced was a curious question, but not +important; the main question was, Did they convey communications from +the spirits of the dead, as the young women alleged, and as many persons +believed (so they thought) from demonstrative evidence? The mere +suggestion of the possibility of this of course awakened an inquisitive +and eager interest everywhere. It became the subject of universal +discussion and experiment in society. There was demand for other +"mediums" to satisfy curiosity or aid investigation; and the demand at +once produced a copious supply. The business of medium became a regular +profession, opening a career especially to enterprising women. They +began to draw together believers and doubters into "circles" and +"séances," and to organize permanent associations. At the end of ten +years the "Spiritual Register" for 1859, boasting great things, +estimated the actual spiritualists in America at 1,500,000, besides +4,000,000 more partly converted. The latest census gives the total +membership of their associations as 45,030. But this moderate figure +should not be taken as the measure of the influence of their leading +tenet. There are not a few honest Christians who are convinced that +communications do sometimes take place between the dead and the living; +there are a great multitude who are disposed, in a vague way, to think +there must be something in it. But there are few even of the earnest +devotees of the spiritualist cult who will deny that the whole business +is infested with fraud, whether of dishonest mediums or of lying +spirits. Of late years the general public has come into possession of +material for independent judgment on this point. An earnest +spiritualist, a man of wealth, named Seybert, dying, left to the +University of Pennsylvania a legacy of sixty thousand dollars, on +condition that the university should appoint a commission to investigate +the claims of spiritualism. A commission was appointed which left +nothing to be desired in point of ability, integrity, and impartiality. +Under the presidency of the renowned Professor Joseph Leidy, and with +the aid and advice of leading believers in spiritualism, they made a +long, patient, faithful investigation, the processes and results of +which are published in a most amusing little volume.[338:1] The gist of +their report may be briefly summed up. Every case of alleged +communication from the world of departed spirits that was investigated +by the commission (and they were guided in their selection of cases by +the advice of eminent and respectable believers in spiritualism) was +discovered and demonstrated to be a case of gross, willful attempted +fraud. The evidence is strong that the organized system of spiritualism +in America, with its associations and lyceums and annual camp-meetings, +and its itinerancy of mediums and trance speakers, is a system of mere +imposture. In the honest simplicity of many of its followers, and in the +wicked mendacity of its leaders, it seems to be on a par with the other +American contribution to the religions of the world, Mormonism. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[316:1] For condensed statistics of American immigration, see +"Encyclopædia Britannica," 9th ed., s. vv. "Emigration" and "United +States." For the facts concerning the Roman Empire one naturally has +recourse to Gibbon. From the indications there given we do not get the +impression that in the three centuries of the struggle of the empire +against the barbarians there was ever such a thirty years' flood of +invasion as the immigration into the United States from 1840 to 1869. +The entrance into the Roman Empire was indeed largely in the form of +armed invasion; but the most destructive influence of the barbarians was +when they were admitted as friends and naturalized as citizens. See +"Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xx., pp. 779, 780. + +[318:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 446. + +[321:1] Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholics," p. 375. The atrocity of +such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at once with the +Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. Brownlee's +Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and dispassionate +pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived from original +sources of information. If anything could have justified the animosity +of the "native Americans" (who, by the way, were widely suspected to be, +in large proportion, native Ulstermen) it would have been the finding of +evidence of such facts as this which Bishop O'Gorman has disclosed. + +[321:2] The subject is reviewed in detail, from opposite points of view, +by Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 489-500, and by Dr. Daniel Dorchester, +"Christianity in the United States," pp. 618-621. One of the most recent +estimates is that presented to the Catholic Congress at Chicago, in +1893, in a remarkable speech by Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans. +Speaking of "the losses sustained by the church in this country, placed +by a conservative estimate at twenty millions of people, he laid the +responsibility for this upon neglect of immigration and colonization, +i.e., neglect of the rural population. From this results a long train of +losses." He added: "When I see how largely Catholicity is represented +among our hoodlum element, I feel in no spread-eagle mood. When I note +how few Catholics are engaged in honestly tilling the honest soil, and +how many Catholics are engaged in the liquor traffic, I cannot talk +buncombe to anybody. When I reflect that out of the 70,000,000 of this +nation we number only 9,000,000, and that out of that 9,000,000 so large +a proportion is made up of poor factory hands, poor mill and shop and +mine and railroad employees, poor government clerks, I still fail to +find material for buncombe or spread-eagle or taffy-giving. And who can +look at our past history and feel proud of our present status?" He +advocated as a remedy for this present state of things a movement toward +colonization, with especial attention to extension of educational +advantages for rural Catholics, and instruction of urban Catholics in +the advantages of rural life. "For so long as the rural South, the +pastoral West, the agricultural East, the farming Middle States, remain +solidly Protestant, as they now are, so long will this nation, this +government, this whole people, remain solidly Protestant" ("The World's +Parliament of Religions," pp. 1414, 1415). + +It is a fact not easy to be accounted for that the statistics of no +Christian communion in America are so defective, uncertain, and +generally unsatisfactory as those of the most solidly organized and +completely systematized of them all, the Roman Catholic Church. + +[325:1] "Parliament of Religions," p. 1417. An obvious verbal misprint +is corrected in the quotation. + +[327:1] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 439, 440. James Parton, in the "Atlantic +Monthly," April and May, 1868. So lately as the year 1869 a long list of +volumes of this scandalous rubbish continued to be offered to the +public, under the indorsement of eminent names, by the "American and +Foreign Christian Union," until the society was driven by public +exposure into withdrawing them from sale. See "The Literature of the +Coming Controversy," in "Putnam's Magazine" for January, 1869. + +[331:1] Speech of Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans, in the Catholic +Congress at Chicago, 1893, quoted above, p. 322, _note_. + +[333:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 459. + +[335:1] Carroll, "Religious Forces of the United States," pp. 165-174; +Bishop Tuttle, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," pp. 1575-1581; Professor +John Fraser, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xvi., pp. 825-828; +Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," pp. 538-646. + +[338:1] "Report of the Seybert Commission," Philadelphia, Lippincott. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +THE CIVIL WAR--ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES. + + +It has been observed that for nearly half a generation after the +reaction began from the fervid excitement of the Millerite agitation no +season of general revival was known in the American church. + +These were years of immense material prosperity, "the golden age of our +history."[340:1] The wealth of the nation in that time far more than +doubled; its railroad mileage more than threefolded; population moved +westward with rapidity and volume beyond precedent. Between 1845 and +1860 there were admitted seven new States and four organized +Territories. + +Withal it was a time of continually deepening intensity of political +agitation. The patchwork of compromises and settlements contrived by +make-shift politicians like Clay and Douglas would not hold; they tore +out, and the rent was made worse. Part of the Compromise of 1850, which +was to be something altogether sempiternal, was a Fugitive Slave Law so +studiously base and wicked in its provisions as to stir the indignation +of just and generous men whenever it was enforced, and to instruct and +strengthen and consolidate an intelligent and conscientious opposition +to slavery as not a century of antislavery lecturing and pamphleteering +could have done. Four years later the sagacious Stephen Douglas +introduced into Congress his ingenious permanent pacification scheme for +taking the slavery question "out of politics" by perfidiously repealing +the act under which the western Territories had for the third part of a +century been pledged to freedom, and leaving the question of freedom or +slavery to be decided by the first settlers upon the soil. It was +understood on both sides that the effect of this measure would be to +turn over the soil of Kansas to slavery; and for a moment there was a +calm that did almost seem like peace. But the providential man for the +emergency, Eli Thayer, boldly accepted the challenge under all the +disadvantageous conditions, and appealed to the friends of freedom and +righteousness to stand by him in "the Kansas Crusade." The appeal was to +the same Christian sentiment which had just uttered its vain protest, +through the almost unanimous voice of the ministers of the gospel, +against the opening of the Territories to the possibility of slavery. It +was taken up in the solemn spirit of religious duty. None who were +present are likely to forget the scene when the emigrants from New Haven +assembled in the North Church to be sped on their way with prayer and +benediction; how the vast multitude were thrilled by the noble eloquence +of Beecher, and how money came out of pocket when it was proposed to +equip the colonists with arms for self-defense against the ferocity of +"border ruffians." There were scenes like this in many a church and +country prayer-meeting, where Christian hearts did not forget to pray +"for them in bonds, as bound with them." There took place such a +religious emigration as America had not known since the days of the +first colonists. They went forth singing the words of Whittier: + + We cross the prairies as of old + Our fathers crossed the sea, + To make the West, as they the East, + The empire of the free. + +Those were choice companies; it was said that in some of their +settlements every third man was a college graduate. Thus it was that, +not all at once, but after desperate tribulations, Kansas was saved for +freedom. It was the turning-point in the "irrepressible conflict." The +beam of the scales, which politicians had for forty years been trying to +hold level, dipped in favor of liberty and justice, and it was hopeless +thenceforth to restore the balance.[342:1] + +Neither of the two characteristics of this time, the abounding material +prosperity or the turbid political agitation, was favorable to that +fixed attention to spiritual themes which promotes the revival of +religion. But the conditions were about to be suddenly changed. + +Suddenly, in the fall of 1857, came a business revulsion. Hard times +followed. Men had leisure for thought and prayer, and anxieties that +they were fain to cast upon God, seeking help and direction. The happy +thought occurred to a good man, Jeremiah Lanphier, in the employ of the +old North Dutch Church in New York, to open a room in the "consistory +building" in Fulton Street as an oratory for the common prayer of so +many business men as might be disposed to gather there in the hour from +twelve to one o'clock, "with one accord to make their common +supplications." The invitation was responded to at first by hardly more +than "two or three." The number grew. The room overflowed. A second room +was opened, and then a third, in the same building, till all its walls +resounded with prayer and song. The example was followed until at one +time, in the spring of 1858, no fewer than twenty "daily union +prayer-meetings" were sustained in different parts of the city. Besides +these, there was preaching at unwonted times and places. Burton's +Theater, on Chambers Street, in the thick of the business houses, was +thronged with eager listeners to the rudimental truths of personal +religion, expounded and applied by great preachers. Everywhere the +cardinal topics of practical religious duty, repentance and Christian +faith, were themes of social conversation. All churches and ministers +were full of activity and hope. "They that feared the Lord spake often +one with another." + +What was true of New York was true, in its measure, of every city, +village, and hamlet in the land. It was the Lord's doing, marvelous in +men's eyes. There was no human leadership or concert of action in +bringing it about. It came. Not only were there no notable evangelists +traveling the country; even the pastors of churches did little more than +enter zealously into their happy duty in things made ready to their +hand. Elsewhere, as at New York, the work began with the spontaneous +gathering of private Christians, stirred by an unseen influence. Two +circumstances tended to promote the diffusion of the revival. The Young +Men's Christian Association, then a recent but rapidly spreading +institution, furnished a natural center in each considerable town for +mutual consultation and mutual incitement among young men of various +sects. For this was another trait of the revival, that it went forward +as a tide movement of the whole church, in disregard of the +dividing-lines of sect. I know not what Christian communion, if any, was +unaffected by it. The other favorable circumstance was the business +interest taken in the revival by the secular press. Up to this time the +church had been little accustomed to look for coöperation to the +newspaper, unless it was the religious weekly. But at this time that was +fulfilled which was spoken of the prophet, that "holiness to the Lord" +should be written upon the trains of commerce and upon all secular +things. The sensation head-lines in enterprising journals proclaimed +"Revival News," and smart reporters were detailed to the prayer-meeting +or the sermon, as having greater popular interest, for the time, than +the criminal trial or the political debate. Such papers as the "Tribune" +and the "Herald," laying on men's breakfast-tables and counting-room +desks the latest pungent word from the noon prayer-meeting or the +evening sermon, did the work of many tract societies. + +As the immediate result of the revival of 1857-58 it has been estimated +that one million of members were added to the fellowship of the +churches. But the ulterior result was greater. This revival was the +introduction to a new era of the nation's spiritual life. It was the +training-school for a force of lay evangelists for future work, eminent +among whom is the name of Dwight Moody. And, like the Great Awakening of +1740, it was the providential preparation of the American church for an +immediately impending peril the gravity of which there were none at the +time far-sighted enough to predict. Looking backward, it is instructive +for us to raise the question how the church would have passed through +the decade of the sixties without the spiritual reinforcement that came +to it amid the pentecostal scenes of 1857 and 1858. + +And yet there were those among the old men who were ready to weep as +they compared the building of the Lord's house with what they had known +in their younger days: no sustained enforcement on the mind and +conscience of alarming and heart-searching doctrines; no "protracted +meetings" in which from day to day the warnings and invitations of the +gospel were set forth before the hesitating mind; in the converts no +severe and thorough "law-work," from the agonizing throes of which the +soul was with no brief travail born to newness of life; but the free +invitation, the ready and glad acceptance, the prompt enrollment on the +Lord's side. Did not these things betoken a superficial piety, springing +up like seed in the thin soil of rocky places? It was a question for +later years to answer, and perhaps we have not the whole of the answer +yet. Certainly the work was not as in the days of Edwards and Brainerd, +nor as in the days of Nettleton and Finney; was it not, perhaps, more +like the work in the days of Barnabas and Paul and Peter? + + * * * * * + +It does not appear that the spiritual quickening of 1857 had any effect +in allaying the sharp controversy between northern and southern +Christians on the subject of slavery. Perhaps it may have deepened and +intensified it. The "southern apostasy," from principles universally +accepted in 1818, had become complete and (so far as any utterance was +permitted to reach the public) unanimous. The southern Methodists and +the southern Baptists had, a dozen years before, relieved themselves +from liability to rebuke, whether express or implied, from their +northern brethren for complicity with the crimes involved in slavery, by +seceding from fellowship. Into the councils of the Episcopalians and the +Catholics this great question of public morality was never allowed to +enter. The Presbyterians were divided into two bodies, each having its +northern and its southern presbyteries; and the course of events in +these two bodies may be taken as an indication of the drift of opinion +and feeling. The Old-School body, having a strong southern element, +remained silent, notwithstanding the open nullification of its +declaration of 1818 by the presbytery of Harmony, S. C., resolving that +"the existence of slavery is not opposed to the will of God," and the +synod of Virginia declaring that "the General Assembly had no right to +declare that relation sinful which Christ and his apostles teach to be +consistent with the most unquestionable piety." The New-School body, +patient and considerate toward its southern presbyteries, did not fail, +nevertheless, to reassert the principles of righteousness, and in 1850 +it declared slave-holding to be _prima facie_ a subject of the +discipline of the church. In 1853 it called upon its southern +presbyteries to report what had been done in the case. One of them +replied defiantly that its ministers and church-members were +slave-holders by choice and on principle. When the General Assembly +condemned this utterance, the entire southern part of the church seceded +and set up a separate jurisdiction.[346:1] + +There seems no reason to doubt the entire sincerity with which the +southern church, in all its sects, had consecrated itself with religious +devotion to the maintenance of that horrible and inhuman form of slavery +which had drawn upon itself the condemnation of the civilized world. The +earnest antislavery convictions which had characterized it only +twenty-five years before, violently suppressed from utterance, seem to +have perished by suffocation. The common sentiment of southern +Christianity was expressed in that serious declaration of the Southern +Presbyterian Church, during the war, of its "deep conviction of the +divine appointment of domestic servitude," and of the "peculiar mission +of the southern church to conserve the institution of slavery."[346:2] + +At the North, on the other hand, with larger liberty, there was wider +diversity of opinion. In general, the effect of continued discussion, of +larger knowledge of facts, and of the enforcement on the common +conscience, by the course of public events, of a sense of responsibility +and duty in the matter, had been to make more intelligent, sober, and +discriminating, and therefore more strong and steadfast, the resolution +to keep clear of all complicity with slavery. There were few to assume +the defense of that odious system, though there were some. There were +many to object to scores of objectionable things in the conduct of +abolitionists. And there were a very great number of honest, +conscientious men who were appalled as they looked forward to the boldly +threatened consequences of even the mildest action in opposition to +slavery--the rending of the church, the ruin of the country, the horrors +of civil war, and its uncertain event, issuing perhaps in the wider +extension and firmer establishment of slavery itself. It was an immense +power that the bold, resolute, rule-or-ruin supporters of the divine +right of slavery held over the Christian public of the whole country, so +long as they could keep these threats suspended in the air. It seemed to +hold in the balance against a simple demand to execute righteousness +toward a poor, oppressed, and helpless race, immense interests of +patriotism, of humanity, of the kingdom of God itself. Presently the +time came when these threats could no longer be kept aloft. The +compliance demanded was clearly, decisively refused. The threats must +either be executed or must fall to the ground amid general derision. But +the moment that the threat was put in execution its power as a threat +had ceased. With the first stroke against the life of the nation all +great and noble motives, instead of being balanced against each other, +were drawing together in the same direction. It ought not to have been +a surprise to the religious leaders of disunion, ecclesiastical and +political, to find that those who had most anxiously deprecated the +attack upon the government should be among the most earnest and resolute +to repel the attack when made. + +No man can read the history of the American church in the Civil War +intelligently who does not apprehend, however great the effort, that the +Christian people of the South did really and sincerely believe +themselves to be commissioned by the providence of God to "conserve the +institution of slavery" as an institution of "divine appointment." +Strange as the conviction seems, it is sure that the conviction of +conscience in the southern army that it was right in waging war against +the government of the country was as clear as the conviction, on the +other side, of the duty of defending the government. The southern +regiments, like the northern, were sent forth with prayer and +benediction, and their camps, as well as those of their adversaries, +were often the seats of earnest religious life.[348:1] + +At the South the entire able-bodied population was soon called into +military service, so that almost the whole church was in the army. At +the North the churches at home hardly seemed diminished by the myriads +sent to the field. It was amazing to see the charities and missions of +the churches sustained with almost undiminished supplies, while the +great enterprises of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions were set on +foot and magnificently carried forward, for the physical, social, and +spiritual good of the soldiers. Never was the gift of giving so +abundantly bestowed on the church as in these stormy times. There was a +feverish eagerness of life in all ways; if there was a too eager haste +to make money among those that could be spared for business, there was a +generous readiness in bestowing it. The little faith that expected to +cancel and retrench, especially in foreign missions, in which it took +sometimes three dollars in the collection to put one dollar into the +work, was rebuked by the rising of the church to the height of the +exigency. + +One religious lesson that was learned as never before, on both sides of +the conflict, was the lesson of Christian fellowship as against the +prevailing folly of sectarian divisions, emulations, and jealousies. +There were great drawings in this direction in the early days of the +war, when men of the most unlike antecedents and associations gathered +on the same platform, intent on the same work, and mutual aversions and +partisan antagonisms melted away in the fervent heat of a common +religious patriotism. But the lesson which was commended at home was +enforced in the camp and the regiment by constraint of circumstances. +The army chaplain, however one-sided he might have been in his parish, +had to be on all sides with his kindly sympathy as soon as he joined his +regiment. He learned in a right apostolic sense to become all things to +all men, and, returning home, he did not forget the lesson. The delight +of a fellowship truly catholic in the one work of Christ, once tasted, +was not easily foregone. Already the current, perplexed with eddies, had +begun to set in the direction of Christian unity. How much the common +labors of Christian men and women and Christian ministers of every +different name, through the five years of bloody strife, contributed to +swell and speed the current, no one can measure. + +According to a well-known law of the kingdom of heaven, the intense +experiences of the war, both in the army and out of it, left no man just +as he was before. To "them that were exercised thereby" they brought +great promotion in the service of the King. The cases are not few nor +inconspicuous of men coming forth from the temptations and the +discipline of the military service every way stronger and better +Christians than they entered it. The whole church gained higher +conceptions of the joy and glory of self-sacrifice, and deeper and more +vivid insight into the significance of vicarious suffering and death. +The war was a rude school of theology, but it taught some things well. +The church had need of all that it could learn, in preparation for the +tasks and trials that were before it. + +There were those, on the other hand, who emerged from the military +service depraved and brutalized; and those who, in the rush of business +incidental to the war, were not trained to self-sacrifice and duty, but +habituated to the seeking of selfish interests in the midst of the +public peril and affliction. We delight in the evidences that these +cases were a small proportion of the whole. But even a small percentage +of so many hundreds of thousands mounts up to a formidable total. The +early years of the peace were so marked by crimes of violence that a +frequent heading in the daily newspapers was "The Carnival of Crime." +Prosperity, or the semblance of it, came in like a sudden flood. +Immigration of an improved character poured into the country in greater +volume than ever. Multitudes made haste to be rich, and fell into +temptations and snares. The perilous era of enormous fortunes began. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[340:1] E. B. Andrews, "History of the United States," vol. ii., p. 66. + +[342:1] Read "The Kansas Crusade," by Eli Thayer, Harpers, New York, +1889. It is lively reading, and indispensable to a full understanding of +this part of the national history. + +[346:1] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 135. + +[346:2] "Narrative of the State of Religion" of the Southern General +Assembly of 1864. + +[348:1] For interesting illustrations of this, see Alexander, "The +Methodists, South," pp. 71-75. The history of the religious life of the +northern army is superabundant and everywhere accessible. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +AFTER THE WAR. + + +When the five years of rending and tearing had passed, in which slavery +was dispossessed of its hold upon the nation, there was much to be done +in reconstructing and readjusting the religious institutions of the +country. + +Throughout the seceding States buildings and endowments for religious +uses had suffered in the general waste and destruction of property. +Colleges and seminaries, in many instances, had seen their entire +resources swept away through investment in the hopeless promises of the +defeated government. Churches, boards, and like associations were widely +disorganized through the vicissitudes of military occupation and the +protracted absence or the death of men of experience and capacity. + +The effect of the war upon denominational organizations had been +various. There was no sect of all the church the members and ministers +of which had not felt the sweep of the currents of popular opinion all +about them. But the course of events in each denomination was in some +measure illustrative of the character of its polity. + +In the Roman Catholic Church the antagonisms of the conflict were as +keenly felt as anywhere. Archbishop Hughes of New York, who, with Henry +Ward Beecher and Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio, accepted a political mission +from President Lincoln, was not more distinctly a Union man than Bishop +Lynch of Charleston was a secessionist. But the firm texture of the +hierarchical organization, held steadily in place by a central authority +outside of the national boundaries, prevented any organic rupture. The +Catholic Church in America was eminently fortunate at one point: the +famous bull _Quanta Cura_, with its appended "Syllabus" of damnable +errors, in which almost all the essential characteristics of the +institutions of the American Republic are anathematized, was fulminated +in 1864, when people in the United States had little time to think of +ecclesiastical events taking place at such a distance. If this +extraordinary document had been first published in a time of peace, and +freely discussed in the newspapers of the time, it could hardly have +failed to inflict the most serious embarrassment on the interests of +Catholicism in America. Even now it keeps the Catholic clergy in a +constantly explanatory attitude to show that the Syllabus does not +really mean what to the ordinary reader it unmistakably seems to mean; +and the work of explanation is made the more necessary and the more +difficult by the decree of papal infallibility, which followed the +Syllabus after a few years. + +Simply on the ground of a _de facto_ political independence, the +southern dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church, following the +principles and precedents of 1789, organized themselves into a "Church +in the Confederate States." One of the southern bishops, Polk, of +Louisiana, accepted a commission of major-general in the Confederate +army, and relieved his brethren of any disciplinary questions that might +have arisen in consequence by dying on the field from a cannon-shot. +With admirable tact and good temper, the "Church in the United States" +managed to ignore the existence of any secession; and when the alleged +_de facto_ independence ceased, the seceding bishops and their dioceses +dropped quietly back into place without leaving a trace of the secession +upon the record. + +The southern organizations of the Methodists and Baptists were of twenty +years' standing at the close of the war in 1865. The war had abolished +the original cause of these divisions, but it had substituted others +quite as serious. The exasperations of the war, and the still more +acrimonious exasperations of the period of the political reconstruction +and of the organization of northern missions at the South, gendered +strifes that still delay the reintegration which is so visibly future of +both of these divided denominations. + +At the beginning of the war one of the most important of the +denominations that still retained large northern and southern +memberships in the same fellowship was the Old-School Presbyterian +Church; and no national sect had made larger concessions to avert a +breach of unity. When the General Assembly met at Philadelphia in May, +1861, amid the intense excitements of the opening war, it was still the +hope of the habitual leaders and managers of the Assembly to avert a +division by holding back that body from any expression of sentiment on +the question on which the minds of Christians were stirred at that time +with a profound and most religious fervor. But the Assembly took the +matter out of the hands of its leaders, and by a great majority, in the +words of a solemn and temperate resolution drawn by the venerable and +conservative Dr. Gardiner Spring, declared its loyalty to the government +and constitution of the country. With expressions of horror at the +sacrilege of taking the church into the domain of politics, southern +presbyteries one after another renounced the jurisdiction of the General +Assembly that could be guilty of so shocking a profanation, and, uniting +in a General Assembly of their own, proceeded with great promptitude to +make equally emphatic deliverances on the opposite side of the same +political question.[354:1] But nice logical consistency and accurate +working within the lines of a church theory were more than could +reasonably be expected of a people in so pitiable a plight. The +difference on the subject of the right function of the church continued +to be held as the ground for continuing the separation from the General +Assembly after the alleged ground in political geography had ceased to +be valid; the working motive for it was more obvious in the unfraternal +and almost wantonly exasperating course of the national General Assembly +during the war; but the best justification for it is to be found in the +effective and useful working of the Southern Presbyterian Church. +Considering the impoverishment and desolation of the southern country, +the record of useful and self-denying work accomplished by this body, +not only at home, but in foreign fields, is, from its beginning, an +immensely honorable one. + +Another occasion of reconstruction was the strong disposition of the +liberated negroes to withdraw themselves from the tutelage of the +churches in which they had been held, in the days of slavery, in a +lower-caste relation. The eager entrance of the northern churches upon +mission work among the blacks, to which access had long been barred by +atrocious laws and by the savage fury of mobs, tended to promote this +change. The multiplication and growth of organized negro denominations +is a characteristic of the period after the war. There is reason to hope +that the change may by and by, with the advance of education and moral +training among this people, inure to their spiritual advantage. There is +equal reason to fear that at present, in many cases, it works to their +serious detriment. + +The effect of the war was not exclusively divisive. In two instances, +at least, it had the effect of healing old schisms. The southern +secession from the New-School Presbyterian Church, which had come away +in 1858 on the slavery issue, found itself in 1861 side by side with the +southern secession from the Old School, and in full agreement with it in +morals and politics. The two bodies were not long in finding that the +doctrinal differences which a quarter-century before had seemed so +insuperable were, after all, no serious hindrance to their coming +together. + +Even after the war was over, its healing power was felt, this time at +the North. There was a honeycomb for Samson in the carcass of the +monster. The two great Presbyterian sects at the North had found a +common comfort in their relief from the perpetual festering irritation +of the slavery question; they had softened toward each other in the glow +of a religious patriotism; they had forgotten old antagonisms in common +labors; and new issues had obscured the tenuous doctrinal disputes that +had agitated the continent in 1837. Both parties grew tired and ashamed +of the long and sometimes ill-natured quarrel. With such a disposition +on both sides, terms of agreement could not fail in time to be found. +For substance, the basis of reunion was this: that the New-School church +should yield the point of organization, and the Old-School church should +yield the point of doctrine; the New-School men should sustain the +Old-School boards, and the Old-School men should tolerate the New-School +heresies. The consolidation of the two sects into one powerful +organization was consummated at Pittsburg, November 12, 1869, with every +demonstration of joy and devout thanksgiving. + +One important denomination, the Congregationalists, had had the +distinguished advantage, through all these turbulent years, of having no +southern membership. Out of all proportion to its numerical strength was +the part which it took in those missions to the neglected populations +of the southern country into which the various denominations, both of +the South and of the North, entered with generous emulation while yet +the war was still waging. Always leaders in advanced education, they not +only, acting through the American Missionary Association, provided for +primary and secondary schools for the negroes, but promoted the +foundation of institutions of higher, and even of the highest, grade at +Hampton, at Atlanta, at Tuskegee, at New Orleans, at Nashville, and at +Washington. Many noble lives have been consecrated to this most +Christlike work of lifting up the depressed. None will grudge a word of +exceptional eulogy to the memory of that splendid character, General +Samuel C. Armstrong, son of one of the early missionaries to the +Sandwich Islands, who poured his inspiring soul into the building up of +the "Normal Institute" at Hampton, Va., thus not only rearing a visible +monument of his labor in the enduring buildings of that great and useful +institution, but also establishing his memory, for as long as human +gratitude can endure, in the hearts of hundreds of young men and young +women, negro and Indian, whose lives are the better and nobler for their +having known him as their teacher. + +It cannot be justly claimed for the Congregationalists of the present +day that they have lost nothing of that corporate unselfishness, seeking +no sectarian aggrandizement, but only God's reign and righteousness, +which had been the glory of their fathers. The studious efforts that +have been made to cultivate among them a sectarian spirit, as if this +were one of the Christian virtues, have not been fruitless. Nevertheless +it may be seen that their work of education at the South has been +conducted in no narrow spirit. The extending of their sect over new +territory has been a most trivial and unimportant result of their +widespread and efficient work. A far greater result has been the +promotion among the colored people of a better education, a higher +standard of morality, and an enlightened piety, through the influence of +the graduates of these institutions, not only as pastors and as +teachers, but in all sorts of trades and professions and as mothers of +families. + +This work of the Congregationalists is entitled to mention, not as +exceptional, but only as eminent among like enterprises, in which few of +the leading sects have failed to be represented. Extravagant +expectations were at first entertained of immediate results in bringing +the long-depressed race up to the common plane of civilization. But it +cannot be said that reasonable and intelligent expectations have been +disappointed. Experience has taught much as to the best conduct of such +missions. The gift of a fund of a million dollars by the late John F. +Slater, of Norwich, has through wise management conduced to this end. It +has encouraged in the foremost institutions the combination of training +to skilled productive labor with education in literature and science. + +The inauguration of these systems of religious education at the South +was the most conspicuously important of the immediate sequels of the +Civil War. But this time was a time of great expansion of the activities +of the church in all directions. The influx of immigration, temporarily +checked by the hard times of 1857 and by the five years of war, came in +again in such floods as never before.[357:1] The foreign immigration is +always attended by a westward movement of the already settled +population. The field of home missions became greater and more exacting +than ever. The zeal of the church, educated during the war to higher +ideas of self-sacrifice, rose to the occasion. The average yearly +receipts of the various Protestant home missionary societies, which in +the decade 1850-59 had been $808,000, rose in the next decade to more +than $2,000,000, in the next to nearly $3,000,000, and for the seven +years 1881-87 to $4,000,000.[358:1] + +In the perils of abounding wealth by which the church after the war was +beset, it was divine fatherly kindness that opened before it new and +enlarged facilities of service to the kingdom of heaven among foreign +nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from +America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by +the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, +with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public +obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its +"bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially +when the dollar in a man's pocket shrank to a half or a third of its +value in the world's currency, it seemed as if the work of foreign +missions would have to be turned over to Christians in lands less +burdened with accumulated disadvantages. But here again the grandeur of +the burden gave an inspiration of strength to the burden-bearer. From +1840 to 1849 the average yearly receipts of the various foreign +missionary societies of the Protestant churches of the country had been +a little more than a half-million. In the decade 1850-59 they had risen +to $850,000; for the years of distress, 1860-69, they exceeded +$1,300,000; for the eleven years 1870-80 the annual receipts in this +behalf were $2,200,000; and in the seven years 1881-87 they were +$3,000,000.[359:1] + +We have seen how, only forty years before the return of peace, in the +days of a humble equality in moderate estates, ardent souls exulted +together in the inauguration of the era of democracy in beneficence, +when every humblest giver might, through association and organization, +have part in magnificent enterprises of Christian charity such as had +theretofore been possible "only to princes or to men of princely +possessions."[359:2] But with the return of civil peace we began to +recognize that among ourselves was growing up a class of "men of +princely possessions"--a class such as the American Republic never +before had known.[359:3] Among those whose fortunes were reckoned by +many millions or many tens of millions were men of sordid nature, whose +wealth, ignobly won, was selfishly hoarded, and to whose names, as to +that of the late Jay Gould, there is attached in the mind of the people +a distinct note of infamy. But this was not in general the character of +the American millionaire. There were those of nobler strain who felt a +responsibility commensurate with the great power conferred by great +riches, and held their wealth as in trust for mankind. Through the +fidelity of men of this sort it has come to pass that the era of great +fortunes in America has become conspicuous in the history of the whole +world as the era of magnificent donations to benevolent ends. Within a +few months of each other, from the little State of Connecticut, came the +fund of a million given by John F. Slater in his lifetime for the +benefit of the freedmen, the gift of a like sum for the like purpose +from Daniel Hand, and the legacy of a million and a half for foreign +missions from Deacon Otis of New London. Great gifts like these were +frequently directed to objects which could not easily have been attained +by the painful process of accumulating small donations. It was a period +not only of splendid gifts to existing institutions, but of foundations +for new universities, libraries, hospitals, and other institutions of +the highest public service, foundations without parallel in human +history for large munificence. To this period belong the beginnings of +the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital at Baltimore, the University +of Chicago, the Clarke University at Worcester, the Vanderbilt +University at Nashville, the Leland Stanford, Jr., University of +California, the Peabody and Enoch Pratt Libraries at Baltimore, the +Lenox Library at New York, the great endowed libraries of Chicago, the +Drexel Institute at Philadelphia, and the Armour Institute at Chicago. +These are some of the names that most readily occur of foundations due +mainly to individual liberality, set down at the risk of omitting others +with equal claim for mention. Not all of these are to be referred to a +religious spirit in the founders, but none of them can fail of a +Christian influence and result. They prepare a foothold for such a +forward stride of Christian civilization as our continent has never +before known. + +The sum of these gifts of millions, added to the great aggregates of +contribution to the national missionary boards and societies, falls far +short of the total contributions expended in cities, towns, and villages +for the building of churches and the maintenance of the countless +charities that cluster around them. The era following the war was +preëminently a "building era." Every one knows that religious devotion +is only one of the mingled motives that work together in such an +enterprise as the building of a church; but, after all deductions, the +voluntary gifts of Christian people for Christ's sake in the promotion +of such works, when added to the grand totals already referred to, would +make an amount that would overtax the ordinary imagination to conceive. + +And yet it is not certain that this period of immense gifts of money is +really a period of increased liberality in the church from the time, +thirty or forty years before, when a millionaire was a rarity to be +pointed out on the streets, and the possession of a hundred thousand +dollars gave one a place among "The Rich Men of New York." In 1850 the +total wealth of the United States was reported in the census as seven +billions of dollars. In 1870, after twenty years, it had more than +fourfolded, rising to thirty billions. Ten years later, according to the +census, it had sixfolded, rising to forty-three billions.[361:1] From +the point of view of One "sitting over against the treasury" it is not +likely that any subsequent period has equaled in its gifts that early +day when in New England the people "were wont to build a fine church as +soon as they had houses for themselves,"[361:2] and when the messengers +went from cabin to cabin to gather the gifts of "the college corn." + + * * * * * + +The greatest addition to the forces of the church in the period since +the war has come from deploying into the field hitherto unused +resources of personal service. The methods under which the personal +activity of private Christians has formerly been organized for service +have increased and multiplied, and old agencies have taken on new forms. + +The earliest and to this day the most extensive of the organizations for +utilizing the non-professional ministry in systematic religious labors +is the Sunday-school. The considerable development of this +instrumentality begins to be recognized after the Second Awakening in +the early years of the present century. The prevailing characteristic of +the American Sunday-school as distinguished from its British congener is +that it is commonly a part of the equipment of the local church for the +instruction of its own children, and incidentally one of the most +important resources for its attractive work toward those that are +without. But it is also recognized as one of the most flexible and +adaptable "arms of the service" for aggressive work, whether in great +cities or on the frontier. It was about the year 1825 that this work +began to be organized on a national scale. But it is since the war that +it has sprung into vastly greater efficiency. The agreement upon uniform +courses of biblical study, to be followed simultaneously by many +millions of pupils over the entire continent, has given a unity and +coherence before unknown to the Sunday-school system; and it has +resulted in extraordinary enterprise and activity on the part of +competent editors and publishers to provide apparatus for the thorough +study of the text, which bids fair in time to take away the reproach of +the term "Sunday-schoolish" as applied to superficial, ignorant, or +merely sentimental expositions of the Scriptures. The work of the +"Sunday-school Times," in bringing within the reach of teachers all over +the land the fruits of the world's best scholarship, is a signal fact +in history--the most conspicuous of a series of like facts. The +tendency, slow, of course, and partial, but powerful, is toward serious, +faithful study and teaching, in which "the mind of the Spirit" is sought +in the sacred text, with strenuous efforts of the teachable mind, with +all the aids that can be brought from whatever quarter. The +Sunday-school system, coextensive with Protestant Christianity in +America, and often the forerunner of church and ministry, and, to a less +extent and under more scrupulous control of clergy, adopted into the +Catholic Church, has become one of the distinctive features of American +Christianity. + +An outgrowth of the Sunday-school system, which, under the conduct of a +man of genius for organization, Dr. John H. Vincent, now a bishop of the +Methodist Church, has expanded to magnificent dimensions, is that which +is suggested by the name "Chautauqua." Beginning in the summer of 1874 +with a fortnight's meeting in a grove beside Chautauqua Lake for the +study of the methods of Sunday-school teaching, it led to the questions, +how to connect the Sunday-school more intimately with other departments +of the church and with other agencies in society; how to control in the +interest of religious culture the forces, social, commercial, +industrial, and educational, which, for good or evil, are affecting the +Sunday-school pupils every day of the week. Striking root at other +centers of assembly, east, west, and south, and combining its summer +lectures with an organized system of home studies extending through the +year, subject to written examinations, "Chautauqua," by the +comprehensive scope of its studies and by the great multitude of its +students, is entitled to be called, in no ignoble sense of the word, a +university.[363:1] A weighty and unimpeachable testimony to the power +and influence of the institution has been the recent organization of a +Catholic Chautauqua, under the conduct of leading scholars and +ecclesiastics of the Roman Church. + + * * * * * + +Another organization of the unpaid service of private Christians is the +Young Men's Christian Association. Beginning in London in 1844, it had +so far demonstrated its usefulness in 1851 as to attract favorable +attention from visitors to the first of the World's Fairs. In the end of +that year the Association in Boston was formed, and this was rapidly +followed by others in the principal cities. It met a growing exigency in +American society. In the organization of commerce and manufacture in +larger establishments than formerly, the apprenticeship system had +necessarily lapsed, and nothing had taken its place. Of old, young men +put to the learning of any business were "articled" or "indentured" as +apprentices to the head of the concern, who was placed _in loco +parentis_, being invested both with the authority and with the +responsibility of a father. Often the apprentices were received into the +house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance +it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the +old man's daughter and succeed to the business. After the employees of a +store came to be numbered by scores and the employees of a factory by +hundreds, the word "apprentice" became obsolete in the American +language. The employee was only a "hand," and there was danger that +employers would forget that he was also a heart and a soul. This was the +exigency that the Young Men's Christian Association came to supply. Men +of conscience among employers and corporations recognized their +opportunity and their duty. The new societies did not lack encouragement +and financial aid from those to whom the character of the young men was +not only a matter of Christian concern, but also a matter of business +interest. In every considerable town the Association organized itself, +and the work of equipment, and soon of building, went on apace. In 1887 +the Association buildings in the United States and Canada were valued at +three and a half millions. In 1896 there were in North America 1429 +Associations, with about a quarter of a million of members, employing +1251 paid officers, and holding buildings and other real estate to the +amount of nearly $20,000,000. + +The work has not been without its vicissitudes. The wonderful revival of +1857, preëminently a laymen's movement, in many instances found its +nidus in the rooms of the Associations; and their work was expanded and +invigorated as a result of the revival. In 1861 came on the war. It +broke up for the time the continental confederacy of Associations. Many +of the local Associations were dissolved by the enlistment of their +members. But out of the inspiring exigencies of the time grew up in the +heart of the Associations the organization and work of the Christian +Commission, coöperating with the Sanitary Commission for the bodily and +spiritual comfort of the armies in the field. The two organizations +expended upward of eleven millions of dollars, the free gift of the +people at home. After the war the survivors of those who had enlisted +from the Associations came back to their home duties, in most cases, +better men for all good service in consequence of their experience of +military discipline. + + * * * * * + +A natural sequel to the organization and success of the Young Men's +Christian Association is the institution of the Young Women's Christian +Association, having like objects and methods in its proper sphere. This +institution, too, owes the reason of its existence to changed social +conditions. The plausible arguments of some earnest reformers in favor +of opening careers of independent self-support to women, and the +unquestionable and pathetic instances by which these arguments are +enforced, are liable to some most serious and weighty offsets. Doubtless +many and many a case of hardship has been relieved by the general +introduction of this reform. But the result has been the gathering in +large towns of populations of unmarried, self-supporting young women, +severed from home duties and influences, and, out of business hours, +under no effective restraints of rule. There is a rush from the country +into the city of applicants for employment, and wages sink to less than +a living rate. We are confronted with an artificial and perilous +condition for the church to deal with, especially in the largest cities. +And of the various instrumentalities to this end, the Young Women's +Christian Association is one of the most effective. + + * * * * * + +The development of organized activity among women has been a conspicuous +characteristic of this period. From the beginning of our churches the +charitable sewing-circle or "Dorcas Society" has been known as a center +both of prayer and of labor. But in this period the organization of +women for charitable service has been on a continental scale. + +In 1874, in an outburst of zeal, "women's crusades" were undertaken, +especially in some western towns, in which bands of singing and praying +women went in person to tippling-houses and even worse resorts, to +assail them, visibly and audibly, with these spiritual weapons. The +crusades, so long as they were a novelty, were not without result. +Spectacular prayers, offered with one eye on the heavens and the other +eye watching the impressions made on the human auditor, are not in vain; +they have their reward. But the really important result of the +"crusades" was the organization of the "Women's Christian Temperance +Union," which has extended in all directions to the utmost bounds of the +country, and has accomplished work of undoubted value, while attempting +other work the value of which is open to debate. + +The separate organization of women for the support and management of +missions began on an extensive scale, in 1868, with the Women's Board of +Missions, instituted in alliance with the American Board of +Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregationalist churches. +The example at once commended itself to the imitation of all, so that +all the principal mission boards of the Protestant churches are in +alliance with actively working women's boards. + +The training acquired in these and other organizations by many women of +exceptional taste and talent for the conduct of large affairs has tended +still further to widen the field of their activity. The ends of the +earth, as well as the dark places nearer home, have felt the salutary +results of it.[367:1] + +In this brief and most incomplete sketch of the origin of one of the +distinguishing features of contemporary Christianity--the application of +the systematized activity of private Christians--no mention has been +made of the corps of "colporteurs," or book-peddlers, employed by +religious publication societies, nor of the vastly useful work of +laymen employed as city missionaries, nor of the houses and orders of +sisters wholly devoted to pious and charitable work. Such work, though +the ceremony of ordination may have been omitted, is rather clerical or +professional than laical. It is on this account the better suited to the +genius of the Catholic Church, whose ages of experience in the conduct +of such organizations, and whose fine examples of economy and efficiency +in the use of them, have put all American Christendom under obligation. +Among Protestant sects the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, and the +Methodists have (after the Moravians) shown themselves readiest to +profit by the example. But a far more widely beneficent service than +that of all the nursing "orders" together, both Catholic and Protestant, +and one not less Christian, while it is characteristically American in +its method, is that of the annually increasing army of faithful women +professionally educated to the work of nursing, at a hundred hospitals, +and fulfilling their vocation individually and on business principles. +The education of nurses is a sequel of the war and one of the beneficent +fruits of it. + + * * * * * + +Not the least important item in the organization of lay activity is the +marvelously rapid growth of the "Young People's Society of Christian +Endeavor." In February, 1881, a pastor in Portland, Me., the Rev. +Francis E. Clark, organized into an association within his church a +number of young people pledged to certain rules of regular attendance +and participation in the association meetings and of coöperation in +useful service. There seems to have been no particular originality in +the plan, but through some felicity in arrangement and opportuneness in +the time it caught like a forest fire, and in an amazingly short time +ran through the country and around the world. One wise precaution was +taken in the basis of the organization: it was provided that it should +not interfere with any member's fidelity to his church or his sect, but +rather promote it. Doubtless jealousy of its influence was thus in some +measure forestalled and averted. But in the rapid spread of the Society +those who were on guard for the interests of the several sects +recognized a danger in too free affiliations outside of sectarian lines, +and soon there were instituted, in like forms of rule, "Epworth Leagues" +for Methodists, "Westminster Leagues" for Presbyterians, "Luther +Leagues" for Lutherans, "St. Andrew's Brotherhoods" for Episcopalians, +"The Baptist Young People's Union," and yet others for yet other sects. +According to the latest reports, the total pledged membership of this +order of associated young disciples, in these various ramifications, is +about 4,500,000[369:1]--this in the United States alone. Of the +Christian Endeavor Societies still adhering to the old name and +constitution, there are in all the world 47,009, of which 11,119 are +"Junior Endeavor Societies." The total membership is 2,820,540.[369:2] + +Contemporary currents of theological thought, setting away from the +excessive individualism which has characterized the churches of the +Great Awakening, confirm the tendency of the Christian life toward a +vigorous and even absorbing external activity. The duty of the church to +human society is made a part of the required curriculum of study in +preparation for the ministry, in fully equipped theological seminaries. +If ever it has been a just reproach of the church that its frequenters +were so absorbed in the saving of their own souls that they forgot the +multitude about them, that reproach is fast passing away. "The +Institutional Church," as the clumsy phrase goes, cares for soul and +body, for family and municipal and national life. Its saving sacraments +are neither two nor seven, but seventy times seven. They include the +bath-tub as well as the font; the coffee-house and cook-shop as well as +the Holy Supper; the gymnasium as well as the prayer-meeting. The +"college settlement" plants colonies of the best life of the church in +regions which men of little faith are tempted to speak of as +"God-forsaken." The Salvation Army, with its noisy and eccentric ways, +and its effective discipline, and its most Christian principle of +setting every rescued man at work to aid in the rescue of others, is +welcomed by all orders of the church, and honored according to the +measure of its usefulness, and even of its faithful effort to be useful. + + * * * * * + +It is not to be supposed that this immense, unprecedented growth of +outward activity can have been gained without some corresponding loss. +The time is not long gone by, when the sustained contemplation of the +deep things of the cross, and the lofty things in the divine nature, and +the subtile and elusive facts concerning the human constitution and +character and the working of the human will, were eminently +characteristic of the religious life of the American church. In the +times when that life was stirred to its most strenuous activity, it was +marked by the vicissitude of prolonged passions of painful sensibility +at the consciousness of sin, and ecstasies of delight in the +contemplation of the infinity of God and the glory of the Saviour and +his salvation. Every one who is conversant with the religious biography +of the generations before our own, knows of the still hours and days set +apart for the severe inward scrutiny of motives and "frames" and the +grounds of one's hope. However truly the church of to-day may judge +that the piety of their fathers was disproportioned and morbidly +introspective and unduly concerned about one's own salvation, it is none +the less true that the reaction from its excesses is violent, and is +providing for itself a new reaction. "The contemplative orders," whether +among Catholics or Protestants, do not find the soil and climate of +America congenial. And yet there is a mission-field here for the mystic +and the quietist; and when the stir-about activity of our generation +suffers their calm voices to be heard, there are not a few to give ear. + + * * * * * + +An event of great historical importance, which cannot be determined to a +precise date, but which belongs more to this period than to any other, +is the loss of the Scotch and Puritan Sabbath, or, as many like to call +it, the American Sabbath. The law of the Westminster divines on this +subject, it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction from any +quarter, does not coincide in its language with the law of God as +expressed either in the Old Testament or in the New. The Westminster +rule requires, as if with a "Thus saith the Lord," that on the first day +of the week, instead of the seventh, men shall desist not only from +labor but from recreation, and "spend the whole time in the public and +private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up +in the works of necessity and mercy."[371:1] This interpretation and +expansion of the Fourth Commandment has never attained to more than a +sectarian and provincial authority; but the overmastering Puritan +influence, both of Virginia and of New England, combined with the +Scotch-Irish influence, made it for a long time dominant in America. +Even those who quite declined to admit the divine authority of the +glosses upon the commandment felt constrained to "submit to the +ordinances of man for the Lord's sake." But it was inevitable that with +the vast increase of the travel and sojourn of American Christians in +other lands of Christendom, and the multitudinous immigration into +America from other lands than Great Britain, the tradition from the +Westminster elders should come to be openly disputed within the church, +and should be disregarded even when not denied. It was not only +inevitable; it was a Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic +authority.[372:1] The five years of war, during which Christians of +various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday +laws were dumb "_inter arma_" not only in the field but among the home +churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and +to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was +inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence of +overstraining the law of God. From the Sunday of ascetic self-denial--"a +day for a man to afflict his soul"--there was a ready rush into utter +recklessness of the law and privilege of rest. In the church there was +wrought sore damage to weak consciences; men acted, not from intelligent +conviction, but from lack of conviction, and allowing themselves in +self-indulgences of the rightfulness of which they were dubious, they +"condemned themselves in that which they allowed." The consequence in +civil society was alike disastrous. Early legislation had not steered +clear of the error of attempting to enforce Sabbath-keeping as a +religious duty by civil penalties; and some relics of that mistake +remained, and still remain, on some of the statute-books. The just +protest against this wrong was, of course, undiscriminating, tending to +defeat the righteous and most salutary laws that aimed simply to secure +for the citizen the privilege of a weekly day of rest and to secure the +holiday thus ordained by law from being perverted into a nuisance. The +social change which is still in progress along these lines no wise +Christian patriot can contemplate with complacency. It threatens, when +complete, to deprive us of that universal quiet Sabbath rest which has +been one of the glories of American social life, and an important +element in its economic prosperity, and to give in place of it, to some, +no assurance of a Sabbath rest at all, to others, a Sabbath of revelry +and debauch. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[354:1] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," chap. xiii.; Johnson, "The +Southern Presbyterians," chap. v. + +[357:1] The immigration is thus given by decades, with an illustrative +diagram, by Dr. Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. 759: + + 1825-35 330,737 + 1835-45 707,770 + 1845-55 2,944,833 + 1855-65 1,578,483 + 1865-75 3,234,090 + 1875-85 4,061,278 + +[358:1] _Ibid._, p. 714. We have quoted in round numbers. The figures do +not include the large sums expended annually in the colportage work of +Bible and tract societies, in Sunday school missions, and in the +building of churches and parsonages. In the accounts of the last-named +most effective enterprise the small amounts received and appropriated to +aid in building would represent manifold more gathered and expended by +the pioneer churches on the ground. + +[359:1] Dorchester, _op. cit._, p. 709. + +[359:2] Above, pp. 259, 260. + +[359:3] A pamphlet published at the office of the New York "Sun," away +back in the early thirties, was formerly in my possession, which +undertook to give, under the title "The Rich Men of New York," the name +of every person in that city who was worth more than one hundred +thousand dollars--and it was not a large pamphlet, either. As nearly as +I remember, there were less than a half-dozen names credited with more +than a million, and one solitary name, that of John Jacob Astor, was +reported as good for the enormous and almost incredible sum of ten +millions. + +[361:1] Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. 715. + +[361:2] See above, p. 70. + +[363:1] Bishop Vincent, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. 441. The +number of students in the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" +already in 1891 exceeded twenty-five thousand. + +[367:1] Among the titles omitted from this list are the various +"Lend-a-Hand Clubs," and "10 × 1 = 10 Clubs," and circles of "King's +Daughters," and like coteries, that have been inspired by the tales and +the "four mottoes" of Edward Everett Hale. + +[369:1] Dr. H. K. Carroll, in "The Independent," April 1, 1897. + +[369:2] "Congregationalist Handbook for 1897," p. 35. + +[371:1] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Ans. 60. The commentaries on the +Catechism, which are many, like Gemara upon Mishna, build wider and +higher the "fence around the law," in a fashion truly rabbinic. + +[372:1] Colossians, ii. 16. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE. + + +The rapid review of three crowded centuries, which is all that the +narrowly prescribed limits of this volume have permitted, has +necessarily been mainly restricted to external facts. But looking back +over the course of visible events, it is not impossible for acute minds +devoted to such study to trace the stream of thought and sentiment that +is sometimes hidden from direct view by the overgrowth which itself has +nourished. + +We have seen a profound spiritual change, renewing the face of the land +and leaving its indelible impress on successive generations, springing +from the profoundest contemplations of God and his work of salvation +through Jesus Christ, and then bringing back into thoughtful and +teachable minds new questions to be solved and new discoveries of truth +to be pondered. The one school of theological opinion and inquiry that +can be described as characteristically American is the theology of the +Great Awakening. The disciples of this school, in all its divergent +branches, agree in looking back to the first Jonathan Edwards as the +founder of it. Through its generations it has shown a striking sequence +and continuity of intellectual and spiritual life, each generation +answering questions put to it by its predecessor, while propounding new +questions to the generation following. After the classical writings of +its first founders, the most widely influential production of this +school is the "Theology Explained and Defended in a Series of Sermons" +of President Dwight. This had the advantage over some other systems of +having been preached, and thus proved to be preachable. The "series of +sermons" was that delivered to successive generations of college +students at Yale at a time of prevailing skepticism, when every +statement of the college pulpit was liable to sharp and not too friendly +scrutiny; and it was preached with the fixed purpose of convincing and +converting the young men who heard it. The audience, the occasion, and +the man--a fervid Christian, and a born poet and orator--combined to +produce a work of wide and enduring influence. The dynasty of the +Edwardeans is continued down to the middle of the nineteenth century, +and later, through different lines, ending in Emmons of Franklin, Taylor +of New Haven, and Finney of Oberlin, and is represented among the living +by the venerable Edwards A. Park, of Andover, who adds to that power of +sustained speculative thinking in a straight line which is +characteristic of the whole school, a wide learning in the whole field +of theological literature, which had not been usual among his +predecessors. It is a prevailing trait of this theology, born of the +great revival, that it has constantly held before itself not only the +question, What is truth? but also the question, How shall it be +preached? It has never ceased to be a revival theology. + +A bold and open breach of traditionary assumptions and habits of +reasoning was made by Horace Bushnell. This was a theologian of a +different type from his New England predecessors. He was of a temper +little disposed to accept either methods or results as a local +tradition, and inclined rather to prefer that which had been "hammered +out on his own anvil." And yet, while very free in manifesting his small +respect for the "logicking" by syllogistic processes which had been the +pride of the theological chair and even the pulpit in America, and while +declining the use of current phraseologies even for the expression of +current ideas, he held himself loyally subject to the canon of the +Scriptures as his rule of faith, and deferential to the voice of the +church catholic as uttered in the concord of testimony of holy men in +all ages. Endowed with a poet's power of intuition, uplifted by a fervid +piety, uttering himself in a literary style singularly rich and +melodious, it is not strange that such a man should have made large +contributions to the theological thought of his own and later times. In +natural theology, his discourses on "The Moral Uses of Dark Things" +(1869), and his longest continuous work, on "Nature and the +Supernatural" (1858), even though read rather as prose-poems than as +arguments, sound distinctly new notes in the treatment of their theme. +In "God in Christ" (1849), "Christ in Theology" (1851), "The Vicarious +Sacrifice" (1866), and "Forgiveness and Law" (1874), and in a notable +article in the "New Englander" for November, 1854, entitled "The +Christian Trinity a Practical Truth," the great topics of the Christian +system were dealt with all the more effectively, in the minds of +thoughtful readers in this and other lands, for cries of alarm and +newspaper and pulpit impeachments of heresy that were sent forth. But +that work of his which most nearly made as well as marked an epoch in +American church history was the treatise of "Christian Nurture" (1847). +This, with the protracted controversy that followed upon the publication +of it, was a powerful influence in lifting the American church out of +the rut of mere individualism that had been wearing deeper and deeper +from the days of the Great Awakening. + +Another wholesome and edifying debate was occasioned by the publications +that went forth from the college and theological seminary of the German +Reformed Church, situated at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania. At this +institution was effected a fruitful union of American and German +theology; the result was to commend to the general attention aspects of +truth, philosophical, theological, and historical, not previously +current among American Protestants. The book of Dr. John Williamson +Nevin, entitled "The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or +Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," revealed to the vast +multitude of churches and ministers that gloried in the name of +Calvinist the fact that on the most distinctive article of Calvinism +they were not Calvinists at all, but Zwinglians. The enunciation of the +standard doctrine of the various Presbyterian churches excited among +themselves a clamor of "Heresy!" and the doctrine of Calvin was put upon +trial before the Calvinists. The outcome of a discussion that extended +itself far beyond the boundaries of the comparatively small and +uninfluential German Reformed Church was to elevate the point of view +and broaden the horizon of American students of the constitution and +history of the church. Later generations of such students owe no light +obligation to the fidelity and courage of Dr. Nevin, as well as to the +erudition and immense productive diligence of his associate, Dr. Philip +Schaff.[377:1] + +It is incidental to the prevailing method of instruction in theology by +a course of prelections in which the teacher reads to his class in +detail his own original _summa theologiæ_, that the American press has +been prolific of ponderous volumes of systematic divinity. Among the +more notable of these systems are those of Leonard Woods (in five +volumes) and of Enoch Pond; of the two Drs. Hodge, father and son; of +Robert J. Breckinridge and James H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney; and +the "Systematic Theology" of a much younger man, Dr. Augustus H. Strong, +of Rochester Seminary, which has won for itself very unusual and wide +respect. Exceptional for ability, as well as for its originality of +conception, is "The Republic of God: An Institute of Theology," by +Elisha Mulford, a disciple of Maurice and of the realist philosophy, the +thought of whose whole life is contained in this and his kindred work on +"The Nation." + + * * * * * + +How great is the debt which the church owes to its heretics is +frequently illustrated in the progress of Christianity in America. If it +had not been for the Unitarian defection in New England, and for the +attacks from Germany upon the historicity of the gospels, the +theologians of America might to this day have been engrossed in +"threshing old straw" in endless debates on "fixed fate, free will, +foreknowledge absolute." The exigencies of controversy forced the study +of the original documents of the church. From his entrance upon his +professorship at Andover, in 1810, the eager enthusiasm of Moses Stuart +made him the father of exegetical science not only for America, but for +all the English-speaking countries. His not less eminent pupil and +associate, Edward Robinson, later of the Union Seminary, New York, +created out of nothing the study of biblical geography. Associating with +himself the most accomplished living Arabist, Eli Smith, of the American +mission at Beirût, he made those "Biblical Researches in Palestine" +which have been the foundation on which all later explorers have built. +Another American missionary, Dr. W. M. Thomson, has given the most +valuable popular exposition of the same subject in his volumes on "The +Land and the Book." With the exception of Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull in his +determination of the site of Kadesh-barnea, the American successors to +Robinson in the original exploration of the Bible lands have made few +additions to our knowledge. But in the department of biblical archæology +the work of Drs. Ward, Peters, and Hilprecht in the mounds of Babylonia, +and of Mr. Bliss in Palestine, has added not a little to the credit of +the American church against the heavy balance which we owe to the +scholarship of Europe. + +Monumental works in lexicography have been produced by Dr. Thayer, of +Cambridge, on New Testament Greek; by Professor Francis Brown, of New +York, in conjunction with Canon Driver, of Oxford, on the languages of +the Old Testament; and by Dr. Sophocles, of Cambridge, on the Byzantine +Greek. + +In the work of the textual criticism of the Scriptures, notwithstanding +its remoteness from the manuscript sources of study, America has +furnished two names that are held in honor throughout the learned world: +among the recent dead, Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, universally beloved and +lamented; and among the living, Caspar René Gregory, successor to the +labors and the fame of Tischendorf. A third name is that of the late Dr. +Isaac H. Hall, the successful collator of Syriac New Testament +manuscripts. + +In those studies of the higher criticism which at the present day are +absorbing so much of the attention of biblical scholars, and the +progress of which is watched with reasonable anxiety for their bearing +on that dogma of the absolute inerrancy of the canonical Scriptures +which has so commonly been postulated as the foundation of Protestant +systems of revealed theology, the American church has taken eager +interest. An eminent, and in some respects the foremost, place among the +leaders in America of these investigations into the substructure, if not +of the Christian faith, at least of the work of the system-builders, is +held by Professor W. H. Green, of Princeton, whose painstaking essays in +the higher criticism have done much to stimulate the studies of younger +men who have come out at conclusions different from his own. The works +of Professors Briggs, of Union Seminary, and Henry P. Smith, of Lane +Seminary, have had the invaluable advantage of being commended to public +attention by ecclesiastical processes and debates. The two volumes of +Professor Bacon, of Yale, have been recognized by the foremost scholars +of Great Britain and Germany as containing original contributions toward +the solution of the problem of Pentateuchal analysis. The intricate +critical questions presented by the Book of Judges have been handled +with supreme ability by Professor Moore, of Andover, in his commentary +on that book. A desideratum in biblical literature has been well +supplied by Professor Bissell, of Hartford, in a work on the Old +Testament Apocrypha. But the _magnum opus_ of American biblical +scholarship, associating with itself the best learning and ability of +other nations, is the publication, under the direction of Professor +Haupt, of Baltimore, of a critical text of the entire Scriptures in the +original languages, with new translations and notes, for the use of +scholars. + +The undeniably grave theological difficulties occasioned by the results +of critical study have given rise to a novel dogma concerning the +Scriptures, which, if it may justly be claimed as a product of the +Princeton Seminary, would seem to discredit the modest boast of the +venerated Dr. Charles Hodge, that "Princeton has never originated a new +idea." It consists in the hypothesis of an "original autograph" of the +Scriptures, the precise contents of which are now undiscoverable, but +which differed from any existing text in being absolutely free from +error of any kind. The hypothesis has no small advantage in this, that +if it is not susceptible of proof, it is equally secure from refutation. +If not practically useful, it is at least novel, and on this ground +entitled to mention in recounting the contributions of the American +church to theology at a really perilous point in the progress of +biblical study. + + * * * * * + +The field of church history, aside from local and sectarian histories, +was late in being invaded by American theologians. For many generations +the theology of America was distinctly unhistorical, speculative, and +provincial. But a change in this respect was inevitably sure to come. +The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is +illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the +masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would +seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions +had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient +lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments of remote ages as +those whose homes are in regions not two generations removed from the +prehistoric wilderness. It was certain that as soon as theology should +begin to be taught to American students in its relation to the history +of the kingdom of Christ, the charm of this method would be keenly felt. + +We may assume the date of 1853 as an epoch from which to date this new +era of theological study. It was in that year that the gifted, learned, +and inspiring teacher, Henry Boynton Smith, was transferred from the +chair of history in Union Theological Seminary, New York, to the chair +of systematic theology. Through his premature and most lamented death +the church has failed of receiving that system of doctrine which had +been hoped for at his hands. But the historic spirit which characterized +him has ever since been characteristic of that seminary. It is +illustrative of the changed tone of theologizing that after the death of +Professor Smith, in the reorganization of the faculty of that important +institution, it was manned in the three chief departments, exegetical, +dogmatic, and practical, by men whose eminent distinction was in the +line of church history. The names of Hitchcock, Schaff, and Shedd cannot +be mentioned without bringing to mind some of the most valuable gifts +that America has made to the literature of the universal church. If to +these we add the names of George Park Fisher, of Yale, and Bishop Hurst, +and Alexander V. G. Allen, of Cambridge, author of "The Continuity of +Christian Thought," and Henry Charles Lea, of Philadelphia, we have +already vindicated for American scholarship a high place in this +department of Christian literature. + + * * * * * + +In practical theology the productiveness of the American church in the +matter of _sermons_ has been so copious that even for the briefest +mention some narrow rule of exclusion must be followed. There is no +doubt that in a multitude of cases the noblest utterances of the +American pulpit, being unwritten, have never come into literature, but +have survived for a time as a glowing memory, and then a fading +tradition. The statement applies to many of the most famous revival +preachers; and in consequence of a prevalent prejudice against the +writing of sermons, it applies especially to the great Methodist and +Baptist preachers, whose representation on the shelves of libraries is +most disproportionate to their influence on the course of the kingdom +of Christ. Of other sermons,--and good sermons,--printed and published, +many have had an influence almost as restricted and as evanescent as the +utterances of the pulpit improvisator. If we confine ourselves to those +sermons that have survived their generation or won attention beyond the +limits of local interest or of sectarian fellowship, the list will not +be unmanageably long. + +In the early years of the nineteenth century the Unitarian pulpits of +Boston were adorned with every literary grace known to the rhetoric of +that period. The luster of Channing's fame has outshone and outlasted +that of his associates; and yet these were stars of hardly less +magnitude. The two Wares, father and son, the younger Buckminster, whose +singular power as a preacher was known not only to wondering hearers, +but to readers on both sides of the ocean, Gannett and Dewey--these were +among them; and, in the next generation, Henry W. Bellows, Thomas Starr +King, and James Freeman Clarke. No body of clergy of like size was ever +so resplendent with talents and accomplishments. The names alone of +those who left the Unitarian pulpit for a literary or political +career--Sparks, Everett, Bancroft, Emerson, Ripley, Palfrey, Upham, +among them--are a constellation by themselves. + +To the merely literary critic those earnest preachers, such as Lyman and +Edward Beecher, Griffin, Sereno Dwight, Wayland, and Kirk, who felt +called of God to withstand, in Boston, this splendid array of not less +earnest men, were clearly inferior to their antagonists. But they were +successful. + +A few years later, the preëminent American writer of sermons to be read +and pondered in every part of the world was Horace Bushnell; as the +great popular preacher, whose words, caught burning from his lips, +rolled around the world in a perpetual stream, was Henry Ward Beecher. +Widely different from either of these, and yet in an honorable sense +successor to the fame of both, was Phillips Brooks, of all American +preachers most widely beloved and honored in all parts of the church. + +Of living preachers whose sermons have already attained a place of honor +in libraries at home and abroad, the name of Bishop F. D. Huntington +stands among the foremost; and those who have been charmed by the +brilliant rhetoric and instructed from the copious learning of his +college classmate, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, must feel it a wrong done to +our national literature that these gifts should be chiefly known to the +reading public only by occasional discourses and by two valuable studies +in religious history instead of by volumes of sermons. Perhaps no +American pulpits have to-day a wider hearing beyond the sea than two +that stand within hearing distance of each other on New Haven Green, +occupied by Theodore T. Munger and Newman Smyth. The pulpit of Plymouth +Church, Brooklyn, has not ceased, since the accession of Lyman Abbott, +to wield a wide and weighty influence,--less wide, but in some respects +more weighty, than in the days of his famous predecessor,--by reason of +a well-deserved reputation for biblical learning and insight, and for +candor and wisdom in applying Scriptural principles to the solution of +current questions. + +The early American theology was, as we have seen, a rhetorical and not a +merely scholastic theology--a theology to be preached.[384:1] In like +manner, the American pulpit in those days was distinctly theological, +like a professor's chair. One who studies with care the pulpit of +to-day, in those volumes that seem to command the widest and most +enduring attention, will find that it is to a large extent apologetic, +addressing itself to the abating of doubts and objections to the +Christian system, or, recognizing the existing doubts, urging the +religious duties that are nevertheless incumbent on the doubting mind. +It has ceased to assume the substantial soundness of the hearer in the +main principles of orthodox opinion, and regards him as one to be held +to the church by attraction, persuasion, or argument. The result of this +attitude of the preacher is to make the pulpit studiously, and even +eagerly, attractive and interesting. This virtue has its corresponding +fault. The American preacher of to-day is little in danger of being +dull; his peril lies at the other extreme. His temptation is rather to +the feebleness of extravagant statement, and to an overstrained and +theatric rhetoric such as some persons find so attractive in the +discourses of Dr. Talmage, and others find repulsive and intolerable. + +A direction in which the literature of practical theology in America is +sure to expand itself in the immediate future is indicated in the title +of a recent work of that versatile and useful writer, Dr. Washington +Gladden, "Applied Christianity." The salutary conviction that political +economy cannot be relied on by itself to adjust all the intricate +relations of men under modern conditions of life, that the ethical +questions that arise are not going to solve themselves automatically by +the law of demand and supply, that the gospel and the church and the +Spirit of Christ have somewhat to do in the matter, has been settling +itself deeply into the minds of Christian believers. The impression that +the questions between labor and capital, between sordid poverty and +overgrown wealth, were old-world questions, of which we of the New World +are relieved, is effectually dispelled. Thus far there is not much of +history to be written under this head, but somewhat of prophecy. It is +now understood, and felt in the conscience, that these questions are for +every Christian to consider, and for those undertaking the cure of souls +to make the subject of their faithful, laborious professional study. The +founding of professorships of social ethics in the theological +seminaries must lead to important and speedy results in the efficiency +of churches and pastors in dealing with this difficult class of +problems.[386:1] But whatever advances shall be made in the future, no +small part of the impulse toward them will be recognized as coming from, +or rather through, the inspiring and most Christian humanitarian +writings and the personal influence and example of Edward Everett Hale. + + * * * * * + +In one noble department of religious literature, the liturgical, the +record of the American church is meager. The reaction among the early +colonists and many of the later settlers against forms of worship +imposed by political authority was violent. Seeking for a logical basis, +it planted itself on the assumption that no form (unless an improvised +form) is permitted in public worship, except such as are sanctioned by +express word of Scripture. In their sturdy resolution to throw off and +break up the yoke, which neither they nor their fathers had been able to +bear, of ordinances and traditions complicated with not a little of +debilitating superstition, the extreme Puritans of England and Scotland +rejected the whole system of holy days in the Christian year, including +the authentic anniversaries of Passover and Pentecost, and discontinued +the use of religious ceremonies at marriages and funerals.[386:2] The +only liturgical compositions that have come down to us from the first +generations are the various attempts, in various degrees of harshness +and rudeness, at the versification of psalms and other Scriptures for +singing. The emancipation of the church from its bondage to an +artificial dogma came, as we have already seen, with the Great Awakening +and the introduction of Watts's "Psalms of David, Imitated in the +Language of the New Testament."[387:1] After the Revolution, at the +request of the General Association of Connecticut and the General +Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Timothy Dwight completed the work +of Watts by versifying a few omitted psalms,[387:2] and added a brief +selection of hymns, chiefly in the grave and solemn Scriptural style of +Watts and Doddridge. Then followed, in successive tides, from England, +the copious hymnody of the Methodist revival, both Calvinist and +Wesleyan, of the Evangelical revival, and now at last of the Oxford +revival, with its affluence of translations from the ancient hymnists, +as well as of original hymns. It is doubtless owing to this abundant +intermittent inflow from England that the production of American hymns +has been so scanty. Only a few writers, among them Thomas Hastings and +Ray Palmer, have written each a considerable number of hymns that have +taken root in the common use of the church. Not a few names besides are +associated each with some one or two or three lyrics that have won an +enduring place in the affections of Christian worshipers. The "gospel +hymns" which have flowed from many pens in increasing volume since the +revival of 1857 have proved their great usefulness, especially in +connection with the ministry of Messrs. Moody and Sankey; but they are, +even the best of them, short-lived. After their season the church seems +not unwilling to let them die. + +Soon after the mid-point of the nineteenth century, began a serious +study of the subject of the conduct of public worship, which continues +to this day, with good promise of sometime reaching useful and stable +results. In 1855 was published "Eutaxia, or the Presbyterian Liturgies: +Historical Sketches. By a Minister of the Presbyterian Church." The +author, Charles W. Baird, was a man peculiarly fitted to render the +church important service, such as indeed he did render in this volume, +and in the field of Huguenot history which he divided with his brother, +Henry M. Baird. How great the loss to historical theology through his +protracted feebleness of body and his death may be conjectured, not +measured. This brief volume awakened an interest in the subject of it in +America, and in Scotland, and among the nonconformists of England. To +American Presbyterians in general it was something like a surprise to be +reminded that the sisterhood of the "Reformed" sects were committed by +their earliest and best traditions in favor of liturgic uses in public +worship. At about the same time the fruitful discussions of the +Mercersburg controversy were in progress in the German Reformed Church. +"Mercersburg found fault with the common style of extemporaneous public +prayer, and advocated a revival of the liturgical church service of the +Reformation period, but so modified and reproduced as to be adapted to +the existing wants of Protestant congregations."[388:1] Each of these +discussions was followed by a proposed book of worship. In 1857 was +published by Mr. Baird "A Book of Public Prayer, Compiled from the +Authorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church, as +Prepared by the Reformers, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others"; and in 1858 +was set forth by a committee of the German Reformed Church "A Liturgy, +or Order of Christian Worship." In 1855 St. Peter's Presbyterian Church +of Rochester published its "Church-book," prepared by Mr. L. W. Bacon, +then acting as pastor, which was principally notable for introducing the +use of the Psalms in parallelisms for responsive reading--a use which at +once found acceptance in many churches, and has become general in all +parts of the country. Sporadic experiments followed in various +individual congregations, looking toward greater variety or greater +dignity or greater musical attractiveness in the services of public +worship, or toward more active participation therein on the part of the +people. But these experiments, conducted without concert or mutual +counsel, often without serious study of the subject, and with a feebly +esthetic purpose, were representative of individual notions, and had in +them no promise of stability or of fruit after their kind. Only, by the +increasing number of them, they have given proof of an unrest on this +subject which at last is beginning to embody itself in organization and +concerted study and enterprise. A fifty years of mere tentative groping +is likely to be followed by another fifty years of substantial progress. + +The influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church upon this growing +tendency has been sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable, but always +important. To begin with, it has held up before the whole church an +example of prescribed forms for divine worship, on the whole, the best +in all history. On the other hand, it has drawn to itself those in +other sects whose tastes and tendencies would make them leaders in the +study of liturgics, and thus while reinforcing itself has hindered the +general advance of improvement in the methods of worship. Withal, its +influence has tended to narrow the discussion to the consideration of a +single provincial and sectarian tradition, as if the usage of a part of +the Christians of the southern end of one of the islands of the British +archipelago had a sort of binding authority over the whole western +continent. But again, on the other hand, the broadening of its own views +to the extent of developing distinctly diverse ways of thinking among +its clergy and people has enlarged the field of study once more, and +tended to interest the church generally in the practical, historical, +and theological aspects of the subject. The somewhat timid ventures of +"Broad" and "Evangelical" men in one direction, and the fearless +breaking of bounds in the other direction by those of "Ritualist" +sympathies, have done much to liberate this important communion from +slavish uniformity and indolent traditionalism; and within a few years +that has been accomplished which only a few years earlier would have +been deemed impossible--the considerable alteration and improvement of +the Book of Common Prayer. + +It is safe to prognosticate, from the course of the history up to this +point, that the subject of the conduct of worship will become more and +more seriously a subject of study in the American church in all its +divisions; that the discussions thereon arising will be attended with +strong antagonisms of sentiment; that mutual antagonisms within the +several sects will be compensated by affiliations of men like-minded +across sectarian lines; and that thus, as many times before, particular +controversies will tend to general union and fellowship. + +One topic under this title of Liturgics requires special mention--the +use of music in the church. It was not till the early part of the +eighteenth century that music began to be cultivated as an art in +America.[391:1] Up to that time "the service of song in the house of the +Lord" had consisted, in most worshiping assemblies on this continent, in +the singing of rude literal versifications of the Psalms and other +Scriptures to some eight or ten old tunes handed down by tradition, and +variously sung in various congregations, as modified by local practice. +The coming in of "singing by rule" was nearly coincident with the +introduction of Watts's psalms and hymns, and was attended with like +agitations. The singing-school for winter evenings became an almost +universal social institution; and there actually grew up an American +school of composition, quaint, rude, and ungrammatical, which had great +vogue toward the end of the last century, and is even now remembered by +some with admiration and regret. It was devoted mainly to psalmody tunes +of an elaborate sort, in which the first half-stanza would be sung in +plain counterpoint, after which the voices would chase each other about +in a lively imitative movement, coming out together triumphantly at the +close. They abounded in forbidden progressions and empty chords, but +were often characterized by fervor of feeling and by strong melodies. A +few of them, as "Lenox" and "Northfield," still linger in use; and the +productions of this school in general, which amount to a considerable +volume, are entitled to respectful remembrance as the first untutored +utterance of music in America. The use of them became a passionate +delight to our grandparents; and the traditions are fresh and vivid of +the great choirs filling the church galleries on three sides, and +tossing the theme about from part to part. + +The use of these rudely artificial tunes involved a gravely important +change in the course of public worship. In congregations that accepted +them the singing necessarily became an exclusive privilege of the choir. +To a lamentable extent, where there was neither the irregular and +spontaneous ejaculation of the Methodist nor the rubrical response of +the Episcopalian, the people came to be shut out from audible +participation in the acts of public worship. + +A movement of musical reform in the direction of greater simplicity and +dignity began early in this century, when Lowell Mason in Boston and +Thomas Hastings in New York began their multitudinous publications of +psalmody. Between them not less than seventy volumes of music were +published in a period of half as many years. Their immense and +successful fecundity was imitated with less success by others, until the +land was swamped with an annual flood of church-music books. A thin +diluvial stratum remains to us from that time in tunes, chiefly from the +pen of Dr. Mason, that have taken permanent place as American chorals. +Such pieces as "Boylston," "Hebron," "Rockingham," "Missionary Hymn," +and the adaptations of Gregorian melodies, "Olmutz" and "Hamburg," are +not likely to be displaced from their hold on the American church by +more skilled and exquisite compositions of later schools. But the +fertile labors of the church musicians of this period were affected by +the market demand for new material for the singing-school, the large +church choir, and the musical convention. The music thus introduced into +the churches consisted not so much of hymn-tunes and anthems as of +"sacred glees."[392:1] + +Before the middle of the century the Episcopal Church had arrived at a +point at which it was much looked to to set the fashions in such matters +as church music and architecture. Its influence at this time was very +bad. It was largely responsible for the fashion, still widely prevalent, +of substituting for the church choir a quartet of professional solo +singers, and for the degradation of church music into the dainty, +languishing, and sensuous style which such "artists" do most affect. The +period of "The Grace Church Collection," "Greatorex's Collection," and +the sheet-music compositions of George William Warren and John R. Thomas +was the lowest tide of American church music. + +A healthy reaction from this vicious condition began about 1855, with +the introduction of hymn-and-tune books and the revival of +congregational singing. From that time the progressive improvement of +the public taste may be traced in the character of the books that have +succeeded one another in the churches, until the admirable compositions +of the modern English school of psalmody tend to predominate above those +of inferior quality. It is the mark of a transitional period that both +in church music and in church architecture we seem to depend much on +compositions and designs derived from older countries. The future of +religious art in America is sufficiently well assured to leave no cause +for hurry or anxiety. + + * * * * * + +In glancing back over this chapter, it will be strange if some are not +impressed, and unfavorably impressed, with a disproportion in the names +cited as representative, which are taken chiefly from some two or three +sects. This may justly be referred in part, no doubt, to the author's +point of view and to the "personal equation"; but it is more largely due +to the fact that in the specialization of the various sects the work of +theological literature and science has been distinctively the lot of the +Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, and preëminently of the +former.[394:1] It is matter of congratulation that the inequality among +the denominations in this respect is in a fair way to be outgrown. + +Special mention must be made of the peculiarly valuable contribution to +the liturgical literature of America that is made by the oldest of our +episcopal churches, the Moravian. This venerable organization is rich +not only in the possession of a heroic martyr history, but in the +inheritance of liturgic forms and usages of unsurpassed beauty and +dignity. Before the other churches had emerged from a half-barbarous +state in respect to church music, this art was successfully cultivated +in the Moravian communities and missions. In past times these have had +comparatively few points of contact and influence with the rest of the +church; but when the elements of a common order of divine worship shall +by and by begin to grow into form, it is hardly possible that the +Moravian traditions will not enter into it as an important factor. + +A combination of conditions which in the case of other bodies in the +church has been an effective discouragement to literary production has +applied with especial force to the Roman Catholic Church in America. +First, its energies and resources, great as they are, have been +engrossed by absolutely prodigious burdens of practical labor; and +secondly, its necessary literary material has been furnished to it from +across the sea, ready to its hand, or needing only the light labor of +translation. But these two conditions are not enough, of themselves, to +account for the very meager contribution of the Catholic Church to the +common religious and theological literature of American Christendom. +Neither is the fact explained by the general low average of culture +among the Catholic population; for literary production does not +ordinarily proceed from the man of average culture, but from men of +superior culture, such as this church possesses in no small number, and +places in positions of undisturbed "learned leisure" that would seem in +the highest degree promotive of intellectual work. But the comparative +statistics of the Catholic and the Protestant countries and universities +of Germany seem to prove conclusively that the spirit and discipline of +the Roman Church are unfavorable to literary productiveness in those +large fields of intellectual activity that are common and free alike to +the scholars of all Christendom. It remains to be seen whether the +stimulating atmosphere and the free and equal competitions of the New +World will not show their invigorating effect in the larger activity of +Catholic scholars, and their liberation from within the narrow lines of +polemic and defensive literature. The republic of Christian letters has +already shown itself prompt to welcome accessions from this quarter. The +signs are favorable. Notwithstanding severe criticisms of their methods +proceeding from the Catholic press, or rather in consequence of such +criticisms, the Catholic institutions of higher learning are rising in +character and in public respect; and the honorable enterprise of +establishing at Washington an American Catholic university, on the +upbuilding of which shall be concentrated the entire intellectual +strength and culture of this church, promises an invigorating influence +that shall extend through that whole system of educational institutions +which the church has set on foot at immense cost, and not with wholly +satisfactory results. + +Recent events in the Catholic Church in America tend to reassure all +minds on an important point on which not bigots and alarmists only, but +liberal-minded citizens apostolically willing to "look not only on their +own things but also on the things of others," have found reasonable +ground for anxiety. The American Catholic Church, while characterized in +all its ranks, in respect of loyal devotion to the pope, by a high type +of ultramontane orthodoxy, is to be administered on patriotic American +principles. The brief term of service of Monsignor Satolli as papal +legate clothed with plenipotentiary authority from the Roman see stamped +out the scheme called from its promoter "Cahenslyism," which would have +divided the American Catholic Church into permanent alien communities, +conserving each its foreign language and organized under its separate +hierarchy. The organization of parishes to be administered in other +languages than English is suffered only as a temporary necessity. The +deadly warfare against the American common-school system has abated. And +the anti-American denunciations contained in the bull and syllabus of +December 8, 1864, are openly renounced as lacking the note of +infallibility.[396:1] + +Of course, as in all large communities of vigorous vitality, there will +be mutually antagonist parties in this body; but it is hardly to be +doubted that with the growth and acclimatization of the Catholic Church +in America that party will eventually predominate which is most in +sympathy with the ruling ideas of the country and the age. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[377:1] For fuller accounts of "the Mercersburg theology," with +references to the literature of the subject, see Dubbs, "The Reformed +Church, German" (American Church History Series, vol. viii.), pp. 219, +220, 389-378; also, Professor E. V. Gerhart in "Schaff-Herzog +Encyclopedia," pp. 1473-1475. + +[384:1] See above, p. 375. + +[386:1] The program of Yale Divinity School for 1896-97 announces among +the "required studies in senior year" lectures "on some important +problems of American life, such as Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism; +Races in the United States; Immigration; the Modern City; the Wage +System; the Relations of Employer and Employed; Social Classes; the +Causes, Prevention, and Punishment of Crime; and University +Settlements." + +[386:2] Williston Walker, "The Congregationalists," pp. 245, 246. + +[387:1] See above, pp. 182-184. + +[387:2] The only relic of this work that survives in common use is the +immortal lyric, "I love thy kingdom, Lord," founded on a motif in the +one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm. This, with Doddridge's hymn, "My +God, and is thy table spread?" continued for a long time to be the most +important church hymn and eucharistic hymn in the English language. We +should not perhaps have looked for the gift of them to two +Congregationalist ministers, one in New England and the other in old +England. There is no such illustration of the spiritual unity of "the +holy catholic church, the fellowship of the holy," as is presented in a +modern hymn-book. + +[388:1] Professor Gerhart, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. 1475. + +[391:1] "Massachusetts Historical Collections," second series, vol. iv., +p. 301; quoted in the "New Englander," vol. xiii., p. 467 (August, +1855). + +[392:1] This was the criticism of the late Rev. Mr. Havergal, of +Worcester Cathedral, to whom Dr. Mason had sent copies of some of his +books. The incident was freely told by Dr. Mason himself. + +[394:1] For many generations the religious and theological literature of +the country proceeded almost exclusively, at first or second hand, from +New England. The Presbyterian historian, Professor Robert Ellis +Thompson, remarks that "until after the division of 1837 American +Presbyterianism made no important addition to the literature of +theology" ("The Presbyterians," p. 143). The like observation is true +down to a much more recent date of the Protestant Episcopal Church. +Noble progress has been made in both these denominations in reversing +this record. + +[396:1] So (for example) Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholics," p. 434. +And yet, at the time, the bull with its appendix was certainly looked +upon as "an act of infallibility." See, in "La Bulle _Quanta Cura_ et la +Civilisation Moderne, par l'Abbé Pélage" (Paris, 1865), the utterances +of all the French bishops. The language of Bishop Plantier of Poitiers +seems decisive: "The Vicar of Jesus Christ, doctor and pastor charged +with the teaching and ruling of the entire church, addressed to the +bishops, and through them to all the Christian universe, instructions, +the object of which is to settle the mind and enlighten the conscience +on sundry points of Christian doctrine and morals" (pp. 103, 104). See +also pp. 445, 450. This brings it within the Vatican Council's +definition of an infallible utterance. But we are bound to bear in mind +that not only is the infallible authority of this manifesto against +"progress, liberalism, and modern civilization" disclaimed, but the +meaning of it, which seems unmistakably clear, is disputed. "The +syllabus," says Bishop O'Gorman, "is technical and legal in its +language, ... and needs to be interpreted to the lay reader by the +ecclesiastical lawyer" (p. 435). + +A seriously important desideratum in theological literature is some +authoritative canon of the infallible utterances of the Roman see. It is +difficult to fix on any one of them the infallible authority of which is +not open to dispute within the church itself; while the liability of +them to misinterpretation (as in the case of the _Quanta Cura_ and +_Syllabus_) brings in still another element of vagueness and +uncertainty. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH. + + +The three centuries of history which we have passed under rapid review +comprise a series of political events of the highest importance to +mankind. We have seen, from our side-point of view, the planting, along +the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean, without mutual concert or +common direction, of many independent germs of civilization. So many of +these as survived the perils of infancy we have seen growing to a lusty +youth, and becoming drawn each to each by ties of common interest and +mutual fellowship. Releasing themselves from colonial dependence on a +transatlantic power, we find these several communities, now grown to be +States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, +of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national +government binding upon all. The strong vitality of the new nation is +proved by its assimilating to itself an immense mass of immigrants from +all parts of Europe, and by expanding itself without essential change +over the area of a continent. It triumphs again and again, and at last +in a struggle that shakes the world, over passions and interests that +threaten schism in the body politic, and gives good reason to its +friends to boast the solid unity of the republic as the strongest +existing fact in the political world. The very great aggrandizement of +the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it +has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in +monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the national +strength. + +The ecclesiastical history which has been recounted in this volume, +covering the same territory and the same period of time, runs with equal +pace in many respects parallel with the political history, but in one +important respect with a wide divergence. As with civilization so with +Christianity: the germs of it, derived from different regions of +Christendom, were planted without concert of purpose, and often with +distinct cross-purposes, in different seed-plots along the Atlantic +seaboard. Varying in polity, in forms of dogmatic statement, and even in +language, the diverse growths were made, through wonders of spiritual +influence and through external stress of trial, to feel their unity in +the one faith. The course of a common experience tended to establish a +predominant type of religious life the influence of which has been +everywhere felt, even when it has not been consented to. The vital +strength of the American church, as of the American nation, has been +subjected to the test of the importation of enormous masses of more or +less uncongenial population, and has shown an amazing power of digestion +and assimilation. Its resources have been taxed by the providential +imposition of burdens of duty and responsibility such, in magnitude and +weight, as never since the early preaching of the gospel have pressed +upon any single generation of the church. Within the space of a single +lifetime, at an expenditure of toil and treasure which it is idle to +attempt to compute, the wide and desolate wilderness, as fast as +civilization has invaded it, has been occupied by the church with +churches, schools, colleges, and seminaries of theology, with pastors, +evangelists, and teachers, and, in one way or another, has been +constrained to confess itself Christian. The continent which so short a +time ago had been compassionately looked upon from across the sea as +missionary ground has become a principal base of supplies, and +recruiting-ground for men and women, for missionary operations in +ancient lands of heathenism and of a decayed Christianity. + +So much for the parallel. The divergence is not less impressive. In +contrast with the solid political unity into which the various and +incongruous elements have settled themselves, the unity of the Christian +church is manifested by oneness neither of jurisdiction nor of +confederation, nor even by diplomatic recognition and correspondence. +Out of the total population of the United States, amounting, according +to the census of 1890, to 62,622,000 souls, the 57,000,000 accounted as +Christians, including 20,000,000 communicant church-members, are +gathered into 165,297 congregations, assembling in 142,000 church +edifices containing 43,000,000 sittings, and valued (together with other +church property) at $670,000,000; and are served in the ministry of the +gospel by more than 111,000 ministers.[400:1] But this great force is +divided among 143 mutually independent sects, larger and smaller. Among +these sects is recognized no controlling and coördinating authority; +neither is there any common leadership; neither is there any system of +mutual counsel and concert. The mutual relations of the sects are +sometimes those of respect and good will, sometimes of sharp competition +and jealousy, sometimes of eager and conscientious hostility. All have +one and the same unselfish and religious aim--to honor God in serving +their fellow-men; and each one, in honestly seeking this supreme aim, is +affected by its corporate interests, sympathies, and antipathies. + +This situation is too characteristic of America, and too distinctly +connected with the whole course of the antecedent history, not to be +brought out with emphasis in this concluding chapter. In other lands the +church is maintained, through the power of the civil government, under +the exclusive control of a single organization, in which the element of +popular influence may be wholly wanting, or may be present (as in many +of the "Reformed" polities) in no small measure. In others yet, through +government influence and favor, a strong predominance is given to one +organized communion, under the shadow of which dissentient minorities +are tolerated and protected. Under the absolute freedom and equality of +the American system there is not so much as a predominance of any one of +the sects. No one of them is so strong and numerous but that it is +outnumbered and outweighed by the aggregate of the two next to it. At +present, in consequence of the rush of immigration, the Roman Catholic +Church is largely in advance of any single denomination besides, but is +inferior in numerical strength and popular influence to the Methodists +and Baptists combined--if they _were_ combined. + +And there is no doubt that this comminution of the church is frankly +accepted, for reasons assigned, not only as an inevitable drawback to +the blessings of religious freedom, but as a good thing in itself. A +weighty sentence of James Madison undoubtedly expresses the prevailing +sentiment among Americans who contemplate the subject merely from the +political side: "In a free government the security for civil rights must +be the same as that for religious rights. It consists, in the one case, +in the multiplicity of interests, and, in the other, in the multiplicity +of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number +of interests and sects."[402:1] And no student of history can deny that +there is much to justify the jealousy with which the lovers of civil +liberty watch the climbing of any sect, no matter how purely spiritual +its constitution, toward a position of command in popular influence. The +influence of the leaders of such a sect may be nothing more than the +legitimate and well-deserved influence of men of superior wisdom and +virtue; but when reinforced by the weight of official religious +character, and backed by a majority, or even a formidable minority, of +voters organized in a religious communion, the feeling is sure to gain +ground that such power is too great to be trusted to the hands even of +the best of men. Whatever sectarian advantage such a body may achieve in +the state by preponderance of number will be more than offset by the +public suspicion and the watchful jealousy of rival sects; and the +weakening of it by division, or the subordination of it by the +overgrowth of a rival, is sure to be regarded with general complacency. + +It is not altogether a pleasing object of contemplation--the citizen and +the statesman looking with contentment on the schism of the church as +averting a danger to the state. It is hardly more gratifying when we +find ministers of the church themselves accepting the condition of +schism as being, on the whole, a very good condition for the church of +Christ, if not, indeed, the best possible. It is quite unreservedly +argued that the principle, "Competition is the life of business," is +applicable to spiritual as well as secular concerns; and the +"emulations" reprobated by the Apostle Paul as "works of the flesh" are +frankly appealed to for promoting the works of the spirit. This debasing +of the motive of church work is naturally attended by a debasement of +the means employed. The competitive church resorts to strange business +devices to secure its needed revenue. "He that giveth" is induced to +give, not "with simplicity," but with a view to incidental advantages, +and a distinct understanding is maintained between the right hand and +the left. The extent and variety of this influence on church life in +America afford no occasion for pride, but the mention of them could not +rightly be omitted. It remains for the future to decide whether they +must needs continue as an inevitable attendant on the voluntary system. + +Sectarian divisions tend strongly to perpetuate themselves. The starting +of schism is easy and quick; the healing of it is a matter of long +diplomatic negotiations. In a very short time the division of the +church, with its necessary relations to property and to the employment +of officials, becomes a vested interest. Provision for large expenditure +unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the general interests of the +kingdom of Christ, which had been instituted in the first place at heavy +cost to the many, is not to be discontinued without more serious loss to +influential individuals. Those who would set themselves about the +healing of a schism must reckon upon personal and property interests to +be conciliated. + +This least amiable characteristic of the growth of the Christian church +in America is not without its compensations. The very fact of the +existence, in presence of one another, of these multitudinous rival +sects, all equal before the law, tends in the long run, under the +influence of the Holy Spirit of peace, to a large and comprehensive +fellowship.[404:1] The widely prevalent acceptance of existing +conditions as probably permanent, even if not quite normal, softens the +mutual reproaches of rival parties. The presumption is of course +implied, if not asserted, in the existence of any Christian sect, that +it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that +than other sects; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the +right and true must, in the long run, prevail. But it is only with a +high act of faith, and not as a matter of reasonable probability, that +any sect in America can venture to indulge itself in the expectation of +a supremacy, or even a predominance, in American Christendom. The +strongest in numbers, in influence, in prestige, however tempted to +assert for itself exclusive or superior rights, is compelled to look +about itself and find itself overwhelmingly outnumbered and outdone by a +divided communion--and yet a communion--of those whom Christ "is not +ashamed to call his brethren"; and just in proportion as it has the +spirit of Christ, it is constrained in its heart to treat them as +brethren and to feel toward them as brethren. Its protest against what +it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most +unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward +fellow-Christians. Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler +from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social +life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman +Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common +charitable aims, than between Catholics and Protestants in France or +Germany, or between Anglicans and nonconformists in England."[405:1] + + * * * * * + +There are many indications, in the recent history of the American +church, pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true +unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual, +expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply +competing and often antagonist sects. Instead of easy-going and playful +felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total +effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on +"anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the +acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American +Christendom is not right, but wrong. Whose is the wrong need not be +decided; certainly it does not wholly belong to the men of this +generation or of this country; we are heirs of the schisms of other +lands and ages, and have added to them schisms of our own making. The +matter begins to be taken soberly and seriously. The tender entreaty of +the Apostle Paul not to suffer ourselves to be split up into +sects[405:2] begins to get a hearing in the conscience. The _nisus_ +toward a more manifest union among Christian believers has long been +growing more and more distinctly visible, and is at the present day one +of the most conspicuous signs of the times. + +Already in the early history we have observed a tendency toward the +healing, in America, of differences imported from over sea. Such was the +commingling of Separatist and Puritan in New England; the temporary +alliance of Congregationalist and Presbyterian to avert the imposition +of a state hierarchy; the combination of Quaker and Roman Catholic to +defeat a project of religious oppression in Maryland; the drawing +together of Lutheran and Reformed Germans for common worship, under the +saintly influence of the Moravian Zinzendorf; and the "Plan of Union" by +which New Englander and Scotch-Irishman were to labor in common for the +evangelization of the new settlements.[406:1] These were sporadic +instances of a tendency that was by and by to become happily epidemic. A +more important instance of the same tendency was the organization of +societies for charitable work which should unite the gifts and personal +labors of the Christians of the whole continent. The chief period of +these organizations extended from 1810, the date of the beginning of the +American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to 1826, when the +American Home Missionary Society was founded.[406:2] The "catholic +basis" on which they were established was dictated partly by the +conscious weakness of the several sects as they drew near to +undertakings formidable even to their united forces, and partly by the +glow of fraternal affection, and the sense of a common spiritual life +pervading the nation, with which the church had come forth from the +fervors of "the second awakening."[406:3] The societies, representing +the common faith and charity of the whole church as distinguished from +the peculiarities of the several sects, drew to themselves the affection +and devotion of Christian hearts to a degree which, to those who highly +valued these distinctions, seemed to endanger important interests. And, +indeed, the situation was anomalous, in which the sectarian divisions of +the Christian people were represented in the churches, and their +catholic unity in charitable societies. It would have seemed more +Pauline, not to say more Christian, to have had voluntary societies for +the sectarian work, and kept the churches for Christian communion. It is +no wonder that High-church champions, on one side and another, soon +began to shout to their adherents, "To your tents, O Israel!" Bishop +Hobart played not in vain upon his pastoral pipe to whistle back his +sheep from straying outside of his pinfold, exhorting them, "in their +endeavors for the general advancement of religion, to use only the +instrumentality of their own church."[407:1] And a jealousy of the +growing influence of a wide fellowship, in charitable labors, with +Christians of other names, led to the enunciation of a like doctrine by +High-church Presbyterians,[407:2] and contributed to the convulsive and +passionate rending of the Presbyterian Church, in 1837, into nearly +equal fragments. So effective has been the centrifugal force that of +the extensive system of societies which from the year 1810 onward first +organized works of national beneficence by enlisting the coöperation of +"all evangelical Christians," the American Bible Society alone continues +to represent any general and important combination from among the +different denominations. + +For all the waning of interest in the "catholic basis" societies, the +sacred discontent of the Christian people with sectarian division +continued to demand expression. How early the aspiration for an +ecumenical council of evangelical Christendom became articulate, it may +not be easy to discover[408:1] In the year 1846 the aspiration was in +some measure realized in the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance +at London. No more mistakes were made in this meeting than perhaps were +necessarily incident to a first experiment in untried work. Almost of +course the good people began with the question, What good men shall we +keep out? for it is a curious fact, in the long and interesting history +of efforts after Christian union, that they commonly take the form of +efforts so to combine many Christians as to exclude certain others. In +this instance, beginning with the plan of including none but Protestant +Christians, they proceeded at once to frame a platform that should bar +out that "great number of the best and holiest men in England who are +found among the Quakers," thus making up, "designedly and with their +eyes open, a schismatic unity--a unity composed of one part of God's +elect, to the exclusion of another; and this in a grand effort after the +very unity of the body of Christ."[409:1] But in spite of this and other +like mistakes, or rather because of them (for it is through its mistakes +that the church is to learn the right way), the early and unsuccessful +beginnings of the Evangelical Alliance marked a stage in the slow +progress toward a "manifestation of the sons of God" by their love +toward each other and toward the common Lord. + +It is in large part the eager appetency for some manifestation of +interconfessional fellowship that has hastened the acceptance of such +organizations as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young +People's Society of Christian Endeavor; just as, on the other hand, it +is the conscientious fear, on the part of watchful guardians of +sectarian interests, that habitual fellowship across the boundary lines +of denominations may weaken the allegiance to the sect, which has +induced the many attempts at substituting associations constituted on a +narrower basis. But the form of organization which most comprehensively +illustrates the unity of the church is that "Charity Organization" which +has grown to be a necessity to the social life of cities and +considerable towns, furnishing a central office of mutual correspondence +and coördination to all churches and societies and persons engaged in +the Christian work of relieving poverty and distress. This central +bureau of charitable coöperation is not the less a center of catholic +fellowship for the fact that it does not shut its door against societies +not distinctively Christian, like Masonic fraternities, nor even against +societies distinctively non-Christian, like Hebrew synagogues and +"societies of ethical culture." We are coming to discover that the +essence of Christian fellowship does not consist in keeping people out. +Neither, so long as the apostolic rubric of Christian worship[410:1] +remains unaltered, is it to be denied that the fellowship thus provided +for is a fellowship in one of the sacraments of Christian service. + +A notable advance in true catholicity of communion is reported from +among the churches and scattered missions in Maine. Hitherto, in the +various movements of Christian union, it was common to attempt to disarm +the suspicions of zealous sectarians by urgent disclaimers of any intent +or tendency to infringe on the rights or interests of the several sects, +or impair their claim to a paramount allegiance from their adherents. +The Christians of Maine, facing tasks of evangelization more than +sufficient to occupy all their resources even when well economized and +squandering nothing on needless divisions and competitions, have +attained to the high grace of saying that sectarian interests must and +shall be sacrificed when the paramount interests of the kingdom of +Christ require it.[410:2] When this attainment is reached by other +souls, and many other, the conspicuous shame and scandal of American +Christianity will begin to be abated. + +Meanwhile the signs of a craving for larger fellowship continue to be +multiplied. Quite independently of practical results achieved, the mere +fact of efforts and experiments is a hopeful fact, even when these are +made in directions in which the past experience of the church has +written up "No Thoroughfare." + +I. No one need question the sincerity or the fraternal spirit with which +some important denominations have each proposed the reuniting of +Christians on the simple condition that all others should accept the +distinctive tenet for which each of these denominations has contended +against others. The present pope, holding the personal respect and +confidence of the Christian world to a higher degree than any one of his +predecessors since the Reformation (to name no earlier date), has +earnestly besought the return of all believers to a common fellowship by +their acceptance of the authority and supremacy of the Roman see. With +equal cordiality the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church have +signified their longing for restored fellowship with their brethren on +the acceptance by these of prelatical episcopacy. And the Baptists, +whose constant readiness at fraternization in everything else is +emphasized by their conscientious refraining from the sacramental sign +of communion, are not less earnest in their desire for the unification +of Christendom by the general acceptance of that tenet concerning +baptism, the widespread rejection of which debars them, reluctant, from +unrestricted fellowship with the general company of faithful men. But +while we welcome every such manifestation of a longing for union among +Christians, and honor the aspiration that it might be brought about in +one or another of these ways, in forecasting the probabilities of the +case, we recognize the extreme unlikeliness that the very formulas which +for ages have been the occasions of mutual contention and separation +shall become the basis of general agreement and lasting concord. + +II. Another indication of the craving for a larger fellowship is found +in the efforts made for large sectarian councils, representing closely +kindred denominations in more than one country. The imposing ubiquity of +the Roman Church, so impressively sustaining its claim to the title +_Catholic_, may have had some influence to provoke other denominations +to show what could be done in emulation of this sort of greatness. It +were wiser not to invite comparison at this point. No other Christian +organization, or close fellowship of organizations, can approach that +which has its seat at Rome, in the world-wideness of its presence, or +demand with so bold a challenge, + + Quæ regio in terris non nostri plena laboris? + +The representative assembly of any other body of Christians, however +widely ramified, must seem insignificant when contrasted with the real +ecumenicity of the Vatican Council. But it has not been useless for the +larger sects of Protestantism to arrange their international assemblies, +if it were for nothing more than this, that such widening of the circle +of practical fellowship may have the effect to disclose to each sect a +larger Christendom outside to which their fellowship must sooner or +later be made to reach. + +The first of these international sectarian councils was that commonly +spoken of as "the Pan-Anglican Synod," of Protestant Episcopal bishops +gathered at Lambeth by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in +1867 and thrice since. The example was bettered by the Presbyterians, +who in 1876 organized for permanence their "Pam-Presbyterian Alliance," +or "Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the world holding +the Presbyterian System." The first of the triennial general councils +of this Alliance was held at Edinburgh in 1877, "representing more +than forty-nine separate churches scattered through twenty-five +different countries, and consisting of more than twenty thousand +congregations."[413:1] The second council was held at Philadelphia, and +the third at Belfast. The idea was promptly seized by the Methodists. At +the instance of the General Conference of the United States, a +Pam-Methodist Council was held in London in 1881,--"the first Ecumenical +Methodist Conference,"--consisting of four hundred delegates, +representing twenty-eight branches of Methodism, ten in the eastern +hemisphere and eighteen in the western, including six millions of +communicants and about twenty millions of people.[413:2] Ten years +later, in 1891, a second "Methodist Ecumenical Conference" was held at +Washington. + +Interesting and useful as this international organization of sects is +capable of being made, it would be a mistake to look upon it as marking +a stage in the progress toward a manifest general unity of the church. +The tendency of it is, on the whole, in the opposite direction. + +III. If the organization of "ecumenical" sects has little tendency +toward the visible communion of saints in the American church, not much +more is to be hoped from measures for the partial consolidation of +sects, such as are often projected and sometimes realized. The healing +of the great thirty years' schism of the Presbyterian Church, in 1869, +was so vast a gain in ecclesiastical economy, and in the abatement of a +long-reeking public scandal and of a multitude of local frictions and +irritations, that none need wonder at the awakening of ardent desires +that the ten Presbyterian bodies still surviving might "find room for +all within one fold"[413:3] in a national or continental Presbyterian +Church. The seventeen Methodist bodies, separated by no differences of +polity or of doctrine that seem important to anybody but themselves, if +consolidated into one, would constitute a truly imposing body, numbering +nearly five millions of communicants and more than fifteen millions of +people; and if this should absorb the Protestant Episcopal Church (an +event the possibility of which has often been contemplated with +complacency), with its half-million of communicants and its elements of +influence far beyond the proportion of its numbers, the result would be +an approximation to some good men's ideal of a national church, with its +army of ministers coördinated by a college of bishops, and its _plebs +adunata sacerdoti_. Consultations are even now in progress looking +toward the closer fellowship of the Congregationalists and the +Disciples. The easy and elastic terms of internal association in each of +these denominations make it the less difficult to adjust terms of mutual +coöperation and union. Suppose that the various Baptist organizations +were to discover that under their like congregational government there +were ways in which, without compromising or weakening in the slightest +their protest against practices which they reprobate in the matter of +baptism, they could, for certain defined purposes, enter into the same +combination, the result would be a body of nearly five millions of +communicants, not the less strong for being lightly harnessed and for +comprehending wide diversities of opinion and temperament. In all this +we have supposed to be realized nothing more than friends of Christian +union have at one time or another urged as practicable and desirable. By +these few and, it would seem, not incongruous combinations there would +be four powerful ecclesiastical corporations,--one Catholic and three +Protestant,--which, out of the twenty millions of church communicants in +the United States, would include more than seventeen and one half +millions.[415:1] + +The pondering of these possibilities is pertinent to this closing +chapter on account of the fact that, as we near the end of the +nineteenth century, one of the most distinctly visible tendencies is the +tendency toward the abatement of sectarian division in the church. It is +not for us simply to note the converging lines of tendency, without some +attempt to compute the point toward which they converge. There is grave +reason to doubt whether this line of the consolidation or confederation +of sects, followed never so far, would reach the desired result. + +If the one hundred and forty-three sects enumerated in the eleventh +census of the United States[415:2] should by successful negotiation be +reduced to four, distinguished each from the others by strongly marked +diversities of organization and of theological statement, and united to +each other only by community of the one faith in Jesus Christ, doubtless +it would involve some important gains. It would make it possible to be +rid of the friction and sometimes the clash of much useless and +expensive machinery, and to extinguish many local schisms that had been +engendered by the zeal of some central sectarian propaganda. Would it +tend to mitigate the intensity of sectarian competition, or would it +tend rather to aggravate it? Is one's pride in his sect, his zeal for +the propagation of it, his jealousy of any influence that tends to +impair its greatness or hinder its progress, likely to be reduced, or is +it rather likely to be exalted, by the consciousness that the sect is a +very great sect, standing alone for important principles? Whatever +there is at present of asperity in the emulous labors of the competing +denominations, would it not be manifold exasperated if the competition +were restricted to four great corporations or confederations? If the +intestine conflict of the church of Christ in America should even be +narrowed down (as many have devoutly wished) to two contestants,--the +Catholic Church with its diversity of orders and rites, on the one hand, +and Protestantism with its various denominations solidly confederated, +on the other,--should we be nearer to the longed-for achievement of +Christian union? or should we find sectarian animosities thereby raised +to the highest power, and the church, discovering that it was on the +wrong track for the desired terminus, compelled to reverse and back in +order to be switched upon the right one? + +Questions like these, put to be considered, not to be answered, raise in +the mind the misgiving that we have been seeking in diplomatic +negotiations between high contracting parties that which diplomacy can +do only a little toward accomplishing. The great aim is to be sought in +humbler ways. It is more hopeful to begin at the lower end. Not in great +towns and centers of ecclesiastical influence, but in villages and +country districts, the deadly effects of comminuted fracture in the +church are most deeply felt. It is directly to the people of such +communities, not through the medium of persons or committees that +represent national sectarian interests, that the new commandment is to +be preached, which yet is no new commandment, but the old commandment +which they have had from the beginning. It cannot always be that sincere +Christian believers, living together in a neighborhood in which the +ruinous effects of division are plain to every eye, shall continue to +misapprehend or disregard some of the tenderest and most unmistakable +counsels of their Lord and his apostles, or imagine the authority of +them to be canceled by the authority of any sect or party of Christians. +The double fallacy, first, that it is a Christian's prime duty to look +out for his own soul, and, secondly, that the soul's best health is to +be secured by sequestering it from contact with dissentient opinions, +and indulging its tastes and preferences wherein they differ from those +of its neighbor, must sometime be found out and exposed. The discovery +will be made that there is nothing in the most cherished sermons and +sacraments and prayers that is comparable in value, as a means of grace, +with the giving up of all these for God's reign and righteousness--that +he who will save his soul shall lose it, and he who will lose his soul +for Christ and his gospel shall save it to life eternal. These centuries +of church history, beginning with convulsive disruptions of the church +in Europe, with persecutions and religious wars, present before us the +importation into the New World of the religious divisions and +subdivisions of the Old, and the further division of these beyond any +precedent in history. It begins to look as if in this "strange work" God +had been grinding up material for a nobler manifestation of the unity of +his people. The sky of the declining century is red with promise. +Hitherto, not the decay of religious earnestness only, but the revival +of it, has brought into the church, not peace, but division. When next +some divine breathing of spiritual influence shall be wafted over the +land, can any man forbid the hope that from village to village the +members of the disintegrated and enfeebled church of Christ may be +gathered together "with one accord in one place" not for the transient +fervors of the revival only, but for permanent fellowship in work and +worship? A few examples of this would spread their influence through the +American church "until the whole was leavened." + +The record of important events in the annals of American Christianity +may well end with that wholly unprecedented gathering at Chicago in +connection with the magnificent celebration of the four hundredth +anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus--I mean, of course, +the Parliament of Religions. In a land which bears among the nations the +reproach of being wholly absorbed in devotion to material interests, and +in which the church, unsupported and barely recognized by the state, and +unregulated by any secular authority, scatters itself into what seem to +be hopelessly discordant fragments, a bold enterprise was undertaken in +the name of American Christianity, such as the church in no other land +of Christendom would have had the power or the courage to venture on. +With large hospitality, representatives of all the religions of the +world were invited to visit Chicago, free of cost, as guests of the +Parliament. For seventeen days the Christianity of America, and of +Christendom, and of Christian missions in heathen lands, sat +confronted--no, not confronted, but side by side on the same +platform--with the non-Christian religions represented by their priests, +prelates, and teachers. Of all the diversities of Christian opinion and +organization in America nothing important was unrepresented, from the +authoritative dogmatic system and the solid organization of the Catholic +Church (present in the person of its highest official dignitaries) to +the broadest liberalism and the most unrestrained individualism. There +were those who stood aloof and prophesied that nothing could come of +such an assemblage but a hopeless jangle of discordant opinions. The +forebodings were disappointed. The diverse opinions were there, and were +uttered with entire unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. +It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the +unchristian and antichristian powers, and in presence of those solemn +questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the +resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity +with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by +the binding force of its antecedents, might have seemed to some most +hopelessly isolated from the common sympathies of the assembly, like all +the rest was faithful in the assertion of its claims, and, on the other +hand, was surpassed by none in the manifestation of fraternal respect +toward fellow-Christians of other folds. Since those seventeen wonderful +September days of 1893, the idea that has so long prevailed with +multitudes of minds, that the only Christian union to be hoped for in +America must be a union to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Church +and in antagonism to it, ought to be reckoned an idea obsolete and +antiquated. + + * * * * * + +The theme prescribed for this volume gives no opportunity for such a +conclusion as the literary artist delights in--a climax of achievement +and consummation, or the catastrophe of a decline and fall. We have +marked the sudden divulging to the world of the long-kept secret of +divine Providence; the unveiling of the hidden continent; the progress +of discovery, of conquest, of colonization; the planting of the church; +the rush of immigration; the occupation of the continent with Christian +institutions by a strange diversity of sects; the great providential +preparations as for some "divine event" still hidden behind the curtain +that is about to rise on the new century,--and here the story breaks off +half told. + + * * * * * + +To so many of his readers as shall have followed him to this last page +of the volume, the author would speak a parting word. He does not +deprecate the criticisms that will certainly be pronounced upon his +work by those competent to judge both of the subject and of the style of +it. He would rather acknowledge them in advance. No one of his critics +can possibly have so keen a sense as the author himself of his +incompetency, and of the inadequacy of his work, to the greatness of the +subject. To one reproach, however, he cannot acknowledge himself justly +liable: he is not self-appointed to a task beyond his powers and +attainments, but has undertaken it at the instance of eminent men to +whose judgment he was bound to defer. But he cannot believe that even +his shortcomings and failures will be wholly fruitless. If they shall +provoke some really competent scholar to make a book worthy of so great +and inspiring a theme, the present author will be well content. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[400:1] These statistical figures are taken from the authoritative work +of Dr. H. K. Carroll, "The Religious Forces of the United States" +(American Church History Series, vol. i.). The volume gives no estimate +of the annual expenditure for the maintenance of religious institutions. +If we assume the small figure of $500 as the average annual expenditure +in connection with each house of worship, it makes an aggregate of +$82,648,500 for parochial expenses. The annual contributions to +Protestant foreign and home missions amount to $7,000,000. (See above, +pp. 358, 359.) The amounts annually contributed as free gifts for +Christian schools and colleges and hospitals and other charitable +objects can at present be only conjectured. + +[402:1] The "Federalist," No. 51. + +[404:1] "This habit of respecting one another's rights cherishes a +feeling of mutual respect and courtesy. If on the one hand the spirit of +independence fosters individualism, on the other it favors good +fellowship. All sects are equal before the law.... Hence one great cause +of jealousy and distrust is removed; and though at times sectarian zeal +may lead to rivalries and controversies unfavorable to unity, on the +other hand the independence and equality of the churches favor their +voluntary coöperation; and in no country is the practical union of +Christians more beautifully or more beneficially exemplified than in the +United States. With the exception of the Roman Catholics, Christians of +all communions are accustomed to work together in the spirit of mutual +concession and confidence, in educational, missionary, and philanthropic +measures for the general good. The motto of the state holds of the +church also, _E pluribus unum_. As a rule, a bigoted church or a fierce +sectarian is despised" (Dr. J. P. Thompson, in "Church and State in the +United States," pp. 98, 99). See, to the like purport, the judicious +remarks of Mr. Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., pp. 568, 664. + +[405:1] Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., p. 568. + +[405:2] 1 Cor. i. 10. + +[406:1] See above, pp. 61, 95, 190, 206, 220, 258. + +[406:2] See above, pp. 252-259. + +[406:3] Among the New England Congregationalists the zeal for union went +so far as to favor combination with other sects even in the work of +training candidates for the ministry. Among the "honorary +vice-presidents" of their "American Education Society" was Bishop +Griswold, of the Eastern Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church. + +[407:1] Sermon at consecration of Bishop H. U. Onderdonk, 1827. + +[407:2] Minutes of the Convention of Delegates met to consult on +Missions in the City of Cincinnati, A.D. 1831. The position of the +bishop was more logical than that of the convention, forasmuch as he +held, by a powerful effort of faith, that "his own" church is the church +of the United States, in an exclusive sense; while the divines at +Cincinnati earnestly repudiate such exclusive pretensions for their +church, and hold to a plurality of sectarian churches on the same +territory, each one of which is divinely invested with the prerogatives +and duties of "the church of Christ." A _usus loquendi_ which seems to +be hopelessly imbedded in the English language applies the word "church" +to each one of the several sects into which the church is divided. It is +this corruption of language which leads to the canonization of schism as +a divine ordinance. + +[408:1] The first proposal for such an assembly seems to be contained in +an article by L. Bacon in the "New Englander" for April, 1844. "Why +might there not be, ere long, some general conference in which the +various evangelical bodies of this country and Great Britain and of the +continent of Europe should be in some way represented, and in which the +great cause of reformed and spiritual Christianity throughout the world +should be made the subject of detailed and deliberate consideration, +with prayer and praise? That would be an 'ecumenical council' such as +never yet assembled since the apostles parted from each other at +Jerusalem--a council not for legislation and division, but for union and +communion and for the extension of the saving knowledge of Christ" (pp. +253, 254). + +[409:1] See the pungent strictures of Horace Bushnell on "The +Evangelical Alliance," in the "New Englander" for January, 1847, p. 109. + +[410:1] James i. 27: "Pure and unpolluted worship, in the eye of God, +consists in visiting widows and orphans in their tribulation, and +keeping one's self spotless from the world." + +[410:2] An agreement has been made, in this State, among five leading +denominations, to avoid competing enterprises in sparsely settled +communities. An interdenominational committee sees to the carrying out +of this policy. At a recent mutual conference unanimous satisfaction was +expressed in the six years' operation of the plan. + +[413:1] "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. i., p. 63. + +[413:2] Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 552. + +[413:3] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 308. + +[415:1] If the Lutherans of America were to be united with the +Presbyterians, it would be no more than was accomplished fourscore years +ago in Prussia. In that case, out of 20,618,307 communicants, there +would be included in the four combinations, 18,768,859. + +[415:2] Dr. Carroll, "Religious Forces," p. xv. + + + + +INDEX. + + +Abbot, Ezra, 379. + +Abbot, George, Archbishop, 42. + +Abbott, Lyman, 384. + +Abolitionists, 82, 282, 284. + +Adams, Charles Francis, 131. + +Adventists, 336. + +Albany, 69. + +Albrights, 229. + +Alexander, Dr. Gross, 348. + +Alexander VI., pope, 3, 17. + +Allen, Professor A. V. G., 156, 159, 382. + +Allen, Professor J. H., 250. + +Alliance, Evangelical, 408. + +America: + providential concealment of, 1; + medieval church in, 2; + Spanish conquests and missions in, 6-15; + French occupation and missions, 16-29; + English colonies in, 38-67, 82-126; + Dutch and Swedes in, 68-81; + churches of New England, 88; + Quaker colonization, 109-117; + other colonists, 120-124; + diverse sects, 127-139; + Great Awakening, 157-180; + Presbyterians, 186; + Reformed, 187; + Lutheran, 188; + Moravian, 189; + Methodist, 198; + severance of colonies from England and of church from state, 221; + Second Awakening, 233; + organized beneficence, 246; + conflicts of the church, 261; + dissension and schism, 292; + immigration, 315; + the church in the Civil War, 340; + reconstruction and expansion of the church, 351; + theology and literature, 374; + political union and ecclesiastical division, 398; + tendencies toward unity, 405. + +American Bible Society, 256, 408. + +American Board of Missions, 252-255. + +American Missionary Association, 255, 314. + +Andover Theological Seminary, 251, 271. + +Andrew, Bishop, 302. + +Andrews, E. B., 340. + +Andrews, W. G., 177, 179. + +Anglican Church established in American colonies, 51, 61, 64, 65. + +Antipopery agitation, 312, 325. + +Antislavery. See Slavery. + +"Apostasy, the southern," 277, 346. + +"Applied Christianity," 385. + +Apprenticeship obsolete, 364. + +Arminianism, 104, 222. + +Armstrong, General S. C., 356. + +Asbury, Bishop Francis, 200. + +Awakening, the Great, 53, 81, 126, 141, 157, 181. + +Awakening, the Second, 233, 242. + + +Bachman, John, 278. + +Bacon, B. W., 380. + +Bacon, David, 246. + +Bacon, Francis, 40. + +Bacon, Leonard, 84, 94, 102, 113, 134, 227, 260, 272, 278, 287, 408. + +Bacon, Nathaniel, 63. + +Baird, Charles W. and Henry M., 388. + +Baltimore, first Lord, 54; + second Lord, 56. + +Bancroft, George, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 41, 116, 117, 383. + +Baptist Young People's Union, 369. + +Baptists: + in Virginia, 53; + in Carolina, 64; + in Rhode Island, 106; + in Massachusetts, 130; + in Pennsylvania, 146; + in the South, 149; + services to religious liberty, 221; + antislavery, 222; + become Calvinists, 223; + found Brown University, 248; + undertake foreign missions, 253; + divide on slavery, 303; + pioneer work, 332; + plan of Christian union, 411. + +Barclay, Robert, 112, 117. + +Barnes, Albert, 294. + +Baxter, George A., 237. + +Baxter, Richard, 66, 121. + +Beecher, Edward, 294, 383. + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 341, 351, 384. + +Beecher, Lyman, 230, 243, 251, 263, 286, 294, 383. + +Belcher, Governor, 168. + +Bellamy, Joseph, 156, 181. + +Bellomont, Lord, 79. + +Bellows, Henry W., 383. + +Benezet, Anthony, 203. + +Bennett, Philip, 48. + +Bennett, Richard, 50. + +Berkeley, Governor Sir William, 49, 50, 51, 63. + +Bethlehem, Pa., 189. + +Biblical science, 378. + +Birney, James G., 273, 274, 275, 283. + +Bishops, Anglican, consecrated, 213, 304. + +Bishops, Catholic, consecrated, 215. + +Bishops, colonial, not wanted, 206. + +Bishops, Methodist, consecrated, 219. + +Bishops, Moravian, 124, 193. + +Bissell, Edwin C., 380. + +Blair, Commissary, 52. + +Blair, Samuel, 160, 167. + +Blake, Joseph, 63. + +Boehm, Martin, 228. + +Bogardus, Everard, 70. + +Boyle, Robert, 66. + +Bradford, Governor William, 94, 97. + +Brainerd, David, 180, 183, 247. + +Bray, Thomas, 61, 62, 66. + +Breckinridge, Robert J., 281, 378. + +Brewster, Edward, 43, 44. + +Brewster, William, 44, 83. + +Briggs, Charles A., 380. + +Brooks, Phillips, 384. + +Brown, Francis, 379. + +Brown, Tutor, 131. + +Browne, J. and S., at Salem, 97. + +Browne, W. H., 55, 59. + +Bryce, James, 404, 405. + +Buck, Richard, 42, 44. + +Buckley, James M., 201, 202, 218, 219, 240, 241. + +Buckminster, 251, 383. + +Bushnell, Horace, 105, 176, 375, 383, 409. + + +Cahenslyism, 392. + +Calvert, Cecilius, 56. + +Calvert, George, 54, 55. + +Calvert, Leonard and George, 56, 59. + +Calvinism: + in New England, 103, 225; + among Baptists, 223; + in the Presbyterian Church, 294. + +Campanius, John, 76, 150. + +Campbell, Douglas, 74. + +Campbellites, 242. + +Camp-meetings, 233. + +Canada, 18-29. + +Cane Ridge revival, 235. + +Carolinas colonized, 62. + +Carroll, Bishop John, 214. + +Carroll, Dr. H. K., 335, 369. + +Cartier, Jacques, 17. + +Cartwright, Peter, 232. + +Catholic Church, Roman: + Revived and reformed in sixteenth century, 4. + Spanish missions a failure, 10-14. + French missions, their wide extension and final collapse, 17-29. + Persecuted in England, 36. + In Maryland, 56. + Way prepared for, 185. + Organized for United States, 215. + Conflict with "trusteeism," 216, 310; + with fanaticism, 312. + Gain and loss by immigration, 318-322. + Modified in America, 323-396. + Methods of propagation, 330. + Its literature, 394. + Its relation to the Church Catholic, 324, 416, 418. + +Cavaliers in Virginia, 51. + +Champlain, 17, 20, 28. + +Channing, William Ellery, 251, 301, 383. + +Charity Organization, 409. + +Charles II. of England, 51, 62, 78. + +Charter: + of Massachusetts, 90; + transferred to America, 98. + +Charter of the Virginia Company: + revoked, 48. + +Chauncy, Charles, 170. + +Chautauqua, 233, 363. + +Cherokee nation, 265. + +Chickasaws and Choctaws, 23. + +Chinese immigration, 336. + +Church polity in New England, 88, 95, 99, 102. + +Clark, Francis E., 368. + +Clarke, James Freeman, 383. + +Clergy: + of Virginia, 52; + of Maryland, 61. + +Cleveland, Aaron, 204. + +College settlement, 370. + +Colleges, 48, 52, 102, 160, 172, 173, 176, 231, 247, 271. + +Colonization in Africa, 257. + +Congregationalists: + in New England, 99; + in New Jersey, 109; + moving west, 137; + coöperate with Presbyterians, 220; + college-builders, 333; + work at the South, 355. + +Conservatism of American churches, 311. + +Copland, Patrick, 47, 48, 50. + +Cornbury, Lord, 80, 121, 135, 141. + +Corwin, E. T., 69, 71, 78, 80, 121, 139. + +Covenanters in New Jersey, 110. + +Cumberland Presbyterians, 241. + +Cutler, Timothy, 131, 156, 169. + + +Dabney, Robert L., 378. + +Dale, Sir Thomas, 43, 45. + +Davenport, James, 170. + +Davenport, John, 49, 102. + +Davies, Samuel, 173. + +Deerfield, 21. + +De la Warr, Lord, 41, 43. + +Dewey, Orville, 383. + +Dickinson, Jonathan, 160, 294. + +Disciples, 242, 414. + +Divisions of Christendom, 31. + +Dominicans, 9, 10, 32. + +Dorchester, Daniel, 322, 335, 357, 358, 359, 361. + +Douglas, Stephen A., 341. + +Dow, Lorenzo, 240. + +Drunkenness prevalent, 286. + +Dubbs, Joseph H., 121. + +Dudley, Governor, 98. + +Dueling, 263. + +Duffield, George, 294. + +Dunster, President, 130. + +Durand, William, 49. + +Durbin, David P., 240. + +Dutch church, 68, 78, 109, 134. + +Dutch in Carolina, 64. + +"Dutch, Pennsylvania," 118. + +Dwight, Timothy, 230, 242, 375, 387. + + +Eaton, Theophilus, 102. + +Eddy, Richard, 225, 228. + +Edmundson, William, 64. + +Edwards, Jonathan, 156, 169, 172, 179, 247, 294. + +Edwards, Jonathan, the younger, 222, 225, 273. + +Elder, M. T., 322, 331. + +Eleuthera colony, 50. + +Eliot, John, 66, 102, 150, 152. + +Embury, Philip, 199. + +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 298, 383. + +Emmons, Nathanael, 251, 305, 375. + +Endicott, John, 90, 93, 94. + +England, religious parties in, 33, 43. + +Episcopal Church: + in Virginia, 38-53; + in Maryland, 60; + in Carolina, 64-67, 148; + in New York, 78-80, 135; + in Pennsylvania, 119; + in Georgia, 124; + in New England, 128, 129, 131-134; + hostile to revivals, 177, 306; + extreme depression, 210; + consecration of bishops, 212; + resuscitation, 304; + violent controversy, 306; + rapid growth, 308; + specialties of, in evangelization, 334; + reconstruction after Civil War, 352; + Pan-Anglican Synod, 412. + +Epworth League, 369. + +Establishment of religion: + in Virginia, 45, 51-53; + in Maryland, 61; + in the Carolinas, 64, 65, 148; + in New York, 78-80; + in New England, 91, 97, 100, 102, 128, 129. + Disestablishment, 174, 221. + +Evangelical Association, 229. + +Evangelization at the South, 356. + +Evangelization at the West, 327. + +Evarts, Jeremiah, 267, 271, 286. + +Exscinding Acts, 167, 297, 353. + + +Fanaticism of Spanish church, 4, 8. + +Fanaticism, antipopery, 60, 61, 312. + +Finney, Charles G., 375. + +Fisher, George Park, 182, 382. + +Fisher, Sidney George, 118, 120, 143-145. + +Fitch, John, 150. + +Fletcher, Governor, 79, 80. + +Florida, 9, 10, 22. + +Foster, R. V., 236, 238. + +Fox, George, 34, 65, 114, 117, 149. + +Franciscans, 10, 11, 12, 32. + +Franklin, Benjamin, 118. + +Fraser, John, 335. + +Frelinghuysen, Domine, 81, 134, 141, 142, 163. + +Frelinghuysen, Senator, 267. + +French missions: + projected, 17; + extinguished, 185, 220. + +Fuller, Dr. and Deacon, 94. + + +Gates, Sir Thomas, 42. + +Georgia, 122, 205, 264, 285. + +German exiles, 53, 139. + +German immigration, 117, 120, 187, 318. + +Gladden, Washington, 385. + +Gosnold, Bartholomew, 38. + +Gough, John B., 289. + +Great fortunes and great gifts, 359. + +Greatorex's collection, 393. + +Green, Ashbel, 204. + +Green, S. S., 122. + +Green, W. H., 380. + +Gregory, Caspar René, 379. + +Griffin, Edward Dorr, 251, 383. + +Griswold, Alexander V., 304. + +Gurley, R. R., 273. + + +Hale, Edward Everett, 367, 386. + +Half-way Covenant, 104. + +Hall, Isaac H., 379. + +Hamilton, J. Taylor, 190, 198. + +Hampton Institute, 356. + +Hand, Daniel, 360. + +Hard times in 1857, 342. + +Harrison, Thomas, 49, 50, 60. + +Hart, Levi, 204. + +Hastings, Thomas, 387, 392. + +Haupt, Bible-work, 380. + +Haverhill, Mass., 21. + +Hawkins, John, 289. + +Helps, Arthur, 7, 8. + +Higginson, Francis, 90. + +High-church party: + in Episcopal Church, 306, 308, 323, 407; + in Presbyterian Church, 295, 407. + +Hill, Matthew, 121. + +Hilprecht, Dr., 379. + +Historical theology, 381. + +Hitchcock, Roswell D., 382. + +Hobart, John Henry, 304, 407. + +Hodge, Charles, 378, 381. + +Holland: + colony from, in New York, 68; + not the source of New England institutions, 74; + Pilgrims in, 86; + mission from, to Germans, 194. + +Hooker, Thomas, 102, 138. + +Hopkins, Samuel, 151, 181, 183, 184, 204, 205. + +Hopkins, Stephen, 44. + +Hopkinsianism, 294. + +Hudson, Henry, 68. + +Hughes, John, 310, 351. + +Huguenots, 37, 53, 62, 64, 65, 81, 139. + +Humphrey, Heman, 286. + +Hunt, Robert, 38, 41. + +Huntington, Frederic D., 384. + +Hurst, John F., 382. + +Hutchinson, Ann, 101, 106. + +Hymn-writers, 387. + + +Indians: + evangelization of, 46, 47, 57, 71, 74, 76, 150, 151, 179, 246; + Indian churches, 131. + +Induction refused to unworthy parsons, 51. + +Immigration, 315, 317, 357. + +Infidelity, 219, 230. + +Institutional Church, 369. + +Intemperance, 75, 205, 285. + +International sectarian councils, 412. + +Ireland, 318. + +Iroquois, 20, 23, 25. + + +Jackson, Helen Hunt, 264. + +Jacobs, Henry E., 71, 121, 188, 190, 196, 198. + +James I. of England, 36, 38, 44, 47, 48, 90. + +James II. of England, 110, 112. + +Jamestown, 30-45. + +Jarratt, Devereux, 173. + +Jefferson, Thomas, 221, 230, 305. + +Jerks, the, 239, 240. + +Jesuits, 4, 10, 26, 28, 29, 32, 56, 57, 58, 71, 150, 214. + +Jogues, Father, 71, 150. + +Johnson, President Samuel, 132. + +Johnson, Thomas Cary, 297, 314, _note_, 354. + +Journalism, 333, 344. + +Judson, Adoniram, 253. + + +Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 284, 341. + +Kansas Crusade, 341. + +Keith, George, 119, 133, 149. + +Keith, Governor, 120. + +Kieft, Governor, 70, 71. + +King, Thomas Starr, 383. + +King's Chapel, Boston, 224. + +Kirby, William, 294. + +Kirk, Edward Norris, 383. + +Knapp, Jacob, 288. + + +Lanphier, Jeremiah, 342. + +La Salle, 18. + +Las Casas, 9, 152. + +Laud, William, 48. + +Lea, Henry Charles, 382. + +Leon, Ponce de, 9. + +Leyden, 45, 83, 86. + +Liberty, religious: + in Eleuthera, 50; + in Maryland, 56, 59; + in Carolina, 63; + in New York, 72; + in New Jersey, 111; + in Pennsylvania, 116; + in Georgia, 123; + defended by Makemie, 136; + favored by sectarian division, 174; + promoted by Baptists, 221. + +Literature of American church, 374-395. + +Littledale, R. F., 26, 27, 28. + +Liturgies, 386, 394. + +Locke, John, 62, 64. + +Lodge, H. C., 62, 70, 117, 153. + +Log College, 142, 160, 162, 172. + +Logan County, Kentucky, 232, 234. + +Louisiana, 23, 27, 220. + +Lutherans, 72, 120, 146, 188, 190, 232. + +Luther League, 369. + + +Madison, James, Bishop, 232. + +Madison, James, President, 402. + +Maine, 20, 21, 23, 410. + +Makemie, Francis, 121, 136. + +Maria Monk, 312. + +Marshall, John, 232. + +Maryland, 49, 54-62. + +Mason, John M., 263. + +Mason, Lowell, 392. + +Massacres, 2, 10, 11, 12, 48, 71, 76, 151, 194. + +Mather, Cotton, 107, 153. + +Mayhews, the, 150. + +McConnell, S. D., 151, 170, 179, 211, 224. + +McGee brothers, 233. + +McGready, James, 233. + +McIlvaine, C. P., 351. + +McMasters, John Bach, 240. + +Megapolensis, Domine, 71, 77, 150. + +Menendez, 10. + +Mennonites, 72, 117, 153. + +Mercersburg theology, 377, 388. + +Methodism: + tardy arrival in America, 198; + spreads southward, 201; + rapid growth, 202; + against slavery and intemperance, 205; + receives bishops, 219; + divided by the slavery agitation, 301; + in pioneer work, 332; + at the South, 353; + Ecumenical Conference, 413; + consolidation of Methodist sects, 414. + +Michaelius, Jonas, 69. + +Millerism, 336. + +Mills, Samuel J., 248, 256. + +Minuit, Peter, 69, 70, 76. + +Missionary societies, 62, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 367. + +Missions, American: + to Indians, 179, 246, 265; + to the West, 220, 327; + to the South, 355. + +Missions, foreign, 252, 255, 257, 358. + +Missions to America: + Icelandic, 2; + Spanish, 6-16; + French, 17-29; + of the S. P. G., 62, 66, 67, 80, 126, 131, 133, 135, 140, 177; + of the church of Holland, 195. + +Missionary Ridge, 268. + +Mississippi, the, 18, 21, 256. + +Missouri Compromise, 270, 271, 284. + +Mobs: + antipopery, 321; + pro-slavery, 283. + +Montesinos, 9. + +Montreal, 17, 20. + +Moody, Dwight L., 344, 388. + +Moor, Thoroughgood, 135. + +Moore, George Foot, 380. + +Moravians: in Georgia, 124; + in Pennsylvania, 189, 193; + missions to Indians, 194; + their liturgies, 394. + +Mormonism, 335. + +Morris, Colonel, 79. + +Morris, Samuel, 173. + +Morse, Jedidiah, 251. + +Morton, Thomas, 88. + +Mühlenberg, Henry M., 191-198. + +Mulford, Elisha, 378. + +Munger, Theodore T., 384. + +Murray, John, 225. + +Music, church, 391, 394. + + +Nansemond church, 48, 49, 59. + +Nationalism of the Puritans, 100, 101, 128, 132, 137, 176. + +Native American party, 313, 321. + +Neill, E. D., 44, 51, 59. + +Neshaminy, 142. + +Nevin, John W., 377. + +Newark, 110, 160. + +New Brunswick, 162. + +New England Company, 66. + +New England theology, 181, 374. + +New Englanders moving west, 80, 137. + +New Haven theology, 294, 298. + +New Jersey, 109-112. + +New Jerusalem Church, 229. + +New Londonderry, 160. + +Newman, A. H., 131, 255, 275. + +New Mexico, 6, 11. + +New-School Presbyterians, 294, 346, 355. + +New-Side Presbyterians, 166. + +New York, 68-81; + diversity of sects, 134. + +Nicholson, Governor, 52. + +Nicolls, Governor, 78. + +Nitschmann, David, 124, 193. + +Northampton, 104, 155-159. + +Norton, Andrews, 299. + +Nott, Eliphalet, 263. + +Nursing orders and schools, 368. + + +Oberlin College, 314. + +Occum, Samson, 179. + +Oglethorpe, James, 123. + +O'Gorman, Bishop, 2, 15, 23, 24, 28, 216, 312, 321, 396. + +Old-School Presbyterians, 295, 345, 353. + +Old-Side Presbyterians, 166. + +Orders in Roman Church, 330. + +Ordination in New England, 96, 100. + +Otis, Deacon, 360. + +Otterbein, Philip William, 228. + + +Paine, Thomas, 230. + +Palatines, 37, 53, 118, 140, 187. + +Palfrey, John G., 98, 99, 100, 383. + +Palmer, Ray, 387. + +Pam-Methodist Conference, 413. + +Pam-Presbyterian Alliance, 412. + +Pan-Anglican Synod, 412. + +Park, Edwards A., 151, 182, 184, 204, 305, 375. + +Parker, Theodore, 300. + +Parkman, Francis, 18. + +Parliament of Religions, 418. + +Pastorius, 117. + +Penn, William, 112, 115, 143. + +Persecutions, 36, 51, 107, 110, 130. + +Pierpont, James, 81. + +Pierpont, Sarah, 156. + +Pierson, Abraham, 109, 150. + +Pilgrims, 45, 83, 84, 86, 88, 93. + +Plan of Union, 220, 258, 293. + +Pocahontas, 46. + +Pond, Enoch, 378. + +Population of United States: + in 1790, 315; + in 1850, _ibid._ + +Porter, Ebenezer, 286. + +Pott, Governor, 55. + +Presbyterians: + in Scotland and Ireland, 37, 110; + in America, 110, 121; + in New York, 136; + schism among, 166; + rapid growth, 186; + alliance with Congregationalists, 206; + earnestly antislavery, 268; + dissensions among, 292; + the great schism, 296; + characteristics as a sect, 332; + new schisms and reunions, 346, 353, 355; + liturgical movement, 388; + early unproductiveness in theology and literature, 394; + international alliance, 412. + +Princeton College, 173, 175. + +Princeton Seminary, 251, 380. + +Prohibitory legislation, 290. + +Protestant sects and Catholic orders, 330-334. + +Protestantism in Europe divided, 31-34. + +Provoost, Bishop, 212, 213, 232. + +Psalmody, 182, 387, 391-393. + +Pulpit, the American, 382. + +Puritan jurisprudence, 113; + sabbatarian extravagance provokes reaction, 371. + +Puritans: + not Separatists, 43; + in Virginia, 44-50; + in Maryland, 59; + antagonize the Separatists, 82; + settle at Salem, 90; + fraternize with the Pilgrims, 94; + church order, 96; + the great Puritan exodus bringing the charter, 98; + intend an established church, 100; + exclude factious dissenters, 101; + divergences of opinion, 103; + in New Jersey, 109; + Puritan church establishments fail, 108, 128, 174; + Nationalist principle succumbs to Separatist, 176. + + +Quakerism: + a reaction from Puritanism, 113; + its enthusiasm, 114; + its discipline, 114; + anticipated in continental Europe, 115; + Keith's schism, 119; + Quaker jurisprudence, 143; + failure in civil government, 144; + and in pastoral work, 145; + its sole and faithful witness at the South, 149; + the only organized church fellowship uniting the colonies, 150; + Hicksite schism, 314. + +Quakers: + persecuted in England, 36; + in Virginia, 51, 53; + missions in Carolina, 64; + persecuted in New York, 73; + and in Massachusetts, 101; + dominant in New Jersey, 110; + and in Pennsylvania, 116; + excluded from Evangelical Alliance, 408. + +_Quanta Cura_, bull, with Syllabus, 352, 396. + +Quebec, 17, 20. + + +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 39, 62. + +Redemptioners, 187. + +Reformation in Spain, 4. + +Reformed Church, German: + begins too late the care of German immigrants, 140; + long unorganized, 146; + persists in separation from other German Christians, 195. + +Reformed-drunkard ethics, 290. + +Reformed Dutch Church: + tardy birth in New York, 69; + and languishing life, 74, 78; + revival under Frelinghuysen, 81, 134, 141, 163. + +Relly, James, 225. + +_Requerimiento_ of the Spanish, 9. + +Restoration of the Stuarts, 51. + +Revival of 1857, 342. + +Revival of Roman Catholic Church, 214. + +Rhode Island, 92, 106, 107. + +Rice, David, 237. + +Rice, Luther, 253. + +Ripley, George, 299. + +Rising, Governor, 77. + +Robinson, Edward, 378. + +Robinson, John, 83, 85, 86, 92. + +Robinson, "One-eyed," 173. + +Rolfe, John, 46. + +Roman Catholic. See Catholic. + +Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 87. + +Rush, Benjamin, 226, 286. + +Ryan, Archbishop, 324. + + +Sabbath observance, 371. + +St. Andrew's Brotherhood, 369. + +St. Augustine, 10. + +St. Lawrence, the, 17. + +Salem, 90, 96. + +Saloons, tippling, 285, 288. + +Saltonstall, Gurdon, 132, 133. + +Salvation Army, 370. + +Salzburgers, 37, 124, 125. + +Sandys, Archbishop, and his sons, 44, 47. + +Satolli, Monsignor, 396. + +Saybrook Platform, 132, 137. + +Schaff, Philip, 377, 382. + +Schenectady, 21. + +Schism: + in Presbyterian Church, 167, 241, 297, 346, 353; + among Congregationalists, 249; + among Unitarians, 298; + in Methodist Church, 302, 303; + among Baptists, 303; + among Quakers, 314; + healed, 355; + compensations of, 107, 304, 354, 404. + +Schlatter, Michael, 195. + +Schools: + for Virginia, 47, 48, 52; + in New York, 70, 75; + in New England, 103; + in New Jersey, 110; + in Pennsylvania, 196. + +Scotch-Irish: + in Virginia, 47; + in Carolina, 64; + in Maryland, 121; + in Pennsylvania, 122; + in New York, 136; + in the Alleghanies, 146; + in the Awakening, 160; + principles and prejudices of, 186. + +Screven, William, 64. + +Scrooby, 44, 83. + +Seabury, Samuel, 212. + +Sects: + European imported, 31-34; + in New York, 72, 134, 140; + in Rhode Island, 106; + in New Jersey, 109; + the German, 117, 120; + multiply against established churches, 174; + enfeebling effect of, 188; + reconstruct themselves, 208; + competition of, 328; + characteristics of, 332; + multitude of, 400; + mischiefs of, 403. + +Seminaries, theological, 249. + +Separatists, 33, 44; + at Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth, 81-95; + in Rhode Island, 107; + their principle prevails, 176. + +Sewall, Samuel, 152. + +Seybert commission, 338. + +Shaftesbury, Lord, 62. + +Shedd, W. J. G., 382. + +Sisterhoods, 368. + +Slater educational fund, 357, 360. + +Slavery: + of Indians, 8, 9, 152; + of negroes, in Florida, 10; + in Virginia, 48; + in all colonies, 147; + condemned in Massachusetts, 152; + and in Pennsylvania, 153; + increased cruelty of, 153. + Kindness to slaves, 154, 179, 246, 271. + Constant and unanimous protest of the church against slavery, 203-205, + 222, 268-277. + Beginning of a pro-slavery party in the church, 277; + propagated by terror, 279-282. + Pro-slavery reaction at the North, 282. + Unanimous protests against extension of slavery, 284. + Slavery question in Presbyterian Church, 296; + in Methodist Church, 301; + in Baptist Convention, 303. + Failure of compromises, 340. + The Kansas Crusade, 341. + Apostasy of the southern church complete, 346. + Diversity of feeling among northern Christians, 347. + Slavery extinguished, 285, 351. + +Smalley, John, 225. + +Smith, Eli, 273, 378; + Henry Boynton, 381; + Henry Preserved, 380; + John, 38-42, 47; + Ralph, 90. + +Smylie, James, 277. + +Smyth, Newman, 384. + +Social science in seminaries, 369, 386. + +Societies, charitable, 252-259, 295, 407. + +Society P. C. K., 67. + +Society P. G. in Foreign Parts, 62, 67; + missions in Carolina, 67; + in New York, 80, 120, _note_, 135, 140; + in Pennsylvania, 119; + in New England, 131-133. + +Society P. G. in New England, 66. + +Sophocles, E. A., 379. + +Southampton insurrection, 279. + +Spain: + Reformation in, 3; + conquests and missions of, 7. + +Spiritualism, 337-339. + +Spotswood, Governor, 52. + +Spring, Gardiner, 353. + +Standish, Myles, 88. + +Stiles, Ezra, 204, 222. + +Stoddard, Solomon, 104, 155. + +Stone, Barton W., 234. + +Storrs, Richard S., 384. + +Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 250. + +Strawbridge, Robert, 200. + +Strong, Augustus H., 378. + +Stuart, Moses, 378. + +Sturtevant, J. M., 294. + +Stuyvesant, Peter, 71, 73, 77. + +Sumner, Charles, 283. + +Sunday observance, 371. + +Sunday-schools, 258, 362. + +Swedenborgians, 229. + +Swedes, 75-77. + +Syllabus of errors condemned by the pope, 352, 396. + +Synod: + "Reforming," 105; + Presbyterian, 136; + disrupted, 167; + excision of, 297; + of Virginia, 346. + + +Talcott, Governor, 168. + +Talmage, Thomas De Witt, 385. + +Taylor, Nathaniel W., 294, 375. + +Temperance: + efforts for, 75, 205, 206; + the Reformation, 285-291; + early legislation, 75, 288; + "Washingtonian movement," 288; + Prohibitionism, 290. + +Tennent, Gilbert, 142, 162, 165, 167, 169. + +Tennent, William, 141, 160. + +Tennent, William, Jr., 180. + +Thayer, Eli, 341, 342. + +Thayer, Joseph H., 379. + +Theological instruction, 81, 217, 249. + +Theological seminaries, 249, 251, 252. + +Theology, New England, 181, 243, 294, 355. + +Theology, systems of, 375, 378. + +Thomas, Allen C. and Richard H., 114, 139, 143. + +Thomas, John R., 393. + +Thompson, Joseph P., 404. + +Thompson, Robert Ellis, 122, 147, 176, 346, 394. + +Thomson, William M., 379. + +Thornwell, James H., 314, _note_, 378. + +Tiffany, Charles C., 65, 71, 120, 131, 134, 173, 207, 210, 213, 224, +232. + +Torkillus, Pastor, 76. + +Tracy, Joseph, 162, 169, 172, 179. + +Trumbull, Henry Clay, 362, 379. + +"Trusteeism," 215, 310. + +Tuttle, Daniel S., 335. + +Tyler, B. B., 236, 238, 242. + + +Union, Christian: + tendencies and attempts, 107, 191, 194, 206, 220, 349, 405, 406. + +Unitarianism, 224, 249, 383. + +United Brethren, 228. + +Unity, real, in the church, 175, 324, 325, 334, 419; + manifestation of it yet future, 36, 417, 419. + +Universalism, 225-228. + + +Van Twiller, Governor, 70. + +Vermont, 21. + +Vincent, John H., 363. + +Virginia, 38-53, 55, 173. + +Virginia Company, 40, 44, 48, 54. + +Voluntary system, 244, 261, 328. + +Vose, James G., 107. + + +Walker, Williston, 100, 104, 386. + +Walloons, 69. + +War: + between France and England, 21, 184; + the Seven Years', 22, 24; + Revolutionary, 202, 209; + the Civil, 348, 365; + produces schisms and healings, 353, 355. + +Ward, William Hayes, 379. + +Ware, Henry, 249, 383. + +Ware, Henry, Jr., 251, 299, 383. + +Warren, George William, 393. + +Washingtonianism, 288. + +Watts, Isaac, 158, 168, 182, 387, 391. + +Wayland, Francis, 383. + +Welsh immigrants, 118. + +Wesley, Charles, 124, 125. + +Wesley, John, 124, 159, 198, 200, 202, 217, 285. + +Westminster League, 369. + +Westminster Sabbath law, 371. + +Westward progress of church, 219, 327, 358. + +Wheelock, Eleazar, 179. + +Whitaker, Alexander, 43, 46, 150. + +White, Father, 57, 59. + +White, John, 89. + +White, Bishop William, 210, 212, 213. + +Whitefield, George, 126, 163, 168, 173, 175, 177. + +Wigglesworth, Michael, 103. + +William and Mary, College of, 52. + +Williams, Roger, 100, 106, 150. + +Williams College, 248. + +Wilson, Henry, 273, 274, 281. + +Winchester, Elhanan, 226. + +Wingfield, Governor, 39. + +Winthrop, John, 49, 98. + +Wise, John, 102. + +Women's C. T. Union, 367. + +Women's Crusade, 366. + +Women's mission boards, 367. + +Woods, Leonard, 378. + +Woolman, John, 150, 203. + + +Ximenes, Cardinal, 3. + + +Yale College, 230, 243. + +Yeo, John, 60. + +Young Men's Christian Association, 343, 364, 409. + +Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, 368, 409. + +Young Women's Christian Association, 366. + + +Zinzendorf, 124, 189, 190, 192. + + + + * * * * * + + + +The following corrections have been made to the text: + + page 32--people of England is of preëminent[original has + preeminent] importance + + page 59--feared to violate the immunities of the + church."[ending quotation mark is missing in original] + + page 188--sent messengers with an imploring petition to their + coreligionists[original has correligionists] at London and + Halle + + page 296--It was an unpardonable offense[original has offence] + + page 335-immediate adventism[original has hyphen between words] + + page 353--gendered strifes that still delay the + reintegration[original has redintegration] + + page 427--_Requerimiento_[original has Requirimiento] of the + Spanish, 9. + + Footnote 377-1--(American Church History Series,[original has + quotation mark] vol. viii.)--also, pp. 219, 220, 389-378--this + typographical error has not been corrected + +Variations in hyphenation are preserved as in the original. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: A History of American Christianity</p> +<p>Author: Leonard Woolsey Bacon</p> +<p>Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20160]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Dave Morgan, Daniel J. Mount, Lisa Reigel,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/c/">http://www.pgdp.net/c/</a>)<br /> + from digital material generously made available by the<br /> + Christian Classics Ethereal Library<br /> + (<a href="http://www.ccel.org/">http://www.ccel.org/</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ddddee;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + The digital material used for the preparation of this file, + including images of the original pages, are available through + the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. See + <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bacon_lw/history.html"> + http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bacon_lw/history.html</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<div class = "mynote"><p>Transcriber's Note:<br /><br /> +Greek words that may not display correctly in all browsers are +transliterated in the text like this: +<ins class="greekcorr" title="biblos">βιβλος</ins>. +Position your mouse over the line to see the transliteration.</p> +<p>A few typographical errors have been corrected. They have been <ins class="correction" title="like this">underlined</ins> +in red in the text. Position your mouse over the line to see the correction. A complete list of corrections follows the text.</p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h3>The American Church History Series</h3> + +<p class="center">CONSISTING OF A SERIES OF DENOMINATIONAL HISTORIES PUBLISHED UNDER THE +AUSPICES OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY</p> + + + +<div class="centered"> +<table summary="General Editors" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2"> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" style="font-weight:bold" colspan="2">General Editors</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class="smcap">Rev. Philip Schaff</span>, D. D., LL. D.</td> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Bishop John F. Hurst</span>, D. D., LL. D.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class="smcap">Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter</span>, D. D., LL. D.</td> + <td class="tdleft"><span class="smcap" style="padding-left: 2em;">Rev. E. J. Wolf</span>, D. D.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class="smcap">Rev Geo. P. Fisher</span>, D. D., LL. D.</td> + <td class="tdleft"><span class="smcap" style="padding-left: 2em;">Henry C. Vedder</span>, M. A.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Rev. Samuel M. Jackson</span>, D. D., LL. D.</td> +</tr> +</table></div> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Volume XIII</span></p> + +<h3>American Church History</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1>A HISTORY<br /> + +OF<br /> + +AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY</h1> + +<p class="gap"> </p> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON</h2> + + +<p class="littlegap"> </p> +<h4>New York<br /> +The Christian Literature Co.</h4> + + +<p class="center">MDCCCXCVII</p> + +<p class="center">Copyright, 1897, by<br /> +<span class="smcap">The Christian Literature Co.</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<div class="centered"> +<table summary="Table of Contents" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"> +<tr> + <td class="tdright" colspan="2">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAP. I.</a>—<span class="smcap">Providential Preparation for the Discovery of America</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_1">1-5</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Purpose of the long concealment of America, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>. A medieval +church in America, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>. Revival of the Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, +especially in Spain, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAP. II.</a>—<span class="smcap">Spanish Christianity in America</span>,</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_6">6-15</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Vastness and swiftness of the Spanish conquests, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>. Conversion +by the sword, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>. Rapid success and sudden downfall of missions +in Florida, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>. The like story in New Mexico, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, and in +California, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAP. III.</a>—<span class="smcap">French Christianity in America</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_16">16-29</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Magnificence of the French scheme of western empire, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>. +Superior dignity of the French missions, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>. Swift expansion +of them, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>. Collision with the English colonies, and triumph +of France, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>. Sudden and complete failure of the French +church, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>. Causes of failure: (1) Dependence on royal +patronage, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>. (2) Implication in Indian feuds, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>. (3) +Instability of Jesuit efforts, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>. (4) Scantiness of French +population, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>. Political aspect of French missions, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>. +Recent French Catholic immigration, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAP. IV.</a>—<span class="smcap">Antecedents of Permanent Christian Colonization</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_30">30-37</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Controversies and parties in Europe, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, and especially in +England, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>. Disintegration of Christendom, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>. New experiment +of church life, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>. Persecutions promote emigration, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAP. V.</a>—<span class="smcap">Puritan Beginnings of the Church in Virginia</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_38">38-53</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">The Rev. Robert Hunt, chaplain to the Virginia colony, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>Base quality of the emigration, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>. Assiduity in religious +duties, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>. Rev. Richard Buck, chaplain, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>. Strict Puritan +régime of Sir T. Dale and Rev. A. Whitaker, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>. Brightening +prospects extinguished by massacre, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>. Dissolution of the +Puritan "Virginia Company" by the king, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>. Puritan ministers +silenced by the royal governor, Berkeley, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>. The governor's +chaplain, Harrison, is converted to Puritan principles, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>. +Visit of the Rev. Patrick Copland, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>. Degradation of church +and clergy, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>. Commissary Blair attempts reform, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>. +Huguenots and Scotch-Irish, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAP. VI.</a>—<span class="smcap">Maryland and the Carolinas</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_54">54-67</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>; secures grant of Maryland, +<a href="#Page_55">55</a>. The second Lord Baltimore organizes a colony on the basis +of religious liberty, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>. Success of the two Jesuit priests, +<a href="#Page_57">57</a>. Baltimore restrains the Jesuits, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, and encourages the +Puritans, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>. Attempt at an Anglican establishment, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>. +Commissary Bray, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>. Tardy settlement of the Carolinas, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>. A +mixed population, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>. Success of Quakerism, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>. American +origin of English missionary societies, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAP. VII.</a>—<span class="smcap">Dutch Calvinists and Swedish Lutherans</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_68">68-81</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Faint traces of religious life in the Dutch settlements, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>. +Pastors Michaelius, Bogardus, and Megapolensis, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>. Religious +liberty, diversity, and bigotry, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>. The Quakers persecuted, +<a href="#Page_73">73</a>. Low vitality of the Dutch colony, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>. Swedish colony on +the Delaware, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>; subjugated by the Dutch, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>. The Dutch +evicted by England, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>. The Dutch church languishes, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>. +Attempts to establish Anglicanism, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>. The S. P. G., <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAP. VIII.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Church in New England</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_82">82-108</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Puritan and Separatist, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>. The Separatists of Scrooby, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>. +Mutual animosity of the two parties, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>. Spirit of John +Robinson, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>. The "social compact" of the Pilgrims, in state, +<a href="#Page_87">87</a>; and in church, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>. Feebleness of the Plymouth colony, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>. +The Puritan colony at Salem, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>. Purpose of the colonists, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>. +Their right to pick their own company, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>. Fellowship with the +Pilgrims, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>. Constituting the Salem church, and ordination of +its ministers, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>. Expulsion of schismatics, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>. Coming of the +great Massachusetts colony bringing the charter, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>. The New +England church polity, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>. Nationalism of the Puritans, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>. +Dealings with Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, and the +Quakers, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>. Diversities among the colonies, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>. Divergences +of opinion and practice in the churches, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>. Variety of sects +in Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, with mutual good will, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>. Lapse of the +Puritan church-state, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAP. IX.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Middle Colonies and Georgia</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_109">109-126</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Dutch, Puritan, Scotch, and Quaker settlers in New Jersey, +<a href="#Page_109">109</a>. Quaker corporation and government, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>. Quaker reaction +from Puritanism, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>. Extravagance and discipline, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>. +Quakerism in continental Europe, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>. Penn's "Holy +Experiment," <a href="#Page_116">116</a>. Philadelphia founded, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>. German sects, +<a href="#Page_118">118</a>. Keith's schism, and the mission of the "S. P. G.," <a href="#Page_119">119</a>. +Lutheran and Reformed Germans, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>. Scotch-Irish, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>. +Georgia, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>. Oglethorpe's charitable scheme, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>. The +Salzburgers, the Moravians, and the Wesleys, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>. George +Whitefield, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAP. X.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Eve of the Great Awakening</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_127">127-154</a><br /></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Fall of the New England theocracy, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>. Dissent from the +"Standing Order": Baptist, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>; Episcopalian, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>. In New +York: the Dutch church, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>; the English, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>; the +Presbyterian, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>. New Englanders moving west, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>. Quakers, +Huguenots, and Palatines, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>. New Jersey: Frelinghuysen and +the Tennents, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>. Pennsylvania: successes and failures of +Quakerism, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>. The southern colonies: their established +churches, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>; the mission of the Quakers, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>. The gospel +among the Indians, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>. The church and slavery, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAP. XI.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Great Awakening</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_155">155-180</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>. An Awakening, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>. +Edwards's "Narrative" in America and England, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>. Revivals in +New Jersey and Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>. Apostolate of Whitefield, +<a href="#Page_163">163</a>. Schism of the Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>. Whitefield in New +England, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>. Faults and excesses of the evangelists, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>. +Good fruits of the revival, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>. Diffusion of Baptist +principles, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>. National religious unity, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>. Attitude of +the Episcopal Church, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>. Zeal for missions, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAP. XII.</a>—<span class="smcap">Close of the Colonial Era</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_181">181-207</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Growth of the New England theology, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>. Watts's Psalms, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>. +Warlike agitations, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>. The Scotch-Irish immigration, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>. +The German immigration, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>. Spiritual destitution, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>. +Zinzendorf, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>. Attempt at union among the Germans, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>. +Alarm of the sects, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>. Mühlenberg and the Lutherans, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>. +Zinzendorf and the Moravians, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>. Schlatter and the Reformed, +<a href="#Page_195">195</a>. Schism made permanent, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>. Wesleyan Methodism, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>. +Francis Asbury, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>. Methodism gravitates southward and grows +apace, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>. Opposition of the church to slavery, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>; and to +intemperance, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>. Project to introduce bishops from England, +resisted in the interest of liberty, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAP. XIII.</a>—<span class="smcap">Reconstruction</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_208">208-229</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Distraction and depression after the War of Independence, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>. +Forlorn condition of the Episcopalians, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>. Their republican +constitution, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>. Episcopal consecration secured in Scotland +and in England, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>. Feebleness of American Catholicism, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>. +Bishop Carroll, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>. "Trusteeism," <a href="#Page_216">216</a>. Methodism becomes a +church, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>. Westward movement of Christianity, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>. Severance +of church from state, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>. Doctrinal divisions; Calvinist and +Arminian, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>. Unitarianism, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>. Universalism, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>. Some +minor sects, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAP. XIV.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Second Awakening</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_230">230-245</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Ebb-tide of spiritual life, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>. Depravity and revival at the +West, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>. The first camp-meetings, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>. Good fruits, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>. +Nervous epidemics, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>. The Cumberland Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>. The +antisectarian sect of The Disciples, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>. Revival at the East, +<a href="#Page_242">242</a>. President Dwight, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAP. XV.</a>—<span class="smcap">Organized Beneficence</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_246">246-260</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Missionary spirit of the revival, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>. Religious earnestness +in the colleges, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>. Mills and his friends at Williamstown, +<a href="#Page_248">248</a>; and at Andover, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>. The Unitarian schism in +Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>. New era of theological seminaries, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>. +Founding of the A. B. C. F. M., <a href="#Page_252">252</a>; of the Baptist Missionary +Convention, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>. Other missionary boards, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>. The American +Bible Society, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>. Mills, and his work for the West and for +Africa, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>. Other societies, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>. Glowing hopes of the +church, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAP. XVI.</a>—<span class="smcap">Conflicts with Public Wrongs</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_261">261-291</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Working of the voluntary system of church support, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>. +Dueling, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>. Crime of the State of Georgia against the +Cherokee nation, implicating the federal government, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>. +Jeremiah Evarts and Theodore Frelinghuysen, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>. Unanimity of +the church, North and South, against slavery, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>. The +Missouri Compromise, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>. Antislavery activity of the church, +at the East, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>; at the West, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>; at the South, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>. +Difficulty of antislavery church discipline, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>. The southern +apostasy, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>. Causes of the sudden revolution of sentiment, +<a href="#Page_279">279</a>. Defections at the North, and rise of a pro-slavery party, +<a href="#Page_282">282</a>. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill; solemn and unanimous protest of +the clergy of New England and New York, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>. Primeval +temperance legislation, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>. Prevalence of drunkenness, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>. +Temperance reformation a religious movement, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>. Development +of "the saloon," <a href="#Page_288">288</a>. The Washingtonian movement and its +drawbacks, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>. The Prohibition period, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAP. XVII.</a>—<span class="smcap">A Decade of Controversies and Schisms</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_292">292-314</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Dissensions in the Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>. Growing strength +of the New England element, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>. Impeachments of heresy, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>. +Benevolent societies, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>. Sudden excommunication of nearly +one half of the church by the other half, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>. Heresy and +schism among Unitarians: Emerson, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>; and Parker, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>. +Disruption, on the slavery question, of the Methodists, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>; +and of the Baptists, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>. Resuscitation of the Episcopal +Church, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>. Bishop Hobart and a High-church party, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>. Rapid +growth of this church, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>. Controversies in the Roman +Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>. Contention against Protestant +fanaticism, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAP. XVIII.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Great Immigration</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_315">315-339</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Expansion of territory and increase of population in the early +part of the nineteenth century, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>. Great volume of +immigration from 1840 on, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>. How drawn and how driven, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>. +At first principally Irish, then German, then Scandinavian, +<a href="#Page_318">318</a>. The Catholic clergy overtasked, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>. Losses of the +Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>. Liberalized tone of American +Catholicism, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>. Planting the church in the West, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>. +Sectarian competitions, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>. Protestant sects and Catholic +orders, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>. Mormonism, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>. Millerism, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>. Spiritualism, +<a href="#Page_337">337</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAP. XIX.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Civil War</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_340">340-350</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Material prosperity, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>. The Kansas Crusade, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>. The revival +of 1857, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>. Deepening of the slavery conflict, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>. Threats +of war, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>. Religious sincerity of both sides, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>. The +church in war-time, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAP. XX.</a>—<span class="smcap">After the Civil War</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_351">351-373</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Reconstructions, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>. The Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>. The Episcopal +Church, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>. Persistent divisions among Methodists, Baptists, +and Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>. Healing of Presbyterian schisms, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>. +Missions at the South, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>. Vast expansion of church +activities, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>. Great religious and educational endowments, +<a href="#Page_359">359</a>. The enlisting of personal service: The Sunday-school, +<a href="#Page_362">362</a>. Chautauqua, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>. Y. M. C. A., <a href="#Page_364">364</a>. Y. W. C. A., <a href="#Page_366">366</a>. W. +C. T. U., <a href="#Page_367">367</a>. Women's missionary boards, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>. Nursing orders +and schools, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>. Y. P. S. C. E., and like associations, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>. +"The Institutional Church," <a href="#Page_369">369</a>. The Salvation Army, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>. Loss +of "the American Sabbath," <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAP. XXI.</a>—<span class="smcap">The Church in Theology and Literature</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_374">374-397</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Unfolding of the Edwardean theology, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>. Horace Bushnell, +<a href="#Page_375">375</a>. The Mercersburg theology, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>. "Bodies of divinity," <a href="#Page_378">378</a>. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>Biblical science, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>. Princeton's new dogma, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>. Church +history, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>. The American pulpit, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>. "Applied +Christianity," <a href="#Page_385">385</a>. Liturgics, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>. Hymns, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>. Other +liturgical studies, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>. Church music, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>. The Moravian +liturgies, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>. Meager productiveness of the Catholic Church, +<a href="#Page_394">394</a>. The Americanizing of the Roman Church, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAP. XXII.</a>—<span class="smcap">Tendencies toward a Manifestation of Unity</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_398">398-420</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td style="padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 2em;"><p class="hang">Growth of the nation and national union, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>. Parallel growth +of the church, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>; and ecclesiastical division, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>. No +predominant sect, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>. Schism acceptable to politicians, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>; +and to some Christians, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>. Compensations of schism, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>. +<i>Nisus</i> toward manifest union, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>. Early efforts at +fellowship among sects, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>. High-church protests against +union, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>. The Evangelical Alliance, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>. Fellowship in +non-sectarian associations, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>. Cooperation of leading sects +in Maine, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>. Various unpromising projects of union: I. Union +on sectarian basis, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>. II. Ecumenical sects, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>. III. +Consolidation of sects, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>. The hope of manifested unity, +<a href="#Page_416">416</a>. Conclusion, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>.</p></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<h3>PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA—SPIRITUAL +REVIVAL THROUGHOUT CHRISTENDOM, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE CHURCH OF SPAIN.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The heroic discovery of America, at the close of the fifteenth century +after Christ, has compelled the generous and just admiration of the +world; but the grandeur of human enterprise and achievement in the +discovery of the western hemisphere has a less claim on our admiration +than that divine wisdom and controlling providence which, for reasons +now manifested, kept the secret hidden through so many millenniums, in +spite of continual chances of disclosure, until the fullness of time.</p> + +<p>How near, to "speak as a fool," the plans of God came to being defeated +by human enterprise is illustrated by unquestioned facts. The fact of +medieval exploration, colonization, and even evangelization in North +America seems now to have emerged from the region of fanciful conjecture +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>into that of history. That for four centuries, ending with the +fifteenth, the church of Iceland maintained its bishops and other +missionaries and built its churches and monasteries on the frozen coast +of Greenland is abundantly proved by documents and monuments. Dim but +seemingly unmistakable traces are now discovered of enterprises, not +only of exploration and trade, but also of evangelization, reaching +along the mainland southward to the shores of New England. There are +vague indications that these beginnings of Christian civilization were +extinguished, as in so many later instances, by savage massacre. With +impressive coincidence, the latest vestige of this primeval American +Christianity fades out in the very year of the discovery of America by +Columbus.<a name="FNanchor_2:1_1" id="FNanchor_2:1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2:1_1" class="fnanchor">[2:1]</a></p> + +<p>By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages had been kept +from premature disclosure during the centuries in which, without knowing +it, the Old World was actually in communication with the New. That was +high strategy in the warfare for the advancement of the kingdom of God +in the earth. What possibilities, even yet only beginning to be +accomplished, were thus saved to both hemispheres! If the discovery of +America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century +earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted to the western world would +have been that of the church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence. +The period closing with the fifteenth century was that of the dense +darkness that goes before the dawn. It was a period in which the +lingering life of the church was chiefly manifested in feverish +complaints of the widespread corruption and outcries for "reformation of +the church in head and members." The degeneracy of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>the clergy was +nowhere more manifest than in the monastic orders, that had been +originally established for the express purpose of reviving and purifying +the church. That ancient word was fulfilled, "Like people, like priest." +But it was especially in the person of the foremost official +representative of the religion of Jesus Christ that that religion was +most dishonored. The fifteenth century was the era of the infamous +popes. By another coincidence which arrests the attention of the reader +of history, that same year of the discovery by Columbus witnessed the +accession of the most infamous of the series, the Borgia, Alexander VI., +to his short and shameful pontificate.</p> + +<p>Let it not be thought, as some of us might be prone to think, that the +timeliness of the discovery of the western hemisphere, in its relation +to church history, is summed up in this, that it coincided with the +Protestant Reformation, so that the New World might be planted with a +Protestant Christianity. For a hundred years the colonization and +evangelization of America were, in the narrowest sense of that large +word, Catholic, not Protestant. But the Catholicism brought hither was +that of the sixteenth century, not of the fifteenth. It is a most +one-sided reading of the history of that illustrious age which fails to +recognize that the great Reformation was a reformation <i>of</i> the church +as well as a reformation <i>from</i> the church. It was in Spain itself, in +which the corruption of the church had been foulest, but from which all +symptoms of "heretical pravity" were purged away with the fiercest zeal +as fast as they appeared,—in Spain under the reign of Ferdinand and +Isabella the Catholic,—that the demand for a Catholic reformation made +itself earliest and most effectually felt. The highest ecclesiastical +dignitary of the realm, Ximenes, confessor to the queen, Archbishop of +Toledo, and cardinal, was himself the leader of reform. No changes in +the rest of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>Christendom were destined for many years to have so great +an influence on the course of evangelization in North America as those +which affected the church of Spain; and of these by far the most +important in their bearing on the early course of Christianity in +America were, first, the purifying and quickening of the miserably +decayed and corrupted mendicant orders,—ever the most effective arm in +the missionary service of the Latin Church,—and, a little later, the +founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and +for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure, +by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony, +nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual +duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative +boards, and especially of the <i>Congregatio de Propaganda Fide</i>, or board +of missions, dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The revived +interest in theological study incident to the general spiritual +quickening gave the church, as the result of the labors of the Council +of Trent, a well-defined body of doctrine, which nevertheless was not so +narrowly defined as to preclude differences and debates among the +diverse sects of the clergy, by whose competitions and antagonisms the +progress of missions both in Christian and in heathen lands was destined +to be so seriously affected.</p> + +<p>An incident of the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth +century—inevitable incident, doubtless, in that age, but none the less +deplorable—was the engendering or intensifying of that cruel and +ferocious form of fanaticism which is defined as the combination of +religious emotion with the malignant passions. The tendency to +fanaticism is one of the perils attendant on the deep stirring of +religious feeling at any time; it was especially attendant on the +religious agitations of that period; but most of all it was in Spain, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>where, of all the Catholic nations, corruption had gone deepest and +spiritual revival was most earnest and sincere, that the manifestations +of fanaticism were most shocking. Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic +were distinguished alike by their piety and their part in the promotion +of civilization, and by the horrors of bloody cruelty perpetrated by +their authority and that of the church, at the instigation of the +sincere and devout reformer Ximenes. In the memorable year 1492 was +inaugurated the fiercest work of the Spanish Inquisition, concerning +which, speaking of her own part in it, the pious Isabella was able +afterward to say, "For the love of Christ and of his virgin mother I +have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, +provinces and kingdoms."</p> + +<p>The earlier pages of American church history will not be intelligently +read unless it is well understood that the Christianity first to be +transplanted to the soil of the New World was the Christianity of +Spain—the Spain of Isabella and Ximenes, of Loyola and Francis Xavier +and St. Theresa, the Spain also of Torquemada and St. Peter Arbues and +the zealous and orthodox Duke of Alva.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2:1_1" id="Footnote_2:1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2:1_1"><span class="label">[2:1]</span></a> See the account of the Greenland church and its missions +in Professor O'Gorman's "History of the Roman Catholic Church in the +United States" (vol. ix. of the American Church History Series), pp. +3-12.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<h3>SPANISH CONQUEST—THE PROPAGATION, DECAY, AND DOWNFALL OF SPANISH +CHRISTIANITY.</h3> + + +<p class="section">It is a striking fact that the earliest monuments of colonial and +ecclesiastical antiquity within the present domain of the United States, +after the early Spanish remains in Florida, are to be found in those +remotely interior and inaccessible highlands of New Mexico, which have +only now begun to be reached in the westward progress of migration. +Before the beginnings of permanent English colonization at Plymouth and +at Jamestown, before the French beginnings on the St. Lawrence, before +the close of the sixteenth century, there had been laid by Spanish +soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries, in those far recesses of the +continent, the foundations of Christian towns and churches, the stately +walls and towers of which still invite the admiration of the traveler.</p> + +<p>The fact is not more impressive than it is instructive. It illustrates +the prodigious impetuosity of that tide of conquest which within so few +years from the discovery of the American continents not only swept over +the regions of South and Central America and the great plateau of +Mexico, but actually occupied with military posts, with extensive and +successful missions, and with a colonization which seemed to show every +sign of stability and future expansion, by far the greater part of the +present domain <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>of the United States exclusive of Alaska—an +ecclesiastico-military empire stretching its vast diameter from the +southernmost cape of Florida across twenty-five parallels of latitude +and forty-five meridians of longitude to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The +lessons taught by this amazingly swift extension of the empire and the +church, and its arrest and almost extinction, are legible on the surface +of the history. It is a strange, but not unparalleled, story of +attempted coöperation in the common service of God and Mammon and +Moloch—of endeavors after concord between Christ and Belial.</p> + +<p>There is no reason to question the sincerity with which the rulers of +Spain believed themselves to be actuated by the highest motives of +Christian charity in their terrible and fatal American policy. "The +conversion of the Indians is the principal foundation of the +conquest—that which ought principally to be attended to." So wrote the +king in a correspondence in which a most cold-blooded authorization is +given for the enslaving of the Indians.<a name="FNanchor_7:1_2" id="FNanchor_7:1_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_7:1_2" class="fnanchor">[7:1]</a> After the very first voyage +of Columbus every expedition of discovery or invasion was equipped with +its contingent of clergy—secular priests as chaplains to the Spaniards, +and friars of the regular orders for mission work among the Indians—at +cost of the royal treasury or as a charge upon the new conquests.</p> + +<p>This subsidizing of the church was the least serious of the injuries +inflicted on the cause of the gospel by the piety of the Spanish +government. That such subsidizing is in the long run an injury is a +lesson illustrated not only in this case, but in many parallel cases in +the course of this history. A far more dreadful wrong was the +identifying of the religion of Jesus Christ with a system of war and +slavery, well-nigh the most atrocious in recorded history. For such a +policy the Spanish nation had just received a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>peculiar training. It is +one of the commonplaces of history to remark that the barbarian invaders +of the Roman empire were themselves vanquished by their own victims, +being converted by them to the Christian faith. In like manner the +Spanish nation, triumphing over its Moslem subjects in the expulsion of +the Moors, seemed in its American conquests to have been converted to +the worst of the tenets of Islam. The propagation of the gospel in the +western hemisphere, under the Spanish rule, illustrated in its public +and official aspects far more the principles of Mohammed than those of +Jesus. The triple alternative offered by the Saracen or the +Turk—conversion or tribute or the sword—was renewed with aggravations +by the Christian conquerors of America. In a form deliberately drawn up +and prescribed by the civil and ecclesiastical counselors at Madrid, the +invader of a new province was to summon the rulers and people to +acknowledge the church and the pope and the king of Spain; and in case +of refusal or delay to comply with this summons, the invader was to +notify them of the consequences in these terms: "If you refuse, by the +help of God we shall enter with force into your land, and shall make war +against you in all ways and manners that we can, and subject you to the +yoke and obedience of the church and of their Highnesses; we shall take +you and your wives and your children and make slaves of them, and sell +and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take +away your goods, and do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as +to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord; and we +protest that the deaths and losses that shall accrue from this are your +own fault."<a name="FNanchor_8:1_3" id="FNanchor_8:1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_8:1_3" class="fnanchor">[8:1]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p><p>While the church was thus implicated in crimes against humanity which +history shudders to record, it is a grateful duty to remember that it +was from the church also and in the name of Christ that bold protests +and strenuous efforts were put forth in behalf of the oppressed and +wronged. Such names as Las Casas and Montesinos shine with a beautiful +luster in the darkness of that age; and the Dominican order, identified +on the other side of the sea with the fiercest cruelties of the Spanish +Inquisition, is honorable in American church history for its fearless +championship of liberty and justice.</p> + +<p>The first entrance of Spanish Christianity upon the soil of the United +States was wholly characteristic. In quest of the Fountain of Youth, +Ponce de Leon sailed for the coast of Florida equipped with forces both +for the carnal and for the spiritual warfare. Besides his colonists and +his men-at-arms, he brought his secular priests as chaplains and his +monks as missionaries; and his instructions from the crown required him +to summon the natives, as in the famous "Requerimiento," to submit +themselves to the Catholic faith and to the king of Spain, under threat +of the sword and slavery. The invaders found a different temper in the +natives from what was encountered in Mexico and Peru, where the +populations were miserably subjugated, or in the islands, where they +were first enslaved and presently completely exterminated. The insolent +invasion was met, as it deserved, by effective volleys of arrows, and +its chivalrous leader was driven back to Cuba, to die there of his +wounds.</p> + +<p>It is needless to recount the successive failures of Spanish +civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>now +included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the +attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez +effect a permanent establishment on the coast of Florida. In September, +1565, the foundations of the oldest city in the United States, St. +Augustine, were laid with solemn religious rites by the toil of the +first negro slaves; and the event was signalized by one of the most +horrible massacres in recorded history, the cold-blooded and perfidious +extermination, almost to the last man, woman, and child, of a colony of +French Protestants that had been planted a few months before at the +mouth of the St. John's River.</p> + +<p>The colony thus inaugurated seemed to give every promise of permanent +success as a center of religious influence. The spiritual work was +naturally and wisely divided into the pastoral care of the Spanish +garrisons and settlements, which was taken in charge by "secular" +priests, and the mission work among the Indians, committed to friars of +those "regular" orders whose solid organization and independence of the +episcopal hierarchy, and whose keen emulation in enterprises of +self-denial, toil, and peril, have been so large an element of strength, +and sometimes of weakness, in the Roman system. In turn, the mission +field of the Floridas was occupied by the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and +the Franciscans. Before the end of seventy years from the founding of +St. Augustine the number of Christian Indians was reckoned at +twenty-five or thirty thousand, distributed among forty-four missions, +under the direction of thirty-five Franciscan missionaries, while the +city of St. Augustine was fully equipped with religious institutions and +organizations. Grave complaints are on record, which indicate that the +great number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their +meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable +proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of +instruction in the barbarous languages of the peninsula.</p> + +<p>For one hundred and fifteen years Spain and the Spanish missionaries had +exclusive possession in Florida, and it was during this period that +these imposing results were achieved. In 1680 a settlement of Scotch +Presbyterians at Port Royal in South Carolina seemed like a menace to +the Spanish domination. It was wholly characteristic of the Spanish +colony to seize the sword at once and destroy its nearest Christian +neighbor. It took the sword, and perished by the sword. The war of races +and sects thus inaugurated went on, with intervals of quiet, until the +Treaty of Paris, in 1763, transferred Florida to the British crown. No +longer sustained by the terror of the Spanish arms and by subsidies from +the Spanish treasury, the whole fabric of Spanish civilization and +Christianization, at the end of a history of almost two centuries, +tumbled at once to complete ruin and extinction.</p> + +<p>The story of the planting of Christian institutions in New Mexico runs +parallel with the early history of Florida. Omitting from this brief +summary the first discovery of these regions by fugitives from one of +the disastrous early attempts to effect a settlement on the Florida +coast, omitting (what we would fain narrate) the stories of heroic +adventure and apostolic zeal and martyrdom which antedate the permanent +occupation of the country, we note the arrival, in 1598, of a strong, +numerous, and splendidly equipped colony, and the founding of a +Christian city in the heart of the American continent. As usual in such +Spanish enterprises, the missionary work was undertaken by a body of +Franciscan friars. After the first months of hardship and +discouragement, the work of the Christian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>colony, and especially the +work of evangelization among the Indians, went forward at a marvelous +rate. Reinforcements both of priests and of soldiers were received from +Mexico; by the end of ten years baptisms were reported to the number of +eight thousand; the entire population of the province was reckoned as +being within the pale of the church; not less than sixty Franciscan +friars at once were engaged in the double service of pastors and +missionaries. The triumph of the gospel and of Spanish arms seemed +complete and permanent.</p> + +<p>Fourscore years after the founding of the colony and mission the sudden +explosion of a conspiracy, which for a long time had been secretly +preparing, revealed the true value of the allegiance of the Indians to +the Spanish government and of their conversion to Christ. Confounding in +a common hatred the missionaries and the tyrannous conquerors, who had +been associated in a common policy, the Christian Indians turned upon +their rulers and their pastors alike with undiscriminating warfare. "In +a few weeks no Spaniard was in New Mexico north of El Paso. Christianity +and civilization were swept away at one blow." The successful rebels +bettered the instruction that they had received from their rejected +pastors. The measures of compulsion that had been used to stamp out +every vestige of the old religion were put into use against the new.</p> + +<p>The cause of Catholic Christianity in New Mexico never recovered from +this stunning blow. After twenty years the Spanish power, taking +advantage of the anarchy and depopulation of the province, had +reoccupied its former posts by military force, the missionaries were +brought back under armed protection, the practice of the ancient +religion was suppressed by the strong hand, and efforts, too often +unsuccessful, were made to win back the apostate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>tribes to something +more than a sullen submission to the government and the religion of +their conquerors. The later history of Spanish Christianity in New +Mexico is a history of decline and decay, enlivened by the usual +contentions between the "regular" clergy and the episcopal government. +The white population increased, the Indian population dwindled. Religion +as set forth by an exotic clergy became an object of indifference when +it was not an object of hatred. In 1845 the Bishop of Durango, visiting +the province, found an Indian population of twenty thousand in a total +of eighty thousand. The clergy numbered only seventeen priests. Three +years later the province became part of the United States.</p> + +<p>To complete the story of the planting of Spanish Christianity within the +present boundaries of the United States, it is necessary to depart from +the merely chronological order of American church history; for, although +the immense adventurousness of Spanish explorers by sea and land had, +early in the sixteenth century, made known to Christendom the coasts and +harbors of the Californias, the beginnings of settlement and missions on +that Pacific coast date from so late as 1769. At this period the method +of such work had become settled into a system. The organization was +threefold, including (1) the garrison town, (2) the Spanish settlement, +and (3) the mission, at which the Indian neophytes were gathered under +the tutelage and strict government of the convent of Franciscan friars. +The whole system was sustained by the authority and the lavish +subventions of the Spanish government, and herein lay its strength and, +as the event speedily proved, its fatal weakness. The inert and feeble +character of the Indians of that region offered little excuse for the +atrocious cruelties that had elsewhere marked the Spanish occupation; +but the paternal kindness of the stronger race was hardly less <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>hurtful. +The natives were easily persuaded to become by thousands the dependents +and servants of the missions. Conversion went on apace. At the end of +sixty-five years from the founding of the missions their twenty-one +stations numbered a Christian native population of more than thirty +thousand, and were possessed of magnificent wealth, agricultural and +commercial. In that very year (1834) the long-intended purpose of the +government to release the Indians from their almost slavery under the +missions, and to distribute the vast property in severalty, was put in +force. In eight years the more than thirty thousand Catholic Indians had +dwindled to less than five thousand; the enormous estates of the +missions were dissipated; the converts lapsed into savagery and +paganism.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Spanish population had gone on slowly increasing. In the +year 1840, seventy years from the Spanish occupancy, it had risen to +nearly six thousand; but it was a population the spiritual character of +which gave little occasion of boasting to the Spanish church. Tardy and +feeble efforts had been instituted to provide it with an organized +parish ministry, when the supreme and exclusive control of that country +ceased from the hands that so long had held it. "The vineyard was taken +away, and given to other husbandmen." In the year 1848 California was +annexed to the United States.</p> + +<p>This condensed story of Spanish Christianity within the present +boundaries of the United States is absurdly brief compared with the vast +extent of space, the three centuries of time, and what seemed at one +time the grandeur of results involved in it. But in truth it has +strangely little connection with the extant Christianity of our country. +It is almost as completely severed from historical relation with the +church of the present day as the missions of the Greenlanders in the +centuries before Columbus. If we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>distinguish justly between the +Christian work and its unchristian and almost satanic admixtures, we can +join without reserve both in the eulogy and in the lament with which the +Catholic historian sums up his review: "It was a glorious work, and the +recital of it impresses us by the vastness and success of the toil. Yet, +as we look around to-day, we can find nothing of it that remains. Names +of saints in melodious Spanish stand out from maps in all that section +where the Spanish monk trod, toiled, and died. A few thousand Christian +Indians, descendants of those they converted and civilized, still +survive in New Mexico and Arizona, and that is all."<a name="FNanchor_15:1_4" id="FNanchor_15:1_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_15:1_4" class="fnanchor">[15:1]</a></p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7:1_2" id="Footnote_7:1_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7:1_2"><span class="label">[7:1]</span></a> Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 234, +American edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8:1_3" id="Footnote_8:1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8:1_3"><span class="label">[8:1]</span></a> Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 235; +also p. 355, where the grotesquely horrible document is given in full. +</p><p> +In the practical prosecution of this scheme of evangelization, it was +found necessary to the due training of the Indians in the holy faith +that they should be enslaved, whether or no. It was on this religious +consideration, clearly laid down in a report of the king's chaplains, +that the atrocious system of <i>encomiendas</i> was founded.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15:1_4" id="Footnote_15:1_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15:1_4"><span class="label">[15:1]</span></a> "The Roman Catholic Church in the United States," by +Professor Thomas O'Gorman (vol. ix., American Church History Series), p. +112.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<h3>THE PROJECT OF FRENCH EMPIRE AND EVANGELIZATION—ITS WIDE AND RAPID +SUCCESS—ITS SUDDEN EXTINCTION.</h3> + + +<p class="section">For a full century, from the discovery of the New World until the first +effective effort at occupation by any other European people, the Spanish +church and nation had held exclusive occupancy of the North American +continent. The Spanish enterprises of conquest and colonization had been +carried forward with enormous and unscrupulous energy, and alongside of +them and involved with them had been borne the Spanish chaplaincies and +missions, sustained from the same treasury, in some honorable instances +bravely protesting against the atrocities they were compelled to +witness, in other instances implicated in them and sharing the bloody +profits of them. But, unquestionable as was the martial prowess of the +Spanish soldier and adventurer, and the fearless devotion of the Spanish +missionary, there appears nothing like systematic planning in all these +immense operations. The tide of conquest flowed in capricious courses, +according as it was invited by hopes of gold or of a passage to China, +or of some phantom of a Fountain of Youth or a city of Quivira or a +Gilded Man; and it seemed in general to the missionary that he could not +do else than follow in the course of conquest.</p> + +<p>It is wholly characteristic of the French people that its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>entering at +last upon enterprises of colonization and missions should be with large +forecasting of the future and with the methods of a grand strategy.</p> + +<p>We can easily believe that the famous "Bull of Partition" of Pope +Alexander VI. was not one of the hindrances that so long delayed the +beginnings of a New France in the West. Incessant dynastic wars with +near neighbors, the final throes of the long struggle between the crown +and the great vassals, and finally the religious wars that culminated in +the awful slaughter of St. Bartholomew's, and ended at the close of the +century with the politic conversion and the coronation of Henry +IV.—these were among the causes that had held back the great nation +from distant undertakings. But thoughts of great things to be achieved +in the New World had never for long at a time been absent from the minds +of Frenchmen. The annual visits of the Breton fishing-fleets to the +banks of Newfoundland kept in mind such rights of discovery as were +alleged by France, and kept attention fixed in the direction of the +great gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Long before the middle of the +sixteenth century Jacques Cartier had explored the St. Lawrence beyond +the commanding position which he named Montreal, and a royal commission +had issued, under which he was to undertake an enterprise of "discovery, +settlement, and the conversion of the Indians." But it was not till the +year 1608 that the first permanent French settlement was effected. With +the <i>coup d'œil</i> of a general or the foresight of a prophet, +Champlain, the illustrious first founder of French empire in America, in +1608 fixed the starting-point of it at the natural fortress of Quebec. +How early the great project had begun to take shape in the leading minds +of the nation it may not be easy to determine. It was only after the +adventurous explorations of the French pioneers, traders, and +friars—men of like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>boundless enthusiasm and courage—had been crowned +by the achievement of La Salle, who first of men traversed the two great +waterways of the continent from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of +Mexico, that the amazing possibilities of it were fully revealed. But, +whosesoever scheme it was, a more magnificent project of empire, secular +and spiritual, has never entered into the heart of man. It seems to have +been native to the American soil, springing up in the hearts of the +French pioneer explorers themselves;<a name="FNanchor_18:1_5" id="FNanchor_18:1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_18:1_5" class="fnanchor">[18:1]</a> but by its grandeur, and at +the same time its unity, it was of a sort to delight the souls of Sully +and Richelieu and of their masters. Under thin and dubious claims by +right of discovery, through the immense energy and daring of her +explorers, the heroic zeal of her missionaries, and not so much by the +prowess of her soldiers as by her craft in diplomacy with savage tribes, +France was to assert and make good her title to the basin of the St. +Lawrence and the lakes, and the basin of the Mississippi and the Gulf of +Mexico. