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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]
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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.
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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." |
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