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the +Mississippi, through the core of the continent, was to be drawn a cordon +of posts, military, commercial, and religious, with other outlying +stations at strategic points both eastward and westward. The only +external interference with this scheme that could be apprehended at its +inception was from the Spanish colonies, already decaying and shrinking +within their boundaries to the west and to the southeast, and from a +puny little English settlement started only a year before, with a +doubtful hold on life, on the bank of the James River. A dozen years +later a pitiably feeble company of Pilgrims shall make their landing at +Plymouth to try the not hopeful experiment of living in the wilderness, +and a settlement of Swedes in Delaware and of Hollanders on the Hudson +shall be added to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>the incongruous, unconcerted, mutually jealous +plantations that begin to take root along the Atlantic seaboard. Not +only grandeur and sagacity of conception, but success in achievement, is +illustrated by the comparative area occupied by the three great European +powers on the continent of North America at the end of a century and a +half from the founding of Quebec in 1608. Dividing the continent into +twenty-five equal parts, the French claimed and seemed to hold firmly in +possession twenty parts, the Spanish four parts, and the English one +part.<a name="FNanchor_19:1_6" id="FNanchor_19:1_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_19:1_6" class="fnanchor">[19:1]</a></p> + +<p>The comparison between the Spanish and the French methods of +colonization and missions in America is at almost every point honorable +to the French. Instead of a greedy scramble after other men's property +in gold and silver, the business basis of the French enterprises was to +consist in a widely organized and laboriously prosecuted traffic in +furs. Instead of a series of desultory and savage campaigns of conquest, +the ferocity of which was aggravated by the show of zeal for the kingdom +of righteousness and peace, was a large-minded and far-sighted scheme of +empire, under which remote and hostile tribes were to be combined by +ties of mutual interest and common advantage. And the missions, instead +of following servilely in the track of bloody conquest to assume the +tutelage of subjugated and enslaved races, were to share with the +soldier and the trader the perilous adventures of exploration, and not +so much to be supported and defended as to be themselves the support and +protection of the settlements, through the influence of Christian love +and self-sacrifice over the savage heart. Such elements of moral +dignity, as well as of imperial grandeur, marked the plans for the +French occupation of North America.</p> + +<p>To a wonderful extent those charged with this enterprise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>were worthy of +the task. Among the military and civil leaders of it, from Champlain to +Montcalm, were men that would have honored the best days of French +chivalry. The energy and daring of the French explorers, whether traders +or missionaries, have not been equaled in the pioneer work of other +races. And the annals of Christian martyrdom may be searched in vain for +more heroic examples of devotion to the work of the gospel than those +which adorn the history of the French missions in North America. What +magnificent results might not be expected from such an enterprise, in +the hands of such men, sustained by the resources of the most powerful +nation and national church in Christendom!</p> + +<p>From the founding of Quebec, in 1608, the expansion of the French +enterprise was swift and vast. By the end of fifty years Quebec had been +equipped with hospital, nunnery, seminary for the education of priests, +all affluently endowed from the wealth of zealous courtiers, and served +in a noble spirit of self-devotion by the choicest men and women that +the French church could furnish; besides these institutions, the +admirable plan of a training colony, at which converted Indians should +be trained to civilized life, was realized at Sillery, in the +neighborhood. The sacred city of Montreal had been established as a base +for missions to the remoter west. Long in advance of the settlement at +Plymouth, French Christianity was actively and beneficently busy among +the savages of eastern Maine, among the so-called "neutral nations" by +the Niagara, among the fiercely hostile Iroquois of northern New York, +by Lake Huron and Lake Nipissing, and, with wonderful tokens of success, +by the Falls of St. Mary. "Thus did the religious zeal of the French +bear the cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake +Superior, and look wistfully toward the homes of the Sioux in the valley +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Eliot had +addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston +harbor."<a name="FNanchor_21:1_7" id="FNanchor_21:1_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_21:1_7" class="fnanchor">[21:1]</a></p> + +<p>Thirty years more passed, bringing the story down to the memorable year +1688. The French posts, military, commercial, and religious, had been +pushed westward to the head of Lake Superior. The Mississippi had been +discovered and explored, and the colonies planted from Canada along its +banks and the banks of its tributaries had been met by the expeditions +proceeding direct from France through the Gulf of Mexico. The claims of +France in America included not only the vast domain of Canada, but a +half of Maine, a half of Vermont, more than a half of New York, the +entire valley of the Mississippi, and Texas as far as the Rio Bravo del +Norte.<a name="FNanchor_21:2_8" id="FNanchor_21:2_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_21:2_8" class="fnanchor">[21:2]</a> And these claims were asserted by actual and almost +undisputed occupancy.</p> + +<p>The seventy years that followed were years of "storm and stress" for the +French colonies and missions. The widening areas occupied by the French +and by the English settlers brought the rival establishments into nearer +neighborhood, into sharper competition, and into bloody collision. +Successive European wars—King William's War, Queen Anne's War (of the +Spanish succession), King George's War (of the Austrian +succession)—involved the dependencies of France and those of England in +the conflicts of their sovereigns. These were the years of terror along +the exposed northern frontier of English settlements in New England and +New York, when massacre and burning by bands of savages, under French +instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield +and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>in desperate +campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought +to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from +which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of +peace between England and France confirmed and reconfirmed the French +claims to the main part of her American domain. The advances of French +missions and settlements continued southward and westward, in spite of +jealousy in European cabinets as the imposing magnitude of the plans of +French empire became more distinctly disclosed, and in spite of the +struggles of the English colonies both North and South. When, on the 4th +of July, 1754, Colonel George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity, +near the fork of the Ohio, to the French, "in the whole valley of the +Mississippi, to its headsprings in the Alleghanies, no standard floated +but that of France."<a name="FNanchor_22:1_9" id="FNanchor_22:1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_22:1_9" class="fnanchor">[22:1]</a></p> + +<p>There seemed little reason to doubt that the French empire in America, +which for a century and a half had gone on expanding and strengthening, +would continue to expand and strengthen for centuries to come. Sudden as +lightning, in August, 1756, the Seven Years' War broke out on the other +side of the globe. The treaty with which it ended, in February, 1763, +transferred to Great Britain, together with the Spanish territory of +Florida, all the French possessions in America, from the Arctic Ocean to +the Gulf of Mexico. "As a dream when one awaketh," the magnificent +vision of empire, spiritual and secular, which for so many generations +had occupied the imagination of French statesmen and churchmen, was +rudely and forever dispelled. Of the princely wealth, the brilliant +talents, the unsurpassed audacity of adventure, the unequaled heroism of +toil and martyrdom expended on the great project, how strangely meager +and evanescent the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>results! In the districts of Lower Canada there +remain, indeed, the institutions of a French Catholic population; and +the aspect of those districts, in which the pledge of full liberty to +the dominant church has been scrupulously fulfilled by the British +government, may reasonably be regarded as an indication of what France +would have done for the continent in general. But within the present +domain of the United States the entire results of a century and a half +of French Catholic colonization and evangelization may be summed up as +follows: In Maine, a thousand Catholic Indians still remain, to remind +one of the time when, as it is boldly claimed, the whole Indian +population of that province were either converted or under Jesuit +training.<a name="FNanchor_23:1_10" id="FNanchor_23:1_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_23:1_10" class="fnanchor">[23:1]</a> In like manner, a scanty score of thousands of Catholic +Indians on various reservations in the remote West represent the time +when, at the end of the French domination, "all the North American +Indians were more or less extensively converted" to Catholic +Christianity, "all had the gospel preached to them."<a name="FNanchor_23:2_11" id="FNanchor_23:2_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_23:2_11" class="fnanchor">[23:2]</a> The splendid +fruits of the missions among the Iroquois, from soil watered by the +blood of martyrs, were wasted to nothing in savage intertribal wars. +Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws of the South and Southwest, among whom +the gospel was by and by to win some of its fairest trophies, the French +missionaries achieved no great success.<a name="FNanchor_23:3_12" id="FNanchor_23:3_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_23:3_12" class="fnanchor">[23:3]</a> The French colonies from +Canada, planted so prosperously along the Western rivers, dispersed, +leaving behind them some straggling families. The abundant later growth +of the Catholic Church in that region was to be from other seed and +stock. The region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be +included within the boundaries of the great republic, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>retained +organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as +they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it +would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The +work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless +it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of +a better age survived to aid the work of those who by and by should +enter in to rebuild the waste places.<a name="FNanchor_24:1_13" id="FNanchor_24:1_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_24:1_13" class="fnanchor">[24:1]</a></p> + +<p>There are not a few of us, wise after the event, who recognize a final +cause of this surprising and almost dramatic failure, in the manifest +intent of divine Providence that the field of the next great empire in +the world's history should not become the exclusive domain of an +old-world monarchy and hierarchy; but the immediate efficient causes of +it are not so obvious. This, however, may justly be said: some of the +seeming elements of strength in the French colonization proved to be +fatal elements of weakness.</p> + +<p>1. The French colonies had the advantage of royal patronage, +endowment,<a name="FNanchor_24:2_14" id="FNanchor_24:2_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_24:2_14" class="fnanchor">[24:2]</a> and protection, and of unity of counsel and direction. +They were all parts of one system, under one control. And their centers +of vitality, head and heart, were on the other side of the sea. +Subsisting upon the strength of the great monarchy, they must needs +share its fortunes, evil as well as good. When, after the reverses of +France in the Seven Years' War, it became necessary to accept hard terms +of peace, the superb framework of empire in the West fell to the +disposal of the victors. "America," said Pitt, "was conquered in +Germany."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>2. The business basis of the French colonies, being that of trade with +the Indians rather than a self-supporting agriculture, favored the swift +expansion of these colonies and their wide influence among the Indians. +Scattered companies of fur-traders would be found here and there, +wherever were favorable points for traffic, penetrating deeply into the +wilderness and establishing friendly business relations with the +savages. It has been observed that the Romanic races show an alacrity +for intermarriage with barbarous tribes that is not to be found in the +Teutonic. The result of such relations is ordinarily less the elevating +of the lower race than the dragging down of the higher; but it tends for +the time to give great advantage in maintaining a powerful political +influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in +number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their +formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and +defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril. +Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It +was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly +relations with their Huron neighbors embattled against them the +fiercest, bravest, and ablest of the Indian tribes, the confederacy of +the Six Nations, which held, with full appreciation of its strategic +importance, the command of the exits southward from the valley of the +St. Lawrence. The fierce jealousy of the Iroquois toward the allies of +their hereditary antagonists, rather than any good will toward white +settlers of other races, made them an effectual check upon French +encroachments upon the slender line of English, Dutch, and Swedish +settlements that stretched southward from Maine along the Atlantic +coast.</p> + +<p>3. In one aspect it was doubtless an advantage to the French missions in +America that the sharp sectarian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>competitions between the different +clerical orders resulted finally in the missions coming almost +exclusively under the control of the Jesuit society. This result insured +to the missions the highest ability in administration and direction, +ample resources of various sorts, and a force of missionaries whose +personal virtues have won for them unstinted eulogy even from unfriendly +sources—men the ardor of whose zeal was rigorously controlled by a more +than martial severity of religious discipline. But it would be uncandid +in us to refuse attention to those grave charges against the society +brought by Catholic authorities and Catholic orders, and so enforced as, +after long and acrimonious controversy, to result in the expulsion of +the society from almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being +stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, +contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being +suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to +Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense +animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic orders in which +the charges against the society were engendered and unrelentingly +prosecuted; but after all deductions it is not credible that the almost +universal odium in which it was held was provoked solely by its virtues. +Among the accusations against the society which seem most clearly +substantiated these two are likely to be concerned in that "brand of +ultimate failure which has invariably been stamped on all its most +promising schemes and efforts":<a name="FNanchor_26:1_15" id="FNanchor_26:1_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_26:1_15" class="fnanchor">[26:1]</a> first, a disposition to compromise +the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to +heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified +by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>name and +outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political +intrigue.<a name="FNanchor_27:1_16" id="FNanchor_27:1_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_27:1_16" class="fnanchor">[27:1]</a> It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in +the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements +within the present boundaries of the United States.</p> + +<p>4. The conditions which favored the swift and magnificent expansion of +the French occupation were unfavorable to the healthy natural growth of +permanent settlements. A post of soldiers, a group of cabins of trappers +and fur-traders, and a mission of nuns and celibate priests, all +together give small promise of rapid increase of population. It is +rather to the fact that the French settlements, except at the seaboard, +were constituted so largely of these elements, than to any alleged +sterility of the French stock, that the fatal weakness of the French +occupation is to be ascribed. The lack of French America was men. The +population of Canada in 1759, according to census, was about eighty-two +thousand;<a name="FNanchor_27:2_17" id="FNanchor_27:2_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_27:2_17" class="fnanchor">[27:2]</a> that of New England in 1754 is estimated at four hundred +and twenty-five thousand. "The white population of five, or perhaps even +of six, of the American provinces was greater singly than that of all +Canada, and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada +fourteenfold."<a name="FNanchor_27:3_18" id="FNanchor_27:3_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_27:3_18" class="fnanchor">[27:3]</a> The same sign of weakness is recognized at the +other extremity of the cordon of French settlements. The vast region of +Louisiana is estimated, at fifty years from its colonization, at one +tenth of the strength of the coeval province of Pennsylvania.<a name="FNanchor_27:4_19" id="FNanchor_27:4_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_27:4_19" class="fnanchor">[27:4]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p><p>Under these hopeless conditions the French colonies had not even the +alternative of keeping the peace. The state of war was forced by the +mother countries. There was no recourse for Canada except to her savage +allies, won for her through the influence of the missionaries.</p> + +<p>It is justly claimed that in the mind of such early leaders as Champlain +the dominant motive of the French colonization was religious; but in the +cruel position into which the colony was forced it was almost inevitable +that the missions should become political. It was boasted in their +behalf that they had taught the Indians "to mingle Jesus Christ and +France together in their affections."<a name="FNanchor_28:1_20" id="FNanchor_28:1_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_28:1_20" class="fnanchor">[28:1]</a> The cross and the lilies +were blazoned together as the sign of French dominion. The missionary +became frequently, and sometimes quite undisguisedly, a political agent. +It was from the missions that the horrible murderous forays upon +defenseless villages proceeded, which so often marked the frontier line +of New England and New York with fire and blood. It is one of the most +unhappy of the results of that savage warfare that in the minds of the +communities that suffered from it the Jesuit missionary came to be +looked upon as accessory to these abhorrent crimes. Deeply is it to be +lamented that men with such eminent claims on our admiration and +reverence should not be triumphantly clear of all suspicion of such +complicity. We gladly concede the claim<a name="FNanchor_28:2_21" id="FNanchor_28:2_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_28:2_21" class="fnanchor">[28:2]</a> that the proof of the +complicity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>is not complete; we could welcome some clear evidence in +disproof of it—some sign of a bold and indignant protest against these +crimes; we could wish that the Jesuit historian had not boasted of these +atrocities as proceeding from the fine work of his brethren,<a name="FNanchor_29:1_22" id="FNanchor_29:1_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_29:1_22" class="fnanchor">[29:1]</a> and +that the antecedents of the Jesuits as a body, and their declared +principles of "moral theology," were such as raise no presumption +against them even in unfriendly minds. But we must be content with +thankfully acknowledging that divine change which has made it impossible +longer to boast of or even justify such deeds, and which leaves no +ground among neighbor Christians of the present day for harboring mutual +suspicions which, to the Christian ministers of French and English +America of two hundred years ago and less, it was impossible to repress.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of the complete extinction within the present domain of +the United States of the magnificent beginnings of the projected French +Catholic Church and empire. It is only in the most recent years, since +the Civil War, that the results of the work inaugurated in America by +Champlain begin to reappear in the field of the ecclesiastical history +of the United States. The immigration of Canadian French Catholics into +the northern tier of States has already grown to considerable volume, +and is still growing in numbers and in stability and strength, and adds +a new and interesting element to the many factors that go to make up the +American church.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18:1_5" id="Footnote_18:1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18:1_5"><span class="label">[18:1]</span></a> So Parkman.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19:1_6" id="Footnote_19:1_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19:1_6"><span class="label">[19:1]</span></a> Bancroft's "United States," vol. iv., p. 267.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21:1_7" id="Footnote_21:1_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21:1_7"><span class="label">[21:1]</span></a> Bancroft's "United States," vol. iii., p. 131.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21:2_8" id="Footnote_21:2_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21:2_8"><span class="label">[21:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22:1_9" id="Footnote_22:1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22:1_9"><span class="label">[22:1]</span></a> Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23:1_10" id="Footnote_23:1_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23:1_10"><span class="label">[23:1]</span></a> Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholic Church in the +United States," p. 136.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23:2_11" id="Footnote_23:2_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23:2_11"><span class="label">[23:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 191-193.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23:3_12" id="Footnote_23:3_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23:3_12"><span class="label">[23:3]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 211.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24:1_13" id="Footnote_24:1_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24:1_13"><span class="label">[24:1]</span></a> See O'Gorman, chaps. ix.-xiv., xx.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24:2_14" id="Footnote_24:2_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24:2_14"><span class="label">[24:2]</span></a> Mr. Bancroft, describing the "sad condition" of La +Salle's colony at Matagorda after the wreck of his richly laden +store-ship, adds that "even now this colony possessed, from the bounty +of Louis XIV., more than was contributed by all the English monarchs +together for the twelve English colonies on the Atlantic. Its number +still exceeded that of the colony of Smith in Virginia, or of those who +embarked in the 'Mayflower'" (vol. iii., p. 171).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26:1_15" id="Footnote_26:1_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26:1_15"><span class="label">[26:1]</span></a> Dr. R. F. Littledale, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. +xiii., pp. 649-652.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27:1_16" id="Footnote_27:1_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27:1_16"><span class="label">[27:1]</span></a> Both these charges are solemnly affirmed by the pope in +the bull of suppression of the society (Dr. R. F. Littledale, in +"Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 655).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27:2_17" id="Footnote_27:2_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27:2_17"><span class="label">[27:2]</span></a> Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 320.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27:3_18" id="Footnote_27:3_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27:3_18"><span class="label">[27:3]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 128, 129.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27:4_19" id="Footnote_27:4_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27:4_19"><span class="label">[27:4]</span></a> The contrast is vigorously emphasized by Mr. Bancroft: +"Such was Louisiana more than a half-century after the first attempt at +colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been five thousand +whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV. had fostered it with +pride and liberal expenditures; an opulent merchant, famed for his +successful enterprise, assumed its direction; the Company of the +Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit, had made it the +foundation of their hopes; and, again, Fleury and Louis XV. had sought +to advance its fortunes. Priests and friars, dispersed through nations +from Biloxi to the Dahcotas, propitiated the favor of the savages; but +still the valley of the Mississippi was nearly a wilderness. All its +patrons—though among them it counted kings and ministers of state—had +not accomplished for it in half a century a tithe of the prosperity +which within the same period sprang naturally from the benevolence of +William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware" (vol. iii., p. +369).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28:1_20" id="Footnote_28:1_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28:1_20"><span class="label">[28:1]</span></a> "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 654.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28:2_21" id="Footnote_28:2_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28:2_21"><span class="label">[28:2]</span></a> Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 137-142.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29:1_22" id="Footnote_29:1_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29:1_22"><span class="label">[29:1]</span></a> Bancroft, vol. iii., pp. 187, 188.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<h3>ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION—THE DISINTEGRATION OF +CHRISTENDOM—CONTROVERSIES—PERSECUTIONS.</h3> + + +<p class="section">We have briefly reviewed the history of two magnificent schemes of +secular and spiritual empire, which, conceived in the minds of great +statesmen and churchmen, sustained by the resources of the mightiest +kingdoms of that age, inaugurated by soldiers of admirable prowess, +explorers of unsurpassed boldness and persistence, and missionaries +whose heroic faith has canonized them in the veneration of Christendom, +have nevertheless come to naught.</p> + +<p>We turn now to observe the beginnings, coinciding in time with those of +the French enterprise, of a series of disconnected plantations along the +Atlantic seaboard, established as if at haphazard, without plan or +mutual preconcert, of different languages and widely diverse Christian +creeds, depending on scanty private resources, unsustained by +governmental arms or treasuries, but destined, in a course of events +which no human foresight could have calculated, to come under the +plastic influence of a single European power, to be molded according to +the general type of English polity, and to become heir to English +traditions, literature, and language. These mutually alien and even +antagonistic communities were to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>constrained, by forces superior to +human control, first into confederation and then into union, and to +occupy the breadth of the new continent as a solid and independent +nation. The history reads like a fulfillment of the apocalyptic imagery +of a rock hewn from the mountain without hands, moving on to fill the +earth.</p> + +<p>Looking back after the event, we find it easy to trace the providential +preparations for this great result. There were few important events in +the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that did not +have to do with it; but the most obvious of these antecedents are to be +found in <i>controversies</i> and <i>persecutions</i>.</p> + +<p>The protest of northern Europe against the abuses and corruptions +prevailing in the Roman Church was articulated in the Augsburg +Confession. Over against it were framed the decrees of the Council of +Trent. Thus the lines were distinctly drawn and the warfare between +contending principles was joined. Those who fondly dreamed of a +permanently united and solid Protestantism to withstand its powerful +antagonist were destined to speedy and inevitable disappointment. There +have been many to deplore that so soon after the protest of Augsburg was +set forth as embodying the common belief of Protestants new parties +should have arisen protesting against the protest. The ordinance of the +Lord's Supper, instituted as a sacrament of universal Christian +fellowship, became (as so often before and since) the center of +contention and the badge of mutual alienation. It was on this point that +Zwingli and the Swiss parted from Luther and the Lutherans; on the same +point, in the next generation of Reformers, John Calvin, attempting to +mediate between the two contending parties, became the founder of still +a third party, strong not only in the lucid and logical doctrinal +statements in which it delighted, but also in the possession of a +definite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>scheme of republican church government which became as +distinctive of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" churches as their doctrine +of the Supper. It was at a later epoch still that those insoluble +questions which press most inexorably for consideration when theological +thought and study are most serious and earnest—the questions that +concern the divine sovereignty in its relation to human freedom and +responsibility—arose in the Catholic Church to divide Jesuit from +Dominican and Franciscan, and in the Reformed churches to divide the +Arminians from the disciples of Gomar and Turretin. All these divisions +among the European Christians of the seventeenth century were to have +their important bearing on the planting of the Christian church in +America.</p> + +<p>In view of the destined predominance of English influence in the +seaboard colonies of America, the history of the divisions of the +Christian people of England is of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has preeminent">preëminent</ins> importance to the +beginnings of the American church. The curiously diverse elements that +entered into the English Reformation, and the violent vicissitudes that +marked the course of it, were all represented in the parties existing +among English Christians at the period of the planting of the colonies.</p> + +<p>The political and dynastic character of the movements that detached the +English hierarchy from the Roman see had for one inevitable result to +leaven the English church as a lump with the leaven of Herod. That +considerable part of the clergy and people that moved to and fro, +without so much as the resistance of any very formidable <i>vis inertiæ</i>, +with the change of the monarch or of the monarch's caprice, might leave +the student of the history of those times in doubt as to whether they +belonged to the kingdom of heaven or to the kingdom of this world. But, +however severe the judgment that any may pass upon the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>character and +motives of Henry VIII. and of the councilors of Edward, there will +hardly be any seriously to question that the movements directed by these +men soon came to be infused with more serious and spiritual influences. +The Lollardy of Wycliffe and his fellows in the fourteenth century had +been severely repressed and driven into "occult conventicles," but had +not been extinguished; the Bible in English, many times retouched after +Wycliffe's days, and perfected by the refugees at Geneva from the Marian +persecutions, had become a common household book; and those exiles +themselves, returning from the various centers of fervid religious +thought and feeling in Holland and Germany and Switzerland, had brought +with them an augmented spiritual faith, as well as intensified and +sharply defined convictions on the questions of theology and church +order that were debated by the scholars of the Continent. It was +impossible that the diverse and antagonist elements thus assembled +should not work on one another with violent reactions. By the beginning +of the seventeenth century not less than four categories would suffice +to classify the people of England according to their religious +differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to +the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from +expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of +England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it; +this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen, +religious, irreligious, and non-religious. Thirdly, there were those +who, not refusing their adhesion to the national church as by law +established, nevertheless earnestly desired to see it more completely +purified from doctrinal errors and practical corruptions, and who +qualified their conformity to it accordingly. Fourthly, there were the +few who distinctly repudiated the national church as a false church, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>coming out from her as from Babylon, determined upon "reformation +without tarrying for any." Finally, following upon these, more radical, +not to say more logical, than the rest, came a fifth party, the +followers of George Fox. Not one of these five parties but has valid +claims, both in its principles and in its membership, on the respect of +history; not one but can point to its saints and martyrs; not one but +was destined to play a quite separate and distinct and highly important +part in the planting of the church of Christ in America. They are +designated, for convenience' sake, as the Catholics, the Conformists, +the Puritans or Reformists, the Separatists (of whom were the Pilgrims), +and the Quakers.</p> + +<p>Such a Christendom was it, so disorganized, divided, and subdivided into +parties and sects, which was to furnish the materials for the peopling +of the new continent with a Christian population. It would seem that the +same "somewhat not ourselves," which had defeated in succession the +plans of two mighty nations to subject the New World to a single +hierarchy, had also provided that no one form or organization of +Christianity should be exclusive or even dominant in the occupation of +the American soil. From one point of view the American colonies will +present a sorry aspect. Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism, +competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks +"that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has +demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come." +No widely extended organization of church discipline in exclusive +occupation of any country has ever long avoided the intolerable +mischiefs attendant on spiritual despotism. It was a shock to the hopes +and the generous sentiments of those who had looked to see one undivided +body of a reformed church erected over against the medieval church, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>from the corruptions of which they had revolted, when they saw +Protestantism go asunder into the several churches of the Lutheran and +the Reformed confessions; there are many even now to deplore it as a +disastrous set-back to the progress of the kingdom of Christ. But in the +calmness of our long retrospect it is easy for us to recognize that +whatever jurisdiction should have been established over an undivided +Protestant church would inevitably have proved itself, in no long time, +just such a yoke as neither the men of that time nor their fathers had +been able to bear. Fifteen centuries of church history have not been +wasted if thereby the Christian people have learned that the pursuit of +Christian unity through administrative or corporate or diplomatic union +is following the wrong road, and that the one Holy Catholic Church is +not the corporation of saints, but their communion.</p> + +<p>The new experiment of church life that was initiated in the colonization +of America is still in progress. The new States were to be planted not +only with diverse companies from the Old World, but with all the +definitely organized sects by which the map of Christendom was at that +time variegated, to which should be added others of native origin. +Notwithstanding successive "booms" now of one and then of another, it +was soon to become obvious to all that no one of these mutually jealous +sects was to have any exclusive predominance, even over narrow precincts +of territory. The old-world state churches, which under the rule, <i>cujus +regio ejus religio</i>, had been supreme and exclusive each in its +jurisdiction, were to find themselves side by side and mingled through +the community on equal terms with those over whom in the old country +they had domineered as dissenters, or whom perhaps they had even +persecuted as heretics or as Antichrist. Thus placed, they were to be +trained by the discipline of divine Providence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>and by the grace of the +Holy Spirit from persecution to toleration, from toleration to mutual +respect, and to coöperation in matters of common concern in the +advancement of the kingdom of Christ. What further remains to be tried +is the question whether, if not the sects, then the Christian hearts in +each sect, can be brought to take the final step from mutual respect to +mutual love, "that we henceforth, speaking truth in love, may grow up in +all things into him, which is the head, even Christ; from whom all the +body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint +supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, +shall make the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in +love." Unless we must submit to those philosophers who forbid us to find +in history the evidences of final cause and providential design, we may +surely look upon this as a worthy possible solution of the mystery of +Providence in the planting of the church in America in almost its +ultimate stage of schism—that it is the purpose of its Head, out of the +mutual attrition of the sects, their disintegration and comminution, to +bring forth such a demonstration of the unity and liberty of the +children of God as the past ages of church history have failed to show.</p> + +<p>That mutual intolerance of differences in religious belief which, in the +seventeenth century, was, throughout Christendom, coextensive with +religious earnestness had its important part to play in the colonization +of America. Of the persecutions and oppressions which gave direct +impulse to the earliest colonization of America, the most notable are +the following: (1) the persecution of the English Puritans in the reigns +of James I. and Charles I., ending with the outbreak of the civil war in +1642; (2) the persecution of the English Roman Catholics during the same +period; (3) the persecution of the English Quakers during the +twenty-five <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>years of Charles II. (1660-85); (4) the persecution of the +French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); (5) +the disabilities suffered by the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland +after the English Revolution (1688); (6) the ferocious ravaging of the +region of the Rhenish Palatinate by the armies of Louis XIV. in the +early years of the seventeenth century; (7) the cruel expulsion of the +Protestants of the archiepiscopal duchy of Salzburg (1731).</p> + +<p>Beyond dispute, the best and most potent elements in the settlement of +the seaboard colonies were the companies of earnestly religious people +who from time to time, under severe compulsion for conscience' sake, +came forth from the Old World as involuntary emigrants. Cruel wars and +persecutions accomplished a result in the advancement of the kingdom of +Christ which the authors of them never intended. But not these agencies +alone promoted the great work. Peace, prosperity, wealth, and the hope +of wealth had their part in it. The earliest successful enterprises of +colonization were indeed marked with the badge of Christianity, and +among their promoters were men whose language and deeds nobly evince the +Christian spirit; but the enterprises were impelled and directed by +commercial or patriotic considerations. The immense advantages that were +to accrue from them to the world through the wider propagation of the +gospel of Christ were not lost sight of in the projecting and organizing +of the expeditions, nor were provisions for church and ministry omitted; +but these were incidental, not primary.</p> + +<p>This story of the divine preparations carried forward through +unconscious human agencies in different lands and ages for the founding +of the American church is a necessary preamble to our history. The scene +of the story is now to be shifted to the other side of the sea.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<h3>THE PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA—ITS DECLINE ALMOST TO +EXTINCTION.</h3> + + +<p class="section">There is sufficient evidence that the three little vessels which on the +13th of May, 1607, were moored to the trees on the bank of the James +River brought to the soil of America the germ of a Christian church. We +may feel constrained to accept only at a large discount the pious +official professions of King James I., and critically to scrutinize many +of the statements of that brilliant and fascinating adventurer, Captain +John Smith, whether concerning his friends or concerning his enemies or +concerning himself. But the beauty and dignity of the Christian +character shine unmistakable in the life of the chaplain to the +expedition, the Rev. Robert Hunt, and all the more radiantly for the +dark and discouraging surroundings in which his ministry was to be +exercised.</p> + +<p>For the company which Captain Smith and that famous mariner, Captain +Bartholomew Gosnold, had by many months of labor and "many a forgotten +pound" of expense succeeded in recruiting for the enterprise was made up +of most unhopeful material for the founding of a Christian colony. Those +were the years of ignoble peace with which the reign of James began; and +the glittering hopes of gold might well attract some of the brave men +who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>had served by sea or land in the wars of Elizabeth. But the last +thirty years had furnished no instance of success, and many of +disastrous and sometimes tragical failure, in like attempts—the +enterprises of Humphrey Gilbert, of Raleigh, of John White, of Gosnold +himself, and of Popham and Gorges. Even brave men might hesitate to +volunteer for the forlorn hope of another experiment at colonizing.</p> + +<p>The little squadron had hardly set sail when the unfitness of the +emigrants for their work began to discover itself. Lying weather-bound +within sight of home, "some few, little better than atheists, of the +greatest rank among them," were busying themselves with scandalous +imputations upon the chaplain, then lying dangerously ill in his berth. +All through the four months' passage by way of the Canaries and the West +India Islands discontents and dissensions prevailed. Wingfield, who had +been named president of the colony, had Smith in irons, and at the +island of Nevis had the gallows set up for his execution on a charge of +conspiracy, when milder counsels prevailed, and he was brought to +Virginia, where he was tried and acquitted and his adversary mulcted in +damages.</p> + +<p>Arrived at the place of settlement, the colonists set about the work of +building their houses, but found that their total number of one hundred +and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight +"gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came +repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and +unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the +Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, +1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition arrived +with reinforcements and supplies, only thirty-eight were surviving out +of the one hundred and five, and of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>these the strongest were conspiring +to seize the pinnace and desert the settlement.</p> + +<p>The newcomers were no better than the first. They were chiefly +"gentlemen" again, and goldsmiths, whose duty was to discover and refine +the quantities of gold that the stockholders in the enterprise were +resolved should be found in Virginia, whether it was there or not. The +ship took back on her return trip a full cargo of worthless dirt.</p> + +<p>Reinforcements continued to arrive every few months, the quality of +which it might be unfair to judge simply from the disgusted complaints +of Captain Smith. He begs the Company to send but thirty honest laborers +and artisans, "rather than a thousand such as we have," and reports the +next ship-load as "fitter to breed a riot than to found a colony." The +wretched settlement became an object of derision to the wits of London, +and of sympathetic interest to serious minds. The Company, reorganized +under a new charter, was strengthened by the accession of some of the +foremost men in England, including four bishops, the Earl of +Southampton, and Sir Francis Bacon. Appeals were made to the Christian +public in behalf of an enterprise so full of promise of the furtherance +of the gospel. A fleet of nine ships was fitted out, carrying more than +five hundred emigrants, with ample supplies. Captain Smith, representing +what there was of civil authority in the colony, had a brief struggle +with their turbulence, and recognized them as of the same sort with the +former companies, for the most part "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, +serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a +commonwealth than either begin one or help to maintain one." When only +part of this expedition had arrived, Captain Smith departed for England, +disabled by an accidental wound, leaving a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>settlement of nearly five +hundred men, abundantly provisioned. "It was not the will of God that +the new state should be formed of these materials."<a name="FNanchor_41:1_23" id="FNanchor_41:1_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_41:1_23" class="fnanchor">[41:1]</a> In six months +the number of the colonists was reduced to sixty, and when relief +arrived it was reckoned that in ten days' longer delay they would have +perished to the last man. With one accord the wretched remnant of the +colony, together with the latest comers, deserted, without a tear of +regret, the scene of their misery. But their retreating vessels were met +and turned back from the mouth of the river by the approaching ships of +Lord de la Warr with emigrants and supplies. Such were the first three +unhappy and unhonored years of the first Christian colony on the soil of +the United States.</p> + +<p>One almost shrinks from being assured that this worthless crew, through +all these years of suicidal crime and folly, had been assiduous in +religious duties. First under an awning made of an old sail, seated upon +logs, with a rail nailed to two trees for a pulpit, afterward in a poor +shanty of a church, "that could neither well defend wind nor rain," they +"had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, +and every three months the holy communion, till their minister died"; +and after that "prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, two or three +years, till more preachers came." The sturdy and terrible resolution of +Captain Smith, who in his marches through the wilderness was wont to +begin the day with prayer and psalm, and was not unequal to the duty, +when it was laid on him, of giving Christian exhortation as well as +righteous punishment, and the gentle Christian influence of the Rev. +Robert Hunt, were the salt that saved the colony from utterly perishing +of its vices. It was not many months before the frail body of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>the +chaplain sank under the hardships of pioneer life; he is commemorated by +his comrade, the captain, as "an honest, religious, and courageous +divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, our wants and +greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of +what we endured after his memorable death." When, in 1609, in a nobler +spirit than that of mere commercial enterprise, the reorganized Company, +under the new charter, was preparing the great reinforcement of five +hundred to go out under Lord de la Warr as governor of the colony, +counsel was taken with Abbot, the Puritan Bishop of London, himself a +member of the Virginia Company, and Richard Buck was selected as a +worthy successor to Robert Hunt in the office of chaplain. Such he +proved himself. Sailing in advance of the governor, in the ship with Sir +Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, and wrecked with them off the +Bermudas, he did not forget his duty in the "plenty, peace, and ease" of +that paradise. The ship's bell was rescued from the wreck to ring for +morning and evening prayer, and for the two sermons every Sunday. There +were births and funerals and a marriage in the shipwrecked company, and +at length, when their makeshift vessel was ready, they embarked for +their desired haven, there to find only the starving threescore +survivors of the colony. They gathered together, a pitiable remnant, in +the church, where Master Buck "made a zealous and sorrowful prayer"; and +at once, without losing a day, they embarked for a last departure from +Virginia, but were met at the mouth of the river by the tardy ships of +Lord de la Warr. The next morning, Sunday, June 10, 1610, Lord de la +Warr landed at the fort, where Gates had drawn up his forlorn platoon of +starving men to receive him. The governor fell on his knees in prayer, +then led the way to the church, and, after service and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>sermon from +the chaplain, made an address, assuming command of the colony.</p> + +<p>Armed, under the new charter, with adequate authority, the new governor +was not slow in putting on the state of a viceroy. Among his first cares +was to provide for the external dignity of worship. The church, a +building sixty feet by twenty-four, built long enough before to be now +in need of repairs, was put into good condition, and a brave sight it +was on Sundays to see the Governor, with the Privy Council and the +Lieutenant-General and the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral and the Master +of the Horse, together with the body-guard of fifty halberdiers in fair +red cloaks, commanded by Captain Edward Brewster, assembled for worship, +the governor seated in the choir in a green velvet chair, with a velvet +cushion on a table before him. Few things could have been better adapted +to convince the peculiar public of Jamestown that divine worship was +indeed a serious matter. There was something more than the parade of +government manifested by his lordship in the few months of his reign; +but the inauguration of strong and effective control over the lazy, +disorderly, and seditious crowd to be dealt with at Jamestown was +reserved for his successor, Sir Thomas Dale, who arrived in May, 1611, +in company with the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the "apostle of Virginia."</p> + +<p>It will not be possible for any to understand the relations of this +colony to the state of parties in England without distinctly recognizing +that the Puritans were not a party <i>against</i> the Church of England, but +a party <i>in</i> the Church of England. The Puritan party was the party of +reform, and was strong in a deep fervor of religious conviction widely +diffused among people and clergy, and extending to the highest places of +the nobility and the episcopate. The anti-Puritan party was the +conservative or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>reactionary party, strong in the <i>vis inertiæ</i>, and in +the king's pig-headed prejudices and his monstrous conceit of +theological ability and supremacy in the church; strong also in a +considerable adhesion and zealous coöperation from among his nominees, +the bishops. The religious division was also a political one, the +Puritans being known as the party of the people, their antagonists as +the court party. The struggle of the Puritans (as distinguished from the +inconsiderable number of the Separatists) was for the maintenance of +their rights within the church; the effort of their adversaries, with +the aid of the king's prerogative, was to drive or harry them out of the +church. It is not to be understood that the two parties were as yet +organized as such and distinctly bounded; but the two tendencies were +plainly recognized, and the sympathies of leading men in church or state +were no secret.</p> + +<p>The Virginia Company was a Puritan corporation.<a name="FNanchor_44:1_24" id="FNanchor_44:1_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_44:1_24" class="fnanchor">[44:1]</a> As such, its +meetings and debates were the object of popular interest and of the +royal jealousy. Among its corporators were the brothers Sandys, sons of +the Puritan Archbishop of York, one of whom held the manor of Scrooby. +Others of the corporation were William Brewster, of Scrooby, and his son +Edward. In the fleet of Sir Thomas Gates, May, 1609, were noted +Puritans, one of whom, Stephen Hopkins, "who had much knowledge in the +Scriptures and could reason well therein," was clerk to that "painful +preacher," but not strict conformist, Master Richard Buck. The intimate +and sometimes official relations of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>Virginia Company not only with +leading representatives of the Puritan party, but with the Pilgrims of +Leyden, whom they would gladly have received into their own colony, are +matter of history and of record. It admits of proof that there was a +steady purpose in the Company, so far as it was not thwarted by the king +and the bishops of the court party, to hold their unruly and +ill-assorted colony under Puritan influences both of church and +government.<a name="FNanchor_45:1_25" id="FNanchor_45:1_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_45:1_25" class="fnanchor">[45:1]</a> The fact throws light on the remoter as well as the +nearer history of Virginia. Especially it throws light on the memorable +administration of Sir Thomas Dale, which followed hard upon the +departure of Lord de la Warr and his body-guard in red cloaks.</p> + +<p>The Company had picked their man with care—"a man of good conscience +and knowledge in divinity," and a soldier and disciplinarian proved in +the wars of the Low Countries—a very prototype of the great Cromwell. +He understood what manner of task he had undertaken, and executed it +without flinching. As a matter of course—it was the way in that +colony—there was a conspiracy against his authority. There was no +second conspiracy under him. Punishment was inflicted on the ringleaders +so swift, so terrible, as to paralyze all future sedition. He put in +force, in the name of the Company, a code of "Laws, Divine, Moral, and +Martial," to which no parallel can be found in the severest legislation +of New England. An invaluable service to the colony was the abolition of +that demoralizing socialism that had been enforced on the colonists, by +which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out +land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own +industry and thrift, or suffered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>the consequences of his laziness. The +culture of tobacco gave the colony a currency and a staple of export.</p> + +<p>With Dale was associated as chaplain Alexander Whitaker, son of the +author of the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles, and brother of a Separatist +preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties +is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, +written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that +nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question +would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What +manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of +faithful work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this +statesmanlike and soldierly governor founded his new city of Henrico up +the river, and laid out across the stream the suburb of Hope-in-Faith, +defended by Fort Charity and Fort Patience, he built there in sight from +his official residence the parsonage of the "apostle of Virginia." The +course of Whitaker's ministry is described by himself in a letter to a +friend: "Every Sabbath day we preach in the forenoon and catechise in +the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's +house." But he and his fellow-clergymen did not labor without aid, even +in word and doctrine. When Mr. John Rolfe was perplexed with questions +of duty touching his love for Pocahontas, it was to the old soldier, +Dale, that he brought his burden, seeking spiritual counsel. And it was +this "religious and valiant governor," as Whitaker calls him, this "man +of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things," +that "labored long to ground the faith of Jesus Christ" in the Indian +maiden, and wrote concerning her, "Were it but for the gaining of this +one soul, I will think my time, toils, and present stay well spent."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>The progress of the gospel in reclaiming the unhappy colony to +Christian civilization varies with the varying fortunes of contending +parties in England. Energetic efforts were made by the Company under +Sandys, the friend of Brewster, to send out worthy colonists; and the +delicate task of finding young women of good character to be shipped as +wives to the settlers was undertaken conscientiously and successfully. +Generous gifts of money and land were contributed (although little came +from them) for the endowment of schools and a college for the promotion +of Christ's work among the white people and the red. But the course of +events on both sides of the sea may be best illustrated by a narrative +of personal incidents.</p> + +<p>In the year 1621, an East India Company's chaplain, the Rev. Patrick +Copland, who perhaps deserves the title of the first English missionary +in India, on his way back from India met, probably at the Canaries, with +ships bound for Virginia with emigrants. Learning from these something +of the needs of the plantation, he stirred up his fellow-passengers on +the "Royal James," and raised the sum of seventy pounds, which was paid +to the treasurer of the Virginia Company; and, being increased by other +gifts to one hundred and twenty-five pounds, was, in consultation with +Mr. Copland, appropriated for a free school to be called the "East India +School."</p> + +<p>The affairs of the colony were most promising. It was growing in +population and in wealth and in the institutions of a Christian +commonwealth. The territory was divided into parishes for the work of +church and clergy. The stupid obstinacy of the king, against the +remonstrances of the Company, perpetrated the crime of sending out a +hundred convicts into the young community, extorting from Captain Smith +the protest that this act "hath laid one of the finest countries of +America under the just scandal of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>being a mere hell upon earth." The +sweepings of the London and Bristol streets were exported for servants. +Of darker portent, though men perceived it not, was the landing of the +first cargo of negro slaves. But so grateful was the Company for the +general prosperity of the colony that it appointed a thanksgiving sermon +to be preached at Bow Church, April 17, 1622, by Mr. Copland, which was +printed under the title, "Virginia's God Be Thanked." In July, 1622, the +Company, proceeding to the execution of a long-cherished plan, chose Mr. +Copland rector of the college to be built at Henrico from the endowments +already provided, when news arrived of the massacre which, in March of +that year, swept away one half of the four thousand colonists. All such +enterprises were at once arrested.</p> + +<p>In 1624 the long contest of the king and the court party against the +Virginia Company was ended by a violent exercise of the prerogative +dissolving the Company, but not until it had established free +representative government in the colony. The revocation of the charter +was one of the last acts of James's ignoble reign. In 1625 he died, and +Charles I. became king. In 1628 "the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of +prelates," William Laud, became Bishop of London, and in 1633 Archbishop +of Canterbury. But the Puritan principles of duty and liberty already +planted in Virginia were not destined to be eradicated.</p> + +<p>From the year 1619, a settlement at Nansemond, near Norfolk, had +prospered, and had been in relations of trade with New England. In 1642 +Philip Bennett, of Nansemond, visiting Boston in his coasting vessel, +bore with him a letter to the Boston church, signed by seventy-four +names, stating the needs of their great county, now without a pastor, +and offering a maintenance to three good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>ministers if they could be +found. A little later William Durand, of the same county, wrote for +himself and his neighbors to John Davenport, of New Haven, to whom some +of them had listened gladly in London (perhaps it was when he preached +the first annual sermon before the Virginia Company in 1621), speaking +of "a revival of piety" among them, and urging the request that had been +sent to the church in Boston. As result of this correspondence, three +eminently learned and faithful ministers of New England came to +Virginia, bringing letters of commendation from Governor Winthrop. But +they found that Virginia, now become a royal colony, had no welcome for +them. The newly arrived royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, a man +after Laud's own heart, forbade their preaching; but the Catholic +governor of Maryland sent them a free invitation, and one of them, +removing to Annapolis with some of the Virginia Puritans, so labored in +the gospel as to draw forth the public thanks of the legislative +assembly.</p> + +<p>The sequel of this story is a strange one. There must have been somewhat +in the character and bearing of these silenced and banished ministers +that touched the heart of Thomas Harrison, the governor's chaplain. He +made a confession of his insincere dealings toward them: that while he +had been showing them "a fair face" he had privately used his influence +to have them silenced. He himself began to preach in that earnest way of +righteousness, temperance, and judgment, which is fitted to make +governors tremble, until Berkeley cast him out as a Puritan, saying that +he did not wish so grave a chaplain; whereupon Harrison crossed the +river to Nansemond, became pastor of the church, and mightily built up +the cause which he had sought to destroy.</p> + +<p>A few months later the Nansemond people had the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>opportunity of giving +succor and hospitality to a shipwrecked company of nine people, who had +been cast away, with loss of all their goods, in sailing from the +Bermudas to found a new settlement on one of the Bahamas. Among the +party was an aged and venerable man, that same Patrick Copland who +twenty-five years before had interested himself in the passing party of +emigrants. This was indeed entertaining an angel. Mr. Copland had long +been a nonconformist minister at the Bermudas, and he listened to the +complaints that were made to him of the persecution to which the people +were subjected by the malignant Berkeley. A free invitation was given to +the Nansemond church to go with their guests to the new settlement of +Eleuthera, in which freedom of conscience and non-interference of the +magistrate with the church were secured by charter.<a name="FNanchor_50:1_26" id="FNanchor_50:1_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_50:1_26" class="fnanchor">[50:1]</a> Mr. Harrison +proceeded to Boston to take counsel of the churches over this +proposition. The people were advised by their Boston brethren to remain +in their lot until their case should become intolerable. Mr. Harrison +went on to London, where a number of things had happened since +Berkeley's appointment. The king had ceased to be; but an order from the +Council of State was sent to Berkeley, sharply reprimanding him for his +course, and directing him to restore Mr. Harrison to his parish. But Mr. +Harrison did not return. He fulfilled an honorable career as incumbent +of a London parish, as chaplain to Henry Cromwell, viceroy of Ireland, +and as a hunted and persecuted preacher in the evil days after the +Restoration. But the "poetic justice" with which this curious dramatic +episode should conclude is not reached until Berkeley is compelled to +surrender his jurisdiction to the Commonwealth, and Richard Bennett, one +of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>banished Puritans of Nansemond, is chosen by the Assembly of +Burgesses to be governor in his stead.<a name="FNanchor_51:1_27" id="FNanchor_51:1_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_51:1_27" class="fnanchor">[51:1]</a></p> + +<p>Of course this is a brief triumph. With the restoration of the Stuarts, +Berkeley comes back into power as royal governor, and for many years +afflicts the colony with his malignant Toryism. The last state is worse +than the first; for during the days of the Commonwealth old soldiers of +the king's army had come to Virginia in such numbers as to form an +appreciable and not wholly admirable element in the population. +Surrounded by such society, the governor was encouraged to indulge his +natural disposition to bigotry and tyranny. Under such a nursing father +the interests of the kingdom of Christ fared as might have been +expected. Rigorous measures were instituted for the suppression of +nonconformity, Quaker preachers were severely dealt with, and clergymen, +such as they were, were imposed upon the more or less reluctant +parishes. But though the governor held the right of presentation, the +vestry of each parish asserted and maintained the right of induction or +of refusing to induct. Without the consent of these representatives of +the people the candidate could secure for himself no more than the +people should from year to year consent to allow him. It was the only +protection of the people from absolute spiritual despotism. The power +might be used to repel a too faithful pastor, but if there was sometimes +a temptation to this, the occasion was far more frequent for putting the +people's reprobation upon the unfaithful and unfit. The colony, growing +in wealth and population, soon became infested with a rabble of +worthless and scandalous priests. In a report which has been often +quoted, Governor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>Berkeley, after giving account of the material +prosperity of the colony, sums up, under date of 1671, the results of +his fostering care over its spiritual interests in these words: "There +are forty-eight parishes, and the ministers well paid. The clergy by my +consent would be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But +of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us. But I thank +God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not +have, these hundred years."</p> + +<p>The scandal of the Virginia clergy went on from bad to worse. Whatever +could be done by the courage and earnestness of one man was done by Dr. +Blair, who arrived in 1689 with limited powers as commissary of the +Bishop of London, and for more than fifty years struggled against +adverse influences to recover the church from its degradation. He +succeeded in getting a charter for William and Mary College, but the +generous endowments of the institution were wasted, and the college +languished in doing the work of a grammar school. Something was +accomplished in the way of discipline, though the cane of Governor +Nicholson over the back of an insolent priest was doubtless more +effective than the commissary's admonitions. But discipline, while it +may do something toward abating scandals, cannot create life from the +dead; and the church established in Virginia had hardly more than a name +to live. Its best estate is described by Spotswood, the best of the +royal governors, when, looking on the outward appearance, he reported: +"This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due +obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the +Church of England." The poor man was soon to find how uncertain is the +peace and tranquillity that is founded on "a gentlemanly conformity." +The most honorable page in his record is the story of his effort <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>for +the education of Indian children. His honest attempt at reformation in +the church brought him into collision not only with the worthless among +the clergy, but also on the one hand with the parish vestries, and on +the other hand with Commissary Blair. But all along the "gentlemanly +conformity" was undisturbed. A parish of French Huguenots was early +established in Henrico County, and in 1713 a parish of German exiles on +the Rappahannock, and these were expressly excepted from the Act of +Uniformity. Aside from these, the chief departures from the enforced +uniformity of worship throughout the colony in the early years of the +eighteenth century were found in a few meetings of persecuted and +vilified Quakers and Baptists. The government and clergy had little +notion of the significance of a slender stream of Scotch-Irish +emigration which, as early as 1720, began to flow into the valley of the +Shenandoah. So cheap a defense against the perils that threatened from +the western frontier it would have been folly to discourage by odious +religious proscription. The reasonable anxiety of the clergy as to what +might come of this invasion of a sturdy and uncompromising Puritanism +struggled without permanent success against the obvious interest of the +commonwealth. The addition of this new and potent element to the +Christian population of the seaboard colonies was part of the +unrecognized preparation for the Great Awakening.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41:1_23" id="Footnote_41:1_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41:1_23"><span class="label">[41:1]</span></a> Bancroft, vol. i., p. 138.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44:1_24" id="Footnote_44:1_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44:1_24"><span class="label">[44:1]</span></a> See the interesting demonstration of this point in +articles by E. D. Neill in "Hours at Home," vol. vi., pp. 22, 201. +</p><p> +Mr. Neill's various publications on the colonial history of Virginia and +Maryland are of the highest value and authority. They include: "The +English Colonization of America During the Seventeenth Century"; +"History of the Virginia Company"; "Virginia Vetusta"; "Virginia +Carolorum"; "Terra Mariæ; or, Threads of Maryland Colonial History"; +"The Founders of Maryland"; "Life of Patrick Copland."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45:1_25" id="Footnote_45:1_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45:1_25"><span class="label">[45:1]</span></a> It was customary for the Company, when a candidate was +proposed for a chaplaincy in the colony, to select a text for him and +appoint a Sunday and a church for a "trial sermon" from which they might +judge of his qualifications.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50:1_26" id="Footnote_50:1_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50:1_26"><span class="label">[50:1]</span></a> The project of Eleuthera is entitled to honorable +mention in the history of religious liberty.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51:1_27" id="Footnote_51:1_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51:1_27"><span class="label">[51:1]</span></a> For fuller details concerning the Puritan character of +the Virginia Company and of the early ministers of Virginia, see the +articles of E. D. Neill, above referred to, in "Hours at Home," vol. +vi.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<h3>THE NEIGHBOR COLONIES TO VIRGINIA—MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The chronological order would require us at this point to turn to the +Dutch settlements on the Hudson River; but the close relations of +Virginia with its neighbor colonies of Maryland and the Carolinas are a +reason for taking up the brief history of these settlements in advance +of their turn.</p> + +<p>The occupation of Maryland dates from the year 1634. The period of bold +and half-desperate adventure in making plantations along the coast was +past. To men of sanguine temper and sufficient fortune and influence at +court, it was now a matter of very promising and not too risky +speculation. To George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, one of the most +interesting characters at the court of James I., the business had +peculiar fascination. He was in both the New England Company and the +Virginia Company, and after the charter of the latter was revoked he was +one of the Provisional Council for the government of Virginia. Nothing +daunted by the ill luck of these companies, he tried colonizing on his +account in 1620, in what was represented to him as the genial soil and +climate of Newfoundland. Sending good money after bad, he was glad to +get out of this venture at the end of nine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>years with a loss of thirty +thousand pounds. In 1629 he sent home his children, and with a lady and +servants and forty of his surviving colonists sailed for Jamestown, +where his reception at the hands of the council and of his old Oxford +fellow-student, Governor Pott, was not cordial. He could hardly have +expected that it would be. He was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic +Church, with a convert's zeal for proselyting, and he was of the court +party. Thus he was in antagonism to the Puritan colony both in politics +and in religion. A formidable disturbing element he and his company +would have been in the already unquiet community. The authorities of the +colony were equal to the emergency. In answer to his lordship's +announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome +to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him +the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman +principles. Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he +was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much +latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his +lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his +intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was +not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman.</p> + +<p>Returned to London, he at once set in motion the powerful influences at +his command to secure a charter for a tract of land south of the James +River, and when this was defeated by the energetic opposition of the +friends of Virginia, he succeeded in securing a grant of land north and +east of the Potomac, with a charter bestowing on him and his heirs "the +most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of +England."<a name="FNanchor_55:1_28" id="FNanchor_55:1_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_55:1_28" class="fnanchor">[55:1]</a> The protest of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Virginia that it was an invasion of the +former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity +with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not +belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of +giving the same thing twice over to different parties.</p> + +<p>The first Lord Baltimore died three months before the charter of +Maryland received the great seal, but his son Cecilius took up the +business with energy and great liberality of investment. The cost of +fitting out the first emigration was estimated at not less than forty +thousand pounds. The company consisted of "three hundred laboring men, +well provided in all things," headed by Leonard and George Calvert, +brothers of the lord proprietor, "with very near twenty other gentlemen +of very good fashion." Two earnest Jesuit priests were quietly added to +the expedition as it passed the Isle of Wight, but in general it was a +Protestant emigration under Catholic patronage. It was stipulated in the +charter that all liege subjects of the English king might freely +transport themselves and their families to Maryland. To discriminate +against any religious body in England would have been for the proprietor +to limit his hope of rapid colonization and revenue and to embroil +himself with political enemies at home. His own and his father's +intimate acquaintance with failure in the planting of Virginia and of +Newfoundland had taught him what not to do in such enterprises. If the +proprietor meant to succeed (and he <i>did</i> mean to) he was shut up +without alternative to the policy of impartial non-interference with +religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual +forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound +political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious +liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>his father before him, and +he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land +speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in +the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere +with business. Nothing would have brought speedier ruin to his +enterprise than to have it suspected, as his enemies were always ready +to allege, that it was governed in the interest of the Roman Catholic +Church. Such a suspicion he took the most effective means of averting. +He kept his promises to his colonists in this matter in good faith, and +had his reward in the notable prosperity of his colony.<a name="FNanchor_57:1_29" id="FNanchor_57:1_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_57:1_29" class="fnanchor">[57:1]</a></p> + +<p>The two priests of the first Maryland company began their work with +characteristic earnestness and diligence. Finding no immediate access to +the Indians, they gave the more constant attention to their own +countrymen, both Catholic and Protestant, and were soon able to give +thanks that by God's blessing on their labors almost all the Protestants +of that year's arrival had been converted, besides many others. In 1640 +the first-fruits of their mission work among the savages were gathered +in; the chief of an Indian village on the Potomac nearly opposite Mount +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>Vernon, and his wife and child, were baptized with solemn pomp, in +which the governor and secretary of the colony took part.</p> + +<p>The first start of the Maryland colony was of a sort to give promise of +feuds and border strifes with the neighbor colony of Virginia, and the +promise was abundantly fulfilled. The conflict over boundary questions +came to bloody collisions by land and sea. It is needless to say that +religious differences were at once drawn into the dispute. The vigorous +proselytism of the Jesuit fathers, the only Christian ministers in the +colony, under the patronage of the lord proprietor was of course +reported to London by the Virginians; and in December, 1641, the House +of Commons, then on the brink of open rupture with the king, presented a +remonstrance to Charles at Hampton Court, complaining that he had +permitted "another state, molded within this state, independent in +government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the +ignorant or negligent professors of religion, and clearly uniting +themselves against such." Lord Baltimore, perceiving that his property +rights were coming into jeopardy, wrote to the too zealous priests, +warning them that they were under English law and were not to expect +from him "any more or other privileges, exemptions, or immunities for +their lands, persons, or goods than is allowed by his Majesty or +officers to like persons in England." He annulled the grants of land +made to the missionaries by certain Indian chiefs, which they affected +to hold as the property of their order, and confirmed for his colony the +law of mortmain. In his not unreasonable anxiety for the tenure of his +estate, he went further still; he had the Jesuits removed from the +charge of the missions, to be replaced by seculars, and only receded +from this severe measure when the Jesuit order acceded to his terms. The +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>pious and venerable Father White records in his journal that "occasion +of suffering has not been wanting from those from whom rather it was +proper to expect aid and protection, who, too intent upon their own +affairs, have not feared to violate the immunities of the church.<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: quotation mark is missing in original">"</ins><a name="FNanchor_59:1_30" id="FNanchor_59:1_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_59:1_30" class="fnanchor">[59:1]</a> +But the zeal of the Calverts for religious liberty and equality was +manifested not only by curbing the Jesuits, but by encouraging their +most strenuous opponents. It was in the year 1643, when the strength of +Puritanism both in England and in New England was proved, that the +Calverts made overtures, although in vain, to secure an immigration from +Massachusetts. A few years later the opportunity occurred of +strengthening their own colony with an accession of Puritans, and at the +same time of weakening Virginia. The sturdy and prosperous Puritan +colony on the Nansemond River were driven by the churlish behavior of +Governor Berkeley to seek a more congenial residence, and were induced +to settle on the Severn at a place which they called Providence, but +which was destined, under the name of Annapolis, to become the capital +of the future State. It was manifestly not merely a coincidence that +Lord Baltimore appointed a Protestant governor, William Stone, and +commended to the Maryland Assembly, in 1649, the enacting of "an Act +concerning Religion," drawn upon the lines of the Ordinance of +Toleration adopted by the Puritan House of Commons at the height of its +authority, in 1647.<a name="FNanchor_59:2_31" id="FNanchor_59:2_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_59:2_31" class="fnanchor">[59:2]</a> How potent was the influence of this +transplanted Nansemond church is largely shown in the eventful civil +history of the colony. When, in 1655, the lord proprietor's governor was +so imprudent as to set an armed force in the field, under the colors of +Lord Baltimore, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>in opposition to the parliamentary commissioners, it +was the planters of the Severn who marched under the flag of the +commonwealth of England, and put them to rout, and executed some of +their leaders for treason. When at last articles of agreement were +signed between the commissioners and Lord Baltimore, one of the +conditions exacted from his lordship was a pledge that he would never +consent to the repeal of the Act of Toleration adopted in 1649 under the +influence of the Puritan colony and its pastor, Thomas Harrison.</p> + +<p>In the turbulence of the colony during and after the civil wars of +England, there becomes more and more manifest a growing spirit of +fanaticism, especially in the form of antipopery crusading. While +Jacobite intrigues or wars with France were in progress it was easy for +demagogues to cast upon the Catholics the suspicion of disloyalty and of +complicity with the public enemy. The numerical unimportance of the +Catholics of Maryland was insufficient to guard them from such +suspicions; for it had soon become obvious that the colony of the +Catholic lord was to be anything but a Catholic colony. The Jesuit +mission had languished; the progress of settlement, and what there had +been of religious life and teaching, had brought no strength to the +Catholic cause. In 1676 a Church of England minister, John Yeo, writes +to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the craving lack of ministers, +excepting among the Catholics and the Quakers, "not doubting but his +Grace may so prevail with Lord Baltimore that a maintenance for a +Protestant ministry may be established." The Bishop of London, echoing +this complaint, speaks of the "total want of ministers and divine +worship, except among those of the Romish belief, who, 'tis conjectured, +does not amount to one of a hundred of the people." To which his +lordship replies that all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>sects are tolerated and protected, but that +it would be impossible to induce the Assembly to consent to a law that +shall oblige any sect to maintain other ministers than its own. The +bishop's figures were doubtless at fault; but Lord Baltimore himself +writes that the nonconformists outnumber the Catholics and those of the +Church of England together about three to one, and that the churchmen +are much more numerous than the Catholics.</p> + +<p>After the Revolution of 1688 it is not strange that a like movement was +set on foot in Maryland. The "beneficent despotism" of the Calverts, +notwithstanding every concession on their part, was ended for the time +by the efforts of an "Association for the Defense of the Protestant +Religion," and Maryland became a royal colony. Under the new régime it +was easier to inflict annoyances and disabilities on the petty minority +of the Roman Catholics than to confer the privileges of an established +church on the hardly more considerable minority of Episcopalians. The +Church of England became in name the official church of the colony, but +two parties so remotely unlike as the Catholics and the Quakers combined +successfully to defeat more serious encroachments on religious liberty. +The attempt to maintain the church of a small minority by taxes extorted +by a foreign government from the whole people had the same effect in +Maryland as in Ireland: it tended to make both church and government +odious. The efforts of Dr. Thomas Bray, commissary of the Bishop of +London, a man of true apostolic fervor, accomplished little in +withstanding the downward tendency of the provincial establishment. The +demoralized and undisciplined clergy resisted the attempt of the +provincial government to abate the scandal of their lives, and the +people resisted the attempt to introduce a bishop. The body thus set +before the people as the official representative of the religion of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>Christ "was perhaps as contemptible an ecclesiastical organization as +history can show," having "all the vices of the Virginian church, +without one of its safeguards or redeeming qualities."<a name="FNanchor_62:1_32" id="FNanchor_62:1_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_62:1_32" class="fnanchor">[62:1]</a> The most +hopeful sign in the morning sky of the eighteenth century was to be +found in the growth of the Society of Friends and the swelling of the +current of the Scotch-Irish immigration. And yet we shall have proof +that the life-work of Commissary Bray, although he went back discouraged +from his labors in Maryland and although this colony took little direct +benefit from his efforts in England, was destined to have great results +in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in America; for he was the +founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign +Parts.</p> + +<p>The Carolinas, North and South, had been the scene of the earliest +attempts at Protestant colonization in America. The Huguenot enterprise +at Beaufort, on Port Royal harbor, was planted in 1562 under the +auspices of Coligny, and came to a speedy and unhappy end. The costly +and disastrous experiment of Sir Walter Raleigh was begun in 1584 on +Roanoke Island, and lasted not many months. But the actual occupation of +the region was late and slow. When, after the Restoration, Charles II. +took up the idea of paying his political debts with free and easy +cessions of American lands, Clarendon, Albemarle, and Shaftesbury were +among the first and luckiest in the scramble. When the representatives +of themselves and their partners arrived in Carolina in 1670, bringing +with them that pompous and preposterous anachronism, the "Fundamental +Constitutions," contrived by the combined wisdom of Shaftesbury and John +Locke to impose a feudal government upon an immense domain of +wilderness, they found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>the ground already occupied with a scanty and +curiously mixed population, which had taken on a simple form of polity +and was growing into a state. The region adjoining Virginia was peopled +by Puritans from the Nansemond country, vexed with the paltry +persecutions of Governor Berkeley, and later by fugitives from the +bloody revenge which he delighted to inflict on those who had been +involved in the righteous rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon. These had +been joined by insolvent debtors not a few. Adventurers from New England +settled on the Cape Fear River for a lumber trade, and kept the various +plantations in communication with the rest of the world by their +coasting craft plying to Boston. Dissatisfied companies from Barbadoes +seeking a less torrid climate next arrived. Thus the region was settled +in the first instance at second hand from older colonies. To these came +settlers direct from England, such emigrants as the proprietors could +persuade to the undertaking, and such as were impelled by the evil state +of England in the last days of the Stuarts, or drawn by the promise of +religious liberty.</p> + +<p>South Carolina, on the other hand, was settled direct from Europe, first +by cargoes of emigrants shipped on speculation by the great real-estate +"operators" who had at heart not only the creation of a gorgeous +aristocracy in the West, but also the realization of fat dividends on +their heavy ventures. Members of the dominant politico-religious party +in England were attracted to a country in which they were still to be +regarded before the law as of the "only true and orthodox" church; and +religious dissenters gladly accepted the offer of toleration and +freedom, even without the assurance of equality. One of the most notable +contributions to the new colony was a company of dissenters from +Somersetshire, led by Joseph Blake, brother to Cromwell's illustrious +admiral. Among these were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>some of the earliest American Baptists; and +there is clear evidence of connection between their arrival and the +coming, in 1684, of a Baptist church from the Massachusetts Colony, +under the pastorate of William Screven. This planting was destined to +have an important influence both on the religious and on the civil +history of the colony. Very early there came two ship-loads of Dutch +Calvinists from New York, dissatisfied with the domineering of their +English victors. But more important than the rest was that sudden +outflow of French Huguenots, representing not only religious fidelity +and devotion, but all those personal and social virtues that most +strengthen the foundations of a state, which set westward upon the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. This, with the later influx +of the Scotch-Irish, profoundly marked the character of South Carolina. +The great names in her history are generally either French or Scotch.</p> + +<p>It ought to have been plain to the proprietors, in their monstrous +conceit of political wisdom, that communities so constituted should have +been the last on which to impose the uniformity of an established +church. John Locke did see this, but was overruled. The Church of +England was established in name, but for long years had only this shadow +of existence. We need not, however, infer from the absence of organized +church and official clergy among the rude and turbulent pioneers of +North Carolina that the kingdom of God was not among them, even from the +beginning. But not until the year 1672 do we find manifestation of it +such as history can recognize. In that year came William Edmundson, "the +voice of one crying in the wilderness," bringing his testimony of the +light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The honest +man, who had not thought it reasonable in the Christians of +Massachusetts to be offended at one's sitting in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>steeple-house with +his hat on, found it an evidence that "they had little or no religion" +when the rough woodsmen of Carolina beguiled the silent moments of the +Friends' devotions by smoking their pipes; and yet he declares that he +found them "a tender people." Converts were won to the society, and a +quarterly meeting was established. Within a few months followed George +Fox, uttering his deep convictions in a voice of singular persuasiveness +and power, that reached the hearts of both high and low. And he too +declared that he had found the people "generally tender and open," and +rejoiced to have made among them "a little entrance for truth." The +church of Christ had been begun. As yet there had been neither baptism +nor sacramental supper; these outward and visible signs were absent; but +inward and spiritual grace was there, and the thing signified is greater +than the sign. The influence diffused itself like leaven. Within a +decade the society was extended through both the Carolinas and became +the principal form of organized Christianity. It was reckoned in 1710 to +include one seventh of the population of North Carolina.<a name="FNanchor_65:1_33" id="FNanchor_65:1_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_65:1_33" class="fnanchor">[65:1]</a></p> + +<p>The attempt of a foreign proprietary government to establish by law the +church of an inconsiderable and not preëminently respectable minority +had little effect except to exasperate and alienate the settlers. Down +to the end of the seventeenth century the official church in North +Carolina gave no sign of life. In South Carolina almost twenty years +passed before it was represented by a single clergyman. The first +manifestation of church life seems to have been in the meetings on the +banks of the Cooper and the Santee, in which the French refugees +worshiped their fathers' God with the psalms of Marot and Beza.</p> + +<p>But with the eighteenth century begins a better era for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>the English +church in the Carolinas. The story of the founding and the work of the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, taken in +connection with its antecedents and its results, belongs to this +history, not only as showing the influence of European Christianity upon +America, but also as indicating the reaction of America upon Europe.</p> + +<p>In an important sense the organization of religious societies which is +characteristic of modern Christendom is of American origin. The labors +of John Eliot among the Indians of New England stirred so deep an +interest in the hearts of English Christians that in 1649 an ordinance +was passed by the Long Parliament creating a corporation to be called +"The President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New +England"; and a general collection made under Cromwell's direction +produced nearly twelve thousand pounds, from the income of which +missionaries were maintained among some of the Northern tribes of +Indians. With the downfall of the Commonwealth the corporation became +defunct; but through the influence of the saintly Richard Baxter, whose +tender interest in the work of Eliot is witnessed by a touching passage +in his writings, the charter was revived in 1662, with Robert Boyle for +president and patron. It was largely through his generosity that Eliot +was enabled to publish his Indian Bible. This society, "The New England +Company," as it is called, is still extant—the oldest of Protestant +missionary societies.<a name="FNanchor_66:1_34" id="FNanchor_66:1_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_66:1_34" class="fnanchor">[66:1]</a></p> + +<p>It is to that Dr. Thomas Bray who returned in 1700 to England from his +thankless and discouraging work as commissary in Maryland of the Bishop +of London, that the Church of England owes a large debt of gratitude for +having <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>taken away the reproach of her barrenness. Already his zeal had +laid the foundations on which was reared the Society for the Promotion +of Christian Knowledge. In 1701 he had the satisfaction of attending the +first meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in +Foreign Parts, which for nearly three quarters of a century, sometimes +in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more +excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American +colonies. Its missionaries, men of a far different character from the +miserable incumbents of parishes in Maryland and Virginia, were among +the first preachers of the gospel in the Carolinas. Within the years +1702-40 there served under the commission of this society in North +Carolina nine missionaries, in South Carolina thirty-five.<a name="FNanchor_67:1_35" id="FNanchor_67:1_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_67:1_35" class="fnanchor">[67:1]</a></p> + +<p>But the zeal of these good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of +Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign +proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part +of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing +disabilities on other sects—these were among the chief occasions of the +continual collision between the people and the colonial governments, +which culminated in the struggle for independence. By the time that +struggle began the established church in the Carolinas was ready to +vanish away.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55:1_28" id="Footnote_55:1_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55:1_28"><span class="label">[55:1]</span></a> W. H. Browne, "Maryland" (in American Commonwealths), p. +18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57:1_29" id="Footnote_57:1_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57:1_29"><span class="label">[57:1]</span></a> This seems to be the whole explanation of the curious +paradox that the first experiment of religious liberty and equality +before the law among all Christian sects should have been made +apparently under the auspices of that denomination which alone at the +present day continues to maintain in theory that it is the duty of civil +government to enforce sound doctrine by pains and penalties. We would +not grudge the amplest recognition of Lord Baltimore's faith or +magnanimity or political wisdom; but we have failed to find evidence of +his rising above the plane of the smart real-estate speculator, willing +to be all things to all men, if so he might realize on his investments. +Happily, he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that his own interest +was involved in the liberty, contentment, and prosperity of his +colonists. +</p><p> +Mr. E. D. Neill, who has excelled other writers in patient and exact +study of the original sources of this part of colonial history, +characterizes Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, as "one whose whole life +was passed in self-aggrandizement, first deserting Father White, then +Charles I., and making friends of Puritans and republicans to secure the +rentals of the province of Maryland, and never contributing a penny for +a church or school-house" ("English Colonization of America," p. 258).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59:1_30" id="Footnote_59:1_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59:1_30"><span class="label">[59:1]</span></a> Browne, pp. 54-57; Neill, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 270-274.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59:2_31" id="Footnote_59:2_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59:2_31"><span class="label">[59:2]</span></a> The act of Parliament provided full religious liberty +for dissenters from the established order, save only "so as nothing be +done by them to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62:1_32" id="Footnote_62:1_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62:1_32"><span class="label">[62:1]</span></a> H. C. Lodge, "British Colonies in America," pp. 119-124, +with authorities cited. The severe characterization seems to be +sustained by the evidence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65:1_33" id="Footnote_65:1_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65:1_33"><span class="label">[65:1]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 237.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66:1_34" id="Footnote_66:1_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66:1_34"><span class="label">[66:1]</span></a> "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 2, 3; "Encyclopædia +Britannica," vol. xvi., p. 514.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67:1_35" id="Footnote_67:1_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67:1_35"><span class="label">[67:1]</span></a> "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 849, 850.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<h3>THE DUTCH CALVINIST COLONY ON THE HUDSON AND THE SWEDISH LUTHERAN COLONY +ON THE DELAWARE—THEY BOTH FALL UNDER THE SHADOW OF GREAT BRITAIN.</h3> + + +<p class="section">When the Englishman Henry Hudson, in the Dutch East India Company's +ship, the "Half-moon," in September, 1609, sailed up "the River of +Mountains" as far as the site of Albany, looking for the northwest +passage to China, the English settlement at Jamestown was in the third +year of its half-perishing existence. More than thirteen years were yet +to pass before the Pilgrims from England by way of Holland should make +their landing on Plymouth Rock.</p> + +<p>But we are not at liberty to assign so early a date to the Dutch +settlement of New York, and still less to the church. There was a prompt +reaching out, on the part of the immensely enterprising Dutch merchants, +after the lucrative trade in peltries; there was a plying to and fro of +trading-vessels, and there were trading-posts established on Manhattan +Island and at the head of navigation on the Hudson, or North River, and +on the South River, or Delaware. Not until the great Dutch West India +Company had secured its monopoly of trade and perfected its +organization, in 1623, was there a beginning of colonization. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>In that +year a company of Walloons, or French-speaking Hollanders, was planted +near Albany, and later arrivals were settled on the Delaware, on Long +Island, and on Manhattan. At length, in 1626, came Peter Minuit with an +ample commission from the all-powerful Company, who organized something +like a system of civil government comprehending all the settlements. +Evidences of prosperity and growing wealth began to multiply. But one is +impressed with the merely secular and commercial character of the +enterprise and with the tardy and feeble signs of religious life in the +colony. In 1626, when the settlement of Manhattan had grown to a village +of thirty houses and two hundred souls, there arrived two official +"sick-visitors," who undertook some of the public duties of a pastor. On +Sundays, in the loft over the horse-mill, they would read from the +Scriptures and the creeds. And two years later, in 1628, the village, +numbering now about two hundred and seventy souls, gave a grateful +welcome to Jonas Michaelius, minister of the gospel. He rejoiced to +gather no less than fifty communicants at the first celebration of the +Lord's Supper, and to organize them into a church according to the +Reformed discipline. The two elders were the governor and the Company's +storekeeper, men of honest report who had served in like functions in +churches of the fatherland. The records of this period are scanty; the +very fact of this beginning of a church and the presence of a minister +in the colony had faded out of history until restored by the recent +discovery of a letter of the forgotten Michaelius.<a name="FNanchor_69:1_36" id="FNanchor_69:1_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_69:1_36" class="fnanchor">[69:1]</a></p> + +<p>The sagacious men in control of the Dutch West India Company were quick +to recognize that weakness in their enterprise which in the splendid +colonial attempt of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>French proved ultimately to be fatal. Their +settlements were almost exclusively devoted to the lucrative trade with +the Indians and were not taking root in the soil. With all its +advantages, the Dutch colony could not compete with New England.<a name="FNanchor_70:1_37" id="FNanchor_70:1_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_70:1_37" class="fnanchor">[70:1]</a> +To meet this difficulty an expedient was adopted which was not long in +beginning to plague the inventors. A vast tract of territory, with +feudal rights and privileges, was offered to any man settling a colony +of fifty persons. The disputes which soon arose between these powerful +vassals and the sovereign Company had for one effect the recall of Peter +Minuit from his position of governor. Never again was the unlucky colony +to have so competent and worthy a head as this discarded elder of the +church. Nevertheless the scheme was not altogether a failure.</p> + +<p>In 1633 arrived a new pastor, Everard Bogardus, in the same ship with a +schoolmaster—the first in the colony—and the new governor, Van +Twiller. The governor was incompetent and corrupt, and the minister was +faithful and plain-spoken; what could result but conflict? During Van +Twiller's five years of mismanagement, nevertheless, the church emerged +from the mill-loft and was installed in a barn-like meeting-house of +wood. During the equally wretched administration of Kieft, the governor, +listening to the reproaches of a guest, who quoted the example of New +England, where the people were wont to build a fine church as soon as +they had houses for themselves, was incited to build a stone church +within the fort. There seems to have been little else that he did for +the kingdom of heaven. Pastor Bogardus is entitled to the respect of +later ages for the chronic quarrel that he kept up with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>worthless +representatives of the Company. At length his righteous rebuke of an +atrociously wicked massacre of neighboring Indians perpetrated by Kieft +brought matters to a head. The two antagonists sailed in the same ship, +in 1647, to lay their dispute before the authorities in Holland, the +Company and the classis. The case went to a higher court. The ship was +cast away and both the parties were drowned.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the patroon Van Rensselaer, on his great manor near Albany, +showed some sense of his duty to the souls of the people whom he had +brought out into the wilderness. He built a church and put into the +pastoral charge over his subjects one who, under his travestied name of +Megapolensis, has obtained a good report as a faithful minister of Jesus +Christ. It was he who saved Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, from +imminent torture and death among the Mohawks, and befriended him, and +saw him safely off for Europe. This is one honorable instance, out of +not a few, of personal respect and kindness shown to members of the +Roman clergy and the Jesuit society by men who held these organizations +in the severest reprobation. To his Jesuit brother he was drawn by a +peculiarly strong bond of fellowship, for the two were fellow-laborers +in the gospel to the red men. For Domine Megapolensis is claimed<a name="FNanchor_71:1_38" id="FNanchor_71:1_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_71:1_38" class="fnanchor">[71:1]</a> +the high honor of being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians.</p> + +<p>In 1647, to the joy of all the colonists, arrived a new governor, Peter +Stuyvesant, not too late to save from utter ruin the colony that had +suffered everything short of ruin from the incompetency and wickedness +of Kieft. About the time that immigration into New England ceased with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>the triumph of the Puritan party in England, there began to be a +distinct current of population setting toward the Hudson River colony. +The West India Company had been among the first of the speculators in +American lands to discover that a system of narrow monopoly is not the +best nurse for a colony; too late to save itself from ultimate +bankruptcy, it removed some of the barriers of trade, and at once +population began to flow in from other colonies, Virginia and New +England. Besides those who were attracted by the great business +advantages of the Dutch colony, there came some from Massachusetts, +driven thence by the policy of exclusiveness in religious opinion +deliberately adopted there. Ordinances were set forth assuring to +several such companies "liberty of conscience, according to the custom +and manner of Holland." Growing prosperously in numbers, the colony grew +in that cosmopolitan diversity of sects and races which went on +increasing with its years. As early as 1644 Father Jogues was told by +the governor that there were persons of eighteen different languages at +Manhattan, including Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, +Anabaptists (here called Mennonists), etc. No jealousy seems to have +arisen over this multiplication of sects until, in 1652, the Dutch +Lutherans, who had been attendants at the Dutch Reformed Church, +presented a respectful petition that they might be permitted to have +their own pastor and church. Denied by Governor Stuyvesant, the request +was presented to the Company and to the States-General. The two Reformed +pastors used the most strenuous endeavors through the classis of +Amsterdam to defeat the petition, under the fear that the concession of +this privilege would tend to the diminution of their congregation. This +resistance was successfully maintained until at last the petitioners +were able to obtain from the Roman Catholic Duke of York <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>the religious +freedom which Dutch Calvinism had failed to give them.</p> + +<p>Started thus in the wrong direction, it was easy for the colonial +government to go from bad to worse. At a time when the entire force of +Dutch clergy in the colony numbered only four, they were most +unapostolically zealous to prevent any good from being done by +"unauthorized conventicles and the preaching of unqualified persons," +and procured the passing of an ordinance forbidding these under penalty +of fine and imprisonment. The mild remonstrances of the Company, which +was eager to get settlers without nice inquiries as to their religious +opinions, had little effect to restrain the enterprising orthodoxy of +Peter Stuyvesant. The activity of the Quakers among the Long Island +towns stirred him to new energy. Not only visiting missionaries, but +quiet dwellers at home, were subjected to severe and ignominious +punishments. The persecution was kept up until one of the banished +Friends, John Bowne, reached Amsterdam and laid the case before the +Company. This enlightened body promptly shortened the days of +tribulation by a letter to the superserviceable Stuyvesant, conceived in +a most commercial spirit. It suggested to him that it was doubtful +whether further persecution was expedient, unless it was desired to +check the growth of population, which at that stage of the enterprise +ought rather to be encouraged. No man, they said, ought to be molested +so long as he disturbed neither his neighbors nor the government. "This +maxim has always been the guide of the magistrates of this city, and the +consequence has been that from every land people have flocked to this +asylum. Tread thus in their steps, and we doubt not you will be +blessed."</p> + +<p>The stewardship of the interests of the kingdom of Christ in the New +Netherlands was about to be taken away from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>the Dutch West India +Company and the classis of Amsterdam. It will hardly be claimed by any +that the account of their stewardship was a glorious one. The supply of +ministers of the gospel had been tardy, inconstant, and scanty. At the +time when the Dutch ministers were most active in hindering the work of +others, there were only four of themselves in a vast territory with a +rapidly increasing population. The clearest sign of spiritual life in +the first generation of the colony is to be found in the righteous +quarrel of Domine Bogardus with the malignant Kieft, and the large +Christian brotherly kindness, the laborious mission work among the +Indians, and the long-sustained pastoral faithfulness of Domine +Megapolensis.</p> + +<p>Doubtless there is a record in heaven of faithful living and serving of +many true disciples among this people, whose names are unknown on earth; +but in writing history it is only with earthly memorials that we have to +do. The records of the Dutch régime present few indications of such +religious activity on the part of the colonists as would show that they +regarded religion otherwise than as something to be imported from +Holland at the expense of the Company.</p> + +<p>A studious and elegant writer, Mr. Douglas Campbell, has presented in +two ample and interesting volumes<a name="FNanchor_74:1_39" id="FNanchor_74:1_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_74:1_39" class="fnanchor">[74:1]</a> the evidence in favor of his +thesis that the characteristic institutions established by the Puritans +in New England were derived, directly or indirectly, not from England, +but from Holland. One of the gravest answers to an argument which +contains so much to command respect is found in the history of the New +Netherlands. In the early records of no one of the American colonies is +there less manifestation of the Puritan characteristics than in the +records of the colony that was absolutely and exclusively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>under Dutch +control and made up chiefly of Dutch settlers. Nineteen years from the +beginning of the colony there was only one church in the whole extent of +it; at the end of thirty years there were only two churches. After ten +years of settlement the first schoolmaster arrived; and after thirty-six +years a Latin school was begun, for want of which up to that time young +men seeking a classical education had had to go to Boston for it. In no +colony does there appear less of local self-government or of central +representative government, less of civil liberty, or even of the +aspiration for it. The contrast between the character of this colony and +the heroic antecedents of the Dutch in Holland is astonishing and +inexplicable. The sordid government of a trading corporation doubtless +tended to depress the moral tone of the community, but this was an evil +common to many of the colonies. Ordinances, frequently renewed, for the +prevention of disorder and brawling on Sunday and for restricting the +sale of strong drinks, show how prevalent and obstinate were these +evils. In 1648 it is boldly asserted in the preamble to a new law that +one fourth of the houses in New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of +strong drink. Not a hopeful beginning for a young commonwealth.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Before bidding a willing good-bye to the Dutch régime of the New +Netherlands, it remains to tell the story of another colony, begun under +happy auspices, but so short-lived that its rise and fall are a mere +episode in the history of the Dutch colony.</p> + +<p>As early as 1630, under the feudal concessions of the Dutch West India +Company, extensive tracts had been taken on the South River, or +Delaware, and, after purchase from the Indians, settled by a colony +under the conduct of the best of all the Dutch leaders, De Vries. +Quarrels <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>with the Indians arose, and at the end of a twelvemonth the +colony was extinguished in blood. The land seemed to be left free for +other occupants.</p> + +<p>Years before, the great Gustavus Adolphus had pondered and decided on an +enterprise of colonization in America.<a name="FNanchor_76:1_40" id="FNanchor_76:1_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_76:1_40" class="fnanchor">[76:1]</a> The exigencies of the +Thirty Years' War delayed the execution of his plan, but after the fatal +day of Lützen the project resumed by the fit successor of Gustavus in +the government of Sweden, the Chancellor Oxenstiern. Peter Minuit, who +had been rejected from his place as the first governor of New Amsterdam, +tendered to the Swedes the aid of his experience and approved wisdom; +and in the end of the year 1637, against the protest of Governor Kieft, +the strong foundations of a Swedish Lutheran colony were laid on the +banks of the Delaware. A new purchase was made of the Indians (who had +as little scruple as the Stuart kings about disposing of the same land +twice over to different parties), including the lands from the mouth of +the bay to the falls near Trenton. A fort was built where now stands the +city of Wilmington, and under the protection of its walls Christian +worship was begun by the first pastor, Torkillus. Strong reinforcements +arrived in 1643, with the energetic Governor Printz and that man of +"unwearied zeal in always propagating the love of God," the Rev. John +Campanius, who through faith has obtained a good report by his brief +most laborious ministry both to his fellow-countrymen and to the +Delaware Indians.</p> + +<p>The governor fixed his residence at Tinicum, now almost included within +the vast circumference of Philadelphia, and there, forty years before +the arrival of William Penn, Campanius preached the gospel of peace in +two languages, to the red men and to the white.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>The question of the Swedish title, raised at the outset by the protest +of the Dutch governor, could not long be postponed. It was suddenly +precipitated on the arrival of Governor Rising, in 1654, by his capture +of Fort Casimir, which the Dutch had built for the practical assertion +of their claim. It seems a somewhat grotesque act of piety on the part +of the Swedes, when, having celebrated the festival of Trinity Sunday by +whipping their fellow-Christians out of the fort, they commemorated the +good work by naming it the Fort of the Holy Trinity. It was a fatal +victory. The next year came Governor Stuyvesant with an overpowering +force and demanded and received the surrender of the colony to the +Dutch. Honorable terms of surrender were conceded; among them, against +the protest, alas! of good Domine Megapolensis, was the stipulation of +religious liberty for the Lutherans.</p> + +<p>It was the end of the Swedish colony, but not at once of the church. The +Swedish community of some seven hundred souls, cut off from +reinforcement and support from the fatherland, cherished its language +and traditions and the mold of doctrine in which it had been shaped; +after more than forty years the reviving interest of the mother church +was manifested by the sending out of missionaries to seek and succor the +daughter long absent and neglected in the wilderness. Two venerable +buildings, the Gloria Dei Church in the southern part of Philadelphia, +and the Old Swedes' Church at Wilmington, remain as monuments of the +honorable story. The Swedish language ceased to be spoken; the people +became undistinguishably absorbed in the swiftly multiplying population +about them.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It was a short-lived triumph in which the Dutch colony reduced the +Swedish under its jurisdiction. It only prepared a larger domain for it +to surrender, in its turn, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>superior force. With perfidy worthy of +the House of Stuart, the newly restored king of England, having granted +to his brother, the Duke of York, territory already plighted to others +and territory already occupied by a friendly power, stretching in all +from the Connecticut to the Delaware, covered his designs with friendly +demonstrations, and in a time of profound peace surprised the quiet town +of New Amsterdam with a hostile fleet and land force and a peremptory +demand for surrender. The only hindrance interposed was a few hours of +vain and angry bluster from Stuyvesant. The indifference of the Dutch +republic, which had from the beginning refused its colony any promise of +protection, and the sordid despotism of the Company, and the arrogant +contempt of popular rights manifested by its governors, seem to have +left no spark of patriotic loyalty alive in the population. With inert +indifference, if not even with satisfaction, the colony transferred its +allegiance to the British crown, henceforth sovereign from Maine to the +Carolinas. The rights of person and property, religious liberty, and +freedom of trade were stipulated in the capitulation.</p> + +<p>The British government was happy in the character of Colonel Nicolls, +who came as commandant of the invading expedition and remained as +governor. Not only faithful to the terms of the surrender, but +considerate of the feelings and interests of the conquered province, he +gave the people small reason to regret the change of government. The +established Dutch church not only was not molested, but was continued in +full possession of its exceptional privileges. And it continued to +languish. At the time of the surrender the province contained "three +cities, thirty villages, and ten thousand inhabitants,"<a name="FNanchor_78:1_41" id="FNanchor_78:1_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_78:1_41" class="fnanchor">[78:1]</a> and for +all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>away to +three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. +This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous +church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power +and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put +the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later +English governors showed no scruple in violating the spirit of the terms +of surrender and using their official power and influence to force the +establishment of the English church against the almost unanimous will of +the people. Property was unjustly taken and legal rights infringed to +this end, but the end was not attained. Colonel Morris, an earnest +Anglican, warned his friends against the folly of taking by force the +salaries of ministers chosen by the people and paying them over to "the +ministers of the church." "It may be a means of subsisting those +ministers, but they won't make many converts among a people who think +themselves very much injured." The pious efforts of Governor Fletcher, +the most zealous of these official propagandists, are even more severely +characterized in a dispatch of his successor, the Earl of Bellomont: +"The late governor, ... under the notion of a Church of England to be +put in opposition to the Dutch and French churches established here, +supported a few rascally English, who are a scandal to their nation and +the Protestant religion."<a name="FNanchor_79:1_42" id="FNanchor_79:1_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_79:1_42" class="fnanchor">[79:1]</a> Evidently such support would have for +its main effect to make the pretended establishment odious to the +people. Colonel Morris sharply points out the impolicy as well as the +injustice of the course adopted, claiming that his church would have +been in a much better position without this political aid, and citing +the case of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, where nothing of the kind had +been attempted, and where, nevertheless, "there are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>four times the +number of churchmen that there are in this province of New York; and +they are so, most of them, upon principle, whereas nine parts in ten of +ours will add no great credit to whatever church they are of."<a name="FNanchor_80:1_43" id="FNanchor_80:1_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_80:1_43" class="fnanchor">[80:1]</a></p> + +<p>It need not be denied that government patronage, even when dispensed by +the dirty hands of such scurvy nursing fathers as Fletcher and Lord +Cornbury, may give strength of a certain sort to a religious +organization. Whatever could be done in the way of endowment or of +social preferment in behalf of the English church was done eagerly. But +happily this church had a better resource than royal governors in the +well-equipped and sustained, and generally well-chosen, army of +missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Not fewer +than fifty-eight of them were placed by the society in this single +province. And if among them there were those who seemed to "preach +Christ of envy and strife," as if the great aim of the preacher of the +gospel were to get a man out of one Christian sect into another, there +were others who showed a more Pauline and more Christian conception of +their work, taking their full share of the task of bringing the +knowledge of Christ to the unevangelized, whether white, red, or +black.<a name="FNanchor_80:2_44" id="FNanchor_80:2_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_80:2_44" class="fnanchor">[80:2]</a></p> + +<p>The diversity of organization which was destined to characterize the +church in the province of New York was increased by the inflow of +population from New England. The settlement of Long Island was from the +beginning Puritan English. The Hudson Valley began early to be occupied +by New Englanders bringing with them their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>pastors. In 1696 Domine +Selyns, the only Dutch pastor in New York City, in his annual report +congratulates himself, "Our number is now full," meaning that there are +four Dutch ministers in the whole province of New York, and adds: "In +the country places here there are many English preachers, mostly from +New England. They were ordained there, having been in a large measure +supplied by the University of Cambridge [Mass.]." The same letter gives +the names of the three eminent French pastors ministering to the +communities of Huguenot refugees at New Rochelle and New York and +elsewhere in the neighborhood. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, more +important to the history of the opening century than any of the rest, +were yet to enter.</p> + +<p>The spectacle of the ancient Dutch church thus dwindling, and seemingly +content to dwindle, to one of the least of the tribes, is not a cheerful +one, nor one easy to understand. But out of this little and dilapidated +Bethlehem was to come forth a leader. Domine Frelinghuysen, arriving in +America in 1720, was to begin a work of training for the ministry, which +would result, in 1784, in the establishment of the first American +professorship of theology;<a name="FNanchor_81:1_45" id="FNanchor_81:1_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_81:1_45" class="fnanchor">[81:1]</a> and by the fervor of his preaching he +was to win the signal glory of bringing in the Great Awakening.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69:1_36" id="Footnote_69:1_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69:1_36"><span class="label">[69:1]</span></a> Dr. E. T. Corwin, "History of the Reformed (Dutch) +Church in America" (in the American Church History Series), pp. 28-32.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70:1_37" id="Footnote_70:1_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70:1_37"><span class="label">[70:1]</span></a> "The province, under the long years of Dutch supremacy, +had gathered only some seven thousand inhabitants, against the hundred +and twenty thousand of their New England neighbors" (Lodge, "English +Colonies," p. 297).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71:1_38" id="Footnote_71:1_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71:1_38"><span class="label">[71:1]</span></a> See Corwin, p. 37; but compare the claim made in behalf +of the Puritan Whitaker, "apostle to the Indians" thirty years earlier +(Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 18); compare also the work +of the Lutheran Campanius in New Sweden (Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. +83).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74:1_39" id="Footnote_74:1_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74:1_39"><span class="label">[74:1]</span></a> "The Puritans in Holland, England, and America" (New +York, 1892).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76:1_40" id="Footnote_76:1_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76:1_40"><span class="label">[76:1]</span></a> The king's noble conceptions of what such a colony +should be and should accomplish are quoted in Bancroft, vol. ii., pp. +284, 285.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78:1_41" id="Footnote_78:1_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78:1_41"><span class="label">[78:1]</span></a> Corwin, p. 54.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79:1_42" id="Footnote_79:1_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79:1_42"><span class="label">[79:1]</span></a> Corwin, pp. 105, 121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80:1_43" id="Footnote_80:1_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80:1_43"><span class="label">[80:1]</span></a> Corwin, p. 105.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80:2_44" id="Footnote_80:2_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80:2_44"><span class="label">[80:2]</span></a> "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 57-79. That the +sectarian proselyting zeal manifested in some of the missionaries' +reports made an unfavorable impression on the society is indicated by +the peremptory terms of a resolution adopted in 1710: "That a stop be +put to the sending any more missionaries among Christians, except to +such places whose ministers are, or shall be, dead or removed" (<i>ibid.</i>, +p. 69). A good resolution, but not well kept.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81:1_45" id="Footnote_81:1_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81:1_45"><span class="label">[81:1]</span></a> Corwin, p. 207. Undue stress should not be laid upon +this formal fact. The early New England colleges were primarily and +mainly theological seminaries and training-schools for the ministry. +Their professors were all theological professors. It is stated in +Dwight's "Life of Edwards" that James Pierpont, of New Haven, Edwards's +father-in-law, who died in 1714, lectured to the students of Yale +College, as professor of moral philosophy.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<h3>THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND—PILGRIM AND PURITAN.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The attitude of the Church of England Puritans toward the Separatists +from that church was the attitude of the earnest, patient, hopeful +reformer toiling for the removal of public abuses, toward the restless +"come-outer" who quits the conflict in despair of succeeding, and, +"without tarrying for any," sets up his little model of good order +outside. Such defection seemed to them not only of the nature of a +military desertion and a weakening of the right side, but also an +implied assertion of superior righteousness which provoked invidious +comparison and mutual irritation of feeling. The comparison must not be +pressed too far if we cite in illustration the feeling of the great mass +of earnest, practical antislavery men in the American conflict with +slavery toward the faction of "come-outer" abolitionists, who, +despairing of success within the church and the state, seceded from +both, thenceforth predicting failure for every practical enterprise of +reform on the part of their former workfellows, and at every defeat +chuckling, "I told you so."</p> + +<p>If we should compare the English Separatist of the seventeenth century +with this American Separatist of the nineteenth, we should be in still +greater danger of misleading. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Certainly there were those among the +Separatists from the Church of England who, in the violence of their +alienation and the bitterness of their sufferings, did not refrain from +sour and acrid censoriousness toward the men who were nearest them in +religious conviction and pursuing like ends by another course. One does +not read far in the history of New England without encountering +reformers of this extreme type. But not such were the company of true +worshipers who, at peril of liberty and life, were wont to assemble each +Lord's day in a room of the old manor-house of Scrooby, of which William +Brewster was lessee, for Christian fellowship and worship, and for +instruction in Christian truth and duty from the saintly lips of John +Robinson. The extreme radicals of their day, they seem to have been +divinely preserved from the besetting sins of radicalism—its +narrowness, its self-righteousness, its censoriousness and intolerance. +Those who read the copious records of the early New England colonization +are again and again surprised at finding that the impoverished little +company of Separatists at Leyden and Plymouth, who were so sharply +reprobated by their Puritan brethren of the Church of England for their +schismatic attitude, their over-righteousness and exclusiveness, do +really excel, in liberality and patient tolerance and catholic and +comprehensive love toward all good men, those who sat in judgment on +them. Something of this is due to the native nobleness of the men +themselves, of whom the world was not worthy; something of it to their +long discipline in the passive virtues under bitter persecution in their +native land and in exile in Holland and in the wilderness; much of it +certainly to the incomparably wise and Christ-like teaching of Robinson +both at Scrooby and at Leyden, and afterward through the tender and +faithful epistles with which he followed them across the sea; and all of +it to the grace <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>of God working in their hearts and glorified in their +living and their dying.</p> + +<p>It would be incompatible with the limits of this volume to recite in +detail the story of the Pilgrims; it has been told more amply and with +fuller repetition than almost any other chapter of human history, and is +never to be told or heard without awakening that thrill with which the +heartstrings respond to the sufferings and triumphs of Christ's blessed +martyrs and confessors. But, more dispassionately studied with reference +to its position and relations in ecclesiastical history, it cannot be +understood unless the sharp and sometimes exasperated antagonism is kept +in view that existed between the inconsiderable faction, as it was +esteemed, of the Separatists, and the great and growing Puritan party at +that time in disfavor with king and court and hierarchy, but soon to +become the dominant party not only in the Church of England, but in the +nation. It is not strange that the antagonism between the two parties +should be lost sight of. The two are identified in their theological +convictions, in their spiritual sympathies, and, for the most part, in +their judgment on questions concerning the externals of the church; and +presently their respective colonies, planted side by side, not without +mutual doubts and suspicions, are to grow together, leaving no visible +seam of juncture,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Like kindred drops commingling into one.<a name="FNanchor_84:1_46" id="FNanchor_84:1_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_84:1_46" class="fnanchor">[84:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To the Puritan reformer within the Church of England, the act of the +Pilgrims at Scrooby in separating themselves from the general mass of +English Christians, mingled though that mass might be with a multitude +of unworthy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>was nothing less than the sin of schism. One effect of the +act was to reflect odium upon the whole party of Puritans, and involve +them in the suspicion of that sedition which was so unjustly, but with +such fatal success, imputed to the Separatists. It was a hard and +doubtful warfare that the Puritans were waging against spiritual +wickedness in high places; the defection of the Separatists doubly +weakened them in the conflict. It is not strange, however it may seem +so, that the animosity of Puritan toward Separatist was sometimes +acrimonious, nor that the public reproaches hurled at the unpopular +little party should have provoked recriminations upon the assailants as +being involved in the defilements and the plagues of Babylon, and should +have driven the Separatists into a narrower exclusiveness of separation, +cutting themselves off not only from communion with abuses and +corruptions in the Church of England, but even from fellowship with good +and holy men in the national church who did not find it a duty to +secede.</p> + +<p>Nothing of this bitterness and narrowness is found in Robinson. +Strenuously as he maintained the right and duty of separation from the +Establishment, he was, especially in his later years, no less earnest in +condemning the "Separatists who carried their separation too far and had +gone beyond the true landmarks in matters of Christian doctrine or of +Christian fellowship."<a name="FNanchor_85:1_47" id="FNanchor_85:1_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_85:1_47" class="fnanchor">[85:1]</a> His latest work, "found in his studie after +his decease," was "A Treatise of the Lawfulness of Hearing of the +Ministers in the Church of England."</p> + +<p>The moderateness of Robinson's position, and the brotherly kindness of +his temper, could not save him and his people from the prevailing odium +that rested upon the Separatist. Many and grave were the sorrows through +which the Pilgrim church had to pass in its way from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>little hamlet +of Scrooby to the bleak hill of Plymouth. They were in peril from the +persecutor at home and in peril in the attempt to escape; in peril from +greedy speculators and malignant politicians; in peril from the sea and +from cold and from starvation; in peril from the savages and from false +brethren privily sent among them to spy out their liberties; but an +added bitterness to all their tribulations lay in this, that, for the +course which they were constrained in conscience to pursue, they were +subject to the reprobation of those whom they most highly honored as +their brethren in the faith of Christ. Some of the most heartbreaking of +their trials arose directly from the unwillingness of English Puritans +to sustain, or even countenance, the Pilgrim colony.</p> + +<p>In the year 1607, when the ships of the Virginia Company were about +landing their freight of emigrants and supplies at Jamestown, the first +and unsuccessful attempt of the Pilgrims was made to escape from their +native land to Holland. Before the end of 1608 the greater part of them, +in scattering parties, had effected the passage of the North Sea, and +the church was reunited in a land of religious freedom. With what a +blameless, diligent, and peaceful life they adorned the name of disciple +through all the twelve years of their sojourn, how honored and beloved +they were among the churches and in the University of Leyden, there are +abundant testimonies. The twelve years of seclusion in an alien land +among a people of strange language was not too long a discipline of +preparation for that work for which the Head of the church had set them +apart. This was the period of Robinson's activity as author. In erudite +studies, in grave debate with gainsayers at home and with fellow-exiles +in Holland, he was maturing in his own mind, and in the minds of the +church, those large and liberal yet definite views of church +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>organization and duty which were destined for coming ages so profoundly +to influence the American church in all its orders and divisions. "He +became a reformer of the Separation."<a name="FNanchor_87:1_48" id="FNanchor_87:1_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_87:1_48" class="fnanchor">[87:1]</a></p> + +<p>We pass by the heroic and pathetic story of the consultations and +correspondences, the negotiations and disappointments, the embarkation +and voyage, and come to that memorable date, November 11 (= 21), 1620, +when, arrived off the shore of Cape Cod, the little company, without +charter or warrant of any kind from any government on earth, about to +land on a savage continent in quest of a home, gathered in the cabin of +the "Mayflower," and after a method quite in analogy with that in which, +sixteen years before, they had constituted the church at Scrooby, +entered into formal and solemn compact "in the presence of God and one +of another, covenanting and combining themselves together into a civil +body politic."</p> + +<p>It is difficult, in reading the instrument then subscribed, to avoid the +conviction that the theory of the origin of the powers of civil +government in a social compact, which had long floated in literature +before it came to be distinctly articulated in the "Contrat Social" of +Jean Jacques Rousseau, was familiar to the minds of those by whom the +paper was drawn. Thoughtful men at the present day universally recognize +the fallacy of this plausible hypothesis, which once had such wide +currency and so serious an influence on the course of political history +in America. But whether or not they were affected by the theory, the +practical good sense of the men and their deference to the teachings of +the Bible secured them from the vicious and absurd consequences +deducible from it. Not all the names of the colonists were subscribed to +the compact,—a clear indication of the freedom of individual judgment +in that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>company,—but it was never for a moment held that the +dissentients were any the less bound by it. When worthless John +Billington, who had somehow got "shuffled into their company," was +sentenced for disrespect and disobedience to Captain Myles Standish "to +have his neck and heels tied together," it does not seem to have +occurred to him to plead that he had never entered into the social +compact; nor yet when the same wretched man, ten years later, was by a +jury convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death and executed. +Logically, under the social-compact theory, it would have been competent +for those dissenting from this compact to enter into another, and set up +a competing civil government on the same ground; but what would have +been the practical value of this line of argument might have been +learned from Mr. Thomas Morton, of Furnivall's Inn, after he had been +haled out of his disorderly house at Merry Mount by Captain Standish, +and convented before the authorities at Plymouth.</p> + +<p>The social-compact theory as applied to the church, implying that the +mutual duties of Christian disciples in society are derived solely from +mutual stipulations, is quite as transparently fallacious as when it is +applied to civil polity, and the consequences deducible from it are not +less absurd. But it cannot be claimed for the Plymouth men, and still +less for their spiritual successors, that they have wholly escaped the +evil consequences of their theory in its practical applications. The +notion that a church of Christ is a club, having no authority or +limitations but what it derives from club rules agreed on among the +members, would have been scouted by the Pilgrims; among those who now +claim to sit in their seats there are some who would hesitate to admit +it, and many who would frankly avow it with all its mischievous +implications. Planted in the soil of Plymouth, it spread at once through +New <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>England, and has become widely rooted in distant and diverse +regions of the American church.<a name="FNanchor_89:1_49" id="FNanchor_89:1_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_89:1_49" class="fnanchor">[89:1]</a></p> + +<p>The church of Plymouth, though deprived of its pastor, continued to be +rich in faith and in all spiritual gifts, and most of all in the +excellent gift of charity. The history of it year after year is a +beautiful illustration of brotherly kindness and mutual self-sacrifice +among themselves and of forgiving patience toward enemies. But the +colony, beginning in extreme feebleness and penury, never became either +strong or rich. One hundred and two souls embarked in the "Mayflower," +of whom nearly one half were dead before the end of four months. At the +end of four years the number had increased to one hundred and eighty. At +the end of ten years the settlement numbered three hundred persons.</p> + +<p>It could not have been with joy wholly unalloyed with misgivings that +this feeble folk learned of a powerful movement for planting a Puritan +colony close in the neighborhood. The movement had begun in the heart of +the national church, and represented everything that was best in that +institution. The Rev. John White, rector of Dorchester, followed across +the sea with pastoral solicitude the young men of his parish, who, in +the business of the fisheries, were wont to make long stay on the New +England coast, far from home and church. His thought was to establish a +settlement that should be a sort of depot of supplies for the fishing +fleets, and a temporary home attended with the comforts and safeguards +of Christian influence. The project was a costly failure; but it was +like the corn of wheat falling into the ground to die, and bringing +forth much fruit. A gentleman of energy and dignity, John <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>Endicott, +pledged his personal service as leader of a new colony. In September, +1628, he landed with a pioneering party at Naumkeag, and having happily +composed some differences that arose with the earlier comers, they named +the place <i>Salem</i>, which is, by interpretation, "Peace." Already, with +the newcomers and the old, the well-provided settlement numbered more +than fifty persons, busy in preparation for further arrivals. Meanwhile +vigorous work was doing in England. The organization to sustain the +colony represented adequate capital and the highest quality of character +and influence. A royal charter, drawn with sagacious care to secure +every privilege the Puritan Company desired, was secured from the +fatuity of the reigning Stuart, erecting in the wilderness such a free +commonwealth as his poor little soul abhorred; and preparation was made +for sending out, in the spring of 1629, a noble fleet of six vessels, +carrying three hundred men and a hundred women and children, with ample +equipment of provisions, tools and arms, and live stock. The Company had +taken care that there should be "plentiful provision of godly +ministers." Three approved clergymen of the Church of +England—Higginson, Skelton, and Bright—had been chosen by the Company +to attend the expedition, besides whom one Ralph Smith, a Separatist +minister, had been permitted to take passage before the Company +"understood of his difference in judgment in some things" from the other +ministers. He was permitted to continue his journey, yet not without a +caution to the governor that unless he were found "conformable to the +government" he was not to be suffered to remain within the limits of its +jurisdiction. An incident of this departure rests on the sole authority +of Cotton Mather, and is best told in his own words:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"When they came to the Land's End, Mr. Higginson, calling up +his children and other passengers unto the stern of the ship +to take their last sight of England, said, 'We will not say, +as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of +England, Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome! but we will say, +Farewell, dear England! farewell, the church of God in +England, and all the Christian friends there! We do not go to +New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though +we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go +to practice the positive part of church reformation and +propagate the gospel in America.'"</p></div> + +<p>The story ought to be true, for the intrinsic likeliness of it; and it +is all the likelier for the fact that among the passengers, kindly and +even fraternally treated, and yet the object of grave misgivings, was +the honest Separatist minister, Ralph Smith.<a name="FNanchor_91:1_50" id="FNanchor_91:1_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_91:1_50" class="fnanchor">[91:1]</a> The ideal of the new +colony could hardly have been better expressed than in these possibly +apocryphal words ascribed to Mr. Higginson. These were not fugitives +seeking asylum from persecution. Still less were they planning an asylum +for others. They were intent on the planting of a new commonwealth, in +which the church of Christ, not according to the imperfect and perverted +pattern of the English Establishment, but according to a fairer pattern, +that had been showed them in their mounts of vision, should be both free +and dominant. If this purpose of theirs was wrong; if they had no right +to deny themselves the comforts and delights of their native land, and +at vast cost of treasure to seclude themselves within a defined tract of +wilderness, for the accomplishment of an enterprise which they conceived +to be of the highest beneficence to mankind—then doubtless many of the +measures which they took in pursuance of this purpose must fall under +the same condemnation with the purpose itself. If <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>there are minds so +constituted as to perceive no moral difference between banishing a man +from his native home, for opinion's sake, and declining, on account of +difference of opinion, to admit a man to partnership in a difficult and +hazardous enterprise organized on a distinctly exclusive basis, such +minds will be constrained to condemn the Puritan colonists from the +start and all along. Minds otherwise constituted will be able to +discriminate between the righteous following of a justifiable policy and +the lapses of the colonial governments from high and Christian motives +and righteous courses. Whether the policy of rigorous exclusiveness, +building up communities of picked material, homogeneous in race, +language, and religion, is on the whole less wise for the founders of a +new commonwealth than a sweepingly comprehensive policy, gathering in +people mutually alien in speech and creed and habits, is a fairly open +question for historical students. Much light might be thrown upon it by +the comparative history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, of New +England and Pennsylvania. It is not a question that is answered at once +by the mere statement of it.</p> + +<p>We do not need to be told that to the little Separatist settlement at +Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the +founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on +ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a +momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions +emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of +answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by the spirit of +Christian love.</p> + +<p>That great spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general +exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the +spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a +divine fulfillment. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in +favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their +pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached +against them would practice as they did if they were in a place where +they might have liberty and live conformably." One of the most +affectionate of his disciples, Edward Winslow, wrote down some of the +precious and memorable words which the pastor, who was to see their face +no more, uttered through his tears as they were about to leave him. +"'There will be no difference,' he said, 'between the unconformable +ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out +of the kingdom.' And so he advised us to close with the godly party of +the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz., +how near we might possibly without sin close with them, rather than in +the least measure to affect division or separation from them."</p> + +<p>The solitude of the little starving hamlet by the sea was favorable to +the springing and fructifying of this seed in the good and honest hearts +into which it had been cast. Before the great fleet of colonists, with +its three unconformable Church of England clergymen, had reached the +port of Salem the good seed had been planted anew in other hearts not +less honest and good. It fell on this wise. The pioneer party at Salem +who came with Endicott, "arriving there in an uncultivated desert, many +of them, for want of wholesome diet and convenient lodgings, were seized +with the scurvy and other distempers, which shortened many of their +days, and prevented many of the rest from performing any great matter of +labor that year for advancing the work of the plantation." Whereupon the +governor, hearing that at Plymouth lived a physician "that had some +skill that way," wrote thither for help, and at once the beloved +physician and deacon of the Plymouth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>church, Dr. Samuel Fuller, +hastened to their relief. On what themes the discourse revolved between +the Puritan governor just from England and the Separatist deacon already +for so many years an exile, and whither it tended, is manifested in a +letter written soon after by Governor Endicott, of Salem, to Governor +Bradford, of Plymouth, under date May 11 (= 21), 1629. The letter marks +an epoch in the history of American Christianity:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>To the worshipful and my right worthy friend, William +Bradford, Esq., Governor of New Plymouth, these:</i></p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Right worthy Sir:</span> It is a thing not usual that servants to +one Master and of the same household should be strangers. I +assure you I desire it not; nay, to speak more plainly, I +cannot be so to you. God's people are marked with one and the +same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, +for the main, one and the same heart, guided by one and the +same Spirit of truth; and where this is there can be no +discord—nay, here must needs be sweet harmony. The same +request with you I make unto the Lord, that we may as +Christian brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love, +bending all our hearts and forces in furthering a work beyond +our strength, with reverence and fear fastening our eyes +always on him that only is able to direct and prosper all our +ways.</p> + +<p>"I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and +care in sending Mr. Fuller among us, and I rejoice much that I +am by him satisfied touching your judgments of the outward +form of God's worship.<a name="FNanchor_94:1_51" id="FNanchor_94:1_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_94:1_51" class="fnanchor">[94:1]</a> It is, as far as I can yet +gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, +and the same which I have professed and maintained ever since +the Lord in mercy revealed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>himself to me, being very far +different from the common report that hath been spread of you +touching that particular. But God's children must not look for +less here below, and it is the great mercy of God that he +strengthens them to go through with it.</p> + +<p>"I shall not need at this time to be tedious unto you, for, +God willing, I purpose to see your face shortly. In the +meantime I humbly take my leave of you, committing you to the +Lord's blessed protection, and rest</p></div> + +<p class="center">"Your assured loving friend and servant,</p> + +<p class="authorsc">"John Endicott."</p> + + +<p>"The positive part of church reformation," which Higginson and his +companions had come into the wilderness to practice, appeared in a new +light when studied under the new conditions. The question of separation +from the general fellowship of English Christians, which had lain +heavily on their consciences, was no longer a question; instead of it +arose the question of separation from their beloved and honored +fellow-Christians at Plymouth. The Act of Uniformity and the tyrannous +processes by which it was enforced no longer existed for them. They were +free to build the house of God simply according to the teaching of the +divine Word. What form will the structure take?</p> + +<p>One of the first practical questions to emerge was the question by what +authority their ministry was to be exercised. On one point they seem to +have been quite clear. The episcopal ordination, which each of them had +received in England, whatever validity it may have had in English law, +gave them no authority in the church of God in Salem. Further, their +appointment from the Company in London, although it was a regular +commission from the constituted civil government of the colony, could +confer no office in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>the spiritual house. A day of solemn fasting was +held, by the governor's appointment, for the choice of pastor and +teacher, and after prayer the two recognized candidates for the two +offices, Skelton and Higginson, were called upon to give their views as +to a divine call to the ministry. "They acknowledged there was a twofold +calling: the one, an inward calling, when the Lord moved the heart of a +man to take that calling upon him, and fitted him with gifts for the +same; the second (the outward calling) was from the people, when a +company of believers are joined together in covenant to walk together in +all the ways of God." Thereupon the assembly proceeded to a written +ballot, and its choice fell upon Mr. Skelton and Mr. Higginson. It +remained for the ministers elect to be solemnly inducted into office, +which was done with prayer and the laying on of hands in benediction.</p> + +<p>But presently there were searchings of heart over the anterior question +as to the constituency of the church. Were all the population of Salem +to be reckoned as of the church of Salem? and if not, who should +"discern between the righteous and the wicked"? The result of study of +this question, in the light of the New Testament, was this—that it was +"necessary for those who intended to be of the church solemnly to enter +into a covenant engagement one with another, in the presence of God, to +walk together before him according to his Word." Thirty persons were +chosen to be the first members of the church, who in a set form of words +made public vows of faithfulness to each other and to Christ. By the +church thus constituted the pastor and teacher, already installed in +office in the parish, were instituted as ministers of the church.<a name="FNanchor_96:1_52" id="FNanchor_96:1_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_96:1_52" class="fnanchor">[96:1]</a></p> + +<p>Before the solemnities of that notable day were concluded, a belated +vessel that had been eagerly awaited <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>landed on the beach at Salem the +"messengers of the church at Plymouth." They came into the assembly, +Governor Bradford at the head, and in the name of the Pilgrim church +declared their "approbation and concurrence," and greeted the new +church, the first-born in America, with "the right hand of fellowship." +A thoughtful and devoted student declares this day's proceedings to be +"the beginning of a distinctively American church history."<a name="FNanchor_97:1_53" id="FNanchor_97:1_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_97:1_53" class="fnanchor">[97:1]</a></p> + +<p>The immediate sequel of this transaction is characteristic and +instructive. Two brothers, John and Samuel Browne, members of the +council of the colony, took grave offense at this departure from the +ways of the Church of England, and, joining to themselves others +like-minded, set up separate worship according to the Book of Common +Prayer. Being called to account before the governor for their schismatic +procedure, they took an aggressive tone and declared that the ministers, +"were Separatists, and would be Anabaptists." The two brothers were +illogical. The ministers had not departed from the Nationalist and +anti-Separatist principles enunciated by Higginson from the quarter-deck +of the "Talbot." What they had just done was to lay the foundations of a +national church for the commonwealth that was in building. And the two +brothers, trying to draw off a part of the people into their +schism-shop, were Separatists, although they were doubtless surprised to +discover it. There was not the slightest hesitation on the governor's +part as to the proper course to be pursued. "Finding those two brothers +to be of high spirits, and their speeches and practices tending to +mutiny and faction, the governor told them that New England was no place +for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back for England at +the return of the ships <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>the same year."<a name="FNanchor_98:1_54" id="FNanchor_98:1_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_98:1_54" class="fnanchor">[98:1]</a> Neither then nor +afterward was there any trace of doubt in the minds of the New England +settlers, in going three thousand miles away into the seclusion of the +wilderness, of their indefeasible moral right to pick their own company. +There was abundant opportunity for mistake and temptation to wrong-doing +in the exercise of this right, but the right itself is so nearly +self-evident as to need no argument.</p> + +<p>While the civil and ecclesiastical foundations of the Salem community +are thus being laid, there is preparing on the other side of the sea +that great <i>coup d'état</i> which is to create, almost in a day, a +practically independent American republic. Until this is accomplished +the colonial organization is according to a common pattern, a settlement +on a distant shore, equipped, sustained, and governed with authority all +but sovereign by a commercial company at the metropolis, within the +reach, and thus under the control, of the supreme power. Suppose, now, +that the shareholders in the commercial company take their charter +conferring all but sovereign authority, and transport themselves and it +across the sea to the heart of the settlement, there to admit other +planters, at their discretion, to the franchise of the Company, what +then? This was the question pondered and decided in those dark days of +English liberty, when the triumph of despotism, civil and spiritual, +over the rights of Englishmen seemed almost achieved. The old officers +of the Company resigned; their places were filled by Winthrop and Dudley +and others, who had undertaken to emigrate; and that memorable season of +1630 not less than seventeen ships, carrying about one thousand +passengers, sailed from English ports for Massachusetts Bay. It was the +beginning of the great Puritan exodus. Attempts were made by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>king +and the archbishop to stay the flow of emigration, but with only +transient success. "At the end of ten years from Winthrop's arrival +about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or four thousand families, +including the few hundreds who were here before him, had come over in +three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred thousand pounds +sterling."<a name="FNanchor_99:1_55" id="FNanchor_99:1_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_99:1_55" class="fnanchor">[99:1]</a> What could not be done by despotism was accomplished by +the triumph of the people over the court. The meeting of the Long +Parliament in 1640 made it safe for Puritans to stay in England; and the +Puritans stayed. The current of migration was not only checked, but +turned backward. It is reckoned that within four generations from that +time more persons went to old England than originally came thence. The +beginnings of this return were of high importance. Among the home-going +companies were men who were destined to render eminent service in the +reconstruction of English society, both in the state and in the army, +and especially in the church. The example of the New England churches, +voluminously set forth in response to written inquiries from England, +had great influence in saving the mother country from suffering the +imposition of a Presbyterian hierarchy that threatened to be as +intolerant and as intolerable as the tyranny of Laud.</p> + +<p>For the order of the New England churches crystallized rapidly into a +systematic and definite church polity, far removed from mere Separatism +even in the temperate form in which this had been illustrated by +Robinson and the Pilgrim church. The successive companies of emigrants +as they arrived, ship-load after ship-load, each with its minister or +college of ministers, followed with almost monotonous exactness the +method adopted in the organization of the church in Salem. A small +company of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>best Christians entered into mutual covenant as a church +of Christ, and this number, growing by well-considered accessions, added +to itself from time to time other believers on the evidence and +confession of their faith in Christ. The ministers, all or nearly all of +whom had been clergymen in the orders of the Church of England, were of +one mind in declining to consider their episcopal ordination in England +as conferring on them any spiritual authority in a church newly gathered +in America. They found rather in the free choice of the brotherhood the +sign of a divine call to spiritual functions in the church, and were +inducted into office by the primitive form of the laying on of hands.</p> + +<p>In many ways, but especially in the systematized relations of the +churches with one another and in their common relations with the civil +government, the settled Nationalism of the great Puritan migration was +illustrated. With the least possible constraint on the individual or on +the church, they were clear in their purpose that their young state +should have its established church.</p> + +<p>Through what rude experiences the system and the men were tested has +been abundantly told and retold.<a name="FNanchor_100:1_56" id="FNanchor_100:1_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_100:1_56" class="fnanchor">[100:1]</a> Roger Williams, learned, +eloquent, sincere, generous, a man after their own heart, was a very +malignant among Separatists, separating himself not only from the +English church, but from all who would not separate from it, and from +all who would not separate from these, and so on, until he could no +longer, for conscience' sake, hold fellowship with his wife in family +prayers. After long patience the colonial government deemed it necessary +to signify to him that if his conscience would not suffer him to keep +quiet, and refrain from stirring up sedition, and embroiling the colony +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>with the English government, he would have to seek freedom for that +sort of conscience outside of their jurisdiction; and they put him out +accordingly, to the great advantage of both parties and without loss of +mutual respect and love. A little later, a clever woman, Mrs. Ann +Hutchinson, with a vast conceit of her superior holiness and with the +ugly censoriousness which is a usual accompaniment of that grace, +demonstrated her genius for mixing a theological controversy with +personal jealousies and public anxieties, and involved the whole colony +of the Bay in an acrimonious quarrel, such as to give an unpleasant tone +of partisanship and ill temper to the proceedings in her case, whether +ecclesiastical or civil. She seems clearly to have been a willful and +persistent nuisance in the little community, and there were good reasons +for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the +wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers +came among them,—not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to +which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early +type,—instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses +against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of +court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly as Quakers, thus +putting themselves in the wrong and conceding to their adversaries that +crown of martyrdom for which their souls were hankering and to which +they were not fully entitled.</p> + +<p>Of course, in maintaining the principle of Nationalism, the New England +Puritans did not decline the implications and corollaries of that +principle. It was only to a prophetic genius like the Separatist Roger +Williams that it was revealed that civil government had no concern to +enforce "the laws of the first table." But the historical student might +be puzzled to name any other church <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>establishment under which less of +molestation was suffered by dissenters, or more of actual encouragement +given to rival sects, than under the New England theocracies. The +Nationalist principle was exclusive; the men who held it in New England +(subject though they were to the temptations of sectarian emulation and +fanatic zeal) were large-minded and generous men.</p> + +<p>The general uniformity of church organization among the Puritan +plantations is the more remarkable in view of the notable independence +and originality of the leading men, who represented tendencies of +opinion as widely diverging as the quasi-Presbyterianism of John Eliot +and the doctrinaire democracy of John Wise. These variations of +ecclesiastico-political theory had much to do with the speedy diffusion +of the immigrant population. For larger freedom in building his ideal +New Jerusalem, the statesmanlike pastor, Thomas Hooker, led forth his +flock a second time into the great and terrible wilderness, and with his +associates devised what has been declared to be "the first example in +history of a written constitution—a distinct organic law constituting a +government and defining its powers."<a name="FNanchor_102:1_57" id="FNanchor_102:1_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_102:1_57" class="fnanchor">[102:1]</a> The like motive determined +the choice company under John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton to refuse +all inducements and importunities to remain in Massachusetts, choosing +rather to build on no other man's foundations at New Haven.<a name="FNanchor_102:2_58" id="FNanchor_102:2_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_102:2_58" class="fnanchor">[102:2]</a> At +the end of a hundred years from the settlement of Boston the shores and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>river valleys of Massachusetts and Connecticut were planted with towns, +each self-governing as a pure democracy, each with its church and +educated minister and its system of common schools. The two colleges at +Cambridge and New Haven were busy with their appointed work of training +young men to the service of God "in church or civil state." And this +great and prosperous and intelligent population was, with inconsiderable +exceptions, the unmingled progeny of the four thousand English families +who, under stress of the tyranny of Charles Stuart and the persecution +of William Laud, had crossed the sea in the twelve years from 1628 to +1640.</p> + +<p>The traditions of the fathers of New England had been piously cherished +down to this third and fourth generation. The model of an ideal state +that had been set up had, meanwhile, been more or less deformed, +especially in Massachusetts, by the interference of England; the +dominance of the established churches had been slightly infringed by the +growth here and there of dissenting churches, Baptist, Episcopalian, and +Quaker; but the framework both of church and of state was wonderfully +little decayed or impaired. The same simplicity in the outward order of +worship was maintained; the same form of high Calvinistic theology +continued to be cherished as a norm of sound preaching and as a vehicle +of instruction to children. All things continued as they had been; and +yet it would have been a most superficial observer who had failed to +detect signs of approaching change. The disproportions of the +Calvinistic system, exaggerated in the popular acceptation, as in the +favorite "Day of Doom" of Michael Wigglesworth, forced the effort after +practical readjustments. The magnifying of divine sovereignty in the +saving of men, to the obscuring of human responsibility, inevitably +mitigated the church's reprobation of respectable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>people who could +testify of no experience of conversion, and yet did not wish to +relinquish for themselves or their families their relation to the +church. Out of the conflict between two aspects of theological truth, +and the conflict between the Nationalist and the Separatist conceptions +of the church, and especially out of the mistaken policy of restricting +the civil franchise to church-members, came forth that device of the +"Half-way Covenant" which provided for a hereditary quasi-membership in +the church for worthy people whose lives were without scandal, and who, +not having been subjects of an experience of conscious conversion, were +felt to be not altogether to blame for the fact. From the same causes +came forth, and widely prevailed, the tenet of "Stoddardeanism," so +called as originating in the pastoral work, and, it is said, in the +personal experience, of Solomon Stoddard, the saintly minister of +Northampton from 1669 till 1729, when he was succeeded by his colleague +and grandson, Jonathan Edwards. It is the view that the Lord's Supper is +instituted as a means of regeneration as well as of sanctification, and +that those who are consciously "in a natural condition" ought not to be +repelled, but rather encouraged to come to it. From the same causes, by +natural sequence, came that so-called Arminianism<a name="FNanchor_104:1_59" id="FNanchor_104:1_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_104:1_59" class="fnanchor">[104:1]</a> which, instead +of urging the immediate necessity and duty of conversion, was content +with commending a "diligent use of means," which might be the hopeful +antecedent of that divine grace.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>These divergences from the straight lines of the primeval New England +Calvinism had already begun to be manifest during the lifetime of some +of the founders. Of not less grave import was the deflection from the +lofty moral standard of the fathers. A great New Englander, Horace +Bushnell, maintaining his thesis that great migrations are followed by a +tendency to barbarism, has cited in proof this part of New England +history.<a name="FNanchor_105:1_60" id="FNanchor_105:1_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_105:1_60" class="fnanchor">[105:1]</a> As early as the second generation, the evil tendency +seemed so formidable as to lead to the calling, by the General Court of +Massachusetts, of the "Reforming Synod" of 1679. No one can say that the +heroic age of New England was past. History has no nobler record to +show, of courage and fortitude in both men and women, than that of New +England in the Indian wars. But the terrors of those days of +tribulation, the breaking up of communities, the decimation of the +population, the long absences of the young men on the bloody business of +the soldier, were not favorable for maturing the fruits of the Spirit. +Withal, the intrigues of British politicians, the threatened or actual +molestations of the civil governments of the colonies, and the +corrupting influences proceeding from every center of viceregal +authority, abetted the tendency to demoralization. By the end of the +first third of the eighteenth century, New England, politically, +ecclesiastically, theologically, and morally, had come into a state of +unstable equilibrium. An overturn is impending.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The set and sturdy resolution of the founders of the four colonies of +the New England confederacy that the first planting of their territory +should be on rigorously exclusive principles, with a homogeneous and +mutually congenial population, under a firm discipline both civil and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>ecclesiastical, finds an experimental justification in the history of +the neighbor colony of Rhode Island. No commonwealth can boast a nobler +and purer name for its founder than the name of Roger Williams. Rhode +Island, founded in generous reaction from the exclusiveness of +Massachusetts, embodied the principle of "soul-liberty" in its earliest +acts. The announcement that under its jurisdiction no man was to be +molested by the civil power for his religious belief was a broad +invitation to all who were uncomfortable under the neighboring +theocracies.<a name="FNanchor_106:1_61" id="FNanchor_106:1_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_106:1_61" class="fnanchor">[106:1]</a> And the invitation was freely accepted. The +companions of Williams were reinforced by the friends of Mrs. +Hutchinson, some of them men of substance and weight of character. The +increasing number of persons inclined to Baptist views found in Rhode +Island a free and congenial atmosphere. Williams himself was not long in +coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found +Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. +More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered +themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its +side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams +before his death that the declaration of individual rights and +independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The +heterogeneous population failed to settle into any stable polity. After +two generations the tyranny of Andros, so odious elsewhere in New +England, was actually welcome as putting an end to the liberty that had +been hardly better than anarchy.</p> + +<p>The results of the manner of the first planting on the growth of the +church in Rhode Island were of a like sort. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>There is no room for +question that the material of a true church was there, in the person of +faithful and consecrated disciples of Christ, and therefore there must +have been gathering together in common worship and mutual edification. +But the sense of individual rights and responsibilities seems to have +overshadowed the love for the whole brotherhood of disciples. The +condition of the church illustrated the Separatism of Williams reduced +to the absurd. There was feeble organization of Christians in knots and +coteries. But sixty years passed before the building of the first house +of worship in Providence, and at the end of almost a century "there had +not existed in the whole colony more than eight or ten churches of any +denomination, and these were mostly in a very feeble and precarious +state."<a name="FNanchor_107:1_62" id="FNanchor_107:1_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_107:1_62" class="fnanchor">[107:1]</a></p> + +<p>Meanwhile the inadequate compensations of a state of schism began to +show themselves. In the absence of any organized fellowship of the whole +there grew up, more than elsewhere, a mutual tolerance and even love +among the petty sects, the lesson of which was learned where it was most +needed. The churches of "the standing order" in Massachusetts not only +admired but imitated "the peace and love which societies of different +modes of worship entertained toward each other in Rhode Island." In +1718, not forty years from the time when Baptist churches ceased to be +<i>religio illicita</i> in Massachusetts, three foremost pastors of Boston +assisted in the ordination of a minister to the Baptist church, at which +Cotton Mather preached the sermon, entitled "Good Men United." It +contained a frank confession of repentance for the persecutions of which +the Boston churches had been guilty.<a name="FNanchor_107:2_63" id="FNanchor_107:2_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_107:2_63" class="fnanchor">[107:2]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>There is a double lesson to be learned from the history of these +neighbor colonies: first, that a rigorously exclusive selection of men +like-minded is the best seed for the first planting of a commonwealth in +the wilderness; secondly, that the exclusiveness that is justified in +the infancy of such a community cannot wisely, nor even righteously, nor +even possibly, be maintained in its adolescence and maturity. The +church-state of Massachusetts and New Haven was overthrown at the end of +the first generation by external interference. If it had continued a few +years longer it must have fallen of itself; but it lasted long enough to +be the mold in which the civilization of the young States should set and +harden.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84:1_46" id="Footnote_84:1_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84:1_46"><span class="label">[84:1]</span></a> The mutual opposition of Puritan and Pilgrim is brought +out with emphasis in "The Genesis of the New England Churches," by L. +Bacon, especially chaps. v., vii., xviii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85:1_47" id="Footnote_85:1_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85:1_47"><span class="label">[85:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Genesis of New England Churches," p. 245.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87:1_48" id="Footnote_87:1_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87:1_48"><span class="label">[87:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 245.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89:1_49" id="Footnote_89:1_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89:1_49"><span class="label">[89:1]</span></a> The writer takes leave to refer to two essays of his +own, in "Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., +1895), for a fuller statement of this point.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91:1_50" id="Footnote_91:1_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91:1_50"><span class="label">[91:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 467.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94:1_51" id="Footnote_94:1_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94:1_51"><span class="label">[94:1]</span></a> The phrase is used in a large sense, as comprehending +the whole subject of the nature and organization of the visible church +(L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 456, note).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96:1_52" id="Footnote_96:1_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96:1_52"><span class="label">[96:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 475.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97:1_53" id="Footnote_97:1_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97:1_53"><span class="label">[97:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 477.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98:1_54" id="Footnote_98:1_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98:1_54"><span class="label">[98:1]</span></a> Morton's Memorial, in Palfrey, vol. i., p. 298.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99:1_55" id="Footnote_99:1_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99:1_55"><span class="label">[99:1]</span></a> Palfrey, vol. i., p. 584.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100:1_56" id="Footnote_100:1_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100:1_56"><span class="label">[100:1]</span></a> As, for example, with great amplitude by Palfrey; and +in more condensed form by Dr. Williston Walker, "Congregationalists" (in +American Church History Series).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102:1_57" id="Footnote_102:1_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102:1_57"><span class="label">[102:1]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Early Constitutional History of +Connecticut."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102:2_58" id="Footnote_102:2_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102:2_58"><span class="label">[102:2]</span></a> L. Bacon, "Thirteen Historical Discourses." The two +mutually independent republics at Hartford and New Haven represented +opposite tendencies. That at New Haven was after the highest type of +theocracy; the Connecticut colony inclined to the less rigorous model of +Plymouth, not exacting church-membership as a condition of voting. How +important this condition appeared to the mind of Davenport may be judged +from his exclamation when it ceased, at the union of New Haven with +Connecticut. He wrote to a friend, "In N. H. C. Christ's interest is +miserably lost;" and prepared to turn his back forever on the colony of +which he was the father.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104:1_59" id="Footnote_104:1_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104:1_59"><span class="label">[104:1]</span></a> The name, applied at first as a stigma to the +liberalizing school of New England theology, may easily mislead if taken +either in its earlier historic sense or in the sense which it was about +to acquire in the Wesleyan revival. The surprise of the eighteenth +century New England theologians at finding the word associated with +intense fervor of preaching and of religious experience is expressed in +the saying, "There is all the difference between a cold Arminian and a +hot Arminian that there is between a cold potato and a hot potato." For +a lucid account of the subject, see W. Walker, "History of the +Congregational Churches," chap. viii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105:1_60" id="Footnote_105:1_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105:1_60"><span class="label">[105:1]</span></a> Sermon on "Barbarism the First Danger."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106:1_61" id="Footnote_106:1_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106:1_61"><span class="label">[106:1]</span></a> And yet, even in the Rhode Island communities, the +arbitrary right of exclusion, in the exercise of which Roger Williams +had been shut out from Massachusetts, was asserted and adopted. It was +forbidden to sell land to a newcomer, except by consent of prior +settlers.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107:1_62" id="Footnote_107:1_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107:1_62"><span class="label">[107:1]</span></a> Dr. J. G. Vose, "Congregationalism in Rhode Island," +pp. 16, 53, 63.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107:2_63" id="Footnote_107:2_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107:2_63"><span class="label">[107:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 56, 57. "Good men, alas! have done such +ill things as these. New England also has in former times done something +of this aspect which would not now be so well approved; in which, if the +brethren in whose house we are now convened met with anything too +unbrotherly, they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike +of everything which looked like persecution in the days that have passed +over us."</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<h3>THE MIDDLE COLONIES: THE JERSEYS, DELAWARE, AND PENNSYLVANIA—THE QUAKER +COLONIZATION—GEORGIA.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The bargainings and conveyancings, the confirmations and reclamations, +the setting up and overturning, which, after the conquest of the New +Netherlands, had the effect to detach the peninsula of New Jersey from +the jurisdiction of New York, and to divide it for a time into two +governments, belong to political history; but they had, of course, an +important influence on the planting of the church in that territory. One +result of them was a wide diversity of materials in the early growth of +the church.</p> + +<p>Toward the end of the Dutch occupation, one lonely congregation had been +planted in that region which, at a later time, when the Dutch church in +America had awaked from its lethargy, was to become known as "the garden +of the Dutch church."<a name="FNanchor_109:1_64" id="FNanchor_109:1_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_109:1_64" class="fnanchor">[109:1]</a></p> + +<p>After the extinction of the high theocracy of the New Haven Colony by +the merger of it in Connecticut, a whole church and town, headed by the +pastor, having secured such guaranty of their political liberty as the +unstable government of New Jersey was able to give, left the homes +endeared to them by thirty years of toil and thrift, and lifting the ark +of the covenant by the staves, set <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>themselves down beside the Passaic, +calling their plantation the New-Ark, and reinstituted their fundamental +principle of restricting the franchise to members of the church. Thus +"with one heart they resolved to carry on their spiritual and town +affairs according to godly government." The Puritan migration, of which +this was the nucleus, had an influence on the legislation and the later +history of New Jersey out of all proportion to its numbers.</p> + +<p>Twenty years later the ferocious persecution of the Scottish +Covenanters, which was incited by the fears or the bloody vindictiveness +of James II. after the futile insurrection of Monmouth, furnished a +motive for emigration to the best people in North Britain, which was +quickly seized and exploited by the operators in Jersey lands. +Assurances of religious liberty were freely given; men of influence were +encouraged to bring over large companies; and in 1686 the brother of the +martyred Duke of Argyle was made governor of East Jersey. The +considerable settlements of Scotchmen found congenial neighbors in the +New Englanders of Newark. A system of free schools, early established by +a law of the commonwealth, is naturally referred to their common +influence.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile a series of events of the highest consequence to the future of +the American church had been in progress in the western half of the +province. Passing from hand to hand, the ownership and lordship of West +Jersey had become vested in a land company dominated by Quakers. For the +first time in the brief history of that sect, it was charged with the +responsibility of the organization and conduct of government. Hitherto +it had been publicly known by the fierce and defiant and often +outrageous protests of its representatives against existing governments +and dignities both in state and in church, such as exposed them to the +natural and reasonable suspicion of being wild <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>and mischievous +anarchists. The opportunities and temptations that come to those in +power would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial +by the cart-tail and the gibbet.</p> + +<p>The Quakers bore the test nobly. Never did a commercial company show +itself so little mercenary; never was a sovereign more magnanimous and +unselfish. With the opening of the province to settlement, the +proprietors set forth a statement of their purposes: "We lay a +foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and +Christians, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own +consent; for we put the power in the people." This was followed by a +code of "Concessions and Agreements" in forty-four articles, which were +at once a constitution of government and a binding compact with such as +should enter themselves as colonists on these terms. They left little to +be desired in securities for personal, political, and religious +liberty.<a name="FNanchor_111:1_65" id="FNanchor_111:1_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_111:1_65" class="fnanchor">[111:1]</a></p> + +<p>At once population began to flow amain. In 1677 two hundred and thirty +Quakers came in one ship and founded the town of Burlington. By 1681 +there had come fourteen hundred. Weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings +were established; houses of worship were built; and in August, 1681, the +Quaker hierarchy (if it may so be called without offense) was completed +by the establishment of the Burlington Yearly Meeting. The same year the +corporation, encouraged by its rapid success, increased its numbers and +its capital, bought out the proprietors of East Jersey, and appointed as +governor over the whole province the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>eminent Quaker theologian, Robert +Barclay. The Quaker régime continued, not always smoothly, till 1688, +when it was extinguished by James II. at the end of his perfidious +campaigns against American liberties.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>This enterprise of the Quaker purchase and settlement of New Jersey +brings upon the stage of American history the great apostle of Christian +colonization, William Penn. He came into relation to the New Jersey +business as arbiter of some differences that arose between the two +Friends who had bought West Jersey in partnership. He continued in +connection with it when the Quaker combination had extended itself by +purchase over the whole Jersey peninsula, and he was a trusted counselor +of the corporation, and the representative of its interests at court. +Thus there grew more and more distinct before his peculiarly adventurous +and enterprising mind the vision of the immense possibilities, +political, religious, and commercial, of American colonization. With +admirable business shrewdness combined with courtly tact, he canceled an +otherwise hopeless debt from the crown in consideration of the +concession to him of a domain of imperial wealth and dimensions, with +practically unlimited rights of jurisdiction. At once he put into +exercise the advantages and opportunities which were united in him so as +never before in the promoter of a like enterprise, and achieved a +success speedy and splendid beyond all precedent.</p> + +<p>The providential preparations for this great enterprise—"the Holy +Experiment," as Penn delighted to call it—had been visibly in progress +in England for not more than the third part of a century. It was not the +less divine for being wholly logical and natural, that, just when the +Puritan Reformation culminated in the victory of the Commonwealth, the +Quaker Reformation should suddenly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>break forth. Puritanism was the last +expression of that appeal from the church to the Scriptures, from +existing traditions of Christianity to its authentic original documents, +which is the essence of Protestantism. In Puritanism, reverence for the +Scriptures is exaggerated to the point of superstition. The doctrine +that God of old had spoken by holy men was supplemented by the +pretension that God had long ago ceased so to speak and never would so +speak again. The claim that the Scriptures contain a sufficient guide to +moral duty and religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the +last details of church organization and worship, and the minute +direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the +Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of +the Puritans.<a name="FNanchor_113:1_66" id="FNanchor_113:1_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_113:1_66" class="fnanchor">[113:1]</a> In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, +perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited +exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. +The Bible was used to contradict the moral sense. It was high time for +the Quaker protest, and it was inevitable that this protest should be +extravagant and violent.</p> + +<p>In their bold reassertion of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, that his +light "lighteth every man who cometh into the world," it is not strange +that the first Quakers should sometimes have lost sight of those +principles the enunciation of which gives such a character of sober +sanity to the apostolic teachings on this subject—that a divine +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>influence on the mind does not discharge one from the duty of +self-control, but that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the +prophets"; that the divine inworking does not suspend nor supersede +man's volition and activity, but that it behooves man to "work, because +God worketh in him to will and to work." The lapse from these +characteristically Christian principles into the enthusiastic, fanatic, +or heathen conception of inspiration has been a perpetually recurring +incident in the history of the church in all ages, and especially in +times of deep and earnest spiritual feeling. But in the case of the +Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil +consequences. Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and +hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the +Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some +peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with +sincere and conscientious reformers, adding to the unpopularity of the +new opinions the odium justly due to their own misdemeanors. But the +prophet whose life and preaching had begun the Quaker Reformation was +not found wanting in the gifts which the case required. Like other great +religious founders, George Fox combined with profound religious +conviction a high degree of tact and common sense and the faculty of +organization. While the gospel of "the Light that lighteth every man" +was speeding with wonderful swiftness to the ends of the earth, there +was growing in the hands of the founder the framework of a discipline by +which the elements of disorder should be controlled.<a name="FNanchor_114:1_67" id="FNanchor_114:1_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_114:1_67" class="fnanchor">[114:1]</a> The result +was a firmly articulated organization compacted by common faith and zeal +and mutual love, and by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>external pressure of fierce persecution +extending throughout the British empire on both sides of the ocean.</p> + +<p>Entering into continental Europe, the Quaker Reformation found itself +anticipated in the progress of religious history. The protests of the +Anabaptists against what they deemed the shortcomings of the Lutheran +Reformation had been attended with far wilder extravagances than those +of the early Quakers, and had been repressed with ruthless severity. But +the political and militant Anabaptists were succeeded by communities of +mild and inoffensive non-resistants, governing themselves by a narrow +and rigorous discipline, and differing from the order of Quakers mainly +at this point, that whereas the Quakers rejected all sacraments, these +insisted strenuously on their own views of Baptism and the Supper, and +added to them the ordinance of the Washing of Feet. These communities +were to be found throughout Protestant Europe, from the Alps to the +North Sea, but were best known in Holland and Lower Germany, where they +were called Mennonites, from the priest, Menno Simons, who, a hundred +years before George Fox, had enunciated the same principles of duty +founded on the strict interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.</p> + +<p>The combination of circumstances to promote the "Holy Experiment" of +William Penn is something prodigious. How he could be a petted favorite +at the shameful court of the last two Stuarts, while his brethren +throughout the realm were languishing under persecution, is a fact not +in itself honorable, but capable of being honorably explained; and both +the persecution and the court favor helped on his enterprise. The time +was opportune; the period of tragical uncertainty in colonization was +past; emigration had come to be a richly promising enterprise. For +leader of the enterprise what endowment was lacking in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>elegantly +accomplished young courtier, holding as his own the richest domain that +could be carved out of a continent, who was at the same time brother, in +unaffected humility and unbounded generosity, in a great fraternity +bound together by principles of ascetic self-denial and devotion to the +kingdom of God?</p> + +<p>Penn's address inviting colonists to his new domain announced the +outlines of his scheme. His great powers of jurisdiction were held by +him only to be transferred to the future inhabitants in a free and +righteous government. "I purpose," said he, conscious of the magnanimity +of the intention, "for the matters of liberty, I purpose that which is +extraordinary—to leave myself and successors no power of doing +mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole +country;" and added, in language which might have fallen from his +intimate friend, Algernon Sidney, but was fully expressive of his own +views, "It is the great end of government to support power in reverence +with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for +liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is +slavery."<a name="FNanchor_116:1_68" id="FNanchor_116:1_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_116:1_68" class="fnanchor">[116:1]</a> With assurances of universal civil and religious +liberty in conformity with these principles, he offered land at forty +shillings for a hundred acres, subject to a small quit-rent.</p> + +<p>Through the correspondence of the Friends' meetings, these proposals +could be brought to the attention of many thousands of people, sifted +and culled by persecution, the best stuff for a colony in all the United +Kingdom. The response was immediate. Within a year three ship-loads of +emigrants went out. The next year Penn himself went with a company of a +hundred, and stayed long enough to see the government organized by the +free act of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>colonists on the principles which he had set forth, and +in that brief sojourn of two years to witness the beginnings of a +splendid prosperity. His city of Philadelphia consisted in August, 1683, +of three or four little cottages. Two years afterward it contained about +six hundred houses, and the schoolmaster and the printing-press had +begun their work.<a name="FNanchor_117:1_69" id="FNanchor_117:1_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_117:1_69" class="fnanchor">[117:1]</a> The growth went on accelerating. In one year +seven thousand settlers are said to have arrived; before the end of the +century the colonists numbered more than twenty thousand, and +Philadelphia had become a thriving town.<a name="FNanchor_117:2_70" id="FNanchor_117:2_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_117:2_70" class="fnanchor">[117:2]</a></p> + +<p>But Great Britain, although the chief source of population, was not the +only source. It had been part of the providential equipment of Penn for +his great work to endow him with the gift of tongues and bring him into +intimate relations with the many congregations of the broken and +persecuted sects kindred to his own on the continent of Europe. The +summer and autumn of 1678, four years before his coming to Pennsylvania, +had been spent by him, in company with George Fox, Robert Barclay, and +other eminent Friends, in a mission tour through Holland (where he +preached in his mother's own language) and Germany. The fruit of this +preaching and of previous missions appeared in an unexpected form. One +of the first important accessions to the colony was the company of +Mennonites led by Pastorius, the "Pennsylvania Pilgrim," who founded +Germantown, now a beautiful suburb of Philadelphia. Group after group of +picturesque devotees that had been driven into seclusion and +eccentricity by long and cruel persecution—the Tunkers, the +Schwenkfelders, the Amish—kept coming and bringing with them their +traditions, their customs, their sacred books, their timid and pathetic +disposition to hide by themselves, sometimes in quasi-monastic +communities like that at Ephrata, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>sometimes in actual hermitage, as in +the ravines of the Wissahickon. But the most important contribution of +this kind came from the suffering villages of the Rhenish Palatinate +ravaged with fire and sword by the French armies in 1688. So numerous +were the fugitives from the Palatinate that the name of Palatine came to +be applied in general to German refugees, from whatever region. This +migration of the German sects (to be distinguished from the later +migration from the established Lutheran and Reformed churches) furnished +the material for that curious "Pennsylvania Dutch" population which for +more than two centuries has lain encysted, so to speak, in the body +politic and ecclesiastic of Pennsylvania, speaking a barbarous jargon of +its own, and refusing to assimilate with the surrounding people.</p> + +<p>It was the rough estimate of Dr. Franklin that colonial Pennsylvania was +made up of one third Quakers, one third Germans, and one third +miscellaneous. The largest item under this last head was the Welsh, most +of them Quakers, who had been invited by Penn with the promise of a +separate tract of forty thousand acres in which to maintain their own +language, government, and institutions. Happily, the natural and +patriotic longing of these immigrants for a New Wales on this side the +sea was not to be realized. The "Welsh Barony" became soon a mere +geographical tradition, and the whole strength of this fervid and +religious people enriched the commonwealth.<a name="FNanchor_118:1_71" id="FNanchor_118:1_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_118:1_71" class="fnanchor">[118:1]</a></p> + +<p>Several notable beginnings of church history belong to the later part of +the period under consideration.</p> + +<p>An interesting line of divergence from the current teachings of the +Friends was led, toward the end of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>seventeenth century, by George +Keith, for thirty years a recognized preacher of the Society. One is +impressed, in a superficial glance at the story, with the reasonableness +and wisdom of some of Keith's positions, and with the intellectual vigor +of the man. But the discussion grew into an acrimonious controversy, and +the controversy deepened into a schism, which culminated in the +disowning of Keith by the Friends in America, and afterward by the +London Yearly Meeting, to which he had appealed. Dropped thus by his old +friends, he was taken up by the English Episcopalians and ordained by +the Bishop of London, and in 1702 returned to America as the first +missionary of the newly organized Society for the Propagation of the +Gospel in Foreign Parts. An active missionary campaign was begun and +sustained by the large resources of the Venerable Society until the +outbreak of the War of Independence. The movement had great advantages +for success. It was next of kin to the expiring Swedish Lutheran Church +in the three counties that became afterward the State of Delaware, and +heir to its venerable edifices and its good will; it was the official +and court church of the royal governors, and after the degenerate sons +of William Penn abandoned the simple worship, as well as the clean +living, in which their father delighted, it was the church promoted by +the proprietary interest; withal it proved itself, both then and +afterward, to hold a deposit of truth and of usages of worship +peculiarly adapted to supplement the defects of the Quaker system. It is +not easy to explain the ill success of the enterprise. In Philadelphia +it took strong root, and the building, in 1727, of Christ Church, which +survives to this day, a monument of architectural beauty as well as +historical interest, marks an important epoch in the progress of +Christianity in America. But in the rural districts the work languished. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Parishes, seemingly well equipped, fell into a "deplorable condition"; +churches were closed and parishes dwindled away. About the year 1724 +Governor Keith reported to the Bishop of London that outside the city +there were "twelve or thirteen little edifices, at times supplied by one +or other of the poor missionaries sent from the society." Nearly all +that had been gained by the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, where the +"Venerable Society" had maintained at times forty-seven missionaries and +twenty-four central stations, was wiped out by the Revolutionary +War.<a name="FNanchor_120:1_72" id="FNanchor_120:1_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_120:1_72" class="fnanchor">[120:1]</a></p> + +<p>Another great beginning that comes within the field of vision in the +first four decades of the eighteenth century is the planting of the +great national churches of Germany. We have observed the migration of +the minor sects of Germany—so complete, in some cases, that the entire +sect was transplanted, leaving no representative in the fatherland. In +the mixed multitude of refugees from the Palatinate and other ravaged +provinces were many belonging both to the Lutheran and to the Reformed +churches, as well as some Catholics. But they were scattered as sheep +having no shepherd. The German Lutheran and Reformed immigration was +destined to attain by and by to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>enormous proportions; but so late was +the considerable expansion of it, and so tardy and inefficient the +attention given to this diaspora by the mother churches, that the +classical organization of the Reformed Church dates only from 1747, and +that of the Lutheran Church from 1760.<a name="FNanchor_121:1_73" id="FNanchor_121:1_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_121:1_73" class="fnanchor">[121:1]</a> The beautiful career of +the Moravians began in Pennsylvania so late as 1734. In general it may +be said that the German-American church was affected only indirectly by +the Great Awakening.</p> + +<p>But the greatest in its consequences, both religious and political, of +the great beginnings in the early part of the eighteenth century, was +the first flow of the swelling tide of the Scotch-Irish immigration. +Already, in 1669, an English Presbyterian, Matthew Hill, persuaded to +the work by Richard Baxter, was ministering to "many of the Reformed +religion" in Maryland; and in 1683 an appeal from them to the Irish +presbytery of Laggan had brought over to their aid that sturdy and +fearless man of God, Francis Makemie, whose successful defense in 1707, +when unlawfully imprisoned in New York by that unsavory defender of the +Anglican faith, Lord Cornbury, gave assurance of religious liberty to +his communion throughout the colonies. In 1705 he was moderator of the +first presbytery <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>in America, numbering six ministers. At the end of +twelve years the number of ministers, including accessions from New +England, had grown to seventeen. But it was not until 1718 that this +migration began in earnest. As early as 1725 James Logan, the +Scotch-Irish-Quaker governor of Pennsylvania, speaking in the spirit of +prophecy, declares that "it looks as if Ireland were to send all her +inhabitants hither; if they continue to come they will make themselves +proprietors of the province." It was a broad-spread, rich alluvium +superimposed upon earlier strata of immigration, out of which was to +spring the sturdy growth of American Presbyterianism, as well as of +other Christian organizations. But by 1730 it was only the turbid and +feculent flood that was visible to most observers; the healthful and +fruitful growth was yet to come.<a name="FNanchor_122:1_74" id="FNanchor_122:1_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_122:1_74" class="fnanchor">[122:1]</a></p> + +<p>The colony of Georgia makes its appearance among the thirteen British +colonies in America, in 1733, as one born out of due time. But no colony +of all the thirteen had a more distinctly Christian origin than this. +The foundations of other American commonwealths had been laid in faith +and hope, but the ruling motive of the founding of Georgia was charity, +and that is the greatest of these three. The spirit which dominated in +the measures taken <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>for the beginning of the enterprise was embodied in +one of the most interesting personages of the dreary eighteenth +century—General James Oglethorpe. His eventful life covered the greater +part of the eighteenth century, but in some of the leading traits of his +character and incidents of his career he was rather a man of the +nineteenth. At the age of twenty-one he was already a veteran of the +army of Prince Eugene, having served with honorable distinction on the +staff of that great commander. Returning to England, in 1722 he entered +Parliament, and soon attained what in that age was the almost solitary +distinction of a social reformer. He procured the appointment of a +special committee to investigate the condition of the debtors' prisons; +and the shocking revelations that ensued led to a beginning of +reformation of the cruel and barbarous laws of England concerning +imprisonment for debt. But being of the higher type of reformers, he was +not content with such negative work. He cherished and elaborated a +scheme that should open a new career for those whose ill success in life +had subjected them to the pains and the ignominy due to criminals. It +was primarily for such as these that he projected the colony of Georgia. +But to a mind like his the victims of injustice in every land were +objects of practical sympathy. His colony should be an asylum for +sufferers from religious persecution from whatever quarter. The +enterprise was organized avowedly as a work of charity. The territory +was vested in trustees, who should receive no pay or emolument for their +services. Oglethorpe himself gave his unpaid labor as military and civil +head of the colony, declining to receive in return so much as a +settler's allotment of land. An appropriation of ten thousand pounds was +made by Parliament for the promotion of the work—the only government +subsidy ever granted to an American colony. With eager and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>unselfish +hopes of a noble service to be rendered to humanity, the generous +soldier embarked with a picked company of one hundred and twenty +emigrants, and on the 12th of February, 1733, landed at the foot of the +bluff on which now stands the city of Savannah. The attractions of the +genial climate and fertile soil, the liberal terms of invitation, and +the splendid schemes of profitable industry were diligently advertised, +and came to the knowledge of that noble young enthusiast, Zinzendorf, +count and Moravian bishop, whose estate of Herrnhut in Lusatia had +become an asylum for persecuted Christians; and missionary colonists of +that Moravian church of which every member was a missionary, and +companies of the exiled Salzburgers, the cruelty of whose sufferings +aroused the universal indignation of Protestant Europe, were mingled +with the unfortunates from English prisons in successive ship-loads of +emigrants. One such ship's company, among the earliest to be added to +the new colony, included some mighty factors in the future church +history of America and of the world. In February, 1736, a company of +three hundred colonists, with Oglethorpe at their head, landed at +Savannah. Among them was a reinforcement of twenty colonists for the +Moravian settlement, with Bishop David Nitschmann, and young Charles +Wesley, secretary to the governor, and his elder brother, John, now +thirty-three years old, eager for the work of evangelizing the heathen +Indians—an intensely narrow, ascetic, High-church ritualist and +sacramentarian. The voyage was a memorable one in history. Amid the +terrors of a perilous storm, Wesley, so liable to be lifted up with the +pride that apes humility, was humbled as he contrasted the agitations of +his own people with the cheerful faith and composure of his German +shipmates; and soon after the landing he was touched with the primitive +simplicity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>and beauty of the ordination service with which a pastor was +set over the Moravian settlement by Bishop Nitschmann. During the +twenty-two months of his service in Georgia, through the ascetic toils +and privations which he inflicted on himself and tried to inflict on +others, he seems as one whom the law has taken severely in hand to lead +him to Christ. It was after his return from America, among the +Moravians, first at London and afterward on a visit to Herrnhut, that he +was "taught the way of the Lord more perfectly."<a name="FNanchor_125:1_75" id="FNanchor_125:1_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_125:1_75" class="fnanchor">[125:1]</a></p> + +<p>The three shipmates, the Wesleys and Bishop Nitschmann, did not remain +long together. Nitschmann soon returned to Germany to lead a new colony +of his brethren to Pennsylvania; Charles Wesley remained for four months +at Frederica, and then recrossed the ocean, weary of the hardness of the +people's hearts; and, except for the painful and humiliating discipline +which was preparing him to "take the whole world to be his parish," it +had been well for John Wesley if he had returned with his brother. Never +did a really great and good man act more like a fool than he did in his +Georgia mission. The priestly arrogance with which he attempted to +enforce his crotchets of churchmanship on a mixed community in the edge +of the wilderness culminated at last in his hurling the thunderbolts of +excommunication at a girl who had jilted him, followed by his slipping +away from the colony between two days, with an indictment for defamation +on record <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>against him, and his returning to London to resign to the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel his commission as missionary. +Just as he was landing, the ship was setting sail which bore to his +deserted field his old Oxford friend and associate in "the Methodist +Club," George Whitefield, then just beginning the career of meteoric +splendor which for thirty-two years dazzled the observers of both +hemispheres. He landed in Savannah in May, 1738. This was the first of +Whitefield's work in America. But it was not the beginning of the Great +Awakening. For many years there had been waiting and longing as of them +that watch for the morning. At Raritan and New Brunswick, in New Jersey, +and elsewhere, there had been prelusive gleams of dawn. And at +Northampton, in December, 1734, Jonathan Edwards had seen the sudden +daybreak and rejoiced with exceeding great joy.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109:1_64" id="Footnote_109:1_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109:1_64"><span class="label">[109:1]</span></a> Corwin, pp. 58, 128.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111:1_65" id="Footnote_111:1_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111:1_65"><span class="label">[111:1]</span></a> It is notable that the concessions offered already by +Carteret and Berkeley in 1664 contained an unlimited pledge of religious +liberty, "any law, statute, usage, or custom of the realm of England to +the contrary notwithstanding" (Mulford, "History of New Jersey," p. +134). A half-century of experience in colonization had satisfied some +minds that the principle adopted by the Quakers for conscience' sake was +also a sound business principle.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113:1_66" id="Footnote_113:1_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113:1_66"><span class="label">[113:1]</span></a> See the vindication of the act of the New Haven +colonists in adopting the laws of Moses as the statute-book of the +colony, in the "Thirteen Historical Discourses of L. Bacon," pp. 29-32. +"The greatest and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal +jurisprudence by any one act since the dark ages was that which was made +by our fathers when they determined 'that the judicial laws of God, as +they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, +being neither typical nor ceremonial nor having any reference to Canaan, +shall be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders and +be a rule to all the courts.'"</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114:1_67" id="Footnote_114:1_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114:1_67"><span class="label">[114:1]</span></a> For the dealing of Fox with the case of John Perrot, +who had a divine call to wear his hat in meeting, see the "History of +the Society of Friends," by the Messrs. Thomas, pp. 197-199 (American +Church History Series, vol. xii.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116:1_68" id="Footnote_116:1_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116:1_68"><span class="label">[116:1]</span></a> Quoted in Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 366.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117:1_69" id="Footnote_117:1_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117:1_69"><span class="label">[117:1]</span></a> Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 392.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117:2_70" id="Footnote_117:2_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117:2_70"><span class="label">[117:2]</span></a> H. C. Lodge, p. 213.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118:1_71" id="Footnote_118:1_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118:1_71"><span class="label">[118:1]</span></a> For a fuller account of the sources of the population +of Pennsylvania, see "The Making of Pennsylvania," by Sydney George +Fisher (Philadelphia, 1896).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120:1_72" id="Footnote_120:1_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120:1_72"><span class="label">[120:1]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 210-212, +220. In a few instances the work suffered from the unfit character of +the missionaries. A more common fault was the vulgar proselyting spirit +which appears in the missionaries' reports ("Digest of S. P. G. +Records," pp. 12-79). A certain <i>naïf</i> insularity sometimes betrays +itself in their incapacity to adapt themselves to their new-world +surroundings. Brave and zealous Mr. Barton in Cumberland County recites +a formidable list of sects into which the people are divided, and with +unconscious humor recounts his efforts to introduce one sect more +(<i>ibid.</i>, p. 37). They could hardly understand that in crossing the +ocean they did not bring with them the prerogatives of a national +establishment, but were in a position of dissent from the existing +establishments. "It grieved them that Church of England men should be +stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of dissenters" ("The Making +of Pennsylvania," p. 192). One of the most pathetically amusing +instances of the misfit of the Englishman in America is that of the Rev. +Mr. Poyer at Jamaica, L. I. The meeting-house and glebe-lands that had +been provided by the people of that parish for the use of themselves and +their pastor were gotten, neither honorably nor lawfully, into the +possession of the missionary of the "S. P. G." and his scanty following, +and held by him in spite of law and justice for twenty-five years. At +last the owners of the property succeeded in evicting him by process of +law. The victim of this persecution reported plaintively to the society +his "great and almost continual contentions with the Independents in his +parish." The litigation had been over the salary settled for the +minister of that parish, and also over the glebe-lands. But "by a late +Tryal at Law he has lost them and the Church itself, of which his +congregation has had the possession for twenty-five years." The +grievance went to the heart of his congregation, who bewail "the +emperious behaviour of these our enemies, who stick not to call +themselves the Established Church and us Dissenters" ("Digest of S. P. +G. Records," p. 61; Corwin, "Dutch Church," pp. 104, 105, 126, 127).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121:1_73" id="Footnote_121:1_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121:1_73"><span class="label">[121:1]</span></a> Dubbs, "Reformed Church," p. 281; Jacobs, "The +Lutherans," p. 260.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122:1_74" id="Footnote_122:1_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122:1_74"><span class="label">[122:1]</span></a> R. E. Thompson, "The Presbyterian Churches," pp. 22-29; +S. S. Green, "The Scotch-Irish in America," paper before the American +Antiquarian Society, April, 1895. "The great bulk of the emigrants came +to this country at two distinct periods of time: the first from 1718 to +the middle of the century, the second from 1771 to 1773.... In +consequence of the famine of 1740 and 1741, it is stated that for +several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the +American plantations; while from 1771 to 1773 the whole emigration from +Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 are weavers" (Green, p. +7). The companies that came to New England in 1718 were mainly absorbed +by the Congregationalism of that region (Thompson, p. 15). The church +founded in Boston by the Irish Presbyterians came in course of time to +have for its pastor the eminent William Ellery Channing (Green, p. 11). +Since the organization of the annual Scotch-Irish Congress in 1889, the +literature of this subject has become copious. (See "Bibliographical +Note" at the end of Mr. Green's pamphlet.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125:1_75" id="Footnote_125:1_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125:1_75"><span class="label">[125:1]</span></a> The beautiful story of the processional progress of the +Salzburg exiles across the continent of Europe is well told by Dr. +Jacobs, "History of the Lutherans," pp. 153-159, with a copious extract +from Bancroft, vol. iii., which shows that that learned author did not +distinguish the Salzburgers from the Moravians. The account of the +ship's company in the storm, in Dr. Jacobs's tenth chapter, is full of +interest. There is a pathetic probability in his suggestion that in the +hymn "Jesus, lover of my soul," we have Charles Wesley's reminiscence of +those scenes of peril and terror. For this episode in the church history +of Georgia as seen from different points of view, see American Church +History Series, vols, iv., v., vii., viii.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<h3>THE AMERICAN CHURCH ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING—A GENERAL VIEW.</h3> + + +<p class="section">By the end of one hundred years from the settlement of Massachusetts +important changes had come upon the chain of colonies along the Atlantic +seaboard in America. In the older colonies the people had been born on +the soil at two or three generations' remove from the original +colonists, or belonged to a later stratum of migration superimposed upon +the first. The exhausting toil and privations of the pioneer had been +succeeded by a good measure of thrift and comfort. There were yet bloody +campaigns to be fought out against the ferocity and craft of savage +enemies wielded by the strategy of Christian neighbors; but the severest +stress of the Indian wars was passed. In different degrees and according +to curiously diverse types, the institutions of a Christian civilization +were becoming settled.</p> + +<p>In the course of this hundred years the political organization of these +various colonies had been drawn into an approach to uniformity. In every +one of them, excepting Connecticut and Rhode Island, the royal or +proprietary government was represented by a governor and his staff, +appointed from England, and furnishing a point of contact which was in +every case and all the time a point of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>friction and irritation between +the colony and the mother country. The reckless laxity of the early +Stuart charters, which permitted the creation of practically independent +democratic republics with churches free from the English hierarchy, was +succeeded, under the House of Orange, by something that looked like a +statesmanlike care for the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges +of the English church. Throughout the colonies, at every viceregal +residence, it was understood that this church, even where it was not +established by law, was the favored official and court church. But +inasmuch as the royal governors were officially odious to the people, +and at the same time in many cases men of despicable personal character, +their influence did little more than create a little "sect of the +Herodians" within the range of their patronage. But though it gave no +real advantage to the preferred church, it was effective (as in +Massachusetts) in breaking down the exclusive pretensions of other +organizations.</p> + +<p>The Massachusetts theocracy, so called, fell with the revocation of the +charter by James II. It had stood for nearly fifty years—long enough to +accomplish the main end of that Nationalist principle which the +Puritans, notwithstanding their fraternizing with the Pilgrim +Separatists, had never let go. The organization of the church throughout +New England, excepting Rhode Island, had gone forward in even step with +the advance of population. Two rules had with these colonists the force +of axioms: first, that it was the duty of every town, as a Christian +community, to sustain the town church; secondly, that it was the duty of +every citizen of the town to contribute to this end according to his +ability. The breaking up of the town church by schisms and the shirking +of individual duty on the ground of dissent were alike discountenanced, +sometimes by severely intolerant measures. The ultimate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>collision of +these principles with the sturdy individualism that had been accepted +from the Separatists of Plymouth was inevitable. It came when the +"standing order" encountered the Baptist and the Quaker conscience. It +came again when the missionaries of the English established church, with +singular unconsciousness of the humor of the situation, pleaded the +sacred right of dissenting and the essential injustice of compelling +dissenters to support the parish church.<a name="FNanchor_129:1_76" id="FNanchor_129:1_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_129:1_76" class="fnanchor">[129:1]</a> The protest may have +been illogical, but it was made effective by "arguments of weight," +backed by all the force of the British government. The exclusiveness of +the New England theocracies, already relaxed in its application to other +sects, was thenceforth at an end. The severity of church establishment +in New England was so far mitigated as at last to put an actual premium +on dissent. Holding still that every citizen is bound to aid in +maintaining the institutions of public worship, it relieved any one of +his assessment for the support of the parish church upon his filing a +certificate that he was contributing to the support of another +congregation, thus providing that any disaffection to the church of the +town must be organized and active. It was the very euthanasia of +establishment. But the state-church and church-state did not cease to be +until they had accomplished that for New England which has never been +accomplished elsewhere in America—the dividing of the settled regions +into definite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>parishes, each with its church and its learned minister. +The democratic autonomy of each church was jealously guarded, and yet +they were all knit together by terms of loose confederation into a vital +system. The impracticable notion of a threefold ministry in each church, +consisting of pastor, teacher, and ruling elder, failed long before the +first generation had passed; but, with this exception, it may justly be +said that the noble ideal of the Puritan fathers of New England of a +Christian state in the New World, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," was, +at the end of a hundred years from their planting, realized with a +completeness not common to such prophetic dreams.</p> + +<p>So solid and vital, at the point of time which we have assumed (1730), +seemed the cohesion of the "standing order" in New England, that only +two inconsiderable defections are visible to the historian.</p> + +<p>The tendency toward Baptist principles early disclosed itself among the +colonists. The example of Roger Williams was followed by less notable +instances; the shameful intolerance with which some of these were +treated shows how formidable this tendency seemed to those in authority. +But a more startling defection appeared about the year 1650, when +President Dunster of Harvard College, a man most honorable and lovable, +signified his adoption of the Baptist tenets. The treatment of him was +ungenerous, and for a time the petty persecutions that followed served +rather to discredit the clergy than really to hinder the spread of +Baptist principles. In the year 1718 the Baptist church of Boston +received fraternal recognition from the foremost representatives of the +Congregational clergy of Boston, with a public confession of the wrong +that they had done.<a name="FNanchor_130:1_77" id="FNanchor_130:1_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_130:1_77" class="fnanchor">[130:1]</a> It is surprising to find, after all this +agitation and sowing of "the seed of the church," that in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>all New +England outside of Rhode Island there are in 1730 only six Baptist +churches, including (an honorable item) two Indian churches on the +islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.<a name="FNanchor_131:1_78" id="FNanchor_131:1_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_131:1_78" class="fnanchor">[131:1]</a></p> + +<p>The other departure from the "standing order" was at this date hardly +more extensive. The early planting of Episcopalian churches in Maine and +New Hampshire, with generous patronage and endowment, had languished and +died. In 1679 there was no Episcopal minister in all New England. In +1702 were begun the energetic and richly supported missions of the "S. +P. G." At the end of twenty-eight years there were in Rhode Island four +Episcopalian churches; in Massachusetts, three, two of them in the city +of Boston; in Connecticut, three.<a name="FNanchor_131:2_79" id="FNanchor_131:2_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_131:2_79" class="fnanchor">[131:2]</a> But in the last-named colony an +incident had occurred, having apparently no intimate connection with the +"Venerable Society's" missions, but charged with weighty, and on the +whole beneficent, consequences for the future of the kingdom of Christ +in America.</p> + +<p>The incident was strikingly parallel to that of seventy years before, +when the president of Harvard College announced his acceptance of +Baptist principles. The day after the Yale commencement in September, +1722, a modest and respectful paper was presented to the trustees of the +college, signed by Rector Timothy Cutler and Tutor Brown (who +constituted the entire faculty of the college) and by five pastors of +good standing in the Connecticut churches. Two other pastors of note +were named as assenting to the paper, although not subscribing it. It +seemed a formidable proportion of the Connecticut clergy. The purport of +the paper was to signify that the signers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>were doubtful of the +validity, or persuaded of the invalidity, of presbyterial as +distinguished from episcopal ordination. The matter was considered with +the gravity which it merited, and a month later, at the time of the +meeting of the colonial legislature, was made the subject of a public +discussion, presided over with great dignity and amenity by Governor +Gurdon Saltonstall, formerly pastor of the church in New London. The +result was that, of the seven pastors assenting to the paper of the two +college men, only two adhered to them; but one of these two was that +able and excellent Samuel Johnson, whose later career as president of +King's College in New York, as well as the career of his no less +distinguished son, is an ornament to American history both of church and +state.</p> + +<p>This secession, small in number, but weighty in character, was of course +a painful shock to the hitherto unbroken unity of the church and clergy +of Connecticut. But it was not quite like a thunderbolt from a clear +sky. It had been immediately preceded by not a little conference and +correspondence with Connecticut pastors on the one hand, and on the +other hand with representatives of the powerful and wealthy Propagation +Society, on the question of support to be received from England for +those who should secede. Its prior antecedents reached farther back into +history. The Baptist convictions of the president of Harvard in 1650 +were not more clearly in line with the individualism of the Plymouth +Separatists than the scruples of the rector of Yale in 1722 were in line +with the Nationalism of Higginson and Winthrop. This sentiment, +especially strong in Connecticut, had given rise to much study as to the +best form of a colonial church constitution; and the results of this had +recently been embodied (in 1708) in the mildly classical system of the +Saybrook Platform. The filial love of the Puritan colonists toward the +mother <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>church of England was by no means extinct in the third +generation. Alongside of the inevitable repugnance felt and manifested +toward the arrogance, insolence, and violence with which the claims of +the Episcopal Church were commended by royal governors and their +attachés and by some of the imported missionaries, there is ample +evidence of kindly and fraternal feeling, far beyond what might have +been expected, on the part of the New England clergy toward the +representatives of the Church of England. The first missionaries of the +"Venerable Society," Keith and Talbot, arriving in New England in 1702, +met with welcome from some of the ministers, who "both hospitably +entertained us in their houses and requested us to preach in their +congregations, which accordingly we did, and received great thanks both +from the ministers and people."<a name="FNanchor_133:1_80" id="FNanchor_133:1_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_133:1_80" class="fnanchor">[133:1]</a> One of these hospitable pastors +was the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, who twenty years later, +as governor of the colony, presided at the debate which followed upon +the demission of Rector Cutler.</p> + +<p>The immediate results of what had been expected to lead off a large +defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but +very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere +and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among +men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted +with self-seeking or servility or with an unpatriotic shame for their +colonial home and sympathy with its political enemies. Elsewhere in New +England, and largely in Connecticut also, the Episcopal Church in its +beginnings was handicapped with a dead-weight of supercilious and odious +Toryism. The example of a man like Johnson showed that one might become +an Episcopalian without ceasing to be a patriotic American and without +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>holding himself aloof from the fellowship of good men. The conference +in Yale College library, September 13, 1722, rather than the planting of +a system of exotic missions, marks the true epoch from which to date the +progress of a genuinely American Episcopal Church.<a name="FNanchor_134:1_81" id="FNanchor_134:1_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_134:1_81" class="fnanchor">[134:1]</a></p> + +<p>Crossing the recently settled boundary line into New York, not yet risen +to rank with the foremost colonies, we find in 1730 a deepening of the +early character, which had marked that colony, of wide diversity among +the Christian people in point of race, language, doctrinal opinion, and +ecclesiastical connection.</p> + +<p>The ancient Dutch church, rallying from its almost asphyxia, had begun +not only to receive new life, but, under the fervid spiritual influence +of Domine Frelinghuysen, to "have it more abundantly" and to become a +means of quickening to other communions. It was bearing fruit, but its +fruit had not seed within itself after its kind. It continued to suffer, +in common with some other imported church systems, from depending on a +transatlantic hierarchy for the succession of its ministry. The supply +of imported ministers continued to be miserably inadequate to the need. +In the first four decades of the century the number of its congregations +more than doubled, rising to a total of sixty-five in New York and New +Jersey; and for these sixty-five congregations there were nineteen +ministers, almost all of them from Europe. This body of churches, so +inadequately manned, was still further limited in its activities by the +continually contracting barrier of the Dutch language.</p> + +<p>The English church, enjoying "the prestige of royal favor and princely +munificence," suffered also the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>drawbacks incidental to these +advantages—the odium attending the unjust and despotic measures +resorted to for its advancement, the vile character of royal officials, +who condoned their private vices by a more ostentatious zeal for their +official church, and the well-founded popular suspicion of its pervading +disloyalty to the interests and the liberties of the colonies in their +antagonism to the encroachments of the British government. It was +represented by one congregation in the city of New York, and perhaps a +dozen others throughout the colony.<a name="FNanchor_135:1_82" id="FNanchor_135:1_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_135:1_82" class="fnanchor">[135:1]</a> It is to the honor of the +ministers of this church that it succeeded in so good a measure in +triumphing over its "advantages." The early pastors of Trinity Church +adorned their doctrine and their confession, and one such example as +that of the Rev. Thoroughgood Moor did much to redeem the character of +the church from the disgrace cast upon it by the lives of its patrons. +This faithful missionary had the signal honor of being imprisoned by the +dirty but zealous Lord Cornbury (own cousin to her Majesty the Queen, +and afterward Earl of Clarendon), of whom he had said, what everybody +knew, that he "deserved to be excommunicated"; and he had further +offended by refusing the communion to the lieutenant-governor, "upon the +account of some debauch and abominable swearing."<a name="FNanchor_135:2_83" id="FNanchor_135:2_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_135:2_83" class="fnanchor">[135:2]</a> There was +surely some vigorous spiritual vitality in a religious body which could +survive the patronizing of a succession of such creatures as Cornbury +and his crew of extortioners and profligates.</p> + +<p>A third element in the early Christianity of New York <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>was the +Presbyterians. These were represented, at the opening of the eighteenth +century, by that forerunner of the Scotch-Irish immigration, Francis +Makemie. The arrest and imprisonment of Makemie in 1706, under the +authority of Lord Cornbury, for the offense of preaching the gospel +without a license from the government, his sturdy defense and his +acquittal, make an epoch in the history of religious liberty in America, +and a perceptible step in the direction of American political liberty +and independence.</p> + +<p>The immense volume and strength of the Scotch-Irish immigration had +hardly begun to be perceptible in New York as early as 1730. The total +strength of the Presbyterian Church in 1705 was organized in +Philadelphia into a solitary presbytery containing six ministers. In +1717, the number having grown to seventeen, the one presbytery was +divided into four, which constituted a synod; and one of the four was +the presbytery of New York and New Jersey. But it was observed, at least +it might have been observed, that the growing Presbyterianism of this +northernmost region was recruited mainly from old England and from New +England—a fact on which were to depend important consequences in later +ecclesiastical history.</p> + +<p>The chief increment of the presbytery of New York and New Jersey was in +three parts, each of them planted from New England. The churches founded +from New Haven Colony in the neighborhood of Newark and Elizabethtown, +and the churches founded by Connecticut settlers on Long Island when +this was included in the jurisdiction of Connecticut, easily and without +serious objection conformed their organization to the Presbyterian +order. The first wave of the perennial westward migration of the New +Englanders, as it flowed over the hills from the valley of the +Housatonic into the valley of the Hudson, was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>observed by Domine +Selyns, away back in 1696, to be attended by many preachers educated at +Harvard College.<a name="FNanchor_137:1_84" id="FNanchor_137:1_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_137:1_84" class="fnanchor">[137:1]</a> But the churches which they founded grew into +the type, not of Cambridge nor of Saybrook, but of Westminster.</p> + +<p>The facility with which the New England Christians, moving westward or +southwestward from their cold northeastern corner of the country, have +commonly consented to forego their cherished usages and traditions of +church order and accept those in use in their new homes, and especially +their readiness in conforming to the Presbyterian polity, has been a +subject of undue lamentation and regret to many who have lacked the +faculty of recognizing in it one of the highest honors of the New +England church. But whether approved or condemned, a fact so unusual in +church history, and especially in the history of the American church, is +entitled to some study. 1. It is to be explained in part, but not +altogether, by the high motive of a willingness to sacrifice personal +preferences, habits, and convictions of judgment, on matters not of +primary importance, to the greater general good of the community. 2. The +Presbyterian polity is the logical expression of that Nationalist +principle which was cherished by many of the Puritan fathers, which +contended at the birth of New England with the mere Independency of the +Pilgrims, and which found an imperfect embodiment in the platforms of +Cambridge and Saybrook. The New England fathers in general, before their +views suffered a sea-change in the course of their migrations, were +Episcopalians and Presbyterians rather than Congregationalists; and if, +in the course of this history, we shall find many in their later +generations conforming to a mitigated form of the Westminster polity, or +to a liberalized and Americanized Episcopal Church, instead of finding +this to be a degeneration, we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>shall do well to ask whether it is not +rather a reversion to type. 3. Those who grow up in a solidly united +Christian community are in a fair way to be trained in the simplicity of +the gospel, and not in any specialties of controversy with contending or +competing sects. Members of the parish churches of New England going +west had an advantage above most others, in that they could go simply as +representatives of the church of Christ, and not of a sect of the +church, or of one side of some controversy in which they had never had +occasion to interest themselves. 4. The principle of congregational +independency, not so much inculcated as acted on in New England, carries +with it the corollary that a congregation may be Presbyterian or +Episcopalian or Methodist, if it judges best, without thereby giving the +individual Christian any justification for secession or schism. 5. The +change, in the westward movement of Christian civilization, from the +congregational order to the classical, coincides with the change in the +frame of civil polity from town government to county government. In the +beginning the civil state in New England was framed after the model of +the church.<a name="FNanchor_138:1_85" id="FNanchor_138:1_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_138:1_85" class="fnanchor">[138:1]</a> It is in accordance with the common course of church +history that when the people were transported from the midst of pure +democracies to the midst of representative republics their church +institutions should take on the character of the environment.</p> + +<p>The other factors of the religious life of New York require only brief +mention.</p> + +<p>There were considerable Quaker communities, especially <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>on western Long +Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the +fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this +Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and +suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that +"middle age of Quakerism"<a name="FNanchor_139:1_86" id="FNanchor_139:1_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_139:1_86" class="fnanchor">[139:1]</a> in which it made itself felt in the +life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective, +protests against popular wrongs.</p> + +<p>Inconsiderable in number, but of the noblest quality, was the +immigration of French Huguenots, which just before and just after the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought to New York and its +neighborhood a half-dozen congregations, accompanied by pastors whose +learning, piety, and devotion to the work of Christ were worthy of that +school of martyrdom in which they had been trained. They were not +numerous enough, nor compactly enough settled, to maintain their own +language in use, and soon became merged, some in the Dutch church and +some in the English. Some of their leading pastors accepted salaries +from the Propagation Society, tendered to them on condition of their +accepting the ordination and conforming to the ritual of the English +church. The French Reformed Church does not appear organically in the +later history of the colony, but the history of the State and of the +nation is never largely written without commemorating, by the record of +family names made illustrious in every department of honorable activity, +the rich contribution made to the American church and nation by the +cruel bigotry and the political fatuity of Louis XIV.<a name="FNanchor_139:2_87" id="FNanchor_139:2_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_139:2_87" class="fnanchor">[139:2]</a></p> + +<p>The German element in the religious life of New York, at the period +under consideration, was of even less historical importance. The +political philanthropy of Queen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>Anne's government, with a distinct +understanding between the right hand and the left, took active measure +to promote the migration of Protestant refugees from all parts of +Germany to the English colonies in America. In the year 1709 a great +company of these unhappy exiles, commonly called "poor Palatines" from +the desolated region whence many of them had been driven out, were +dropped, helpless and friendless, in the wilderness of Schoharie County, +and found themselves there practically in a state of slavery through +their ignorance of the country and its language. There were few to care +for their souls. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was +promptly in the field, with its diligent missionaries and its ignoble +policy of doing the work of Christ and humanity with a shrewd eye to the +main chance of making proselytes to its party.<a name="FNanchor_140:1_88" id="FNanchor_140:1_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_140:1_88" class="fnanchor">[140:1]</a> With a tardiness +which it is difficult not to speak of as characteristic, after the lapse +of twenty-one years the classis of Amsterdam recognized its +responsibility for this multitude of wandering sheep; and at last, in +1793, the German Reformed Church had so far emancipated itself from its +bondage to the old-country hierarchy as to assume, almost a century too +late, the cure of these poor souls. But this migration added little to +the religious life of the New York Colony, except a new element of +diversity to a people already sufficiently heterogeneous. The greater +part of these few thousands gladly found their way to the more +hospitable colony of Pennsylvania, leaving traces of themselves in +family names scattered here and there, and in certain local names, like +that of Palatine Bridge.</p> + +<p>The general impression left on the mind by this survey of the Christian +people of New York in 1730 is of a mass <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>of almost hopelessly +incongruous materials, out of which the brooding Spirit of God shall by +and by bring forth the unity of a new creation.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The population of the two Jerseys continued to bear the character +impressed on it by the original colonization. West Jersey was +predominantly Quaker; East Jersey showed in its institutions of church +and school the marks made upon it by the mingling of Scotch and Yankee. +But there was one point at which influences had centered which were to +make New Jersey the seed-plot of a new growth of church life for the +continent.</p> + +<p>The intolerable tyranny of Lord Cornbury in New York, at the beginning +of the century, had driven many of the Dutch Christians of that colony +across the Hudson. The languishing vine throve by transplanting. In the +congenial neighborhood of the Calvinists of Scotland and New England the +cluster of churches in the region of New Brunswick came to be known as +"the garden of the Dutch church." To this region, bearing a name +destined to great honor in American church history, came from Holland, +in 1720, Domine Theodore J. Frelinghuysen. The fervor and earnestness of +his preaching, unwonted in that age, wakened a religious feeling in his +own congregation, which overflowed the limits of a single parish and +became as one of the streams that make glad the city of God.</p> + +<p>In the year 1718 there arrived at the port of Philadelphia an Irishman, +William Tennent, with his four sons, the eldest a boy of fifteen. He was +not a Scotch-Irishman, but an English-Irishman—a clergyman of the +established Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland. He lost no time in +connecting himself with the Presbyterian synod of Philadelphia, and +after a few years of pastoral service in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>the colony of New York became +pastor of the Presbyterian church at Neshaminy, in Pennsylvania, twenty +miles north of Philadelphia. Here his zeal for Christian education moved +him to begin a school, which, called from the humble building in which +it was held, became famous in American Presbyterian history as the Log +College. Here were educated many men who became eminent in the ministry +of the gospel, and among them the four boys who had come with their +father from Ireland. Gilbert, the eldest and most distinguished of them, +came in 1727, from his temporary position as tutor in the Log College, +to be pastor to the Presbyterian church in New Brunswick, where +Frelinghuysen, in the face of opposition from his own brethren in the +ministry, had for seven years pursued his deeply spiritual and fruitful +work as pastor to the Dutch church. Whatever debate there may be over +the question of an official and tactual succession in the church, the +existence of a vital and spiritual succession, binding "the generations +each to each," need not be disputed by any. Sometimes, as here, the +succession is distinctly traceable. Gilbert Tennent was own son in the +ministry to Theodore Frelinghuysen as truly as Timothy to Paul, but he +became spiritual father to a great multitude.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>In the year 1730 the total population of Pennsylvania was estimated by +Governor Gordon at forty-nine thousand. In the less than fifty years +since the colony was settled it had outstripped all the older colonies, +and Philadelphia, its chief town, continued to be by far the most +important port for the landing of immigrants. The original Quaker +influence was still dominant in the colony, but the very large majority +of the population was German; and presently the Quakers were to find +their political supremacy departing, and were to acquiesce in the change +by abdicating political <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>preferment.<a name="FNanchor_143:1_89" id="FNanchor_143:1_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_143:1_89" class="fnanchor">[143:1]</a> The religious influence of +the Society of Friends continued to be potent and in many respects most +salutary. But the exceptional growth and prosperity of the colony was +attended with a vast "unearned increment" of wealth to the first +settlers, and the maxim, "Religio peperit divitias, et mater devorata +est a prole,"<a name="FNanchor_143:2_90" id="FNanchor_143:2_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_143:2_90" class="fnanchor">[143:2]</a> received one of the most striking illustrations in +all history. So speedily the Society had entered on its Middle +Age;<a name="FNanchor_143:3_91" id="FNanchor_143:3_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_143:3_91" class="fnanchor">[143:3]</a> the most violent of protests against formalism had begun to +congeal into a precise and sometimes frivolous system of formalities. +But the lasting impress made on the legislation of the colony by Penn +and his contemporaries is a monument of their wise and Christian +statesmanship. Up to their time the most humane penal codes in +Christendom were those of New England, founded on the Mosaic law. But +even in these, and still more in the application of them, there were +traces of that widely prevalent feeling that punishment is society's +bitter and malignant revenge on the criminal. The penal code and the +prison discipline of Pennsylvania became an object of admiring study for +social reformers the world over, and marked a long stage in the +advancement of the kingdom of God. The city of Philadelphia early took +the lead of American towns, not only in size, but in its public +charities and its cultivation of humane arts.</p> + +<p>Notwithstanding these eminent honors, there is much in the later history +of the great commonwealth in which Quakerism held dominion for the +greater part of a century to reflect doubt on the fitness of that form +of Christianity for conducting the affairs, either civil or religious, +of a great community.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>There is nothing in the personal duty of non-resistance of evil, as +inculcated in the New Testament, that conflicts with the functions of +the civil governor—even the function of bearing the sword as God's +minister. Rather, each of these is the complement and counterpart of the +other. Among the early colonial governors no man wielded the sword of +the ruler more effectively than the Quaker Archdale in the Carolinas. It +is when this law of personal duty is assumed as the principle of public +government that the order of society is inverted, and the function of +the magistrate is inevitably taken up by the individual, and the old +wilderness law of blood-revenge is reinstituted. The legislation of +William Penn involved no abdication of the power of the sword by the +civil governor. The enactment, however sparing, of capital laws conceded +by implication every point that is claimed by Christian moralists in +justification of war. But it is hardly to be doubted that the tendency +of Quaker politics so to conduct civil government as that it shall +"resist not evil" is responsible for some of the strange paradoxes in +the later history of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth was founded in good +faith on principles of mutual good will with the Indians and tender +regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional +amity, and of a permanent peace policy. Its history has been +characterized, beyond that of other States, by foul play toward the +Indians and protracted Indian wars, by acrimonious and sometimes bloody +sectarian conflicts, by obstinate insurrections against public +order,<a name="FNanchor_144:1_92" id="FNanchor_144:1_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_144:1_92" class="fnanchor">[144:1]</a> and by cruel and exterminating war upon honest settlers, +founded on a mere open question of title to territory.<a name="FNanchor_144:2_93" id="FNanchor_144:2_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_144:2_93" class="fnanchor">[144:2]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>The failure of Quakerism is even more conspicuous considered as a +church discipline. There is a charm as of apostolic simplicity and +beauty in its unassuming hierarchy of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and +yearly meetings, corresponding by epistles and by the visits of +traveling evangelists, which realizes the type of the primitive church +presented in "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." But it was never +able to outgrow, in the large and free field to which it was +transplanted, the defects incident to its origin in a protest and a +schism. It never learned to commend itself to men as a church for all +Christians, and never ceased to be, even in its own consciousness, a +coterie of specialists. Penn, to be sure, in his youthful overzeal, had +claimed exclusive and universal rights for Quakerism as "the alone good +way of life and salvation," all religions, faiths, and worships besides +being "in the darkness of apostasy."<a name="FNanchor_145:1_94" id="FNanchor_145:1_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_145:1_94" class="fnanchor">[145:1]</a> But after the abatement of +that wonderful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>first fervor which within a lifetime carried "its line +into all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world," it was +impossible to hold it to this pitch. Claiming no divine right to all +men's allegiance, it felt no duty of opening the door to all men's +access. It was free to exclude from the meeting on arbitrary and even on +frivolous grounds. As zeal decayed, the energies of the Society were +mainly shown in protesting and excluding and expelling. God's husbandry +does not prosper when his servants are over-earnest in rooting up tares. +The course of the Society of Friends in the eighteenth century was +suicidal. It held a noble opportunity of acting as pastor to a great +commonwealth. It missed this great opportunity, for which it was perhaps +constitutionally disqualified, and devoted itself to edifying its own +members and guarding its own purity. So it was that, saving its soul, it +lost it. The vineyard must be taken away from it.</p> + +<p>And there were no other husbandmen to take the vineyard. The petty +German sects, representing so large a part of the population, were +isolated by their language and habits. The Lutherans and the Reformed, +trained in established churches to the methods and responsibilities of +parish work, were not yet represented by any organization. The +Scotch-Irish Presbyterian immigration was pouring in at Philadelphia +like a flood, sometimes whole parishes at once, each bringing its own +pastor; and it left large traces of itself in the eastern counties of +Pennsylvania, while it rushed to the western frontier and poured itself +like a freshet southwesterly through the valleys of the Blue Ridge and +the Alleghanies. But the Presbyterian churches of eastern Pennsylvania, +even as reinforced from England and New England, were neither many nor +strong; the Baptists were feebler yet, although both these bodies were +giving signs of the strength they were both about to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>develop.<a name="FNanchor_147:1_95" id="FNanchor_147:1_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_147:1_95" class="fnanchor">[147:1]</a> +The Episcopalians had one strong and rapidly growing church in +Philadelphia, and a few languishing missions in country towns sustained +by gifts from England. There were as yet no Methodists.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Crossing the boundary line from Pennsylvania into Maryland—the line +destined to become famous in political history as Mason and Dixon's—we +come to the four Southern colonies, Maryland, Virginia, and the two +Carolinas. Georgia in 1730 has not yet begun to be. All these have +strongly marked characteristics in common, which determine in advance +the character of their religious history. They are not peculiar in being +slave colonies; there is no colony North or South in which slaves are +not held under sanction of law. Georgia, in its early years, is to have +the solitary honor of being an antislavery and prohibitionist colony. +But the four earlier Southern colonies are unlike their Northern +neighbors in this, that the institution of slavery dominates their whole +social life. The unit of the social organism is not the town, for there +are no towns; it is the plantation. In a population thus dispersed over +vast tracts of territory, schools and churches are maintained with +difficulty, or not maintained at all. Systems of primary and secondary +schools are impracticable, and, for want of these, institutions of +higher education either languish or are never begun. A consequent +tendency, which, happily, there were many influences to resist, was for +this townless population to settle down into the condition of those who, +in distinction from the early Christians, came to be called <i>pagani</i>, or +"men of the hamlets," and <i>Heiden</i>, or "men of the heath."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>Another common characteristic of the four Southern colonies is that +upon them all was imposed by foreign power a church establishment not +acceptable to the people. In the Carolinas the attempted establishment +of the English church was an absolute failure. It was a church (with +slight exceptions) without parishes, without services, without clergy, +without people, but with certain pretensions in law which were +hindrances in the way of other Christian work, and which tended to make +itself generally odious. In the two older colonies the Established +Church was worse than a failure. It had endowments, parsonages, glebes, +salaries raised by public tax, and therefore it had a clergy—and <i>such</i> +a clergy! Transferring to America the most shameful faults of the +English Establishment, it gave the sacred offices of the Christian +ministry by "patronage" into the hands of debauched and corrupt +adventurers, whose character in general was below the not very lofty +standard of the people whom they pretended to serve in the name of Jesus +Christ. Both in Virginia and in Maryland the infliction of this rabble +of simonists as a burden upon the public treasury was a nuisance under +which the people grew more and more restive from year to year. There was +no spiritual discipline to which this <i>prêtraille</i> was amenable.<a name="FNanchor_148:1_96" id="FNanchor_148:1_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_148:1_96" class="fnanchor">[148:1]</a> +It was the constant effort of good citizens, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>in the legislature and in +the vestries, if not to starve out the vermin, at least to hold them in +some sort of subjection to the power of the purse. The struggle was one +of the antecedents of the War of Independence, and the vestries of the +Virginia parishes, with their combined ecclesiastical and civil +functions, became a training-school for some of the statesmen of the +Revolution.</p> + +<p>In the general dereliction of churchly care for the people of the +Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main +responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal +hindrances, by earnest Christians of various names, whom the established +clergy vainly affected to despise. The Baptists and the Presbyterians, +soon to be so powerfully prevalent throughout the South, were +represented by a few scattered congregations. But the church of the +people of the South at this period seems to have been the Quaker +meeting, and the ministry the occasional missionary who, bearing +credentials from some yearly meeting, followed in the pioneer footsteps +of George Fox, and went from one circle of Friends to another, through +those vast expanses of thinly settled territory, to revive and confirm +and edify. The early fervors of the Society were soon spent. Its work +was strangely unstable. The proved defects of it as a working system +were grave. The criticism of George Keith seems justified by the +event—its candle needed a candlestick. But no man can truly write the +history of the church of Christ in the United States without giving +honor to the body which for so long a time and over so vast an area bore +the name and testimony <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>of Jesus almost alone; and no man can read the +journeys and labors of John Woolman, mystic and ascetic saint, without +recognizing that he and others like-minded were nothing less than true +apostles of the Lord Jesus.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>One impression made by this general survey of the colonies is that of +the absence of any sign of unity among the various Christian bodies in +occupation. One corner of the great domain, New England, was thickly +planted with homogeneous churches in mutual fellowship. One order of +Christians, the Quakers, had at least a framework of organization +conterminous with the country. In general there were only scattered +members of a Christian community, awaiting the inbreathing of some +quickening spiritual influence that should bring bone to its bone and +erect the whole into a living church.</p> + +<p>Another and very gratifying impression from the story thus far is the +general fidelity of the Christian colonists in the work of the gospel +among the heathen Indians. There was none of the colonies that did not +make profession of a zealous purpose for the Christianizing of the +savages; and it is only just to say, in the face of much unjust and evil +talk, that there was none that did not give proof of its sincerity. In +Virginia, the Puritans Whitaker and Thomas Dale; in Maryland, the +earliest companies of Jesuit missionaries; Campanius among the Swedish +Lutherans; Megapolensis among the Dutchmen, and the Jesuit martyr Jogues +in the forests of New York; in New England, not only John Eliot and +Roger Williams and the Mayhews, but many a village pastor like Fitch of +Norwich and Pierson of Branford, were distinguished in the first +generation by their devotion to this duty.<a name="FNanchor_150:1_97" id="FNanchor_150:1_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_150:1_97" class="fnanchor">[150:1]</a> The succession of +faithful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>missionaries has never failed from that day to this. The large +expectations of the churches are indicated by the erection of one of the +earliest buildings at Harvard College for the use of Indian students. At +William and Mary College not less than seventy Indian students at one +time are said to have been gathered for an advanced education. It was no +fault of the colonial churches that these earnest and persistent efforts +yielded small results. "We discover a strange uniformity of feature in +the successive failures.... Always, just when the project seemed most +hopeful, an indiscriminate massacre of missionaries and converts +together swept the enterprise out of existence. The experience of all +was the same."<a name="FNanchor_151:1_98" id="FNanchor_151:1_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_151:1_98" class="fnanchor">[151:1]</a></p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It will be a matter of growing interest, as we proceed, to trace the +relation of the American church to negro slavery.</p> + +<p>It is a curious fact, not without some later analogies, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>that the +introduction into the New World of this "direful spring of woes +unnumbered" was promoted, in the first instance, by the good Las Casas, +as the hopeful preventive of a worse evil. Touched by the spectacle of +whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel +servitude imposed upon them by the Spanish, it seemed to him a less +wrong to transfer the infliction of this injustice to shoulders more +able to bear it. But "man's inhumanity to man" needed no pretext of +philanthropy. From the landing of the Dutch ship at Jamestown in 1619, +with her small invoice of fourteen negroes, the dismal trade went on +increasing, in spite of humane protest and attempted prohibition. The +legislature of Massachusetts, which was the representative of the +church, set forth what it conceived to be the biblical ethics on the +subject. Recognizing that "lawful captives taken in just wars" may be +held in bondage, it declared among its earliest public acts, in 1641, +that, with this exception, no involuntary bond-slavery, villeinage, or +captivity should ever be in the colony; and in 1646 it took measures for +returning to Africa negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver. It is +not strange that reflection on the golden rule should soon raise doubts +whether the precedents of the Book of Joshua had equal authority with +the law of Christ. In 1675 John Eliot, from the midst of his work among +the Indians, warned the governor against the sale of Indians taken in +war, on the ground that "the selling of souls is dangerous merchandise," +and "with a bleeding and burning passion" remonstrated against "the +abject condition of the enslaved Africans." In 1700 that typical +Puritan, Judge Samuel Sewall, published his pamphlet on "The Selling of +Joseph," claiming for the negroes the rights of brethren, and predicting +that there would be "no progress in gospeling" until slavery should be +abolished. Those were serious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>days of antislavery agitation, when +Cotton Mather, in his "Essays to Do Good," spoke of the injustice of +slavery in terms such that his little book had to be expurgated by the +American Tract Society to accommodate it to the degenerate conscience of +a later day, and when the town of Boston in 1701 took measures "to put a +period to negroes being slaves." Such endeavors after universal justice +and freedom, on the part of the Christians of New England, thwarted by +the insatiable greed of British traders and politicians, were not to +cease until, with the first enlargement of independence, they should +bring forth judgment to victory.</p> + +<p>The voice of New England was echoed from Pennsylvania. The Mennonites of +Germantown, in 1688, framed in quaint and touching language their +petition for the abolition of slavery, and the Quaker yearly meetings +responded one to another with unanimous protest. But the mischief grew +and grew. In the Northern colonies the growth was stunted by the +climate. Elsewhere the institution, beginning with the domestic service +of a few bondmen attached to their masters' families, took on a new type +of malignity as it expanded. In proportion as the servile population +increases to such numbers as to be formidable, laws of increasing +severity are directed to restraining or repressing it. The first +symptoms of insurrection are followed by horrors of bloody vengeance, +and "from that time forth the slave laws have but one quality—that of +ferocity engendered by fear."<a name="FNanchor_153:1_99" id="FNanchor_153:1_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_153:1_99" class="fnanchor">[153:1]</a> It was not from the willful +inhumanity of the Southern colonies, but from their terrors, that those +slave codes came forth which for nearly two centuries were the shame of +America and the scandal of Christendom. It is a comfort to the heart of +humanity to reflect that the people were better than their laws; it was +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>only at the recurring periods of fear of insurrection that they were +worse. In ordinary times human sympathy and Christian principle softened +the rigors of the situation. The first practical fruits of the revival +of religion in the Southern colonies were seen in efforts of Christian +kindness toward the souls and bodies of the slaves.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129:1_76" id="Footnote_129:1_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129:1_76"><span class="label">[129:1]</span></a> One is touched by the plaintive grief of the Rev. Mr. +Muirson, who has come from the established church of England to make +proselytes from the established churches of Connecticut. He writes to +the "S. P. G.," without a thought of casting any reflections upon his +patrons: "It would require more time than you would willingly bestow on +these Lines, to express how rigidly and severely they treat our People, +by taking their Estate by distress when they do not willingly pay to +support their Ministers" ("Digest of S. P. G. Records," p. 43). The +pathos of the situation is intensified when we bear in mind the relation +of this tender-hearted gentleman's own emoluments to the taxes extorted +from the Congregationalists in his New York parish.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130:1_77" id="Footnote_130:1_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130:1_77"><span class="label">[130:1]</span></a> See above, p. <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131:1_78" id="Footnote_131:1_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131:1_78"><span class="label">[131:1]</span></a> Newman, "Baptist Churches in the United States," pp. +197, 198, 231.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131:2_79" id="Footnote_131:2_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131:2_79"><span class="label">[131:2]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," chaps, iv., v.; +C. F. Adams, "Three Episodes in Massachusetts History," pp. 342, 621.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133:1_80" id="Footnote_133:1_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133:1_80"><span class="label">[133:1]</span></a> "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 42.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134:1_81" id="Footnote_134:1_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134:1_81"><span class="label">[134:1]</span></a> Tiffany, chap. v. For a full account of these +beginnings in Connecticut in their historical relations, see L. Bacon on +"The Episcopal Church in Connecticut" ("New Englander," vol. xxv., pp. +283-329).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135:1_82" id="Footnote_135:1_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135:1_82"><span class="label">[135:1]</span></a> There were on duty in New York in 1730, besides the +minister of Trinity Church, ten missionaries of the "S. P. G.," +including several employed specially among the Indians and the negroes. +Fifteen years later there were reported to the "Venerable Society" in +New York and New Jersey twenty-two churches ("Digest of S. P. G.," pp. +855, 856; Tiffany, p. 178).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135:2_83" id="Footnote_135:2_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135:2_83"><span class="label">[135:2]</span></a> "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 68 and note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137:1_84" id="Footnote_137:1_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137:1_84"><span class="label">[137:1]</span></a> Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," p. 115.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138:1_85" id="Footnote_138:1_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138:1_85"><span class="label">[138:1]</span></a> "Mr. Hooker did often quote a saying out of Mr. +Cartwright, that no man fashioneth his house to his hangings, but his +hangings to his house. It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned +to the setting forth of God's house, which is his church, than to +accommodate the church frame to the civil state" (John Cotton, quoted by +L. Bacon, "Historical Discourses," p. 18).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139:1_86" id="Footnote_139:1_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139:1_86"><span class="label">[139:1]</span></a> Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 239.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139:2_87" id="Footnote_139:2_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139:2_87"><span class="label">[139:2]</span></a> Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," pp. 77, 78, 173.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140:1_88" id="Footnote_140:1_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140:1_88"><span class="label">[140:1]</span></a> Illustrations of the sordid sectarianism of the +"Venerable Society's" operations are painfully frequent in the pages of +the "digest of the S. P. G." See especially on this particular case the +action respecting Messrs. Kocherthal, Ehlig, and Beyse (p. 61).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143:1_89" id="Footnote_143:1_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143:1_89"><span class="label">[143:1]</span></a> S. G. Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 125; +Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 235.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143:2_90" id="Footnote_143:2_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143:2_90"><span class="label">[143:2]</span></a> "Religion gave birth to wealth, and was devoured by her +own offspring." The aphorism is ascribed to Lord Falkland.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143:3_91" id="Footnote_143:3_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143:3_91"><span class="label">[143:3]</span></a> Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 236.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144:1_92" id="Footnote_144:1_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144:1_92"><span class="label">[144:1]</span></a> Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," pp. 166-169, +174.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144:2_93" id="Footnote_144:2_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144:2_93"><span class="label">[144:2]</span></a> It is not easy to define the peculiarity of Penn's +Indian policy. It is vulgarly referred to as if it consisted in just +dealing, especially in not taking their land except by fair purchase; +and the "Shackamaxon Treaty," of which nothing is known except by vague +report and tradition, is spoken of as some thing quite unprecedented in +this respect. The fact is that this measure of virtue was common to the +English colonists generally, and eminently to the New England colonists. +A good example of the ordinary cant of historical writers on this +subject is found in "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 238. The writer +says of the Connecticut Puritans: "They occupied the land by squatter +sovereignty.... It seemed like a pleasant place; they wanted it. They +were the saints, and the saints, as we all know, shall inherit the +earth.... Having originally acquired their land simply by taking it, ... +they naturally grew up with rather liberal views as to their right to +any additional territory that pleased their fancy." No purchase by Penn +was made with more scrupulous regard to the rights of the Indians than +the purchases by which the settlers of Connecticut acquired title to +their lands; but I know of no New England precedent for the somewhat +Punic piece of sharp practice by which the metes and bounds of one of +the Pennsylvania purchases were laid down. +</p><p> +The long exemption of Pennsylvania from trouble with the Indians seems +to be due to the fact that an exceptionally mild, considerate, and +conscientious body of settlers was confronted with a tribe of savages +thoroughly subdued and cowed in recent conflicts with enemies both red +and white. It seems clear, also, that the exceptional ferocity of the +forty years of uninterrupted war with the Indians that ensued was due in +part to the long dereliction by the Quaker government of its duty of +protecting its citizens and punishing murder, robbery, and arson when +committed by its copper-colored subjects.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145:1_94" id="Footnote_145:1_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145:1_94"><span class="label">[145:1]</span></a> Penn's "Truth Exalted" (quoted in "Encyclopædia +Britannica," vol. xviii., p. 493).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147:1_95" id="Footnote_147:1_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147:1_95"><span class="label">[147:1]</span></a> In 1741, after a decade of great activity and growth, +the entire clerical strength of the American Presbyterian Church, in its +four presbyteries, was forty-seven ministers (Thompson, "Presbyterian +Churches," p. 33).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148:1_96" id="Footnote_148:1_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148:1_96"><span class="label">[148:1]</span></a> It is a subject of unceasing lament on the part of +historians of the American Episcopal Church that the mother church, all +through the colonial days, should have obstinately refused to the +daughter the gift of the episcopate. There is no denying the grave +disadvantages thus inflicted. But it admits of doubt whether such +bishops, with such conditions, as would have been conceded by the +English church of the eighteenth century, would, after all, have been so +very precious a boon. We shrink from the imputation upon the colonial +church of Maryland and Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it +would have been considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity +of the English church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, +culminating in Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far +Americanized the Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome +minister was ever to be forced from outside on one of its parishes. +After the Revolution it became possible to set up the episcopate also on +American principles. Those who are burdened with regret over the long +delay of the American Protestant episcopate may find no small +consolation in pondering the question, what kind of an outfit of +bishops, with canons attached, might have been hoped for from Sir Robert +Walpole or Lord Bute? On the whole, at this point the American Episcopal +Church is in the habit of pitying itself too much. It has something to +be thankful for.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150:1_97" id="Footnote_150:1_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150:1_97"><span class="label">[150:1]</span></a> It is a curious exception, if it is indeed an +exception, that the one Christian colony that shows no record of early +Indian missions should be that of William Penn. Could this be due to the +Quaker faith in the sufficiency of "the Light that lighteneth every man +that cometh into the world"? +</p><p> +The type of theology and method of instruction used by some of the +earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of +adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of +Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man +for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of +Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an +illustration both of his good intentions and of his methods, which were +not so good, in "<i>Some Helps for the Indians: Shewing them how to +Improve their Natural Reason, to Know the True God and the Christian +Religion</i>." This catechism is printed in the Indian language with an +English version interlined. +</p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Q.</i> How do you prove that there is but one true God? +</p><p> +"<i>An.</i> Because the reason why singular things of the same kind +are multiplied is not to be found in the nature of God; for +the reason why such like things are multiplied is from the +fruitfulness of their causes: but God hath no cause of his +being, but is of himself. Therefore he is one." (And so on +through <i>secondly</i> and <i>thirdly</i>.)</p></div> +<p> +<i>Per contra</i>, a sermon to the Stockbridge Indians by the most ponderous +of the metaphysical preachers of New England, Samuel Hopkins, is +beautifully simple and childlike. It is given in full in Park's "Life of +Hopkins," pp. 46-49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151:1_98" id="Footnote_151:1_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151:1_98"><span class="label">[151:1]</span></a> McConnell, "History of the American Episcopal Church," +p. 7. The statement calls for qualification in detail, but the general +fact is unmistakable.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153:1_99" id="Footnote_153:1_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153:1_99"><span class="label">[153:1]</span></a> H. C. Lodge, "English Colonies," p. 67 <i>et seq.</i></p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<h3>THE GREAT AWAKENING</h3> + + +<p class="section">It was not wholly dark in American Christendom before the dawn of the +Great Awakening. The censoriousness which was the besetting sin of the +evangelists in that great religious movement, the rhetorical temptation +to glorify the revival by intensifying the contrast with the antecedent +condition, and the exaggerated <i>revivalism</i> ever since so prevalent in +the American church,—the tendency to consider religion as consisting +mainly in scenes and periods of special fervor, and the intervals +between as so much void space and waste time,—all these have combined +to deepen the dark tints in which the former state is set before us in +history.</p> + +<p>The power of godliness was manifest in the earlier days by many +infallible signs, not excluding those "times of refreshing" in which the +simultaneous earnestness of many souls compels the general attention. +Even in Northampton, where the doctrine of the venerable Stoddard as to +the conditions of communion has been thought to be the low-water mark of +church vitality, not less than five such "harvest seasons" were within +recent memory. It was to this parish in a country town on the frontier +of civilization, but the most important in Massachusetts outside of +Boston, that there came, in the year 1727, to serve as colleague to his +aged grandfather, Pastor Stoddard, a young man whose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>wonderful +intellectual and spiritual gifts had from his childhood awakened the +pious hopes of all who had known him, and who was destined in his future +career to be recognized as the most illustrious of the saints and +doctors of the American church. The authentic facts of the boyhood of +Jonathan Edwards read like the myths that adorn the legendary Lives of +the Saints. As an undergraduate of Yale College, before the age of +seventeen, his reflections on the mysteries of God, and the universe, +and the human mind, were such as even yet command the attention and +respect of students of philosophy. He remained at New Haven two years +after graduation, for the further study of theology, and then spent +eight months in charge of the newly organized Presbyterian church in New +York.<a name="FNanchor_156:1_100" id="FNanchor_156:1_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_156:1_100" class="fnanchor">[156:1]</a> After this he spent two years as tutor at Yale,—"one of +the pillar tutors, and the glory of the college,"—at the critical +period after the defection of Rector Cutler to the Church of +England.<a name="FNanchor_156:2_101" id="FNanchor_156:2_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_156:2_101" class="fnanchor">[156:2]</a> From this position he was called in 1726, at the age of +twenty-three, to the church at Northampton. There he was ordained +February 15, 1727, and thither a few months later he brought his +"espousèd saint," Sarah Pierpont, consummate flower of Puritan +womanhood, thenceforth the companion not only of his pastoral cares and +sorrows, but of his seraphic contemplations of divine things.</p> + +<p>The intensely earnest sermons, the holy life, and the loving prayers of +one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church were not long +in bearing abundant fruit. In a time of spiritual and moral depression, +when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>the world, the flesh, and the devil seemed to be gaining against +the gospel, sometime in the year 1733 signs began to be visible of +yielding to the power of God's Word. The frivolous or wanton frolics of +the youth began to be exchanged for meetings for religious conference. +The pastor was encouraged to renewed tenderness and solemnity in his +preaching. His themes were justification by faith, the awfulness of +God's justice, the excellency of Christ, the duty of pressing into the +kingdom of God. Presently a young woman, a leader in the village +gayeties, became "serious, giving evidence," even to the severe judgment +of Edwards, "of a heart truly broken and sanctified." A general +seriousness began to spread over the whole town. Hardly a single person, +old or young, but felt concerned about eternal things. According to +Edwards's "Narrative":</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true +saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the +town, so that in the spring and summer, anno 1735, the town +seemed to be full of the presence of God. It was never so full +of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress, as +it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in +almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on the +account of salvation's being brought unto them; parents +rejoicing over their children as being new-born, and husbands +over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of +God were then seen in his sanctuary. God's day was a delight, +and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were +then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, +every one intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to +drink in the words of the minister as they came from his +mouth; the assembly in general were from time to time in tears +while the Word was preached, some weeping with sorrow and +distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and +concern for the souls of their neighbors. Our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>public praises +were then greatly enlivened; God was then served in our +psalmody in some measure in the beauty of holiness."</p></div> + +<p>The crucial test of the divineness of the work was given when the people +presented themselves before the Lord with a solemn act of thanksgiving +for his great goodness and his gracious presence in the town of +Northampton, with publicly recorded vows to renounce their evil ways and +put away their abominations from before his eyes. They solemnly promise +thenceforth, in all dealings with their neighbor, to be governed by the +rules of honesty, justice, and uprightness; not to overreach or defraud +him, nor anywise to injure him, whether willfully or through want of +care; to regard not only their own interest, but his; particularly, to +be faithful in the payment of just debts; in the case of past wrongs +against any, never to rest till they have made full reparation; to +refrain from evil speaking, and from everything that feeds a spirit of +bitterness; to do nothing in a spirit of revenge; not to be led by +private or partisan interest into any course hurtful to the interests of +Christ's kingdom; particularly, in public affairs, not to allow ambition +or partisanship to lead them counter to the interest of true religion. +Those who are young promise to allow themselves in no diversions that +would hinder a devout spirit, and to avoid everything that tends to +lasciviousness, and which will not be approved by the infinitely pure +and holy eye of God. Finally, they consecrate themselves watchfully to +perform the relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, +brothers and sisters, masters, mistresses, and servants.</p> + +<p>So great a work as this could not be hid. The whole region of the +Connecticut Valley, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and neighboring +regions felt the influence of it. The fame of it went abroad. A letter +of Edwards's in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>reply to inquiries from his friend, Dr. Colman, of +Boston, was forwarded to Dr. Watts and Dr. Guise, of London, and by them +published under the title of "Narrative of Surprising Conversions." A +copy of the little book was carried in his pocket for wayside reading on +a walk from London to Oxford by John Wesley, in the year 1738. Not yet +in the course of his work had he "seen it on this fashion," and he +writes in his journal: "Surely this is the Lord's doing, and it is +marvelous in our eyes."</p> + +<p>Both in this narrative and in a later work on "The Distinguishing Marks +of a Work of the Spirit of God," one cannot but admire the divine gift +of a calm wisdom with which Edwards had been endowed as if for this +exigency. He is never dazzled by the incidents of the work, nor +distracted by them from the essence of it. His argument for the +divineness of the work is not founded on the unusual or extraordinary +character of it, nor on the impressive bodily effects sometimes +attending it, such as tears, groans, outcries, convulsions, or +faintings, nor on visions or ecstasies or "impressions." What he claims +is that the work may be divine, <i>notwithstanding</i> the presence of these +incidents.<a name="FNanchor_159:1_102" id="FNanchor_159:1_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_159:1_102" class="fnanchor">[159:1]</a> It was doubtless owing to the firm and judicious +guidance of such a pastor that the intense religious fervor of this +first awakening at Northampton was marked by so much of sobriety and +order. In later years, in other regions, and under the influence of +preachers not of greater earnestness, but of less wisdom and discretion, +there were habitual scenes of extravagant and senseless enthusiasm, +which make the closing pages of this chapter of church history painfully +instructive.</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to understand how one of the first places at a +distance to feel the kindling example of Northampton should be the +neighborhood of Newark. To this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>region, planted, as we have seen, with +so strong a stock from New England, from old England, and from Scotland, +came, in 1708, a youth of twenty years, Jonathan Dickinson, a native of +the historic little town of Hatfield, next neighbor to Northampton. He +was pastor at Elizabeth, but his influence and activity extended through +all that part of New Jersey, and he became easily the leader of the +rapidly growing communion of Presbyterian churches in that province, and +the opponent, in the interest of Christian liberty and sincerity, of +rigid terms of subscription, demanded by men of little faith. There is a +great career before him; but that which concerns the present topic is +his account of what took place "sometime in August, 1739 (the summer +before Mr. Whitefield came first into these parts), when there was a +remarkable revival at Newark.... This revival of religion was chiefly +observable among the younger people, till the following March, when the +whole town in general was brought under an uncommon concern about their +eternal interests, and the congregation appeared universally affected +under some sermons that were then preached to them."</p> + +<p>Like scenes of spiritual quickening were witnessed that same season in +other parts of New Jersey; but special interest attaches to the report +from New Londonderry, Penn., where a Scotch-Irish community received as +its pastor, in the spring of 1740, Samuel Blair, a native of Ireland, +trained in the Log College of William Tennent. He describes the people, +at his first knowledge of them, as sunk in a religious torpor, +ignorance, and indifference. The first sign of vitality was observed in +March, 1740, during the pastor's absence, when, under an alarming sermon +from a neighbor minister:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"There was a visible appearance of much soul-concern among +the hearers; so that some burst out with an audible noise into +bitter crying, a thing not known in these parts before.... The +first sermon I preached after my return to them was from +Matthew vi. 33: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his +righteousness.' After opening up and explaining the parts of +the text, when in the improvement I came to press the +injunction in the text upon the unconverted and ungodly, and +offered this as one reason among others why they should now +first of all seek the kingdom and righteousness of God, viz., +that they had neglected too long to do so already, this +consideration seemed to come and cut like a sword upon several +in the congregation; so that while I was speaking upon it they +could no longer contain, but burst out in the most bitter +mourning. I desired them as much as possible to restrain +themselves from making any noise that would hinder themselves +or others from hearing what was spoken; and often afterward I +had occasion to repeat the same counsel. I still advised +people to endeavor to moderate and bound their passions, but +not so as to resist and stifle their convictions. The number +of the awakened increased very fast. Frequently under sermons +there were some newly convicted and brought into deep distress +of soul about their perishing estate. Our Sabbath assemblies +soon became vastly large, many people from almost all parts +around inclining very much to come where there was such +appearance of the divine power and presence. I think there was +scarcely a sermon or lecture preached here through that whole +summer but there were manifest evidences of impressions on the +hearers, and many times the impressions were very great and +general. Several would be overcome and fainting; others deeply +sobbing, hardly able to contain; others crying in a most +dolorous manner; many others more silently weeping, and a +solemn concern appearing in the countenances of many others. +And sometimes the soul-exercises of some (though comparatively +but very few) would so far affect their bodies as to occasion +some strange, unusual bodily motions. I had opportunities of +speaking particularly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>with a great many of those who afforded +such outward tokens of inward soul-concern in the time of +public worship and hearing of the Word. Indeed, many came to +me of themselves, in their distress, for private instruction +and counsel; and I found, so far as I can remember, that with +by far the greater part their apparent concern in public was +not just a transient qualm of conscience or merely a floating +commotion of the affections, but a rational, fixed conviction +of their dangerous, perishing estate....</p> + +<p>"In some time many of the convinced and distressed afforded +very hopeful, satisfying evidence that the Lord had brought +them to true closure with Jesus Christ, and that their +distresses and fears had been in a great measure removed in a +right gospel way, by believing in the Son of God. Several of +them had very remarkable and sweet deliverances this way. It +was very agreeable to hear their accounts how that when they +were in the deepest perplexity and darkness, distress and +difficulty, seeking God as poor, condemned, hell-deserving +sinners, the scene of recovering grace through a Redeemer has +been opened to their understandings with a surprising beauty +and glory, so that they were enabled to believe in Christ with +joy unspeakable and full of glory."<a name="FNanchor_162:1_103" id="FNanchor_162:1_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_162:1_103" class="fnanchor">[162:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>The experience of Gilbert Tennent at New Brunswick had no connection +with the first awakening at Northampton, but had important relations +with later events. He was the eldest of the four sons whom William +Tennent, the Episcopalian minister from Ireland, had brought with him to +America and educated at his Log College. In 1727 he became pastor of a +church at New Brunswick, where he was much impressed with what he saw of +the results of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>the work of the Rev. Theodore Frelinghuysen, who for +seven years had been pastor of a neighboring Dutch church. The example +and fraternal counsel of this good man made him sensible of the +fruitlessness of his own work, and moved him to more earnest prayers and +labors. Having been brought low with sickness, he prayed to God to grant +him one half-year more in which to "endeavor to promote his kingdom with +all my might at all adventures." Being raised up from sickness, he +devoted himself to earnest personal labors with individuals and to +renewed faithfulness in the pulpit, "which method was sealed by the Holy +Spirit in the conviction and conversion of a considerable number of +persons, at various times and in different places, in that part of the +country, as appeared by their acquaintance with experimental religion +and good conversation." This bit of pastoral history, in which is +nothing startling or prodigious, was at least five years previous to the +"Surprising Conversions" at Northampton. There must have been generally +throughout the country a preparedness for the Great Awakening.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It was in that year (1735) in which the town of Northampton was all +ablaze with the glory of its first revival under Edwards that George +Whitefield, first among the members of Wesley's "Holy Club" at Oxford, +attained to that "sense of the divine love" from which he was wont to +date his conversion. In May, 1738, when the last reflections from the +Northampton revival had faded out from all around the horizon, the young +clergyman, whose first efforts as a preacher in pulpits of the Church of +England had astonished all hearers by the power of his eloquence, +arrived at Savannah, urged by the importunity of the Wesleys to take up +the work in Georgia in which they had so conspicuously failed. He +entered eagerly into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>the sanguine schemes for the advantage of the +young colony, and especially into the scheme for building and endowing +an orphan-house in just that corner of the earth where there was less +need of such an institution than anywhere else. After three months' stay +he started on his return to England to seek priest's orders for himself, +and funds for the orphans that might be expected sometime in Georgia. He +was successful in both his errands. He was ordained; he collected more +than one thousand pounds for the orphan-house; and being detained in the +kingdom by an embargo, he began that course of evangelistic preaching +which continued on either side of the ocean until his death, and which +is without a parallel in church history. His incomparable eloquence +thronged the parish churches, until the churches were closed against +him, and the Bishop of London warned the people against him in a +pastoral letter. Then he went out into the open fields, in the service, +as he said, of him "who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens +for his sounding-board, and who, when his gospel was refused by the +Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges." Multitudes of +every rank thronged him; but especially the heathenized and embruted +colliers near Bristol listened to the unknown gospel, and their awakened +feelings were revealed to the preacher by his observing the white +gutters made by the tears that ran down their grimy faces. At last the +embargo was raised, and committing his work to Wesley, whom he had drawn +into field-preaching, he sailed in August, 1739, for Philadelphia, on +his way to Georgia. His fame had gone before him, and the desire to hear +him was universal. The churches would not contain the throngs. It was +long remembered how, on those summer evenings, he would take his stand +in the balcony of the old court-house in Market Street, and how every +syllable from his wonderful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>voice would be heard aboard the river-craft +moored at the foot of the street, four hundred feet away.</p> + +<p>At New York the Episcopal church was closed against him, but the pastor +of the Presbyterian church, Mr. Pemberton, from Boston, made him +welcome, and the fields were free to him and his hearers. On the way to +New York and back, the tireless man preached at every town. At New +Brunswick he saw and heard with profound admiration Gilbert Tennent, +thenceforth his friend and yokefellow.</p> + +<p>Seeing the solemn eagerness of the people everywhere to hear him, he +determined to make the journey to Savannah by land, and again he turned +the long journey into a campaign of preaching. Arriving at Savannah in +January, 1740, he laid the foundation of his orphan-house, "Bethesda," +and in March was again on his way northward on a tour of preaching and +solicitation of funds. Touching at Charleston, where the bishop's +commissary, Dr. Garden, was at open controversy with him, he preached +five times and received seventy pounds for his charitable work. Landing +at New Castle on a Sunday morning, he preached morning and evening. +Monday morning he preached at Wilmington to a vast assemblage. Tuesday +evening he preached on Society Hill, in Philadelphia, "to about eight +thousand," and at the same place Wednesday morning and evening. Then +once more he made the tour to New York and back, preaching at every +halting-place. A contemporary newspaper contains the following item:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"New Castle, May 15th. This evening Mr. Whitefield went on +board his sloop here in order to sail for Georgia. On Sunday +he preached twice in Philadelphia, and in the evening, when he +preached his farewell sermon, it is supposed he had twenty +thousand hearers. On Monday he preached at Darby and Chester; +on Tuesday at Wilmington and Whiteclay Creek; on Wednesday, +twice at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>Nottingham; on Thursday at Fog's Manor and New +Castle. The congregations were much increased since his being +here last. The presence of God was much seen in the +assemblies, especially at Nottingham and Fog's Manor, where +the people were under such deep soul-distress that their cries +almost drowned his voice. He has collected in this and the +neighboring provinces about four hundred and fifty pounds +sterling for his orphans in Georgia."</p></div> + +<p>Into the feeble but rapidly growing presbyteries and the one synod of +the American Presbyterian Church the revival had brought, not peace, but +a sword. The collision was inevitable between the fervor and +unrestrained zeal of the evangelists and the sense of order and decorum, +and of the importance of organization and method, into which men are +trained in the ministry of an established church. No man, even at this +day, can read the "standards" of the Presbyterian Church without seeing +that they have had to be strained to admit those "revival methods" which +ever since the days of Whitefield have prevailed in that body. The +conflict that arose was not unlike that which from the beginning of New +England history had subsisted between Separatist and Nationalist. In the +Presbyterian conflict, as so often in religious controversies, +disciplinary and doctrinal questions were complicated with a difference +of race. The "Old Side" was the Scotch and Irish party; the "New Side" +was the New England party, to which many of the old-country ministers +adhered. For successive years the mutual opposition had shown itself in +the synod; and in 1740, at the synod meeting at Philadelphia, soon after +the departure of Whitefield, the real gravamen of the controversy +appeared, in the implied and even express impeachment of the spiritual +character of the Old Side ministers. The impeachment had been implied in +the coming of the evangelists uninvited into other men's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>parishes, as +if these were mission ground. And now it was expressed in papers read +before the synod by Blair and Gilbert Tennent. The action of the synod +went so far toward sustaining the men of the New Side as to repeal the +rule restraining ministers from preaching outside of their own parishes, +and as to put on record a thanksgiving for the work of God in the land. +Through all the days of the synod's meeting, daily throngs on Society +Hill were addressed by the Tennents and other "hot gospelers" of the +revival, and churches and private houses were resounding with revival +hymns and exhortations. Already the preaching and printing of Gilbert +Tennent's "Nottingham Sermon" had made further fellowship between the +two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated +the worst characteristic of the revivalists—their censoriousness. It +was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," +which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one +of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer +to it came in a form that might have been expected. At the opening of +the synod of 1741 a solemn protestation was presented containing an +indictment in seven grave counts against the men of the New Side, and +declaring them to "have at present no right to sit and vote as members +of this synod, and that if they should sit and vote, the doings of the +synod would be of no force or obligation." The protestation was adopted +by the synod by a bare majority of a small attendance. The presbytery of +New Brunswick found itself exscinded by this short and easy process of +discipline; the presbytery of New York joined with it in organizing a +new synod, and the schism was complete.</p> + +<p>It is needless further to follow in detail the amazing career of +Whitefield, "posting o'er land and ocean without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>rest," and attended at +every movement by such storms of religious agitation as have been +already described. In August, 1740, he made his first visit to New +England. He met with a cordial welcome. At Boston all pulpits were +opened to him, and churches were thronged with eager and excited +hearers.<a name="FNanchor_168:1_104" id="FNanchor_168:1_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_168:1_104" class="fnanchor">[168:1]</a> He preached on the common in the open air, and the +crowds were doubled. All the surrounding towns, and the coast eastward +to Maine, and the interior as far as Northampton, and the Connecticut +towns along the road to New York, were wonderfully aroused by the +preaching, which, according to the testimony of two nations and all +grades of society, must have been of unequaled power over the feelings. +Not only the clergy, including the few Church of England missionaries, +but the colleges and the magistrates delighted to honor him. Belcher, +the royal governor at Boston, fairly slobbered over him, with tears and +embraces and kisses; and the devout Governor Talcott, at New Haven, gave +God thanks, after listening to the great preacher, "for such refreshings +on the way to our rest." So he was sped on his way back to the South.</p> + +<p>Relieved thus of the glamor of his presence, the New England people +began, some of them, to recognize in what an earthen vessel their +treasure had been borne. Already, in his earlier youth, when his vast +powers had been suddenly revealed to him and to the world, he had had +wise counsel from such men as Watts and Doddridge against some of his +perils. Watts warned him against his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>superstition of trusting to +"impressions" assumed to be divine; and Doddridge pronounced him "an +honest man, but weak, and a little intoxicated with popularity."<a name="FNanchor_169:1_105" id="FNanchor_169:1_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_169:1_105" class="fnanchor">[169:1]</a> +But no human strength could stand against the adulation that everywhere +attended him. His vain conceit was continually betraying him into +indiscretions, which he was ever quick to expiate by humble +acknowledgment. At Northampton he was deeply impressed with the beauty +of holiness in Edwards and his wife; and he listened with deference to +the cautions of that wise counselor against his faith in "impressions" +and against his censorious judgments of other men as "unconverted"; but +it seemed to the pastor that his guest "liked him not so well for +opposing these things."</p> + +<p>The faults of Whitefield were intensified to a hateful degree in some of +his associates and followers. Leaving Boston, he sent, to succeed to his +work, Gilbert Tennent, then glowing with the heat of his noted +Nottingham sermon on "An Unconverted Ministry." At once men's minds +began to be divided. On the one hand, so wise and sober a critic as +Thomas Prince, listening with severe attention, gave his strong and +unreserved approval to the preaching and demeanor of Tennent.<a name="FNanchor_169:2_106" id="FNanchor_169:2_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_169:2_106" class="fnanchor">[169:2]</a> At +the other extreme, we have such testimony as this from Dr. Timothy +Cutler, the former rector of Yale College, now the Episcopalian minister +of Boston:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It would be an endless attempt to describe that scene of +confusion and disturbance occasioned by him [Whitefield]: the +division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, the +contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of +children and servants, the quarrels among teachers, the +disorders of the night, the intermission of labor and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>business, the neglect of husbandry and of gathering the +harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous +there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and +several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest +crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this +revel maintained in some places many days and nights together +without intermission; and then there were the blessed +outpourings of the Spirit!... After him came one Tennent, a +monster! impudent and noisy, and told them they were all +damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed them, and in the most +dreadful winter I ever saw people wallowed in the snow night +and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings, and many +ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried +more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful +for."<a name="FNanchor_170:1_107" id="FNanchor_170:1_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_170:1_107" class="fnanchor">[170:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>This is in a tone of bitter sectarian railing. But, after all, the main +allegations in it are sustained by the ample evidence produced by Dr. +Charles Chauncy, pastor of the First Church in Boston, in his serious +and weighty volume of "Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in +New England," published in 1743, as he sincerely says, "to serve the +interests of Christ's kingdom," and "faithfully pointing out the things +of a bad and dangerous tendency in the late and present religious +appearance in the land." Dr. Chauncy was doubtless included in the +sweeping denunciation of the Christian ministry in general as +"unconverted," "Pharisees," "hypocrites." And yet it does not appear in +historical evidence that Chauncy was not every whit as good a Christian +as Tennent or Whitefield.</p> + +<p>The excesses of the revival went on from bad to worse. They culminated, +at last, in the frenzy of poor James Davenport, great-grandson of the +venerable founder of New Haven, who, under the control of "impressions" +and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>"impulses" and texts of Scripture "borne in upon his mind," +abandoned his Long Island parish, a true <i>allotrio-episcopos</i>, to thrust +himself uninvited into the parishes of other ministers, denouncing the +pastor as "unconverted" and adjuring the people to desert both pastor +and church. Like some other self-appointed itinerants and exhorters of +the time, he seemed bent upon schism, as if this were the great end of +preaching. Being invited to New London to assist in organizing a +Separatist church, he "published the messages which he said he received +from the Spirit in dreams and otherwise, importing the great necessity +of mortification and contempt of the world; and made them believe that +they must put away from them everything that they delighted in, to avoid +the heinous sin of idolatry—that wigs, cloaks and breeches, hoods, +gowns, rings, jewels, and necklaces, must be all brought together into +one heap into his chamber, that they might by his solemn decree be +committed to the flames." On the Sabbath afternoon the pile was publicly +burned amid songs and shouts. In the pile were many favorite books of +devotion, including works of Flavel, Beveridge, Henry, and like +venerated names, and the sentence was announced with a loud voice, "that +the smoke of the torments of such of the authors of the above-said books +as died in the same belief as when they set them out was now ascending +in hell, in like manner as they saw the smoke of these books +arise."<a name="FNanchor_171:1_108" id="FNanchor_171:1_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_171:1_108" class="fnanchor">[171:1]</a> The public fever and delirium was passing its crisis. A +little more than a year from this time, Davenport, who had been treated +by his brethren with much forbearance and had twice been released from +public process as <i>non compos mentis</i>, recovered his reason at the same +time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and +affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>under the +influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit +of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned +to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained +of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept over New England, except +a few languishing schisms in country towns of Connecticut.</p> + +<p>As in the middle colonies, the revival had brought division in New +England. But, after the New England fashion, it was division merely into +ways of thinking, not into sects. Central in the agitated scene is the +calm figure of Edwards, uniting the faith and zeal of an apostle with +the acuteness of a philosopher, and applying the exquisite powers of his +intellect to discriminate between a divine work and its human or Satanic +admixtures, and between true and spurious religious affections. He won +the blessing of the peacemaker. When half a generation had passed there +had not ceased, indeed, to be differences of opinion, but there was none +left to defend the wild extravagances which the very authors of them +lamented, and there was none to deny, in face of the rich and enduring +fruits of the revival, that the power of God had been present in it. In +the twenty years ending in 1760 the number of the New England churches +had been increased by one hundred and fifty.<a name="FNanchor_172:1_109" id="FNanchor_172:1_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_172:1_109" class="fnanchor">[172:1]</a></p> + +<p>In the middle colonies there had been like progress. The Presbyterian +ministry had increased from forty-five to more than a hundred; and the +increase had been wholly on the "New Side." An early move of the +conservative party, to require a degree from a British or a New England +college as a condition of license to preach, was promptly recognized as +intended to exclude the fervid students from the Log College. It was met +by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>organization of Princeton College, whose influence, more New +Englandish than New England, directed by a succession of illustrious +Yale graduates in full sympathy with the advanced theology of the +revival, was counted on to withstand the more cautious orthodoxy of +Yale. In this and other ways the Presbyterian schism fell out to the +furtherance of the gospel.</p> + +<p>In Virginia the quickening was as when the wind breathed in the valley +of dry bones. The story of Samuel Morris and his unconscious mission, +although authentic fact, belongs with the very romance of +evangelism.<a name="FNanchor_173:1_110" id="FNanchor_173:1_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_173:1_110" class="fnanchor">[173:1]</a> Whitefield and "One-eyed Robinson," and at last +Samuel Davies, came to his aid. The deadly exclusiveness of the inert +Virginia establishment was broken up, and the gospel had free course. +The Presbyterian Church, which had at first been looked on as an exotic +sect that might be tolerated out on the western frontier, after a brief +struggle with the Act of Uniformity maintained its right to live and +struck vigorous root in the soil. The effect of the Awakening was felt +in the establishment itself. Devereux Jarratt, a convert of the revival, +went to England for ordination, and returned to labor for the +resuscitation of the Episcopal Church in his native State. "To him, and +such as he, the first workings of the renewed energy of the church in +Virginia are to be traced."<a name="FNanchor_173:2_111" id="FNanchor_173:2_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_173:2_111" class="fnanchor">[173:2]</a></p> + +<p>An even more important result of the Awakening was the swift and wide +extension of Baptist principles and churches. This was altogether +logical. The revival had come, not so much in the spirit and power of +Elijah, turning to each other the hearts of fathers and of children, as +in the spirit of Ezekiel, the preacher of individual responsibility and +duty. The temper of the revival was wholly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>congenial with the strong +individualism of the Baptist churches. The Separatist churches formed in +New England by the withdrawal of revival enthusiasts from the parish +churches in many instances became Baptist. Cases of individual +conversion to Baptist views were frequent, and the earnestness with +which the new opinion was held approved itself not only by debating and +proselyting, but by strenuous and useful evangelizing. Especially at the +South, from Virginia to Georgia, the new preachers, entering into the +labors of the annoyed and persecuted pioneers of their communion, won +multitudes of converts to the Christian faith, from the neglected +populations, both black and white, and gave to the Baptist churches a +lasting preëminence in numbers among the churches of the South.</p> + +<p>Throughout the country the effect of this vigorous propagation of rival +sects openly, in the face of whatever there was of church establishment, +settled this point: that the law of American States, by whomsoever +administered, must sooner or later be the law of liberty and equality +among the various religious communions. In the southern colonies, the +empty shell of a church establishment had crumbled on contact with the +serious earnestness of the young congregations gathered by the +Presbyterian and Baptist evangelists. In New England, where +establishment was in the form of an attempt by the people of the +commonwealth to confirm the people of each town in the maintenance of +common worship according to their conscience and judgment, the "standing +order" had solid strength; but when it was attempted by public authority +to curb the liberty of a considerable minority conscientiously intent on +secession, the reins were ready to break. It soon came to be recognized +that the only preëminence the parish churches could permanently hold was +that of being "servants of all."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p>With equal and unlimited liberty, was to follow, as a prevailing +characteristic of American Christianity, a large diversity of +organization. Not only that men disagreeing in their convictions of +truth would be enrolled in different bodies, but that men holding the +same views, in the same statement of them, would feel free to go apart +from one another, and stay apart. There was not even to be any one +generally predominating organization from which minor ones should be +reckoned as dissenting. One after another the organizations which should +be tempted by some period of exceptional growth and prosperity to +pretend to a hegemony among the churches—Catholic, Episcopalian, +Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist—would meet with some set-back as +inexorable as "the law of nature that prevents the trees from growing up +into the sky."</p> + +<p>By a curious paradox, the same spiritual agitation which deepened the +divisions of the American church aroused in the colonies the +consciousness of a national religious unity. We have already seen that +in the period before the Awakening the sole organ of fellowship reaching +through the whole chain of the British colonies was the correspondence +of the Quaker meetings and missionaries. In the glow of the revival the +continent awoke to the consciousness of a common spiritual life. Ranging +the continent literally from Georgia to Maine, with all his weaknesses +and indiscretions, and with his incomparable eloquence, welcomed by +every sect, yet refusing an exclusive allegiance to any, Whitefield +exercised a true apostolate, bearing daily the care of all the churches, +and becoming a messenger of mutual fellowship not only between the ends +of the continent, but between the Christians of two hemispheres. Remote +churches exchanged offices of service. Tennent came from New Jersey to +labor in New England; Dickinson and Burr and Edwards were the gift of +the northern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>colonies to the college at Princeton. The quickened sense +of a common religious life and duty and destiny was no small part of the +preparation for the birth of the future nation.</p> + +<p>Whether for good or for evil, the few years from 1740 to 1750 were +destined to impress upon the American church in its various orders, for +a hundred years to come, the character of <i>Methodism</i>.<a name="FNanchor_176:1_112" id="FNanchor_176:1_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_176:1_112" class="fnanchor">[176:1]</a></p> + +<p>In New England, the idea, into which the first pastors had been trained +by their experience as parish ministers in the English established +church, of the parochial church holding correlative rights and duties +toward the community in all its families, succumbed at last, after a +hundred years of more or less conscious antagonism, to the incompatible +principle, adopted from the Separatists of Plymouth, of the church +formed according to elective affinity by the "social compact" of persons +of the age of discretion who could give account to themselves and to one +another of the conscious act and experience of conversion. This view, +subject to important mitigations or aggravations in actual +administration, held almost unquestioned dominance in the New England +churches until boldly challenged by Horace Bushnell, in his +"epoch-making" volume on "Christian Nurture" (1846), as a departure from +the orthodoxy of the fathers.</p> + +<p>In the Presbyterian Church, revivalism as a principle of church life had +to contend with rules distinctly articulated in its constitutional +documents. So exclusively does the Westminster institute contemplate the +church as an established parish that its "Directory for Worship" +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>contains no provision for so abnormal an incident as the baptism of an +adult, and all baptized children growing up and not being of scandalous +life are to be welcomed to the Lord's Supper. It proves the immense +power of the Awakening, that this rigid and powerful organization, of a +people tenacious of its traditions to the point of obstinacy, should +have swung so completely free at this point, not only of its +long-settled usages, but of the distinct letter of its standards.</p> + +<p>The Episcopal Church of the colonies was almost forced into an attitude +of opposition to the revival. The unspeakable folly of the English +bishops in denouncing and silencing the most effective preachers in the +national church had betrayed Whitefield into his most easily besetting +sin, that of censorious judgment, and his sweeping counter-denunciations +of the Episcopalian clergy in general as unconverted closed to him many +hearts and pulpits that at first had been hospitably open to him. Being +human, they came into open antagonism to him and to the revival. From +the protest against extravagance and disorder, it was a short and +perilously easy step to the rejection of religious fervor and +earnestness. The influence of the mother church of that dreary period +and the influence of the official rings around every royal governor were +all too potent in the same direction. The Propagation Society's +missionaries boasted, with reason, of large accessions of proselytes +alienated from other churches by their distaste for the methods of the +revival. The effect on the Episcopal Church itself was in some respects +unhappy. It "lowered a spiritual temperature already too low,"<a name="FNanchor_177:1_113" id="FNanchor_177:1_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_177:1_113" class="fnanchor">[177:1]</a> +and weakened the moral influence of the church, and the value of its +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>testimony to important principles which there were few besides +efficiently to represent—the duty of the church not to disown or shut +out those of little faith, and the church's duty toward its children. +Never in the history of the church have the Lord's husbandmen shown a +fiercer zeal for rooting up tares, regardless of damage to the wheat, +than was shown by the preachers of the Awakening. Never was there a +wider application of the reproach against those who, instead of +preaching to men that they should be converted and become as little +children, preach to children that they must be converted and become like +grown folks.<a name="FNanchor_178:1_114" id="FNanchor_178:1_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_178:1_114" class="fnanchor">[178:1]</a> The attitude of the Episcopal Church at that period +was not altogether admirable; but it is nothing to its dishonor that it +bore the reproach of being a friend of publicans and sinners, and +offered itself as a <i>refugium peccatorum</i>, thus holding many in some +sort of relation to the kingdom of Christ who would otherwise have +lapsed into sheer infidelity.</p> + +<p>In all this the Episcopal Church was affected by the Awakening only by +way of reaction. But it owes a debt to the direct influence of the +Awakening which it has not always been careful to acknowledge. We have +already seen that the requickening of the asphyxiated church of Virginia +was part of the great revival, and this character remains impressed on +that church to this day. The best of those traits by which the American +Episcopal Church is distinguished from the Church of England, as, for +instance, the greater purity of the ministry and of the membership, are +family traits of the revival churches; the most venerated of its early +bishops, White and Griswold, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>bore the same family likeness; and the +"Evangelical party," for a time so influential in its counsels, was a +tardy and mild afterglow from the setting of the Great Awakening.<a name="FNanchor_179:1_115" id="FNanchor_179:1_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_179:1_115" class="fnanchor">[179:1]</a></p> + +<p>An incident of the revival, failing which it would have lacked an +essential token of the presence of the Spirit of Christ, was the +kindling of zeal for communicating the gospel to the ignorant, the +neglected, and the heathen. Among the first-fruits of Whitefield's +preaching at the South was a practical movement among the planters for +the instruction of their slaves—devotees, most of them, of the most +abject fetich-worship of their native continent. Of the evangelists and +pastors most active in the revival, there were few, either North or +South, whose letters or journals do not report the drawing into the +churches of large numbers of negroes and Indians, whose daily lives +witnessed to the sincerity of their profession of repentance and +Christian faith. The Indian population of the southeastern corner of +Connecticut with such accord received the gospel at the hands of the +evangelists that heathenism seemed extinct among them.<a name="FNanchor_179:2_116" id="FNanchor_179:2_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_179:2_116" class="fnanchor">[179:2]</a></p> + +<p>Among the first trophies of the revival at Norwich was a Mohegan boy +named Samson Occum. Wheelock, pastor at Lebanon, one of the most ardent +of the revival preachers, took him into his family as a student. This +was the beginning of that school for the training of Indian preachers +which, endowed in part with funds gathered by Occum in England, grew at +last into Dartmouth College. The choicest spiritual gifts at the +disposal of the church were freely spent on the missions. Whitefield +visited the school and the field, and sped Kirkland on his way to the +Oneidas. Edwards, leaving Northampton in sorrow of heart, gave <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>his +incomparable powers to the work of the gospel among the Stockbridge +Indians until summoned thence to the presidency of Princeton College. +When Brainerd fainted under his burden, it was William Tennent who went +out into the wilderness to carry on the work of harvest. But the great +gift of the American church to the cause of missions was the gift of +David Brainerd himself. His life was the typical missionary's life—the +scattering of precious seed with tears, the heart-sickness of hope +deferred, at last the rejoicing of the harvest-home. His early death +enrolled him in the canon of the saints of modern Christendom. The story +of his life and death, written by Jonathan Edwards out of that fatherly +love with which he had tended the young man's latest days and hours, may +not have been an unmixed blessing to the church. The long-protracted +introspections, the cherished forebodings and misgivings, as if doubt +was to be cultivated as a Christian virtue, may not have been an +altogether wholesome example for general imitation. But think what the +story of that short life has wrought! To how many hearts it has been an +inspiration to self-sacrifice and devotion to the service of God in the +service of man, we cannot know. Along one line its influence can be +partly traced. The "Life of David Brainerd" made Henry Martyn a +missionary to the heathen. As spiritual father to Henry Martyn, Brainerd +may be reckoned, in no unimportant sense, to be the father of modern +missions to the heathen.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156:1_100" id="Footnote_156:1_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156:1_100"><span class="label">[156:1]</span></a> Of how little relative importance was this charge may +be judged from the fact that a quarter-century later, when the famous +Joseph Bellamy was invited to it from his tiny parish of Bethlem, Conn., +the council called to advise in the case judged that the interests of +Bethlem were too important to be sacrificed to the demands of New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156:2_101" id="Footnote_156:2_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156:2_101"><span class="label">[156:2]</span></a> See the altogether admirable monograph of Professor A. +V. G. Allen on "Jonathan Edwards," p. 23.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159:1_102" id="Footnote_159:1_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159:1_102"><span class="label">[159:1]</span></a> Allen, "Jonathan Edwards," pp. 164-174.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162:1_103" id="Footnote_162:1_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162:1_103"><span class="label">[162:1]</span></a> Joseph Tracy, "The Great Awakening," chap. ii. This +work, of acknowledged value and authority, is on the list of the +Congregational Board of Publication. It is much to be regretted that the +Board does not publish it as well as announce it. A new edition of it, +under the hand of a competent editor, with a good index, would be a +useful service to history.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168:1_104" id="Footnote_168:1_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168:1_104"><span class="label">[168:1]</span></a> The critical historian has the unusual satisfaction, at +this point, of finding a gauge by which to discount the large round +numbers given in Whitefield's journal. He speaks of preaching in the Old +South Church to six thousand persons. The now venerable building had at +that time a seating capacity of about twelve hundred. Making the largest +allowance for standing-room, we may estimate his actual audience at two +thousand. Whitefield was an honest man, but sixty-six per cent. is not +too large a discount to make from his figures; his estimates of +spiritual effect from his labor are liable to a similar deduction.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169:1_105" id="Footnote_169:1_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169:1_105"><span class="label">[169:1]</span></a> Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 51.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169:2_106" id="Footnote_169:2_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169:2_106"><span class="label">[169:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 114-120.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170:1_107" id="Footnote_170:1_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170:1_107"><span class="label">[170:1]</span></a> Letter of September 24, 1743, quoted in McConnell, +"American Episcopal Church," p. 142, note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171:1_108" id="Footnote_171:1_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171:1_108"><span class="label">[171:1]</span></a> Chauncy, "Seasonable Thoughts," pp. 220-223.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172:1_109" id="Footnote_172:1_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172:1_109"><span class="label">[172:1]</span></a> Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 389.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173:1_110" id="Footnote_173:1_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173:1_110"><span class="label">[173:1]</span></a> See the autobiographical narrative in Tracy, p. 377.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173:2_111" id="Footnote_173:2_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173:2_111"><span class="label">[173:2]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176:1_112" id="Footnote_176:1_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176:1_112"><span class="label">[176:1]</span></a> "The Great Awakening ... terminated the Puritan and +inaugurated the Pietist or Methodist age of American church history" +(Thompson, "Presbyterian Churches in the United States," p. 34). It is +not unnecessary to remark that the word "Methodist" is not used in the +narrow sense of "Wesleyan."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177:1_113" id="Footnote_177:1_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177:1_113"><span class="label">[177:1]</span></a> Unpublished lectures of the Rev. W. G. Andrews on "The +Evangelical Revival of 1740 and American Episcopalians." It is much to +be hoped that these valuable studies of the critical period of American +church history may not long remain unpublished.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178:1_114" id="Footnote_178:1_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178:1_114"><span class="label">[178:1]</span></a> This sharp antithesis is quoted at second hand from +Charles Kingsley. The stories of little children frightened into +screaming, and then dragged (at four years of age, says Jonathan +Edwards) through the agitating vicissitudes of a "revival experience," +occupy some of the most pathetic, not to say tragical, pages of the +history of the Awakening.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179:1_115" id="Footnote_179:1_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179:1_115"><span class="label">[179:1]</span></a> McConnell, pp. 144-146; W. G. Andrews, Lecture III.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179:2_116" id="Footnote_179:2_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179:2_116"><span class="label">[179:2]</span></a> Tracy, pp. 187-192.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<h3>CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA—THE GERMAN CHURCHES—THE BEGINNINGS OF THE +METHODIST CHURCH.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The quickening of religious feeling, the deepening of religious +conviction, the clearing and defining of theological opinions, that were +incidental to the Great Awakening, were a preparation for more than +thirty years of intense political and warlike agitation. The churches +suffered from the long distraction of the public mind, and at the end of +it were faint and exhausted. But for the infusion of a "more abundant +life" which they had received, it would seem that they could hardly have +survived the stress of that stormy and revolutionary period.</p> + +<p>The religious life of this period was manifested in part in the growth +of the New England theology. The great leader of this school of +theological inquiry, the elder Edwards, was born at the opening of the +eighteenth century. The oldest and most eminent of his disciples and +successors, Bellamy and Hopkins, were born respectively in 1719 and +1721, and entered into the work of the Awakening in the flush of their +earliest manhood. A long dynasty of acute and strenuous argumentators +has continued, through successive generations to the present day, this +distinctly American school of theological thought. This is not the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>place for tracing the intricate history of their discussions,<a name="FNanchor_182:1_117" id="FNanchor_182:1_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_182:1_117" class="fnanchor">[182:1]</a> +but the story of the Awakening could not be told without some mention of +this its attendant and sequel.</p> + +<p>Not less notable than the new theology of the revival was the new +psalmody. In general it may be said that every flood-tide of spiritual +emotion in the church leaves its high-water mark in the form of "new +songs to the Lord" that remain after the tide of feeling has assuaged. +In this instance the new songs were not produced by the revival, but +only adopted by it. It is not easy for us at this day to conceive the +effect that must have been produced in the Christian communities of +America by the advent of Isaac Watts's marvelous poetic work, "The +Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament." +Important religious results have more than once followed in the church +on the publication of religious poems—notably, in our own century, on +the publication of "The Christian Year." But no other instance of the +kind is comparable with the publication in America of Watts's Psalms. +When we remember how scanty were the resources of religious poetry in +American homes in the early eighteenth century, and especially how rude +and even grotesque the rhymes that served in the various churches as a +vehicle of worship, it seems that the coming of those melodious stanzas, +in which the meaning of one poet is largely interpreted by the +sympathetic insight of another poet, and the fervid devotion of the Old +Testament is informed with the life and transfigured in the language of +the New, must have been like a glow of sunlight breaking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>in upon a gray +and cloudy day. Few pages of biography can be found more vividly +illustrative of the times and the men than the page in which Samuel +Hopkins recites the story of the sufferings of his own somber and +ponderous mind under the rebuke of his college friend David Brainerd. He +walked his solitary room in tears, and (he says) "took up Watts's +version of the Psalms, and opened it at the Fifty-first Psalm, and read +the first, second, and third parts in long meter with strong affections, +and made it all my own language, and thought it was the language of my +heart to God." There was more than the experience of a great and simple +soul, there was the germ of a future system of theology, in the +penitential confession which the young student "made his own language," +and in the exquisite lines which, under the figure of a frightened bird, +became the utterance of his first tremulous and faltering faith:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lord, should thy judgment grow severe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am condemned, but thou art clear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Should sudden vengeance seize my breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must pronounce thee just in death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And if my soul were sent to hell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy righteous law approves it well.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet save a trembling sinner, Lord,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose hope, still hovering round thy word,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would light on some sweet promise there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some sure support against despair.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The introduction of the new psalmody was not accomplished all at once, +nor without a struggle. But we gravely mistake if we look upon the +controversy that resulted in the adoption of Watts's Psalms as a mere +conflict between enlightened good taste and stubborn conservatism. The +action proposed was revolutionary. It involved the surrender of a +long-settled principle of Puritanism. At <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>the present day the objection +to the use of "human composures" in public worship is unintelligible, +except to Scotchmen. In the later Puritan age such use was reckoned an +infringement on the entire and exclusive authority and sufficiency of +the Scriptures, and a constructive violation of the second commandment. +By the adoption of the new psalmody the Puritan and Presbyterian +churches, perhaps not consciously, but none the less actually, yielded +the major premiss of the only argument by which liturgical worship was +condemned on principle. Thereafter the question of the use of liturgical +forms became a mere question of expediency. It is remarkable that the +logical consequences of this important step have been so tardy and +hesitating.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It was not in the common course of church history that the period under +consideration should be a period of vigorous internal activity and +development in the old settled churches of America. The deep, often +excessive, excitements of the Awakening had not only ceased, but had +been succeeded by intense agitations of another sort. Two successive +"French and Indian" wars kept the long frontier, at a time when there +was little besides frontier to the British colonies, in continual peril +of fire and scalping-knife.<a name="FNanchor_184:1_118" id="FNanchor_184:1_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_184:1_118" class="fnanchor">[184:1]</a> The astonishingly sudden and complete +extinction <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>of the French politico-religious empire in Canada and the +West made possible, and at no remote time inevitable, the separation of +the British colonies from the mother country and the contentions and +debates that led into the Revolutionary War began at once.</p> + +<p>Another consequence of the prostrating of the French power in America +has been less noticed by historians, but the course of this narrative +will not be followed far without its becoming manifest as not less +momentous in its bearing on the future history of the church. The +extinction of the French-Catholic power in America made possible the +later plantation and large and free development of the Catholic Church +in the territory of the United States. After that event the Catholic +resident or citizen was no longer subject to the suspicion of being a +sympathizer with a hostile neighboring power, and the Jesuit missionary +was no longer liable to be regarded as a political intriguer and a +conspirator with savage assassins against the lives of innocent settlers +and their families. If there are those who, reading the earlier pages of +this volume, have mourned over the disappointment and annihilation of +two magnificent schemes of Catholic domination on the North American +continent as being among the painful mysteries of divine providence, +they may find compensation for these catastrophes in later advances of +Catholicism, which without these antecedents would seem to have been +hardly possible.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>Although the spiritual development of the awakened American churches, +after the Awakening until the independence of the States was established +and acknowledged, was limited by these great hindrances, this period was +one of momentous influences from abroad upon American Christianity.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The Scotch-Irish immigration kept gathering volume and force. The great +stream of immigrants entering at the port of Philadelphia and flowing +westward and southwestward was joined by a tributary stream entering at +Charleston. Not only the numbers of this people, occupying in force the +hill-country from Pennsylvania to Georgia, but still more its +extraordinary qualities and the discipline of its history, made it a +factor of prime importance in the events of the times just before and +just after the achievement of the national independence. For generations +it had been schooled to the apprehension and acceptance of an +elaborately articulated system of theology and church order as of divine +authority. Its prejudices and animosities were quite as potent as its +principles. Its fixed hereditary aversion to the English government and +the English church was the natural fruit of long memories and traditions +of outrages inflicted by both these; its influence was now about to be +powerfully manifested in the overthrow of the English power and its +feeble church establishments in the colonies. At the opening of the War +of Independence the Presbyterian Church, reunited since the schism of +1741, numbered one hundred and seventy ministers in seventeen +presbyteries; but its weight of influence was out of all proportion to +its numbers, and this entire force, not altogether at unity with itself +on ecclesiastical questions, was united as one man in the maintenance of +American rights.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p><p>The great German immigration begins to flow in earnest in this period. +Three successive tides of migration have set from Germany to America. +The first was the movement of the petty sects under the invitation and +patronage of William Penn, quartering themselves in the eastern parts of +Pennsylvania. The second was the transportation of "the Palatines," +expatriated by stress of persecution and war, not from the Rhenish +Palatinate only, but from the archduchy of Salzburg and from other parts +of Germany and Switzerland, gathered up and removed to America, some of +them directly, some by way of England, as an act of political charity by +Queen Anne's government, with the idea of strengthening the colonies by +planting Protestant settlers for a safeguard against Spanish or French +aggressions. The third tide continues flowing, with variable volume, to +this day. It is the voluntary flow of companies of individual emigrants +seeking to better the fortunes of themselves or their families. But this +voluntary migration has been unhealthily and sometimes dishonestly +stimulated, from the beginning of it, by the selfish interests of those +concerned in the business of transportation or in the sale of land. It +seems to have been mainly the greed of shipping merchants, at first, +that spread abroad in the German states florid announcements of the +charms and riches of America, decoying multitudes of ignorant persons to +risk everything on these representations, and to mortgage themselves +into a term of slavery until they should have paid the cost of their +passage by their labor. This class of bondmen, called "redemptioners," +made no inconsiderable part of the population of the middle colonies; +and it seems to have been a worthy part. The trade of "trepanning" the +unfortunates and transporting them and selling their term of service was +not by several degrees as bad as the African slave-trade; but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>it was of +the same sort, and the deadly horrors of its "middle passage" were +hardly less.</p> + +<p>In one way and another the German immigration had grown by the middle of +the eighteenth century to great dimensions. In the year 1749 twelve +thousand Germans landed at the port of Philadelphia. In general they +were as sheep having no shepherd. Their deplorable religious condition +was owing less to poverty than to diversity of sects.<a name="FNanchor_188:1_119" id="FNanchor_188:1_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_188:1_119" class="fnanchor">[188:1]</a> In many +places the number of sects rendered concerted action impossible, and the +people remained destitute of religious instruction.</p> + +<p>The famine of the word was sorely felt. In 1733 three great Lutheran +congregations in Pennsylvania, numbering five hundred families each, +sent messengers with an imploring petition to their <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has correligionists">coreligionists</ins> at +London and Halle, representing their "state of the greatest +destitution." "Our own means" (they say) "are utterly insufficient to +effect the necessary relief, unless God in his mercy may send us help +from abroad. It is truly lamentable to think of the large numbers of the +rising generation who know not their right hand from their left; and, +unless help be promptly afforded, the danger is great that, in +consequence of the great lack of churches and schools, the most of them +will be led into the ways of destructive error."</p> + +<p>This urgent appeal bore fruit like the apples of Sodom. It resulted in a +painful and pitiable correspondence with the chiefs of the mother +church, these haggling for months and years over stipulations of salary, +and refusing to send a minister until the salary should be pledged in +cash; and their correspondents pleading their poverty and need.<a name="FNanchor_188:2_120" id="FNanchor_188:2_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_188:2_120" class="fnanchor">[188:2]</a> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>The few and feeble churches of the Reformed confession were equally +needy and ill befriended.</p> + +<p>It seems to us, as we read the story after the lapse of a hundred and +fifty years, as if the man expressly designed and equipped by the +providence of God for this exigency in the progress of his kingdom had +arrived when Zinzendorf, the Moravian, made his appearance at +Philadelphia, December 10, 1741. The American church, in all its +history, can point to no fairer representative of the charity that +"seeketh not her own" than this Saxon nobleman, who, for the true love +that he bore to Christ and all Christ's brethren, was willing to give up +his home, his ancestral estates, his fortune, his title of nobility, his +patrician family name, his office of bishop in the ancient Moravian +church, and even (last infirmity of zealous spirits) his interest in +promoting specially that order of consecrated men and women in the +church catholic which he had done and sacrificed so much to save from +extinction, and to which his "cares and toils were given." He hastened +first up the Lehigh Valley to spend Christmas at Bethlehem, where the +foundations had already been laid on which have been built up the +half-monastic institutions of charity and education and missions which +have done and are still doing so much to bless the world in both its +hemispheres. It was in commemoration of this Christmas visit of Bishop +Zinzendorf that the mother house of the Moravian communities in America +received its name of Bethlehem. Returning to Philadelphia, he took this +city as the base of his unselfish and unpartisan labors in behalf of the +great and multiplying population from his fatherland, which through its +sectarian divisions had become so helpless and spiritually needy. +Already for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>twenty years there had been a few scattering churches of +the Reformed confession, and for half that time a few Lutheran +congregations had been gathered or had gathered themselves. But both the +sects had been overcome by the paralysis resulting from habitual +dependence on paternal governments, and the two were borne asunder, +while every right motive was urging to coöperation and fellowship, by +the almost spent momentum of old controversies. In Philadelphia two +starveling congregations representing the two competing sects occupied +the same rude meeting-place each by itself on alternate Sundays. The +Lutherans made shift without a pastor, for the only Lutheran minister in +Pennsylvania lived at Lancaster, sixty miles away.</p> + +<p>To the scattered, distracted, and demoralized flocks of his German +fellow-Christians in the middle colonies came Zinzendorf, knowing Jesus +Christ crucified, knowing no man according to the flesh; and at once +"the neglected congregations were made to feel the thrill of a strong +religious life." "Aglow with zeal for Christ, throwing all emphasis in +his teaching upon the one doctrine of redemption through the blood shed +on Calvary, all the social advantages and influence and wealth which his +position gave him were made subservient to the work of preaching Christ, +and him crucified, to the rich and the poor, the learned and the +ignorant."<a name="FNanchor_190:1_121" id="FNanchor_190:1_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_190:1_121" class="fnanchor">[190:1]</a> The Lutherans of Philadelphia heard him gladly and +entreated him to preach to them regularly; to which he consented, but +not until he had assured himself that this would be acceptable to the +pastor of the Reformed congregation. But his mission was to the sheep +scattered abroad, of whom he reckoned (an extravagant overestimate) not +less than one hundred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>thousand of the Lutheran party in Pennsylvania +alone. Others, as he soon found, had been feeling, like himself, the +hurt of the daughter of Zion. A series of conferences was held from +month to month, in which men of the various German sects took counsel +together over the dissensions of their people, and over the question how +the ruinous effects of these dissensions could be avoided. The plan was, +not to attempt a merger of the sects, nor to alienate men from their +habitual affiliations, but to draw together in coöperation and common +worship the German Christians, of whatever sect, in a fellowship to be +called, in imitation of a Pauline phrase (Eph. ii. 22), "the +Congregation of God in the Spirit." The plan seemed so right and +reasonable and promising of beneficent results as to win general +approval. It was in a fair way to draw together the whole miserably +divided German population.<a name="FNanchor_191:1_122" id="FNanchor_191:1_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_191:1_122" class="fnanchor">[191:1]</a></p> + +<p>At once the "drum ecclesiastic" beat to arms. In view of the impending +danger that their scattered fellow-countrymen might come into mutual +fellowship on the basis of their common faith in Christ, the Lutheran +leaders at Halle, who for years had been dawdling and haggling over the +imploring entreaties of the shepherdless Lutheran populations in +America, promptly reconsidered their <i>non possumus</i>, and found and sent +a man admirably qualified for the desired work, Henry Melchior +Mühlenberg, a man of eminent ability and judgment, of faith, devotion, +and untiring diligence, not illiberal, but a conscientious sectarian. An +earnest preacher of the gospel, he was also earnest that the gospel +should be preached according to the Lutheran formularies, to +congregations organized according to the Lutheran discipline. The easier +and less worthy part of the appointed task was soon achieved. The danger +that the religious factions that had divided <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>Germany might be laid +aside in the New World was effectually dispelled. Six years later the +governor of Pennsylvania was still able to write, "The Germans imported +with them all the religious whimsies of their country, and, I believe, +have subdivided since their arrival here;" and he estimates their number +at three fifths of the population of the province. The more arduous and +noble work of organizing and compacting the Lutherans into their +separate congregations, and combining these by synodical assemblies, was +prosecuted with wisdom and energy, and at last, in spite of hindrances +and discouragements, with beneficent success. The American Lutheran +Church of to-day is the monument of the labors of Mühlenberg.</p> + +<p>The brief remainder of Zinzendorf's work in America may be briefly told. +There is no doubt that, like many another eager and hopeful reformer, he +overestimated the strength and solidity of the support that was given to +his generous and beneficent plans. At the time of Mühlenberg's arrival +Zinzendorf was the elected and installed pastor of the Lutheran +congregation in Philadelphia. The conflict could not be a long one +between the man who claimed everything for his commission and his sect +and the man who was resolved to insist on nothing for himself. +Notwithstanding the strong love for him among the people, Zinzendorf was +easily displaced from his official station. When dispute arose about the +use of the empty carpenter's shop that stood them instead of a church, +he waived his own claims and at his own cost built a new house of +worship. But it was no part of his work to stay and persist in +maintaining a division. He retired from the field, leaving it in charge +of Mühlenberg, "being satisfied if only Christ were preached," and +returned to Europe, having achieved a truly honorable and most Christian +failure, more to be esteemed in the sight of God than many a splendid +success.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p><p>But his brief sojourn in America was not without visible fruit. He left +behind him the Moravian church fully organized under the episcopate of +Bishop David Nitschmann, with communities or congregations begun at nine +different centers, and schools established in four places. An extensive +itinerancy had been set in operation under careful supervision, and, +most characteristic of all, a great beginning had been made of those +missions to the heathen Indians, in which the devoted and successful +labors of this little society of Christians have put to shame the whole +American church besides. Not all of this is to be ascribed to the +activity of Zinzendorf; but in all of it he was a sharer, and his share +was a heroic one. The two years' visit of Count Zinzendorf to America +forms a beautiful and quite singular episode in our church history. +Returning to his ancestral estates splendidly impoverished by his +free-handed beneficence, he passed many of the later years of his life +at Herrnhut, that radiating center from which the light of the gospel +was borne by the multitude of humble missionaries to every continent +under the whole heaven. The news that came to him from the "economies" +that he had planted in the forests of Pennsylvania was such as to fill +his generous soul with joy. In the communities of Nazareth and Bethlehem +was renewed the pentecostal consecration when no man called anything his +own. The prosperous farms and varied industries, in which no towns in +Pennsylvania could equal them, were carried on, not for private +interest, but for the church. After three years the community work was +not only self-supporting, but sustained about fifty missionaries in the +field, and was preparing to send aid to the missions of the mother +church in Germany. The Moravian settlements multiplied at distant +points, north and south. The educational establishments grew strong and +famous. But especially the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>Indian missions spread far and wide. The +story of these missions is one of the fairest and most radiant pages in +the history of the American church, and one of the bloodiest. +Zinzendorf, dying at London in May, 1756, was spared, we may hope, the +heartbreaking news of the massacre at Gnadenhütten the year before. But +from that time on, through the French wars, the Revolutionary War, the +War of 1812, and down to the infamy of Georgia and the United States in +1837, the innocent and Christlike Moravian missions have been exposed +from every side to the malignity of savage men both white and red. No +order of missionaries or missionary converts can show a nobler roll of +martyrs than the Moravians.<a name="FNanchor_194:1_123" id="FNanchor_194:1_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_194:1_123" class="fnanchor">[194:1]</a></p> + +<p>The work of Mühlenberg for the Lutherans stimulated the Reformed +churches in Europe to a like work for their own scattered and pastorless +sheep. In both cases the fear that the work of the gospel might not be +done seemed a less effective incitement to activity than the fear that +it might be done by others. It was the Reformed Church of Holland, +rather than those of Germany, miserably broken down and discouraged by +ravaging wars, that assumed the main responsibility for this task. As +early as 1728 the Dutch synods had earnestly responded to the appeal of +their impoverished brethren on the Rhine in behalf of the sheep +scattered abroad. And in 1743, acting through the classis of Amsterdam, +they had made such progress toward beginning the preliminary +arrangements of the work as to send to the Presbyterian synod of +Philadelphia a proposal to combine into one the Presbyterian, or Scotch +Reformed, the Dutch Reformed, and the German Reformed churches in +America. It had already been proved impossible to draw together in +common activity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>and worship the different sects of the same German race +and language; the effort to unite in one organization peoples of +different language, but of substantially the same doctrine and polity, +was equally futile. It seemed as if minute sectarian division and +subdivision was to be forced upon American Christianity as a law of its +church life.</p> + +<p>Diplomacies ended, the synods of Holland took up their work with real +munificence. Large funds were raised, sufficient to make every German +Reformed missionary in America a stipendiary of the classis of +Amsterdam; and if these subsidies were encumbered with severe conditions +of subordination to a foreign directory, and if they begot an enfeebling +sense of dependence, these were necessary incidents of the difficult +situation—<i>res dura et novitas regni</i>. The most important service which +the synods of Holland rendered to their American beneficiaries was to +find a man who should do for them just the work which Mühlenberg was +already doing with great energy for the Lutherans. The man was Michael +Schlatter. If in any respect he was inferior to Mühlenberg, it was not +in respect to diligent devotion to the business on which he had been +sent. It is much to the credit of both of them that, in organizing and +promoting their two sharply competing sects, they never failed of +fraternal personal relations. They worked together with one heart to +keep their people apart from each other. The Christian instinct, in a +community of German Christians, to gather in one congregation for common +worship was solemnly discouraged by the two apostles and the synods +which they organized. How could the two parties walk together when one +prayed <i>Vater unser</i>, and the other <i>unser Vater</i>? But the beauty of +Christian unity was illustrated in such incidents as this: Mr. Schlatter +and some of the Reformed Christians, being present at a Lutheran church +on a communion Sunday, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>listened to the preaching of the Lutheran +pastor, after which the Reformed minister made a communion address, and +then the congregation was dismissed, and the Reformed went off to a +school-house to receive the Lord's Supper.<a name="FNanchor_196:1_124" id="FNanchor_196:1_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_196:1_124" class="fnanchor">[196:1]</a> Truly it was fragrant +like the ointment on the beard of Aaron!</p> + +<p>Such was the diligence of Schlatter that the synod or cœtus of the +Reformed Church was instituted in 1747, a year from his arrival. The +Lutheran synod dates from 1748, although Mühlenberg was on the ground +four years earlier than Schlatter. Thus the great work of dividing the +German population of America into two major sects was conscientiously +and effectually performed. Seventy years later, with large expenditure +of persuasion, authority, and money, it was found possible to heal in +some measure in the old country the very schism which good men had been +at such pains to perpetuate in the new.</p> + +<p>High honor is due to the prophetic wisdom of these two leaders of +German-American Christianity, in that they clearly recognized in advance +that the English was destined to be the dominant language of North +America. Their strenuous though unsuccessful effort to promote a system +of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill +judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon +by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude. +It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may +have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their +fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The +combination of the mass of the German population in one solid church +organization would have been a formidable support to such aspirations. +The splitting of this mass in half, necessitating petty local <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>schisms +with all their debilitating and demoralizing consequences, may have +helped secure the country from a serious political and social danger.</p> + +<p>So, then, the German church in America at the close of the colonial era +exists, outside of the petty primeval sects, in three main divisions: +the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Moravian. There is free opportunity +for Christians of this language to sort themselves according to their +elective affinities. That American ideal of edifying harmony is well +attained, according to which men of partial or one-sided views of truth +shall be associated exclusively in church relations with others of like +precious defects. Mühlenberg seems to have been sensible of the nature +of the division he was making in the body of Christ, when, after +severing successfully between the strict Lutherans in a certain +congregation and those of Moravian sympathies, he finds it "hard to +decide on which side of the controversy the greater justice lay. The +greater part of those on the Lutheran side, he feared, was composed of +unconverted men," while the Moravian party seemed open to the reproach +of enthusiasm. So he concluded that each sort of Christians would be +better off without the other. Time proved his diagnosis to be better +than his treatment. In the course of a generation the Lutheran body, +carefully weeded of pietistic admixtures, sank perilously deep in cold +rationalism, and the Moravian church was quite carried away for a time +on a flood of sentimentalism. What might have been the course of this +part of church history if Mühlenberg and Schlatter had shared more +deeply with Zinzendorf in the spirit of apostolic and catholic +Christianity, and if all three had conspired to draw together into one +the various temperaments and tendencies of the German Americans in the +unity of the Spirit with the bond of peace, may seem like an idle +historical conjecture, but the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>question is not without practical +interest to-day. Perhaps the Moravians would have been the better for +being ballasted with the weighty theologies and the conservative temper +of the state churches; it is very certain that these would have gained +by the infusion of something of that warmth of Christian love and zeal +that pervaded to a wonderful degree the whole Moravian fellowship. But +the hand and the foot were quite agreed that they had no need of each +other or of the heart.<a name="FNanchor_198:1_125" id="FNanchor_198:1_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_198:1_125" class="fnanchor">[198:1]</a></p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>By far the most momentous event of American church history in the +closing period of the colonial era was the planting of the Methodist +Episcopal Church. The Wesleyan revival was strangely tardy in reaching +this country, with which it had so many points of connection. It was in +America, in 1737, that John Wesley passed through the discipline of a +humiliating experience, by which his mind had been opened, and that he +had been brought into acquaintance with the Moravians, by whom he was to +be taught the way of the Lord more perfectly. It was John Wesley who +sent Whitefield to America, from whom, on his first return to England, +in 1738, he learned the practice of field-preaching. It was from America +that Edwards's "Narrative of Surprising Conversions" had come to Wesley, +which, being read by him on the walk from London to Oxford, opened to +his mind unknown possibilities of the swift advancement of the kingdom +of God. The beginning of the Wesleyan societies in England followed in +close connection upon the first Awakening in America. It went on with +growing momentum in England and Ireland for quarter of a century, until, +in 1765, it numbered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>thirty-nine circuits served by ninety-two +itinerant preachers; and its work was mainly among the classes from +which the emigration to the colonies was drawn. It is not easy to +explain how it came to pass that through all these twenty-five years +Wesleyan Methodism gave no sound or sign of life on that continent on +which it was destined (if one may speak of predestination in this +connection) to grow to its most magnificent proportions.</p> + +<p>At last, in 1766, in a little group of Methodist families that had found +one another out among the recent comers in New York, Philip Embury, who +in his native Ireland long before had been a recognized local preacher, +was induced by the persuasions and reproaches of a pious woman to take +his not inconsiderable talent from the napkin in which he had kept it +hidden for six years, and preach in his own house to as many as could be +brought in to listen to him. The few that were there formed themselves +into a "class" and promised to attend at future meetings.</p> + +<p>A more untoward time for the setting on foot of a religious enterprise +could hardly have been chosen. It was a time of prevailing languor in +the churches, in the reaction from the Great Awakening; it was also a +time of intense political agitation. The year before the Stamp Act had +been passed, and the whole chain of colonies, from New Hampshire to +Georgia, had been stirred up to resist the execution of it. This year +the Stamp Act had been repealed, but in such terms as to imply a new +menace and redouble the agitation. From this time forward to the +outbreak of war in 1775, and from that year on till the conclusion of +peace in 1783, the land was never at rest from turmoil. Through it all +the Methodist societies grew and multiplied. In 1767 Embury's house had +overflowed, and a sail-loft was hired for the growing congregation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>In +1768 a lot on John Street was secured and a meeting-house was built. The +work had spread to Philadelphia, and, self-planted in Maryland under the +preaching of Robert Strawbridge, was propagating itself rapidly in that +peculiarly congenial soil. In 1769, in response to earnest entreaties +from America, two of Wesley's itinerant preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor, +arrived with his commission to organize an American itinerancy; and two +years later, in 1771, arrived Francis Asbury, who, by virtue of his +preëminent qualifications for organization, administration, and command, +soon became practically the director of the American work, a function to +which, in 1772, he was officially appointed by commission from Wesley.</p> + +<p>Very great is the debt that American Christianity owes to Francis +Asbury. It may reasonably be doubted whether any one man, from the +founding of the church in America until now, has achieved so much in the +visible and traceable results of his work. It is very certain that +Wesley himself, with his despotic temper and his High-church and Tory +principles, could not have carried the Methodist movement in the New +World onward through the perils of its infancy on the way to so eminent +a success as that which was prepared by his vicegerent. Fully possessed +of the principles of that autocratic discipline ordained by Wesley, he +knew how to use it as not abusing it, being aware that such a discipline +can continue to subsist, in the long run, only by studying the temper of +the subjects of it, and making sure of obedience to orders by making +sure that the orders are agreeable, on the whole, to the subjects. More +than one polity theoretically aristocratic or monarchic in the +atmosphere of our republic has grown into a practically popular +government, simply through tact and good judgment in the administration +of it, without changing a syllable of its constitution. Very early in +the history of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>the Methodist Church it is easy to recognize the +aptitude with which Asbury naturalizes himself in the new climate. +Nominally he holds an absolute autocracy over the young organization. +Whatever the subject at issue, "on hearing every preacher for and +against, the right of determination was to rest with him."<a name="FNanchor_201:1_126" id="FNanchor_201:1_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_201:1_126" class="fnanchor">[201:1]</a> +Questions of the utmost difficulty and of vital importance arose in the +first years of the American itinerancy. They could not have been decided +so wisely for the country and the universal church if Asbury, seeming to +govern the ministry and membership of the Society, had not studied to be +governed by them. In spite of the sturdy dictum of Wesley, "We are not +republicans, and do not intend to be," the salutary and necessary change +had already begun which was to accommodate his institutes in practice, +and eventually in form, to the habits and requirements of a free people.</p> + +<p>The center of gravity of the Methodist Society, beginning at New York, +moved rapidly southward. Boston had been the metropolis of the +Congregationalist churches; New York, of the Episcopalians; +Philadelphia, of the Quakers and the Presbyterians; and Baltimore, +latest and southernmost of the large colonial cities, became, for a +time, the headquarters of Methodism. Accessions to the Society in that +region were more in number and stronger in wealth and social influence +than in more northern communities. It was at Baltimore that Asbury fixed +his residence—so far as a Methodist bishop, ranging the country with +incessant and untiring diligence, could be said to have a fixed +residence.</p> + +<p>The record of the successive annual conferences of the Methodists gives +a gauge of their increase. At the first, in 1773, at Philadelphia, there +were reported 1160 members and 10 preachers, not one of these a native +of America.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p><p>At the second annual conference, in Philadelphia, there were reported +2073 members and 17 preachers.</p> + +<p>The third annual conference sat at Philadelphia in 1775, simultaneously +with the Continental Congress. It was the beginning of the war. There +were reported 3148 members. Some of the foremost preachers had gone back +to England, unable to carry on their work without being compelled to +compromise their royalist principles. The preachers reporting were 19. +Of the membership nearly 2500 were south of Philadelphia—about eighty +per cent.</p> + +<p>At the fourth annual conference, at Baltimore, in 1776, were reported +4921 members and 24 preachers.</p> + +<p>At the fifth annual conference, in Harford County, Maryland, were +reported 6968 members and 36 preachers. This was in the thick of the +war. More of the leading preachers, sympathizing with the royal cause, +were going home to England. The Methodists as a body were subject to not +unreasonable suspicion of being disaffected to the cause of +independence. Their preachers were principally Englishmen with British +sympathies. The whole order was dominated and its property controlled by +an offensively outspoken Tory of the Dr. Johnson type.<a name="FNanchor_202:1_127" id="FNanchor_202:1_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_202:1_127" class="fnanchor">[202:1]</a> It was +natural enough that in their public work they should be liable to +annoyance, mob violence, and military arrest. Even Asbury, a man of +proved American sympathies, found it necessary to retire for a time from +public activity.</p> + +<p>In these circumstances, it is no wonder that at the conference of 1778, +at Leesburg, Va., at which five circuits in the most disturbed regions +were unrepresented, there was a decline in numbers. The members were +fewer by 873; the preachers fewer by 7.</p> + +<p>But it is really wonderful that the next year (1779) <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>were reported +extensive revivals in all parts not directly affected by the war, and an +increase of 2482 members and 49 preachers. The distribution of the +membership was very remarkable. At this time, and for many years after, +there was no organized Methodism in New England. New York, being +occupied by the invading army, sent no report. Of the total reported +membership of 8577, 140 are credited to New Jersey, 179 to Pennsylvania, +795 to Delaware, and 900 to Maryland. Nearly all the remainder, about +eighty per cent. of the whole, was included in Virginia and North +Carolina. With the exception of 319 persons, the entire reported +membership of the Methodist societies lived south of Mason and Dixon's +line. The fact throws an honorable light on some incidents of the early +history of this great order of preachers.</p> + +<p>In the sixteen years from the meeting in Philip Embury's house to the +end of the War of Independence the membership of the Methodist societies +grew to about 12,000, served by about 70 itinerant preachers. It was a +very vital and active membership, including a large number of "local +preachers" and exhorters. The societies and classes were effectively +organized and officered for aggressive work; and they were planted, for +the most part, in the regions most destitute of Christian institutions.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Parallel with the course of the gospel, we trace in every period the +course of those antichristian influences with which the gospel is in +conflict. The system of slavery must continue, through many sorrowful +years, to be in view from the line of our studies. We shall know it by +the unceasing protest made against it in the name of the Lord. The +arguments of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were sustained by the +yearly meetings of the Friends. At Newport, the chief center of the +African slave-trade, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>two Congregational pastors, Samuel Hopkins, +the theologian, and the erudite Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale +College, mutually opposed in theology and contrasted at every point of +natural character, were at one in boldly opposing the business by which +their parishioners had been enriched.<a name="FNanchor_204:1_128" id="FNanchor_204:1_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_204:1_128" class="fnanchor">[204:1]</a> The deepening of the +conflict for political liberty pointed the application of the golden +rule in the case of the slaves. The antislavery literature of the period +includes a printed sermon that had been preached by the distinguished +Dr. Levi Hart "to the corporation of freemen" of his native town of +Farmington, Conn., at their autumnal town-meeting in 1774; and the poem +on "Slavery," published in 1775 by that fine character, Aaron +Cleveland,<a name="FNanchor_204:2_129" id="FNanchor_204:2_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_204:2_129" class="fnanchor">[204:2]</a> of Norwich, hatter, poet, legislator, and minister of +the gospel. Among the Presbyterians of New Jersey, the father of Dr. +Ashbel Green took the extreme ground which was taken by Dr. Hopkins's +church in 1784, that no person holding a slave should be permitted to +remain in the communion of the church.<a name="FNanchor_204:3_130" id="FNanchor_204:3_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_204:3_130" class="fnanchor">[204:3]</a> In 1774 the first society +in the world for the abolition of slavery was organized among the +Friends in Pennsylvania, to be followed by others, making a continuous +series of abolition societies from New England to Maryland and Virginia. +But the great antislavery society of the period in question was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>the +Methodist Society. Laboring through the War of Independence mainly in +the Southern States, it publicly declared, in the conference of 1780, +"that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and +hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure +religion, and doing that which we would not that others should do to us +and ours." The discipline of the body of itinerants was conducted +rigorously in accordance with this declaration.</p> + +<p>It must not be supposed that the instances here cited represent +exceptions to the general course of opinion in the church of those +times. They are simply expressions of the universal judgment of those +whose attention had been seriously fixed upon the subject. There appears +no evidence of the existence of a contrary sentiment. The first +beginnings of a party in the church in opposition to the common judgment +of the Christian conscience on the subject of slavery are to be referred +to a comparatively very recent date.</p> + +<p>Another of the great conflicts of the modern church was impending. But +it was only to prophetic minds in the middle of the eighteenth century +that it was visible in the greatness of its proportions. The vice of +drunkenness, which Isaiah had denounced in Samaria and Paul had +denounced at Ephesus, was growing insensibly, since the introduction of +distilled liquors as a common beverage, to a fatal prevalence. The +trustees of the charitable colony of Georgia, consciously laying the +foundations of many generations, endeavored to provide for the welfare +of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro +slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon +nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the +Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of +entire abstinence from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>intoxicating liquids as a beverage."<a name="FNanchor_206:1_131" id="FNanchor_206:1_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_206:1_131" class="fnanchor">[206:1]</a> But, +as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of +leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference +of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous +liquors, sell and drink them in drams," as "wrong in its nature and +consequences." To this course they were committed long in advance by the +"General Rules" set forth by the two Wesleys in May, 1743, for the +guidance of the "United Societies."<a name="FNanchor_206:2_132" id="FNanchor_206:2_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_206:2_132" class="fnanchor">[206:2]</a></p> + +<p>An incident of the times immediately preceding the War of Independence +requires to be noted in this place, not as being of great importance in +itself, but as characteristic of the condition of the country and +prophetic of changes that were about to take place. During the decade +from 1760 to 1775 the national body of the Presbyterians—the now +reunited synod of New York and Philadelphia—and the General Association +of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut met together by their +representatives in annual convention to take counsel over a grave peril +that seemed to be impending. A petition had been urgently pressed, in +behalf of the American Episcopalians, for the establishment of bishops +in the colonies under the authority of the Church of England. The +reasons for this measure were obvious and weighty; and the protestations +of those who promoted it, that they sought no advantage before the law +over their fellow-Christians, were doubtless sincere. Nevertheless, the +fear that the bringing in of Church of England bishops would involve the +bringing in of many of those mischiefs of the English church +establishment which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear +was a perfectly reasonable fear both to the Puritans of New England and +to the Presbyterians from Ireland. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>was difficult for these, and it +would have been even more difficult for the new dignitaries, in colonial +days, to understand how bishops could be anything but lord bishops. The +fear of such results was not confined to ecclesiastics. The movement was +felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British +encroachments on colonial rights. The Massachusetts Assembly instructed +its agent in London strenuously to oppose it. In Virginia, the +Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the +petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was +in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they +received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.<a name="FNanchor_207:1_133" id="FNanchor_207:1_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_207:1_133" class="fnanchor">[207:1]</a></p> + +<p>The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the +Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little +colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one. And so it was +indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger +and stronger body of the two. By and by the disproportion was inverted, +and the alliance continued, with notable results.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182:1_117" id="Footnote_182:1_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182:1_117"><span class="label">[182:1]</span></a> See G. P. Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp. +394-418; also E. A. Park in the "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. iii., +pp. 1634-38. The New England theology is not so called as being confined +to New England. Its leading "improvements on Calvinism" were accepted by +Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall among the English Baptists, and by +Chalmers of the Presbyterians of Scotland.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184:1_118" id="Footnote_184:1_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184:1_118"><span class="label">[184:1]</span></a> Of what sort was the life of a church and its pastor in +those days is illustrated in extracts from the journal of Samuel +Hopkins, the theologian, pastor at Great Barrington, given in the Memoir +by Professor Park, pp. 40-43. The Sabbath worship was disturbed by the +arrival of warlike news. The pastor and the families of his flock were +driven from their homes to take refuge in blockhouses crowded with +fugitives. He was gone nearly three months of fall and winter with a +scouting party of a hundred whites and nineteen Indians in the woods. He +sent off the fighting men of his town with sermon and benediction on an +expedition to Canada. During the second war he writes to his friend +Bellamy (1754) of a dreadful rumor that "good Mr. Edwards" had perished +in a massacre at Stockbridge. This rumor was false, but he adds: "On the +Lord's day <span class="smcap">P.M.</span>, as I was reading the psalm, news came that Stockbridge +was beset by an army of Indians, and on fire, which broke up the +assembly in an instant. All were put into the utmost consternation—men, +women, and children crying, 'What shall we do?' Not a gun to defend us, +not a fort to flee to, and few guns and little ammunition in the place. +Some ran one way and some another; but the general course was to the +southward, especially for women and children. Women, children, and +squaws presently flocked in upon us from Stockbridge, half naked and +frighted almost to death; and fresh news came that the enemy were on the +plains this side Stockbridge, shooting and killing and scalping people +as they fled. Some presently came along bloody, with news that they saw +persons killed and scalped, which raised a consternation, tumult, and +distress inexpressible."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188:1_119" id="Footnote_188:1_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188:1_119"><span class="label">[188:1]</span></a> Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 191, 234; Dubbs, "German +Reformed Church," p. 271.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188:2_120" id="Footnote_188:2_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188:2_120"><span class="label">[188:2]</span></a> See extracts from the correspondence given by Dr. +Jacobs, pp. 193-195. Dr. Jacobs's suggestion that three congregations of +five hundred families each might among them have raised the few hundreds +a year required seems reasonable, unless a large number of these were +families of redemptioners, that is, for the time, slaves.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190:1_121" id="Footnote_190:1_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190:1_121"><span class="label">[190:1]</span></a> Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 196. The story of +Zinzendorf, as seen from different points of view, may be studied in the +volumes of Drs. Jacobs, Dubbs, and Hamilton (American Church History +Series).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191:1_122" id="Footnote_191:1_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191:1_122"><span class="label">[191:1]</span></a> Acrelius, quoted by Jacobs, p. 218, note.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194:1_123" id="Footnote_194:1_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194:1_123"><span class="label">[194:1]</span></a> Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 215-218; Hamilton, "The +Moravians," chaps, iii.-viii., xi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196:1_124" id="Footnote_196:1_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196:1_124"><span class="label">[196:1]</span></a> Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 289.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198:1_125" id="Footnote_198:1_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198:1_125"><span class="label">[198:1]</span></a> Jacobs, pp. 227, 309, sqq.; Hamilton, p. 457. No +account of the German-American churches is adequate which does not go +back to the work of Spener, the influence of which was felt through them +all. The author is compelled to content himself with inadequate work on +many topics.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201:1_126" id="Footnote_201:1_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201:1_126"><span class="label">[201:1]</span></a> Dr. J. M. Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 181.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202:1_127" id="Footnote_202:1_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202:1_127"><span class="label">[202:1]</span></a> The attitude of Wesley toward the American cause is set +forth with judicial fairness by Dr. Buckley, pp. 158-168.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204:1_128" id="Footnote_204:1_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204:1_128"><span class="label">[204:1]</span></a> A full account of Hopkins's long-sustained activity +against both slavery and the slave-trade is given in Park's "Memoir of +Hopkins," pp. 114-157. His sermons on the subject began in 1770. His +monumental "Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, with an +Address to Slave-holders," was published in 1776. For additional +information as to the antislavery attitude of the church at this period, +and especially that of Stiles, see review of "The Minister's Wooing," by +L. Bacon ("New Englander," vol. xviii., p. 145).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204:2_129" id="Footnote_204:2_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204:2_129"><span class="label">[204:2]</span></a> I have not been able to find a copy of this poem, the +character of which, however, is well known. The son of Aaron Cleveland, +William, was a silversmith at Norwich, among whose grandsons may be +named President Grover Cleveland, and Aaron Cleveland Cox, later known +as Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204:3_130" id="Footnote_204:3_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204:3_130"><span class="label">[204:3]</span></a> Dr. A. Green's Life of his father, in "Monthly +Christian Advocate."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206:1_131" id="Footnote_206:1_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206:1_131"><span class="label">[206:1]</span></a> Park, "Memoir of Hopkins," p. 112.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206:2_132" id="Footnote_206:2_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206:2_132"><span class="label">[206:2]</span></a> Buckley, "The Methodists," Appendix, pp. 688, 689.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207:1_133" id="Footnote_207:1_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207:1_133"><span class="label">[207:1]</span></a> See Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. +267-278, where the subject is treated fully and with characteristic +fairness.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<h3>RECONSTRUCTION.</h3> + + +<p class="section">Seven years of war left the American people exhausted, impoverished, +disorganized, conscious of having come into possession of a national +existence, and stirred with anxious searchings of heart over the +question what new institutions should succeed to those overthrown in the +struggle for independence.</p> + +<p>Like questions pervaded the commonwealth of American Christians through +all its divisions. The interconfessional divisions of the body +ecclesiastic were about to prove themselves a more effectual bar to +union than the political and territorial divisions of the body politic. +The religious divisions were nearly equal in number to the political. +Naming them in the order in which they had settled themselves on the +soil of the new nation, they were as follows: 1. The Protestant +Episcopalians; 2. The Reformed Dutch; 3. The Congregationalists; 4. The +Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians; +8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this +time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the +German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The +Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists +and the Baptists, were of so simple and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>elastic a polity, so +self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to +adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the Presbyterians, had +already organized themselves as independent of foreign spiritual +jurisdiction. Others still, as the German Reformed, the Moravians, and +the Quakers, were content to remain for years to come in a relation of +subordination to foreign centers of organization. But there were three +communions, of great prospective importance, which found it necessary to +address themselves to the task of reorganization to suit the changed +political conditions. These were the Episcopalians, the Catholics, and +the Methodists.</p> + +<p>In one respect all the various orders of churches were alike. They had +all suffered from the waste and damage of war. Pastors and missionaries +had been driven from their cures, congregations had been scattered, +houses of worship had been desecrated or destroyed. The Episcopalian and +Methodist ministers were generally Tories, and their churches, and in +some instances their persons, were not spared by the patriots. The +Friends and the Moravians, principled against taking active part in +warfare, were exposed to aggressions from both sides. All other sects +were safely presumed to be in earnest sympathy with the cause of +independence, which many of their pastors actively served as chaplains +or as combatants, or in other ways; wherever the British troops held the +ground, their churches were the object of spite. Nor were these the +chief losses by the war. More grievous still were the death of the +strong men and the young men of the churches, the demoralization of camp +life, and, as the war advanced, the infection of the current fashions of +unbelief from the officers both of the French and of the British armies. +The prevalent diathesis of the American church in all its sects was one +of spiritual torpor, from which, however, it soon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>began to be aroused +as the grave exigencies of the situation disclosed themselves.</p> + +<p>Perhaps no one of the Christian organizations of America came out of the +war in a more forlorn condition than the Episcopalians. This condition +was thus described by Bishop White, in an official charge to his clergy +at Philadelphia in 1832:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The congregations of our communion throughout the United +States were approaching annihilation. Although within this +city three Episcopal clergymen were resident and officiating, +the churches over the rest of the State had become deprived of +their clergy during the war, either by death or by departure +for England. In the Eastern States, with two or three +exceptions, there was a cessation of the exercises of the +pulpit, owing to the necessary disuse of the prayers for the +former civil rulers. In Maryland and Virginia, where the +church had enjoyed civil establishments, on the ceasing of +these, the incumbents of the parishes, almost without +exception, ceased to officiate. Farther south the condition of +the church was not better, to say the least."<a name="FNanchor_210:1_134" id="FNanchor_210:1_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_210:1_134" class="fnanchor">[210:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>This extreme feebleness of Episcopalianism in the several States +conspired with the tendencies of the time in civil affairs to induce +upon the new organization a character not at all conformed to the ideal +of episcopal government. Instead of establishing as the unit of +organization the bishop in every principal town, governing his diocese +at the head of his clergy with some measure of authority, it was almost +a necessity of the time to constitute dioceses as big as kingdoms, and +then to take security against <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>excess of power in the diocesan by +overslaughing his authority through exorbitant powers conferred upon a +periodical mixed synod, legislating for a whole continent, even in +matters confessedly variable and unessential. In the later evolution of +the system, this superior limitation of the bishop's powers is +supplemented from below by magnifying the authority of representative +bodies, diocesan and parochial, until the work of the bishop is reduced +as nearly as possible to the merely "ministerial" performance of certain +assigned functions according to prescribed directions. Concerning this +frame of government it is to be remarked: 1. That it was quite +consciously and confessedly devised for the government of a sect, with +the full and fraternal understanding that other "religious denominations +of Christians" (to use the favorite American euphemism) "were left at +full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective churches" +to suit themselves.<a name="FNanchor_211:1_135" id="FNanchor_211:1_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_211:1_135" class="fnanchor">[211:1]</a> 2. That, judged according to its professed +purpose, it has proved itself a practically good and effective +government. 3. That it is in no proper sense of the word an episcopal +government, but rather a classical and synodical government, according +to the common type of the American church constitutions of the +period.<a name="FNanchor_211:2_136" id="FNanchor_211:2_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_211:2_136" class="fnanchor">[211:2]</a></p> + +<p>The objections which only a few years before had withstood the +importation into the colonies of lord bishops, with the English common +and canon law at their backs, vanished entirely before the proposal for +the harmless functionaries provided for in the new constitution. John +Adams himself, a leader of the former opposition, now, as American +minister in London, did his best to secure for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>Bishops-elect White and +Provoost the coveted consecration from English bishops. The only +hindrance now to this long-desired boon was in the supercilious +dilatoriness of the English prelates and of the civil authorities to +whom they were subordinate. They were evidently in a sulky temper over +the overwhelming defeat of the British arms. If it had been in their +power to blockade effectively the channels of sacramental grace, there +is no sign that they would have consented to the American petition. +Happily there were other courses open. 1. There was the recourse to +presbyterial ordination, an expedient sanctioned, when necessary, by the +authority of "the judicious Hooker," and actually recommended, if the +case should require, by the Rev. William White, soon to be consecrated +as one of the first American bishops. 2. Already for more than a +half-century the Moravian episcopate had been present and most +apostolically active in America. 3. The Lutheran Episcopal churches of +Denmark and Sweden were fully competent and known to be not unwilling to +confer the episcopal succession on the American candidates. 4. There +were the Scotch nonjuring bishops, outlawed for political reasons from +communion with the English church, who were tending their "persecuted +remnant" of a flock in Scotland. Theirs was a not less valid succession +than those of their better-provided English brethren, and fully as +honorable a history. It was due to the separate initiative of the +Episcopalian ministers of Connecticut, and to the persistence of their +bishop-elect, Samuel Seabury, that the deadlock imposed by the +Englishmen was broken. Inheriting the Puritan spirit, which sought a +<i>jus divinum</i> in all church questions, they were men of deeper +convictions and "higher" principles than their more southern brethren. +In advance of the plans for national organization, without conferring +with flesh and blood, they had met and acted, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>and their candidate for +consecration was in London urging his claims, before the ministers in +the Middle States had any knowledge of what was doing. After a year of +costly and vexatious delay in London, finding no progress made and no +hope of any, he proceeded to Aberdeen and was consecrated bishop +November 14, 1784. It was more than two years longer before the English +bishops succeeded in finding a way to do what their unrecognized Scotch +brethren had done with small demur. But they did find it. So long as the +Americans seemed dependent on English consecration they could not get +it. When at last it was made quite plain that they could and would do +without it if necessary, they were more than welcome to it. Dr. White +for Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provoost for New York, were consecrated by the +Archbishop of Canterbury at the chapel of Lambeth Palace, February 4, +1787. Dr. Griffith, elected for Virginia, failed to be present; in all +that great diocese there was not interest enough felt in the matter to +raise the money to pay his passage to England and back.</p> + +<p>The American Episcopal Church was at last in a condition to live. Some +formidable dangers of division arising from the double derivation of the +episcopate were happily averted by the tact and statesmanship of Bishop +White, and liturgical changes incidental to the reconstitution of the +church were made, on the whole with cautious judgment and good taste, +and successfully introduced. But for many years the church lived only a +languishing life. Bishop Provoost of New York, after fourteen years of +service, demitted his functions in 1801, discouraged about the +continuance of the church. He "thought it would die out with the old +colonial families."<a name="FNanchor_213:1_137" id="FNanchor_213:1_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_213:1_137" class="fnanchor">[213:1]</a> The large prosperity of this church dates +only from the second decade of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>this century. It is the more notable for +the brief time in which so much has been accomplished.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The difficulties in the way of the organization of the Catholic Church +for the United States were not less serious, and were overcome with +equal success, but not without a prolonged struggle against opposition +from within. It is not easy for us, in view either of the antecedent or +of the subsequent history, to realize the extreme feebleness of American +Catholicism at the birth of our nation. According to an official +"Relation on the State of Religion in the United States," presented by +the prefect apostolic in 1785, the total number of Catholics in the +entire Union was 18,200, exclusive of an unascertainable number, +destitute of priests, in the Mississippi Valley. The entire number of +the clergy was twenty-four, most of them former members of the Society +of Jesuits, that had been suppressed in 1773 by the famous bull, +<i>Dominus ac Redemptor</i>, of Clement XIV. Sorely against their will, these +missionaries, hitherto subject only to the discipline of their own +society, were transformed into secular priests, under the jurisdiction +of the Vicar Apostolic of London. After the establishment of +independence, with the intense jealousy felt regarding British +influence, and by none more deeply and more reasonably felt than by the +Catholics, this jurisdiction was impracticable. The providentially fit +man for the emergency was found in the Rev. John Carroll, of an old +Maryland family distinguished alike for patriotism and for faithfulness +to Catholic principles. In June, 1784, he was made prefect apostolic +over the Catholic Church in the United States, and the dependence on +British jurisdiction was terminated.</p> + +<p>When, however, it was proposed that this provisional arrangement should +be superseded by the appointment of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>a bishop, objections not unexpected +were encountered from among the clergy. Already we have had occasion to +note the jealousy of episcopal authority that is felt by the clergy of +the regular orders. The lately disbanded Jesuits, with characteristic +flexibility of self-adaptation to circumstances, had at once +reincorporated themselves under another name, thus to hold the not +inconsiderable estates of their order in the State of Maryland. But the +plans of these energetic men either to control the bishop or to prevent +his appointment were unsuccessful. In December, 1790, Bishop Carroll, +having been consecrated in England, arrived and entered upon his see of +Baltimore.</p> + +<p>Difficulties, through which there were not many precedents to guide him, +thickened about the path of the new prelate. It was well both for the +church and for the republic that he was a man not only versed in the +theology and polity of his church, but imbued with American principles +and feelings. The first conflict that vexed the church under his +administration, and which for fifty years continued to vex his +associates and successors, was a collision between the American +sentiment for local and individual liberty and self-government, and the +absolutist spiritual government of Rome. The Catholics of New York, +including those of the Spanish and French legations, had built a church +in Barclay Street, then on the northern outskirt of the city; and they +had the very natural and just feeling that they had a right to do what +they would with their own and with the building erected at their +charges. They proceeded accordingly to put in charge of it priests of +their own selection. But they had lost sight of the countervailing +principle that if they had a right to do as they would with their +building, the bishop, as representing the supreme authority in the +church, had a like right to do as he would with his clergy. The building +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>was theirs; but it was for the bishop to say what services should be +held in it, or whether there should be any services in it at all, in the +Roman Catholic communion. It is surprising how often this issue was +made, and how repeatedly and obstinately it was fought out in various +places, when the final result was so inevitable. The hierarchical power +prevailed, of course, but after much irritation between priesthood and +people, and "great loss of souls to the church."<a name="FNanchor_216:1_138" id="FNanchor_216:1_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_216:1_138" class="fnanchor">[216:1]</a> American ideas +and methods were destined profoundly and beneficially to affect the +Roman Church in the United States, but not by the revolutionary process +of establishing "trusteeism," or the lay control of parishes. The +damaging results of such disputes to both parties and to their common +interest in the church put the two parties under heavy bonds to deal by +each other with mutual consideration. The tendency, as in some parallel +cases, is toward an absolute government administered on republican +principles, the authoritative command being given with cautious +consideration of the disposition of the subject. The rights of the laity +are sufficiently secured, first, by their holding the purse, and, +secondly, in a community in which the Roman is only one of many churches +held in like esteem and making like claims to divine authority, by their +holding in reserve the right of withdrawal.</p> + +<p>Other and unwonted difficulties for the young church lay in the Babel +confusion of races and languages among its disciples, and in the lack of +public resources, which could be supplied no otherwise than by free +gift. Yet another difficulty was the scant supply of clergy; but events +which about this time began to spread desolation among the institutions +of Catholic Europe proved to be of inestimable benefit to the +ill-provided Catholics of America. Rome might almost have been content +to see the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>wasting and destruction in her ancient strongholds, for the +opportune reinforcement which it brought, at a critical time, to the +renascent church in the New World. More important than the priests of +various orders and divers languages, who came all equipped for mission +work among immigrants of different nationalities, was the arrival of the +Sulpitians of Paris, fleeing from the persecutions of the French +Revolution, ready for their special work of training for the parish +priesthood. The founding of their seminary in Baltimore in 1791, for the +training of a native clergy, was the best security that had yet been +given for the permanence of the Catholic revival. The American Catholic +Church was a small affair as yet, and for twenty years to come was to +continue so; but the framework was preparing of an organization +sufficient for the days of great things that were before it.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The most revolutionary change suffered by any religious body in America, +in adjusting itself to the changed conditions after the War of +Independence, was that suffered by the latest arrived and most rapidly +growing of them all. We have seen the order of the Wesleyan preachers +coming so tardily across the ocean, and propagated with constantly +increasing momentum southward from the border of Maryland. Its +congregations were not a church; its preachers were not a clergy. +Instituted in England by a narrow, High-church clergyman of the +established church, its preachers were simply a company of lay +missionaries under the command of John Wesley; its adherents were +members of the Church of England, bound to special fidelity to their +duties as such in their several parish churches, but united in clubs and +classes for the mutual promotion of holy living in an unholy age; and +its chapels and other property, fruits of the self-denial of many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>poor, +were held under iron-bound title-deeds, subject to the control of John +Wesley and of the close corporation of preachers to whom he should demit +them.</p> + +<p>It seems hardly worthy of the immense practical sagacity of Wesley that +he should have thought to transplant this system unchanged into the +midst of circumstances so widely different as those which must surround +it in America. And yet even here, where the best work of his preachers +was to be done among populations not only churchless, but out of reach +of church or ministry of whatever name, in those Southern States in +which nine tenths of his penitents and converts were gained, his +preachers were warned against the sacrilege of ministering to the +craving converts the Christian ordinances of baptism and the holy +supper, and bidden to send them to their own churches—when they had +none. The wretched incumbents of the State parishes at the first sounds +of war had scampered from the field like hirelings whose own the sheep +are not, and the demand that the preachers of the word should also +minister the comfort of the Christian ordinances became too strong to be +resisted. The call of duty and necessity seemed to the preachers +gathered at a conference at Fluvanna in 1779 to be a call from God; and, +contrary to the strong objections of Wesley and Asbury, they chose from +the older of their own number a committee who "ordained themselves, and +proceeded to ordain and set apart other ministers for the same +purpose—that they might minister the holy ordinances to the church of +Christ."<a name="FNanchor_218:1_139" id="FNanchor_218:1_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_218:1_139" class="fnanchor">[218:1]</a> The step was a bold one, and although it seemed to be +attended by happy spiritual results, it threatened to precipitate a +division of "the Society" into two factions. The progress of events, the +establishment and acknowledgment of American independence, and the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>constant expansion of the Methodist work, brought its own solution of +the divisive questions.</p> + +<p>It was an important day in the history of the American church, that +second day of September, 1784, when John Wesley, assisted by other +presbyters of the Church of England, laid his hands in benediction upon +the head of Dr. Thomas Coke, and committed to him the superintendency of +the Methodist work in America, as colleague with Francis Asbury. On the +arrival of Coke in America, the preachers were hastily summoned together +in conference at Baltimore, and there, in Christmas week of the same +year, Asbury was ordained successively as deacon, as elder, and as +superintendent. By the two bishops thus constituted were ordained elders +and deacons, and Methodism became a living church.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The two decades from the close of the War of Independence include the +period of the lowest ebb-tide of vitality in the history of American +Christianity. The spirit of half-belief or unbelief that prevailed on +the other side of the sea, both in the church and out of it, was +manifest also here. Happily the tide of foreign immigration at this time +was stayed, and the church had opportunity to gather strength for the +immense task that was presently to be devolved upon it. But the westward +movement of our own population was now beginning to pour down the +western slope of the Alleghanies into the great Mississippi basin. It +was observed by the Methodist preachers that the members of their +societies who had, through fear, necessity, or choice, moved into the +back settlements and into new parts of the country, as soon as peace was +settled and the way was open solicited the preachers to come among them, +and so the work followed them to the west.<a name="FNanchor_219:1_140" id="FNanchor_219:1_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_219:1_140" class="fnanchor">[219:1]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>In the years +1791-1810 occurred the great movement of population from Virginia to +Kentucky and from Carolina to Tennessee. It was reckoned that one fourth +of the Baptists of Virginia had removed to Kentucky, and yet they hardly +leavened the lump of early frontier barbarism. The Presbyterian Church, +working in its favorite methods, devised campaigns of home missionary +enterprise in its presbyteries and synods, detailing pastors from their +parishes for temporary mission service in following the movement of the +Scotch-Irish migration into the hill-country in which it seemed to find +its congenial habitat, and from which its powerful influences were to +flow in all directions. The Congregationalists of New England in like +manner followed with Christian teaching and pastoral care their sons +moving westward to occupy the rich lands of western New York and of +Ohio. The General Association of the pastors of Connecticut, solicitous +that the work of missions to the frontier should be carried forward +without loss of power through division of forces, entered, in 1801, into +the compact with the General Assembly of the Presbyterians known as the +"Plan of Union," by which Christians of both polities might coöperate in +the founding of churches and in maintaining the work of the gospel.</p> + +<p>In the year 1803 the most important political event since the adoption +of the Constitution, the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson, +opened to the American church a new and immense field for missionary +activity. This vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi westward +to the summits of the Rocky Mountains and nearly doubling the domain of +the United States, was the last remainder of the great projected French +Catholic empire that had fallen in 1763. Passed back and forth with the +vicissitudes of European politics between French and Spanish masters, it +had made small progress in either civilization or Christianity. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>But the +immense possibilities of it to the kingdoms of this world and to the +kingdom of heaven were obvious to every intelligent mind. Not many years +were to pass before it was to become an arena in which all the various +forces of American Christianity were to be found contending against all +the powers of darkness, not without dealing some mutual blows in the +melley.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The review of this period must not close without adverting to two +important advances in public practical Christianity, in which (as often +in like cases) the earnest endeavors of some among the Christians have +been beholden for success to uncongenial reinforcements. As it is +written, "The earth helped the woman."</p> + +<p>In the establishment of the American principle of the non-interference +of the state with religion, and the equality of all religious communions +before the law, much was due, no doubt, to the mutual jealousies of the +sects, no one or two of which were strong enough to maintain exceptional +pretensions over the rest combined. Much also is to be imputed to the +indifferentism and sometimes the anti-religious sentiment of an +important and numerous class of doctrinaire politicians of which +Jefferson may be taken as a type. So far as this work was a work of +intelligent conviction and religious faith, the chief honor of it must +be given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Presbyterians, had +been energetic and efficient in demanding their own liberties; the +Friends and the Baptists agreed in demanding liberty of conscience and +worship, and equality before the law, for all alike. But the active +labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. It is to their +consistency and constancy in the warfare against the privileges of the +powerful "Standing Order" of New England, and of the moribund +establishments of the South, that we are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>chiefly indebted for the final +triumph, in this country, of that principle of the separation of church +from state which is one of the largest contributions of the New World to +civilization and to the church universal.</p> + +<p>It is not surprising that a people so earnest as the Baptists showed +themselves in the promotion of religious liberty should be forward in +the condemnation of American slavery. We have already seen the vigor +with which the Methodists, having all their strength at the South, +levied a spiritual warfare against this great wrong. It was at the South +that the Baptists, in 1789, "<i>Resolved</i>, That slavery is a violent +deprivation of the rights of nature, and inconsistent with a republican +government, and we therefore recommend it to our brethren to make use of +every legal measure to extirpate this horrid evil from the land."<a name="FNanchor_222:1_141" id="FNanchor_222:1_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_222:1_141" class="fnanchor">[222:1]</a> +At the North, Jonathan Edwards the Younger is conspicuous in the +unbroken succession of antislavery churchmen. His sermon on the +"Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave-trade," preached in 1791 before the +Connecticut Abolition Society, of which President Ezra Stiles was the +head, long continued to be reprinted and circulated, both at the North +and at the South, as the most effective argument not only against the +slave-trade, but against the whole system of slavery.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It will not be intruding needlessly upon the difficult field of dogmatic +history if we note here the widely important diversities of Christian +teaching that belong to this which we may call the sub-Revolutionary +period.</p> + +<p>It is in contradiction to our modern association of ideas to read that +the prevailing type of doctrine among the early Baptists of New England +was Arminian.<a name="FNanchor_222:2_142" id="FNanchor_222:2_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_222:2_142" class="fnanchor">[222:2]</a> The pronounced individualism of the Baptist +churches, and the emphasis which they place upon human responsibility, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>might naturally have created a tendency in this direction; but a cause +not less obvious was their antagonism to the established +Congregationalism, with its sharply defined Calvinistic statements. The +public challenging of these statements made a favorite issue on which to +appeal to the people from their constituted teachers. But when the South +and Southwest opened itself as the field of a wonderfully rapid +expansion before the feet of the Baptist evangelists, the antagonism was +quite of another sort. Their collaborators and sharp competitors in the +great and noble work of planting the gospel and the church in old and +neglected fields at the South, and carrying them westward to the +continually advancing frontier of population, were to be found in the +multiplying army of the Methodist itinerants and local exhorters, whose +theology, enjoined upon them by their commission, was the Arminianism of +John Wesley. No explanation is apparent for the revulsion of the great +body of American Baptists into a Calvinism exaggerated to the point of +caricature, except the reaction of controversy with the Methodists. The +tendency of the two parties to opposite poles of dogma was all the +stronger for the fact that on both sides teachers and taught were alike +lacking in liberalizing education. The fact that two by far the most +numerous denominations of Christians in the United States were picketed +thus over against each other in the same regions, as widely differing +from each other in doctrine and organization as the Dominican order from +the Jesuit, and differing somewhat in the same way, is a fact that +invites our regret and disapproval, but at the same time compels us to +remember its compensating advantages.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It is to this period that we trace the head-waters of several important +existing denominations.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>At the close of the war the congregation of the "King's Chapel," the +oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been thinned and had lost +its rector in the general migration of leading Tory families to Nova +Scotia. At the restoration of peace it was served in the capacity of lay +reader by Mr. James Freeman, a young graduate of Harvard, who came soon +to be esteemed very highly in love both for his work's sake and for his +own. Being chosen pastor of the church, he was not many months in +finding that many things in the English Prayer-book were irreconcilable +with doubts and convictions concerning the Trinity and related +doctrines, which about this time were widely prevalent among theologians +both in the Church of England and outside of it. In June, 1785, it was +voted in the congregation, by a very large majority, to amend the order +of worship in accordance with these scruples. The changes were in a +direction in which not a few Episcopalians were disposed to move,<a name="FNanchor_224:1_143" id="FNanchor_224:1_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_224:1_143" class="fnanchor">[224:1]</a> +and the congregation did not hesitate to apply for ordination for their +pastor, first to Bishop Seabury, and afterward, with better hope of +success, to Bishop Provoost. Failing here also, the congregation +proceeded to induct their elect pastor into his office without waiting +further upon bishops; and thus "the first Episcopal church in New +England became the first Unitarian church in America." It was not the +beginning of Unitarianism in America, for this had long been "in the +air." But it was the first distinct organization of it. How rapidly and +powerfully it spread within narrow geographical limits, and how widely +it has affected the course of religious history, must appear in later +chapters.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Close as might seem to be the kindred between Unitarianism and +Universalism, coeval as they are in their origin <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>as organized sects, +they are curiously diverse in their origin. Each of them, at the present +day, holds the characteristic tenet of the other; in general, Unitarians +are Universalists, and Universalists are Unitarians.<a name="FNanchor_225:1_144" id="FNanchor_225:1_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_225:1_144" class="fnanchor">[225:1]</a> But in the +beginning Unitarianism was a bold reactionary protest against leading +doctrines of the prevailing Calvinism of New England, notably against +the doctrines of the Trinity, of expiatory atonement, and of human +depravity; and it was still more a protest against the intolerant and +intolerable dogmatism of the sanhedrim of Jonathan Edwards's successors, +in their cock-sure expositions of the methods of the divine government +and the psychology of conversion. Universalism, on the other hand, in +its first setting forth in America, planted itself on the leading +"evangelical" doctrines, which its leaders had earnestly preached, and +made them the major premisses of its argument. Justification and +salvation, said John Murray, one of Whitefield's Calvinistic Methodist +preachers, are the lot of those for whom Christ died. But Christ died +for the elect, said his Calvinistic brethren. Nay, verily, said Murray +(in this following one of his colleagues, James Relly); what saith the +Scripture? "Christ died for <i>all</i>." It was the pinch of this argument +which brought New England theologians, beginning with Smalley and the +second Edwards, to the acceptance of the rectoral theory of the +atonement, and so prepared the way for much disputation among the +doctors of the next century.<a name="FNanchor_225:2_145" id="FNanchor_225:2_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_225:2_145" class="fnanchor">[225:2]</a></p> + +<p>Mr. Murray arrived in America in 1770, and after much going to and fro +organized, in 1779, at Gloucester, Mass., the first congregation in +America on distinctly Universalist principles. But other men, along +other lines of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>thought, had been working their way to somewhat similar +conclusions. In 1785 Elhanan Winchester, a thoroughly Calvinistic +Baptist minister in Philadelphia, led forth his excommunicated brethren, +one hundred strong, and organized them into a "Society of Universal +Baptists," holding to the universal <i>restoration</i> of mankind to holiness +and happiness. The two differing schools fraternized in a convention of +Universalist churches at Philadelphia in 1794, at which articles of +belief and a plan of organization were set forth, understood to be from +the pen of Dr. Benjamin Rush; and a resolution was adopted declaring the +holding of slaves to be "inconsistent with the union of the human race +in a common Saviour, and the obligations to mutual and universal love +which flow from that union."</p> + +<p>It was along still another line of argument, proceeding from the assumed +"rectitude of human nature," that the Unitarians came, tardily and +hesitatingly, to the Universalist position. The long persistence of +definite boundary lines between two bodies so nearly alike in their +tenets is a subject worthy of study. The lines seem to be rather +historical and social than theological. The distinction between them has +been thus epigrammatically stated: that the Universalist holds that God +is too good to damn a man; the Unitarian holds that men are too good to +be damned.</p> + +<p>No controversy in the history of the American church has been more +deeply marked by a sincere and serious earnestness, over and above the +competitive zeal and invidious acrimony that are an inevitable admixture +in such debates, than the controversy that was at once waged against the +two new sects claiming the title "Liberal." It was sincerely felt by +their antagonists that, while the one abandoned the foundation of the +Christian faith, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>other destroyed the foundation of Christian +morality. In the early propaganda of each of them was much to deepen +this mistrust. When the standard of dissent is set up in any community, +and men are invited to it in the name of liberality, nothing can hinder +its becoming a rallying-point for all sorts of disaffected souls, not +only the liberal, but the loose. The story of the controversy belongs to +later chapters of this book. It is safe to say at this point that the +early orthodox fears have at least not been fully confirmed by the +sequel up to this date. It was one of the most strenuous of the early +disputants against the "liberal" opinions<a name="FNanchor_227:1_146" id="FNanchor_227:1_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_227:1_146" class="fnanchor">[227:1]</a> who remarked in his +later years, concerning the Unitarian saints, that it seemed as if their +exclusive contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the +example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional beauty and +Christlikeness of living. As for the Universalists, the record of their +fidelity, as a body, to the various interests of social morality is not +surpassed by that of any denomination. But in the earlier days the +conflict against the two sects called "liberal" was waged ruthlessly, +not as against defective or erroneous schemes of doctrine, but as +against distinctly antichristian heresies.</p> + +<p>There is instruction to be gotten from studying, in comparison, the +course of these opinions in the established churches of Great Britain +and among the unestablished churches of America. Under the enforced +comprehensiveness or tolerance of a national church, it is easier for +strange doctrines to spread within the pale. Under the American plan of +the organization of Christianity by voluntary mutual association +according to elective affinity, with freedom to receive or exclude, the +flock within the fold may perhaps be kept safer from contamination; as +when the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1792, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>again in 1794, +decided that Universalists be not admitted to the sealing ordinances of +the gospel;<a name="FNanchor_228:1_147" id="FNanchor_228:1_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_228:1_147" class="fnanchor">[228:1]</a> but by this course the excluded opinion is compelled +to intrench itself both for defense and for attack in a sectarian +organization. It is a practically interesting question, the answer to +which is by no means self-evident, whether Universalist opinions would +have been less prevalent to-day in England and Scotland if they had been +excluded from the national churches and erected into a sect with its +partisan pulpits, presses, and propagandists; or whether they would have +more diffused in America if, instead of being dealt with by process of +excommunication or deposition, they had been dealt with simply by +argument. This is one of the many questions which history raises, but +which (happily for him) it does not fall within the function of the +historian to answer.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>To this period is to be referred the origin of some of the minor +American sects.</p> + +<p>The "United Brethren in Christ" grew into a distinct organization about +the year 1800. It arose incidentally to the Methodist evangelism, in an +effort on the part of Philip William Otterbein, of the German Reformed +Church, and Martin Boehm, of the Mennonites, to provide for the +shepherdless German-speaking people by an adaptation of the Wesleyan +methods. Presently, in the natural progress of language, the English +work outgrew the German. It is now doing an extensive and useful work by +pulpit and press, chiefly in Pennsylvania and the States of that +latitude. The reasons for its continued existence separate from the +Methodist Church, which it closely resembles both in doctrine and in +polity, are more apparent to those within the organization than to +superficial observers from outside.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>The organization just described arose from the unwillingness of the +German Reformed Church to meet the craving needs of the German people by +using the Wesleyan methods. From the unwillingness of the Methodist +Church to use the German language arose another organization, "the +Evangelical Association," sometimes known, from the name of its founder, +by the somewhat grotesque title of "the Albrights." This also is both +Methodist and Episcopal, a reduced copy of the great Wesleyan +institution, mainly devoted to labors among the Germans.</p> + +<p>In 1792 was planted at Baltimore the first American congregation of that +organization of disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg which had been begun in +London nine years before and called by the appropriately fanciful name +of "the Church of the New Jerusalem."</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210:1_134" id="Footnote_210:1_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210:1_134"><span class="label">[210:1]</span></a> Quoted in Tiffany, p. 289, note. The extreme depression +of the Protestant Episcopal and (as will soon appear) of the Roman +Catholic Church, at this point of time, emphasizes all the more the +great advances made by both these communions from this time forward.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211:1_135" id="Footnote_211:1_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211:1_135"><span class="label">[211:1]</span></a> Preface to the American "Book of Common Prayer," 1789.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211:2_136" id="Footnote_211:2_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211:2_136"><span class="label">[211:2]</span></a> See the critical observations of Dr. McConnell, +"History of the American Episcopal Church," pp. 264-276. The polity of +this church seems to have suffered for want of a States' Rights and +Strict Construction party. The centrifugal force has been overbalanced +by the centripetal.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213:1_137" id="Footnote_213:1_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213:1_137"><span class="label">[213:1]</span></a> Tiffany, pp. 385-399.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216:1_138" id="Footnote_216:1_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216:1_138"><span class="label">[216:1]</span></a> Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 269-323, 367, 399.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218:1_139" id="Footnote_218:1_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218:1_139"><span class="label">[218:1]</span></a> Buckley, "The Methodists," pp. 182, 183.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219:1_140" id="Footnote_219:1_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219:1_140"><span class="label">[219:1]</span></a> Jesse Lee, quoted by Dr. Buckley, p. 195.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222:1_141" id="Footnote_222:1_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222:1_141"><span class="label">[222:1]</span></a> Newman, "The Baptists," p. 305.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222:2_142" id="Footnote_222:2_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222:2_142"><span class="label">[222:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 243.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224:1_143" id="Footnote_224:1_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224:1_143"><span class="label">[224:1]</span></a> Tiffany, p. 347; McConnell, p. 249.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225:1_144" id="Footnote_225:1_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225:1_144"><span class="label">[225:1]</span></a> Dr. Richard Eddy, "The Universalists," p. 429.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225:2_145" id="Footnote_225:2_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225:2_145"><span class="label">[225:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 392-397. The sermons of Smalley were +preached at Wallingford, Conn., "by particular request, with special +reference to the Murrayan controversy."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227:1_146" id="Footnote_227:1_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227:1_146"><span class="label">[227:1]</span></a> Leonard Bacon, of New Haven, in conversation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228:1_147" id="Footnote_228:1_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228:1_147"><span class="label">[228:1]</span></a> Eddy, p. 387.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<h3>THE SECOND AWAKENING.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The closing years of the eighteenth century show the lowest low-water +mark of the lowest ebb-tide of spiritual life in the history of the +American church. The demoralization of army life, the fury of political +factions, the catchpenny materialist morality of Franklin, the +philosophic deism of men like Jefferson, and the popular ribaldry of Tom +Paine, had wrought, together with other untoward influences, to bring +about a condition of things which to the eye of little faith seemed +almost desperate.</p> + +<p>From the beginning of the reaction from the stormy excitements of the +Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches +from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled +those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a +gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition of +Yale College at the accession of President Dwight in 1795, as described +in the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher, then a sophomore.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Before he came, college was in a most ungodly state. The +college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were +skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>and liquors were +kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and +licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped.... +That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. +Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom +Paine and believed him; I read and fought him all the way. +Never had any propensity to infidelity. But most of the class +before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire, +Rousseau, D'Alembert, etc."<a name="FNanchor_231:1_148" id="FNanchor_231:1_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_231:1_148" class="fnanchor">[231:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>In the Middle States the aspect was not more promising. Princeton +College had been closed for three years of the Revolutionary War. In +1782 there were only two among the students who professed themselves +Christians. The Presbyterian General Assembly, representing the +strongest religious force in that region, in 1798 described the then +existing condition of the country in these terms:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten +destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and +bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have +convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with +similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful +apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and +practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing +impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of +religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances +tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the +public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to +our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, +injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of +debauchery and loose indulgence greatly abound."</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p><p>From the point of view of the Episcopalian of that day the prospect was +even more disheartening. It was at this time that Bishop Provoost of New +York laid down his functions, not expecting the church to continue much +longer; and Bishop Madison of Virginia shared the despairing conviction +of Chief-Justice Marshall that the church was too far gone ever to be +revived.<a name="FNanchor_232:1_149" id="FNanchor_232:1_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_232:1_149" class="fnanchor">[232:1]</a> Over all this period the historian of the Lutheran +Church writes up the title "Deterioration."<a name="FNanchor_232:2_150" id="FNanchor_232:2_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_232:2_150" class="fnanchor">[232:2]</a> Proposals were set on +foot looking toward the merger of these two languishing denominations.</p> + +<p>Even the Methodists, the fervor of whose zeal and vitality of whose +organization had withstood what seemed severer tests, felt the benumbing +influence of this unhappy age. For three years ending in 1796 the total +membership diminished at the rate of about four thousand a year.</p> + +<p>Many witnesses agree in describing the moral and religious condition of +the border States of Kentucky and Tennessee as peculiarly deplorable. +The autobiography of that famous pioneer preacher, Peter Cartwright, +gives a lively picture of Kentucky society in 1793 as he remembered it +in his old age:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Logan County, when my father moved into it, was called +'Rogues' Harbor.' Here many refugees from all parts of the +Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for although there +was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate +state of society. Murderers, horse-thieves, highway robbers, +and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and +actually formed a majority. Those who favored a better state +of morals were called 'Regulators.' But they encountered +fierce opposition from the 'Rogues,' and a battle was fought +with guns, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>pistols, dirks, knives, and clubs, in which the +'Regulators' were defeated."<a name="FNanchor_233:1_151" id="FNanchor_233:1_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_233:1_151" class="fnanchor">[233:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>The people that walked in this gross darkness beheld a great light. In +1796 a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, who for more than ten +years had done useful service in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, +assumed charge of several Presbyterian churches in that very Logan +County which we know through the reminiscences of Peter Cartwright. As +he went the round of his scattered congregations his preaching was felt +to have peculiar power "to arouse false professors, to awaken a dead +church, and warn sinners and lead them to seek the new spiritual life +which he himself had found." Three years later two brothers, William and +John McGee, one a Presbyterian minister and the other a Methodist, came +through the beautiful Cumberland country in Kentucky and Tennessee, +speaking, as if in the spirit and power of John the Baptist, to +multitudes that gathered from great distances to hear them. On one +occasion, in the woods of Logan County, in July, 1800, the gathered +families, many of whom came from far, tethered their teams and encamped +for several days for the unaccustomed privilege of common worship and +Christian preaching. This is believed to have been the first American +camp-meeting—an era worth remembering in our history. Not without +abundant New Testament antecedents, it naturalized itself at once on our +soil as a natural expedient for scattered frontier populations +unprovided with settled institutions. By a natural process of evolution, +adapting itself to other environments and uses, the backwoods +camp-meeting has grown into the "Chautauqua" assembly, which at so many +places besides <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>the original center at Chautauqua Lake has grown into an +important and most characteristic institution of American civilization.</p> + +<p>We are happy in having an account of some of these meetings from one who +was personally and sympathetically interested in them. For in the spring +of the next year Barton Warren Stone, a Presbyterian minister serving +his two congregations of Concord and Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, and +oppressed with a sense of the religious apathy prevailing about him, +made the long journey across the State of Kentucky to see for himself +the wonderful things of which he had heard, and afterward wrote his +reminiscences.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There, on the edge of a prairie in Logan County, Kentucky, +the multitudes came together and continued a number of days +and nights encamped on the ground, during which time worship +was carried on in some part of the encampment. The scene was +new to me and passing strange. It baffled description. Many, +very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for +hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless +state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting +symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a +prayer for mercy fervently uttered. After lying there for +hours they obtained deliverance. The gloomy cloud that had +covered their faces seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, +and hope, in smiles, brightened into joy. They would rise, +shouting deliverance, and then would address the surrounding +multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive. With +astonishment did I hear men, women, and children declaring the +wonderful works of God and the glorious mysteries of the +gospel. Their appeals were solemn, heart-penetrating, bold, +and free. Under such circumstances many others would fall down +into the same state from which the speakers had just been +delivered.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>"Two or three of my particular acquaintances from a distance +were struck down. I sat patiently by one of them, whom I knew +to be a careless sinner, for hours, and observed with critical +attention everything that passed, from the beginning to the +end. I noticed the momentary revivings as from death, the +humble confession of sins, the fervent prayer, and the +ultimate deliverance; then the solemn thanks and praise to +God, and affectionate exhortation to companions and to the +people around to repent and come to Jesus. I was astonished at +the knowledge of gospel truth displayed in the address. The +effect was that several sank down into the same appearance of +death. After attending to many such cases, my conviction was +complete that it was a good work—the work of God; nor has my +mind wavered since on the subject. Much did I see then, and +much have I seen since, that I consider to be fanaticism; but +this should not condemn the work. The devil has always tried +to ape the works of God, to bring them into disrepute; but +that cannot be a Satanic work which brings men to humble +confession, to forsaking of sin, to prayer, fervent praise and +thanksgiving, and a sincere and affectionate exhortation to +sinners to repent and come to Jesus the Saviour."</p></div> + +<p>Profoundly impressed by what he had seen and heard, Pastor Stone +returned to his double parish in Bourbon County and rehearsed the story +of it. "The congregation was affected with awful solemnity, and many +returned home weeping." This was in the early spring. Not many months +afterward there was a notable springing up of this seed.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A memorable meeting was held at Cane Ridge in August, 1801. +The roads were crowded with wagons, carriages, horses, and +footmen moving to the solemn camp. It was judged by military +men on the ground that between twenty and thirty thousand +persons were assembled. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>Four or five preachers spoke at the +same time in different parts of the encampment without +confusion. The Methodist and Baptist preachers aided in the +work, and all appeared cordially united in it. They were of +one mind and soul: the salvation of sinners was the one +object. We all engaged in singing the same songs, all united +in prayer, all preached the same things.... The numbers +converted will be known only in eternity. Many things +transpired in the meeting which were so much like miracles +that they had the same effect as miracles on unbelievers. By +them many were convinced that Jesus was the Christ and were +persuaded to submit to him. This meeting continued six or +seven days and nights, and would have continued longer, but +food for the sustenance of such a multitude failed.</p> + +<p>"To this meeting many had come from Ohio and other distant +parts. These returned home and diffused the same spirit in +their respective neighborhoods. Similar results followed. So +low had religion sunk, and such carelessness had universally +prevailed, that I have thought that nothing common could have +arrested and held the attention of the people."<a name="FNanchor_236:1_152" id="FNanchor_236:1_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_236:1_152" class="fnanchor">[236:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>The sober and cautious tone of this narrative will already have +impressed the reader. These are not the words of a heated enthusiast, or +a man weakly credulous. We may hesitate to accept his judgment, but may +safely accept his testimony, amply corroborated as it is, to facts which +he has seen and heard.</p> + +<p>But the crucial test of the work, the test prescribed by the Lord of the +church, is that it shall be known by its fruits. And this test it seems +to bear well. Dr. Archibald Alexander, had in high reverence in the +Presbyterian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>Church as a wise counselor in spiritual matters, made +scrupulous inquiry into the results of this revival, and received from +one of his correspondents, Dr. George A. Baxter, who made an early visit +to the scenes of the revival, the following testimony:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"On my way I was informed by settlers on the road that the +character of Kentucky travelers was entirely changed, and that +they were as remarkable for sobriety as they had formerly been +for dissoluteness and immorality. And indeed I found Kentucky +to appearances the most moral place I had ever seen. A profane +expression was hardly ever heard. A religious awe seemed to +pervade the country. Upon the whole, I think the revival in +Kentucky the most extraordinary that has ever visited the +church of Christ; and, all things considered, it was +peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of the country into +which it came. Infidelity was triumphant and religion was on +the point of expiring. Something extraordinary seemed +necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people who were +ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable and futurity a +delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded +infidelity and brought numbers beyond calculation under +serious impressions."</p></div> + +<p>A sermon preached in 1803 to the Presbyterian synod of Kentucky, by the +Rev. David Rice, has the value of testimony given in the presence of +other competent witnesses, and liable thus to be questioned or +contradicted. In it he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Neighborhoods noted for their vicious and profligate manners +are now as much noted for their piety and good order. +Drunkards, profane swearers, liars, quarrelsome persons, etc., +are remarkably reformed.... A number of families who had lived +apparently without the fear of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>God, in folly and in vice, +without any religious instruction or any proper government, +are now reduced to order and are daily joining in the worship +of God, reading his word, singing his praises, and offering up +their supplications to a throne of grace. Parents who seemed +formerly to have little or no regard for the salvation of +their children are now anxiously concerned for their +salvation, are pleading for them, and endeavoring to lead them +to Christ and train them up in the way of piety and virtue."</p></div> + +<p>That same year the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in its +annual review of the state of religion, adverted with emphasis to the +work in the Cumberland country, and cited remarkable instances of +conversion—malignant opposers of vital piety convinced and reconciled, +learned, active, and conspicuous infidels becoming signal monuments of +that grace which they once despised; and in conclusion declared with joy +that "the state and prospects of vital religion in our country are more +favorable and encouraging than at any period within the last forty +years."<a name="FNanchor_238:1_153" id="FNanchor_238:1_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_238:1_153" class="fnanchor">[238:1]</a></p> + +<p>In order successfully to study the phenomena of this remarkable passage +in the history of the church, it is necessary to bear in mind the social +conditions that prevailed. A population <i>perfervido ingenio</i>, of a +temper peculiarly susceptible of intense excitement, transplanted into a +wild country, under little control either of conventionality or law, +deeply ingrained from many generations with the religious sentiment, but +broken loose from the control of it and living consciously in reckless +disregard of the law of God, is suddenly aroused to a sense of its +apostasy and wickedness. The people do not hear the word of God from +Sabbath to Sabbath, or even from evening to evening, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>and take it home +with them and ponder it amid the avocations of daily business; by the +conditions, they are sequestered for days together in the wilderness for +the exclusive contemplation of momentous truths pressed upon the mind +with incessant and impassioned iteration; and they remain together, an +agitated throng, not of men only, but of women and children. The student +of psychology recognizes at once that here are present in an unusual +combination the conditions not merely of the ready propagation of +influence by example and persuasion, but of those nervous, mental, or +spiritual infections which make so important a figure in the world's +history, civil, military, or religious. It is wholly in accord with +human nature that the physical manifestations attendant on religious +excitement in these circumstances should be of an intense and +extravagant sort.</p> + +<p>And such indeed they were. Sudden outcries, hysteric weeping and +laughter, faintings, catalepsies, trances, were customary concomitants +of the revival preaching. Multitudes fell prostrate on the ground, +"spiritually slain," as it was said. Lest the helpless bodies should be +trampled on by the surging crowd, they were taken up and laid in rows on +the floor of the neighboring meeting-house. "Some lay quiet, unable to +move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with +their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a +live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours +at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then +plunged, shouting 'Lost! Lost!' into the forest."</p> + +<p>As the revival went on and the camp-meeting grew to be a custom and an +institution, this nervous epidemic took on certain recognizable forms, +one of which was known as "the jerks." This malady "began in the head +and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to +side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made +to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over +hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to +bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of +eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his +own observation on the subject:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have passed a meeting-house where I observed the +undergrowth had been cut for a camp-meeting, and from fifty to +a hundred saplings were left breast-high on purpose for +persons who were 'jerked' to hold on to. I observed where they +had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping +flies.... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who +wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who +are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is +subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but +the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have +sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while +jerking."<a name="FNanchor_240:1_154" id="FNanchor_240:1_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_240:1_154" class="fnanchor">[240:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>There is nothing improbable in the claim that phenomena like these, +strange, weird, startling, "were so much like miracles that they had the +same effect as miracles on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>unbelievers." They helped break up the +apathetic torpor of the church and summon the multitudes into the +wilderness to hear the preaching of repentance and the remission of +sins. But they had some lamentable results. Those who, like many among +the Methodists,<a name="FNanchor_241:1_155" id="FNanchor_241:1_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_241:1_155" class="fnanchor">[241:1]</a> found in them the direct work of the Holy Spirit, +were thereby started along the perilous incline toward enthusiasm and +fanaticism. Those, on the other hand, repelled by the grotesqueness and +extravagance of these manifestations, who were led to distrust or +condemn the good work with which they were associated, fell into a +graver error. This was the error into which, to its cost, the +Presbyterian Church was by and by drawn in dealing with questions that +emerged from these agitations. The revival gave rise to two new sects, +both of them marked by the fervor of spirit that characterized the time, +and both of them finding their principal habitat in the same western +region. The Cumberland Presbyterians, now grown to large numbers and +deserved influence and dignity in the fellowship of American sects, +separated themselves from the main body of Presbyterians by refusing to +accept, in face of the craving needs of the pastorless population all +about them, the arbitrary rule shutting the door of access to the +Presbyterian ministry to all candidates, how great soever their other +qualifications, who lacked a classical education. Separating on this +issue, they took the opportunity to amend the generally accepted +doctrinal statements of the Presbyterian churches by mitigating those +utterances which seemed to them, as they have seemed to many others, to +err in the direction of fatalism.</p> + +<p>About the same time there was manifested in various quarters a generous +revolt against the existence and multiplication of mutually exclusive +sects in the Christian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>family, each limited by humanly devised +doctrinal articles and branded with partisan names. How these various +protesting elements came together on the sole basis of a common faith in +Christ and a common acceptance of the divine authority of the Bible; +how, not intending it, they came to be themselves a new sect; and how, +struggling in vain against the inexorable laws of language, they came to +be distinguished by names, as <i>Campbellite Baptist</i>, <i>Christ-ian</i> (with +a long <i>i</i>), and (<ins class="greekcorr" title="kat' exochên">κατ' ἐξόχην</ins>) Disciples, are points on which +interesting and instructive light is shed in the history by Dr. B. B. +Tyler.<a name="FNanchor_242:1_156" id="FNanchor_242:1_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_242:1_156" class="fnanchor">[242:1]</a></p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The great revival of the West and Southwest was not the only revival, +and not even the earliest revival, of that time of crisis. As early as +1792 the long inertia of the eastern churches began to be broken here +and there by signs of growing earnestness and attentiveness to spiritual +things. There was little of excited agitation. There was no preaching of +famous evangelists. There were no imposing convocations. Only in many +and many of those country towns in which, at that time, the main +strength of the population lay, the labors of faithful pastors began to +be rewarded with large ingatherings of penitent believers. The +languishing churches grew strong and hopeful, and the insolent +infidelity of the times was abashed. With such sober simplicity was the +work of the gospel carried forward, in the opening years of this +century, among the churches and pastors that had learned wisdom from the +mistakes made in the Great Awakening, that there are few striking +incidents for the historian. Hardly any man is to be pointed out as a +preëminent leader of the church at this period. If to any one, this +place of honor belongs to Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, +whose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>accession to the presidency of Yale College at the darkest hour +in its history marked the turning-point. We have already learned from +the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher how low the college had sunk in point +of religious character, when most of the class above him were openly +boastful of being infidels.<a name="FNanchor_243:1_157" id="FNanchor_243:1_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_243:1_157" class="fnanchor">[243:1]</a> How the new president dealt with them +is well described by the same witness:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"They thought the faculty were afraid of free discussion. But +when they handed Dr. Dwight a list of subjects for class +disputation, to their surprise, he selected this: 'Is the +Bible the word of God?' and told them to do their best. He +heard all they had to say, answered them, and there was an +end. He preached incessantly for six months on the subject, +and all infidelity skulked and hid its head. He elaborated his +theological system in a series of forenoon sermons in the +chapel; the afternoon discourses were practical. The original +design of Yale College was to found a divinity school. To a +mind appreciative, like mine, his preaching was a continual +course of education and a continual feast. He was copious and +polished in style, though disciplined and logical. There was a +pith and power of doctrine there that has not been since +surpassed, if equaled."<a name="FNanchor_243:2_158" id="FNanchor_243:2_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_243:2_158" class="fnanchor">[243:2]</a></p></div> + +<p>It may be doubted whether to any man of his generation it was given to +exercise a wider and more beneficent influence over the American church +than that of President Dwight. His system of "Theology Explained and +Defended in a Series of Sermons," a theology meant to be preached and +made effective in convincing men and converting them to the service of +God, was so constructed as to be completed within the four years of the +college curriculum, so that every graduate should have heard the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>whole +of it. The influence of it has not been limited by the boundaries of our +country, nor has it expired with the century just completed since +President Dwight's accession.</p> + +<p>At the East also, as well as at the West, the quickening of religious +thought and feeling had the common effect of alienating and disrupting. +Diverging tendencies, which had begun to disclose themselves in the +discussions between Edwards and Chauncy in their respective volumes of +"Thoughts" on the Great Awakening, became emphasized in the revival of +1800. That liberalism which had begun as a protest against a too +peremptory style of dogmatism was rapidly advancing toward a dogmatic +denial of points deemed by the opposite party to be essential. Dogmatic +differences were aggravated by differences of taste and temperament, and +everything was working toward the schism by which some sincere and +zealous souls should seek to do God service.</p> + +<p>In one most important particular the revival of 1800 was happily +distinguished from the Great Awakening of 1740. It was not done and over +with at the end of a few years, and then followed by a long period of +reaction. It was the beginning of a long period of vigorous and +"abundant life," moving forward, not, indeed, with even and unvarying +flow, yet with continuous current, marked with those alternations of +exaltation and subsidence which seem, whether for evil or for good, to +have become a fixed characteristic of American church history.</p> + +<p>The widespread revivals of the first decade of the nineteenth century +saved the church of Christ in America from its low estate and girded it +for stupendous tasks that were about to be devolved on it. In the glow +of this renewed fervor, the churches of New England successfully made +the difficult transition from establishment to self-support and to the +costly enterprises of aggressive evangelization <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>into which, in company +with other churches to the South and West, they were about to enter. The +Christianity of the country was prepared and equipped to attend with +equal pace the prodigious rush of population across the breadth of the +Great Valley, and to give welcome to the invading host of immigrants +which before the end of a half century was to effect its entrance into +our territory at the rate of a thousand a day. It was to accommodate +itself to changing social conditions, as the once agricultural +population began to concentrate itself in factory villages and +commercial towns. It was to carry on systematic campaigns of warfare +against instituted social wrong, such as the drinking usages of society, +the savage code of dueling, the public sanction of slavery. And it was +to enter the "effectual door" which from the beginning of the century +opened wider and wider to admit the gospel and the church to every +nation under heaven.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231:1_148" id="Footnote_231:1_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231:1_148"><span class="label">[231:1]</span></a> "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., p. 43. The +same charming volume contains abundant evidence that the spirit of true +religion was cherished in the homes of the people, while there were so +many public signs of apostasy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232:1_149" id="Footnote_232:1_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232:1_149"><span class="label">[232:1]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 388, 394, +395.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232:2_150" id="Footnote_232:2_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232:2_150"><span class="label">[232:2]</span></a> Dr. Jacobs, chap. xix.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233:1_151" id="Footnote_233:1_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233:1_151"><span class="label">[233:1]</span></a> "Autobiography of Peter Cartwright," quoted by +Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. 348.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236:1_152" id="Footnote_236:1_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236:1_152"><span class="label">[236:1]</span></a> See B. B. Tyler, "History of the Disciples," pp. 11-17; +R. V. Foster, "The Cumberland Presbyterians," pp. 260-263 (American +Church History Series, vols. xi., xii.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238:1_153" id="Footnote_238:1_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238:1_153"><span class="label">[238:1]</span></a> Tyler, "The Disciples"; Foster, "The Cumberland +Presbyterians," <a href="#Footnote_236:1_152"><i>ubi supra</i></a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240:1_154" id="Footnote_240:1_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240:1_154"><span class="label">[240:1]</span></a> Let me add an illustrative instance related to me by +the distinguished Methodist, Dr. David P. Durbin. Standing near the +platform from which he was to preach at a camp-meeting, he observed a +powerfully built young backwoodsman who was manifestly there with no +better intent than to disturb and break up the meeting. Presently it +became evident that the young man was conscious of some influence taking +hold of him to which he was resolved not to yield; he clutched with both +hands a hickory sapling next which he was standing, to hold himself +steady, but was whirled round and round, until the bark of the sapling +peeled off under his grasp. But, as in the cases referred to by Dow, the +attack was attended by no religious sentiment whatever. +</p><p> +On the manifestations in the Cumberland country, see McMasters, "United +States," vol. ii., pp. 581, 582, and the sources there cited. For some +judicious remarks on the general subject, see Buckley, "Methodism," pp. +217-224.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241:1_155" id="Footnote_241:1_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241:1_155"><span class="label">[241:1]</span></a> So Dr. Buckley, "Methodism," p. 217.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242:1_156" id="Footnote_242:1_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242:1_156"><span class="label">[242:1]</span></a> American Church History Series, vol. xii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243:1_157" id="Footnote_243:1_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243:1_157"><span class="label">[243:1]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243:2_158" id="Footnote_243:2_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243:2_158"><span class="label">[243:2]</span></a> "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 43, 44.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<h3>ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE.</h3> + + +<p class="section">When the Presbyterian General Assembly, in 1803, made a studious review +of the revivals which for several years had been in progress, especially +at the South and West, it included in its "Narrative" the following +observations:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Assembly observe with great pleasure that the desire for +spreading the gospel among the blacks and among the savage +tribes on our borders has been rapidly increasing during the +last year. The Assembly take notice of this circumstance with +the more satisfaction, as it not only affords a pleasing +presage of the spread of the gospel, but also furnishes +agreeable evidence of the genuineness and the benign tendency +of that spirit which God has been pleased to pour out upon his +people."</p></div> + +<p>In New England the like result had already, several years before, +followed upon the like antecedent. In the year 1798 the "Missionary +Society of Connecticut" was constituted, having for its object "to +Christianize the heathen in North America, and to support and promote +Christian knowledge in the new settlements within the United States"; +and in August, 1800, its first missionary, David Bacon, engaged at a +salary of "one hundred and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>ten cents per day," set out for the +wilderness south and west of Lake Erie, "afoot and alone, with no more +luggage than he could carry on his person," to visit the wild tribes of +that region, "to explore their situation, and learn their feelings with +respect to Christianity, and, so far as he had opportunity, to teach +them its doctrines and duties." The name forms a link in the bright +succession from John Eliot to this day. But it must needs be that some +suffer as victims of the inexperience of those who are first to take +direction of an untried enterprise. The abandonment of its first +missionary by one of the first missionary societies, leaving him +helpless in the wilderness, was a brief lesson in the economy of +missions opportunely given at the outset of the American mission work, +and happily had no need to be repeated.<a name="FNanchor_247:1_159" id="FNanchor_247:1_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_247:1_159" class="fnanchor">[247:1]</a></p> + +<p>David Bacon, like Henry Martyn, who at that same time, in far different +surroundings, was intent upon his plans of mission work in India, was +own son in the faith to David Brainerd. But they were elder sons in a +great family. The pathetic story of that heroic youth, as told by +Jonathan Edwards, was a classic at that time in almost every country +parsonage; but its influence was especially felt in the colleges, now no +longer, as a few years earlier, the seats of the scornful, but the homes +of serious and religious learning which they were meant to be by their +founders.</p> + +<p>Of the advancement of Christian civilization in the first +quarter-century from the achievement of independence there is no more +distinguished monument than the increase, through those troubled and +impoverished years, of the institutions of secular and sacred learning. +The really successful and effective colleges that had survived from the +colonial period were hardly a half-dozen. Up to 1810 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>these had been +reinforced by as many more. By far the greater number of them were +founded by the New England Congregationalists, to whom this has ever +been a favorite field of activity. But special honor must be paid to the +wise and courageous and nobly successful enterprise of large-minded and +large-hearted men among the Baptists, who as early as 1764, boldly +breasting a current of unworthy prejudice in their own denomination, +began the work of Brown University at Providence, which, carried forward +by a notable succession of great educators, has been set in the front +rank of existing American institutions of learning. After the revivals +of 1800 these Christian colleges were not only attended by students +coming from zealous and fervid churches; they themselves became the foci +from which high and noble spiritual influences were radiated through the +land. It was in communities like these that the example of such lives as +that of Brainerd stirred up generous young minds to a chivalrous and +even ascetic delight in attempting great labors and enduring great +sacrifices as soldiers under the Captain of salvation.</p> + +<p>It was at Williams College, then just planted in the Berkshire hills, +that a little coterie of students was formed which, for the grandeur of +the consequences that flowed from it, is worthy to be named in history +beside the Holy Club of Oxford in 1730, and the friends at Oriel College +in 1830. Samuel J. Mills came to Williams College in 1806 from the +parsonage of "Father Mills" of Torringford, concerning whom quaint +traditions and even memories still linger in the neighboring parishes of +Litchfield County, Connecticut. Around this young student gathered a +circle of men like-minded. The shade of a lonely haystack was their +oratory; the pledges by which they bound themselves to a life-work for +the kingdom of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>heaven remind one of the mutual vows of the earliest +friends of Loyola. Some of the youths went soon to the theological +seminary, and at once leavened that community with their own spirit.</p> + +<p>The seminary—there was only one in all Protestant America. As early as +1791 the Sulpitian fathers had organized their seminary at Baltimore. +But it was not until 1808 that any institution for theological studies +was open to candidates for the Protestant ministry. Up to that time such +studies were made in the regular college curriculum, which was +distinctly theological in character; and it was common for the graduate +to spend an additional year at the college for special study under the +president or the one professor of divinity. But many country parsonages +that were tenanted by men of fame as writers and teachers were greatly +frequented by young men preparing themselves for the work of preaching.</p> + +<p>The change to the modern method of education for the ministry was a +sudden one. It was precipitated by an event which has not even yet +ceased to be looked on by the losing party with honest lamentation and +with an unnecessary amount of sectarian acrimony. The divinity +professorship in Harvard College, founded in 1722<a name="FNanchor_249:1_160" id="FNanchor_249:1_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_249:1_160" class="fnanchor">[249:1]</a> by Thomas +Hollis, of London, a Baptist friend of New England, was filled, after a +long struggle and an impassioned protest, by the election of Henry Ware, +an avowed and representative Unitarian. It was a distinct announcement +that the government of the college had taken sides in the impending +conflict, in opposition to the system of religious doctrine to the +maintenance of which the college had from its foundation been devoted. +The significance of the fact was not mistaken by either party. It meant +that the two tendencies which had been recognizable from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>long before +the Great Awakening were drawing asunder, and that thenceforth it must +be expected that the vast influence of the venerable college, in the +clergy and in society, would be given to the Liberal side. The dismay of +one party and the exultation of the other were alike well grounded. The +cry of the Orthodox was "To your tents, O Israel!" Lines of +ecclesiastical non-intercourse were drawn. Church was divided from +church, and family from family. When the forces and the losses on each +side came to be reckoned up, there was a double wonder: First, at the +narrow boundaries by which the Unitarian defection was circumscribed: "A +radius of thirty-five miles from Boston as a center would sweep almost +the whole field of its history and influence;"<a name="FNanchor_250:1_161" id="FNanchor_250:1_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_250:1_161" class="fnanchor">[250:1]</a> and then at the +sweeping completeness of it within these bounds; as Mrs. H. B. Stowe +summed up the situation at Boston, "All the literary men of +Massachusetts were Unitarian; all the trustees and professors of Harvard +College were Unitarian; all the <i>élite</i> of wealth and fashion crowded +Unitarian churches; the judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving +decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization so +carefully ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers had been nullified and all the +power had passed into the hands of the congregation."<a name="FNanchor_250:2_162" id="FNanchor_250:2_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_250:2_162" class="fnanchor">[250:2]</a></p> + +<p>The schism, with its acrimonies and heartburnings, was doubtless in some +sense necessary. And it was attended with some beneficent consequences. +It gave rise to instructive and illuminating debate. And on the part of +the Orthodox it occasioned an outburst of earnest zeal which in a +wonderfully short time had more than repaired their loss in numbers, and +had started them on a career of wide beneficence, with a momentum that +has been increasing to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>this day. But it is not altogether useless to +put the question how much was lost to both parties and to the common +cause by the separation. It is not difficult to conceive that such +dogged polemics as Nathanael Emmons and Jedidiah Morse might have been +none the worse for being held in some sort of fellowship, rather than in +exasperated controversy, with such types of Christian sainthood as the +younger Ware and the younger Buckminster; and it is easy to imagine the +extreme culture and cool intellectual and spiritual temper of the +Unitarian pulpit in general as finding its advantage in not being cut +off from direct radiations from the fiery zeal of Lyman Beecher and +Edward Dorr Griffin. Is it quite sure that New England Congregationalism +would have been in all respects worse off if Channing and his friends +had continued to be recognized as the Liberal wing of its clergy? or +that the Unitarian ministers would not have been a great deal better off +if they had remained in connection with a strong and conservative right +wing, which might counterbalance the exorbitant leftward flights of +their more impatient and erratic spirits?</p> + +<p>The seating of a pronounced Unitarian in the Hollis chair of theology at +Harvard took place in 1805. Three years later, in 1808, the doors of +Andover Seminary were opened to students. Thirty-six were present, and +the number went on increasing. The example was quickly followed. In 1810 +the Dutch seminary was begun at New Brunswick, and in 1812 the +Presbyterian at Princeton. In 1816 Bangor Seminary (Congregationalist) +and Hartwick Seminary (Lutheran) were opened. In 1819 the Episcopalian +"General Seminary" followed, and the Baptist "Hamilton Seminary" in +1820. In 1821 Presbyterian seminaries were begun at Auburn, N. Y., and +Marysville, Tenn. In 1822 the Yale Divinity College was founded +(Congregationalist); in 1823 the Virginia <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>(Episcopalian) seminary at +Alexandria; in 1824 the Union (Presbyterian) Seminary, also in Virginia, +and the Unitarian seminary at Cambridge; in 1825 the Baptist seminary at +Newton, Mass., and the German Reformed at York, Pa.; in 1826 the +Lutheran at Gettysburg; in 1827 the Baptist at Rock Spring, Ill. Thus, +within a period of twenty years, seventeen theological schools had come +into existence where none had been known before. It was a swift and +beneficent revolution, and the revolution has never gone backward. In +1880 were enumerated in the United States no less than one hundred and +forty-two seminaries, representing all sects, orders, and schools of +theological opinion, employing five hundred and twenty-nine resident +professors.<a name="FNanchor_252:1_163" id="FNanchor_252:1_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_252:1_163" class="fnanchor">[252:1]</a></p> + +<p>To Andover, in the very first years of its great history, came Mills and +others of the little Williams College circle; and at once their +infectious enthusiasm for the advancement of the kingdom of God was felt +throughout the institution. The eager zeal of these young men brooked no +delay. In June, 1810, the General Association of Massachusetts met at +the neighboring town of Bradford; there four of the students, Judson, +Nott, Newell, and Hall, presented themselves and their cause; and at +that meeting was constituted the American Board of Commissioners for +Foreign Missions. The little faith of the churches shrank from the +responsibility of sustaining missionaries in the field, and Judson was +sent to England to solicit the coöperation of the London Missionary +Society. This effort happily failing, the burden came back upon the +American churches and was not refused. At last, in February, 1812, the +first American missionaries to a foreign country, Messrs. Judson, Rice, +Newell, Nott, and Hall, with their wives, sailed, in two parties, for +Calcutta.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p><p>And now befell an incident perplexing, embarrassing, and disheartening +to the supporters of the mission, but attended with results for the +promotion of the gospel to which their best wisdom never could have +attained. Adoniram Judson, a graduate of Brown University, having spent +the long months at sea in the diligent and devout study of the +Scriptures, arrived at Calcutta fully persuaded of the truth of Baptist +principles. His friend, Luther Rice, arriving by the other vessel, came +by and by to the same conclusion; and the two, with their wives, were +baptized by immersion in the Baptist church at Calcutta. The +announcement of this news in America was an irresistible appeal to the +already powerful and rapidly growing Baptist denomination to assume the +support of the two missionaries who now offered themselves to the +service of the Baptist churches. Rice returned to urge the appeal on +their immediate attention, while Judson remained to enter on that noble +apostolate for which his praise is in all the churches.</p> + +<p>To the widespread Baptist fellowship this sudden, unmistakable, and +imperative providential summons to engage in the work of foreign +missions was (it is hardly too much to say) like life from the dead. The +sect had doubled its numbers in the decade just passed, and was +estimated to include two hundred thousand communicants, all "baptized +believers." But this multitude was without common organization, and, +while abundantly endowed with sectarian animosities, was singularly +lacking in a consciousness of common spiritual life. It was pervaded by +a deadly fatalism, which, under the guise of reverence for the will of +God, was openly pleaded as a reason for abstaining from effort and +self-denial in the promotion of the gospel. Withal it was widely +characterized not only by a lack of education in its ministry, but by a +violent and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>brutal opposition to a learned clergy, which was +particularly strange in a party the moiety of whose principles depends +on a point in Greek lexicology. It was to a party—we may not say a +body—deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine +call was to be presented and urged. The messenger was well fitted for +his work. To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a +missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of +its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and +a personal persuasiveness. Of course his first address was to pastors +and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever +name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; and here his task was easy +and brief, for they were already of his mind. But the great mass of +ignorance and prejudice had also to be reckoned with. By a work in which +the influence of the divine Spirit was quite as manifest as in the +convulsive agitations of a camp-meeting, it was dealt with successfully. +Church history moved swiftly in those days. The news of the accession of +Judson and Rice was received in January, 1813. In May, 1814, the General +Missionary Convention of the Baptists was organized at Philadelphia, +thirty-three delegates being present, from eleven different States. The +Convention, which was to meet triennially, entered at once upon its +work. It became a vital center to the Baptist denomination. From it, at +its second meeting, proceeded effective measures for the promotion of +education in the ministry, and, under the conviction that "western as +well as eastern regions are given to the Son of God as an inheritance," +large plans for home missions at the West.</p> + +<p>Thus the great debt which the English Congregationalists had owed to the +Baptists for heroic leadership in the work of foreign missions was +repaid with generous usury <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>by the Congregationalists to the Baptists of +America. From this time forward the American Baptists came more and more +to be felt as a salutary force in the religious life of the nation and +the world. But against what bitter and furious opposition on the part of +the ancient ignorance the new light had to struggle cannot easily be +conceived by those who have only heard of the "Hard-Shell Baptist" as a +curious fossil of a prehistoric period.<a name="FNanchor_255:1_164" id="FNanchor_255:1_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_255:1_164" class="fnanchor">[255:1]</a></p> + +<p>The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions continued for +twenty-seven years to be the common organ of foreign missionary +operations for the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Dutch +and German Reformed churches. In the year 1837 an official Presbyterian +Board of Missions was erected by the Old-School fragment of the +disrupted Presbyterian Church; and to this, when the two fragments were +reunited, in 1869, the contributions of the New-School side began to be +transferred. In 1858 the Dutch church, and in 1879 the German church, +instituted their separate mission operations. Thus the initiative of the +Andover students in 1810 resulted in the erection, not of one mission +board, timidly venturing to set five missionaries in the foreign field, +but of five boards, whose total annual resources are counted by millions +of dollars, whose evangelists, men and women, American and foreign-born, +are a great army, and whose churches, schools, colleges, theological +seminaries, hospitals, printing-presses, with the other equipments of a +Christian civilization, and the myriads of whose faithful Christian +converts, in every country under the whole heaven, have done more for +the true honor of our nation than all that it has achieved in diplomacy +and war.<a name="FNanchor_255:2_165" id="FNanchor_255:2_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_255:2_165" class="fnanchor">[255:2]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>The Episcopalians entered on foreign mission work in 1819, and the +Methodists, tardily but at last with signal efficiency and success, in +1832. No considerable sect of American Christians at the present day is +unrepresented in the foreign field.</p> + +<p>In order to complete the history of this organizing era in the church, +we must return to the humble but memorable figure of Samuel J. Mills. It +was his characteristic word to one of his fellows, as they stood ready +to leave the seclusion of the seminary for active service, "You and I, +brother, are little men, but before we die, our influence must be felt +on the other side of the world." No one claimed that he was other than a +"little man," except as he was filled and possessed with a great +thought, and that the thought that filled the mind of Christ—the +thought of the Coming Age and of the Reign of God on earth.<a name="FNanchor_256:1_166" id="FNanchor_256:1_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_256:1_166" class="fnanchor">[256:1]</a> While +his five companions were sailing for the remotest East, Mills plunged +into the depth of the western wilderness, and between 1812 and 1815, in +two toilsome journeys, traversed the Great Valley as far as New Orleans, +deeply impressed everywhere with the famine of the word, and laboring, +in coöperation with local societies at the East, to provide for the +universal want by the sale or gift of Bibles and the organization of +Bible societies. After his second return he proposed the organization of +the American Bible Society, which was accomplished in 1816.</p> + +<p>But already this nobly enterprising mind was intent on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>a new plan, of +most far-reaching importance, not original with himself, but, on the +contrary, long familiar to those who studied the extension of the church +and pondered the indications of God's providential purposes. The +earliest attempt in America toward the propagation of the gospel in +foreign lands would seem to have been the circular letter sent out by +the neighbor pastors, Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, in the year 1773, +from Newport, chief seat of the slave-trade, asking contributions for +the education of two colored men as missionaries to their native +continent of Africa. To many generous minds at once, in this era of +great Christian enterprises, the thought recurred of vast blessings to +be wrought for the Dark Continent by the agency of colored men +Christianized, civilized, and educated in America. Good men reverently +hoped to see in this triumphant solution of the mystery of divine +providence in permitting the curse of African slavery, through the cruel +greed of men, to be inflicted on the American republic. In 1816 Mills +successfully pressed upon the Presbyterian "Synod of New York and New +Jersey" a plan for educating Christian men of color for the work of the +gospel in their fatherland. That same year, in coöperation with an +earnest philanthropist, Dr. Robert Finley, of New Jersey, he aided in +the instituting of the American Colonization Society. In 1817 he sailed, +in company with a colleague, the Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, to explore the +coast of Africa in search of the best site for a colony. On the return +voyage he died, and his body was committed to the sea: a "little man," +to whom were granted only five years of what men call "active life"; but +he had fulfilled his vow, and the ends of the earth had felt his +influence for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. +The enterprise of African colonization, already dear to Christian hearts +for the hopes that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>it involved of the redemption of a lost continent, +of the elevation of an oppressed race in America, of the emancipation of +slaves and the abolition of slavery, received a new consecration as the +object of the dying labors and prayers of Mills. It was associated, in +the minds of good men, not only with plans for the conversion of the +heathen, and with the tide of antislavery sentiment now spreading and +deepening both at the South and at the North, but also with "Clarkson +societies" and other local organizations, in many different places, for +the moral and physical elevation of the free colored people from the +pitiable degradation in which they were commonly living in the larger +towns. Altogether the watchmen on the walls of Zion saw no fairer sign +of dawn, in that second decade of the nineteenth century, than the +hopeful lifting of the cloud from Africa, the brightening prospects of +the free negroes of the United States, and the growing hope of the +abolition of American slavery.<a name="FNanchor_258:1_167" id="FNanchor_258:1_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_258:1_167" class="fnanchor">[258:1]</a></p> + +<p>Other societies, national in their scope and constituency, the origin of +which belongs in this organizing period, are the American Education +Society (1815), the American Sunday-school Union (1824), the American +Tract Society (1825), the Seamen's Friend Society (1826), and the +American Home Missionary Society (1826), in which last the +Congregationalists of New England coöperated with the Presbyterians on +the basis of a Plan of Union entered into between the General Assembly +and the General Association of Connecticut, the tendency of which was to +reinforce the Presbyterian Church with the numbers and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>the vigor of the +New England westward migration. Of course the establishment of these and +other societies for beneficent work outside of sectarian lines did not +hinder, but rather stimulated, sectarian organizations for the like +objects. The whole American church, in all its orders, was girding +itself for a work, at home and abroad, the immense grandeur of which no +man of that generation could possibly have foreseen.</p> + +<p>The grandeur of this work was to consist not only in the results of it, +but in the resources of it. As never before, the sympathies, prayers, +and personal coöperation of all Christians, even the feeblest, were to +be combined and utilized for enterprises coextensive with the continent +and the world and taking hold on eternity. The possibilities of the new +era were dazzling to the prophetic imagination. A young minister then +standing on the threshold of a long career exulted in the peculiar and +excelling glory of the dawning day:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Surely, if it is the noblest attribute of our nature that +spreads out the circle of our sympathies to include the whole +family of man, and sends forth our affections to embrace the +ages of a distant futurity, it must be regarded as a privilege +no less exalted that our means of <i>doing</i> good are limited by +no remoteness of country or distance of duration, but we may +operate, if we will, to assuage the miseries of another +hemisphere, or to prevent the necessities of an unborn +generation. The time has been when a man might weep over the +wrongs of Africa, and he might look forward to weep over the +hopelessness of her degradation, till his heart should bleed; +and yet his tears would be all that he could give her. He +might relieve the beggar at his door, but he could do nothing +for a dying continent. He might provide for his children, but +he could do nothing for the nations that were yet to be born +to an inheritance of utter wretchedness. Then the privilege of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>engaging in schemes of magnificent benevolence belonged only +to princes and to men of princely possessions; but now the +progress of improvement has brought down this privilege to the +reach of every individual. The institutions of our age are a +republic of benevolence, and all may share in the unrestrained +and equal democracy. This privilege is ours. We may stretch +forth our hand, if we will, to enlighten the Hindu or to tame +the savage of the wilderness. It is ours, if we will, to put +forth our contributions and thus to operate not ineffectually +for the relief and renovation of a continent over which one +tide of misery has swept without ebb and without restraint for +unremembered centuries. It is ours, if we will, to do +something that shall tell on all the coming ages of a race +which has been persecuted and enslaved, trodden down and +despised, for a thousand generations. Our Father has made us +the almoners of his love. He has raised us to partake, as it +were, in the ubiquity of his own beneficence. Shall we be +unworthy of the trust? God forbid!"<a name="FNanchor_260:1_168" id="FNanchor_260:1_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_260:1_168" class="fnanchor">[260:1]</a></p></div> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247:1_159" id="Footnote_247:1_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247:1_159"><span class="label">[247:1]</span></a> "Life of David Bacon," by his son (Boston, 1876).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249:1_160" id="Footnote_249:1_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249:1_160"><span class="label">[249:1]</span></a> Compare the claim of priority for the Dutch church, p. +81, <a href="#Footnote_81:1_45"><i>note</i></a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250:1_161" id="Footnote_250:1_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250:1_161"><span class="label">[250:1]</span></a> J. H. Allen, "The Unitarians," p. 194.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250:2_162" id="Footnote_250:2_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250:2_162"><span class="label">[250:2]</span></a> "Autobiography of L. Beecher," p. 110.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252:1_163" id="Footnote_252:1_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252:1_163"><span class="label">[252:1]</span></a> "Herzog-Schaff Encyclopedia," pp. 2328-2331.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255:1_164" id="Footnote_255:1_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255:1_164"><span class="label">[255:1]</span></a> "The Baptists," by Dr. A. H. Newman, pp. 379-442.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255:2_165" id="Footnote_255:2_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255:2_165"><span class="label">[255:2]</span></a> I have omitted from this list of results in the direct +line from the inception at Andover, in 1810, the American Missionary +Association. It owed its origin, in 1846, to the dissatisfaction felt by +a considerable number of the supporters of the American Board with the +attitude of that institution on some of the questions arising +incidentally to the antislavery discussion. Its foreign missions, never +extensive, were transferred to other hands, at the close of the Civil +War, that it might devote itself wholly to its great and successful work +among "the oppressed races" at home.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256:1_166" id="Footnote_256:1_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256:1_166"><span class="label">[256:1]</span></a> It may be worth considering how far the course of +religious and theological thought would have been modified if the +English New Testament had used these phrases instead of <i>World to Come</i> +and <i>Kingdom of God</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258:1_167" id="Footnote_258:1_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258:1_167"><span class="label">[258:1]</span></a> The colored Baptists of Richmond entered eagerly into +the Colonization project, and in 1822 their "African Missionary Society" +sent out its mission to the young colony of Liberia. One of their +missionaries was the Rev. Lott Cary, the dignity of whose character and +career was an encouragement of his people in their highest aspirations, +and a confirmation of the hopes of their friends (Newman, "The +Baptists," p. 402; Gurley, "Life of Ashmun," pp. 147-160).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260:1_168" id="Footnote_260:1_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260:1_168"><span class="label">[260:1]</span></a> Leonard Bacon, "A Plea for Africa," in the Park Street +Church, Boston, July 4, 1824.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<h3>CONFLICTS OF THE CHURCH WITH PUBLIC WRONGS.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The transition from establishment to the voluntary system for the +support of churches was made not without some difficulty, but with +surprisingly little. In the South the established churches were +practically dead before the laws establishing them were repealed and the +endowments disposed of. In New York the Episcopalian churches were +indeed depressed and discouraged by the ceasing of State support and +official patronage; and inasmuch as these, with the subsidies of the "S. +P. G.," had been their main reliance, it was inevitable that they should +pass through a period of prostration until the appreciation of their +large endowments, and the progress of immigration and of conversion from +other sects, and especially the awakening of religious earnestness and +of sectarian ambition.</p> + +<p>In New England the transition to the voluntary system was more gradual. +Not till 1818 in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts not till 1834, was +the last strand of connection severed between the churches of the +standing order and the state, and the churches left solely to their own +resources. The exaltation and divine inspiration that had come to these +churches with the revivals which from the end of the eighteenth century +were never for a long time intermitted, and the example of the +dissenting congregations, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodist, +successfully self-supported among them, made it easy for them, +notwithstanding the misgivings of many good men, not only to assume the +entire burden of their own expenses, but with this to undertake and +carry forward great and costly enterprises of charity reaching to the +bounds of the country and of the inhabited earth. It is idle to claim +that the American system is at no disadvantage in comparison with that +which elsewhere prevails almost throughout Christendom; but it may be +safely asserted that the danger that has been most emphasized as a +warning against the voluntary system has not attended this system in +America. The fear that a clergy supported by the free gifts of the +people would prove subservient and truckling to the hand by which it is +fed has been proved groundless. Of course there have been time-servers +in the American ministry, as in every other; but flagrant instances of +the abasement of a whole body of clergy before the power that holds the +purse and controls promotion are to be sought in the old countries +rather than the new. Even selfish motives would operate against this +temptation, since it has often been demonstrated that the people will +not sustain a ministry which it suspects of the vice of subserviency. +The annals of no established church can show such unsparing fidelity of +the ministry in rebuking the sins of people and of rulers in the name of +the Lord, as that which has been, on the whole, characteristic of the +Christian ministers of the United States.</p> + +<p>Among the conflicts of the American church with public wrongs strongly +intrenched in law or social usage, two are of such magnitude and +protracted through so long a period as to demand special +consideration—the conflict with drunkenness and the conflict with +slavery. Some less conspicuous illustrations of the fidelity of the +church <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>in the case of public and popular sins may be more briefly +referred to.</p> + +<p>The death of Alexander Hamilton, in July, 1804, in a duel with Aaron +Burr, occasioned a wide and violent outburst of indignation against the +murderer, now a fugitive and outcast, for the dastardly malignity of the +details of his crime, and for the dignity and generosity as well as the +public worth of his victim. This was the sort of explosion of excited +public feeling which often loses itself in the air. It was a different +matter when the churches and ministers of Christ took up the affair in +the light of the law of God, and, dealing not with the circumstances but +with the essence of it, pressed it inexorably on the conscience of the +people. Some of the most memorable words in American literature were +uttered on this occasion, notwithstanding that there were few +congregations in which there were not sore consciences to be irritated +or political anxieties to be set quaking by them. The names of Eliphalet +Nott and John M. Mason were honorably conspicuous in this work. But one +unknown young man of thirty, in a corner of Long Island, uttered words +in his little country meeting-house that pricked the conscience of the +nation. The words of Lyman Beecher on this theme may well be quoted as +being a part of history, for the consequences that followed them.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dueling is a great national sin. With the exception of a +small section of the Union, the whole land is defiled with +blood. From the lakes of the North to the plains of Georgia is +heard the voice of lamentation and woe—the cries of the widow +and fatherless. This work of desolation is performed often by +men in office, by the appointed guardians of life and liberty. +On the floor of Congress challenges have been threatened, if +not given, and thus powder and ball have been introduced as +the auxiliaries of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>deliberation and argument.... We are +murderers—a nation of murderers—while we tolerate and reward +the perpetrators of the crime."</p></div> + +<p>Words such as these resounding from pulpit after pulpit, multiplied and +disseminated by means of the press, acted on by representative bodies of +churches, becoming embodied in anti-dueling societies, exorcised the +foul spirit from the land. The criminal folly of dueling did not, +indeed, at once and altogether cease. Instances of it continue to be +heard of to this day. But the conscience of the nation was instructed, +and a warning was served upon political parties to beware of proposing +for national honors men whose hands were defiled with blood.<a name="FNanchor_264:1_169" id="FNanchor_264:1_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_264:1_169" class="fnanchor">[264:1]</a></p> + +<p>Another instance of the fidelity of the church in resistance to public +wrong was its action in the matter of the dealing of the State of +Georgia and the national government toward the Georgia Indians. This is +no place for the details of the shameful story of perfidy and +oppression. It is well told by Helen Hunt Jackson in the melancholy +pages of "A Century of Dishonor." The wrongs inflicted on the Cherokee +nation were deepened by every conceivable aggravation.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the whole history of our government's dealings with the +Indian tribes there is no record so black as the record of its +perfidy to this nation. There will come a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>time in the remote +future when to the student of American history it will seem +well-nigh incredible. From the beginning of the century they +had been steadily advancing in civilization. As far back as +1800 they had begun the manufacture of cotton cloth, and in +1820 there was scarcely a family in that part of the nation +living east of the Mississippi but what understood the use of +the card and spinning-wheel. Every family had its farm under +cultivation. The territory was laid off into districts, with a +council-house, a judge, and a marshal in each district. A +national committee and council were the supreme authority in +the nation. Schools were flourishing in all the villages. +Printing-presses were at work.... They were enthusiastic in +their efforts to establish and perfect their own system of +jurisprudence. Missions of several sects were established in +their country, and a large number of them had professed +Christianity and were leading exemplary lives. There is no +instance in all history of a race of people passing in so +short a space of time from the barbarous stage to the +agricultural and civilized."<a name="FNanchor_265:1_170" id="FNanchor_265:1_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_265:1_170" class="fnanchor">[265:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>We do well to give authentic details of the condition of the Cherokee +nation in the early part of the century, for the advanced happy and +peaceful civilization of this people was one of the fairest fruits of +American Christianity working upon exceptionally noble race-qualities in +the recipients of it. An agent of the War Department in 1825 made +official report to the Department on the rare beauty of the Cherokee +country, secured to them by the most sacred pledges with which it was +possible for the national government to bind itself, and covered by the +inhabitants, through their industry and thrift, with flocks and herds, +with farms and villages; and goes on to speak of the Indians themselves:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"The natives carry on considerable trade with the adjoining +States; some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee +to the Mississippi, and down that river to New Orleans. Apple +and peach orchards are quite common, and gardens are +cultivated and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese +are seen on Cherokee tables. There are many public roads in +the nation, and houses of entertainment kept by natives. +Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of +the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured; +blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee +hands, are very common. Almost every family in the nation +grows cotton for its own consumption. Industry and commercial +enterprise are extending themselves in every part. Nearly all +the merchants in the nation are native Cherokees. Agricultural +pursuits engage the chief attention of the people. Different +branches in mechanics are pursued. The population is rapidly +increasing.... The Christian religion is the religion of the +nation. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Moravians are +the most numerous sects. Some of the most influential +characters are members of the church and live consistently +with their professions. The whole nation is penetrated with +gratitude for the aid it has received from the United States +government and from different religious societies. Schools are +increasing every year; learning is encouraged and rewarded; +the young class acquire the English and those of mature age +the Cherokee system of learning."<a name="FNanchor_266:1_171" id="FNanchor_266:1_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_266:1_171" class="fnanchor">[266:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>This country, enriched by the toil and thrift of its owners, the State +of Georgia resolved not merely to subjugate to its jurisdiction, but to +steal from its rightful and lawful owners, driving them away as outlaws. +As a sure expedient for securing popular consent to the intended infamy, +the farms of the Cherokees were parceled out to be drawn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>for in a +lottery, and the lottery tickets distributed among the white voters. +Thus fortified, the brave State of Georgia went to all lengths of +outrage. "Missionaries were arrested and sent to prison for preaching to +Cherokees; Cherokees were sentenced to death by Georgia courts and hung +by Georgia executioners." But the great crime could not be achieved +without the connivance, and at last the active consent, of the national +government. Should this consent be given? Never in American history has +the issue been more squarely drawn between the kingdom of Satan and the +kingdom of Christ. American Christianity was most conspicuously +represented in this conflict by an eminent layman, Jeremiah Evarts, +whose fame for this public service, and not for this alone, will in the +lapse of time outshine even that of his illustrious son. In a series of +articles in the "National Intelligencer," under the signature of +"William Penn," he cited the sixteen treaties in which the nation had +pledged its faith to defend the Cherokees in the possession of their +lands, and set the whole case before the people as well as the +government. But his voice was not solitary. From press and pulpit and +from the platforms of public meetings all over the country came +petitions, remonstrances, and indignant protests, reinforcing the +pathetic entreaties of the Cherokees themselves to be protected from the +cruelty that threatened to tear them from their homes. In Congress the +honor of leadership among many faithful and able advocates of right and +justice was conceded to Theodore Frelinghuysen, then in the prime of a +great career of Christian service. By the majority of one vote the bill +for the removal of the Cherokees passed the United States Senate. The +gates of hell triumphed for a time with a fatal exultation. The authors +and abettors of the great crime were confirmed in their delusion that +threats of disunion and rebellion could be relied <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>on to carry any +desired point. But the mills of God went on grinding. Thirty years +later, when in the battle of Missionary Ridge the chivalry of Georgia +went down before the army that represented justice and freedom and the +authority of national law, the vanquished and retreating soldiers of a +lost cause could not be accused of superstition if they remembered that +the scene of their humiliating defeat had received its name from the +martyrdom of Christian missionaries at the hands of their fathers.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>In earlier pages we have already traced the succession of bold protests +and organized labors on the part of church and clergy against the +institution of slavery.<a name="FNanchor_268:1_172" id="FNanchor_268:1_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_268:1_172" class="fnanchor">[268:1]</a> If protest and argument against it seem +to be less frequent in the early years of the new century, it is only +because debate must needs languish when there is no antagonist. Slavery +had at that time no defenders in the church. No body of men in 1818 more +unmistakably represented the Christian citizenship of the whole country, +North, South, and West, outside of New England, than the General +Assembly of the then undivided Presbyterian Church. In that year the +Assembly set forth a full and unanimous expression of its sentiments on +the subject of slavery, addressed "to the churches and people under its +care." This monumental document is too long to be cited here in full. +The opening paragraphs of it exhibit the universally accepted sentiment +of American Christians of that time:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human +race by another as a gross violation of the most precious and +sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with +the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as +ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>with the spirit and +principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin that 'all +things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye +even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral +system. It exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings +in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of +moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of +others whether they shall receive religious instruction; +whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they +shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall +perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and +wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether +they shall preserve their chastity and purity or regard the +dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the +consequences of slavery—consequences not imaginary, but which +connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which +the slave is <i>always</i> exposed often take place in fact, and in +their worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take +place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through +the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on +the minds of masters, they do not, still the slave is deprived +of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed +to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may +inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which +inhumanity and avarice may suggest.</p> + +<p>"From this view of the consequences resulting from the +practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently +fallen of enslaving a portion of their <i>brethren</i> of +mankind,—for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men +to dwell on the face of the earth,'—it is manifestly the duty +of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when +the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of +humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally +seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and +unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and +as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy +religion and to obtain the complete <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>abolition of slavery +throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world."</p></div> + +<p>It was not strange that while sentiments like these prevailed without +contradiction in all parts of the country, while in State after State +emancipations were taking place and acts of abolition were passing, and +even in the States most deeply involved in slavery "a great, and the +most virtuous, part of the community abhorred slavery and wished its +extermination,"<a name="FNanchor_270:1_173" id="FNanchor_270:1_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_270:1_173" class="fnanchor">[270:1]</a> there should seem to be little call for debate. +But that the antislavery spirit in the churches was not dead was +demonstrated with the first occasion.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1820, at the close of two years of agitating +discussion, the new State of Missouri was admitted to the Union as a +slave State, although with the stipulation that the remaining territory +of the United States north of the parallel of latitude bounding Missouri +on the south should be consecrated forever to freedom. The opposition to +this extension of slavery was taken up by American Christianity as its +own cause. It was the impending danger of such an extension that +prompted that powerful and unanimous declaration of the Presbyterian +General Assembly in 1818. The arguments against the Missouri bill, +whether in the debates of Congress or in countless memorials and +resolutions from public meetings both secular and religious, were +arguments from justice and duty and the law of Christ. These were met by +constitutional objections and considerations of expediency and +convenience, and by threats of disunion and civil war. The defense of +slavery on principle had not yet begun to be heard, even among +politicians.</p> + +<p>The successful extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>River was +disheartening to the friends of justice and humanity, but only for the +moment. Already, before the two years' conflict had been decided by "the +Missouri Compromise," a powerful series of articles by that great +religious leader, Jeremiah Evarts, in the "Panoplist" (Boston, 1820), +rallied the forces of the church to renew the battle. The decade that +opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained +antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of +the nation in all quarters.<a name="FNanchor_271:1_174" id="FNanchor_271:1_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_271:1_174" class="fnanchor">[271:1]</a> In New England the focus of +antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover. +There the leading question among the students in their "Society of +Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and +especially what <i>they</i> could do, for the uplifting of the colored +population of the country, both the enslaved and the free. Measures were +concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were +to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with +other men";<a name="FNanchor_271:2_175" id="FNanchor_271:2_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_271:2_175" class="fnanchor">[271:2]</a> and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these +young men when from year to year they came into places of effective +influence. With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an +antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover +their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses +on that day. Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual +antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united +churches of that city, continued for the rest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>of that decade at least +to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of +the oppressed. Neither was the work of the young men circumscribed by +narrow local boundaries. The report of their committee, in the year +1823, on "The Condition of the Black Population of the United States," +could hardly be characterized as timid in its utterances on the moral +character of American slavery. A few lines will indicate the tone of it +in this respect:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, +we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or +modern, pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its +character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its +anticipated results, as the slavery which exists in these +United States.... When we use the strong language which we +feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject, +we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense +moral and political evil.... In regard to its influence on the +white population the most lamentable proof of its +deteriorating effects may be found in the fact that, excepting +the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of +reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds +have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things, +none can be found to lift their voices against a system so +utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated +humanity—a system which permits all the atrocities of the +domestic slave trade—which permits the father to sell his +children as he would his cattle—a system which consigns one +half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and +which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the +same ruin on the master and the slave."<a name="FNanchor_272:1_176" id="FNanchor_272:1_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_272:1_176" class="fnanchor">[272:1]</a></p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>The historical value of the paper from which these brief extracts are +given, as illustrating the attitude of the church at the time, is +enhanced by the use that was made of it. Published in the form of a +review article in a magazine of national circulation, the recognized +organ of the orthodox Congregationalists, it was republished in a +pamphlet for gratuitous distribution and extensively circulated in New +England by the agency of the Andover students. It was also republished +at Richmond, Va. Other laborers at the East in the same cause were +Joshua Leavitt, Bela B. Edwards, and Eli Smith, afterward illustrious as +a missionary,<a name="FNanchor_273:1_177" id="FNanchor_273:1_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_273:1_177" class="fnanchor">[273:1]</a> and Ralph Randolph Gurley, secretary of the +Colonization Society, whose edition of the powerful and uncompromising +sermon of the younger Edwards on "The Injustice and Impolicy of the +Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans" was published at Boston +for circulation at the South, in hopes of promoting the universal +abolition of slavery. The list might be indefinitely extended to include +the foremost names in the church in that period. There was no adverse +party.</p> + +<p>At the West an audacious movement of the slavery extension politicians, +flushed with their success in Missouri, to introduce slavery into +Illinois, Indiana, and even Ohio, was defeated largely by the aid of the +Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of whom had been southern men and had +experienced the evils of the system.<a name="FNanchor_273:2_178" id="FNanchor_273:2_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_273:2_178" class="fnanchor">[273:2]</a> In Kentucky and Tennessee +the abolition movement was led more distinctively by the Presbyterians +and the Quakers. It was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>a bold effort to procure the manumission of +slaves and the repeal of the slave code in those States by the agreement +of the citizens. The character of the movement is indicated in the +constitution of the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West +Tennessee," which declares that slavery "exceeds any other crime in +magnitude" and is "the greatest act of practical infidelity," and that +"the gospel of Christ, if believed, would remove personal slavery at +once by destroying the will in the tyrant to enslave."<a name="FNanchor_274:1_179" id="FNanchor_274:1_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_274:1_179" class="fnanchor">[274:1]</a> A like +movement in North Carolina and in Maryland, at the same time, attained +to formidable dimensions. The state of sentiment in Virginia may be +judged from the fact that so late as December, 1831, in the memorable +debate in the legislature on a proposal for the abolition of slavery, a +leading speaker, denouncing slavery as "the most pernicious of all the +evils with which the body politic can be afflicted," could say, +undisputed, "<i>By none is this position denied</i>, if we except the erratic +John Randolph."<a name="FNanchor_274:2_180" id="FNanchor_274:2_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_274:2_180" class="fnanchor">[274:2]</a> The conflict in Virginia at that critical time +was between Christian principle and wise statesmanship on the one hand, +and on the other hand selfish interest and ambition, and the prevailing +terror resulting from a recent servile insurrection. Up to this time +there appears no sign of any division in the church on this subject. +Neither was there any sectional division; the opponents of slavery, +whether at the North or at the South, were acting in the interest of the +common country, and particularly in the interest of the States that were +still afflicted with slavery. But a swift change was just impending.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p><p>We have already recognized the Methodist organization as the effective +pioneer of systematic abolitionism in America.<a name="FNanchor_275:1_181" id="FNanchor_275:1_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_275:1_181" class="fnanchor">[275:1]</a> The Baptists, also +having their main strength in the southern States, were early and +emphatic in condemning the institutions by which they were +surrounded.<a name="FNanchor_275:2_182" id="FNanchor_275:2_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_275:2_182" class="fnanchor">[275:2]</a> But all the sects found themselves embarrassed by +serious difficulties when it came to the practical application of the +principles and rules which they enunciated. The exacting of "immediate +emancipation" as a condition of fellowship in the ministry or communion +in the church, and the popular cries of "No fellowship with +slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were +found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn +facts. The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by +no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute +authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them +suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.<a name="FNanchor_275:3_183" id="FNanchor_275:3_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_275:3_183" class="fnanchor">[275:3]</a> In dealing +with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1) +To execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the +principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat. +This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian +sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>at a +distance and not well acquainted with details of fact. (2) To attempt to +provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses. This +course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without success. (3) +Discouraged by the difficulties, to let go all discipline. This was the +point reached at last by most of the southern churches. (4) Clinging to +the formulas, "Immediate emancipation," "No communion with +slave-holders," so to "palter in a double sense" with the words as to +evade the meaning of them. According to this method, slave-holding did +not consist in the holding of slaves, but in holding them with evil +purpose and wrong treatment; a slave who was held for his own advantage, +receiving from his master "that which is just and equal," was said, in +this dialect, to be "morally emancipated." This was the usual expedient +of a large and respectable party of antislavery Christians at the North, +when their principle of "no communion with slave-holders" brought them +to the seeming necessity of excommunicating an unquestionably Christian +brother for doing an undeniable duty. (5) To lay down, broadly and +explicitly, the principles of Christian morality governing the subject, +leaving the application of them in individual cases to the individual +church or church-member. This was the course exemplified with admirable +wisdom and fidelity in the Presbyterian "deliverance" of 1818. (6) To +meet the postulate, laid down with so much assurance, as if an axiom, +that "slave-holding is always and everywhere a sin, to be immediately +repented of and forsaken," with a flat and square contradiction, as +being irreconcilable with facts and with the judgment of the Christian +Scriptures; and thus to condemn and oppose to the utmost the system of +slavery, without imputing the guilt of it to persons involved in it by +no fault of their own. This course commended itself to many lucid and +logical minds and honest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>consciences, including some of the most +consistent and effective opponents of slavery. (7) Still another course +must be mentioned, which, absurd as it seems, was actually pursued by a +few headlong reformers, who showed in various ways a singular alacrity +at playing into the hands of their adversaries. It consisted in +enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most +offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and +every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to +turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this +sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man +holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason +justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.<a name="FNanchor_277:1_184" id="FNanchor_277:1_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_277:1_184" class="fnanchor">[277:1]</a> It is +not strange that men in the southern churches, being offered such an +argument ready made to their hand, should promptly accept both the +premiss and the conclusion, and that so at last there should begin to be +a pro-slavery party in the American church.</p> + +<p>The disastrous epoch of the beginning of what has been called "the +southern apostasy" from the universal moral sentiment of Christendom on +the subject of slavery may be dated at about the year 1833. A year +earlier began to be heard those vindications on political grounds of +what had just been declared in the legislature of Virginia to be by +common consent the most pernicious of political evils—vindications +which continued for thirty years to invite the wonder of the civilized +world. When (about 1833) a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, the +Rev. James Smylie, made the "discovery," which "surprised himself," that +the system of American slavery was sanctioned and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>approved by the +Scriptures as good and righteous, he found that his brethren in the +Presbyterian ministry at the extreme South were not only surprised, but +shocked and offended, at the proposition.<a name="FNanchor_278:1_185" id="FNanchor_278:1_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_278:1_185" class="fnanchor">[278:1]</a> And yet such was the +swift progress of this innovation that in surprisingly few years, we +might almost say months, it had become not only prevalent, but violently +and exclusively dominant in the church of the southern States, with the +partial exception of Kentucky and Tennessee. It would be difficult to +find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of +sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology. Dissent from the +novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor. It was +less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to +hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been +commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great +religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading +statesmen. It became one of the accepted evidences of Christianity at +the South that infidelity failed to offer any justification for American +slavery equal to that derived from the Christian Scriptures. That +eminent leader among the Lutheran clergy, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, of +Charleston, referred "that unexampled unanimity of sentiment that now +exists in the whole South on the subject of slavery" to the confidence +felt by the religious public in the Bible defense of slavery as set +forth by clergymen and laymen in sermons and pamphlets and speeches in +Congress.<a name="FNanchor_278:2_186" id="FNanchor_278:2_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_278:2_186" class="fnanchor">[278:2]</a></p> + +<p>The historian may not excuse himself from the task of inquiring into the +cause of this sudden and immense moral revolution. The explanation +offered by Dr. Bachman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>is the very thing that needs to be explained. +How came the Christian public throughout the slave-holding States, which +so short a time before had been unanimous in finding in the Bible the +condemnation of their slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the +divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent +institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about +the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent +on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on +the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small +but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift +current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this +sudden change of religious opinion—one of the most remarkable in the +history of the church—was panic terror. In August, 1831, a servile +insurrection in Virginia, led by a crazy negro, Nat Turner by name, was +followed (as always in such cases) by bloody vengeance on the part of +the whites.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Southampton insurrection, occurring at a time when the +price of slaves was depressed in consequence of a depression +in the price of cotton, gave occasion to a sudden development +of opposition to slavery in the legislature of Virginia. A +measure for the prospective abolition of the institution in +that ancient commonwealth was proposed, earnestly debated, +eloquently urged, and at last defeated, with a minority +ominously large in its favor. Warned by so great a peril, and +strengthened soon afterward by an increase in the market value +of cotton and of slaves, the slave-holding interest in all the +South was stimulated to new activity. Defenses of slavery more +audacious than had been heard before began to be uttered by +southern politicians at home and by southern representatives +and senators in Congress. A panic seized upon the planters in +some districts of the Southwest. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>Conspiracies and plans of +insurrection were discovered. Negroes were tortured or +terrified into confessions. Obnoxious white men were put to +death without any legal trial and in defiance of those rules +of evidence which are insisted on by southern laws. Thus a +sudden and convincing terror was spread through the South. +Every man was made to know that if he should become obnoxious +to the guardians of the great southern 'institution' he was +liable to be denounced and murdered. It was distinctly and +imperatively demanded that nobody should be allowed to say +anything anywhere against slavery. The movement of the +societies which had then been recently formed at Boston and +New York, with 'Immediate abolition' for their motto, was made +use of to stimulate the terror and the fury of the South.... +The position of political parties and of candidates for the +Presidency, just at that juncture, gave special advantage to +the agitators—an advantage that was not neglected. Everything +was done that practiced demagogues could contrive to stimulate +the South into a frenzy and to put down at once and forever +all opposition to slavery. The clergy and the religious bodies +were summoned to the patriotic duty of committing themselves +on the side of 'southern institutions.' Just then it was, if +we mistake not, that their apostasy began. They dared not say +that slavery as an institution in the State is essentially an +organized injustice, and that, though the Scriptures rightly +and wisely enjoin justice and the recognition of the slaves' +brotherhood upon masters, and conscientious meekness upon +slaves, the organized injustice of the institution ought to be +abolished by the shortest process consistent with the public +safety and the welfare of the enslaved. They dared not even +keep silence under the plea that the institution is political +and therefore not to be meddled with by religious bodies or +religious persons. They yielded to the demand. They were +carried along in the current of the popular frenzy; they +joined in the clamor, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians;' they +denounced the fanaticism of abolition and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>permitted +themselves to be understood as certifying, in the name of +religion and of Christ, that the entire institution of slavery +'as it exists' is chargeable with no injustice and is +warranted by the word of God."<a name="FNanchor_281:1_187" id="FNanchor_281:1_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_281:1_187" class="fnanchor">[281:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>There is no good reason to question the genuineness and sincerity of the +fears expressed by the slave-holding population as a justification of +their violent measures for the suppression of free speech in relation to +slavery; nor of their belief that the papers and prints actively +disseminated from the antislavery press in Boston were fitted, if not +distinctly intended, to kindle bloody insurrections. These terrors were +powerfully pleaded in the great debate in the Virginia legislature as an +argument for the abolition of slavery.<a name="FNanchor_281:2_188" id="FNanchor_281:2_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_281:2_188" class="fnanchor">[281:2]</a> This failing, they became +throughout the South a constraining power for the suppression of free +speech, not only on the part of outsiders, but among the southern people +themselves. The régime thus introduced was, in the strictest sense of +the phrase, "a reign of terror." The universal lockjaw which thenceforth +forbade the utterance of what had so recently and suddenly ceased to be +the unanimous religious conviction of the southern church soon produced +an "unexampled unanimity" on the other side, broken only when some fiery +and indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the +Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives +against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had +been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every +correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God," +and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly! The man who cannot see that +involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the +principle of taking by force that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>which is another's has simply no +moral sense.... Hereditary slavery is without pretense, except in avowed +rapacity."<a name="FNanchor_282:1_189" id="FNanchor_282:1_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_282:1_189" class="fnanchor">[282:1]</a> Of course the antislavery societies which, under +various names, had existed in the South by hundreds were suddenly +extinguished, and manumissions, which had been going on at the rate of +thousands in a year, almost entirely ceased.</p> + +<p>The strange and swiftly spreading moral epidemic did not stop at State +boundary lines. At the North the main cause of defection was not, +indeed, directly operative. There was no danger there of servile +insurrection. But there was true sympathy for those who lived under the +shadow of such impending horrors, threatening alike the guilty and the +innocent. There was a deep passion of honest patriotism, now becoming +alarmed lest the threats of disunion proceeding from the terrified South +should prove a serious peril to the nation in whose prosperity the hopes +of the world seemed to be involved. There was a worthy solicitude lest +the bonds of intercourse between the churches of North and South should +be ruptured and so the integrity of the nation be the more imperiled. +Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust +at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their +headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility, +scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the +unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law +and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept +their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves +exclusively the name of abolitionist, made that name, so long a title of +honor, to be universally odious.<a name="FNanchor_282:2_190" id="FNanchor_282:2_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_282:2_190" class="fnanchor">[282:2]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>These various factors of public opinion were actively manipulated. +Political parties competed for the southern vote. Commercial houses +competed for southern business. Religious sects, parties, and societies +were emulous in conciliating southern adhesions or contributions and +averting schisms. The condition of success in any of these cases was +well understood to be concession, or at least silence, on the subject of +slavery. The pressure of motives, some of which were honorable and +generous, was everywhere, like the pressure of the atmosphere. It was +not strange that there should be defections from righteousness. Even the +enormous effrontery of the slave power in demanding for its own security +that the rule of tyrannous law and mob violence by which freedom of +speech and of the press had been extinguished at the South should be +extended over the so-called free States did not fail of finding citizens +of reputable standing so base as to give the demand their countenance, +their public advocacy, and even their personal assistance. As the +subject emerged from time to time in the religious community, the +questions arising were often confused and embarrassed by false issues +and illogical statements, and the state of opinion was continually +misrepresented through the incurable habit of the over-zealous in +denouncing as "pro-slavery" those who dissented from their favorite +formulas. But after all deductions, the historian who shall by and by +review this period with the advantage of a longer perspective will be +compelled to record not a few lamentable defections, both individual and +corporate, from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity. And, +nevertheless, that later record will also show that while the southern +church had been terrified into "an unexampled unanimity" in renouncing +the principles which it had unanimously held, and while like causes had +wrought potently upon northern sentiment, it was the steadfast fidelity +of the Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of +thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to +slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for +the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, +by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever +consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was +presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of +New England was prompt, spontaneous, emphatic, and practically +unanimous. Their memorial, with three thousand and fifty signatures, +protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his +presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently +injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all +confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the +peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to +the just judgments of the Almighty." In like manner the memorial of one +hundred and fifty-one clergymen of various denominations in New York +City and vicinity protested in like terms, "in the name of religion and +humanity," against the guilt of the extension of slavery. Perhaps there +has been no occasion on which the consenting voice of the entire church +has been so solemnly uttered on a question of public morality, and this +in the very region in which church and clergy had been most stormily +denounced by the little handful of abolitionists <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>who gloried in the +name of infidel<a name="FNanchor_285:1_191" id="FNanchor_285:1_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_285:1_191" class="fnanchor">[285:1]</a> as recreant to justice and humanity.</p> + +<p>The protest of the church was of no avail to defeat the machination of +demagogues. The iniquitous measure was carried through. But this was not +the end; it was only the beginning of the end. Yet ten years, and +American slavery, through the mad folly of its advocates and the +steadfast fidelity of the great body of the earnestly religious people +of the land, was swept away by the tide of war.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The long struggle of the American church against drunkenness as a social +and public evil begins at an early date. One of the thirteen colonies, +Georgia, had the prohibition of slavery and of the importation of +spirituous liquors incorporated by Oglethorpe in its early and +short-lived constitution. It would be interesting to discover, if we +could, to what extent the rigor of John Wesley's discipline against both +these mischiefs was due to his association with Oglethorpe in the +founding of that latest of the colonies. Both the imperious nature of +Wesley and the peculiar character of his fraternity as being originally +not a church, but a voluntary society within the church, predisposed to +a policy of arbitrary exclusiveness by hard and fast lines drawn +according to formula, which might not have been ventured on by one who +was consciously drawing up the conditions of communion in the church. In +the Puritan colonies the public morals in respect to temperance were +from the beginning guarded by salutary license laws devised to suppress +all dram-shops and tippling-houses, and to prevent, as far as law could +wisely undertake to prevent, all abusive and mischievous sales of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>liquor. But these indications of a sound public sentiment did not +prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of +the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of +the nineteenth century. Two circumstances had combined to aggravate the +national vice. Seven years of army life, with its exhaustion and +exposure and military social usage, had initiated into dangerous +drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders of society, +and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks. Besides this, +the increased importation and manufacture of distilled spirits had made +it easy and common to substitute these for the mild fermented liquors +which had been the ordinary drink of the people. Gradually and +unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of +which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception. +The words of Isaiah concerning the drunkards of Ephraim seem not too +strong to apply to the condition of American society, that "all tables +were full of vomit and filthiness." In the prevalence of intemperate +drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection. "The +priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." Individual +words of warning, among the earliest of which was the classical essay of +Dr. Benjamin Rush (1785), failed to arouse general attention. The new +century was well advanced before the stirring appeals of Ebenezer +Porter, Lyman Beecher, Heman Humphrey, and Jeremiah Evarts had awakened +in the church any effectual conviction of sin in the matter. The +appointment of a strong committee, in 1811, by the Presbyterian General +Assembly was promptly followed by like action by the clergy of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, leading to the formation of State +societies. But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with +the evil to be overcome must be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>dated from the organization of the +"American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first +aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering +social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary +social intercourse. The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift +and complete. A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the +same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was +able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of +those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or +exaggeration:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed +in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use +of ardent spirits—the new phenomenon of an intelligent people +rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without +any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of +public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a +great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down +among his subjects by any system of efforts—has excited +admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister +country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental +Europe."<a name="FNanchor_287:1_192" id="FNanchor_287:1_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_287:1_192" class="fnanchor">[287:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it, +that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the +temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social +drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively +religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the +efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits. The +attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal" +abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the +ban, dates from as late as 1836.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p><p>But it soon appeared that the immense gain of banishing ardent spirits +from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the +haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some +corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic +and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of +obscure tippling-shops—a nuisance, at least in New England, till then +unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had +interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to +his transient guests, not to the people of the town. With the +suppression of social drinking there was effected, in spite of salutary +law to the contrary, a woeful change. The American "saloon" was, in an +important sense, the offspring of the American temperance reformation. +The fact justified the reformer in turning his attention to the law. +From that time onward the history of the temperance reformation has +included the history of multitudinous experiments in legislation, none +of which has been so conclusive as to satisfy all students of the +subject that any later law is, on the whole, more usefully effective +than the original statutes of the Puritan colonies.<a name="FNanchor_288:1_193" id="FNanchor_288:1_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_288:1_193" class="fnanchor">[288:1]</a></p> + +<p>In 1840 the temperance reformation received a sudden forward impulse +from an unexpected source. One evening a group of six notoriously hard +drinkers, coming together greatly impressed from a sermon of that noted +evangelist, Elder Jacob Knapp, pledged themselves by mutual vows to +total abstinence; and from this beginning went forward that +extraordinary agitation known as "the Washingtonian movement." Up to +this time the aim of the reformers had been mainly directed to the +prevention <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>of drunkenness by a change in social customs and personal +habits. Now there was suddenly opened a door of hope to the almost +despair of the drunkard himself. The lately reformed drunkards of +Baltimore set themselves to the reforming of other drunkards, and these +took up the work in their turn, and reformation was extended in a +geometrical progression till it covered the country. Everywhere meetings +were held, to be addressed by reformed drunkards, and new recruits from +the gutter were pushed forward to tell their experience to the admiring +public, and sent out on speaking tours. The people were stirred up as +never before on the subject of temperance. There was something very +Christian-like in the method of this propagation, and hopeful souls +looked forward to a temperance millennium as at hand. But fatal faults +in the work soon discovered themselves. Among the new evangelists were +not a few men of true penitence and humility, like John Hawkins, and one +man at least of incomparable eloquence as well as Christian earnestness, +John B. Gough. But the public were not long in finding that merely to +have wallowed in vice and to be able to tell ludicrous or pathetic +stories from one's experience was not of itself sufficient qualification +for the work of a public instructor in morals. The temperance platform +became infested with swaggering autobiographers, whose glory was in +their shame, and whose general influence was distinctly demoralizing. +The sudden influx of the tide of enthusiasm was followed by a disastrous +ebb. It was the estimate of Mr. Gough that out of six hundred thousand +reformed drunkards not less than four hundred and fifty thousand had +relapsed into vice. The same observer, the splendor of whose eloquence +was well mated with an unusual sobriety of judgment, is credited with +the statement <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>that he knew of no case of stable reformation from +drunkenness that was not connected with a thorough spiritual renovation +and conversion.</p> + +<p>Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the +"Washingtonian" excitement. But the evil that it did lived after it. +Already at the time of its breaking forth the temperance reformation had +entered upon that period of decadence in which its main interest was to +be concentrated upon law and politics. And here the vicious ethics of +the reformed-drunkard school became manifest. The drunkard, according to +his own account of himself (unless he was not only reformed, but +repentant), had been a victim of circumstances. Drunkenness, instead of +a base and beastly sin, was an infirmity incident to a high-strung and +generous temperament. The blame of it was to be laid, not upon the +drunkard, whose exquisitely susceptible organization was quite unable to +resist temptation coming in his way, but on those who put intoxicating +liquor where he could get at it, or on the State, whose duty it was to +put the article out of the reach of its citizens. The guilt of +drunkenness must rest, not on the unfortunate drunkard who happened to +be attacked by that disease, but on the sober and well-behaving citizen, +and especially the Christian citizen, who did not vote the correct +ticket.</p> + +<p>What may be called the Prohibition period of the temperance reformation +begins about 1850 and still continues. It is characterized by the +pursuit of a type of legislation of variable efficacy or inefficacy, the +essence of which is that the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be a +monopoly of the government.<a name="FNanchor_290:1_194" id="FNanchor_290:1_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_290:1_194" class="fnanchor">[290:1]</a> Indications begin to appear that the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>disproportionate devotion to measures of legislation and politics is +abating. Some of the most effective recent labor for the promotion of +temperance has been wrought independently of such resort. If the cycle +shall be completed, and the church come back to the methods by which its +first triumphs in this field were won, it will come back the wiser and +the stronger for its vicissitudes of experience through these threescore +years and ten.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264:1_169" id="Footnote_264:1_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264:1_169"><span class="label">[264:1]</span></a> "An impression was made that never ceased. It started a +series of efforts that have affected the whole northern mind at least; +and in Jackson's time the matter came up in Congress, and a law was +passed disfranchising a duelist. And that was not the last of it; for +when Henry Clay was up for the Presidency the Democrats printed an +edition of forty thousand of that sermon and scattered them all over the +North" ("Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 153, 154; with +foot-note from Dr. L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power +in the politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the +name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious +feeling of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of Henry +Clay").</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265:1_170" id="Footnote_265:1_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265:1_170"><span class="label">[265:1]</span></a> "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 270, 271.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266:1_171" id="Footnote_266:1_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266:1_171"><span class="label">[266:1]</span></a> "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 275, 276.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268:1_172" id="Footnote_268:1_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268:1_172"><span class="label">[268:1]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270:1_173" id="Footnote_270:1_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270:1_173"><span class="label">[270:1]</span></a> Deliverance of General Assembly, 1818.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271:1_174" id="Footnote_271:1_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271:1_174"><span class="label">[271:1]</span></a> The persistent attempt to represent this period as one +of prevailing apathy and inertia on the subject of slavery is a very +flagrant falsification of history. And yet by dint of sturdy reiteration +it has been forced into such currency as to impose itself even on so +careful a writer as Mr. Schouler, in his "History of the United States." +It is impossible to read this part of American church history +intelligently, unless the mind is disabused of this misrepresentation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271:2_175" id="Footnote_271:2_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271:2_175"><span class="label">[271:2]</span></a> "Christian Spectator" (monthly), New Haven, 1828, p. +4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272:1_176" id="Footnote_272:1_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272:1_176"><span class="label">[272:1]</span></a> "Christian Spectator," 1823, pp. 493, 494, 341; "The +Earlier Antislavery Days," by L. Bacon, in the "Christian Union," +December 9 and 16, 1874, January 6 and 13, 1875. It is one of the +"Curiosities of Literature," though hardly one of its "Amenities," that +certain phrases carefully dissected from this paper (which was written +by Mr. Bacon at the age of twenty-one) should be pertinaciously used, in +the face of repeated exposures, to prove the author of it to be an +apologist for slavery!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273:1_177" id="Footnote_273:1_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273:1_177"><span class="label">[273:1]</span></a> "Christian Spectator," 1825-1828.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273:2_178" id="Footnote_273:2_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273:2_178"><span class="label">[273:2]</span></a> Wilson, "Slave Power in America," vol. i., p. 164; +"James G. Birney and his Times," pp. 64, 65. This last-named book is an +interesting and valuable contribution of materials for history, +especially by its refutation of certain industriously propagated +misrepresentations.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274:1_179" id="Footnote_274:1_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274:1_179"><span class="label">[274:1]</span></a> "Birney and his Times," chap. xii., on "Abolition in +the South before 1828." Much is to be learned on this neglected topic in +American history from the reports of the National Convention for the +Abolition of Slavery, meeting biennially, with some intermissions, at +Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington down to 1829. An incomplete file +of these reports is at the library of Brown University.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274:2_180" id="Footnote_274:2_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274:2_180"><span class="label">[274:2]</span></a> Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., chap. xiv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275:1_181" id="Footnote_275:1_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275:1_181"><span class="label">[275:1]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275:2_182" id="Footnote_275:2_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275:2_182"><span class="label">[275:2]</span></a> Newman, "The Baptists," pp. 288, 305. Let me make +general reference to the volumes of the American Church History Series +by their several indexes, s. v. Slavery.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275:3_183" id="Footnote_275:3_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275:3_183"><span class="label">[275:3]</span></a> One instance for illustration is as good as ten +thousand. It is from the "Life of James G. Birney," a man of the highest +integrity of conscience: "Michael, the husband and father of the family +legally owned by Mr. Birney, and who had been brought up with him from +boyhood, had been unable to conquer his appetite for strong liquors, and +needed the constant watchful care of his master and friend. For some +years the probability was that if free he would become a confirmed +drunkard and beggar his family. The children were nearly grown, but had +little mental capacity. For years Michael had understood that his +freedom would be restored to him as soon as he could control his love of +ardent spirits" (pp. 108, 109).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277:1_184" id="Footnote_277:1_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277:1_184"><span class="label">[277:1]</span></a> "If human beings could be justly held in bondage for +one hour, they could be for days and weeks and years, and so on +indefinitely from generation to generation" ("Life of W. L. Garrison," +vol. i., p. 140).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278:1_185" id="Footnote_278:1_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278:1_185"><span class="label">[278:1]</span></a> "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, p. 639, article on +"The Southern Apostasy."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278:2_186" id="Footnote_278:2_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278:2_186"><span class="label">[278:2]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 642-644.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281:1_187" id="Footnote_281:1_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281:1_187"><span class="label">[281:1]</span></a> "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, pp. 660, 661.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281:2_188" id="Footnote_281:2_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281:2_188"><span class="label">[281:2]</span></a> Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., pp. 190-207.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282:1_189" id="Footnote_282:1_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282:1_189"><span class="label">[282:1]</span></a> "Biblical Repertory," Princeton, July, 1833, pp. 294, +295, 303.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282:2_190" id="Footnote_282:2_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282:2_190"><span class="label">[282:2]</span></a> The true story of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and his +little party has yet to be written faithfully and fully. As told by his +family and friends and by himself, it is a monstrous falsification of +history. One of the best sources of authentic material for this chapter +of history is "James G. Birney and his Times," by General William +Birney, pp. 269-331. I may also refer to my volume, "Irenics and +Polemics" (New York, the Christian Literature Co.), pp. 145-202. The sum +of the story is given thus, in the words of Charles Sumner: "An +omnibus-load of Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the +antislavery cause than all its enemies" ("Birney," p. 331).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285:1_191" id="Footnote_285:1_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285:1_191"><span class="label">[285:1]</span></a> Birney, p. 321.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287:1_192" id="Footnote_287:1_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287:1_192"><span class="label">[287:1]</span></a> Sermon of L. Bacon (MS.), New Haven, July 4, 1830.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288:1_193" id="Footnote_288:1_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288:1_193"><span class="label">[288:1]</span></a> "Eastern and Western States of America," by J. S. +Buckingham, M. P., vol. i., pp. 408-413.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290:1_194" id="Footnote_290:1_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290:1_194"><span class="label">[290:1]</span></a> By a curious anomaly in church polity, adhesion to this +particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the +discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In most other communions +liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best +fitted to the end sought.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<h3>A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS.</h3> + + +<p class="section">During the period from 1835 to 1845 the spirit of schism seemed to be in +the air. In this period no one of the larger organizations of churches +was free from agitating controversies, and some of the most important of +them were rent asunder by explosion.</p> + +<p>At the time when the Presbyterian Church suffered its great schism, in +1837, it was the most influential religious body in the United States. +In 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries, +including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants. +But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It +represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races +on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish +immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition +derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally +educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional social standing +and control over men of intellectual strength and leadership. In the +four years beginning with 1831 the additions to its roll of communicants +"on examination" had numbered nearly one hundred thousand. But this +spiritual growth was chilled and stunted by the dissensions that arose. +The revivals ceased and the membership actually dwindled.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p><p>The contention had grown (a fact not without parallel in church +history) out of measures devised in the interest of coöperation and +union. In 1801, in the days of its comparative feebleness, the General +Assembly had proposed to the General Association of Connecticut a "Plan +of Union" according to which the communities of New England Christians +then beginning to move westward between the parallels that bound "the +New England zone," and bringing with them their accustomed +Congregational polity, might coöperate on terms of mutual concession +with Presbyterian churches in their neighborhood. The proposals had been +fraternally received and accepted, and under the terms of this compact +great accessions had been made to the strength of the Presbyterian +Church, of pastors and congregations marked with the intellectual +activity and religious enterprise of the New England churches, who, +while cordially conforming to the new methods of organization and +discipline, were not in the least penetrated with the traditionary +Scotch veneration for the Westminster standards. For nearly thirty years +the great reinforcements from New England and from men of the New +England way of thinking had been ungrudgingly bestowed and heartily +welcomed. But the great accessions which in the first four years of the +fourth decade of this century had increased the roll of the communicants +of the Presbyterian Church by more than fifty per cent. had come in +undue proportion from the New Englandized regions of western New York +and Ohio. It was inevitable that the jealousy of hereditary +Presbyterians, "whose were the fathers," should be aroused by the +perfectly reasonable fear lest the traditional ways of the church which +they felt to be in a peculiar sense <i>their</i> church might be affected by +so large an element from without.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>The grounds of explicit complaint against the party called "New School" +were principally twofold—doctrine and organization.</p> + +<p>In the Presbyterian Church at this time were three pretty distinct types +of theological thought. First, there was the unmitigated Scotch +Calvinism; secondly, there was the modification of this system, which +became naturalized in the church after the Great Awakening, when +Jonathan Dickinson and Jonathan Edwards, from neighbor towns in +Massachusetts, came to be looked upon as the great Presbyterian +theologians; thirdly, there was the "consistent Calvinism," that had +been still further evolved by the patient labor of students in direct +succession from Edwards, and that was known under the name of +"Hopkinsianism." Just now the latest and not the least eminent in this +school, Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, was enunciating to large +and enthusiastic classes in Yale Divinity School new definitions and +forms of statement giving rise to much earnest debate. The alarm of +those to whom the very phrase "improvement in theology" was an +abomination expressed itself in futile indictments for heresy brought +against some of the most eminently godly and useful ministers in all the +church. Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, Edward Beecher, J. M. +Sturtevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, and George Duffield, +of the presbytery of Carlisle, Pa., were annoyed by impeachments for +heresy, which all failed before reaching the court of last resort. But +repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, +were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up +year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the +position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the +denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary +meeting-place <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the +accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and +useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing +student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness +with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through +a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and +illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space +of a year, as one suspended from the ministry.</p> + +<p>The earliest leaders in national organization for the propagation of +Christianity at home and abroad were the Congregationalists of New +England and men like-minded with them. But the societies thus originated +were organized on broad and catholic principles, and invited the +coöperation of all Christians. They naturally became the organs of much +of the active beneficence of Presbyterian congregations, and the +Presbyterian clergy and laity were largely represented in the direction +of them. They were recognized and commended by the representative bodies +of the Presbyterian Church. As a point of high-church theory it was held +by the rigidly Presbyterian party that the work of the gospel in all its +departments and in all lands is the proper function of "the church as +such"—meaning practically that each sect ought to have its separate +propaganda. There was logical strength in this position as reached from +their premisses, and there were arguments of practical convenience to be +urged in favor of it. But the demand to sunder at once the bonds of +fellowship which united Christians of different names in the beneficent +work of the great national societies was not acceptable even to the +whole of the Old-School party. To the New Englanders it was intolerable.</p> + +<p>There were other and less important grounds of difference that were +discussed between the parties. And in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>the background, behind them all, +was the slavery question. It seems to have been willingly <i>kept</i> in the +background by the leaders of debate on both sides; but it was there. The +New-School synods and presbyteries of the North were firm in their +adherence to the antislavery principles of the church. On the other +hand, the Old-School party relied, in the <i>coup d'église</i> that was in +preparation, on the support of "an almost solid South."<a name="FNanchor_296:1_195" id="FNanchor_296:1_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_296:1_195" class="fnanchor">[296:1]</a></p> + +<p>It was an unpardonable <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has offence">offense</ins> of the New-School party that it had grown +to such formidable strength, intellectually, spiritually, and +numerically. The probability that the church might, with the continued +growth and influence of this party, become Americanized and so lose the +purity of its thoroughgoing Scotch traditions was very real, and to some +minds very dreadful. To these the very ark of God seemed in danger. +Arraignments for heresy in presbytery and synod resulted in failure; and +when these and other cases involving questions of orthodoxy or of the +policy of the church were brought into the supreme judicature of the +church, the solemn but unmistakable fact disclosed itself that even the +General Assembly could not be relied on for the support of measures +introduced by the Old-School leaders. In fact, every Assembly from 1831 +to 1836, with a single exception, had shown a clear New-School majority. +The foundations were destroyed, and what should the righteous do?</p> + +<p>History was about to repeat itself with unwonted preciseness of detail. +On the gathering of the Assembly of 1837 a careful count of noses +revealed what had been known only once before in seven years, and what +might never be again—a clear Old-School majority in the house. To the +pious mind the neglecting of such an opportunity would have been to +tempt Providence. Without notice, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>without complaint or charges or +specifications, without opportunity of defense, 4 synods, including 533 +churches and more than 100,000 communicants, were excommunicated by a +majority vote. The victory of pure doctrine and strict church order, +though perhaps not exactly glorious, was triumphant and irreversible. +There was no more danger to the church from a possible New-School +majority.</p> + +<p>When the four exscinded synods, three in western New York and one in +Ohio, together with a great following of sympathizing congregations in +all parts of the country, came together to reconstruct their shattered +polity, they were found to number about four ninths of the late +Presbyterian Church. For thirty years the American church was to present +to Christendom the strange spectacle of two great ecclesiastical bodies +claiming identically the same name, holding the same doctrinal +standards, observing the same ritual and governed by the same +discipline, and occupying the same great territory, and yet completely +dissevered from each other and at times in relations of sharp mutual +antagonism.<a name="FNanchor_297:1_196" id="FNanchor_297:1_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_297:1_196" class="fnanchor">[297:1]</a></p> + +<p>The theological debate which had split the Presbyterian Church from end +to end was quite as earnest and copious in New England. But owing to the +freer habit of theological inquiry and the looser texture of +organization among the Congregationalist churches, it made no organic +schism beyond the setting up of a new theological seminary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>in +Connecticut to offset what were deemed the "dangerous tendencies" of the +New Haven theology. After a few years the party lines had faded out and +the two seminaries were good neighbors.</p> + +<p>The unlikeliest place in all American Christendom for a partisan +controversy and a schism would have seemed to be the Unitarian +denomination in and about Boston. Beginning with the refusal not only of +any imposed standard of belief, but of any statement of common opinions, +and with unlimited freedom of opinion in every direction, unless, +perhaps, in the direction of orthodoxy, it was not easy to see how a +splitting wedge could be started in it. But the infection of the time +was not to be resisted. Even Unitarianism must have its heresies and +heresiarchs to deal with. No sooner did the pressure of outside attack +abate than antagonisms began pretty sharply to declare themselves. In +1832 Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, pastor of the Second Church in Boston, +proposed to the church to abandon or radically change the observance of +the Lord's Supper. When the church demurred at this extraordinary demand +he resigned his office, firing off an elaborate argument against the +usage of the church by way of a parting salute. Without any formal +demission of the ministry, he retired to his literary seclusion at +Concord, from which he brought forth in books and lectures the oracular +utterances which caught more and more the ear of a wide public, and in +which, in casual-seeming parentheses and <i>obiter dicta</i>, Christianity +and all practical religion were condemned by sly innuendo and +half-respectful allusion by which he might "without sneering teach the +rest to sneer." In 1838 he was still so far recognized in the ministry +as to be invited to address the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity +School. The blank pantheism which he then enunciated called forth from +Professor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>Henry Ware, Jr., a sermon in the college chapel on the +personality of God, which he sent with a friendly note to Mr. Emerson. +The gay and Skimpolesque reply of the sage is an illustration of that +flippancy with which he chose to toy in a literary way with momentous +questions, and which was so exasperating to the earnest men of positive +religious convictions with whom he had been associated in the Christian +ministry.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge +should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have +always been, from my incapacity of methodical writing, 'a +chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, lucky +when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near +enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the +notice of masters of literature and religion.... I could not +possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you so cruelly hint +at on which any doctrine of mine stands, for I do not know +what arguments mean in reference to any expression of thought. +I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I +dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal +men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits +of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my +affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance +of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed +duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis +against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing."</p></div> + +<p>The issue was joined and the controversy began. Professor Andrews Norton +in a pamphlet denounced "the latest form of infidelity," and the Rev. +George Ripley replied in a volume, to which Professor Norton issued a +rejoinder. But there was not substance enough of religious dogma and +sentiment in the transcendentalist <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>philosophers to give them any +permanent standing in the church. They went into various walks of +secular literature, and have powerfully influenced the course of +opinions; but they came to be no longer recognizable as a religious or +theological party.</p> + +<p>Among the minor combatants in the conflict between the Unitarians and +the pantheists was a young man whose name was destined to become +conspicuous, not within the Unitarian fellowship, but on the outskirts +of it. Theodore Parker was a man of a different type from the men about +him of either party. The son of a mechanic, he fought his way through +difficulties to a liberal education, and was thirty years old before his +very great abilities attracted general attention. A greedy gormandizer +of books in many languages, he had little of the dainty scholarship so +much prized at the neighboring university. But the results of his vast +reading were stored in a quick and tenacious memory as ready rhetorical +material wherewith to convince or astonish. Paradox was a passion with +him, that was stimulated by complaints, and even by deprecations, to the +point of irreverence. He liked to "make people's flesh crawl." Even in +his advocacy of social and public reforms, which was strenuous and +sincere, he delighted so to urge his cause as to inflame prejudice and +opposition against it. With this temper it is not strange that when he +came to enunciate his departure from some of the accepted tenets of his +brethren, who were habitually reverent in their discipleship toward +Jesus Christ, he should do this in a way to offend and shock. The +immediate reaction of the Unitarian clergy from the statements of his +sermon, in 1841, on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," +in which the supernatural was boldly discarded from his belief, was so +general and so earnest as to give occasion to Channing's exclamation, +"Now we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>have a Unitarian orthodoxy!" Channing did not live to see the +characteristic tenets of the heresiarch to whom he hesitated to give the +name of Christian not only widely accepted in the Unitarian churches, +but some of them freely discussed as open questions among some orthodox +scholars.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Two very great events in this period of schism may be dispatched with a +brevity out of all proportion to their importance, on account of the +simplicity of motive and action by which they are characterized.</p> + +<p>In the year 1844 the slavery agitation in the Methodist Episcopal Church +culminated, not in the rupture of the church, but in the +well-considered, deliberate division of it between North and South. The +history of the slavery question among the Methodists was a typical one. +From the beginning the Methodist Society had been committed by its +founder and his early successors to the strictest (not the strongest) +position on this question. Not only was the system of slavery denounced +as iniquitous, but the attempt was made to enforce the rigid rule that +persons involved under this system in the relation of master to slave +should be excluded from the ministry, if not from the communion. But the +enforcement of this rule was found to be not only difficult, but wrong, +and difficult simply because it was wrong. Then followed that illogical +confusion of ideas studiously fostered by zealots at either extreme: If +the slave-holder may be in some circumstances a faithful Christian +disciple, fulfilling in righteousness and love a Christian duty, then +slavery is right; if slavery is wrong, then every slave-holder is a +manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any +further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put +forth for the darkening of counsel. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>But each extreme was eager to +sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of +its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, +they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The +attempts made from 1836 to 1840, by stretching to the utmost the +authority of the General Conference and the bishops, for the suppression +of "modern abolitionism" in the church (without saying what they meant +by the phrase) had their natural effect: the antislavery sentiment in +the church organized and uttered itself more vigorously and more +extravagantly than ever on the basis, "All slave-holding is sin; no +fellowship with slave-holders." In 1843 an antislavery secession took +place, which drew after it a following of six thousand, increased in a +few months to fifteen thousand. The paradoxical result of this movement +is not without many parallels in church history: After the drawing off +of fifteen thousand of the most zealous antislavery men in the church, +the antislavery party in the church was vastly stronger, even in +numbers, than it had been before. The General Conference of 1836 had +pronounced itself, without a dissenting vote, to be "decidedly opposed +to modern abolitionism." The General Conference of 1844, on the first +test vote on the question of excluding from the ministry one who had +become a slave-holder through marriage, revealed a majority of one +hundred and seventeen to fifty-six in favor of the most rigorous +antislavery discipline. The graver question upon the case of Bishop +Andrew, who was in the like condemnation, could not be decided +otherwise. The form of the Conference's action in this case was +studiously inoffensive. It imputed no wrong and proposed no censure, +but, simply on the ground that the circumstances would embarrass him in +the exercise of his office, declared it as "the sense of this General +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>Conference that he desist from the exercise of this office so long as +this impediment remains." The issue could not have been simpler and +clearer. The Conference was warned that the passage of the resolution +would be followed by the secession of the South. The debate was long, +earnest, and tender. At the end of it the resolution was passed, one +hundred and eleven to sixty-nine. At once notice was given of the +intended secession. Commissioners were appointed from both parties to +adjust the conditions of it, and in the next year (1845) was organized +the "Methodist Episcopal Church, South."</p> + +<p>Under the fierce tyranny then dominant at the South the southern +Baptists might not fall behind their Methodist neighbors in zeal for +slavery. This time it was the South that forced the issue. The Alabama +Baptist Convention, without waiting for a concrete case, demanded of the +national missionary boards "the distinct, explicit avowal that +slave-holders are eligible and entitled equally with non-slave-holders +to all the privileges and immunities of their several unions." The +answer of the Foreign Mission Board was perfectly kind, but, on the main +point, perfectly unequivocal: "We can never be a party to any +arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery." The result had +been foreseen. The great denomination was divided between North and +South. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in May, 1845, and +began its home and foreign missionary work without delay.</p> + +<p>This dark chapter of our story is not without its brighter aspects. (1) +Amid the inevitable asperities attendant on such debate and division +there were many and beautiful manifestations of brotherly love between +the separated parties. (2) These strifes fell out to the furtherance of +the gospel. Emulations, indeed, are not among the works of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>the Spirit. +In the strenuous labors of the two divided denominations, greatly +exceeding what had gone before, it is plain that sometimes Christ was +preached of envy and strife. Nevertheless Christ was preached, with +great and salutary results; and therein do we rejoice, yea, and will +rejoice.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Two important orders in the American church, which for a time had almost +faded out from our field of vision, come back, from about this epoch of +debate and division, into continually growing conspicuousness and +strength. Neither of them was implicated in that great debate involving +the fundamental principles of the kingdom of heaven,—the principles of +righteousness and love to men,—by which other parts of the church had +been agitated and sometimes divided. Whether to their discredit or to +their honor, it is part of history that neither the Protestant Episcopal +Church nor the Roman Catholic Church took any important part, either +corporately or through its representative men, in the agonizing struggle +of the American church to maintain justice and humanity in public law +and policy. But standing thus aloof from the great ethical questions +that agitated the conscience of the nation, they were both of them +disturbed by controversies internal or external, which demand mention at +least in this chapter.</p> + +<p>The beginning of the resuscitation of the Protestant Episcopal Church +from the dead-and-alive condition in which it had so long been +languishing is dated from the year 1811.<a name="FNanchor_304:1_197" id="FNanchor_304:1_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_304:1_197" class="fnanchor">[304:1]</a> This year was marked by +the accession to the episcopate of two eminent men, representing two +strongly divergent parties in that church—Bishop Griswold, of +Massachusetts, Evangelical, and Bishop Hobart, of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>New York, +High-churchman. A quorum of three bishops having been gotten together, +not without great difficulty, the two were consecrated in Trinity +Church, New York, May 29, 1811.</p> + +<p>The time was opportune and the conjuncture of circumstances singularly +favorable. The stigma of Toryism, which had marked the church from long +before the War of Independence, was now more than erased. In New England +the Episcopal Church was of necessity committed to that political party +which favored the abolition of the privileges of the standing order; and +this was the anti-English party, which, under the lead of Jefferson, was +fast forcing the country into war with England. The Episcopalians were +now in a position to retort the charge of disloyalty under which they +had not unjustly suffered. At the same time their church lost nothing of +the social prestige incidental to its relation to the established Church +of England. Politicians of the Democratic party, including some men of +well-deserved credit and influence, naturally attached themselves to a +religious party having many points of congeniality.<a name="FNanchor_305:1_198" id="FNanchor_305:1_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_305:1_198" class="fnanchor">[305:1]</a></p> + +<p>In another sense, also, the time was opportune for an advance of the +Episcopal Church. In the person of Bishop Hobart it had now a bold, +energetic, and able representative of principles hitherto not much in +favor in America—the thoroughgoing High-church principles of Archbishop +Laud. Before this time the Episcopal Church had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>had very little to +contribute by way of enriching the diversity of the American sects. It +was simply the feeblest of the communions bearing the common family +traits of the Great Awakening, with the not unimportant <i>differentia</i> of +its settled ritual of worship and its traditions of order and decorum. +But when Bishop Hobart put the trumpet to his lips and prepared himself +to sound, the public heard a very different note, and no uncertain one. +The church (meaning his own fragment of the church) the one channel of +saving grace; the vehicles of that grace, the sacraments, valid only +when ministered by a priesthood with the right pedigree of ordination; +submission to the constituted authorities of the church absolutely +unlimited, except by clear divine requirements; abstinence from +prayer-meetings; firm opposition to revivals of religion; refusal of all +coöperation with Christians outside of his own sect in endeavors for the +general advancement of religion—such were some of the principles and +duties inculcated by this bishop of the new era as of binding +force.<a name="FNanchor_306:1_199" id="FNanchor_306:1_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_306:1_199" class="fnanchor">[306:1]</a> The courage of this attitude was splendid and captivating. +It requires, even at the present time, not a little force of conviction +to sustain one in publicly enunciating such views; but at the time of +the accession of Hobart, when the Episcopal Church was just beginning to +lift up its head out of the dust of despair, it needed the heroism of a +martyr. It was not only the vast multitude of American Christians +outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the +evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the +American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with +indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were +disclaimed, scouted, and denounced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>with (if possible) greater +indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which +its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other +orders in the church confirms this principle: that steady persistence +and iteration in assuring any body of believers that they are in some +special sense the favorites of Heaven, and in assuring any body of +clergy that they are endued from on high with some special and +exceptional powers, will by and by make an impression on the mind. The +flattering assurance may be coyly waived aside; it may even be +indignantly repelled; but in the long run there will be a growing number +of the brethren who become convinced that there is something in it. It +was in harmony with human nature that the party of high pretensions to +distinguished privileges for the church and prerogatives for the +"priesthood" should in a few years become a formidable contestant for +the control of the denomination. The controversy between the two parties +rose to its height of exacerbation during the prevalence of that strange +epidemic of controversy which ran simultaneously through so many of the +great religious organizations of the country at once. No denomination +had it in a more malignant form than the Episcopalians. The war of +pamphlets and newspapers was fiercely waged, and the election of bishops +sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents +of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the +publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing +episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of +the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the +morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The +highest febrile temperature was reached when, at an ordination in 1843, +two of the leading presbyters in the diocese of New York rose in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>their +places, and, reading each one his solemn protest against the ordaining +of one of the candidates on the ground of his Romanizing opinions, left +the church.</p> + +<p>The result of the long conflict was not immediately apparent. It was not +only that "high" opinions, even the highest of the Tractarian school, +were to be tolerated within the church, but that the High-church party +was to be the dominant party. The Episcopal Church was to stand before +the public as representing, not that which it held in common with the +other churches of the country, but that which was most distinctive. From +this time forth the "Evangelical" party continued relatively to decline, +down to the time, thirty years later, when it was represented in the +inconsiderable secession of the "Reformed Episcopal Church." The +combination of circumstances and influences by which this party +supremacy was brought about is an interesting study, for which, however, +there is no room in this brief compendium of history.</p> + +<p>A more important fact is this: that in spite of these agitating internal +strifes, and even by reason of them, the growth of the denomination was +wonderfully rapid and strong. No fact in the external history of the +American church at this period is more imposing than this growth of the +Episcopal Church from nothing to a really commanding stature. It is easy +to enumerate minor influences tending to this result, some of which are +not of high spiritual dignity; but these must not be overestimated. The +nature of this growth, as well as the numerical amount of it, requires +to be considered. This strongly distinguished order in the American +church has been aggrandized, not, to any great degree, by immigration, +nor by conquest from the ranks of the irreligious, but by a continual +stream of accessions both to its laity and to its clergy from other +sects of the church. These accessions have of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>course been variable in +quality, but they have included many such as no denomination could +afford to lose, and such as any would be proud to receive. Without +judging of individual cases, it is natural and reasonable to explain so +considerable a current setting so steadily for two generations toward +the Episcopal Church as being attracted by the distinctive +characteristics of that church. Foremost among these we may reckon the +study of the dignity and beauty of public worship, and the tradition and +use of forms of devotion of singular excellence and value. A tendency to +revert to the ancient Calvinist doctrine of the sacraments has +prepossessed some in favor of that sect in which the old Calvinism is +still cherished. Some have rejoiced to find a door of access to the +communion of the church not beset with revivalist exactions of +examination and scrutiny of the sacred interior experiences of the soul. +Some have reacted from an excessive or inquisitive or arbitrary church +discipline, toward a default of discipline. Some, worthily weary of +sectarian division and of the "evangelical" doctrine that schism is the +normal condition of the church of Christ, have found real comfort in +taking refuge in a sect in which, closing their eyes, they can say, +"There are no schisms in the church; the church is one and undivided, +and we are it." These and other like considerations, mingled in varying +proportions, have been honorable motives impelling toward the Episcopal +denomination; and few that have felt the force of them have felt +constrained stubbornly to resist the gentle assurances offered by the +"apostolic succession" theory of a superior authority and prerogative +with which they had become invested. The numerous accessions to the +Episcopal Church from other communions have, of course, been in large +part reinforcements to the already dominant party.</p> + +<p>In the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>during this stormy +period, there was by no means a perfect calm. The ineradicable feeling +of the American citizen—however recent his naturalization—that he has +a right to do what he will with his own, had kept asserting itself in +that plausible but untenable claim of the laity to manage the church +property acquired by their own contributions, which is known to Catholic +writers as "trusteeism." Through the whole breadth of the country, from +Buffalo to New Orleans, sharp conflicts over this question between +clergy and laity had continued to vex the peace of the church, and the +victory of the clergy had not been unvarying and complete. When, in +1837, Bishop John Hughes took the reins of spiritual power in New York, +he resolved to try conclusions with the trustees who attempted to +overrule his authority in his own cathedral. Sharply threatening to put +the church under interdict, if necessary, he brought the recalcitrants +to terms at last by a less formidable process. He appealed to the +congregation to withhold all further contributions from the trustees. +The appeal, for conscience' sake, to refrain from giving has always a +double hope of success. And the bishop succeeded in ousting the +trustees, at the serious risk of teaching the people a trick which has +since been found equally effective when applied on the opposite side of +a dispute between clergyman and congregation. In Philadelphia the long +struggle was not ended without the actual interdicting of the cathedral +of St. Mary's, April, 1831. In Buffalo, so late as 1847, even this +extreme measure, applied to the largest congregation in the newly +erected diocese, did not at once enforce submission.</p> + +<p>The conflict with trusteeism was only one out of many conflicts which +gave abundant exercise to the administrative abilities of the American +bishops. The mutual jealousies of the various nationalities and races +among the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>laity, and of the various sects of the regular clergy, +menaced, and have not wholly ceased to menace, the harmony of the +church, if not its unity.</p> + +<p>One disturbing element by which the Roman Catholic Church in some +European countries has been sorely vexed makes no considerable figure in +the corresponding history in America. There has never been here any +"Liberal Catholic" party. The fact stands in analogy with many like +facts. Visitors to America from the established churches of England or +Scotland or Germany have often been surprised to find the temper of the +old-country church so much broader and less rigid than that of the +daughter church in the new and free republic. The reason is less +recondite than might be supposed. In the old countries there are +retained in connection with the state-church, by constraint of law or of +powerful social or family influences, many whose adhesion to its +distinctive tenets and rules is slight and superficial. It is out of +such material that the liberal church party grows. In the migration it +is not that the liberal churchman becomes more strict, but that, being +released from outside pressure, he becomes less of a churchman. He +easily draws off from his hereditary communion and joins himself to some +other, or to none at all. This process of evaporation leaves behind it a +strong residuum in which all characteristic elements are held as in a +saturated solution.</p> + +<p>A further security of the American Catholic Church against the growth of +any "Liberal Catholic" party like those of continental Europe is the +absolutist organization of the hierarchy under the personal government +of the pope. In these last few centuries great progress has been made by +the Roman see in extinguishing the ancient traditions of local or +national independence in the election of bishops. Nevertheless in +Catholic Europe important relics <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>of this independence give an effective +check to the absolute power of Rome. In America no trace of this +historic independence has ever existed. The power of appointing and +removing bishops is held absolutely and exclusively by the pope and +exercised through the Congregation of the Propaganda. The power of +ordaining and assigning priests is held by the bishop, who also holds or +controls the title to the church property in his diocese. The security +against partisan division within the church is as complete as it can be +made without gravely increasing the risks of alienating additional +multitudes from the fellowship of the church.<a name="FNanchor_312:1_200" id="FNanchor_312:1_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_312:1_200" class="fnanchor">[312:1]</a></p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>During the whole of this dreary decade there were "fightings without" as +well as within for the Catholic Church in the United States. Its great +and sudden growth solely by immigration had made it distinctively a +church of foreigners, and chiefly of Irishmen. The conditions were +favorable for the development of a race prejudice aggravated by a +religious antipathy. It was a good time for the impostor, the fanatic, +and the demagogue to get in their work. In Boston, in 1834, the report +that a woman was detained against her will in the Ursuline convent at +Charlestown, near Boston, led to the burning of the building by a +drunken mob. The Titus Oates of the American no-popery panic, in 1836, +was an infamous woman named Maria Monk, whose monstrous stories of +secret horrors perpetrated in a convent in Montreal, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>which she +claimed to have lived as a nun, were published by a respectable house +and had immense currency. A New York pastor of good standing, Dr. +Brownlee, made himself sponsor for her character and her stories; and +when these had been thoroughly exposed, by Protestant ministers and +laymen, for the shameless frauds that they were, there were plenty of +zealots to sustain her still. A "Protestant Society" was organized in +New York, and solicited the contributions of the benevolent and pious to +promote the dissemination of raw-head-and-bloody-bones literature on the +horrors of popery. The enterprise met with reprobation from sober-minded +Protestants, but it was not without its influence for mischief. The +presence of a great foreign vote, easily manipulated and cast in block, +was proving a copious source of political corruption. Large concessions +of privilege or of public property to Catholic institutions were +reasonably suspected to have been made in consideration of clerical +services in partisan politics.<a name="FNanchor_313:1_201" id="FNanchor_313:1_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_313:1_201" class="fnanchor">[313:1]</a> The conditions provoked, we might +say necessitated, a political reform movement, which took the name and +character of "Native American." In Philadelphia, a city notorious at +that time for misgovernment and turbulence, an orderly "American" +meeting was attacked and broken up by an Irish mob. One act of violence +led to another, the excitement increasing from day to day; deadly shots +were exchanged in the streets, houses from which balls had been fired +into the crowd were set in flames, which spread to other houses, +churches were burned, and the whole city dominated by mobs that were +finally <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>suppressed by the State militia. It was an appropriate climax +to the ten years of ecclesiastical and social turmoil.<a name="FNanchor_314:1_202" id="FNanchor_314:1_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_314:1_202" class="fnanchor">[314:1]</a></p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296:1_195" id="Footnote_296:1_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296:1_195"><span class="label">[296:1]</span></a> Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," p. 359.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297:1_196" id="Footnote_297:1_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297:1_196"><span class="label">[297:1]</span></a> For the close historical parallel to the exscinding +acts of 1837 see page <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, above. A later parallel, it is claimed, is +found in the "virtually exscinding act" of the General Assembly of 1861, +which was the occasion of the secession of the Southern Presbyterians. +The historian of the Southern Presbyterians, who remarks with entire +complacency that the "victory" of 1837 was won "only by virtue of an +almost solid South," seems quite unconscious that this kind of victory +could have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The +Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, +that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle +instead of from the breech.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304:1_197" id="Footnote_304:1_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304:1_197"><span class="label">[304:1]</span></a> Tiffany, chap. xv.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305:1_198" id="Footnote_305:1_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305:1_198"><span class="label">[305:1]</span></a> The intense antagonism of the New England +Congregationalists to Jefferson and his party as representing French +infidelity and Jacobinism admits of many striking illustrations. The +sermon of Nathanael Emmons on "Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made +Israel to sin" is characterized by Professor Park as "a curiosity in +politico-homiletical literature." At this distance it is not difficult +to see that the course of this clergy was far more honorable to its +boldness and independence than to its discretion and sense of fitness. +Both its virtues and its faults had a tendency to strengthen an opposing +party.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306:1_199" id="Footnote_306:1_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306:1_199"><span class="label">[306:1]</span></a> Hobart's sermon at the consecration of Right Rev. H. U. +Onderdonk, Philadelphia, 1827.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312:1_200" id="Footnote_312:1_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312:1_200"><span class="label">[312:1]</span></a> For a fuller account of the dissensions in the Catholic +Church, consult, by index, Bishop O'Gorman's "History." On the modern +organization of the episcopate in complete dependence on the Holy See, +consult the learned article on "Episcopal Elections," by Dr. Peries, of +the Catholic University at Washington, in the "American Catholic +Quarterly Review" for January, 1896; also the remarks of Archbishop +Kenrick, of St. Louis, in his "<i>Concio in Concilio Vaticano Habenda at +non Habita</i>," in "An Inside View of the Vatican Council," by L. W. +Bacon, pp. 61, 121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313:1_201" id="Footnote_313:1_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313:1_201"><span class="label">[313:1]</span></a> A satirical view of these concessions, in the vast +dimensions which they had reached twenty-five years later in the city +and county of New York, was published in two articles, "Our Established +Church," and "The Unestablished Church," in "Putnam's Magazine" for July +and December, 1869. The articles were reissued in a pamphlet, "with an +explanatory and exculpatory preface, and sundry notices of the +contemporary press."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314:1_202" id="Footnote_314:1_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314:1_202"><span class="label">[314:1]</span></a> A studiously careful account of the Philadelphia riots +of 1844 is given in the "New Englander," vol. ii. (1844), pp. 470, 624. +</p><p> +This account of the schisms of the period is of course not complete. The +American Missionary Association, since distinguished for successful +labors chiefly among the freedmen, grew out of dissatisfaction felt by +men of advanced antislavery views with the position of the "American +Board" and the American Home Missionary Society on the slavery question. +The organization of it was matured in 1846. A very fruitful schism in +its results was that which, in 1835, planted a cutting from Lane +Seminary at Cincinnati, in the virgin soil at Oberlin, Ohio. The +beginning thus made with a class in theology has grown into a noble and +widely beneficent institution, the influence of which has extended to +the ends of the land and of the world. +</p><p> +The division of the Society of Friends into the two societies known as +Hicksite and Orthodox is of earlier date—1827-28. +</p><p> +No attempt is made in this volume to chronicle the interminable +splittings and reunitings of the Presbyterian sects of Scottish +extraction. A curious diagram, on page 146 of volume xi. of the present +series, illustrates the sort of task which such a chronicle involves. +</p><p> +An illustration of the way in which the extreme defenders of slavery and +the extreme abolitionists sustained each other in illogical statements +(see above, pp. <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>) is found in Dr. Thornwell's claim (identical +with Mr. Garrison's) that if slavery is wrong, then all slave-holders +ought to be excommunicated (vol. vi., p. 157, note). Dr. Thornwell may +not have been the "mental and moral giant" that he appears to his +admirers (see Professor Johnson in vol. xi., p. 355), but he was an +intelligent and able man, quite too clear-headed to be imposed upon by a +palpable "ambiguous middle," except for his excitement in the heat of a +desperate controversy with the moral sense of all Christendom.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<h3>THE GREAT IMMIGRATION.</h3> + + +<p class="section">At the taking of the first census of the United States, in 1790, the +country contained a population of about four millions in its territory +of less than one million of square miles.</p> + +<p>Sixty years later, at the census of 1850, it contained a population of +more than twenty-three millions in its territory of about three millions +of square miles.</p> + +<p>The vast expansion of territory to more than threefold the great +original domain of the United States had been made by honorable purchase +or less honorable conquest. It had not added largely to the population +of the nation; the new acquisitions were mainly of unoccupied land. The +increase of the population, down to about 1845, was chiefly the natural +increase of a hardy and prolific stock under conditions in the highest +degree favorable to such increase. Up to the year 1820 the recent +immigration had been inconsiderable. In the ten years 1820-29 the annual +arrival of immigrants was nine thousand. In the next decade, 1830-39, +the annual arrival was nearly thirty-five thousand, or a hundred a day. +For forty years the total immigration from all quarters was much less +than a half-million. In the course of the next three decades, from 1840 +to 1869, there arrived in the United States from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>the various countries +of Europe five and a half millions of people. It was more than the +entire population of the country at the time of the first census;—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A multitude like which the populous North<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Poured never from her frozen loins to pass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Came like a deluge on the South and spread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Under the pressure of a less copious flood of incursion the greatest +empire in all history, strongest in arts and polity as well as arms, had +perished utterly. If Rome, with her population of one hundred and twenty +millions, her genius for war and government, and her long-compacted +civilization, succumbed under a less sudden rush of invasion, what hope +was there for the young American Republic, with its scanty population +and its new and untried institutions?<a name="FNanchor_316:1_203" id="FNanchor_316:1_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_316:1_203" class="fnanchor">[316:1]</a></p> + +<p>An impressive providential combination of causes determined this great +historic movement of population at this time. It was effected by +attractions in front of the emigrant, reinforced by impulses from +behind. The conclusion of the peace of 1815 was followed by the +beginning of an era of great public works, one of the first of which was +the digging of the Erie Canal. This sort of enterprise makes an +immediate demand for large forces of unskilled laborers; and in both +hemispheres it has been observed to occasion movements of population out +of Catholic countries <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>into Protestant countries. The westward current +of the indigenous population created a vacuum in the seaboard States, +and a demand for labor that was soon felt in the labor-markets of the +Old World. A liberal homestead policy on the part of the national +government, and naturalization laws that were more than liberal, +agencies for the encouragement of settlers organized by individual +States and by railroad corporations and other great landed proprietors, +and the eager competition of steamship companies drumming for steerage +passengers in all parts of Europe—all these coöperated with the growing +facility and cheapness of steam transportation to swell the current of +migration. The discovery of gold in California quickened the flow of it.</p> + +<p>As if it had been the divine purpose not only to draw forth, but to +drive forth, the populations of the Old World to make their homes in the +New, there was added to all these causes conducive to migration the +Irish famine of 1846-47, and the futile revolutions of 1848, with the +tyrannical reactions which followed them. But the great stimulus to +migration was the success and prosperity that attended it. It was +"success that succeeded." The great emigration agent was the letter +written to his old home by the new settler, in multitudes of cases +inclosing funds to pay the passage of friends whom he had left behind +him.</p> + +<p>The great immigration that began about 1845 is distinguished from some +of the early colonizations in that it was in no sense a religious +movement. Very grave religious results were to issue from it; but they +were to be achieved through the unconscious coöperation of a multitude +of individuals each intent with singleness of vision on his own +individual ends. It is by such unconscious coöperation that the +directing mind and the overruling hand of God in history are most +signally illustrated.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p><p>In the first rush of this increased immigration by far the greatest +contributor of new population was Ireland. It not only surpassed any +other country in the number of its immigrants, but in the height of the +Irish exodus, in the decade 1840-50, it nearly equaled all other +countries of the world together. The incoming Irish millions were almost +solidly Roman Catholic. The measures taken by the British government for +many generations to attach the Irish people to the crown and convert +them to the English standard of Protestantism had had the result of +discharging upon our shores a people distinguished above all Christendom +besides for its ardent and unreserved devotion to the Roman Church, and +hardly less distinguished for its hatred to England.</p> + +<p>After the first flood-tide the relative number of the Irish immigrants +began to decrease, and has kept on decreasing until now. Since the Civil +War the chief source of immigration has been Germany; and its +contributions to our population have greatly aggrandized the Lutheran +denomination, once so inconsiderable in numbers, until in many western +cities it is the foremost of the Protestant communions, and in Chicago +outnumbers the communicants of the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, and +the Methodist churches combined.<a name="FNanchor_318:1_204" id="FNanchor_318:1_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_318:1_204" class="fnanchor">[318:1]</a> The German immigration has +contributed its share, and probably more than its share, to our +non-religious and churchless population. Withal, in a proportion which +it is not easy to ascertain with precision, it added multitudinous +thousands to the sudden and enormous growth of the Roman Catholic +Church. But there is an instructive contrast between the German +immigrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, and the Irish immigration. +The Catholicism of the Irish, held from generation to generation in the +face of partisan and sometimes cruelly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>persecuting laws, was held with +the ardor, if not of personal conviction, at least of strong hereditary +animosity. To the Germans, their religious sect, whether Catholic, +Lutheran, or Reformed, is determined for them by political arrangement, +under the principle <i>cujus regio, ejus religio</i>. It is matter of course +that tenets thus acquired should be held by a tenure so far removed from +fanaticism as to seem to more zealous souls much like lukewarmness. +Accustomed to have the cost of religious institutions provided for in +the budget of public expenses, the wards of the Old World state-churches +find themselves here in strange surroundings, untrained in habits of +self-denial for religious objects. The danger is a grave and real one +that before they become acclimated to the new conditions a large +percentage will be lost, not only from their hereditary communion, but +from all Christian fellowship, and lapse into simple indifferentism and +godlessness. They have much to learn and something to teach. The +indigenous American churches are not likely to be docile learners at the +feet of alien teachers; but it would seem like the slighting of a +providential opportunity if the older sects should fail to recognize +that one of the greatest and by far the most rapidly growing of the +Protestant churches of America, the Lutheran, growing now with new +increments not only from the German, but also from the Scandinavian +nations, is among us in such force to teach us somewhat by its example +of the equable, systematic, and methodical ways of a state-church, as +well as to learn something from the irregular fervor of that revivalism +which its neighbors on every hand have inherited from the Great +Awakening. It would be the very extravagance of national self-conceit if +the older American churches should become possessed of the idea that +four millions of German Christians and one million of Scandinavians, +arriving here from 1860 to 1890, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>with their characteristic methods in +theology and usages of worship and habits of church organization and +administration, were here, in the providence of God, only to be +assimilated and not at all to assimilate.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The vast growth of the Roman Catholic Church in America could not but +fill its clergy and adherents with wonder and honest pride. But it was +an occasion of immense labors and not a little anxiety. One effect of +the enormous immigration was inevitably to impose upon this church, +according to the popular apprehension, the character of a foreign +association, and, in the earlier periods of the influx, of an Irish +association. It was in like manner inevitable, from the fact that the +immigrant class are preponderantly poor and of low social rank, that it +should for two or three generations be looked upon as a church for the +illiterate and unskilled laboring class. An incident of the excessive +torrent rush of the immigration was that the Catholic Church became to a +disproportionate extent an urban institution, making no adequate +provision for the dispersed in agricultural regions.</p> + +<p>Against these and other like disadvantages the hierarchy of the Catholic +Church have struggled heroically, with some measure of success. The +steadily rising character of the imported population in its successive +generations has aided them. If in the first generations the churches +were congregations of immigrants served by an imported clergy, the most +strenuous exertions were made for the founding of institutions that +should secure to future congregations born upon the soil the services of +an American-trained priesthood. One serious hindrance to the noble +advances that have nevertheless been made in this direction has been the +fanatical opposition levied against even the most beneficent enterprises +of the church by a bigoted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>Native-Americanism. It is not a hopeful +method of conciliating and naturalizing a foreign element in the +community to treat them with suspicion and hostility as alien enemies. +The shameful persecution which the mob was for a brief time permitted to +inflict on Catholic churches and schools and convents had for its chief +effect to confirm the foreigner in his adherence to his church and his +antipathy to Protestantism, and to provoke a twofold ferocity in return. +At a time when there was reason to apprehend a Know-nothing riot in New +York, in 1844, a plan was concerted and organized by "a large Irish +society with divisions throughout the city," by which, "in case a single +church was attacked, buildings should be fired in all quarters and the +great city should be involved in a general conflagration."<a name="FNanchor_321:1_205" id="FNanchor_321:1_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_321:1_205" class="fnanchor">[321:1]</a></p> + +<p>The utmost that could have been hoped for by the devoted but inadequate +body of the Roman Catholic clergy in America, overwhelmed by an influx +of their people coming in upon them in increasing volume, numbering +millions per annum, was that they might be able to hold their own. But +this hope was very far from being attained. How great have been the +losses to the Roman communion through the transplantation of its members +across the sea is a question to which the most widely varying answers +have been given, and on which statistical exactness seems unattainable. +The various estimates, agreeing in nothing else, agree in representing +them as enormously great.<a name="FNanchor_321:2_206" id="FNanchor_321:2_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_321:2_206" class="fnanchor">[321:2]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>All good men will also agree that in +so far as these losses represent mere lapses into unbelief and +irreligion they are to be deplored. Happily there is good evidence of a +large salvage, gathered into other churches, from what so easily becomes +a shipwreck of faith with total loss.</p> + +<p>It might seem surprising, in view of the many and diverse resources of +attractive influence which the Roman Church has at its command, that its +losses have not been to some larger extent compensated by conversions +from other sects. Instances of such conversion are by no means wanting; +but so far as a popular current toward Catholicism is concerned, the +attractions in that direction are outweighed by the disadvantages +already referred to. It has not been altogether a detriment to the +Catholic Church in America that the social status and personal +composition of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>its congregations, in its earlier years, have been such +that the transition into it from any of the Protestant churches could be +made only at the cost of a painful self-denial. The number of accessions +to it has been thereby lessened, but (leaving out the case of the +transition of politicians from considerations of expediency) the quality +of them has been severely sifted. Incomparably the most valuable +acquisition which the American Catholic Church has received has been the +company of devoted and gifted young men, deeply imbued with the +principles and sentiments of the High-church party in the Episcopal +Church, who have felt constrained in conscience and in logic to take the +step, which seems so short, from the highest level in the Anglican +Church into the Roman, and who, organized into the Order of the Paulist +Fathers, have exemplified in the Roman Church so many of the highest +qualities of Protestant preaching.</p> + +<p>He is a bold man who will undertake to predict in detail the future of +the Roman Church in America. To say that it will be modified by its +surroundings is only to say what is true of it in all countries. To say +that it will be modified for the better is to say what is true of it in +all Protestant countries. Nowhere is the Roman Church so pure from +scandal and so effective for good as where it is closely surrounded and +jealously scrutinized by bodies of its fellow-Christians whom it is +permitted to recognize only as heretics. But when the influence of +surrounding heresy is seen to be an indispensable blessing to the +church, the heretic himself comes to be looked upon with a mitigated +horror. Not with the sacrifice of any principle, but through the +application of some of those provisions by which the Latin theology is +able to meet exigencies like this,—the allowance in favor of +"invincible ignorance" and prejudice, the distinction between the body +and "the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>soul of the church,"—the Roman Catholic, recognizing the +spirit of Christ in his Protestant fellow-Christian, is able to hold him +in spiritual if not formal communion, so that the Catholic Church may +prove itself not dissevered from the Church Catholic. In the common +duties of citizenship and of humanity, in the promotion of the interests +of morality, even in those religious matters that are of common concern +to all honest disciples of Jesus Christ, he is at one with his heretic +brethren. Without the change of a single item either of doctrine or of +discipline, the attitude and temper of the church, as compared with the +church of Spain or Italy or Mexico, is revolutionized. The change must +needs draw with it other changes, which may not come without some jar +and conflict between progressive and conservative, but which +nevertheless needs must come. Out of many indications of the spirit of +fellowship with all Christians now exemplified among American Catholics, +I quote one of the most recent and authoritative from an address of +Archbishop Ryan at the Catholic Congress in Chicago in 1893. Speaking on +Christian union, he said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If there is any one thing more than another upon which people +agree, it is respect and reverence for the person and the +character of the Founder of Christianity. How the Protestant +loves his Saviour! How the Protestant eye will sometimes grow +dim when speaking of our Lord! In this great center of union +is found the hope of human society, the only means of +preserving Christian civilization, the only point upon which +Catholic and Protestant may meet. As if foreseeing that this +should be, Christ himself gave his example of fraternal +charity, not to the orthodox Jew, but to the heretical +Samaritan, showing that charity and love, while faith remains +intact, can never <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>be true unless no distinction is made +between God's creatures."<a name="FNanchor_325:1_207" id="FNanchor_325:1_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_325:1_207" class="fnanchor">[325:1]</a></p></div> + +<p>Herein is fellowship higher than that of symbols and sacraments. By so +far as it receives this spirit of love the American Catholic Church +enters into its place in that greater Catholic Church of which we all +make mention in the Apostles' Creed—"the Holy Universal Church, which +is the fellowship of holy souls."</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The effect of the Great Immigration on the body of the immigrant +population is not more interesting or more important than the effect of +it on the religious bodies already in occupation of the soil. The +impression made on them by what seemed an irruption of barbarians of +strange language or dialect, for the most part rude, unskilled, and +illiterate, shunning as profane the Christian churches of the land, and +bowing in unknown rites as devotees of a system known, and by no means +favorably known, only through polemic literature and history, and +through the gruesome traditions of Puritan and Presbyterian and +Huguenot, was an impression not far removed from horror; and this +impression was deepened as the enormous proportions of this invasion +disclosed themselves from year to year. The serious and not unreasonable +fear that these armies of aliens, handled as they manifestly were by a +generalship that was quick to seize and fortify in a conspicuous way the +strategic points of influence, especially in the new States, might +imperil or ruin the institutions and liberties of the young Republic, +was stimulated and exploited in the interest of enterprises of +evangelization that might counter-work the operations of the invading +church. The appeals <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>of the Bible and tract societies, and of the +various home mission agencies of the different denominations, as well as +of the distinctively antipopery societies, were pointed with the alarm +lest "the great West" should fall under the domination of the papal +hierarchy. Naturally the delineations of the Roman system and of its +public and social results that were presented to the public for these +purposes were of no flattering character. Not history only, but +contemporary geography gave warnings of peril. Canada on one hand, and +Mexico and the rest of Spanish America on the other, were cited as +living examples of the fate which might befall the free United States. +The apocalyptic prophecies were copiously drawn upon for material of +war. By processes of exegesis which critical scholarship regards with a +smile or a shudder, the helpless pope was made to figure as the +Antichrist, the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, the Scarlet Woman on +the Seven Hills, the Little Horn Speaking Blasphemies, the Beast, and +the Great Red Dragon. That moiety of Christendom which, sorely as its +history has been deformed by corruption and persecution, violently as it +seems to be contrasted with the simplicity of the primeval church, is +nevertheless the spiritual home of multitudes of Christ's well-approved +servants and disciples, was held up to gaze as being nothing but the +enemy of Christ and his cause. The appetite of the Protestant public for +scandals at the expense of their fellow-Christians was stimulated to a +morbid greediness and then overfed with willful and wicked fabrications. +The effect of this fanaticism on some honest but illogical minds was +what might have been looked for. Brought by and by into personal +acquaintance with Catholic ministers and institutions, and discovering +the fraud and injustice that had been perpetrated, they sprang by a +generous reaction into an attitude of sympathy for the Roman Catholic +system. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>A more favorable preparation of the way of conversion to Rome +could not be desired by the skillful propagandist. One recognizes a +retributive justice in the fact, when notable gains to the Catholic +Church are distinctly traced to the reaction of honest men from these +fraudulent polemics.<a name="FNanchor_327:1_208" id="FNanchor_327:1_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_327:1_208" class="fnanchor">[327:1]</a></p> + +<p>The danger to the Republic, which was thus malignantly or ignorantly +exaggerated and distorted, was nevertheless real and grave. No sincerely +earnest and religious Protestant, nor even any well-informed patriotic +citizen, with the example of French and Spanish America before his eyes, +could look with tolerance upon the prospect of a possible Catholicizing +of the new States at the West; and the sight of the incessant tide of +immigration setting westward, the reports of large funds sent hither +from abroad to aid the propagation of the Roman Church, and the accounts +of costly and imposing ecclesiastical buildings rising at the most +important centers of population, roused the Christian patriotism of the +older States to the noblest enterprises of evangelization. There was no +wasting of energy in futile disputation. In all the Protestant +communions it was felt that the work called for was a simple, peaceful, +and positive one—to plant the soil of the West, at the first occupation +of it by settlers, with Christian institutions and influences. The +immensity of the task stimulated rather than dismayed the zeal of the +various churches. The work undertaken and accomplished in the twenty +years from 1840 to 1860 in providing the newly settled regions with +churches, pastors, colleges, and theological seminaries, with +Sunday-schools, and with Bibles <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>and other religious books, was of a +magnitude which will never be defined by statistical figures. How great +it was, and at what cost it was effected in gifts of treasure and of +heroic lives of toil and self-denial, can only be a matter of vague +wonder and thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>The work of planting the church in the West exhibits the voluntary +system at its best—and at its worst. A task so vast and so momentous +has never been imposed on the resources of any state establishment. It +is safe to say that no established church has ever existed, however +imperially endowed, that would have been equal to the undertaking of it. +With no imposing combination of forces, and no strategic concert of +action, the work was begun spontaneously and simultaneously, like some +of the operations of nature, by a multitude of different agencies, and +went forward uninterrupted to something as nearly like completeness as +could be in a work the exigencies of which continually widened beyond +all achievements. The planting of the church in the West is one of the +wonders of church history.</p> + +<p>But this noble act of religious devotion was by no means a sacrifice +without blemish. The sacred zeal for advancing God's reign and +righteousness was mingled with many very human motives in the progress +of it. Conspicuous among these was the spirit of sectarian competition. +The worthy and apostolic love for kindred according to the flesh +separated from home and exposed to the privations and temptations of the +frontier, the honest anxiety to forestall the domination of a +dangerously powerful religious corporation propagating perverted views +of truth, even the desire to advance principles and forms of belief +deemed to be important, were infused with a spirit of partisanship as +little spiritual as the enthusiasm which animates the struggles and the +shouters at a foot-ball game. The devoted pioneer of the gospel on the +frontier, seeing his work <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>endangered by that of a rival denomination, +writes to the central office of his sect; the board of missions makes +its appeal to the contributing churches; the churches respond with +subsidies; and the local rivalry in the mission field is pressed, +sometimes to a good result, on the principle that "competition is the +life of business." Thus the fragrance of the precious ointment of loving +sacrifice is perceptibly tainted, according to the warning of +Ecclesiastes or the Preacher. And yet it is not easy for good men, being +men, sternly to rebuke the spirit that seems to be effective in +promoting the good cause that they have at heart.</p> + +<p>If the effect of these emulations on the contributing churches was +rather carnal than spiritual, the effect in the mission field was worse. +The effect was seen in the squandering of money and of priceless service +of good men and women, in the debilitating and demoralizing division and +subdivision of the Christian people, not of cities and large towns, but +of villages and hamlets and of thinly settled farming districts. By the +building of churches and other edifices for sectarian uses, schism was +established for coming time as a vested interest. The gifts and service +bestowed in this cause with a truly magnificent liberality would have +sufficed to establish the Christian faith and fellowship throughout the +new settlements in strength and dignity, in churches which, instead of +lingering as puny and dependent nurslings, would have grown apace to be +strong and healthy nursing mothers to newer churches yet.</p> + +<p>There is an instructive contrast, not only between the working of the +voluntary system and that of the Old World establishments, but between +the methods of the Catholic Church and the Protestant no-method. Under +the control of a strong coördinating authority the competitions of the +various Catholic orders, however sharp, could never be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>allowed to run +into wasteful extravagance through cross-purposes. It is believed that +the Catholics have not erected many monuments of their own unthrift in +the shape of costly buildings begun, but left unfinished and abandoned. +A more common incident of their work has been the buying up of these +expensive failures, at a large reduction from their cost, and turning +them to useful service. And yet the principle of sectarian competition +is both recognized and utilized in the Roman system. The various +clerical sects, with their characteristic names, costumes, methods, and +doctrinal differences, have their recognized aptitudes for various sorts +of work, with which their names are strongly associated: the Dominican +for pulpit eloquence, the Capuchin for rough-and-ready street-preaching, +the Benedictine for literary work, the Sulpitian for the training of +priests, and the ubiquitous Jesuit for shifty general utility with a +specialty of school-keeping. These and a multitude of other orders, male +and female, have been effectively and usefully employed in the arduous +labor <i>Romanam condere gentem</i>. But it would seem that the superior +stability of the present enterprise of planting Catholicism in the +domain of the United States, as compared with former expensive failures, +was due in some part to the larger employment of a diocesan parish +clergy instead of a disproportionate reliance on the "regulars."</p> + +<p>On the whole, notwithstanding its immense armies of immigrants and the +devoted labors of its priests, and notwithstanding its great expansion, +visible everywhere in conspicuous monuments of architecture, the +Catholic advance in America has not been, comparatively speaking, +successful. For one thing, the campaign was carried on too far from its +base of supplies. The subsidies from Lyons and Vienna, liberal as they +were, were no match for the home missionary zeal of the seaboard States +in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>following their own sons westward with church and gospel and pastor. +Even the conditions which made possible the superior management and +economy of resources, both material and personal, among the Catholics, +were attended with compensating drawbacks. With these advantages they +could not have the immense advantage of the popular initiative. In +Protestantism the people were the church, and the minister was chief +among the people only by virtue of being servant of all; the people were +incited to take up the work for their own and carry it on at their best +discretion; and they were free to make wasteful and disastrous blunders +and learn therefrom by experience. With far greater expenditure of +funds, they make no comparison with their brethren of the Roman +obedience in stately and sumptuous buildings at great centers of +commerce and travel. But they have covered the face of the land with +country meeting-houses, twice as many as there was any worthy use for, +in which faithful service is rendered to subdivided congregations by +underpaid ministers, enough in number, if they were wisely distributed, +for the evangelization of the whole continent; and each country +meeting-house is a mission station, and its congregation, men, women, +and children, are missionaries. Thus it has come about, in the language +of the earnest Catholic from the once Catholic city of New Orleans, that +"the nation, the government, the whole people, remain solidly +Protestant."<a name="FNanchor_331:1_209" id="FNanchor_331:1_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_331:1_209" class="fnanchor">[331:1]</a> Great territories originally discovered by Catholic +explorers and planted in the name of the church by Catholic missionaries +and colonists, and more lately occupied by Catholic immigrants in what +seemed overwhelming numbers, are now the seat of free and powerful +commonwealths in which the Catholic Church is only one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>of the most +powerful and beneficent of the Christian sects, while the institutions +and influences which characterize their society are predominantly +Protestant.</p> + +<p>In the westward propagation of Protestantism, as well as of Catholicism, +the distinctive attributes of the several sects or orders is strikingly +illustrated.</p> + +<p>Foremost in the pioneer work of the church are easily to be recognized +the Methodists and the Baptists, one the most solidly organized of the +Protestant sects, the other the most uncompact and individualist; the +first by virtue of the supple military organization of its great corps +of itinerants, the other by the simplicity and popular apprehensibleness +of its distinctive tenets and arguments and the aggressive ardor with +which it inspires all its converts, and both by their facility in +recruiting their ministry from the rank and file of the church, without +excluding any by arbitrarily imposed conditions. The Presbyterians were +heavily cumbered for advance work by traditions and rules which they +were rigidly reluctant to yield or bend, even when the reason for the +rule was superseded by higher reasons. The argument for a learned +ministry is doubtless a weighty one; but it does not suffice to prove +that when college-bred men are not to be had it is better that the +people have no minister at all. There is virtue in the rule of +ministerial parity; but it should not be allowed to hinder the church +from employing in humbler spiritual functions men who fall below the +prescribed standard. This the church, in course of time, discovered, and +instituted a "minor order" of ministers, under the title of colporteurs. +But it was timidly and tardily done, and therefore ineffectively. The +Presbyterians lost their place in the skirmish-line; but that which had +been their hindrance in the advance work gave them great advantage in +settled communities, in which for many years they took <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>precedence in +the building up of strong and intelligent congregations.</p> + +<p>To the Congregationalists belongs an honor in the past which, in recent +generations, they have not been jealous to retain. Beyond any sect, +except the Moravians, they have cherished that charity which seeketh not +her own. The earliest leaders in the organization of schemes of national +beneficence in coöperation with others, they have sustained them with +unselfish liberality, without regard to returns of sectarian advantage. +The results of their labor are largely to be traced in the upbuilding of +other sects. Their specialty in evangelization has been that of the +religious educators of the nation. They have been preëminently the +builders of colleges and theological seminaries. To them, also, belongs +the leadership in religious journalism. Not only the journals of their +own sect and the undenominational journals, but also to a notable extent +the religious journals of other denominations, have depended for their +efficiency on men bred in the discipline of Congregationalism.</p> + +<p>It is no just reproach to the Episcopalians that they were tardy in +entering the field of home missions. When we remember that it is only +since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find +their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements +to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless +Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign +missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of +the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future +of the church, and determined the type of Episcopalianism that was to be +planted in the West.<a name="FNanchor_333:1_210" id="FNanchor_333:1_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_333:1_210" class="fnanchor">[333:1]</a> Entering thus late into the work, and that +with stinted resources, the Episcopal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>Church wholly missed the +apostolic glory of not building on other men's foundations. Coming with +the highest pretensions to exclusive authority, its work was very +largely a work of proselyting from other Christian sects. But this work +was prosperously carried on; and although not in itself a work of the +highest dignity, and although the methods of it often bore a painfully +schismatic character, there is little room for doubt that the results of +it have enriched and strengthened the common Christianity of America. +Its specialties in the planting work have been the setting of a worthy +example of dignity and simplicity in the conduct of divine worship, and +in general of efficiency in the administration of a parish, and, above +all, the successful handling of the immensely difficult duties imposed +upon Christian congregations in great cities, where the Episcopal Church +has its chief strength and its most effective work.</p> + +<p>One must needs ascend to a certain altitude above the common level in +order to discern a substantial resultant unity of movement in the +strenuous rivalries and even antagonisms of the many sects of the one +church of Christ in America in that critical quarter-century from the +year 1835 to the outbreak of the Civil War, in which the work of the +church was suddenly expanded by the addition of a whole empire of +territory on the west, and the bringing in of a whole empire of alien +population from the east, and when no one of the Christian forces of the +nation could be spared from the field. The unity is very real, and is +visible enough, doubtless, from "the circle of the heavens." The sharers +in the toil and conflict and the near spectators are not well placed to +observe it. It will be for historians in some later century to study it +in a truer perspective.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It is not only as falling within this period of immigration, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>but as +being largely dependent on its accessions from foreign lands, that the +growth of Mormonism is entitled to mention in this chapter. In its +origin Mormonism is distinctly American—a system of gross, palpable +imposture contrived by a disreputable adventurer, Joe Smith, with the +aid of three confederates, who afterward confessed the fraud and perjury +of which they had been guilty. It is a shame to human nature that the +silly lies put forth by this precious gang should have found believers. +But the solemn pretensions to divine revelation, mixed with elements +borrowed from the prevalent revivalism, and from the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has hyphen between words">immediate adventism</ins> +which so easily captivates excitable imaginations, drew a number of +honest dupes into the train of the knavish leaders, and made possible +the pitiable history which followed. The chief recruiting-grounds for +the new religion were not in America, but in the manufacturing and +mining regions of Great Britain, and in some of the countries, +especially the Scandinavian countries, of continental Europe. The able +handling of an emigration fund, and the dexterous combination of appeals +to many passions and interests at once, have availed to draw together in +the State of Utah and neighboring regions a body of fanatics formidable +to the Republic, not by their number, for they count only about one +hundred and fifty thousand, but by the solidity with which they are +compacted into a political, economical, religious, and, at need, +military community, handled at will by unscrupulous chiefs. It is only +incidentally that the strange story of the Mormons, a story singularly +dramatic and sometimes tragic, is connected with the history of American +Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_335:1_211" id="FNanchor_335:1_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_335:1_211" class="fnanchor">[335:1]</a></p> + +<p>To this same period belongs the beginning of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>immigration of the +Chinese, which, like that of the Mormons, becomes by and by important to +our subject as furnishing occasion for active and fruitful missionary +labors.</p> + +<p>In the year 1843 culminated the panic agitation of Millerism. From the +year 1831 an honest Vermont farmer named William Miller had been urging +upon the public, in pamphlets and lectures, his views of the approaching +advent of Christ to judgment and the destruction of the world. He had +figured it out on the basis of prophecies in Daniel and the Revelation, +and the great event was set down for April 23, 1843. As the date drew +near the excitement of many became intense. Great meetings were held, in +the open air or in tents, of those who wished to be found waiting for +the Lord. Some nobly proved their sincerity by the surrender of their +property for the support of their poorer brethren until the end should +come. The awful day was awaited with glowing rapture of hope, or by some +with terror. When it dawned there was eager gazing upon the clouds of +heaven to descry the sign of the Son of man. And when the day had passed +without event there were various revulsions of feeling. The prophets set +themselves to going over their figures and fixing new dates; earnest +believers, sobered by the failure of their pious expectations, held +firmly to the substance of their faith and hope, while no longer +attempting to "know times and seasons, which the Father hath put within +his own power"; weak minds made shipwreck of faith; and scoffers cried +in derision, "Where is the promise of his coming?" A monument of this +honest delusion still exists in the not very considerable sect of +Adventists, with its subdivisions; but sympathizers with their general +scheme of prophetical interpretation are to be found among the most +earnest and faithful members of other churches.</p> + +<p>Such has been the progress of Scriptural knowledge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>since the days when +Farmer Miller went to work with his arithmetic and slate upon the +strange symbols and enigmatic figures of the Old and New Testament +Apocalypses, that plain Christians everywhere have now the means of +knowing that the lines of calculation along which good people were led +into delusion a half-century ago started from utterly fallacious +premises. It is to the fidelity of critical scholars that we owe it that +hereafter, except among the ignorant and unintelligent, these two books, +now clearly understood, will not again be used to minister to the panic +of a Millerite craze, nor to furnish vituperative epithets for +antipopery agitators.</p> + +<p>To this period also must be referred the rise of that system of +necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other +countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to +constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what +in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by +the name of witchcraft, we find the beginning of so-called +"spiritualism" in the "Rochester rappings," produced, to the wonder of +many witnesses, by "the Fox girls" in 1849. How the rappings and other +sensible phenomena were produced was a curious question, but not +important; the main question was, Did they convey communications from +the spirits of the dead, as the young women alleged, and as many persons +believed (so they thought) from demonstrative evidence? The mere +suggestion of the possibility of this of course awakened an inquisitive +and eager interest everywhere. It became the subject of universal +discussion and experiment in society. There was demand for other +"mediums" to satisfy curiosity or aid investigation; and the demand at +once produced a copious supply. The business of medium became a regular +profession, opening a career especially to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>enterprising women. They +began to draw together believers and doubters into "circles" and +"séances," and to organize permanent associations. At the end of ten +years the "Spiritual Register" for 1859, boasting great things, +estimated the actual spiritualists in America at 1,500,000, besides +4,000,000 more partly converted. The latest census gives the total +membership of their associations as 45,030. But this moderate figure +should not be taken as the measure of the influence of their leading +tenet. There are not a few honest Christians who are convinced that +communications do sometimes take place between the dead and the living; +there are a great multitude who are disposed, in a vague way, to think +there must be something in it. But there are few even of the earnest +devotees of the spiritualist cult who will deny that the whole business +is infested with fraud, whether of dishonest mediums or of lying +spirits. Of late years the general public has come into possession of +material for independent judgment on this point. An earnest +spiritualist, a man of wealth, named Seybert, dying, left to the +University of Pennsylvania a legacy of sixty thousand dollars, on +condition that the university should appoint a commission to investigate +the claims of spiritualism. A commission was appointed which left +nothing to be desired in point of ability, integrity, and impartiality. +Under the presidency of the renowned Professor Joseph Leidy, and with +the aid and advice of leading believers in spiritualism, they made a +long, patient, faithful investigation, the processes and results of +which are published in a most amusing little volume.<a name="FNanchor_338:1_212" id="FNanchor_338:1_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_338:1_212" class="fnanchor">[338:1]</a> The gist of +their report may be briefly summed up. Every case of alleged +communication from the world of departed spirits that was investigated +by the commission (and they were guided in their selection of cases by +the advice of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>eminent and respectable believers in spiritualism) was +discovered and demonstrated to be a case of gross, willful attempted +fraud. The evidence is strong that the organized system of spiritualism +in America, with its associations and lyceums and annual camp-meetings, +and its itinerancy of mediums and trance speakers, is a system of mere +imposture. In the honest simplicity of many of its followers, and in the +wicked mendacity of its leaders, it seems to be on a par with the other +American contribution to the religions of the world, Mormonism.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316:1_203" id="Footnote_316:1_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316:1_203"><span class="label">[316:1]</span></a> For condensed statistics of American immigration, see +"Encyclopædia Britannica," 9th ed., s. vv. "Emigration" and "United +States." For the facts concerning the Roman Empire one naturally has +recourse to Gibbon. From the indications there given we do not get the +impression that in the three centuries of the struggle of the empire +against the barbarians there was ever such a thirty years' flood of +invasion as the immigration into the United States from 1840 to 1869. +The entrance into the Roman Empire was indeed largely in the form of +armed invasion; but the most destructive influence of the barbarians was +when they were admitted as friends and naturalized as citizens. See +"Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xx., pp. 779, 780.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318:1_204" id="Footnote_318:1_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318:1_204"><span class="label">[318:1]</span></a> Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 446.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321:1_205" id="Footnote_321:1_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321:1_205"><span class="label">[321:1]</span></a> Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholics," p. 375. The +atrocity of such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at +once with the Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. +Brownlee's Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and +dispassionate pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived from +original sources of information. If anything could have justified the +animosity of the "native Americans" (who, by the way, were widely +suspected to be, in large proportion, native Ulstermen) it would have +been the finding of evidence of such facts as this which Bishop O'Gorman +has disclosed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321:2_206" id="Footnote_321:2_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321:2_206"><span class="label">[321:2]</span></a> The subject is reviewed in detail, from opposite points +of view, by Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 489-500, and by Dr. Daniel Dorchester, +"Christianity in the United States," pp. 618-621. One of the most recent +estimates is that presented to the Catholic Congress at Chicago, in +1893, in a remarkable speech by Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans. +Speaking of "the losses sustained by the church in this country, placed +by a conservative estimate at twenty millions of people, he laid the +responsibility for this upon neglect of immigration and colonization, +i.e., neglect of the rural population. From this results a long train of +losses." He added: "When I see how largely Catholicity is represented +among our hoodlum element, I feel in no spread-eagle mood. When I note +how few Catholics are engaged in honestly tilling the honest soil, and +how many Catholics are engaged in the liquor traffic, I cannot talk +buncombe to anybody. When I reflect that out of the 70,000,000 of this +nation we number only 9,000,000, and that out of that 9,000,000 so large +a proportion is made up of poor factory hands, poor mill and shop and +mine and railroad employees, poor government clerks, I still fail to +find material for buncombe or spread-eagle or taffy-giving. And who can +look at our past history and feel proud of our present status?" He +advocated as a remedy for this present state of things a movement toward +colonization, with especial attention to extension of educational +advantages for rural Catholics, and instruction of urban Catholics in +the advantages of rural life. "For so long as the rural South, the +pastoral West, the agricultural East, the farming Middle States, remain +solidly Protestant, as they now are, so long will this nation, this +government, this whole people, remain solidly Protestant" ("The World's +Parliament of Religions," pp. 1414, 1415). +</p><p> +It is a fact not easy to be accounted for that the statistics of no +Christian communion in America are so defective, uncertain, and +generally unsatisfactory as those of the most solidly organized and +completely systematized of them all, the Roman Catholic Church.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325:1_207" id="Footnote_325:1_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325:1_207"><span class="label">[325:1]</span></a> "Parliament of Religions," p. 1417. An obvious verbal +misprint is corrected in the quotation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327:1_208" id="Footnote_327:1_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327:1_208"><span class="label">[327:1]</span></a> Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 439, 440. James Parton, in the +"Atlantic Monthly," April and May, 1868. So lately as the year 1869 a +long list of volumes of this scandalous rubbish continued to be offered +to the public, under the indorsement of eminent names, by the "American +and Foreign Christian Union," until the society was driven by public +exposure into withdrawing them from sale. See "The Literature of the +Coming Controversy," in "Putnam's Magazine" for January, 1869.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331:1_209" id="Footnote_331:1_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331:1_209"><span class="label">[331:1]</span></a> Speech of Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans, in the +Catholic Congress at Chicago, 1893, quoted above, p. 322, <i>note</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333:1_210" id="Footnote_333:1_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333:1_210"><span class="label">[333:1]</span></a> Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 459.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335:1_211" id="Footnote_335:1_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335:1_211"><span class="label">[335:1]</span></a> Carroll, "Religious Forces of the United States," pp. +165-174; Bishop Tuttle, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," pp. 1575-1581; +Professor John Fraser, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," vol. xvi., pp. +825-828; Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," pp. 538-646.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338:1_212" id="Footnote_338:1_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338:1_212"><span class="label">[338:1]</span></a> "Report of the Seybert Commission," Philadelphia, +Lippincott.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<h3>THE CIVIL WAR—ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES.</h3> + + +<p class="section">It has been observed that for nearly half a generation after the +reaction began from the fervid excitement of the Millerite agitation no +season of general revival was known in the American church.</p> + +<p>These were years of immense material prosperity, "the golden age of our +history."<a name="FNanchor_340:1_213" id="FNanchor_340:1_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_340:1_213" class="fnanchor">[340:1]</a> The wealth of the nation in that time far more than +doubled; its railroad mileage more than threefolded; population moved +westward with rapidity and volume beyond precedent. Between 1845 and +1860 there were admitted seven new States and four organized +Territories.</p> + +<p>Withal it was a time of continually deepening intensity of political +agitation. The patchwork of compromises and settlements contrived by +make-shift politicians like Clay and Douglas would not hold; they tore +out, and the rent was made worse. Part of the Compromise of 1850, which +was to be something altogether sempiternal, was a Fugitive Slave Law so +studiously base and wicked in its provisions as to stir the indignation +of just and generous men whenever it was enforced, and to instruct and +strengthen and consolidate an intelligent and conscientious opposition +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>to slavery as not a century of antislavery lecturing and pamphleteering +could have done. Four years later the sagacious Stephen Douglas +introduced into Congress his ingenious permanent pacification scheme for +taking the slavery question "out of politics" by perfidiously repealing +the act under which the western Territories had for the third part of a +century been pledged to freedom, and leaving the question of freedom or +slavery to be decided by the first settlers upon the soil. It was +understood on both sides that the effect of this measure would be to +turn over the soil of Kansas to slavery; and for a moment there was a +calm that did almost seem like peace. But the providential man for the +emergency, Eli Thayer, boldly accepted the challenge under all the +disadvantageous conditions, and appealed to the friends of freedom and +righteousness to stand by him in "the Kansas Crusade." The appeal was to +the same Christian sentiment which had just uttered its vain protest, +through the almost unanimous voice of the ministers of the gospel, +against the opening of the Territories to the possibility of slavery. It +was taken up in the solemn spirit of religious duty. None who were +present are likely to forget the scene when the emigrants from New Haven +assembled in the North Church to be sped on their way with prayer and +benediction; how the vast multitude were thrilled by the noble eloquence +of Beecher, and how money came out of pocket when it was proposed to +equip the colonists with arms for self-defense against the ferocity of +"border ruffians." There were scenes like this in many a church and +country prayer-meeting, where Christian hearts did not forget to pray +"for them in bonds, as bound with them." There took place such a +religious emigration as America had not known since the days of the +first colonists. They went forth singing the words of Whittier:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span><span class="i0">We cross the prairies as of old<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Our fathers crossed the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make the West, as they the East,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The empire of the free.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Those were choice companies; it was said that in some of their +settlements every third man was a college graduate. Thus it was that, +not all at once, but after desperate tribulations, Kansas was saved for +freedom. It was the turning-point in the "irrepressible conflict." The +beam of the scales, which politicians had for forty years been trying to +hold level, dipped in favor of liberty and justice, and it was hopeless +thenceforth to restore the balance.<a name="FNanchor_342:1_214" id="FNanchor_342:1_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_342:1_214" class="fnanchor">[342:1]</a></p> + +<p>Neither of the two characteristics of this time, the abounding material +prosperity or the turbid political agitation, was favorable to that +fixed attention to spiritual themes which promotes the revival of +religion. But the conditions were about to be suddenly changed.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, in the fall of 1857, came a business revulsion. Hard times +followed. Men had leisure for thought and prayer, and anxieties that +they were fain to cast upon God, seeking help and direction. The happy +thought occurred to a good man, Jeremiah Lanphier, in the employ of the +old North Dutch Church in New York, to open a room in the "consistory +building" in Fulton Street as an oratory for the common prayer of so +many business men as might be disposed to gather there in the hour from +twelve to one o'clock, "with one accord to make their common +supplications." The invitation was responded to at first by hardly more +than "two or three." The number grew. The room overflowed. A second room +was opened, and then a third, in the same building, till all its walls +resounded with prayer and song. The example was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>followed until at one +time, in the spring of 1858, no fewer than twenty "daily union +prayer-meetings" were sustained in different parts of the city. Besides +these, there was preaching at unwonted times and places. Burton's +Theater, on Chambers Street, in the thick of the business houses, was +thronged with eager listeners to the rudimental truths of personal +religion, expounded and applied by great preachers. Everywhere the +cardinal topics of practical religious duty, repentance and Christian +faith, were themes of social conversation. All churches and ministers +were full of activity and hope. "They that feared the Lord spake often +one with another."</p> + +<p>What was true of New York was true, in its measure, of every city, +village, and hamlet in the land. It was the Lord's doing, marvelous in +men's eyes. There was no human leadership or concert of action in +bringing it about. It came. Not only were there no notable evangelists +traveling the country; even the pastors of churches did little more than +enter zealously into their happy duty in things made ready to their +hand. Elsewhere, as at New York, the work began with the spontaneous +gathering of private Christians, stirred by an unseen influence. Two +circumstances tended to promote the diffusion of the revival. The Young +Men's Christian Association, then a recent but rapidly spreading +institution, furnished a natural center in each considerable town for +mutual consultation and mutual incitement among young men of various +sects. For this was another trait of the revival, that it went forward +as a tide movement of the whole church, in disregard of the +dividing-lines of sect. I know not what Christian communion, if any, was +unaffected by it. The other favorable circumstance was the business +interest taken in the revival by the secular press. Up to this time the +church had been little accustomed to look for coöperation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>to the +newspaper, unless it was the religious weekly. But at this time that was +fulfilled which was spoken of the prophet, that "holiness to the Lord" +should be written upon the trains of commerce and upon all secular +things. The sensation head-lines in enterprising journals proclaimed +"Revival News," and smart reporters were detailed to the prayer-meeting +or the sermon, as having greater popular interest, for the time, than +the criminal trial or the political debate. Such papers as the "Tribune" +and the "Herald," laying on men's breakfast-tables and counting-room +desks the latest pungent word from the noon prayer-meeting or the +evening sermon, did the work of many tract societies.</p> + +<p>As the immediate result of the revival of 1857-58 it has been estimated +that one million of members were added to the fellowship of the +churches. But the ulterior result was greater. This revival was the +introduction to a new era of the nation's spiritual life. It was the +training-school for a force of lay evangelists for future work, eminent +among whom is the name of Dwight Moody. And, like the Great Awakening of +1740, it was the providential preparation of the American church for an +immediately impending peril the gravity of which there were none at the +time far-sighted enough to predict. Looking backward, it is instructive +for us to raise the question how the church would have passed through +the decade of the sixties without the spiritual reinforcement that came +to it amid the pentecostal scenes of 1857 and 1858.</p> + +<p>And yet there were those among the old men who were ready to weep as +they compared the building of the Lord's house with what they had known +in their younger days: no sustained enforcement on the mind and +conscience of alarming and heart-searching doctrines; no "protracted +meetings" in which from day to day the warnings and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>invitations of the +gospel were set forth before the hesitating mind; in the converts no +severe and thorough "law-work," from the agonizing throes of which the +soul was with no brief travail born to newness of life; but the free +invitation, the ready and glad acceptance, the prompt enrollment on the +Lord's side. Did not these things betoken a superficial piety, springing +up like seed in the thin soil of rocky places? It was a question for +later years to answer, and perhaps we have not the whole of the answer +yet. Certainly the work was not as in the days of Edwards and Brainerd, +nor as in the days of Nettleton and Finney; was it not, perhaps, more +like the work in the days of Barnabas and Paul and Peter?</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It does not appear that the spiritual quickening of 1857 had any effect +in allaying the sharp controversy between northern and southern +Christians on the subject of slavery. Perhaps it may have deepened and +intensified it. The "southern apostasy," from principles universally +accepted in 1818, had become complete and (so far as any utterance was +permitted to reach the public) unanimous. The southern Methodists and +the southern Baptists had, a dozen years before, relieved themselves +from liability to rebuke, whether express or implied, from their +northern brethren for complicity with the crimes involved in slavery, by +seceding from fellowship. Into the councils of the Episcopalians and the +Catholics this great question of public morality was never allowed to +enter. The Presbyterians were divided into two bodies, each having its +northern and its southern presbyteries; and the course of events in +these two bodies may be taken as an indication of the drift of opinion +and feeling. The Old-School body, having a strong southern element, +remained silent, notwithstanding the open nullification of its +declaration <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>of 1818 by the presbytery of Harmony, S. C., resolving that +"the existence of slavery is not opposed to the will of God," and the +synod of Virginia declaring that "the General Assembly had no right to +declare that relation sinful which Christ and his apostles teach to be +consistent with the most unquestionable piety." The New-School body, +patient and considerate toward its southern presbyteries, did not fail, +nevertheless, to reassert the principles of righteousness, and in 1850 +it declared slave-holding to be <i>prima facie</i> a subject of the +discipline of the church. In 1853 it called upon its southern +presbyteries to report what had been done in the case. One of them +replied defiantly that its ministers and church-members were +slave-holders by choice and on principle. When the General Assembly +condemned this utterance, the entire southern part of the church seceded +and set up a separate jurisdiction.<a name="FNanchor_346:1_215" id="FNanchor_346:1_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_346:1_215" class="fnanchor">[346:1]</a></p> + +<p>There seems no reason to doubt the entire sincerity with which the +southern church, in all its sects, had consecrated itself with religious +devotion to the maintenance of that horrible and inhuman form of slavery +which had drawn upon itself the condemnation of the civilized world. The +earnest antislavery convictions which had characterized it only +twenty-five years before, violently suppressed from utterance, seem to +have perished by suffocation. The common sentiment of southern +Christianity was expressed in that serious declaration of the Southern +Presbyterian Church, during the war, of its "deep conviction of the +divine appointment of domestic servitude," and of the "peculiar mission +of the southern church to conserve the institution of slavery."<a name="FNanchor_346:2_216" id="FNanchor_346:2_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_346:2_216" class="fnanchor">[346:2]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p><p>At the North, on the other hand, with larger liberty, there was wider +diversity of opinion. In general, the effect of continued discussion, of +larger knowledge of facts, and of the enforcement on the common +conscience, by the course of public events, of a sense of responsibility +and duty in the matter, had been to make more intelligent, sober, and +discriminating, and therefore more strong and steadfast, the resolution +to keep clear of all complicity with slavery. There were few to assume +the defense of that odious system, though there were some. There were +many to object to scores of objectionable things in the conduct of +abolitionists. And there were a very great number of honest, +conscientious men who were appalled as they looked forward to the boldly +threatened consequences of even the mildest action in opposition to +slavery—the rending of the church, the ruin of the country, the horrors +of civil war, and its uncertain event, issuing perhaps in the wider +extension and firmer establishment of slavery itself. It was an immense +power that the bold, resolute, rule-or-ruin supporters of the divine +right of slavery held over the Christian public of the whole country, so +long as they could keep these threats suspended in the air. It seemed to +hold in the balance against a simple demand to execute righteousness +toward a poor, oppressed, and helpless race, immense interests of +patriotism, of humanity, of the kingdom of God itself. Presently the +time came when these threats could no longer be kept aloft. The +compliance demanded was clearly, decisively refused. The threats must +either be executed or must fall to the ground amid general derision. But +the moment that the threat was put in execution its power as a threat +had ceased. With the first stroke against the life of the nation all +great and noble motives, instead of being balanced against each other, +were drawing together in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>same direction. It ought not to have been +a surprise to the religious leaders of disunion, ecclesiastical and +political, to find that those who had most anxiously deprecated the +attack upon the government should be among the most earnest and resolute +to repel the attack when made.</p> + +<p>No man can read the history of the American church in the Civil War +intelligently who does not apprehend, however great the effort, that the +Christian people of the South did really and sincerely believe +themselves to be commissioned by the providence of God to "conserve the +institution of slavery" as an institution of "divine appointment." +Strange as the conviction seems, it is sure that the conviction of +conscience in the southern army that it was right in waging war against +the government of the country was as clear as the conviction, on the +other side, of the duty of defending the government. The southern +regiments, like the northern, were sent forth with prayer and +benediction, and their camps, as well as those of their adversaries, +were often the seats of earnest religious life.<a name="FNanchor_348:1_217" id="FNanchor_348:1_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_348:1_217" class="fnanchor">[348:1]</a></p> + +<p>At the South the entire able-bodied population was soon called into +military service, so that almost the whole church was in the army. At +the North the churches at home hardly seemed diminished by the myriads +sent to the field. It was amazing to see the charities and missions of +the churches sustained with almost undiminished supplies, while the +great enterprises of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions were set on +foot and magnificently carried forward, for the physical, social, and +spiritual good of the soldiers. Never was the gift of giving so +abundantly bestowed on the church as in these stormy times. There was a +feverish eagerness of life in all ways; if there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>was a too eager haste +to make money among those that could be spared for business, there was a +generous readiness in bestowing it. The little faith that expected to +cancel and retrench, especially in foreign missions, in which it took +sometimes three dollars in the collection to put one dollar into the +work, was rebuked by the rising of the church to the height of the +exigency.</p> + +<p>One religious lesson that was learned as never before, on both sides of +the conflict, was the lesson of Christian fellowship as against the +prevailing folly of sectarian divisions, emulations, and jealousies. +There were great drawings in this direction in the early days of the +war, when men of the most unlike antecedents and associations gathered +on the same platform, intent on the same work, and mutual aversions and +partisan antagonisms melted away in the fervent heat of a common +religious patriotism. But the lesson which was commended at home was +enforced in the camp and the regiment by constraint of circumstances. +The army chaplain, however one-sided he might have been in his parish, +had to be on all sides with his kindly sympathy as soon as he joined his +regiment. He learned in a right apostolic sense to become all things to +all men, and, returning home, he did not forget the lesson. The delight +of a fellowship truly catholic in the one work of Christ, once tasted, +was not easily foregone. Already the current, perplexed with eddies, had +begun to set in the direction of Christian unity. How much the common +labors of Christian men and women and Christian ministers of every +different name, through the five years of bloody strife, contributed to +swell and speed the current, no one can measure.</p> + +<p>According to a well-known law of the kingdom of heaven, the intense +experiences of the war, both in the army and out of it, left no man just +as he was before. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>To "them that were exercised thereby" they brought +great promotion in the service of the King. The cases are not few nor +inconspicuous of men coming forth from the temptations and the +discipline of the military service every way stronger and better +Christians than they entered it. The whole church gained higher +conceptions of the joy and glory of self-sacrifice, and deeper and more +vivid insight into the significance of vicarious suffering and death. +The war was a rude school of theology, but it taught some things well. +The church had need of all that it could learn, in preparation for the +tasks and trials that were before it.</p> + +<p>There were those, on the other hand, who emerged from the military +service depraved and brutalized; and those who, in the rush of business +incidental to the war, were not trained to self-sacrifice and duty, but +habituated to the seeking of selfish interests in the midst of the +public peril and affliction. We delight in the evidences that these +cases were a small proportion of the whole. But even a small percentage +of so many hundreds of thousands mounts up to a formidable total. The +early years of the peace were so marked by crimes of violence that a +frequent heading in the daily newspapers was "The Carnival of Crime." +Prosperity, or the semblance of it, came in like a sudden flood. +Immigration of an improved character poured into the country in greater +volume than ever. Multitudes made haste to be rich, and fell into +temptations and snares. The perilous era of enormous fortunes began.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340:1_213" id="Footnote_340:1_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340:1_213"><span class="label">[340:1]</span></a> E. B. Andrews, "History of the United States," vol. +ii., p. 66.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342:1_214" id="Footnote_342:1_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342:1_214"><span class="label">[342:1]</span></a> Read "The Kansas Crusade," by Eli Thayer, Harpers, New +York, 1889. It is lively reading, and indispensable to a full +understanding of this part of the national history.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346:1_215" id="Footnote_346:1_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346:1_215"><span class="label">[346:1]</span></a> Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 135.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346:2_216" id="Footnote_346:2_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346:2_216"><span class="label">[346:2]</span></a> "Narrative of the State of Religion" of the Southern +General Assembly of 1864.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348:1_217" id="Footnote_348:1_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348:1_217"><span class="label">[348:1]</span></a> For interesting illustrations of this, see Alexander, +"The Methodists, South," pp. 71-75. The history of the religious life of +the northern army is superabundant and everywhere accessible.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<h3>AFTER THE WAR.</h3> + + +<p class="section">When the five years of rending and tearing had passed, in which slavery +was dispossessed of its hold upon the nation, there was much to be done +in reconstructing and readjusting the religious institutions of the +country.</p> + +<p>Throughout the seceding States buildings and endowments for religious +uses had suffered in the general waste and destruction of property. +Colleges and seminaries, in many instances, had seen their entire +resources swept away through investment in the hopeless promises of the +defeated government. Churches, boards, and like associations were widely +disorganized through the vicissitudes of military occupation and the +protracted absence or the death of men of experience and capacity.</p> + +<p>The effect of the war upon denominational organizations had been +various. There was no sect of all the church the members and ministers +of which had not felt the sweep of the currents of popular opinion all +about them. But the course of events in each denomination was in some +measure illustrative of the character of its polity.</p> + +<p>In the Roman Catholic Church the antagonisms of the conflict were as +keenly felt as anywhere. Archbishop Hughes of New York, who, with Henry +Ward Beecher and Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio, accepted a political mission +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>from President Lincoln, was not more distinctly a Union man than Bishop +Lynch of Charleston was a secessionist. But the firm texture of the +hierarchical organization, held steadily in place by a central authority +outside of the national boundaries, prevented any organic rupture. The +Catholic Church in America was eminently fortunate at one point: the +famous bull <i>Quanta Cura</i>, with its appended "Syllabus" of damnable +errors, in which almost all the essential characteristics of the +institutions of the American Republic are anathematized, was fulminated +in 1864, when people in the United States had little time to think of +ecclesiastical events taking place at such a distance. If this +extraordinary document had been first published in a time of peace, and +freely discussed in the newspapers of the time, it could hardly have +failed to inflict the most serious embarrassment on the interests of +Catholicism in America. Even now it keeps the Catholic clergy in a +constantly explanatory attitude to show that the Syllabus does not +really mean what to the ordinary reader it unmistakably seems to mean; +and the work of explanation is made the more necessary and the more +difficult by the decree of papal infallibility, which followed the +Syllabus after a few years.</p> + +<p>Simply on the ground of a <i>de facto</i> political independence, the +southern dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church, following the +principles and precedents of 1789, organized themselves into a "Church +in the Confederate States." One of the southern bishops, Polk, of +Louisiana, accepted a commission of major-general in the Confederate +army, and relieved his brethren of any disciplinary questions that might +have arisen in consequence by dying on the field from a cannon-shot. +With admirable tact and good temper, the "Church in the United States" +managed to ignore the existence of any secession; and when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>the alleged +<i>de facto</i> independence ceased, the seceding bishops and their dioceses +dropped quietly back into place without leaving a trace of the secession +upon the record.</p> + +<p>The southern organizations of the Methodists and Baptists were of twenty +years' standing at the close of the war in 1865. The war had abolished +the original cause of these divisions, but it had substituted others +quite as serious. The exasperations of the war, and the still more +acrimonious exasperations of the period of the political reconstruction +and of the organization of northern missions at the South, gendered +strifes that still delay the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has redintegration">reintegration</ins> which is so visibly future of +both of these divided denominations.</p> + +<p>At the beginning of the war one of the most important of the +denominations that still retained large northern and southern +memberships in the same fellowship was the Old-School Presbyterian +Church; and no national sect had made larger concessions to avert a +breach of unity. When the General Assembly met at Philadelphia in May, +1861, amid the intense excitements of the opening war, it was still the +hope of the habitual leaders and managers of the Assembly to avert a +division by holding back that body from any expression of sentiment on +the question on which the minds of Christians were stirred at that time +with a profound and most religious fervor. But the Assembly took the +matter out of the hands of its leaders, and by a great majority, in the +words of a solemn and temperate resolution drawn by the venerable and +conservative Dr. Gardiner Spring, declared its loyalty to the government +and constitution of the country. With expressions of horror at the +sacrilege of taking the church into the domain of politics, southern +presbyteries one after another renounced the jurisdiction of the General +Assembly that could be guilty of so shocking a profanation, and, uniting +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>in a General Assembly of their own, proceeded with great promptitude to +make equally emphatic deliverances on the opposite side of the same +political question.<a name="FNanchor_354:1_218" id="FNanchor_354:1_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_354:1_218" class="fnanchor">[354:1]</a> But nice logical consistency and accurate +working within the lines of a church theory were more than could +reasonably be expected of a people in so pitiable a plight. The +difference on the subject of the right function of the church continued +to be held as the ground for continuing the separation from the General +Assembly after the alleged ground in political geography had ceased to +be valid; the working motive for it was more obvious in the unfraternal +and almost wantonly exasperating course of the national General Assembly +during the war; but the best justification for it is to be found in the +effective and useful working of the Southern Presbyterian Church. +Considering the impoverishment and desolation of the southern country, +the record of useful and self-denying work accomplished by this body, +not only at home, but in foreign fields, is, from its beginning, an +immensely honorable one.</p> + +<p>Another occasion of reconstruction was the strong disposition of the +liberated negroes to withdraw themselves from the tutelage of the +churches in which they had been held, in the days of slavery, in a +lower-caste relation. The eager entrance of the northern churches upon +mission work among the blacks, to which access had long been barred by +atrocious laws and by the savage fury of mobs, tended to promote this +change. The multiplication and growth of organized negro denominations +is a characteristic of the period after the war. There is reason to hope +that the change may by and by, with the advance of education and moral +training among this people, inure to their spiritual advantage. There is +equal reason to fear that at present, in many cases, it works to their +serious detriment.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p><p>The effect of the war was not exclusively divisive. In two instances, +at least, it had the effect of healing old schisms. The southern +secession from the New-School Presbyterian Church, which had come away +in 1858 on the slavery issue, found itself in 1861 side by side with the +southern secession from the Old School, and in full agreement with it in +morals and politics. The two bodies were not long in finding that the +doctrinal differences which a quarter-century before had seemed so +insuperable were, after all, no serious hindrance to their coming +together.</p> + +<p>Even after the war was over, its healing power was felt, this time at +the North. There was a honeycomb for Samson in the carcass of the +monster. The two great Presbyterian sects at the North had found a +common comfort in their relief from the perpetual festering irritation +of the slavery question; they had softened toward each other in the glow +of a religious patriotism; they had forgotten old antagonisms in common +labors; and new issues had obscured the tenuous doctrinal disputes that +had agitated the continent in 1837. Both parties grew tired and ashamed +of the long and sometimes ill-natured quarrel. With such a disposition +on both sides, terms of agreement could not fail in time to be found. +For substance, the basis of reunion was this: that the New-School church +should yield the point of organization, and the Old-School church should +yield the point of doctrine; the New-School men should sustain the +Old-School boards, and the Old-School men should tolerate the New-School +heresies. The consolidation of the two sects into one powerful +organization was consummated at Pittsburg, November 12, 1869, with every +demonstration of joy and devout thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>One important denomination, the Congregationalists, had had the +distinguished advantage, through all these turbulent years, of having no +southern membership. Out of all proportion to its numerical strength was +the part <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>which it took in those missions to the neglected populations +of the southern country into which the various denominations, both of +the South and of the North, entered with generous emulation while yet +the war was still waging. Always leaders in advanced education, they not +only, acting through the American Missionary Association, provided for +primary and secondary schools for the negroes, but promoted the +foundation of institutions of higher, and even of the highest, grade at +Hampton, at Atlanta, at Tuskegee, at New Orleans, at Nashville, and at +Washington. Many noble lives have been consecrated to this most +Christlike work of lifting up the depressed. None will grudge a word of +exceptional eulogy to the memory of that splendid character, General +Samuel C. Armstrong, son of one of the early missionaries to the +Sandwich Islands, who poured his inspiring soul into the building up of +the "Normal Institute" at Hampton, Va., thus not only rearing a visible +monument of his labor in the enduring buildings of that great and useful +institution, but also establishing his memory, for as long as human +gratitude can endure, in the hearts of hundreds of young men and young +women, negro and Indian, whose lives are the better and nobler for their +having known him as their teacher.</p> + +<p>It cannot be justly claimed for the Congregationalists of the present +day that they have lost nothing of that corporate unselfishness, seeking +no sectarian aggrandizement, but only God's reign and righteousness, +which had been the glory of their fathers. The studious efforts that +have been made to cultivate among them a sectarian spirit, as if this +were one of the Christian virtues, have not been fruitless. Nevertheless +it may be seen that their work of education at the South has been +conducted in no narrow spirit. The extending of their sect over new +territory has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>been a most trivial and unimportant result of their +widespread and efficient work. A far greater result has been the +promotion among the colored people of a better education, a higher +standard of morality, and an enlightened piety, through the influence of +the graduates of these institutions, not only as pastors and as +teachers, but in all sorts of trades and professions and as mothers of +families.</p> + +<p>This work of the Congregationalists is entitled to mention, not as +exceptional, but only as eminent among like enterprises, in which few of +the leading sects have failed to be represented. Extravagant +expectations were at first entertained of immediate results in bringing +the long-depressed race up to the common plane of civilization. But it +cannot be said that reasonable and intelligent expectations have been +disappointed. Experience has taught much as to the best conduct of such +missions. The gift of a fund of a million dollars by the late John F. +Slater, of Norwich, has through wise management conduced to this end. It +has encouraged in the foremost institutions the combination of training +to skilled productive labor with education in literature and science.</p> + +<p>The inauguration of these systems of religious education at the South +was the most conspicuously important of the immediate sequels of the +Civil War. But this time was a time of great expansion of the activities +of the church in all directions. The influx of immigration, temporarily +checked by the hard times of 1857 and by the five years of war, came in +again in such floods as never before.<a name="FNanchor_357:1_219" id="FNanchor_357:1_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_357:1_219" class="fnanchor">[357:1]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>The foreign immigration is +always attended by a westward movement of the already settled +population. The field of home missions became greater and more exacting +than ever. The zeal of the church, educated during the war to higher +ideas of self-sacrifice, rose to the occasion. The average yearly +receipts of the various Protestant home missionary societies, which in +the decade 1850-59 had been $808,000, rose in the next decade to more +than $2,000,000, in the next to nearly $3,000,000, and for the seven +years 1881-87 to $4,000,000.<a name="FNanchor_358:1_220" id="FNanchor_358:1_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_358:1_220" class="fnanchor">[358:1]</a></p> + +<p>In the perils of abounding wealth by which the church after the war was +beset, it was divine fatherly kindness that opened before it new and +enlarged facilities of service to the kingdom of heaven among foreign +nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from +America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by +the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, +with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public +obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its +"bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially +when the dollar in a man's pocket shrank to a half or a third of its +value in the world's currency, it seemed as if the work of foreign +missions would have to be turned over to Christians in lands less +burdened with accumulated disadvantages. But here again the grandeur of +the burden gave an inspiration of strength to the burden-bearer. From +1840 to 1849 the average yearly receipts of the various foreign +missionary societies of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>Protestant churches of the country had been +a little more than a half-million. In the decade 1850-59 they had risen +to $850,000; for the years of distress, 1860-69, they exceeded +$1,300,000; for the eleven years 1870-80 the annual receipts in this +behalf were $2,200,000; and in the seven years 1881-87 they were +$3,000,000.<a name="FNanchor_359:1_221" id="FNanchor_359:1_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_359:1_221" class="fnanchor">[359:1]</a></p> + +<p>We have seen how, only forty years before the return of peace, in the +days of a humble equality in moderate estates, ardent souls exulted +together in the inauguration of the era of democracy in beneficence, +when every humblest giver might, through association and organization, +have part in magnificent enterprises of Christian charity such as had +theretofore been possible "only to princes or to men of princely +possessions."<a name="FNanchor_359:2_222" id="FNanchor_359:2_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_359:2_222" class="fnanchor">[359:2]</a> But with the return of civil peace we began to +recognize that among ourselves was growing up a class of "men of +princely possessions"—a class such as the American Republic never +before had known.<a name="FNanchor_359:3_223" id="FNanchor_359:3_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_359:3_223" class="fnanchor">[359:3]</a> Among those whose fortunes were reckoned by +many millions or many tens of millions were men of sordid nature, whose +wealth, ignobly won, was selfishly hoarded, and to whose names, as to +that of the late Jay Gould, there is attached in the mind of the people +a distinct note of infamy. But this was not in general the character of +the American millionaire. There were those of nobler strain who felt a +responsibility commensurate with the great power conferred by great +riches, and held their wealth as in trust for mankind. Through the +fidelity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>of men of this sort it has come to pass that the era of great +fortunes in America has become conspicuous in the history of the whole +world as the era of magnificent donations to benevolent ends. Within a +few months of each other, from the little State of Connecticut, came the +fund of a million given by John F. Slater in his lifetime for the +benefit of the freedmen, the gift of a like sum for the like purpose +from Daniel Hand, and the legacy of a million and a half for foreign +missions from Deacon Otis of New London. Great gifts like these were +frequently directed to objects which could not easily have been attained +by the painful process of accumulating small donations. It was a period +not only of splendid gifts to existing institutions, but of foundations +for new universities, libraries, hospitals, and other institutions of +the highest public service, foundations without parallel in human +history for large munificence. To this period belong the beginnings of +the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital at Baltimore, the University +of Chicago, the Clarke University at Worcester, the Vanderbilt +University at Nashville, the Leland Stanford, Jr., University of +California, the Peabody and Enoch Pratt Libraries at Baltimore, the +Lenox Library at New York, the great endowed libraries of Chicago, the +Drexel Institute at Philadelphia, and the Armour Institute at Chicago. +These are some of the names that most readily occur of foundations due +mainly to individual liberality, set down at the risk of omitting others +with equal claim for mention. Not all of these are to be referred to a +religious spirit in the founders, but none of them can fail of a +Christian influence and result. They prepare a foothold for such a +forward stride of Christian civilization as our continent has never +before known.</p> + +<p>The sum of these gifts of millions, added to the great aggregates of +contribution to the national missionary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>boards and societies, falls far +short of the total contributions expended in cities, towns, and villages +for the building of churches and the maintenance of the countless +charities that cluster around them. The era following the war was +preëminently a "building era." Every one knows that religious devotion +is only one of the mingled motives that work together in such an +enterprise as the building of a church; but, after all deductions, the +voluntary gifts of Christian people for Christ's sake in the promotion +of such works, when added to the grand totals already referred to, would +make an amount that would overtax the ordinary imagination to conceive.</p> + +<p>And yet it is not certain that this period of immense gifts of money is +really a period of increased liberality in the church from the time, +thirty or forty years before, when a millionaire was a rarity to be +pointed out on the streets, and the possession of a hundred thousand +dollars gave one a place among "The Rich Men of New York." In 1850 the +total wealth of the United States was reported in the census as seven +billions of dollars. In 1870, after twenty years, it had more than +fourfolded, rising to thirty billions. Ten years later, according to the +census, it had sixfolded, rising to forty-three billions.<a name="FNanchor_361:1_224" id="FNanchor_361:1_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_361:1_224" class="fnanchor">[361:1]</a> From +the point of view of One "sitting over against the treasury" it is not +likely that any subsequent period has equaled in its gifts that early +day when in New England the people "were wont to build a fine church as +soon as they had houses for themselves,"<a name="FNanchor_361:2_225" id="FNanchor_361:2_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_361:2_225" class="fnanchor">[361:2]</a> and when the messengers +went from cabin to cabin to gather the gifts of "the college corn."</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The greatest addition to the forces of the church in the period since +the war has come from deploying into the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>field hitherto unused +resources of personal service. The methods under which the personal +activity of private Christians has formerly been organized for service +have increased and multiplied, and old agencies have taken on new forms.</p> + +<p>The earliest and to this day the most extensive of the organizations for +utilizing the non-professional ministry in systematic religious labors +is the Sunday-school. The considerable development of this +instrumentality begins to be recognized after the Second Awakening in +the early years of the present century. The prevailing characteristic of +the American Sunday-school as distinguished from its British congener is +that it is commonly a part of the equipment of the local church for the +instruction of its own children, and incidentally one of the most +important resources for its attractive work toward those that are +without. But it is also recognized as one of the most flexible and +adaptable "arms of the service" for aggressive work, whether in great +cities or on the frontier. It was about the year 1825 that this work +began to be organized on a national scale. But it is since the war that +it has sprung into vastly greater efficiency. The agreement upon uniform +courses of biblical study, to be followed simultaneously by many +millions of pupils over the entire continent, has given a unity and +coherence before unknown to the Sunday-school system; and it has +resulted in extraordinary enterprise and activity on the part of +competent editors and publishers to provide apparatus for the thorough +study of the text, which bids fair in time to take away the reproach of +the term "Sunday-schoolish" as applied to superficial, ignorant, or +merely sentimental expositions of the Scriptures. The work of the +"Sunday-school Times," in bringing within the reach of teachers all over +the land the fruits of the world's best <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>scholarship, is a signal fact +in history—the most conspicuous of a series of like facts. The +tendency, slow, of course, and partial, but powerful, is toward serious, +faithful study and teaching, in which "the mind of the Spirit" is sought +in the sacred text, with strenuous efforts of the teachable mind, with +all the aids that can be brought from whatever quarter. The +Sunday-school system, coextensive with Protestant Christianity in +America, and often the forerunner of church and ministry, and, to a less +extent and under more scrupulous control of clergy, adopted into the +Catholic Church, has become one of the distinctive features of American +Christianity.</p> + +<p>An outgrowth of the Sunday-school system, which, under the conduct of a +man of genius for organization, Dr. John H. Vincent, now a bishop of the +Methodist Church, has expanded to magnificent dimensions, is that which +is suggested by the name "Chautauqua." Beginning in the summer of 1874 +with a fortnight's meeting in a grove beside Chautauqua Lake for the +study of the methods of Sunday-school teaching, it led to the questions, +how to connect the Sunday-school more intimately with other departments +of the church and with other agencies in society; how to control in the +interest of religious culture the forces, social, commercial, +industrial, and educational, which, for good or evil, are affecting the +Sunday-school pupils every day of the week. Striking root at other +centers of assembly, east, west, and south, and combining its summer +lectures with an organized system of home studies extending through the +year, subject to written examinations, "Chautauqua," by the +comprehensive scope of its studies and by the great multitude of its +students, is entitled to be called, in no ignoble sense of the word, a +university.<a name="FNanchor_363:1_226" id="FNanchor_363:1_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_363:1_226" class="fnanchor">[363:1]</a> A weighty and unimpeachable testimony to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>the power +and influence of the institution has been the recent organization of a +Catholic Chautauqua, under the conduct of leading scholars and +ecclesiastics of the Roman Church.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Another organization of the unpaid service of private Christians is the +Young Men's Christian Association. Beginning in London in 1844, it had +so far demonstrated its usefulness in 1851 as to attract favorable +attention from visitors to the first of the World's Fairs. In the end of +that year the Association in Boston was formed, and this was rapidly +followed by others in the principal cities. It met a growing exigency in +American society. In the organization of commerce and manufacture in +larger establishments than formerly, the apprenticeship system had +necessarily lapsed, and nothing had taken its place. Of old, young men +put to the learning of any business were "articled" or "indentured" as +apprentices to the head of the concern, who was placed <i>in loco +parentis</i>, being invested both with the authority and with the +responsibility of a father. Often the apprentices were received into the +house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance +it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the +old man's daughter and succeed to the business. After the employees of a +store came to be numbered by scores and the employees of a factory by +hundreds, the word "apprentice" became obsolete in the American +language. The employee was only a "hand," and there was danger that +employers would forget that he was also a heart and a soul. This was the +exigency that the Young Men's Christian Association came to supply. Men +of conscience among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>employers and corporations recognized their +opportunity and their duty. The new societies did not lack encouragement +and financial aid from those to whom the character of the young men was +not only a matter of Christian concern, but also a matter of business +interest. In every considerable town the Association organized itself, +and the work of equipment, and soon of building, went on apace. In 1887 +the Association buildings in the United States and Canada were valued at +three and a half millions. In 1896 there were in North America 1429 +Associations, with about a quarter of a million of members, employing +1251 paid officers, and holding buildings and other real estate to the +amount of nearly $20,000,000.</p> + +<p>The work has not been without its vicissitudes. The wonderful revival of +1857, preëminently a laymen's movement, in many instances found its +nidus in the rooms of the Associations; and their work was expanded and +invigorated as a result of the revival. In 1861 came on the war. It +broke up for the time the continental confederacy of Associations. Many +of the local Associations were dissolved by the enlistment of their +members. But out of the inspiring exigencies of the time grew up in the +heart of the Associations the organization and work of the Christian +Commission, coöperating with the Sanitary Commission for the bodily and +spiritual comfort of the armies in the field. The two organizations +expended upward of eleven millions of dollars, the free gift of the +people at home. After the war the survivors of those who had enlisted +from the Associations came back to their home duties, in most cases, +better men for all good service in consequence of their experience of +military discipline.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>A natural sequel to the organization and success of the Young Men's +Christian Association is the institution of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>the Young Women's Christian +Association, having like objects and methods in its proper sphere. This +institution, too, owes the reason of its existence to changed social +conditions. The plausible arguments of some earnest reformers in favor +of opening careers of independent self-support to women, and the +unquestionable and pathetic instances by which these arguments are +enforced, are liable to some most serious and weighty offsets. Doubtless +many and many a case of hardship has been relieved by the general +introduction of this reform. But the result has been the gathering in +large towns of populations of unmarried, self-supporting young women, +severed from home duties and influences, and, out of business hours, +under no effective restraints of rule. There is a rush from the country +into the city of applicants for employment, and wages sink to less than +a living rate. We are confronted with an artificial and perilous +condition for the church to deal with, especially in the largest cities. +And of the various instrumentalities to this end, the Young Women's +Christian Association is one of the most effective.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The development of organized activity among women has been a conspicuous +characteristic of this period. From the beginning of our churches the +charitable sewing-circle or "Dorcas Society" has been known as a center +both of prayer and of labor. But in this period the organization of +women for charitable service has been on a continental scale.</p> + +<p>In 1874, in an outburst of zeal, "women's crusades" were undertaken, +especially in some western towns, in which bands of singing and praying +women went in person to tippling-houses and even worse resorts, to +assail them, visibly and audibly, with these spiritual weapons. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>The +crusades, so long as they were a novelty, were not without result. +Spectacular prayers, offered with one eye on the heavens and the other +eye watching the impressions made on the human auditor, are not in vain; +they have their reward. But the really important result of the +"crusades" was the organization of the "Women's Christian Temperance +Union," which has extended in all directions to the utmost bounds of the +country, and has accomplished work of undoubted value, while attempting +other work the value of which is open to debate.</p> + +<p>The separate organization of women for the support and management of +missions began on an extensive scale, in 1868, with the Women's Board of +Missions, instituted in alliance with the American Board of +Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregationalist churches. +The example at once commended itself to the imitation of all, so that +all the principal mission boards of the Protestant churches are in +alliance with actively working women's boards.</p> + +<p>The training acquired in these and other organizations by many women of +exceptional taste and talent for the conduct of large affairs has tended +still further to widen the field of their activity. The ends of the +earth, as well as the dark places nearer home, have felt the salutary +results of it.<a name="FNanchor_367:1_227" id="FNanchor_367:1_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_367:1_227" class="fnanchor">[367:1]</a></p> + +<p>In this brief and most incomplete sketch of the origin of one of the +distinguishing features of contemporary Christianity—the application of +the systematized activity of private Christians—no mention has been +made of the corps of "colporteurs," or book-peddlers, employed by +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>religious publication societies, nor of the vastly useful work of +laymen employed as city missionaries, nor of the houses and orders of +sisters wholly devoted to pious and charitable work. Such work, though +the ceremony of ordination may have been omitted, is rather clerical or +professional than laical. It is on this account the better suited to the +genius of the Catholic Church, whose ages of experience in the conduct +of such organizations, and whose fine examples of economy and efficiency +in the use of them, have put all American Christendom under obligation. +Among Protestant sects the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, and the +Methodists have (after the Moravians) shown themselves readiest to +profit by the example. But a far more widely beneficent service than +that of all the nursing "orders" together, both Catholic and Protestant, +and one not less Christian, while it is characteristically American in +its method, is that of the annually increasing army of faithful women +professionally educated to the work of nursing, at a hundred hospitals, +and fulfilling their vocation individually and on business principles. +The education of nurses is a sequel of the war and one of the beneficent +fruits of it.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>Not the least important item in the organization of lay activity is the +marvelously rapid growth of the "Young People's Society of Christian +Endeavor." In February, 1881, a pastor in Portland, Me., the Rev. +Francis E. Clark, organized into an association within his church a +number of young people pledged to certain rules of regular attendance +and participation in the association meetings and of coöperation in +useful service. There seems to have been no particular originality in +the plan, but through some felicity in arrangement and opportuneness in +the time it caught like a forest fire, and in an amazingly short <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>time +ran through the country and around the world. One wise precaution was +taken in the basis of the organization: it was provided that it should +not interfere with any member's fidelity to his church or his sect, but +rather promote it. Doubtless jealousy of its influence was thus in some +measure forestalled and averted. But in the rapid spread of the Society +those who were on guard for the interests of the several sects +recognized a danger in too free affiliations outside of sectarian lines, +and soon there were instituted, in like forms of rule, "Epworth Leagues" +for Methodists, "Westminster Leagues" for Presbyterians, "Luther +Leagues" for Lutherans, "St. Andrew's Brotherhoods" for Episcopalians, +"The Baptist Young People's Union," and yet others for yet other sects. +According to the latest reports, the total pledged membership of this +order of associated young disciples, in these various ramifications, is +about 4,500,000<a name="FNanchor_369:1_228" id="FNanchor_369:1_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_369:1_228" class="fnanchor">[369:1]</a>—this in the United States alone. Of the +Christian Endeavor Societies still adhering to the old name and +constitution, there are in all the world 47,009, of which 11,119 are +"Junior Endeavor Societies." The total membership is 2,820,540.<a name="FNanchor_369:2_229" id="FNanchor_369:2_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_369:2_229" class="fnanchor">[369:2]</a></p> + +<p>Contemporary currents of theological thought, setting away from the +excessive individualism which has characterized the churches of the +Great Awakening, confirm the tendency of the Christian life toward a +vigorous and even absorbing external activity. The duty of the church to +human society is made a part of the required curriculum of study in +preparation for the ministry, in fully equipped theological seminaries. +If ever it has been a just reproach of the church that its frequenters +were so absorbed in the saving of their own souls that they forgot the +multitude about them, that reproach is fast passing away. "The +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>Institutional Church," as the clumsy phrase goes, cares for soul and +body, for family and municipal and national life. Its saving sacraments +are neither two nor seven, but seventy times seven. They include the +bath-tub as well as the font; the coffee-house and cook-shop as well as +the Holy Supper; the gymnasium as well as the prayer-meeting. The +"college settlement" plants colonies of the best life of the church in +regions which men of little faith are tempted to speak of as +"God-forsaken." The Salvation Army, with its noisy and eccentric ways, +and its effective discipline, and its most Christian principle of +setting every rescued man at work to aid in the rescue of others, is +welcomed by all orders of the church, and honored according to the +measure of its usefulness, and even of its faithful effort to be useful.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>It is not to be supposed that this immense, unprecedented growth of +outward activity can have been gained without some corresponding loss. +The time is not long gone by, when the sustained contemplation of the +deep things of the cross, and the lofty things in the divine nature, and +the subtile and elusive facts concerning the human constitution and +character and the working of the human will, were eminently +characteristic of the religious life of the American church. In the +times when that life was stirred to its most strenuous activity, it was +marked by the vicissitude of prolonged passions of painful sensibility +at the consciousness of sin, and ecstasies of delight in the +contemplation of the infinity of God and the glory of the Saviour and +his salvation. Every one who is conversant with the religious biography +of the generations before our own, knows of the still hours and days set +apart for the severe inward scrutiny of motives and "frames" and the +grounds of one's hope. However truly the church of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>to-day may judge +that the piety of their fathers was disproportioned and morbidly +introspective and unduly concerned about one's own salvation, it is none +the less true that the reaction from its excesses is violent, and is +providing for itself a new reaction. "The contemplative orders," whether +among Catholics or Protestants, do not find the soil and climate of +America congenial. And yet there is a mission-field here for the mystic +and the quietist; and when the stir-about activity of our generation +suffers their calm voices to be heard, there are not a few to give ear.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>An event of great historical importance, which cannot be determined to a +precise date, but which belongs more to this period than to any other, +is the loss of the Scotch and Puritan Sabbath, or, as many like to call +it, the American Sabbath. The law of the Westminster divines on this +subject, it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction from any +quarter, does not coincide in its language with the law of God as +expressed either in the Old Testament or in the New. The Westminster +rule requires, as if with a "Thus saith the Lord," that on the first day +of the week, instead of the seventh, men shall desist not only from +labor but from recreation, and "spend the whole time in the public and +private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up +in the works of necessity and mercy."<a name="FNanchor_371:1_230" id="FNanchor_371:1_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_371:1_230" class="fnanchor">[371:1]</a> This interpretation and +expansion of the Fourth Commandment has never attained to more than a +sectarian and provincial authority; but the overmastering Puritan +influence, both of Virginia and of New England, combined with the +Scotch-Irish influence, made it for a long time dominant in America. +Even those who quite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>declined to admit the divine authority of the +glosses upon the commandment felt constrained to "submit to the +ordinances of man for the Lord's sake." But it was inevitable that with +the vast increase of the travel and sojourn of American Christians in +other lands of Christendom, and the multitudinous immigration into +America from other lands than Great Britain, the tradition from the +Westminster elders should come to be openly disputed within the church, +and should be disregarded even when not denied. It was not only +inevitable; it was a Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic +authority.<a name="FNanchor_372:1_231" id="FNanchor_372:1_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_372:1_231" class="fnanchor">[372:1]</a> The five years of war, during which Christians of +various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday +laws were dumb "<i>inter arma</i>" not only in the field but among the home +churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and +to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was +inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence of +overstraining the law of God. From the Sunday of ascetic self-denial—"a +day for a man to afflict his soul"—there was a ready rush into utter +recklessness of the law and privilege of rest. In the church there was +wrought sore damage to weak consciences; men acted, not from intelligent +conviction, but from lack of conviction, and allowing themselves in +self-indulgences of the rightfulness of which they were dubious, they +"condemned themselves in that which they allowed." The consequence in +civil society was alike disastrous. Early legislation had not steered +clear of the error of attempting to enforce Sabbath-keeping as a +religious duty by civil penalties; and some relics of that mistake +remained, and still remain, on some of the statute-books. The just +protest against this wrong was, of course, undiscriminating, tending to +defeat the righteous and most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>salutary laws that aimed simply to secure +for the citizen the privilege of a weekly day of rest and to secure the +holiday thus ordained by law from being perverted into a nuisance. The +social change which is still in progress along these lines no wise +Christian patriot can contemplate with complacency. It threatens, when +complete, to deprive us of that universal quiet Sabbath rest which has +been one of the glories of American social life, and an important +element in its economic prosperity, and to give in place of it, to some, +no assurance of a Sabbath rest at all, to others, a Sabbath of revelry +and debauch.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354:1_218" id="Footnote_354:1_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354:1_218"><span class="label">[354:1]</span></a> Thompson, "The Presbyterians," chap. xiii.; Johnson, +"The Southern Presbyterians," chap. v.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357:1_219" id="Footnote_357:1_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357:1_219"><span class="label">[357:1]</span></a> The immigration is thus given by decades, with an +illustrative diagram, by Dr. Dorchester, "Christianity in the United +States," p. 759: +</p> + +<table class="tindent" summary="Christian Immigration into the United States" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1825-35</td> + <td class="tdright">330,737</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1835-45</td> + <td class="tdright">707,770</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1845-55</td> + <td class="tdright">2,944,833</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1855-65</td> + <td class="tdright">1,578,483</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1865-75</td> + <td class="tdright">3,234,090</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">1875-85</td> + <td class="tdright">4,061,278</td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358:1_220" id="Footnote_358:1_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358:1_220"><span class="label">[358:1]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 714. We have quoted in round numbers. The +figures do not include the large sums expended annually in the +colportage work of Bible and tract societies, in Sunday school missions, +and in the building of churches and parsonages. In the accounts of the +last-named most effective enterprise the small amounts received and +appropriated to aid in building would represent manifold more gathered +and expended by the pioneer churches on the ground.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359:1_221" id="Footnote_359:1_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359:1_221"><span class="label">[359:1]</span></a> Dorchester, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 709.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359:2_222" id="Footnote_359:2_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359:2_222"><span class="label">[359:2]</span></a> Above, pp. <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359:3_223" id="Footnote_359:3_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359:3_223"><span class="label">[359:3]</span></a> A pamphlet published at the office of the New York +"Sun," away back in the early thirties, was formerly in my possession, +which undertook to give, under the title "The Rich Men of New York," the +name of every person in that city who was worth more than one hundred +thousand dollars—and it was not a large pamphlet, either. As nearly as +I remember, there were less than a half-dozen names credited with more +than a million, and one solitary name, that of John Jacob Astor, was +reported as good for the enormous and almost incredible sum of ten +millions.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361:1_224" id="Footnote_361:1_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361:1_224"><span class="label">[361:1]</span></a> Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. +715.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361:2_225" id="Footnote_361:2_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361:2_225"><span class="label">[361:2]</span></a> See above, p. <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363:1_226" id="Footnote_363:1_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363:1_226"><span class="label">[363:1]</span></a> Bishop Vincent, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. +441. The number of students in the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific +Circle" already in 1891 exceeded twenty-five thousand.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367:1_227" id="Footnote_367:1_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367:1_227"><span class="label">[367:1]</span></a> Among the titles omitted from this list are the various +"Lend-a-Hand Clubs," and "10 × 1 = 10 Clubs," and circles of "King's +Daughters," and like coteries, that have been inspired by the tales and +the "four mottoes" of Edward Everett Hale.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369:1_228" id="Footnote_369:1_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369:1_228"><span class="label">[369:1]</span></a> Dr. H. K. Carroll, in "The Independent," April 1, +1897.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369:2_229" id="Footnote_369:2_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369:2_229"><span class="label">[369:2]</span></a> "Congregationalist Handbook for 1897," p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371:1_230" id="Footnote_371:1_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371:1_230"><span class="label">[371:1]</span></a> Westminster Shorter Catechism, Ans. 60. The +commentaries on the Catechism, which are many, like Gemara upon Mishna, +build wider and higher the "fence around the law," in a fashion truly +rabbinic.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372:1_231" id="Footnote_372:1_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372:1_231"><span class="label">[372:1]</span></a> Colossians, ii. 16.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<h3>THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The rapid review of three crowded centuries, which is all that the +narrowly prescribed limits of this volume have permitted, has +necessarily been mainly restricted to external facts. But looking back +over the course of visible events, it is not impossible for acute minds +devoted to such study to trace the stream of thought and sentiment that +is sometimes hidden from direct view by the overgrowth which itself has +nourished.</p> + +<p>We have seen a profound spiritual change, renewing the face of the land +and leaving its indelible impress on successive generations, springing +from the profoundest contemplations of God and his work of salvation +through Jesus Christ, and then bringing back into thoughtful and +teachable minds new questions to be solved and new discoveries of truth +to be pondered. The one school of theological opinion and inquiry that +can be described as characteristically American is the theology of the +Great Awakening. The disciples of this school, in all its divergent +branches, agree in looking back to the first Jonathan Edwards as the +founder of it. Through its generations it has shown a striking sequence +and continuity of intellectual and spiritual life, each generation +answering questions put to it by its predecessor, while propounding new +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>questions to the generation following. After the classical writings of +its first founders, the most widely influential production of this +school is the "Theology Explained and Defended in a Series of Sermons" +of President Dwight. This had the advantage over some other systems of +having been preached, and thus proved to be preachable. The "series of +sermons" was that delivered to successive generations of college +students at Yale at a time of prevailing skepticism, when every +statement of the college pulpit was liable to sharp and not too friendly +scrutiny; and it was preached with the fixed purpose of convincing and +converting the young men who heard it. The audience, the occasion, and +the man—a fervid Christian, and a born poet and orator—combined to +produce a work of wide and enduring influence. The dynasty of the +Edwardeans is continued down to the middle of the nineteenth century, +and later, through different lines, ending in Emmons of Franklin, Taylor +of New Haven, and Finney of Oberlin, and is represented among the living +by the venerable Edwards A. Park, of Andover, who adds to that power of +sustained speculative thinking in a straight line which is +characteristic of the whole school, a wide learning in the whole field +of theological literature, which had not been usual among his +predecessors. It is a prevailing trait of this theology, born of the +great revival, that it has constantly held before itself not only the +question, What is truth? but also the question, How shall it be +preached? It has never ceased to be a revival theology.</p> + +<p>A bold and open breach of traditionary assumptions and habits of +reasoning was made by Horace Bushnell. This was a theologian of a +different type from his New England predecessors. He was of a temper +little disposed to accept either methods or results as a local +tradition, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>inclined rather to prefer that which had been "hammered +out on his own anvil." And yet, while very free in manifesting his small +respect for the "logicking" by syllogistic processes which had been the +pride of the theological chair and even the pulpit in America, and while +declining the use of current phraseologies even for the expression of +current ideas, he held himself loyally subject to the canon of the +Scriptures as his rule of faith, and deferential to the voice of the +church catholic as uttered in the concord of testimony of holy men in +all ages. Endowed with a poet's power of intuition, uplifted by a fervid +piety, uttering himself in a literary style singularly rich and +melodious, it is not strange that such a man should have made large +contributions to the theological thought of his own and later times. In +natural theology, his discourses on "The Moral Uses of Dark Things" +(1869), and his longest continuous work, on "Nature and the +Supernatural" (1858), even though read rather as prose-poems than as +arguments, sound distinctly new notes in the treatment of their theme. +In "God in Christ" (1849), "Christ in Theology" (1851), "The Vicarious +Sacrifice" (1866), and "Forgiveness and Law" (1874), and in a notable +article in the "New Englander" for November, 1854, entitled "The +Christian Trinity a Practical Truth," the great topics of the Christian +system were dealt with all the more effectively, in the minds of +thoughtful readers in this and other lands, for cries of alarm and +newspaper and pulpit impeachments of heresy that were sent forth. But +that work of his which most nearly made as well as marked an epoch in +American church history was the treatise of "Christian Nurture" (1847). +This, with the protracted controversy that followed upon the publication +of it, was a powerful influence in lifting the American church out of +the rut of mere individualism that had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>wearing deeper and deeper +from the days of the Great Awakening.</p> + +<p>Another wholesome and edifying debate was occasioned by the publications +that went forth from the college and theological seminary of the German +Reformed Church, situated at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania. At this +institution was effected a fruitful union of American and German +theology; the result was to commend to the general attention aspects of +truth, philosophical, theological, and historical, not previously +current among American Protestants. The book of Dr. John Williamson +Nevin, entitled "The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or +Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," revealed to the vast +multitude of churches and ministers that gloried in the name of +Calvinist the fact that on the most distinctive article of Calvinism +they were not Calvinists at all, but Zwinglians. The enunciation of the +standard doctrine of the various Presbyterian churches excited among +themselves a clamor of "Heresy!" and the doctrine of Calvin was put upon +trial before the Calvinists. The outcome of a discussion that extended +itself far beyond the boundaries of the comparatively small and +uninfluential German Reformed Church was to elevate the point of view +and broaden the horizon of American students of the constitution and +history of the church. Later generations of such students owe no light +obligation to the fidelity and courage of Dr. Nevin, as well as to the +erudition and immense productive diligence of his associate, Dr. Philip +Schaff.<a name="FNanchor_377:1_232" id="FNanchor_377:1_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_377:1_232" class="fnanchor">[377:1]</a></p> + +<p>It is incidental to the prevailing method of instruction in theology by +a course of prelections in which the teacher <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>reads to his class in +detail his own original <i>summa theologiæ</i>, that the American press has +been prolific of ponderous volumes of systematic divinity. Among the +more notable of these systems are those of Leonard Woods (in five +volumes) and of Enoch Pond; of the two Drs. Hodge, father and son; of +Robert J. Breckinridge and James H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney; and +the "Systematic Theology" of a much younger man, Dr. Augustus H. Strong, +of Rochester Seminary, which has won for itself very unusual and wide +respect. Exceptional for ability, as well as for its originality of +conception, is "The Republic of God: An Institute of Theology," by +Elisha Mulford, a disciple of Maurice and of the realist philosophy, the +thought of whose whole life is contained in this and his kindred work on +"The Nation."</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>How great is the debt which the church owes to its heretics is +frequently illustrated in the progress of Christianity in America. If it +had not been for the Unitarian defection in New England, and for the +attacks from Germany upon the historicity of the gospels, the +theologians of America might to this day have been engrossed in +"threshing old straw" in endless debates on "fixed fate, free will, +foreknowledge absolute." The exigencies of controversy forced the study +of the original documents of the church. From his entrance upon his +professorship at Andover, in 1810, the eager enthusiasm of Moses Stuart +made him the father of exegetical science not only for America, but for +all the English-speaking countries. His not less eminent pupil and +associate, Edward Robinson, later of the Union Seminary, New York, +created out of nothing the study of biblical geography. Associating with +himself the most accomplished living Arabist, Eli Smith, of the American +mission at Beirût, he made those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>"Biblical Researches in Palestine" +which have been the foundation on which all later explorers have built. +Another American missionary, Dr. W. M. Thomson, has given the most +valuable popular exposition of the same subject in his volumes on "The +Land and the Book." With the exception of Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull in his +determination of the site of Kadesh-barnea, the American successors to +Robinson in the original exploration of the Bible lands have made few +additions to our knowledge. But in the department of biblical archæology +the work of Drs. Ward, Peters, and Hilprecht in the mounds of Babylonia, +and of Mr. Bliss in Palestine, has added not a little to the credit of +the American church against the heavy balance which we owe to the +scholarship of Europe.</p> + +<p>Monumental works in lexicography have been produced by Dr. Thayer, of +Cambridge, on New Testament Greek; by Professor Francis Brown, of New +York, in conjunction with Canon Driver, of Oxford, on the languages of +the Old Testament; and by Dr. Sophocles, of Cambridge, on the Byzantine +Greek.</p> + +<p>In the work of the textual criticism of the Scriptures, notwithstanding +its remoteness from the manuscript sources of study, America has +furnished two names that are held in honor throughout the learned world: +among the recent dead, Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, universally beloved and +lamented; and among the living, Caspar René Gregory, successor to the +labors and the fame of Tischendorf. A third name is that of the late Dr. +Isaac H. Hall, the successful collator of Syriac New Testament +manuscripts.</p> + +<p>In those studies of the higher criticism which at the present day are +absorbing so much of the attention of biblical scholars, and the +progress of which is watched with reasonable anxiety for their bearing +on that dogma of the absolute inerrancy of the canonical Scriptures +which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>has so commonly been postulated as the foundation of Protestant +systems of revealed theology, the American church has taken eager +interest. An eminent, and in some respects the foremost, place among the +leaders in America of these investigations into the substructure, if not +of the Christian faith, at least of the work of the system-builders, is +held by Professor W. H. Green, of Princeton, whose painstaking essays in +the higher criticism have done much to stimulate the studies of younger +men who have come out at conclusions different from his own. The works +of Professors Briggs, of Union Seminary, and Henry P. Smith, of Lane +Seminary, have had the invaluable advantage of being commended to public +attention by ecclesiastical processes and debates. The two volumes of +Professor Bacon, of Yale, have been recognized by the foremost scholars +of Great Britain and Germany as containing original contributions toward +the solution of the problem of Pentateuchal analysis. The intricate +critical questions presented by the Book of Judges have been handled +with supreme ability by Professor Moore, of Andover, in his commentary +on that book. A desideratum in biblical literature has been well +supplied by Professor Bissell, of Hartford, in a work on the Old +Testament Apocrypha. But the <i>magnum opus</i> of American biblical +scholarship, associating with itself the best learning and ability of +other nations, is the publication, under the direction of Professor +Haupt, of Baltimore, of a critical text of the entire Scriptures in the +original languages, with new translations and notes, for the use of +scholars.</p> + +<p>The undeniably grave theological difficulties occasioned by the results +of critical study have given rise to a novel dogma concerning the +Scriptures, which, if it may justly be claimed as a product of the +Princeton Seminary, would seem to discredit the modest boast of the +venerated Dr. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>Charles Hodge, that "Princeton has never originated a new +idea." It consists in the hypothesis of an "original autograph" of the +Scriptures, the precise contents of which are now undiscoverable, but +which differed from any existing text in being absolutely free from +error of any kind. The hypothesis has no small advantage in this, that +if it is not susceptible of proof, it is equally secure from refutation. +If not practically useful, it is at least novel, and on this ground +entitled to mention in recounting the contributions of the American +church to theology at a really perilous point in the progress of +biblical study.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The field of church history, aside from local and sectarian histories, +was late in being invaded by American theologians. For many generations +the theology of America was distinctly unhistorical, speculative, and +provincial. But a change in this respect was inevitably sure to come. +The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is +illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the +masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would +seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions +had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient +lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments of remote ages as +those whose homes are in regions not two generations removed from the +prehistoric wilderness. It was certain that as soon as theology should +begin to be taught to American students in its relation to the history +of the kingdom of Christ, the charm of this method would be keenly felt.</p> + +<p>We may assume the date of 1853 as an epoch from which to date this new +era of theological study. It was in that year that the gifted, learned, +and inspiring teacher, Henry Boynton Smith, was transferred from the +chair of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>history in Union Theological Seminary, New York, to the chair +of systematic theology. Through his premature and most lamented death +the church has failed of receiving that system of doctrine which had +been hoped for at his hands. But the historic spirit which characterized +him has ever since been characteristic of that seminary. It is +illustrative of the changed tone of theologizing that after the death of +Professor Smith, in the reorganization of the faculty of that important +institution, it was manned in the three chief departments, exegetical, +dogmatic, and practical, by men whose eminent distinction was in the +line of church history. The names of Hitchcock, Schaff, and Shedd cannot +be mentioned without bringing to mind some of the most valuable gifts +that America has made to the literature of the universal church. If to +these we add the names of George Park Fisher, of Yale, and Bishop Hurst, +and Alexander V. G. Allen, of Cambridge, author of "The Continuity of +Christian Thought," and Henry Charles Lea, of Philadelphia, we have +already vindicated for American scholarship a high place in this +department of Christian literature.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>In practical theology the productiveness of the American church in the +matter of <i>sermons</i> has been so copious that even for the briefest +mention some narrow rule of exclusion must be followed. There is no +doubt that in a multitude of cases the noblest utterances of the +American pulpit, being unwritten, have never come into literature, but +have survived for a time as a glowing memory, and then a fading +tradition. The statement applies to many of the most famous revival +preachers; and in consequence of a prevalent prejudice against the +writing of sermons, it applies especially to the great Methodist and +Baptist preachers, whose representation on the shelves of libraries is +most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>disproportionate to their influence on the course of the kingdom +of Christ. Of other sermons,—and good sermons,—printed and published, +many have had an influence almost as restricted and as evanescent as the +utterances of the pulpit improvisator. If we confine ourselves to those +sermons that have survived their generation or won attention beyond the +limits of local interest or of sectarian fellowship, the list will not +be unmanageably long.</p> + +<p>In the early years of the nineteenth century the Unitarian pulpits of +Boston were adorned with every literary grace known to the rhetoric of +that period. The luster of Channing's fame has outshone and outlasted +that of his associates; and yet these were stars of hardly less +magnitude. The two Wares, father and son, the younger Buckminster, whose +singular power as a preacher was known not only to wondering hearers, +but to readers on both sides of the ocean, Gannett and Dewey—these were +among them; and, in the next generation, Henry W. Bellows, Thomas Starr +King, and James Freeman Clarke. No body of clergy of like size was ever +so resplendent with talents and accomplishments. The names alone of +those who left the Unitarian pulpit for a literary or political +career—Sparks, Everett, Bancroft, Emerson, Ripley, Palfrey, Upham, +among them—are a constellation by themselves.</p> + +<p>To the merely literary critic those earnest preachers, such as Lyman and +Edward Beecher, Griffin, Sereno Dwight, Wayland, and Kirk, who felt +called of God to withstand, in Boston, this splendid array of not less +earnest men, were clearly inferior to their antagonists. But they were +successful.</p> + +<p>A few years later, the preëminent American writer of sermons to be read +and pondered in every part of the world was Horace Bushnell; as the +great popular preacher, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>whose words, caught burning from his lips, +rolled around the world in a perpetual stream, was Henry Ward Beecher. +Widely different from either of these, and yet in an honorable sense +successor to the fame of both, was Phillips Brooks, of all American +preachers most widely beloved and honored in all parts of the church.</p> + +<p>Of living preachers whose sermons have already attained a place of honor +in libraries at home and abroad, the name of Bishop F. D. Huntington +stands among the foremost; and those who have been charmed by the +brilliant rhetoric and instructed from the copious learning of his +college classmate, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, must feel it a wrong done to +our national literature that these gifts should be chiefly known to the +reading public only by occasional discourses and by two valuable studies +in religious history instead of by volumes of sermons. Perhaps no +American pulpits have to-day a wider hearing beyond the sea than two +that stand within hearing distance of each other on New Haven Green, +occupied by Theodore T. Munger and Newman Smyth. The pulpit of Plymouth +Church, Brooklyn, has not ceased, since the accession of Lyman Abbott, +to wield a wide and weighty influence,—less wide, but in some respects +more weighty, than in the days of his famous predecessor,—by reason of +a well-deserved reputation for biblical learning and insight, and for +candor and wisdom in applying Scriptural principles to the solution of +current questions.</p> + +<p>The early American theology was, as we have seen, a rhetorical and not a +merely scholastic theology—a theology to be preached.<a name="FNanchor_384:1_233" id="FNanchor_384:1_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_384:1_233" class="fnanchor">[384:1]</a> In like +manner, the American pulpit in those days was distinctly theological, +like a professor's chair. One who studies with care the pulpit of +to-day, in those volumes that seem to command the widest and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>most +enduring attention, will find that it is to a large extent apologetic, +addressing itself to the abating of doubts and objections to the +Christian system, or, recognizing the existing doubts, urging the +religious duties that are nevertheless incumbent on the doubting mind. +It has ceased to assume the substantial soundness of the hearer in the +main principles of orthodox opinion, and regards him as one to be held +to the church by attraction, persuasion, or argument. The result of this +attitude of the preacher is to make the pulpit studiously, and even +eagerly, attractive and interesting. This virtue has its corresponding +fault. The American preacher of to-day is little in danger of being +dull; his peril lies at the other extreme. His temptation is rather to +the feebleness of extravagant statement, and to an overstrained and +theatric rhetoric such as some persons find so attractive in the +discourses of Dr. Talmage, and others find repulsive and intolerable.</p> + +<p>A direction in which the literature of practical theology in America is +sure to expand itself in the immediate future is indicated in the title +of a recent work of that versatile and useful writer, Dr. Washington +Gladden, "Applied Christianity." The salutary conviction that political +economy cannot be relied on by itself to adjust all the intricate +relations of men under modern conditions of life, that the ethical +questions that arise are not going to solve themselves automatically by +the law of demand and supply, that the gospel and the church and the +Spirit of Christ have somewhat to do in the matter, has been settling +itself deeply into the minds of Christian believers. The impression that +the questions between labor and capital, between sordid poverty and +overgrown wealth, were old-world questions, of which we of the New World +are relieved, is effectually dispelled. Thus far there is not much of +history to be written under this head, but somewhat of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>prophecy. It is +now understood, and felt in the conscience, that these questions are for +every Christian to consider, and for those undertaking the cure of souls +to make the subject of their faithful, laborious professional study. The +founding of professorships of social ethics in the theological +seminaries must lead to important and speedy results in the efficiency +of churches and pastors in dealing with this difficult class of +problems.<a name="FNanchor_386:1_234" id="FNanchor_386:1_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_386:1_234" class="fnanchor">[386:1]</a> But whatever advances shall be made in the future, no +small part of the impulse toward them will be recognized as coming from, +or rather through, the inspiring and most Christian humanitarian +writings and the personal influence and example of Edward Everett Hale.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>In one noble department of religious literature, the liturgical, the +record of the American church is meager. The reaction among the early +colonists and many of the later settlers against forms of worship +imposed by political authority was violent. Seeking for a logical basis, +it planted itself on the assumption that no form (unless an improvised +form) is permitted in public worship, except such as are sanctioned by +express word of Scripture. In their sturdy resolution to throw off and +break up the yoke, which neither they nor their fathers had been able to +bear, of ordinances and traditions complicated with not a little of +debilitating superstition, the extreme Puritans of England and Scotland +rejected the whole system of holy days in the Christian year, including +the authentic anniversaries of Passover and Pentecost, and discontinued +the use of religious ceremonies at marriages and funerals.<a name="FNanchor_386:2_235" id="FNanchor_386:2_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_386:2_235" class="fnanchor">[386:2]</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>The +only liturgical compositions that have come down to us from the first +generations are the various attempts, in various degrees of harshness +and rudeness, at the versification of psalms and other Scriptures for +singing. The emancipation of the church from its bondage to an +artificial dogma came, as we have already seen, with the Great Awakening +and the introduction of Watts's "Psalms of David, Imitated in the +Language of the New Testament."<a name="FNanchor_387:1_236" id="FNanchor_387:1_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_387:1_236" class="fnanchor">[387:1]</a> After the Revolution, at the +request of the General Association of Connecticut and the General +Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Timothy Dwight completed the work +of Watts by versifying a few omitted psalms,<a name="FNanchor_387:2_237" id="FNanchor_387:2_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_387:2_237" class="fnanchor">[387:2]</a> and added a brief +selection of hymns, chiefly in the grave and solemn Scriptural style of +Watts and Doddridge. Then followed, in successive tides, from England, +the copious hymnody of the Methodist revival, both Calvinist and +Wesleyan, of the Evangelical revival, and now at last of the Oxford +revival, with its affluence of translations from the ancient hymnists, +as well as of original hymns. It is doubtless owing to this abundant +intermittent inflow from England that the production of American hymns +has been so scanty. Only a few writers, among them Thomas Hastings and +Ray Palmer, have written each a considerable number of hymns that have +taken root in the common use of the church. Not a few names besides are +associated each with some one or two or three lyrics that have won an +enduring place in the affections of Christian worshipers. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>The "gospel +hymns" which have flowed from many pens in increasing volume since the +revival of 1857 have proved their great usefulness, especially in +connection with the ministry of Messrs. Moody and Sankey; but they are, +even the best of them, short-lived. After their season the church seems +not unwilling to let them die.</p> + +<p>Soon after the mid-point of the nineteenth century, began a serious +study of the subject of the conduct of public worship, which continues +to this day, with good promise of sometime reaching useful and stable +results. In 1855 was published "Eutaxia, or the Presbyterian Liturgies: +Historical Sketches. By a Minister of the Presbyterian Church." The +author, Charles W. Baird, was a man peculiarly fitted to render the +church important service, such as indeed he did render in this volume, +and in the field of Huguenot history which he divided with his brother, +Henry M. Baird. How great the loss to historical theology through his +protracted feebleness of body and his death may be conjectured, not +measured. This brief volume awakened an interest in the subject of it in +America, and in Scotland, and among the nonconformists of England. To +American Presbyterians in general it was something like a surprise to be +reminded that the sisterhood of the "Reformed" sects were committed by +their earliest and best traditions in favor of liturgic uses in public +worship. At about the same time the fruitful discussions of the +Mercersburg controversy were in progress in the German Reformed Church. +"Mercersburg found fault with the common style of extemporaneous public +prayer, and advocated a revival of the liturgical church service of the +Reformation period, but so modified and reproduced as to be adapted to +the existing wants of Protestant congregations."<a name="FNanchor_388:1_238" id="FNanchor_388:1_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_388:1_238" class="fnanchor">[388:1]</a> Each of these +discussions was followed by a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>proposed book of worship. In 1857 was +published by Mr. Baird "A Book of Public Prayer, Compiled from the +Authorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church, as +Prepared by the Reformers, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others"; and in 1858 +was set forth by a committee of the German Reformed Church "A Liturgy, +or Order of Christian Worship." In 1855 St. Peter's Presbyterian Church +of Rochester published its "Church-book," prepared by Mr. L. W. Bacon, +then acting as pastor, which was principally notable for introducing the +use of the Psalms in parallelisms for responsive reading—a use which at +once found acceptance in many churches, and has become general in all +parts of the country. Sporadic experiments followed in various +individual congregations, looking toward greater variety or greater +dignity or greater musical attractiveness in the services of public +worship, or toward more active participation therein on the part of the +people. But these experiments, conducted without concert or mutual +counsel, often without serious study of the subject, and with a feebly +esthetic purpose, were representative of individual notions, and had in +them no promise of stability or of fruit after their kind. Only, by the +increasing number of them, they have given proof of an unrest on this +subject which at last is beginning to embody itself in organization and +concerted study and enterprise. A fifty years of mere tentative groping +is likely to be followed by another fifty years of substantial progress.</p> + +<p>The influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church upon this growing +tendency has been sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable, but always +important. To begin with, it has held up before the whole church an +example of prescribed forms for divine worship, on the whole, the best +in all history. On the other hand, it has drawn to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>itself those in +other sects whose tastes and tendencies would make them leaders in the +study of liturgics, and thus while reinforcing itself has hindered the +general advance of improvement in the methods of worship. Withal, its +influence has tended to narrow the discussion to the consideration of a +single provincial and sectarian tradition, as if the usage of a part of +the Christians of the southern end of one of the islands of the British +archipelago had a sort of binding authority over the whole western +continent. But again, on the other hand, the broadening of its own views +to the extent of developing distinctly diverse ways of thinking among +its clergy and people has enlarged the field of study once more, and +tended to interest the church generally in the practical, historical, +and theological aspects of the subject. The somewhat timid ventures of +"Broad" and "Evangelical" men in one direction, and the fearless +breaking of bounds in the other direction by those of "Ritualist" +sympathies, have done much to liberate this important communion from +slavish uniformity and indolent traditionalism; and within a few years +that has been accomplished which only a few years earlier would have +been deemed impossible—the considerable alteration and improvement of +the Book of Common Prayer.</p> + +<p>It is safe to prognosticate, from the course of the history up to this +point, that the subject of the conduct of worship will become more and +more seriously a subject of study in the American church in all its +divisions; that the discussions thereon arising will be attended with +strong antagonisms of sentiment; that mutual antagonisms within the +several sects will be compensated by affiliations of men like-minded +across sectarian lines; and that thus, as many times before, particular +controversies will tend to general union and fellowship.</p> + +<p>One topic under this title of Liturgics requires special <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>mention—the +use of music in the church. It was not till the early part of the +eighteenth century that music began to be cultivated as an art in +America.<a name="FNanchor_391:1_239" id="FNanchor_391:1_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_391:1_239" class="fnanchor">[391:1]</a> Up to that time "the service of song in the house of the +Lord" had consisted, in most worshiping assemblies on this continent, in +the singing of rude literal versifications of the Psalms and other +Scriptures to some eight or ten old tunes handed down by tradition, and +variously sung in various congregations, as modified by local practice. +The coming in of "singing by rule" was nearly coincident with the +introduction of Watts's psalms and hymns, and was attended with like +agitations. The singing-school for winter evenings became an almost +universal social institution; and there actually grew up an American +school of composition, quaint, rude, and ungrammatical, which had great +vogue toward the end of the last century, and is even now remembered by +some with admiration and regret. It was devoted mainly to psalmody tunes +of an elaborate sort, in which the first half-stanza would be sung in +plain counterpoint, after which the voices would chase each other about +in a lively imitative movement, coming out together triumphantly at the +close. They abounded in forbidden progressions and empty chords, but +were often characterized by fervor of feeling and by strong melodies. A +few of them, as "Lenox" and "Northfield," still linger in use; and the +productions of this school in general, which amount to a considerable +volume, are entitled to respectful remembrance as the first untutored +utterance of music in America. The use of them became a passionate +delight to our grandparents; and the traditions are fresh and vivid of +the great choirs filling the church galleries on three sides, and +tossing the theme about from part to part.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p><p>The use of these rudely artificial tunes involved a gravely important +change in the course of public worship. In congregations that accepted +them the singing necessarily became an exclusive privilege of the choir. +To a lamentable extent, where there was neither the irregular and +spontaneous ejaculation of the Methodist nor the rubrical response of +the Episcopalian, the people came to be shut out from audible +participation in the acts of public worship.</p> + +<p>A movement of musical reform in the direction of greater simplicity and +dignity began early in this century, when Lowell Mason in Boston and +Thomas Hastings in New York began their multitudinous publications of +psalmody. Between them not less than seventy volumes of music were +published in a period of half as many years. Their immense and +successful fecundity was imitated with less success by others, until the +land was swamped with an annual flood of church-music books. A thin +diluvial stratum remains to us from that time in tunes, chiefly from the +pen of Dr. Mason, that have taken permanent place as American chorals. +Such pieces as "Boylston," "Hebron," "Rockingham," "Missionary Hymn," +and the adaptations of Gregorian melodies, "Olmutz" and "Hamburg," are +not likely to be displaced from their hold on the American church by +more skilled and exquisite compositions of later schools. But the +fertile labors of the church musicians of this period were affected by +the market demand for new material for the singing-school, the large +church choir, and the musical convention. The music thus introduced into +the churches consisted not so much of hymn-tunes and anthems as of +"sacred glees."<a name="FNanchor_392:1_240" id="FNanchor_392:1_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_392:1_240" class="fnanchor">[392:1]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p><p>Before the middle of the century the Episcopal Church had arrived at a +point at which it was much looked to to set the fashions in such matters +as church music and architecture. Its influence at this time was very +bad. It was largely responsible for the fashion, still widely prevalent, +of substituting for the church choir a quartet of professional solo +singers, and for the degradation of church music into the dainty, +languishing, and sensuous style which such "artists" do most affect. The +period of "The Grace Church Collection," "Greatorex's Collection," and +the sheet-music compositions of George William Warren and John R. Thomas +was the lowest tide of American church music.</p> + +<p>A healthy reaction from this vicious condition began about 1855, with +the introduction of hymn-and-tune books and the revival of +congregational singing. From that time the progressive improvement of +the public taste may be traced in the character of the books that have +succeeded one another in the churches, until the admirable compositions +of the modern English school of psalmody tend to predominate above those +of inferior quality. It is the mark of a transitional period that both +in church music and in church architecture we seem to depend much on +compositions and designs derived from older countries. The future of +religious art in America is sufficiently well assured to leave no cause +for hurry or anxiety.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>In glancing back over this chapter, it will be strange if some are not +impressed, and unfavorably impressed, with a disproportion in the names +cited as representative, which are taken chiefly from some two or three +sects. This may justly be referred in part, no doubt, to the author's +point of view and to the "personal equation"; but it is more largely due +to the fact that in the specialization of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>various sects the work of +theological literature and science has been distinctively the lot of the +Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, and preëminently of the +former.<a name="FNanchor_394:1_241" id="FNanchor_394:1_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_394:1_241" class="fnanchor">[394:1]</a> It is matter of congratulation that the inequality among +the denominations in this respect is in a fair way to be outgrown.</p> + +<p>Special mention must be made of the peculiarly valuable contribution to +the liturgical literature of America that is made by the oldest of our +episcopal churches, the Moravian. This venerable organization is rich +not only in the possession of a heroic martyr history, but in the +inheritance of liturgic forms and usages of unsurpassed beauty and +dignity. Before the other churches had emerged from a half-barbarous +state in respect to church music, this art was successfully cultivated +in the Moravian communities and missions. In past times these have had +comparatively few points of contact and influence with the rest of the +church; but when the elements of a common order of divine worship shall +by and by begin to grow into form, it is hardly possible that the +Moravian traditions will not enter into it as an important factor.</p> + +<p>A combination of conditions which in the case of other bodies in the +church has been an effective discouragement to literary production has +applied with especial force to the Roman Catholic Church in America. +First, its energies and resources, great as they are, have been +engrossed by absolutely prodigious burdens of practical labor; and +secondly, its necessary literary material has been furnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>to it from +across the sea, ready to its hand, or needing only the light labor of +translation. But these two conditions are not enough, of themselves, to +account for the very meager contribution of the Catholic Church to the +common religious and theological literature of American Christendom. +Neither is the fact explained by the general low average of culture +among the Catholic population; for literary production does not +ordinarily proceed from the man of average culture, but from men of +superior culture, such as this church possesses in no small number, and +places in positions of undisturbed "learned leisure" that would seem in +the highest degree promotive of intellectual work. But the comparative +statistics of the Catholic and the Protestant countries and universities +of Germany seem to prove conclusively that the spirit and discipline of +the Roman Church are unfavorable to literary productiveness in those +large fields of intellectual activity that are common and free alike to +the scholars of all Christendom. It remains to be seen whether the +stimulating atmosphere and the free and equal competitions of the New +World will not show their invigorating effect in the larger activity of +Catholic scholars, and their liberation from within the narrow lines of +polemic and defensive literature. The republic of Christian letters has +already shown itself prompt to welcome accessions from this quarter. The +signs are favorable. Notwithstanding severe criticisms of their methods +proceeding from the Catholic press, or rather in consequence of such +criticisms, the Catholic institutions of higher learning are rising in +character and in public respect; and the honorable enterprise of +establishing at Washington an American Catholic university, on the +upbuilding of which shall be concentrated the entire intellectual +strength and culture of this church, promises an invigorating influence +that shall extend through that whole system of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>educational institutions +which the church has set on foot at immense cost, and not with wholly +satisfactory results.</p> + +<p>Recent events in the Catholic Church in America tend to reassure all +minds on an important point on which not bigots and alarmists only, but +liberal-minded citizens apostolically willing to "look not only on their +own things but also on the things of others," have found reasonable +ground for anxiety. The American Catholic Church, while characterized in +all its ranks, in respect of loyal devotion to the pope, by a high type +of ultramontane orthodoxy, is to be administered on patriotic American +principles. The brief term of service of Monsignor Satolli as papal +legate clothed with plenipotentiary authority from the Roman see stamped +out the scheme called from its promoter "Cahenslyism," which would have +divided the American Catholic Church into permanent alien communities, +conserving each its foreign language and organized under its separate +hierarchy. The organization of parishes to be administered in other +languages than English is suffered only as a temporary necessity. The +deadly warfare against the American common-school system has abated. And +the anti-American denunciations contained in the bull and syllabus of +December 8, 1864, are openly renounced as lacking the note of +infallibility.<a name="FNanchor_396:1_242" id="FNanchor_396:1_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_396:1_242" class="fnanchor">[396:1]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span></p><p>Of course, as in all large communities of vigorous vitality, there will +be mutually antagonist parties in this body; but it is hardly to be +doubted that with the growth and acclimatization of the Catholic Church +in America that party will eventually predominate which is most in +sympathy with the ruling ideas of the country and the age.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377:1_232" id="Footnote_377:1_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377:1_232"><span class="label">[377:1]</span></a> For fuller accounts of "the Mercersburg theology," with +references to the literature of the subject, see Dubbs, "The Reformed +Church, German" (American Church History Series<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has comma quotation mark">,</ins> vol. viii.), pp. 219, +220, 389-378; also, Professor E. V. Gerhart in "Schaff-Herzog +Encyclopedia," pp. 1473-1475.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384:1_233" id="Footnote_384:1_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384:1_233"><span class="label">[384:1]</span></a> See above, p. <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386:1_234" id="Footnote_386:1_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386:1_234"><span class="label">[386:1]</span></a> The program of Yale Divinity School for 1896-97 +announces among the "required studies in senior year" lectures "on some +important problems of American life, such as Socialism, Communism, and +Anarchism; Races in the United States; Immigration; the Modern City; the +Wage System; the Relations of Employer and Employed; Social Classes; the +Causes, Prevention, and Punishment of Crime; and University +Settlements."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386:2_235" id="Footnote_386:2_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386:2_235"><span class="label">[386:2]</span></a> Williston Walker, "The Congregationalists," pp. 245, +246.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387:1_236" id="Footnote_387:1_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387:1_236"><span class="label">[387:1]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_182">182-184</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387:2_237" id="Footnote_387:2_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387:2_237"><span class="label">[387:2]</span></a> The only relic of this work that survives in common use +is the immortal lyric, "I love thy kingdom, Lord," founded on a motif in +the one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm. This, with Doddridge's hymn, +"My God, and is thy table spread?" continued for a long time to be the +most important church hymn and eucharistic hymn in the English language. +We should not perhaps have looked for the gift of them to two +Congregationalist ministers, one in New England and the other in old +England. There is no such illustration of the spiritual unity of "the +holy catholic church, the fellowship of the holy," as is presented in a +modern hymn-book.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388:1_238" id="Footnote_388:1_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388:1_238"><span class="label">[388:1]</span></a> Professor Gerhart, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. +1475.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391:1_239" id="Footnote_391:1_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391:1_239"><span class="label">[391:1]</span></a> "Massachusetts Historical Collections," second series, +vol. iv., p. 301; quoted in the "New Englander," vol. xiii., p. 467 +(August, 1855).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392:1_240" id="Footnote_392:1_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392:1_240"><span class="label">[392:1]</span></a> This was the criticism of the late Rev. Mr. Havergal, +of Worcester Cathedral, to whom Dr. Mason had sent copies of some of his +books. The incident was freely told by Dr. Mason himself.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394:1_241" id="Footnote_394:1_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394:1_241"><span class="label">[394:1]</span></a> For many generations the religious and theological +literature of the country proceeded almost exclusively, at first or +second hand, from New England. The Presbyterian historian, Professor +Robert Ellis Thompson, remarks that "until after the division of 1837 +American Presbyterianism made no important addition to the literature of +theology" ("The Presbyterians," p. 143). The like observation is true +down to a much more recent date of the Protestant Episcopal Church. +Noble progress has been made in both these denominations in reversing +this record.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396:1_242" id="Footnote_396:1_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396:1_242"><span class="label">[396:1]</span></a> So (for example) Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman +Catholics," p. 434. And yet, at the time, the bull with its appendix was +certainly looked upon as "an act of infallibility." See, in "La Bulle +<i>Quanta Cura</i> et la Civilisation Moderne, par l'Abbé Pélage" (Paris, +1865), the utterances of all the French bishops. The language of Bishop +Plantier of Poitiers seems decisive: "The Vicar of Jesus Christ, doctor +and pastor charged with the teaching and ruling of the entire church, +addressed to the bishops, and through them to all the Christian +universe, instructions, the object of which is to settle the mind and +enlighten the conscience on sundry points of Christian doctrine and +morals" (pp. 103, 104). See also pp. 445, 450. This brings it within the +Vatican Council's definition of an infallible utterance. But we are +bound to bear in mind that not only is the infallible authority of this +manifesto against "progress, liberalism, and modern civilization" +disclaimed, but the meaning of it, which seems unmistakably clear, is +disputed. "The syllabus," says Bishop O'Gorman, "is technical and legal +in its language, ... and needs to be interpreted to the lay reader by +the ecclesiastical lawyer" (p. 435). +</p><p> +A seriously important desideratum in theological literature is some +authoritative canon of the infallible utterances of the Roman see. It is +difficult to fix on any one of them the infallible authority of which is +not open to dispute within the church itself; while the liability of +them to misinterpretation (as in the case of the <i>Quanta Cura</i> and +<i>Syllabus</i>) brings in still another element of vagueness and +uncertainty.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<h3>TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH.</h3> + + +<p class="section">The three centuries of history which we have passed under rapid review +comprise a series of political events of the highest importance to +mankind. We have seen, from our side-point of view, the planting, along +the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean, without mutual concert or +common direction, of many independent germs of civilization. So many of +these as survived the perils of infancy we have seen growing to a lusty +youth, and becoming drawn each to each by ties of common interest and +mutual fellowship. Releasing themselves from colonial dependence on a +transatlantic power, we find these several communities, now grown to be +States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, +of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national +government binding upon all. The strong vitality of the new nation is +proved by its assimilating to itself an immense mass of immigrants from +all parts of Europe, and by expanding itself without essential change +over the area of a continent. It triumphs again and again, and at last +in a struggle that shakes the world, over passions and interests that +threaten schism in the body politic, and gives good reason to its +friends to boast the solid unity of the republic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>as the strongest +existing fact in the political world. The very great aggrandizement of +the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it +has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in +monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the national +strength.</p> + +<p>The ecclesiastical history which has been recounted in this volume, +covering the same territory and the same period of time, runs with equal +pace in many respects parallel with the political history, but in one +important respect with a wide divergence. As with civilization so with +Christianity: the germs of it, derived from different regions of +Christendom, were planted without concert of purpose, and often with +distinct cross-purposes, in different seed-plots along the Atlantic +seaboard. Varying in polity, in forms of dogmatic statement, and even in +language, the diverse growths were made, through wonders of spiritual +influence and through external stress of trial, to feel their unity in +the one faith. The course of a common experience tended to establish a +predominant type of religious life the influence of which has been +everywhere felt, even when it has not been consented to. The vital +strength of the American church, as of the American nation, has been +subjected to the test of the importation of enormous masses of more or +less uncongenial population, and has shown an amazing power of digestion +and assimilation. Its resources have been taxed by the providential +imposition of burdens of duty and responsibility such, in magnitude and +weight, as never since the early preaching of the gospel have pressed +upon any single generation of the church. Within the space of a single +lifetime, at an expenditure of toil and treasure which it is idle to +attempt to compute, the wide and desolate wilderness, as fast as +civilization has invaded it, has been occupied by the church with +churches, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>schools, colleges, and seminaries of theology, with pastors, +evangelists, and teachers, and, in one way or another, has been +constrained to confess itself Christian. The continent which so short a +time ago had been compassionately looked upon from across the sea as +missionary ground has become a principal base of supplies, and +recruiting-ground for men and women, for missionary operations in +ancient lands of heathenism and of a decayed Christianity.</p> + +<p>So much for the parallel. The divergence is not less impressive. In +contrast with the solid political unity into which the various and +incongruous elements have settled themselves, the unity of the Christian +church is manifested by oneness neither of jurisdiction nor of +confederation, nor even by diplomatic recognition and correspondence. +Out of the total population of the United States, amounting, according +to the census of 1890, to 62,622,000 souls, the 57,000,000 accounted as +Christians, including 20,000,000 communicant church-members, are +gathered into 165,297 congregations, assembling in 142,000 church +edifices containing 43,000,000 sittings, and valued (together with other +church property) at $670,000,000; and are served in the ministry of the +gospel by more than 111,000 ministers.<a name="FNanchor_400:1_243" id="FNanchor_400:1_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_400:1_243" class="fnanchor">[400:1]</a> But this great force is +divided among 143 mutually independent sects, larger and smaller. Among +these sects is recognized no controlling and coördinating authority; +neither is there any common leadership; neither is there any system of +mutual counsel and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>concert. The mutual relations of the sects are +sometimes those of respect and good will, sometimes of sharp competition +and jealousy, sometimes of eager and conscientious hostility. All have +one and the same unselfish and religious aim—to honor God in serving +their fellow-men; and each one, in honestly seeking this supreme aim, is +affected by its corporate interests, sympathies, and antipathies.</p> + +<p>This situation is too characteristic of America, and too distinctly +connected with the whole course of the antecedent history, not to be +brought out with emphasis in this concluding chapter. In other lands the +church is maintained, through the power of the civil government, under +the exclusive control of a single organization, in which the element of +popular influence may be wholly wanting, or may be present (as in many +of the "Reformed" polities) in no small measure. In others yet, through +government influence and favor, a strong predominance is given to one +organized communion, under the shadow of which dissentient minorities +are tolerated and protected. Under the absolute freedom and equality of +the American system there is not so much as a predominance of any one of +the sects. No one of them is so strong and numerous but that it is +outnumbered and outweighed by the aggregate of the two next to it. At +present, in consequence of the rush of immigration, the Roman Catholic +Church is largely in advance of any single denomination besides, but is +inferior in numerical strength and popular influence to the Methodists +and Baptists combined—if they <i>were</i> combined.</p> + +<p>And there is no doubt that this comminution of the church is frankly +accepted, for reasons assigned, not only as an inevitable drawback to +the blessings of religious freedom, but as a good thing in itself. A +weighty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>sentence of James Madison undoubtedly expresses the prevailing +sentiment among Americans who contemplate the subject merely from the +political side: "In a free government the security for civil rights must +be the same as that for religious rights. It consists, in the one case, +in the multiplicity of interests, and, in the other, in the multiplicity +of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number +of interests and sects."<a name="FNanchor_402:1_244" id="FNanchor_402:1_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_402:1_244" class="fnanchor">[402:1]</a> And no student of history can deny that +there is much to justify the jealousy with which the lovers of civil +liberty watch the climbing of any sect, no matter how purely spiritual +its constitution, toward a position of command in popular influence. The +influence of the leaders of such a sect may be nothing more than the +legitimate and well-deserved influence of men of superior wisdom and +virtue; but when reinforced by the weight of official religious +character, and backed by a majority, or even a formidable minority, of +voters organized in a religious communion, the feeling is sure to gain +ground that such power is too great to be trusted to the hands even of +the best of men. Whatever sectarian advantage such a body may achieve in +the state by preponderance of number will be more than offset by the +public suspicion and the watchful jealousy of rival sects; and the +weakening of it by division, or the subordination of it by the +overgrowth of a rival, is sure to be regarded with general complacency.</p> + +<p>It is not altogether a pleasing object of contemplation—the citizen and +the statesman looking with contentment on the schism of the church as +averting a danger to the state. It is hardly more gratifying when we +find ministers of the church themselves accepting the condition of +schism as being, on the whole, a very good condition for the church of +Christ, if not, indeed, the best possible. It is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>quite unreservedly +argued that the principle, "Competition is the life of business," is +applicable to spiritual as well as secular concerns; and the +"emulations" reprobated by the Apostle Paul as "works of the flesh" are +frankly appealed to for promoting the works of the spirit. This debasing +of the motive of church work is naturally attended by a debasement of +the means employed. The competitive church resorts to strange business +devices to secure its needed revenue. "He that giveth" is induced to +give, not "with simplicity," but with a view to incidental advantages, +and a distinct understanding is maintained between the right hand and +the left. The extent and variety of this influence on church life in +America afford no occasion for pride, but the mention of them could not +rightly be omitted. It remains for the future to decide whether they +must needs continue as an inevitable attendant on the voluntary system.</p> + +<p>Sectarian divisions tend strongly to perpetuate themselves. The starting +of schism is easy and quick; the healing of it is a matter of long +diplomatic negotiations. In a very short time the division of the +church, with its necessary relations to property and to the employment +of officials, becomes a vested interest. Provision for large expenditure +unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the general interests of the +kingdom of Christ, which had been instituted in the first place at heavy +cost to the many, is not to be discontinued without more serious loss to +influential individuals. Those who would set themselves about the +healing of a schism must reckon upon personal and property interests to +be conciliated.</p> + +<p>This least amiable characteristic of the growth of the Christian church +in America is not without its compensations. The very fact of the +existence, in presence of one another, of these multitudinous rival +sects, all equal before <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>the law, tends in the long run, under the +influence of the Holy Spirit of peace, to a large and comprehensive +fellowship.<a name="FNanchor_404:1_245" id="FNanchor_404:1_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_404:1_245" class="fnanchor">[404:1]</a> The widely prevalent acceptance of existing +conditions as probably permanent, even if not quite normal, softens the +mutual reproaches of rival parties. The presumption is of course +implied, if not asserted, in the existence of any Christian sect, that +it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that +than other sects; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the +right and true must, in the long run, prevail. But it is only with a +high act of faith, and not as a matter of reasonable probability, that +any sect in America can venture to indulge itself in the expectation of +a supremacy, or even a predominance, in American Christendom. The +strongest in numbers, in influence, in prestige, however tempted to +assert for itself exclusive or superior rights, is compelled to look +about itself and find itself overwhelmingly outnumbered and outdone by a +divided communion—and yet a communion—of those whom Christ "is not +ashamed to call his brethren"; and just in proportion as it has the +spirit of Christ, it is constrained in its heart to treat them as +brethren and to feel toward them as brethren. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>Its protest against what +it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most +unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward +fellow-Christians. Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler +from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social +life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman +Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common +charitable aims, than between Catholics and Protestants in France or +Germany, or between Anglicans and nonconformists in England."<a name="FNanchor_405:1_246" id="FNanchor_405:1_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_405:1_246" class="fnanchor">[405:1]</a></p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>There are many indications, in the recent history of the American +church, pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true +unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual, +expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply +competing and often antagonist sects. Instead of easy-going and playful +felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total +effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on +"anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the +acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American +Christendom is not right, but wrong. Whose is the wrong need not be +decided; certainly it does not wholly belong to the men of this +generation or of this country; we are heirs of the schisms of other +lands and ages, and have added to them schisms of our own making. The +matter begins to be taken soberly and seriously. The tender entreaty of +the Apostle Paul not to suffer ourselves to be split up into +sects<a name="FNanchor_405:2_247" id="FNanchor_405:2_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_405:2_247" class="fnanchor">[405:2]</a> begins to get a hearing in the conscience. The <i>nisus</i> +toward a more manifest union among Christian believers has long been +growing more and more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>distinctly visible, and is at the present day one +of the most conspicuous signs of the times.</p> + +<p>Already in the early history we have observed a tendency toward the +healing, in America, of differences imported from over sea. Such was the +commingling of Separatist and Puritan in New England; the temporary +alliance of Congregationalist and Presbyterian to avert the imposition +of a state hierarchy; the combination of Quaker and Roman Catholic to +defeat a project of religious oppression in Maryland; the drawing +together of Lutheran and Reformed Germans for common worship, under the +saintly influence of the Moravian Zinzendorf; and the "Plan of Union" by +which New Englander and Scotch-Irishman were to labor in common for the +evangelization of the new settlements.<a name="FNanchor_406:1_248" id="FNanchor_406:1_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_406:1_248" class="fnanchor">[406:1]</a> These were sporadic +instances of a tendency that was by and by to become happily epidemic. A +more important instance of the same tendency was the organization of +societies for charitable work which should unite the gifts and personal +labors of the Christians of the whole continent. The chief period of +these organizations extended from 1810, the date of the beginning of the +American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to 1826, when the +American Home Missionary Society was founded.<a name="FNanchor_406:2_249" id="FNanchor_406:2_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_406:2_249" class="fnanchor">[406:2]</a> The "catholic +basis" on which they were established was dictated partly by the +conscious weakness of the several sects as they drew near to +undertakings formidable even to their united forces, and partly by the +glow of fraternal affection, and the sense of a common spiritual life +pervading the nation, with which the church had come forth from the +fervors of "the second awakening."<a name="FNanchor_406:3_250" id="FNanchor_406:3_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_406:3_250" class="fnanchor">[406:3]</a> The societies, representing +the common <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>faith and charity of the whole church as distinguished from +the peculiarities of the several sects, drew to themselves the affection +and devotion of Christian hearts to a degree which, to those who highly +valued these distinctions, seemed to endanger important interests. And, +indeed, the situation was anomalous, in which the sectarian divisions of +the Christian people were represented in the churches, and their +catholic unity in charitable societies. It would have seemed more +Pauline, not to say more Christian, to have had voluntary societies for +the sectarian work, and kept the churches for Christian communion. It is +no wonder that High-church champions, on one side and another, soon +began to shout to their adherents, "To your tents, O Israel!" Bishop +Hobart played not in vain upon his pastoral pipe to whistle back his +sheep from straying outside of his pinfold, exhorting them, "in their +endeavors for the general advancement of religion, to use only the +instrumentality of their own church."<a name="FNanchor_407:1_251" id="FNanchor_407:1_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_407:1_251" class="fnanchor">[407:1]</a> And a jealousy of the +growing influence of a wide fellowship, in charitable labors, with +Christians of other names, led to the enunciation of a like doctrine by +High-church Presbyterians,<a name="FNanchor_407:2_252" id="FNanchor_407:2_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_407:2_252" class="fnanchor">[407:2]</a> and contributed to the convulsive and +passionate rending of the Presbyterian Church, in 1837, into nearly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>equal fragments. So effective has been the centrifugal force that of +the extensive system of societies which from the year 1810 onward first +organized works of national beneficence by enlisting the coöperation of +"all evangelical Christians," the American Bible Society alone continues +to represent any general and important combination from among the +different denominations.</p> + +<p>For all the waning of interest in the "catholic basis" societies, the +sacred discontent of the Christian people with sectarian division +continued to demand expression. How early the aspiration for an +ecumenical council of evangelical Christendom became articulate, it may +not be easy to discover<a name="FNanchor_408:1_253" id="FNanchor_408:1_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_408:1_253" class="fnanchor">[408:1]</a> In the year 1846 the aspiration was in +some measure realized in the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance +at London. No more mistakes were made in this meeting than perhaps were +necessarily incident to a first experiment in untried work. Almost of +course the good people began with the question, What good men shall we +keep out? for it is a curious fact, in the long and interesting history +of efforts after Christian union, that they commonly take the form of +efforts so to combine many Christians as to exclude certain others. In +this instance, beginning with the plan of including none but Protestant +Christians, they proceeded at once to frame a platform that should bar +out that "great number of the best and holiest men in England who are +found among the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>Quakers," thus making up, "designedly and with their +eyes open, a schismatic unity—a unity composed of one part of God's +elect, to the exclusion of another; and this in a grand effort after the +very unity of the body of Christ."<a name="FNanchor_409:1_254" id="FNanchor_409:1_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_409:1_254" class="fnanchor">[409:1]</a> But in spite of this and other +like mistakes, or rather because of them (for it is through its mistakes +that the church is to learn the right way), the early and unsuccessful +beginnings of the Evangelical Alliance marked a stage in the slow +progress toward a "manifestation of the sons of God" by their love +toward each other and toward the common Lord.</p> + +<p>It is in large part the eager appetency for some manifestation of +interconfessional fellowship that has hastened the acceptance of such +organizations as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young +People's Society of Christian Endeavor; just as, on the other hand, it +is the conscientious fear, on the part of watchful guardians of +sectarian interests, that habitual fellowship across the boundary lines +of denominations may weaken the allegiance to the sect, which has +induced the many attempts at substituting associations constituted on a +narrower basis. But the form of organization which most comprehensively +illustrates the unity of the church is that "Charity Organization" which +has grown to be a necessity to the social life of cities and +considerable towns, furnishing a central office of mutual correspondence +and coördination to all churches and societies and persons engaged in +the Christian work of relieving poverty and distress. This central +bureau of charitable coöperation is not the less a center of catholic +fellowship for the fact that it does not shut its door against societies +not distinctively Christian, like Masonic fraternities, nor even against +societies distinctively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>non-Christian, like Hebrew synagogues and +"societies of ethical culture." We are coming to discover that the +essence of Christian fellowship does not consist in keeping people out. +Neither, so long as the apostolic rubric of Christian worship<a name="FNanchor_410:1_255" id="FNanchor_410:1_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_410:1_255" class="fnanchor">[410:1]</a> +remains unaltered, is it to be denied that the fellowship thus provided +for is a fellowship in one of the sacraments of Christian service.</p> + +<p>A notable advance in true catholicity of communion is reported from +among the churches and scattered missions in Maine. Hitherto, in the +various movements of Christian union, it was common to attempt to disarm +the suspicions of zealous sectarians by urgent disclaimers of any intent +or tendency to infringe on the rights or interests of the several sects, +or impair their claim to a paramount allegiance from their adherents. +The Christians of Maine, facing tasks of evangelization more than +sufficient to occupy all their resources even when well economized and +squandering nothing on needless divisions and competitions, have +attained to the high grace of saying that sectarian interests must and +shall be sacrificed when the paramount interests of the kingdom of +Christ require it.<a name="FNanchor_410:2_256" id="FNanchor_410:2_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_410:2_256" class="fnanchor">[410:2]</a> When this attainment is reached by other +souls, and many other, the conspicuous shame and scandal of American +Christianity will begin to be abated.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the signs of a craving for larger fellowship continue to be +multiplied. Quite independently of practical results achieved, the mere +fact of efforts and experiments is a hopeful fact, even when these are +made in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span>directions in which the past experience of the church has +written up "No Thoroughfare."</p> + +<p>I. No one need question the sincerity or the fraternal spirit with which +some important denominations have each proposed the reuniting of +Christians on the simple condition that all others should accept the +distinctive tenet for which each of these denominations has contended +against others. The present pope, holding the personal respect and +confidence of the Christian world to a higher degree than any one of his +predecessors since the Reformation (to name no earlier date), has +earnestly besought the return of all believers to a common fellowship by +their acceptance of the authority and supremacy of the Roman see. With +equal cordiality the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church have +signified their longing for restored fellowship with their brethren on +the acceptance by these of prelatical episcopacy. And the Baptists, +whose constant readiness at fraternization in everything else is +emphasized by their conscientious refraining from the sacramental sign +of communion, are not less earnest in their desire for the unification +of Christendom by the general acceptance of that tenet concerning +baptism, the widespread rejection of which debars them, reluctant, from +unrestricted fellowship with the general company of faithful men. But +while we welcome every such manifestation of a longing for union among +Christians, and honor the aspiration that it might be brought about in +one or another of these ways, in forecasting the probabilities of the +case, we recognize the extreme unlikeliness that the very formulas which +for ages have been the occasions of mutual contention and separation +shall become the basis of general agreement and lasting concord.</p> + +<p>II. Another indication of the craving for a larger fellowship is found +in the efforts made for large sectarian <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>councils, representing closely +kindred denominations in more than one country. The imposing ubiquity of +the Roman Church, so impressively sustaining its claim to the title +<i>Catholic</i>, may have had some influence to provoke other denominations +to show what could be done in emulation of this sort of greatness. It +were wiser not to invite comparison at this point. No other Christian +organization, or close fellowship of organizations, can approach that +which has its seat at Rome, in the world-wideness of its presence, or +demand with so bold a challenge,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Quæ regio in terris non nostri plena laboris?</p></div> + +<p>The representative assembly of any other body of Christians, however +widely ramified, must seem insignificant when contrasted with the real +ecumenicity of the Vatican Council. But it has not been useless for the +larger sects of Protestantism to arrange their international assemblies, +if it were for nothing more than this, that such widening of the circle +of practical fellowship may have the effect to disclose to each sect a +larger Christendom outside to which their fellowship must sooner or +later be made to reach.</p> + +<p>The first of these international sectarian councils was that commonly +spoken of as "the Pan-Anglican Synod," of Protestant Episcopal bishops +gathered at Lambeth by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in +1867 and thrice since. The example was bettered by the Presbyterians, +who in 1876 organized for permanence their "Pam-Presbyterian Alliance," +or "Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the world holding the +Presbyterian System." The first of the triennial general councils of +this Alliance was held at Edinburgh in 1877, "representing more than +forty-nine separate churches scattered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>through twenty-five different +countries, and consisting of more than twenty thousand +congregations."<a name="FNanchor_413:1_257" id="FNanchor_413:1_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_413:1_257" class="fnanchor">[413:1]</a> The second council was held at Philadelphia, and +the third at Belfast. The idea was promptly seized by the Methodists. At +the instance of the General Conference of the United States, a +Pam-Methodist Council was held in London in 1881,—"the first Ecumenical +Methodist Conference,"—consisting of four hundred delegates, +representing twenty-eight branches of Methodism, ten in the eastern +hemisphere and eighteen in the western, including six millions of +communicants and about twenty millions of people.<a name="FNanchor_413:2_258" id="FNanchor_413:2_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_413:2_258" class="fnanchor">[413:2]</a> Ten years +later, in 1891, a second "Methodist Ecumenical Conference" was held at +Washington.</p> + +<p>Interesting and useful as this international organization of sects is +capable of being made, it would be a mistake to look upon it as marking +a stage in the progress toward a manifest general unity of the church. +The tendency of it is, on the whole, in the opposite direction.</p> + +<p>III. If the organization of "ecumenical" sects has little tendency +toward the visible communion of saints in the American church, not much +more is to be hoped from measures for the partial consolidation of +sects, such as are often projected and sometimes realized. The healing +of the great thirty years' schism of the Presbyterian Church, in 1869, +was so vast a gain in ecclesiastical economy, and in the abatement of a +long-reeking public scandal and of a multitude of local frictions and +irritations, that none need wonder at the awakening of ardent desires +that the ten Presbyterian bodies still surviving might "find room for +all within one fold"<a name="FNanchor_413:3_259" id="FNanchor_413:3_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_413:3_259" class="fnanchor">[413:3]</a> in a national or continental Presbyterian +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>Church. The seventeen Methodist bodies, separated by no differences of +polity or of doctrine that seem important to anybody but themselves, if +consolidated into one, would constitute a truly imposing body, numbering +nearly five millions of communicants and more than fifteen millions of +people; and if this should absorb the Protestant Episcopal Church (an +event the possibility of which has often been contemplated with +complacency), with its half-million of communicants and its elements of +influence far beyond the proportion of its numbers, the result would be +an approximation to some good men's ideal of a national church, with its +army of ministers coördinated by a college of bishops, and its <i>plebs +adunata sacerdoti</i>. Consultations are even now in progress looking +toward the closer fellowship of the Congregationalists and the +Disciples. The easy and elastic terms of internal association in each of +these denominations make it the less difficult to adjust terms of mutual +coöperation and union. Suppose that the various Baptist organizations +were to discover that under their like congregational government there +were ways in which, without compromising or weakening in the slightest +their protest against practices which they reprobate in the matter of +baptism, they could, for certain defined purposes, enter into the same +combination, the result would be a body of nearly five millions of +communicants, not the less strong for being lightly harnessed and for +comprehending wide diversities of opinion and temperament. In all this +we have supposed to be realized nothing more than friends of Christian +union have at one time or another urged as practicable and desirable. By +these few and, it would seem, not incongruous combinations there would +be four powerful ecclesiastical corporations,—one Catholic and three +Protestant,—which, out of the twenty millions of church communicants in +the United <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>States, would include more than seventeen and one half +millions.<a name="FNanchor_415:1_260" id="FNanchor_415:1_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_415:1_260" class="fnanchor">[415:1]</a></p> + +<p>The pondering of these possibilities is pertinent to this closing +chapter on account of the fact that, as we near the end of the +nineteenth century, one of the most distinctly visible tendencies is the +tendency toward the abatement of sectarian division in the church. It is +not for us simply to note the converging lines of tendency, without some +attempt to compute the point toward which they converge. There is grave +reason to doubt whether this line of the consolidation or confederation +of sects, followed never so far, would reach the desired result.</p> + +<p>If the one hundred and forty-three sects enumerated in the eleventh +census of the United States<a name="FNanchor_415:2_261" id="FNanchor_415:2_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_415:2_261" class="fnanchor">[415:2]</a> should by successful negotiation be +reduced to four, distinguished each from the others by strongly marked +diversities of organization and of theological statement, and united to +each other only by community of the one faith in Jesus Christ, doubtless +it would involve some important gains. It would make it possible to be +rid of the friction and sometimes the clash of much useless and +expensive machinery, and to extinguish many local schisms that had been +engendered by the zeal of some central sectarian propaganda. Would it +tend to mitigate the intensity of sectarian competition, or would it +tend rather to aggravate it? Is one's pride in his sect, his zeal for +the propagation of it, his jealousy of any influence that tends to +impair its greatness or hinder its progress, likely to be reduced, or is +it rather likely to be exalted, by the consciousness that the sect is a +very great sect, standing alone for important principles? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>Whatever +there is at present of asperity in the emulous labors of the competing +denominations, would it not be manifold exasperated if the competition +were restricted to four great corporations or confederations? If the +intestine conflict of the church of Christ in America should even be +narrowed down (as many have devoutly wished) to two contestants,—the +Catholic Church with its diversity of orders and rites, on the one hand, +and Protestantism with its various denominations solidly confederated, +on the other,—should we be nearer to the longed-for achievement of +Christian union? or should we find sectarian animosities thereby raised +to the highest power, and the church, discovering that it was on the +wrong track for the desired terminus, compelled to reverse and back in +order to be switched upon the right one?</p> + +<p>Questions like these, put to be considered, not to be answered, raise in +the mind the misgiving that we have been seeking in diplomatic +negotiations between high contracting parties that which diplomacy can +do only a little toward accomplishing. The great aim is to be sought in +humbler ways. It is more hopeful to begin at the lower end. Not in great +towns and centers of ecclesiastical influence, but in villages and +country districts, the deadly effects of comminuted fracture in the +church are most deeply felt. It is directly to the people of such +communities, not through the medium of persons or committees that +represent national sectarian interests, that the new commandment is to +be preached, which yet is no new commandment, but the old commandment +which they have had from the beginning. It cannot always be that sincere +Christian believers, living together in a neighborhood in which the +ruinous effects of division are plain to every eye, shall continue to +misapprehend or disregard some of the tenderest and most unmistakable +counsels of their Lord and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>his apostles, or imagine the authority of +them to be canceled by the authority of any sect or party of Christians. +The double fallacy, first, that it is a Christian's prime duty to look +out for his own soul, and, secondly, that the soul's best health is to +be secured by sequestering it from contact with dissentient opinions, +and indulging its tastes and preferences wherein they differ from those +of its neighbor, must sometime be found out and exposed. The discovery +will be made that there is nothing in the most cherished sermons and +sacraments and prayers that is comparable in value, as a means of grace, +with the giving up of all these for God's reign and righteousness—that +he who will save his soul shall lose it, and he who will lose his soul +for Christ and his gospel shall save it to life eternal. These centuries +of church history, beginning with convulsive disruptions of the church +in Europe, with persecutions and religious wars, present before us the +importation into the New World of the religious divisions and +subdivisions of the Old, and the further division of these beyond any +precedent in history. It begins to look as if in this "strange work" God +had been grinding up material for a nobler manifestation of the unity of +his people. The sky of the declining century is red with promise. +Hitherto, not the decay of religious earnestness only, but the revival +of it, has brought into the church, not peace, but division. When next +some divine breathing of spiritual influence shall be wafted over the +land, can any man forbid the hope that from village to village the +members of the disintegrated and enfeebled church of Christ may be +gathered together "with one accord in one place" not for the transient +fervors of the revival only, but for permanent fellowship in work and +worship? A few examples of this would spread their influence through the +American church "until the whole was leavened."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p><p>The record of important events in the annals of American Christianity +may well end with that wholly unprecedented gathering at Chicago in +connection with the magnificent celebration of the four hundredth +anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus—I mean, of course, +the Parliament of Religions. In a land which bears among the nations the +reproach of being wholly absorbed in devotion to material interests, and +in which the church, unsupported and barely recognized by the state, and +unregulated by any secular authority, scatters itself into what seem to +be hopelessly discordant fragments, a bold enterprise was undertaken in +the name of American Christianity, such as the church in no other land +of Christendom would have had the power or the courage to venture on. +With large hospitality, representatives of all the religions of the +world were invited to visit Chicago, free of cost, as guests of the +Parliament. For seventeen days the Christianity of America, and of +Christendom, and of Christian missions in heathen lands, sat +confronted—no, not confronted, but side by side on the same +platform—with the non-Christian religions represented by their priests, +prelates, and teachers. Of all the diversities of Christian opinion and +organization in America nothing important was unrepresented, from the +authoritative dogmatic system and the solid organization of the Catholic +Church (present in the person of its highest official dignitaries) to +the broadest liberalism and the most unrestrained individualism. There +were those who stood aloof and prophesied that nothing could come of +such an assemblage but a hopeless jangle of discordant opinions. The +forebodings were disappointed. The diverse opinions were there, and were +uttered with entire unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. +It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the +unchristian and antichristian powers, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>in presence of those solemn +questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the +resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity +with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by +the binding force of its antecedents, might have seemed to some most +hopelessly isolated from the common sympathies of the assembly, like all +the rest was faithful in the assertion of its claims, and, on the other +hand, was surpassed by none in the manifestation of fraternal respect +toward fellow-Christians of other folds. Since those seventeen wonderful +September days of 1893, the idea that has so long prevailed with +multitudes of minds, that the only Christian union to be hoped for in +America must be a union to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Church +and in antagonism to it, ought to be reckoned an idea obsolete and +antiquated.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>The theme prescribed for this volume gives no opportunity for such a +conclusion as the literary artist delights in—a climax of achievement +and consummation, or the catastrophe of a decline and fall. We have +marked the sudden divulging to the world of the long-kept secret of +divine Providence; the unveiling of the hidden continent; the progress +of discovery, of conquest, of colonization; the planting of the church; +the rush of immigration; the occupation of the continent with Christian +institutions by a strange diversity of sects; the great providential +preparations as for some "divine event" still hidden behind the curtain +that is about to rise on the new century,—and here the story breaks off +half told.</p> + +<hr class="hrthoughtbk" /> + +<p>To so many of his readers as shall have followed him to this last page +of the volume, the author would speak a parting word. He does not +deprecate the criticisms that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>will certainly be pronounced upon his +work by those competent to judge both of the subject and of the style of +it. He would rather acknowledge them in advance. No one of his critics +can possibly have so keen a sense as the author himself of his +incompetency, and of the inadequacy of his work, to the greatness of the +subject. To one reproach, however, he cannot acknowledge himself justly +liable: he is not self-appointed to a task beyond his powers and +attainments, but has undertaken it at the instance of eminent men to +whose judgment he was bound to defer. But he cannot believe that even +his shortcomings and failures will be wholly fruitless. If they shall +provoke some really competent scholar to make a book worthy of so great +and inspiring a theme, the present author will be well content.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400:1_243" id="Footnote_400:1_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400:1_243"><span class="label">[400:1]</span></a> These statistical figures are taken from the +authoritative work of Dr. H. K. Carroll, "The Religious Forces of the +United States" (American Church History Series, vol. i.). The volume +gives no estimate of the annual expenditure for the maintenance of +religious institutions. If we assume the small figure of $500 as the +average annual expenditure in connection with each house of worship, it +makes an aggregate of $82,648,500 for parochial expenses. The annual +contributions to Protestant foreign and home missions amount to +$7,000,000. (See above, pp. <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>.) The amounts annually contributed +as free gifts for Christian schools and colleges and hospitals and other +charitable objects can at present be only conjectured.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402:1_244" id="Footnote_402:1_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402:1_244"><span class="label">[402:1]</span></a> The "Federalist," No. 51.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404:1_245" id="Footnote_404:1_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404:1_245"><span class="label">[404:1]</span></a> "This habit of respecting one another's rights +cherishes a feeling of mutual respect and courtesy. If on the one hand +the spirit of independence fosters individualism, on the other it favors +good fellowship. All sects are equal before the law.... Hence one great +cause of jealousy and distrust is removed; and though at times sectarian +zeal may lead to rivalries and controversies unfavorable to unity, on +the other hand the independence and equality of the churches favor their +voluntary coöperation; and in no country is the practical union of +Christians more beautifully or more beneficially exemplified than in the +United States. With the exception of the Roman Catholics, Christians of +all communions are accustomed to work together in the spirit of mutual +concession and confidence, in educational, missionary, and philanthropic +measures for the general good. The motto of the state holds of the +church also, <i>E pluribus unum</i>. As a rule, a bigoted church or a fierce +sectarian is despised" (Dr. J. P. Thompson, in "Church and State in the +United States," pp. 98, 99). See, to the like purport, the judicious +remarks of Mr. Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., pp. 568, 664.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405:1_246" id="Footnote_405:1_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405:1_246"><span class="label">[405:1]</span></a> Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., p. 568.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405:2_247" id="Footnote_405:2_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405:2_247"><span class="label">[405:2]</span></a> 1 Cor. i. 10.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406:1_248" id="Footnote_406:1_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406:1_248"><span class="label">[406:1]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406:2_249" id="Footnote_406:2_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406:2_249"><span class="label">[406:2]</span></a> See above, pp. <a href="#Page_252">252-259</a>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406:3_250" id="Footnote_406:3_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406:3_250"><span class="label">[406:3]</span></a> Among the New England Congregationalists the zeal for +union went so far as to favor combination with other sects even in the +work of training candidates for the ministry. Among the "honorary +vice-presidents" of their "American Education Society" was Bishop +Griswold, of the Eastern Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407:1_251" id="Footnote_407:1_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407:1_251"><span class="label">[407:1]</span></a> Sermon at consecration of Bishop H. U. Onderdonk, +1827.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407:2_252" id="Footnote_407:2_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407:2_252"><span class="label">[407:2]</span></a> Minutes of the Convention of Delegates met to consult +on Missions in the City of Cincinnati, <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 1831. The position of the +bishop was more logical than that of the convention, forasmuch as he +held, by a powerful effort of faith, that "his own" church is the church +of the United States, in an exclusive sense; while the divines at +Cincinnati earnestly repudiate such exclusive pretensions for their +church, and hold to a plurality of sectarian churches on the same +territory, each one of which is divinely invested with the prerogatives +and duties of "the church of Christ." A <i>usus loquendi</i> which seems to +be hopelessly imbedded in the English language applies the word "church" +to each one of the several sects into which the church is divided. It is +this corruption of language which leads to the canonization of schism as +a divine ordinance.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408:1_253" id="Footnote_408:1_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408:1_253"><span class="label">[408:1]</span></a> The first proposal for such an assembly seems to be +contained in an article by L. Bacon in the "New Englander" for April, +1844. "Why might there not be, ere long, some general conference in +which the various evangelical bodies of this country and Great Britain +and of the continent of Europe should be in some way represented, and in +which the great cause of reformed and spiritual Christianity throughout +the world should be made the subject of detailed and deliberate +consideration, with prayer and praise? That would be an 'ecumenical +council' such as never yet assembled since the apostles parted from each +other at Jerusalem—a council not for legislation and division, but for +union and communion and for the extension of the saving knowledge of +Christ" (pp. 253, 254).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409:1_254" id="Footnote_409:1_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409:1_254"><span class="label">[409:1]</span></a> See the pungent strictures of Horace Bushnell on "The +Evangelical Alliance," in the "New Englander" for January, 1847, p. +109.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410:1_255" id="Footnote_410:1_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410:1_255"><span class="label">[410:1]</span></a> James i. 27: "Pure and unpolluted worship, in the eye +of God, consists in visiting widows and orphans in their tribulation, +and keeping one's self spotless from the world."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410:2_256" id="Footnote_410:2_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410:2_256"><span class="label">[410:2]</span></a> An agreement has been made, in this State, among five +leading denominations, to avoid competing enterprises in sparsely +settled communities. An interdenominational committee sees to the +carrying out of this policy. At a recent mutual conference unanimous +satisfaction was expressed in the six years' operation of the plan.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413:1_257" id="Footnote_413:1_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413:1_257"><span class="label">[413:1]</span></a> "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. i., p. 63.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413:2_258" id="Footnote_413:2_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413:2_258"><span class="label">[413:2]</span></a> Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 552.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413:3_259" id="Footnote_413:3_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413:3_259"><span class="label">[413:3]</span></a> Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 308.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415:1_260" id="Footnote_415:1_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415:1_260"><span class="label">[415:1]</span></a> If the Lutherans of America were to be united with the +Presbyterians, it would be no more than was accomplished fourscore years +ago in Prussia. In that case, out of 20,618,307 communicants, there +would be included in the four combinations, 18,768,859.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415:2_261" id="Footnote_415:2_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415:2_261"><span class="label">[415:2]</span></a> Dr. Carroll, "Religious Forces," p. xv.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span></p> +<h2>INDEX.</h2> + + +<ul class="list"> +<li>Abbot, Ezra, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Abbot, George, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> +<li>Abbott, Lyman, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Abolitionists, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.</li> +<li>Adams, Charles Francis, <a href="#Footnote_131:2_79">131</a>.</li> +<li>Adventists, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li> +<li>Albany, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> +<li>Albrights, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li> +<li>Alexander, Dr. Gross, <a href="#Footnote_348:1_217">348</a>.</li> +<li>Alexander VI., pope, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> +<li>Allen, Professor A. V. G., <a href="#Footnote_156:2_101">156</a>, <a href="#Footnote_159:1_102">159</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Allen, Professor J. H., <a href="#Footnote_250:1_161">250</a>.</li> +<li>Alliance, Evangelical, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li> +<li>America:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">providential concealment of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">medieval church in, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Spanish conquests and missions in, <a href="#Page_6">6-15</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">French occupation and missions, <a href="#Page_16">16-29</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">English colonies in, <a href="#Page_38">38-67</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82-126</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Dutch and Swedes in, <a href="#Page_68">68-81</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">churches of New England, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Quaker colonization, <a href="#Page_109">109-117</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">other colonists, <a href="#Page_120">120-124</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">diverse sects, <a href="#Page_127">127-139</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Great Awakening, <a href="#Page_157">157-180</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Reformed, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Lutheran, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Moravian, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Methodist, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">severance of colonies from England and of church from state, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Second Awakening, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">organized beneficence, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">conflicts of the church, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">dissension and schism, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">immigration, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the church in the Civil War, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">reconstruction and expansion of the church, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">theology and literature, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">political union and ecclesiastical division, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">tendencies toward unity, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>.</li> +<li>American Bible Society, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li> +<li>American Board of Missions, <a href="#Page_252">252-255</a>.</li> +<li>American Missionary Association, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314</a>.</li> +<li>Andover Theological Seminary, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> +<li>Andrew, Bishop, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</li> +<li>Andrews, E. B., <a href="#Footnote_340:1_213">340</a>.</li> +<li>Andrews, W. G., <a href="#Footnote_177:1_113">177</a>, <a href="#Footnote_179:1_115">179</a>.</li> +<li>Anglican Church established in American colonies, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li> +<li>Antipopery agitation, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li> +<li>Antislavery. See <a href="#Slavery">Slavery</a>.</li> +<li>"Apostasy, the southern," <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> +<li>"Applied Christianity," <a href="#Page_385">385</a>.</li> +<li>Apprenticeship obsolete, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>.</li> +<li>Arminianism, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li> +<li>Armstrong, General S. C., <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.</li> +<li>Asbury, Bishop Francis, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</li> +<li>Awakening, the Great, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li> +<li>Awakening, the Second, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Bachman, John, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</li> +<li>Bacon, B. W., <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Bacon, David, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</li> +<li>Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li> +<li>Bacon, Leonard, <a href="#Footnote_84:1_46">84</a>, <a href="#Footnote_94:1_51">94</a>, <a href="#Footnote_102:1_57">102</a>, <a href="#Footnote_113:1_66">113</a>, <a href="#Footnote_134:1_81">134</a>, <a href="#Footnote_227:1_146">227</a>, <a href="#Footnote_260:1_168">260</a>, <a href="#Footnote_272:1_176">272</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Footnote_287:1_192">287</a>, <a href="#Footnote_408:1_253">408</a>.</li> +<li>Bacon, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> +<li>Baird, Charles W. and Henry M., <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>Baltimore, first Lord, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">second Lord, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> +<li>Bancroft, George, <a href="#Footnote_19:1_6">19</a>, <a href="#Footnote_21:1_7">21</a>, <a href="#Footnote_22:1_9">22</a>, <a href="#Footnote_24:2_14">24</a>, <a href="#Footnote_27:2_17">27</a>, <a href="#Footnote_29:1_22">29</a>, <a href="#Footnote_41:1_23">41</a>, <a href="#Footnote_116:1_68">116</a>, <a href="#Footnote_117:1_69">117</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Baptist Young People's Union, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li>Baptists:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Carolina, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in the South, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">services to religious liberty, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">antislavery, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">become Calvinists, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">found Brown University, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">undertake foreign missions, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">divide on slavery, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">pioneer work, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">plan of Christian union, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>.</li> +<li>Barclay, Robert, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li> +<li>Barnes, Albert, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Baxter, George A., <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li> +<li>Baxter, Richard, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li> +<li>Beecher, Edward, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Beecher, Henry Ward, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Beecher, Lyman, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Belcher, Governor, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> +<li>Bellamy, Joseph, <a href="#Footnote_156:1_100">156</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li> +<li>Bellomont, Lord, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> +<li>Bellows, Henry W., <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Benezet, Anthony, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li> +<li>Bennett, Philip, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> +<li>Bennett, Richard, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li> +<li>Berkeley, Governor Sir William, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> +<li>Bethlehem, Pa., <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li> +<li>Biblical science, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Birney, James G., <a href="#Footnote_273:2_178">273</a>, <a href="#Footnote_274:1_179">274</a>, <a href="#Footnote_275:3_183">275</a>, <a href="#Footnote_282:2_190">283</a>.</li> +<li>Bishops, Anglican, consecrated, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> +<li>Bishops, Catholic, consecrated, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li> +<li>Bishops, colonial, not wanted, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li> +<li>Bishops, Methodist, consecrated, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li> +<li>Bishops, Moravian, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li> +<li>Bissell, Edwin C., <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Blair, Commissary, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> +<li>Blair, Samuel, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</li> +<li>Blake, Joseph, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li> +<li>Boehm, Martin, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> +<li>Bogardus, Everard, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> +<li>Boyle, Robert, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li> +<li>Bradford, Governor William, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> +<li>Brainerd, David, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</li> +<li>Bray, Thomas, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li> +<li>Breckinridge, Robert J., <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Brewster, Edward, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> +<li>Brewster, William, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> +<li>Briggs, Charles A., <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Brooks, Phillips, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Brown, Francis, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Brown, Tutor, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> +<li>Browne, J. and S., at Salem, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li> +<li>Browne, W. H., <a href="#Footnote_55:1_28">55</a>, <a href="#Footnote_59:1_30">59</a>.</li> +<li>Bryce, James, <a href="#Footnote_404:1_245">404</a>, <a href="#Footnote_405:1_246">405</a>.</li> +<li>Buck, Richard, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> +<li>Buckley, James M., <a href="#Footnote_201:1_126">201</a>, <a href="#Footnote_202:1_127">202</a>, <a href="#Footnote_218:1_139">218</a>, <a href="#Footnote_219:1_140">219</a>, <a href="#Footnote_240:1_154">240</a>, <a href="#Footnote_241:1_155">241</a>.</li> +<li>Buckminster, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Bushnell, Horace, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Footnote_409:1_254">409</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Cahenslyism, <a href="#Page_396">392</a>.</li> +<li>Calvert, Cecilius, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> +<li>Calvert, George, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">55</a>.</li> +<li>Calvert, Leonard and George, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> +<li>Calvinism:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">among Baptists, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in the Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Campanius, John, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Campbell, Douglas, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</li> +<li>Campbellites, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> +<li>Camp-meetings, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li> +<li>Canada, <a href="#Page_18">18-29</a>.</li> +<li>Cane Ridge revival, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</li> +<li>Carolinas colonized, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> +<li>Carroll, Bishop John, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> +<li>Carroll, Dr. H. K., <a href="#Footnote_335:1_211">335</a>, <a href="#Footnote_369:1_228">369</a>.</li> +<li>Cartier, Jacques, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> +<li>Cartwright, Peter, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> +<li><a name="Catholic" id="Catholic"></a>Catholic Church, Roman:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Revived and reformed in sixteenth century, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Spanish missions a failure, <a href="#Page_10">10-14</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">French missions, their wide extension and final collapse, <a href="#Page_17">17-29</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Persecuted in England, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">In Maryland, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Way prepared for, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Organized for United States, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Conflict with "trusteeism," <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">with fanaticism, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Gain and loss by immigration, <a href="#Page_318">318-322</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Modified in America, <a href="#Page_323">323-396</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Methods of propagation, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Its literature, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Its relation to the Church Catholic, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>.</li> +<li>Cavaliers in Virginia, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> +<li>Champlain, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li> +<li>Channing, William Ellery, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>Charity Organization, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>.</li> +<li>Charles II. of England, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> +<li>Charter:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">transferred to America, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> +<li>Charter of the Virginia Company:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">revoked, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> +<li>Chauncy, Charles, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li> +<li>Chautauqua, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>.</li> +<li>Cherokee nation, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li> +<li>Chickasaws and Choctaws, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li> +<li>Chinese immigration, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li> +<li>Church polity in New England, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> +<li>Clark, Francis E., <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> +<li>Clarke, James Freeman, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Clergy:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of Virginia, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of Maryland, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li> +<li>Cleveland, Aaron, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> +<li>College settlement, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.</li> +<li>Colleges, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> +<li>Colonization in Africa, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li> +<li>Congregationalists:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">moving west, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">coöperate with Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">college-builders, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">work at the South, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</li> +<li>Conservatism of American churches, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li> +<li>Copland, Patrick, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li> +<li>Cornbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li> +<li>Corwin, E. T., <a href="#Footnote_69:1_36">69</a>, <a href="#Footnote_71:1_38">71</a>, <a href="#Footnote_78:1_41">78</a>, <a href="#Footnote_80:1_43">80</a>, <a href="#Footnote_120:1_72">121</a>, <a href="#Footnote_139:2_87">139</a>.</li> +<li>Covenanters in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li> +<li>Cumberland Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li> +<li>Cutler, Timothy, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Dabney, Robert L., <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Dale, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li> +<li>Davenport, James, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li> +<li>Davenport, John, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> +<li>Davies, Samuel, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Deerfield, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> +<li>De la Warr, Lord, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">43</a>.</li> +<li>Dewey, Orville, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Dickinson, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Disciples, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>.</li> +<li>Divisions of Christendom, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li> +<li>Dominicans, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> +<li>Dorchester, Daniel, <a href="#Footnote_321:2_206">322</a>, <a href="#Footnote_335:1_211">335</a>, <a href="#Footnote_357:1_219">357</a>, <a href="#Footnote_358:1_220">358</a>, <a href="#Footnote_359:1_221">359</a>, <a href="#Footnote_361:1_224">361</a>.</li> +<li>Douglas, Stephen A., <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li> +<li>Dow, Lorenzo, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</li> +<li>Drunkenness prevalent, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> +<li>Dubbs, Joseph H., <a href="#Footnote_121:1_73">121</a>.</li> +<li>Dudley, Governor, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> +<li>Dueling, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li> +<li>Duffield, George, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Dunster, President, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</li> +<li>Durand, William, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</li> +<li>Durbin, David P., <a href="#Footnote_240:1_154">240</a>.</li> +<li>Dutch church, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> +<li>Dutch in Carolina, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> +<li>"Dutch, Pennsylvania," <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> +<li>Dwight, Timothy, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Eaton, Theophilus, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> +<li>Eddy, Richard, <a href="#Footnote_225:1_144">225</a>, <a href="#Footnote_228:1_147">228</a>.</li> +<li>Edmundson, William, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> +<li>Edwards, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Edwards, Jonathan, the younger, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</li> +<li>Elder, M. T., <a href="#Footnote_321:2_206">322</a>, <a href="#Footnote_331:1_209">331</a>.</li> +<li>Eleuthera colony, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li> +<li>Eliot, John, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> +<li>Embury, Philip, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.</li> +<li>Emerson, Ralph Waldo, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Emmons, Nathanael, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Footnote_305:1_198">305</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Endicott, John, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> +<li>England, religious parties in, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li> +<li>Episcopal Church:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_38">38-53</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Maryland, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Carolina, <a href="#Page_64">64-67</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_78">78-80</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Georgia, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131-134</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">hostile to revivals, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">extreme depression, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">consecration of bishops, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">resuscitation, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">violent controversy, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">rapid growth, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">specialties of, in evangelization, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">reconstruction after Civil War, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Pan-Anglican Synod, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>.</li> +<li>Epworth League, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li>Establishment of religion:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51-53</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Maryland, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in the Carolinas, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_78">78-80</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li> + <li class="subsubitem">Disestablishment, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> +<li>Evangelical Association, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li> +<li>Evangelization at the South, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.</li> +<li>Evangelization at the West, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>.</li> +<li>Evarts, Jeremiah, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> +<li>Exscinding Acts, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>Fanaticism of Spanish church, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li> +<li>Fanaticism, antipopery, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> +<li>Finney, Charles G., <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Fisher, George Park, <a href="#Footnote_182:1_117">182</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Fisher, Sidney George, <a href="#Footnote_118:1_71">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143-145</a>.</li> +<li>Fitch, John, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Fletcher, Governor, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li> +<li>Florida, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</li> +<li>Foster, R. V., <a href="#Footnote_236:1_152">236</a>, <a href="#Footnote_238:1_153">238</a>.</li> +<li>Fox, George, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> +<li>Franciscans, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li> +<li>Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> +<li>Fraser, John, <a href="#Footnote_335:1_211">335</a>.</li> +<li>Frelinghuysen, Domine, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li> +<li>Frelinghuysen, Senator, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.</li> +<li>French missions:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">projected, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">extinguished, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> +<li>Fuller, Dr. and Deacon, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Gates, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li> +<li>Georgia, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> +<li>German exiles, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> +<li>German immigration, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>.</li> +<li>Gladden, Washington, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>.</li> +<li>Gosnold, Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li> +<li>Gough, John B., <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.</li> +<li>Great fortunes and great gifts, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li> +<li>Greatorex's collection, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>.</li> +<li>Green, Ashbel, <a href="#Footnote_204:3_130">204</a>.</li> +<li>Green, S. S., <a href="#Footnote_122:1_74">122</a>.</li> +<li>Green, W. H., <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Gregory, Caspar René, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Griffin, Edward Dorr, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Griswold, Alexander V., <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li> +<li>Gurley, R. R., <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Hale, Edward Everett, <a href="#Footnote_367:1_227">367</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>.</li> +<li>Half-way Covenant, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</li> +<li>Hall, Isaac H., <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Hamilton, J. Taylor, <a href="#Footnote_190:1_121">190</a>, <a href="#Footnote_198:1_125">198</a>.</li> +<li>Hampton Institute, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.</li> +<li>Hand, Daniel, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.</li> +<li>Hard times in 1857, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li> +<li>Harrison, Thomas, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> +<li>Hart, Levi, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li> +<li>Hastings, Thomas, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</li> +<li>Haupt, Bible-work, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Haverhill, Mass., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> +<li>Hawkins, John, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.</li> +<li>Helps, Arthur, <a href="#Footnote_7:1_2">7</a>, <a href="#Footnote_8:1_3">8</a>.</li> +<li>Higginson, Francis, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li> +<li>High-church party:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Episcopal Church, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>.</li> +<li>Hill, Matthew, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li> +<li>Hilprecht, Dr., <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Historical theology, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.</li> +<li>Hitchcock, Roswell D., <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Hobart, John Henry, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>.</li> +<li>Hodge, Charles, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.</li> +<li>Holland:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">colony from, in New York, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">not the source of New England institutions, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Pilgrims in, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">mission from, to Germans, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</li> +<li>Hooker, Thomas, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Footnote_138:1_85">138</a>.</li> +<li>Hopkins, Samuel, <a href="#Footnote_150:1_97">151</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Footnote_184:1_118">184</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li> +<li>Hopkins, Stephen, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li> +<li>Hopkinsianism, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Hudson, Henry, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li> +<li>Hughes, John, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.</li> +<li>Huguenots, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li> +<li>Humphrey, Heman, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> +<li>Hunt, Robert, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li> +<li>Huntington, Frederic D., <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Hurst, John F., <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Hutchinson, Ann, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li> +<li>Hymn-writers, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Indians:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">evangelization of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Indian churches, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li> +<li>Induction refused to unworthy parsons, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> +<li>Immigration, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>.</li> +<li>Infidelity, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</li> +<li>Institutional Church, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li>Intemperance, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> +<li>International sectarian councils, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>.</li> +<li>Ireland, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>.</li> +<li>Iroquois, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Jackson, Helen Hunt, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</li> +<li>Jacobs, Henry E., <a href="#Footnote_71:1_38">71</a>, <a href="#Footnote_121:1_73">121</a>, <a href="#Footnote_188:1_119">188</a>, <a href="#Footnote_190:1_121">190</a>, <a href="#Footnote_196:1_124">196</a>, <a href="#Footnote_198:1_125">198</a>.</li> +<li>James I. of England, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li> +<li>James II. of England, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li> +<li>Jamestown, <a href="#Page_30">30-45</a>.</li> +<li>Jarratt, Devereux, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Jefferson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</li> +<li>Jerks, the, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</li> +<li>Jesuits, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>Jogues, Father, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Johnson, President Samuel, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li> +<li>Johnson, Thomas Cary, <a href="#Footnote_297:1_196">297</a>, <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314, <i>note</i></a>, <a href="#Footnote_354:1_218">354</a>.</li> +<li>Journalism, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.</li> +<li>Judson, Adoniram, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Kansas-Nebraska Bill, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li> +<li>Kansas Crusade, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li> +<li>Keith, George, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li> +<li>Keith, Governor, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</li> +<li>Kieft, Governor, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</li> +<li>King, Thomas Starr, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>King's Chapel, Boston, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li> +<li>Kirby, William, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Kirk, Edward Norris, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Knapp, Jacob, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Lanphier, Jeremiah, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li> +<li>La Salle, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li> +<li>Las Casas, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> +<li>Laud, William, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li> +<li>Lea, Henry Charles, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Leon, Ponce de, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> +<li>Leyden, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</li> +<li>Liberty, religious:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Eleuthera, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Maryland, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Carolina, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Georgia, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">defended by Makemie, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">favored by sectarian division, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">promoted by Baptists, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li> +<li>Literature of American church, <a href="#Page_374">374-395</a>.</li> +<li>Littledale, R. F., <a href="#Footnote_26:1_15">26</a>, <a href="#Footnote_27:1_16">27</a>, <a href="#Footnote_28:1_20">28</a>.</li> +<li>Liturgies, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>.</li> +<li>Locke, John, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> +<li>Lodge, H. C., <a href="#Footnote_62:1_32">62</a>, <a href="#Footnote_70:1_37">70</a>, <a href="#Footnote_117:2_70">117</a>, <a href="#Footnote_153:1_99">153</a>.</li> +<li>Log College, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li> +<li>Logan County, Kentucky, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.</li> +<li>Louisiana, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li> +<li>Lutherans, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> +<li>Luther League, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Madison, James, Bishop, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> +<li>Madison, James, President, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>.</li> +<li>Maine, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>.</li> +<li>Makemie, Francis, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li> +<li>Maria Monk, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li> +<li>Marshall, John, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> +<li>Maryland, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54-62</a>.</li> +<li>Mason, John M., <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li> +<li>Mason, Lowell, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</li> +<li>Massacres, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</li> +<li>Mather, Cotton, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</li> +<li>Mayhews, the, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>McConnell, S. D., <a href="#Footnote_151:1_98">151</a>, <a href="#Footnote_170:1_107">170</a>, <a href="#Footnote_179:1_115">179</a>, <a href="#Footnote_211:2_136">211</a>, <a href="#Footnote_224:1_143">224</a>.</li> +<li>McGee brothers, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li> +<li>McGready, James, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li> +<li>McIlvaine, C. P., <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.</li> +<li>McMasters, John Bach, <a href="#Footnote_240:1_154">240</a>.</li> +<li>Megapolensis, Domine, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Menendez, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> +<li>Mennonites, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</li> +<li>Mercersburg theology, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li> +<li>Methodism:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">tardy arrival in America, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">spreads southward, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">rapid growth, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">against slavery and intemperance, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">receives bishops, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">divided by the slavery agitation, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in pioneer work, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">at the South, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Ecumenical Conference, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">consolidation of Methodist sects, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>.</li> +<li>Michaelius, Jonas, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> +<li>Millerism, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li> +<li>Mills, Samuel J., <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li> +<li>Minuit, Peter, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li> +<li>Missionary societies, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>.</li> +<li>Missions, American:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">to Indians, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">to the West, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">to the South, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</li> +<li>Missions, foreign, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.</li> +<li>Missions to America:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Icelandic, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Spanish, <a href="#Page_6">6-16</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">French, <a href="#Page_17">17-29</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of the S. P. G., <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Footnote_133:1_80">133</a>, <a href="#Footnote_135:1_82">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of the church of Holland, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li> +<li>Missionary Ridge, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.</li> +<li>Mississippi, the, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li> +<li>Missouri Compromise, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.</li> +<li>Mobs:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">antipopery, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">pro-slavery, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</li> +<li>Montesinos, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> +<li>Montreal, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> +<li>Moody, Dwight L., <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li> +<li>Moor, Thoroughgood, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li> +<li>Moore, George Foot, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Moravians: in Georgia, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">missions to Indians, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">their liturgies, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>.</li> +<li>Mormonism, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>Morris, Colonel, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li> +<li>Morris, Samuel, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Morse, Jedidiah, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.</li> +<li>Morton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> +<li>Mühlenberg, Henry M., <a href="#Page_191">191-198</a>.</li> +<li>Mulford, Elisha, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Munger, Theodore T., <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Murray, John, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li> +<li>Music, church, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Nansemond church, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> +<li>Nationalism of the Puritans, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.</li> +<li>Native American party, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>.</li> +<li>Neill, E. D., <a href="#Footnote_44:1_24">44</a>, <a href="#Footnote_51:1_27">51</a>, <a href="#Footnote_59:1_30">59</a>.</li> +<li>Neshaminy, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li> +<li>Nevin, John W., <a href="#Page_377">377</a>.</li> +<li>Newark, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> +<li>New Brunswick, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li> +<li>New England Company, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li> +<li>New England theology, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>.</li> +<li>New Englanders moving west, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</li> +<li>New Haven theology, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</li> +<li>New Jersey, <a href="#Page_109">109-112</a>.</li> +<li>New Jerusalem Church, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li> +<li>New Londonderry, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> +<li>Newman, A. H., <a href="#Footnote_131:1_78">131</a>, <a href="#Footnote_255:1_164">255</a>, <a href="#Footnote_275:2_182">275</a>.</li> +<li>New Mexico, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li> +<li>New-School Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</li> +<li>New-Side Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li> +<li>New York, <a href="#Page_68">68-81</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">diversity of sects, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</li> +<li>Nicholson, Governor, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> +<li>Nicolls, Governor, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li> +<li>Nitschmann, David, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li> +<li>Northampton, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155-159</a>.</li> +<li>Norton, Andrews, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</li> +<li>Nott, Eliphalet, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li> +<li>Nursing orders and schools, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Oberlin College, <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314</a>.</li> +<li>Occum, Samson, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li> +<li>Oglethorpe, James, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li> +<li>O'Gorman, Bishop, <a href="#Footnote_2:1_1">2</a>, <a href="#Footnote_15:1_4">15</a>, <a href="#Footnote_23:1_10">23</a>, <a href="#Footnote_24:1_13">24</a>, <a href="#Footnote_28:2_21">28</a>, <a href="#Footnote_216:1_138">216</a>, <a href="#Footnote_312:1_200">312</a>, <a href="#Footnote_321:1_205">321</a>, <a href="#Footnote_396:1_242">396</a>.</li> +<li>Old-School Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.</li> +<li>Old-Side Presbyterians, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li> +<li>Orders in Roman Church, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li> +<li>Ordination in New England, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li> +<li>Otis, Deacon, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.</li> +<li>Otterbein, Philip William, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Paine, Thomas, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</li> +<li>Palatines, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li> +<li>Palfrey, John G., <a href="#Footnote_98:1_54">98</a>, <a href="#Footnote_99:1_55">99</a>, <a href="#Footnote_100:1_56">100</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Palmer, Ray, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>.</li> +<li>Pam-Methodist Conference, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>.</li> +<li>Pam-Presbyterian Alliance, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>.</li> +<li>Pan-Anglican Synod, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>.</li> +<li>Park, Edwards A., <a href="#Footnote_150:1_97">151</a>, <a href="#Footnote_182:1_117">182</a>, <a href="#Footnote_184:1_118">184</a>, <a href="#Footnote_204:1_128">204</a>, <a href="#Footnote_305:1_198">305</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Parker, Theodore, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.</li> +<li>Parkman, Francis, <a href="#Footnote_18:1_5">18</a>.</li> +<li>Parliament of Religions, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>.</li> +<li>Pastorius, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li> +<li>Penn, William, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li> +<li>Persecutions, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</li> +<li>Pierpont, James, <a href="#Footnote_81:1_45">81</a>.</li> +<li>Pierpont, Sarah, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li> +<li>Pierson, Abraham, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Pilgrims, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li> +<li>Plan of Union, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</li> +<li>Pocahontas, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> +<li>Pond, Enoch, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Population of United States:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in 1790, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in 1850, <a href="#Page_315"><i>ibid.</i></a></li> +<li>Porter, Ebenezer, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> +<li>Pott, Governor, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li> +<li>Presbyterians:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Scotland and Ireland, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in America, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">schism among, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">rapid growth, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">alliance with Congregationalists, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">earnestly antislavery, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">dissensions among, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the great schism, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">characteristics as a sect, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">new schisms and reunions, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">liturgical movement, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">early unproductiveness in theology and literature, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">international alliance, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>.</li> +<li>Princeton College, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li> +<li>Princeton Seminary, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>.</li> +<li>Prohibitory legislation, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</li> +<li>Protestant sects and Catholic orders, <a href="#Page_330">330-334</a>.</li> +<li>Protestantism in Europe divided, <a href="#Page_31">31-34</a>.</li> +<li>Provoost, Bishop, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li> +<li>Psalmody, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391-393</a>.</li> +<li>Pulpit, the American, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Puritan jurisprudence, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">sabbatarian extravagance provokes reaction, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>Puritans:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">not Separatists, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_44">44-50</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Maryland, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">antagonize the Separatists, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">settle at Salem, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">fraternize with the Pilgrims, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">church order, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the great Puritan exodus bringing the charter, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">intend an established church, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">exclude factious dissenters, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">divergences of opinion, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Puritan church establishments fail, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Nationalist principle succumbs to Separatist, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Quakerism:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">a reaction from Puritanism, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">its enthusiasm, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">its discipline, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">anticipated in continental Europe, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Keith's schism, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Quaker jurisprudence, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">failure in civil government, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">and in pastoral work, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">its sole and faithful witness at the South, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the only organized church fellowship uniting the colonies, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Hicksite schism, <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314</a>.</li> +<li>Quakers:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">persecuted in England, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">missions in Carolina, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">persecuted in New York, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">and in Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">dominant in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">and in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">excluded from Evangelical Alliance, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>.</li> +<li><i>Quanta Cura</i>, bull, with Syllabus, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Footnote_396:1_242">396</a>.</li> +<li>Quebec, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> +<li>Redemptioners, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li> +<li>Reformation in Spain, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li> +<li>Reformed Church, German:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">begins too late the care of German immigrants, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">long unorganized, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">persists in separation from other German Christians, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li> +<li>Reformed-drunkard ethics, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</li> +<li>Reformed Dutch Church:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">tardy birth in New York, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">and languishing life, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">revival under Frelinghuysen, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li> +<li>Relly, James, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li> +<li><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original has Requirimiento"><i>Requerimiento</i></ins> of the Spanish, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li> +<li>Restoration of the Stuarts, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li> +<li>Revival of 1857, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li> +<li>Revival of Roman Catholic Church, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li> +<li>Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li> +<li>Rice, David, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li> +<li>Rice, Luther, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li> +<li>Ripley, George, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</li> +<li>Rising, Governor, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> +<li>Robinson, Edward, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Robinson, John, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</li> +<li>Robinson, "One-eyed," <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Rolfe, John, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li> +<li>Roman Catholic. See <a href="#Catholic">Catholic</a>.</li> +<li>Rousseau, Jean Jacques, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li> +<li>Rush, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li> +<li>Ryan, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Sabbath observance, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</li> +<li>St. Andrew's Brotherhood, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li>St. Augustine, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</li> +<li>St. Lawrence, the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li> +<li>Salem, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li> +<li>Saloons, tippling, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> +<li>Saltonstall, Gurdon, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li> +<li>Salvation Army, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.</li> +<li>Salzburgers, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Footnote_125:1_75">125</a>.</li> +<li>Sandys, Archbishop, and his sons, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li> +<li>Satolli, Monsignor, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</li> +<li>Saybrook Platform, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</li> +<li>Schaff, Philip, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Schenectady, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> +<li>Schism:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">among Congregationalists, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">among Unitarians, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Methodist Church, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">among Baptists, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">among Quakers, <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">healed, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">compensations of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.</li> +<li>Schlatter, Michael, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li> +<li>Schools:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">for Virginia, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li> +<li>Scotch-Irish:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Carolina, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Maryland, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in the Alleghanies, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in the Awakening, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">principles and prejudices of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li> +<li>Screven, William, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li> +<li>Scrooby, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li> +<li>Seabury, Samuel, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>Sects:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">European imported, <a href="#Page_31">31-34</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New Jersey, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the German, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">multiply against established churches, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">enfeebling effect of, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">reconstruct themselves, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">competition of, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">characteristics of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">multitude of, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">mischiefs of, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</li> +<li>Seminaries, theological, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> +<li>Separatists, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">at Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth, <a href="#Page_82">81-95</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Rhode Island, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">their principle prevails, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.</li> +<li>Sewall, Samuel, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li> +<li>Seybert commission, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>.</li> +<li>Shaftesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li> +<li>Shedd, W. J. G., <a href="#Page_382">382</a>.</li> +<li>Sisterhoods, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li> +<li>Slater educational fund, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.</li> +<li><a name="Slavery" id="Slavery">Slavery</a>:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of Indians, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of negroes, in Florida, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Virginia, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in all colonies, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">condemned in Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">and in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">increased cruelty of, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Kindness to slaves, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Constant and unanimous protest of the church against slavery, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-277</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Beginning of a pro-slavery party in the church, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">propagated by terror, <a href="#Page_279">279-282</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Pro-slavery reaction at the North, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Unanimous protests against extension of slavery, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Slavery question in Presbyterian Church, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">in Methodist Church, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</li> + <li class="subsubitem">in Baptist Convention, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Failure of compromises, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">The Kansas Crusade, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Apostasy of the southern church complete, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Diversity of feeling among northern Christians, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Slavery extinguished, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.</li> +<li>Smalley, John, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li> +<li>Smith, Eli, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Henry Boynton, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Henry Preserved, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">John, <a href="#Page_38">38-42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Ralph, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li> +<li>Smylie, James, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.</li> +<li>Smyth, Newman, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Social science in seminaries, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>.</li> +<li>Societies, charitable, <a href="#Page_252">252-259</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>.</li> +<li>Society P. C. K., <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li> +<li>Society P. G. in Foreign Parts, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">missions in Carolina, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New York, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Footnote_120:1_72">120, <i>note</i></a>, <a href="#Footnote_135:1_82">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">in New England, <a href="#Page_131">131-133</a>.</li> +<li>Society P. G. in New England, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li> +<li>Sophocles, E. A., <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Southampton insurrection, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.</li> +<li>Spain:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Reformation in, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">conquests and missions of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li> +<li>Spiritualism, <a href="#Page_337">337-339</a>.</li> +<li>Spotswood, Governor, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> +<li>Spring, Gardiner, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.</li> +<li>Standish, Myles, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li> +<li>Stiles, Ezra, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li> +<li>Stoddard, Solomon, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</li> +<li>Stone, Barton W., <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.</li> +<li>Storrs, Richard S., <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li> +<li>Stowe, Mrs. H. B., <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li> +<li>Strawbridge, Robert, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</li> +<li>Strong, Augustus H., <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Stuart, Moses, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Sturtevant, J. M., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li> +<li>Stuyvesant, Peter, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li> +<li>Sumner, Charles, <a href="#Footnote_282:2_190">283</a>.</li> +<li>Sunday observance, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</li> +<li>Sunday-schools, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>.</li> +<li>Swedenborgians, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li> +<li>Swedes, <a href="#Page_75">75-77</a>.</li> +<li>Syllabus of errors condemned by the pope, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>.</li> +<li>Synod:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">"Reforming," <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Presbyterian, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">disrupted, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">excision of, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">of Virginia, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Talcott, Governor, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li> +<li>Talmage, Thomas De Witt, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>.</li> +<li>Taylor, Nathaniel W., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li> +<li>Temperance:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">efforts for, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the Reformation, <a href="#Page_285">285-291</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">early legislation, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">"Washingtonian movement," <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Prohibitionism, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</li> +<li>Tennent, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li> +<li>Tennent, William, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li> +<li>Tennent, William, Jr., <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li> +<li>Thayer, Eli, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Footnote_342:1_214">342</a>.</li> +<li>Thayer, Joseph H., <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Theological instruction, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li> +<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>Theological seminaries, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li> +<li>Theology, New England, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</li> +<li>Theology, systems of, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Thomas, Allen C. and Richard H., <a href="#Footnote_114:1_67">114</a>, <a href="#Footnote_139:1_86">139</a>, <a href="#Footnote_143:3_91">143</a>.</li> +<li>Thomas, John R., <a href="#Page_393">393</a>.</li> +<li>Thompson, Joseph P., <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.</li> +<li>Thompson, Robert Ellis, <a href="#Footnote_122:1_74">122</a>, <a href="#Footnote_147:1_95">147</a>, <a href="#Footnote_176:1_112">176</a>, <a href="#Footnote_346:1_215">346</a>, <a href="#Footnote_394:1_241">394</a>.</li> +<li>Thomson, William M., <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Thornwell, James H., <a href="#Footnote_314:1_202">314, <i>note</i></a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Tiffany, Charles C., <a href="#Footnote_65:1_33">65</a>, <a href="#Footnote_71:1_38">71</a>, <a href="#Footnote_120:1_72">120</a>, <a href="#Footnote_131:2_79">131</a>, <a href="#Footnote_134:1_81">134</a>, <a href="#Footnote_173:2_111">173</a>, <a href="#Footnote_207:1_133">207</a>, <a href="#Footnote_210:1_134">210</a>, <a href="#Footnote_213:1_137">213</a>, <a href="#Footnote_224:1_143">224</a>, <a href="#Footnote_232:1_149">232</a>.</li> +<li>Torkillus, Pastor, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li> +<li>Tracy, Joseph, <a href="#Footnote_162:1_103">162</a>, <a href="#Footnote_169:1_105">169</a>, <a href="#Footnote_172:1_109">172</a>, <a href="#Footnote_179:2_116">179</a>.</li> +<li>Trumbull, Henry Clay, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>"Trusteeism," <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</li> +<li>Tuttle, Daniel S., <a href="#Footnote_335:1_211">335</a>.</li> +<li>Tyler, B. B., <a href="#Footnote_236:1_152">236</a>, <a href="#Footnote_238:1_153">238</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Union, Christian:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">tendencies and attempts, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.</li> +<li>Unitarianism, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>United Brethren, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li> +<li>Unity, real, in the church, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">manifestation of it yet future, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_419">419</a>.</li> +<li>Universalism, <a href="#Page_225">225-228</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Van Twiller, Governor, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</li> +<li>Vermont, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li> +<li>Vincent, John H., <a href="#Page_363">363</a>.</li> +<li>Virginia, <a href="#Page_38">38-53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li> +<li>Virginia Company, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li> +<li>Voluntary system, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>.</li> +<li>Vose, James G., <a href="#Footnote_107:1_62">107</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Walker, Williston, <a href="#Footnote_100:1_56">100</a>, <a href="#Footnote_104:1_59">104</a>, <a href="#Footnote_386:2_235">386</a>.</li> +<li>Walloons, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li> +<li>War:</li> + <li class="listsubitem">between France and England, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the Seven Years', <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">Revolutionary, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">the Civil, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>;</li> + <li class="listsubitem">produces schisms and healings, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</li> +<li>Ward, William Hayes, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</li> +<li>Ware, Henry, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Ware, Henry, Jr., <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Warren, George William, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>.</li> +<li>Washingtonianism, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li> +<li>Watts, Isaac, <a href="#Page_159">158</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>.</li> +<li>Wayland, Francis, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li> +<li>Welsh immigrants, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li> +<li>Wesley, Charles, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li> +<li>Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Footnote_202:1_127">202</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li> +<li>Westminster League, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>.</li> +<li>Westminster Sabbath law, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>.</li> +<li>Westward progress of church, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.</li> +<li>Wheelock, Eleazar, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li> +<li>Whitaker, Alexander, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>White, Father, <a href="#Footnote_57:1_29">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li> +<li>White, John, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.</li> +<li>White, Bishop William, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</li> +<li>Whitefield, George, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li> +<li>Wigglesworth, Michael, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</li> +<li>William and Mary, College of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li> +<li>Williams, Roger, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li> +<li>Williams College, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li> +<li>Wilson, Henry, <a href="#Footnote_273:2_178">273</a>, <a href="#Footnote_274:2_180">274</a>, <a href="#Footnote_281:2_188">281</a>.</li> +<li>Winchester, Elhanan, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li> +<li>Wingfield, Governor, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li> +<li>Winthrop, John, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li> +<li>Wise, John, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li> +<li>Women's C. T. Union, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>.</li> +<li>Women's Crusade, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.</li> +<li>Women's mission boards, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>.</li> +<li>Woods, Leonard, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li> +<li>Woolman, John, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Ximenes, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Yale College, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</li> +<li>Yeo, John, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li> +<li>Young Men's Christian Association, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>.</li> +<li>Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>.</li> +<li>Young Women's Christian Association, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.</li> +<li><br /></li> +<li>Zinzendorf, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</li> +</ul> +<div class="notebox"> +<h2>Transcriber's Notes:</h2> + +<p>Variations in hyphenation are preserved as in the original. Examples +include the following:</p> + +<table summary="hyphenated words" class="tindent" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">Christ-like</td> + <td class="tdleft">Christlike</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" style="padding-right: 3em;">make-shift</td> + <td class="tdleft">makeshift</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p>The following corrections have been made to the text:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>page 32—people of England is of preëminent[original has preeminent] +importance</p> + +<p>page 59—feared to violate the immunities of the church."[ending +quotation mark is missing in original]</p> + +<p>page 188—sent messengers with an imploring petition to their +coreligionists[original has correligionists] at London and Halle</p> + +<p>page 296—It was an unpardonable offense[original has offence]</p> + +<p>page 335—immediate adventism[original has hyphen between words]</p> + +<p>page 353—gendered strifes that still delay the reintegration[original +has redintegration]</p> + +<p>page 427—<i>Requerimiento</i>[original has Requirimiento] of the Spanish, 9.</p> + +<p>Footnote 377-1—(American Church History Series,[original has quotation +mark] vol. viii.)—also, pp. 219, 220, 389-378—this typographical error +has not been corrected</p></div> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 20160-h.txt or 20160-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/6/20160">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/6/20160</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A History of American Christianity + + +Author: Leonard Woolsey Bacon + + + +Release Date: December 22, 2006 [eBook #20160] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF AMERICAN +CHRISTIANITY*** + + +E-text prepared by Dave Morgan, Daniel J. Mount, Lisa Reigel, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net/c/) from digital material generously made available +by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (http://www.ccel.org/) + + + +Note: The digital material used for the preparation of this file, + including images of the original pages, are available through + the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. See + http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bacon_lw/history.html + + +Transcriber's notes: + + Greek words in this text have been transliterated and placed + between +marks+. + + Words in italics are surrounded with underscores. + + A list of corrections made is at the end of the text. + + + + + +The American Church History Series + +Consisting of a Series of Denominational Histories Published Under the +Auspices of the American Society of Church History + +General Editors + +REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., LL. D. +RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D. D., LL. D. +REV GEO. P. FISHER, D. D., LL. D. +BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL. D. +REV. E. J. WOLF, D. D. +HENRY C. VEDDER, M. A. +REV. SAMUEL M. JACKSON, D. D., LL. D. + +Volume XIII + +American Church History + + +A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY + +by + +LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON + + + + + + + +New York +The Christian Literature Co. +MDCCCXCVII +Copyright, 1897, by +The Christian Literature Co. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE +CHAP. I.--PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATION FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 1-5 + + Purpose of the long concealment of America, 1. A medieval + church in America, 2. Revival of the Catholic Church, 3, + especially in Spain, 4, 5. + + +CHAP. II.--SPANISH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 6-15 + + Vastness and swiftness of the Spanish conquests, 6. Conversion + by the sword, 7. Rapid success and sudden downfall of missions + in Florida, 9. The like story in New Mexico, 12, and in + California, 14. + + +CHAP. III.--FRENCH CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 16-29 + + Magnificence of the French scheme of western empire, 16. + Superior dignity of the French missions, 19. Swift expansion + of them, 20. Collision with the English colonies, and triumph + of France, 21. Sudden and complete failure of the French + church, 23. Causes of failure: (1) Dependence on royal + patronage, 24. (2) Implication in Indian feuds, 25. (3) + Instability of Jesuit efforts, 26. (4) Scantiness of French + population, 27. Political aspect of French missions, 28. + Recent French Catholic immigration, 29. + + +CHAP. IV.--ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION 30-37 + + Controversies and parties in Europe, 31, and especially in + England, 32. Disintegration of Christendom, 34. New experiment + of church life, 35. Persecutions promote emigration, 36, 37. + + +CHAP. V.--PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA 38-53 + + The Rev. Robert Hunt, chaplain to the Virginia colony, 38. + Base quality of the emigration, 39. Assiduity in religious + duties, 41. Rev. Richard Buck, chaplain, 42. Strict Puritan + regime of Sir T. Dale and Rev. A. Whitaker, 43. Brightening + prospects extinguished by massacre, 48. Dissolution of the + Puritan "Virginia Company" by the king, 48. Puritan ministers + silenced by the royal governor, Berkeley, 49. The governor's + chaplain, Harrison, is converted to Puritan principles, 49. + Visit of the Rev. Patrick Copland, 50. Degradation of church + and clergy, 51. Commissary Blair attempts reform, 52. + Huguenots and Scotch-Irish, 53. + + +CHAP. VI.--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS 54-67 + + George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 54; secures grant of Maryland, + 55. The second Lord Baltimore organizes a colony on the basis + of religious liberty, 56. Success of the two Jesuit priests, + 57. Baltimore restrains the Jesuits, 58, and encourages the + Puritans, 59. Attempt at an Anglican establishment, 61. + Commissary Bray, 61. Tardy settlement of the Carolinas, 62. A + mixed population, 63. Success of Quakerism, 65. American + origin of English missionary societies, 66. + + +CHAP. VII.--DUTCH CALVINISTS AND SWEDISH LUTHERANS 68-81 + + Faint traces of religious life in the Dutch settlements, 69. + Pastors Michaelius, Bogardus, and Megapolensis, 70. Religious + liberty, diversity, and bigotry, 72. The Quakers persecuted, + 73. Low vitality of the Dutch colony, 75. Swedish colony on + the Delaware, 76; subjugated by the Dutch, 77. The Dutch + evicted by England, 78. The Dutch church languishes, 79. + Attempts to establish Anglicanism, 79. The S. P. G., 80. + + +CHAP. VIII.--THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND 82-108 + + Puritan and Separatist, 82. The Separatists of Scrooby, 83. + Mutual animosity of the two parties, 84. Spirit of John + Robinson, 85. The "social compact" of the Pilgrims, in state, + 87; and in church, 88. Feebleness of the Plymouth colony, 89. + The Puritan colony at Salem, 90. Purpose of the colonists, 91. + Their right to pick their own company, 92. Fellowship with the + Pilgrims, 93. Constituting the Salem church, and ordination of + its ministers, 95. Expulsion of schismatics, 97. Coming of the + great Massachusetts colony bringing the charter, 98. The New + England church polity, 99. Nationalism of the Puritans, 100. + Dealings with Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, and the + Quakers, 101. Diversities among the colonies, 102. Divergences + of opinion and practice in the churches, 103. Variety of sects + in Rhode Island, 106, with mutual good will, 107. Lapse of the + Puritan church-state, 108. + + +CHAP. IX.--THE MIDDLE COLONIES AND GEORGIA 109-126 + + Dutch, Puritan, Scotch, and Quaker settlers in New Jersey, + 109. Quaker corporation and government, 110. Quaker reaction + from Puritanism, 113. Extravagance and discipline, 114. + Quakerism in continental Europe, 115. Penn's "Holy + Experiment," 116. Philadelphia founded, 117. German sects, + 118. Keith's schism, and the mission of the "S. P. G.," 119. + Lutheran and Reformed Germans, 120. Scotch-Irish, 121. + Georgia, 122. Oglethorpe's charitable scheme, 123. The + Salzburgers, the Moravians, and the Wesleys, 124. George + Whitefield, 126. + + +CHAP. X.--THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING 127-154 + + Fall of the New England theocracy, 128. Dissent from the + "Standing Order": Baptist, 130; Episcopalian, 131. In New + York: the Dutch church, 134; the English, 135; the + Presbyterian, 136. New Englanders moving west, 137. Quakers, + Huguenots, and Palatines, 139. New Jersey: Frelinghuysen and + the Tennents, 141. Pennsylvania: successes and failures of + Quakerism, 143. The southern colonies: their established + churches, 148; the mission of the Quakers, 149. The gospel + among the Indians, 150. The church and slavery, 151. + + +CHAP. XI.--THE GREAT AWAKENING 155-180 + + Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, 156. An Awakening, 157. + Edwards's "Narrative" in America and England, 159. Revivals in + New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 160. Apostolate of Whitefield, + 163. Schism of the Presbyterian Church, 166. Whitefield in New + England, 168. Faults and excesses of the evangelists, 169. + Good fruits of the revival, 173. Diffusion of Baptist + principles, 173. National religious unity, 175. Attitude of + the Episcopal Church, 177. Zeal for missions, 179. + + +CHAP. XII.--CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA 181-207 + + Growth of the New England theology, 181. Watts's Psalms, 182. + Warlike agitations, 184. The Scotch-Irish immigration, 186. + The German immigration, 187. Spiritual destitution, 188. + Zinzendorf, 189. Attempt at union among the Germans, 190. + Alarm of the sects, 191. Muehlenberg and the Lutherans, 191. + Zinzendorf and the Moravians, 192. Schlatter and the Reformed, + 195. Schism made permanent, 197. Wesleyan Methodism, 198. + Francis Asbury, 200. Methodism gravitates southward and grows + apace, 201. Opposition of the church to slavery, 203; and to + intemperance, 205. Project to introduce bishops from England, + resisted in the interest of liberty, 206. + + +CHAP. XIII.--RECONSTRUCTION 208-229 + + Distraction and depression after the War of Independence, 208. + Forlorn condition of the Episcopalians, 210. Their republican + constitution, 211. Episcopal consecration secured in Scotland + and in England, 212. Feebleness of American Catholicism, 214. + Bishop Carroll, 215. "Trusteeism," 216. Methodism becomes a + church, 217. Westward movement of Christianity, 219. Severance + of church from state, 221. Doctrinal divisions; Calvinist and + Arminian, 222. Unitarianism, 224. Universalism, 225. Some + minor sects, 228. + + +CHAP. XIV.--THE SECOND AWAKENING 230-245 + + Ebb-tide of spiritual life, 230. Depravity and revival at the + West, 232. The first camp-meetings, 233. Good fruits, 237. + Nervous epidemics, 239. The Cumberland Presbyterians, 241. The + antisectarian sect of The Disciples, 242. Revival at the East, + 242. President Dwight, 243. + + +CHAP. XV.--ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE 246-260 + + Missionary spirit of the revival, 246. Religious earnestness + in the colleges, 247. Mills and his friends at Williamstown, + 248; and at Andover, 249. The Unitarian schism in + Massachusetts, 249. New era of theological seminaries, 251. + Founding of the A. B. C. F. M., 252; of the Baptist Missionary + Convention, 253. Other missionary boards, 255. The American + Bible Society, 256. Mills, and his work for the West and for + Africa, 256. Other societies, 258. Glowing hopes of the + church, 259. + + +CHAP. XVI.--CONFLICTS WITH PUBLIC WRONGS 261-291 + + Working of the voluntary system of church support, 261. + Dueling, 263. Crime of the State of Georgia against the + Cherokee nation, implicating the federal government, 264. + Jeremiah Evarts and Theodore Frelinghuysen, 267. Unanimity of + the church, North and South, against slavery, 268. The + Missouri Compromise, 270. Antislavery activity of the church, + at the East, 271; at the West, 273; at the South, 274. + Difficulty of antislavery church discipline, 275. The southern + apostasy, 277. Causes of the sudden revolution of sentiment, + 279. Defections at the North, and rise of a pro-slavery party, + 282. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill; solemn and unanimous protest of + the clergy of New England and New York, 284. Primeval + temperance legislation, 285. Prevalence of drunkenness, 286. + Temperance reformation a religious movement, 286. Development + of "the saloon," 288. The Washingtonian movement and its + drawbacks, 289. The Prohibition period, 290. + + +CHAP. XVII.--A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS 292-314 + + Dissensions in the Presbyterian Church, 292. Growing strength + of the New England element, 293. Impeachments of heresy, 294. + Benevolent societies, 295. Sudden excommunication of nearly + one half of the church by the other half, 296. Heresy and + schism among Unitarians: Emerson, 298; and Parker, 300. + Disruption, on the slavery question, of the Methodists, 301; + and of the Baptists, 303. Resuscitation of the Episcopal + Church, 304. Bishop Hobart and a High-church party, 306. Rapid + growth of this church, 308. Controversies in the Roman + Catholic Church, 310. Contention against Protestant + fanaticism, 312. + + +CHAP. XVIII.--THE GREAT IMMIGRATION 315-339 + + Expansion of territory and increase of population in the early + part of the nineteenth century, 315. Great volume of + immigration from 1840 on, 316. How drawn and how driven, 316. + At first principally Irish, then German, then Scandinavian, + 318. The Catholic clergy overtasked, 320. Losses of the + Catholic Church, 321. Liberalized tone of American + Catholicism, 323. Planting the church in the West, 327. + Sectarian competitions, 328. Protestant sects and Catholic + orders, 329. Mormonism, 335. Millerism, 336. Spiritualism, + 337. + + +CHAP. XIX.--THE CIVIL WAR 340-350 + + Material prosperity, 340. The Kansas Crusade, 341. The revival + of 1857, 342. Deepening of the slavery conflict, 345. Threats + of war, 347. Religious sincerity of both sides, 348. The + church in war-time, 349. + + +CHAP. XX.--AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 351-373 + + Reconstructions, 351. The Catholic Church, 352. The Episcopal + Church, 352. Persistent divisions among Methodists, Baptists, + and Presbyterians, 353. Healing of Presbyterian schisms, 355. + Missions at the South, 355. Vast expansion of church + activities, 357. Great religious and educational endowments, + 359. The enlisting of personal service: The Sunday-school, + 362. Chautauqua, 363. Y. M. C. A., 364. Y. W. C. A., 366. W. + C. T. U., 367. Women's missionary boards, 367. Nursing orders + and schools, 368. Y. P. S. C. E., and like associations, 368. + "The Institutional Church," 369. The Salvation Army, 370. Loss + of "the American Sabbath," 371. + + +CHAP. XXI.--THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE 374-397 + + Unfolding of the Edwardean theology, 374. Horace Bushnell, + 375. The Mercersburg theology, 377. "Bodies of divinity," 378. + Biblical science, 378. Princeton's new dogma, 380. Church + history, 381. The American pulpit, 382. "Applied + Christianity," 385. Liturgics, 386. Hymns, 387. Other + liturgical studies, 388. Church music, 391. The Moravian + liturgies, 394. Meager productiveness of the Catholic Church, + 394. The Americanizing of the Roman Church, 396. + + +CHAP. XXII.--TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF UNITY 398-420 + + Growth of the nation and national union, 398. Parallel growth + of the church, 399; and ecclesiastical division, 400. No + predominant sect, 401. Schism acceptable to politicians, 402; + and to some Christians, 403. Compensations of schism, 404. + _Nisus_ toward manifest union, 405. Early efforts at + fellowship among sects, 406. High-church protests against + union, 407. The Evangelical Alliance, 408. Fellowship in + non-sectarian associations, 409. Cooperation of leading sects + in Maine, 410. Various unpromising projects of union: I. Union + on sectarian basis, 411. II. Ecumenical sects, 412. III. + Consolidation of sects, 413. The hope of manifested unity, + 416. Conclusion, 419. + + + + +A HISTORY OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +PROVIDENTIAL PREPARATIONS FOR THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA--SPIRITUAL +REVIVAL THROUGHOUT CHRISTENDOM, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE CHURCH OF SPAIN. + + +The heroic discovery of America, at the close of the fifteenth century +after Christ, has compelled the generous and just admiration of the +world; but the grandeur of human enterprise and achievement in the +discovery of the western hemisphere has a less claim on our admiration +than that divine wisdom and controlling providence which, for reasons +now manifested, kept the secret hidden through so many millenniums, in +spite of continual chances of disclosure, until the fullness of time. + +How near, to "speak as a fool," the plans of God came to being defeated +by human enterprise is illustrated by unquestioned facts. The fact of +medieval exploration, colonization, and even evangelization in North +America seems now to have emerged from the region of fanciful conjecture +into that of history. That for four centuries, ending with the +fifteenth, the church of Iceland maintained its bishops and other +missionaries and built its churches and monasteries on the frozen coast +of Greenland is abundantly proved by documents and monuments. Dim but +seemingly unmistakable traces are now discovered of enterprises, not +only of exploration and trade, but also of evangelization, reaching +along the mainland southward to the shores of New England. There are +vague indications that these beginnings of Christian civilization were +extinguished, as in so many later instances, by savage massacre. With +impressive coincidence, the latest vestige of this primeval American +Christianity fades out in the very year of the discovery of America by +Columbus.[2:1] + +By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages had been kept +from premature disclosure during the centuries in which, without knowing +it, the Old World was actually in communication with the New. That was +high strategy in the warfare for the advancement of the kingdom of God +in the earth. What possibilities, even yet only beginning to be +accomplished, were thus saved to both hemispheres! If the discovery of +America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century +earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted to the western world would +have been that of the church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence. +The period closing with the fifteenth century was that of the dense +darkness that goes before the dawn. It was a period in which the +lingering life of the church was chiefly manifested in feverish +complaints of the widespread corruption and outcries for "reformation of +the church in head and members." The degeneracy of the clergy was +nowhere more manifest than in the monastic orders, that had been +originally established for the express purpose of reviving and purifying +the church. That ancient word was fulfilled, "Like people, like priest." +But it was especially in the person of the foremost official +representative of the religion of Jesus Christ that that religion was +most dishonored. The fifteenth century was the era of the infamous +popes. By another coincidence which arrests the attention of the reader +of history, that same year of the discovery by Columbus witnessed the +accession of the most infamous of the series, the Borgia, Alexander VI., +to his short and shameful pontificate. + +Let it not be thought, as some of us might be prone to think, that the +timeliness of the discovery of the western hemisphere, in its relation +to church history, is summed up in this, that it coincided with the +Protestant Reformation, so that the New World might be planted with a +Protestant Christianity. For a hundred years the colonization and +evangelization of America were, in the narrowest sense of that large +word, Catholic, not Protestant. But the Catholicism brought hither was +that of the sixteenth century, not of the fifteenth. It is a most +one-sided reading of the history of that illustrious age which fails to +recognize that the great Reformation was a reformation _of_ the church +as well as a reformation _from_ the church. It was in Spain itself, in +which the corruption of the church had been foulest, but from which all +symptoms of "heretical pravity" were purged away with the fiercest zeal +as fast as they appeared,--in Spain under the reign of Ferdinand and +Isabella the Catholic,--that the demand for a Catholic reformation made +itself earliest and most effectually felt. The highest ecclesiastical +dignitary of the realm, Ximenes, confessor to the queen, Archbishop of +Toledo, and cardinal, was himself the leader of reform. No changes in +the rest of Christendom were destined for many years to have so great +an influence on the course of evangelization in North America as those +which affected the church of Spain; and of these by far the most +important in their bearing on the early course of Christianity in +America were, first, the purifying and quickening of the miserably +decayed and corrupted mendicant orders,--ever the most effective arm in +the missionary service of the Latin Church,--and, a little later, the +founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and +for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure, +by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony, +nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual +duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative +boards, and especially of the _Congregatio de Propaganda Fide_, or board +of missions, dates chiefly from the sixteenth century. The revived +interest in theological study incident to the general spiritual +quickening gave the church, as the result of the labors of the Council +of Trent, a well-defined body of doctrine, which nevertheless was not so +narrowly defined as to preclude differences and debates among the +diverse sects of the clergy, by whose competitions and antagonisms the +progress of missions both in Christian and in heathen lands was destined +to be so seriously affected. + +An incident of the Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth +century--inevitable incident, doubtless, in that age, but none the less +deplorable--was the engendering or intensifying of that cruel and +ferocious form of fanaticism which is defined as the combination of +religious emotion with the malignant passions. The tendency to +fanaticism is one of the perils attendant on the deep stirring of +religious feeling at any time; it was especially attendant on the +religious agitations of that period; but most of all it was in Spain, +where, of all the Catholic nations, corruption had gone deepest and +spiritual revival was most earnest and sincere, that the manifestations +of fanaticism were most shocking. Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic +were distinguished alike by their piety and their part in the promotion +of civilization, and by the horrors of bloody cruelty perpetrated by +their authority and that of the church, at the instigation of the +sincere and devout reformer Ximenes. In the memorable year 1492 was +inaugurated the fiercest work of the Spanish Inquisition, concerning +which, speaking of her own part in it, the pious Isabella was able +afterward to say, "For the love of Christ and of his virgin mother I +have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, +provinces and kingdoms." + +The earlier pages of American church history will not be intelligently +read unless it is well understood that the Christianity first to be +transplanted to the soil of the New World was the Christianity of +Spain--the Spain of Isabella and Ximenes, of Loyola and Francis Xavier +and St. Theresa, the Spain also of Torquemada and St. Peter Arbues and +the zealous and orthodox Duke of Alva. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2:1] See the account of the Greenland church and its missions in +Professor O'Gorman's "History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United +States" (vol. ix. of the American Church History Series), pp. 3-12. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +SPANISH CONQUEST--THE PROPAGATION, DECAY, AND DOWNFALL OF SPANISH +CHRISTIANITY. + + +It is a striking fact that the earliest monuments of colonial and +ecclesiastical antiquity within the present domain of the United States, +after the early Spanish remains in Florida, are to be found in those +remotely interior and inaccessible highlands of New Mexico, which have +only now begun to be reached in the westward progress of migration. +Before the beginnings of permanent English colonization at Plymouth and +at Jamestown, before the French beginnings on the St. Lawrence, before +the close of the sixteenth century, there had been laid by Spanish +soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries, in those far recesses of the +continent, the foundations of Christian towns and churches, the stately +walls and towers of which still invite the admiration of the traveler. + +The fact is not more impressive than it is instructive. It illustrates +the prodigious impetuosity of that tide of conquest which within so few +years from the discovery of the American continents not only swept over +the regions of South and Central America and the great plateau of +Mexico, but actually occupied with military posts, with extensive and +successful missions, and with a colonization which seemed to show every +sign of stability and future expansion, by far the greater part of the +present domain of the United States exclusive of Alaska--an +ecclesiastico-military empire stretching its vast diameter from the +southernmost cape of Florida across twenty-five parallels of latitude +and forty-five meridians of longitude to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The +lessons taught by this amazingly swift extension of the empire and the +church, and its arrest and almost extinction, are legible on the surface +of the history. It is a strange, but not unparalleled, story of +attempted cooeperation in the common service of God and Mammon and +Moloch--of endeavors after concord between Christ and Belial. + +There is no reason to question the sincerity with which the rulers of +Spain believed themselves to be actuated by the highest motives of +Christian charity in their terrible and fatal American policy. "The +conversion of the Indians is the principal foundation of the +conquest--that which ought principally to be attended to." So wrote the +king in a correspondence in which a most cold-blooded authorization is +given for the enslaving of the Indians.[7:1] After the very first voyage +of Columbus every expedition of discovery or invasion was equipped with +its contingent of clergy--secular priests as chaplains to the Spaniards, +and friars of the regular orders for mission work among the Indians--at +cost of the royal treasury or as a charge upon the new conquests. + +This subsidizing of the church was the least serious of the injuries +inflicted on the cause of the gospel by the piety of the Spanish +government. That such subsidizing is in the long run an injury is a +lesson illustrated not only in this case, but in many parallel cases in +the course of this history. A far more dreadful wrong was the +identifying of the religion of Jesus Christ with a system of war and +slavery, well-nigh the most atrocious in recorded history. For such a +policy the Spanish nation had just received a peculiar training. It is +one of the commonplaces of history to remark that the barbarian invaders +of the Roman empire were themselves vanquished by their own victims, +being converted by them to the Christian faith. In like manner the +Spanish nation, triumphing over its Moslem subjects in the expulsion of +the Moors, seemed in its American conquests to have been converted to +the worst of the tenets of Islam. The propagation of the gospel in the +western hemisphere, under the Spanish rule, illustrated in its public +and official aspects far more the principles of Mohammed than those of +Jesus. The triple alternative offered by the Saracen or the +Turk--conversion or tribute or the sword--was renewed with aggravations +by the Christian conquerors of America. In a form deliberately drawn up +and prescribed by the civil and ecclesiastical counselors at Madrid, the +invader of a new province was to summon the rulers and people to +acknowledge the church and the pope and the king of Spain; and in case +of refusal or delay to comply with this summons, the invader was to +notify them of the consequences in these terms: "If you refuse, by the +help of God we shall enter with force into your land, and shall make war +against you in all ways and manners that we can, and subject you to the +yoke and obedience of the church and of their Highnesses; we shall take +you and your wives and your children and make slaves of them, and sell +and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take +away your goods, and do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as +to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord; and we +protest that the deaths and losses that shall accrue from this are your +own fault."[8:1] + +While the church was thus implicated in crimes against humanity which +history shudders to record, it is a grateful duty to remember that it +was from the church also and in the name of Christ that bold protests +and strenuous efforts were put forth in behalf of the oppressed and +wronged. Such names as Las Casas and Montesinos shine with a beautiful +luster in the darkness of that age; and the Dominican order, identified +on the other side of the sea with the fiercest cruelties of the Spanish +Inquisition, is honorable in American church history for its fearless +championship of liberty and justice. + +The first entrance of Spanish Christianity upon the soil of the United +States was wholly characteristic. In quest of the Fountain of Youth, +Ponce de Leon sailed for the coast of Florida equipped with forces both +for the carnal and for the spiritual warfare. Besides his colonists and +his men-at-arms, he brought his secular priests as chaplains and his +monks as missionaries; and his instructions from the crown required him +to summon the natives, as in the famous "Requerimiento," to submit +themselves to the Catholic faith and to the king of Spain, under threat +of the sword and slavery. The invaders found a different temper in the +natives from what was encountered in Mexico and Peru, where the +populations were miserably subjugated, or in the islands, where they +were first enslaved and presently completely exterminated. The insolent +invasion was met, as it deserved, by effective volleys of arrows, and +its chivalrous leader was driven back to Cuba, to die there of his +wounds. + +It is needless to recount the successive failures of Spanish +civilization and Christianity to get foothold on the domain now +included in the United States. Not until more than forty years after the +attempt of Ponce de Leon did the expedition of the ferocious Menendez +effect a permanent establishment on the coast of Florida. In September, +1565, the foundations of the oldest city in the United States, St. +Augustine, were laid with solemn religious rites by the toil of the +first negro slaves; and the event was signalized by one of the most +horrible massacres in recorded history, the cold-blooded and perfidious +extermination, almost to the last man, woman, and child, of a colony of +French Protestants that had been planted a few months before at the +mouth of the St. John's River. + +The colony thus inaugurated seemed to give every promise of permanent +success as a center of religious influence. The spiritual work was +naturally and wisely divided into the pastoral care of the Spanish +garrisons and settlements, which was taken in charge by "secular" +priests, and the mission work among the Indians, committed to friars of +those "regular" orders whose solid organization and independence of the +episcopal hierarchy, and whose keen emulation in enterprises of +self-denial, toil, and peril, have been so large an element of strength, +and sometimes of weakness, in the Roman system. In turn, the mission +field of the Floridas was occupied by the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and +the Franciscans. Before the end of seventy years from the founding of +St. Augustine the number of Christian Indians was reckoned at +twenty-five or thirty thousand, distributed among forty-four missions, +under the direction of thirty-five Franciscan missionaries, while the +city of St. Augustine was fully equipped with religious institutions and +organizations. Grave complaints are on record, which indicate that the +great number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their +meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these +indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable +proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of +instruction in the barbarous languages of the peninsula. + +For one hundred and fifteen years Spain and the Spanish missionaries had +exclusive possession in Florida, and it was during this period that +these imposing results were achieved. In 1680 a settlement of Scotch +Presbyterians at Port Royal in South Carolina seemed like a menace to +the Spanish domination. It was wholly characteristic of the Spanish +colony to seize the sword at once and destroy its nearest Christian +neighbor. It took the sword, and perished by the sword. The war of races +and sects thus inaugurated went on, with intervals of quiet, until the +Treaty of Paris, in 1763, transferred Florida to the British crown. No +longer sustained by the terror of the Spanish arms and by subsidies from +the Spanish treasury, the whole fabric of Spanish civilization and +Christianization, at the end of a history of almost two centuries, +tumbled at once to complete ruin and extinction. + +The story of the planting of Christian institutions in New Mexico runs +parallel with the early history of Florida. Omitting from this brief +summary the first discovery of these regions by fugitives from one of +the disastrous early attempts to effect a settlement on the Florida +coast, omitting (what we would fain narrate) the stories of heroic +adventure and apostolic zeal and martyrdom which antedate the permanent +occupation of the country, we note the arrival, in 1598, of a strong, +numerous, and splendidly equipped colony, and the founding of a +Christian city in the heart of the American continent. As usual in such +Spanish enterprises, the missionary work was undertaken by a body of +Franciscan friars. After the first months of hardship and +discouragement, the work of the Christian colony, and especially the +work of evangelization among the Indians, went forward at a marvelous +rate. Reinforcements both of priests and of soldiers were received from +Mexico; by the end of ten years baptisms were reported to the number of +eight thousand; the entire population of the province was reckoned as +being within the pale of the church; not less than sixty Franciscan +friars at once were engaged in the double service of pastors and +missionaries. The triumph of the gospel and of Spanish arms seemed +complete and permanent. + +Fourscore years after the founding of the colony and mission the sudden +explosion of a conspiracy, which for a long time had been secretly +preparing, revealed the true value of the allegiance of the Indians to +the Spanish government and of their conversion to Christ. Confounding in +a common hatred the missionaries and the tyrannous conquerors, who had +been associated in a common policy, the Christian Indians turned upon +their rulers and their pastors alike with undiscriminating warfare. "In +a few weeks no Spaniard was in New Mexico north of El Paso. Christianity +and civilization were swept away at one blow." The successful rebels +bettered the instruction that they had received from their rejected +pastors. The measures of compulsion that had been used to stamp out +every vestige of the old religion were put into use against the new. + +The cause of Catholic Christianity in New Mexico never recovered from +this stunning blow. After twenty years the Spanish power, taking +advantage of the anarchy and depopulation of the province, had +reoccupied its former posts by military force, the missionaries were +brought back under armed protection, the practice of the ancient +religion was suppressed by the strong hand, and efforts, too often +unsuccessful, were made to win back the apostate tribes to something +more than a sullen submission to the government and the religion of +their conquerors. The later history of Spanish Christianity in New +Mexico is a history of decline and decay, enlivened by the usual +contentions between the "regular" clergy and the episcopal government. +The white population increased, the Indian population dwindled. Religion +as set forth by an exotic clergy became an object of indifference when +it was not an object of hatred. In 1845 the Bishop of Durango, visiting +the province, found an Indian population of twenty thousand in a total +of eighty thousand. The clergy numbered only seventeen priests. Three +years later the province became part of the United States. + +To complete the story of the planting of Spanish Christianity within the +present boundaries of the United States, it is necessary to depart from +the merely chronological order of American church history; for, although +the immense adventurousness of Spanish explorers by sea and land had, +early in the sixteenth century, made known to Christendom the coasts and +harbors of the Californias, the beginnings of settlement and missions on +that Pacific coast date from so late as 1769. At this period the method +of such work had become settled into a system. The organization was +threefold, including (1) the garrison town, (2) the Spanish settlement, +and (3) the mission, at which the Indian neophytes were gathered under +the tutelage and strict government of the convent of Franciscan friars. +The whole system was sustained by the authority and the lavish +subventions of the Spanish government, and herein lay its strength and, +as the event speedily proved, its fatal weakness. The inert and feeble +character of the Indians of that region offered little excuse for the +atrocious cruelties that had elsewhere marked the Spanish occupation; +but the paternal kindness of the stronger race was hardly less hurtful. +The natives were easily persuaded to become by thousands the dependents +and servants of the missions. Conversion went on apace. At the end of +sixty-five years from the founding of the missions their twenty-one +stations numbered a Christian native population of more than thirty +thousand, and were possessed of magnificent wealth, agricultural and +commercial. In that very year (1834) the long-intended purpose of the +government to release the Indians from their almost slavery under the +missions, and to distribute the vast property in severalty, was put in +force. In eight years the more than thirty thousand Catholic Indians had +dwindled to less than five thousand; the enormous estates of the +missions were dissipated; the converts lapsed into savagery and +paganism. + +Meanwhile the Spanish population had gone on slowly increasing. In the +year 1840, seventy years from the Spanish occupancy, it had risen to +nearly six thousand; but it was a population the spiritual character of +which gave little occasion of boasting to the Spanish church. Tardy and +feeble efforts had been instituted to provide it with an organized +parish ministry, when the supreme and exclusive control of that country +ceased from the hands that so long had held it. "The vineyard was taken +away, and given to other husbandmen." In the year 1848 California was +annexed to the United States. + +This condensed story of Spanish Christianity within the present +boundaries of the United States is absurdly brief compared with the vast +extent of space, the three centuries of time, and what seemed at one +time the grandeur of results involved in it. But in truth it has +strangely little connection with the extant Christianity of our country. +It is almost as completely severed from historical relation with the +church of the present day as the missions of the Greenlanders in the +centuries before Columbus. If we distinguish justly between the +Christian work and its unchristian and almost satanic admixtures, we can +join without reserve both in the eulogy and in the lament with which the +Catholic historian sums up his review: "It was a glorious work, and the +recital of it impresses us by the vastness and success of the toil. Yet, +as we look around to-day, we can find nothing of it that remains. Names +of saints in melodious Spanish stand out from maps in all that section +where the Spanish monk trod, toiled, and died. A few thousand Christian +Indians, descendants of those they converted and civilized, still +survive in New Mexico and Arizona, and that is all."[15:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7:1] Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 234, American +edition. + +[8:1] Helps, "Spanish Conquest in America," vol. i., p. 235; also p. +355, where the grotesquely horrible document is given in full. + +In the practical prosecution of this scheme of evangelization, it was +found necessary to the due training of the Indians in the holy faith +that they should be enslaved, whether or no. It was on this religious +consideration, clearly laid down in a report of the king's chaplains, +that the atrocious system of _encomiendas_ was founded. + +[15:1] "The Roman Catholic Church in the United States," by Professor +Thomas O'Gorman (vol. ix., American Church History Series), p. 112. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE PROJECT OF FRENCH EMPIRE AND EVANGELIZATION--ITS WIDE AND RAPID +SUCCESS--ITS SUDDEN EXTINCTION. + + +For a full century, from the discovery of the New World until the first +effective effort at occupation by any other European people, the Spanish +church and nation had held exclusive occupancy of the North American +continent. The Spanish enterprises of conquest and colonization had been +carried forward with enormous and unscrupulous energy, and alongside of +them and involved with them had been borne the Spanish chaplaincies and +missions, sustained from the same treasury, in some honorable instances +bravely protesting against the atrocities they were compelled to +witness, in other instances implicated in them and sharing the bloody +profits of them. But, unquestionable as was the martial prowess of the +Spanish soldier and adventurer, and the fearless devotion of the Spanish +missionary, there appears nothing like systematic planning in all these +immense operations. The tide of conquest flowed in capricious courses, +according as it was invited by hopes of gold or of a passage to China, +or of some phantom of a Fountain of Youth or a city of Quivira or a +Gilded Man; and it seemed in general to the missionary that he could not +do else than follow in the course of conquest. + +It is wholly characteristic of the French people that its entering at +last upon enterprises of colonization and missions should be with large +forecasting of the future and with the methods of a grand strategy. + +We can easily believe that the famous "Bull of Partition" of Pope +Alexander VI. was not one of the hindrances that so long delayed the +beginnings of a New France in the West. Incessant dynastic wars with +near neighbors, the final throes of the long struggle between the crown +and the great vassals, and finally the religious wars that culminated in +the awful slaughter of St. Bartholomew's, and ended at the close of the +century with the politic conversion and the coronation of Henry +IV.--these were among the causes that had held back the great nation +from distant undertakings. But thoughts of great things to be achieved +in the New World had never for long at a time been absent from the minds +of Frenchmen. The annual visits of the Breton fishing-fleets to the +banks of Newfoundland kept in mind such rights of discovery as were +alleged by France, and kept attention fixed in the direction of the +great gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Long before the middle of the +sixteenth century Jacques Cartier had explored the St. Lawrence beyond +the commanding position which he named Montreal, and a royal commission +had issued, under which he was to undertake an enterprise of "discovery, +settlement, and the conversion of the Indians." But it was not till the +year 1608 that the first permanent French settlement was effected. With +the _coup d'oeil_ of a general or the foresight of a prophet, +Champlain, the illustrious first founder of French empire in America, in +1608 fixed the starting-point of it at the natural fortress of Quebec. +How early the great project had begun to take shape in the leading minds +of the nation it may not be easy to determine. It was only after the +adventurous explorations of the French pioneers, traders, and +friars--men of like boundless enthusiasm and courage--had been crowned +by the achievement of La Salle, who first of men traversed the two great +waterways of the continent from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of +Mexico, that the amazing possibilities of it were fully revealed. But, +whosesoever scheme it was, a more magnificent project of empire, secular +and spiritual, has never entered into the heart of man. It seems to have +been native to the American soil, springing up in the hearts of the +French pioneer explorers themselves;[18:1] but by its grandeur, and at +the same time its unity, it was of a sort to delight the souls of Sully +and Richelieu and of their masters. Under thin and dubious claims by +right of discovery, through the immense energy and daring of her +explorers, the heroic zeal of her missionaries, and not so much by the +prowess of her soldiers as by her craft in diplomacy with savage tribes, +France was to assert and make good her title to the basin of the St. +Lawrence and the lakes, and the basin of the Mississippi and the Gulf of +Mexico. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the +Mississippi, through the core of the continent, was to be drawn a cordon +of posts, military, commercial, and religious, with other outlying +stations at strategic points both eastward and westward. The only +external interference with this scheme that could be apprehended at its +inception was from the Spanish colonies, already decaying and shrinking +within their boundaries to the west and to the southeast, and from a +puny little English settlement started only a year before, with a +doubtful hold on life, on the bank of the James River. A dozen years +later a pitiably feeble company of Pilgrims shall make their landing at +Plymouth to try the not hopeful experiment of living in the wilderness, +and a settlement of Swedes in Delaware and of Hollanders on the Hudson +shall be added to the incongruous, unconcerted, mutually jealous +plantations that begin to take root along the Atlantic seaboard. Not +only grandeur and sagacity of conception, but success in achievement, is +illustrated by the comparative area occupied by the three great European +powers on the continent of North America at the end of a century and a +half from the founding of Quebec in 1608. Dividing the continent into +twenty-five equal parts, the French claimed and seemed to hold firmly in +possession twenty parts, the Spanish four parts, and the English one +part.[19:1] + +The comparison between the Spanish and the French methods of +colonization and missions in America is at almost every point honorable +to the French. Instead of a greedy scramble after other men's property +in gold and silver, the business basis of the French enterprises was to +consist in a widely organized and laboriously prosecuted traffic in +furs. Instead of a series of desultory and savage campaigns of conquest, +the ferocity of which was aggravated by the show of zeal for the kingdom +of righteousness and peace, was a large-minded and far-sighted scheme of +empire, under which remote and hostile tribes were to be combined by +ties of mutual interest and common advantage. And the missions, instead +of following servilely in the track of bloody conquest to assume the +tutelage of subjugated and enslaved races, were to share with the +soldier and the trader the perilous adventures of exploration, and not +so much to be supported and defended as to be themselves the support and +protection of the settlements, through the influence of Christian love +and self-sacrifice over the savage heart. Such elements of moral +dignity, as well as of imperial grandeur, marked the plans for the +French occupation of North America. + +To a wonderful extent those charged with this enterprise were worthy of +the task. Among the military and civil leaders of it, from Champlain to +Montcalm, were men that would have honored the best days of French +chivalry. The energy and daring of the French explorers, whether traders +or missionaries, have not been equaled in the pioneer work of other +races. And the annals of Christian martyrdom may be searched in vain for +more heroic examples of devotion to the work of the gospel than those +which adorn the history of the French missions in North America. What +magnificent results might not be expected from such an enterprise, in +the hands of such men, sustained by the resources of the most powerful +nation and national church in Christendom! + +From the founding of Quebec, in 1608, the expansion of the French +enterprise was swift and vast. By the end of fifty years Quebec had been +equipped with hospital, nunnery, seminary for the education of priests, +all affluently endowed from the wealth of zealous courtiers, and served +in a noble spirit of self-devotion by the choicest men and women that +the French church could furnish; besides these institutions, the +admirable plan of a training colony, at which converted Indians should +be trained to civilized life, was realized at Sillery, in the +neighborhood. The sacred city of Montreal had been established as a base +for missions to the remoter west. Long in advance of the settlement at +Plymouth, French Christianity was actively and beneficently busy among +the savages of eastern Maine, among the so-called "neutral nations" by +the Niagara, among the fiercely hostile Iroquois of northern New York, +by Lake Huron and Lake Nipissing, and, with wonderful tokens of success, +by the Falls of St. Mary. "Thus did the religious zeal of the French +bear the cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake +Superior, and look wistfully toward the homes of the Sioux in the valley +of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Eliot had +addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston +harbor."[21:1] + +Thirty years more passed, bringing the story down to the memorable year +1688. The French posts, military, commercial, and religious, had been +pushed westward to the head of Lake Superior. The Mississippi had been +discovered and explored, and the colonies planted from Canada along its +banks and the banks of its tributaries had been met by the expeditions +proceeding direct from France through the Gulf of Mexico. The claims of +France in America included not only the vast domain of Canada, but a +half of Maine, a half of Vermont, more than a half of New York, the +entire valley of the Mississippi, and Texas as far as the Rio Bravo del +Norte.[21:2] And these claims were asserted by actual and almost +undisputed occupancy. + +The seventy years that followed were years of "storm and stress" for the +French colonies and missions. The widening areas occupied by the French +and by the English settlers brought the rival establishments into nearer +neighborhood, into sharper competition, and into bloody collision. +Successive European wars--King William's War, Queen Anne's War (of the +Spanish succession), King George's War (of the Austrian +succession)--involved the dependencies of France and those of England in +the conflicts of their sovereigns. These were the years of terror along +the exposed northern frontier of English settlements in New England and +New York, when massacre and burning by bands of savages, under French +instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield +and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, in desperate +campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought +to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from +which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of +peace between England and France confirmed and reconfirmed the French +claims to the main part of her American domain. The advances of French +missions and settlements continued southward and westward, in spite of +jealousy in European cabinets as the imposing magnitude of the plans of +French empire became more distinctly disclosed, and in spite of the +struggles of the English colonies both North and South. When, on the 4th +of July, 1754, Colonel George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity, +near the fork of the Ohio, to the French, "in the whole valley of the +Mississippi, to its headsprings in the Alleghanies, no standard floated +but that of France."[22:1] + +There seemed little reason to doubt that the French empire in America, +which for a century and a half had gone on expanding and strengthening, +would continue to expand and strengthen for centuries to come. Sudden as +lightning, in August, 1756, the Seven Years' War broke out on the other +side of the globe. The treaty with which it ended, in February, 1763, +transferred to Great Britain, together with the Spanish territory of +Florida, all the French possessions in America, from the Arctic Ocean to +the Gulf of Mexico. "As a dream when one awaketh," the magnificent +vision of empire, spiritual and secular, which for so many generations +had occupied the imagination of French statesmen and churchmen, was +rudely and forever dispelled. Of the princely wealth, the brilliant +talents, the unsurpassed audacity of adventure, the unequaled heroism of +toil and martyrdom expended on the great project, how strangely meager +and evanescent the results! In the districts of Lower Canada there +remain, indeed, the institutions of a French Catholic population; and +the aspect of those districts, in which the pledge of full liberty to +the dominant church has been scrupulously fulfilled by the British +government, may reasonably be regarded as an indication of what France +would have done for the continent in general. But within the present +domain of the United States the entire results of a century and a half +of French Catholic colonization and evangelization may be summed up as +follows: In Maine, a thousand Catholic Indians still remain, to remind +one of the time when, as it is boldly claimed, the whole Indian +population of that province were either converted or under Jesuit +training.[23:1] In like manner, a scanty score of thousands of Catholic +Indians on various reservations in the remote West represent the time +when, at the end of the French domination, "all the North American +Indians were more or less extensively converted" to Catholic +Christianity, "all had the gospel preached to them."[23:2] The splendid +fruits of the missions among the Iroquois, from soil watered by the +blood of martyrs, were wasted to nothing in savage intertribal wars. +Among the Choctaws and Chickasaws of the South and Southwest, among whom +the gospel was by and by to win some of its fairest trophies, the French +missionaries achieved no great success.[23:3] The French colonies from +Canada, planted so prosperously along the Western rivers, dispersed, +leaving behind them some straggling families. The abundant later growth +of the Catholic Church in that region was to be from other seed and +stock. The region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be +included within the boundaries of the great republic, retained +organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as +they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it +would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The +work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless +it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of +a better age survived to aid the work of those who by and by should +enter in to rebuild the waste places.[24:1] + +There are not a few of us, wise after the event, who recognize a final +cause of this surprising and almost dramatic failure, in the manifest +intent of divine Providence that the field of the next great empire in +the world's history should not become the exclusive domain of an +old-world monarchy and hierarchy; but the immediate efficient causes of +it are not so obvious. This, however, may justly be said: some of the +seeming elements of strength in the French colonization proved to be +fatal elements of weakness. + +1. The French colonies had the advantage of royal patronage, +endowment,[24:2] and protection, and of unity of counsel and direction. +They were all parts of one system, under one control. And their centers +of vitality, head and heart, were on the other side of the sea. +Subsisting upon the strength of the great monarchy, they must needs +share its fortunes, evil as well as good. When, after the reverses of +France in the Seven Years' War, it became necessary to accept hard terms +of peace, the superb framework of empire in the West fell to the +disposal of the victors. "America," said Pitt, "was conquered in +Germany." + +2. The business basis of the French colonies, being that of trade with +the Indians rather than a self-supporting agriculture, favored the swift +expansion of these colonies and their wide influence among the Indians. +Scattered companies of fur-traders would be found here and there, +wherever were favorable points for traffic, penetrating deeply into the +wilderness and establishing friendly business relations with the +savages. It has been observed that the Romanic races show an alacrity +for intermarriage with barbarous tribes that is not to be found in the +Teutonic. The result of such relations is ordinarily less the elevating +of the lower race than the dragging down of the higher; but it tends for +the time to give great advantage in maintaining a powerful political +influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in +number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their +formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and +defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril. +Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It +was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly +relations with their Huron neighbors embattled against them the +fiercest, bravest, and ablest of the Indian tribes, the confederacy of +the Six Nations, which held, with full appreciation of its strategic +importance, the command of the exits southward from the valley of the +St. Lawrence. The fierce jealousy of the Iroquois toward the allies of +their hereditary antagonists, rather than any good will toward white +settlers of other races, made them an effectual check upon French +encroachments upon the slender line of English, Dutch, and Swedish +settlements that stretched southward from Maine along the Atlantic +coast. + +3. In one aspect it was doubtless an advantage to the French missions in +America that the sharp sectarian competitions between the different +clerical orders resulted finally in the missions coming almost +exclusively under the control of the Jesuit society. This result insured +to the missions the highest ability in administration and direction, +ample resources of various sorts, and a force of missionaries whose +personal virtues have won for them unstinted eulogy even from unfriendly +sources--men the ardor of whose zeal was rigorously controlled by a more +than martial severity of religious discipline. But it would be uncandid +in us to refuse attention to those grave charges against the society +brought by Catholic authorities and Catholic orders, and so enforced as, +after long and acrimonious controversy, to result in the expulsion of +the society from almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being +stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, +contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being +suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to +Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense +animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic orders in which +the charges against the society were engendered and unrelentingly +prosecuted; but after all deductions it is not credible that the almost +universal odium in which it was held was provoked solely by its virtues. +Among the accusations against the society which seem most clearly +substantiated these two are likely to be concerned in that "brand of +ultimate failure which has invariably been stamped on all its most +promising schemes and efforts":[26:1] first, a disposition to compromise +the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to +heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified +by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and +outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political +intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in +the prodigious failure of the French Catholic missions and settlements +within the present boundaries of the United States. + +4. The conditions which favored the swift and magnificent expansion of +the French occupation were unfavorable to the healthy natural growth of +permanent settlements. A post of soldiers, a group of cabins of trappers +and fur-traders, and a mission of nuns and celibate priests, all +together give small promise of rapid increase of population. It is +rather to the fact that the French settlements, except at the seaboard, +were constituted so largely of these elements, than to any alleged +sterility of the French stock, that the fatal weakness of the French +occupation is to be ascribed. The lack of French America was men. The +population of Canada in 1759, according to census, was about eighty-two +thousand;[27:2] that of New England in 1754 is estimated at four hundred +and twenty-five thousand. "The white population of five, or perhaps even +of six, of the American provinces was greater singly than that of all +Canada, and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada +fourteenfold."[27:3] The same sign of weakness is recognized at the +other extremity of the cordon of French settlements. The vast region of +Louisiana is estimated, at fifty years from its colonization, at one +tenth of the strength of the coeval province of Pennsylvania.[27:4] + +Under these hopeless conditions the French colonies had not even the +alternative of keeping the peace. The state of war was forced by the +mother countries. There was no recourse for Canada except to her savage +allies, won for her through the influence of the missionaries. + +It is justly claimed that in the mind of such early leaders as Champlain +the dominant motive of the French colonization was religious; but in the +cruel position into which the colony was forced it was almost inevitable +that the missions should become political. It was boasted in their +behalf that they had taught the Indians "to mingle Jesus Christ and +France together in their affections."[28:1] The cross and the lilies +were blazoned together as the sign of French dominion. The missionary +became frequently, and sometimes quite undisguisedly, a political agent. +It was from the missions that the horrible murderous forays upon +defenseless villages proceeded, which so often marked the frontier line +of New England and New York with fire and blood. It is one of the most +unhappy of the results of that savage warfare that in the minds of the +communities that suffered from it the Jesuit missionary came to be +looked upon as accessory to these abhorrent crimes. Deeply is it to be +lamented that men with such eminent claims on our admiration and +reverence should not be triumphantly clear of all suspicion of such +complicity. We gladly concede the claim[28:2] that the proof of the +complicity is not complete; we could welcome some clear evidence in +disproof of it--some sign of a bold and indignant protest against these +crimes; we could wish that the Jesuit historian had not boasted of these +atrocities as proceeding from the fine work of his brethren,[29:1] and +that the antecedents of the Jesuits as a body, and their declared +principles of "moral theology," were such as raise no presumption +against them even in unfriendly minds. But we must be content with +thankfully acknowledging that divine change which has made it impossible +longer to boast of or even justify such deeds, and which leaves no +ground among neighbor Christians of the present day for harboring mutual +suspicions which, to the Christian ministers of French and English +America of two hundred years ago and less, it was impossible to repress. + +I have spoken of the complete extinction within the present domain of +the United States of the magnificent beginnings of the projected French +Catholic Church and empire. It is only in the most recent years, since +the Civil War, that the results of the work inaugurated in America by +Champlain begin to reappear in the field of the ecclesiastical history +of the United States. The immigration of Canadian French Catholics into +the northern tier of States has already grown to considerable volume, +and is still growing in numbers and in stability and strength, and adds +a new and interesting element to the many factors that go to make up the +American church. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[18:1] So Parkman. + +[19:1] Bancroft's "United States," vol. iv., p. 267. + +[21:1] Bancroft's "United States," vol. iii., p. 131. + +[21:2] _Ibid._, p. 175. + +[22:1] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 121. + +[23:1] Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholic Church in the United +States," p. 136. + +[23:2] _Ibid._, pp. 191-193. + +[23:3] _Ibid._, p. 211. + +[24:1] See O'Gorman, chaps. ix.-xiv., xx. + +[24:2] Mr. Bancroft, describing the "sad condition" of La Salle's colony +at Matagorda after the wreck of his richly laden store-ship, adds that +"even now this colony possessed, from the bounty of Louis XIV., more +than was contributed by all the English monarchs together for the twelve +English colonies on the Atlantic. Its number still exceeded that of the +colony of Smith in Virginia, or of those who embarked in the +'Mayflower'" (vol. iii., p. 171). + +[26:1] Dr. R. F. Littledale, in "Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xiii., +pp. 649-652. + +[27:1] Both these charges are solemnly affirmed by the pope in the bull +of suppression of the society (Dr. R. F. Littledale, in "Encyclopaedia +Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 655). + +[27:2] Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 320. + +[27:3] _Ibid._, pp. 128, 129. + +[27:4] The contrast is vigorously emphasized by Mr. Bancroft: "Such was +Louisiana more than a half-century after the first attempt at +colonization by La Salle. Its population may have been five thousand +whites and half that number of blacks. Louis XIV. had fostered it with +pride and liberal expenditures; an opulent merchant, famed for his +successful enterprise, assumed its direction; the Company of the +Mississippi, aided by boundless but transient credit, had made it the +foundation of their hopes; and, again, Fleury and Louis XV. had sought +to advance its fortunes. Priests and friars, dispersed through nations +from Biloxi to the Dahcotas, propitiated the favor of the savages; but +still the valley of the Mississippi was nearly a wilderness. All its +patrons--though among them it counted kings and ministers of state--had +not accomplished for it in half a century a tithe of the prosperity +which within the same period sprang naturally from the benevolence of +William Penn to the peaceful settlers on the Delaware" (vol. iii., p. +369). + +[28:1] "Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xiii., p. 654. + +[28:2] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 137-142. + +[29:1] Bancroft, vol. iii., pp. 187, 188. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +ANTECEDENTS OF PERMANENT CHRISTIAN COLONIZATION--THE DISINTEGRATION OF +CHRISTENDOM--CONTROVERSIES--PERSECUTIONS. + + +We have briefly reviewed the history of two magnificent schemes of +secular and spiritual empire, which, conceived in the minds of great +statesmen and churchmen, sustained by the resources of the mightiest +kingdoms of that age, inaugurated by soldiers of admirable prowess, +explorers of unsurpassed boldness and persistence, and missionaries +whose heroic faith has canonized them in the veneration of Christendom, +have nevertheless come to naught. + +We turn now to observe the beginnings, coinciding in time with those of +the French enterprise, of a series of disconnected plantations along the +Atlantic seaboard, established as if at haphazard, without plan or +mutual preconcert, of different languages and widely diverse Christian +creeds, depending on scanty private resources, unsustained by +governmental arms or treasuries, but destined, in a course of events +which no human foresight could have calculated, to come under the +plastic influence of a single European power, to be molded according to +the general type of English polity, and to become heir to English +traditions, literature, and language. These mutually alien and even +antagonistic communities were to be constrained, by forces superior to +human control, first into confederation and then into union, and to +occupy the breadth of the new continent as a solid and independent +nation. The history reads like a fulfillment of the apocalyptic imagery +of a rock hewn from the mountain without hands, moving on to fill the +earth. + +Looking back after the event, we find it easy to trace the providential +preparations for this great result. There were few important events in +the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that did not +have to do with it; but the most obvious of these antecedents are to be +found in _controversies_ and _persecutions_. + +The protest of northern Europe against the abuses and corruptions +prevailing in the Roman Church was articulated in the Augsburg +Confession. Over against it were framed the decrees of the Council of +Trent. Thus the lines were distinctly drawn and the warfare between +contending principles was joined. Those who fondly dreamed of a +permanently united and solid Protestantism to withstand its powerful +antagonist were destined to speedy and inevitable disappointment. There +have been many to deplore that so soon after the protest of Augsburg was +set forth as embodying the common belief of Protestants new parties +should have arisen protesting against the protest. The ordinance of the +Lord's Supper, instituted as a sacrament of universal Christian +fellowship, became (as so often before and since) the center of +contention and the badge of mutual alienation. It was on this point that +Zwingli and the Swiss parted from Luther and the Lutherans; on the same +point, in the next generation of Reformers, John Calvin, attempting to +mediate between the two contending parties, became the founder of still +a third party, strong not only in the lucid and logical doctrinal +statements in which it delighted, but also in the possession of a +definite scheme of republican church government which became as +distinctive of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" churches as their doctrine +of the Supper. It was at a later epoch still that those insoluble +questions which press most inexorably for consideration when theological +thought and study are most serious and earnest--the questions that +concern the divine sovereignty in its relation to human freedom and +responsibility--arose in the Catholic Church to divide Jesuit from +Dominican and Franciscan, and in the Reformed churches to divide the +Arminians from the disciples of Gomar and Turretin. All these divisions +among the European Christians of the seventeenth century were to have +their important bearing on the planting of the Christian church in +America. + +In view of the destined predominance of English influence in the +seaboard colonies of America, the history of the divisions of the +Christian people of England is of preeminent importance to the +beginnings of the American church. The curiously diverse elements that +entered into the English Reformation, and the violent vicissitudes that +marked the course of it, were all represented in the parties existing +among English Christians at the period of the planting of the colonies. + +The political and dynastic character of the movements that detached the +English hierarchy from the Roman see had for one inevitable result to +leaven the English church as a lump with the leaven of Herod. That +considerable part of the clergy and people that moved to and fro, +without so much as the resistance of any very formidable _vis inertiae_, +with the change of the monarch or of the monarch's caprice, might leave +the student of the history of those times in doubt as to whether they +belonged to the kingdom of heaven or to the kingdom of this world. But, +however severe the judgment that any may pass upon the character and +motives of Henry VIII. and of the councilors of Edward, there will +hardly be any seriously to question that the movements directed by these +men soon came to be infused with more serious and spiritual influences. +The Lollardy of Wycliffe and his fellows in the fourteenth century had +been severely repressed and driven into "occult conventicles," but had +not been extinguished; the Bible in English, many times retouched after +Wycliffe's days, and perfected by the refugees at Geneva from the Marian +persecutions, had become a common household book; and those exiles +themselves, returning from the various centers of fervid religious +thought and feeling in Holland and Germany and Switzerland, had brought +with them an augmented spiritual faith, as well as intensified and +sharply defined convictions on the questions of theology and church +order that were debated by the scholars of the Continent. It was +impossible that the diverse and antagonist elements thus assembled +should not work on one another with violent reactions. By the beginning +of the seventeenth century not less than four categories would suffice +to classify the people of England according to their religious +differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to +the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from +expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of +England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it; +this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen, +religious, irreligious, and non-religious. Thirdly, there were those +who, not refusing their adhesion to the national church as by law +established, nevertheless earnestly desired to see it more completely +purified from doctrinal errors and practical corruptions, and who +qualified their conformity to it accordingly. Fourthly, there were the +few who distinctly repudiated the national church as a false church, +coming out from her as from Babylon, determined upon "reformation +without tarrying for any." Finally, following upon these, more radical, +not to say more logical, than the rest, came a fifth party, the +followers of George Fox. Not one of these five parties but has valid +claims, both in its principles and in its membership, on the respect of +history; not one but can point to its saints and martyrs; not one but +was destined to play a quite separate and distinct and highly important +part in the planting of the church of Christ in America. They are +designated, for convenience' sake, as the Catholics, the Conformists, +the Puritans or Reformists, the Separatists (of whom were the Pilgrims), +and the Quakers. + +Such a Christendom was it, so disorganized, divided, and subdivided into +parties and sects, which was to furnish the materials for the peopling +of the new continent with a Christian population. It would seem that the +same "somewhat not ourselves," which had defeated in succession the +plans of two mighty nations to subject the New World to a single +hierarchy, had also provided that no one form or organization of +Christianity should be exclusive or even dominant in the occupation of +the American soil. From one point of view the American colonies will +present a sorry aspect. Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism, +competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks +"that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has +demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come." +No widely extended organization of church discipline in exclusive +occupation of any country has ever long avoided the intolerable +mischiefs attendant on spiritual despotism. It was a shock to the hopes +and the generous sentiments of those who had looked to see one undivided +body of a reformed church erected over against the medieval church, +from the corruptions of which they had revolted, when they saw +Protestantism go asunder into the several churches of the Lutheran and +the Reformed confessions; there are many even now to deplore it as a +disastrous set-back to the progress of the kingdom of Christ. But in the +calmness of our long retrospect it is easy for us to recognize that +whatever jurisdiction should have been established over an undivided +Protestant church would inevitably have proved itself, in no long time, +just such a yoke as neither the men of that time nor their fathers had +been able to bear. Fifteen centuries of church history have not been +wasted if thereby the Christian people have learned that the pursuit of +Christian unity through administrative or corporate or diplomatic union +is following the wrong road, and that the one Holy Catholic Church is +not the corporation of saints, but their communion. + +The new experiment of church life that was initiated in the colonization +of America is still in progress. The new States were to be planted not +only with diverse companies from the Old World, but with all the +definitely organized sects by which the map of Christendom was at that +time variegated, to which should be added others of native origin. +Notwithstanding successive "booms" now of one and then of another, it +was soon to become obvious to all that no one of these mutually jealous +sects was to have any exclusive predominance, even over narrow precincts +of territory. The old-world state churches, which under the rule, _cujus +regio ejus religio_, had been supreme and exclusive each in its +jurisdiction, were to find themselves side by side and mingled through +the community on equal terms with those over whom in the old country +they had domineered as dissenters, or whom perhaps they had even +persecuted as heretics or as Antichrist. Thus placed, they were to be +trained by the discipline of divine Providence and by the grace of the +Holy Spirit from persecution to toleration, from toleration to mutual +respect, and to cooeperation in matters of common concern in the +advancement of the kingdom of Christ. What further remains to be tried +is the question whether, if not the sects, then the Christian hearts in +each sect, can be brought to take the final step from mutual respect to +mutual love, "that we henceforth, speaking truth in love, may grow up in +all things into him, which is the head, even Christ; from whom all the +body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint +supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, +shall make the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in +love." Unless we must submit to those philosophers who forbid us to find +in history the evidences of final cause and providential design, we may +surely look upon this as a worthy possible solution of the mystery of +Providence in the planting of the church in America in almost its +ultimate stage of schism--that it is the purpose of its Head, out of the +mutual attrition of the sects, their disintegration and comminution, to +bring forth such a demonstration of the unity and liberty of the +children of God as the past ages of church history have failed to show. + +That mutual intolerance of differences in religious belief which, in the +seventeenth century, was, throughout Christendom, coextensive with +religious earnestness had its important part to play in the colonization +of America. Of the persecutions and oppressions which gave direct +impulse to the earliest colonization of America, the most notable are +the following: (1) the persecution of the English Puritans in the reigns +of James I. and Charles I., ending with the outbreak of the civil war in +1642; (2) the persecution of the English Roman Catholics during the same +period; (3) the persecution of the English Quakers during the +twenty-five years of Charles II. (1660-85); (4) the persecution of the +French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); (5) +the disabilities suffered by the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland +after the English Revolution (1688); (6) the ferocious ravaging of the +region of the Rhenish Palatinate by the armies of Louis XIV. in the +early years of the seventeenth century; (7) the cruel expulsion of the +Protestants of the archiepiscopal duchy of Salzburg (1731). + +Beyond dispute, the best and most potent elements in the settlement of +the seaboard colonies were the companies of earnestly religious people +who from time to time, under severe compulsion for conscience' sake, +came forth from the Old World as involuntary emigrants. Cruel wars and +persecutions accomplished a result in the advancement of the kingdom of +Christ which the authors of them never intended. But not these agencies +alone promoted the great work. Peace, prosperity, wealth, and the hope +of wealth had their part in it. The earliest successful enterprises of +colonization were indeed marked with the badge of Christianity, and +among their promoters were men whose language and deeds nobly evince the +Christian spirit; but the enterprises were impelled and directed by +commercial or patriotic considerations. The immense advantages that were +to accrue from them to the world through the wider propagation of the +gospel of Christ were not lost sight of in the projecting and organizing +of the expeditions, nor were provisions for church and ministry omitted; +but these were incidental, not primary. + +This story of the divine preparations carried forward through +unconscious human agencies in different lands and ages for the founding +of the American church is a necessary preamble to our history. The scene +of the story is now to be shifted to the other side of the sea. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE PURITAN BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH IN VIRGINIA--ITS DECLINE ALMOST TO +EXTINCTION. + + +There is sufficient evidence that the three little vessels which on the +13th of May, 1607, were moored to the trees on the bank of the James +River brought to the soil of America the germ of a Christian church. We +may feel constrained to accept only at a large discount the pious +official professions of King James I., and critically to scrutinize many +of the statements of that brilliant and fascinating adventurer, Captain +John Smith, whether concerning his friends or concerning his enemies or +concerning himself. But the beauty and dignity of the Christian +character shine unmistakable in the life of the chaplain to the +expedition, the Rev. Robert Hunt, and all the more radiantly for the +dark and discouraging surroundings in which his ministry was to be +exercised. + +For the company which Captain Smith and that famous mariner, Captain +Bartholomew Gosnold, had by many months of labor and "many a forgotten +pound" of expense succeeded in recruiting for the enterprise was made up +of most unhopeful material for the founding of a Christian colony. Those +were the years of ignoble peace with which the reign of James began; and +the glittering hopes of gold might well attract some of the brave men +who had served by sea or land in the wars of Elizabeth. But the last +thirty years had furnished no instance of success, and many of +disastrous and sometimes tragical failure, in like attempts--the +enterprises of Humphrey Gilbert, of Raleigh, of John White, of Gosnold +himself, and of Popham and Gorges. Even brave men might hesitate to +volunteer for the forlorn hope of another experiment at colonizing. + +The little squadron had hardly set sail when the unfitness of the +emigrants for their work began to discover itself. Lying weather-bound +within sight of home, "some few, little better than atheists, of the +greatest rank among them," were busying themselves with scandalous +imputations upon the chaplain, then lying dangerously ill in his berth. +All through the four months' passage by way of the Canaries and the West +India Islands discontents and dissensions prevailed. Wingfield, who had +been named president of the colony, had Smith in irons, and at the +island of Nevis had the gallows set up for his execution on a charge of +conspiracy, when milder counsels prevailed, and he was brought to +Virginia, where he was tried and acquitted and his adversary mulcted in +damages. + +Arrived at the place of settlement, the colonists set about the work of +building their houses, but found that their total number of one hundred +and five was made up in the proportion of four carpenters to forty-eight +"gentlemen." Not inadequately provisioned for their work, they came +repeatedly almost to perishing through their sheer incapacity and +unthrift, and their needless quarrels with one another and with the +Indians. In five months one half of the company were dead. In January, +1608, eight months from the landing, when the second expedition arrived +with reinforcements and supplies, only thirty-eight were surviving out +of the one hundred and five, and of these the strongest were conspiring +to seize the pinnace and desert the settlement. + +The newcomers were no better than the first. They were chiefly +"gentlemen" again, and goldsmiths, whose duty was to discover and refine +the quantities of gold that the stockholders in the enterprise were +resolved should be found in Virginia, whether it was there or not. The +ship took back on her return trip a full cargo of worthless dirt. + +Reinforcements continued to arrive every few months, the quality of +which it might be unfair to judge simply from the disgusted complaints +of Captain Smith. He begs the Company to send but thirty honest laborers +and artisans, "rather than a thousand such as we have," and reports the +next ship-load as "fitter to breed a riot than to found a colony." The +wretched settlement became an object of derision to the wits of London, +and of sympathetic interest to serious minds. The Company, reorganized +under a new charter, was strengthened by the accession of some of the +foremost men in England, including four bishops, the Earl of +Southampton, and Sir Francis Bacon. Appeals were made to the Christian +public in behalf of an enterprise so full of promise of the furtherance +of the gospel. A fleet of nine ships was fitted out, carrying more than +five hundred emigrants, with ample supplies. Captain Smith, representing +what there was of civil authority in the colony, had a brief struggle +with their turbulence, and recognized them as of the same sort with the +former companies, for the most part "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, +serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a +commonwealth than either begin one or help to maintain one." When only +part of this expedition had arrived, Captain Smith departed for England, +disabled by an accidental wound, leaving a settlement of nearly five +hundred men, abundantly provisioned. "It was not the will of God that +the new state should be formed of these materials."[41:1] In six months +the number of the colonists was reduced to sixty, and when relief +arrived it was reckoned that in ten days' longer delay they would have +perished to the last man. With one accord the wretched remnant of the +colony, together with the latest comers, deserted, without a tear of +regret, the scene of their misery. But their retreating vessels were met +and turned back from the mouth of the river by the approaching ships of +Lord de la Warr with emigrants and supplies. Such were the first three +unhappy and unhonored years of the first Christian colony on the soil of +the United States. + +One almost shrinks from being assured that this worthless crew, through +all these years of suicidal crime and folly, had been assiduous in +religious duties. First under an awning made of an old sail, seated upon +logs, with a rail nailed to two trees for a pulpit, afterward in a poor +shanty of a church, "that could neither well defend wind nor rain," they +"had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, +and every three months the holy communion, till their minister died"; +and after that "prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, two or three +years, till more preachers came." The sturdy and terrible resolution of +Captain Smith, who in his marches through the wilderness was wont to +begin the day with prayer and psalm, and was not unequal to the duty, +when it was laid on him, of giving Christian exhortation as well as +righteous punishment, and the gentle Christian influence of the Rev. +Robert Hunt, were the salt that saved the colony from utterly perishing +of its vices. It was not many months before the frail body of the +chaplain sank under the hardships of pioneer life; he is commemorated by +his comrade, the captain, as "an honest, religious, and courageous +divine, during whose life our factions were oft qualified, our wants and +greatest extremities so comforted that they seemed easy in comparison of +what we endured after his memorable death." When, in 1609, in a nobler +spirit than that of mere commercial enterprise, the reorganized Company, +under the new charter, was preparing the great reinforcement of five +hundred to go out under Lord de la Warr as governor of the colony, +counsel was taken with Abbot, the Puritan Bishop of London, himself a +member of the Virginia Company, and Richard Buck was selected as a +worthy successor to Robert Hunt in the office of chaplain. Such he +proved himself. Sailing in advance of the governor, in the ship with Sir +Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, and wrecked with them off the +Bermudas, he did not forget his duty in the "plenty, peace, and ease" of +that paradise. The ship's bell was rescued from the wreck to ring for +morning and evening prayer, and for the two sermons every Sunday. There +were births and funerals and a marriage in the shipwrecked company, and +at length, when their makeshift vessel was ready, they embarked for +their desired haven, there to find only the starving threescore +survivors of the colony. They gathered together, a pitiable remnant, in +the church, where Master Buck "made a zealous and sorrowful prayer"; and +at once, without losing a day, they embarked for a last departure from +Virginia, but were met at the mouth of the river by the tardy ships of +Lord de la Warr. The next morning, Sunday, June 10, 1610, Lord de la +Warr landed at the fort, where Gates had drawn up his forlorn platoon of +starving men to receive him. The governor fell on his knees in prayer, +then led the way to the church, and, after service and a sermon from +the chaplain, made an address, assuming command of the colony. + +Armed, under the new charter, with adequate authority, the new governor +was not slow in putting on the state of a viceroy. Among his first cares +was to provide for the external dignity of worship. The church, a +building sixty feet by twenty-four, built long enough before to be now +in need of repairs, was put into good condition, and a brave sight it +was on Sundays to see the Governor, with the Privy Council and the +Lieutenant-General and the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral and the Master +of the Horse, together with the body-guard of fifty halberdiers in fair +red cloaks, commanded by Captain Edward Brewster, assembled for worship, +the governor seated in the choir in a green velvet chair, with a velvet +cushion on a table before him. Few things could have been better adapted +to convince the peculiar public of Jamestown that divine worship was +indeed a serious matter. There was something more than the parade of +government manifested by his lordship in the few months of his reign; +but the inauguration of strong and effective control over the lazy, +disorderly, and seditious crowd to be dealt with at Jamestown was +reserved for his successor, Sir Thomas Dale, who arrived in May, 1611, +in company with the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the "apostle of Virginia." + +It will not be possible for any to understand the relations of this +colony to the state of parties in England without distinctly recognizing +that the Puritans were not a party _against_ the Church of England, but +a party _in_ the Church of England. The Puritan party was the party of +reform, and was strong in a deep fervor of religious conviction widely +diffused among people and clergy, and extending to the highest places of +the nobility and the episcopate. The anti-Puritan party was the +conservative or reactionary party, strong in the _vis inertiae_, and in +the king's pig-headed prejudices and his monstrous conceit of +theological ability and supremacy in the church; strong also in a +considerable adhesion and zealous cooeperation from among his nominees, +the bishops. The religious division was also a political one, the +Puritans being known as the party of the people, their antagonists as +the court party. The struggle of the Puritans (as distinguished from the +inconsiderable number of the Separatists) was for the maintenance of +their rights within the church; the effort of their adversaries, with +the aid of the king's prerogative, was to drive or harry them out of the +church. It is not to be understood that the two parties were as yet +organized as such and distinctly bounded; but the two tendencies were +plainly recognized, and the sympathies of leading men in church or state +were no secret. + +The Virginia Company was a Puritan corporation.[44:1] As such, its +meetings and debates were the object of popular interest and of the +royal jealousy. Among its corporators were the brothers Sandys, sons of +the Puritan Archbishop of York, one of whom held the manor of Scrooby. +Others of the corporation were William Brewster, of Scrooby, and his son +Edward. In the fleet of Sir Thomas Gates, May, 1609, were noted +Puritans, one of whom, Stephen Hopkins, "who had much knowledge in the +Scriptures and could reason well therein," was clerk to that "painful +preacher," but not strict conformist, Master Richard Buck. The intimate +and sometimes official relations of the Virginia Company not only with +leading representatives of the Puritan party, but with the Pilgrims of +Leyden, whom they would gladly have received into their own colony, are +matter of history and of record. It admits of proof that there was a +steady purpose in the Company, so far as it was not thwarted by the king +and the bishops of the court party, to hold their unruly and +ill-assorted colony under Puritan influences both of church and +government.[45:1] The fact throws light on the remoter as well as the +nearer history of Virginia. Especially it throws light on the memorable +administration of Sir Thomas Dale, which followed hard upon the +departure of Lord de la Warr and his body-guard in red cloaks. + +The Company had picked their man with care--"a man of good conscience +and knowledge in divinity," and a soldier and disciplinarian proved in +the wars of the Low Countries--a very prototype of the great Cromwell. +He understood what manner of task he had undertaken, and executed it +without flinching. As a matter of course--it was the way in that +colony--there was a conspiracy against his authority. There was no +second conspiracy under him. Punishment was inflicted on the ringleaders +so swift, so terrible, as to paralyze all future sedition. He put in +force, in the name of the Company, a code of "Laws, Divine, Moral, and +Martial," to which no parallel can be found in the severest legislation +of New England. An invaluable service to the colony was the abolition of +that demoralizing socialism that had been enforced on the colonists, by +which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out +land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own +industry and thrift, or suffered the consequences of his laziness. The +culture of tobacco gave the colony a currency and a staple of export. + +With Dale was associated as chaplain Alexander Whitaker, son of the +author of the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles, and brother of a Separatist +preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties +is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, +written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that +nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question +would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What +manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of +faithful work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this +statesmanlike and soldierly governor founded his new city of Henrico up +the river, and laid out across the stream the suburb of Hope-in-Faith, +defended by Fort Charity and Fort Patience, he built there in sight from +his official residence the parsonage of the "apostle of Virginia." The +course of Whitaker's ministry is described by himself in a letter to a +friend: "Every Sabbath day we preach in the forenoon and catechise in +the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's +house." But he and his fellow-clergymen did not labor without aid, even +in word and doctrine. When Mr. John Rolfe was perplexed with questions +of duty touching his love for Pocahontas, it was to the old soldier, +Dale, that he brought his burden, seeking spiritual counsel. And it was +this "religious and valiant governor," as Whitaker calls him, this "man +of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things," +that "labored long to ground the faith of Jesus Christ" in the Indian +maiden, and wrote concerning her, "Were it but for the gaining of this +one soul, I will think my time, toils, and present stay well spent." + +The progress of the gospel in reclaiming the unhappy colony to +Christian civilization varies with the varying fortunes of contending +parties in England. Energetic efforts were made by the Company under +Sandys, the friend of Brewster, to send out worthy colonists; and the +delicate task of finding young women of good character to be shipped as +wives to the settlers was undertaken conscientiously and successfully. +Generous gifts of money and land were contributed (although little came +from them) for the endowment of schools and a college for the promotion +of Christ's work among the white people and the red. But the course of +events on both sides of the sea may be best illustrated by a narrative +of personal incidents. + +In the year 1621, an East India Company's chaplain, the Rev. Patrick +Copland, who perhaps deserves the title of the first English missionary +in India, on his way back from India met, probably at the Canaries, with +ships bound for Virginia with emigrants. Learning from these something +of the needs of the plantation, he stirred up his fellow-passengers on +the "Royal James," and raised the sum of seventy pounds, which was paid +to the treasurer of the Virginia Company; and, being increased by other +gifts to one hundred and twenty-five pounds, was, in consultation with +Mr. Copland, appropriated for a free school to be called the "East India +School." + +The affairs of the colony were most promising. It was growing in +population and in wealth and in the institutions of a Christian +commonwealth. The territory was divided into parishes for the work of +church and clergy. The stupid obstinacy of the king, against the +remonstrances of the Company, perpetrated the crime of sending out a +hundred convicts into the young community, extorting from Captain Smith +the protest that this act "hath laid one of the finest countries of +America under the just scandal of being a mere hell upon earth." The +sweepings of the London and Bristol streets were exported for servants. +Of darker portent, though men perceived it not, was the landing of the +first cargo of negro slaves. But so grateful was the Company for the +general prosperity of the colony that it appointed a thanksgiving sermon +to be preached at Bow Church, April 17, 1622, by Mr. Copland, which was +printed under the title, "Virginia's God Be Thanked." In July, 1622, the +Company, proceeding to the execution of a long-cherished plan, chose Mr. +Copland rector of the college to be built at Henrico from the endowments +already provided, when news arrived of the massacre which, in March of +that year, swept away one half of the four thousand colonists. All such +enterprises were at once arrested. + +In 1624 the long contest of the king and the court party against the +Virginia Company was ended by a violent exercise of the prerogative +dissolving the Company, but not until it had established free +representative government in the colony. The revocation of the charter +was one of the last acts of James's ignoble reign. In 1625 he died, and +Charles I. became king. In 1628 "the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of +prelates," William Laud, became Bishop of London, and in 1633 Archbishop +of Canterbury. But the Puritan principles of duty and liberty already +planted in Virginia were not destined to be eradicated. + +From the year 1619, a settlement at Nansemond, near Norfolk, had +prospered, and had been in relations of trade with New England. In 1642 +Philip Bennett, of Nansemond, visiting Boston in his coasting vessel, +bore with him a letter to the Boston church, signed by seventy-four +names, stating the needs of their great county, now without a pastor, +and offering a maintenance to three good ministers if they could be +found. A little later William Durand, of the same county, wrote for +himself and his neighbors to John Davenport, of New Haven, to whom some +of them had listened gladly in London (perhaps it was when he preached +the first annual sermon before the Virginia Company in 1621), speaking +of "a revival of piety" among them, and urging the request that had been +sent to the church in Boston. As result of this correspondence, three +eminently learned and faithful ministers of New England came to +Virginia, bringing letters of commendation from Governor Winthrop. But +they found that Virginia, now become a royal colony, had no welcome for +them. The newly arrived royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, a man +after Laud's own heart, forbade their preaching; but the Catholic +governor of Maryland sent them a free invitation, and one of them, +removing to Annapolis with some of the Virginia Puritans, so labored in +the gospel as to draw forth the public thanks of the legislative +assembly. + +The sequel of this story is a strange one. There must have been somewhat +in the character and bearing of these silenced and banished ministers +that touched the heart of Thomas Harrison, the governor's chaplain. He +made a confession of his insincere dealings toward them: that while he +had been showing them "a fair face" he had privately used his influence +to have them silenced. He himself began to preach in that earnest way of +righteousness, temperance, and judgment, which is fitted to make +governors tremble, until Berkeley cast him out as a Puritan, saying that +he did not wish so grave a chaplain; whereupon Harrison crossed the +river to Nansemond, became pastor of the church, and mightily built up +the cause which he had sought to destroy. + +A few months later the Nansemond people had the opportunity of giving +succor and hospitality to a shipwrecked company of nine people, who had +been cast away, with loss of all their goods, in sailing from the +Bermudas to found a new settlement on one of the Bahamas. Among the +party was an aged and venerable man, that same Patrick Copland who +twenty-five years before had interested himself in the passing party of +emigrants. This was indeed entertaining an angel. Mr. Copland had long +been a nonconformist minister at the Bermudas, and he listened to the +complaints that were made to him of the persecution to which the people +were subjected by the malignant Berkeley. A free invitation was given to +the Nansemond church to go with their guests to the new settlement of +Eleuthera, in which freedom of conscience and non-interference of the +magistrate with the church were secured by charter.[50:1] Mr. Harrison +proceeded to Boston to take counsel of the churches over this +proposition. The people were advised by their Boston brethren to remain +in their lot until their case should become intolerable. Mr. Harrison +went on to London, where a number of things had happened since +Berkeley's appointment. The king had ceased to be; but an order from the +Council of State was sent to Berkeley, sharply reprimanding him for his +course, and directing him to restore Mr. Harrison to his parish. But Mr. +Harrison did not return. He fulfilled an honorable career as incumbent +of a London parish, as chaplain to Henry Cromwell, viceroy of Ireland, +and as a hunted and persecuted preacher in the evil days after the +Restoration. But the "poetic justice" with which this curious dramatic +episode should conclude is not reached until Berkeley is compelled to +surrender his jurisdiction to the Commonwealth, and Richard Bennett, one +of the banished Puritans of Nansemond, is chosen by the Assembly of +Burgesses to be governor in his stead.[51:1] + +Of course this is a brief triumph. With the restoration of the Stuarts, +Berkeley comes back into power as royal governor, and for many years +afflicts the colony with his malignant Toryism. The last state is worse +than the first; for during the days of the Commonwealth old soldiers of +the king's army had come to Virginia in such numbers as to form an +appreciable and not wholly admirable element in the population. +Surrounded by such society, the governor was encouraged to indulge his +natural disposition to bigotry and tyranny. Under such a nursing father +the interests of the kingdom of Christ fared as might have been +expected. Rigorous measures were instituted for the suppression of +nonconformity, Quaker preachers were severely dealt with, and clergymen, +such as they were, were imposed upon the more or less reluctant +parishes. But though the governor held the right of presentation, the +vestry of each parish asserted and maintained the right of induction or +of refusing to induct. Without the consent of these representatives of +the people the candidate could secure for himself no more than the +people should from year to year consent to allow him. It was the only +protection of the people from absolute spiritual despotism. The power +might be used to repel a too faithful pastor, but if there was sometimes +a temptation to this, the occasion was far more frequent for putting the +people's reprobation upon the unfaithful and unfit. The colony, growing +in wealth and population, soon became infested with a rabble of +worthless and scandalous priests. In a report which has been often +quoted, Governor Berkeley, after giving account of the material +prosperity of the colony, sums up, under date of 1671, the results of +his fostering care over its spiritual interests in these words: "There +are forty-eight parishes, and the ministers well paid. The clergy by my +consent would be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But +of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us. But I thank +God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not +have, these hundred years." + +The scandal of the Virginia clergy went on from bad to worse. Whatever +could be done by the courage and earnestness of one man was done by Dr. +Blair, who arrived in 1689 with limited powers as commissary of the +Bishop of London, and for more than fifty years struggled against +adverse influences to recover the church from its degradation. He +succeeded in getting a charter for William and Mary College, but the +generous endowments of the institution were wasted, and the college +languished in doing the work of a grammar school. Something was +accomplished in the way of discipline, though the cane of Governor +Nicholson over the back of an insolent priest was doubtless more +effective than the commissary's admonitions. But discipline, while it +may do something toward abating scandals, cannot create life from the +dead; and the church established in Virginia had hardly more than a name +to live. Its best estate is described by Spotswood, the best of the +royal governors, when, looking on the outward appearance, he reported: +"This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due +obedience to the royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the +Church of England." The poor man was soon to find how uncertain is the +peace and tranquillity that is founded on "a gentlemanly conformity." +The most honorable page in his record is the story of his effort for +the education of Indian children. His honest attempt at reformation in +the church brought him into collision not only with the worthless among +the clergy, but also on the one hand with the parish vestries, and on +the other hand with Commissary Blair. But all along the "gentlemanly +conformity" was undisturbed. A parish of French Huguenots was early +established in Henrico County, and in 1713 a parish of German exiles on +the Rappahannock, and these were expressly excepted from the Act of +Uniformity. Aside from these, the chief departures from the enforced +uniformity of worship throughout the colony in the early years of the +eighteenth century were found in a few meetings of persecuted and +vilified Quakers and Baptists. The government and clergy had little +notion of the significance of a slender stream of Scotch-Irish +emigration which, as early as 1720, began to flow into the valley of the +Shenandoah. So cheap a defense against the perils that threatened from +the western frontier it would have been folly to discourage by odious +religious proscription. The reasonable anxiety of the clergy as to what +might come of this invasion of a sturdy and uncompromising Puritanism +struggled without permanent success against the obvious interest of the +commonwealth. The addition of this new and potent element to the +Christian population of the seaboard colonies was part of the +unrecognized preparation for the Great Awakening. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[41:1] Bancroft, vol. i., p. 138. + +[44:1] See the interesting demonstration of this point in articles by E. +D. Neill in "Hours at Home," vol. vi., pp. 22, 201. + +Mr. Neill's various publications on the colonial history of Virginia and +Maryland are of the highest value and authority. They include: "The +English Colonization of America During the Seventeenth Century"; +"History of the Virginia Company"; "Virginia Vetusta"; "Virginia +Carolorum"; "Terra Mariae; or, Threads of Maryland Colonial History"; +"The Founders of Maryland"; "Life of Patrick Copland." + +[45:1] It was customary for the Company, when a candidate was proposed +for a chaplaincy in the colony, to select a text for him and appoint a +Sunday and a church for a "trial sermon" from which they might judge of +his qualifications. + +[50:1] The project of Eleuthera is entitled to honorable mention in the +history of religious liberty. + +[51:1] For fuller details concerning the Puritan character of the +Virginia Company and of the early ministers of Virginia, see the +articles of E. D. Neill, above referred to, in "Hours at Home," vol. vi. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE NEIGHBOR COLONIES TO VIRGINIA--MARYLAND AND THE CAROLINAS. + + +The chronological order would require us at this point to turn to the +Dutch settlements on the Hudson River; but the close relations of +Virginia with its neighbor colonies of Maryland and the Carolinas are a +reason for taking up the brief history of these settlements in advance +of their turn. + +The occupation of Maryland dates from the year 1634. The period of bold +and half-desperate adventure in making plantations along the coast was +past. To men of sanguine temper and sufficient fortune and influence at +court, it was now a matter of very promising and not too risky +speculation. To George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, one of the most +interesting characters at the court of James I., the business had +peculiar fascination. He was in both the New England Company and the +Virginia Company, and after the charter of the latter was revoked he was +one of the Provisional Council for the government of Virginia. Nothing +daunted by the ill luck of these companies, he tried colonizing on his +account in 1620, in what was represented to him as the genial soil and +climate of Newfoundland. Sending good money after bad, he was glad to +get out of this venture at the end of nine years with a loss of thirty +thousand pounds. In 1629 he sent home his children, and with a lady and +servants and forty of his surviving colonists sailed for Jamestown, +where his reception at the hands of the council and of his old Oxford +fellow-student, Governor Pott, was not cordial. He could hardly have +expected that it would be. He was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic +Church, with a convert's zeal for proselyting, and he was of the court +party. Thus he was in antagonism to the Puritan colony both in politics +and in religion. A formidable disturbing element he and his company +would have been in the already unquiet community. The authorities of the +colony were equal to the emergency. In answer to his lordship's +announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome +to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him +the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman +principles. Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he +was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much +latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his +lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his +intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was +not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman. + +Returned to London, he at once set in motion the powerful influences at +his command to secure a charter for a tract of land south of the James +River, and when this was defeated by the energetic opposition of the +friends of Virginia, he succeeded in securing a grant of land north and +east of the Potomac, with a charter bestowing on him and his heirs "the +most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of +England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the +former grant to that colony was unavailing. The free-handed generosity +with which the Stuarts were in the habit of giving away what did not +belong to them rarely allowed itself to be embarrassed by the fear of +giving the same thing twice over to different parties. + +The first Lord Baltimore died three months before the charter of +Maryland received the great seal, but his son Cecilius took up the +business with energy and great liberality of investment. The cost of +fitting out the first emigration was estimated at not less than forty +thousand pounds. The company consisted of "three hundred laboring men, +well provided in all things," headed by Leonard and George Calvert, +brothers of the lord proprietor, "with very near twenty other gentlemen +of very good fashion." Two earnest Jesuit priests were quietly added to +the expedition as it passed the Isle of Wight, but in general it was a +Protestant emigration under Catholic patronage. It was stipulated in the +charter that all liege subjects of the English king might freely +transport themselves and their families to Maryland. To discriminate +against any religious body in England would have been for the proprietor +to limit his hope of rapid colonization and revenue and to embroil +himself with political enemies at home. His own and his father's +intimate acquaintance with failure in the planting of Virginia and of +Newfoundland had taught him what not to do in such enterprises. If the +proprietor meant to succeed (and he _did_ mean to) he was shut up +without alternative to the policy of impartial non-interference with +religious differences among his colonists, and the promotion of mutual +forbearance among sects. Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound +political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious +liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and +he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land +speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in +the least disposed to allow his religious predilections to interfere +with business. Nothing would have brought speedier ruin to his +enterprise than to have it suspected, as his enemies were always ready +to allege, that it was governed in the interest of the Roman Catholic +Church. Such a suspicion he took the most effective means of averting. +He kept his promises to his colonists in this matter in good faith, and +had his reward in the notable prosperity of his colony.[57:1] + +The two priests of the first Maryland company began their work with +characteristic earnestness and diligence. Finding no immediate access to +the Indians, they gave the more constant attention to their own +countrymen, both Catholic and Protestant, and were soon able to give +thanks that by God's blessing on their labors almost all the Protestants +of that year's arrival had been converted, besides many others. In 1640 +the first-fruits of their mission work among the savages were gathered +in; the chief of an Indian village on the Potomac nearly opposite Mount +Vernon, and his wife and child, were baptized with solemn pomp, in +which the governor and secretary of the colony took part. + +The first start of the Maryland colony was of a sort to give promise of +feuds and border strifes with the neighbor colony of Virginia, and the +promise was abundantly fulfilled. The conflict over boundary questions +came to bloody collisions by land and sea. It is needless to say that +religious differences were at once drawn into the dispute. The vigorous +proselytism of the Jesuit fathers, the only Christian ministers in the +colony, under the patronage of the lord proprietor was of course +reported to London by the Virginians; and in December, 1641, the House +of Commons, then on the brink of open rupture with the king, presented a +remonstrance to Charles at Hampton Court, complaining that he had +permitted "another state, molded within this state, independent in +government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the +ignorant or negligent professors of religion, and clearly uniting +themselves against such." Lord Baltimore, perceiving that his property +rights were coming into jeopardy, wrote to the too zealous priests, +warning them that they were under English law and were not to expect +from him "any more or other privileges, exemptions, or immunities for +their lands, persons, or goods than is allowed by his Majesty or +officers to like persons in England." He annulled the grants of land +made to the missionaries by certain Indian chiefs, which they affected +to hold as the property of their order, and confirmed for his colony the +law of mortmain. In his not unreasonable anxiety for the tenure of his +estate, he went further still; he had the Jesuits removed from the +charge of the missions, to be replaced by seculars, and only receded +from this severe measure when the Jesuit order acceded to his terms. The +pious and venerable Father White records in his journal that "occasion +of suffering has not been wanting from those from whom rather it was +proper to expect aid and protection, who, too intent upon their own +affairs, have not feared to violate the immunities of the church."[59:1] +But the zeal of the Calverts for religious liberty and equality was +manifested not only by curbing the Jesuits, but by encouraging their +most strenuous opponents. It was in the year 1643, when the strength of +Puritanism both in England and in New England was proved, that the +Calverts made overtures, although in vain, to secure an immigration from +Massachusetts. A few years later the opportunity occurred of +strengthening their own colony with an accession of Puritans, and at the +same time of weakening Virginia. The sturdy and prosperous Puritan +colony on the Nansemond River were driven by the churlish behavior of +Governor Berkeley to seek a more congenial residence, and were induced +to settle on the Severn at a place which they called Providence, but +which was destined, under the name of Annapolis, to become the capital +of the future State. It was manifestly not merely a coincidence that +Lord Baltimore appointed a Protestant governor, William Stone, and +commended to the Maryland Assembly, in 1649, the enacting of "an Act +concerning Religion," drawn upon the lines of the Ordinance of +Toleration adopted by the Puritan House of Commons at the height of its +authority, in 1647.[59:2] How potent was the influence of this +transplanted Nansemond church is largely shown in the eventful civil +history of the colony. When, in 1655, the lord proprietor's governor was +so imprudent as to set an armed force in the field, under the colors of +Lord Baltimore, in opposition to the parliamentary commissioners, it +was the planters of the Severn who marched under the flag of the +commonwealth of England, and put them to rout, and executed some of +their leaders for treason. When at last articles of agreement were +signed between the commissioners and Lord Baltimore, one of the +conditions exacted from his lordship was a pledge that he would never +consent to the repeal of the Act of Toleration adopted in 1649 under the +influence of the Puritan colony and its pastor, Thomas Harrison. + +In the turbulence of the colony during and after the civil wars of +England, there becomes more and more manifest a growing spirit of +fanaticism, especially in the form of antipopery crusading. While +Jacobite intrigues or wars with France were in progress it was easy for +demagogues to cast upon the Catholics the suspicion of disloyalty and of +complicity with the public enemy. The numerical unimportance of the +Catholics of Maryland was insufficient to guard them from such +suspicions; for it had soon become obvious that the colony of the +Catholic lord was to be anything but a Catholic colony. The Jesuit +mission had languished; the progress of settlement, and what there had +been of religious life and teaching, had brought no strength to the +Catholic cause. In 1676 a Church of England minister, John Yeo, writes +to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the craving lack of ministers, +excepting among the Catholics and the Quakers, "not doubting but his +Grace may so prevail with Lord Baltimore that a maintenance for a +Protestant ministry may be established." The Bishop of London, echoing +this complaint, speaks of the "total want of ministers and divine +worship, except among those of the Romish belief, who, 'tis conjectured, +does not amount to one of a hundred of the people." To which his +lordship replies that all sects are tolerated and protected, but that +it would be impossible to induce the Assembly to consent to a law that +shall oblige any sect to maintain other ministers than its own. The +bishop's figures were doubtless at fault; but Lord Baltimore himself +writes that the nonconformists outnumber the Catholics and those of the +Church of England together about three to one, and that the churchmen +are much more numerous than the Catholics. + +After the Revolution of 1688 it is not strange that a like movement was +set on foot in Maryland. The "beneficent despotism" of the Calverts, +notwithstanding every concession on their part, was ended for the time +by the efforts of an "Association for the Defense of the Protestant +Religion," and Maryland became a royal colony. Under the new regime it +was easier to inflict annoyances and disabilities on the petty minority +of the Roman Catholics than to confer the privileges of an established +church on the hardly more considerable minority of Episcopalians. The +Church of England became in name the official church of the colony, but +two parties so remotely unlike as the Catholics and the Quakers combined +successfully to defeat more serious encroachments on religious liberty. +The attempt to maintain the church of a small minority by taxes extorted +by a foreign government from the whole people had the same effect in +Maryland as in Ireland: it tended to make both church and government +odious. The efforts of Dr. Thomas Bray, commissary of the Bishop of +London, a man of true apostolic fervor, accomplished little in +withstanding the downward tendency of the provincial establishment. The +demoralized and undisciplined clergy resisted the attempt of the +provincial government to abate the scandal of their lives, and the +people resisted the attempt to introduce a bishop. The body thus set +before the people as the official representative of the religion of +Christ "was perhaps as contemptible an ecclesiastical organization as +history can show," having "all the vices of the Virginian church, +without one of its safeguards or redeeming qualities."[62:1] The most +hopeful sign in the morning sky of the eighteenth century was to be +found in the growth of the Society of Friends and the swelling of the +current of the Scotch-Irish immigration. And yet we shall have proof +that the life-work of Commissary Bray, although he went back discouraged +from his labors in Maryland and although this colony took little direct +benefit from his efforts in England, was destined to have great results +in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in America; for he was the +founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign +Parts. + +The Carolinas, North and South, had been the scene of the earliest +attempts at Protestant colonization in America. The Huguenot enterprise +at Beaufort, on Port Royal harbor, was planted in 1562 under the +auspices of Coligny, and came to a speedy and unhappy end. The costly +and disastrous experiment of Sir Walter Raleigh was begun in 1584 on +Roanoke Island, and lasted not many months. But the actual occupation of +the region was late and slow. When, after the Restoration, Charles II. +took up the idea of paying his political debts with free and easy +cessions of American lands, Clarendon, Albemarle, and Shaftesbury were +among the first and luckiest in the scramble. When the representatives +of themselves and their partners arrived in Carolina in 1670, bringing +with them that pompous and preposterous anachronism, the "Fundamental +Constitutions," contrived by the combined wisdom of Shaftesbury and John +Locke to impose a feudal government upon an immense domain of +wilderness, they found the ground already occupied with a scanty and +curiously mixed population, which had taken on a simple form of polity +and was growing into a state. The region adjoining Virginia was peopled +by Puritans from the Nansemond country, vexed with the paltry +persecutions of Governor Berkeley, and later by fugitives from the +bloody revenge which he delighted to inflict on those who had been +involved in the righteous rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon. These had +been joined by insolvent debtors not a few. Adventurers from New England +settled on the Cape Fear River for a lumber trade, and kept the various +plantations in communication with the rest of the world by their +coasting craft plying to Boston. Dissatisfied companies from Barbadoes +seeking a less torrid climate next arrived. Thus the region was settled +in the first instance at second hand from older colonies. To these came +settlers direct from England, such emigrants as the proprietors could +persuade to the undertaking, and such as were impelled by the evil state +of England in the last days of the Stuarts, or drawn by the promise of +religious liberty. + +South Carolina, on the other hand, was settled direct from Europe, first +by cargoes of emigrants shipped on speculation by the great real-estate +"operators" who had at heart not only the creation of a gorgeous +aristocracy in the West, but also the realization of fat dividends on +their heavy ventures. Members of the dominant politico-religious party +in England were attracted to a country in which they were still to be +regarded before the law as of the "only true and orthodox" church; and +religious dissenters gladly accepted the offer of toleration and +freedom, even without the assurance of equality. One of the most notable +contributions to the new colony was a company of dissenters from +Somersetshire, led by Joseph Blake, brother to Cromwell's illustrious +admiral. Among these were some of the earliest American Baptists; and +there is clear evidence of connection between their arrival and the +coming, in 1684, of a Baptist church from the Massachusetts Colony, +under the pastorate of William Screven. This planting was destined to +have an important influence both on the religious and on the civil +history of the colony. Very early there came two ship-loads of Dutch +Calvinists from New York, dissatisfied with the domineering of their +English victors. But more important than the rest was that sudden +outflow of French Huguenots, representing not only religious fidelity +and devotion, but all those personal and social virtues that most +strengthen the foundations of a state, which set westward upon the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. This, with the later influx +of the Scotch-Irish, profoundly marked the character of South Carolina. +The great names in her history are generally either French or Scotch. + +It ought to have been plain to the proprietors, in their monstrous +conceit of political wisdom, that communities so constituted should have +been the last on which to impose the uniformity of an established +church. John Locke did see this, but was overruled. The Church of +England was established in name, but for long years had only this shadow +of existence. We need not, however, infer from the absence of organized +church and official clergy among the rude and turbulent pioneers of +North Carolina that the kingdom of God was not among them, even from the +beginning. But not until the year 1672 do we find manifestation of it +such as history can recognize. In that year came William Edmundson, "the +voice of one crying in the wilderness," bringing his testimony of the +light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The honest +man, who had not thought it reasonable in the Christians of +Massachusetts to be offended at one's sitting in the steeple-house with +his hat on, found it an evidence that "they had little or no religion" +when the rough woodsmen of Carolina beguiled the silent moments of the +Friends' devotions by smoking their pipes; and yet he declares that he +found them "a tender people." Converts were won to the society, and a +quarterly meeting was established. Within a few months followed George +Fox, uttering his deep convictions in a voice of singular persuasiveness +and power, that reached the hearts of both high and low. And he too +declared that he had found the people "generally tender and open," and +rejoiced to have made among them "a little entrance for truth." The +church of Christ had been begun. As yet there had been neither baptism +nor sacramental supper; these outward and visible signs were absent; but +inward and spiritual grace was there, and the thing signified is greater +than the sign. The influence diffused itself like leaven. Within a +decade the society was extended through both the Carolinas and became +the principal form of organized Christianity. It was reckoned in 1710 to +include one seventh of the population of North Carolina.[65:1] + +The attempt of a foreign proprietary government to establish by law the +church of an inconsiderable and not preeminently respectable minority +had little effect except to exasperate and alienate the settlers. Down +to the end of the seventeenth century the official church in North +Carolina gave no sign of life. In South Carolina almost twenty years +passed before it was represented by a single clergyman. The first +manifestation of church life seems to have been in the meetings on the +banks of the Cooper and the Santee, in which the French refugees +worshiped their fathers' God with the psalms of Marot and Beza. + +But with the eighteenth century begins a better era for the English +church in the Carolinas. The story of the founding and the work of the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, taken in +connection with its antecedents and its results, belongs to this +history, not only as showing the influence of European Christianity upon +America, but also as indicating the reaction of America upon Europe. + +In an important sense the organization of religious societies which is +characteristic of modern Christendom is of American origin. The labors +of John Eliot among the Indians of New England stirred so deep an +interest in the hearts of English Christians that in 1649 an ordinance +was passed by the Long Parliament creating a corporation to be called +"The President and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New +England"; and a general collection made under Cromwell's direction +produced nearly twelve thousand pounds, from the income of which +missionaries were maintained among some of the Northern tribes of +Indians. With the downfall of the Commonwealth the corporation became +defunct; but through the influence of the saintly Richard Baxter, whose +tender interest in the work of Eliot is witnessed by a touching passage +in his writings, the charter was revived in 1662, with Robert Boyle for +president and patron. It was largely through his generosity that Eliot +was enabled to publish his Indian Bible. This society, "The New England +Company," as it is called, is still extant--the oldest of Protestant +missionary societies.[66:1] + +It is to that Dr. Thomas Bray who returned in 1700 to England from his +thankless and discouraging work as commissary in Maryland of the Bishop +of London, that the Church of England owes a large debt of gratitude for +having taken away the reproach of her barrenness. Already his zeal had +laid the foundations on which was reared the Society for the Promotion +of Christian Knowledge. In 1701 he had the satisfaction of attending the +first meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in +Foreign Parts, which for nearly three quarters of a century, sometimes +in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more +excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American +colonies. Its missionaries, men of a far different character from the +miserable incumbents of parishes in Maryland and Virginia, were among +the first preachers of the gospel in the Carolinas. Within the years +1702-40 there served under the commission of this society in North +Carolina nine missionaries, in South Carolina thirty-five.[67:1] + +But the zeal of these good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of +Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign +proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part +of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing +disabilities on other sects--these were among the chief occasions of the +continual collision between the people and the colonial governments, +which culminated in the struggle for independence. By the time that +struggle began the established church in the Carolinas was ready to +vanish away. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[55:1] W. H. Browne, "Maryland" (in American Commonwealths), p. 18. + +[57:1] This seems to be the whole explanation of the curious paradox +that the first experiment of religious liberty and equality before the +law among all Christian sects should have been made apparently under the +auspices of that denomination which alone at the present day continues +to maintain in theory that it is the duty of civil government to enforce +sound doctrine by pains and penalties. We would not grudge the amplest +recognition of Lord Baltimore's faith or magnanimity or political +wisdom; but we have failed to find evidence of his rising above the +plane of the smart real-estate speculator, willing to be all things to +all men, if so he might realize on his investments. Happily, he was +clear-sighted enough to perceive that his own interest was involved in +the liberty, contentment, and prosperity of his colonists. + +Mr. E. D. Neill, who has excelled other writers in patient and exact +study of the original sources of this part of colonial history, +characterizes Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, as "one whose whole life +was passed in self-aggrandizement, first deserting Father White, then +Charles I., and making friends of Puritans and republicans to secure the +rentals of the province of Maryland, and never contributing a penny for +a church or school-house" ("English Colonization of America," p. 258). + +[59:1] Browne, pp. 54-57; Neill, _op. cit._, pp. 270-274. + +[59:2] The act of Parliament provided full religious liberty for +dissenters from the established order, save only "so as nothing be done +by them to the disturbance of the peace of the kingdom." + +[62:1] H. C. Lodge, "British Colonies in America," pp. 119-124, with +authorities cited. The severe characterization seems to be sustained by +the evidence. + +[65:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 237. + +[66:1] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 2, 3; "Encyclopaedia +Britannica," vol. xvi., p. 514. + +[67:1] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 849, 850. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE DUTCH CALVINIST COLONY ON THE HUDSON AND THE SWEDISH LUTHERAN COLONY +ON THE DELAWARE--THEY BOTH FALL UNDER THE SHADOW OF GREAT BRITAIN. + + +When the Englishman Henry Hudson, in the Dutch East India Company's +ship, the "Half-moon," in September, 1609, sailed up "the River of +Mountains" as far as the site of Albany, looking for the northwest +passage to China, the English settlement at Jamestown was in the third +year of its half-perishing existence. More than thirteen years were yet +to pass before the Pilgrims from England by way of Holland should make +their landing on Plymouth Rock. + +But we are not at liberty to assign so early a date to the Dutch +settlement of New York, and still less to the church. There was a prompt +reaching out, on the part of the immensely enterprising Dutch merchants, +after the lucrative trade in peltries; there was a plying to and fro of +trading-vessels, and there were trading-posts established on Manhattan +Island and at the head of navigation on the Hudson, or North River, and +on the South River, or Delaware. Not until the great Dutch West India +Company had secured its monopoly of trade and perfected its +organization, in 1623, was there a beginning of colonization. In that +year a company of Walloons, or French-speaking Hollanders, was planted +near Albany, and later arrivals were settled on the Delaware, on Long +Island, and on Manhattan. At length, in 1626, came Peter Minuit with an +ample commission from the all-powerful Company, who organized something +like a system of civil government comprehending all the settlements. +Evidences of prosperity and growing wealth began to multiply. But one is +impressed with the merely secular and commercial character of the +enterprise and with the tardy and feeble signs of religious life in the +colony. In 1626, when the settlement of Manhattan had grown to a village +of thirty houses and two hundred souls, there arrived two official +"sick-visitors," who undertook some of the public duties of a pastor. On +Sundays, in the loft over the horse-mill, they would read from the +Scriptures and the creeds. And two years later, in 1628, the village, +numbering now about two hundred and seventy souls, gave a grateful +welcome to Jonas Michaelius, minister of the gospel. He rejoiced to +gather no less than fifty communicants at the first celebration of the +Lord's Supper, and to organize them into a church according to the +Reformed discipline. The two elders were the governor and the Company's +storekeeper, men of honest report who had served in like functions in +churches of the fatherland. The records of this period are scanty; the +very fact of this beginning of a church and the presence of a minister +in the colony had faded out of history until restored by the recent +discovery of a letter of the forgotten Michaelius.[69:1] + +The sagacious men in control of the Dutch West India Company were quick +to recognize that weakness in their enterprise which in the splendid +colonial attempt of the French proved ultimately to be fatal. Their +settlements were almost exclusively devoted to the lucrative trade with +the Indians and were not taking root in the soil. With all its +advantages, the Dutch colony could not compete with New England.[70:1] +To meet this difficulty an expedient was adopted which was not long in +beginning to plague the inventors. A vast tract of territory, with +feudal rights and privileges, was offered to any man settling a colony +of fifty persons. The disputes which soon arose between these powerful +vassals and the sovereign Company had for one effect the recall of Peter +Minuit from his position of governor. Never again was the unlucky colony +to have so competent and worthy a head as this discarded elder of the +church. Nevertheless the scheme was not altogether a failure. + +In 1633 arrived a new pastor, Everard Bogardus, in the same ship with a +schoolmaster--the first in the colony--and the new governor, Van +Twiller. The governor was incompetent and corrupt, and the minister was +faithful and plain-spoken; what could result but conflict? During Van +Twiller's five years of mismanagement, nevertheless, the church emerged +from the mill-loft and was installed in a barn-like meeting-house of +wood. During the equally wretched administration of Kieft, the governor, +listening to the reproaches of a guest, who quoted the example of New +England, where the people were wont to build a fine church as soon as +they had houses for themselves, was incited to build a stone church +within the fort. There seems to have been little else that he did for +the kingdom of heaven. Pastor Bogardus is entitled to the respect of +later ages for the chronic quarrel that he kept up with the worthless +representatives of the Company. At length his righteous rebuke of an +atrociously wicked massacre of neighboring Indians perpetrated by Kieft +brought matters to a head. The two antagonists sailed in the same ship, +in 1647, to lay their dispute before the authorities in Holland, the +Company and the classis. The case went to a higher court. The ship was +cast away and both the parties were drowned. + +Meanwhile the patroon Van Rensselaer, on his great manor near Albany, +showed some sense of his duty to the souls of the people whom he had +brought out into the wilderness. He built a church and put into the +pastoral charge over his subjects one who, under his travestied name of +Megapolensis, has obtained a good report as a faithful minister of Jesus +Christ. It was he who saved Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, from +imminent torture and death among the Mohawks, and befriended him, and +saw him safely off for Europe. This is one honorable instance, out of +not a few, of personal respect and kindness shown to members of the +Roman clergy and the Jesuit society by men who held these organizations +in the severest reprobation. To his Jesuit brother he was drawn by a +peculiarly strong bond of fellowship, for the two were fellow-laborers +in the gospel to the red men. For Domine Megapolensis is claimed[71:1] +the high honor of being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians. + +In 1647, to the joy of all the colonists, arrived a new governor, Peter +Stuyvesant, not too late to save from utter ruin the colony that had +suffered everything short of ruin from the incompetency and wickedness +of Kieft. About the time that immigration into New England ceased with +the triumph of the Puritan party in England, there began to be a +distinct current of population setting toward the Hudson River colony. +The West India Company had been among the first of the speculators in +American lands to discover that a system of narrow monopoly is not the +best nurse for a colony; too late to save itself from ultimate +bankruptcy, it removed some of the barriers of trade, and at once +population began to flow in from other colonies, Virginia and New +England. Besides those who were attracted by the great business +advantages of the Dutch colony, there came some from Massachusetts, +driven thence by the policy of exclusiveness in religious opinion +deliberately adopted there. Ordinances were set forth assuring to +several such companies "liberty of conscience, according to the custom +and manner of Holland." Growing prosperously in numbers, the colony grew +in that cosmopolitan diversity of sects and races which went on +increasing with its years. As early as 1644 Father Jogues was told by +the governor that there were persons of eighteen different languages at +Manhattan, including Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, +Anabaptists (here called Mennonists), etc. No jealousy seems to have +arisen over this multiplication of sects until, in 1652, the Dutch +Lutherans, who had been attendants at the Dutch Reformed Church, +presented a respectful petition that they might be permitted to have +their own pastor and church. Denied by Governor Stuyvesant, the request +was presented to the Company and to the States-General. The two Reformed +pastors used the most strenuous endeavors through the classis of +Amsterdam to defeat the petition, under the fear that the concession of +this privilege would tend to the diminution of their congregation. This +resistance was successfully maintained until at last the petitioners +were able to obtain from the Roman Catholic Duke of York the religious +freedom which Dutch Calvinism had failed to give them. + +Started thus in the wrong direction, it was easy for the colonial +government to go from bad to worse. At a time when the entire force of +Dutch clergy in the colony numbered only four, they were most +unapostolically zealous to prevent any good from being done by +"unauthorized conventicles and the preaching of unqualified persons," +and procured the passing of an ordinance forbidding these under penalty +of fine and imprisonment. The mild remonstrances of the Company, which +was eager to get settlers without nice inquiries as to their religious +opinions, had little effect to restrain the enterprising orthodoxy of +Peter Stuyvesant. The activity of the Quakers among the Long Island +towns stirred him to new energy. Not only visiting missionaries, but +quiet dwellers at home, were subjected to severe and ignominious +punishments. The persecution was kept up until one of the banished +Friends, John Bowne, reached Amsterdam and laid the case before the +Company. This enlightened body promptly shortened the days of +tribulation by a letter to the superserviceable Stuyvesant, conceived in +a most commercial spirit. It suggested to him that it was doubtful +whether further persecution was expedient, unless it was desired to +check the growth of population, which at that stage of the enterprise +ought rather to be encouraged. No man, they said, ought to be molested +so long as he disturbed neither his neighbors nor the government. "This +maxim has always been the guide of the magistrates of this city, and the +consequence has been that from every land people have flocked to this +asylum. Tread thus in their steps, and we doubt not you will be +blessed." + +The stewardship of the interests of the kingdom of Christ in the New +Netherlands was about to be taken away from the Dutch West India +Company and the classis of Amsterdam. It will hardly be claimed by any +that the account of their stewardship was a glorious one. The supply of +ministers of the gospel had been tardy, inconstant, and scanty. At the +time when the Dutch ministers were most active in hindering the work of +others, there were only four of themselves in a vast territory with a +rapidly increasing population. The clearest sign of spiritual life in +the first generation of the colony is to be found in the righteous +quarrel of Domine Bogardus with the malignant Kieft, and the large +Christian brotherly kindness, the laborious mission work among the +Indians, and the long-sustained pastoral faithfulness of Domine +Megapolensis. + +Doubtless there is a record in heaven of faithful living and serving of +many true disciples among this people, whose names are unknown on earth; +but in writing history it is only with earthly memorials that we have to +do. The records of the Dutch regime present few indications of such +religious activity on the part of the colonists as would show that they +regarded religion otherwise than as something to be imported from +Holland at the expense of the Company. + +A studious and elegant writer, Mr. Douglas Campbell, has presented in +two ample and interesting volumes[74:1] the evidence in favor of his +thesis that the characteristic institutions established by the Puritans +in New England were derived, directly or indirectly, not from England, +but from Holland. One of the gravest answers to an argument which +contains so much to command respect is found in the history of the New +Netherlands. In the early records of no one of the American colonies is +there less manifestation of the Puritan characteristics than in the +records of the colony that was absolutely and exclusively under Dutch +control and made up chiefly of Dutch settlers. Nineteen years from the +beginning of the colony there was only one church in the whole extent of +it; at the end of thirty years there were only two churches. After ten +years of settlement the first schoolmaster arrived; and after thirty-six +years a Latin school was begun, for want of which up to that time young +men seeking a classical education had had to go to Boston for it. In no +colony does there appear less of local self-government or of central +representative government, less of civil liberty, or even of the +aspiration for it. The contrast between the character of this colony and +the heroic antecedents of the Dutch in Holland is astonishing and +inexplicable. The sordid government of a trading corporation doubtless +tended to depress the moral tone of the community, but this was an evil +common to many of the colonies. Ordinances, frequently renewed, for the +prevention of disorder and brawling on Sunday and for restricting the +sale of strong drinks, show how prevalent and obstinate were these +evils. In 1648 it is boldly asserted in the preamble to a new law that +one fourth of the houses in New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of +strong drink. Not a hopeful beginning for a young commonwealth. + + * * * * * + +Before bidding a willing good-bye to the Dutch regime of the New +Netherlands, it remains to tell the story of another colony, begun under +happy auspices, but so short-lived that its rise and fall are a mere +episode in the history of the Dutch colony. + +As early as 1630, under the feudal concessions of the Dutch West India +Company, extensive tracts had been taken on the South River, or +Delaware, and, after purchase from the Indians, settled by a colony +under the conduct of the best of all the Dutch leaders, De Vries. +Quarrels with the Indians arose, and at the end of a twelvemonth the +colony was extinguished in blood. The land seemed to be left free for +other occupants. + +Years before, the great Gustavus Adolphus had pondered and decided on an +enterprise of colonization in America.[76:1] The exigencies of the +Thirty Years' War delayed the execution of his plan, but after the fatal +day of Luetzen the project resumed by the fit successor of Gustavus in +the government of Sweden, the Chancellor Oxenstiern. Peter Minuit, who +had been rejected from his place as the first governor of New Amsterdam, +tendered to the Swedes the aid of his experience and approved wisdom; +and in the end of the year 1637, against the protest of Governor Kieft, +the strong foundations of a Swedish Lutheran colony were laid on the +banks of the Delaware. A new purchase was made of the Indians (who had +as little scruple as the Stuart kings about disposing of the same land +twice over to different parties), including the lands from the mouth of +the bay to the falls near Trenton. A fort was built where now stands the +city of Wilmington, and under the protection of its walls Christian +worship was begun by the first pastor, Torkillus. Strong reinforcements +arrived in 1643, with the energetic Governor Printz and that man of +"unwearied zeal in always propagating the love of God," the Rev. John +Campanius, who through faith has obtained a good report by his brief +most laborious ministry both to his fellow-countrymen and to the +Delaware Indians. + +The governor fixed his residence at Tinicum, now almost included within +the vast circumference of Philadelphia, and there, forty years before +the arrival of William Penn, Campanius preached the gospel of peace in +two languages, to the red men and to the white. + +The question of the Swedish title, raised at the outset by the protest +of the Dutch governor, could not long be postponed. It was suddenly +precipitated on the arrival of Governor Rising, in 1654, by his capture +of Fort Casimir, which the Dutch had built for the practical assertion +of their claim. It seems a somewhat grotesque act of piety on the part +of the Swedes, when, having celebrated the festival of Trinity Sunday by +whipping their fellow-Christians out of the fort, they commemorated the +good work by naming it the Fort of the Holy Trinity. It was a fatal +victory. The next year came Governor Stuyvesant with an overpowering +force and demanded and received the surrender of the colony to the +Dutch. Honorable terms of surrender were conceded; among them, against +the protest, alas! of good Domine Megapolensis, was the stipulation of +religious liberty for the Lutherans. + +It was the end of the Swedish colony, but not at once of the church. The +Swedish community of some seven hundred souls, cut off from +reinforcement and support from the fatherland, cherished its language +and traditions and the mold of doctrine in which it had been shaped; +after more than forty years the reviving interest of the mother church +was manifested by the sending out of missionaries to seek and succor the +daughter long absent and neglected in the wilderness. Two venerable +buildings, the Gloria Dei Church in the southern part of Philadelphia, +and the Old Swedes' Church at Wilmington, remain as monuments of the +honorable story. The Swedish language ceased to be spoken; the people +became undistinguishably absorbed in the swiftly multiplying population +about them. + + * * * * * + +It was a short-lived triumph in which the Dutch colony reduced the +Swedish under its jurisdiction. It only prepared a larger domain for it +to surrender, in its turn, to superior force. With perfidy worthy of +the House of Stuart, the newly restored king of England, having granted +to his brother, the Duke of York, territory already plighted to others +and territory already occupied by a friendly power, stretching in all +from the Connecticut to the Delaware, covered his designs with friendly +demonstrations, and in a time of profound peace surprised the quiet town +of New Amsterdam with a hostile fleet and land force and a peremptory +demand for surrender. The only hindrance interposed was a few hours of +vain and angry bluster from Stuyvesant. The indifference of the Dutch +republic, which had from the beginning refused its colony any promise of +protection, and the sordid despotism of the Company, and the arrogant +contempt of popular rights manifested by its governors, seem to have +left no spark of patriotic loyalty alive in the population. With inert +indifference, if not even with satisfaction, the colony transferred its +allegiance to the British crown, henceforth sovereign from Maine to the +Carolinas. The rights of person and property, religious liberty, and +freedom of trade were stipulated in the capitulation. + +The British government was happy in the character of Colonel Nicolls, +who came as commandant of the invading expedition and remained as +governor. Not only faithful to the terms of the surrender, but +considerate of the feelings and interests of the conquered province, he +gave the people small reason to regret the change of government. The +established Dutch church not only was not molested, but was continued in +full possession of its exceptional privileges. And it continued to +languish. At the time of the surrender the province contained "three +cities, thirty villages, and ten thousand inhabitants,"[78:1] and for +all these there were six ministers. The six soon dribbled away to +three, and for ten years these three continued without reinforcement. +This extreme feebleness of the clergy, the absence of any vigorous +church life among the laity, and the debilitating notion that the power +and the right to preach the gospel must be imported from Holland, put +the Dutch church at such a disadvantage as to invite aggression. Later +English governors showed no scruple in violating the spirit of the terms +of surrender and using their official power and influence to force the +establishment of the English church against the almost unanimous will of +the people. Property was unjustly taken and legal rights infringed to +this end, but the end was not attained. Colonel Morris, an earnest +Anglican, warned his friends against the folly of taking by force the +salaries of ministers chosen by the people and paying them over to "the +ministers of the church." "It may be a means of subsisting those +ministers, but they won't make many converts among a people who think +themselves very much injured." The pious efforts of Governor Fletcher, +the most zealous of these official propagandists, are even more severely +characterized in a dispatch of his successor, the Earl of Bellomont: +"The late governor, ... under the notion of a Church of England to be +put in opposition to the Dutch and French churches established here, +supported a few rascally English, who are a scandal to their nation and +the Protestant religion."[79:1] Evidently such support would have for +its main effect to make the pretended establishment odious to the +people. Colonel Morris sharply points out the impolicy as well as the +injustice of the course adopted, claiming that his church would have +been in a much better position without this political aid, and citing +the case of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, where nothing of the kind had +been attempted, and where, nevertheless, "there are four times the +number of churchmen that there are in this province of New York; and +they are so, most of them, upon principle, whereas nine parts in ten of +ours will add no great credit to whatever church they are of."[80:1] + +It need not be denied that government patronage, even when dispensed by +the dirty hands of such scurvy nursing fathers as Fletcher and Lord +Cornbury, may give strength of a certain sort to a religious +organization. Whatever could be done in the way of endowment or of +social preferment in behalf of the English church was done eagerly. But +happily this church had a better resource than royal governors in the +well-equipped and sustained, and generally well-chosen, army of +missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Not fewer +than fifty-eight of them were placed by the society in this single +province. And if among them there were those who seemed to "preach +Christ of envy and strife," as if the great aim of the preacher of the +gospel were to get a man out of one Christian sect into another, there +were others who showed a more Pauline and more Christian conception of +their work, taking their full share of the task of bringing the +knowledge of Christ to the unevangelized, whether white, red, or +black.[80:2] + +The diversity of organization which was destined to characterize the +church in the province of New York was increased by the inflow of +population from New England. The settlement of Long Island was from the +beginning Puritan English. The Hudson Valley began early to be occupied +by New Englanders bringing with them their pastors. In 1696 Domine +Selyns, the only Dutch pastor in New York City, in his annual report +congratulates himself, "Our number is now full," meaning that there are +four Dutch ministers in the whole province of New York, and adds: "In +the country places here there are many English preachers, mostly from +New England. They were ordained there, having been in a large measure +supplied by the University of Cambridge [Mass.]." The same letter gives +the names of the three eminent French pastors ministering to the +communities of Huguenot refugees at New Rochelle and New York and +elsewhere in the neighborhood. The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, more +important to the history of the opening century than any of the rest, +were yet to enter. + +The spectacle of the ancient Dutch church thus dwindling, and seemingly +content to dwindle, to one of the least of the tribes, is not a cheerful +one, nor one easy to understand. But out of this little and dilapidated +Bethlehem was to come forth a leader. Domine Frelinghuysen, arriving in +America in 1720, was to begin a work of training for the ministry, which +would result, in 1784, in the establishment of the first American +professorship of theology;[81:1] and by the fervor of his preaching he +was to win the signal glory of bringing in the Great Awakening. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[69:1] Dr. E. T. Corwin, "History of the Reformed (Dutch) Church in +America" (in the American Church History Series), pp. 28-32. + +[70:1] "The province, under the long years of Dutch supremacy, had +gathered only some seven thousand inhabitants, against the hundred and +twenty thousand of their New England neighbors" (Lodge, "English +Colonies," p. 297). + +[71:1] See Corwin, p. 37; but compare the claim made in behalf of the +Puritan Whitaker, "apostle to the Indians" thirty years earlier +(Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 18); compare also the work +of the Lutheran Campanius in New Sweden (Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. +83). + +[74:1] "The Puritans in Holland, England, and America" (New York, 1892). + +[76:1] The king's noble conceptions of what such a colony should be and +should accomplish are quoted in Bancroft, vol. ii., pp. 284, 285. + +[78:1] Corwin, p. 54. + +[79:1] Corwin, pp. 105, 121. + +[80:1] Corwin, p. 105. + +[80:2] "Digest of S. P. G. Records," pp. 57-79. That the sectarian +proselyting zeal manifested in some of the missionaries' reports made an +unfavorable impression on the society is indicated by the peremptory +terms of a resolution adopted in 1710: "That a stop be put to the +sending any more missionaries among Christians, except to such places +whose ministers are, or shall be, dead or removed" (_ibid._, p. 69). A +good resolution, but not well kept. + +[81:1] Corwin, p. 207. Undue stress should not be laid upon this formal +fact. The early New England colleges were primarily and mainly +theological seminaries and training-schools for the ministry. Their +professors were all theological professors. It is stated in Dwight's +"Life of Edwards" that James Pierpont, of New Haven, Edwards's +father-in-law, who died in 1714, lectured to the students of Yale +College, as professor of moral philosophy. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND--PILGRIM AND PURITAN. + + +The attitude of the Church of England Puritans toward the Separatists +from that church was the attitude of the earnest, patient, hopeful +reformer toiling for the removal of public abuses, toward the restless +"come-outer" who quits the conflict in despair of succeeding, and, +"without tarrying for any," sets up his little model of good order +outside. Such defection seemed to them not only of the nature of a +military desertion and a weakening of the right side, but also an +implied assertion of superior righteousness which provoked invidious +comparison and mutual irritation of feeling. The comparison must not be +pressed too far if we cite in illustration the feeling of the great mass +of earnest, practical antislavery men in the American conflict with +slavery toward the faction of "come-outer" abolitionists, who, +despairing of success within the church and the state, seceded from +both, thenceforth predicting failure for every practical enterprise of +reform on the part of their former workfellows, and at every defeat +chuckling, "I told you so." + +If we should compare the English Separatist of the seventeenth century +with this American Separatist of the nineteenth, we should be in still +greater danger of misleading. Certainly there were those among the +Separatists from the Church of England who, in the violence of their +alienation and the bitterness of their sufferings, did not refrain from +sour and acrid censoriousness toward the men who were nearest them in +religious conviction and pursuing like ends by another course. One does +not read far in the history of New England without encountering +reformers of this extreme type. But not such were the company of true +worshipers who, at peril of liberty and life, were wont to assemble each +Lord's day in a room of the old manor-house of Scrooby, of which William +Brewster was lessee, for Christian fellowship and worship, and for +instruction in Christian truth and duty from the saintly lips of John +Robinson. The extreme radicals of their day, they seem to have been +divinely preserved from the besetting sins of radicalism--its +narrowness, its self-righteousness, its censoriousness and intolerance. +Those who read the copious records of the early New England colonization +are again and again surprised at finding that the impoverished little +company of Separatists at Leyden and Plymouth, who were so sharply +reprobated by their Puritan brethren of the Church of England for their +schismatic attitude, their over-righteousness and exclusiveness, do +really excel, in liberality and patient tolerance and catholic and +comprehensive love toward all good men, those who sat in judgment on +them. Something of this is due to the native nobleness of the men +themselves, of whom the world was not worthy; something of it to their +long discipline in the passive virtues under bitter persecution in their +native land and in exile in Holland and in the wilderness; much of it +certainly to the incomparably wise and Christ-like teaching of Robinson +both at Scrooby and at Leyden, and afterward through the tender and +faithful epistles with which he followed them across the sea; and all of +it to the grace of God working in their hearts and glorified in their +living and their dying. + +It would be incompatible with the limits of this volume to recite in +detail the story of the Pilgrims; it has been told more amply and with +fuller repetition than almost any other chapter of human history, and is +never to be told or heard without awakening that thrill with which the +heartstrings respond to the sufferings and triumphs of Christ's blessed +martyrs and confessors. But, more dispassionately studied with reference +to its position and relations in ecclesiastical history, it cannot be +understood unless the sharp and sometimes exasperated antagonism is kept +in view that existed between the inconsiderable faction, as it was +esteemed, of the Separatists, and the great and growing Puritan party at +that time in disfavor with king and court and hierarchy, but soon to +become the dominant party not only in the Church of England, but in the +nation. It is not strange that the antagonism between the two parties +should be lost sight of. The two are identified in their theological +convictions, in their spiritual sympathies, and, for the most part, in +their judgment on questions concerning the externals of the church; and +presently their respective colonies, planted side by side, not without +mutual doubts and suspicions, are to grow together, leaving no visible +seam of juncture, + + Like kindred drops commingling into one.[84:1] + +To the Puritan reformer within the Church of England, the act of the +Pilgrims at Scrooby in separating themselves from the general mass of +English Christians, mingled though that mass might be with a multitude +of unworthy was nothing less than the sin of schism. One effect of the +act was to reflect odium upon the whole party of Puritans, and involve +them in the suspicion of that sedition which was so unjustly, but with +such fatal success, imputed to the Separatists. It was a hard and +doubtful warfare that the Puritans were waging against spiritual +wickedness in high places; the defection of the Separatists doubly +weakened them in the conflict. It is not strange, however it may seem +so, that the animosity of Puritan toward Separatist was sometimes +acrimonious, nor that the public reproaches hurled at the unpopular +little party should have provoked recriminations upon the assailants as +being involved in the defilements and the plagues of Babylon, and should +have driven the Separatists into a narrower exclusiveness of separation, +cutting themselves off not only from communion with abuses and +corruptions in the Church of England, but even from fellowship with good +and holy men in the national church who did not find it a duty to +secede. + +Nothing of this bitterness and narrowness is found in Robinson. +Strenuously as he maintained the right and duty of separation from the +Establishment, he was, especially in his later years, no less earnest in +condemning the "Separatists who carried their separation too far and had +gone beyond the true landmarks in matters of Christian doctrine or of +Christian fellowship."[85:1] His latest work, "found in his studie after +his decease," was "A Treatise of the Lawfulness of Hearing of the +Ministers in the Church of England." + +The moderateness of Robinson's position, and the brotherly kindness of +his temper, could not save him and his people from the prevailing odium +that rested upon the Separatist. Many and grave were the sorrows through +which the Pilgrim church had to pass in its way from the little hamlet +of Scrooby to the bleak hill of Plymouth. They were in peril from the +persecutor at home and in peril in the attempt to escape; in peril from +greedy speculators and malignant politicians; in peril from the sea and +from cold and from starvation; in peril from the savages and from false +brethren privily sent among them to spy out their liberties; but an +added bitterness to all their tribulations lay in this, that, for the +course which they were constrained in conscience to pursue, they were +subject to the reprobation of those whom they most highly honored as +their brethren in the faith of Christ. Some of the most heartbreaking of +their trials arose directly from the unwillingness of English Puritans +to sustain, or even countenance, the Pilgrim colony. + +In the year 1607, when the ships of the Virginia Company were about +landing their freight of emigrants and supplies at Jamestown, the first +and unsuccessful attempt of the Pilgrims was made to escape from their +native land to Holland. Before the end of 1608 the greater part of them, +in scattering parties, had effected the passage of the North Sea, and +the church was reunited in a land of religious freedom. With what a +blameless, diligent, and peaceful life they adorned the name of disciple +through all the twelve years of their sojourn, how honored and beloved +they were among the churches and in the University of Leyden, there are +abundant testimonies. The twelve years of seclusion in an alien land +among a people of strange language was not too long a discipline of +preparation for that work for which the Head of the church had set them +apart. This was the period of Robinson's activity as author. In erudite +studies, in grave debate with gainsayers at home and with fellow-exiles +in Holland, he was maturing in his own mind, and in the minds of the +church, those large and liberal yet definite views of church +organization and duty which were destined for coming ages so profoundly +to influence the American church in all its orders and divisions. "He +became a reformer of the Separation."[87:1] + +We pass by the heroic and pathetic story of the consultations and +correspondences, the negotiations and disappointments, the embarkation +and voyage, and come to that memorable date, November 11 (= 21), 1620, +when, arrived off the shore of Cape Cod, the little company, without +charter or warrant of any kind from any government on earth, about to +land on a savage continent in quest of a home, gathered in the cabin of +the "Mayflower," and after a method quite in analogy with that in which, +sixteen years before, they had constituted the church at Scrooby, +entered into formal and solemn compact "in the presence of God and one +of another, covenanting and combining themselves together into a civil +body politic." + +It is difficult, in reading the instrument then subscribed, to avoid the +conviction that the theory of the origin of the powers of civil +government in a social compact, which had long floated in literature +before it came to be distinctly articulated in the "Contrat Social" of +Jean Jacques Rousseau, was familiar to the minds of those by whom the +paper was drawn. Thoughtful men at the present day universally recognize +the fallacy of this plausible hypothesis, which once had such wide +currency and so serious an influence on the course of political history +in America. But whether or not they were affected by the theory, the +practical good sense of the men and their deference to the teachings of +the Bible secured them from the vicious and absurd consequences +deducible from it. Not all the names of the colonists were subscribed to +the compact,--a clear indication of the freedom of individual judgment +in that company,--but it was never for a moment held that the +dissentients were any the less bound by it. When worthless John +Billington, who had somehow got "shuffled into their company," was +sentenced for disrespect and disobedience to Captain Myles Standish "to +have his neck and heels tied together," it does not seem to have +occurred to him to plead that he had never entered into the social +compact; nor yet when the same wretched man, ten years later, was by a +jury convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death and executed. +Logically, under the social-compact theory, it would have been competent +for those dissenting from this compact to enter into another, and set up +a competing civil government on the same ground; but what would have +been the practical value of this line of argument might have been +learned from Mr. Thomas Morton, of Furnivall's Inn, after he had been +haled out of his disorderly house at Merry Mount by Captain Standish, +and convented before the authorities at Plymouth. + +The social-compact theory as applied to the church, implying that the +mutual duties of Christian disciples in society are derived solely from +mutual stipulations, is quite as transparently fallacious as when it is +applied to civil polity, and the consequences deducible from it are not +less absurd. But it cannot be claimed for the Plymouth men, and still +less for their spiritual successors, that they have wholly escaped the +evil consequences of their theory in its practical applications. The +notion that a church of Christ is a club, having no authority or +limitations but what it derives from club rules agreed on among the +members, would have been scouted by the Pilgrims; among those who now +claim to sit in their seats there are some who would hesitate to admit +it, and many who would frankly avow it with all its mischievous +implications. Planted in the soil of Plymouth, it spread at once through +New England, and has become widely rooted in distant and diverse +regions of the American church.[89:1] + +The church of Plymouth, though deprived of its pastor, continued to be +rich in faith and in all spiritual gifts, and most of all in the +excellent gift of charity. The history of it year after year is a +beautiful illustration of brotherly kindness and mutual self-sacrifice +among themselves and of forgiving patience toward enemies. But the +colony, beginning in extreme feebleness and penury, never became either +strong or rich. One hundred and two souls embarked in the "Mayflower," +of whom nearly one half were dead before the end of four months. At the +end of four years the number had increased to one hundred and eighty. At +the end of ten years the settlement numbered three hundred persons. + +It could not have been with joy wholly unalloyed with misgivings that +this feeble folk learned of a powerful movement for planting a Puritan +colony close in the neighborhood. The movement had begun in the heart of +the national church, and represented everything that was best in that +institution. The Rev. John White, rector of Dorchester, followed across +the sea with pastoral solicitude the young men of his parish, who, in +the business of the fisheries, were wont to make long stay on the New +England coast, far from home and church. His thought was to establish a +settlement that should be a sort of depot of supplies for the fishing +fleets, and a temporary home attended with the comforts and safeguards +of Christian influence. The project was a costly failure; but it was +like the corn of wheat falling into the ground to die, and bringing +forth much fruit. A gentleman of energy and dignity, John Endicott, +pledged his personal service as leader of a new colony. In September, +1628, he landed with a pioneering party at Naumkeag, and having happily +composed some differences that arose with the earlier comers, they named +the place _Salem_, which is, by interpretation, "Peace." Already, with +the newcomers and the old, the well-provided settlement numbered more +than fifty persons, busy in preparation for further arrivals. Meanwhile +vigorous work was doing in England. The organization to sustain the +colony represented adequate capital and the highest quality of character +and influence. A royal charter, drawn with sagacious care to secure +every privilege the Puritan Company desired, was secured from the +fatuity of the reigning Stuart, erecting in the wilderness such a free +commonwealth as his poor little soul abhorred; and preparation was made +for sending out, in the spring of 1629, a noble fleet of six vessels, +carrying three hundred men and a hundred women and children, with +ample equipment of provisions, tools and arms, and live stock. The +Company had taken care that there should be "plentiful provision +of godly ministers." Three approved clergymen of the Church of +England--Higginson, Skelton, and Bright--had been chosen by the Company +to attend the expedition, besides whom one Ralph Smith, a Separatist +minister, had been permitted to take passage before the Company +"understood of his difference in judgment in some things" from the other +ministers. He was permitted to continue his journey, yet not without a +caution to the governor that unless he were found "conformable to the +government" he was not to be suffered to remain within the limits of its +jurisdiction. An incident of this departure rests on the sole authority +of Cotton Mather, and is best told in his own words: + + "When they came to the Land's End, Mr. Higginson, calling up + his children and other passengers unto the stern of the ship + to take their last sight of England, said, 'We will not say, + as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of + England, Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome! but we will say, + Farewell, dear England! farewell, the church of God in + England, and all the Christian friends there! We do not go to + New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though + we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it; but we go + to practice the positive part of church reformation and + propagate the gospel in America.'" + +The story ought to be true, for the intrinsic likeliness of it; and it +is all the likelier for the fact that among the passengers, kindly and +even fraternally treated, and yet the object of grave misgivings, was +the honest Separatist minister, Ralph Smith.[91:1] The ideal of the new +colony could hardly have been better expressed than in these possibly +apocryphal words ascribed to Mr. Higginson. These were not fugitives +seeking asylum from persecution. Still less were they planning an asylum +for others. They were intent on the planting of a new commonwealth, in +which the church of Christ, not according to the imperfect and perverted +pattern of the English Establishment, but according to a fairer pattern, +that had been showed them in their mounts of vision, should be both free +and dominant. If this purpose of theirs was wrong; if they had no right +to deny themselves the comforts and delights of their native land, and +at vast cost of treasure to seclude themselves within a defined tract of +wilderness, for the accomplishment of an enterprise which they conceived +to be of the highest beneficence to mankind--then doubtless many of the +measures which they took in pursuance of this purpose must fall under +the same condemnation with the purpose itself. If there are minds so +constituted as to perceive no moral difference between banishing a man +from his native home, for opinion's sake, and declining, on account of +difference of opinion, to admit a man to partnership in a difficult and +hazardous enterprise organized on a distinctly exclusive basis, such +minds will be constrained to condemn the Puritan colonists from the +start and all along. Minds otherwise constituted will be able to +discriminate between the righteous following of a justifiable policy and +the lapses of the colonial governments from high and Christian motives +and righteous courses. Whether the policy of rigorous exclusiveness, +building up communities of picked material, homogeneous in race, +language, and religion, is on the whole less wise for the founders of a +new commonwealth than a sweepingly comprehensive policy, gathering in +people mutually alien in speech and creed and habits, is a fairly open +question for historical students. Much light might be thrown upon it by +the comparative history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, of New +England and Pennsylvania. It is not a question that is answered at once +by the mere statement of it. + +We do not need to be told that to the little Separatist settlement at +Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the +founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on +ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a +momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions +emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of +answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by the spirit of +Christian love. + +That great spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general +exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the +spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a +divine fulfillment. Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in +favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their +pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached +against them would practice as they did if they were in a place where +they might have liberty and live conformably." One of the most +affectionate of his disciples, Edward Winslow, wrote down some of the +precious and memorable words which the pastor, who was to see their face +no more, uttered through his tears as they were about to leave him. +"'There will be no difference,' he said, 'between the unconformable +ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out +of the kingdom.' And so he advised us to close with the godly party of +the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz., +how near we might possibly without sin close with them, rather than in +the least measure to affect division or separation from them." + +The solitude of the little starving hamlet by the sea was favorable to +the springing and fructifying of this seed in the good and honest hearts +into which it had been cast. Before the great fleet of colonists, with +its three unconformable Church of England clergymen, had reached the +port of Salem the good seed had been planted anew in other hearts not +less honest and good. It fell on this wise. The pioneer party at Salem +who came with Endicott, "arriving there in an uncultivated desert, many +of them, for want of wholesome diet and convenient lodgings, were seized +with the scurvy and other distempers, which shortened many of their +days, and prevented many of the rest from performing any great matter of +labor that year for advancing the work of the plantation." Whereupon the +governor, hearing that at Plymouth lived a physician "that had some +skill that way," wrote thither for help, and at once the beloved +physician and deacon of the Plymouth church, Dr. Samuel Fuller, +hastened to their relief. On what themes the discourse revolved between +the Puritan governor just from England and the Separatist deacon already +for so many years an exile, and whither it tended, is manifested in a +letter written soon after by Governor Endicott, of Salem, to Governor +Bradford, of Plymouth, under date May 11 (= 21), 1629. The letter marks +an epoch in the history of American Christianity: + + "_To the worshipful and my right worthy friend, William + Bradford, Esq., Governor of New Plymouth, these:_ + + "RIGHT WORTHY SIR: It is a thing not usual that servants to + one Master and of the same household should be strangers. I + assure you I desire it not; nay, to speak more plainly, I + cannot be so to you. God's people are marked with one and the + same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, + for the main, one and the same heart, guided by one and the + same Spirit of truth; and where this is there can be no + discord--nay, here must needs be sweet harmony. The same + request with you I make unto the Lord, that we may as + Christian brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love, + bending all our hearts and forces in furthering a work beyond + our strength, with reverence and fear fastening our eyes + always on him that only is able to direct and prosper all our + ways. + + "I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and + care in sending Mr. Fuller among us, and I rejoice much that I + am by him satisfied touching your judgments of the outward + form of God's worship.[94:1] It is, as far as I can yet + gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, + and the same which I have professed and maintained ever since + the Lord in mercy revealed himself to me, being very far + different from the common report that hath been spread of you + touching that particular. But God's children must not look for + less here below, and it is the great mercy of God that he + strengthens them to go through with it. + + "I shall not need at this time to be tedious unto you, for, + God willing, I purpose to see your face shortly. In the + meantime I humbly take my leave of you, committing you to the + Lord's blessed protection, and rest + + "Your assured loving friend and servant, + + "JOHN ENDICOTT." + +"The positive part of church reformation," which Higginson and his +companions had come into the wilderness to practice, appeared in a new +light when studied under the new conditions. The question of separation +from the general fellowship of English Christians, which had lain +heavily on their consciences, was no longer a question; instead of it +arose the question of separation from their beloved and honored +fellow-Christians at Plymouth. The Act of Uniformity and the tyrannous +processes by which it was enforced no longer existed for them. They were +free to build the house of God simply according to the teaching of the +divine Word. What form will the structure take? + +One of the first practical questions to emerge was the question by what +authority their ministry was to be exercised. On one point they seem to +have been quite clear. The episcopal ordination, which each of them had +received in England, whatever validity it may have had in English law, +gave them no authority in the church of God in Salem. Further, their +appointment from the Company in London, although it was a regular +commission from the constituted civil government of the colony, could +confer no office in the spiritual house. A day of solemn fasting was +held, by the governor's appointment, for the choice of pastor and +teacher, and after prayer the two recognized candidates for the two +offices, Skelton and Higginson, were called upon to give their views as +to a divine call to the ministry. "They acknowledged there was a twofold +calling: the one, an inward calling, when the Lord moved the heart of a +man to take that calling upon him, and fitted him with gifts for the +same; the second (the outward calling) was from the people, when a +company of believers are joined together in covenant to walk together in +all the ways of God." Thereupon the assembly proceeded to a written +ballot, and its choice fell upon Mr. Skelton and Mr. Higginson. It +remained for the ministers elect to be solemnly inducted into office, +which was done with prayer and the laying on of hands in benediction. + +But presently there were searchings of heart over the anterior question +as to the constituency of the church. Were all the population of Salem +to be reckoned as of the church of Salem? and if not, who should +"discern between the righteous and the wicked"? The result of study of +this question, in the light of the New Testament, was this--that it was +"necessary for those who intended to be of the church solemnly to enter +into a covenant engagement one with another, in the presence of God, to +walk together before him according to his Word." Thirty persons were +chosen to be the first members of the church, who in a set form of words +made public vows of faithfulness to each other and to Christ. By the +church thus constituted the pastor and teacher, already installed in +office in the parish, were instituted as ministers of the church.[96:1] + +Before the solemnities of that notable day were concluded, a belated +vessel that had been eagerly awaited landed on the beach at Salem the +"messengers of the church at Plymouth." They came into the assembly, +Governor Bradford at the head, and in the name of the Pilgrim church +declared their "approbation and concurrence," and greeted the new +church, the first-born in America, with "the right hand of fellowship." +A thoughtful and devoted student declares this day's proceedings to be +"the beginning of a distinctively American church history."[97:1] + +The immediate sequel of this transaction is characteristic and +instructive. Two brothers, John and Samuel Browne, members of the +council of the colony, took grave offense at this departure from the +ways of the Church of England, and, joining to themselves others +like-minded, set up separate worship according to the Book of Common +Prayer. Being called to account before the governor for their schismatic +procedure, they took an aggressive tone and declared that the ministers, +"were Separatists, and would be Anabaptists." The two brothers were +illogical. The ministers had not departed from the Nationalist and +anti-Separatist principles enunciated by Higginson from the quarter-deck +of the "Talbot." What they had just done was to lay the foundations of a +national church for the commonwealth that was in building. And the two +brothers, trying to draw off a part of the people into their +schism-shop, were Separatists, although they were doubtless surprised to +discover it. There was not the slightest hesitation on the governor's +part as to the proper course to be pursued. "Finding those two brothers +to be of high spirits, and their speeches and practices tending to +mutiny and faction, the governor told them that New England was no place +for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back for England at +the return of the ships the same year."[98:1] Neither then nor +afterward was there any trace of doubt in the minds of the New England +settlers, in going three thousand miles away into the seclusion of the +wilderness, of their indefeasible moral right to pick their own company. +There was abundant opportunity for mistake and temptation to wrong-doing +in the exercise of this right, but the right itself is so nearly +self-evident as to need no argument. + +While the civil and ecclesiastical foundations of the Salem community +are thus being laid, there is preparing on the other side of the sea +that great _coup d'etat_ which is to create, almost in a day, a +practically independent American republic. Until this is accomplished +the colonial organization is according to a common pattern, a settlement +on a distant shore, equipped, sustained, and governed with authority all +but sovereign by a commercial company at the metropolis, within the +reach, and thus under the control, of the supreme power. Suppose, now, +that the shareholders in the commercial company take their charter +conferring all but sovereign authority, and transport themselves and it +across the sea to the heart of the settlement, there to admit other +planters, at their discretion, to the franchise of the Company, what +then? This was the question pondered and decided in those dark days of +English liberty, when the triumph of despotism, civil and spiritual, +over the rights of Englishmen seemed almost achieved. The old officers +of the Company resigned; their places were filled by Winthrop and Dudley +and others, who had undertaken to emigrate; and that memorable season of +1630 not less than seventeen ships, carrying about one thousand +passengers, sailed from English ports for Massachusetts Bay. It was the +beginning of the great Puritan exodus. Attempts were made by the king +and the archbishop to stay the flow of emigration, but with only +transient success. "At the end of ten years from Winthrop's arrival +about twenty-one thousand Englishmen, or four thousand families, +including the few hundreds who were here before him, had come over in +three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred thousand pounds +sterling."[99:1] What could not be done by despotism was accomplished by +the triumph of the people over the court. The meeting of the Long +Parliament in 1640 made it safe for Puritans to stay in England; and the +Puritans stayed. The current of migration was not only checked, but +turned backward. It is reckoned that within four generations from that +time more persons went to old England than originally came thence. The +beginnings of this return were of high importance. Among the home-going +companies were men who were destined to render eminent service in the +reconstruction of English society, both in the state and in the army, +and especially in the church. The example of the New England churches, +voluminously set forth in response to written inquiries from England, +had great influence in saving the mother country from suffering the +imposition of a Presbyterian hierarchy that threatened to be as +intolerant and as intolerable as the tyranny of Laud. + +For the order of the New England churches crystallized rapidly into a +systematic and definite church polity, far removed from mere Separatism +even in the temperate form in which this had been illustrated by +Robinson and the Pilgrim church. The successive companies of emigrants +as they arrived, ship-load after ship-load, each with its minister or +college of ministers, followed with almost monotonous exactness the +method adopted in the organization of the church in Salem. A small +company of the best Christians entered into mutual covenant as a church +of Christ, and this number, growing by well-considered accessions, added +to itself from time to time other believers on the evidence and +confession of their faith in Christ. The ministers, all or nearly all of +whom had been clergymen in the orders of the Church of England, were of +one mind in declining to consider their episcopal ordination in England +as conferring on them any spiritual authority in a church newly gathered +in America. They found rather in the free choice of the brotherhood the +sign of a divine call to spiritual functions in the church, and were +inducted into office by the primitive form of the laying on of hands. + +In many ways, but especially in the systematized relations of the +churches with one another and in their common relations with the civil +government, the settled Nationalism of the great Puritan migration was +illustrated. With the least possible constraint on the individual or on +the church, they were clear in their purpose that their young state +should have its established church. + +Through what rude experiences the system and the men were tested has +been abundantly told and retold.[100:1] Roger Williams, learned, +eloquent, sincere, generous, a man after their own heart, was a very +malignant among Separatists, separating himself not only from the +English church, but from all who would not separate from it, and from +all who would not separate from these, and so on, until he could no +longer, for conscience' sake, hold fellowship with his wife in family +prayers. After long patience the colonial government deemed it necessary +to signify to him that if his conscience would not suffer him to keep +quiet, and refrain from stirring up sedition, and embroiling the colony +with the English government, he would have to seek freedom for that +sort of conscience outside of their jurisdiction; and they put him out +accordingly, to the great advantage of both parties and without loss of +mutual respect and love. A little later, a clever woman, Mrs. Ann +Hutchinson, with a vast conceit of her superior holiness and with the +ugly censoriousness which is a usual accompaniment of that grace, +demonstrated her genius for mixing a theological controversy with +personal jealousies and public anxieties, and involved the whole colony +of the Bay in an acrimonious quarrel, such as to give an unpleasant tone +of partisanship and ill temper to the proceedings in her case, whether +ecclesiastical or civil. She seems clearly to have been a willful and +persistent nuisance in the little community, and there were good reasons +for wanting to be rid of her, and right ways to that end. They took the +wrong way and tried her for heresy. In like manner, when the Quakers +came among them,--not of the mild, meek, inoffensive modern variety to +which we are accustomed, but of the fierce, aggressive early +type,--instead of proceeding against them for their overt offenses +against the state, disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of +court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly as Quakers, thus +putting themselves in the wrong and conceding to their adversaries that +crown of martyrdom for which their souls were hankering and to which +they were not fully entitled. + +Of course, in maintaining the principle of Nationalism, the New England +Puritans did not decline the implications and corollaries of that +principle. It was only to a prophetic genius like the Separatist Roger +Williams that it was revealed that civil government had no concern to +enforce "the laws of the first table." But the historical student might +be puzzled to name any other church establishment under which less of +molestation was suffered by dissenters, or more of actual encouragement +given to rival sects, than under the New England theocracies. The +Nationalist principle was exclusive; the men who held it in New England +(subject though they were to the temptations of sectarian emulation and +fanatic zeal) were large-minded and generous men. + +The general uniformity of church organization among the Puritan +plantations is the more remarkable in view of the notable independence +and originality of the leading men, who represented tendencies of +opinion as widely diverging as the quasi-Presbyterianism of John Eliot +and the doctrinaire democracy of John Wise. These variations of +ecclesiastico-political theory had much to do with the speedy diffusion +of the immigrant population. For larger freedom in building his ideal +New Jerusalem, the statesmanlike pastor, Thomas Hooker, led forth his +flock a second time into the great and terrible wilderness, and with his +associates devised what has been declared to be "the first example in +history of a written constitution--a distinct organic law constituting a +government and defining its powers."[102:1] The like motive determined +the choice company under John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton to refuse +all inducements and importunities to remain in Massachusetts, choosing +rather to build on no other man's foundations at New Haven.[102:2] At +the end of a hundred years from the settlement of Boston the shores and +river valleys of Massachusetts and Connecticut were planted with towns, +each self-governing as a pure democracy, each with its church and +educated minister and its system of common schools. The two colleges at +Cambridge and New Haven were busy with their appointed work of training +young men to the service of God "in church or civil state." And this +great and prosperous and intelligent population was, with inconsiderable +exceptions, the unmingled progeny of the four thousand English families +who, under stress of the tyranny of Charles Stuart and the persecution +of William Laud, had crossed the sea in the twelve years from 1628 to +1640. + +The traditions of the fathers of New England had been piously cherished +down to this third and fourth generation. The model of an ideal state +that had been set up had, meanwhile, been more or less deformed, +especially in Massachusetts, by the interference of England; the +dominance of the established churches had been slightly infringed by the +growth here and there of dissenting churches, Baptist, Episcopalian, and +Quaker; but the framework both of church and of state was wonderfully +little decayed or impaired. The same simplicity in the outward order of +worship was maintained; the same form of high Calvinistic theology +continued to be cherished as a norm of sound preaching and as a vehicle +of instruction to children. All things continued as they had been; and +yet it would have been a most superficial observer who had failed to +detect signs of approaching change. The disproportions of the +Calvinistic system, exaggerated in the popular acceptation, as in the +favorite "Day of Doom" of Michael Wigglesworth, forced the effort after +practical readjustments. The magnifying of divine sovereignty in the +saving of men, to the obscuring of human responsibility, inevitably +mitigated the church's reprobation of respectable people who could +testify of no experience of conversion, and yet did not wish to +relinquish for themselves or their families their relation to the +church. Out of the conflict between two aspects of theological truth, +and the conflict between the Nationalist and the Separatist conceptions +of the church, and especially out of the mistaken policy of restricting +the civil franchise to church-members, came forth that device of the +"Half-way Covenant" which provided for a hereditary quasi-membership in +the church for worthy people whose lives were without scandal, and who, +not having been subjects of an experience of conscious conversion, were +felt to be not altogether to blame for the fact. From the same causes +came forth, and widely prevailed, the tenet of "Stoddardeanism," so +called as originating in the pastoral work, and, it is said, in the +personal experience, of Solomon Stoddard, the saintly minister of +Northampton from 1669 till 1729, when he was succeeded by his colleague +and grandson, Jonathan Edwards. It is the view that the Lord's Supper is +instituted as a means of regeneration as well as of sanctification, and +that those who are consciously "in a natural condition" ought not to be +repelled, but rather encouraged to come to it. From the same causes, by +natural sequence, came that so-called Arminianism[104:1] which, instead +of urging the immediate necessity and duty of conversion, was content +with commending a "diligent use of means," which might be the hopeful +antecedent of that divine grace. + +These divergences from the straight lines of the primeval New England +Calvinism had already begun to be manifest during the lifetime of some +of the founders. Of not less grave import was the deflection from the +lofty moral standard of the fathers. A great New Englander, Horace +Bushnell, maintaining his thesis that great migrations are followed by a +tendency to barbarism, has cited in proof this part of New England +history.[105:1] As early as the second generation, the evil tendency +seemed so formidable as to lead to the calling, by the General Court of +Massachusetts, of the "Reforming Synod" of 1679. No one can say that the +heroic age of New England was past. History has no nobler record to +show, of courage and fortitude in both men and women, than that of New +England in the Indian wars. But the terrors of those days of +tribulation, the breaking up of communities, the decimation of the +population, the long absences of the young men on the bloody business of +the soldier, were not favorable for maturing the fruits of the Spirit. +Withal, the intrigues of British politicians, the threatened or actual +molestations of the civil governments of the colonies, and the +corrupting influences proceeding from every center of viceregal +authority, abetted the tendency to demoralization. By the end of the +first third of the eighteenth century, New England, politically, +ecclesiastically, theologically, and morally, had come into a state of +unstable equilibrium. An overturn is impending. + + * * * * * + +The set and sturdy resolution of the founders of the four colonies of +the New England confederacy that the first planting of their territory +should be on rigorously exclusive principles, with a homogeneous and +mutually congenial population, under a firm discipline both civil and +ecclesiastical, finds an experimental justification in the history of +the neighbor colony of Rhode Island. No commonwealth can boast a nobler +and purer name for its founder than the name of Roger Williams. Rhode +Island, founded in generous reaction from the exclusiveness of +Massachusetts, embodied the principle of "soul-liberty" in its earliest +acts. The announcement that under its jurisdiction no man was to be +molested by the civil power for his religious belief was a broad +invitation to all who were uncomfortable under the neighboring +theocracies.[106:1] And the invitation was freely accepted. The +companions of Williams were reinforced by the friends of Mrs. +Hutchinson, some of them men of substance and weight of character. The +increasing number of persons inclined to Baptist views found in Rhode +Island a free and congenial atmosphere. Williams himself was not long in +coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found +Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. +More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered +themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its +side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams +before his death that the declaration of individual rights and +independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The +heterogeneous population failed to settle into any stable polity. After +two generations the tyranny of Andros, so odious elsewhere in New +England, was actually welcome as putting an end to the liberty that had +been hardly better than anarchy. + +The results of the manner of the first planting on the growth of the +church in Rhode Island were of a like sort. There is no room for +question that the material of a true church was there, in the person of +faithful and consecrated disciples of Christ, and therefore there must +have been gathering together in common worship and mutual edification. +But the sense of individual rights and responsibilities seems to have +overshadowed the love for the whole brotherhood of disciples. The +condition of the church illustrated the Separatism of Williams reduced +to the absurd. There was feeble organization of Christians in knots and +coteries. But sixty years passed before the building of the first house +of worship in Providence, and at the end of almost a century "there had +not existed in the whole colony more than eight or ten churches of any +denomination, and these were mostly in a very feeble and precarious +state."[107:1] + +Meanwhile the inadequate compensations of a state of schism began to +show themselves. In the absence of any organized fellowship of the whole +there grew up, more than elsewhere, a mutual tolerance and even love +among the petty sects, the lesson of which was learned where it was most +needed. The churches of "the standing order" in Massachusetts not only +admired but imitated "the peace and love which societies of different +modes of worship entertained toward each other in Rhode Island." In +1718, not forty years from the time when Baptist churches ceased to be +_religio illicita_ in Massachusetts, three foremost pastors of Boston +assisted in the ordination of a minister to the Baptist church, at which +Cotton Mather preached the sermon, entitled "Good Men United." It +contained a frank confession of repentance for the persecutions of which +the Boston churches had been guilty.[107:2] + +There is a double lesson to be learned from the history of these +neighbor colonies: first, that a rigorously exclusive selection of men +like-minded is the best seed for the first planting of a commonwealth in +the wilderness; secondly, that the exclusiveness that is justified in +the infancy of such a community cannot wisely, nor even righteously, nor +even possibly, be maintained in its adolescence and maturity. The +church-state of Massachusetts and New Haven was overthrown at the end of +the first generation by external interference. If it had continued a few +years longer it must have fallen of itself; but it lasted long enough to +be the mold in which the civilization of the young States should set and +harden. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[84:1] The mutual opposition of Puritan and Pilgrim is brought out with +emphasis in "The Genesis of the New England Churches," by L. Bacon, +especially chaps. v., vii., xviii. + +[85:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis of New England Churches," p. 245. + +[87:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 245. + +[89:1] The writer takes leave to refer to two essays of his own, in +"Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., 1895), for a +fuller statement of this point. + +[91:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 467. + +[94:1] The phrase is used in a large sense, as comprehending the whole +subject of the nature and organization of the visible church (L. Bacon, +"Genesis," p. 456, note). + +[96:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 475. + +[97:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 477. + +[98:1] Morton's Memorial, in Palfrey, vol. i., p. 298. + +[99:1] Palfrey, vol. i., p. 584. + +[100:1] As, for example, with great amplitude by Palfrey; and in more +condensed form by Dr. Williston Walker, "Congregationalists" (in +American Church History Series). + +[102:1] L. Bacon, "Early Constitutional History of Connecticut." + +[102:2] L. Bacon, "Thirteen Historical Discourses." The two mutually +independent republics at Hartford and New Haven represented opposite +tendencies. That at New Haven was after the highest type of theocracy; +the Connecticut colony inclined to the less rigorous model of Plymouth, +not exacting church-membership as a condition of voting. How important +this condition appeared to the mind of Davenport may be judged from his +exclamation when it ceased, at the union of New Haven with Connecticut. +He wrote to a friend, "In N. H. C. Christ's interest is miserably lost;" +and prepared to turn his back forever on the colony of which he was the +father. + +[104:1] The name, applied at first as a stigma to the liberalizing +school of New England theology, may easily mislead if taken either in +its earlier historic sense or in the sense which it was about to acquire +in the Wesleyan revival. The surprise of the eighteenth century New +England theologians at finding the word associated with intense fervor +of preaching and of religious experience is expressed in the saying, +"There is all the difference between a cold Arminian and a hot Arminian +that there is between a cold potato and a hot potato." For a lucid +account of the subject, see W. Walker, "History of the Congregational +Churches," chap. viii. + +[105:1] Sermon on "Barbarism the First Danger." + +[106:1] And yet, even in the Rhode Island communities, the arbitrary +right of exclusion, in the exercise of which Roger Williams had been +shut out from Massachusetts, was asserted and adopted. It was forbidden +to sell land to a newcomer, except by consent of prior settlers. + +[107:1] Dr. J. G. Vose, "Congregationalism in Rhode Island," pp. 16, 53, +63. + +[107:2] _Ibid._, pp. 56, 57. "Good men, alas! have done such ill things +as these. New England also has in former times done something of this +aspect which would not now be so well approved; in which, if the +brethren in whose house we are now convened met with anything too +unbrotherly, they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike +of everything which looked like persecution in the days that have passed +over us." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +THE MIDDLE COLONIES: THE JERSEYS, DELAWARE, AND PENNSYLVANIA--THE QUAKER +COLONIZATION--GEORGIA. + + +The bargainings and conveyancings, the confirmations and reclamations, +the setting up and overturning, which, after the conquest of the New +Netherlands, had the effect to detach the peninsula of New Jersey from +the jurisdiction of New York, and to divide it for a time into two +governments, belong to political history; but they had, of course, an +important influence on the planting of the church in that territory. One +result of them was a wide diversity of materials in the early growth of +the church. + +Toward the end of the Dutch occupation, one lonely congregation had been +planted in that region which, at a later time, when the Dutch church in +America had awaked from its lethargy, was to become known as "the garden +of the Dutch church."[109:1] + +After the extinction of the high theocracy of the New Haven Colony by +the merger of it in Connecticut, a whole church and town, headed by the +pastor, having secured such guaranty of their political liberty as the +unstable government of New Jersey was able to give, left the homes +endeared to them by thirty years of toil and thrift, and lifting the ark +of the covenant by the staves, set themselves down beside the Passaic, +calling their plantation the New-Ark, and reinstituted their fundamental +principle of restricting the franchise to members of the church. Thus +"with one heart they resolved to carry on their spiritual and town +affairs according to godly government." The Puritan migration, of which +this was the nucleus, had an influence on the legislation and the later +history of New Jersey out of all proportion to its numbers. + +Twenty years later the ferocious persecution of the Scottish +Covenanters, which was incited by the fears or the bloody vindictiveness +of James II. after the futile insurrection of Monmouth, furnished a +motive for emigration to the best people in North Britain, which was +quickly seized and exploited by the operators in Jersey lands. +Assurances of religious liberty were freely given; men of influence were +encouraged to bring over large companies; and in 1686 the brother of the +martyred Duke of Argyle was made governor of East Jersey. The +considerable settlements of Scotchmen found congenial neighbors in the +New Englanders of Newark. A system of free schools, early established by +a law of the commonwealth, is naturally referred to their common +influence. + +Meanwhile a series of events of the highest consequence to the future of +the American church had been in progress in the western half of the +province. Passing from hand to hand, the ownership and lordship of West +Jersey had become vested in a land company dominated by Quakers. For the +first time in the brief history of that sect, it was charged with the +responsibility of the organization and conduct of government. Hitherto +it had been publicly known by the fierce and defiant and often +outrageous protests of its representatives against existing governments +and dignities both in state and in church, such as exposed them to the +natural and reasonable suspicion of being wild and mischievous +anarchists. The opportunities and temptations that come to those in +power would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial +by the cart-tail and the gibbet. + +The Quakers bore the test nobly. Never did a commercial company show +itself so little mercenary; never was a sovereign more magnanimous and +unselfish. With the opening of the province to settlement, the +proprietors set forth a statement of their purposes: "We lay a +foundation for after ages to understand their liberty as men and +Christians, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own +consent; for we put the power in the people." This was followed by a +code of "Concessions and Agreements" in forty-four articles, which were +at once a constitution of government and a binding compact with such as +should enter themselves as colonists on these terms. They left little to +be desired in securities for personal, political, and religious +liberty.[111:1] + +At once population began to flow amain. In 1677 two hundred and thirty +Quakers came in one ship and founded the town of Burlington. By 1681 +there had come fourteen hundred. Weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings +were established; houses of worship were built; and in August, 1681, the +Quaker hierarchy (if it may so be called without offense) was completed +by the establishment of the Burlington Yearly Meeting. The same year the +corporation, encouraged by its rapid success, increased its numbers and +its capital, bought out the proprietors of East Jersey, and appointed as +governor over the whole province the eminent Quaker theologian, Robert +Barclay. The Quaker regime continued, not always smoothly, till 1688, +when it was extinguished by James II. at the end of his perfidious +campaigns against American liberties. + + * * * * * + +This enterprise of the Quaker purchase and settlement of New Jersey +brings upon the stage of American history the great apostle of Christian +colonization, William Penn. He came into relation to the New Jersey +business as arbiter of some differences that arose between the two +Friends who had bought West Jersey in partnership. He continued in +connection with it when the Quaker combination had extended itself by +purchase over the whole Jersey peninsula, and he was a trusted counselor +of the corporation, and the representative of its interests at court. +Thus there grew more and more distinct before his peculiarly adventurous +and enterprising mind the vision of the immense possibilities, +political, religious, and commercial, of American colonization. With +admirable business shrewdness combined with courtly tact, he canceled an +otherwise hopeless debt from the crown in consideration of the +concession to him of a domain of imperial wealth and dimensions, with +practically unlimited rights of jurisdiction. At once he put into +exercise the advantages and opportunities which were united in him so as +never before in the promoter of a like enterprise, and achieved a +success speedy and splendid beyond all precedent. + +The providential preparations for this great enterprise--"the Holy +Experiment," as Penn delighted to call it--had been visibly in progress +in England for not more than the third part of a century. It was not the +less divine for being wholly logical and natural, that, just when the +Puritan Reformation culminated in the victory of the Commonwealth, the +Quaker Reformation should suddenly break forth. Puritanism was the last +expression of that appeal from the church to the Scriptures, from +existing traditions of Christianity to its authentic original documents, +which is the essence of Protestantism. In Puritanism, reverence for the +Scriptures is exaggerated to the point of superstition. The doctrine +that God of old had spoken by holy men was supplemented by the +pretension that God had long ago ceased so to speak and never would so +speak again. The claim that the Scriptures contain a sufficient guide to +moral duty and religious truth was exorbitantly stretched to include the +last details of church organization and worship, and the minute +direction of political and other secular affairs. In many a case the +Scriptures thus applied did highly ennoble the polity and legislation of +the Puritans.[113:1] In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, +perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited +exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart. +The Bible was used to contradict the moral sense. It was high time for +the Quaker protest, and it was inevitable that this protest should be +extravagant and violent. + +In their bold reassertion of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, that his +light "lighteth every man who cometh into the world," it is not strange +that the first Quakers should sometimes have lost sight of those +principles the enunciation of which gives such a character of sober +sanity to the apostolic teachings on this subject--that a divine +influence on the mind does not discharge one from the duty of +self-control, but that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the +prophets"; that the divine inworking does not suspend nor supersede +man's volition and activity, but that it behooves man to "work, because +God worketh in him to will and to work." The lapse from these +characteristically Christian principles into the enthusiastic, fanatic, +or heathen conception of inspiration has been a perpetually recurring +incident in the history of the church in all ages, and especially in +times of deep and earnest spiritual feeling. But in the case of the +Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil +consequences. Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and +hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the +Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some +peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with +sincere and conscientious reformers, adding to the unpopularity of the +new opinions the odium justly due to their own misdemeanors. But the +prophet whose life and preaching had begun the Quaker Reformation was +not found wanting in the gifts which the case required. Like other great +religious founders, George Fox combined with profound religious +conviction a high degree of tact and common sense and the faculty of +organization. While the gospel of "the Light that lighteth every man" +was speeding with wonderful swiftness to the ends of the earth, there +was growing in the hands of the founder the framework of a discipline by +which the elements of disorder should be controlled.[114:1] The result +was a firmly articulated organization compacted by common faith and zeal +and mutual love, and by the external pressure of fierce persecution +extending throughout the British empire on both sides of the ocean. + +Entering into continental Europe, the Quaker Reformation found itself +anticipated in the progress of religious history. The protests of the +Anabaptists against what they deemed the shortcomings of the Lutheran +Reformation had been attended with far wilder extravagances than those +of the early Quakers, and had been repressed with ruthless severity. But +the political and militant Anabaptists were succeeded by communities of +mild and inoffensive non-resistants, governing themselves by a narrow +and rigorous discipline, and differing from the order of Quakers mainly +at this point, that whereas the Quakers rejected all sacraments, these +insisted strenuously on their own views of Baptism and the Supper, and +added to them the ordinance of the Washing of Feet. These communities +were to be found throughout Protestant Europe, from the Alps to the +North Sea, but were best known in Holland and Lower Germany, where they +were called Mennonites, from the priest, Menno Simons, who, a hundred +years before George Fox, had enunciated the same principles of duty +founded on the strict interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. + +The combination of circumstances to promote the "Holy Experiment" of +William Penn is something prodigious. How he could be a petted favorite +at the shameful court of the last two Stuarts, while his brethren +throughout the realm were languishing under persecution, is a fact not +in itself honorable, but capable of being honorably explained; and both +the persecution and the court favor helped on his enterprise. The time +was opportune; the period of tragical uncertainty in colonization was +past; emigration had come to be a richly promising enterprise. For +leader of the enterprise what endowment was lacking in the elegantly +accomplished young courtier, holding as his own the richest domain that +could be carved out of a continent, who was at the same time brother, in +unaffected humility and unbounded generosity, in a great fraternity +bound together by principles of ascetic self-denial and devotion to the +kingdom of God? + +Penn's address inviting colonists to his new domain announced the +outlines of his scheme. His great powers of jurisdiction were held by +him only to be transferred to the future inhabitants in a free and +righteous government. "I purpose," said he, conscious of the magnanimity +of the intention, "for the matters of liberty, I purpose that which is +extraordinary--to leave myself and successors no power of doing +mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole +country;" and added, in language which might have fallen from his +intimate friend, Algernon Sidney, but was fully expressive of his own +views, "It is the great end of government to support power in reverence +with the people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power; for +liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is +slavery."[116:1] With assurances of universal civil and religious +liberty in conformity with these principles, he offered land at forty +shillings for a hundred acres, subject to a small quit-rent. + +Through the correspondence of the Friends' meetings, these proposals +could be brought to the attention of many thousands of people, sifted +and culled by persecution, the best stuff for a colony in all the United +Kingdom. The response was immediate. Within a year three ship-loads of +emigrants went out. The next year Penn himself went with a company of a +hundred, and stayed long enough to see the government organized by the +free act of the colonists on the principles which he had set forth, and +in that brief sojourn of two years to witness the beginnings of a +splendid prosperity. His city of Philadelphia consisted in August, 1683, +of three or four little cottages. Two years afterward it contained about +six hundred houses, and the schoolmaster and the printing-press had +begun their work.[117:1] The growth went on accelerating. In one year +seven thousand settlers are said to have arrived; before the end of the +century the colonists numbered more than twenty thousand, and +Philadelphia had become a thriving town.[117:2] + +But Great Britain, although the chief source of population, was not the +only source. It had been part of the providential equipment of Penn for +his great work to endow him with the gift of tongues and bring him into +intimate relations with the many congregations of the broken and +persecuted sects kindred to his own on the continent of Europe. The +summer and autumn of 1678, four years before his coming to Pennsylvania, +had been spent by him, in company with George Fox, Robert Barclay, and +other eminent Friends, in a mission tour through Holland (where he +preached in his mother's own language) and Germany. The fruit of this +preaching and of previous missions appeared in an unexpected form. One +of the first important accessions to the colony was the company of +Mennonites led by Pastorius, the "Pennsylvania Pilgrim," who founded +Germantown, now a beautiful suburb of Philadelphia. Group after group of +picturesque devotees that had been driven into seclusion and +eccentricity by long and cruel persecution--the Tunkers, the +Schwenkfelders, the Amish--kept coming and bringing with them their +traditions, their customs, their sacred books, their timid and pathetic +disposition to hide by themselves, sometimes in quasi-monastic +communities like that at Ephrata, sometimes in actual hermitage, as in +the ravines of the Wissahickon. But the most important contribution of +this kind came from the suffering villages of the Rhenish Palatinate +ravaged with fire and sword by the French armies in 1688. So numerous +were the fugitives from the Palatinate that the name of Palatine came to +be applied in general to German refugees, from whatever region. This +migration of the German sects (to be distinguished from the later +migration from the established Lutheran and Reformed churches) furnished +the material for that curious "Pennsylvania Dutch" population which for +more than two centuries has lain encysted, so to speak, in the body +politic and ecclesiastic of Pennsylvania, speaking a barbarous jargon of +its own, and refusing to assimilate with the surrounding people. + +It was the rough estimate of Dr. Franklin that colonial Pennsylvania was +made up of one third Quakers, one third Germans, and one third +miscellaneous. The largest item under this last head was the Welsh, most +of them Quakers, who had been invited by Penn with the promise of a +separate tract of forty thousand acres in which to maintain their own +language, government, and institutions. Happily, the natural and +patriotic longing of these immigrants for a New Wales on this side the +sea was not to be realized. The "Welsh Barony" became soon a mere +geographical tradition, and the whole strength of this fervid and +religious people enriched the commonwealth.[118:1] + +Several notable beginnings of church history belong to the later part of +the period under consideration. + +An interesting line of divergence from the current teachings of the +Friends was led, toward the end of the seventeenth century, by George +Keith, for thirty years a recognized preacher of the Society. One is +impressed, in a superficial glance at the story, with the reasonableness +and wisdom of some of Keith's positions, and with the intellectual vigor +of the man. But the discussion grew into an acrimonious controversy, and +the controversy deepened into a schism, which culminated in the +disowning of Keith by the Friends in America, and afterward by the +London Yearly Meeting, to which he had appealed. Dropped thus by his old +friends, he was taken up by the English Episcopalians and ordained by +the Bishop of London, and in 1702 returned to America as the first +missionary of the newly organized Society for the Propagation of the +Gospel in Foreign Parts. An active missionary campaign was begun and +sustained by the large resources of the Venerable Society until the +outbreak of the War of Independence. The movement had great advantages +for success. It was next of kin to the expiring Swedish Lutheran Church +in the three counties that became afterward the State of Delaware, and +heir to its venerable edifices and its good will; it was the official +and court church of the royal governors, and after the degenerate sons +of William Penn abandoned the simple worship, as well as the clean +living, in which their father delighted, it was the church promoted by +the proprietary interest; withal it proved itself, both then and +afterward, to hold a deposit of truth and of usages of worship +peculiarly adapted to supplement the defects of the Quaker system. It is +not easy to explain the ill success of the enterprise. In Philadelphia +it took strong root, and the building, in 1727, of Christ Church, which +survives to this day, a monument of architectural beauty as well as +historical interest, marks an important epoch in the progress of +Christianity in America. But in the rural districts the work languished. +Parishes, seemingly well equipped, fell into a "deplorable condition"; +churches were closed and parishes dwindled away. About the year 1724 +Governor Keith reported to the Bishop of London that outside the city +there were "twelve or thirteen little edifices, at times supplied by one +or other of the poor missionaries sent from the society." Nearly all +that had been gained by the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, where the +"Venerable Society" had maintained at times forty-seven missionaries and +twenty-four central stations, was wiped out by the Revolutionary +War.[120:1] + +Another great beginning that comes within the field of vision in the +first four decades of the eighteenth century is the planting of the +great national churches of Germany. We have observed the migration of +the minor sects of Germany--so complete, in some cases, that the entire +sect was transplanted, leaving no representative in the fatherland. In +the mixed multitude of refugees from the Palatinate and other ravaged +provinces were many belonging both to the Lutheran and to the Reformed +churches, as well as some Catholics. But they were scattered as sheep +having no shepherd. The German Lutheran and Reformed immigration was +destined to attain by and by to enormous proportions; but so late was +the considerable expansion of it, and so tardy and inefficient the +attention given to this diaspora by the mother churches, that the +classical organization of the Reformed Church dates only from 1747, and +that of the Lutheran Church from 1760.[121:1] The beautiful career of +the Moravians began in Pennsylvania so late as 1734. In general it may +be said that the German-American church was affected only indirectly by +the Great Awakening. + +But the greatest in its consequences, both religious and political, of +the great beginnings in the early part of the eighteenth century, was +the first flow of the swelling tide of the Scotch-Irish immigration. +Already, in 1669, an English Presbyterian, Matthew Hill, persuaded to +the work by Richard Baxter, was ministering to "many of the Reformed +religion" in Maryland; and in 1683 an appeal from them to the Irish +presbytery of Laggan had brought over to their aid that sturdy and +fearless man of God, Francis Makemie, whose successful defense in 1707, +when unlawfully imprisoned in New York by that unsavory defender of the +Anglican faith, Lord Cornbury, gave assurance of religious liberty to +his communion throughout the colonies. In 1705 he was moderator of the +first presbytery in America, numbering six ministers. At the end of +twelve years the number of ministers, including accessions from New +England, had grown to seventeen. But it was not until 1718 that this +migration began in earnest. As early as 1725 James Logan, the +Scotch-Irish-Quaker governor of Pennsylvania, speaking in the spirit of +prophecy, declares that "it looks as if Ireland were to send all her +inhabitants hither; if they continue to come they will make themselves +proprietors of the province." It was a broad-spread, rich alluvium +superimposed upon earlier strata of immigration, out of which was to +spring the sturdy growth of American Presbyterianism, as well as of +other Christian organizations. But by 1730 it was only the turbid and +feculent flood that was visible to most observers; the healthful and +fruitful growth was yet to come.[122:1] + +The colony of Georgia makes its appearance among the thirteen British +colonies in America, in 1733, as one born out of due time. But no colony +of all the thirteen had a more distinctly Christian origin than this. +The foundations of other American commonwealths had been laid in faith +and hope, but the ruling motive of the founding of Georgia was charity, +and that is the greatest of these three. The spirit which dominated in +the measures taken for the beginning of the enterprise was embodied in +one of the most interesting personages of the dreary eighteenth +century--General James Oglethorpe. His eventful life covered the greater +part of the eighteenth century, but in some of the leading traits of his +character and incidents of his career he was rather a man of the +nineteenth. At the age of twenty-one he was already a veteran of the +army of Prince Eugene, having served with honorable distinction on the +staff of that great commander. Returning to England, in 1722 he entered +Parliament, and soon attained what in that age was the almost solitary +distinction of a social reformer. He procured the appointment of a +special committee to investigate the condition of the debtors' prisons; +and the shocking revelations that ensued led to a beginning of +reformation of the cruel and barbarous laws of England concerning +imprisonment for debt. But being of the higher type of reformers, he was +not content with such negative work. He cherished and elaborated a +scheme that should open a new career for those whose ill success in life +had subjected them to the pains and the ignominy due to criminals. It +was primarily for such as these that he projected the colony of Georgia. +But to a mind like his the victims of injustice in every land were +objects of practical sympathy. His colony should be an asylum for +sufferers from religious persecution from whatever quarter. The +enterprise was organized avowedly as a work of charity. The territory +was vested in trustees, who should receive no pay or emolument for their +services. Oglethorpe himself gave his unpaid labor as military and civil +head of the colony, declining to receive in return so much as a +settler's allotment of land. An appropriation of ten thousand pounds was +made by Parliament for the promotion of the work--the only government +subsidy ever granted to an American colony. With eager and unselfish +hopes of a noble service to be rendered to humanity, the generous +soldier embarked with a picked company of one hundred and twenty +emigrants, and on the 12th of February, 1733, landed at the foot of the +bluff on which now stands the city of Savannah. The attractions of the +genial climate and fertile soil, the liberal terms of invitation, and +the splendid schemes of profitable industry were diligently advertised, +and came to the knowledge of that noble young enthusiast, Zinzendorf, +count and Moravian bishop, whose estate of Herrnhut in Lusatia had +become an asylum for persecuted Christians; and missionary colonists of +that Moravian church of which every member was a missionary, and +companies of the exiled Salzburgers, the cruelty of whose sufferings +aroused the universal indignation of Protestant Europe, were mingled +with the unfortunates from English prisons in successive ship-loads of +emigrants. One such ship's company, among the earliest to be added to +the new colony, included some mighty factors in the future church +history of America and of the world. In February, 1736, a company of +three hundred colonists, with Oglethorpe at their head, landed at +Savannah. Among them was a reinforcement of twenty colonists for the +Moravian settlement, with Bishop David Nitschmann, and young Charles +Wesley, secretary to the governor, and his elder brother, John, now +thirty-three years old, eager for the work of evangelizing the heathen +Indians--an intensely narrow, ascetic, High-church ritualist and +sacramentarian. The voyage was a memorable one in history. Amid the +terrors of a perilous storm, Wesley, so liable to be lifted up with the +pride that apes humility, was humbled as he contrasted the agitations of +his own people with the cheerful faith and composure of his German +shipmates; and soon after the landing he was touched with the primitive +simplicity and beauty of the ordination service with which a pastor was +set over the Moravian settlement by Bishop Nitschmann. During the +twenty-two months of his service in Georgia, through the ascetic toils +and privations which he inflicted on himself and tried to inflict on +others, he seems as one whom the law has taken severely in hand to lead +him to Christ. It was after his return from America, among the +Moravians, first at London and afterward on a visit to Herrnhut, that he +was "taught the way of the Lord more perfectly."[125:1] + +The three shipmates, the Wesleys and Bishop Nitschmann, did not remain +long together. Nitschmann soon returned to Germany to lead a new colony +of his brethren to Pennsylvania; Charles Wesley remained for four months +at Frederica, and then recrossed the ocean, weary of the hardness of the +people's hearts; and, except for the painful and humiliating discipline +which was preparing him to "take the whole world to be his parish," it +had been well for John Wesley if he had returned with his brother. Never +did a really great and good man act more like a fool than he did in his +Georgia mission. The priestly arrogance with which he attempted to +enforce his crotchets of churchmanship on a mixed community in the edge +of the wilderness culminated at last in his hurling the thunderbolts of +excommunication at a girl who had jilted him, followed by his slipping +away from the colony between two days, with an indictment for defamation +on record against him, and his returning to London to resign to the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel his commission as missionary. +Just as he was landing, the ship was setting sail which bore to his +deserted field his old Oxford friend and associate in "the Methodist +Club," George Whitefield, then just beginning the career of meteoric +splendor which for thirty-two years dazzled the observers of both +hemispheres. He landed in Savannah in May, 1738. This was the first of +Whitefield's work in America. But it was not the beginning of the Great +Awakening. For many years there had been waiting and longing as of them +that watch for the morning. At Raritan and New Brunswick, in New Jersey, +and elsewhere, there had been prelusive gleams of dawn. And at +Northampton, in December, 1734, Jonathan Edwards had seen the sudden +daybreak and rejoiced with exceeding great joy. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[109:1] Corwin, pp. 58, 128. + +[111:1] It is notable that the concessions offered already by Carteret +and Berkeley in 1664 contained an unlimited pledge of religious liberty, +"any law, statute, usage, or custom of the realm of England to the +contrary notwithstanding" (Mulford, "History of New Jersey," p. 134). A +half-century of experience in colonization had satisfied some minds that +the principle adopted by the Quakers for conscience' sake was also a +sound business principle. + +[113:1] See the vindication of the act of the New Haven colonists in +adopting the laws of Moses as the statute-book of the colony, in the +"Thirteen Historical Discourses of L. Bacon," pp. 29-32. "The greatest +and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal jurisprudence by +any one act since the dark ages was that which was made by our fathers +when they determined 'that the judicial laws of God, as they were +delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, being +neither typical nor ceremonial nor having any reference to Canaan, shall +be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders and be a +rule to all the courts.'" + +[114:1] For the dealing of Fox with the case of John Perrot, who had a +divine call to wear his hat in meeting, see the "History of the Society +of Friends," by the Messrs. Thomas, pp. 197-199 (American Church History +Series, vol. xii.). + +[116:1] Quoted in Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 366. + +[117:1] Bancroft, vol. ii., p. 392. + +[117:2] H. C. Lodge, p. 213. + +[118:1] For a fuller account of the sources of the population of +Pennsylvania, see "The Making of Pennsylvania," by Sydney George Fisher +(Philadelphia, 1896). + +[120:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 210-212, 220. In a +few instances the work suffered from the unfit character of the +missionaries. A more common fault was the vulgar proselyting spirit +which appears in the missionaries' reports ("Digest of S. P. G. +Records," pp. 12-79). A certain _naif_ insularity sometimes betrays +itself in their incapacity to adapt themselves to their new-world +surroundings. Brave and zealous Mr. Barton in Cumberland County recites +a formidable list of sects into which the people are divided, and with +unconscious humor recounts his efforts to introduce one sect more +(_ibid._, p. 37). They could hardly understand that in crossing the +ocean they did not bring with them the prerogatives of a national +establishment, but were in a position of dissent from the existing +establishments. "It grieved them that Church of England men should be +stigmatized with the grim and horrid title of dissenters" ("The Making +of Pennsylvania," p. 192). One of the most pathetically amusing +instances of the misfit of the Englishman in America is that of the Rev. +Mr. Poyer at Jamaica, L. I. The meeting-house and glebe-lands that had +been provided by the people of that parish for the use of themselves and +their pastor were gotten, neither honorably nor lawfully, into the +possession of the missionary of the "S. P. G." and his scanty following, +and held by him in spite of law and justice for twenty-five years. At +last the owners of the property succeeded in evicting him by process of +law. The victim of this persecution reported plaintively to the society +his "great and almost continual contentions with the Independents in his +parish." The litigation had been over the salary settled for the +minister of that parish, and also over the glebe-lands. But "by a late +Tryal at Law he has lost them and the Church itself, of which his +congregation has had the possession for twenty-five years." The +grievance went to the heart of his congregation, who bewail "the +emperious behaviour of these our enemies, who stick not to call +themselves the Established Church and us Dissenters" ("Digest of S. P. +G. Records," p. 61; Corwin, "Dutch Church," pp. 104, 105, 126, 127). + +[121:1] Dubbs, "Reformed Church," p. 281; Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. +260. + +[122:1] R. E. Thompson, "The Presbyterian Churches," pp. 22-29; S. S. +Green, "The Scotch-Irish in America," paper before the American +Antiquarian Society, April, 1895. "The great bulk of the emigrants came +to this country at two distinct periods of time: the first from 1718 to +the middle of the century, the second from 1771 to 1773.... In +consequence of the famine of 1740 and 1741, it is stated that for +several years afterward 12,000 emigrants annually left Ulster for the +American plantations; while from 1771 to 1773 the whole emigration from +Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 are weavers" (Green, p. +7). The companies that came to New England in 1718 were mainly absorbed +by the Congregationalism of that region (Thompson, p. 15). The church +founded in Boston by the Irish Presbyterians came in course of time to +have for its pastor the eminent William Ellery Channing (Green, p. 11). +Since the organization of the annual Scotch-Irish Congress in 1889, the +literature of this subject has become copious. (See "Bibliographical +Note" at the end of Mr. Green's pamphlet.) + +[125:1] The beautiful story of the processional progress of the Salzburg +exiles across the continent of Europe is well told by Dr. Jacobs, +"History of the Lutherans," pp. 153-159, with a copious extract from +Bancroft, vol. iii., which shows that that learned author did not +distinguish the Salzburgers from the Moravians. The account of the +ship's company in the storm, in Dr. Jacobs's tenth chapter, is full of +interest. There is a pathetic probability in his suggestion that in the +hymn "Jesus, lover of my soul," we have Charles Wesley's reminiscence of +those scenes of peril and terror. For this episode in the church history +of Georgia as seen from different points of view, see American Church +History Series, vols, iv., v., vii., viii. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +THE AMERICAN CHURCH ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT AWAKENING--A GENERAL VIEW. + + +By the end of one hundred years from the settlement of Massachusetts +important changes had come upon the chain of colonies along the Atlantic +seaboard in America. In the older colonies the people had been born on +the soil at two or three generations' remove from the original +colonists, or belonged to a later stratum of migration superimposed upon +the first. The exhausting toil and privations of the pioneer had been +succeeded by a good measure of thrift and comfort. There were yet bloody +campaigns to be fought out against the ferocity and craft of savage +enemies wielded by the strategy of Christian neighbors; but the severest +stress of the Indian wars was passed. In different degrees and according +to curiously diverse types, the institutions of a Christian civilization +were becoming settled. + +In the course of this hundred years the political organization of these +various colonies had been drawn into an approach to uniformity. In every +one of them, excepting Connecticut and Rhode Island, the royal or +proprietary government was represented by a governor and his staff, +appointed from England, and furnishing a point of contact which was in +every case and all the time a point of friction and irritation between +the colony and the mother country. The reckless laxity of the early +Stuart charters, which permitted the creation of practically independent +democratic republics with churches free from the English hierarchy, was +succeeded, under the House of Orange, by something that looked like a +statesmanlike care for the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges +of the English church. Throughout the colonies, at every viceregal +residence, it was understood that this church, even where it was not +established by law, was the favored official and court church. But +inasmuch as the royal governors were officially odious to the people, +and at the same time in many cases men of despicable personal character, +their influence did little more than create a little "sect of the +Herodians" within the range of their patronage. But though it gave no +real advantage to the preferred church, it was effective (as in +Massachusetts) in breaking down the exclusive pretensions of other +organizations. + +The Massachusetts theocracy, so called, fell with the revocation of the +charter by James II. It had stood for nearly fifty years--long enough to +accomplish the main end of that Nationalist principle which the +Puritans, notwithstanding their fraternizing with the Pilgrim +Separatists, had never let go. The organization of the church throughout +New England, excepting Rhode Island, had gone forward in even step with +the advance of population. Two rules had with these colonists the force +of axioms: first, that it was the duty of every town, as a Christian +community, to sustain the town church; secondly, that it was the duty of +every citizen of the town to contribute to this end according to his +ability. The breaking up of the town church by schisms and the shirking +of individual duty on the ground of dissent were alike discountenanced, +sometimes by severely intolerant measures. The ultimate collision of +these principles with the sturdy individualism that had been accepted +from the Separatists of Plymouth was inevitable. It came when the +"standing order" encountered the Baptist and the Quaker conscience. It +came again when the missionaries of the English established church, with +singular unconsciousness of the humor of the situation, pleaded the +sacred right of dissenting and the essential injustice of compelling +dissenters to support the parish church.[129:1] The protest may have +been illogical, but it was made effective by "arguments of weight," +backed by all the force of the British government. The exclusiveness of +the New England theocracies, already relaxed in its application to other +sects, was thenceforth at an end. The severity of church establishment +in New England was so far mitigated as at last to put an actual premium +on dissent. Holding still that every citizen is bound to aid in +maintaining the institutions of public worship, it relieved any one of +his assessment for the support of the parish church upon his filing a +certificate that he was contributing to the support of another +congregation, thus providing that any disaffection to the church of the +town must be organized and active. It was the very euthanasia of +establishment. But the state-church and church-state did not cease to be +until they had accomplished that for New England which has never been +accomplished elsewhere in America--the dividing of the settled regions +into definite parishes, each with its church and its learned minister. +The democratic autonomy of each church was jealously guarded, and yet +they were all knit together by terms of loose confederation into a vital +system. The impracticable notion of a threefold ministry in each church, +consisting of pastor, teacher, and ruling elder, failed long before the +first generation had passed; but, with this exception, it may justly be +said that the noble ideal of the Puritan fathers of New England of a +Christian state in the New World, "wherein dwelleth righteousness," was, +at the end of a hundred years from their planting, realized with a +completeness not common to such prophetic dreams. + +So solid and vital, at the point of time which we have assumed (1730), +seemed the cohesion of the "standing order" in New England, that only +two inconsiderable defections are visible to the historian. + +The tendency toward Baptist principles early disclosed itself among the +colonists. The example of Roger Williams was followed by less notable +instances; the shameful intolerance with which some of these were +treated shows how formidable this tendency seemed to those in authority. +But a more startling defection appeared about the year 1650, when +President Dunster of Harvard College, a man most honorable and lovable, +signified his adoption of the Baptist tenets. The treatment of him was +ungenerous, and for a time the petty persecutions that followed served +rather to discredit the clergy than really to hinder the spread of +Baptist principles. In the year 1718 the Baptist church of Boston +received fraternal recognition from the foremost representatives of the +Congregational clergy of Boston, with a public confession of the wrong +that they had done.[130:1] It is surprising to find, after all this +agitation and sowing of "the seed of the church," that in all New +England outside of Rhode Island there are in 1730 only six Baptist +churches, including (an honorable item) two Indian churches on the +islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.[131:1] + +The other departure from the "standing order" was at this date hardly +more extensive. The early planting of Episcopalian churches in Maine and +New Hampshire, with generous patronage and endowment, had languished and +died. In 1679 there was no Episcopal minister in all New England. In +1702 were begun the energetic and richly supported missions of the "S. +P. G." At the end of twenty-eight years there were in Rhode Island four +Episcopalian churches; in Massachusetts, three, two of them in the city +of Boston; in Connecticut, three.[131:2] But in the last-named colony an +incident had occurred, having apparently no intimate connection with the +"Venerable Society's" missions, but charged with weighty, and on the +whole beneficent, consequences for the future of the kingdom of Christ +in America. + +The incident was strikingly parallel to that of seventy years before, +when the president of Harvard College announced his acceptance of +Baptist principles. The day after the Yale commencement in September, +1722, a modest and respectful paper was presented to the trustees of the +college, signed by Rector Timothy Cutler and Tutor Brown (who +constituted the entire faculty of the college) and by five pastors of +good standing in the Connecticut churches. Two other pastors of note +were named as assenting to the paper, although not subscribing it. It +seemed a formidable proportion of the Connecticut clergy. The purport of +the paper was to signify that the signers were doubtful of the +validity, or persuaded of the invalidity, of presbyterial as +distinguished from episcopal ordination. The matter was considered with +the gravity which it merited, and a month later, at the time of the +meeting of the colonial legislature, was made the subject of a public +discussion, presided over with great dignity and amenity by Governor +Gurdon Saltonstall, formerly pastor of the church in New London. The +result was that, of the seven pastors assenting to the paper of the two +college men, only two adhered to them; but one of these two was that +able and excellent Samuel Johnson, whose later career as president of +King's College in New York, as well as the career of his no less +distinguished son, is an ornament to American history both of church and +state. + +This secession, small in number, but weighty in character, was of course +a painful shock to the hitherto unbroken unity of the church and clergy +of Connecticut. But it was not quite like a thunderbolt from a clear +sky. It had been immediately preceded by not a little conference and +correspondence with Connecticut pastors on the one hand, and on the +other hand with representatives of the powerful and wealthy Propagation +Society, on the question of support to be received from England for +those who should secede. Its prior antecedents reached farther back into +history. The Baptist convictions of the president of Harvard in 1650 +were not more clearly in line with the individualism of the Plymouth +Separatists than the scruples of the rector of Yale in 1722 were in line +with the Nationalism of Higginson and Winthrop. This sentiment, +especially strong in Connecticut, had given rise to much study as to the +best form of a colonial church constitution; and the results of this had +recently been embodied (in 1708) in the mildly classical system of the +Saybrook Platform. The filial love of the Puritan colonists toward the +mother church of England was by no means extinct in the third +generation. Alongside of the inevitable repugnance felt and manifested +toward the arrogance, insolence, and violence with which the claims of +the Episcopal Church were commended by royal governors and their +attaches and by some of the imported missionaries, there is ample +evidence of kindly and fraternal feeling, far beyond what might have +been expected, on the part of the New England clergy toward the +representatives of the Church of England. The first missionaries of the +"Venerable Society," Keith and Talbot, arriving in New England in 1702, +met with welcome from some of the ministers, who "both hospitably +entertained us in their houses and requested us to preach in their +congregations, which accordingly we did, and received great thanks both +from the ministers and people."[133:1] One of these hospitable pastors +was the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, who twenty years later, +as governor of the colony, presided at the debate which followed upon +the demission of Rector Cutler. + +The immediate results of what had been expected to lead off a large +defection from the colonial clergy were numerically insignificant; but +very far from insignificant was the fact that in Connecticut a sincere +and spontaneous movement toward the Episcopal Church had arisen among +men honored and beloved, whose ecclesiastical views were not tainted +with self-seeking or servility or with an unpatriotic shame for their +colonial home and sympathy with its political enemies. Elsewhere in New +England, and largely in Connecticut also, the Episcopal Church in its +beginnings was handicapped with a dead-weight of supercilious and odious +Toryism. The example of a man like Johnson showed that one might become +an Episcopalian without ceasing to be a patriotic American and without +holding himself aloof from the fellowship of good men. The conference +in Yale College library, September 13, 1722, rather than the planting of +a system of exotic missions, marks the true epoch from which to date the +progress of a genuinely American Episcopal Church.[134:1] + +Crossing the recently settled boundary line into New York, not yet risen +to rank with the foremost colonies, we find in 1730 a deepening of the +early character, which had marked that colony, of wide diversity among +the Christian people in point of race, language, doctrinal opinion, and +ecclesiastical connection. + +The ancient Dutch church, rallying from its almost asphyxia, had begun +not only to receive new life, but, under the fervid spiritual influence +of Domine Frelinghuysen, to "have it more abundantly" and to become a +means of quickening to other communions. It was bearing fruit, but its +fruit had not seed within itself after its kind. It continued to suffer, +in common with some other imported church systems, from depending on a +transatlantic hierarchy for the succession of its ministry. The supply +of imported ministers continued to be miserably inadequate to the need. +In the first four decades of the century the number of its congregations +more than doubled, rising to a total of sixty-five in New York and New +Jersey; and for these sixty-five congregations there were nineteen +ministers, almost all of them from Europe. This body of churches, so +inadequately manned, was still further limited in its activities by the +continually contracting barrier of the Dutch language. + +The English church, enjoying "the prestige of royal favor and princely +munificence," suffered also the drawbacks incidental to these +advantages--the odium attending the unjust and despotic measures +resorted to for its advancement, the vile character of royal officials, +who condoned their private vices by a more ostentatious zeal for their +official church, and the well-founded popular suspicion of its pervading +disloyalty to the interests and the liberties of the colonies in their +antagonism to the encroachments of the British government. It was +represented by one congregation in the city of New York, and perhaps a +dozen others throughout the colony.[135:1] It is to the honor of the +ministers of this church that it succeeded in so good a measure in +triumphing over its "advantages." The early pastors of Trinity Church +adorned their doctrine and their confession, and one such example as +that of the Rev. Thoroughgood Moor did much to redeem the character of +the church from the disgrace cast upon it by the lives of its patrons. +This faithful missionary had the signal honor of being imprisoned by the +dirty but zealous Lord Cornbury (own cousin to her Majesty the Queen, +and afterward Earl of Clarendon), of whom he had said, what everybody +knew, that he "deserved to be excommunicated"; and he had further +offended by refusing the communion to the lieutenant-governor, "upon the +account of some debauch and abominable swearing."[135:2] There was +surely some vigorous spiritual vitality in a religious body which could +survive the patronizing of a succession of such creatures as Cornbury +and his crew of extortioners and profligates. + +A third element in the early Christianity of New York was the +Presbyterians. These were represented, at the opening of the eighteenth +century, by that forerunner of the Scotch-Irish immigration, Francis +Makemie. The arrest and imprisonment of Makemie in 1706, under the +authority of Lord Cornbury, for the offense of preaching the gospel +without a license from the government, his sturdy defense and his +acquittal, make an epoch in the history of religious liberty in America, +and a perceptible step in the direction of American political liberty +and independence. + +The immense volume and strength of the Scotch-Irish immigration had +hardly begun to be perceptible in New York as early as 1730. The total +strength of the Presbyterian Church in 1705 was organized in +Philadelphia into a solitary presbytery containing six ministers. In +1717, the number having grown to seventeen, the one presbytery was +divided into four, which constituted a synod; and one of the four was +the presbytery of New York and New Jersey. But it was observed, at least +it might have been observed, that the growing Presbyterianism of this +northernmost region was recruited mainly from old England and from New +England--a fact on which were to depend important consequences in later +ecclesiastical history. + +The chief increment of the presbytery of New York and New Jersey was in +three parts, each of them planted from New England. The churches founded +from New Haven Colony in the neighborhood of Newark and Elizabethtown, +and the churches founded by Connecticut settlers on Long Island when +this was included in the jurisdiction of Connecticut, easily and without +serious objection conformed their organization to the Presbyterian +order. The first wave of the perennial westward migration of the New +Englanders, as it flowed over the hills from the valley of the +Housatonic into the valley of the Hudson, was observed by Domine +Selyns, away back in 1696, to be attended by many preachers educated at +Harvard College.[137:1] But the churches which they founded grew into +the type, not of Cambridge nor of Saybrook, but of Westminster. + +The facility with which the New England Christians, moving westward or +southwestward from their cold northeastern corner of the country, have +commonly consented to forego their cherished usages and traditions of +church order and accept those in use in their new homes, and especially +their readiness in conforming to the Presbyterian polity, has been a +subject of undue lamentation and regret to many who have lacked the +faculty of recognizing in it one of the highest honors of the New +England church. But whether approved or condemned, a fact so unusual in +church history, and especially in the history of the American church, is +entitled to some study. 1. It is to be explained in part, but not +altogether, by the high motive of a willingness to sacrifice personal +preferences, habits, and convictions of judgment, on matters not of +primary importance, to the greater general good of the community. 2. The +Presbyterian polity is the logical expression of that Nationalist +principle which was cherished by many of the Puritan fathers, which +contended at the birth of New England with the mere Independency of the +Pilgrims, and which found an imperfect embodiment in the platforms of +Cambridge and Saybrook. The New England fathers in general, before their +views suffered a sea-change in the course of their migrations, were +Episcopalians and Presbyterians rather than Congregationalists; and if, +in the course of this history, we shall find many in their later +generations conforming to a mitigated form of the Westminster polity, or +to a liberalized and Americanized Episcopal Church, instead of finding +this to be a degeneration, we shall do well to ask whether it is not +rather a reversion to type. 3. Those who grow up in a solidly united +Christian community are in a fair way to be trained in the simplicity of +the gospel, and not in any specialties of controversy with contending or +competing sects. Members of the parish churches of New England going +west had an advantage above most others, in that they could go simply as +representatives of the church of Christ, and not of a sect of the +church, or of one side of some controversy in which they had never had +occasion to interest themselves. 4. The principle of congregational +independency, not so much inculcated as acted on in New England, carries +with it the corollary that a congregation may be Presbyterian or +Episcopalian or Methodist, if it judges best, without thereby giving the +individual Christian any justification for secession or schism. 5. The +change, in the westward movement of Christian civilization, from the +congregational order to the classical, coincides with the change in the +frame of civil polity from town government to county government. In the +beginning the civil state in New England was framed after the model of +the church.[138:1] It is in accordance with the common course of church +history that when the people were transported from the midst of pure +democracies to the midst of representative republics their church +institutions should take on the character of the environment. + +The other factors of the religious life of New York require only brief +mention. + +There were considerable Quaker communities, especially on western Long +Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the +fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this +Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and +suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that +"middle age of Quakerism"[139:1] in which it made itself felt in the +life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective, +protests against popular wrongs. + +Inconsiderable in number, but of the noblest quality, was the +immigration of French Huguenots, which just before and just after the +revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought to New York and its +neighborhood a half-dozen congregations, accompanied by pastors whose +learning, piety, and devotion to the work of Christ were worthy of that +school of martyrdom in which they had been trained. They were not +numerous enough, nor compactly enough settled, to maintain their own +language in use, and soon became merged, some in the Dutch church and +some in the English. Some of their leading pastors accepted salaries +from the Propagation Society, tendered to them on condition of their +accepting the ordination and conforming to the ritual of the English +church. The French Reformed Church does not appear organically in the +later history of the colony, but the history of the State and of the +nation is never largely written without commemorating, by the record of +family names made illustrious in every department of honorable activity, +the rich contribution made to the American church and nation by the +cruel bigotry and the political fatuity of Louis XIV.[139:2] + +The German element in the religious life of New York, at the period +under consideration, was of even less historical importance. The +political philanthropy of Queen Anne's government, with a distinct +understanding between the right hand and the left, took active measure +to promote the migration of Protestant refugees from all parts of +Germany to the English colonies in America. In the year 1709 a great +company of these unhappy exiles, commonly called "poor Palatines" from +the desolated region whence many of them had been driven out, were +dropped, helpless and friendless, in the wilderness of Schoharie County, +and found themselves there practically in a state of slavery through +their ignorance of the country and its language. There were few to care +for their souls. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was +promptly in the field, with its diligent missionaries and its ignoble +policy of doing the work of Christ and humanity with a shrewd eye to the +main chance of making proselytes to its party.[140:1] With a tardiness +which it is difficult not to speak of as characteristic, after the lapse +of twenty-one years the classis of Amsterdam recognized its +responsibility for this multitude of wandering sheep; and at last, in +1793, the German Reformed Church had so far emancipated itself from its +bondage to the old-country hierarchy as to assume, almost a century too +late, the cure of these poor souls. But this migration added little to +the religious life of the New York Colony, except a new element of +diversity to a people already sufficiently heterogeneous. The greater +part of these few thousands gladly found their way to the more +hospitable colony of Pennsylvania, leaving traces of themselves in +family names scattered here and there, and in certain local names, like +that of Palatine Bridge. + +The general impression left on the mind by this survey of the Christian +people of New York in 1730 is of a mass of almost hopelessly +incongruous materials, out of which the brooding Spirit of God shall by +and by bring forth the unity of a new creation. + + * * * * * + +The population of the two Jerseys continued to bear the character +impressed on it by the original colonization. West Jersey was +predominantly Quaker; East Jersey showed in its institutions of church +and school the marks made upon it by the mingling of Scotch and Yankee. +But there was one point at which influences had centered which were to +make New Jersey the seed-plot of a new growth of church life for the +continent. + +The intolerable tyranny of Lord Cornbury in New York, at the beginning +of the century, had driven many of the Dutch Christians of that colony +across the Hudson. The languishing vine throve by transplanting. In the +congenial neighborhood of the Calvinists of Scotland and New England the +cluster of churches in the region of New Brunswick came to be known as +"the garden of the Dutch church." To this region, bearing a name +destined to great honor in American church history, came from Holland, +in 1720, Domine Theodore J. Frelinghuysen. The fervor and earnestness of +his preaching, unwonted in that age, wakened a religious feeling in his +own congregation, which overflowed the limits of a single parish and +became as one of the streams that make glad the city of God. + +In the year 1718 there arrived at the port of Philadelphia an Irishman, +William Tennent, with his four sons, the eldest a boy of fifteen. He was +not a Scotch-Irishman, but an English-Irishman--a clergyman of the +established Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland. He lost no time in +connecting himself with the Presbyterian synod of Philadelphia, and +after a few years of pastoral service in the colony of New York became +pastor of the Presbyterian church at Neshaminy, in Pennsylvania, twenty +miles north of Philadelphia. Here his zeal for Christian education moved +him to begin a school, which, called from the humble building in which +it was held, became famous in American Presbyterian history as the Log +College. Here were educated many men who became eminent in the ministry +of the gospel, and among them the four boys who had come with their +father from Ireland. Gilbert, the eldest and most distinguished of them, +came in 1727, from his temporary position as tutor in the Log College, +to be pastor to the Presbyterian church in New Brunswick, where +Frelinghuysen, in the face of opposition from his own brethren in the +ministry, had for seven years pursued his deeply spiritual and fruitful +work as pastor to the Dutch church. Whatever debate there may be over +the question of an official and tactual succession in the church, the +existence of a vital and spiritual succession, binding "the generations +each to each," need not be disputed by any. Sometimes, as here, the +succession is distinctly traceable. Gilbert Tennent was own son in the +ministry to Theodore Frelinghuysen as truly as Timothy to Paul, but he +became spiritual father to a great multitude. + + * * * * * + +In the year 1730 the total population of Pennsylvania was estimated by +Governor Gordon at forty-nine thousand. In the less than fifty years +since the colony was settled it had outstripped all the older colonies, +and Philadelphia, its chief town, continued to be by far the most +important port for the landing of immigrants. The original Quaker +influence was still dominant in the colony, but the very large majority +of the population was German; and presently the Quakers were to find +their political supremacy departing, and were to acquiesce in the change +by abdicating political preferment.[143:1] The religious influence of +the Society of Friends continued to be potent and in many respects most +salutary. But the exceptional growth and prosperity of the colony was +attended with a vast "unearned increment" of wealth to the first +settlers, and the maxim, "Religio peperit divitias, et mater devorata +est a prole,"[143:2] received one of the most striking illustrations in +all history. So speedily the Society had entered on its Middle +Age;[143:3] the most violent of protests against formalism had begun to +congeal into a precise and sometimes frivolous system of formalities. +But the lasting impress made on the legislation of the colony by Penn +and his contemporaries is a monument of their wise and Christian +statesmanship. Up to their time the most humane penal codes in +Christendom were those of New England, founded on the Mosaic law. But +even in these, and still more in the application of them, there were +traces of that widely prevalent feeling that punishment is society's +bitter and malignant revenge on the criminal. The penal code and the +prison discipline of Pennsylvania became an object of admiring study for +social reformers the world over, and marked a long stage in the +advancement of the kingdom of God. The city of Philadelphia early took +the lead of American towns, not only in size, but in its public +charities and its cultivation of humane arts. + +Notwithstanding these eminent honors, there is much in the later history +of the great commonwealth in which Quakerism held dominion for the +greater part of a century to reflect doubt on the fitness of that form +of Christianity for conducting the affairs, either civil or religious, +of a great community. + +There is nothing in the personal duty of non-resistance of evil, as +inculcated in the New Testament, that conflicts with the functions of +the civil governor--even the function of bearing the sword as God's +minister. Rather, each of these is the complement and counterpart of the +other. Among the early colonial governors no man wielded the sword of +the ruler more effectively than the Quaker Archdale in the Carolinas. It +is when this law of personal duty is assumed as the principle of public +government that the order of society is inverted, and the function of +the magistrate is inevitably taken up by the individual, and the old +wilderness law of blood-revenge is reinstituted. The legislation of +William Penn involved no abdication of the power of the sword by the +civil governor. The enactment, however sparing, of capital laws conceded +by implication every point that is claimed by Christian moralists in +justification of war. But it is hardly to be doubted that the tendency +of Quaker politics so to conduct civil government as that it shall +"resist not evil" is responsible for some of the strange paradoxes in +the later history of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth was founded in good +faith on principles of mutual good will with the Indians and tender +regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional +amity, and of a permanent peace policy. Its history has been +characterized, beyond that of other States, by foul play toward the +Indians and protracted Indian wars, by acrimonious and sometimes bloody +sectarian conflicts, by obstinate insurrections against public +order,[144:1] and by cruel and exterminating war upon honest settlers, +founded on a mere open question of title to territory.[144:2] + +The failure of Quakerism is even more conspicuous considered as a +church discipline. There is a charm as of apostolic simplicity and +beauty in its unassuming hierarchy of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and +yearly meetings, corresponding by epistles and by the visits of +traveling evangelists, which realizes the type of the primitive church +presented in "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." But it was never +able to outgrow, in the large and free field to which it was +transplanted, the defects incident to its origin in a protest and a +schism. It never learned to commend itself to men as a church for all +Christians, and never ceased to be, even in its own consciousness, a +coterie of specialists. Penn, to be sure, in his youthful overzeal, had +claimed exclusive and universal rights for Quakerism as "the alone good +way of life and salvation," all religions, faiths, and worships besides +being "in the darkness of apostasy."[145:1] But after the abatement of +that wonderful first fervor which within a lifetime carried "its line +into all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world," it was +impossible to hold it to this pitch. Claiming no divine right to all +men's allegiance, it felt no duty of opening the door to all men's +access. It was free to exclude from the meeting on arbitrary and even on +frivolous grounds. As zeal decayed, the energies of the Society were +mainly shown in protesting and excluding and expelling. God's husbandry +does not prosper when his servants are over-earnest in rooting up tares. +The course of the Society of Friends in the eighteenth century was +suicidal. It held a noble opportunity of acting as pastor to a great +commonwealth. It missed this great opportunity, for which it was perhaps +constitutionally disqualified, and devoted itself to edifying its own +members and guarding its own purity. So it was that, saving its soul, it +lost it. The vineyard must be taken away from it. + +And there were no other husbandmen to take the vineyard. The petty +German sects, representing so large a part of the population, were +isolated by their language and habits. The Lutherans and the Reformed, +trained in established churches to the methods and responsibilities of +parish work, were not yet represented by any organization. The +Scotch-Irish Presbyterian immigration was pouring in at Philadelphia +like a flood, sometimes whole parishes at once, each bringing its own +pastor; and it left large traces of itself in the eastern counties of +Pennsylvania, while it rushed to the western frontier and poured itself +like a freshet southwesterly through the valleys of the Blue Ridge and +the Alleghanies. But the Presbyterian churches of eastern Pennsylvania, +even as reinforced from England and New England, were neither many nor +strong; the Baptists were feebler yet, although both these bodies were +giving signs of the strength they were both about to develop.[147:1] +The Episcopalians had one strong and rapidly growing church in +Philadelphia, and a few languishing missions in country towns sustained +by gifts from England. There were as yet no Methodists. + + * * * * * + +Crossing the boundary line from Pennsylvania into Maryland--the line +destined to become famous in political history as Mason and Dixon's--we +come to the four Southern colonies, Maryland, Virginia, and the two +Carolinas. Georgia in 1730 has not yet begun to be. All these have +strongly marked characteristics in common, which determine in advance +the character of their religious history. They are not peculiar in being +slave colonies; there is no colony North or South in which slaves are +not held under sanction of law. Georgia, in its early years, is to have +the solitary honor of being an antislavery and prohibitionist colony. +But the four earlier Southern colonies are unlike their Northern +neighbors in this, that the institution of slavery dominates their whole +social life. The unit of the social organism is not the town, for there +are no towns; it is the plantation. In a population thus dispersed over +vast tracts of territory, schools and churches are maintained with +difficulty, or not maintained at all. Systems of primary and secondary +schools are impracticable, and, for want of these, institutions of +higher education either languish or are never begun. A consequent +tendency, which, happily, there were many influences to resist, was for +this townless population to settle down into the condition of those who, +in distinction from the early Christians, came to be called _pagani_, or +"men of the hamlets," and _Heiden_, or "men of the heath." + +Another common characteristic of the four Southern colonies is that +upon them all was imposed by foreign power a church establishment not +acceptable to the people. In the Carolinas the attempted establishment +of the English church was an absolute failure. It was a church (with +slight exceptions) without parishes, without services, without clergy, +without people, but with certain pretensions in law which were +hindrances in the way of other Christian work, and which tended to make +itself generally odious. In the two older colonies the Established +Church was worse than a failure. It had endowments, parsonages, glebes, +salaries raised by public tax, and therefore it had a clergy--and _such_ +a clergy! Transferring to America the most shameful faults of the +English Establishment, it gave the sacred offices of the Christian +ministry by "patronage" into the hands of debauched and corrupt +adventurers, whose character in general was below the not very lofty +standard of the people whom they pretended to serve in the name of Jesus +Christ. Both in Virginia and in Maryland the infliction of this rabble +of simonists as a burden upon the public treasury was a nuisance under +which the people grew more and more restive from year to year. There was +no spiritual discipline to which this _pretraille_ was amenable.[148:1] +It was the constant effort of good citizens, in the legislature and in +the vestries, if not to starve out the vermin, at least to hold them in +some sort of subjection to the power of the purse. The struggle was one +of the antecedents of the War of Independence, and the vestries of the +Virginia parishes, with their combined ecclesiastical and civil +functions, became a training-school for some of the statesmen of the +Revolution. + +In the general dereliction of churchly care for the people of the +Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main +responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal +hindrances, by earnest Christians of various names, whom the established +clergy vainly affected to despise. The Baptists and the Presbyterians, +soon to be so powerfully prevalent throughout the South, were +represented by a few scattered congregations. But the church of the +people of the South at this period seems to have been the Quaker +meeting, and the ministry the occasional missionary who, bearing +credentials from some yearly meeting, followed in the pioneer footsteps +of George Fox, and went from one circle of Friends to another, through +those vast expanses of thinly settled territory, to revive and confirm +and edify. The early fervors of the Society were soon spent. Its work +was strangely unstable. The proved defects of it as a working system +were grave. The criticism of George Keith seems justified by the +event--its candle needed a candlestick. But no man can truly write the +history of the church of Christ in the United States without giving +honor to the body which for so long a time and over so vast an area bore +the name and testimony of Jesus almost alone; and no man can read the +journeys and labors of John Woolman, mystic and ascetic saint, without +recognizing that he and others like-minded were nothing less than true +apostles of the Lord Jesus. + + * * * * * + +One impression made by this general survey of the colonies is that of +the absence of any sign of unity among the various Christian bodies in +occupation. One corner of the great domain, New England, was thickly +planted with homogeneous churches in mutual fellowship. One order of +Christians, the Quakers, had at least a framework of organization +conterminous with the country. In general there were only scattered +members of a Christian community, awaiting the inbreathing of some +quickening spiritual influence that should bring bone to its bone and +erect the whole into a living church. + +Another and very gratifying impression from the story thus far is the +general fidelity of the Christian colonists in the work of the gospel +among the heathen Indians. There was none of the colonies that did not +make profession of a zealous purpose for the Christianizing of the +savages; and it is only just to say, in the face of much unjust and evil +talk, that there was none that did not give proof of its sincerity. In +Virginia, the Puritans Whitaker and Thomas Dale; in Maryland, the +earliest companies of Jesuit missionaries; Campanius among the Swedish +Lutherans; Megapolensis among the Dutchmen, and the Jesuit martyr Jogues +in the forests of New York; in New England, not only John Eliot and +Roger Williams and the Mayhews, but many a village pastor like Fitch of +Norwich and Pierson of Branford, were distinguished in the first +generation by their devotion to this duty.[150:1] The succession of +faithful missionaries has never failed from that day to this. The large +expectations of the churches are indicated by the erection of one of the +earliest buildings at Harvard College for the use of Indian students. At +William and Mary College not less than seventy Indian students at one +time are said to have been gathered for an advanced education. It was no +fault of the colonial churches that these earnest and persistent efforts +yielded small results. "We discover a strange uniformity of feature in +the successive failures.... Always, just when the project seemed most +hopeful, an indiscriminate massacre of missionaries and converts +together swept the enterprise out of existence. The experience of all +was the same."[151:1] + + * * * * * + +It will be a matter of growing interest, as we proceed, to trace the +relation of the American church to negro slavery. + +It is a curious fact, not without some later analogies, that the +introduction into the New World of this "direful spring of woes +unnumbered" was promoted, in the first instance, by the good Las Casas, +as the hopeful preventive of a worse evil. Touched by the spectacle of +whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel +servitude imposed upon them by the Spanish, it seemed to him a less +wrong to transfer the infliction of this injustice to shoulders more +able to bear it. But "man's inhumanity to man" needed no pretext of +philanthropy. From the landing of the Dutch ship at Jamestown in 1619, +with her small invoice of fourteen negroes, the dismal trade went on +increasing, in spite of humane protest and attempted prohibition. The +legislature of Massachusetts, which was the representative of the +church, set forth what it conceived to be the biblical ethics on the +subject. Recognizing that "lawful captives taken in just wars" may be +held in bondage, it declared among its earliest public acts, in 1641, +that, with this exception, no involuntary bond-slavery, villeinage, or +captivity should ever be in the colony; and in 1646 it took measures for +returning to Africa negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver. It is +not strange that reflection on the golden rule should soon raise doubts +whether the precedents of the Book of Joshua had equal authority with +the law of Christ. In 1675 John Eliot, from the midst of his work among +the Indians, warned the governor against the sale of Indians taken in +war, on the ground that "the selling of souls is dangerous merchandise," +and "with a bleeding and burning passion" remonstrated against "the +abject condition of the enslaved Africans." In 1700 that typical +Puritan, Judge Samuel Sewall, published his pamphlet on "The Selling of +Joseph," claiming for the negroes the rights of brethren, and predicting +that there would be "no progress in gospeling" until slavery should be +abolished. Those were serious days of antislavery agitation, when +Cotton Mather, in his "Essays to Do Good," spoke of the injustice of +slavery in terms such that his little book had to be expurgated by the +American Tract Society to accommodate it to the degenerate conscience of +a later day, and when the town of Boston in 1701 took measures "to put a +period to negroes being slaves." Such endeavors after universal justice +and freedom, on the part of the Christians of New England, thwarted by +the insatiable greed of British traders and politicians, were not to +cease until, with the first enlargement of independence, they should +bring forth judgment to victory. + +The voice of New England was echoed from Pennsylvania. The Mennonites of +Germantown, in 1688, framed in quaint and touching language their +petition for the abolition of slavery, and the Quaker yearly meetings +responded one to another with unanimous protest. But the mischief grew +and grew. In the Northern colonies the growth was stunted by the +climate. Elsewhere the institution, beginning with the domestic service +of a few bondmen attached to their masters' families, took on a new type +of malignity as it expanded. In proportion as the servile population +increases to such numbers as to be formidable, laws of increasing +severity are directed to restraining or repressing it. The first +symptoms of insurrection are followed by horrors of bloody vengeance, +and "from that time forth the slave laws have but one quality--that of +ferocity engendered by fear."[153:1] It was not from the willful +inhumanity of the Southern colonies, but from their terrors, that those +slave codes came forth which for nearly two centuries were the shame of +America and the scandal of Christendom. It is a comfort to the heart of +humanity to reflect that the people were better than their laws; it was +only at the recurring periods of fear of insurrection that they were +worse. In ordinary times human sympathy and Christian principle softened +the rigors of the situation. The first practical fruits of the revival +of religion in the Southern colonies were seen in efforts of Christian +kindness toward the souls and bodies of the slaves. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[129:1] One is touched by the plaintive grief of the Rev. Mr. Muirson, +who has come from the established church of England to make proselytes +from the established churches of Connecticut. He writes to the "S. P. +G.," without a thought of casting any reflections upon his patrons: "It +would require more time than you would willingly bestow on these Lines, +to express how rigidly and severely they treat our People, by taking +their Estate by distress when they do not willingly pay to support their +Ministers" ("Digest of S. P. G. Records," p. 43). The pathos of the +situation is intensified when we bear in mind the relation of this +tender-hearted gentleman's own emoluments to the taxes extorted from the +Congregationalists in his New York parish. + +[130:1] See above, p. 107. + +[131:1] Newman, "Baptist Churches in the United States," pp. 197, 198, +231. + +[131:2] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," chaps, iv., v.; C. F. +Adams, "Three Episodes in Massachusetts History," pp. 342, 621. + +[133:1] "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 42. + +[134:1] Tiffany, chap. v. For a full account of these beginnings in +Connecticut in their historical relations, see L. Bacon on "The +Episcopal Church in Connecticut" ("New Englander," vol. xxv., pp. +283-329). + +[135:1] There were on duty in New York in 1730, besides the minister of +Trinity Church, ten missionaries of the "S. P. G.," including several +employed specially among the Indians and the negroes. Fifteen years +later there were reported to the "Venerable Society" in New York and New +Jersey twenty-two churches ("Digest of S. P. G.," pp. 855, 856; Tiffany, +p. 178). + +[135:2] "Digest of S. P. G.," p. 68 and note. + +[137:1] Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," p. 115. + +[138:1] "Mr. Hooker did often quote a saying out of Mr. Cartwright, that +no man fashioneth his house to his hangings, but his hangings to his +house. It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting +forth of God's house, which is his church, than to accommodate the +church frame to the civil state" (John Cotton, quoted by L. Bacon, +"Historical Discourses," p. 18). + +[139:1] Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 239. + +[139:2] Corwin, "Reformed (Dutch) Church," pp. 77, 78, 173. + +[140:1] Illustrations of the sordid sectarianism of the "Venerable +Society's" operations are painfully frequent in the pages of the "digest +of the S. P. G." See especially on this particular case the action +respecting Messrs. Kocherthal, Ehlig, and Beyse (p. 61). + +[143:1] S. G. Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 125; Thomas, "The +Society of Friends," p. 235. + +[143:2] "Religion gave birth to wealth, and was devoured by her own +offspring." The aphorism is ascribed to Lord Falkland. + +[143:3] Thomas, "The Society of Friends," p. 236. + +[144:1] Fisher, "The Making of Pennsylvania," pp. 166-169, 174. + +[144:2] It is not easy to define the peculiarity of Penn's Indian +policy. It is vulgarly referred to as if it consisted in just dealing, +especially in not taking their land except by fair purchase; and the +"Shackamaxon Treaty," of which nothing is known except by vague report +and tradition, is spoken of as some thing quite unprecedented in this +respect. The fact is that this measure of virtue was common to the +English colonists generally, and eminently to the New England colonists. +A good example of the ordinary cant of historical writers on this +subject is found in "The Making of Pennsylvania," p. 238. The writer +says of the Connecticut Puritans: "They occupied the land by squatter +sovereignty.... It seemed like a pleasant place; they wanted it. They +were the saints, and the saints, as we all know, shall inherit the +earth.... Having originally acquired their land simply by taking it, ... +they naturally grew up with rather liberal views as to their right to +any additional territory that pleased their fancy." No purchase by Penn +was made with more scrupulous regard to the rights of the Indians than +the purchases by which the settlers of Connecticut acquired title to +their lands; but I know of no New England precedent for the somewhat +Punic piece of sharp practice by which the metes and bounds of one of +the Pennsylvania purchases were laid down. + +The long exemption of Pennsylvania from trouble with the Indians seems +to be due to the fact that an exceptionally mild, considerate, and +conscientious body of settlers was confronted with a tribe of savages +thoroughly subdued and cowed in recent conflicts with enemies both red +and white. It seems clear, also, that the exceptional ferocity of the +forty years of uninterrupted war with the Indians that ensued was due in +part to the long dereliction by the Quaker government of its duty of +protecting its citizens and punishing murder, robbery, and arson when +committed by its copper-colored subjects. + +[145:1] Penn's "Truth Exalted" (quoted in "Encyclopaedia Britannica," +vol. xviii., p. 493). + +[147:1] In 1741, after a decade of great activity and growth, the entire +clerical strength of the American Presbyterian Church, in its four +presbyteries, was forty-seven ministers (Thompson, "Presbyterian +Churches," p. 33). + +[148:1] It is a subject of unceasing lament on the part of historians of +the American Episcopal Church that the mother church, all through the +colonial days, should have obstinately refused to the daughter the gift +of the episcopate. There is no denying the grave disadvantages thus +inflicted. But it admits of doubt whether such bishops, with such +conditions, as would have been conceded by the English church of the +eighteenth century, would, after all, have been so very precious a boon. +We shrink from the imputation upon the colonial church of Maryland and +Virginia which is implied in suggesting that it would have been +considerably improved by gaining the disciplinary purity of the English +church of the Georgian era. The long fight in Virginia, culminating in +Patrick Henry's speech in the Parsons' Case, so far Americanized the +Episcopal Church as to make sure that no unwelcome minister was ever to +be forced from outside on one of its parishes. After the Revolution it +became possible to set up the episcopate also on American principles. +Those who are burdened with regret over the long delay of the American +Protestant episcopate may find no small consolation in pondering the +question, what kind of an outfit of bishops, with canons attached, might +have been hoped for from Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Bute? On the whole, +at this point the American Episcopal Church is in the habit of pitying +itself too much. It has something to be thankful for. + +[150:1] It is a curious exception, if it is indeed an exception, that +the one Christian colony that shows no record of early Indian missions +should be that of William Penn. Could this be due to the Quaker faith in +the sufficiency of "the Light that lighteneth every man that cometh into +the world"? + +The type of theology and method of instruction used by some of the +earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of +adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of +Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man +for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of +Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an +illustration both of his good intentions and of his methods, which were +not so good, in "_Some Helps for the Indians: Shewing them how to +Improve their Natural Reason, to Know the True God and the Christian +Religion_." This catechism is printed in the Indian language with an +English version interlined. + +"_Q._ How do you prove that there is but one true God? + +"_An._ Because the reason why singular things of the same kind are +multiplied is not to be found in the nature of God; for the reason why +such like things are multiplied is from the fruitfulness of their +causes: but God hath no cause of his being, but is of himself. Therefore +he is one." (And so on through _secondly_ and _thirdly_.) + +_Per contra_, a sermon to the Stockbridge Indians by the most ponderous +of the metaphysical preachers of New England, Samuel Hopkins, is +beautifully simple and childlike. It is given in full in Park's "Life of +Hopkins," pp. 46-49. + +[151:1] McConnell, "History of the American Episcopal Church," p. 7. The +statement calls for qualification in detail, but the general fact is +unmistakable. + +[153:1] H. C. Lodge, "English Colonies," p. 67 _et seq._ + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +THE GREAT AWAKENING + + +It was not wholly dark in American Christendom before the dawn of the +Great Awakening. The censoriousness which was the besetting sin of the +evangelists in that great religious movement, the rhetorical temptation +to glorify the revival by intensifying the contrast with the antecedent +condition, and the exaggerated _revivalism_ ever since so prevalent in +the American church,--the tendency to consider religion as consisting +mainly in scenes and periods of special fervor, and the intervals +between as so much void space and waste time,--all these have combined +to deepen the dark tints in which the former state is set before us in +history. + +The power of godliness was manifest in the earlier days by many +infallible signs, not excluding those "times of refreshing" in which the +simultaneous earnestness of many souls compels the general attention. +Even in Northampton, where the doctrine of the venerable Stoddard as to +the conditions of communion has been thought to be the low-water mark of +church vitality, not less than five such "harvest seasons" were within +recent memory. It was to this parish in a country town on the frontier +of civilization, but the most important in Massachusetts outside of +Boston, that there came, in the year 1727, to serve as colleague to his +aged grandfather, Pastor Stoddard, a young man whose wonderful +intellectual and spiritual gifts had from his childhood awakened the +pious hopes of all who had known him, and who was destined in his future +career to be recognized as the most illustrious of the saints and +doctors of the American church. The authentic facts of the boyhood of +Jonathan Edwards read like the myths that adorn the legendary Lives of +the Saints. As an undergraduate of Yale College, before the age of +seventeen, his reflections on the mysteries of God, and the universe, +and the human mind, were such as even yet command the attention and +respect of students of philosophy. He remained at New Haven two years +after graduation, for the further study of theology, and then spent +eight months in charge of the newly organized Presbyterian church in New +York.[156:1] After this he spent two years as tutor at Yale,--"one of +the pillar tutors, and the glory of the college,"--at the critical +period after the defection of Rector Cutler to the Church of +England.[156:2] From this position he was called in 1726, at the age of +twenty-three, to the church at Northampton. There he was ordained +February 15, 1727, and thither a few months later he brought his +"espoused saint," Sarah Pierpont, consummate flower of Puritan +womanhood, thenceforth the companion not only of his pastoral cares and +sorrows, but of his seraphic contemplations of divine things. + +The intensely earnest sermons, the holy life, and the loving prayers of +one of the greatest preachers in the history of the church were not long +in bearing abundant fruit. In a time of spiritual and moral depression, +when the world, the flesh, and the devil seemed to be gaining against +the gospel, sometime in the year 1733 signs began to be visible of +yielding to the power of God's Word. The frivolous or wanton frolics of +the youth began to be exchanged for meetings for religious conference. +The pastor was encouraged to renewed tenderness and solemnity in his +preaching. His themes were justification by faith, the awfulness of +God's justice, the excellency of Christ, the duty of pressing into the +kingdom of God. Presently a young woman, a leader in the village +gayeties, became "serious, giving evidence," even to the severe judgment +of Edwards, "of a heart truly broken and sanctified." A general +seriousness began to spread over the whole town. Hardly a single person, +old or young, but felt concerned about eternal things. According to +Edwards's "Narrative": + + "The work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true + saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the + town, so that in the spring and summer, anno 1735, the town + seemed to be full of the presence of God. It was never so full + of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress, as + it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God's presence in + almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on the + account of salvation's being brought unto them; parents + rejoicing over their children as being new-born, and husbands + over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of + God were then seen in his sanctuary. God's day was a delight, + and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were + then beautiful; the congregation was alive in God's service, + every one intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to + drink in the words of the minister as they came from his + mouth; the assembly in general were from time to time in tears + while the Word was preached, some weeping with sorrow and + distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and + concern for the souls of their neighbors. Our public praises + were then greatly enlivened; God was then served in our + psalmody in some measure in the beauty of holiness." + +The crucial test of the divineness of the work was given when the people +presented themselves before the Lord with a solemn act of thanksgiving +for his great goodness and his gracious presence in the town of +Northampton, with publicly recorded vows to renounce their evil ways and +put away their abominations from before his eyes. They solemnly promise +thenceforth, in all dealings with their neighbor, to be governed by the +rules of honesty, justice, and uprightness; not to overreach or defraud +him, nor anywise to injure him, whether willfully or through want of +care; to regard not only their own interest, but his; particularly, to +be faithful in the payment of just debts; in the case of past wrongs +against any, never to rest till they have made full reparation; to +refrain from evil speaking, and from everything that feeds a spirit of +bitterness; to do nothing in a spirit of revenge; not to be led by +private or partisan interest into any course hurtful to the interests of +Christ's kingdom; particularly, in public affairs, not to allow ambition +or partisanship to lead them counter to the interest of true religion. +Those who are young promise to allow themselves in no diversions that +would hinder a devout spirit, and to avoid everything that tends to +lasciviousness, and which will not be approved by the infinitely pure +and holy eye of God. Finally, they consecrate themselves watchfully to +perform the relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, +brothers and sisters, masters, mistresses, and servants. + +So great a work as this could not be hid. The whole region of the +Connecticut Valley, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and neighboring +regions felt the influence of it. The fame of it went abroad. A letter +of Edwards's in reply to inquiries from his friend, Dr. Colman, of +Boston, was forwarded to Dr. Watts and Dr. Guise, of London, and by them +published under the title of "Narrative of Surprising Conversions." A +copy of the little book was carried in his pocket for wayside reading on +a walk from London to Oxford by John Wesley, in the year 1738. Not yet +in the course of his work had he "seen it on this fashion," and he +writes in his journal: "Surely this is the Lord's doing, and it is +marvelous in our eyes." + +Both in this narrative and in a later work on "The Distinguishing Marks +of a Work of the Spirit of God," one cannot but admire the divine gift +of a calm wisdom with which Edwards had been endowed as if for this +exigency. He is never dazzled by the incidents of the work, nor +distracted by them from the essence of it. His argument for the +divineness of the work is not founded on the unusual or extraordinary +character of it, nor on the impressive bodily effects sometimes +attending it, such as tears, groans, outcries, convulsions, or +faintings, nor on visions or ecstasies or "impressions." What he claims +is that the work may be divine, _notwithstanding_ the presence of these +incidents.[159:1] It was doubtless owing to the firm and judicious +guidance of such a pastor that the intense religious fervor of this +first awakening at Northampton was marked by so much of sobriety and +order. In later years, in other regions, and under the influence of +preachers not of greater earnestness, but of less wisdom and discretion, +there were habitual scenes of extravagant and senseless enthusiasm, +which make the closing pages of this chapter of church history painfully +instructive. + +It is not difficult to understand how one of the first places at a +distance to feel the kindling example of Northampton should be the +neighborhood of Newark. To this region, planted, as we have seen, with +so strong a stock from New England, from old England, and from Scotland, +came, in 1708, a youth of twenty years, Jonathan Dickinson, a native of +the historic little town of Hatfield, next neighbor to Northampton. He +was pastor at Elizabeth, but his influence and activity extended through +all that part of New Jersey, and he became easily the leader of the +rapidly growing communion of Presbyterian churches in that province, and +the opponent, in the interest of Christian liberty and sincerity, of +rigid terms of subscription, demanded by men of little faith. There is a +great career before him; but that which concerns the present topic is +his account of what took place "sometime in August, 1739 (the summer +before Mr. Whitefield came first into these parts), when there was a +remarkable revival at Newark.... This revival of religion was chiefly +observable among the younger people, till the following March, when the +whole town in general was brought under an uncommon concern about their +eternal interests, and the congregation appeared universally affected +under some sermons that were then preached to them." + +Like scenes of spiritual quickening were witnessed that same season in +other parts of New Jersey; but special interest attaches to the report +from New Londonderry, Penn., where a Scotch-Irish community received as +its pastor, in the spring of 1740, Samuel Blair, a native of Ireland, +trained in the Log College of William Tennent. He describes the people, +at his first knowledge of them, as sunk in a religious torpor, +ignorance, and indifference. The first sign of vitality was observed in +March, 1740, during the pastor's absence, when, under an alarming sermon +from a neighbor minister: + + "There was a visible appearance of much soul-concern among + the hearers; so that some burst out with an audible noise into + bitter crying, a thing not known in these parts before.... The + first sermon I preached after my return to them was from + Matthew vi. 33: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his + righteousness.' After opening up and explaining the parts of + the text, when in the improvement I came to press the + injunction in the text upon the unconverted and ungodly, and + offered this as one reason among others why they should now + first of all seek the kingdom and righteousness of God, viz., + that they had neglected too long to do so already, this + consideration seemed to come and cut like a sword upon several + in the congregation; so that while I was speaking upon it they + could no longer contain, but burst out in the most bitter + mourning. I desired them as much as possible to restrain + themselves from making any noise that would hinder themselves + or others from hearing what was spoken; and often afterward I + had occasion to repeat the same counsel. I still advised + people to endeavor to moderate and bound their passions, but + not so as to resist and stifle their convictions. The number + of the awakened increased very fast. Frequently under sermons + there were some newly convicted and brought into deep distress + of soul about their perishing estate. Our Sabbath assemblies + soon became vastly large, many people from almost all parts + around inclining very much to come where there was such + appearance of the divine power and presence. I think there was + scarcely a sermon or lecture preached here through that whole + summer but there were manifest evidences of impressions on the + hearers, and many times the impressions were very great and + general. Several would be overcome and fainting; others deeply + sobbing, hardly able to contain; others crying in a most + dolorous manner; many others more silently weeping, and a + solemn concern appearing in the countenances of many others. + And sometimes the soul-exercises of some (though comparatively + but very few) would so far affect their bodies as to occasion + some strange, unusual bodily motions. I had opportunities of + speaking particularly with a great many of those who afforded + such outward tokens of inward soul-concern in the time of + public worship and hearing of the Word. Indeed, many came to + me of themselves, in their distress, for private instruction + and counsel; and I found, so far as I can remember, that with + by far the greater part their apparent concern in public was + not just a transient qualm of conscience or merely a floating + commotion of the affections, but a rational, fixed conviction + of their dangerous, perishing estate.... + + "In some time many of the convinced and distressed afforded + very hopeful, satisfying evidence that the Lord had brought + them to true closure with Jesus Christ, and that their + distresses and fears had been in a great measure removed in a + right gospel way, by believing in the Son of God. Several of + them had very remarkable and sweet deliverances this way. It + was very agreeable to hear their accounts how that when they + were in the deepest perplexity and darkness, distress and + difficulty, seeking God as poor, condemned, hell-deserving + sinners, the scene of recovering grace through a Redeemer has + been opened to their understandings with a surprising beauty + and glory, so that they were enabled to believe in Christ with + joy unspeakable and full of glory."[162:1] + +The experience of Gilbert Tennent at New Brunswick had no connection +with the first awakening at Northampton, but had important relations +with later events. He was the eldest of the four sons whom William +Tennent, the Episcopalian minister from Ireland, had brought with him to +America and educated at his Log College. In 1727 he became pastor of a +church at New Brunswick, where he was much impressed with what he saw of +the results of the work of the Rev. Theodore Frelinghuysen, who for +seven years had been pastor of a neighboring Dutch church. The example +and fraternal counsel of this good man made him sensible of the +fruitlessness of his own work, and moved him to more earnest prayers and +labors. Having been brought low with sickness, he prayed to God to grant +him one half-year more in which to "endeavor to promote his kingdom with +all my might at all adventures." Being raised up from sickness, he +devoted himself to earnest personal labors with individuals and to +renewed faithfulness in the pulpit, "which method was sealed by the Holy +Spirit in the conviction and conversion of a considerable number of +persons, at various times and in different places, in that part of the +country, as appeared by their acquaintance with experimental religion +and good conversation." This bit of pastoral history, in which is +nothing startling or prodigious, was at least five years previous to the +"Surprising Conversions" at Northampton. There must have been generally +throughout the country a preparedness for the Great Awakening. + + * * * * * + +It was in that year (1735) in which the town of Northampton was all +ablaze with the glory of its first revival under Edwards that George +Whitefield, first among the members of Wesley's "Holy Club" at Oxford, +attained to that "sense of the divine love" from which he was wont to +date his conversion. In May, 1738, when the last reflections from the +Northampton revival had faded out from all around the horizon, the young +clergyman, whose first efforts as a preacher in pulpits of the Church of +England had astonished all hearers by the power of his eloquence, +arrived at Savannah, urged by the importunity of the Wesleys to take up +the work in Georgia in which they had so conspicuously failed. He +entered eagerly into the sanguine schemes for the advantage of the +young colony, and especially into the scheme for building and endowing +an orphan-house in just that corner of the earth where there was less +need of such an institution than anywhere else. After three months' stay +he started on his return to England to seek priest's orders for himself, +and funds for the orphans that might be expected sometime in Georgia. He +was successful in both his errands. He was ordained; he collected more +than one thousand pounds for the orphan-house; and being detained in the +kingdom by an embargo, he began that course of evangelistic preaching +which continued on either side of the ocean until his death, and which +is without a parallel in church history. His incomparable eloquence +thronged the parish churches, until the churches were closed against +him, and the Bishop of London warned the people against him in a +pastoral letter. Then he went out into the open fields, in the service, +as he said, of him "who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens +for his sounding-board, and who, when his gospel was refused by the +Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges." Multitudes of +every rank thronged him; but especially the heathenized and embruted +colliers near Bristol listened to the unknown gospel, and their awakened +feelings were revealed to the preacher by his observing the white +gutters made by the tears that ran down their grimy faces. At last the +embargo was raised, and committing his work to Wesley, whom he had drawn +into field-preaching, he sailed in August, 1739, for Philadelphia, on +his way to Georgia. His fame had gone before him, and the desire to hear +him was universal. The churches would not contain the throngs. It was +long remembered how, on those summer evenings, he would take his stand +in the balcony of the old court-house in Market Street, and how every +syllable from his wonderful voice would be heard aboard the river-craft +moored at the foot of the street, four hundred feet away. + +At New York the Episcopal church was closed against him, but the pastor +of the Presbyterian church, Mr. Pemberton, from Boston, made him +welcome, and the fields were free to him and his hearers. On the way to +New York and back, the tireless man preached at every town. At New +Brunswick he saw and heard with profound admiration Gilbert Tennent, +thenceforth his friend and yokefellow. + +Seeing the solemn eagerness of the people everywhere to hear him, he +determined to make the journey to Savannah by land, and again he turned +the long journey into a campaign of preaching. Arriving at Savannah in +January, 1740, he laid the foundation of his orphan-house, "Bethesda," +and in March was again on his way northward on a tour of preaching and +solicitation of funds. Touching at Charleston, where the bishop's +commissary, Dr. Garden, was at open controversy with him, he preached +five times and received seventy pounds for his charitable work. Landing +at New Castle on a Sunday morning, he preached morning and evening. +Monday morning he preached at Wilmington to a vast assemblage. Tuesday +evening he preached on Society Hill, in Philadelphia, "to about eight +thousand," and at the same place Wednesday morning and evening. Then +once more he made the tour to New York and back, preaching at every +halting-place. A contemporary newspaper contains the following item: + + "New Castle, May 15th. This evening Mr. Whitefield went on + board his sloop here in order to sail for Georgia. On Sunday + he preached twice in Philadelphia, and in the evening, when he + preached his farewell sermon, it is supposed he had twenty + thousand hearers. On Monday he preached at Darby and Chester; + on Tuesday at Wilmington and Whiteclay Creek; on Wednesday, + twice at Nottingham; on Thursday at Fog's Manor and New + Castle. The congregations were much increased since his being + here last. The presence of God was much seen in the + assemblies, especially at Nottingham and Fog's Manor, where + the people were under such deep soul-distress that their cries + almost drowned his voice. He has collected in this and the + neighboring provinces about four hundred and fifty pounds + sterling for his orphans in Georgia." + +Into the feeble but rapidly growing presbyteries and the one synod of +the American Presbyterian Church the revival had brought, not peace, but +a sword. The collision was inevitable between the fervor and +unrestrained zeal of the evangelists and the sense of order and decorum, +and of the importance of organization and method, into which men are +trained in the ministry of an established church. No man, even at this +day, can read the "standards" of the Presbyterian Church without seeing +that they have had to be strained to admit those "revival methods" which +ever since the days of Whitefield have prevailed in that body. The +conflict that arose was not unlike that which from the beginning of New +England history had subsisted between Separatist and Nationalist. In the +Presbyterian conflict, as so often in religious controversies, +disciplinary and doctrinal questions were complicated with a difference +of race. The "Old Side" was the Scotch and Irish party; the "New Side" +was the New England party, to which many of the old-country ministers +adhered. For successive years the mutual opposition had shown itself in +the synod; and in 1740, at the synod meeting at Philadelphia, soon after +the departure of Whitefield, the real gravamen of the controversy +appeared, in the implied and even express impeachment of the spiritual +character of the Old Side ministers. The impeachment had been implied in +the coming of the evangelists uninvited into other men's parishes, as +if these were mission ground. And now it was expressed in papers read +before the synod by Blair and Gilbert Tennent. The action of the synod +went so far toward sustaining the men of the New Side as to repeal the +rule restraining ministers from preaching outside of their own parishes, +and as to put on record a thanksgiving for the work of God in the land. +Through all the days of the synod's meeting, daily throngs on Society +Hill were addressed by the Tennents and other "hot gospelers" of the +revival, and churches and private houses were resounding with revival +hymns and exhortations. Already the preaching and printing of Gilbert +Tennent's "Nottingham Sermon" had made further fellowship between the +two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated +the worst characteristic of the revivalists--their censoriousness. It +was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," +which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one +of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer +to it came in a form that might have been expected. At the opening of +the synod of 1741 a solemn protestation was presented containing an +indictment in seven grave counts against the men of the New Side, and +declaring them to "have at present no right to sit and vote as members +of this synod, and that if they should sit and vote, the doings of the +synod would be of no force or obligation." The protestation was adopted +by the synod by a bare majority of a small attendance. The presbytery of +New Brunswick found itself exscinded by this short and easy process of +discipline; the presbytery of New York joined with it in organizing a +new synod, and the schism was complete. + +It is needless further to follow in detail the amazing career of +Whitefield, "posting o'er land and ocean without rest," and attended at +every movement by such storms of religious agitation as have been +already described. In August, 1740, he made his first visit to New +England. He met with a cordial welcome. At Boston all pulpits were +opened to him, and churches were thronged with eager and excited +hearers.[168:1] He preached on the common in the open air, and the +crowds were doubled. All the surrounding towns, and the coast eastward +to Maine, and the interior as far as Northampton, and the Connecticut +towns along the road to New York, were wonderfully aroused by the +preaching, which, according to the testimony of two nations and all +grades of society, must have been of unequaled power over the feelings. +Not only the clergy, including the few Church of England missionaries, +but the colleges and the magistrates delighted to honor him. Belcher, +the royal governor at Boston, fairly slobbered over him, with tears and +embraces and kisses; and the devout Governor Talcott, at New Haven, gave +God thanks, after listening to the great preacher, "for such refreshings +on the way to our rest." So he was sped on his way back to the South. + +Relieved thus of the glamor of his presence, the New England people +began, some of them, to recognize in what an earthen vessel their +treasure had been borne. Already, in his earlier youth, when his vast +powers had been suddenly revealed to him and to the world, he had had +wise counsel from such men as Watts and Doddridge against some of his +perils. Watts warned him against his superstition of trusting to +"impressions" assumed to be divine; and Doddridge pronounced him "an +honest man, but weak, and a little intoxicated with popularity."[169:1] +But no human strength could stand against the adulation that everywhere +attended him. His vain conceit was continually betraying him into +indiscretions, which he was ever quick to expiate by humble +acknowledgment. At Northampton he was deeply impressed with the beauty +of holiness in Edwards and his wife; and he listened with deference to +the cautions of that wise counselor against his faith in "impressions" +and against his censorious judgments of other men as "unconverted"; but +it seemed to the pastor that his guest "liked him not so well for +opposing these things." + +The faults of Whitefield were intensified to a hateful degree in some of +his associates and followers. Leaving Boston, he sent, to succeed to his +work, Gilbert Tennent, then glowing with the heat of his noted +Nottingham sermon on "An Unconverted Ministry." At once men's minds +began to be divided. On the one hand, so wise and sober a critic as +Thomas Prince, listening with severe attention, gave his strong and +unreserved approval to the preaching and demeanor of Tennent.[169:2] At +the other extreme, we have such testimony as this from Dr. Timothy +Cutler, the former rector of Yale College, now the Episcopalian minister +of Boston: + + "It would be an endless attempt to describe that scene of + confusion and disturbance occasioned by him [Whitefield]: the + division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, the + contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of + children and servants, the quarrels among teachers, the + disorders of the night, the intermission of labor and + business, the neglect of husbandry and of gathering the + harvest.... In many conventicles and places of rendezvous + there has been checkered work indeed, several preaching and + several exhorting and praying at the same time, the rest + crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, and this + revel maintained in some places many days and nights together + without intermission; and then there were the blessed + outpourings of the Spirit!... After him came one Tennent, a + monster! impudent and noisy, and told them they were all + damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed them, and in the most + dreadful winter I ever saw people wallowed in the snow night + and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings, and many + ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried + more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful + for."[170:1] + +This is in a tone of bitter sectarian railing. But, after all, the main +allegations in it are sustained by the ample evidence produced by Dr. +Charles Chauncy, pastor of the First Church in Boston, in his serious +and weighty volume of "Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in +New England," published in 1743, as he sincerely says, "to serve the +interests of Christ's kingdom," and "faithfully pointing out the things +of a bad and dangerous tendency in the late and present religious +appearance in the land." Dr. Chauncy was doubtless included in the +sweeping denunciation of the Christian ministry in general as +"unconverted," "Pharisees," "hypocrites." And yet it does not appear in +historical evidence that Chauncy was not every whit as good a Christian +as Tennent or Whitefield. + +The excesses of the revival went on from bad to worse. They culminated, +at last, in the frenzy of poor James Davenport, great-grandson of the +venerable founder of New Haven, who, under the control of "impressions" +and "impulses" and texts of Scripture "borne in upon his mind," +abandoned his Long Island parish, a true _allotrio-episcopos_, to thrust +himself uninvited into the parishes of other ministers, denouncing the +pastor as "unconverted" and adjuring the people to desert both pastor +and church. Like some other self-appointed itinerants and exhorters of +the time, he seemed bent upon schism, as if this were the great end of +preaching. Being invited to New London to assist in organizing a +Separatist church, he "published the messages which he said he received +from the Spirit in dreams and otherwise, importing the great necessity +of mortification and contempt of the world; and made them believe that +they must put away from them everything that they delighted in, to avoid +the heinous sin of idolatry--that wigs, cloaks and breeches, hoods, +gowns, rings, jewels, and necklaces, must be all brought together into +one heap into his chamber, that they might by his solemn decree be +committed to the flames." On the Sabbath afternoon the pile was publicly +burned amid songs and shouts. In the pile were many favorite books of +devotion, including works of Flavel, Beveridge, Henry, and like +venerated names, and the sentence was announced with a loud voice, "that +the smoke of the torments of such of the authors of the above-said books +as died in the same belief as when they set them out was now ascending +in hell, in like manner as they saw the smoke of these books +arise."[171:1] The public fever and delirium was passing its crisis. A +little more than a year from this time, Davenport, who had been treated +by his brethren with much forbearance and had twice been released from +public process as _non compos mentis_, recovered his reason at the same +time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and +affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done under the +influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit +of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned +to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained +of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept over New England, except +a few languishing schisms in country towns of Connecticut. + +As in the middle colonies, the revival had brought division in New +England. But, after the New England fashion, it was division merely into +ways of thinking, not into sects. Central in the agitated scene is the +calm figure of Edwards, uniting the faith and zeal of an apostle with +the acuteness of a philosopher, and applying the exquisite powers of his +intellect to discriminate between a divine work and its human or Satanic +admixtures, and between true and spurious religious affections. He won +the blessing of the peacemaker. When half a generation had passed there +had not ceased, indeed, to be differences of opinion, but there was none +left to defend the wild extravagances which the very authors of them +lamented, and there was none to deny, in face of the rich and enduring +fruits of the revival, that the power of God had been present in it. In +the twenty years ending in 1760 the number of the New England churches +had been increased by one hundred and fifty.[172:1] + +In the middle colonies there had been like progress. The Presbyterian +ministry had increased from forty-five to more than a hundred; and the +increase had been wholly on the "New Side." An early move of the +conservative party, to require a degree from a British or a New England +college as a condition of license to preach, was promptly recognized as +intended to exclude the fervid students from the Log College. It was met +by the organization of Princeton College, whose influence, more New +Englandish than New England, directed by a succession of illustrious +Yale graduates in full sympathy with the advanced theology of the +revival, was counted on to withstand the more cautious orthodoxy of +Yale. In this and other ways the Presbyterian schism fell out to the +furtherance of the gospel. + +In Virginia the quickening was as when the wind breathed in the valley +of dry bones. The story of Samuel Morris and his unconscious mission, +although authentic fact, belongs with the very romance of +evangelism.[173:1] Whitefield and "One-eyed Robinson," and at last +Samuel Davies, came to his aid. The deadly exclusiveness of the inert +Virginia establishment was broken up, and the gospel had free course. +The Presbyterian Church, which had at first been looked on as an exotic +sect that might be tolerated out on the western frontier, after a brief +struggle with the Act of Uniformity maintained its right to live and +struck vigorous root in the soil. The effect of the Awakening was felt +in the establishment itself. Devereux Jarratt, a convert of the revival, +went to England for ordination, and returned to labor for the +resuscitation of the Episcopal Church in his native State. "To him, and +such as he, the first workings of the renewed energy of the church in +Virginia are to be traced."[173:2] + +An even more important result of the Awakening was the swift and wide +extension of Baptist principles and churches. This was altogether +logical. The revival had come, not so much in the spirit and power of +Elijah, turning to each other the hearts of fathers and of children, as +in the spirit of Ezekiel, the preacher of individual responsibility and +duty. The temper of the revival was wholly congenial with the strong +individualism of the Baptist churches. The Separatist churches formed in +New England by the withdrawal of revival enthusiasts from the parish +churches in many instances became Baptist. Cases of individual +conversion to Baptist views were frequent, and the earnestness with +which the new opinion was held approved itself not only by debating and +proselyting, but by strenuous and useful evangelizing. Especially at the +South, from Virginia to Georgia, the new preachers, entering into the +labors of the annoyed and persecuted pioneers of their communion, won +multitudes of converts to the Christian faith, from the neglected +populations, both black and white, and gave to the Baptist churches a +lasting preeminence in numbers among the churches of the South. + +Throughout the country the effect of this vigorous propagation of rival +sects openly, in the face of whatever there was of church establishment, +settled this point: that the law of American States, by whomsoever +administered, must sooner or later be the law of liberty and equality +among the various religious communions. In the southern colonies, the +empty shell of a church establishment had crumbled on contact with the +serious earnestness of the young congregations gathered by the +Presbyterian and Baptist evangelists. In New England, where +establishment was in the form of an attempt by the people of the +commonwealth to confirm the people of each town in the maintenance of +common worship according to their conscience and judgment, the "standing +order" had solid strength; but when it was attempted by public authority +to curb the liberty of a considerable minority conscientiously intent on +secession, the reins were ready to break. It soon came to be recognized +that the only preeminence the parish churches could permanently hold was +that of being "servants of all." + +With equal and unlimited liberty, was to follow, as a prevailing +characteristic of American Christianity, a large diversity of +organization. Not only that men disagreeing in their convictions of +truth would be enrolled in different bodies, but that men holding the +same views, in the same statement of them, would feel free to go apart +from one another, and stay apart. There was not even to be any one +generally predominating organization from which minor ones should be +reckoned as dissenting. One after another the organizations which should +be tempted by some period of exceptional growth and prosperity to +pretend to a hegemony among the churches--Catholic, Episcopalian, +Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist--would meet with some set-back as +inexorable as "the law of nature that prevents the trees from growing up +into the sky." + +By a curious paradox, the same spiritual agitation which deepened the +divisions of the American church aroused in the colonies the +consciousness of a national religious unity. We have already seen that +in the period before the Awakening the sole organ of fellowship reaching +through the whole chain of the British colonies was the correspondence +of the Quaker meetings and missionaries. In the glow of the revival the +continent awoke to the consciousness of a common spiritual life. Ranging +the continent literally from Georgia to Maine, with all his weaknesses +and indiscretions, and with his incomparable eloquence, welcomed by +every sect, yet refusing an exclusive allegiance to any, Whitefield +exercised a true apostolate, bearing daily the care of all the churches, +and becoming a messenger of mutual fellowship not only between the ends +of the continent, but between the Christians of two hemispheres. Remote +churches exchanged offices of service. Tennent came from New Jersey to +labor in New England; Dickinson and Burr and Edwards were the gift of +the northern colonies to the college at Princeton. The quickened sense +of a common religious life and duty and destiny was no small part of the +preparation for the birth of the future nation. + +Whether for good or for evil, the few years from 1740 to 1750 were +destined to impress upon the American church in its various orders, for +a hundred years to come, the character of _Methodism_.[176:1] + +In New England, the idea, into which the first pastors had been trained +by their experience as parish ministers in the English established +church, of the parochial church holding correlative rights and duties +toward the community in all its families, succumbed at last, after a +hundred years of more or less conscious antagonism, to the incompatible +principle, adopted from the Separatists of Plymouth, of the church +formed according to elective affinity by the "social compact" of persons +of the age of discretion who could give account to themselves and to one +another of the conscious act and experience of conversion. This view, +subject to important mitigations or aggravations in actual +administration, held almost unquestioned dominance in the New England +churches until boldly challenged by Horace Bushnell, in his +"epoch-making" volume on "Christian Nurture" (1846), as a departure from +the orthodoxy of the fathers. + +In the Presbyterian Church, revivalism as a principle of church life had +to contend with rules distinctly articulated in its constitutional +documents. So exclusively does the Westminster institute contemplate the +church as an established parish that its "Directory for Worship" +contains no provision for so abnormal an incident as the baptism of an +adult, and all baptized children growing up and not being of scandalous +life are to be welcomed to the Lord's Supper. It proves the immense +power of the Awakening, that this rigid and powerful organization, of a +people tenacious of its traditions to the point of obstinacy, should +have swung so completely free at this point, not only of its +long-settled usages, but of the distinct letter of its standards. + +The Episcopal Church of the colonies was almost forced into an attitude +of opposition to the revival. The unspeakable folly of the English +bishops in denouncing and silencing the most effective preachers in the +national church had betrayed Whitefield into his most easily besetting +sin, that of censorious judgment, and his sweeping counter-denunciations +of the Episcopalian clergy in general as unconverted closed to him many +hearts and pulpits that at first had been hospitably open to him. Being +human, they came into open antagonism to him and to the revival. From +the protest against extravagance and disorder, it was a short and +perilously easy step to the rejection of religious fervor and +earnestness. The influence of the mother church of that dreary period +and the influence of the official rings around every royal governor were +all too potent in the same direction. The Propagation Society's +missionaries boasted, with reason, of large accessions of proselytes +alienated from other churches by their distaste for the methods of the +revival. The effect on the Episcopal Church itself was in some respects +unhappy. It "lowered a spiritual temperature already too low,"[177:1] +and weakened the moral influence of the church, and the value of its +testimony to important principles which there were few besides +efficiently to represent--the duty of the church not to disown or shut +out those of little faith, and the church's duty toward its children. +Never in the history of the church have the Lord's husbandmen shown a +fiercer zeal for rooting up tares, regardless of damage to the wheat, +than was shown by the preachers of the Awakening. Never was there a +wider application of the reproach against those who, instead of +preaching to men that they should be converted and become as little +children, preach to children that they must be converted and become like +grown folks.[178:1] The attitude of the Episcopal Church at that period +was not altogether admirable; but it is nothing to its dishonor that it +bore the reproach of being a friend of publicans and sinners, and +offered itself as a _refugium peccatorum_, thus holding many in some +sort of relation to the kingdom of Christ who would otherwise have +lapsed into sheer infidelity. + +In all this the Episcopal Church was affected by the Awakening only by +way of reaction. But it owes a debt to the direct influence of the +Awakening which it has not always been careful to acknowledge. We have +already seen that the requickening of the asphyxiated church of Virginia +was part of the great revival, and this character remains impressed on +that church to this day. The best of those traits by which the American +Episcopal Church is distinguished from the Church of England, as, for +instance, the greater purity of the ministry and of the membership, are +family traits of the revival churches; the most venerated of its early +bishops, White and Griswold, bore the same family likeness; and the +"Evangelical party," for a time so influential in its counsels, was a +tardy and mild afterglow from the setting of the Great Awakening.[179:1] + +An incident of the revival, failing which it would have lacked an +essential token of the presence of the Spirit of Christ, was the +kindling of zeal for communicating the gospel to the ignorant, the +neglected, and the heathen. Among the first-fruits of Whitefield's +preaching at the South was a practical movement among the planters for +the instruction of their slaves--devotees, most of them, of the most +abject fetich-worship of their native continent. Of the evangelists and +pastors most active in the revival, there were few, either North or +South, whose letters or journals do not report the drawing into the +churches of large numbers of negroes and Indians, whose daily lives +witnessed to the sincerity of their profession of repentance and +Christian faith. The Indian population of the southeastern corner of +Connecticut with such accord received the gospel at the hands of the +evangelists that heathenism seemed extinct among them.[179:2] + +Among the first trophies of the revival at Norwich was a Mohegan boy +named Samson Occum. Wheelock, pastor at Lebanon, one of the most ardent +of the revival preachers, took him into his family as a student. This +was the beginning of that school for the training of Indian preachers +which, endowed in part with funds gathered by Occum in England, grew at +last into Dartmouth College. The choicest spiritual gifts at the +disposal of the church were freely spent on the missions. Whitefield +visited the school and the field, and sped Kirkland on his way to the +Oneidas. Edwards, leaving Northampton in sorrow of heart, gave his +incomparable powers to the work of the gospel among the Stockbridge +Indians until summoned thence to the presidency of Princeton College. +When Brainerd fainted under his burden, it was William Tennent who went +out into the wilderness to carry on the work of harvest. But the great +gift of the American church to the cause of missions was the gift of +David Brainerd himself. His life was the typical missionary's life--the +scattering of precious seed with tears, the heart-sickness of hope +deferred, at last the rejoicing of the harvest-home. His early death +enrolled him in the canon of the saints of modern Christendom. The story +of his life and death, written by Jonathan Edwards out of that fatherly +love with which he had tended the young man's latest days and hours, may +not have been an unmixed blessing to the church. The long-protracted +introspections, the cherished forebodings and misgivings, as if doubt +was to be cultivated as a Christian virtue, may not have been an +altogether wholesome example for general imitation. But think what the +story of that short life has wrought! To how many hearts it has been an +inspiration to self-sacrifice and devotion to the service of God in the +service of man, we cannot know. Along one line its influence can be +partly traced. The "Life of David Brainerd" made Henry Martyn a +missionary to the heathen. As spiritual father to Henry Martyn, Brainerd +may be reckoned, in no unimportant sense, to be the father of modern +missions to the heathen. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[156:1] Of how little relative importance was this charge may be judged +from the fact that a quarter-century later, when the famous Joseph +Bellamy was invited to it from his tiny parish of Bethlem, Conn., the +council called to advise in the case judged that the interests of +Bethlem were too important to be sacrificed to the demands of New York. + +[156:2] See the altogether admirable monograph of Professor A. V. G. +Allen on "Jonathan Edwards," p. 23. + +[159:1] Allen, "Jonathan Edwards," pp. 164-174. + +[162:1] Joseph Tracy, "The Great Awakening," chap. ii. This work, of +acknowledged value and authority, is on the list of the Congregational +Board of Publication. It is much to be regretted that the Board does not +publish it as well as announce it. A new edition of it, under the hand +of a competent editor, with a good index, would be a useful service to +history. + +[168:1] The critical historian has the unusual satisfaction, at this +point, of finding a gauge by which to discount the large round numbers +given in Whitefield's journal. He speaks of preaching in the Old South +Church to six thousand persons. The now venerable building had at that +time a seating capacity of about twelve hundred. Making the largest +allowance for standing-room, we may estimate his actual audience at two +thousand. Whitefield was an honest man, but sixty-six per cent. is not +too large a discount to make from his figures; his estimates of +spiritual effect from his labor are liable to a similar deduction. + +[169:1] Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 51. + +[169:2] _Ibid._, pp. 114-120. + +[170:1] Letter of September 24, 1743, quoted in McConnell, "American +Episcopal Church," p. 142, note. + +[171:1] Chauncy, "Seasonable Thoughts," pp. 220-223. + +[172:1] Tracy, "Great Awakening," p. 389. + +[173:1] See the autobiographical narrative in Tracy, p. 377. + +[173:2] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 45. + +[176:1] "The Great Awakening ... terminated the Puritan and inaugurated +the Pietist or Methodist age of American church history" (Thompson, +"Presbyterian Churches in the United States," p. 34). It is not +unnecessary to remark that the word "Methodist" is not used in the +narrow sense of "Wesleyan." + +[177:1] Unpublished lectures of the Rev. W. G. Andrews on "The +Evangelical Revival of 1740 and American Episcopalians." It is much to +be hoped that these valuable studies of the critical period of American +church history may not long remain unpublished. + +[178:1] This sharp antithesis is quoted at second hand from Charles +Kingsley. The stories of little children frightened into screaming, and +then dragged (at four years of age, says Jonathan Edwards) through the +agitating vicissitudes of a "revival experience," occupy some of the +most pathetic, not to say tragical, pages of the history of the +Awakening. + +[179:1] McConnell, pp. 144-146; W. G. Andrews, Lecture III. + +[179:2] Tracy, pp. 187-192. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL ERA--THE GERMAN CHURCHES--THE BEGINNINGS OF THE +METHODIST CHURCH. + + +The quickening of religious feeling, the deepening of religious +conviction, the clearing and defining of theological opinions, that were +incidental to the Great Awakening, were a preparation for more than +thirty years of intense political and warlike agitation. The churches +suffered from the long distraction of the public mind, and at the end of +it were faint and exhausted. But for the infusion of a "more abundant +life" which they had received, it would seem that they could hardly have +survived the stress of that stormy and revolutionary period. + +The religious life of this period was manifested in part in the growth +of the New England theology. The great leader of this school of +theological inquiry, the elder Edwards, was born at the opening of the +eighteenth century. The oldest and most eminent of his disciples and +successors, Bellamy and Hopkins, were born respectively in 1719 and +1721, and entered into the work of the Awakening in the flush of their +earliest manhood. A long dynasty of acute and strenuous argumentators +has continued, through successive generations to the present day, this +distinctly American school of theological thought. This is not the +place for tracing the intricate history of their discussions,[182:1] +but the story of the Awakening could not be told without some mention of +this its attendant and sequel. + +Not less notable than the new theology of the revival was the new +psalmody. In general it may be said that every flood-tide of spiritual +emotion in the church leaves its high-water mark in the form of "new +songs to the Lord" that remain after the tide of feeling has assuaged. +In this instance the new songs were not produced by the revival, but +only adopted by it. It is not easy for us at this day to conceive the +effect that must have been produced in the Christian communities of +America by the advent of Isaac Watts's marvelous poetic work, "The +Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament." +Important religious results have more than once followed in the church +on the publication of religious poems--notably, in our own century, on +the publication of "The Christian Year." But no other instance of the +kind is comparable with the publication in America of Watts's Psalms. +When we remember how scanty were the resources of religious poetry in +American homes in the early eighteenth century, and especially how rude +and even grotesque the rhymes that served in the various churches as a +vehicle of worship, it seems that the coming of those melodious stanzas, +in which the meaning of one poet is largely interpreted by the +sympathetic insight of another poet, and the fervid devotion of the Old +Testament is informed with the life and transfigured in the language of +the New, must have been like a glow of sunlight breaking in upon a gray +and cloudy day. Few pages of biography can be found more vividly +illustrative of the times and the men than the page in which Samuel +Hopkins recites the story of the sufferings of his own somber and +ponderous mind under the rebuke of his college friend David Brainerd. He +walked his solitary room in tears, and (he says) "took up Watts's +version of the Psalms, and opened it at the Fifty-first Psalm, and read +the first, second, and third parts in long meter with strong affections, +and made it all my own language, and thought it was the language of my +heart to God." There was more than the experience of a great and simple +soul, there was the germ of a future system of theology, in the +penitential confession which the young student "made his own language," +and in the exquisite lines which, under the figure of a frightened bird, +became the utterance of his first tremulous and faltering faith: + + Lord, should thy judgment grow severe, + I am condemned, but thou art clear. + + Should sudden vengeance seize my breath, + I must pronounce thee just in death; + And if my soul were sent to hell, + Thy righteous law approves it well. + + Yet save a trembling sinner, Lord, + Whose hope, still hovering round thy word, + Would light on some sweet promise there, + Some sure support against despair. + +The introduction of the new psalmody was not accomplished all at once, +nor without a struggle. But we gravely mistake if we look upon the +controversy that resulted in the adoption of Watts's Psalms as a mere +conflict between enlightened good taste and stubborn conservatism. The +action proposed was revolutionary. It involved the surrender of a +long-settled principle of Puritanism. At the present day the objection +to the use of "human composures" in public worship is unintelligible, +except to Scotchmen. In the later Puritan age such use was reckoned an +infringement on the entire and exclusive authority and sufficiency of +the Scriptures, and a constructive violation of the second commandment. +By the adoption of the new psalmody the Puritan and Presbyterian +churches, perhaps not consciously, but none the less actually, yielded +the major premiss of the only argument by which liturgical worship was +condemned on principle. Thereafter the question of the use of liturgical +forms became a mere question of expediency. It is remarkable that the +logical consequences of this important step have been so tardy and +hesitating. + + * * * * * + +It was not in the common course of church history that the period under +consideration should be a period of vigorous internal activity and +development in the old settled churches of America. The deep, often +excessive, excitements of the Awakening had not only ceased, but had +been succeeded by intense agitations of another sort. Two successive +"French and Indian" wars kept the long frontier, at a time when there +was little besides frontier to the British colonies, in continual peril +of fire and scalping-knife.[184:1] The astonishingly sudden and complete +extinction of the French politico-religious empire in Canada and the +West made possible, and at no remote time inevitable, the separation of +the British colonies from the mother country and the contentions and +debates that led into the Revolutionary War began at once. + +Another consequence of the prostrating of the French power in America +has been less noticed by historians, but the course of this narrative +will not be followed far without its becoming manifest as not less +momentous in its bearing on the future history of the church. The +extinction of the French-Catholic power in America made possible the +later plantation and large and free development of the Catholic Church +in the territory of the United States. After that event the Catholic +resident or citizen was no longer subject to the suspicion of being a +sympathizer with a hostile neighboring power, and the Jesuit missionary +was no longer liable to be regarded as a political intriguer and a +conspirator with savage assassins against the lives of innocent settlers +and their families. If there are those who, reading the earlier pages of +this volume, have mourned over the disappointment and annihilation of +two magnificent schemes of Catholic domination on the North American +continent as being among the painful mysteries of divine providence, +they may find compensation for these catastrophes in later advances of +Catholicism, which without these antecedents would seem to have been +hardly possible. + +Although the spiritual development of the awakened American churches, +after the Awakening until the independence of the States was established +and acknowledged, was limited by these great hindrances, this period was +one of momentous influences from abroad upon American Christianity. + + * * * * * + +The Scotch-Irish immigration kept gathering volume and force. The great +stream of immigrants entering at the port of Philadelphia and flowing +westward and southwestward was joined by a tributary stream entering at +Charleston. Not only the numbers of this people, occupying in force the +hill-country from Pennsylvania to Georgia, but still more its +extraordinary qualities and the discipline of its history, made it a +factor of prime importance in the events of the times just before and +just after the achievement of the national independence. For generations +it had been schooled to the apprehension and acceptance of an +elaborately articulated system of theology and church order as of divine +authority. Its prejudices and animosities were quite as potent as its +principles. Its fixed hereditary aversion to the English government and +the English church was the natural fruit of long memories and traditions +of outrages inflicted by both these; its influence was now about to be +powerfully manifested in the overthrow of the English power and its +feeble church establishments in the colonies. At the opening of the War +of Independence the Presbyterian Church, reunited since the schism of +1741, numbered one hundred and seventy ministers in seventeen +presbyteries; but its weight of influence was out of all proportion to +its numbers, and this entire force, not altogether at unity with itself +on ecclesiastical questions, was united as one man in the maintenance of +American rights. + +The great German immigration begins to flow in earnest in this period. +Three successive tides of migration have set from Germany to America. +The first was the movement of the petty sects under the invitation and +patronage of William Penn, quartering themselves in the eastern parts of +Pennsylvania. The second was the transportation of "the Palatines," +expatriated by stress of persecution and war, not from the Rhenish +Palatinate only, but from the archduchy of Salzburg and from other parts +of Germany and Switzerland, gathered up and removed to America, some of +them directly, some by way of England, as an act of political charity by +Queen Anne's government, with the idea of strengthening the colonies by +planting Protestant settlers for a safeguard against Spanish or French +aggressions. The third tide continues flowing, with variable volume, to +this day. It is the voluntary flow of companies of individual emigrants +seeking to better the fortunes of themselves or their families. But this +voluntary migration has been unhealthily and sometimes dishonestly +stimulated, from the beginning of it, by the selfish interests of those +concerned in the business of transportation or in the sale of land. It +seems to have been mainly the greed of shipping merchants, at first, +that spread abroad in the German states florid announcements of the +charms and riches of America, decoying multitudes of ignorant persons to +risk everything on these representations, and to mortgage themselves +into a term of slavery until they should have paid the cost of their +passage by their labor. This class of bondmen, called "redemptioners," +made no inconsiderable part of the population of the middle colonies; +and it seems to have been a worthy part. The trade of "trepanning" the +unfortunates and transporting them and selling their term of service was +not by several degrees as bad as the African slave-trade; but it was of +the same sort, and the deadly horrors of its "middle passage" were +hardly less. + +In one way and another the German immigration had grown by the middle of +the eighteenth century to great dimensions. In the year 1749 twelve +thousand Germans landed at the port of Philadelphia. In general they +were as sheep having no shepherd. Their deplorable religious condition +was owing less to poverty than to diversity of sects.[188:1] In many +places the number of sects rendered concerted action impossible, and the +people remained destitute of religious instruction. + +The famine of the word was sorely felt. In 1733 three great Lutheran +congregations in Pennsylvania, numbering five hundred families each, +sent messengers with an imploring petition to their coreligionists at +London and Halle, representing their "state of the greatest +destitution." "Our own means" (they say) "are utterly insufficient to +effect the necessary relief, unless God in his mercy may send us help +from abroad. It is truly lamentable to think of the large numbers of the +rising generation who know not their right hand from their left; and, +unless help be promptly afforded, the danger is great that, in +consequence of the great lack of churches and schools, the most of them +will be led into the ways of destructive error." + +This urgent appeal bore fruit like the apples of Sodom. It resulted in a +painful and pitiable correspondence with the chiefs of the mother +church, these haggling for months and years over stipulations of salary, +and refusing to send a minister until the salary should be pledged in +cash; and their correspondents pleading their poverty and need.[188:2] +The few and feeble churches of the Reformed confession were equally +needy and ill befriended. + +It seems to us, as we read the story after the lapse of a hundred and +fifty years, as if the man expressly designed and equipped by the +providence of God for this exigency in the progress of his kingdom had +arrived when Zinzendorf, the Moravian, made his appearance at +Philadelphia, December 10, 1741. The American church, in all its +history, can point to no fairer representative of the charity that +"seeketh not her own" than this Saxon nobleman, who, for the true love +that he bore to Christ and all Christ's brethren, was willing to give up +his home, his ancestral estates, his fortune, his title of nobility, his +patrician family name, his office of bishop in the ancient Moravian +church, and even (last infirmity of zealous spirits) his interest in +promoting specially that order of consecrated men and women in the +church catholic which he had done and sacrificed so much to save from +extinction, and to which his "cares and toils were given." He hastened +first up the Lehigh Valley to spend Christmas at Bethlehem, where the +foundations had already been laid on which have been built up the +half-monastic institutions of charity and education and missions which +have done and are still doing so much to bless the world in both its +hemispheres. It was in commemoration of this Christmas visit of Bishop +Zinzendorf that the mother house of the Moravian communities in America +received its name of Bethlehem. Returning to Philadelphia, he took this +city as the base of his unselfish and unpartisan labors in behalf of the +great and multiplying population from his fatherland, which through its +sectarian divisions had become so helpless and spiritually needy. +Already for twenty years there had been a few scattering churches of +the Reformed confession, and for half that time a few Lutheran +congregations had been gathered or had gathered themselves. But both the +sects had been overcome by the paralysis resulting from habitual +dependence on paternal governments, and the two were borne asunder, +while every right motive was urging to cooeperation and fellowship, by +the almost spent momentum of old controversies. In Philadelphia two +starveling congregations representing the two competing sects occupied +the same rude meeting-place each by itself on alternate Sundays. The +Lutherans made shift without a pastor, for the only Lutheran minister in +Pennsylvania lived at Lancaster, sixty miles away. + +To the scattered, distracted, and demoralized flocks of his German +fellow-Christians in the middle colonies came Zinzendorf, knowing Jesus +Christ crucified, knowing no man according to the flesh; and at once +"the neglected congregations were made to feel the thrill of a strong +religious life." "Aglow with zeal for Christ, throwing all emphasis in +his teaching upon the one doctrine of redemption through the blood shed +on Calvary, all the social advantages and influence and wealth which his +position gave him were made subservient to the work of preaching Christ, +and him crucified, to the rich and the poor, the learned and the +ignorant."[190:1] The Lutherans of Philadelphia heard him gladly and +entreated him to preach to them regularly; to which he consented, but +not until he had assured himself that this would be acceptable to the +pastor of the Reformed congregation. But his mission was to the sheep +scattered abroad, of whom he reckoned (an extravagant overestimate) not +less than one hundred thousand of the Lutheran party in Pennsylvania +alone. Others, as he soon found, had been feeling, like himself, the +hurt of the daughter of Zion. A series of conferences was held from +month to month, in which men of the various German sects took counsel +together over the dissensions of their people, and over the question how +the ruinous effects of these dissensions could be avoided. The plan was, +not to attempt a merger of the sects, nor to alienate men from their +habitual affiliations, but to draw together in cooeperation and common +worship the German Christians, of whatever sect, in a fellowship to be +called, in imitation of a Pauline phrase (Eph. ii. 22), "the +Congregation of God in the Spirit." The plan seemed so right and +reasonable and promising of beneficent results as to win general +approval. It was in a fair way to draw together the whole miserably +divided German population.[191:1] + +At once the "drum ecclesiastic" beat to arms. In view of the impending +danger that their scattered fellow-countrymen might come into mutual +fellowship on the basis of their common faith in Christ, the Lutheran +leaders at Halle, who for years had been dawdling and haggling over the +imploring entreaties of the shepherdless Lutheran populations in +America, promptly reconsidered their _non possumus_, and found and sent +a man admirably qualified for the desired work, Henry Melchior +Muehlenberg, a man of eminent ability and judgment, of faith, devotion, +and untiring diligence, not illiberal, but a conscientious sectarian. An +earnest preacher of the gospel, he was also earnest that the gospel +should be preached according to the Lutheran formularies, to +congregations organized according to the Lutheran discipline. The easier +and less worthy part of the appointed task was soon achieved. The danger +that the religious factions that had divided Germany might be laid +aside in the New World was effectually dispelled. Six years later the +governor of Pennsylvania was still able to write, "The Germans imported +with them all the religious whimsies of their country, and, I believe, +have subdivided since their arrival here;" and he estimates their number +at three fifths of the population of the province. The more arduous and +noble work of organizing and compacting the Lutherans into their +separate congregations, and combining these by synodical assemblies, was +prosecuted with wisdom and energy, and at last, in spite of hindrances +and discouragements, with beneficent success. The American Lutheran +Church of to-day is the monument of the labors of Muehlenberg. + +The brief remainder of Zinzendorf's work in America may be briefly told. +There is no doubt that, like many another eager and hopeful reformer, he +overestimated the strength and solidity of the support that was given to +his generous and beneficent plans. At the time of Muehlenberg's arrival +Zinzendorf was the elected and installed pastor of the Lutheran +congregation in Philadelphia. The conflict could not be a long one +between the man who claimed everything for his commission and his sect +and the man who was resolved to insist on nothing for himself. +Notwithstanding the strong love for him among the people, Zinzendorf was +easily displaced from his official station. When dispute arose about the +use of the empty carpenter's shop that stood them instead of a church, +he waived his own claims and at his own cost built a new house of +worship. But it was no part of his work to stay and persist in +maintaining a division. He retired from the field, leaving it in charge +of Muehlenberg, "being satisfied if only Christ were preached," and +returned to Europe, having achieved a truly honorable and most Christian +failure, more to be esteemed in the sight of God than many a splendid +success. + +But his brief sojourn in America was not without visible fruit. He left +behind him the Moravian church fully organized under the episcopate of +Bishop David Nitschmann, with communities or congregations begun at nine +different centers, and schools established in four places. An extensive +itinerancy had been set in operation under careful supervision, and, +most characteristic of all, a great beginning had been made of those +missions to the heathen Indians, in which the devoted and successful +labors of this little society of Christians have put to shame the whole +American church besides. Not all of this is to be ascribed to the +activity of Zinzendorf; but in all of it he was a sharer, and his share +was a heroic one. The two years' visit of Count Zinzendorf to America +forms a beautiful and quite singular episode in our church history. +Returning to his ancestral estates splendidly impoverished by his +free-handed beneficence, he passed many of the later years of his life +at Herrnhut, that radiating center from which the light of the gospel +was borne by the multitude of humble missionaries to every continent +under the whole heaven. The news that came to him from the "economies" +that he had planted in the forests of Pennsylvania was such as to fill +his generous soul with joy. In the communities of Nazareth and Bethlehem +was renewed the pentecostal consecration when no man called anything his +own. The prosperous farms and varied industries, in which no towns in +Pennsylvania could equal them, were carried on, not for private +interest, but for the church. After three years the community work was +not only self-supporting, but sustained about fifty missionaries in the +field, and was preparing to send aid to the missions of the mother +church in Germany. The Moravian settlements multiplied at distant +points, north and south. The educational establishments grew strong and +famous. But especially the Indian missions spread far and wide. The +story of these missions is one of the fairest and most radiant pages in +the history of the American church, and one of the bloodiest. +Zinzendorf, dying at London in May, 1756, was spared, we may hope, the +heartbreaking news of the massacre at Gnadenhuetten the year before. But +from that time on, through the French wars, the Revolutionary War, the +War of 1812, and down to the infamy of Georgia and the United States in +1837, the innocent and Christlike Moravian missions have been exposed +from every side to the malignity of savage men both white and red. No +order of missionaries or missionary converts can show a nobler roll of +martyrs than the Moravians.[194:1] + +The work of Muehlenberg for the Lutherans stimulated the Reformed +churches in Europe to a like work for their own scattered and pastorless +sheep. In both cases the fear that the work of the gospel might not be +done seemed a less effective incitement to activity than the fear that +it might be done by others. It was the Reformed Church of Holland, +rather than those of Germany, miserably broken down and discouraged by +ravaging wars, that assumed the main responsibility for this task. As +early as 1728 the Dutch synods had earnestly responded to the appeal of +their impoverished brethren on the Rhine in behalf of the sheep +scattered abroad. And in 1743, acting through the classis of Amsterdam, +they had made such progress toward beginning the preliminary +arrangements of the work as to send to the Presbyterian synod of +Philadelphia a proposal to combine into one the Presbyterian, or Scotch +Reformed, the Dutch Reformed, and the German Reformed churches in +America. It had already been proved impossible to draw together in +common activity and worship the different sects of the same German race +and language; the effort to unite in one organization peoples of +different language, but of substantially the same doctrine and polity, +was equally futile. It seemed as if minute sectarian division and +subdivision was to be forced upon American Christianity as a law of its +church life. + +Diplomacies ended, the synods of Holland took up their work with real +munificence. Large funds were raised, sufficient to make every German +Reformed missionary in America a stipendiary of the classis of +Amsterdam; and if these subsidies were encumbered with severe conditions +of subordination to a foreign directory, and if they begot an enfeebling +sense of dependence, these were necessary incidents of the difficult +situation--_res dura et novitas regni_. The most important service which +the synods of Holland rendered to their American beneficiaries was to +find a man who should do for them just the work which Muehlenberg was +already doing with great energy for the Lutherans. The man was Michael +Schlatter. If in any respect he was inferior to Muehlenberg, it was not +in respect to diligent devotion to the business on which he had been +sent. It is much to the credit of both of them that, in organizing and +promoting their two sharply competing sects, they never failed of +fraternal personal relations. They worked together with one heart to +keep their people apart from each other. The Christian instinct, in a +community of German Christians, to gather in one congregation for common +worship was solemnly discouraged by the two apostles and the synods +which they organized. How could the two parties walk together when one +prayed _Vater unser_, and the other _unser Vater_? But the beauty of +Christian unity was illustrated in such incidents as this: Mr. Schlatter +and some of the Reformed Christians, being present at a Lutheran church +on a communion Sunday, listened to the preaching of the Lutheran +pastor, after which the Reformed minister made a communion address, and +then the congregation was dismissed, and the Reformed went off to a +school-house to receive the Lord's Supper.[196:1] Truly it was fragrant +like the ointment on the beard of Aaron! + +Such was the diligence of Schlatter that the synod or coetus of the +Reformed Church was instituted in 1747, a year from his arrival. The +Lutheran synod dates from 1748, although Muehlenberg was on the ground +four years earlier than Schlatter. Thus the great work of dividing the +German population of America into two major sects was conscientiously +and effectually performed. Seventy years later, with large expenditure +of persuasion, authority, and money, it was found possible to heal in +some measure in the old country the very schism which good men had been +at such pains to perpetuate in the new. + +High honor is due to the prophetic wisdom of these two leaders of +German-American Christianity, in that they clearly recognized in advance +that the English was destined to be the dominant language of North +America. Their strenuous though unsuccessful effort to promote a system +of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill +judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon +by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude. +It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may +have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their +fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The +combination of the mass of the German population in one solid church +organization would have been a formidable support to such aspirations. +The splitting of this mass in half, necessitating petty local schisms +with all their debilitating and demoralizing consequences, may have +helped secure the country from a serious political and social danger. + +So, then, the German church in America at the close of the colonial era +exists, outside of the petty primeval sects, in three main divisions: +the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Moravian. There is free opportunity +for Christians of this language to sort themselves according to their +elective affinities. That American ideal of edifying harmony is well +attained, according to which men of partial or one-sided views of truth +shall be associated exclusively in church relations with others of like +precious defects. Muehlenberg seems to have been sensible of the nature +of the division he was making in the body of Christ, when, after +severing successfully between the strict Lutherans in a certain +congregation and those of Moravian sympathies, he finds it "hard to +decide on which side of the controversy the greater justice lay. The +greater part of those on the Lutheran side, he feared, was composed of +unconverted men," while the Moravian party seemed open to the reproach +of enthusiasm. So he concluded that each sort of Christians would be +better off without the other. Time proved his diagnosis to be better +than his treatment. In the course of a generation the Lutheran body, +carefully weeded of pietistic admixtures, sank perilously deep in cold +rationalism, and the Moravian church was quite carried away for a time +on a flood of sentimentalism. What might have been the course of this +part of church history if Muehlenberg and Schlatter had shared more +deeply with Zinzendorf in the spirit of apostolic and catholic +Christianity, and if all three had conspired to draw together into one +the various temperaments and tendencies of the German Americans in the +unity of the Spirit with the bond of peace, may seem like an idle +historical conjecture, but the question is not without practical +interest to-day. Perhaps the Moravians would have been the better for +being ballasted with the weighty theologies and the conservative temper +of the state churches; it is very certain that these would have gained +by the infusion of something of that warmth of Christian love and zeal +that pervaded to a wonderful degree the whole Moravian fellowship. But +the hand and the foot were quite agreed that they had no need of each +other or of the heart.[198:1] + + * * * * * + +By far the most momentous event of American church history in the +closing period of the colonial era was the planting of the Methodist +Episcopal Church. The Wesleyan revival was strangely tardy in reaching +this country, with which it had so many points of connection. It was in +America, in 1737, that John Wesley passed through the discipline of a +humiliating experience, by which his mind had been opened, and that he +had been brought into acquaintance with the Moravians, by whom he was to +be taught the way of the Lord more perfectly. It was John Wesley who +sent Whitefield to America, from whom, on his first return to England, +in 1738, he learned the practice of field-preaching. It was from America +that Edwards's "Narrative of Surprising Conversions" had come to Wesley, +which, being read by him on the walk from London to Oxford, opened to +his mind unknown possibilities of the swift advancement of the kingdom +of God. The beginning of the Wesleyan societies in England followed in +close connection upon the first Awakening in America. It went on with +growing momentum in England and Ireland for quarter of a century, until, +in 1765, it numbered thirty-nine circuits served by ninety-two +itinerant preachers; and its work was mainly among the classes from +which the emigration to the colonies was drawn. It is not easy to +explain how it came to pass that through all these twenty-five years +Wesleyan Methodism gave no sound or sign of life on that continent on +which it was destined (if one may speak of predestination in this +connection) to grow to its most magnificent proportions. + +At last, in 1766, in a little group of Methodist families that had found +one another out among the recent comers in New York, Philip Embury, who +in his native Ireland long before had been a recognized local preacher, +was induced by the persuasions and reproaches of a pious woman to take +his not inconsiderable talent from the napkin in which he had kept it +hidden for six years, and preach in his own house to as many as could be +brought in to listen to him. The few that were there formed themselves +into a "class" and promised to attend at future meetings. + +A more untoward time for the setting on foot of a religious enterprise +could hardly have been chosen. It was a time of prevailing languor in +the churches, in the reaction from the Great Awakening; it was also a +time of intense political agitation. The year before the Stamp Act had +been passed, and the whole chain of colonies, from New Hampshire to +Georgia, had been stirred up to resist the execution of it. This year +the Stamp Act had been repealed, but in such terms as to imply a new +menace and redouble the agitation. From this time forward to the +outbreak of war in 1775, and from that year on till the conclusion of +peace in 1783, the land was never at rest from turmoil. Through it all +the Methodist societies grew and multiplied. In 1767 Embury's house had +overflowed, and a sail-loft was hired for the growing congregation. In +1768 a lot on John Street was secured and a meeting-house was built. The +work had spread to Philadelphia, and, self-planted in Maryland under the +preaching of Robert Strawbridge, was propagating itself rapidly in that +peculiarly congenial soil. In 1769, in response to earnest entreaties +from America, two of Wesley's itinerant preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor, +arrived with his commission to organize an American itinerancy; and two +years later, in 1771, arrived Francis Asbury, who, by virtue of his +preeminent qualifications for organization, administration, and command, +soon became practically the director of the American work, a function to +which, in 1772, he was officially appointed by commission from Wesley. + +Very great is the debt that American Christianity owes to Francis +Asbury. It may reasonably be doubted whether any one man, from the +founding of the church in America until now, has achieved so much in the +visible and traceable results of his work. It is very certain that +Wesley himself, with his despotic temper and his High-church and Tory +principles, could not have carried the Methodist movement in the New +World onward through the perils of its infancy on the way to so eminent +a success as that which was prepared by his vicegerent. Fully possessed +of the principles of that autocratic discipline ordained by Wesley, he +knew how to use it as not abusing it, being aware that such a discipline +can continue to subsist, in the long run, only by studying the temper of +the subjects of it, and making sure of obedience to orders by making +sure that the orders are agreeable, on the whole, to the subjects. More +than one polity theoretically aristocratic or monarchic in the +atmosphere of our republic has grown into a practically popular +government, simply through tact and good judgment in the administration +of it, without changing a syllable of its constitution. Very early in +the history of the Methodist Church it is easy to recognize the +aptitude with which Asbury naturalizes himself in the new climate. +Nominally he holds an absolute autocracy over the young organization. +Whatever the subject at issue, "on hearing every preacher for and +against, the right of determination was to rest with him."[201:1] +Questions of the utmost difficulty and of vital importance arose in the +first years of the American itinerancy. They could not have been decided +so wisely for the country and the universal church if Asbury, seeming to +govern the ministry and membership of the Society, had not studied to be +governed by them. In spite of the sturdy dictum of Wesley, "We are not +republicans, and do not intend to be," the salutary and necessary change +had already begun which was to accommodate his institutes in practice, +and eventually in form, to the habits and requirements of a free people. + +The center of gravity of the Methodist Society, beginning at New York, +moved rapidly southward. Boston had been the metropolis of the +Congregationalist churches; New York, of the Episcopalians; +Philadelphia, of the Quakers and the Presbyterians; and Baltimore, +latest and southernmost of the large colonial cities, became, for a +time, the headquarters of Methodism. Accessions to the Society in that +region were more in number and stronger in wealth and social influence +than in more northern communities. It was at Baltimore that Asbury fixed +his residence--so far as a Methodist bishop, ranging the country with +incessant and untiring diligence, could be said to have a fixed +residence. + +The record of the successive annual conferences of the Methodists gives +a gauge of their increase. At the first, in 1773, at Philadelphia, there +were reported 1160 members and 10 preachers, not one of these a native +of America. + +At the second annual conference, in Philadelphia, there were reported +2073 members and 17 preachers. + +The third annual conference sat at Philadelphia in 1775, simultaneously +with the Continental Congress. It was the beginning of the war. There +were reported 3148 members. Some of the foremost preachers had gone back +to England, unable to carry on their work without being compelled to +compromise their royalist principles. The preachers reporting were 19. +Of the membership nearly 2500 were south of Philadelphia--about eighty +per cent. + +At the fourth annual conference, at Baltimore, in 1776, were reported +4921 members and 24 preachers. + +At the fifth annual conference, in Harford County, Maryland, were +reported 6968 members and 36 preachers. This was in the thick of the +war. More of the leading preachers, sympathizing with the royal cause, +were going home to England. The Methodists as a body were subject to not +unreasonable suspicion of being disaffected to the cause of +independence. Their preachers were principally Englishmen with British +sympathies. The whole order was dominated and its property controlled by +an offensively outspoken Tory of the Dr. Johnson type.[202:1] It was +natural enough that in their public work they should be liable to +annoyance, mob violence, and military arrest. Even Asbury, a man of +proved American sympathies, found it necessary to retire for a time from +public activity. + +In these circumstances, it is no wonder that at the conference of 1778, +at Leesburg, Va., at which five circuits in the most disturbed regions +were unrepresented, there was a decline in numbers. The members were +fewer by 873; the preachers fewer by 7. + +But it is really wonderful that the next year (1779) were reported +extensive revivals in all parts not directly affected by the war, and an +increase of 2482 members and 49 preachers. The distribution of the +membership was very remarkable. At this time, and for many years after, +there was no organized Methodism in New England. New York, being +occupied by the invading army, sent no report. Of the total reported +membership of 8577, 140 are credited to New Jersey, 179 to Pennsylvania, +795 to Delaware, and 900 to Maryland. Nearly all the remainder, about +eighty per cent. of the whole, was included in Virginia and North +Carolina. With the exception of 319 persons, the entire reported +membership of the Methodist societies lived south of Mason and Dixon's +line. The fact throws an honorable light on some incidents of the early +history of this great order of preachers. + +In the sixteen years from the meeting in Philip Embury's house to the +end of the War of Independence the membership of the Methodist societies +grew to about 12,000, served by about 70 itinerant preachers. It was a +very vital and active membership, including a large number of "local +preachers" and exhorters. The societies and classes were effectively +organized and officered for aggressive work; and they were planted, for +the most part, in the regions most destitute of Christian institutions. + + * * * * * + +Parallel with the course of the gospel, we trace in every period the +course of those antichristian influences with which the gospel is in +conflict. The system of slavery must continue, through many sorrowful +years, to be in view from the line of our studies. We shall know it by +the unceasing protest made against it in the name of the Lord. The +arguments of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were sustained by the +yearly meetings of the Friends. At Newport, the chief center of the +African slave-trade, the two Congregational pastors, Samuel Hopkins, +the theologian, and the erudite Ezra Stiles, afterward president of Yale +College, mutually opposed in theology and contrasted at every point of +natural character, were at one in boldly opposing the business by which +their parishioners had been enriched.[204:1] The deepening of the +conflict for political liberty pointed the application of the golden +rule in the case of the slaves. The antislavery literature of the period +includes a printed sermon that had been preached by the distinguished +Dr. Levi Hart "to the corporation of freemen" of his native town of +Farmington, Conn., at their autumnal town-meeting in 1774; and the poem +on "Slavery," published in 1775 by that fine character, Aaron +Cleveland,[204:2] of Norwich, hatter, poet, legislator, and minister of +the gospel. Among the Presbyterians of New Jersey, the father of Dr. +Ashbel Green took the extreme ground which was taken by Dr. Hopkins's +church in 1784, that no person holding a slave should be permitted to +remain in the communion of the church.[204:3] In 1774 the first society +in the world for the abolition of slavery was organized among the +Friends in Pennsylvania, to be followed by others, making a continuous +series of abolition societies from New England to Maryland and Virginia. +But the great antislavery society of the period in question was the +Methodist Society. Laboring through the War of Independence mainly in +the Southern States, it publicly declared, in the conference of 1780, +"that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and +hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure +religion, and doing that which we would not that others should do to us +and ours." The discipline of the body of itinerants was conducted +rigorously in accordance with this declaration. + +It must not be supposed that the instances here cited represent +exceptions to the general course of opinion in the church of those +times. They are simply expressions of the universal judgment of those +whose attention had been seriously fixed upon the subject. There appears +no evidence of the existence of a contrary sentiment. The first +beginnings of a party in the church in opposition to the common judgment +of the Christian conscience on the subject of slavery are to be referred +to a comparatively very recent date. + +Another of the great conflicts of the modern church was impending. But +it was only to prophetic minds in the middle of the eighteenth century +that it was visible in the greatness of its proportions. The vice of +drunkenness, which Isaiah had denounced in Samaria and Paul had +denounced at Ephesus, was growing insensibly, since the introduction of +distilled liquors as a common beverage, to a fatal prevalence. The +trustees of the charitable colony of Georgia, consciously laying the +foundations of many generations, endeavored to provide for the welfare +of the nascent State by forbidding at once the importation of negro +slaves and of spirituous liquors; but the salutary interdict was soon +nullified in the interest of the crops and of the trade with the +Indians. Dr. Hopkins "inculcated, at a very early day, the duty of +entire abstinence from intoxicating liquids as a beverage."[206:1] But, +as in the conflict with slavery, so in this conflict, the priority of +leadership belongs easily to Wesley and his itinerants. The conference +of 1783 declared against permitting the converts "to make spirituous +liquors, sell and drink them in drams," as "wrong in its nature and +consequences." To this course they were committed long in advance by the +"General Rules" set forth by the two Wesleys in May, 1743, for the +guidance of the "United Societies."[206:2] + +An incident of the times immediately preceding the War of Independence +requires to be noted in this place, not as being of great importance in +itself, but as characteristic of the condition of the country and +prophetic of changes that were about to take place. During the decade +from 1760 to 1775 the national body of the Presbyterians--the now +reunited synod of New York and Philadelphia--and the General Association +of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut met together by their +representatives in annual convention to take counsel over a grave peril +that seemed to be impending. A petition had been urgently pressed, in +behalf of the American Episcopalians, for the establishment of bishops +in the colonies under the authority of the Church of England. The +reasons for this measure were obvious and weighty; and the protestations +of those who promoted it, that they sought no advantage before the law +over their fellow-Christians, were doubtless sincere. Nevertheless, the +fear that the bringing in of Church of England bishops would involve the +bringing in of many of those mischiefs of the English church +establishment which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear +was a perfectly reasonable fear both to the Puritans of New England and +to the Presbyterians from Ireland. It was difficult for these, and it +would have been even more difficult for the new dignitaries, in colonial +days, to understand how bishops could be anything but lord bishops. The +fear of such results was not confined to ecclesiastics. The movement was +felt by the colonial statesmen to be dangerously akin to other British +encroachments on colonial rights. The Massachusetts Assembly instructed +its agent in London strenuously to oppose it. In Virginia, the +Episcopalian clergy themselves at first refused to concur in the +petition for bishops; and when at last the concurrence was voted, it was +in the face of a formal protest of four of the clergy, for which they +received a vote of thanks from the House of Burgesses.[207:1] + +The alliance thus occasioned between the national synod of the +Presbyterian Church and the Congregationalist clergy of the little +colony of Connecticut seems like a disproportioned one. And so it was +indeed; for the Connecticut General Association was by far the larger +and stronger body of the two. By and by the disproportion was inverted, +and the alliance continued, with notable results. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[182:1] See G. P. Fisher, "History of Christian Doctrine," pp. 394-418; +also E. A. Park in the "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. iii., pp. +1634-38. The New England theology is not so called as being confined to +New England. Its leading "improvements on Calvinism" were accepted by +Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall among the English Baptists, and by +Chalmers of the Presbyterians of Scotland. + +[184:1] Of what sort was the life of a church and its pastor in those +days is illustrated in extracts from the journal of Samuel Hopkins, the +theologian, pastor at Great Barrington, given in the Memoir by Professor +Park, pp. 40-43. The Sabbath worship was disturbed by the arrival of +warlike news. The pastor and the families of his flock were driven from +their homes to take refuge in blockhouses crowded with fugitives. He was +gone nearly three months of fall and winter with a scouting party of a +hundred whites and nineteen Indians in the woods. He sent off the +fighting men of his town with sermon and benediction on an expedition to +Canada. During the second war he writes to his friend Bellamy (1754) of +a dreadful rumor that "good Mr. Edwards" had perished in a massacre at +Stockbridge. This rumor was false, but he adds: "On the Lord's day P.M., +as I was reading the psalm, news came that Stockbridge was beset by an +army of Indians, and on fire, which broke up the assembly in an instant. +All were put into the utmost consternation--men, women, and children +crying, 'What shall we do?' Not a gun to defend us, not a fort to flee +to, and few guns and little ammunition in the place. Some ran one way +and some another; but the general course was to the southward, +especially for women and children. Women, children, and squaws presently +flocked in upon us from Stockbridge, half naked and frighted almost to +death; and fresh news came that the enemy were on the plains this side +Stockbridge, shooting and killing and scalping people as they fled. Some +presently came along bloody, with news that they saw persons killed and +scalped, which raised a consternation, tumult, and distress +inexpressible." + +[188:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 191, 234; Dubbs, "German Reformed +Church," p. 271. + +[188:2] See extracts from the correspondence given by Dr. Jacobs, pp. +193-195. Dr. Jacobs's suggestion that three congregations of five +hundred families each might among them have raised the few hundreds a +year required seems reasonable, unless a large number of these were +families of redemptioners, that is, for the time, slaves. + +[190:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 196. The story of Zinzendorf, as +seen from different points of view, may be studied in the volumes of +Drs. Jacobs, Dubbs, and Hamilton (American Church History Series). + +[191:1] Acrelius, quoted by Jacobs, p. 218, note. + +[194:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," pp. 215-218; Hamilton, "The Moravians," +chaps, iii.-viii., xi. + +[196:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 289. + +[198:1] Jacobs, pp. 227, 309, sqq.; Hamilton, p. 457. No account of the +German-American churches is adequate which does not go back to the work +of Spener, the influence of which was felt through them all. The author +is compelled to content himself with inadequate work on many topics. + +[201:1] Dr. J. M. Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 181. + +[202:1] The attitude of Wesley toward the American cause is set forth +with judicial fairness by Dr. Buckley, pp. 158-168. + +[204:1] A full account of Hopkins's long-sustained activity against both +slavery and the slave-trade is given in Park's "Memoir of Hopkins," pp. +114-157. His sermons on the subject began in 1770. His monumental +"Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, with an Address to +Slave-holders," was published in 1776. For additional information as to +the antislavery attitude of the church at this period, and especially +that of Stiles, see review of "The Minister's Wooing," by L. Bacon ("New +Englander," vol. xviii., p. 145). + +[204:2] I have not been able to find a copy of this poem, the character +of which, however, is well known. The son of Aaron Cleveland, William, +was a silversmith at Norwich, among whose grandsons may be named +President Grover Cleveland, and Aaron Cleveland Cox, later known as +Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe. + +[204:3] Dr. A. Green's Life of his father, in "Monthly Christian +Advocate." + +[206:1] Park, "Memoir of Hopkins," p. 112. + +[206:2] Buckley, "The Methodists," Appendix, pp. 688, 689. + +[207:1] See Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 267-278, where +the subject is treated fully and with characteristic fairness. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +RECONSTRUCTION. + + +Seven years of war left the American people exhausted, impoverished, +disorganized, conscious of having come into possession of a national +existence, and stirred with anxious searchings of heart over the +question what new institutions should succeed to those overthrown in the +struggle for independence. + +Like questions pervaded the commonwealth of American Christians through +all its divisions. The interconfessional divisions of the body +ecclesiastic were about to prove themselves a more effectual bar to +union than the political and territorial divisions of the body politic. +The religious divisions were nearly equal in number to the political. +Naming them in the order in which they had settled themselves on the +soil of the new nation, they were as follows: 1. The Protestant +Episcopalians; 2. The Reformed Dutch; 3. The Congregationalists; 4. The +Roman Catholics; 5. The Friends; 6. The Baptists; 7. The Presbyterians; +8. The Methodists; to which must be added three sects which up to this +time had almost exclusively to do with the German language and the +German immigrant population, to wit, 9. The German Reformed; 10. The +Lutherans; 11. The Moravians. Some of these, as the Congregationalists +and the Baptists, were of so simple and elastic a polity, so +self-adaptive to whatever new environment, as to require no effort to +adjust themselves. Others, as the Dutch and the Presbyterians, had +already organized themselves as independent of foreign spiritual +jurisdiction. Others still, as the German Reformed, the Moravians, and +the Quakers, were content to remain for years to come in a relation of +subordination to foreign centers of organization. But there were three +communions, of great prospective importance, which found it necessary to +address themselves to the task of reorganization to suit the changed +political conditions. These were the Episcopalians, the Catholics, and +the Methodists. + +In one respect all the various orders of churches were alike. They had +all suffered from the waste and damage of war. Pastors and missionaries +had been driven from their cures, congregations had been scattered, +houses of worship had been desecrated or destroyed. The Episcopalian and +Methodist ministers were generally Tories, and their churches, and in +some instances their persons, were not spared by the patriots. The +Friends and the Moravians, principled against taking active part in +warfare, were exposed to aggressions from both sides. All other sects +were safely presumed to be in earnest sympathy with the cause of +independence, which many of their pastors actively served as chaplains +or as combatants, or in other ways; wherever the British troops held the +ground, their churches were the object of spite. Nor were these the +chief losses by the war. More grievous still were the death of the +strong men and the young men of the churches, the demoralization of camp +life, and, as the war advanced, the infection of the current fashions of +unbelief from the officers both of the French and of the British armies. +The prevalent diathesis of the American church in all its sects was one +of spiritual torpor, from which, however, it soon began to be aroused +as the grave exigencies of the situation disclosed themselves. + +Perhaps no one of the Christian organizations of America came out of the +war in a more forlorn condition than the Episcopalians. This condition +was thus described by Bishop White, in an official charge to his clergy +at Philadelphia in 1832: + + "The congregations of our communion throughout the United + States were approaching annihilation. Although within this + city three Episcopal clergymen were resident and officiating, + the churches over the rest of the State had become deprived of + their clergy during the war, either by death or by departure + for England. In the Eastern States, with two or three + exceptions, there was a cessation of the exercises of the + pulpit, owing to the necessary disuse of the prayers for the + former civil rulers. In Maryland and Virginia, where the + church had enjoyed civil establishments, on the ceasing of + these, the incumbents of the parishes, almost without + exception, ceased to officiate. Farther south the condition of + the church was not better, to say the least."[210:1] + +This extreme feebleness of Episcopalianism in the several States +conspired with the tendencies of the time in civil affairs to induce +upon the new organization a character not at all conformed to the ideal +of episcopal government. Instead of establishing as the unit of +organization the bishop in every principal town, governing his diocese +at the head of his clergy with some measure of authority, it was almost +a necessity of the time to constitute dioceses as big as kingdoms, and +then to take security against excess of power in the diocesan by +overslaughing his authority through exorbitant powers conferred upon a +periodical mixed synod, legislating for a whole continent, even in +matters confessedly variable and unessential. In the later evolution of +the system, this superior limitation of the bishop's powers is +supplemented from below by magnifying the authority of representative +bodies, diocesan and parochial, until the work of the bishop is reduced +as nearly as possible to the merely "ministerial" performance of certain +assigned functions according to prescribed directions. Concerning this +frame of government it is to be remarked: 1. That it was quite +consciously and confessedly devised for the government of a sect, with +the full and fraternal understanding that other "religious denominations +of Christians" (to use the favorite American euphemism) "were left at +full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective churches" +to suit themselves.[211:1] 2. That, judged according to its professed +purpose, it has proved itself a practically good and effective +government. 3. That it is in no proper sense of the word an episcopal +government, but rather a classical and synodical government, according +to the common type of the American church constitutions of the +period.[211:2] + +The objections which only a few years before had withstood the +importation into the colonies of lord bishops, with the English common +and canon law at their backs, vanished entirely before the proposal for +the harmless functionaries provided for in the new constitution. John +Adams himself, a leader of the former opposition, now, as American +minister in London, did his best to secure for Bishops-elect White and +Provoost the coveted consecration from English bishops. The only +hindrance now to this long-desired boon was in the supercilious +dilatoriness of the English prelates and of the civil authorities to +whom they were subordinate. They were evidently in a sulky temper over +the overwhelming defeat of the British arms. If it had been in their +power to blockade effectively the channels of sacramental grace, there +is no sign that they would have consented to the American petition. +Happily there were other courses open. 1. There was the recourse to +presbyterial ordination, an expedient sanctioned, when necessary, by the +authority of "the judicious Hooker," and actually recommended, if the +case should require, by the Rev. William White, soon to be consecrated +as one of the first American bishops. 2. Already for more than a +half-century the Moravian episcopate had been present and most +apostolically active in America. 3. The Lutheran Episcopal churches of +Denmark and Sweden were fully competent and known to be not unwilling to +confer the episcopal succession on the American candidates. 4. There +were the Scotch nonjuring bishops, outlawed for political reasons from +communion with the English church, who were tending their "persecuted +remnant" of a flock in Scotland. Theirs was a not less valid succession +than those of their better-provided English brethren, and fully as +honorable a history. It was due to the separate initiative of the +Episcopalian ministers of Connecticut, and to the persistence of their +bishop-elect, Samuel Seabury, that the deadlock imposed by the +Englishmen was broken. Inheriting the Puritan spirit, which sought a +_jus divinum_ in all church questions, they were men of deeper +convictions and "higher" principles than their more southern brethren. +In advance of the plans for national organization, without conferring +with flesh and blood, they had met and acted, and their candidate for +consecration was in London urging his claims, before the ministers in +the Middle States had any knowledge of what was doing. After a year of +costly and vexatious delay in London, finding no progress made and no +hope of any, he proceeded to Aberdeen and was consecrated bishop +November 14, 1784. It was more than two years longer before the English +bishops succeeded in finding a way to do what their unrecognized Scotch +brethren had done with small demur. But they did find it. So long as the +Americans seemed dependent on English consecration they could not get +it. When at last it was made quite plain that they could and would do +without it if necessary, they were more than welcome to it. Dr. White +for Pennsylvania, and Dr. Provoost for New York, were consecrated by the +Archbishop of Canterbury at the chapel of Lambeth Palace, February 4, +1787. Dr. Griffith, elected for Virginia, failed to be present; in all +that great diocese there was not interest enough felt in the matter to +raise the money to pay his passage to England and back. + +The American Episcopal Church was at last in a condition to live. Some +formidable dangers of division arising from the double derivation of the +episcopate were happily averted by the tact and statesmanship of Bishop +White, and liturgical changes incidental to the reconstitution of the +church were made, on the whole with cautious judgment and good taste, +and successfully introduced. But for many years the church lived only a +languishing life. Bishop Provoost of New York, after fourteen years of +service, demitted his functions in 1801, discouraged about the +continuance of the church. He "thought it would die out with the old +colonial families."[213:1] The large prosperity of this church dates +only from the second decade of this century. It is the more notable for +the brief time in which so much has been accomplished. + + * * * * * + +The difficulties in the way of the organization of the Catholic Church +for the United States were not less serious, and were overcome with +equal success, but not without a prolonged struggle against opposition +from within. It is not easy for us, in view either of the antecedent or +of the subsequent history, to realize the extreme feebleness of American +Catholicism at the birth of our nation. According to an official +"Relation on the State of Religion in the United States," presented by +the prefect apostolic in 1785, the total number of Catholics in the +entire Union was 18,200, exclusive of an unascertainable number, +destitute of priests, in the Mississippi Valley. The entire number of +the clergy was twenty-four, most of them former members of the Society +of Jesuits, that had been suppressed in 1773 by the famous bull, +_Dominus ac Redemptor_, of Clement XIV. Sorely against their will, these +missionaries, hitherto subject only to the discipline of their own +society, were transformed into secular priests, under the jurisdiction +of the Vicar Apostolic of London. After the establishment of +independence, with the intense jealousy felt regarding British +influence, and by none more deeply and more reasonably felt than by the +Catholics, this jurisdiction was impracticable. The providentially fit +man for the emergency was found in the Rev. John Carroll, of an old +Maryland family distinguished alike for patriotism and for faithfulness +to Catholic principles. In June, 1784, he was made prefect apostolic +over the Catholic Church in the United States, and the dependence on +British jurisdiction was terminated. + +When, however, it was proposed that this provisional arrangement should +be superseded by the appointment of a bishop, objections not unexpected +were encountered from among the clergy. Already we have had occasion to +note the jealousy of episcopal authority that is felt by the clergy of +the regular orders. The lately disbanded Jesuits, with characteristic +flexibility of self-adaptation to circumstances, had at once +reincorporated themselves under another name, thus to hold the not +inconsiderable estates of their order in the State of Maryland. But the +plans of these energetic men either to control the bishop or to prevent +his appointment were unsuccessful. In December, 1790, Bishop Carroll, +having been consecrated in England, arrived and entered upon his see of +Baltimore. + +Difficulties, through which there were not many precedents to guide him, +thickened about the path of the new prelate. It was well both for the +church and for the republic that he was a man not only versed in the +theology and polity of his church, but imbued with American principles +and feelings. The first conflict that vexed the church under his +administration, and which for fifty years continued to vex his +associates and successors, was a collision between the American +sentiment for local and individual liberty and self-government, and the +absolutist spiritual government of Rome. The Catholics of New York, +including those of the Spanish and French legations, had built a church +in Barclay Street, then on the northern outskirt of the city; and they +had the very natural and just feeling that they had a right to do what +they would with their own and with the building erected at their +charges. They proceeded accordingly to put in charge of it priests of +their own selection. But they had lost sight of the countervailing +principle that if they had a right to do as they would with their +building, the bishop, as representing the supreme authority in the +church, had a like right to do as he would with his clergy. The building +was theirs; but it was for the bishop to say what services should be +held in it, or whether there should be any services in it at all, in the +Roman Catholic communion. It is surprising how often this issue was +made, and how repeatedly and obstinately it was fought out in various +places, when the final result was so inevitable. The hierarchical power +prevailed, of course, but after much irritation between priesthood and +people, and "great loss of souls to the church."[216:1] American ideas +and methods were destined profoundly and beneficially to affect the +Roman Church in the United States, but not by the revolutionary process +of establishing "trusteeism," or the lay control of parishes. The +damaging results of such disputes to both parties and to their common +interest in the church put the two parties under heavy bonds to deal by +each other with mutual consideration. The tendency, as in some parallel +cases, is toward an absolute government administered on republican +principles, the authoritative command being given with cautious +consideration of the disposition of the subject. The rights of the laity +are sufficiently secured, first, by their holding the purse, and, +secondly, in a community in which the Roman is only one of many churches +held in like esteem and making like claims to divine authority, by their +holding in reserve the right of withdrawal. + +Other and unwonted difficulties for the young church lay in the Babel +confusion of races and languages among its disciples, and in the lack of +public resources, which could be supplied no otherwise than by free +gift. Yet another difficulty was the scant supply of clergy; but events +which about this time began to spread desolation among the institutions +of Catholic Europe proved to be of inestimable benefit to the +ill-provided Catholics of America. Rome might almost have been content +to see the wasting and destruction in her ancient strongholds, for the +opportune reinforcement which it brought, at a critical time, to the +renascent church in the New World. More important than the priests of +various orders and divers languages, who came all equipped for mission +work among immigrants of different nationalities, was the arrival of the +Sulpitians of Paris, fleeing from the persecutions of the French +Revolution, ready for their special work of training for the parish +priesthood. The founding of their seminary in Baltimore in 1791, for the +training of a native clergy, was the best security that had yet been +given for the permanence of the Catholic revival. The American Catholic +Church was a small affair as yet, and for twenty years to come was to +continue so; but the framework was preparing of an organization +sufficient for the days of great things that were before it. + + * * * * * + +The most revolutionary change suffered by any religious body in America, +in adjusting itself to the changed conditions after the War of +Independence, was that suffered by the latest arrived and most rapidly +growing of them all. We have seen the order of the Wesleyan preachers +coming so tardily across the ocean, and propagated with constantly +increasing momentum southward from the border of Maryland. Its +congregations were not a church; its preachers were not a clergy. +Instituted in England by a narrow, High-church clergyman of the +established church, its preachers were simply a company of lay +missionaries under the command of John Wesley; its adherents were +members of the Church of England, bound to special fidelity to their +duties as such in their several parish churches, but united in clubs and +classes for the mutual promotion of holy living in an unholy age; and +its chapels and other property, fruits of the self-denial of many poor, +were held under iron-bound title-deeds, subject to the control of John +Wesley and of the close corporation of preachers to whom he should demit +them. + +It seems hardly worthy of the immense practical sagacity of Wesley that +he should have thought to transplant this system unchanged into the +midst of circumstances so widely different as those which must surround +it in America. And yet even here, where the best work of his preachers +was to be done among populations not only churchless, but out of reach +of church or ministry of whatever name, in those Southern States in +which nine tenths of his penitents and converts were gained, his +preachers were warned against the sacrilege of ministering to the +craving converts the Christian ordinances of baptism and the holy +supper, and bidden to send them to their own churches--when they had +none. The wretched incumbents of the State parishes at the first sounds +of war had scampered from the field like hirelings whose own the sheep +are not, and the demand that the preachers of the word should also +minister the comfort of the Christian ordinances became too strong to be +resisted. The call of duty and necessity seemed to the preachers +gathered at a conference at Fluvanna in 1779 to be a call from God; and, +contrary to the strong objections of Wesley and Asbury, they chose from +the older of their own number a committee who "ordained themselves, and +proceeded to ordain and set apart other ministers for the same +purpose--that they might minister the holy ordinances to the church of +Christ."[218:1] The step was a bold one, and although it seemed to be +attended by happy spiritual results, it threatened to precipitate a +division of "the Society" into two factions. The progress of events, the +establishment and acknowledgment of American independence, and the +constant expansion of the Methodist work, brought its own solution of +the divisive questions. + +It was an important day in the history of the American church, that +second day of September, 1784, when John Wesley, assisted by other +presbyters of the Church of England, laid his hands in benediction upon +the head of Dr. Thomas Coke, and committed to him the superintendency of +the Methodist work in America, as colleague with Francis Asbury. On the +arrival of Coke in America, the preachers were hastily summoned together +in conference at Baltimore, and there, in Christmas week of the same +year, Asbury was ordained successively as deacon, as elder, and as +superintendent. By the two bishops thus constituted were ordained elders +and deacons, and Methodism became a living church. + + * * * * * + +The two decades from the close of the War of Independence include the +period of the lowest ebb-tide of vitality in the history of American +Christianity. The spirit of half-belief or unbelief that prevailed on +the other side of the sea, both in the church and out of it, was +manifest also here. Happily the tide of foreign immigration at this time +was stayed, and the church had opportunity to gather strength for the +immense task that was presently to be devolved upon it. But the westward +movement of our own population was now beginning to pour down the +western slope of the Alleghanies into the great Mississippi basin. It +was observed by the Methodist preachers that the members of their +societies who had, through fear, necessity, or choice, moved into the +back settlements and into new parts of the country, as soon as peace was +settled and the way was open solicited the preachers to come among them, +and so the work followed them to the west.[219:1] In the years +1791-1810 occurred the great movement of population from Virginia to +Kentucky and from Carolina to Tennessee. It was reckoned that one fourth +of the Baptists of Virginia had removed to Kentucky, and yet they hardly +leavened the lump of early frontier barbarism. The Presbyterian Church, +working in its favorite methods, devised campaigns of home missionary +enterprise in its presbyteries and synods, detailing pastors from their +parishes for temporary mission service in following the movement of the +Scotch-Irish migration into the hill-country in which it seemed to find +its congenial habitat, and from which its powerful influences were to +flow in all directions. The Congregationalists of New England in like +manner followed with Christian teaching and pastoral care their sons +moving westward to occupy the rich lands of western New York and of +Ohio. The General Association of the pastors of Connecticut, solicitous +that the work of missions to the frontier should be carried forward +without loss of power through division of forces, entered, in 1801, into +the compact with the General Assembly of the Presbyterians known as the +"Plan of Union," by which Christians of both polities might cooeperate in +the founding of churches and in maintaining the work of the gospel. + +In the year 1803 the most important political event since the adoption +of the Constitution, the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson, +opened to the American church a new and immense field for missionary +activity. This vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi westward +to the summits of the Rocky Mountains and nearly doubling the domain of +the United States, was the last remainder of the great projected French +Catholic empire that had fallen in 1763. Passed back and forth with the +vicissitudes of European politics between French and Spanish masters, it +had made small progress in either civilization or Christianity. But the +immense possibilities of it to the kingdoms of this world and to the +kingdom of heaven were obvious to every intelligent mind. Not many years +were to pass before it was to become an arena in which all the various +forces of American Christianity were to be found contending against all +the powers of darkness, not without dealing some mutual blows in the +melley. + + * * * * * + +The review of this period must not close without adverting to two +important advances in public practical Christianity, in which (as often +in like cases) the earnest endeavors of some among the Christians have +been beholden for success to uncongenial reinforcements. As it is +written, "The earth helped the woman." + +In the establishment of the American principle of the non-interference +of the state with religion, and the equality of all religious communions +before the law, much was due, no doubt, to the mutual jealousies of the +sects, no one or two of which were strong enough to maintain exceptional +pretensions over the rest combined. Much also is to be imputed to the +indifferentism and sometimes the anti-religious sentiment of an +important and numerous class of doctrinaire politicians of which +Jefferson may be taken as a type. So far as this work was a work of +intelligent conviction and religious faith, the chief honor of it must +be given to the Baptists. Other sects, notably the Presbyterians, had +been energetic and efficient in demanding their own liberties; the +Friends and the Baptists agreed in demanding liberty of conscience and +worship, and equality before the law, for all alike. But the active +labor in this cause was mainly done by the Baptists. It is to their +consistency and constancy in the warfare against the privileges of the +powerful "Standing Order" of New England, and of the moribund +establishments of the South, that we are chiefly indebted for the final +triumph, in this country, of that principle of the separation of church +from state which is one of the largest contributions of the New World to +civilization and to the church universal. + +It is not surprising that a people so earnest as the Baptists showed +themselves in the promotion of religious liberty should be forward in +the condemnation of American slavery. We have already seen the vigor +with which the Methodists, having all their strength at the South, +levied a spiritual warfare against this great wrong. It was at the South +that the Baptists, in 1789, "_Resolved_, That slavery is a violent +deprivation of the rights of nature, and inconsistent with a republican +government, and we therefore recommend it to our brethren to make use of +every legal measure to extirpate this horrid evil from the land."[222:1] +At the North, Jonathan Edwards the Younger is conspicuous in the +unbroken succession of antislavery churchmen. His sermon on the +"Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave-trade," preached in 1791 before the +Connecticut Abolition Society, of which President Ezra Stiles was the +head, long continued to be reprinted and circulated, both at the North +and at the South, as the most effective argument not only against the +slave-trade, but against the whole system of slavery. + + * * * * * + +It will not be intruding needlessly upon the difficult field of dogmatic +history if we note here the widely important diversities of Christian +teaching that belong to this which we may call the sub-Revolutionary +period. + +It is in contradiction to our modern association of ideas to read that +the prevailing type of doctrine among the early Baptists of New England +was Arminian.[222:2] The pronounced individualism of the Baptist +churches, and the emphasis which they place upon human responsibility, +might naturally have created a tendency in this direction; but a cause +not less obvious was their antagonism to the established +Congregationalism, with its sharply defined Calvinistic statements. The +public challenging of these statements made a favorite issue on which to +appeal to the people from their constituted teachers. But when the South +and Southwest opened itself as the field of a wonderfully rapid +expansion before the feet of the Baptist evangelists, the antagonism was +quite of another sort. Their collaborators and sharp competitors in the +great and noble work of planting the gospel and the church in old and +neglected fields at the South, and carrying them westward to the +continually advancing frontier of population, were to be found in the +multiplying army of the Methodist itinerants and local exhorters, whose +theology, enjoined upon them by their commission, was the Arminianism of +John Wesley. No explanation is apparent for the revulsion of the great +body of American Baptists into a Calvinism exaggerated to the point of +caricature, except the reaction of controversy with the Methodists. The +tendency of the two parties to opposite poles of dogma was all the +stronger for the fact that on both sides teachers and taught were alike +lacking in liberalizing education. The fact that two by far the most +numerous denominations of Christians in the United States were picketed +thus over against each other in the same regions, as widely differing +from each other in doctrine and organization as the Dominican order from +the Jesuit, and differing somewhat in the same way, is a fact that +invites our regret and disapproval, but at the same time compels us to +remember its compensating advantages. + + * * * * * + +It is to this period that we trace the head-waters of several important +existing denominations. + +At the close of the war the congregation of the "King's Chapel," the +oldest Episcopal church in New England, had been thinned and had lost +its rector in the general migration of leading Tory families to Nova +Scotia. At the restoration of peace it was served in the capacity of lay +reader by Mr. James Freeman, a young graduate of Harvard, who came soon +to be esteemed very highly in love both for his work's sake and for his +own. Being chosen pastor of the church, he was not many months in +finding that many things in the English Prayer-book were irreconcilable +with doubts and convictions concerning the Trinity and related +doctrines, which about this time were widely prevalent among theologians +both in the Church of England and outside of it. In June, 1785, it was +voted in the congregation, by a very large majority, to amend the order +of worship in accordance with these scruples. The changes were in a +direction in which not a few Episcopalians were disposed to move,[224:1] +and the congregation did not hesitate to apply for ordination for their +pastor, first to Bishop Seabury, and afterward, with better hope of +success, to Bishop Provoost. Failing here also, the congregation +proceeded to induct their elect pastor into his office without waiting +further upon bishops; and thus "the first Episcopal church in New +England became the first Unitarian church in America." It was not the +beginning of Unitarianism in America, for this had long been "in the +air." But it was the first distinct organization of it. How rapidly and +powerfully it spread within narrow geographical limits, and how widely +it has affected the course of religious history, must appear in later +chapters. + + * * * * * + +Close as might seem to be the kindred between Unitarianism and +Universalism, coeval as they are in their origin as organized sects, +they are curiously diverse in their origin. Each of them, at the present +day, holds the characteristic tenet of the other; in general, Unitarians +are Universalists, and Universalists are Unitarians.[225:1] But in the +beginning Unitarianism was a bold reactionary protest against leading +doctrines of the prevailing Calvinism of New England, notably against +the doctrines of the Trinity, of expiatory atonement, and of human +depravity; and it was still more a protest against the intolerant and +intolerable dogmatism of the sanhedrim of Jonathan Edwards's successors, +in their cock-sure expositions of the methods of the divine government +and the psychology of conversion. Universalism, on the other hand, in +its first setting forth in America, planted itself on the leading +"evangelical" doctrines, which its leaders had earnestly preached, and +made them the major premisses of its argument. Justification and +salvation, said John Murray, one of Whitefield's Calvinistic Methodist +preachers, are the lot of those for whom Christ died. But Christ died +for the elect, said his Calvinistic brethren. Nay, verily, said Murray +(in this following one of his colleagues, James Relly); what saith the +Scripture? "Christ died for _all_." It was the pinch of this argument +which brought New England theologians, beginning with Smalley and the +second Edwards, to the acceptance of the rectoral theory of the +atonement, and so prepared the way for much disputation among the +doctors of the next century.[225:2] + +Mr. Murray arrived in America in 1770, and after much going to and fro +organized, in 1779, at Gloucester, Mass., the first congregation in +America on distinctly Universalist principles. But other men, along +other lines of thought, had been working their way to somewhat similar +conclusions. In 1785 Elhanan Winchester, a thoroughly Calvinistic +Baptist minister in Philadelphia, led forth his excommunicated brethren, +one hundred strong, and organized them into a "Society of Universal +Baptists," holding to the universal _restoration_ of mankind to holiness +and happiness. The two differing schools fraternized in a convention of +Universalist churches at Philadelphia in 1794, at which articles of +belief and a plan of organization were set forth, understood to be from +the pen of Dr. Benjamin Rush; and a resolution was adopted declaring the +holding of slaves to be "inconsistent with the union of the human race +in a common Saviour, and the obligations to mutual and universal love +which flow from that union." + +It was along still another line of argument, proceeding from the assumed +"rectitude of human nature," that the Unitarians came, tardily and +hesitatingly, to the Universalist position. The long persistence of +definite boundary lines between two bodies so nearly alike in their +tenets is a subject worthy of study. The lines seem to be rather +historical and social than theological. The distinction between them has +been thus epigrammatically stated: that the Universalist holds that God +is too good to damn a man; the Unitarian holds that men are too good to +be damned. + +No controversy in the history of the American church has been more +deeply marked by a sincere and serious earnestness, over and above the +competitive zeal and invidious acrimony that are an inevitable admixture +in such debates, than the controversy that was at once waged against the +two new sects claiming the title "Liberal." It was sincerely felt by +their antagonists that, while the one abandoned the foundation of the +Christian faith, the other destroyed the foundation of Christian +morality. In the early propaganda of each of them was much to deepen +this mistrust. When the standard of dissent is set up in any community, +and men are invited to it in the name of liberality, nothing can hinder +its becoming a rallying-point for all sorts of disaffected souls, not +only the liberal, but the loose. The story of the controversy belongs to +later chapters of this book. It is safe to say at this point that the +early orthodox fears have at least not been fully confirmed by the +sequel up to this date. It was one of the most strenuous of the early +disputants against the "liberal" opinions[227:1] who remarked in his +later years, concerning the Unitarian saints, that it seemed as if their +exclusive contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the +example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional beauty and +Christlikeness of living. As for the Universalists, the record of their +fidelity, as a body, to the various interests of social morality is not +surpassed by that of any denomination. But in the earlier days the +conflict against the two sects called "liberal" was waged ruthlessly, +not as against defective or erroneous schemes of doctrine, but as +against distinctly antichristian heresies. + +There is instruction to be gotten from studying, in comparison, the +course of these opinions in the established churches of Great Britain +and among the unestablished churches of America. Under the enforced +comprehensiveness or tolerance of a national church, it is easier for +strange doctrines to spread within the pale. Under the American plan of +the organization of Christianity by voluntary mutual association +according to elective affinity, with freedom to receive or exclude, the +flock within the fold may perhaps be kept safer from contamination; as +when the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1792, and again in 1794, +decided that Universalists be not admitted to the sealing ordinances of +the gospel;[228:1] but by this course the excluded opinion is compelled +to intrench itself both for defense and for attack in a sectarian +organization. It is a practically interesting question, the answer to +which is by no means self-evident, whether Universalist opinions would +have been less prevalent to-day in England and Scotland if they had been +excluded from the national churches and erected into a sect with its +partisan pulpits, presses, and propagandists; or whether they would have +more diffused in America if, instead of being dealt with by process of +excommunication or deposition, they had been dealt with simply by +argument. This is one of the many questions which history raises, but +which (happily for him) it does not fall within the function of the +historian to answer. + + * * * * * + +To this period is to be referred the origin of some of the minor +American sects. + +The "United Brethren in Christ" grew into a distinct organization about +the year 1800. It arose incidentally to the Methodist evangelism, in an +effort on the part of Philip William Otterbein, of the German Reformed +Church, and Martin Boehm, of the Mennonites, to provide for the +shepherdless German-speaking people by an adaptation of the Wesleyan +methods. Presently, in the natural progress of language, the English +work outgrew the German. It is now doing an extensive and useful work by +pulpit and press, chiefly in Pennsylvania and the States of that +latitude. The reasons for its continued existence separate from the +Methodist Church, which it closely resembles both in doctrine and in +polity, are more apparent to those within the organization than to +superficial observers from outside. + +The organization just described arose from the unwillingness of the +German Reformed Church to meet the craving needs of the German people by +using the Wesleyan methods. From the unwillingness of the Methodist +Church to use the German language arose another organization, "the +Evangelical Association," sometimes known, from the name of its founder, +by the somewhat grotesque title of "the Albrights." This also is both +Methodist and Episcopal, a reduced copy of the great Wesleyan +institution, mainly devoted to labors among the Germans. + +In 1792 was planted at Baltimore the first American congregation of that +organization of disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg which had been begun in +London nine years before and called by the appropriately fanciful name +of "the Church of the New Jerusalem." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[210:1] Quoted in Tiffany, p. 289, note. The extreme depression of the +Protestant Episcopal and (as will soon appear) of the Roman Catholic +Church, at this point of time, emphasizes all the more the great +advances made by both these communions from this time forward. + +[211:1] Preface to the American "Book of Common Prayer," 1789. + +[211:2] See the critical observations of Dr. McConnell, "History of the +American Episcopal Church," pp. 264-276. The polity of this church seems +to have suffered for want of a States' Rights and Strict Construction +party. The centrifugal force has been overbalanced by the centripetal. + +[213:1] Tiffany, pp. 385-399. + +[216:1] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 269-323, 367, 399. + +[218:1] Buckley, "The Methodists," pp. 182, 183. + +[219:1] Jesse Lee, quoted by Dr. Buckley, p. 195. + +[222:1] Newman, "The Baptists," p. 305. + +[222:2] _Ibid._, p. 243. + +[224:1] Tiffany, p. 347; McConnell, p. 249. + +[225:1] Dr. Richard Eddy, "The Universalists," p. 429. + +[225:2] _Ibid._, pp. 392-397. The sermons of Smalley were preached at +Wallingford, Conn., "by particular request, with special reference to +the Murrayan controversy." + +[227:1] Leonard Bacon, of New Haven, in conversation. + +[228:1] Eddy, p. 387. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE SECOND AWAKENING. + + +The closing years of the eighteenth century show the lowest low-water +mark of the lowest ebb-tide of spiritual life in the history of the +American church. The demoralization of army life, the fury of political +factions, the catchpenny materialist morality of Franklin, the +philosophic deism of men like Jefferson, and the popular ribaldry of Tom +Paine, had wrought, together with other untoward influences, to bring +about a condition of things which to the eye of little faith seemed +almost desperate. + +From the beginning of the reaction from the stormy excitements of the +Great Awakening, nothing had seemed to arouse the New England churches +from a lethargic dullness; so, at least, it seemed to those who recalled +those wonderful days of old, either in memory or by tradition. We have a +gauge of the general decline of the public morals, in the condition of +Yale College at the accession of President Dwight in 1795, as described +in the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher, then a sophomore. + + "Before he came, college was in a most ungodly state. The + college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were + skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were + kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and + licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped.... + That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. + Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom + Paine and believed him; I read and fought him all the way. + Never had any propensity to infidelity. But most of the class + before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire, + Rousseau, D'Alembert, etc."[231:1] + +In the Middle States the aspect was not more promising. Princeton +College had been closed for three years of the Revolutionary War. In +1782 there were only two among the students who professed themselves +Christians. The Presbyterian General Assembly, representing the +strongest religious force in that region, in 1798 described the then +existing condition of the country in these terms: + + "Formidable innovations and convulsions in Europe threaten + destruction to morals and religion. Scenes of devastation and + bloodshed unexampled in the history of modern nations have + convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with + similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful + apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and + practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing + impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of + religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances + tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the + public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to + our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, + injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of + debauchery and loose indulgence greatly abound." + +From the point of view of the Episcopalian of that day the prospect was +even more disheartening. It was at this time that Bishop Provoost of New +York laid down his functions, not expecting the church to continue much +longer; and Bishop Madison of Virginia shared the despairing conviction +of Chief-Justice Marshall that the church was too far gone ever to be +revived.[232:1] Over all this period the historian of the Lutheran +Church writes up the title "Deterioration."[232:2] Proposals were set on +foot looking toward the merger of these two languishing denominations. + +Even the Methodists, the fervor of whose zeal and vitality of whose +organization had withstood what seemed severer tests, felt the benumbing +influence of this unhappy age. For three years ending in 1796 the total +membership diminished at the rate of about four thousand a year. + +Many witnesses agree in describing the moral and religious condition of +the border States of Kentucky and Tennessee as peculiarly deplorable. +The autobiography of that famous pioneer preacher, Peter Cartwright, +gives a lively picture of Kentucky society in 1793 as he remembered it +in his old age: + + "Logan County, when my father moved into it, was called + 'Rogues' Harbor.' Here many refugees from all parts of the + Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for although there + was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate + state of society. Murderers, horse-thieves, highway robbers, + and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and + actually formed a majority. Those who favored a better state + of morals were called 'Regulators.' But they encountered + fierce opposition from the 'Rogues,' and a battle was fought + with guns, pistols, dirks, knives, and clubs, in which the + 'Regulators' were defeated."[233:1] + +The people that walked in this gross darkness beheld a great light. In +1796 a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, who for more than ten +years had done useful service in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, +assumed charge of several Presbyterian churches in that very Logan +County which we know through the reminiscences of Peter Cartwright. As +he went the round of his scattered congregations his preaching was felt +to have peculiar power "to arouse false professors, to awaken a dead +church, and warn sinners and lead them to seek the new spiritual life +which he himself had found." Three years later two brothers, William and +John McGee, one a Presbyterian minister and the other a Methodist, came +through the beautiful Cumberland country in Kentucky and Tennessee, +speaking, as if in the spirit and power of John the Baptist, to +multitudes that gathered from great distances to hear them. On one +occasion, in the woods of Logan County, in July, 1800, the gathered +families, many of whom came from far, tethered their teams and encamped +for several days for the unaccustomed privilege of common worship and +Christian preaching. This is believed to have been the first American +camp-meeting--an era worth remembering in our history. Not without +abundant New Testament antecedents, it naturalized itself at once on our +soil as a natural expedient for scattered frontier populations +unprovided with settled institutions. By a natural process of evolution, +adapting itself to other environments and uses, the backwoods +camp-meeting has grown into the "Chautauqua" assembly, which at so many +places besides the original center at Chautauqua Lake has grown into an +important and most characteristic institution of American civilization. + +We are happy in having an account of some of these meetings from one who +was personally and sympathetically interested in them. For in the spring +of the next year Barton Warren Stone, a Presbyterian minister serving +his two congregations of Concord and Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, and +oppressed with a sense of the religious apathy prevailing about him, +made the long journey across the State of Kentucky to see for himself +the wonderful things of which he had heard, and afterward wrote his +reminiscences. + + "There, on the edge of a prairie in Logan County, Kentucky, + the multitudes came together and continued a number of days + and nights encamped on the ground, during which time worship + was carried on in some part of the encampment. The scene was + new to me and passing strange. It baffled description. Many, + very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for + hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless + state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting + symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a + prayer for mercy fervently uttered. After lying there for + hours they obtained deliverance. The gloomy cloud that had + covered their faces seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, + and hope, in smiles, brightened into joy. They would rise, + shouting deliverance, and then would address the surrounding + multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive. With + astonishment did I hear men, women, and children declaring the + wonderful works of God and the glorious mysteries of the + gospel. Their appeals were solemn, heart-penetrating, bold, + and free. Under such circumstances many others would fall down + into the same state from which the speakers had just been + delivered. + + "Two or three of my particular acquaintances from a distance + were struck down. I sat patiently by one of them, whom I knew + to be a careless sinner, for hours, and observed with critical + attention everything that passed, from the beginning to the + end. I noticed the momentary revivings as from death, the + humble confession of sins, the fervent prayer, and the + ultimate deliverance; then the solemn thanks and praise to + God, and affectionate exhortation to companions and to the + people around to repent and come to Jesus. I was astonished at + the knowledge of gospel truth displayed in the address. The + effect was that several sank down into the same appearance of + death. After attending to many such cases, my conviction was + complete that it was a good work--the work of God; nor has my + mind wavered since on the subject. Much did I see then, and + much have I seen since, that I consider to be fanaticism; but + this should not condemn the work. The devil has always tried + to ape the works of God, to bring them into disrepute; but + that cannot be a Satanic work which brings men to humble + confession, to forsaking of sin, to prayer, fervent praise and + thanksgiving, and a sincere and affectionate exhortation to + sinners to repent and come to Jesus the Saviour." + +Profoundly impressed by what he had seen and heard, Pastor Stone +returned to his double parish in Bourbon County and rehearsed the story +of it. "The congregation was affected with awful solemnity, and many +returned home weeping." This was in the early spring. Not many months +afterward there was a notable springing up of this seed. + + "A memorable meeting was held at Cane Ridge in August, 1801. + The roads were crowded with wagons, carriages, horses, and + footmen moving to the solemn camp. It was judged by military + men on the ground that between twenty and thirty thousand + persons were assembled. Four or five preachers spoke at the + same time in different parts of the encampment without + confusion. The Methodist and Baptist preachers aided in the + work, and all appeared cordially united in it. They were of + one mind and soul: the salvation of sinners was the one + object. We all engaged in singing the same songs, all united + in prayer, all preached the same things.... The numbers + converted will be known only in eternity. Many things + transpired in the meeting which were so much like miracles + that they had the same effect as miracles on unbelievers. By + them many were convinced that Jesus was the Christ and were + persuaded to submit to him. This meeting continued six or + seven days and nights, and would have continued longer, but + food for the sustenance of such a multitude failed. + + "To this meeting many had come from Ohio and other distant + parts. These returned home and diffused the same spirit in + their respective neighborhoods. Similar results followed. So + low had religion sunk, and such carelessness had universally + prevailed, that I have thought that nothing common could have + arrested and held the attention of the people."[236:1] + +The sober and cautious tone of this narrative will already have +impressed the reader. These are not the words of a heated enthusiast, or +a man weakly credulous. We may hesitate to accept his judgment, but may +safely accept his testimony, amply corroborated as it is, to facts which +he has seen and heard. + +But the crucial test of the work, the test prescribed by the Lord of the +church, is that it shall be known by its fruits. And this test it seems +to bear well. Dr. Archibald Alexander, had in high reverence in the +Presbyterian Church as a wise counselor in spiritual matters, made +scrupulous inquiry into the results of this revival, and received from +one of his correspondents, Dr. George A. Baxter, who made an early visit +to the scenes of the revival, the following testimony: + + "On my way I was informed by settlers on the road that the + character of Kentucky travelers was entirely changed, and that + they were as remarkable for sobriety as they had formerly been + for dissoluteness and immorality. And indeed I found Kentucky + to appearances the most moral place I had ever seen. A profane + expression was hardly ever heard. A religious awe seemed to + pervade the country. Upon the whole, I think the revival in + Kentucky the most extraordinary that has ever visited the + church of Christ; and, all things considered, it was + peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of the country into + which it came. Infidelity was triumphant and religion was on + the point of expiring. Something extraordinary seemed + necessary to arrest the attention of a giddy people who were + ready to conclude that Christianity was a fable and futurity a + delusion. This revival has done it. It has confounded + infidelity and brought numbers beyond calculation under + serious impressions." + +A sermon preached in 1803 to the Presbyterian synod of Kentucky, by the +Rev. David Rice, has the value of testimony given in the presence of +other competent witnesses, and liable thus to be questioned or +contradicted. In it he says: + + "Neighborhoods noted for their vicious and profligate manners + are now as much noted for their piety and good order. + Drunkards, profane swearers, liars, quarrelsome persons, etc., + are remarkably reformed.... A number of families who had lived + apparently without the fear of God, in folly and in vice, + without any religious instruction or any proper government, + are now reduced to order and are daily joining in the worship + of God, reading his word, singing his praises, and offering up + their supplications to a throne of grace. Parents who seemed + formerly to have little or no regard for the salvation of + their children are now anxiously concerned for their + salvation, are pleading for them, and endeavoring to lead them + to Christ and train them up in the way of piety and virtue." + +That same year the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in its +annual review of the state of religion, adverted with emphasis to the +work in the Cumberland country, and cited remarkable instances of +conversion--malignant opposers of vital piety convinced and reconciled, +learned, active, and conspicuous infidels becoming signal monuments of +that grace which they once despised; and in conclusion declared with joy +that "the state and prospects of vital religion in our country are more +favorable and encouraging than at any period within the last forty +years."[238:1] + +In order successfully to study the phenomena of this remarkable passage +in the history of the church, it is necessary to bear in mind the social +conditions that prevailed. A population _perfervido ingenio_, of a +temper peculiarly susceptible of intense excitement, transplanted into a +wild country, under little control either of conventionality or law, +deeply ingrained from many generations with the religious sentiment, but +broken loose from the control of it and living consciously in reckless +disregard of the law of God, is suddenly aroused to a sense of its +apostasy and wickedness. The people do not hear the word of God from +Sabbath to Sabbath, or even from evening to evening, and take it home +with them and ponder it amid the avocations of daily business; by the +conditions, they are sequestered for days together in the wilderness for +the exclusive contemplation of momentous truths pressed upon the mind +with incessant and impassioned iteration; and they remain together, an +agitated throng, not of men only, but of women and children. The student +of psychology recognizes at once that here are present in an unusual +combination the conditions not merely of the ready propagation of +influence by example and persuasion, but of those nervous, mental, or +spiritual infections which make so important a figure in the world's +history, civil, military, or religious. It is wholly in accord with +human nature that the physical manifestations attendant on religious +excitement in these circumstances should be of an intense and +extravagant sort. + +And such indeed they were. Sudden outcries, hysteric weeping and +laughter, faintings, catalepsies, trances, were customary concomitants +of the revival preaching. Multitudes fell prostrate on the ground, +"spiritually slain," as it was said. Lest the helpless bodies should be +trampled on by the surging crowd, they were taken up and laid in rows on +the floor of the neighboring meeting-house. "Some lay quiet, unable to +move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with +their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a +live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours +at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then +plunged, shouting 'Lost! Lost!' into the forest." + +As the revival went on and the camp-meeting grew to be a custom and an +institution, this nervous epidemic took on certain recognizable forms, +one of which was known as "the jerks." This malady "began in the head +and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown from side to +side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made +to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over +hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to +bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of +eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his +own observation on the subject: + + "I have passed a meeting-house where I observed the + undergrowth had been cut for a camp-meeting, and from fifty to + a hundred saplings were left breast-high on purpose for + persons who were 'jerked' to hold on to. I observed where they + had held on they had kicked up the earth as a horse stamping + flies.... I believe it does not affect those naturalists who + wish to get it to philosophize about it; and rarely those who + are the most pious; but the lukewarm, lazy professor is + subject to it. The wicked fear it and are subject to it; but + the persecutors are more subject to it than any, and they have + sometimes cursed and sworn and damned it while + jerking."[240:1] + +There is nothing improbable in the claim that phenomena like these, +strange, weird, startling, "were so much like miracles that they had the +same effect as miracles on unbelievers." They helped break up the +apathetic torpor of the church and summon the multitudes into the +wilderness to hear the preaching of repentance and the remission of +sins. But they had some lamentable results. Those who, like many among +the Methodists,[241:1] found in them the direct work of the Holy Spirit, +were thereby started along the perilous incline toward enthusiasm and +fanaticism. Those, on the other hand, repelled by the grotesqueness and +extravagance of these manifestations, who were led to distrust or +condemn the good work with which they were associated, fell into a +graver error. This was the error into which, to its cost, the +Presbyterian Church was by and by drawn in dealing with questions that +emerged from these agitations. The revival gave rise to two new sects, +both of them marked by the fervor of spirit that characterized the time, +and both of them finding their principal habitat in the same western +region. The Cumberland Presbyterians, now grown to large numbers and +deserved influence and dignity in the fellowship of American sects, +separated themselves from the main body of Presbyterians by refusing to +accept, in face of the craving needs of the pastorless population all +about them, the arbitrary rule shutting the door of access to the +Presbyterian ministry to all candidates, how great soever their other +qualifications, who lacked a classical education. Separating on this +issue, they took the opportunity to amend the generally accepted +doctrinal statements of the Presbyterian churches by mitigating those +utterances which seemed to them, as they have seemed to many others, to +err in the direction of fatalism. + +About the same time there was manifested in various quarters a generous +revolt against the existence and multiplication of mutually exclusive +sects in the Christian family, each limited by humanly devised +doctrinal articles and branded with partisan names. How these various +protesting elements came together on the sole basis of a common faith in +Christ and a common acceptance of the divine authority of the Bible; +how, not intending it, they came to be themselves a new sect; and how, +struggling in vain against the inexorable laws of language, they came to +be distinguished by names, as _Campbellite Baptist_, _Christ-ian_ (with +a long _i_), and (+kat' exochen+) Disciples, are points on which +interesting and instructive light is shed in the history by Dr. B. B. +Tyler.[242:1] + + * * * * * + +The great revival of the West and Southwest was not the only revival, +and not even the earliest revival, of that time of crisis. As early as +1792 the long inertia of the eastern churches began to be broken here +and there by signs of growing earnestness and attentiveness to spiritual +things. There was little of excited agitation. There was no preaching of +famous evangelists. There were no imposing convocations. Only in many +and many of those country towns in which, at that time, the main +strength of the population lay, the labors of faithful pastors began to +be rewarded with large ingatherings of penitent believers. The +languishing churches grew strong and hopeful, and the insolent +infidelity of the times was abashed. With such sober simplicity was the +work of the gospel carried forward, in the opening years of this +century, among the churches and pastors that had learned wisdom from the +mistakes made in the Great Awakening, that there are few striking +incidents for the historian. Hardly any man is to be pointed out as a +preeminent leader of the church at this period. If to any one, this +place of honor belongs to Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, +whose accession to the presidency of Yale College at the darkest hour +in its history marked the turning-point. We have already learned from +the reminiscences of Lyman Beecher how low the college had sunk in point +of religious character, when most of the class above him were openly +boastful of being infidels.[243:1] How the new president dealt with them +is well described by the same witness: + + "They thought the faculty were afraid of free discussion. But + when they handed Dr. Dwight a list of subjects for class + disputation, to their surprise, he selected this: 'Is the + Bible the word of God?' and told them to do their best. He + heard all they had to say, answered them, and there was an + end. He preached incessantly for six months on the subject, + and all infidelity skulked and hid its head. He elaborated his + theological system in a series of forenoon sermons in the + chapel; the afternoon discourses were practical. The original + design of Yale College was to found a divinity school. To a + mind appreciative, like mine, his preaching was a continual + course of education and a continual feast. He was copious and + polished in style, though disciplined and logical. There was a + pith and power of doctrine there that has not been since + surpassed, if equaled."[243:2] + +It may be doubted whether to any man of his generation it was given to +exercise a wider and more beneficent influence over the American church +than that of President Dwight. His system of "Theology Explained and +Defended in a Series of Sermons," a theology meant to be preached and +made effective in convincing men and converting them to the service of +God, was so constructed as to be completed within the four years of the +college curriculum, so that every graduate should have heard the whole +of it. The influence of it has not been limited by the boundaries of our +country, nor has it expired with the century just completed since +President Dwight's accession. + +At the East also, as well as at the West, the quickening of religious +thought and feeling had the common effect of alienating and disrupting. +Diverging tendencies, which had begun to disclose themselves in the +discussions between Edwards and Chauncy in their respective volumes of +"Thoughts" on the Great Awakening, became emphasized in the revival of +1800. That liberalism which had begun as a protest against a too +peremptory style of dogmatism was rapidly advancing toward a dogmatic +denial of points deemed by the opposite party to be essential. Dogmatic +differences were aggravated by differences of taste and temperament, and +everything was working toward the schism by which some sincere and +zealous souls should seek to do God service. + +In one most important particular the revival of 1800 was happily +distinguished from the Great Awakening of 1740. It was not done and over +with at the end of a few years, and then followed by a long period of +reaction. It was the beginning of a long period of vigorous and +"abundant life," moving forward, not, indeed, with even and unvarying +flow, yet with continuous current, marked with those alternations of +exaltation and subsidence which seem, whether for evil or for good, to +have become a fixed characteristic of American church history. + +The widespread revivals of the first decade of the nineteenth century +saved the church of Christ in America from its low estate and girded it +for stupendous tasks that were about to be devolved on it. In the glow +of this renewed fervor, the churches of New England successfully made +the difficult transition from establishment to self-support and to the +costly enterprises of aggressive evangelization into which, in company +with other churches to the South and West, they were about to enter. The +Christianity of the country was prepared and equipped to attend with +equal pace the prodigious rush of population across the breadth of the +Great Valley, and to give welcome to the invading host of immigrants +which before the end of a half century was to effect its entrance into +our territory at the rate of a thousand a day. It was to accommodate +itself to changing social conditions, as the once agricultural +population began to concentrate itself in factory villages and +commercial towns. It was to carry on systematic campaigns of warfare +against instituted social wrong, such as the drinking usages of society, +the savage code of dueling, the public sanction of slavery. And it was +to enter the "effectual door" which from the beginning of the century +opened wider and wider to admit the gospel and the church to every +nation under heaven. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[231:1] "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., p. 43. The same +charming volume contains abundant evidence that the spirit of true +religion was cherished in the homes of the people, while there were so +many public signs of apostasy. + +[232:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," pp. 388, 394, 395. + +[232:2] Dr. Jacobs, chap. xix. + +[233:1] "Autobiography of Peter Cartwright," quoted by Dorchester, +"Christianity in the United States," p. 348. + +[236:1] See B. B. Tyler, "History of the Disciples," pp. 11-17; R. V. +Foster, "The Cumberland Presbyterians," pp. 260-263 (American Church +History Series, vols. xi., xii.). + +[238:1] Tyler, "The Disciples"; Foster, "The Cumberland Presbyterians," +_ubi supra_. + +[240:1] Let me add an illustrative instance related to me by the +distinguished Methodist, Dr. David P. Durbin. Standing near the platform +from which he was to preach at a camp-meeting, he observed a powerfully +built young backwoodsman who was manifestly there with no better intent +than to disturb and break up the meeting. Presently it became evident +that the young man was conscious of some influence taking hold of him to +which he was resolved not to yield; he clutched with both hands a +hickory sapling next which he was standing, to hold himself steady, but +was whirled round and round, until the bark of the sapling peeled off +under his grasp. But, as in the cases referred to by Dow, the attack was +attended by no religious sentiment whatever. + +On the manifestations in the Cumberland country, see McMasters, "United +States," vol. ii., pp. 581, 582, and the sources there cited. For some +judicious remarks on the general subject, see Buckley, "Methodism," pp. +217-224. + +[241:1] So Dr. Buckley, "Methodism," p. 217. + +[242:1] American Church History Series, vol. xii. + +[243:1] See above, pp. 230, 231. + +[243:2] "Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 43, 44. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +ORGANIZED BENEFICENCE. + + +When the Presbyterian General Assembly, in 1803, made a studious review +of the revivals which for several years had been in progress, especially +at the South and West, it included in its "Narrative" the following +observations: + + "The Assembly observe with great pleasure that the desire for + spreading the gospel among the blacks and among the savage + tribes on our borders has been rapidly increasing during the + last year. The Assembly take notice of this circumstance with + the more satisfaction, as it not only affords a pleasing + presage of the spread of the gospel, but also furnishes + agreeable evidence of the genuineness and the benign tendency + of that spirit which God has been pleased to pour out upon his + people." + +In New England the like result had already, several years before, +followed upon the like antecedent. In the year 1798 the "Missionary +Society of Connecticut" was constituted, having for its object "to +Christianize the heathen in North America, and to support and promote +Christian knowledge in the new settlements within the United States"; +and in August, 1800, its first missionary, David Bacon, engaged at a +salary of "one hundred and ten cents per day," set out for the +wilderness south and west of Lake Erie, "afoot and alone, with no more +luggage than he could carry on his person," to visit the wild tribes of +that region, "to explore their situation, and learn their feelings with +respect to Christianity, and, so far as he had opportunity, to teach +them its doctrines and duties." The name forms a link in the bright +succession from John Eliot to this day. But it must needs be that some +suffer as victims of the inexperience of those who are first to take +direction of an untried enterprise. The abandonment of its first +missionary by one of the first missionary societies, leaving him +helpless in the wilderness, was a brief lesson in the economy of +missions opportunely given at the outset of the American mission work, +and happily had no need to be repeated.[247:1] + +David Bacon, like Henry Martyn, who at that same time, in far different +surroundings, was intent upon his plans of mission work in India, was +own son in the faith to David Brainerd. But they were elder sons in a +great family. The pathetic story of that heroic youth, as told by +Jonathan Edwards, was a classic at that time in almost every country +parsonage; but its influence was especially felt in the colleges, now no +longer, as a few years earlier, the seats of the scornful, but the homes +of serious and religious learning which they were meant to be by their +founders. + +Of the advancement of Christian civilization in the first +quarter-century from the achievement of independence there is no more +distinguished monument than the increase, through those troubled and +impoverished years, of the institutions of secular and sacred learning. +The really successful and effective colleges that had survived from the +colonial period were hardly a half-dozen. Up to 1810 these had been +reinforced by as many more. By far the greater number of them were +founded by the New England Congregationalists, to whom this has ever +been a favorite field of activity. But special honor must be paid to the +wise and courageous and nobly successful enterprise of large-minded and +large-hearted men among the Baptists, who as early as 1764, boldly +breasting a current of unworthy prejudice in their own denomination, +began the work of Brown University at Providence, which, carried forward +by a notable succession of great educators, has been set in the front +rank of existing American institutions of learning. After the revivals +of 1800 these Christian colleges were not only attended by students +coming from zealous and fervid churches; they themselves became the foci +from which high and noble spiritual influences were radiated through the +land. It was in communities like these that the example of such lives as +that of Brainerd stirred up generous young minds to a chivalrous and +even ascetic delight in attempting great labors and enduring great +sacrifices as soldiers under the Captain of salvation. + +It was at Williams College, then just planted in the Berkshire hills, +that a little coterie of students was formed which, for the grandeur of +the consequences that flowed from it, is worthy to be named in history +beside the Holy Club of Oxford in 1730, and the friends at Oriel College +in 1830. Samuel J. Mills came to Williams College in 1806 from the +parsonage of "Father Mills" of Torringford, concerning whom quaint +traditions and even memories still linger in the neighboring parishes of +Litchfield County, Connecticut. Around this young student gathered a +circle of men like-minded. The shade of a lonely haystack was their +oratory; the pledges by which they bound themselves to a life-work for +the kingdom of heaven remind one of the mutual vows of the earliest +friends of Loyola. Some of the youths went soon to the theological +seminary, and at once leavened that community with their own spirit. + +The seminary--there was only one in all Protestant America. As early as +1791 the Sulpitian fathers had organized their seminary at Baltimore. +But it was not until 1808 that any institution for theological studies +was open to candidates for the Protestant ministry. Up to that time such +studies were made in the regular college curriculum, which was +distinctly theological in character; and it was common for the graduate +to spend an additional year at the college for special study under the +president or the one professor of divinity. But many country parsonages +that were tenanted by men of fame as writers and teachers were greatly +frequented by young men preparing themselves for the work of preaching. + +The change to the modern method of education for the ministry was a +sudden one. It was precipitated by an event which has not even yet +ceased to be looked on by the losing party with honest lamentation and +with an unnecessary amount of sectarian acrimony. The divinity +professorship in Harvard College, founded in 1722[249:1] by Thomas +Hollis, of London, a Baptist friend of New England, was filled, after a +long struggle and an impassioned protest, by the election of Henry Ware, +an avowed and representative Unitarian. It was a distinct announcement +that the government of the college had taken sides in the impending +conflict, in opposition to the system of religious doctrine to the +maintenance of which the college had from its foundation been devoted. +The significance of the fact was not mistaken by either party. It meant +that the two tendencies which had been recognizable from long before +the Great Awakening were drawing asunder, and that thenceforth it must +be expected that the vast influence of the venerable college, in the +clergy and in society, would be given to the Liberal side. The dismay of +one party and the exultation of the other were alike well grounded. The +cry of the Orthodox was "To your tents, O Israel!" Lines of +ecclesiastical non-intercourse were drawn. Church was divided from +church, and family from family. When the forces and the losses on each +side came to be reckoned up, there was a double wonder: First, at the +narrow boundaries by which the Unitarian defection was circumscribed: "A +radius of thirty-five miles from Boston as a center would sweep almost +the whole field of its history and influence;"[250:1] and then at the +sweeping completeness of it within these bounds; as Mrs. H. B. Stowe +summed up the situation at Boston, "All the literary men of +Massachusetts were Unitarian; all the trustees and professors of Harvard +College were Unitarian; all the _elite_ of wealth and fashion crowded +Unitarian churches; the judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving +decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization so +carefully ordered by the Pilgrim Fathers had been nullified and all the +power had passed into the hands of the congregation."[250:2] + +The schism, with its acrimonies and heartburnings, was doubtless in some +sense necessary. And it was attended with some beneficent consequences. +It gave rise to instructive and illuminating debate. And on the part of +the Orthodox it occasioned an outburst of earnest zeal which in a +wonderfully short time had more than repaired their loss in numbers, and +had started them on a career of wide beneficence, with a momentum that +has been increasing to this day. But it is not altogether useless to +put the question how much was lost to both parties and to the common +cause by the separation. It is not difficult to conceive that such +dogged polemics as Nathanael Emmons and Jedidiah Morse might have been +none the worse for being held in some sort of fellowship, rather than in +exasperated controversy, with such types of Christian sainthood as the +younger Ware and the younger Buckminster; and it is easy to imagine the +extreme culture and cool intellectual and spiritual temper of the +Unitarian pulpit in general as finding its advantage in not being cut +off from direct radiations from the fiery zeal of Lyman Beecher and +Edward Dorr Griffin. Is it quite sure that New England Congregationalism +would have been in all respects worse off if Channing and his friends +had continued to be recognized as the Liberal wing of its clergy? or +that the Unitarian ministers would not have been a great deal better off +if they had remained in connection with a strong and conservative right +wing, which might counterbalance the exorbitant leftward flights of +their more impatient and erratic spirits? + +The seating of a pronounced Unitarian in the Hollis chair of theology at +Harvard took place in 1805. Three years later, in 1808, the doors of +Andover Seminary were opened to students. Thirty-six were present, and +the number went on increasing. The example was quickly followed. In 1810 +the Dutch seminary was begun at New Brunswick, and in 1812 the +Presbyterian at Princeton. In 1816 Bangor Seminary (Congregationalist) +and Hartwick Seminary (Lutheran) were opened. In 1819 the Episcopalian +"General Seminary" followed, and the Baptist "Hamilton Seminary" in +1820. In 1821 Presbyterian seminaries were begun at Auburn, N. Y., and +Marysville, Tenn. In 1822 the Yale Divinity College was founded +(Congregationalist); in 1823 the Virginia (Episcopalian) seminary at +Alexandria; in 1824 the Union (Presbyterian) Seminary, also in Virginia, +and the Unitarian seminary at Cambridge; in 1825 the Baptist seminary at +Newton, Mass., and the German Reformed at York, Pa.; in 1826 the +Lutheran at Gettysburg; in 1827 the Baptist at Rock Spring, Ill. Thus, +within a period of twenty years, seventeen theological schools had come +into existence where none had been known before. It was a swift and +beneficent revolution, and the revolution has never gone backward. In +1880 were enumerated in the United States no less than one hundred and +forty-two seminaries, representing all sects, orders, and schools of +theological opinion, employing five hundred and twenty-nine resident +professors.[252:1] + +To Andover, in the very first years of its great history, came Mills and +others of the little Williams College circle; and at once their +infectious enthusiasm for the advancement of the kingdom of God was felt +throughout the institution. The eager zeal of these young men brooked no +delay. In June, 1810, the General Association of Massachusetts met at +the neighboring town of Bradford; there four of the students, Judson, +Nott, Newell, and Hall, presented themselves and their cause; and at +that meeting was constituted the American Board of Commissioners for +Foreign Missions. The little faith of the churches shrank from the +responsibility of sustaining missionaries in the field, and Judson was +sent to England to solicit the cooeperation of the London Missionary +Society. This effort happily failing, the burden came back upon the +American churches and was not refused. At last, in February, 1812, the +first American missionaries to a foreign country, Messrs. Judson, Rice, +Newell, Nott, and Hall, with their wives, sailed, in two parties, for +Calcutta. + +And now befell an incident perplexing, embarrassing, and disheartening +to the supporters of the mission, but attended with results for the +promotion of the gospel to which their best wisdom never could have +attained. Adoniram Judson, a graduate of Brown University, having spent +the long months at sea in the diligent and devout study of the +Scriptures, arrived at Calcutta fully persuaded of the truth of Baptist +principles. His friend, Luther Rice, arriving by the other vessel, came +by and by to the same conclusion; and the two, with their wives, were +baptized by immersion in the Baptist church at Calcutta. The +announcement of this news in America was an irresistible appeal to the +already powerful and rapidly growing Baptist denomination to assume the +support of the two missionaries who now offered themselves to the +service of the Baptist churches. Rice returned to urge the appeal on +their immediate attention, while Judson remained to enter on that noble +apostolate for which his praise is in all the churches. + +To the widespread Baptist fellowship this sudden, unmistakable, and +imperative providential summons to engage in the work of foreign +missions was (it is hardly too much to say) like life from the dead. The +sect had doubled its numbers in the decade just passed, and was +estimated to include two hundred thousand communicants, all "baptized +believers." But this multitude was without common organization, and, +while abundantly endowed with sectarian animosities, was singularly +lacking in a consciousness of common spiritual life. It was pervaded by +a deadly fatalism, which, under the guise of reverence for the will of +God, was openly pleaded as a reason for abstaining from effort and +self-denial in the promotion of the gospel. Withal it was widely +characterized not only by a lack of education in its ministry, but by a +violent and brutal opposition to a learned clergy, which was +particularly strange in a party the moiety of whose principles depends +on a point in Greek lexicology. It was to a party--we may not say a +body--deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine +call was to be presented and urged. The messenger was well fitted for +his work. To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a +missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of +its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and +a personal persuasiveness. Of course his first address was to pastors +and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever +name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; and here his task was easy +and brief, for they were already of his mind. But the great mass of +ignorance and prejudice had also to be reckoned with. By a work in which +the influence of the divine Spirit was quite as manifest as in the +convulsive agitations of a camp-meeting, it was dealt with successfully. +Church history moved swiftly in those days. The news of the accession of +Judson and Rice was received in January, 1813. In May, 1814, the General +Missionary Convention of the Baptists was organized at Philadelphia, +thirty-three delegates being present, from eleven different States. The +Convention, which was to meet triennially, entered at once upon its +work. It became a vital center to the Baptist denomination. From it, at +its second meeting, proceeded effective measures for the promotion of +education in the ministry, and, under the conviction that "western as +well as eastern regions are given to the Son of God as an inheritance," +large plans for home missions at the West. + +Thus the great debt which the English Congregationalists had owed to the +Baptists for heroic leadership in the work of foreign missions was +repaid with generous usury by the Congregationalists to the Baptists of +America. From this time forward the American Baptists came more and more +to be felt as a salutary force in the religious life of the nation and +the world. But against what bitter and furious opposition on the part of +the ancient ignorance the new light had to struggle cannot easily be +conceived by those who have only heard of the "Hard-Shell Baptist" as a +curious fossil of a prehistoric period.[255:1] + +The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions continued for +twenty-seven years to be the common organ of foreign missionary +operations for the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Dutch +and German Reformed churches. In the year 1837 an official Presbyterian +Board of Missions was erected by the Old-School fragment of the +disrupted Presbyterian Church; and to this, when the two fragments were +reunited, in 1869, the contributions of the New-School side began to be +transferred. In 1858 the Dutch church, and in 1879 the German church, +instituted their separate mission operations. Thus the initiative of the +Andover students in 1810 resulted in the erection, not of one mission +board, timidly venturing to set five missionaries in the foreign field, +but of five boards, whose total annual resources are counted by millions +of dollars, whose evangelists, men and women, American and foreign-born, +are a great army, and whose churches, schools, colleges, theological +seminaries, hospitals, printing-presses, with the other equipments of a +Christian civilization, and the myriads of whose faithful Christian +converts, in every country under the whole heaven, have done more for +the true honor of our nation than all that it has achieved in diplomacy +and war.[255:2] + +The Episcopalians entered on foreign mission work in 1819, and the +Methodists, tardily but at last with signal efficiency and success, in +1832. No considerable sect of American Christians at the present day is +unrepresented in the foreign field. + +In order to complete the history of this organizing era in the church, +we must return to the humble but memorable figure of Samuel J. Mills. It +was his characteristic word to one of his fellows, as they stood ready +to leave the seclusion of the seminary for active service, "You and I, +brother, are little men, but before we die, our influence must be felt +on the other side of the world." No one claimed that he was other than a +"little man," except as he was filled and possessed with a great +thought, and that the thought that filled the mind of Christ--the +thought of the Coming Age and of the Reign of God on earth.[256:1] While +his five companions were sailing for the remotest East, Mills plunged +into the depth of the western wilderness, and between 1812 and 1815, in +two toilsome journeys, traversed the Great Valley as far as New Orleans, +deeply impressed everywhere with the famine of the word, and laboring, +in cooeperation with local societies at the East, to provide for the +universal want by the sale or gift of Bibles and the organization of +Bible societies. After his second return he proposed the organization of +the American Bible Society, which was accomplished in 1816. + +But already this nobly enterprising mind was intent on a new plan, of +most far-reaching importance, not original with himself, but, on the +contrary, long familiar to those who studied the extension of the church +and pondered the indications of God's providential purposes. The +earliest attempt in America toward the propagation of the gospel in +foreign lands would seem to have been the circular letter sent out by +the neighbor pastors, Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, in the year 1773, +from Newport, chief seat of the slave-trade, asking contributions for +the education of two colored men as missionaries to their native +continent of Africa. To many generous minds at once, in this era of +great Christian enterprises, the thought recurred of vast blessings to +be wrought for the Dark Continent by the agency of colored men +Christianized, civilized, and educated in America. Good men reverently +hoped to see in this triumphant solution of the mystery of divine +providence in permitting the curse of African slavery, through the cruel +greed of men, to be inflicted on the American republic. In 1816 Mills +successfully pressed upon the Presbyterian "Synod of New York and New +Jersey" a plan for educating Christian men of color for the work of the +gospel in their fatherland. That same year, in cooeperation with an +earnest philanthropist, Dr. Robert Finley, of New Jersey, he aided in +the instituting of the American Colonization Society. In 1817 he sailed, +in company with a colleague, the Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, to explore the +coast of Africa in search of the best site for a colony. On the return +voyage he died, and his body was committed to the sea: a "little man," +to whom were granted only five years of what men call "active life"; but +he had fulfilled his vow, and the ends of the earth had felt his +influence for the advancement of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. +The enterprise of African colonization, already dear to Christian hearts +for the hopes that it involved of the redemption of a lost continent, +of the elevation of an oppressed race in America, of the emancipation of +slaves and the abolition of slavery, received a new consecration as the +object of the dying labors and prayers of Mills. It was associated, in +the minds of good men, not only with plans for the conversion of the +heathen, and with the tide of antislavery sentiment now spreading and +deepening both at the South and at the North, but also with "Clarkson +societies" and other local organizations, in many different places, for +the moral and physical elevation of the free colored people from the +pitiable degradation in which they were commonly living in the larger +towns. Altogether the watchmen on the walls of Zion saw no fairer sign +of dawn, in that second decade of the nineteenth century, than the +hopeful lifting of the cloud from Africa, the brightening prospects of +the free negroes of the United States, and the growing hope of the +abolition of American slavery.[258:1] + +Other societies, national in their scope and constituency, the origin of +which belongs in this organizing period, are the American Education +Society (1815), the American Sunday-school Union (1824), the American +Tract Society (1825), the Seamen's Friend Society (1826), and the +American Home Missionary Society (1826), in which last the +Congregationalists of New England cooeperated with the Presbyterians on +the basis of a Plan of Union entered into between the General Assembly +and the General Association of Connecticut, the tendency of which was to +reinforce the Presbyterian Church with the numbers and the vigor of the +New England westward migration. Of course the establishment of these and +other societies for beneficent work outside of sectarian lines did not +hinder, but rather stimulated, sectarian organizations for the like +objects. The whole American church, in all its orders, was girding +itself for a work, at home and abroad, the immense grandeur of which no +man of that generation could possibly have foreseen. + +The grandeur of this work was to consist not only in the results of it, +but in the resources of it. As never before, the sympathies, prayers, +and personal cooeperation of all Christians, even the feeblest, were to +be combined and utilized for enterprises coextensive with the continent +and the world and taking hold on eternity. The possibilities of the new +era were dazzling to the prophetic imagination. A young minister then +standing on the threshold of a long career exulted in the peculiar and +excelling glory of the dawning day: + + "Surely, if it is the noblest attribute of our nature that + spreads out the circle of our sympathies to include the whole + family of man, and sends forth our affections to embrace the + ages of a distant futurity, it must be regarded as a privilege + no less exalted that our means of _doing_ good are limited by + no remoteness of country or distance of duration, but we may + operate, if we will, to assuage the miseries of another + hemisphere, or to prevent the necessities of an unborn + generation. The time has been when a man might weep over the + wrongs of Africa, and he might look forward to weep over the + hopelessness of her degradation, till his heart should bleed; + and yet his tears would be all that he could give her. He + might relieve the beggar at his door, but he could do nothing + for a dying continent. He might provide for his children, but + he could do nothing for the nations that were yet to be born + to an inheritance of utter wretchedness. Then the privilege of + engaging in schemes of magnificent benevolence belonged only + to princes and to men of princely possessions; but now the + progress of improvement has brought down this privilege to the + reach of every individual. The institutions of our age are a + republic of benevolence, and all may share in the unrestrained + and equal democracy. This privilege is ours. We may stretch + forth our hand, if we will, to enlighten the Hindu or to tame + the savage of the wilderness. It is ours, if we will, to put + forth our contributions and thus to operate not ineffectually + for the relief and renovation of a continent over which one + tide of misery has swept without ebb and without restraint for + unremembered centuries. It is ours, if we will, to do + something that shall tell on all the coming ages of a race + which has been persecuted and enslaved, trodden down and + despised, for a thousand generations. Our Father has made us + the almoners of his love. He has raised us to partake, as it + were, in the ubiquity of his own beneficence. Shall we be + unworthy of the trust? God forbid!"[260:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[247:1] "Life of David Bacon," by his son (Boston, 1876). + +[249:1] Compare the claim of priority for the Dutch church, p. 81, +_note_. + +[250:1] J. H. Allen, "The Unitarians," p. 194. + +[250:2] "Autobiography of L. Beecher," p. 110. + +[252:1] "Herzog-Schaff Encyclopedia," pp. 2328-2331. + +[255:1] "The Baptists," by Dr. A. H. Newman, pp. 379-442. + +[255:2] I have omitted from this list of results in the direct line from +the inception at Andover, in 1810, the American Missionary Association. +It owed its origin, in 1846, to the dissatisfaction felt by a +considerable number of the supporters of the American Board with the +attitude of that institution on some of the questions arising +incidentally to the antislavery discussion. Its foreign missions, never +extensive, were transferred to other hands, at the close of the Civil +War, that it might devote itself wholly to its great and successful work +among "the oppressed races" at home. + +[256:1] It may be worth considering how far the course of religious and +theological thought would have been modified if the English New +Testament had used these phrases instead of _World to Come_ and _Kingdom +of God_. + +[258:1] The colored Baptists of Richmond entered eagerly into the +Colonization project, and in 1822 their "African Missionary Society" +sent out its mission to the young colony of Liberia. One of their +missionaries was the Rev. Lott Cary, the dignity of whose character and +career was an encouragement of his people in their highest aspirations, +and a confirmation of the hopes of their friends (Newman, "The +Baptists," p. 402; Gurley, "Life of Ashmun," pp. 147-160). + +[260:1] Leonard Bacon, "A Plea for Africa," in the Park Street Church, +Boston, July 4, 1824. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +CONFLICTS OF THE CHURCH WITH PUBLIC WRONGS. + + +The transition from establishment to the voluntary system for the +support of churches was made not without some difficulty, but with +surprisingly little. In the South the established churches were +practically dead before the laws establishing them were repealed and the +endowments disposed of. In New York the Episcopalian churches were +indeed depressed and discouraged by the ceasing of State support and +official patronage; and inasmuch as these, with the subsidies of the "S. +P. G.," had been their main reliance, it was inevitable that they should +pass through a period of prostration until the appreciation of their +large endowments, and the progress of immigration and of conversion from +other sects, and especially the awakening of religious earnestness and +of sectarian ambition. + +In New England the transition to the voluntary system was more gradual. +Not till 1818 in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts not till 1834, was +the last strand of connection severed between the churches of the +standing order and the state, and the churches left solely to their own +resources. The exaltation and divine inspiration that had come to these +churches with the revivals which from the end of the eighteenth century +were never for a long time intermitted, and the example of the +dissenting congregations, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodist, +successfully self-supported among them, made it easy for them, +notwithstanding the misgivings of many good men, not only to assume the +entire burden of their own expenses, but with this to undertake and +carry forward great and costly enterprises of charity reaching to the +bounds of the country and of the inhabited earth. It is idle to claim +that the American system is at no disadvantage in comparison with that +which elsewhere prevails almost throughout Christendom; but it may be +safely asserted that the danger that has been most emphasized as a +warning against the voluntary system has not attended this system in +America. The fear that a clergy supported by the free gifts of the +people would prove subservient and truckling to the hand by which it is +fed has been proved groundless. Of course there have been time-servers +in the American ministry, as in every other; but flagrant instances of +the abasement of a whole body of clergy before the power that holds the +purse and controls promotion are to be sought in the old countries +rather than the new. Even selfish motives would operate against this +temptation, since it has often been demonstrated that the people will +not sustain a ministry which it suspects of the vice of subserviency. +The annals of no established church can show such unsparing fidelity of +the ministry in rebuking the sins of people and of rulers in the name of +the Lord, as that which has been, on the whole, characteristic of the +Christian ministers of the United States. + +Among the conflicts of the American church with public wrongs strongly +intrenched in law or social usage, two are of such magnitude and +protracted through so long a period as to demand special +consideration--the conflict with drunkenness and the conflict with +slavery. Some less conspicuous illustrations of the fidelity of the +church in the case of public and popular sins may be more briefly +referred to. + +The death of Alexander Hamilton, in July, 1804, in a duel with Aaron +Burr, occasioned a wide and violent outburst of indignation against the +murderer, now a fugitive and outcast, for the dastardly malignity of the +details of his crime, and for the dignity and generosity as well as the +public worth of his victim. This was the sort of explosion of excited +public feeling which often loses itself in the air. It was a different +matter when the churches and ministers of Christ took up the affair in +the light of the law of God, and, dealing not with the circumstances but +with the essence of it, pressed it inexorably on the conscience of the +people. Some of the most memorable words in American literature were +uttered on this occasion, notwithstanding that there were few +congregations in which there were not sore consciences to be irritated +or political anxieties to be set quaking by them. The names of Eliphalet +Nott and John M. Mason were honorably conspicuous in this work. But one +unknown young man of thirty, in a corner of Long Island, uttered words +in his little country meeting-house that pricked the conscience of the +nation. The words of Lyman Beecher on this theme may well be quoted as +being a part of history, for the consequences that followed them. + + "Dueling is a great national sin. With the exception of a + small section of the Union, the whole land is defiled with + blood. From the lakes of the North to the plains of Georgia is + heard the voice of lamentation and woe--the cries of the widow + and fatherless. This work of desolation is performed often by + men in office, by the appointed guardians of life and liberty. + On the floor of Congress challenges have been threatened, if + not given, and thus powder and ball have been introduced as + the auxiliaries of deliberation and argument.... We are + murderers--a nation of murderers--while we tolerate and reward + the perpetrators of the crime." + +Words such as these resounding from pulpit after pulpit, multiplied and +disseminated by means of the press, acted on by representative bodies of +churches, becoming embodied in anti-dueling societies, exorcised the +foul spirit from the land. The criminal folly of dueling did not, +indeed, at once and altogether cease. Instances of it continue to be +heard of to this day. But the conscience of the nation was instructed, +and a warning was served upon political parties to beware of proposing +for national honors men whose hands were defiled with blood.[264:1] + +Another instance of the fidelity of the church in resistance to public +wrong was its action in the matter of the dealing of the State of +Georgia and the national government toward the Georgia Indians. This is +no place for the details of the shameful story of perfidy and +oppression. It is well told by Helen Hunt Jackson in the melancholy +pages of "A Century of Dishonor." The wrongs inflicted on the Cherokee +nation were deepened by every conceivable aggravation. + + "In the whole history of our government's dealings with the + Indian tribes there is no record so black as the record of its + perfidy to this nation. There will come a time in the remote + future when to the student of American history it will seem + well-nigh incredible. From the beginning of the century they + had been steadily advancing in civilization. As far back as + 1800 they had begun the manufacture of cotton cloth, and in + 1820 there was scarcely a family in that part of the nation + living east of the Mississippi but what understood the use of + the card and spinning-wheel. Every family had its farm under + cultivation. The territory was laid off into districts, with a + council-house, a judge, and a marshal in each district. A + national committee and council were the supreme authority in + the nation. Schools were flourishing in all the villages. + Printing-presses were at work.... They were enthusiastic in + their efforts to establish and perfect their own system of + jurisprudence. Missions of several sects were established in + their country, and a large number of them had professed + Christianity and were leading exemplary lives. There is no + instance in all history of a race of people passing in so + short a space of time from the barbarous stage to the + agricultural and civilized."[265:1] + +We do well to give authentic details of the condition of the Cherokee +nation in the early part of the century, for the advanced happy and +peaceful civilization of this people was one of the fairest fruits of +American Christianity working upon exceptionally noble race-qualities in +the recipients of it. An agent of the War Department in 1825 made +official report to the Department on the rare beauty of the Cherokee +country, secured to them by the most sacred pledges with which it was +possible for the national government to bind itself, and covered by the +inhabitants, through their industry and thrift, with flocks and herds, +with farms and villages; and goes on to speak of the Indians themselves: + + "The natives carry on considerable trade with the adjoining + States; some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee + to the Mississippi, and down that river to New Orleans. Apple + and peach orchards are quite common, and gardens are + cultivated and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese + are seen on Cherokee tables. There are many public roads in + the nation, and houses of entertainment kept by natives. + Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of + the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured; + blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee + hands, are very common. Almost every family in the nation + grows cotton for its own consumption. Industry and commercial + enterprise are extending themselves in every part. Nearly all + the merchants in the nation are native Cherokees. Agricultural + pursuits engage the chief attention of the people. Different + branches in mechanics are pursued. The population is rapidly + increasing.... The Christian religion is the religion of the + nation. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Moravians are + the most numerous sects. Some of the most influential + characters are members of the church and live consistently + with their professions. The whole nation is penetrated with + gratitude for the aid it has received from the United States + government and from different religious societies. Schools are + increasing every year; learning is encouraged and rewarded; + the young class acquire the English and those of mature age + the Cherokee system of learning."[266:1] + +This country, enriched by the toil and thrift of its owners, the State +of Georgia resolved not merely to subjugate to its jurisdiction, but to +steal from its rightful and lawful owners, driving them away as outlaws. +As a sure expedient for securing popular consent to the intended infamy, +the farms of the Cherokees were parceled out to be drawn for in a +lottery, and the lottery tickets distributed among the white voters. +Thus fortified, the brave State of Georgia went to all lengths of +outrage. "Missionaries were arrested and sent to prison for preaching to +Cherokees; Cherokees were sentenced to death by Georgia courts and hung +by Georgia executioners." But the great crime could not be achieved +without the connivance, and at last the active consent, of the national +government. Should this consent be given? Never in American history has +the issue been more squarely drawn between the kingdom of Satan and the +kingdom of Christ. American Christianity was most conspicuously +represented in this conflict by an eminent layman, Jeremiah Evarts, +whose fame for this public service, and not for this alone, will in the +lapse of time outshine even that of his illustrious son. In a series of +articles in the "National Intelligencer," under the signature of +"William Penn," he cited the sixteen treaties in which the nation had +pledged its faith to defend the Cherokees in the possession of their +lands, and set the whole case before the people as well as the +government. But his voice was not solitary. From press and pulpit and +from the platforms of public meetings all over the country came +petitions, remonstrances, and indignant protests, reinforcing the +pathetic entreaties of the Cherokees themselves to be protected from the +cruelty that threatened to tear them from their homes. In Congress the +honor of leadership among many faithful and able advocates of right and +justice was conceded to Theodore Frelinghuysen, then in the prime of a +great career of Christian service. By the majority of one vote the bill +for the removal of the Cherokees passed the United States Senate. The +gates of hell triumphed for a time with a fatal exultation. The authors +and abettors of the great crime were confirmed in their delusion that +threats of disunion and rebellion could be relied on to carry any +desired point. But the mills of God went on grinding. Thirty years +later, when in the battle of Missionary Ridge the chivalry of Georgia +went down before the army that represented justice and freedom and the +authority of national law, the vanquished and retreating soldiers of a +lost cause could not be accused of superstition if they remembered that +the scene of their humiliating defeat had received its name from the +martyrdom of Christian missionaries at the hands of their fathers. + + * * * * * + +In earlier pages we have already traced the succession of bold protests +and organized labors on the part of church and clergy against the +institution of slavery.[268:1] If protest and argument against it seem +to be less frequent in the early years of the new century, it is only +because debate must needs languish when there is no antagonist. Slavery +had at that time no defenders in the church. No body of men in 1818 more +unmistakably represented the Christian citizenship of the whole country, +North, South, and West, outside of New England, than the General +Assembly of the then undivided Presbyterian Church. In that year the +Assembly set forth a full and unanimous expression of its sentiments on +the subject of slavery, addressed "to the churches and people under its +care." This monumental document is too long to be cited here in full. +The opening paragraphs of it exhibit the universally accepted sentiment +of American Christians of that time: + + "We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human + race by another as a gross violation of the most precious and + sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with + the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as + ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and + principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin that 'all + things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye + even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral + system. It exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings + in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of + moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of + others whether they shall receive religious instruction; + whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they + shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall + perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and + wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether + they shall preserve their chastity and purity or regard the + dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the + consequences of slavery--consequences not imaginary, but which + connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which + the slave is _always_ exposed often take place in fact, and in + their worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take + place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through + the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on + the minds of masters, they do not, still the slave is deprived + of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed + to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may + inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which + inhumanity and avarice may suggest. + + "From this view of the consequences resulting from the + practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently + fallen of enslaving a portion of their _brethren_ of + mankind,--for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men + to dwell on the face of the earth,'--it is manifestly the duty + of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when + the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of + humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally + seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and + unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former times, and + as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy + religion and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery + throughout Christendom, and if possible throughout the world." + +It was not strange that while sentiments like these prevailed without +contradiction in all parts of the country, while in State after State +emancipations were taking place and acts of abolition were passing, and +even in the States most deeply involved in slavery "a great, and the +most virtuous, part of the community abhorred slavery and wished its +extermination,"[270:1] there should seem to be little call for debate. +But that the antislavery spirit in the churches was not dead was +demonstrated with the first occasion. + +In the spring of 1820, at the close of two years of agitating +discussion, the new State of Missouri was admitted to the Union as a +slave State, although with the stipulation that the remaining territory +of the United States north of the parallel of latitude bounding Missouri +on the south should be consecrated forever to freedom. The opposition to +this extension of slavery was taken up by American Christianity as its +own cause. It was the impending danger of such an extension that +prompted that powerful and unanimous declaration of the Presbyterian +General Assembly in 1818. The arguments against the Missouri bill, +whether in the debates of Congress or in countless memorials and +resolutions from public meetings both secular and religious, were +arguments from justice and duty and the law of Christ. These were met by +constitutional objections and considerations of expediency and +convenience, and by threats of disunion and civil war. The defense of +slavery on principle had not yet begun to be heard, even among +politicians. + +The successful extension of slavery beyond the Mississippi River was +disheartening to the friends of justice and humanity, but only for the +moment. Already, before the two years' conflict had been decided by "the +Missouri Compromise," a powerful series of articles by that great +religious leader, Jeremiah Evarts, in the "Panoplist" (Boston, 1820), +rallied the forces of the church to renew the battle. The decade that +opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained +antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of +the nation in all quarters.[271:1] In New England the focus of +antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover. +There the leading question among the students in their "Society of +Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and +especially what _they_ could do, for the uplifting of the colored +population of the country, both the enslaved and the free. Measures were +concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were +to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with +other men";[271:2] and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these +young men when from year to year they came into places of effective +influence. With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an +antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover +their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses +on that day. Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual +antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united +churches of that city, continued for the rest of that decade at least +to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of +the oppressed. Neither was the work of the young men circumscribed by +narrow local boundaries. The report of their committee, in the year +1823, on "The Condition of the Black Population of the United States," +could hardly be characterized as timid in its utterances on the moral +character of American slavery. A few lines will indicate the tone of it +in this respect: + + "Excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, + we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or + modern, pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its + character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its + anticipated results, as the slavery which exists in these + United States.... When we use the strong language which we + feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject, + we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense + moral and political evil.... In regard to its influence on the + white population the most lamentable proof of its + deteriorating effects may be found in the fact that, excepting + the pious, whose hearts are governed by the Christian law of + reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds + have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things, + none can be found to lift their voices against a system so + utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated + humanity--a system which permits all the atrocities of the + domestic slave trade--which permits the father to sell his + children as he would his cattle--a system which consigns one + half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and + which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the + same ruin on the master and the slave."[272:1] + +The historical value of the paper from which these brief extracts are +given, as illustrating the attitude of the church at the time, is +enhanced by the use that was made of it. Published in the form of a +review article in a magazine of national circulation, the recognized +organ of the orthodox Congregationalists, it was republished in a +pamphlet for gratuitous distribution and extensively circulated in New +England by the agency of the Andover students. It was also republished +at Richmond, Va. Other laborers at the East in the same cause were +Joshua Leavitt, Bela B. Edwards, and Eli Smith, afterward illustrious as +a missionary,[273:1] and Ralph Randolph Gurley, secretary of the +Colonization Society, whose edition of the powerful and uncompromising +sermon of the younger Edwards on "The Injustice and Impolicy of the +Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans" was published at Boston +for circulation at the South, in hopes of promoting the universal +abolition of slavery. The list might be indefinitely extended to include +the foremost names in the church in that period. There was no adverse +party. + +At the West an audacious movement of the slavery extension politicians, +flushed with their success in Missouri, to introduce slavery into +Illinois, Indiana, and even Ohio, was defeated largely by the aid of the +Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of whom had been southern men and had +experienced the evils of the system.[273:2] In Kentucky and Tennessee +the abolition movement was led more distinctively by the Presbyterians +and the Quakers. It was a bold effort to procure the manumission of +slaves and the repeal of the slave code in those States by the agreement +of the citizens. The character of the movement is indicated in the +constitution of the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West +Tennessee," which declares that slavery "exceeds any other crime in +magnitude" and is "the greatest act of practical infidelity," and that +"the gospel of Christ, if believed, would remove personal slavery at +once by destroying the will in the tyrant to enslave."[274:1] A like +movement in North Carolina and in Maryland, at the same time, attained +to formidable dimensions. The state of sentiment in Virginia may be +judged from the fact that so late as December, 1831, in the memorable +debate in the legislature on a proposal for the abolition of slavery, a +leading speaker, denouncing slavery as "the most pernicious of all the +evils with which the body politic can be afflicted," could say, +undisputed, "_By none is this position denied_, if we except the erratic +John Randolph."[274:2] The conflict in Virginia at that critical time +was between Christian principle and wise statesmanship on the one hand, +and on the other hand selfish interest and ambition, and the prevailing +terror resulting from a recent servile insurrection. Up to this time +there appears no sign of any division in the church on this subject. +Neither was there any sectional division; the opponents of slavery, +whether at the North or at the South, were acting in the interest of the +common country, and particularly in the interest of the States that were +still afflicted with slavery. But a swift change was just impending. + +We have already recognized the Methodist organization as the effective +pioneer of systematic abolitionism in America.[275:1] The Baptists, also +having their main strength in the southern States, were early and +emphatic in condemning the institutions by which they were +surrounded.[275:2] But all the sects found themselves embarrassed by +serious difficulties when it came to the practical application of the +principles and rules which they enunciated. The exacting of "immediate +emancipation" as a condition of fellowship in the ministry or communion +in the church, and the popular cries of "No fellowship with +slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were +found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn +facts. The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by +no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute +authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them +suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.[275:3] In dealing +with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1) +To execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the +principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat. +This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian +sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living at a +distance and not well acquainted with details of fact. (2) To attempt to +provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses. This +course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without success. (3) +Discouraged by the difficulties, to let go all discipline. This was the +point reached at last by most of the southern churches. (4) Clinging to +the formulas, "Immediate emancipation," "No communion with +slave-holders," so to "palter in a double sense" with the words as to +evade the meaning of them. According to this method, slave-holding did +not consist in the holding of slaves, but in holding them with evil +purpose and wrong treatment; a slave who was held for his own advantage, +receiving from his master "that which is just and equal," was said, in +this dialect, to be "morally emancipated." This was the usual expedient +of a large and respectable party of antislavery Christians at the North, +when their principle of "no communion with slave-holders" brought them +to the seeming necessity of excommunicating an unquestionably Christian +brother for doing an undeniable duty. (5) To lay down, broadly and +explicitly, the principles of Christian morality governing the subject, +leaving the application of them in individual cases to the individual +church or church-member. This was the course exemplified with admirable +wisdom and fidelity in the Presbyterian "deliverance" of 1818. (6) To +meet the postulate, laid down with so much assurance, as if an axiom, +that "slave-holding is always and everywhere a sin, to be immediately +repented of and forsaken," with a flat and square contradiction, as +being irreconcilable with facts and with the judgment of the Christian +Scriptures; and thus to condemn and oppose to the utmost the system of +slavery, without imputing the guilt of it to persons involved in it by +no fault of their own. This course commended itself to many lucid and +logical minds and honest consciences, including some of the most +consistent and effective opponents of slavery. (7) Still another course +must be mentioned, which, absurd as it seems, was actually pursued by a +few headlong reformers, who showed in various ways a singular alacrity +at playing into the hands of their adversaries. It consisted in +enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most +offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and +every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to +turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this +sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man +holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason +justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is +not strange that men in the southern churches, being offered such an +argument ready made to their hand, should promptly accept both the +premiss and the conclusion, and that so at last there should begin to be +a pro-slavery party in the American church. + +The disastrous epoch of the beginning of what has been called "the +southern apostasy" from the universal moral sentiment of Christendom on +the subject of slavery may be dated at about the year 1833. A year +earlier began to be heard those vindications on political grounds of +what had just been declared in the legislature of Virginia to be by +common consent the most pernicious of political evils--vindications +which continued for thirty years to invite the wonder of the civilized +world. When (about 1833) a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, the +Rev. James Smylie, made the "discovery," which "surprised himself," that +the system of American slavery was sanctioned and approved by the +Scriptures as good and righteous, he found that his brethren in the +Presbyterian ministry at the extreme South were not only surprised, but +shocked and offended, at the proposition.[278:1] And yet such was the +swift progress of this innovation that in surprisingly few years, we +might almost say months, it had become not only prevalent, but violently +and exclusively dominant in the church of the southern States, with the +partial exception of Kentucky and Tennessee. It would be difficult to +find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of +sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology. Dissent from the +novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor. It was +less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to +hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been +commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great +religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading +statesmen. It became one of the accepted evidences of Christianity at +the South that infidelity failed to offer any justification for American +slavery equal to that derived from the Christian Scriptures. That +eminent leader among the Lutheran clergy, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, of +Charleston, referred "that unexampled unanimity of sentiment that now +exists in the whole South on the subject of slavery" to the confidence +felt by the religious public in the Bible defense of slavery as set +forth by clergymen and laymen in sermons and pamphlets and speeches in +Congress.[278:2] + +The historian may not excuse himself from the task of inquiring into the +cause of this sudden and immense moral revolution. The explanation +offered by Dr. Bachman is the very thing that needs to be explained. +How came the Christian public throughout the slave-holding States, which +so short a time before had been unanimous in finding in the Bible the +condemnation of their slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the +divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent +institution? Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about +the result. The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent +on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on +the moral judgments of some. The furious vituperations of a very small +but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift +current of public opinion. But demonstrably the chief cause of this +sudden change of religious opinion--one of the most remarkable in the +history of the church--was panic terror. In August, 1831, a servile +insurrection in Virginia, led by a crazy negro, Nat Turner by name, was +followed (as always in such cases) by bloody vengeance on the part of +the whites. + + "The Southampton insurrection, occurring at a time when the + price of slaves was depressed in consequence of a depression + in the price of cotton, gave occasion to a sudden development + of opposition to slavery in the legislature of Virginia. A + measure for the prospective abolition of the institution in + that ancient commonwealth was proposed, earnestly debated, + eloquently urged, and at last defeated, with a minority + ominously large in its favor. Warned by so great a peril, and + strengthened soon afterward by an increase in the market value + of cotton and of slaves, the slave-holding interest in all the + South was stimulated to new activity. Defenses of slavery more + audacious than had been heard before began to be uttered by + southern politicians at home and by southern representatives + and senators in Congress. A panic seized upon the planters in + some districts of the Southwest. Conspiracies and plans of + insurrection were discovered. Negroes were tortured or + terrified into confessions. Obnoxious white men were put to + death without any legal trial and in defiance of those rules + of evidence which are insisted on by southern laws. Thus a + sudden and convincing terror was spread through the South. + Every man was made to know that if he should become obnoxious + to the guardians of the great southern 'institution' he was + liable to be denounced and murdered. It was distinctly and + imperatively demanded that nobody should be allowed to say + anything anywhere against slavery. The movement of the + societies which had then been recently formed at Boston and + New York, with 'Immediate abolition' for their motto, was made + use of to stimulate the terror and the fury of the South.... + The position of political parties and of candidates for the + Presidency, just at that juncture, gave special advantage to + the agitators--an advantage that was not neglected. Everything + was done that practiced demagogues could contrive to stimulate + the South into a frenzy and to put down at once and forever + all opposition to slavery. The clergy and the religious bodies + were summoned to the patriotic duty of committing themselves + on the side of 'southern institutions.' Just then it was, if + we mistake not, that their apostasy began. They dared not say + that slavery as an institution in the State is essentially an + organized injustice, and that, though the Scriptures rightly + and wisely enjoin justice and the recognition of the slaves' + brotherhood upon masters, and conscientious meekness upon + slaves, the organized injustice of the institution ought to be + abolished by the shortest process consistent with the public + safety and the welfare of the enslaved. They dared not even + keep silence under the plea that the institution is political + and therefore not to be meddled with by religious bodies or + religious persons. They yielded to the demand. They were + carried along in the current of the popular frenzy; they + joined in the clamor, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians;' they + denounced the fanaticism of abolition and permitted + themselves to be understood as certifying, in the name of + religion and of Christ, that the entire institution of slavery + 'as it exists' is chargeable with no injustice and is + warranted by the word of God."[281:1] + +There is no good reason to question the genuineness and sincerity of the +fears expressed by the slave-holding population as a justification of +their violent measures for the suppression of free speech in relation to +slavery; nor of their belief that the papers and prints actively +disseminated from the antislavery press in Boston were fitted, if not +distinctly intended, to kindle bloody insurrections. These terrors were +powerfully pleaded in the great debate in the Virginia legislature as an +argument for the abolition of slavery.[281:2] This failing, they became +throughout the South a constraining power for the suppression of free +speech, not only on the part of outsiders, but among the southern people +themselves. The regime thus introduced was, in the strictest sense of +the phrase, "a reign of terror." The universal lockjaw which thenceforth +forbade the utterance of what had so recently and suddenly ceased to be +the unanimous religious conviction of the southern church soon produced +an "unexampled unanimity" on the other side, broken only when some fiery +and indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the +Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives +against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had +been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every +correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God," +and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly! The man who cannot see that +involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the +principle of taking by force that which is another's has simply no +moral sense.... Hereditary slavery is without pretense, except in avowed +rapacity."[282:1] Of course the antislavery societies which, under +various names, had existed in the South by hundreds were suddenly +extinguished, and manumissions, which had been going on at the rate of +thousands in a year, almost entirely ceased. + +The strange and swiftly spreading moral epidemic did not stop at State +boundary lines. At the North the main cause of defection was not, +indeed, directly operative. There was no danger there of servile +insurrection. But there was true sympathy for those who lived under the +shadow of such impending horrors, threatening alike the guilty and the +innocent. There was a deep passion of honest patriotism, now becoming +alarmed lest the threats of disunion proceeding from the terrified South +should prove a serious peril to the nation in whose prosperity the hopes +of the world seemed to be involved. There was a worthy solicitude lest +the bonds of intercourse between the churches of North and South should +be ruptured and so the integrity of the nation be the more imperiled. +Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust +at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their +headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility, +scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the +unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law +and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept +their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves +exclusively the name of abolitionist, made that name, so long a title of +honor, to be universally odious.[282:2] + +These various factors of public opinion were actively manipulated. +Political parties competed for the southern vote. Commercial houses +competed for southern business. Religious sects, parties, and societies +were emulous in conciliating southern adhesions or contributions and +averting schisms. The condition of success in any of these cases was +well understood to be concession, or at least silence, on the subject of +slavery. The pressure of motives, some of which were honorable and +generous, was everywhere, like the pressure of the atmosphere. It was +not strange that there should be defections from righteousness. Even the +enormous effrontery of the slave power in demanding for its own security +that the rule of tyrannous law and mob violence by which freedom of +speech and of the press had been extinguished at the South should be +extended over the so-called free States did not fail of finding citizens +of reputable standing so base as to give the demand their countenance, +their public advocacy, and even their personal assistance. As the +subject emerged from time to time in the religious community, the +questions arising were often confused and embarrassed by false issues +and illogical statements, and the state of opinion was continually +misrepresented through the incurable habit of the over-zealous in +denouncing as "pro-slavery" those who dissented from their favorite +formulas. But after all deductions, the historian who shall by and by +review this period with the advantage of a longer perspective will be +compelled to record not a few lamentable defections, both individual and +corporate, from the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity. And, +nevertheless, that later record will also show that while the southern +church had been terrified into "an unexampled unanimity" in renouncing +the principles which it had unanimously held, and while like causes had +wrought potently upon northern sentiment, it was the steadfast fidelity +of the Christian people that saved the nation from ruin. At the end of +thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to +slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for +the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, +by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever +consecrated to freedom. The issue of the extension of slavery was +presented to the people in its simplicity. The action of the clergy of +New England was prompt, spontaneous, emphatic, and practically +unanimous. Their memorial, with three thousand and fifty signatures, +protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his +presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently +injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all +confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the +peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to +the just judgments of the Almighty." In like manner the memorial of one +hundred and fifty-one clergymen of various denominations in New York +City and vicinity protested in like terms, "in the name of religion and +humanity," against the guilt of the extension of slavery. Perhaps there +has been no occasion on which the consenting voice of the entire church +has been so solemnly uttered on a question of public morality, and this +in the very region in which church and clergy had been most stormily +denounced by the little handful of abolitionists who gloried in the +name of infidel[285:1] as recreant to justice and humanity. + +The protest of the church was of no avail to defeat the machination of +demagogues. The iniquitous measure was carried through. But this was not +the end; it was only the beginning of the end. Yet ten years, and +American slavery, through the mad folly of its advocates and the +steadfast fidelity of the great body of the earnestly religious people +of the land, was swept away by the tide of war. + + * * * * * + +The long struggle of the American church against drunkenness as a social +and public evil begins at an early date. One of the thirteen colonies, +Georgia, had the prohibition of slavery and of the importation of +spirituous liquors incorporated by Oglethorpe in its early and +short-lived constitution. It would be interesting to discover, if we +could, to what extent the rigor of John Wesley's discipline against both +these mischiefs was due to his association with Oglethorpe in the +founding of that latest of the colonies. Both the imperious nature of +Wesley and the peculiar character of his fraternity as being originally +not a church, but a voluntary society within the church, predisposed to +a policy of arbitrary exclusiveness by hard and fast lines drawn +according to formula, which might not have been ventured on by one who +was consciously drawing up the conditions of communion in the church. In +the Puritan colonies the public morals in respect to temperance were +from the beginning guarded by salutary license laws devised to suppress +all dram-shops and tippling-houses, and to prevent, as far as law could +wisely undertake to prevent, all abusive and mischievous sales of +liquor. But these indications of a sound public sentiment did not +prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of +the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of +the nineteenth century. Two circumstances had combined to aggravate the +national vice. Seven years of army life, with its exhaustion and +exposure and military social usage, had initiated into dangerous +drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders of society, +and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks. Besides this, +the increased importation and manufacture of distilled spirits had made +it easy and common to substitute these for the mild fermented liquors +which had been the ordinary drink of the people. Gradually and +unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of +which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception. +The words of Isaiah concerning the drunkards of Ephraim seem not too +strong to apply to the condition of American society, that "all tables +were full of vomit and filthiness." In the prevalence of intemperate +drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection. "The +priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink." Individual +words of warning, among the earliest of which was the classical essay of +Dr. Benjamin Rush (1785), failed to arouse general attention. The new +century was well advanced before the stirring appeals of Ebenezer +Porter, Lyman Beecher, Heman Humphrey, and Jeremiah Evarts had awakened +in the church any effectual conviction of sin in the matter. The +appointment of a strong committee, in 1811, by the Presbyterian General +Assembly was promptly followed by like action by the clergy of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, leading to the formation of State +societies. But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with +the evil to be overcome must be dated from the organization of the +"American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first +aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering +social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary +social intercourse. The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift +and complete. A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the +same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was +able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of +those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or +exaggeration: + + "The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed + in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use + of ardent spirits--the new phenomenon of an intelligent people + rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without + any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of + public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a + great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down + among his subjects by any system of efforts--has excited + admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister + country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental + Europe."[287:1] + +It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it, +that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the +temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social +drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively +religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the +efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits. The +attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal" +abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the +ban, dates from as late as 1836. + +But it soon appeared that the immense gain of banishing ardent spirits +from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the +haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some +corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic +and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of +obscure tippling-shops--a nuisance, at least in New England, till then +unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had +interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to +his transient guests, not to the people of the town. With the +suppression of social drinking there was effected, in spite of salutary +law to the contrary, a woeful change. The American "saloon" was, in an +important sense, the offspring of the American temperance reformation. +The fact justified the reformer in turning his attention to the law. +From that time onward the history of the temperance reformation has +included the history of multitudinous experiments in legislation, none +of which has been so conclusive as to satisfy all students of the +subject that any later law is, on the whole, more usefully effective +than the original statutes of the Puritan colonies.[288:1] + +In 1840 the temperance reformation received a sudden forward impulse +from an unexpected source. One evening a group of six notoriously hard +drinkers, coming together greatly impressed from a sermon of that noted +evangelist, Elder Jacob Knapp, pledged themselves by mutual vows to +total abstinence; and from this beginning went forward that +extraordinary agitation known as "the Washingtonian movement." Up to +this time the aim of the reformers had been mainly directed to the +prevention of drunkenness by a change in social customs and personal +habits. Now there was suddenly opened a door of hope to the almost +despair of the drunkard himself. The lately reformed drunkards of +Baltimore set themselves to the reforming of other drunkards, and these +took up the work in their turn, and reformation was extended in a +geometrical progression till it covered the country. Everywhere meetings +were held, to be addressed by reformed drunkards, and new recruits from +the gutter were pushed forward to tell their experience to the admiring +public, and sent out on speaking tours. The people were stirred up as +never before on the subject of temperance. There was something very +Christian-like in the method of this propagation, and hopeful souls +looked forward to a temperance millennium as at hand. But fatal faults +in the work soon discovered themselves. Among the new evangelists were +not a few men of true penitence and humility, like John Hawkins, and one +man at least of incomparable eloquence as well as Christian earnestness, +John B. Gough. But the public were not long in finding that merely to +have wallowed in vice and to be able to tell ludicrous or pathetic +stories from one's experience was not of itself sufficient qualification +for the work of a public instructor in morals. The temperance platform +became infested with swaggering autobiographers, whose glory was in +their shame, and whose general influence was distinctly demoralizing. +The sudden influx of the tide of enthusiasm was followed by a disastrous +ebb. It was the estimate of Mr. Gough that out of six hundred thousand +reformed drunkards not less than four hundred and fifty thousand had +relapsed into vice. The same observer, the splendor of whose eloquence +was well mated with an unusual sobriety of judgment, is credited with +the statement that he knew of no case of stable reformation from +drunkenness that was not connected with a thorough spiritual renovation +and conversion. + +Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the +"Washingtonian" excitement. But the evil that it did lived after it. +Already at the time of its breaking forth the temperance reformation had +entered upon that period of decadence in which its main interest was to +be concentrated upon law and politics. And here the vicious ethics of +the reformed-drunkard school became manifest. The drunkard, according to +his own account of himself (unless he was not only reformed, but +repentant), had been a victim of circumstances. Drunkenness, instead of +a base and beastly sin, was an infirmity incident to a high-strung and +generous temperament. The blame of it was to be laid, not upon the +drunkard, whose exquisitely susceptible organization was quite unable to +resist temptation coming in his way, but on those who put intoxicating +liquor where he could get at it, or on the State, whose duty it was to +put the article out of the reach of its citizens. The guilt of +drunkenness must rest, not on the unfortunate drunkard who happened to +be attacked by that disease, but on the sober and well-behaving citizen, +and especially the Christian citizen, who did not vote the correct +ticket. + +What may be called the Prohibition period of the temperance reformation +begins about 1850 and still continues. It is characterized by the +pursuit of a type of legislation of variable efficacy or inefficacy, the +essence of which is that the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be a +monopoly of the government.[290:1] Indications begin to appear that the +disproportionate devotion to measures of legislation and politics is +abating. Some of the most effective recent labor for the promotion of +temperance has been wrought independently of such resort. If the cycle +shall be completed, and the church come back to the methods by which its +first triumphs in this field were won, it will come back the wiser and +the stronger for its vicissitudes of experience through these threescore +years and ten. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[264:1] "An impression was made that never ceased. It started a series +of efforts that have affected the whole northern mind at least; and in +Jackson's time the matter came up in Congress, and a law was passed +disfranchising a duelist. And that was not the last of it; for when +Henry Clay was up for the Presidency the Democrats printed an edition of +forty thousand of that sermon and scattered them all over the North" +("Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i., pp. 153, 154; with foot-note +from Dr. L. Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the +politics of this country. More than anything else, it made the name of +brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling +of the people. It hung like a millstone on the neck of Henry Clay"). + +[265:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 270, 271. + +[266:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 275, 276. + +[268:1] See above, pp. 203-205, 222. + +[270:1] Deliverance of General Assembly, 1818. + +[271:1] The persistent attempt to represent this period as one of +prevailing apathy and inertia on the subject of slavery is a very +flagrant falsification of history. And yet by dint of sturdy reiteration +it has been forced into such currency as to impose itself even on so +careful a writer as Mr. Schouler, in his "History of the United States." +It is impossible to read this part of American church history +intelligently, unless the mind is disabused of this misrepresentation. + +[271:2] "Christian Spectator" (monthly), New Haven, 1828, p. 4. + +[272:1] "Christian Spectator," 1823, pp. 493, 494, 341; "The Earlier +Antislavery Days," by L. Bacon, in the "Christian Union," December 9 and +16, 1874, January 6 and 13, 1875. It is one of the "Curiosities of +Literature," though hardly one of its "Amenities," that certain phrases +carefully dissected from this paper (which was written by Mr. Bacon at +the age of twenty-one) should be pertinaciously used, in the face of +repeated exposures, to prove the author of it to be an apologist for +slavery! + +[273:1] "Christian Spectator," 1825-1828. + +[273:2] Wilson, "Slave Power in America," vol. i., p. 164; "James G. +Birney and his Times," pp. 64, 65. This last-named book is an +interesting and valuable contribution of materials for history, +especially by its refutation of certain industriously propagated +misrepresentations. + +[274:1] "Birney and his Times," chap. xii., on "Abolition in the South +before 1828." Much is to be learned on this neglected topic in American +history from the reports of the National Convention for the Abolition of +Slavery, meeting biennially, with some intermissions, at Philadelphia, +Baltimore, and Washington down to 1829. An incomplete file of these +reports is at the library of Brown University. + +[274:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., chap. xiv. + +[275:1] See above, pp. 204, 205. + +[275:2] Newman, "The Baptists," pp. 288, 305. Let me make general +reference to the volumes of the American Church History Series by their +several indexes, s. v. Slavery. + +[275:3] One instance for illustration is as good as ten thousand. It is +from the "Life of James G. Birney," a man of the highest integrity of +conscience: "Michael, the husband and father of the family legally owned +by Mr. Birney, and who had been brought up with him from boyhood, had +been unable to conquer his appetite for strong liquors, and needed the +constant watchful care of his master and friend. For some years the +probability was that if free he would become a confirmed drunkard and +beggar his family. The children were nearly grown, but had little mental +capacity. For years Michael had understood that his freedom would be +restored to him as soon as he could control his love of ardent spirits" +(pp. 108, 109). + +[277:1] "If human beings could be justly held in bondage for one hour, +they could be for days and weeks and years, and so on indefinitely from +generation to generation" ("Life of W. L. Garrison," vol. i., p. 140). + +[278:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, p. 639, article on "The +Southern Apostasy." + +[278:2] _Ibid._, pp. 642-644. + +[281:1] "New Englander," vol. xii., 1854, pp. 660, 661. + +[281:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i., pp. 190-207. + +[282:1] "Biblical Repertory," Princeton, July, 1833, pp. 294, 295, 303. + +[282:2] The true story of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and his little +party has yet to be written faithfully and fully. As told by his family +and friends and by himself, it is a monstrous falsification of history. +One of the best sources of authentic material for this chapter of +history is "James G. Birney and his Times," by General William Birney, +pp. 269-331. I may also refer to my volume, "Irenics and Polemics" (New +York, the Christian Literature Co.), pp. 145-202. The sum of the story +is given thus, in the words of Charles Sumner: "An omnibus-load of +Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the antislavery cause than +all its enemies" ("Birney," p. 331). + +[285:1] Birney, p. 321. + +[287:1] Sermon of L. Bacon (MS.), New Haven, July 4, 1830. + +[288:1] "Eastern and Western States of America," by J. S. Buckingham, M. +P., vol. i., pp. 408-413. + +[290:1] By a curious anomaly in church polity, adhesion to this +particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the +discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In most other communions +liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best +fitted to the end sought. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +A DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES AND SCHISMS. + + +During the period from 1835 to 1845 the spirit of schism seemed to be in +the air. In this period no one of the larger organizations of churches +was free from agitating controversies, and some of the most important of +them were rent asunder by explosion. + +At the time when the Presbyterian Church suffered its great schism, in +1837, it was the most influential religious body in the United States. +In 120 years its solitary presbytery had grown to 135 presbyteries, +including 2140 ministers serving 2865 churches and 220,557 communicants. +But these large figures are an inadequate measure of its influence. It +represented in its ministry and membership the two most masterful races +on the continent, the New England colonists and the Scotch-Irish +immigrants; and the tenacity with which it had adhered to the tradition +derived through both these lines, of admitting none but liberally +educated men to its ministry, had given it exceptional social standing +and control over men of intellectual strength and leadership. In the +four years beginning with 1831 the additions to its roll of communicants +"on examination" had numbered nearly one hundred thousand. But this +spiritual growth was chilled and stunted by the dissensions that arose. +The revivals ceased and the membership actually dwindled. + +The contention had grown (a fact not without parallel in church +history) out of measures devised in the interest of cooeperation and +union. In 1801, in the days of its comparative feebleness, the General +Assembly had proposed to the General Association of Connecticut a "Plan +of Union" according to which the communities of New England Christians +then beginning to move westward between the parallels that bound "the +New England zone," and bringing with them their accustomed +Congregational polity, might cooeperate on terms of mutual concession +with Presbyterian churches in their neighborhood. The proposals had been +fraternally received and accepted, and under the terms of this compact +great accessions had been made to the strength of the Presbyterian +Church, of pastors and congregations marked with the intellectual +activity and religious enterprise of the New England churches, who, +while cordially conforming to the new methods of organization and +discipline, were not in the least penetrated with the traditionary +Scotch veneration for the Westminster standards. For nearly thirty years +the great reinforcements from New England and from men of the New +England way of thinking had been ungrudgingly bestowed and heartily +welcomed. But the great accessions which in the first four years of the +fourth decade of this century had increased the roll of the communicants +of the Presbyterian Church by more than fifty per cent. had come in +undue proportion from the New Englandized regions of western New York +and Ohio. It was inevitable that the jealousy of hereditary +Presbyterians, "whose were the fathers," should be aroused by the +perfectly reasonable fear lest the traditional ways of the church which +they felt to be in a peculiar sense _their_ church might be affected by +so large an element from without. + +The grounds of explicit complaint against the party called "New School" +were principally twofold--doctrine and organization. + +In the Presbyterian Church at this time were three pretty distinct types +of theological thought. First, there was the unmitigated Scotch +Calvinism; secondly, there was the modification of this system, which +became naturalized in the church after the Great Awakening, when +Jonathan Dickinson and Jonathan Edwards, from neighbor towns in +Massachusetts, came to be looked upon as the great Presbyterian +theologians; thirdly, there was the "consistent Calvinism," that had +been still further evolved by the patient labor of students in direct +succession from Edwards, and that was known under the name of +"Hopkinsianism." Just now the latest and not the least eminent in this +school, Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, was enunciating to large +and enthusiastic classes in Yale Divinity School new definitions and +forms of statement giving rise to much earnest debate. The alarm of +those to whom the very phrase "improvement in theology" was an +abomination expressed itself in futile indictments for heresy brought +against some of the most eminently godly and useful ministers in all the +church. Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, Edward Beecher, J. M. +Sturtevant, and William Kirby, of Illinois College, and George Duffield, +of the presbytery of Carlisle, Pa., were annoyed by impeachments for +heresy, which all failed before reaching the court of last resort. But +repeated and persistent prosecutions of Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, +were destined to more conspicuous failure, by reason of their coming up +year after year before the General Assembly, and also by reason of the +position of the accused as pastor of the mother church of the +denomination, the First Church of Philadelphia, which was the customary +meeting-place of the Assembly; withal by reason of the character of the +accused, the honor and love in which he was held for his faithful and +useful work as pastor, his world-wide fame as a devoted and believing +student of the Scriptures, and the Christlike gentleness and meekness +with which he endured the harassing of church trials continuing through +a period of seven years, and compelling him, under an irregular and +illegal sentence of the synod, to sit silent in his church for the space +of a year, as one suspended from the ministry. + +The earliest leaders in national organization for the propagation of +Christianity at home and abroad were the Congregationalists of New +England and men like-minded with them. But the societies thus originated +were organized on broad and catholic principles, and invited the +cooeperation of all Christians. They naturally became the organs of much +of the active beneficence of Presbyterian congregations, and the +Presbyterian clergy and laity were largely represented in the direction +of them. They were recognized and commended by the representative bodies +of the Presbyterian Church. As a point of high-church theory it was held +by the rigidly Presbyterian party that the work of the gospel in all its +departments and in all lands is the proper function of "the church as +such"--meaning practically that each sect ought to have its separate +propaganda. There was logical strength in this position as reached from +their premisses, and there were arguments of practical convenience to be +urged in favor of it. But the demand to sunder at once the bonds of +fellowship which united Christians of different names in the beneficent +work of the great national societies was not acceptable even to the +whole of the Old-School party. To the New Englanders it was intolerable. + +There were other and less important grounds of difference that were +discussed between the parties. And in the background, behind them all, +was the slavery question. It seems to have been willingly _kept_ in the +background by the leaders of debate on both sides; but it was there. The +New-School synods and presbyteries of the North were firm in their +adherence to the antislavery principles of the church. On the other +hand, the Old-School party relied, in the _coup d'eglise_ that was in +preparation, on the support of "an almost solid South."[296:1] + +It was an unpardonable offense of the New-School party that it had grown +to such formidable strength, intellectually, spiritually, and +numerically. The probability that the church might, with the continued +growth and influence of this party, become Americanized and so lose the +purity of its thoroughgoing Scotch traditions was very real, and to some +minds very dreadful. To these the very ark of God seemed in danger. +Arraignments for heresy in presbytery and synod resulted in failure; and +when these and other cases involving questions of orthodoxy or of the +policy of the church were brought into the supreme judicature of the +church, the solemn but unmistakable fact disclosed itself that even the +General Assembly could not be relied on for the support of measures +introduced by the Old-School leaders. In fact, every Assembly from 1831 +to 1836, with a single exception, had shown a clear New-School majority. +The foundations were destroyed, and what should the righteous do? + +History was about to repeat itself with unwonted preciseness of detail. +On the gathering of the Assembly of 1837 a careful count of noses +revealed what had been known only once before in seven years, and what +might never be again--a clear Old-School majority in the house. To the +pious mind the neglecting of such an opportunity would have been to +tempt Providence. Without notice, without complaint or charges or +specifications, without opportunity of defense, 4 synods, including 533 +churches and more than 100,000 communicants, were excommunicated by a +majority vote. The victory of pure doctrine and strict church order, +though perhaps not exactly glorious, was triumphant and irreversible. +There was no more danger to the church from a possible New-School +majority. + +When the four exscinded synods, three in western New York and one in +Ohio, together with a great following of sympathizing congregations in +all parts of the country, came together to reconstruct their shattered +polity, they were found to number about four ninths of the late +Presbyterian Church. For thirty years the American church was to present +to Christendom the strange spectacle of two great ecclesiastical bodies +claiming identically the same name, holding the same doctrinal +standards, observing the same ritual and governed by the same +discipline, and occupying the same great territory, and yet completely +dissevered from each other and at times in relations of sharp mutual +antagonism.[297:1] + +The theological debate which had split the Presbyterian Church from end +to end was quite as earnest and copious in New England. But owing to the +freer habit of theological inquiry and the looser texture of +organization among the Congregationalist churches, it made no organic +schism beyond the setting up of a new theological seminary in +Connecticut to offset what were deemed the "dangerous tendencies" of the +New Haven theology. After a few years the party lines had faded out and +the two seminaries were good neighbors. + +The unlikeliest place in all American Christendom for a partisan +controversy and a schism would have seemed to be the Unitarian +denomination in and about Boston. Beginning with the refusal not only of +any imposed standard of belief, but of any statement of common opinions, +and with unlimited freedom of opinion in every direction, unless, +perhaps, in the direction of orthodoxy, it was not easy to see how a +splitting wedge could be started in it. But the infection of the time +was not to be resisted. Even Unitarianism must have its heresies and +heresiarchs to deal with. No sooner did the pressure of outside attack +abate than antagonisms began pretty sharply to declare themselves. In +1832 Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, pastor of the Second Church in Boston, +proposed to the church to abandon or radically change the observance of +the Lord's Supper. When the church demurred at this extraordinary demand +he resigned his office, firing off an elaborate argument against the +usage of the church by way of a parting salute. Without any formal +demission of the ministry, he retired to his literary seclusion at +Concord, from which he brought forth in books and lectures the oracular +utterances which caught more and more the ear of a wide public, and in +which, in casual-seeming parentheses and _obiter dicta_, Christianity +and all practical religion were condemned by sly innuendo and +half-respectful allusion by which he might "without sneering teach the +rest to sneer." In 1838 he was still so far recognized in the ministry +as to be invited to address the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity +School. The blank pantheism which he then enunciated called forth from +Professor Henry Ware, Jr., a sermon in the college chapel on the +personality of God, which he sent with a friendly note to Mr. Emerson. +The gay and Skimpolesque reply of the sage is an illustration of that +flippancy with which he chose to toy in a literary way with momentous +questions, and which was so exasperating to the earnest men of positive +religious convictions with whom he had been associated in the Christian +ministry. + + "It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge + should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have + always been, from my incapacity of methodical writing, 'a + chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, lucky + when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near + enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the + notice of masters of literature and religion.... I could not + possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you so cruelly hint + at on which any doctrine of mine stands, for I do not know + what arguments mean in reference to any expression of thought. + I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I + dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal + men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits + of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my + affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance + of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed + duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis + against all comers. I certainly shall do no such thing." + +The issue was joined and the controversy began. Professor Andrews Norton +in a pamphlet denounced "the latest form of infidelity," and the Rev. +George Ripley replied in a volume, to which Professor Norton issued a +rejoinder. But there was not substance enough of religious dogma and +sentiment in the transcendentalist philosophers to give them any +permanent standing in the church. They went into various walks of +secular literature, and have powerfully influenced the course of +opinions; but they came to be no longer recognizable as a religious or +theological party. + +Among the minor combatants in the conflict between the Unitarians and +the pantheists was a young man whose name was destined to become +conspicuous, not within the Unitarian fellowship, but on the outskirts +of it. Theodore Parker was a man of a different type from the men about +him of either party. The son of a mechanic, he fought his way through +difficulties to a liberal education, and was thirty years old before his +very great abilities attracted general attention. A greedy gormandizer +of books in many languages, he had little of the dainty scholarship so +much prized at the neighboring university. But the results of his vast +reading were stored in a quick and tenacious memory as ready rhetorical +material wherewith to convince or astonish. Paradox was a passion with +him, that was stimulated by complaints, and even by deprecations, to the +point of irreverence. He liked to "make people's flesh crawl." Even in +his advocacy of social and public reforms, which was strenuous and +sincere, he delighted so to urge his cause as to inflame prejudice and +opposition against it. With this temper it is not strange that when he +came to enunciate his departure from some of the accepted tenets of his +brethren, who were habitually reverent in their discipleship toward +Jesus Christ, he should do this in a way to offend and shock. The +immediate reaction of the Unitarian clergy from the statements of his +sermon, in 1841, on "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," +in which the supernatural was boldly discarded from his belief, was so +general and so earnest as to give occasion to Channing's exclamation, +"Now we have a Unitarian orthodoxy!" Channing did not live to see the +characteristic tenets of the heresiarch to whom he hesitated to give the +name of Christian not only widely accepted in the Unitarian churches, +but some of them freely discussed as open questions among some orthodox +scholars. + + * * * * * + +Two very great events in this period of schism may be dispatched with a +brevity out of all proportion to their importance, on account of the +simplicity of motive and action by which they are characterized. + +In the year 1844 the slavery agitation in the Methodist Episcopal Church +culminated, not in the rupture of the church, but in the +well-considered, deliberate division of it between North and South. The +history of the slavery question among the Methodists was a typical one. +From the beginning the Methodist Society had been committed by its +founder and his early successors to the strictest (not the strongest) +position on this question. Not only was the system of slavery denounced +as iniquitous, but the attempt was made to enforce the rigid rule that +persons involved under this system in the relation of master to slave +should be excluded from the ministry, if not from the communion. But the +enforcement of this rule was found to be not only difficult, but wrong, +and difficult simply because it was wrong. Then followed that illogical +confusion of ideas studiously fostered by zealots at either extreme: If +the slave-holder may be in some circumstances a faithful Christian +disciple, fulfilling in righteousness and love a Christian duty, then +slavery is right; if slavery is wrong, then every slave-holder is a +manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any +further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put +forth for the darkening of counsel. But each extreme was eager to +sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of +its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, +they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The +attempts made from 1836 to 1840, by stretching to the utmost the +authority of the General Conference and the bishops, for the suppression +of "modern abolitionism" in the church (without saying what they meant +by the phrase) had their natural effect: the antislavery sentiment in +the church organized and uttered itself more vigorously and more +extravagantly than ever on the basis, "All slave-holding is sin; no +fellowship with slave-holders." In 1843 an antislavery secession took +place, which drew after it a following of six thousand, increased in a +few months to fifteen thousand. The paradoxical result of this movement +is not without many parallels in church history: After the drawing off +of fifteen thousand of the most zealous antislavery men in the church, +the antislavery party in the church was vastly stronger, even in +numbers, than it had been before. The General Conference of 1836 had +pronounced itself, without a dissenting vote, to be "decidedly opposed +to modern abolitionism." The General Conference of 1844, on the first +test vote on the question of excluding from the ministry one who had +become a slave-holder through marriage, revealed a majority of one +hundred and seventeen to fifty-six in favor of the most rigorous +antislavery discipline. The graver question upon the case of Bishop +Andrew, who was in the like condemnation, could not be decided +otherwise. The form of the Conference's action in this case was +studiously inoffensive. It imputed no wrong and proposed no censure, +but, simply on the ground that the circumstances would embarrass him in +the exercise of his office, declared it as "the sense of this General +Conference that he desist from the exercise of this office so long as +this impediment remains." The issue could not have been simpler and +clearer. The Conference was warned that the passage of the resolution +would be followed by the secession of the South. The debate was long, +earnest, and tender. At the end of it the resolution was passed, one +hundred and eleven to sixty-nine. At once notice was given of the +intended secession. Commissioners were appointed from both parties to +adjust the conditions of it, and in the next year (1845) was organized +the "Methodist Episcopal Church, South." + +Under the fierce tyranny then dominant at the South the southern +Baptists might not fall behind their Methodist neighbors in zeal for +slavery. This time it was the South that forced the issue. The Alabama +Baptist Convention, without waiting for a concrete case, demanded of the +national missionary boards "the distinct, explicit avowal that +slave-holders are eligible and entitled equally with non-slave-holders +to all the privileges and immunities of their several unions." The +answer of the Foreign Mission Board was perfectly kind, but, on the main +point, perfectly unequivocal: "We can never be a party to any +arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery." The result had +been foreseen. The great denomination was divided between North and +South. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in May, 1845, and +began its home and foreign missionary work without delay. + +This dark chapter of our story is not without its brighter aspects. (1) +Amid the inevitable asperities attendant on such debate and division +there were many and beautiful manifestations of brotherly love between +the separated parties. (2) These strifes fell out to the furtherance of +the gospel. Emulations, indeed, are not among the works of the Spirit. +In the strenuous labors of the two divided denominations, greatly +exceeding what had gone before, it is plain that sometimes Christ was +preached of envy and strife. Nevertheless Christ was preached, with +great and salutary results; and therein do we rejoice, yea, and will +rejoice. + + * * * * * + +Two important orders in the American church, which for a time had almost +faded out from our field of vision, come back, from about this epoch of +debate and division, into continually growing conspicuousness and +strength. Neither of them was implicated in that great debate involving +the fundamental principles of the kingdom of heaven,--the principles of +righteousness and love to men,--by which other parts of the church had +been agitated and sometimes divided. Whether to their discredit or to +their honor, it is part of history that neither the Protestant Episcopal +Church nor the Roman Catholic Church took any important part, either +corporately or through its representative men, in the agonizing struggle +of the American church to maintain justice and humanity in public law +and policy. But standing thus aloof from the great ethical questions +that agitated the conscience of the nation, they were both of them +disturbed by controversies internal or external, which demand mention at +least in this chapter. + +The beginning of the resuscitation of the Protestant Episcopal Church +from the dead-and-alive condition in which it had so long been +languishing is dated from the year 1811.[304:1] This year was marked by +the accession to the episcopate of two eminent men, representing two +strongly divergent parties in that church--Bishop Griswold, of +Massachusetts, Evangelical, and Bishop Hobart, of New York, +High-churchman. A quorum of three bishops having been gotten together, +not without great difficulty, the two were consecrated in Trinity +Church, New York, May 29, 1811. + +The time was opportune and the conjuncture of circumstances singularly +favorable. The stigma of Toryism, which had marked the church from long +before the War of Independence, was now more than erased. In New England +the Episcopal Church was of necessity committed to that political party +which favored the abolition of the privileges of the standing order; and +this was the anti-English party, which, under the lead of Jefferson, was +fast forcing the country into war with England. The Episcopalians were +now in a position to retort the charge of disloyalty under which they +had not unjustly suffered. At the same time their church lost nothing of +the social prestige incidental to its relation to the established Church +of England. Politicians of the Democratic party, including some men of +well-deserved credit and influence, naturally attached themselves to a +religious party having many points of congeniality.[305:1] + +In another sense, also, the time was opportune for an advance of the +Episcopal Church. In the person of Bishop Hobart it had now a bold, +energetic, and able representative of principles hitherto not much in +favor in America--the thoroughgoing High-church principles of Archbishop +Laud. Before this time the Episcopal Church had had very little to +contribute by way of enriching the diversity of the American sects. It +was simply the feeblest of the communions bearing the common family +traits of the Great Awakening, with the not unimportant _differentia_ of +its settled ritual of worship and its traditions of order and decorum. +But when Bishop Hobart put the trumpet to his lips and prepared himself +to sound, the public heard a very different note, and no uncertain one. +The church (meaning his own fragment of the church) the one channel of +saving grace; the vehicles of that grace, the sacraments, valid only +when ministered by a priesthood with the right pedigree of ordination; +submission to the constituted authorities of the church absolutely +unlimited, except by clear divine requirements; abstinence from +prayer-meetings; firm opposition to revivals of religion; refusal of all +cooeperation with Christians outside of his own sect in endeavors for the +general advancement of religion--such were some of the principles and +duties inculcated by this bishop of the new era as of binding +force.[306:1] The courage of this attitude was splendid and captivating. +It requires, even at the present time, not a little force of conviction +to sustain one in publicly enunciating such views; but at the time of +the accession of Hobart, when the Episcopal Church was just beginning to +lift up its head out of the dust of despair, it needed the heroism of a +martyr. It was not only the vast multitude of American Christians +outside of the Episcopal Church, comprising almost all the learning, the +evangelistic zeal, and the charitable activity and self-denial of the +American church of that time, that heard these unwonted pretensions with +indignation or with ridicule; in the Episcopal Church itself they were +disclaimed, scouted, and denounced with (if possible) greater +indignation still. But the new party had elements of growth for which +its adversaries did not sufficiently reckon. The experience of other +orders in the church confirms this principle: that steady persistence +and iteration in assuring any body of believers that they are in some +special sense the favorites of Heaven, and in assuring any body of +clergy that they are endued from on high with some special and +exceptional powers, will by and by make an impression on the mind. The +flattering assurance may be coyly waived aside; it may even be +indignantly repelled; but in the long run there will be a growing number +of the brethren who become convinced that there is something in it. It +was in harmony with human nature that the party of high pretensions to +distinguished privileges for the church and prerogatives for the +"priesthood" should in a few years become a formidable contestant for +the control of the denomination. The controversy between the two parties +rose to its height of exacerbation during the prevalence of that strange +epidemic of controversy which ran simultaneously through so many of the +great religious organizations of the country at once. No denomination +had it in a more malignant form than the Episcopalians. The war of +pamphlets and newspapers was fiercely waged, and the election of bishops +sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents +of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the +publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing +episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of +the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the +morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The +highest febrile temperature was reached when, at an ordination in 1843, +two of the leading presbyters in the diocese of New York rose in their +places, and, reading each one his solemn protest against the ordaining +of one of the candidates on the ground of his Romanizing opinions, left +the church. + +The result of the long conflict was not immediately apparent. It was not +only that "high" opinions, even the highest of the Tractarian school, +were to be tolerated within the church, but that the High-church party +was to be the dominant party. The Episcopal Church was to stand before +the public as representing, not that which it held in common with the +other churches of the country, but that which was most distinctive. From +this time forth the "Evangelical" party continued relatively to decline, +down to the time, thirty years later, when it was represented in the +inconsiderable secession of the "Reformed Episcopal Church." The +combination of circumstances and influences by which this party +supremacy was brought about is an interesting study, for which, however, +there is no room in this brief compendium of history. + +A more important fact is this: that in spite of these agitating internal +strifes, and even by reason of them, the growth of the denomination was +wonderfully rapid and strong. No fact in the external history of the +American church at this period is more imposing than this growth of the +Episcopal Church from nothing to a really commanding stature. It is easy +to enumerate minor influences tending to this result, some of which are +not of high spiritual dignity; but these must not be overestimated. The +nature of this growth, as well as the numerical amount of it, requires +to be considered. This strongly distinguished order in the American +church has been aggrandized, not, to any great degree, by immigration, +nor by conquest from the ranks of the irreligious, but by a continual +stream of accessions both to its laity and to its clergy from other +sects of the church. These accessions have of course been variable in +quality, but they have included many such as no denomination could +afford to lose, and such as any would be proud to receive. Without +judging of individual cases, it is natural and reasonable to explain so +considerable a current setting so steadily for two generations toward +the Episcopal Church as being attracted by the distinctive +characteristics of that church. Foremost among these we may reckon the +study of the dignity and beauty of public worship, and the tradition and +use of forms of devotion of singular excellence and value. A tendency to +revert to the ancient Calvinist doctrine of the sacraments has +prepossessed some in favor of that sect in which the old Calvinism is +still cherished. Some have rejoiced to find a door of access to the +communion of the church not beset with revivalist exactions of +examination and scrutiny of the sacred interior experiences of the soul. +Some have reacted from an excessive or inquisitive or arbitrary church +discipline, toward a default of discipline. Some, worthily weary of +sectarian division and of the "evangelical" doctrine that schism is the +normal condition of the church of Christ, have found real comfort in +taking refuge in a sect in which, closing their eyes, they can say, +"There are no schisms in the church; the church is one and undivided, +and we are it." These and other like considerations, mingled in varying +proportions, have been honorable motives impelling toward the Episcopal +denomination; and few that have felt the force of them have felt +constrained stubbornly to resist the gentle assurances offered by the +"apostolic succession" theory of a superior authority and prerogative +with which they had become invested. The numerous accessions to the +Episcopal Church from other communions have, of course, been in large +part reinforcements to the already dominant party. + +In the Roman Catholic Church of the United States, during this stormy +period, there was by no means a perfect calm. The ineradicable feeling +of the American citizen--however recent his naturalization--that he has +a right to do what he will with his own, had kept asserting itself in +that plausible but untenable claim of the laity to manage the church +property acquired by their own contributions, which is known to Catholic +writers as "trusteeism." Through the whole breadth of the country, from +Buffalo to New Orleans, sharp conflicts over this question between +clergy and laity had continued to vex the peace of the church, and the +victory of the clergy had not been unvarying and complete. When, in +1837, Bishop John Hughes took the reins of spiritual power in New York, +he resolved to try conclusions with the trustees who attempted to +overrule his authority in his own cathedral. Sharply threatening to put +the church under interdict, if necessary, he brought the recalcitrants +to terms at last by a less formidable process. He appealed to the +congregation to withhold all further contributions from the trustees. +The appeal, for conscience' sake, to refrain from giving has always a +double hope of success. And the bishop succeeded in ousting the +trustees, at the serious risk of teaching the people a trick which has +since been found equally effective when applied on the opposite side of +a dispute between clergyman and congregation. In Philadelphia the long +struggle was not ended without the actual interdicting of the cathedral +of St. Mary's, April, 1831. In Buffalo, so late as 1847, even this +extreme measure, applied to the largest congregation in the newly +erected diocese, did not at once enforce submission. + +The conflict with trusteeism was only one out of many conflicts which +gave abundant exercise to the administrative abilities of the American +bishops. The mutual jealousies of the various nationalities and races +among the laity, and of the various sects of the regular clergy, +menaced, and have not wholly ceased to menace, the harmony of the +church, if not its unity. + +One disturbing element by which the Roman Catholic Church in some +European countries has been sorely vexed makes no considerable figure in +the corresponding history in America. There has never been here any +"Liberal Catholic" party. The fact stands in analogy with many like +facts. Visitors to America from the established churches of England or +Scotland or Germany have often been surprised to find the temper of the +old-country church so much broader and less rigid than that of the +daughter church in the new and free republic. The reason is less +recondite than might be supposed. In the old countries there are +retained in connection with the state-church, by constraint of law or of +powerful social or family influences, many whose adhesion to its +distinctive tenets and rules is slight and superficial. It is out of +such material that the liberal church party grows. In the migration it +is not that the liberal churchman becomes more strict, but that, being +released from outside pressure, he becomes less of a churchman. He +easily draws off from his hereditary communion and joins himself to some +other, or to none at all. This process of evaporation leaves behind it a +strong residuum in which all characteristic elements are held as in a +saturated solution. + +A further security of the American Catholic Church against the growth of +any "Liberal Catholic" party like those of continental Europe is the +absolutist organization of the hierarchy under the personal government +of the pope. In these last few centuries great progress has been made by +the Roman see in extinguishing the ancient traditions of local or +national independence in the election of bishops. Nevertheless in +Catholic Europe important relics of this independence give an effective +check to the absolute power of Rome. In America no trace of this +historic independence has ever existed. The power of appointing and +removing bishops is held absolutely and exclusively by the pope and +exercised through the Congregation of the Propaganda. The power of +ordaining and assigning priests is held by the bishop, who also holds or +controls the title to the church property in his diocese. The security +against partisan division within the church is as complete as it can be +made without gravely increasing the risks of alienating additional +multitudes from the fellowship of the church.[312:1] + + * * * * * + +During the whole of this dreary decade there were "fightings without" as +well as within for the Catholic Church in the United States. Its great +and sudden growth solely by immigration had made it distinctively a +church of foreigners, and chiefly of Irishmen. The conditions were +favorable for the development of a race prejudice aggravated by a +religious antipathy. It was a good time for the impostor, the fanatic, +and the demagogue to get in their work. In Boston, in 1834, the report +that a woman was detained against her will in the Ursuline convent at +Charlestown, near Boston, led to the burning of the building by a +drunken mob. The Titus Oates of the American no-popery panic, in 1836, +was an infamous woman named Maria Monk, whose monstrous stories of +secret horrors perpetrated in a convent in Montreal, in which she +claimed to have lived as a nun, were published by a respectable house +and had immense currency. A New York pastor of good standing, Dr. +Brownlee, made himself sponsor for her character and her stories; and +when these had been thoroughly exposed, by Protestant ministers and +laymen, for the shameless frauds that they were, there were plenty of +zealots to sustain her still. A "Protestant Society" was organized in +New York, and solicited the contributions of the benevolent and pious to +promote the dissemination of raw-head-and-bloody-bones literature on the +horrors of popery. The enterprise met with reprobation from sober-minded +Protestants, but it was not without its influence for mischief. The +presence of a great foreign vote, easily manipulated and cast in block, +was proving a copious source of political corruption. Large concessions +of privilege or of public property to Catholic institutions were +reasonably suspected to have been made in consideration of clerical +services in partisan politics.[313:1] The conditions provoked, we might +say necessitated, a political reform movement, which took the name and +character of "Native American." In Philadelphia, a city notorious at +that time for misgovernment and turbulence, an orderly "American" +meeting was attacked and broken up by an Irish mob. One act of violence +led to another, the excitement increasing from day to day; deadly shots +were exchanged in the streets, houses from which balls had been fired +into the crowd were set in flames, which spread to other houses, +churches were burned, and the whole city dominated by mobs that were +finally suppressed by the State militia. It was an appropriate climax +to the ten years of ecclesiastical and social turmoil.[314:1] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[296:1] Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," p. 359. + +[297:1] For the close historical parallel to the exscinding acts of 1837 +see page 167, above. A later parallel, it is claimed, is found in the +"virtually exscinding act" of the General Assembly of 1861, which was +the occasion of the secession of the Southern Presbyterians. The +historian of the Southern Presbyterians, who remarks with entire +complacency that the "victory" of 1837 was won "only by virtue of an +almost solid South," seems quite unconscious that this kind of victory +could have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The +Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, +that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle +instead of from the breech. + +[304:1] Tiffany, chap. xv. + +[305:1] The intense antagonism of the New England Congregationalists to +Jefferson and his party as representing French infidelity and Jacobinism +admits of many striking illustrations. The sermon of Nathanael Emmons on +"Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" is characterized by +Professor Park as "a curiosity in politico-homiletical literature." At +this distance it is not difficult to see that the course of this clergy +was far more honorable to its boldness and independence than to its +discretion and sense of fitness. Both its virtues and its faults had a +tendency to strengthen an opposing party. + +[306:1] Hobart's sermon at the consecration of Right Rev. H. U. +Onderdonk, Philadelphia, 1827. + +[312:1] For a fuller account of the dissensions in the Catholic Church, +consult, by index, Bishop O'Gorman's "History." On the modern +organization of the episcopate in complete dependence on the Holy See, +consult the learned article on "Episcopal Elections," by Dr. Peries, of +the Catholic University at Washington, in the "American Catholic +Quarterly Review" for January, 1896; also the remarks of Archbishop +Kenrick, of St. Louis, in his "_Concio in Concilio Vaticano Habenda at +non Habita_," in "An Inside View of the Vatican Council," by L. W. +Bacon, pp. 61, 121. + +[313:1] A satirical view of these concessions, in the vast dimensions +which they had reached twenty-five years later in the city and county of +New York, was published in two articles, "Our Established Church," and +"The Unestablished Church," in "Putnam's Magazine" for July and +December, 1869. The articles were reissued in a pamphlet, "with an +explanatory and exculpatory preface, and sundry notices of the +contemporary press." + +[314:1] A studiously careful account of the Philadelphia riots of 1844 +is given in the "New Englander," vol. ii. (1844), pp. 470, 624. + +This account of the schisms of the period is of course not complete. The +American Missionary Association, since distinguished for successful +labors chiefly among the freedmen, grew out of dissatisfaction felt by +men of advanced antislavery views with the position of the "American +Board" and the American Home Missionary Society on the slavery question. +The organization of it was matured in 1846. A very fruitful schism in +its results was that which, in 1835, planted a cutting from Lane +Seminary at Cincinnati, in the virgin soil at Oberlin, Ohio. The +beginning thus made with a class in theology has grown into a noble and +widely beneficent institution, the influence of which has extended to +the ends of the land and of the world. + +The division of the Society of Friends into the two societies known as +Hicksite and Orthodox is of earlier date--1827-28. + +No attempt is made in this volume to chronicle the interminable +splittings and reunitings of the Presbyterian sects of Scottish +extraction. A curious diagram, on page 146 of volume xi. of the present +series, illustrates the sort of task which such a chronicle involves. + +An illustration of the way in which the extreme defenders of slavery and +the extreme abolitionists sustained each other in illogical statements +(see above, pp. 301, 302) is found in Dr. Thornwell's claim (identical +with Mr. Garrison's) that if slavery is wrong, then all slave-holders +ought to be excommunicated (vol. vi., p. 157, note). Dr. Thornwell may +not have been the "mental and moral giant" that he appears to his +admirers (see Professor Johnson in vol. xi., p. 355), but he was an +intelligent and able man, quite too clear-headed to be imposed upon by a +palpable "ambiguous middle," except for his excitement in the heat of a +desperate controversy with the moral sense of all Christendom. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE GREAT IMMIGRATION. + + +At the taking of the first census of the United States, in 1790, the +country contained a population of about four millions in its territory +of less than one million of square miles. + +Sixty years later, at the census of 1850, it contained a population of +more than twenty-three millions in its territory of about three millions +of square miles. + +The vast expansion of territory to more than threefold the great +original domain of the United States had been made by honorable purchase +or less honorable conquest. It had not added largely to the population +of the nation; the new acquisitions were mainly of unoccupied land. The +increase of the population, down to about 1845, was chiefly the natural +increase of a hardy and prolific stock under conditions in the highest +degree favorable to such increase. Up to the year 1820 the recent +immigration had been inconsiderable. In the ten years 1820-29 the annual +arrival of immigrants was nine thousand. In the next decade, 1830-39, +the annual arrival was nearly thirty-five thousand, or a hundred a day. +For forty years the total immigration from all quarters was much less +than a half-million. In the course of the next three decades, from 1840 +to 1869, there arrived in the United States from the various countries +of Europe five and a half millions of people. It was more than the +entire population of the country at the time of the first census;-- + + A multitude like which the populous North + Poured never from her frozen loins to pass + Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons + Came like a deluge on the South and spread + Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. + +Under the pressure of a less copious flood of incursion the greatest +empire in all history, strongest in arts and polity as well as arms, had +perished utterly. If Rome, with her population of one hundred and twenty +millions, her genius for war and government, and her long-compacted +civilization, succumbed under a less sudden rush of invasion, what hope +was there for the young American Republic, with its scanty population +and its new and untried institutions?[316:1] + +An impressive providential combination of causes determined this great +historic movement of population at this time. It was effected by +attractions in front of the emigrant, reinforced by impulses from +behind. The conclusion of the peace of 1815 was followed by the +beginning of an era of great public works, one of the first of which was +the digging of the Erie Canal. This sort of enterprise makes an +immediate demand for large forces of unskilled laborers; and in both +hemispheres it has been observed to occasion movements of population out +of Catholic countries into Protestant countries. The westward current +of the indigenous population created a vacuum in the seaboard States, +and a demand for labor that was soon felt in the labor-markets of the +Old World. A liberal homestead policy on the part of the national +government, and naturalization laws that were more than liberal, +agencies for the encouragement of settlers organized by individual +States and by railroad corporations and other great landed proprietors, +and the eager competition of steamship companies drumming for steerage +passengers in all parts of Europe--all these cooeperated with the growing +facility and cheapness of steam transportation to swell the current of +migration. The discovery of gold in California quickened the flow of it. + +As if it had been the divine purpose not only to draw forth, but to +drive forth, the populations of the Old World to make their homes in the +New, there was added to all these causes conducive to migration the +Irish famine of 1846-47, and the futile revolutions of 1848, with the +tyrannical reactions which followed them. But the great stimulus to +migration was the success and prosperity that attended it. It was +"success that succeeded." The great emigration agent was the letter +written to his old home by the new settler, in multitudes of cases +inclosing funds to pay the passage of friends whom he had left behind +him. + +The great immigration that began about 1845 is distinguished from some +of the early colonizations in that it was in no sense a religious +movement. Very grave religious results were to issue from it; but they +were to be achieved through the unconscious cooeperation of a multitude +of individuals each intent with singleness of vision on his own +individual ends. It is by such unconscious cooeperation that the +directing mind and the overruling hand of God in history are most +signally illustrated. + +In the first rush of this increased immigration by far the greatest +contributor of new population was Ireland. It not only surpassed any +other country in the number of its immigrants, but in the height of the +Irish exodus, in the decade 1840-50, it nearly equaled all other +countries of the world together. The incoming Irish millions were almost +solidly Roman Catholic. The measures taken by the British government for +many generations to attach the Irish people to the crown and convert +them to the English standard of Protestantism had had the result of +discharging upon our shores a people distinguished above all Christendom +besides for its ardent and unreserved devotion to the Roman Church, and +hardly less distinguished for its hatred to England. + +After the first flood-tide the relative number of the Irish immigrants +began to decrease, and has kept on decreasing until now. Since the Civil +War the chief source of immigration has been Germany; and its +contributions to our population have greatly aggrandized the Lutheran +denomination, once so inconsiderable in numbers, until in many western +cities it is the foremost of the Protestant communions, and in Chicago +outnumbers the communicants of the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, and +the Methodist churches combined.[318:1] The German immigration has +contributed its share, and probably more than its share, to our +non-religious and churchless population. Withal, in a proportion which +it is not easy to ascertain with precision, it added multitudinous +thousands to the sudden and enormous growth of the Roman Catholic +Church. But there is an instructive contrast between the German +immigrations, whether Catholic or Protestant, and the Irish immigration. +The Catholicism of the Irish, held from generation to generation in the +face of partisan and sometimes cruelly persecuting laws, was held with +the ardor, if not of personal conviction, at least of strong hereditary +animosity. To the Germans, their religious sect, whether Catholic, +Lutheran, or Reformed, is determined for them by political arrangement, +under the principle _cujus regio, ejus religio_. It is matter of course +that tenets thus acquired should be held by a tenure so far removed from +fanaticism as to seem to more zealous souls much like lukewarmness. +Accustomed to have the cost of religious institutions provided for in +the budget of public expenses, the wards of the Old World state-churches +find themselves here in strange surroundings, untrained in habits of +self-denial for religious objects. The danger is a grave and real one +that before they become acclimated to the new conditions a large +percentage will be lost, not only from their hereditary communion, but +from all Christian fellowship, and lapse into simple indifferentism and +godlessness. They have much to learn and something to teach. The +indigenous American churches are not likely to be docile learners at the +feet of alien teachers; but it would seem like the slighting of a +providential opportunity if the older sects should fail to recognize +that one of the greatest and by far the most rapidly growing of the +Protestant churches of America, the Lutheran, growing now with new +increments not only from the German, but also from the Scandinavian +nations, is among us in such force to teach us somewhat by its example +of the equable, systematic, and methodical ways of a state-church, as +well as to learn something from the irregular fervor of that revivalism +which its neighbors on every hand have inherited from the Great +Awakening. It would be the very extravagance of national self-conceit if +the older American churches should become possessed of the idea that +four millions of German Christians and one million of Scandinavians, +arriving here from 1860 to 1890, with their characteristic methods in +theology and usages of worship and habits of church organization and +administration, were here, in the providence of God, only to be +assimilated and not at all to assimilate. + + * * * * * + +The vast growth of the Roman Catholic Church in America could not but +fill its clergy and adherents with wonder and honest pride. But it was +an occasion of immense labors and not a little anxiety. One effect of +the enormous immigration was inevitably to impose upon this church, +according to the popular apprehension, the character of a foreign +association, and, in the earlier periods of the influx, of an Irish +association. It was in like manner inevitable, from the fact that the +immigrant class are preponderantly poor and of low social rank, that it +should for two or three generations be looked upon as a church for the +illiterate and unskilled laboring class. An incident of the excessive +torrent rush of the immigration was that the Catholic Church became to a +disproportionate extent an urban institution, making no adequate +provision for the dispersed in agricultural regions. + +Against these and other like disadvantages the hierarchy of the Catholic +Church have struggled heroically, with some measure of success. The +steadily rising character of the imported population in its successive +generations has aided them. If in the first generations the churches +were congregations of immigrants served by an imported clergy, the most +strenuous exertions were made for the founding of institutions that +should secure to future congregations born upon the soil the services of +an American-trained priesthood. One serious hindrance to the noble +advances that have nevertheless been made in this direction has been the +fanatical opposition levied against even the most beneficent enterprises +of the church by a bigoted Native-Americanism. It is not a hopeful +method of conciliating and naturalizing a foreign element in the +community to treat them with suspicion and hostility as alien enemies. +The shameful persecution which the mob was for a brief time permitted to +inflict on Catholic churches and schools and convents had for its chief +effect to confirm the foreigner in his adherence to his church and his +antipathy to Protestantism, and to provoke a twofold ferocity in return. +At a time when there was reason to apprehend a Know-nothing riot in New +York, in 1844, a plan was concerted and organized by "a large Irish +society with divisions throughout the city," by which, "in case a single +church was attacked, buildings should be fired in all quarters and the +great city should be involved in a general conflagration."[321:1] + +The utmost that could have been hoped for by the devoted but inadequate +body of the Roman Catholic clergy in America, overwhelmed by an influx +of their people coming in upon them in increasing volume, numbering +millions per annum, was that they might be able to hold their own. But +this hope was very far from being attained. How great have been the +losses to the Roman communion through the transplantation of its members +across the sea is a question to which the most widely varying answers +have been given, and on which statistical exactness seems unattainable. +The various estimates, agreeing in nothing else, agree in representing +them as enormously great.[321:2] All good men will also agree that in +so far as these losses represent mere lapses into unbelief and +irreligion they are to be deplored. Happily there is good evidence of a +large salvage, gathered into other churches, from what so easily becomes +a shipwreck of faith with total loss. + +It might seem surprising, in view of the many and diverse resources of +attractive influence which the Roman Church has at its command, that its +losses have not been to some larger extent compensated by conversions +from other sects. Instances of such conversion are by no means wanting; +but so far as a popular current toward Catholicism is concerned, the +attractions in that direction are outweighed by the disadvantages +already referred to. It has not been altogether a detriment to the +Catholic Church in America that the social status and personal +composition of its congregations, in its earlier years, have been such +that the transition into it from any of the Protestant churches could be +made only at the cost of a painful self-denial. The number of accessions +to it has been thereby lessened, but (leaving out the case of the +transition of politicians from considerations of expediency) the quality +of them has been severely sifted. Incomparably the most valuable +acquisition which the American Catholic Church has received has been the +company of devoted and gifted young men, deeply imbued with the +principles and sentiments of the High-church party in the Episcopal +Church, who have felt constrained in conscience and in logic to take the +step, which seems so short, from the highest level in the Anglican +Church into the Roman, and who, organized into the Order of the Paulist +Fathers, have exemplified in the Roman Church so many of the highest +qualities of Protestant preaching. + +He is a bold man who will undertake to predict in detail the future of +the Roman Church in America. To say that it will be modified by its +surroundings is only to say what is true of it in all countries. To say +that it will be modified for the better is to say what is true of it in +all Protestant countries. Nowhere is the Roman Church so pure from +scandal and so effective for good as where it is closely surrounded and +jealously scrutinized by bodies of its fellow-Christians whom it is +permitted to recognize only as heretics. But when the influence of +surrounding heresy is seen to be an indispensable blessing to the +church, the heretic himself comes to be looked upon with a mitigated +horror. Not with the sacrifice of any principle, but through the +application of some of those provisions by which the Latin theology is +able to meet exigencies like this,--the allowance in favor of +"invincible ignorance" and prejudice, the distinction between the body +and "the soul of the church,"--the Roman Catholic, recognizing the +spirit of Christ in his Protestant fellow-Christian, is able to hold him +in spiritual if not formal communion, so that the Catholic Church may +prove itself not dissevered from the Church Catholic. In the common +duties of citizenship and of humanity, in the promotion of the interests +of morality, even in those religious matters that are of common concern +to all honest disciples of Jesus Christ, he is at one with his heretic +brethren. Without the change of a single item either of doctrine or of +discipline, the attitude and temper of the church, as compared with the +church of Spain or Italy or Mexico, is revolutionized. The change must +needs draw with it other changes, which may not come without some jar +and conflict between progressive and conservative, but which +nevertheless needs must come. Out of many indications of the spirit of +fellowship with all Christians now exemplified among American Catholics, +I quote one of the most recent and authoritative from an address of +Archbishop Ryan at the Catholic Congress in Chicago in 1893. Speaking on +Christian union, he said: + + "If there is any one thing more than another upon which people + agree, it is respect and reverence for the person and the + character of the Founder of Christianity. How the Protestant + loves his Saviour! How the Protestant eye will sometimes grow + dim when speaking of our Lord! In this great center of union + is found the hope of human society, the only means of + preserving Christian civilization, the only point upon which + Catholic and Protestant may meet. As if foreseeing that this + should be, Christ himself gave his example of fraternal + charity, not to the orthodox Jew, but to the heretical + Samaritan, showing that charity and love, while faith remains + intact, can never be true unless no distinction is made + between God's creatures."[325:1] + +Herein is fellowship higher than that of symbols and sacraments. By so +far as it receives this spirit of love the American Catholic Church +enters into its place in that greater Catholic Church of which we all +make mention in the Apostles' Creed--"the Holy Universal Church, which +is the fellowship of holy souls." + + * * * * * + +The effect of the Great Immigration on the body of the immigrant +population is not more interesting or more important than the effect of +it on the religious bodies already in occupation of the soil. The +impression made on them by what seemed an irruption of barbarians of +strange language or dialect, for the most part rude, unskilled, and +illiterate, shunning as profane the Christian churches of the land, and +bowing in unknown rites as devotees of a system known, and by no means +favorably known, only through polemic literature and history, and +through the gruesome traditions of Puritan and Presbyterian and +Huguenot, was an impression not far removed from horror; and this +impression was deepened as the enormous proportions of this invasion +disclosed themselves from year to year. The serious and not unreasonable +fear that these armies of aliens, handled as they manifestly were by a +generalship that was quick to seize and fortify in a conspicuous way the +strategic points of influence, especially in the new States, might +imperil or ruin the institutions and liberties of the young Republic, +was stimulated and exploited in the interest of enterprises of +evangelization that might counter-work the operations of the invading +church. The appeals of the Bible and tract societies, and of the +various home mission agencies of the different denominations, as well as +of the distinctively antipopery societies, were pointed with the alarm +lest "the great West" should fall under the domination of the papal +hierarchy. Naturally the delineations of the Roman system and of its +public and social results that were presented to the public for these +purposes were of no flattering character. Not history only, but +contemporary geography gave warnings of peril. Canada on one hand, and +Mexico and the rest of Spanish America on the other, were cited as +living examples of the fate which might befall the free United States. +The apocalyptic prophecies were copiously drawn upon for material of +war. By processes of exegesis which critical scholarship regards with a +smile or a shudder, the helpless pope was made to figure as the +Antichrist, the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, the Scarlet Woman on +the Seven Hills, the Little Horn Speaking Blasphemies, the Beast, and +the Great Red Dragon. That moiety of Christendom which, sorely as its +history has been deformed by corruption and persecution, violently as it +seems to be contrasted with the simplicity of the primeval church, is +nevertheless the spiritual home of multitudes of Christ's well-approved +servants and disciples, was held up to gaze as being nothing but the +enemy of Christ and his cause. The appetite of the Protestant public for +scandals at the expense of their fellow-Christians was stimulated to a +morbid greediness and then overfed with willful and wicked fabrications. +The effect of this fanaticism on some honest but illogical minds was +what might have been looked for. Brought by and by into personal +acquaintance with Catholic ministers and institutions, and discovering +the fraud and injustice that had been perpetrated, they sprang by a +generous reaction into an attitude of sympathy for the Roman Catholic +system. A more favorable preparation of the way of conversion to Rome +could not be desired by the skillful propagandist. One recognizes a +retributive justice in the fact, when notable gains to the Catholic +Church are distinctly traced to the reaction of honest men from these +fraudulent polemics.[327:1] + +The danger to the Republic, which was thus malignantly or ignorantly +exaggerated and distorted, was nevertheless real and grave. No sincerely +earnest and religious Protestant, nor even any well-informed patriotic +citizen, with the example of French and Spanish America before his eyes, +could look with tolerance upon the prospect of a possible Catholicizing +of the new States at the West; and the sight of the incessant tide of +immigration setting westward, the reports of large funds sent hither +from abroad to aid the propagation of the Roman Church, and the accounts +of costly and imposing ecclesiastical buildings rising at the most +important centers of population, roused the Christian patriotism of the +older States to the noblest enterprises of evangelization. There was no +wasting of energy in futile disputation. In all the Protestant +communions it was felt that the work called for was a simple, peaceful, +and positive one--to plant the soil of the West, at the first occupation +of it by settlers, with Christian institutions and influences. The +immensity of the task stimulated rather than dismayed the zeal of the +various churches. The work undertaken and accomplished in the twenty +years from 1840 to 1860 in providing the newly settled regions with +churches, pastors, colleges, and theological seminaries, with +Sunday-schools, and with Bibles and other religious books, was of a +magnitude which will never be defined by statistical figures. How great +it was, and at what cost it was effected in gifts of treasure and of +heroic lives of toil and self-denial, can only be a matter of vague +wonder and thanksgiving. + +The work of planting the church in the West exhibits the voluntary +system at its best--and at its worst. A task so vast and so momentous +has never been imposed on the resources of any state establishment. It +is safe to say that no established church has ever existed, however +imperially endowed, that would have been equal to the undertaking of it. +With no imposing combination of forces, and no strategic concert of +action, the work was begun spontaneously and simultaneously, like some +of the operations of nature, by a multitude of different agencies, and +went forward uninterrupted to something as nearly like completeness as +could be in a work the exigencies of which continually widened beyond +all achievements. The planting of the church in the West is one of the +wonders of church history. + +But this noble act of religious devotion was by no means a sacrifice +without blemish. The sacred zeal for advancing God's reign and +righteousness was mingled with many very human motives in the progress +of it. Conspicuous among these was the spirit of sectarian competition. +The worthy and apostolic love for kindred according to the flesh +separated from home and exposed to the privations and temptations of the +frontier, the honest anxiety to forestall the domination of a +dangerously powerful religious corporation propagating perverted views +of truth, even the desire to advance principles and forms of belief +deemed to be important, were infused with a spirit of partisanship as +little spiritual as the enthusiasm which animates the struggles and the +shouters at a foot-ball game. The devoted pioneer of the gospel on the +frontier, seeing his work endangered by that of a rival denomination, +writes to the central office of his sect; the board of missions makes +its appeal to the contributing churches; the churches respond with +subsidies; and the local rivalry in the mission field is pressed, +sometimes to a good result, on the principle that "competition is the +life of business." Thus the fragrance of the precious ointment of loving +sacrifice is perceptibly tainted, according to the warning of +Ecclesiastes or the Preacher. And yet it is not easy for good men, being +men, sternly to rebuke the spirit that seems to be effective in +promoting the good cause that they have at heart. + +If the effect of these emulations on the contributing churches was +rather carnal than spiritual, the effect in the mission field was worse. +The effect was seen in the squandering of money and of priceless service +of good men and women, in the debilitating and demoralizing division and +subdivision of the Christian people, not of cities and large towns, but +of villages and hamlets and of thinly settled farming districts. By the +building of churches and other edifices for sectarian uses, schism was +established for coming time as a vested interest. The gifts and service +bestowed in this cause with a truly magnificent liberality would have +sufficed to establish the Christian faith and fellowship throughout the +new settlements in strength and dignity, in churches which, instead of +lingering as puny and dependent nurslings, would have grown apace to be +strong and healthy nursing mothers to newer churches yet. + +There is an instructive contrast, not only between the working of the +voluntary system and that of the Old World establishments, but between +the methods of the Catholic Church and the Protestant no-method. Under +the control of a strong cooerdinating authority the competitions of the +various Catholic orders, however sharp, could never be allowed to run +into wasteful extravagance through cross-purposes. It is believed that +the Catholics have not erected many monuments of their own unthrift in +the shape of costly buildings begun, but left unfinished and abandoned. +A more common incident of their work has been the buying up of these +expensive failures, at a large reduction from their cost, and turning +them to useful service. And yet the principle of sectarian competition +is both recognized and utilized in the Roman system. The various +clerical sects, with their characteristic names, costumes, methods, and +doctrinal differences, have their recognized aptitudes for various sorts +of work, with which their names are strongly associated: the Dominican +for pulpit eloquence, the Capuchin for rough-and-ready street-preaching, +the Benedictine for literary work, the Sulpitian for the training of +priests, and the ubiquitous Jesuit for shifty general utility with a +specialty of school-keeping. These and a multitude of other orders, male +and female, have been effectively and usefully employed in the arduous +labor _Romanam condere gentem_. But it would seem that the superior +stability of the present enterprise of planting Catholicism in the +domain of the United States, as compared with former expensive failures, +was due in some part to the larger employment of a diocesan parish +clergy instead of a disproportionate reliance on the "regulars." + +On the whole, notwithstanding its immense armies of immigrants and the +devoted labors of its priests, and notwithstanding its great expansion, +visible everywhere in conspicuous monuments of architecture, the +Catholic advance in America has not been, comparatively speaking, +successful. For one thing, the campaign was carried on too far from its +base of supplies. The subsidies from Lyons and Vienna, liberal as they +were, were no match for the home missionary zeal of the seaboard States +in following their own sons westward with church and gospel and pastor. +Even the conditions which made possible the superior management and +economy of resources, both material and personal, among the Catholics, +were attended with compensating drawbacks. With these advantages they +could not have the immense advantage of the popular initiative. In +Protestantism the people were the church, and the minister was chief +among the people only by virtue of being servant of all; the people were +incited to take up the work for their own and carry it on at their best +discretion; and they were free to make wasteful and disastrous blunders +and learn therefrom by experience. With far greater expenditure of +funds, they make no comparison with their brethren of the Roman +obedience in stately and sumptuous buildings at great centers of +commerce and travel. But they have covered the face of the land with +country meeting-houses, twice as many as there was any worthy use for, +in which faithful service is rendered to subdivided congregations by +underpaid ministers, enough in number, if they were wisely distributed, +for the evangelization of the whole continent; and each country +meeting-house is a mission station, and its congregation, men, women, +and children, are missionaries. Thus it has come about, in the language +of the earnest Catholic from the once Catholic city of New Orleans, that +"the nation, the government, the whole people, remain solidly +Protestant."[331:1] Great territories originally discovered by Catholic +explorers and planted in the name of the church by Catholic missionaries +and colonists, and more lately occupied by Catholic immigrants in what +seemed overwhelming numbers, are now the seat of free and powerful +commonwealths in which the Catholic Church is only one of the most +powerful and beneficent of the Christian sects, while the institutions +and influences which characterize their society are predominantly +Protestant. + +In the westward propagation of Protestantism, as well as of Catholicism, +the distinctive attributes of the several sects or orders is strikingly +illustrated. + +Foremost in the pioneer work of the church are easily to be recognized +the Methodists and the Baptists, one the most solidly organized of the +Protestant sects, the other the most uncompact and individualist; the +first by virtue of the supple military organization of its great corps +of itinerants, the other by the simplicity and popular apprehensibleness +of its distinctive tenets and arguments and the aggressive ardor with +which it inspires all its converts, and both by their facility in +recruiting their ministry from the rank and file of the church, without +excluding any by arbitrarily imposed conditions. The Presbyterians were +heavily cumbered for advance work by traditions and rules which they +were rigidly reluctant to yield or bend, even when the reason for the +rule was superseded by higher reasons. The argument for a learned +ministry is doubtless a weighty one; but it does not suffice to prove +that when college-bred men are not to be had it is better that the +people have no minister at all. There is virtue in the rule of +ministerial parity; but it should not be allowed to hinder the church +from employing in humbler spiritual functions men who fall below the +prescribed standard. This the church, in course of time, discovered, and +instituted a "minor order" of ministers, under the title of colporteurs. +But it was timidly and tardily done, and therefore ineffectively. The +Presbyterians lost their place in the skirmish-line; but that which had +been their hindrance in the advance work gave them great advantage in +settled communities, in which for many years they took precedence in +the building up of strong and intelligent congregations. + +To the Congregationalists belongs an honor in the past which, in recent +generations, they have not been jealous to retain. Beyond any sect, +except the Moravians, they have cherished that charity which seeketh not +her own. The earliest leaders in the organization of schemes of national +beneficence in cooeperation with others, they have sustained them with +unselfish liberality, without regard to returns of sectarian advantage. +The results of their labor are largely to be traced in the upbuilding of +other sects. Their specialty in evangelization has been that of the +religious educators of the nation. They have been preeminently the +builders of colleges and theological seminaries. To them, also, belongs +the leadership in religious journalism. Not only the journals of their +own sect and the undenominational journals, but also to a notable extent +the religious journals of other denominations, have depended for their +efficiency on men bred in the discipline of Congregationalism. + +It is no just reproach to the Episcopalians that they were tardy in +entering the field of home missions. When we remember that it is only +since 1811 that they have emerged from numerical insignificance, we find +their contribution to the planting of the church in the new settlements +to be a highly honorable one. By a suicidal compact the guileless +Evangelical party agreed, in 1835, to take direction of the foreign +missions of the church, and leave the home field under the direction of +the aggressive High-church party. It surrendered its part in the future +of the church, and determined the type of Episcopalianism that was to be +planted in the West.[333:1] Entering thus late into the work, and that +with stinted resources, the Episcopal Church wholly missed the +apostolic glory of not building on other men's foundations. Coming with +the highest pretensions to exclusive authority, its work was very +largely a work of proselyting from other Christian sects. But this work +was prosperously carried on; and although not in itself a work of the +highest dignity, and although the methods of it often bore a painfully +schismatic character, there is little room for doubt that the results of +it have enriched and strengthened the common Christianity of America. +Its specialties in the planting work have been the setting of a worthy +example of dignity and simplicity in the conduct of divine worship, and +in general of efficiency in the administration of a parish, and, above +all, the successful handling of the immensely difficult duties imposed +upon Christian congregations in great cities, where the Episcopal Church +has its chief strength and its most effective work. + +One must needs ascend to a certain altitude above the common level in +order to discern a substantial resultant unity of movement in the +strenuous rivalries and even antagonisms of the many sects of the one +church of Christ in America in that critical quarter-century from the +year 1835 to the outbreak of the Civil War, in which the work of the +church was suddenly expanded by the addition of a whole empire of +territory on the west, and the bringing in of a whole empire of alien +population from the east, and when no one of the Christian forces of the +nation could be spared from the field. The unity is very real, and is +visible enough, doubtless, from "the circle of the heavens." The sharers +in the toil and conflict and the near spectators are not well placed to +observe it. It will be for historians in some later century to study it +in a truer perspective. + + * * * * * + +It is not only as falling within this period of immigration, but as +being largely dependent on its accessions from foreign lands, that the +growth of Mormonism is entitled to mention in this chapter. In its +origin Mormonism is distinctly American--a system of gross, palpable +imposture contrived by a disreputable adventurer, Joe Smith, with the +aid of three confederates, who afterward confessed the fraud and perjury +of which they had been guilty. It is a shame to human nature that the +silly lies put forth by this precious gang should have found believers. +But the solemn pretensions to divine revelation, mixed with elements +borrowed from the prevalent revivalism, and from the immediate adventism +which so easily captivates excitable imaginations, drew a number of +honest dupes into the train of the knavish leaders, and made possible +the pitiable history which followed. The chief recruiting-grounds for +the new religion were not in America, but in the manufacturing and +mining regions of Great Britain, and in some of the countries, +especially the Scandinavian countries, of continental Europe. The able +handling of an emigration fund, and the dexterous combination of appeals +to many passions and interests at once, have availed to draw together in +the State of Utah and neighboring regions a body of fanatics formidable +to the Republic, not by their number, for they count only about one +hundred and fifty thousand, but by the solidity with which they are +compacted into a political, economical, religious, and, at need, +military community, handled at will by unscrupulous chiefs. It is only +incidentally that the strange story of the Mormons, a story singularly +dramatic and sometimes tragic, is connected with the history of American +Christianity.[335:1] + +To this same period belongs the beginning of the immigration of the +Chinese, which, like that of the Mormons, becomes by and by important to +our subject as furnishing occasion for active and fruitful missionary +labors. + +In the year 1843 culminated the panic agitation of Millerism. From the +year 1831 an honest Vermont farmer named William Miller had been urging +upon the public, in pamphlets and lectures, his views of the approaching +advent of Christ to judgment and the destruction of the world. He had +figured it out on the basis of prophecies in Daniel and the Revelation, +and the great event was set down for April 23, 1843. As the date drew +near the excitement of many became intense. Great meetings were held, in +the open air or in tents, of those who wished to be found waiting for +the Lord. Some nobly proved their sincerity by the surrender of their +property for the support of their poorer brethren until the end should +come. The awful day was awaited with glowing rapture of hope, or by some +with terror. When it dawned there was eager gazing upon the clouds of +heaven to descry the sign of the Son of man. And when the day had passed +without event there were various revulsions of feeling. The prophets set +themselves to going over their figures and fixing new dates; earnest +believers, sobered by the failure of their pious expectations, held +firmly to the substance of their faith and hope, while no longer +attempting to "know times and seasons, which the Father hath put within +his own power"; weak minds made shipwreck of faith; and scoffers cried +in derision, "Where is the promise of his coming?" A monument of this +honest delusion still exists in the not very considerable sect of +Adventists, with its subdivisions; but sympathizers with their general +scheme of prophetical interpretation are to be found among the most +earnest and faithful members of other churches. + +Such has been the progress of Scriptural knowledge since the days when +Farmer Miller went to work with his arithmetic and slate upon the +strange symbols and enigmatic figures of the Old and New Testament +Apocalypses, that plain Christians everywhere have now the means of +knowing that the lines of calculation along which good people were led +into delusion a half-century ago started from utterly fallacious +premises. It is to the fidelity of critical scholars that we owe it that +hereafter, except among the ignorant and unintelligent, these two books, +now clearly understood, will not again be used to minister to the panic +of a Millerite craze, nor to furnish vituperative epithets for +antipopery agitators. + +To this period also must be referred the rise of that system of +necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other +countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to +constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what +in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by +the name of witchcraft, we find the beginning of so-called +"spiritualism" in the "Rochester rappings," produced, to the wonder of +many witnesses, by "the Fox girls" in 1849. How the rappings and other +sensible phenomena were produced was a curious question, but not +important; the main question was, Did they convey communications from +the spirits of the dead, as the young women alleged, and as many persons +believed (so they thought) from demonstrative evidence? The mere +suggestion of the possibility of this of course awakened an inquisitive +and eager interest everywhere. It became the subject of universal +discussion and experiment in society. There was demand for other +"mediums" to satisfy curiosity or aid investigation; and the demand at +once produced a copious supply. The business of medium became a regular +profession, opening a career especially to enterprising women. They +began to draw together believers and doubters into "circles" and +"seances," and to organize permanent associations. At the end of ten +years the "Spiritual Register" for 1859, boasting great things, +estimated the actual spiritualists in America at 1,500,000, besides +4,000,000 more partly converted. The latest census gives the total +membership of their associations as 45,030. But this moderate figure +should not be taken as the measure of the influence of their leading +tenet. There are not a few honest Christians who are convinced that +communications do sometimes take place between the dead and the living; +there are a great multitude who are disposed, in a vague way, to think +there must be something in it. But there are few even of the earnest +devotees of the spiritualist cult who will deny that the whole business +is infested with fraud, whether of dishonest mediums or of lying +spirits. Of late years the general public has come into possession of +material for independent judgment on this point. An earnest +spiritualist, a man of wealth, named Seybert, dying, left to the +University of Pennsylvania a legacy of sixty thousand dollars, on +condition that the university should appoint a commission to investigate +the claims of spiritualism. A commission was appointed which left +nothing to be desired in point of ability, integrity, and impartiality. +Under the presidency of the renowned Professor Joseph Leidy, and with +the aid and advice of leading believers in spiritualism, they made a +long, patient, faithful investigation, the processes and results of +which are published in a most amusing little volume.[338:1] The gist of +their report may be briefly summed up. Every case of alleged +communication from the world of departed spirits that was investigated +by the commission (and they were guided in their selection of cases by +the advice of eminent and respectable believers in spiritualism) was +discovered and demonstrated to be a case of gross, willful attempted +fraud. The evidence is strong that the organized system of spiritualism +in America, with its associations and lyceums and annual camp-meetings, +and its itinerancy of mediums and trance speakers, is a system of mere +imposture. In the honest simplicity of many of its followers, and in the +wicked mendacity of its leaders, it seems to be on a par with the other +American contribution to the religions of the world, Mormonism. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[316:1] For condensed statistics of American immigration, see +"Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th ed., s. vv. "Emigration" and "United +States." For the facts concerning the Roman Empire one naturally has +recourse to Gibbon. From the indications there given we do not get the +impression that in the three centuries of the struggle of the empire +against the barbarians there was ever such a thirty years' flood of +invasion as the immigration into the United States from 1840 to 1869. +The entrance into the Roman Empire was indeed largely in the form of +armed invasion; but the most destructive influence of the barbarians was +when they were admitted as friends and naturalized as citizens. See +"Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xx., pp. 779, 780. + +[318:1] Jacobs, "The Lutherans," p. 446. + +[321:1] Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholics," p. 375. The atrocity of +such a plot seems incredible. We should have classed it at once with the +Maria Monk story, and other fabulous horrors of Dr. Brownlee's +Protestant Society, but that we find it in the sober and dispassionate +pages of Bishop O'Gorman's History, which is derived from original +sources of information. If anything could have justified the animosity +of the "native Americans" (who, by the way, were widely suspected to be, +in large proportion, native Ulstermen) it would have been the finding of +evidence of such facts as this which Bishop O'Gorman has disclosed. + +[321:2] The subject is reviewed in detail, from opposite points of view, +by Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 489-500, and by Dr. Daniel Dorchester, +"Christianity in the United States," pp. 618-621. One of the most recent +estimates is that presented to the Catholic Congress at Chicago, in +1893, in a remarkable speech by Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans. +Speaking of "the losses sustained by the church in this country, placed +by a conservative estimate at twenty millions of people, he laid the +responsibility for this upon neglect of immigration and colonization, +i.e., neglect of the rural population. From this results a long train of +losses." He added: "When I see how largely Catholicity is represented +among our hoodlum element, I feel in no spread-eagle mood. When I note +how few Catholics are engaged in honestly tilling the honest soil, and +how many Catholics are engaged in the liquor traffic, I cannot talk +buncombe to anybody. When I reflect that out of the 70,000,000 of this +nation we number only 9,000,000, and that out of that 9,000,000 so large +a proportion is made up of poor factory hands, poor mill and shop and +mine and railroad employees, poor government clerks, I still fail to +find material for buncombe or spread-eagle or taffy-giving. And who can +look at our past history and feel proud of our present status?" He +advocated as a remedy for this present state of things a movement toward +colonization, with especial attention to extension of educational +advantages for rural Catholics, and instruction of urban Catholics in +the advantages of rural life. "For so long as the rural South, the +pastoral West, the agricultural East, the farming Middle States, remain +solidly Protestant, as they now are, so long will this nation, this +government, this whole people, remain solidly Protestant" ("The World's +Parliament of Religions," pp. 1414, 1415). + +It is a fact not easy to be accounted for that the statistics of no +Christian communion in America are so defective, uncertain, and +generally unsatisfactory as those of the most solidly organized and +completely systematized of them all, the Roman Catholic Church. + +[325:1] "Parliament of Religions," p. 1417. An obvious verbal misprint +is corrected in the quotation. + +[327:1] Bishop O'Gorman, pp. 439, 440. James Parton, in the "Atlantic +Monthly," April and May, 1868. So lately as the year 1869 a long list of +volumes of this scandalous rubbish continued to be offered to the +public, under the indorsement of eminent names, by the "American and +Foreign Christian Union," until the society was driven by public +exposure into withdrawing them from sale. See "The Literature of the +Coming Controversy," in "Putnam's Magazine" for January, 1869. + +[331:1] Speech of Mr. M. T. Elder, of New Orleans, in the Catholic +Congress at Chicago, 1893, quoted above, p. 322, _note_. + +[333:1] Tiffany, "Protestant Episcopal Church," p. 459. + +[335:1] Carroll, "Religious Forces of the United States," pp. 165-174; +Bishop Tuttle, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," pp. 1575-1581; Professor +John Fraser, in "Encyclopaedia Britannica," vol. xvi., pp. 825-828; +Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," pp. 538-646. + +[338:1] "Report of the Seybert Commission," Philadelphia, Lippincott. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +THE CIVIL WAR--ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES. + + +It has been observed that for nearly half a generation after the +reaction began from the fervid excitement of the Millerite agitation no +season of general revival was known in the American church. + +These were years of immense material prosperity, "the golden age of our +history."[340:1] The wealth of the nation in that time far more than +doubled; its railroad mileage more than threefolded; population moved +westward with rapidity and volume beyond precedent. Between 1845 and +1860 there were admitted seven new States and four organized +Territories. + +Withal it was a time of continually deepening intensity of political +agitation. The patchwork of compromises and settlements contrived by +make-shift politicians like Clay and Douglas would not hold; they tore +out, and the rent was made worse. Part of the Compromise of 1850, which +was to be something altogether sempiternal, was a Fugitive Slave Law so +studiously base and wicked in its provisions as to stir the indignation +of just and generous men whenever it was enforced, and to instruct and +strengthen and consolidate an intelligent and conscientious opposition +to slavery as not a century of antislavery lecturing and pamphleteering +could have done. Four years later the sagacious Stephen Douglas +introduced into Congress his ingenious permanent pacification scheme for +taking the slavery question "out of politics" by perfidiously repealing +the act under which the western Territories had for the third part of a +century been pledged to freedom, and leaving the question of freedom or +slavery to be decided by the first settlers upon the soil. It was +understood on both sides that the effect of this measure would be to +turn over the soil of Kansas to slavery; and for a moment there was a +calm that did almost seem like peace. But the providential man for the +emergency, Eli Thayer, boldly accepted the challenge under all the +disadvantageous conditions, and appealed to the friends of freedom and +righteousness to stand by him in "the Kansas Crusade." The appeal was to +the same Christian sentiment which had just uttered its vain protest, +through the almost unanimous voice of the ministers of the gospel, +against the opening of the Territories to the possibility of slavery. It +was taken up in the solemn spirit of religious duty. None who were +present are likely to forget the scene when the emigrants from New Haven +assembled in the North Church to be sped on their way with prayer and +benediction; how the vast multitude were thrilled by the noble eloquence +of Beecher, and how money came out of pocket when it was proposed to +equip the colonists with arms for self-defense against the ferocity of +"border ruffians." There were scenes like this in many a church and +country prayer-meeting, where Christian hearts did not forget to pray +"for them in bonds, as bound with them." There took place such a +religious emigration as America had not known since the days of the +first colonists. They went forth singing the words of Whittier: + + We cross the prairies as of old + Our fathers crossed the sea, + To make the West, as they the East, + The empire of the free. + +Those were choice companies; it was said that in some of their +settlements every third man was a college graduate. Thus it was that, +not all at once, but after desperate tribulations, Kansas was saved for +freedom. It was the turning-point in the "irrepressible conflict." The +beam of the scales, which politicians had for forty years been trying to +hold level, dipped in favor of liberty and justice, and it was hopeless +thenceforth to restore the balance.[342:1] + +Neither of the two characteristics of this time, the abounding material +prosperity or the turbid political agitation, was favorable to that +fixed attention to spiritual themes which promotes the revival of +religion. But the conditions were about to be suddenly changed. + +Suddenly, in the fall of 1857, came a business revulsion. Hard times +followed. Men had leisure for thought and prayer, and anxieties that +they were fain to cast upon God, seeking help and direction. The happy +thought occurred to a good man, Jeremiah Lanphier, in the employ of the +old North Dutch Church in New York, to open a room in the "consistory +building" in Fulton Street as an oratory for the common prayer of so +many business men as might be disposed to gather there in the hour from +twelve to one o'clock, "with one accord to make their common +supplications." The invitation was responded to at first by hardly more +than "two or three." The number grew. The room overflowed. A second room +was opened, and then a third, in the same building, till all its walls +resounded with prayer and song. The example was followed until at one +time, in the spring of 1858, no fewer than twenty "daily union +prayer-meetings" were sustained in different parts of the city. Besides +these, there was preaching at unwonted times and places. Burton's +Theater, on Chambers Street, in the thick of the business houses, was +thronged with eager listeners to the rudimental truths of personal +religion, expounded and applied by great preachers. Everywhere the +cardinal topics of practical religious duty, repentance and Christian +faith, were themes of social conversation. All churches and ministers +were full of activity and hope. "They that feared the Lord spake often +one with another." + +What was true of New York was true, in its measure, of every city, +village, and hamlet in the land. It was the Lord's doing, marvelous in +men's eyes. There was no human leadership or concert of action in +bringing it about. It came. Not only were there no notable evangelists +traveling the country; even the pastors of churches did little more than +enter zealously into their happy duty in things made ready to their +hand. Elsewhere, as at New York, the work began with the spontaneous +gathering of private Christians, stirred by an unseen influence. Two +circumstances tended to promote the diffusion of the revival. The Young +Men's Christian Association, then a recent but rapidly spreading +institution, furnished a natural center in each considerable town for +mutual consultation and mutual incitement among young men of various +sects. For this was another trait of the revival, that it went forward +as a tide movement of the whole church, in disregard of the +dividing-lines of sect. I know not what Christian communion, if any, was +unaffected by it. The other favorable circumstance was the business +interest taken in the revival by the secular press. Up to this time the +church had been little accustomed to look for cooeperation to the +newspaper, unless it was the religious weekly. But at this time that was +fulfilled which was spoken of the prophet, that "holiness to the Lord" +should be written upon the trains of commerce and upon all secular +things. The sensation head-lines in enterprising journals proclaimed +"Revival News," and smart reporters were detailed to the prayer-meeting +or the sermon, as having greater popular interest, for the time, than +the criminal trial or the political debate. Such papers as the "Tribune" +and the "Herald," laying on men's breakfast-tables and counting-room +desks the latest pungent word from the noon prayer-meeting or the +evening sermon, did the work of many tract societies. + +As the immediate result of the revival of 1857-58 it has been estimated +that one million of members were added to the fellowship of the +churches. But the ulterior result was greater. This revival was the +introduction to a new era of the nation's spiritual life. It was the +training-school for a force of lay evangelists for future work, eminent +among whom is the name of Dwight Moody. And, like the Great Awakening of +1740, it was the providential preparation of the American church for an +immediately impending peril the gravity of which there were none at the +time far-sighted enough to predict. Looking backward, it is instructive +for us to raise the question how the church would have passed through +the decade of the sixties without the spiritual reinforcement that came +to it amid the pentecostal scenes of 1857 and 1858. + +And yet there were those among the old men who were ready to weep as +they compared the building of the Lord's house with what they had known +in their younger days: no sustained enforcement on the mind and +conscience of alarming and heart-searching doctrines; no "protracted +meetings" in which from day to day the warnings and invitations of the +gospel were set forth before the hesitating mind; in the converts no +severe and thorough "law-work," from the agonizing throes of which the +soul was with no brief travail born to newness of life; but the free +invitation, the ready and glad acceptance, the prompt enrollment on the +Lord's side. Did not these things betoken a superficial piety, springing +up like seed in the thin soil of rocky places? It was a question for +later years to answer, and perhaps we have not the whole of the answer +yet. Certainly the work was not as in the days of Edwards and Brainerd, +nor as in the days of Nettleton and Finney; was it not, perhaps, more +like the work in the days of Barnabas and Paul and Peter? + + * * * * * + +It does not appear that the spiritual quickening of 1857 had any effect +in allaying the sharp controversy between northern and southern +Christians on the subject of slavery. Perhaps it may have deepened and +intensified it. The "southern apostasy," from principles universally +accepted in 1818, had become complete and (so far as any utterance was +permitted to reach the public) unanimous. The southern Methodists and +the southern Baptists had, a dozen years before, relieved themselves +from liability to rebuke, whether express or implied, from their +northern brethren for complicity with the crimes involved in slavery, by +seceding from fellowship. Into the councils of the Episcopalians and the +Catholics this great question of public morality was never allowed to +enter. The Presbyterians were divided into two bodies, each having its +northern and its southern presbyteries; and the course of events in +these two bodies may be taken as an indication of the drift of opinion +and feeling. The Old-School body, having a strong southern element, +remained silent, notwithstanding the open nullification of its +declaration of 1818 by the presbytery of Harmony, S. C., resolving that +"the existence of slavery is not opposed to the will of God," and the +synod of Virginia declaring that "the General Assembly had no right to +declare that relation sinful which Christ and his apostles teach to be +consistent with the most unquestionable piety." The New-School body, +patient and considerate toward its southern presbyteries, did not fail, +nevertheless, to reassert the principles of righteousness, and in 1850 +it declared slave-holding to be _prima facie_ a subject of the +discipline of the church. In 1853 it called upon its southern +presbyteries to report what had been done in the case. One of them +replied defiantly that its ministers and church-members were +slave-holders by choice and on principle. When the General Assembly +condemned this utterance, the entire southern part of the church seceded +and set up a separate jurisdiction.[346:1] + +There seems no reason to doubt the entire sincerity with which the +southern church, in all its sects, had consecrated itself with religious +devotion to the maintenance of that horrible and inhuman form of slavery +which had drawn upon itself the condemnation of the civilized world. The +earnest antislavery convictions which had characterized it only +twenty-five years before, violently suppressed from utterance, seem to +have perished by suffocation. The common sentiment of southern +Christianity was expressed in that serious declaration of the Southern +Presbyterian Church, during the war, of its "deep conviction of the +divine appointment of domestic servitude," and of the "peculiar mission +of the southern church to conserve the institution of slavery."[346:2] + +At the North, on the other hand, with larger liberty, there was wider +diversity of opinion. In general, the effect of continued discussion, of +larger knowledge of facts, and of the enforcement on the common +conscience, by the course of public events, of a sense of responsibility +and duty in the matter, had been to make more intelligent, sober, and +discriminating, and therefore more strong and steadfast, the resolution +to keep clear of all complicity with slavery. There were few to assume +the defense of that odious system, though there were some. There were +many to object to scores of objectionable things in the conduct of +abolitionists. And there were a very great number of honest, +conscientious men who were appalled as they looked forward to the boldly +threatened consequences of even the mildest action in opposition to +slavery--the rending of the church, the ruin of the country, the horrors +of civil war, and its uncertain event, issuing perhaps in the wider +extension and firmer establishment of slavery itself. It was an immense +power that the bold, resolute, rule-or-ruin supporters of the divine +right of slavery held over the Christian public of the whole country, so +long as they could keep these threats suspended in the air. It seemed to +hold in the balance against a simple demand to execute righteousness +toward a poor, oppressed, and helpless race, immense interests of +patriotism, of humanity, of the kingdom of God itself. Presently the +time came when these threats could no longer be kept aloft. The +compliance demanded was clearly, decisively refused. The threats must +either be executed or must fall to the ground amid general derision. But +the moment that the threat was put in execution its power as a threat +had ceased. With the first stroke against the life of the nation all +great and noble motives, instead of being balanced against each other, +were drawing together in the same direction. It ought not to have been +a surprise to the religious leaders of disunion, ecclesiastical and +political, to find that those who had most anxiously deprecated the +attack upon the government should be among the most earnest and resolute +to repel the attack when made. + +No man can read the history of the American church in the Civil War +intelligently who does not apprehend, however great the effort, that the +Christian people of the South did really and sincerely believe +themselves to be commissioned by the providence of God to "conserve the +institution of slavery" as an institution of "divine appointment." +Strange as the conviction seems, it is sure that the conviction of +conscience in the southern army that it was right in waging war against +the government of the country was as clear as the conviction, on the +other side, of the duty of defending the government. The southern +regiments, like the northern, were sent forth with prayer and +benediction, and their camps, as well as those of their adversaries, +were often the seats of earnest religious life.[348:1] + +At the South the entire able-bodied population was soon called into +military service, so that almost the whole church was in the army. At +the North the churches at home hardly seemed diminished by the myriads +sent to the field. It was amazing to see the charities and missions of +the churches sustained with almost undiminished supplies, while the +great enterprises of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions were set on +foot and magnificently carried forward, for the physical, social, and +spiritual good of the soldiers. Never was the gift of giving so +abundantly bestowed on the church as in these stormy times. There was a +feverish eagerness of life in all ways; if there was a too eager haste +to make money among those that could be spared for business, there was a +generous readiness in bestowing it. The little faith that expected to +cancel and retrench, especially in foreign missions, in which it took +sometimes three dollars in the collection to put one dollar into the +work, was rebuked by the rising of the church to the height of the +exigency. + +One religious lesson that was learned as never before, on both sides of +the conflict, was the lesson of Christian fellowship as against the +prevailing folly of sectarian divisions, emulations, and jealousies. +There were great drawings in this direction in the early days of the +war, when men of the most unlike antecedents and associations gathered +on the same platform, intent on the same work, and mutual aversions and +partisan antagonisms melted away in the fervent heat of a common +religious patriotism. But the lesson which was commended at home was +enforced in the camp and the regiment by constraint of circumstances. +The army chaplain, however one-sided he might have been in his parish, +had to be on all sides with his kindly sympathy as soon as he joined his +regiment. He learned in a right apostolic sense to become all things to +all men, and, returning home, he did not forget the lesson. The delight +of a fellowship truly catholic in the one work of Christ, once tasted, +was not easily foregone. Already the current, perplexed with eddies, had +begun to set in the direction of Christian unity. How much the common +labors of Christian men and women and Christian ministers of every +different name, through the five years of bloody strife, contributed to +swell and speed the current, no one can measure. + +According to a well-known law of the kingdom of heaven, the intense +experiences of the war, both in the army and out of it, left no man just +as he was before. To "them that were exercised thereby" they brought +great promotion in the service of the King. The cases are not few nor +inconspicuous of men coming forth from the temptations and the +discipline of the military service every way stronger and better +Christians than they entered it. The whole church gained higher +conceptions of the joy and glory of self-sacrifice, and deeper and more +vivid insight into the significance of vicarious suffering and death. +The war was a rude school of theology, but it taught some things well. +The church had need of all that it could learn, in preparation for the +tasks and trials that were before it. + +There were those, on the other hand, who emerged from the military +service depraved and brutalized; and those who, in the rush of business +incidental to the war, were not trained to self-sacrifice and duty, but +habituated to the seeking of selfish interests in the midst of the +public peril and affliction. We delight in the evidences that these +cases were a small proportion of the whole. But even a small percentage +of so many hundreds of thousands mounts up to a formidable total. The +early years of the peace were so marked by crimes of violence that a +frequent heading in the daily newspapers was "The Carnival of Crime." +Prosperity, or the semblance of it, came in like a sudden flood. +Immigration of an improved character poured into the country in greater +volume than ever. Multitudes made haste to be rich, and fell into +temptations and snares. The perilous era of enormous fortunes began. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[340:1] E. B. Andrews, "History of the United States," vol. ii., p. 66. + +[342:1] Read "The Kansas Crusade," by Eli Thayer, Harpers, New York, +1889. It is lively reading, and indispensable to a full understanding of +this part of the national history. + +[346:1] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 135. + +[346:2] "Narrative of the State of Religion" of the Southern General +Assembly of 1864. + +[348:1] For interesting illustrations of this, see Alexander, "The +Methodists, South," pp. 71-75. The history of the religious life of the +northern army is superabundant and everywhere accessible. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +AFTER THE WAR. + + +When the five years of rending and tearing had passed, in which slavery +was dispossessed of its hold upon the nation, there was much to be done +in reconstructing and readjusting the religious institutions of the +country. + +Throughout the seceding States buildings and endowments for religious +uses had suffered in the general waste and destruction of property. +Colleges and seminaries, in many instances, had seen their entire +resources swept away through investment in the hopeless promises of the +defeated government. Churches, boards, and like associations were widely +disorganized through the vicissitudes of military occupation and the +protracted absence or the death of men of experience and capacity. + +The effect of the war upon denominational organizations had been +various. There was no sect of all the church the members and ministers +of which had not felt the sweep of the currents of popular opinion all +about them. But the course of events in each denomination was in some +measure illustrative of the character of its polity. + +In the Roman Catholic Church the antagonisms of the conflict were as +keenly felt as anywhere. Archbishop Hughes of New York, who, with Henry +Ward Beecher and Bishop McIlvaine of Ohio, accepted a political mission +from President Lincoln, was not more distinctly a Union man than Bishop +Lynch of Charleston was a secessionist. But the firm texture of the +hierarchical organization, held steadily in place by a central authority +outside of the national boundaries, prevented any organic rupture. The +Catholic Church in America was eminently fortunate at one point: the +famous bull _Quanta Cura_, with its appended "Syllabus" of damnable +errors, in which almost all the essential characteristics of the +institutions of the American Republic are anathematized, was fulminated +in 1864, when people in the United States had little time to think of +ecclesiastical events taking place at such a distance. If this +extraordinary document had been first published in a time of peace, and +freely discussed in the newspapers of the time, it could hardly have +failed to inflict the most serious embarrassment on the interests of +Catholicism in America. Even now it keeps the Catholic clergy in a +constantly explanatory attitude to show that the Syllabus does not +really mean what to the ordinary reader it unmistakably seems to mean; +and the work of explanation is made the more necessary and the more +difficult by the decree of papal infallibility, which followed the +Syllabus after a few years. + +Simply on the ground of a _de facto_ political independence, the +southern dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church, following the +principles and precedents of 1789, organized themselves into a "Church +in the Confederate States." One of the southern bishops, Polk, of +Louisiana, accepted a commission of major-general in the Confederate +army, and relieved his brethren of any disciplinary questions that might +have arisen in consequence by dying on the field from a cannon-shot. +With admirable tact and good temper, the "Church in the United States" +managed to ignore the existence of any secession; and when the alleged +_de facto_ independence ceased, the seceding bishops and their dioceses +dropped quietly back into place without leaving a trace of the secession +upon the record. + +The southern organizations of the Methodists and Baptists were of twenty +years' standing at the close of the war in 1865. The war had abolished +the original cause of these divisions, but it had substituted others +quite as serious. The exasperations of the war, and the still more +acrimonious exasperations of the period of the political reconstruction +and of the organization of northern missions at the South, gendered +strifes that still delay the reintegration which is so visibly future of +both of these divided denominations. + +At the beginning of the war one of the most important of the +denominations that still retained large northern and southern +memberships in the same fellowship was the Old-School Presbyterian +Church; and no national sect had made larger concessions to avert a +breach of unity. When the General Assembly met at Philadelphia in May, +1861, amid the intense excitements of the opening war, it was still the +hope of the habitual leaders and managers of the Assembly to avert a +division by holding back that body from any expression of sentiment on +the question on which the minds of Christians were stirred at that time +with a profound and most religious fervor. But the Assembly took the +matter out of the hands of its leaders, and by a great majority, in the +words of a solemn and temperate resolution drawn by the venerable and +conservative Dr. Gardiner Spring, declared its loyalty to the government +and constitution of the country. With expressions of horror at the +sacrilege of taking the church into the domain of politics, southern +presbyteries one after another renounced the jurisdiction of the General +Assembly that could be guilty of so shocking a profanation, and, uniting +in a General Assembly of their own, proceeded with great promptitude to +make equally emphatic deliverances on the opposite side of the same +political question.[354:1] But nice logical consistency and accurate +working within the lines of a church theory were more than could +reasonably be expected of a people in so pitiable a plight. The +difference on the subject of the right function of the church continued +to be held as the ground for continuing the separation from the General +Assembly after the alleged ground in political geography had ceased to +be valid; the working motive for it was more obvious in the unfraternal +and almost wantonly exasperating course of the national General Assembly +during the war; but the best justification for it is to be found in the +effective and useful working of the Southern Presbyterian Church. +Considering the impoverishment and desolation of the southern country, +the record of useful and self-denying work accomplished by this body, +not only at home, but in foreign fields, is, from its beginning, an +immensely honorable one. + +Another occasion of reconstruction was the strong disposition of the +liberated negroes to withdraw themselves from the tutelage of the +churches in which they had been held, in the days of slavery, in a +lower-caste relation. The eager entrance of the northern churches upon +mission work among the blacks, to which access had long been barred by +atrocious laws and by the savage fury of mobs, tended to promote this +change. The multiplication and growth of organized negro denominations +is a characteristic of the period after the war. There is reason to hope +that the change may by and by, with the advance of education and moral +training among this people, inure to their spiritual advantage. There is +equal reason to fear that at present, in many cases, it works to their +serious detriment. + +The effect of the war was not exclusively divisive. In two instances, +at least, it had the effect of healing old schisms. The southern +secession from the New-School Presbyterian Church, which had come away +in 1858 on the slavery issue, found itself in 1861 side by side with the +southern secession from the Old School, and in full agreement with it in +morals and politics. The two bodies were not long in finding that the +doctrinal differences which a quarter-century before had seemed so +insuperable were, after all, no serious hindrance to their coming +together. + +Even after the war was over, its healing power was felt, this time at +the North. There was a honeycomb for Samson in the carcass of the +monster. The two great Presbyterian sects at the North had found a +common comfort in their relief from the perpetual festering irritation +of the slavery question; they had softened toward each other in the glow +of a religious patriotism; they had forgotten old antagonisms in common +labors; and new issues had obscured the tenuous doctrinal disputes that +had agitated the continent in 1837. Both parties grew tired and ashamed +of the long and sometimes ill-natured quarrel. With such a disposition +on both sides, terms of agreement could not fail in time to be found. +For substance, the basis of reunion was this: that the New-School church +should yield the point of organization, and the Old-School church should +yield the point of doctrine; the New-School men should sustain the +Old-School boards, and the Old-School men should tolerate the New-School +heresies. The consolidation of the two sects into one powerful +organization was consummated at Pittsburg, November 12, 1869, with every +demonstration of joy and devout thanksgiving. + +One important denomination, the Congregationalists, had had the +distinguished advantage, through all these turbulent years, of having no +southern membership. Out of all proportion to its numerical strength was +the part which it took in those missions to the neglected populations +of the southern country into which the various denominations, both of +the South and of the North, entered with generous emulation while yet +the war was still waging. Always leaders in advanced education, they not +only, acting through the American Missionary Association, provided for +primary and secondary schools for the negroes, but promoted the +foundation of institutions of higher, and even of the highest, grade at +Hampton, at Atlanta, at Tuskegee, at New Orleans, at Nashville, and at +Washington. Many noble lives have been consecrated to this most +Christlike work of lifting up the depressed. None will grudge a word of +exceptional eulogy to the memory of that splendid character, General +Samuel C. Armstrong, son of one of the early missionaries to the +Sandwich Islands, who poured his inspiring soul into the building up of +the "Normal Institute" at Hampton, Va., thus not only rearing a visible +monument of his labor in the enduring buildings of that great and useful +institution, but also establishing his memory, for as long as human +gratitude can endure, in the hearts of hundreds of young men and young +women, negro and Indian, whose lives are the better and nobler for their +having known him as their teacher. + +It cannot be justly claimed for the Congregationalists of the present +day that they have lost nothing of that corporate unselfishness, seeking +no sectarian aggrandizement, but only God's reign and righteousness, +which had been the glory of their fathers. The studious efforts that +have been made to cultivate among them a sectarian spirit, as if this +were one of the Christian virtues, have not been fruitless. Nevertheless +it may be seen that their work of education at the South has been +conducted in no narrow spirit. The extending of their sect over new +territory has been a most trivial and unimportant result of their +widespread and efficient work. A far greater result has been the +promotion among the colored people of a better education, a higher +standard of morality, and an enlightened piety, through the influence of +the graduates of these institutions, not only as pastors and as +teachers, but in all sorts of trades and professions and as mothers of +families. + +This work of the Congregationalists is entitled to mention, not as +exceptional, but only as eminent among like enterprises, in which few of +the leading sects have failed to be represented. Extravagant +expectations were at first entertained of immediate results in bringing +the long-depressed race up to the common plane of civilization. But it +cannot be said that reasonable and intelligent expectations have been +disappointed. Experience has taught much as to the best conduct of such +missions. The gift of a fund of a million dollars by the late John F. +Slater, of Norwich, has through wise management conduced to this end. It +has encouraged in the foremost institutions the combination of training +to skilled productive labor with education in literature and science. + +The inauguration of these systems of religious education at the South +was the most conspicuously important of the immediate sequels of the +Civil War. But this time was a time of great expansion of the activities +of the church in all directions. The influx of immigration, temporarily +checked by the hard times of 1857 and by the five years of war, came in +again in such floods as never before.[357:1] The foreign immigration is +always attended by a westward movement of the already settled +population. The field of home missions became greater and more exacting +than ever. The zeal of the church, educated during the war to higher +ideas of self-sacrifice, rose to the occasion. The average yearly +receipts of the various Protestant home missionary societies, which in +the decade 1850-59 had been $808,000, rose in the next decade to more +than $2,000,000, in the next to nearly $3,000,000, and for the seven +years 1881-87 to $4,000,000.[358:1] + +In the perils of abounding wealth by which the church after the war was +beset, it was divine fatherly kindness that opened before it new and +enlarged facilities of service to the kingdom of heaven among foreign +nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from +America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by +the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, +with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public +obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its +"bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially +when the dollar in a man's pocket shrank to a half or a third of its +value in the world's currency, it seemed as if the work of foreign +missions would have to be turned over to Christians in lands less +burdened with accumulated disadvantages. But here again the grandeur of +the burden gave an inspiration of strength to the burden-bearer. From +1840 to 1849 the average yearly receipts of the various foreign +missionary societies of the Protestant churches of the country had been +a little more than a half-million. In the decade 1850-59 they had risen +to $850,000; for the years of distress, 1860-69, they exceeded +$1,300,000; for the eleven years 1870-80 the annual receipts in this +behalf were $2,200,000; and in the seven years 1881-87 they were +$3,000,000.[359:1] + +We have seen how, only forty years before the return of peace, in the +days of a humble equality in moderate estates, ardent souls exulted +together in the inauguration of the era of democracy in beneficence, +when every humblest giver might, through association and organization, +have part in magnificent enterprises of Christian charity such as had +theretofore been possible "only to princes or to men of princely +possessions."[359:2] But with the return of civil peace we began to +recognize that among ourselves was growing up a class of "men of +princely possessions"--a class such as the American Republic never +before had known.[359:3] Among those whose fortunes were reckoned by +many millions or many tens of millions were men of sordid nature, whose +wealth, ignobly won, was selfishly hoarded, and to whose names, as to +that of the late Jay Gould, there is attached in the mind of the people +a distinct note of infamy. But this was not in general the character of +the American millionaire. There were those of nobler strain who felt a +responsibility commensurate with the great power conferred by great +riches, and held their wealth as in trust for mankind. Through the +fidelity of men of this sort it has come to pass that the era of great +fortunes in America has become conspicuous in the history of the whole +world as the era of magnificent donations to benevolent ends. Within a +few months of each other, from the little State of Connecticut, came the +fund of a million given by John F. Slater in his lifetime for the +benefit of the freedmen, the gift of a like sum for the like purpose +from Daniel Hand, and the legacy of a million and a half for foreign +missions from Deacon Otis of New London. Great gifts like these were +frequently directed to objects which could not easily have been attained +by the painful process of accumulating small donations. It was a period +not only of splendid gifts to existing institutions, but of foundations +for new universities, libraries, hospitals, and other institutions of +the highest public service, foundations without parallel in human +history for large munificence. To this period belong the beginnings of +the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital at Baltimore, the University +of Chicago, the Clarke University at Worcester, the Vanderbilt +University at Nashville, the Leland Stanford, Jr., University of +California, the Peabody and Enoch Pratt Libraries at Baltimore, the +Lenox Library at New York, the great endowed libraries of Chicago, the +Drexel Institute at Philadelphia, and the Armour Institute at Chicago. +These are some of the names that most readily occur of foundations due +mainly to individual liberality, set down at the risk of omitting others +with equal claim for mention. Not all of these are to be referred to a +religious spirit in the founders, but none of them can fail of a +Christian influence and result. They prepare a foothold for such a +forward stride of Christian civilization as our continent has never +before known. + +The sum of these gifts of millions, added to the great aggregates of +contribution to the national missionary boards and societies, falls far +short of the total contributions expended in cities, towns, and villages +for the building of churches and the maintenance of the countless +charities that cluster around them. The era following the war was +preeminently a "building era." Every one knows that religious devotion +is only one of the mingled motives that work together in such an +enterprise as the building of a church; but, after all deductions, the +voluntary gifts of Christian people for Christ's sake in the promotion +of such works, when added to the grand totals already referred to, would +make an amount that would overtax the ordinary imagination to conceive. + +And yet it is not certain that this period of immense gifts of money is +really a period of increased liberality in the church from the time, +thirty or forty years before, when a millionaire was a rarity to be +pointed out on the streets, and the possession of a hundred thousand +dollars gave one a place among "The Rich Men of New York." In 1850 the +total wealth of the United States was reported in the census as seven +billions of dollars. In 1870, after twenty years, it had more than +fourfolded, rising to thirty billions. Ten years later, according to the +census, it had sixfolded, rising to forty-three billions.[361:1] From +the point of view of One "sitting over against the treasury" it is not +likely that any subsequent period has equaled in its gifts that early +day when in New England the people "were wont to build a fine church as +soon as they had houses for themselves,"[361:2] and when the messengers +went from cabin to cabin to gather the gifts of "the college corn." + + * * * * * + +The greatest addition to the forces of the church in the period since +the war has come from deploying into the field hitherto unused +resources of personal service. The methods under which the personal +activity of private Christians has formerly been organized for service +have increased and multiplied, and old agencies have taken on new forms. + +The earliest and to this day the most extensive of the organizations for +utilizing the non-professional ministry in systematic religious labors +is the Sunday-school. The considerable development of this +instrumentality begins to be recognized after the Second Awakening in +the early years of the present century. The prevailing characteristic of +the American Sunday-school as distinguished from its British congener is +that it is commonly a part of the equipment of the local church for the +instruction of its own children, and incidentally one of the most +important resources for its attractive work toward those that are +without. But it is also recognized as one of the most flexible and +adaptable "arms of the service" for aggressive work, whether in great +cities or on the frontier. It was about the year 1825 that this work +began to be organized on a national scale. But it is since the war that +it has sprung into vastly greater efficiency. The agreement upon uniform +courses of biblical study, to be followed simultaneously by many +millions of pupils over the entire continent, has given a unity and +coherence before unknown to the Sunday-school system; and it has +resulted in extraordinary enterprise and activity on the part of +competent editors and publishers to provide apparatus for the thorough +study of the text, which bids fair in time to take away the reproach of +the term "Sunday-schoolish" as applied to superficial, ignorant, or +merely sentimental expositions of the Scriptures. The work of the +"Sunday-school Times," in bringing within the reach of teachers all over +the land the fruits of the world's best scholarship, is a signal fact +in history--the most conspicuous of a series of like facts. The +tendency, slow, of course, and partial, but powerful, is toward serious, +faithful study and teaching, in which "the mind of the Spirit" is sought +in the sacred text, with strenuous efforts of the teachable mind, with +all the aids that can be brought from whatever quarter. The +Sunday-school system, coextensive with Protestant Christianity in +America, and often the forerunner of church and ministry, and, to a less +extent and under more scrupulous control of clergy, adopted into the +Catholic Church, has become one of the distinctive features of American +Christianity. + +An outgrowth of the Sunday-school system, which, under the conduct of a +man of genius for organization, Dr. John H. Vincent, now a bishop of the +Methodist Church, has expanded to magnificent dimensions, is that which +is suggested by the name "Chautauqua." Beginning in the summer of 1874 +with a fortnight's meeting in a grove beside Chautauqua Lake for the +study of the methods of Sunday-school teaching, it led to the questions, +how to connect the Sunday-school more intimately with other departments +of the church and with other agencies in society; how to control in the +interest of religious culture the forces, social, commercial, +industrial, and educational, which, for good or evil, are affecting the +Sunday-school pupils every day of the week. Striking root at other +centers of assembly, east, west, and south, and combining its summer +lectures with an organized system of home studies extending through the +year, subject to written examinations, "Chautauqua," by the +comprehensive scope of its studies and by the great multitude of its +students, is entitled to be called, in no ignoble sense of the word, a +university.[363:1] A weighty and unimpeachable testimony to the power +and influence of the institution has been the recent organization of a +Catholic Chautauqua, under the conduct of leading scholars and +ecclesiastics of the Roman Church. + + * * * * * + +Another organization of the unpaid service of private Christians is the +Young Men's Christian Association. Beginning in London in 1844, it had +so far demonstrated its usefulness in 1851 as to attract favorable +attention from visitors to the first of the World's Fairs. In the end of +that year the Association in Boston was formed, and this was rapidly +followed by others in the principal cities. It met a growing exigency in +American society. In the organization of commerce and manufacture in +larger establishments than formerly, the apprenticeship system had +necessarily lapsed, and nothing had taken its place. Of old, young men +put to the learning of any business were "articled" or "indentured" as +apprentices to the head of the concern, who was placed _in loco +parentis_, being invested both with the authority and with the +responsibility of a father. Often the apprentices were received into the +house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance +it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the +old man's daughter and succeed to the business. After the employees of a +store came to be numbered by scores and the employees of a factory by +hundreds, the word "apprentice" became obsolete in the American +language. The employee was only a "hand," and there was danger that +employers would forget that he was also a heart and a soul. This was the +exigency that the Young Men's Christian Association came to supply. Men +of conscience among employers and corporations recognized their +opportunity and their duty. The new societies did not lack encouragement +and financial aid from those to whom the character of the young men was +not only a matter of Christian concern, but also a matter of business +interest. In every considerable town the Association organized itself, +and the work of equipment, and soon of building, went on apace. In 1887 +the Association buildings in the United States and Canada were valued at +three and a half millions. In 1896 there were in North America 1429 +Associations, with about a quarter of a million of members, employing +1251 paid officers, and holding buildings and other real estate to the +amount of nearly $20,000,000. + +The work has not been without its vicissitudes. The wonderful revival of +1857, preeminently a laymen's movement, in many instances found its +nidus in the rooms of the Associations; and their work was expanded and +invigorated as a result of the revival. In 1861 came on the war. It +broke up for the time the continental confederacy of Associations. Many +of the local Associations were dissolved by the enlistment of their +members. But out of the inspiring exigencies of the time grew up in the +heart of the Associations the organization and work of the Christian +Commission, cooeperating with the Sanitary Commission for the bodily and +spiritual comfort of the armies in the field. The two organizations +expended upward of eleven millions of dollars, the free gift of the +people at home. After the war the survivors of those who had enlisted +from the Associations came back to their home duties, in most cases, +better men for all good service in consequence of their experience of +military discipline. + + * * * * * + +A natural sequel to the organization and success of the Young Men's +Christian Association is the institution of the Young Women's Christian +Association, having like objects and methods in its proper sphere. This +institution, too, owes the reason of its existence to changed social +conditions. The plausible arguments of some earnest reformers in favor +of opening careers of independent self-support to women, and the +unquestionable and pathetic instances by which these arguments are +enforced, are liable to some most serious and weighty offsets. Doubtless +many and many a case of hardship has been relieved by the general +introduction of this reform. But the result has been the gathering in +large towns of populations of unmarried, self-supporting young women, +severed from home duties and influences, and, out of business hours, +under no effective restraints of rule. There is a rush from the country +into the city of applicants for employment, and wages sink to less than +a living rate. We are confronted with an artificial and perilous +condition for the church to deal with, especially in the largest cities. +And of the various instrumentalities to this end, the Young Women's +Christian Association is one of the most effective. + + * * * * * + +The development of organized activity among women has been a conspicuous +characteristic of this period. From the beginning of our churches the +charitable sewing-circle or "Dorcas Society" has been known as a center +both of prayer and of labor. But in this period the organization of +women for charitable service has been on a continental scale. + +In 1874, in an outburst of zeal, "women's crusades" were undertaken, +especially in some western towns, in which bands of singing and praying +women went in person to tippling-houses and even worse resorts, to +assail them, visibly and audibly, with these spiritual weapons. The +crusades, so long as they were a novelty, were not without result. +Spectacular prayers, offered with one eye on the heavens and the other +eye watching the impressions made on the human auditor, are not in vain; +they have their reward. But the really important result of the +"crusades" was the organization of the "Women's Christian Temperance +Union," which has extended in all directions to the utmost bounds of the +country, and has accomplished work of undoubted value, while attempting +other work the value of which is open to debate. + +The separate organization of women for the support and management of +missions began on an extensive scale, in 1868, with the Women's Board of +Missions, instituted in alliance with the American Board of +Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregationalist churches. +The example at once commended itself to the imitation of all, so that +all the principal mission boards of the Protestant churches are in +alliance with actively working women's boards. + +The training acquired in these and other organizations by many women of +exceptional taste and talent for the conduct of large affairs has tended +still further to widen the field of their activity. The ends of the +earth, as well as the dark places nearer home, have felt the salutary +results of it.[367:1] + +In this brief and most incomplete sketch of the origin of one of the +distinguishing features of contemporary Christianity--the application of +the systematized activity of private Christians--no mention has been +made of the corps of "colporteurs," or book-peddlers, employed by +religious publication societies, nor of the vastly useful work of +laymen employed as city missionaries, nor of the houses and orders of +sisters wholly devoted to pious and charitable work. Such work, though +the ceremony of ordination may have been omitted, is rather clerical or +professional than laical. It is on this account the better suited to the +genius of the Catholic Church, whose ages of experience in the conduct +of such organizations, and whose fine examples of economy and efficiency +in the use of them, have put all American Christendom under obligation. +Among Protestant sects the Lutherans, the Episcopalians, and the +Methodists have (after the Moravians) shown themselves readiest to +profit by the example. But a far more widely beneficent service than +that of all the nursing "orders" together, both Catholic and Protestant, +and one not less Christian, while it is characteristically American in +its method, is that of the annually increasing army of faithful women +professionally educated to the work of nursing, at a hundred hospitals, +and fulfilling their vocation individually and on business principles. +The education of nurses is a sequel of the war and one of the beneficent +fruits of it. + + * * * * * + +Not the least important item in the organization of lay activity is the +marvelously rapid growth of the "Young People's Society of Christian +Endeavor." In February, 1881, a pastor in Portland, Me., the Rev. +Francis E. Clark, organized into an association within his church a +number of young people pledged to certain rules of regular attendance +and participation in the association meetings and of cooeperation in +useful service. There seems to have been no particular originality in +the plan, but through some felicity in arrangement and opportuneness in +the time it caught like a forest fire, and in an amazingly short time +ran through the country and around the world. One wise precaution was +taken in the basis of the organization: it was provided that it should +not interfere with any member's fidelity to his church or his sect, but +rather promote it. Doubtless jealousy of its influence was thus in some +measure forestalled and averted. But in the rapid spread of the Society +those who were on guard for the interests of the several sects +recognized a danger in too free affiliations outside of sectarian lines, +and soon there were instituted, in like forms of rule, "Epworth Leagues" +for Methodists, "Westminster Leagues" for Presbyterians, "Luther +Leagues" for Lutherans, "St. Andrew's Brotherhoods" for Episcopalians, +"The Baptist Young People's Union," and yet others for yet other sects. +According to the latest reports, the total pledged membership of this +order of associated young disciples, in these various ramifications, is +about 4,500,000[369:1]--this in the United States alone. Of the +Christian Endeavor Societies still adhering to the old name and +constitution, there are in all the world 47,009, of which 11,119 are +"Junior Endeavor Societies." The total membership is 2,820,540.[369:2] + +Contemporary currents of theological thought, setting away from the +excessive individualism which has characterized the churches of the +Great Awakening, confirm the tendency of the Christian life toward a +vigorous and even absorbing external activity. The duty of the church to +human society is made a part of the required curriculum of study in +preparation for the ministry, in fully equipped theological seminaries. +If ever it has been a just reproach of the church that its frequenters +were so absorbed in the saving of their own souls that they forgot the +multitude about them, that reproach is fast passing away. "The +Institutional Church," as the clumsy phrase goes, cares for soul and +body, for family and municipal and national life. Its saving sacraments +are neither two nor seven, but seventy times seven. They include the +bath-tub as well as the font; the coffee-house and cook-shop as well as +the Holy Supper; the gymnasium as well as the prayer-meeting. The +"college settlement" plants colonies of the best life of the church in +regions which men of little faith are tempted to speak of as +"God-forsaken." The Salvation Army, with its noisy and eccentric ways, +and its effective discipline, and its most Christian principle of +setting every rescued man at work to aid in the rescue of others, is +welcomed by all orders of the church, and honored according to the +measure of its usefulness, and even of its faithful effort to be useful. + + * * * * * + +It is not to be supposed that this immense, unprecedented growth of +outward activity can have been gained without some corresponding loss. +The time is not long gone by, when the sustained contemplation of the +deep things of the cross, and the lofty things in the divine nature, and +the subtile and elusive facts concerning the human constitution and +character and the working of the human will, were eminently +characteristic of the religious life of the American church. In the +times when that life was stirred to its most strenuous activity, it was +marked by the vicissitude of prolonged passions of painful sensibility +at the consciousness of sin, and ecstasies of delight in the +contemplation of the infinity of God and the glory of the Saviour and +his salvation. Every one who is conversant with the religious biography +of the generations before our own, knows of the still hours and days set +apart for the severe inward scrutiny of motives and "frames" and the +grounds of one's hope. However truly the church of to-day may judge +that the piety of their fathers was disproportioned and morbidly +introspective and unduly concerned about one's own salvation, it is none +the less true that the reaction from its excesses is violent, and is +providing for itself a new reaction. "The contemplative orders," whether +among Catholics or Protestants, do not find the soil and climate of +America congenial. And yet there is a mission-field here for the mystic +and the quietist; and when the stir-about activity of our generation +suffers their calm voices to be heard, there are not a few to give ear. + + * * * * * + +An event of great historical importance, which cannot be determined to a +precise date, but which belongs more to this period than to any other, +is the loss of the Scotch and Puritan Sabbath, or, as many like to call +it, the American Sabbath. The law of the Westminster divines on this +subject, it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction from any +quarter, does not coincide in its language with the law of God as +expressed either in the Old Testament or in the New. The Westminster +rule requires, as if with a "Thus saith the Lord," that on the first day +of the week, instead of the seventh, men shall desist not only from +labor but from recreation, and "spend the whole time in the public and +private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up +in the works of necessity and mercy."[371:1] This interpretation and +expansion of the Fourth Commandment has never attained to more than a +sectarian and provincial authority; but the overmastering Puritan +influence, both of Virginia and of New England, combined with the +Scotch-Irish influence, made it for a long time dominant in America. +Even those who quite declined to admit the divine authority of the +glosses upon the commandment felt constrained to "submit to the +ordinances of man for the Lord's sake." But it was inevitable that with +the vast increase of the travel and sojourn of American Christians in +other lands of Christendom, and the multitudinous immigration into +America from other lands than Great Britain, the tradition from the +Westminster elders should come to be openly disputed within the church, +and should be disregarded even when not denied. It was not only +inevitable; it was a Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic +authority.[372:1] The five years of war, during which Christians of +various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday +laws were dumb "_inter arma_" not only in the field but among the home +churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and +to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was +inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence of +overstraining the law of God. From the Sunday of ascetic self-denial--"a +day for a man to afflict his soul"--there was a ready rush into utter +recklessness of the law and privilege of rest. In the church there was +wrought sore damage to weak consciences; men acted, not from intelligent +conviction, but from lack of conviction, and allowing themselves in +self-indulgences of the rightfulness of which they were dubious, they +"condemned themselves in that which they allowed." The consequence in +civil society was alike disastrous. Early legislation had not steered +clear of the error of attempting to enforce Sabbath-keeping as a +religious duty by civil penalties; and some relics of that mistake +remained, and still remain, on some of the statute-books. The just +protest against this wrong was, of course, undiscriminating, tending to +defeat the righteous and most salutary laws that aimed simply to secure +for the citizen the privilege of a weekly day of rest and to secure the +holiday thus ordained by law from being perverted into a nuisance. The +social change which is still in progress along these lines no wise +Christian patriot can contemplate with complacency. It threatens, when +complete, to deprive us of that universal quiet Sabbath rest which has +been one of the glories of American social life, and an important +element in its economic prosperity, and to give in place of it, to some, +no assurance of a Sabbath rest at all, to others, a Sabbath of revelry +and debauch. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[354:1] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," chap. xiii.; Johnson, "The +Southern Presbyterians," chap. v. + +[357:1] The immigration is thus given by decades, with an illustrative +diagram, by Dr. Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. 759: + + 1825-35 330,737 + 1835-45 707,770 + 1845-55 2,944,833 + 1855-65 1,578,483 + 1865-75 3,234,090 + 1875-85 4,061,278 + +[358:1] _Ibid._, p. 714. We have quoted in round numbers. The figures do +not include the large sums expended annually in the colportage work of +Bible and tract societies, in Sunday school missions, and in the +building of churches and parsonages. In the accounts of the last-named +most effective enterprise the small amounts received and appropriated to +aid in building would represent manifold more gathered and expended by +the pioneer churches on the ground. + +[359:1] Dorchester, _op. cit._, p. 709. + +[359:2] Above, pp. 259, 260. + +[359:3] A pamphlet published at the office of the New York "Sun," away +back in the early thirties, was formerly in my possession, which +undertook to give, under the title "The Rich Men of New York," the name +of every person in that city who was worth more than one hundred +thousand dollars--and it was not a large pamphlet, either. As nearly as +I remember, there were less than a half-dozen names credited with more +than a million, and one solitary name, that of John Jacob Astor, was +reported as good for the enormous and almost incredible sum of ten +millions. + +[361:1] Dorchester, "Christianity in the United States," p. 715. + +[361:2] See above, p. 70. + +[363:1] Bishop Vincent, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. 441. The +number of students in the "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle" +already in 1891 exceeded twenty-five thousand. + +[367:1] Among the titles omitted from this list are the various +"Lend-a-Hand Clubs," and "10 x 1 = 10 Clubs," and circles of "King's +Daughters," and like coteries, that have been inspired by the tales and +the "four mottoes" of Edward Everett Hale. + +[369:1] Dr. H. K. Carroll, in "The Independent," April 1, 1897. + +[369:2] "Congregationalist Handbook for 1897," p. 35. + +[371:1] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Ans. 60. The commentaries on the +Catechism, which are many, like Gemara upon Mishna, build wider and +higher the "fence around the law," in a fashion truly rabbinic. + +[372:1] Colossians, ii. 16. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +THE CHURCH IN THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE. + + +The rapid review of three crowded centuries, which is all that the +narrowly prescribed limits of this volume have permitted, has +necessarily been mainly restricted to external facts. But looking back +over the course of visible events, it is not impossible for acute minds +devoted to such study to trace the stream of thought and sentiment that +is sometimes hidden from direct view by the overgrowth which itself has +nourished. + +We have seen a profound spiritual change, renewing the face of the land +and leaving its indelible impress on successive generations, springing +from the profoundest contemplations of God and his work of salvation +through Jesus Christ, and then bringing back into thoughtful and +teachable minds new questions to be solved and new discoveries of truth +to be pondered. The one school of theological opinion and inquiry that +can be described as characteristically American is the theology of the +Great Awakening. The disciples of this school, in all its divergent +branches, agree in looking back to the first Jonathan Edwards as the +founder of it. Through its generations it has shown a striking sequence +and continuity of intellectual and spiritual life, each generation +answering questions put to it by its predecessor, while propounding new +questions to the generation following. After the classical writings of +its first founders, the most widely influential production of this +school is the "Theology Explained and Defended in a Series of Sermons" +of President Dwight. This had the advantage over some other systems of +having been preached, and thus proved to be preachable. The "series of +sermons" was that delivered to successive generations of college +students at Yale at a time of prevailing skepticism, when every +statement of the college pulpit was liable to sharp and not too friendly +scrutiny; and it was preached with the fixed purpose of convincing and +converting the young men who heard it. The audience, the occasion, and +the man--a fervid Christian, and a born poet and orator--combined to +produce a work of wide and enduring influence. The dynasty of the +Edwardeans is continued down to the middle of the nineteenth century, +and later, through different lines, ending in Emmons of Franklin, Taylor +of New Haven, and Finney of Oberlin, and is represented among the living +by the venerable Edwards A. Park, of Andover, who adds to that power of +sustained speculative thinking in a straight line which is +characteristic of the whole school, a wide learning in the whole field +of theological literature, which had not been usual among his +predecessors. It is a prevailing trait of this theology, born of the +great revival, that it has constantly held before itself not only the +question, What is truth? but also the question, How shall it be +preached? It has never ceased to be a revival theology. + +A bold and open breach of traditionary assumptions and habits of +reasoning was made by Horace Bushnell. This was a theologian of a +different type from his New England predecessors. He was of a temper +little disposed to accept either methods or results as a local +tradition, and inclined rather to prefer that which had been "hammered +out on his own anvil." And yet, while very free in manifesting his small +respect for the "logicking" by syllogistic processes which had been the +pride of the theological chair and even the pulpit in America, and while +declining the use of current phraseologies even for the expression of +current ideas, he held himself loyally subject to the canon of the +Scriptures as his rule of faith, and deferential to the voice of the +church catholic as uttered in the concord of testimony of holy men in +all ages. Endowed with a poet's power of intuition, uplifted by a fervid +piety, uttering himself in a literary style singularly rich and +melodious, it is not strange that such a man should have made large +contributions to the theological thought of his own and later times. In +natural theology, his discourses on "The Moral Uses of Dark Things" +(1869), and his longest continuous work, on "Nature and the +Supernatural" (1858), even though read rather as prose-poems than as +arguments, sound distinctly new notes in the treatment of their theme. +In "God in Christ" (1849), "Christ in Theology" (1851), "The Vicarious +Sacrifice" (1866), and "Forgiveness and Law" (1874), and in a notable +article in the "New Englander" for November, 1854, entitled "The +Christian Trinity a Practical Truth," the great topics of the Christian +system were dealt with all the more effectively, in the minds of +thoughtful readers in this and other lands, for cries of alarm and +newspaper and pulpit impeachments of heresy that were sent forth. But +that work of his which most nearly made as well as marked an epoch in +American church history was the treatise of "Christian Nurture" (1847). +This, with the protracted controversy that followed upon the publication +of it, was a powerful influence in lifting the American church out of +the rut of mere individualism that had been wearing deeper and deeper +from the days of the Great Awakening. + +Another wholesome and edifying debate was occasioned by the publications +that went forth from the college and theological seminary of the German +Reformed Church, situated at Mercersburg in Pennsylvania. At this +institution was effected a fruitful union of American and German +theology; the result was to commend to the general attention aspects of +truth, philosophical, theological, and historical, not previously +current among American Protestants. The book of Dr. John Williamson +Nevin, entitled "The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or +Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," revealed to the vast +multitude of churches and ministers that gloried in the name of +Calvinist the fact that on the most distinctive article of Calvinism +they were not Calvinists at all, but Zwinglians. The enunciation of the +standard doctrine of the various Presbyterian churches excited among +themselves a clamor of "Heresy!" and the doctrine of Calvin was put upon +trial before the Calvinists. The outcome of a discussion that extended +itself far beyond the boundaries of the comparatively small and +uninfluential German Reformed Church was to elevate the point of view +and broaden the horizon of American students of the constitution and +history of the church. Later generations of such students owe no light +obligation to the fidelity and courage of Dr. Nevin, as well as to the +erudition and immense productive diligence of his associate, Dr. Philip +Schaff.[377:1] + +It is incidental to the prevailing method of instruction in theology by +a course of prelections in which the teacher reads to his class in +detail his own original _summa theologiae_, that the American press has +been prolific of ponderous volumes of systematic divinity. Among the +more notable of these systems are those of Leonard Woods (in five +volumes) and of Enoch Pond; of the two Drs. Hodge, father and son; of +Robert J. Breckinridge and James H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney; and +the "Systematic Theology" of a much younger man, Dr. Augustus H. Strong, +of Rochester Seminary, which has won for itself very unusual and wide +respect. Exceptional for ability, as well as for its originality of +conception, is "The Republic of God: An Institute of Theology," by +Elisha Mulford, a disciple of Maurice and of the realist philosophy, the +thought of whose whole life is contained in this and his kindred work on +"The Nation." + + * * * * * + +How great is the debt which the church owes to its heretics is +frequently illustrated in the progress of Christianity in America. If it +had not been for the Unitarian defection in New England, and for the +attacks from Germany upon the historicity of the gospels, the +theologians of America might to this day have been engrossed in +"threshing old straw" in endless debates on "fixed fate, free will, +foreknowledge absolute." The exigencies of controversy forced the study +of the original documents of the church. From his entrance upon his +professorship at Andover, in 1810, the eager enthusiasm of Moses Stuart +made him the father of exegetical science not only for America, but for +all the English-speaking countries. His not less eminent pupil and +associate, Edward Robinson, later of the Union Seminary, New York, +created out of nothing the study of biblical geography. Associating with +himself the most accomplished living Arabist, Eli Smith, of the American +mission at Beirut, he made those "Biblical Researches in Palestine" +which have been the foundation on which all later explorers have built. +Another American missionary, Dr. W. M. Thomson, has given the most +valuable popular exposition of the same subject in his volumes on "The +Land and the Book." With the exception of Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull in his +determination of the site of Kadesh-barnea, the American successors to +Robinson in the original exploration of the Bible lands have made few +additions to our knowledge. But in the department of biblical archaeology +the work of Drs. Ward, Peters, and Hilprecht in the mounds of Babylonia, +and of Mr. Bliss in Palestine, has added not a little to the credit of +the American church against the heavy balance which we owe to the +scholarship of Europe. + +Monumental works in lexicography have been produced by Dr. Thayer, of +Cambridge, on New Testament Greek; by Professor Francis Brown, of New +York, in conjunction with Canon Driver, of Oxford, on the languages of +the Old Testament; and by Dr. Sophocles, of Cambridge, on the Byzantine +Greek. + +In the work of the textual criticism of the Scriptures, notwithstanding +its remoteness from the manuscript sources of study, America has +furnished two names that are held in honor throughout the learned world: +among the recent dead, Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, universally beloved and +lamented; and among the living, Caspar Rene Gregory, successor to the +labors and the fame of Tischendorf. A third name is that of the late Dr. +Isaac H. Hall, the successful collator of Syriac New Testament +manuscripts. + +In those studies of the higher criticism which at the present day are +absorbing so much of the attention of biblical scholars, and the +progress of which is watched with reasonable anxiety for their bearing +on that dogma of the absolute inerrancy of the canonical Scriptures +which has so commonly been postulated as the foundation of Protestant +systems of revealed theology, the American church has taken eager +interest. An eminent, and in some respects the foremost, place among the +leaders in America of these investigations into the substructure, if not +of the Christian faith, at least of the work of the system-builders, is +held by Professor W. H. Green, of Princeton, whose painstaking essays in +the higher criticism have done much to stimulate the studies of younger +men who have come out at conclusions different from his own. The works +of Professors Briggs, of Union Seminary, and Henry P. Smith, of Lane +Seminary, have had the invaluable advantage of being commended to public +attention by ecclesiastical processes and debates. The two volumes of +Professor Bacon, of Yale, have been recognized by the foremost scholars +of Great Britain and Germany as containing original contributions toward +the solution of the problem of Pentateuchal analysis. The intricate +critical questions presented by the Book of Judges have been handled +with supreme ability by Professor Moore, of Andover, in his commentary +on that book. A desideratum in biblical literature has been well +supplied by Professor Bissell, of Hartford, in a work on the Old +Testament Apocrypha. But the _magnum opus_ of American biblical +scholarship, associating with itself the best learning and ability of +other nations, is the publication, under the direction of Professor +Haupt, of Baltimore, of a critical text of the entire Scriptures in the +original languages, with new translations and notes, for the use of +scholars. + +The undeniably grave theological difficulties occasioned by the results +of critical study have given rise to a novel dogma concerning the +Scriptures, which, if it may justly be claimed as a product of the +Princeton Seminary, would seem to discredit the modest boast of the +venerated Dr. Charles Hodge, that "Princeton has never originated a new +idea." It consists in the hypothesis of an "original autograph" of the +Scriptures, the precise contents of which are now undiscoverable, but +which differed from any existing text in being absolutely free from +error of any kind. The hypothesis has no small advantage in this, that +if it is not susceptible of proof, it is equally secure from refutation. +If not practically useful, it is at least novel, and on this ground +entitled to mention in recounting the contributions of the American +church to theology at a really perilous point in the progress of +biblical study. + + * * * * * + +The field of church history, aside from local and sectarian histories, +was late in being invaded by American theologians. For many generations +the theology of America was distinctly unhistorical, speculative, and +provincial. But a change in this respect was inevitably sure to come. +The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is +illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the +masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would +seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions +had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient +lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments of remote ages as +those whose homes are in regions not two generations removed from the +prehistoric wilderness. It was certain that as soon as theology should +begin to be taught to American students in its relation to the history +of the kingdom of Christ, the charm of this method would be keenly felt. + +We may assume the date of 1853 as an epoch from which to date this new +era of theological study. It was in that year that the gifted, learned, +and inspiring teacher, Henry Boynton Smith, was transferred from the +chair of history in Union Theological Seminary, New York, to the chair +of systematic theology. Through his premature and most lamented death +the church has failed of receiving that system of doctrine which had +been hoped for at his hands. But the historic spirit which characterized +him has ever since been characteristic of that seminary. It is +illustrative of the changed tone of theologizing that after the death of +Professor Smith, in the reorganization of the faculty of that important +institution, it was manned in the three chief departments, exegetical, +dogmatic, and practical, by men whose eminent distinction was in the +line of church history. The names of Hitchcock, Schaff, and Shedd cannot +be mentioned without bringing to mind some of the most valuable gifts +that America has made to the literature of the universal church. If to +these we add the names of George Park Fisher, of Yale, and Bishop Hurst, +and Alexander V. G. Allen, of Cambridge, author of "The Continuity of +Christian Thought," and Henry Charles Lea, of Philadelphia, we have +already vindicated for American scholarship a high place in this +department of Christian literature. + + * * * * * + +In practical theology the productiveness of the American church in the +matter of _sermons_ has been so copious that even for the briefest +mention some narrow rule of exclusion must be followed. There is no +doubt that in a multitude of cases the noblest utterances of the +American pulpit, being unwritten, have never come into literature, but +have survived for a time as a glowing memory, and then a fading +tradition. The statement applies to many of the most famous revival +preachers; and in consequence of a prevalent prejudice against the +writing of sermons, it applies especially to the great Methodist and +Baptist preachers, whose representation on the shelves of libraries is +most disproportionate to their influence on the course of the kingdom +of Christ. Of other sermons,--and good sermons,--printed and published, +many have had an influence almost as restricted and as evanescent as the +utterances of the pulpit improvisator. If we confine ourselves to those +sermons that have survived their generation or won attention beyond the +limits of local interest or of sectarian fellowship, the list will not +be unmanageably long. + +In the early years of the nineteenth century the Unitarian pulpits of +Boston were adorned with every literary grace known to the rhetoric of +that period. The luster of Channing's fame has outshone and outlasted +that of his associates; and yet these were stars of hardly less +magnitude. The two Wares, father and son, the younger Buckminster, whose +singular power as a preacher was known not only to wondering hearers, +but to readers on both sides of the ocean, Gannett and Dewey--these were +among them; and, in the next generation, Henry W. Bellows, Thomas Starr +King, and James Freeman Clarke. No body of clergy of like size was ever +so resplendent with talents and accomplishments. The names alone of +those who left the Unitarian pulpit for a literary or political +career--Sparks, Everett, Bancroft, Emerson, Ripley, Palfrey, Upham, +among them--are a constellation by themselves. + +To the merely literary critic those earnest preachers, such as Lyman and +Edward Beecher, Griffin, Sereno Dwight, Wayland, and Kirk, who felt +called of God to withstand, in Boston, this splendid array of not less +earnest men, were clearly inferior to their antagonists. But they were +successful. + +A few years later, the preeminent American writer of sermons to be read +and pondered in every part of the world was Horace Bushnell; as the +great popular preacher, whose words, caught burning from his lips, +rolled around the world in a perpetual stream, was Henry Ward Beecher. +Widely different from either of these, and yet in an honorable sense +successor to the fame of both, was Phillips Brooks, of all American +preachers most widely beloved and honored in all parts of the church. + +Of living preachers whose sermons have already attained a place of honor +in libraries at home and abroad, the name of Bishop F. D. Huntington +stands among the foremost; and those who have been charmed by the +brilliant rhetoric and instructed from the copious learning of his +college classmate, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, must feel it a wrong done to +our national literature that these gifts should be chiefly known to the +reading public only by occasional discourses and by two valuable studies +in religious history instead of by volumes of sermons. Perhaps no +American pulpits have to-day a wider hearing beyond the sea than two +that stand within hearing distance of each other on New Haven Green, +occupied by Theodore T. Munger and Newman Smyth. The pulpit of Plymouth +Church, Brooklyn, has not ceased, since the accession of Lyman Abbott, +to wield a wide and weighty influence,--less wide, but in some respects +more weighty, than in the days of his famous predecessor,--by reason of +a well-deserved reputation for biblical learning and insight, and for +candor and wisdom in applying Scriptural principles to the solution of +current questions. + +The early American theology was, as we have seen, a rhetorical and not a +merely scholastic theology--a theology to be preached.[384:1] In like +manner, the American pulpit in those days was distinctly theological, +like a professor's chair. One who studies with care the pulpit of +to-day, in those volumes that seem to command the widest and most +enduring attention, will find that it is to a large extent apologetic, +addressing itself to the abating of doubts and objections to the +Christian system, or, recognizing the existing doubts, urging the +religious duties that are nevertheless incumbent on the doubting mind. +It has ceased to assume the substantial soundness of the hearer in the +main principles of orthodox opinion, and regards him as one to be held +to the church by attraction, persuasion, or argument. The result of this +attitude of the preacher is to make the pulpit studiously, and even +eagerly, attractive and interesting. This virtue has its corresponding +fault. The American preacher of to-day is little in danger of being +dull; his peril lies at the other extreme. His temptation is rather to +the feebleness of extravagant statement, and to an overstrained and +theatric rhetoric such as some persons find so attractive in the +discourses of Dr. Talmage, and others find repulsive and intolerable. + +A direction in which the literature of practical theology in America is +sure to expand itself in the immediate future is indicated in the title +of a recent work of that versatile and useful writer, Dr. Washington +Gladden, "Applied Christianity." The salutary conviction that political +economy cannot be relied on by itself to adjust all the intricate +relations of men under modern conditions of life, that the ethical +questions that arise are not going to solve themselves automatically by +the law of demand and supply, that the gospel and the church and the +Spirit of Christ have somewhat to do in the matter, has been settling +itself deeply into the minds of Christian believers. The impression that +the questions between labor and capital, between sordid poverty and +overgrown wealth, were old-world questions, of which we of the New World +are relieved, is effectually dispelled. Thus far there is not much of +history to be written under this head, but somewhat of prophecy. It is +now understood, and felt in the conscience, that these questions are for +every Christian to consider, and for those undertaking the cure of souls +to make the subject of their faithful, laborious professional study. The +founding of professorships of social ethics in the theological +seminaries must lead to important and speedy results in the efficiency +of churches and pastors in dealing with this difficult class of +problems.[386:1] But whatever advances shall be made in the future, no +small part of the impulse toward them will be recognized as coming from, +or rather through, the inspiring and most Christian humanitarian +writings and the personal influence and example of Edward Everett Hale. + + * * * * * + +In one noble department of religious literature, the liturgical, the +record of the American church is meager. The reaction among the early +colonists and many of the later settlers against forms of worship +imposed by political authority was violent. Seeking for a logical basis, +it planted itself on the assumption that no form (unless an improvised +form) is permitted in public worship, except such as are sanctioned by +express word of Scripture. In their sturdy resolution to throw off and +break up the yoke, which neither they nor their fathers had been able to +bear, of ordinances and traditions complicated with not a little of +debilitating superstition, the extreme Puritans of England and Scotland +rejected the whole system of holy days in the Christian year, including +the authentic anniversaries of Passover and Pentecost, and discontinued +the use of religious ceremonies at marriages and funerals.[386:2] The +only liturgical compositions that have come down to us from the first +generations are the various attempts, in various degrees of harshness +and rudeness, at the versification of psalms and other Scriptures for +singing. The emancipation of the church from its bondage to an +artificial dogma came, as we have already seen, with the Great Awakening +and the introduction of Watts's "Psalms of David, Imitated in the +Language of the New Testament."[387:1] After the Revolution, at the +request of the General Association of Connecticut and the General +Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, Timothy Dwight completed the work +of Watts by versifying a few omitted psalms,[387:2] and added a brief +selection of hymns, chiefly in the grave and solemn Scriptural style of +Watts and Doddridge. Then followed, in successive tides, from England, +the copious hymnody of the Methodist revival, both Calvinist and +Wesleyan, of the Evangelical revival, and now at last of the Oxford +revival, with its affluence of translations from the ancient hymnists, +as well as of original hymns. It is doubtless owing to this abundant +intermittent inflow from England that the production of American hymns +has been so scanty. Only a few writers, among them Thomas Hastings and +Ray Palmer, have written each a considerable number of hymns that have +taken root in the common use of the church. Not a few names besides are +associated each with some one or two or three lyrics that have won an +enduring place in the affections of Christian worshipers. The "gospel +hymns" which have flowed from many pens in increasing volume since the +revival of 1857 have proved their great usefulness, especially in +connection with the ministry of Messrs. Moody and Sankey; but they are, +even the best of them, short-lived. After their season the church seems +not unwilling to let them die. + +Soon after the mid-point of the nineteenth century, began a serious +study of the subject of the conduct of public worship, which continues +to this day, with good promise of sometime reaching useful and stable +results. In 1855 was published "Eutaxia, or the Presbyterian Liturgies: +Historical Sketches. By a Minister of the Presbyterian Church." The +author, Charles W. Baird, was a man peculiarly fitted to render the +church important service, such as indeed he did render in this volume, +and in the field of Huguenot history which he divided with his brother, +Henry M. Baird. How great the loss to historical theology through his +protracted feebleness of body and his death may be conjectured, not +measured. This brief volume awakened an interest in the subject of it in +America, and in Scotland, and among the nonconformists of England. To +American Presbyterians in general it was something like a surprise to be +reminded that the sisterhood of the "Reformed" sects were committed by +their earliest and best traditions in favor of liturgic uses in public +worship. At about the same time the fruitful discussions of the +Mercersburg controversy were in progress in the German Reformed Church. +"Mercersburg found fault with the common style of extemporaneous public +prayer, and advocated a revival of the liturgical church service of the +Reformation period, but so modified and reproduced as to be adapted to +the existing wants of Protestant congregations."[388:1] Each of these +discussions was followed by a proposed book of worship. In 1857 was +published by Mr. Baird "A Book of Public Prayer, Compiled from the +Authorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church, as +Prepared by the Reformers, Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others"; and in 1858 +was set forth by a committee of the German Reformed Church "A Liturgy, +or Order of Christian Worship." In 1855 St. Peter's Presbyterian Church +of Rochester published its "Church-book," prepared by Mr. L. W. Bacon, +then acting as pastor, which was principally notable for introducing the +use of the Psalms in parallelisms for responsive reading--a use which at +once found acceptance in many churches, and has become general in all +parts of the country. Sporadic experiments followed in various +individual congregations, looking toward greater variety or greater +dignity or greater musical attractiveness in the services of public +worship, or toward more active participation therein on the part of the +people. But these experiments, conducted without concert or mutual +counsel, often without serious study of the subject, and with a feebly +esthetic purpose, were representative of individual notions, and had in +them no promise of stability or of fruit after their kind. Only, by the +increasing number of them, they have given proof of an unrest on this +subject which at last is beginning to embody itself in organization and +concerted study and enterprise. A fifty years of mere tentative groping +is likely to be followed by another fifty years of substantial progress. + +The influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church upon this growing +tendency has been sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable, but always +important. To begin with, it has held up before the whole church an +example of prescribed forms for divine worship, on the whole, the best +in all history. On the other hand, it has drawn to itself those in +other sects whose tastes and tendencies would make them leaders in the +study of liturgics, and thus while reinforcing itself has hindered the +general advance of improvement in the methods of worship. Withal, its +influence has tended to narrow the discussion to the consideration of a +single provincial and sectarian tradition, as if the usage of a part of +the Christians of the southern end of one of the islands of the British +archipelago had a sort of binding authority over the whole western +continent. But again, on the other hand, the broadening of its own views +to the extent of developing distinctly diverse ways of thinking among +its clergy and people has enlarged the field of study once more, and +tended to interest the church generally in the practical, historical, +and theological aspects of the subject. The somewhat timid ventures of +"Broad" and "Evangelical" men in one direction, and the fearless +breaking of bounds in the other direction by those of "Ritualist" +sympathies, have done much to liberate this important communion from +slavish uniformity and indolent traditionalism; and within a few years +that has been accomplished which only a few years earlier would have +been deemed impossible--the considerable alteration and improvement of +the Book of Common Prayer. + +It is safe to prognosticate, from the course of the history up to this +point, that the subject of the conduct of worship will become more and +more seriously a subject of study in the American church in all its +divisions; that the discussions thereon arising will be attended with +strong antagonisms of sentiment; that mutual antagonisms within the +several sects will be compensated by affiliations of men like-minded +across sectarian lines; and that thus, as many times before, particular +controversies will tend to general union and fellowship. + +One topic under this title of Liturgics requires special mention--the +use of music in the church. It was not till the early part of the +eighteenth century that music began to be cultivated as an art in +America.[391:1] Up to that time "the service of song in the house of the +Lord" had consisted, in most worshiping assemblies on this continent, in +the singing of rude literal versifications of the Psalms and other +Scriptures to some eight or ten old tunes handed down by tradition, and +variously sung in various congregations, as modified by local practice. +The coming in of "singing by rule" was nearly coincident with the +introduction of Watts's psalms and hymns, and was attended with like +agitations. The singing-school for winter evenings became an almost +universal social institution; and there actually grew up an American +school of composition, quaint, rude, and ungrammatical, which had great +vogue toward the end of the last century, and is even now remembered by +some with admiration and regret. It was devoted mainly to psalmody tunes +of an elaborate sort, in which the first half-stanza would be sung in +plain counterpoint, after which the voices would chase each other about +in a lively imitative movement, coming out together triumphantly at the +close. They abounded in forbidden progressions and empty chords, but +were often characterized by fervor of feeling and by strong melodies. A +few of them, as "Lenox" and "Northfield," still linger in use; and the +productions of this school in general, which amount to a considerable +volume, are entitled to respectful remembrance as the first untutored +utterance of music in America. The use of them became a passionate +delight to our grandparents; and the traditions are fresh and vivid of +the great choirs filling the church galleries on three sides, and +tossing the theme about from part to part. + +The use of these rudely artificial tunes involved a gravely important +change in the course of public worship. In congregations that accepted +them the singing necessarily became an exclusive privilege of the choir. +To a lamentable extent, where there was neither the irregular and +spontaneous ejaculation of the Methodist nor the rubrical response of +the Episcopalian, the people came to be shut out from audible +participation in the acts of public worship. + +A movement of musical reform in the direction of greater simplicity and +dignity began early in this century, when Lowell Mason in Boston and +Thomas Hastings in New York began their multitudinous publications of +psalmody. Between them not less than seventy volumes of music were +published in a period of half as many years. Their immense and +successful fecundity was imitated with less success by others, until the +land was swamped with an annual flood of church-music books. A thin +diluvial stratum remains to us from that time in tunes, chiefly from the +pen of Dr. Mason, that have taken permanent place as American chorals. +Such pieces as "Boylston," "Hebron," "Rockingham," "Missionary Hymn," +and the adaptations of Gregorian melodies, "Olmutz" and "Hamburg," are +not likely to be displaced from their hold on the American church by +more skilled and exquisite compositions of later schools. But the +fertile labors of the church musicians of this period were affected by +the market demand for new material for the singing-school, the large +church choir, and the musical convention. The music thus introduced into +the churches consisted not so much of hymn-tunes and anthems as of +"sacred glees."[392:1] + +Before the middle of the century the Episcopal Church had arrived at a +point at which it was much looked to to set the fashions in such matters +as church music and architecture. Its influence at this time was very +bad. It was largely responsible for the fashion, still widely prevalent, +of substituting for the church choir a quartet of professional solo +singers, and for the degradation of church music into the dainty, +languishing, and sensuous style which such "artists" do most affect. The +period of "The Grace Church Collection," "Greatorex's Collection," and +the sheet-music compositions of George William Warren and John R. Thomas +was the lowest tide of American church music. + +A healthy reaction from this vicious condition began about 1855, with +the introduction of hymn-and-tune books and the revival of +congregational singing. From that time the progressive improvement of +the public taste may be traced in the character of the books that have +succeeded one another in the churches, until the admirable compositions +of the modern English school of psalmody tend to predominate above those +of inferior quality. It is the mark of a transitional period that both +in church music and in church architecture we seem to depend much on +compositions and designs derived from older countries. The future of +religious art in America is sufficiently well assured to leave no cause +for hurry or anxiety. + + * * * * * + +In glancing back over this chapter, it will be strange if some are not +impressed, and unfavorably impressed, with a disproportion in the names +cited as representative, which are taken chiefly from some two or three +sects. This may justly be referred in part, no doubt, to the author's +point of view and to the "personal equation"; but it is more largely due +to the fact that in the specialization of the various sects the work of +theological literature and science has been distinctively the lot of the +Congregationalists and the Presbyterians, and preeminently of the +former.[394:1] It is matter of congratulation that the inequality among +the denominations in this respect is in a fair way to be outgrown. + +Special mention must be made of the peculiarly valuable contribution to +the liturgical literature of America that is made by the oldest of our +episcopal churches, the Moravian. This venerable organization is rich +not only in the possession of a heroic martyr history, but in the +inheritance of liturgic forms and usages of unsurpassed beauty and +dignity. Before the other churches had emerged from a half-barbarous +state in respect to church music, this art was successfully cultivated +in the Moravian communities and missions. In past times these have had +comparatively few points of contact and influence with the rest of the +church; but when the elements of a common order of divine worship shall +by and by begin to grow into form, it is hardly possible that the +Moravian traditions will not enter into it as an important factor. + +A combination of conditions which in the case of other bodies in the +church has been an effective discouragement to literary production has +applied with especial force to the Roman Catholic Church in America. +First, its energies and resources, great as they are, have been +engrossed by absolutely prodigious burdens of practical labor; and +secondly, its necessary literary material has been furnished to it from +across the sea, ready to its hand, or needing only the light labor of +translation. But these two conditions are not enough, of themselves, to +account for the very meager contribution of the Catholic Church to the +common religious and theological literature of American Christendom. +Neither is the fact explained by the general low average of culture +among the Catholic population; for literary production does not +ordinarily proceed from the man of average culture, but from men of +superior culture, such as this church possesses in no small number, and +places in positions of undisturbed "learned leisure" that would seem in +the highest degree promotive of intellectual work. But the comparative +statistics of the Catholic and the Protestant countries and universities +of Germany seem to prove conclusively that the spirit and discipline of +the Roman Church are unfavorable to literary productiveness in those +large fields of intellectual activity that are common and free alike to +the scholars of all Christendom. It remains to be seen whether the +stimulating atmosphere and the free and equal competitions of the New +World will not show their invigorating effect in the larger activity of +Catholic scholars, and their liberation from within the narrow lines of +polemic and defensive literature. The republic of Christian letters has +already shown itself prompt to welcome accessions from this quarter. The +signs are favorable. Notwithstanding severe criticisms of their methods +proceeding from the Catholic press, or rather in consequence of such +criticisms, the Catholic institutions of higher learning are rising in +character and in public respect; and the honorable enterprise of +establishing at Washington an American Catholic university, on the +upbuilding of which shall be concentrated the entire intellectual +strength and culture of this church, promises an invigorating influence +that shall extend through that whole system of educational institutions +which the church has set on foot at immense cost, and not with wholly +satisfactory results. + +Recent events in the Catholic Church in America tend to reassure all +minds on an important point on which not bigots and alarmists only, but +liberal-minded citizens apostolically willing to "look not only on their +own things but also on the things of others," have found reasonable +ground for anxiety. The American Catholic Church, while characterized in +all its ranks, in respect of loyal devotion to the pope, by a high type +of ultramontane orthodoxy, is to be administered on patriotic American +principles. The brief term of service of Monsignor Satolli as papal +legate clothed with plenipotentiary authority from the Roman see stamped +out the scheme called from its promoter "Cahenslyism," which would have +divided the American Catholic Church into permanent alien communities, +conserving each its foreign language and organized under its separate +hierarchy. The organization of parishes to be administered in other +languages than English is suffered only as a temporary necessity. The +deadly warfare against the American common-school system has abated. And +the anti-American denunciations contained in the bull and syllabus of +December 8, 1864, are openly renounced as lacking the note of +infallibility.[396:1] + +Of course, as in all large communities of vigorous vitality, there will +be mutually antagonist parties in this body; but it is hardly to be +doubted that with the growth and acclimatization of the Catholic Church +in America that party will eventually predominate which is most in +sympathy with the ruling ideas of the country and the age. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[377:1] For fuller accounts of "the Mercersburg theology," with +references to the literature of the subject, see Dubbs, "The Reformed +Church, German" (American Church History Series, vol. viii.), pp. 219, +220, 389-378; also, Professor E. V. Gerhart in "Schaff-Herzog +Encyclopedia," pp. 1473-1475. + +[384:1] See above, p. 375. + +[386:1] The program of Yale Divinity School for 1896-97 announces among +the "required studies in senior year" lectures "on some important +problems of American life, such as Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism; +Races in the United States; Immigration; the Modern City; the Wage +System; the Relations of Employer and Employed; Social Classes; the +Causes, Prevention, and Punishment of Crime; and University +Settlements." + +[386:2] Williston Walker, "The Congregationalists," pp. 245, 246. + +[387:1] See above, pp. 182-184. + +[387:2] The only relic of this work that survives in common use is the +immortal lyric, "I love thy kingdom, Lord," founded on a motif in the +one hundred and thirty-seventh psalm. This, with Doddridge's hymn, "My +God, and is thy table spread?" continued for a long time to be the most +important church hymn and eucharistic hymn in the English language. We +should not perhaps have looked for the gift of them to two +Congregationalist ministers, one in New England and the other in old +England. There is no such illustration of the spiritual unity of "the +holy catholic church, the fellowship of the holy," as is presented in a +modern hymn-book. + +[388:1] Professor Gerhart, in "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," p. 1475. + +[391:1] "Massachusetts Historical Collections," second series, vol. iv., +p. 301; quoted in the "New Englander," vol. xiii., p. 467 (August, +1855). + +[392:1] This was the criticism of the late Rev. Mr. Havergal, of +Worcester Cathedral, to whom Dr. Mason had sent copies of some of his +books. The incident was freely told by Dr. Mason himself. + +[394:1] For many generations the religious and theological literature of +the country proceeded almost exclusively, at first or second hand, from +New England. The Presbyterian historian, Professor Robert Ellis +Thompson, remarks that "until after the division of 1837 American +Presbyterianism made no important addition to the literature of +theology" ("The Presbyterians," p. 143). The like observation is true +down to a much more recent date of the Protestant Episcopal Church. +Noble progress has been made in both these denominations in reversing +this record. + +[396:1] So (for example) Bishop O'Gorman, "The Roman Catholics," p. 434. +And yet, at the time, the bull with its appendix was certainly looked +upon as "an act of infallibility." See, in "La Bulle _Quanta Cura_ et la +Civilisation Moderne, par l'Abbe Pelage" (Paris, 1865), the utterances +of all the French bishops. The language of Bishop Plantier of Poitiers +seems decisive: "The Vicar of Jesus Christ, doctor and pastor charged +with the teaching and ruling of the entire church, addressed to the +bishops, and through them to all the Christian universe, instructions, +the object of which is to settle the mind and enlighten the conscience +on sundry points of Christian doctrine and morals" (pp. 103, 104). See +also pp. 445, 450. This brings it within the Vatican Council's +definition of an infallible utterance. But we are bound to bear in mind +that not only is the infallible authority of this manifesto against +"progress, liberalism, and modern civilization" disclaimed, but the +meaning of it, which seems unmistakably clear, is disputed. "The +syllabus," says Bishop O'Gorman, "is technical and legal in its +language, ... and needs to be interpreted to the lay reader by the +ecclesiastical lawyer" (p. 435). + +A seriously important desideratum in theological literature is some +authoritative canon of the infallible utterances of the Roman see. It is +difficult to fix on any one of them the infallible authority of which is +not open to dispute within the church itself; while the liability of +them to misinterpretation (as in the case of the _Quanta Cura_ and +_Syllabus_) brings in still another element of vagueness and +uncertainty. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +TENDENCIES TOWARD A MANIFESTATION OF THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH. + + +The three centuries of history which we have passed under rapid review +comprise a series of political events of the highest importance to +mankind. We have seen, from our side-point of view, the planting, along +the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean, without mutual concert or +common direction, of many independent germs of civilization. So many of +these as survived the perils of infancy we have seen growing to a lusty +youth, and becoming drawn each to each by ties of common interest and +mutual fellowship. Releasing themselves from colonial dependence on a +transatlantic power, we find these several communities, now grown to be +States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, +of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national +government binding upon all. The strong vitality of the new nation is +proved by its assimilating to itself an immense mass of immigrants from +all parts of Europe, and by expanding itself without essential change +over the area of a continent. It triumphs again and again, and at last +in a struggle that shakes the world, over passions and interests that +threaten schism in the body politic, and gives good reason to its +friends to boast the solid unity of the republic as the strongest +existing fact in the political world. The very great aggrandizement of +the nation has been an affair of the last sixty years; but already it +has recorded itself throughout the vast expanse of the continent in +monuments of architecture and engineering worthy of the national +strength. + +The ecclesiastical history which has been recounted in this volume, +covering the same territory and the same period of time, runs with equal +pace in many respects parallel with the political history, but in one +important respect with a wide divergence. As with civilization so with +Christianity: the germs of it, derived from different regions of +Christendom, were planted without concert of purpose, and often with +distinct cross-purposes, in different seed-plots along the Atlantic +seaboard. Varying in polity, in forms of dogmatic statement, and even in +language, the diverse growths were made, through wonders of spiritual +influence and through external stress of trial, to feel their unity in +the one faith. The course of a common experience tended to establish a +predominant type of religious life the influence of which has been +everywhere felt, even when it has not been consented to. The vital +strength of the American church, as of the American nation, has been +subjected to the test of the importation of enormous masses of more or +less uncongenial population, and has shown an amazing power of digestion +and assimilation. Its resources have been taxed by the providential +imposition of burdens of duty and responsibility such, in magnitude and +weight, as never since the early preaching of the gospel have pressed +upon any single generation of the church. Within the space of a single +lifetime, at an expenditure of toil and treasure which it is idle to +attempt to compute, the wide and desolate wilderness, as fast as +civilization has invaded it, has been occupied by the church with +churches, schools, colleges, and seminaries of theology, with pastors, +evangelists, and teachers, and, in one way or another, has been +constrained to confess itself Christian. The continent which so short a +time ago had been compassionately looked upon from across the sea as +missionary ground has become a principal base of supplies, and +recruiting-ground for men and women, for missionary operations in +ancient lands of heathenism and of a decayed Christianity. + +So much for the parallel. The divergence is not less impressive. In +contrast with the solid political unity into which the various and +incongruous elements have settled themselves, the unity of the Christian +church is manifested by oneness neither of jurisdiction nor of +confederation, nor even by diplomatic recognition and correspondence. +Out of the total population of the United States, amounting, according +to the census of 1890, to 62,622,000 souls, the 57,000,000 accounted as +Christians, including 20,000,000 communicant church-members, are +gathered into 165,297 congregations, assembling in 142,000 church +edifices containing 43,000,000 sittings, and valued (together with other +church property) at $670,000,000; and are served in the ministry of the +gospel by more than 111,000 ministers.[400:1] But this great force is +divided among 143 mutually independent sects, larger and smaller. Among +these sects is recognized no controlling and cooerdinating authority; +neither is there any common leadership; neither is there any system of +mutual counsel and concert. The mutual relations of the sects are +sometimes those of respect and good will, sometimes of sharp competition +and jealousy, sometimes of eager and conscientious hostility. All have +one and the same unselfish and religious aim--to honor God in serving +their fellow-men; and each one, in honestly seeking this supreme aim, is +affected by its corporate interests, sympathies, and antipathies. + +This situation is too characteristic of America, and too distinctly +connected with the whole course of the antecedent history, not to be +brought out with emphasis in this concluding chapter. In other lands the +church is maintained, through the power of the civil government, under +the exclusive control of a single organization, in which the element of +popular influence may be wholly wanting, or may be present (as in many +of the "Reformed" polities) in no small measure. In others yet, through +government influence and favor, a strong predominance is given to one +organized communion, under the shadow of which dissentient minorities +are tolerated and protected. Under the absolute freedom and equality of +the American system there is not so much as a predominance of any one of +the sects. No one of them is so strong and numerous but that it is +outnumbered and outweighed by the aggregate of the two next to it. At +present, in consequence of the rush of immigration, the Roman Catholic +Church is largely in advance of any single denomination besides, but is +inferior in numerical strength and popular influence to the Methodists +and Baptists combined--if they _were_ combined. + +And there is no doubt that this comminution of the church is frankly +accepted, for reasons assigned, not only as an inevitable drawback to +the blessings of religious freedom, but as a good thing in itself. A +weighty sentence of James Madison undoubtedly expresses the prevailing +sentiment among Americans who contemplate the subject merely from the +political side: "In a free government the security for civil rights must +be the same as that for religious rights. It consists, in the one case, +in the multiplicity of interests, and, in the other, in the multiplicity +of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number +of interests and sects."[402:1] And no student of history can deny that +there is much to justify the jealousy with which the lovers of civil +liberty watch the climbing of any sect, no matter how purely spiritual +its constitution, toward a position of command in popular influence. The +influence of the leaders of such a sect may be nothing more than the +legitimate and well-deserved influence of men of superior wisdom and +virtue; but when reinforced by the weight of official religious +character, and backed by a majority, or even a formidable minority, of +voters organized in a religious communion, the feeling is sure to gain +ground that such power is too great to be trusted to the hands even of +the best of men. Whatever sectarian advantage such a body may achieve in +the state by preponderance of number will be more than offset by the +public suspicion and the watchful jealousy of rival sects; and the +weakening of it by division, or the subordination of it by the +overgrowth of a rival, is sure to be regarded with general complacency. + +It is not altogether a pleasing object of contemplation--the citizen and +the statesman looking with contentment on the schism of the church as +averting a danger to the state. It is hardly more gratifying when we +find ministers of the church themselves accepting the condition of +schism as being, on the whole, a very good condition for the church of +Christ, if not, indeed, the best possible. It is quite unreservedly +argued that the principle, "Competition is the life of business," is +applicable to spiritual as well as secular concerns; and the +"emulations" reprobated by the Apostle Paul as "works of the flesh" are +frankly appealed to for promoting the works of the spirit. This debasing +of the motive of church work is naturally attended by a debasement of +the means employed. The competitive church resorts to strange business +devices to secure its needed revenue. "He that giveth" is induced to +give, not "with simplicity," but with a view to incidental advantages, +and a distinct understanding is maintained between the right hand and +the left. The extent and variety of this influence on church life in +America afford no occasion for pride, but the mention of them could not +rightly be omitted. It remains for the future to decide whether they +must needs continue as an inevitable attendant on the voluntary system. + +Sectarian divisions tend strongly to perpetuate themselves. The starting +of schism is easy and quick; the healing of it is a matter of long +diplomatic negotiations. In a very short time the division of the +church, with its necessary relations to property and to the employment +of officials, becomes a vested interest. Provision for large expenditure +unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the general interests of the +kingdom of Christ, which had been instituted in the first place at heavy +cost to the many, is not to be discontinued without more serious loss to +influential individuals. Those who would set themselves about the +healing of a schism must reckon upon personal and property interests to +be conciliated. + +This least amiable characteristic of the growth of the Christian church +in America is not without its compensations. The very fact of the +existence, in presence of one another, of these multitudinous rival +sects, all equal before the law, tends in the long run, under the +influence of the Holy Spirit of peace, to a large and comprehensive +fellowship.[404:1] The widely prevalent acceptance of existing +conditions as probably permanent, even if not quite normal, softens the +mutual reproaches of rival parties. The presumption is of course +implied, if not asserted, in the existence of any Christian sect, that +it is holding the absolute right and truth, or at least more nearly that +than other sects; and the inference, to a religious mind, is that the +right and true must, in the long run, prevail. But it is only with a +high act of faith, and not as a matter of reasonable probability, that +any sect in America can venture to indulge itself in the expectation of +a supremacy, or even a predominance, in American Christendom. The +strongest in numbers, in influence, in prestige, however tempted to +assert for itself exclusive or superior rights, is compelled to look +about itself and find itself overwhelmingly outnumbered and outdone by a +divided communion--and yet a communion--of those whom Christ "is not +ashamed to call his brethren"; and just in proportion as it has the +spirit of Christ, it is constrained in its heart to treat them as +brethren and to feel toward them as brethren. Its protest against what +it regards as their errors and defects is nowise weakened by the most +unreserved manifestations of respect and good will as toward +fellow-Christians. Thus it comes to pass that the observant traveler +from other countries, seeking the distinctive traits of American social +life, "notes a kindlier feeling between all denominations, Roman +Catholics included, a greater readiness to work together for common +charitable aims, than between Catholics and Protestants in France or +Germany, or between Anglicans and nonconformists in England."[405:1] + + * * * * * + +There are many indications, in the recent history of the American +church, pointing forward toward some higher manifestation of the true +unity of the church than is to be found in occasional, or even habitual, +expressions of mutual good will passing to and fro among sharply +competing and often antagonist sects. Instead of easy-going and playful +felicitations on the multitude of sects as contributing to the total +effectiveness of the church, such as used to be common enough on +"anniversary" platforms, we hear, in one form and another, the +acknowledgment that the divided and subdivided state of American +Christendom is not right, but wrong. Whose is the wrong need not be +decided; certainly it does not wholly belong to the men of this +generation or of this country; we are heirs of the schisms of other +lands and ages, and have added to them schisms of our own making. The +matter begins to be taken soberly and seriously. The tender entreaty of +the Apostle Paul not to suffer ourselves to be split up into +sects[405:2] begins to get a hearing in the conscience. The _nisus_ +toward a more manifest union among Christian believers has long been +growing more and more distinctly visible, and is at the present day one +of the most conspicuous signs of the times. + +Already in the early history we have observed a tendency toward the +healing, in America, of differences imported from over sea. Such was the +commingling of Separatist and Puritan in New England; the temporary +alliance of Congregationalist and Presbyterian to avert the imposition +of a state hierarchy; the combination of Quaker and Roman Catholic to +defeat a project of religious oppression in Maryland; the drawing +together of Lutheran and Reformed Germans for common worship, under the +saintly influence of the Moravian Zinzendorf; and the "Plan of Union" by +which New Englander and Scotch-Irishman were to labor in common for the +evangelization of the new settlements.[406:1] These were sporadic +instances of a tendency that was by and by to become happily epidemic. A +more important instance of the same tendency was the organization of +societies for charitable work which should unite the gifts and personal +labors of the Christians of the whole continent. The chief period of +these organizations extended from 1810, the date of the beginning of the +American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to 1826, when the +American Home Missionary Society was founded.[406:2] The "catholic +basis" on which they were established was dictated partly by the +conscious weakness of the several sects as they drew near to +undertakings formidable even to their united forces, and partly by the +glow of fraternal affection, and the sense of a common spiritual life +pervading the nation, with which the church had come forth from the +fervors of "the second awakening."[406:3] The societies, representing +the common faith and charity of the whole church as distinguished from +the peculiarities of the several sects, drew to themselves the affection +and devotion of Christian hearts to a degree which, to those who highly +valued these distinctions, seemed to endanger important interests. And, +indeed, the situation was anomalous, in which the sectarian divisions of +the Christian people were represented in the churches, and their +catholic unity in charitable societies. It would have seemed more +Pauline, not to say more Christian, to have had voluntary societies for +the sectarian work, and kept the churches for Christian communion. It is +no wonder that High-church champions, on one side and another, soon +began to shout to their adherents, "To your tents, O Israel!" Bishop +Hobart played not in vain upon his pastoral pipe to whistle back his +sheep from straying outside of his pinfold, exhorting them, "in their +endeavors for the general advancement of religion, to use only the +instrumentality of their own church."[407:1] And a jealousy of the +growing influence of a wide fellowship, in charitable labors, with +Christians of other names, led to the enunciation of a like doctrine by +High-church Presbyterians,[407:2] and contributed to the convulsive and +passionate rending of the Presbyterian Church, in 1837, into nearly +equal fragments. So effective has been the centrifugal force that of +the extensive system of societies which from the year 1810 onward first +organized works of national beneficence by enlisting the cooeperation of +"all evangelical Christians," the American Bible Society alone continues +to represent any general and important combination from among the +different denominations. + +For all the waning of interest in the "catholic basis" societies, the +sacred discontent of the Christian people with sectarian division +continued to demand expression. How early the aspiration for an +ecumenical council of evangelical Christendom became articulate, it may +not be easy to discover[408:1] In the year 1846 the aspiration was in +some measure realized in the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance +at London. No more mistakes were made in this meeting than perhaps were +necessarily incident to a first experiment in untried work. Almost of +course the good people began with the question, What good men shall we +keep out? for it is a curious fact, in the long and interesting history +of efforts after Christian union, that they commonly take the form of +efforts so to combine many Christians as to exclude certain others. In +this instance, beginning with the plan of including none but Protestant +Christians, they proceeded at once to frame a platform that should bar +out that "great number of the best and holiest men in England who are +found among the Quakers," thus making up, "designedly and with their +eyes open, a schismatic unity--a unity composed of one part of God's +elect, to the exclusion of another; and this in a grand effort after the +very unity of the body of Christ."[409:1] But in spite of this and other +like mistakes, or rather because of them (for it is through its mistakes +that the church is to learn the right way), the early and unsuccessful +beginnings of the Evangelical Alliance marked a stage in the slow +progress toward a "manifestation of the sons of God" by their love +toward each other and toward the common Lord. + +It is in large part the eager appetency for some manifestation of +interconfessional fellowship that has hastened the acceptance of such +organizations as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young +People's Society of Christian Endeavor; just as, on the other hand, it +is the conscientious fear, on the part of watchful guardians of +sectarian interests, that habitual fellowship across the boundary lines +of denominations may weaken the allegiance to the sect, which has +induced the many attempts at substituting associations constituted on a +narrower basis. But the form of organization which most comprehensively +illustrates the unity of the church is that "Charity Organization" which +has grown to be a necessity to the social life of cities and +considerable towns, furnishing a central office of mutual correspondence +and cooerdination to all churches and societies and persons engaged in +the Christian work of relieving poverty and distress. This central +bureau of charitable cooeperation is not the less a center of catholic +fellowship for the fact that it does not shut its door against societies +not distinctively Christian, like Masonic fraternities, nor even against +societies distinctively non-Christian, like Hebrew synagogues and +"societies of ethical culture." We are coming to discover that the +essence of Christian fellowship does not consist in keeping people out. +Neither, so long as the apostolic rubric of Christian worship[410:1] +remains unaltered, is it to be denied that the fellowship thus provided +for is a fellowship in one of the sacraments of Christian service. + +A notable advance in true catholicity of communion is reported from +among the churches and scattered missions in Maine. Hitherto, in the +various movements of Christian union, it was common to attempt to disarm +the suspicions of zealous sectarians by urgent disclaimers of any intent +or tendency to infringe on the rights or interests of the several sects, +or impair their claim to a paramount allegiance from their adherents. +The Christians of Maine, facing tasks of evangelization more than +sufficient to occupy all their resources even when well economized and +squandering nothing on needless divisions and competitions, have +attained to the high grace of saying that sectarian interests must and +shall be sacrificed when the paramount interests of the kingdom of +Christ require it.[410:2] When this attainment is reached by other +souls, and many other, the conspicuous shame and scandal of American +Christianity will begin to be abated. + +Meanwhile the signs of a craving for larger fellowship continue to be +multiplied. Quite independently of practical results achieved, the mere +fact of efforts and experiments is a hopeful fact, even when these are +made in directions in which the past experience of the church has +written up "No Thoroughfare." + +I. No one need question the sincerity or the fraternal spirit with which +some important denominations have each proposed the reuniting of +Christians on the simple condition that all others should accept the +distinctive tenet for which each of these denominations has contended +against others. The present pope, holding the personal respect and +confidence of the Christian world to a higher degree than any one of his +predecessors since the Reformation (to name no earlier date), has +earnestly besought the return of all believers to a common fellowship by +their acceptance of the authority and supremacy of the Roman see. With +equal cordiality the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church have +signified their longing for restored fellowship with their brethren on +the acceptance by these of prelatical episcopacy. And the Baptists, +whose constant readiness at fraternization in everything else is +emphasized by their conscientious refraining from the sacramental sign +of communion, are not less earnest in their desire for the unification +of Christendom by the general acceptance of that tenet concerning +baptism, the widespread rejection of which debars them, reluctant, from +unrestricted fellowship with the general company of faithful men. But +while we welcome every such manifestation of a longing for union among +Christians, and honor the aspiration that it might be brought about in +one or another of these ways, in forecasting the probabilities of the +case, we recognize the extreme unlikeliness that the very formulas which +for ages have been the occasions of mutual contention and separation +shall become the basis of general agreement and lasting concord. + +II. Another indication of the craving for a larger fellowship is found +in the efforts made for large sectarian councils, representing closely +kindred denominations in more than one country. The imposing ubiquity of +the Roman Church, so impressively sustaining its claim to the title +_Catholic_, may have had some influence to provoke other denominations +to show what could be done in emulation of this sort of greatness. It +were wiser not to invite comparison at this point. No other Christian +organization, or close fellowship of organizations, can approach that +which has its seat at Rome, in the world-wideness of its presence, or +demand with so bold a challenge, + + Quae regio in terris non nostri plena laboris? + +The representative assembly of any other body of Christians, however +widely ramified, must seem insignificant when contrasted with the real +ecumenicity of the Vatican Council. But it has not been useless for the +larger sects of Protestantism to arrange their international assemblies, +if it were for nothing more than this, that such widening of the circle +of practical fellowship may have the effect to disclose to each sect a +larger Christendom outside to which their fellowship must sooner or +later be made to reach. + +The first of these international sectarian councils was that commonly +spoken of as "the Pan-Anglican Synod," of Protestant Episcopal bishops +gathered at Lambeth by invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in +1867 and thrice since. The example was bettered by the Presbyterians, +who in 1876 organized for permanence their "Pam-Presbyterian Alliance," +or "Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the world holding +the Presbyterian System." The first of the triennial general councils +of this Alliance was held at Edinburgh in 1877, "representing more +than forty-nine separate churches scattered through twenty-five +different countries, and consisting of more than twenty thousand +congregations."[413:1] The second council was held at Philadelphia, and +the third at Belfast. The idea was promptly seized by the Methodists. At +the instance of the General Conference of the United States, a +Pam-Methodist Council was held in London in 1881,--"the first Ecumenical +Methodist Conference,"--consisting of four hundred delegates, +representing twenty-eight branches of Methodism, ten in the eastern +hemisphere and eighteen in the western, including six millions of +communicants and about twenty millions of people.[413:2] Ten years +later, in 1891, a second "Methodist Ecumenical Conference" was held at +Washington. + +Interesting and useful as this international organization of sects is +capable of being made, it would be a mistake to look upon it as marking +a stage in the progress toward a manifest general unity of the church. +The tendency of it is, on the whole, in the opposite direction. + +III. If the organization of "ecumenical" sects has little tendency +toward the visible communion of saints in the American church, not much +more is to be hoped from measures for the partial consolidation of +sects, such as are often projected and sometimes realized. The healing +of the great thirty years' schism of the Presbyterian Church, in 1869, +was so vast a gain in ecclesiastical economy, and in the abatement of a +long-reeking public scandal and of a multitude of local frictions and +irritations, that none need wonder at the awakening of ardent desires +that the ten Presbyterian bodies still surviving might "find room for +all within one fold"[413:3] in a national or continental Presbyterian +Church. The seventeen Methodist bodies, separated by no differences of +polity or of doctrine that seem important to anybody but themselves, if +consolidated into one, would constitute a truly imposing body, numbering +nearly five millions of communicants and more than fifteen millions of +people; and if this should absorb the Protestant Episcopal Church (an +event the possibility of which has often been contemplated with +complacency), with its half-million of communicants and its elements of +influence far beyond the proportion of its numbers, the result would be +an approximation to some good men's ideal of a national church, with its +army of ministers cooerdinated by a college of bishops, and its _plebs +adunata sacerdoti_. Consultations are even now in progress looking +toward the closer fellowship of the Congregationalists and the +Disciples. The easy and elastic terms of internal association in each of +these denominations make it the less difficult to adjust terms of mutual +cooeperation and union. Suppose that the various Baptist organizations +were to discover that under their like congregational government there +were ways in which, without compromising or weakening in the slightest +their protest against practices which they reprobate in the matter of +baptism, they could, for certain defined purposes, enter into the same +combination, the result would be a body of nearly five millions of +communicants, not the less strong for being lightly harnessed and for +comprehending wide diversities of opinion and temperament. In all this +we have supposed to be realized nothing more than friends of Christian +union have at one time or another urged as practicable and desirable. By +these few and, it would seem, not incongruous combinations there would +be four powerful ecclesiastical corporations,--one Catholic and three +Protestant,--which, out of the twenty millions of church communicants in +the United States, would include more than seventeen and one half +millions.[415:1] + +The pondering of these possibilities is pertinent to this closing +chapter on account of the fact that, as we near the end of the +nineteenth century, one of the most distinctly visible tendencies is the +tendency toward the abatement of sectarian division in the church. It is +not for us simply to note the converging lines of tendency, without some +attempt to compute the point toward which they converge. There is grave +reason to doubt whether this line of the consolidation or confederation +of sects, followed never so far, would reach the desired result. + +If the one hundred and forty-three sects enumerated in the eleventh +census of the United States[415:2] should by successful negotiation be +reduced to four, distinguished each from the others by strongly marked +diversities of organization and of theological statement, and united to +each other only by community of the one faith in Jesus Christ, doubtless +it would involve some important gains. It would make it possible to be +rid of the friction and sometimes the clash of much useless and +expensive machinery, and to extinguish many local schisms that had been +engendered by the zeal of some central sectarian propaganda. Would it +tend to mitigate the intensity of sectarian competition, or would it +tend rather to aggravate it? Is one's pride in his sect, his zeal for +the propagation of it, his jealousy of any influence that tends to +impair its greatness or hinder its progress, likely to be reduced, or is +it rather likely to be exalted, by the consciousness that the sect is a +very great sect, standing alone for important principles? Whatever +there is at present of asperity in the emulous labors of the competing +denominations, would it not be manifold exasperated if the competition +were restricted to four great corporations or confederations? If the +intestine conflict of the church of Christ in America should even be +narrowed down (as many have devoutly wished) to two contestants,--the +Catholic Church with its diversity of orders and rites, on the one hand, +and Protestantism with its various denominations solidly confederated, +on the other,--should we be nearer to the longed-for achievement of +Christian union? or should we find sectarian animosities thereby raised +to the highest power, and the church, discovering that it was on the +wrong track for the desired terminus, compelled to reverse and back in +order to be switched upon the right one? + +Questions like these, put to be considered, not to be answered, raise in +the mind the misgiving that we have been seeking in diplomatic +negotiations between high contracting parties that which diplomacy can +do only a little toward accomplishing. The great aim is to be sought in +humbler ways. It is more hopeful to begin at the lower end. Not in great +towns and centers of ecclesiastical influence, but in villages and +country districts, the deadly effects of comminuted fracture in the +church are most deeply felt. It is directly to the people of such +communities, not through the medium of persons or committees that +represent national sectarian interests, that the new commandment is to +be preached, which yet is no new commandment, but the old commandment +which they have had from the beginning. It cannot always be that sincere +Christian believers, living together in a neighborhood in which the +ruinous effects of division are plain to every eye, shall continue to +misapprehend or disregard some of the tenderest and most unmistakable +counsels of their Lord and his apostles, or imagine the authority of +them to be canceled by the authority of any sect or party of Christians. +The double fallacy, first, that it is a Christian's prime duty to look +out for his own soul, and, secondly, that the soul's best health is to +be secured by sequestering it from contact with dissentient opinions, +and indulging its tastes and preferences wherein they differ from those +of its neighbor, must sometime be found out and exposed. The discovery +will be made that there is nothing in the most cherished sermons and +sacraments and prayers that is comparable in value, as a means of grace, +with the giving up of all these for God's reign and righteousness--that +he who will save his soul shall lose it, and he who will lose his soul +for Christ and his gospel shall save it to life eternal. These centuries +of church history, beginning with convulsive disruptions of the church +in Europe, with persecutions and religious wars, present before us the +importation into the New World of the religious divisions and +subdivisions of the Old, and the further division of these beyond any +precedent in history. It begins to look as if in this "strange work" God +had been grinding up material for a nobler manifestation of the unity of +his people. The sky of the declining century is red with promise. +Hitherto, not the decay of religious earnestness only, but the revival +of it, has brought into the church, not peace, but division. When next +some divine breathing of spiritual influence shall be wafted over the +land, can any man forbid the hope that from village to village the +members of the disintegrated and enfeebled church of Christ may be +gathered together "with one accord in one place" not for the transient +fervors of the revival only, but for permanent fellowship in work and +worship? A few examples of this would spread their influence through the +American church "until the whole was leavened." + +The record of important events in the annals of American Christianity +may well end with that wholly unprecedented gathering at Chicago in +connection with the magnificent celebration of the four hundredth +anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus--I mean, of course, +the Parliament of Religions. In a land which bears among the nations the +reproach of being wholly absorbed in devotion to material interests, and +in which the church, unsupported and barely recognized by the state, and +unregulated by any secular authority, scatters itself into what seem to +be hopelessly discordant fragments, a bold enterprise was undertaken in +the name of American Christianity, such as the church in no other land +of Christendom would have had the power or the courage to venture on. +With large hospitality, representatives of all the religions of the +world were invited to visit Chicago, free of cost, as guests of the +Parliament. For seventeen days the Christianity of America, and of +Christendom, and of Christian missions in heathen lands, sat +confronted--no, not confronted, but side by side on the same +platform--with the non-Christian religions represented by their priests, +prelates, and teachers. Of all the diversities of Christian opinion and +organization in America nothing important was unrepresented, from the +authoritative dogmatic system and the solid organization of the Catholic +Church (present in the person of its highest official dignitaries) to +the broadest liberalism and the most unrestrained individualism. There +were those who stood aloof and prophesied that nothing could come of +such an assemblage but a hopeless jangle of discordant opinions. The +forebodings were disappointed. The diverse opinions were there, and were +uttered with entire unreserve. But the jangle of discord was not there. +It was seen and felt that the American church, in the presence of the +unchristian and antichristian powers, and in presence of those solemn +questions of the needs of humanity that overtask the ingenuity and the +resources of us all combined, was "builded as a city that is at unity +with itself." That body which, by its strength of organization, and by +the binding force of its antecedents, might have seemed to some most +hopelessly isolated from the common sympathies of the assembly, like all +the rest was faithful in the assertion of its claims, and, on the other +hand, was surpassed by none in the manifestation of fraternal respect +toward fellow-Christians of other folds. Since those seventeen wonderful +September days of 1893, the idea that has so long prevailed with +multitudes of minds, that the only Christian union to be hoped for in +America must be a union to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic Church +and in antagonism to it, ought to be reckoned an idea obsolete and +antiquated. + + * * * * * + +The theme prescribed for this volume gives no opportunity for such a +conclusion as the literary artist delights in--a climax of achievement +and consummation, or the catastrophe of a decline and fall. We have +marked the sudden divulging to the world of the long-kept secret of +divine Providence; the unveiling of the hidden continent; the progress +of discovery, of conquest, of colonization; the planting of the church; +the rush of immigration; the occupation of the continent with Christian +institutions by a strange diversity of sects; the great providential +preparations as for some "divine event" still hidden behind the curtain +that is about to rise on the new century,--and here the story breaks off +half told. + + * * * * * + +To so many of his readers as shall have followed him to this last page +of the volume, the author would speak a parting word. He does not +deprecate the criticisms that will certainly be pronounced upon his +work by those competent to judge both of the subject and of the style of +it. He would rather acknowledge them in advance. No one of his critics +can possibly have so keen a sense as the author himself of his +incompetency, and of the inadequacy of his work, to the greatness of the +subject. To one reproach, however, he cannot acknowledge himself justly +liable: he is not self-appointed to a task beyond his powers and +attainments, but has undertaken it at the instance of eminent men to +whose judgment he was bound to defer. But he cannot believe that even +his shortcomings and failures will be wholly fruitless. If they shall +provoke some really competent scholar to make a book worthy of so great +and inspiring a theme, the present author will be well content. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[400:1] These statistical figures are taken from the authoritative work +of Dr. H. K. Carroll, "The Religious Forces of the United States" +(American Church History Series, vol. i.). The volume gives no estimate +of the annual expenditure for the maintenance of religious institutions. +If we assume the small figure of $500 as the average annual expenditure +in connection with each house of worship, it makes an aggregate of +$82,648,500 for parochial expenses. The annual contributions to +Protestant foreign and home missions amount to $7,000,000. (See above, +pp. 358, 359.) The amounts annually contributed as free gifts for +Christian schools and colleges and hospitals and other charitable +objects can at present be only conjectured. + +[402:1] The "Federalist," No. 51. + +[404:1] "This habit of respecting one another's rights cherishes a +feeling of mutual respect and courtesy. If on the one hand the spirit of +independence fosters individualism, on the other it favors good +fellowship. All sects are equal before the law.... Hence one great cause +of jealousy and distrust is removed; and though at times sectarian zeal +may lead to rivalries and controversies unfavorable to unity, on the +other hand the independence and equality of the churches favor their +voluntary cooeperation; and in no country is the practical union of +Christians more beautifully or more beneficially exemplified than in the +United States. With the exception of the Roman Catholics, Christians of +all communions are accustomed to work together in the spirit of mutual +concession and confidence, in educational, missionary, and philanthropic +measures for the general good. The motto of the state holds of the +church also, _E pluribus unum_. As a rule, a bigoted church or a fierce +sectarian is despised" (Dr. J. P. Thompson, in "Church and State in the +United States," pp. 98, 99). See, to the like purport, the judicious +remarks of Mr. Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., pp. 568, 664. + +[405:1] Bryce, "American Commonwealth," vol. ii., p. 568. + +[405:2] 1 Cor. i. 10. + +[406:1] See above, pp. 61, 95, 190, 206, 220, 258. + +[406:2] See above, pp. 252-259. + +[406:3] Among the New England Congregationalists the zeal for union went +so far as to favor combination with other sects even in the work of +training candidates for the ministry. Among the "honorary +vice-presidents" of their "American Education Society" was Bishop +Griswold, of the Eastern Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church. + +[407:1] Sermon at consecration of Bishop H. U. Onderdonk, 1827. + +[407:2] Minutes of the Convention of Delegates met to consult on +Missions in the City of Cincinnati, A.D. 1831. The position of the +bishop was more logical than that of the convention, forasmuch as he +held, by a powerful effort of faith, that "his own" church is the church +of the United States, in an exclusive sense; while the divines at +Cincinnati earnestly repudiate such exclusive pretensions for their +church, and hold to a plurality of sectarian churches on the same +territory, each one of which is divinely invested with the prerogatives +and duties of "the church of Christ." A _usus loquendi_ which seems to +be hopelessly imbedded in the English language applies the word "church" +to each one of the several sects into which the church is divided. It is +this corruption of language which leads to the canonization of schism as +a divine ordinance. + +[408:1] The first proposal for such an assembly seems to be contained in +an article by L. Bacon in the "New Englander" for April, 1844. "Why +might there not be, ere long, some general conference in which the +various evangelical bodies of this country and Great Britain and of the +continent of Europe should be in some way represented, and in which the +great cause of reformed and spiritual Christianity throughout the world +should be made the subject of detailed and deliberate consideration, +with prayer and praise? That would be an 'ecumenical council' such as +never yet assembled since the apostles parted from each other at +Jerusalem--a council not for legislation and division, but for union and +communion and for the extension of the saving knowledge of Christ" (pp. +253, 254). + +[409:1] See the pungent strictures of Horace Bushnell on "The +Evangelical Alliance," in the "New Englander" for January, 1847, p. 109. + +[410:1] James i. 27: "Pure and unpolluted worship, in the eye of God, +consists in visiting widows and orphans in their tribulation, and +keeping one's self spotless from the world." + +[410:2] An agreement has been made, in this State, among five leading +denominations, to avoid competing enterprises in sparsely settled +communities. An interdenominational committee sees to the carrying out +of this policy. At a recent mutual conference unanimous satisfaction was +expressed in the six years' operation of the plan. + +[413:1] "Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," vol. i., p. 63. + +[413:2] Buckley, "The Methodists," p. 552. + +[413:3] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 308. + +[415:1] If the Lutherans of America were to be united with the +Presbyterians, it would be no more than was accomplished fourscore years +ago in Prussia. In that case, out of 20,618,307 communicants, there +would be included in the four combinations, 18,768,859. + +[415:2] Dr. Carroll, "Religious Forces," p. xv. + + + + +INDEX. + + +Abbot, Ezra, 379. + +Abbot, George, Archbishop, 42. + +Abbott, Lyman, 384. + +Abolitionists, 82, 282, 284. + +Adams, Charles Francis, 131. + +Adventists, 336. + +Albany, 69. + +Albrights, 229. + +Alexander, Dr. Gross, 348. + +Alexander VI., pope, 3, 17. + +Allen, Professor A. V. G., 156, 159, 382. + +Allen, Professor J. H., 250. + +Alliance, Evangelical, 408. + +America: + providential concealment of, 1; + medieval church in, 2; + Spanish conquests and missions in, 6-15; + French occupation and missions, 16-29; + English colonies in, 38-67, 82-126; + Dutch and Swedes in, 68-81; + churches of New England, 88; + Quaker colonization, 109-117; + other colonists, 120-124; + diverse sects, 127-139; + Great Awakening, 157-180; + Presbyterians, 186; + Reformed, 187; + Lutheran, 188; + Moravian, 189; + Methodist, 198; + severance of colonies from England and of church from state, 221; + Second Awakening, 233; + organized beneficence, 246; + conflicts of the church, 261; + dissension and schism, 292; + immigration, 315; + the church in the Civil War, 340; + reconstruction and expansion of the church, 351; + theology and literature, 374; + political union and ecclesiastical division, 398; + tendencies toward unity, 405. + +American Bible Society, 256, 408. + +American Board of Missions, 252-255. + +American Missionary Association, 255, 314. + +Andover Theological Seminary, 251, 271. + +Andrew, Bishop, 302. + +Andrews, E. B., 340. + +Andrews, W. G., 177, 179. + +Anglican Church established in American colonies, 51, 61, 64, 65. + +Antipopery agitation, 312, 325. + +Antislavery. See Slavery. + +"Apostasy, the southern," 277, 346. + +"Applied Christianity," 385. + +Apprenticeship obsolete, 364. + +Arminianism, 104, 222. + +Armstrong, General S. C., 356. + +Asbury, Bishop Francis, 200. + +Awakening, the Great, 53, 81, 126, 141, 157, 181. + +Awakening, the Second, 233, 242. + + +Bachman, John, 278. + +Bacon, B. W., 380. + +Bacon, David, 246. + +Bacon, Francis, 40. + +Bacon, Leonard, 84, 94, 102, 113, 134, 227, 260, 272, 278, 287, 408. + +Bacon, Nathaniel, 63. + +Baird, Charles W. and Henry M., 388. + +Baltimore, first Lord, 54; + second Lord, 56. + +Bancroft, George, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, 41, 116, 117, 383. + +Baptist Young People's Union, 369. + +Baptists: + in Virginia, 53; + in Carolina, 64; + in Rhode Island, 106; + in Massachusetts, 130; + in Pennsylvania, 146; + in the South, 149; + services to religious liberty, 221; + antislavery, 222; + become Calvinists, 223; + found Brown University, 248; + undertake foreign missions, 253; + divide on slavery, 303; + pioneer work, 332; + plan of Christian union, 411. + +Barclay, Robert, 112, 117. + +Barnes, Albert, 294. + +Baxter, George A., 237. + +Baxter, Richard, 66, 121. + +Beecher, Edward, 294, 383. + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 341, 351, 384. + +Beecher, Lyman, 230, 243, 251, 263, 286, 294, 383. + +Belcher, Governor, 168. + +Bellamy, Joseph, 156, 181. + +Bellomont, Lord, 79. + +Bellows, Henry W., 383. + +Benezet, Anthony, 203. + +Bennett, Philip, 48. + +Bennett, Richard, 50. + +Berkeley, Governor Sir William, 49, 50, 51, 63. + +Bethlehem, Pa., 189. + +Biblical science, 378. + +Birney, James G., 273, 274, 275, 283. + +Bishops, Anglican, consecrated, 213, 304. + +Bishops, Catholic, consecrated, 215. + +Bishops, colonial, not wanted, 206. + +Bishops, Methodist, consecrated, 219. + +Bishops, Moravian, 124, 193. + +Bissell, Edwin C., 380. + +Blair, Commissary, 52. + +Blair, Samuel, 160, 167. + +Blake, Joseph, 63. + +Boehm, Martin, 228. + +Bogardus, Everard, 70. + +Boyle, Robert, 66. + +Bradford, Governor William, 94, 97. + +Brainerd, David, 180, 183, 247. + +Bray, Thomas, 61, 62, 66. + +Breckinridge, Robert J., 281, 378. + +Brewster, Edward, 43, 44. + +Brewster, William, 44, 83. + +Briggs, Charles A., 380. + +Brooks, Phillips, 384. + +Brown, Francis, 379. + +Brown, Tutor, 131. + +Browne, J. and S., at Salem, 97. + +Browne, W. H., 55, 59. + +Bryce, James, 404, 405. + +Buck, Richard, 42, 44. + +Buckley, James M., 201, 202, 218, 219, 240, 241. + +Buckminster, 251, 383. + +Bushnell, Horace, 105, 176, 375, 383, 409. + + +Cahenslyism, 392. + +Calvert, Cecilius, 56. + +Calvert, George, 54, 55. + +Calvert, Leonard and George, 56, 59. + +Calvinism: + in New England, 103, 225; + among Baptists, 223; + in the Presbyterian Church, 294. + +Campanius, John, 76, 150. + +Campbell, Douglas, 74. + +Campbellites, 242. + +Camp-meetings, 233. + +Canada, 18-29. + +Cane Ridge revival, 235. + +Carolinas colonized, 62. + +Carroll, Bishop John, 214. + +Carroll, Dr. H. K., 335, 369. + +Cartier, Jacques, 17. + +Cartwright, Peter, 232. + +Catholic Church, Roman: + Revived and reformed in sixteenth century, 4. + Spanish missions a failure, 10-14. + French missions, their wide extension and final collapse, 17-29. + Persecuted in England, 36. + In Maryland, 56. + Way prepared for, 185. + Organized for United States, 215. + Conflict with "trusteeism," 216, 310; + with fanaticism, 312. + Gain and loss by immigration, 318-322. + Modified in America, 323-396. + Methods of propagation, 330. + Its literature, 394. + Its relation to the Church Catholic, 324, 416, 418. + +Cavaliers in Virginia, 51. + +Champlain, 17, 20, 28. + +Channing, William Ellery, 251, 301, 383. + +Charity Organization, 409. + +Charles II. of England, 51, 62, 78. + +Charter: + of Massachusetts, 90; + transferred to America, 98. + +Charter of the Virginia Company: + revoked, 48. + +Chauncy, Charles, 170. + +Chautauqua, 233, 363. + +Cherokee nation, 265. + +Chickasaws and Choctaws, 23. + +Chinese immigration, 336. + +Church polity in New England, 88, 95, 99, 102. + +Clark, Francis E., 368. + +Clarke, James Freeman, 383. + +Clergy: + of Virginia, 52; + of Maryland, 61. + +Cleveland, Aaron, 204. + +College settlement, 370. + +Colleges, 48, 52, 102, 160, 172, 173, 176, 231, 247, 271. + +Colonization in Africa, 257. + +Congregationalists: + in New England, 99; + in New Jersey, 109; + moving west, 137; + cooeperate with Presbyterians, 220; + college-builders, 333; + work at the South, 355. + +Conservatism of American churches, 311. + +Copland, Patrick, 47, 48, 50. + +Cornbury, Lord, 80, 121, 135, 141. + +Corwin, E. T., 69, 71, 78, 80, 121, 139. + +Covenanters in New Jersey, 110. + +Cumberland Presbyterians, 241. + +Cutler, Timothy, 131, 156, 169. + + +Dabney, Robert L., 378. + +Dale, Sir Thomas, 43, 45. + +Davenport, James, 170. + +Davenport, John, 49, 102. + +Davies, Samuel, 173. + +Deerfield, 21. + +De la Warr, Lord, 41, 43. + +Dewey, Orville, 383. + +Dickinson, Jonathan, 160, 294. + +Disciples, 242, 414. + +Divisions of Christendom, 31. + +Dominicans, 9, 10, 32. + +Dorchester, Daniel, 322, 335, 357, 358, 359, 361. + +Douglas, Stephen A., 341. + +Dow, Lorenzo, 240. + +Drunkenness prevalent, 286. + +Dubbs, Joseph H., 121. + +Dudley, Governor, 98. + +Dueling, 263. + +Duffield, George, 294. + +Dunster, President, 130. + +Durand, William, 49. + +Durbin, David P., 240. + +Dutch church, 68, 78, 109, 134. + +Dutch in Carolina, 64. + +"Dutch, Pennsylvania," 118. + +Dwight, Timothy, 230, 242, 375, 387. + + +Eaton, Theophilus, 102. + +Eddy, Richard, 225, 228. + +Edmundson, William, 64. + +Edwards, Jonathan, 156, 169, 172, 179, 247, 294. + +Edwards, Jonathan, the younger, 222, 225, 273. + +Elder, M. T., 322, 331. + +Eleuthera colony, 50. + +Eliot, John, 66, 102, 150, 152. + +Embury, Philip, 199. + +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 298, 383. + +Emmons, Nathanael, 251, 305, 375. + +Endicott, John, 90, 93, 94. + +England, religious parties in, 33, 43. + +Episcopal Church: + in Virginia, 38-53; + in Maryland, 60; + in Carolina, 64-67, 148; + in New York, 78-80, 135; + in Pennsylvania, 119; + in Georgia, 124; + in New England, 128, 129, 131-134; + hostile to revivals, 177, 306; + extreme depression, 210; + consecration of bishops, 212; + resuscitation, 304; + violent controversy, 306; + rapid growth, 308; + specialties of, in evangelization, 334; + reconstruction after Civil War, 352; + Pan-Anglican Synod, 412. + +Epworth League, 369. + +Establishment of religion: + in Virginia, 45, 51-53; + in Maryland, 61; + in the Carolinas, 64, 65, 148; + in New York, 78-80; + in New England, 91, 97, 100, 102, 128, 129. + Disestablishment, 174, 221. + +Evangelical Association, 229. + +Evangelization at the South, 356. + +Evangelization at the West, 327. + +Evarts, Jeremiah, 267, 271, 286. + +Exscinding Acts, 167, 297, 353. + + +Fanaticism of Spanish church, 4, 8. + +Fanaticism, antipopery, 60, 61, 312. + +Finney, Charles G., 375. + +Fisher, George Park, 182, 382. + +Fisher, Sidney George, 118, 120, 143-145. + +Fitch, John, 150. + +Fletcher, Governor, 79, 80. + +Florida, 9, 10, 22. + +Foster, R. V., 236, 238. + +Fox, George, 34, 65, 114, 117, 149. + +Franciscans, 10, 11, 12, 32. + +Franklin, Benjamin, 118. + +Fraser, John, 335. + +Frelinghuysen, Domine, 81, 134, 141, 142, 163. + +Frelinghuysen, Senator, 267. + +French missions: + projected, 17; + extinguished, 185, 220. + +Fuller, Dr. and Deacon, 94. + + +Gates, Sir Thomas, 42. + +Georgia, 122, 205, 264, 285. + +German exiles, 53, 139. + +German immigration, 117, 120, 187, 318. + +Gladden, Washington, 385. + +Gosnold, Bartholomew, 38. + +Gough, John B., 289. + +Great fortunes and great gifts, 359. + +Greatorex's collection, 393. + +Green, Ashbel, 204. + +Green, S. S., 122. + +Green, W. H., 380. + +Gregory, Caspar Rene, 379. + +Griffin, Edward Dorr, 251, 383. + +Griswold, Alexander V., 304. + +Gurley, R. R., 273. + + +Hale, Edward Everett, 367, 386. + +Half-way Covenant, 104. + +Hall, Isaac H., 379. + +Hamilton, J. Taylor, 190, 198. + +Hampton Institute, 356. + +Hand, Daniel, 360. + +Hard times in 1857, 342. + +Harrison, Thomas, 49, 50, 60. + +Hart, Levi, 204. + +Hastings, Thomas, 387, 392. + +Haupt, Bible-work, 380. + +Haverhill, Mass., 21. + +Hawkins, John, 289. + +Helps, Arthur, 7, 8. + +Higginson, Francis, 90. + +High-church party: + in Episcopal Church, 306, 308, 323, 407; + in Presbyterian Church, 295, 407. + +Hill, Matthew, 121. + +Hilprecht, Dr., 379. + +Historical theology, 381. + +Hitchcock, Roswell D., 382. + +Hobart, John Henry, 304, 407. + +Hodge, Charles, 378, 381. + +Holland: + colony from, in New York, 68; + not the source of New England institutions, 74; + Pilgrims in, 86; + mission from, to Germans, 194. + +Hooker, Thomas, 102, 138. + +Hopkins, Samuel, 151, 181, 183, 184, 204, 205. + +Hopkins, Stephen, 44. + +Hopkinsianism, 294. + +Hudson, Henry, 68. + +Hughes, John, 310, 351. + +Huguenots, 37, 53, 62, 64, 65, 81, 139. + +Humphrey, Heman, 286. + +Hunt, Robert, 38, 41. + +Huntington, Frederic D., 384. + +Hurst, John F., 382. + +Hutchinson, Ann, 101, 106. + +Hymn-writers, 387. + + +Indians: + evangelization of, 46, 47, 57, 71, 74, 76, 150, 151, 179, 246; + Indian churches, 131. + +Induction refused to unworthy parsons, 51. + +Immigration, 315, 317, 357. + +Infidelity, 219, 230. + +Institutional Church, 369. + +Intemperance, 75, 205, 285. + +International sectarian councils, 412. + +Ireland, 318. + +Iroquois, 20, 23, 25. + + +Jackson, Helen Hunt, 264. + +Jacobs, Henry E., 71, 121, 188, 190, 196, 198. + +James I. of England, 36, 38, 44, 47, 48, 90. + +James II. of England, 110, 112. + +Jamestown, 30-45. + +Jarratt, Devereux, 173. + +Jefferson, Thomas, 221, 230, 305. + +Jerks, the, 239, 240. + +Jesuits, 4, 10, 26, 28, 29, 32, 56, 57, 58, 71, 150, 214. + +Jogues, Father, 71, 150. + +Johnson, President Samuel, 132. + +Johnson, Thomas Cary, 297, 314, _note_, 354. + +Journalism, 333, 344. + +Judson, Adoniram, 253. + + +Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 284, 341. + +Kansas Crusade, 341. + +Keith, George, 119, 133, 149. + +Keith, Governor, 120. + +Kieft, Governor, 70, 71. + +King, Thomas Starr, 383. + +King's Chapel, Boston, 224. + +Kirby, William, 294. + +Kirk, Edward Norris, 383. + +Knapp, Jacob, 288. + + +Lanphier, Jeremiah, 342. + +La Salle, 18. + +Las Casas, 9, 152. + +Laud, William, 48. + +Lea, Henry Charles, 382. + +Leon, Ponce de, 9. + +Leyden, 45, 83, 86. + +Liberty, religious: + in Eleuthera, 50; + in Maryland, 56, 59; + in Carolina, 63; + in New York, 72; + in New Jersey, 111; + in Pennsylvania, 116; + in Georgia, 123; + defended by Makemie, 136; + favored by sectarian division, 174; + promoted by Baptists, 221. + +Literature of American church, 374-395. + +Littledale, R. F., 26, 27, 28. + +Liturgies, 386, 394. + +Locke, John, 62, 64. + +Lodge, H. C., 62, 70, 117, 153. + +Log College, 142, 160, 162, 172. + +Logan County, Kentucky, 232, 234. + +Louisiana, 23, 27, 220. + +Lutherans, 72, 120, 146, 188, 190, 232. + +Luther League, 369. + + +Madison, James, Bishop, 232. + +Madison, James, President, 402. + +Maine, 20, 21, 23, 410. + +Makemie, Francis, 121, 136. + +Maria Monk, 312. + +Marshall, John, 232. + +Maryland, 49, 54-62. + +Mason, John M., 263. + +Mason, Lowell, 392. + +Massacres, 2, 10, 11, 12, 48, 71, 76, 151, 194. + +Mather, Cotton, 107, 153. + +Mayhews, the, 150. + +McConnell, S. D., 151, 170, 179, 211, 224. + +McGee brothers, 233. + +McGready, James, 233. + +McIlvaine, C. P., 351. + +McMasters, John Bach, 240. + +Megapolensis, Domine, 71, 77, 150. + +Menendez, 10. + +Mennonites, 72, 117, 153. + +Mercersburg theology, 377, 388. + +Methodism: + tardy arrival in America, 198; + spreads southward, 201; + rapid growth, 202; + against slavery and intemperance, 205; + receives bishops, 219; + divided by the slavery agitation, 301; + in pioneer work, 332; + at the South, 353; + Ecumenical Conference, 413; + consolidation of Methodist sects, 414. + +Michaelius, Jonas, 69. + +Millerism, 336. + +Mills, Samuel J., 248, 256. + +Minuit, Peter, 69, 70, 76. + +Missionary societies, 62, 252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 367. + +Missions, American: + to Indians, 179, 246, 265; + to the West, 220, 327; + to the South, 355. + +Missions, foreign, 252, 255, 257, 358. + +Missions to America: + Icelandic, 2; + Spanish, 6-16; + French, 17-29; + of the S. P. G., 62, 66, 67, 80, 126, 131, 133, 135, 140, 177; + of the church of Holland, 195. + +Missionary Ridge, 268. + +Mississippi, the, 18, 21, 256. + +Missouri Compromise, 270, 271, 284. + +Mobs: + antipopery, 321; + pro-slavery, 283. + +Montesinos, 9. + +Montreal, 17, 20. + +Moody, Dwight L., 344, 388. + +Moor, Thoroughgood, 135. + +Moore, George Foot, 380. + +Moravians: in Georgia, 124; + in Pennsylvania, 189, 193; + missions to Indians, 194; + their liturgies, 394. + +Mormonism, 335. + +Morris, Colonel, 79. + +Morris, Samuel, 173. + +Morse, Jedidiah, 251. + +Morton, Thomas, 88. + +Muehlenberg, Henry M., 191-198. + +Mulford, Elisha, 378. + +Munger, Theodore T., 384. + +Murray, John, 225. + +Music, church, 391, 394. + + +Nansemond church, 48, 49, 59. + +Nationalism of the Puritans, 100, 101, 128, 132, 137, 176. + +Native American party, 313, 321. + +Neill, E. D., 44, 51, 59. + +Neshaminy, 142. + +Nevin, John W., 377. + +Newark, 110, 160. + +New Brunswick, 162. + +New England Company, 66. + +New England theology, 181, 374. + +New Englanders moving west, 80, 137. + +New Haven theology, 294, 298. + +New Jersey, 109-112. + +New Jerusalem Church, 229. + +New Londonderry, 160. + +Newman, A. H., 131, 255, 275. + +New Mexico, 6, 11. + +New-School Presbyterians, 294, 346, 355. + +New-Side Presbyterians, 166. + +New York, 68-81; + diversity of sects, 134. + +Nicholson, Governor, 52. + +Nicolls, Governor, 78. + +Nitschmann, David, 124, 193. + +Northampton, 104, 155-159. + +Norton, Andrews, 299. + +Nott, Eliphalet, 263. + +Nursing orders and schools, 368. + + +Oberlin College, 314. + +Occum, Samson, 179. + +Oglethorpe, James, 123. + +O'Gorman, Bishop, 2, 15, 23, 24, 28, 216, 312, 321, 396. + +Old-School Presbyterians, 295, 345, 353. + +Old-Side Presbyterians, 166. + +Orders in Roman Church, 330. + +Ordination in New England, 96, 100. + +Otis, Deacon, 360. + +Otterbein, Philip William, 228. + + +Paine, Thomas, 230. + +Palatines, 37, 53, 118, 140, 187. + +Palfrey, John G., 98, 99, 100, 383. + +Palmer, Ray, 387. + +Pam-Methodist Conference, 413. + +Pam-Presbyterian Alliance, 412. + +Pan-Anglican Synod, 412. + +Park, Edwards A., 151, 182, 184, 204, 305, 375. + +Parker, Theodore, 300. + +Parkman, Francis, 18. + +Parliament of Religions, 418. + +Pastorius, 117. + +Penn, William, 112, 115, 143. + +Persecutions, 36, 51, 107, 110, 130. + +Pierpont, James, 81. + +Pierpont, Sarah, 156. + +Pierson, Abraham, 109, 150. + +Pilgrims, 45, 83, 84, 86, 88, 93. + +Plan of Union, 220, 258, 293. + +Pocahontas, 46. + +Pond, Enoch, 378. + +Population of United States: + in 1790, 315; + in 1850, _ibid._ + +Porter, Ebenezer, 286. + +Pott, Governor, 55. + +Presbyterians: + in Scotland and Ireland, 37, 110; + in America, 110, 121; + in New York, 136; + schism among, 166; + rapid growth, 186; + alliance with Congregationalists, 206; + earnestly antislavery, 268; + dissensions among, 292; + the great schism, 296; + characteristics as a sect, 332; + new schisms and reunions, 346, 353, 355; + liturgical movement, 388; + early unproductiveness in theology and literature, 394; + international alliance, 412. + +Princeton College, 173, 175. + +Princeton Seminary, 251, 380. + +Prohibitory legislation, 290. + +Protestant sects and Catholic orders, 330-334. + +Protestantism in Europe divided, 31-34. + +Provoost, Bishop, 212, 213, 232. + +Psalmody, 182, 387, 391-393. + +Pulpit, the American, 382. + +Puritan jurisprudence, 113; + sabbatarian extravagance provokes reaction, 371. + +Puritans: + not Separatists, 43; + in Virginia, 44-50; + in Maryland, 59; + antagonize the Separatists, 82; + settle at Salem, 90; + fraternize with the Pilgrims, 94; + church order, 96; + the great Puritan exodus bringing the charter, 98; + intend an established church, 100; + exclude factious dissenters, 101; + divergences of opinion, 103; + in New Jersey, 109; + Puritan church establishments fail, 108, 128, 174; + Nationalist principle succumbs to Separatist, 176. + + +Quakerism: + a reaction from Puritanism, 113; + its enthusiasm, 114; + its discipline, 114; + anticipated in continental Europe, 115; + Keith's schism, 119; + Quaker jurisprudence, 143; + failure in civil government, 144; + and in pastoral work, 145; + its sole and faithful witness at the South, 149; + the only organized church fellowship uniting the colonies, 150; + Hicksite schism, 314. + +Quakers: + persecuted in England, 36; + in Virginia, 51, 53; + missions in Carolina, 64; + persecuted in New York, 73; + and in Massachusetts, 101; + dominant in New Jersey, 110; + and in Pennsylvania, 116; + excluded from Evangelical Alliance, 408. + +_Quanta Cura_, bull, with Syllabus, 352, 396. + +Quebec, 17, 20. + + +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 39, 62. + +Redemptioners, 187. + +Reformation in Spain, 4. + +Reformed Church, German: + begins too late the care of German immigrants, 140; + long unorganized, 146; + persists in separation from other German Christians, 195. + +Reformed-drunkard ethics, 290. + +Reformed Dutch Church: + tardy birth in New York, 69; + and languishing life, 74, 78; + revival under Frelinghuysen, 81, 134, 141, 163. + +Relly, James, 225. + +_Requerimiento_ of the Spanish, 9. + +Restoration of the Stuarts, 51. + +Revival of 1857, 342. + +Revival of Roman Catholic Church, 214. + +Rhode Island, 92, 106, 107. + +Rice, David, 237. + +Rice, Luther, 253. + +Ripley, George, 299. + +Rising, Governor, 77. + +Robinson, Edward, 378. + +Robinson, John, 83, 85, 86, 92. + +Robinson, "One-eyed," 173. + +Rolfe, John, 46. + +Roman Catholic. See Catholic. + +Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 87. + +Rush, Benjamin, 226, 286. + +Ryan, Archbishop, 324. + + +Sabbath observance, 371. + +St. Andrew's Brotherhood, 369. + +St. Augustine, 10. + +St. Lawrence, the, 17. + +Salem, 90, 96. + +Saloons, tippling, 285, 288. + +Saltonstall, Gurdon, 132, 133. + +Salvation Army, 370. + +Salzburgers, 37, 124, 125. + +Sandys, Archbishop, and his sons, 44, 47. + +Satolli, Monsignor, 396. + +Saybrook Platform, 132, 137. + +Schaff, Philip, 377, 382. + +Schenectady, 21. + +Schism: + in Presbyterian Church, 167, 241, 297, 346, 353; + among Congregationalists, 249; + among Unitarians, 298; + in Methodist Church, 302, 303; + among Baptists, 303; + among Quakers, 314; + healed, 355; + compensations of, 107, 304, 354, 404. + +Schlatter, Michael, 195. + +Schools: + for Virginia, 47, 48, 52; + in New York, 70, 75; + in New England, 103; + in New Jersey, 110; + in Pennsylvania, 196. + +Scotch-Irish: + in Virginia, 47; + in Carolina, 64; + in Maryland, 121; + in Pennsylvania, 122; + in New York, 136; + in the Alleghanies, 146; + in the Awakening, 160; + principles and prejudices of, 186. + +Screven, William, 64. + +Scrooby, 44, 83. + +Seabury, Samuel, 212. + +Sects: + European imported, 31-34; + in New York, 72, 134, 140; + in Rhode Island, 106; + in New Jersey, 109; + the German, 117, 120; + multiply against established churches, 174; + enfeebling effect of, 188; + reconstruct themselves, 208; + competition of, 328; + characteristics of, 332; + multitude of, 400; + mischiefs of, 403. + +Seminaries, theological, 249. + +Separatists, 33, 44; + at Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth, 81-95; + in Rhode Island, 107; + their principle prevails, 176. + +Sewall, Samuel, 152. + +Seybert commission, 338. + +Shaftesbury, Lord, 62. + +Shedd, W. J. G., 382. + +Sisterhoods, 368. + +Slater educational fund, 357, 360. + +Slavery: + of Indians, 8, 9, 152; + of negroes, in Florida, 10; + in Virginia, 48; + in all colonies, 147; + condemned in Massachusetts, 152; + and in Pennsylvania, 153; + increased cruelty of, 153. + Kindness to slaves, 154, 179, 246, 271. + Constant and unanimous protest of the church against slavery, 203-205, + 222, 268-277. + Beginning of a pro-slavery party in the church, 277; + propagated by terror, 279-282. + Pro-slavery reaction at the North, 282. + Unanimous protests against extension of slavery, 284. + Slavery question in Presbyterian Church, 296; + in Methodist Church, 301; + in Baptist Convention, 303. + Failure of compromises, 340. + The Kansas Crusade, 341. + Apostasy of the southern church complete, 346. + Diversity of feeling among northern Christians, 347. + Slavery extinguished, 285, 351. + +Smalley, John, 225. + +Smith, Eli, 273, 378; + Henry Boynton, 381; + Henry Preserved, 380; + John, 38-42, 47; + Ralph, 90. + +Smylie, James, 277. + +Smyth, Newman, 384. + +Social science in seminaries, 369, 386. + +Societies, charitable, 252-259, 295, 407. + +Society P. C. K., 67. + +Society P. G. in Foreign Parts, 62, 67; + missions in Carolina, 67; + in New York, 80, 120, _note_, 135, 140; + in Pennsylvania, 119; + in New England, 131-133. + +Society P. G. in New England, 66. + +Sophocles, E. A., 379. + +Southampton insurrection, 279. + +Spain: + Reformation in, 3; + conquests and missions of, 7. + +Spiritualism, 337-339. + +Spotswood, Governor, 52. + +Spring, Gardiner, 353. + +Standish, Myles, 88. + +Stiles, Ezra, 204, 222. + +Stoddard, Solomon, 104, 155. + +Stone, Barton W., 234. + +Storrs, Richard S., 384. + +Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 250. + +Strawbridge, Robert, 200. + +Strong, Augustus H., 378. + +Stuart, Moses, 378. + +Sturtevant, J. M., 294. + +Stuyvesant, Peter, 71, 73, 77. + +Sumner, Charles, 283. + +Sunday observance, 371. + +Sunday-schools, 258, 362. + +Swedenborgians, 229. + +Swedes, 75-77. + +Syllabus of errors condemned by the pope, 352, 396. + +Synod: + "Reforming," 105; + Presbyterian, 136; + disrupted, 167; + excision of, 297; + of Virginia, 346. + + +Talcott, Governor, 168. + +Talmage, Thomas De Witt, 385. + +Taylor, Nathaniel W., 294, 375. + +Temperance: + efforts for, 75, 205, 206; + the Reformation, 285-291; + early legislation, 75, 288; + "Washingtonian movement," 288; + Prohibitionism, 290. + +Tennent, Gilbert, 142, 162, 165, 167, 169. + +Tennent, William, 141, 160. + +Tennent, William, Jr., 180. + +Thayer, Eli, 341, 342. + +Thayer, Joseph H., 379. + +Theological instruction, 81, 217, 249. + +Theological seminaries, 249, 251, 252. + +Theology, New England, 181, 243, 294, 355. + +Theology, systems of, 375, 378. + +Thomas, Allen C. and Richard H., 114, 139, 143. + +Thomas, John R., 393. + +Thompson, Joseph P., 404. + +Thompson, Robert Ellis, 122, 147, 176, 346, 394. + +Thomson, William M., 379. + +Thornwell, James H., 314, _note_, 378. + +Tiffany, Charles C., 65, 71, 120, 131, 134, 173, 207, 210, 213, 224, +232. + +Torkillus, Pastor, 76. + +Tracy, Joseph, 162, 169, 172, 179. + +Trumbull, Henry Clay, 362, 379. + +"Trusteeism," 215, 310. + +Tuttle, Daniel S., 335. + +Tyler, B. B., 236, 238, 242. + + +Union, Christian: + tendencies and attempts, 107, 191, 194, 206, 220, 349, 405, 406. + +Unitarianism, 224, 249, 383. + +United Brethren, 228. + +Unity, real, in the church, 175, 324, 325, 334, 419; + manifestation of it yet future, 36, 417, 419. + +Universalism, 225-228. + + +Van Twiller, Governor, 70. + +Vermont, 21. + +Vincent, John H., 363. + +Virginia, 38-53, 55, 173. + +Virginia Company, 40, 44, 48, 54. + +Voluntary system, 244, 261, 328. + +Vose, James G., 107. + + +Walker, Williston, 100, 104, 386. + +Walloons, 69. + +War: + between France and England, 21, 184; + the Seven Years', 22, 24; + Revolutionary, 202, 209; + the Civil, 348, 365; + produces schisms and healings, 353, 355. + +Ward, William Hayes, 379. + +Ware, Henry, 249, 383. + +Ware, Henry, Jr., 251, 299, 383. + +Warren, George William, 393. + +Washingtonianism, 288. + +Watts, Isaac, 158, 168, 182, 387, 391. + +Wayland, Francis, 383. + +Welsh immigrants, 118. + +Wesley, Charles, 124, 125. + +Wesley, John, 124, 159, 198, 200, 202, 217, 285. + +Westminster League, 369. + +Westminster Sabbath law, 371. + +Westward progress of church, 219, 327, 358. + +Wheelock, Eleazar, 179. + +Whitaker, Alexander, 43, 46, 150. + +White, Father, 57, 59. + +White, John, 89. + +White, Bishop William, 210, 212, 213. + +Whitefield, George, 126, 163, 168, 173, 175, 177. + +Wigglesworth, Michael, 103. + +William and Mary, College of, 52. + +Williams, Roger, 100, 106, 150. + +Williams College, 248. + +Wilson, Henry, 273, 274, 281. + +Winchester, Elhanan, 226. + +Wingfield, Governor, 39. + +Winthrop, John, 49, 98. + +Wise, John, 102. + +Women's C. T. Union, 367. + +Women's Crusade, 366. + +Women's mission boards, 367. + +Woods, Leonard, 378. + +Woolman, John, 150, 203. + + +Ximenes, Cardinal, 3. + + +Yale College, 230, 243. + +Yeo, John, 60. + +Young Men's Christian Association, 343, 364, 409. + +Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, 368, 409. + +Young Women's Christian Association, 366. + + +Zinzendorf, 124, 189, 190, 192. + + + + * * * * * + + + +The following corrections have been made to the text: + + page 32--people of England is of preeminent[original has + preeminent] importance + + page 59--feared to violate the immunities of the + church."[ending quotation mark is missing in original] + + page 188--sent messengers with an imploring petition to their + coreligionists[original has correligionists] at London and + Halle + + page 296--It was an unpardonable offense[original has offence] + + page 335-immediate adventism[original has hyphen between words] + + page 353--gendered strifes that still delay the + reintegration[original has redintegration] + + page 427--_Requerimiento_[original has Requirimiento] of the + Spanish, 9. + + Footnote 377-1--(American Church History Series,[original has + quotation mark] vol. viii.)--also, pp. 219, 220, 389-378--this + typographical error has not been corrected + +Variations in hyphenation are preserved as in the original. 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